Alcaeus of Mytilene

Alcaeus and Sappho, Attic red-figure kalathos, c. 470 BC, Staatliche Antikensammlungen (Inv. 2416)

Alcaeus of Mytilene (/ælˈsəs/; Greek: Ἀλκαῖος ὁ Μυτιληναῖος, Alkaios; c. 620 – 6th century BC), Greek lyric poet from Lesbos Island who is credited with inventing the Alcaic verse. He was included in the canonical list of nine lyric poets by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria. He was an older contemporary and an alleged lover of Sappho, with whom he may have exchanged poems. He was born into the aristocratic governing class of Mytilene, the main city of Lesbos, where he was involved in political disputes and feuds.

Biography

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. This coin is said to have belonged to Fulvius Ursinus. It passed through various hands and collections into the Royal Museum at Paris, and was engraved by the Chevalier Visconti." — J. Easby-Smith[1]
Pittacus

The broad outlines of the poet's life are well known.[2][3][4] He was born into the aristocratic, warrior class that dominated Mytilene, the strongest city-state on the island of Lesbos and, by the end of the seventh century BC, the most influential of all the North Aegean Greek cities, with a strong navy and colonies securing its trade-routes in the Hellespont. The city had long been ruled by kings born to the Penthilid clan but, during the poet's life, the Penthilids were a spent force and rival aristocrats and their factions contended with each other for supreme power. Alcaeus and his older brothers were passionately involved in the struggle but experienced little success. Their political adventures can be understood in terms of three tyrants who came and went in succession:

Sometime before 600 BC, Mytilene fought Athens for control of Sigeion and Alcaeus was old enough to participate in the fighting. According to the historian Herodotus,[5] the poet threw away his shield to make good his escape from the victorious Athenians then celebrated the occasion in a poem that he later sent to his friend, Melanippus. It is thought that Alcaeus travelled widely during his years in exile, including at least one visit to Egypt. His older brother, Antimenidas, appears to have served as a mercenary in the army of Nebuchadnezzar II and probably took part in the conquest of Askelon. Alcaeus wrote verses in celebration of Antimenides' return, including mention of his valour in slaying the larger opponent (frag. 350), and he proudly describes the military hardware that adorned their family home (frag. 357).

"Alcaeus was in some respects not unlike a Royalist soldier of the age of the Stuarts. He had the high spirit and reckless gaiety, the love of country bound up with belief in a caste, the licence tempered by generosity and sometimes by tenderness, of a cavalier who has seen good and evil days." — Richard Claverhouse Jebb[6]

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 frs. 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. 384), may owe its inspiration to her performances at the festival.[7] The Lesbian or Aeolic school of poetry "reached in the songs of Sappho and Alcaeus that high point of brilliancy to which it never after-wards approached"[8] and it was assumed by later Greek critics and during the early centuries of the Christian era that the two poets were in fact lovers, a theme which became a favourite subject in art (as in the urn pictured above).

Poetry

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). Alexandrian scholars numbered him in their canonic nine (one lyric poet per Muse). Among these, Pindar was held by many ancient critics to be pre-eminent,[9] but some gave precedence to Alcaeus instead.[10] The canonic nine are traditionally divided into two groups, with Alcaeus, Sappho and Anacreon, being 'monodists' or 'solo-singers', with the following characteristics:[11]

The other six of the canonic nine composed verses for public occasions, performed by choruses and professional singers and typically featuring complex metrical arrangements that were never reproduced in other verses. However, this division into two groups is considered by some modern scholars to be too simplistic and often it is practically impossible to know whether a lyric composition was sung or recited, or whether or not it was accompanied by musical instruments and dance. Even the private reflections of Alcaeus, ostensibly sung at dinner parties, still retain a public function.[12]

Critics often seek to understand Alcaeus in comparison with Sappho:

If we compare the two, we find that Alcaeus is versatile, Sappho narrow in her range; that his verse is less polished and less melodious than hers; and that the emotions which he chooses to display are less intense. — David Campbell[13]
The Aeolian song is suddenly revealed, as a mature work of art, in the spirited stanzas of Alcaeus. It is raised to a supreme excellence by his younger contemporary, Sappho, whose melody is unsurpassed, perhaps unequalled, among all the relics of Greek verse. — Richard Jebb[14]
In the variety of his subjects, in the exquisite rhythm of his meters, and in the faultless perfection of his style, all of which appear even in mutilated fragments, he excells all the poets, even his more intense, more delicate and more truly inspired contemporary Sappho. — James Easby-Smith[10]

The Roman poet, Horace, also compared the two, describing Alcaeus as "more full-throatedly singing"[15] — 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.[12]

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,"[16] 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."[17]

Poetic genres

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

A drinking poem (fr. 346)

The following verses demonstrate some key characteristics of the Alcaic style (square brackets indicate uncertainties in the ancient text):

πώνωμεν· τί τὰ λύχν' ὀμμένομεν; δάκτυλος ἀμέρα·
κὰδ δ'ἄερρε κυλίχναις μεγάλαις [αιτα]ποικίλαισ·
οἶνον γὰρ Σεμέλας καὶ Δίος υἶος λαθικάδεον
ἀνθρώποισιν ἔδωκ'. ἔγχεε κέρναις ἔνα καὶ δύο
πλήαις κὰκ κεφάλας, [ἀ] δ' ἀτέρα τὰν ἀτέραν κύλιξ
ὠθήτω...
[1]

  1. ^ David A. Campbell, Greek Lyric Poetry, Bristol Classical Press (1982), p. 60
 

Let's drink! Why are we waiting for the lamps? Only an inch of daylight left.
Lift down the large cups, my friends, the painted ones;
for wine was given to men by the son of Semele and Zeus
to help them forget their troubles. Mix one part of water to two of wine,
pour it in up to the brim, and let one cup push the other along...[1]

  1. ^ Andrew M.Miller (trans.), Greek Lyric: An Anthology in Translation, Hackett Publishing Co. (1996), p. 48

The Greek meter here is relatively simple, comprising the Greater Asclepiad, adroitly used to convey, for example, the rhythm of jostling cups (ἀ δ' ἀτέρα τὰν ἀτέραν). The language of the poem is typically direct and concise and comprises short sentences — the first line is in fact a model of condensed meaning, comprising an exhortation ("Let's drink!), a rhetorical question ("Why are we waiting for the lamps?") and a justifying statement (Only an inch of daylight left.)[45] The meaning is clear and uncomplicated, the subject is drawn from personal experience, and there is an absence of poetic ornament, such as simile or metaphor. Like many of his poems (e.g., frs. 38, 326, 338, 347, 350), it begins with a verb (in this case "Let's drink!") and it includes a proverbial expression ("Only an inch of daylight left") though it is possible that he coined it himself.[13]

A hymn (fr. 34)

Alcaeus rarely used metaphor or simile and yet he had a fondness for the allegory of the storm-tossed ship of state. The following fragment of a hymn to Castor and Polydeuces (the Dioscuri) is possibly another example of this though some scholars interpret it instead as a prayer for a safe voyage.[46]

Hither now to me from your isle of Pelops,
You powerful children of Zeus and Leda,
Showing youselves kindly by nature, Castor
And Polydeuces!

Travelling abroad on swift-footed horses,
Over the wide earth, over all the ocean,
How easily you bring deliverance from
Death's gelid rigor,

Landing on tall ships with a sudden, great bound,
A far-away light up the forestays running,
Bringing radiance to a ship in trouble,
Sailed in the darkness!

The poem was written in Sapphic stanzas, a verse form popularly associated with his compatriot, Sappho, but in which he too excelled, here paraphrased in English to suggest the same rhythms. There were probably another three stanzas in the original poem but only nine letters of them remain.[47] The 'far-away light' (Πήλοθεν λάμπροι) is a reference to St Elmo's Fire, an electrical discharge supposed by ancient Greek mariners to be an epiphany of the Dioscuri, but the meaning of the line was obscured by gaps in the papyrus until reconstructed by a modern scholar—such reconstructions are typical of the extant poetry (see Scholars, fragments and sources below). This poem doesn't begin with a verb but with an adverb (Δευτέ) but still communicates a sense of action. He probably performed his verses at drinking parties for friends and political allies—men for whom loyalty was essential, particularly in such troubled times.[43]

Tributes from other poets

Horace

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.[48] In his second book, in an ode composed in Alcaic stanzas on the subject of an almost fatal accident he had on his farm, he imagines meeting Alcaeus and Sappho in Hades:

quam paene furvae regna Proserpinae
et iudicantem vidimus Aeacum
sedesque descriptas piorum et
Aeoliis fidibus querentem

Sappho puellis de popularibus
et te sonantem plenius aureo,
Alcaee, plectro dura navis,
dura fugae mala, dura belli![1]

  1. ^ Horace Od. 2.13.21–8
 

How close the realm of dusky Proserpine
Yawned at that instant! I half glimpsed the dire
Judge of the dead, the blest in their divine
Seclusion, Sappho on the Aeolian lyre,

Mourning the cold girls of her native isle,
And you, Alcaeus, more full-throatedly
Singing with your gold quill of ships, exile
And war, hardship on land, hardship at sea.[1]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference classics116 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

Ovid

Ovid compared Alcaeus to Sappho in Letters of the Heroines, where Sappho is imagined to speak as follows:

nec plus Alcaeus consors patriaeque lyraeque
laudis habet, quamvis grandius ille sonet.

 

Nor does Alcaeus, my fellow-countryman and fellow-poet,
receive more praise, although he resounds more grandly.[1]

  1. ^ Ovid Her.15.29s, cited and translated by David A. Campbell, Greek Lyric I: Sappho and Alcaeus, Loeb Classical Library (1982), p. 39

Scholars, fragments and sources

A 2nd century AD papyrus of Alcaeus, one of the many such fragments that have contributed to our greatly improved knowledge of Alcaeus' poetry during the 20th century (P.Berol. inv. 9810 = fr. 137 L.–P.).

The story of Alcaeus is partly the story of the scholars who rescued his work from oblivion.[4][49] His verses have not come down to us through a manuscript tradition — generations of scribes copying an author's collected works, such as delivered intact into the modern age four entire books of Pindar's odes — but haphazardly, in quotes from ancient scholars and commentators whose own works have chanced to survive, and in the tattered remnants of papyri uncovered from an ancient rubbish pile at Oxyrhynchus and other locations in Egypt: sources that modern scholars have studied and correlated exhaustively, adding little by little to the world's store of poetic fragments.

Ancient scholars quoted Alcaeus in support of various arguments. Thus for example Heraclitus 'The Allegorist'[50] quoted fr. 326 and part of fr. 6, about ships in a storm, in his study on Homer's use of allegory.[51] The hymn to Hermes, fr308(b), was quoted by Hephaestion (grammarian)[52] and both he and Libanius, the rhetorician, quoted the first two lines of fr. 350,[53] celebrating the return from Babylon of Alcaeus' brother. The rest of fr. 350 was paraphrased in prose by the historian/geographer Strabo.[54] Many fragments were supplied in quotes by Athenaeus, principally on the subject of wine-drinking, but fr. 333, "wine, window into a man", was quoted much later by the Byzantine grammarian, John Tzetzes.[55]

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. This was followed by another edition of the nine poets, collected by Henricus Stephanus and published in Paris in 1560. Fulvius Ursinus compiled a fuller collection of Alcaic fragments, including a commentary, which was published at Antwerp in 1568. The first separate edition of Alcaeus was by Christian David Jani and it was published at Halle in 1780. The next separate edition was by August Matthiae, Leipzig 1827.

Some of the fragments quoted by ancient scholars were able to be integrated by scholars in the nineteenth century. Thus for example two separate quotes by Athenaeus[56] were united by Theodor Bergk to form fr. 362. Three separate sources were combined to form fr. 350, as mentioned above, including a prose paraphrase from Strabo that first needed to be restored to its original meter, a synthesis achieved by the united efforts of Otto Hoffmann, Karl Otfried Muller[57] and Franz Heinrich Ludolf Ahrens. The discovery of the Oxyrhynchus papyri towards the end of the nineteenth century dramatically increased the scope of scholarly research. In fact, eight important fragments have now been compiled from papyri — frs. 9, 38A, 42, 45, 34, 129, 130 and most recently S262. These fragments typically feature lacunae or gaps that scholars fill with 'educated guesses', including for example a "brilliant supplement" by Maurice Bowra in fr. 34, a hymn to the Dioscuri that includes a description of St Elmo's fire in the ship's rigging.[58] Working with only eight letters (πρό...τρ...ντες or pro...tr...ntes), Bowra conjured up a phrase that brilliantly develops the meaning and the euphony of the poem (πρότον' ὀντρέχοντες or proton' ontrechontes), describing luminescence "running along the forestays".

References

  1. J. Easby-Smith, The Songs of Alcaeus, W. H. Lowdermilk and Co. (1901)
  2. David Mulroy, Early Greek Lyric Poetry, University of Michigan Press, 1992, pp. 77–78
  3. David. A. Campbell, Greek Lyric Poetry, Bristol Classic Press, 1982, pp. 285–7
  4. 1 2 James S. Easby-Smith, The Songs of Alcaeus, W. H. Lowdermilk and Co., Washington, 1901
  5. Histories 5.95
  6. R. C. Jebb, Greek Literature, MacMillan and Co. 1878, p. 59
  7. Gregory Nagy, 'Lyric and Greek Myth' in The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology, ed. R. D. Woodward, Cambridge University Press (2007), pp. 19–51
  8. James S. Easby-Smith, The Songs of Alcaeus, W. H. Lowdermilk and Co., Washington, 1901
  9. Quintilian 10.1.61; cf. Pseudo-Longinus 33.5.
  10. 1 2 James Easby-Smith, The Songs of Alcaeus (digitized without page numbers)
  11. Andrew M.Miller (trans.), Greek Lyric: An Anthology in Translation, Hackett Publishing Co. (1996), Intro. xiii
  12. 1 2 Gregory Nagy, 'Lyric and Greek Myth' in The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology, ed. R. D. Woodward, Cambridge University Press (2007), pp. 19–51
  13. 1 2 David A. Campbell, Greek Lyric Poetry, Bristol Classical Press (1982), p. 287
  14. Richard Jebb, Bacchylides: the poems and fragments, Cambridge University Press 1905, p. 29
  15. James Michie (trans.), The Odes of Horace, Penguin Classics (1964), p. 116
  16. Imit. 422, quoted from Easby-Smith in Songs of Alcaeus
  17. Quintillian 10.1.63, quoted by D.Campbell in G.L.P, p. 288
  18. fr. 129
  19. 1 2 fr. 332
  20. fr. S262
  21. fr. 6
  22. Imit. 422, quoted by Campbell in G.L.P., p. 286
  23. Athenaeus 10.430c
  24. Frs. 335, 346
  25. fr. 38A
  26. fr. 333
  27. fr. 338
  28. fr. 347
  29. Hesiod Op. 582–8
  30. David A. Campbell, Greek Lyric Poetry, Bristol Classical Press (1982), p. 286
  31. fr. 34a
  32. fr. 308b
  33. fr. 45
  34. David A. Campbell, Greek Lyric Poetry, Bristol Classical Press (1982), pp. 292–3
  35. David Campbell, 'Monody', in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature: Greek Literature, P. Easterling and E. Kenney (eds), Cambridge University Press (1985), p. 213
  36. Cicero, Tusc. Disp. 4.71
  37. fr. 384
  38. fr. 362, Athenaeus 15.687d
  39. fr. 357
  40. Athenaeus 14.627a
  41. fr. 350
  42. fr. 10B
  43. 1 2 David Campbell, 'Monody', in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature: Greek Literature, P. Easterling and E. Kenney (eds), Cambridge University Press (1985), p. 214
  44. fr. 42
  45. David Campbell, 'Monody', in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature: Greek Literature, P. Easterling and E. Kenney (eds), Cambridge University Press (1985), p. 212
  46. David A. Campbell, Greek Lyric Poetry, Bristol Classical Press (1982), pp. 286, 289
  47. David A. Campbell, Greek Lyric Vol. I, Loeb Classical Library (1990), p. 247
  48. Horace Od. 3.30
  49. David. A. Campbell, Greek Lyric Poetry, Bristol Classic Press, 1982, pp. 285–305
  50. Donald. A. Russell and David Konstan (ed.s and tran.s.), Heraclitus:Homeric Problems, Society of Biblical Literature (2005), Introduction
  51. Heraclitus All.5
  52. Hephaestion Ench. xiv.1
  53. Hephaestion Ench. x 3; Libanus Or. 13.5
  54. Strabo 13.617
  55. Tzetzes Alex. 212
  56. Athenaeus 15.674cd, 15.687d
  57. Müller, Karl Otfried, "Ein Bruder des Dichters Alkäos ficht unter Nebukadnezar," Rheinisches Museum 1 (1827):287.
  58. David. A. Campbell, Greek Lyric Poetry, Bristol Classic Press, 1982, p. 290

Sources

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