Bacchylides celebrated such victories by Theseus in one of his dithyrambs, sung in the form of a dialogue between chorus and chorus-leader ( poem 18 ).

Bacchylides described Theseus as wearing a hat with red hair, which classicists believe was Thracian in origin.

) Observations by Eusebius and Georgius Syncellus can be taken to indicate that Bacchylides might have been still alive at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, but modern scholars have differed widely in estimates of the year of his death – Jebb, for example sets it at 428 BC and yet a date around 451 BC is more favoured.

Bacchylides's career as a poet probably benefitted from the high reputation of his uncle, Simonides, whose patrons, when Bacchylides was born, already included Hipparchus, tyrant of Athens 527 – 14 BC.

Pindar was not commissioned to celebrate Hieron's subsequent victory in the chariot race at the Olympic Games in 468 BC – this, the most prestigious of Hieron's victories, was however celebrated by Bacchylides ( Ode 3 ).

" The relation of Bacchylides to Greek art is a subject that no student of his poetry can ignore " – Richard Claverhouse Jebb.

Some more pieces of the Egyptian fragments were fitted together by Friedrich Blass in Germany and then followed the authoritative edition of Bacchylides ' poetry by Richard Claverhouse Jebb – a combination of scholars that inspired one academic to comment: " we almost had the Renaissance back again ".

The debt however was mutual and Bacchylides borrowed from tragedy for some of his effects – thus Ode 16, with its myth of Deianeira, seems to assume audience knowledge of Sophocles's play, Women of Trachis, and Ode 18 echoes three plays – Aeschylus's Persians and Suppliants and Sophocles's Oedipus Rex.

In fact, in the same year that both poets celebrated Pherenicus's Olympic victory, Pindar also composed an ode for Theron of Acragas ( Olympian 2 ), in which he likens himself to an eagle confronted with chattering ravens – possibly a reference to Bacchylides and his uncle.

" In fact one modern scholar has observed in Bacchylides a general tendency towards imitation, sometimes approaching the level of quotation: in this case, the eagle simile in Ode 5 may be thought to imitate a passage in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter ( 375 – 83 ), and the countless leaves fluttering in the wind on " the gleaming headlands of Ida ", mentioned later in the ode, recall a passage in Iliad ( 6. 146 – 9 ).

A tendency to imitate other poets is not peculiar to Bacchylides, however – it was common in ancient poetry, as for example in a poem by Alcaeus ( fragment 347 ), which virtually quotes a passage from Hesiod ( Works and Days 582 – 8 ).

Pindar's Olympian Ode 1 and Bacchylides's Ode 5 differ also in their description of the race – while Pindar's reference to Pherenicus is slight and general ("... speeding / by Alpheus ' bank, / His lovely limbs ungoaded on the course ...": Olympian I. 20 – 21 ), Bacchylides describes the running of the winner more vividly and in rather more detail – a difference that is characteristic of the two poets:

Ultimately, however, Bacchylides and Pindar share many of the same goals and techniques – the difference is largely one of temperament:

Dionysius Chalcus, Alcaeus, Anacreon, Pindar, Bacchylides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Antiphanes make frequent and familiar allusion to the cottabus – and it appears on vases from the era ; but in the writers of the Roman and Alexandrian period such reference as occurs shows that the fashion had died out.

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.

Soon he was competing with Pindar for commissions from the leading families of Aegina and, in 476 BC, their rivalry seems to have reached the highest levels when Bacchylides composed an ode celebrating Hieron's first victory at the Olympian Games ( Ode 5 ).

They were arranged in nine ' books ', exemplifying the following genres ( Bacchylides in fact composed in a greater variety of genres than any of the other lyric poets who comprise the canonic nine, with the exception of Pindar, who composed in ten ):

In Bacchylides ' ode, composed for Hiero of Syracuse, who won the chariot race at Olympia in 468, Croesus with his wife and family mounted the funeral pyre, but before the flames could envelop the king, he was snatched up by Apollo and spirited away to the Hyperboreans.

The form soon spread to other Greek city-states, and dithyrambs were composed by the poets Simonides and Bacchylides, as well as Pindar ( the only one whose works have survived in anything like their original form ).

The clearest sense of dithyramb as proto-tragedy comes from a surviving dithyramb by Bacchylides, though it was composed after tragedy had already developed fully.

Bacchylides: Politics, Performance, Poetic Tradition.

At the same time, choral odes begin to take on something of the form of dithyrambs reminiscent of the poetry of Bacchylides, featuring elaborate treatment of myths.

* The lyric poet Bacchylides quoted / paraphrased Hesiod in a victory ode addressed to Hieron of Syracuse, commemorating the tyrant's win in the chariot race at the Pythian Games 470 BC, the attribution made with these words: " A man of Boeotia, Hesiod, minister of the Muses, spoke thus: ' He whom the immortals honour is attended also by the good report of men.

It appears likely that Sappho's poetry was largely lost through action of the same indiscriminate forces of cultural change that have left us such paltry remains of all nine canonical Greek lyric poets, of whom only Pindar ( whose works alone survive in a manuscript tradition ) and Bacchylides ( our knowledge of whom we owe to a single dramatic papyrus find ) have fared much better.

His rule was eulogized by poets like Simonides of Ceos, Bacchylides and Pindar, who visited his court.

Bacchylides (; ) ( 5th century BC ) was a Greek lyric poet.

He has often been compared unfavourably with his contemporary, Pindar, as " a kind of Boccherini to Pindar's Haydn ", yet the differences in their styles doesn't allow for easy comparison and " to blame Bacchylides for not being Pindar is as childish a judgement as to condemn ... Marvel for missing the grandeur of Milton.

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.

According to Suda, his father's name was Meidon and his grandfather, also named Bacchylides, was a famous athlete, yet according to Etymologicum Magnum his father's name was Meidylus.

Most modern scholars however treat Bacchylides as an exact contemporary of Pindar, placing his birth around 518 BC.

According to one account, Bacchylides was banished for a time from his native Ceos and spent this period as an exile in Peloponnesus, where his genius ripened and he did the work which established his fame.

Plutarch is the only ancient source for this account and yet it is considered credible on the basis of some literary evidence ( Pindar wrote a paean celebrating Ceos, in which he says on behalf of the island " I am renowned for my athletic achievements among Greeks " 4, epode 1, a circumstance that suggests that Bacchylides himself was unavailable at the time.

Ceos, where Bacchylides was born and raised, had long had a history of poetical and musical culture, especially in its association with Delos, the focal point of the Cyclades and the principal sanctuary of the Ionian race, where the people of Ceos annually sent choirs to celebrate festivals of Apollo.

Athletic victories achieved by Ceans in panhellenic festivals were recorded at Ioulis on slabs of stone and thus Bacchylides could readily announce, in an ode celebrating one such victory ( Ode 2 ), a total of twenty-seven victories won by his countrymen at the Isthmian Games.

Pindar celebrated the same victory but used the occasion to advise the tyrant of the need for moderation in one's personal conduct ( Pindar's Olympian Ode 1 ), whereas Bacchylides probably offered his own ode as a free sample of his skill in the hope of attracting future commissions.

The tyrant's apparent preference for Bacchylides over Pindar on this occasion might have been partly due to the Cean poet's simpler language and not just to his less moralizing posture, and yet it is also possible that Bacchylides and his uncle were simply better suited to palace politics than was their more high-minded rival.

Alexandrian scholars in fact interpreted a number of passages in Pindar as hostile allusions to Bacchylides and Simonides and this interpretation has been endorsed by modern scholars also.

As a composer of choral lyrics, Bacchylides was probably responsible also for the performance, involving him in frequent travel to venues where musicians and choirs awaited instruction.

The underwater encounter is also the subject of a Bacchylides dithyramb.

Theseus Fighting the Centaur ( 1804 – 1819 ), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Theseus Defeats the Centaur by Antonio Canova ( 1804 – 1819 ), Kunsthistorisches Museum

Author Suzanne Collins was inspired by Theseus to write The Hunger Games trilogy, which was published from 2008 – 2010.

IX " Theseus: making the new Athens " ( 1994 ), pp. 203 – 222.

Theseus, visiting the underwater palace of his father, Poseidon, meets with Amphitrite, as witnessed by the goddess Athena and by some of the neighbourhood dolphins – here presented by the artist Euphronios.

Theseus triumphing over the notorious thug Procrustes – here depicted by the artist Euphronios.

Theseus and Procrustes, Attic red-figure neck amphora | neck-amphora, 570 – 560 BC, Staatliche Antikensammlungen ( Inv.

Sciron beaten by Theseus, Attic red-figure cup, 500 – 490 BC, Louvre ( G 104 )

**** 331st Fighter Interception Squadron " Theseus " – ( Mirage 2000-5 Mk2 )

* Victor Bruns ( 1904 – 1996 ), Das Recht des Herrn ( 1953 ), Theseus ( 1975 )

* Morpho theseus – Theseus Morpho

* June 15 – The Royal Navy aircraft carriers HMS Eagle, HMS Illustrious, HMS Implacable, HMS Indefatigable, HMS Indomitable, HMS Perseus, and HMS Theseus, the Royal Canadian Navy aircraft carrier HMCS Magnificent, and the Royal Australian Navy aircraft carrier HMAS Sydney and 37 squadrons of Fleet Air Arm and Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve aircraft – including Fireflies, Sea Furies, Seafires, Attackers, Vampires, Skyraiders, Sea Hornets, Meteors, Avengers, Gannets, Wyverns, Sea Venoms, Sea Hawks, and Dragonflies – take part in the Coronation Review of the Fleet for Queen Elizabeth II.

* November 6 – The worlds first ship-based helicopter-borne assault takes place, as helicopters from HMS Ocean and HMS Theseus land 425 men of the Royal Marines 45 Commando and 23 tons of stores in Port Said, Egypt, in 90 minutes.

* Theseus 1234 – 1204 ( myth )

* Theseus ( 1862 – 1880 )

) – 2006 Theseus Verlag, Berlin 3-89620-287-1