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.

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 ).

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.

He won the chariot race at Delphi in 470 ( a victory celebrated in Pindar's first Pythian ode ) and at Olympia in 468 ( this, his greatest victory, was commemorated in Bacchylides ' third victory ode ).

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.

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.

According to Kenyon, Pindar's idionsyncratic genius entitles him to the benefit of a doubt in all such cases: "... if there be actual imitation at all, it is fairly safe to conclude that it is on the part of Bacchylides.

The lines were much quoted in antiquity, as for example by Stobaeus and Sextus Empiricus, and it was imitated by later poets, such as Sophocles and Bacchylides.

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.

With this tale complete Bacchylides proclaims once again that the actions he has just told will be forever remembered thanks to the muses, leading once again into his praise of Pytheas and his trainer Menander, who shall be remembered for their great victories in the Pan-Hellenic games, even if an envious rival slights them.

* 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.

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

This precept, from one of Bacchylides ' extant fragments, was considered by his modern editor, Richard Claverhouse Jebb, to be typical of the poet's temperament: " If the utterances scattered throughout the poems warrant a conjecture, Bacchylides was of placid temper ; amiably tolerant ; satisfied with a modest lot ; not free from some tinge of that pensive melancholy which was peculiarly Ionian ; but with good sense ..."

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.

) 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 was commissioned by Hieron in 470 BC, this time to celebrate his triumph in the chariot race at the Pythian Games ( Ode 4 ).

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.

4 ) observed that the emperor Julian enjoyed reading Bacchylides, and the largest collection of quotations that survived up until the modern era was assembled by Stobaeus ( early 5th century ).

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 ".

Bacchylides has often been compared unflatteringly with Pindar, as for example by the French critic, Henri Weil: " There is no doubt that he fails of the elevation, and also of the depth, of Pindar.

But irrespective of any scruples about his treatment of myth, Bacchylides is thought to demonstrate in Ode 5 some of his finest work and the description of the eagle's flight, near the beginning of the poem, has been called by one modern scholar " the most impressive passage in his extant poetry.

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:

" Bacchylides continues this dancer allusion in praise of Aegina, and ends it by listing some famous men who were born on the island, namely Peleus and Telamon.

As is often the case with ancient Greek literature, Bacchylides plays of the audience ’ s knowledge of Homer without repeating a scene told by Homer.

* Barrett, W. S., Greek Lyric, Tragedy, and Textual Criticism: Collected Papers, edited for publication by M. L. West ( Oxford & New York, 2007 ): papers dealing with Bacchylides, Stesichorus, Pindar, and Euripides

* Works by Bacchylides at the Internet Archive

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

* Bacchylides, " The Theseus Dithyramb " – composed c. 500 BCE

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.

" 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 ).

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

Indeed, the grandfather of Simonides ' nephew, Bacchylides, was one of the island's notable athletes.

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 ).

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 Sons of Antenor, or Helen Demanded Back, is the first of Bacchylides ’ s dithyrambs in the text restored in 1896.

Simonides, the uncle of Bacchylides, was another strong influence on his poetry, as for example in his metrical range, mostly dactylo-epitrite in form, with some Aeolic rhythms and a few iambics.

As a dialogue between a solitary singer and a chorus, Bacchylides ' dithyramb is suggestive of what tragedy may have resembled before Aeschylus added a second actor.

Scholiasts are the only authority for stories about rivalry between Simonides and Pindar at the court of Hieron, traditionally used to explain some of the meanings in Pindar's victory odes ( see the articles on Bacchylides and Pindar ).

The Greeks distinguished, however, between lyric monody ( e. g. Sappho, Anacreon ) and choral lyric ( e. g. Pindar, Bacchylides ).

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.