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.

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.

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.

" 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 ).

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.

Heracles is moved to tears by Meleager's account ; Meleager has left his sister Deianira unwedded in his father's house, and entreats Heracles to take her as bride ; here Bacchylides breaks off his account of the meeting, without noting that in this way Heracles in the Underworld chooses a disastrous wife.

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.

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.

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

) 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.

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.

The Alexandrian grammarian Didymus ( circa 30 BC ) wrote commentaries on the work of Bacchylides and the poems appear, from the finding of papyri fragments, to have been popular reading in the first three centuries AD.

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.

* 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.

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 ..."

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.

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 ):

Bacchylides had become, almost overnight, among the best represented poets of the canonic nine, with about half as many extant verses as Pindar, adding about a hundred new words to Greek lexicons.

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.

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

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.

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.

* 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 ).

The oldest sources on Bacchylides and his work are scholia on Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Aristophanes, Apollonius Rhodius and Callimachus.

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

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.

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.

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 ).

Ode 13 of the Bacchylides is a Nemean ode performed to honor the athlete Pytheas of Aegina for winning the pancration event of the Nemean games.

" 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.