129 ) indicate that the poet, his brothers and Pittacus made plans to overthrow him and that Pittacus subsequently betrayed them ; Alcaeus and his brothers fled into exile where the poet later wrote a drinking song in celebration of the news of the tyrant's death ( frag.

* They wrote in their native dialects ( Alcaeus and Sappho in Aeolic dialect, Anacreon in Ionic );

Horace, who often wrote in imitation of Alcaeus, sketches in verse one of the Lesbian poet's favourite subjects-Lycus of the black hair and eyes ( C. 1. 32. 11-12: nigris oculis nigroque / crine decorum ).

It is possible that Alcaeus wrote amorously about Sappho, as indicated in an earlier quote.

* Miscellaneous: Alcaeus wrote on such a wide variety of subjects and themes that contradictions in his character emerge.

The poets Alcaeus of Mytilene, Sappho, Anacreon, and Bacchylides wrote of love, war, and death in lyrics of great feeling and beauty.

He wrote commentaries on Sophocles, Alcaeus of Mytilene and Homer, and a work ( Te ~ tput &) on places consecrated to the gods.

* Myrsilus-it is not known when he came to power but some verses by Alcaeus ( frag.

The poetic works of Alcaeus were collected into ten books, with elaborate commentaries, by the Alexandrian scholars Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace sometime in the 3rd century BC, and yet his verses today exist only in fragmentary form, varying in size from mere phrases, such as wine, window into a man ( fr. 333 ) to entire groups of verses and stanzas, such as those quoted below ( fr. 346 ).

* Love songs: Almost all Alcaeus ' amorous verses, mentioned with disapproval by Quintilian above, have vanished without trace.

The grammarian Athenaeus quoted some verses about perfumed ointments to prove just how unwarlike Alcaeus could be and he quoted his description of the armour adorning the walls of his house as proof that he could be unusually warlike for a lyric poet.

The first ' modern ' publication of Alcaeus ' verses appeared in a Greek and Latin edition of fragments collected from the canonic nine lyrical poets by Michael Neander, published at Basle in 1556.

Simonides composed verses almost entirely for public performances and inscriptions, unlike previous lyric poets such as Sappho and Alcaeus, who composed more intimate verses to entertain friends —" With Simonides the age of individualism in lyric poetry has passed.

* Alcaeus: The great lyric poet of Mytilene, he is not mentioned by name but he is the author of some well-known verses that Philocleon adapts to a scolion directed against Cleon in lines 1232-35.

Alcaeus exhorts his friends to drink in celebration of a tyrant's death, to drink away their sorrows, to drink because life is short and along the lines in vino veritas, to drink through winter storms and to drink through the heat of summer.

* Pittacus-the dominant political figure of his time, he was voted supreme power by the political assembly of Mytilene and appears to have governed well ( 590-580 BC ), even allowing Alcaeus and his faction to return home in peace.

The hymn to Hermes, fr308 ( b ), was quoted by Hephaestion ( grammarian ) and both he and Libanius, the rhetorician, quoted the first two lines of fr. 350, celebrating the return from Babylon of Alcaeus ' brother.

It is thought that Alcaeus travelled widely during his years in exile, including at least one visit to Egypt.

The Roman poet Horace modelled his own lyrical compositions on those of Alcaeus, rendering the Lesbian poet's verse-forms, including ' Alcaic ' and ' Sapphic ' stanzas, into concise Latin-an achievement he celebrates in his third book of odes.

" It contained poems by the compiler himself and forty-six other poets, including Archilochus, Alcaeus, Anacreon, and Simonides.

Alcaeus and Sappho, Attica | Attic red-figure kalathos, ca.

Alcaeus ( Alkaios, ) of Mytilene ( c. 620 – 6th century BC ), Greek lyric poet from Lesbos Island who is credited with inventing the Alcaic verse.

Alcaeus " A probably authentic Lesbian coin has been preserved, bearing upon the obverse ... a profile head of Alcaeus, and upon the reverse ... a profile head of Pittacus.

Alcaeus and his older brothers were passionately involved in the struggle but experienced little success.

Sometime before 600 BC, Mytilene fought Athens for control of Sigeion and Alcaeus was old enough to participate in the fighting.

Sappho and Alcaeus by Lawrence Alma-Tadema.

Alcaeus was a contemporary and a countryman of Sappho and, since both poets composed for the entertainment of Mytilenean friends, they had many opportunities to associate with each other on a quite regular basis, such as at the Kallisteia, an annual festival celebrating the island's federation under Mytilene, held at the ' Messon ' ( referred to as temenos in fr. s 129 and 130 ), where Sappho performed publicly with female choirs.

Alcaeus ' reference to Sappho in terms more typical of a divinity, as holy / pure, honey-smiling Sappho ( fr.

Among these, Pindar was held by many ancient critics to be pre-eminent, but some gave precedence to Alcaeus instead.

Even the private reflections of Alcaeus, ostensibly sung at dinner parties, still retain a public function.

The Roman poet, Horace, also compared the two, describing Alcaeus as " more full-throatedly singing "-see Horace's tribute below.

Alcaeus himself seems to underscore the difference between his own ' down-to-earth ' style and Sappho's more ' celestial ' qualities when he describes her almost as a goddess ( as cited above ), and yet it has been argued that both poets were concerned with a balance between the divine and the profane, each emphasising different elements in that balance.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus exhorts us to " Observe in Alcaeus the sublimity, brevity and sweetness coupled with stern power, his splendid figures, and his clearness which was unimpaired by the dialect ; and above all mark his manner of expressing his sentiments on public affairs ," while Quintilian, after commending Alcaeus for his excellence " in that part of his works where he inveighs against tyrants and contributes to good morals ; in his language he is concise, exalted, careful and often like an orator ;" goes on to add: " but he descended into wantonnness and amours, though better fitted for higher things.

The works of Alcaeus are conventionally grouped according to five genres.

The first productive period came when he was considering poetry as a vocation, before he had decided to write fiction for a living ( in his note for Who's Who he wrote that he `` wrote verses 1865 - 1868 ; ;

Even his old literary home, Punch, where the When We Were Very Young verses had first appeared, was ultimately to reject him, as Christopher Milne details in his autobiography The Enchanted Places, although Methuen continued to publish whatever Milne wrote, including the long poem ' The Norman Church ' and an assembly of articles entitled Year In, Year Out ( which Milne likened to a benefit night for the author ).

On the day of his wife's death he wrote two verses from the Psalms, and the prayer, ' O Lord, God of Mercy, unite me in Heaven with those whom you have permitted me to love on earth.

Although he wrote poetry, also an anthology of verses on the monasteries of Mesopotamia and Egypt, and a genealogical work, his fame rests upon his Book of Songs ( Kitab al-Aghani ).

In 1902, the English politician and game shooting enthusiast Mark Hanbury Beaufoy wrote some much-quoted verses on gun safety, including many salient points.

Thomas Bernard, who later became Bishop of Killaloe, wrote in his verses on Reynolds:

His contemporary Sheykhi wrote verses on love and romance.

He also wrote many letters, verses and epitaphs, including those of Duke / Prince Arichis II of Benevento and of many members of the Carolingian family.

Ibn Ezra hinted, and Bonfils explicitly stated, that Joshua wrote these verses many years after the death of Moses.

Other commentators do not accept this position and maintain that although Moses did not write those eight verses it was nonetheless dictated to him and that Joshua wrote it based on instructions left by Moses, and that the Torah often describes future events, some of which have yet to occur.

Plutarch wrote that, according to Volumnius, Brutus repeated two verses, but Volumnius was only able to recall the one quoted.

He also wrote iambic and trochaic verses which, according to one modern scholar, are more lively and direct than his elegies and possibly paved the way for the iambics of Athenian drama.

The same poem was said by Diogenes Laertios to have stirred Athenians more than any other verses that Solon wrote:

On the title page he wrote, " There was an old fossil named Lear, Who's verses were boring and drear.

Simonides wrote a wide range of choral lyrics with an Ionian flavour and elegiac verses in Doric idioms.

He modelled his work on the " choral " lyrics of Stesichorus at least in so far as he wrote narratives on mythical themes ( often with original variations from the traditional stories ) and structured his verses in triads ( units of three stanzas each, called " strophe ", " antistrophe " and " epode "), so closely in fact that even the ancients sometimes had difficulty distinguishing between the two poets Whereas however ancient scholars collected the work of Stesichorus into twenty-six books, each probably a self-contained narrative that gave its title to the whole book, they compiled only seven books for Ibycus, which were numbered rather than titled and whose selection criteria are unknown.

According to Athenaeus, he was small, thin and surprisingly strong The Byzantine encyclopaedia Suda, recorded that he was expelled from Ephesus by the tyrants Athenagoras and Comas, then settled in Clazomenae, and that he wrote verses satirising Bupalis and Athenis because they made insulting likenesses of him.

After the song started to acquire its informal status as the national anthem, various people wrote additional verses to increase the " Swedishness " of the song.

The aforementioned Lundqvist wrote his own third verse beginning with " Jag älskar dig Sverige " ( I love thee, Sweden ), Frans Österblom wrote four verses beginning with " Jag älskar min hembygd " (" I love my native area ") and Louise Ahlén in 1910 wrote two verses which are occasionally printed still to this day, not the least lately on the Internet.