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.

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 relates how Achilles ’ inaction spurred the Trojans to false hope, and how their swollen pride led them to be destroyed at the hands of the men they thought they had vanquished.

Bacchylides also mentions that Dexithea later had a son Euxanthios by Minos.

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.

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.

Ironically, his newly discovered poems sparked a renewed interest in Pindar's work, with whom he was compared so unfavourably that " the students of Pindaric poetry almost succeeded in burying Bacchylides all over again.

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.

The heroes who participated assembled from all over Hellas, according to Homer ; Bacchylides called them " the best of the Hellenes ".

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.

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 ):

This difference in moral posturing was typical of the two poets, with Bacchylides adopting a quieter, simpler and less forceful manner than Pindar.

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.

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:

The scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria included him in the canonical list of nine lyric poets, along with Bacchylides ( his nephew ) and Pindar ( reputedly a bitter rival ).

He is known to have written on Greek lyric poets, notably Bacchylides and Pindar, and on drama ; the better part of the Pindar and Sophocles scholia originated with Didymus.

The poets Simonides, Pindar, Bacchylides, Aeschylus, and Epicharmus were active at his court, as well the philosopher Xenophanes.

According to most ancient sources, Atreus was the father of Plisthenes, but in some lyric poets ( Ibycus, Bacchylides ) Plisthenides ( son of Plisthenes ) is used as an alternative name for Atreus himself.

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.

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

He modeled his court after Athens and was a patron of the poets Pindar and Bacchylides, both of whom dedicated poems to Alexander.

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 ).

In the classical period Kea ( Ceos ) was the home of Simonides and of his nephew Bacchylides, both ancient Greek lyric poets, and the Sophist Prodicus, and the physician Erasistratus.

* 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.

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.

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 ..."

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 ).

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.

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.

Bacchylides is renowned for his use of picturesque detail, giving life and colour to descriptions with small but skilful touches, often demonstrating a keen sense of beauty or splendour in external nature: a radiance, " as of fire ," streams from the forms of the Nereids ( XVI.

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.

Bacchylides however might be better understood as an heir to Stesichorus, being more concerned with story-telling per se, than as a rival of Pindar.

Bacchylides begins his ode with the tale of Heracles fighting the Nemean lion, employing the battle to explain why pancration tournaments are now held during the Nemean games.

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

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.

** Omar Bacchylides Runic, a poet with a talent for extemporizing, and Chib's occasional lover.

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.

" Modern scholars generally accept 556-468 BC for his life in spite of some awkward consequences — for example it would make him about fifty years older than his nephew Bacchylides and still very active internationally at about 80 years of age.

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 ).