* 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.

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.

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 ).

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.

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 ).

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.

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.

The ode plays upon the fact that those who are listening to Bacchylides have also read the epics of Homer, and understand the whole story behind this scene that would speak poorly of Achilles if people did not know the role he played in the Trojan war.

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 ).

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.

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 ):

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

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.

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.

) 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.

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 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.

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 ).

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.

* 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

" 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.

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

" 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.

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

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

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 ).

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.

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:

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 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.

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.

* Works by Bacchylides at the Internet Archive

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 ).

If the stories of rivalry are true, it may be surmised that Simonides's experiences at the courts of the tyrants, Hipparchus and Scopas, gave him a competitive edge over the proud Pindar and enabled him to promote the career of his nephew, Bacchylides, at Pindar's expense.

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

Some scholars in the modern age also found his poetry perplexing, at least up until the discovery in 1896 of some poems by his rival Bacchylides, when comparisons of their work showed that many of Pindar's idiosyncrasies are typical of archaic genres rather than of the poet himself.