Page "Bacchylides" Paragraph 4

Bacchylides ' lyrics do not seem to have been popular in his own lifetime.

Lyrics by his uncle, Simonides, and his rival, Pindar, were known in Athens and were sung at parties, they were parodied by Aristophanes and quoted by Plato, but no trace of Bacchylides ' work can be found until the Hellenistic age, when Callimachus began writing some commentaries on them.

Like Simonides and Pindar, however, Bacchylides composed lyrics to appeal to the sophisticated tastes of a social elite and his patrons, though relatively few in number, covered a wide, geographical area around the Mediterranean, including for example Delos in The Aegean Sea, Thessaly to the north of mainland Greece and Sicily or Magna Graecia in the west.

It has been inferred from the elegance and quiet charm of his lyrics that he only gradually acquired fame towards the end of his life.