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Phalaecus (poet)
Phalaecus () was an Ancient Greek lyric and epigrammatic poet, from whom the meter called Phalaecian() took its name. He is occasionally referred to by the grammarians, but they give no information respecting his works, except that he composed hymns to Hermes. The line quoted by Hephaestion is evidently the first verse of a hymn. He seems to have been distinguished as an epigrammatist, and five of his epigrams are still preserved in the Greek Anthology, besides the one quoted by Athenaeus. The age of Phalaecus is uncertain. The conjecture of Reiske is founded on an epigram which does not properly belong to this writer. A more probable indication of his date is furnished by another epigram, in which he mentions the actor Lycon, who lived in the time of Alexander the Great, but this epigram also is of somewhat doubtful authorship. At all events he was probably one of the principal Alexandrian poets. Phalaecian verse The Phalaecian verse is well known from its frequent use by the Ro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greek Lyric
Greek lyric is the body of lyric poetry written in dialects of Ancient Greek. Lyric poetry is, in short, poetry to be sung accompanied by music, traditionally a lyre. It is primarily associated with the early 7th to the early 5th centuries BC, sometimes called the "Lyric Age of Greece", but continued to be written into the Hellenistic and Imperial periods. Background Lyric is one of three broad categories of poetry in classical antiquity, along with drama and epic, according to the scheme of the "natural forms of poetry" developed by Goethe in the early nineteenth century. (Drama is considered a form of poetry here because both tragedy and comedy were written in verse in ancient Greece.) Culturally, Greek lyric is the product of the political, social and intellectual milieu of the Greek ''polis'' ('city-state'). Much of Greek lyric is occasional poetry, composed for public or private performance by a soloist or chorus to mark particular occasions. The symposium ('drinking pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander The Great
Alexander III of Macedon (; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), most commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the Ancient Greece, ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia (ancient kingdom), Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip II of Macedon, Philip II to the throne in 336 BC at the age of 20 and spent most of his ruling years conducting Wars of Alexander the Great, a lengthy military campaign throughout West Asia, Western Asia, Central Asia, parts of South Asia, and ancient Egypt, Egypt. By the age of 30, he had created one of the List of largest empires, largest empires in history, stretching from History of Greece, Greece to northwestern History of India, India. He was undefeated in battle and is widely considered to be one of history's greatest and most successful military commanders. Until the age of 16, Alexander was tutored by Aristotle. In 335 BC, shortly after his assumption of kingship over Macedon, he Alexander's Balkan campaign, campaigned in the Bal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sophocles
Sophocles ( 497/496 – winter 406/405 BC)Sommerstein (2002), p. 41. was an ancient Greek tragedian known as one of three from whom at least two plays have survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or contemporary with, those of Aeschylus and earlier than, or contemporary with, those of Euripides. Sophocles wrote more than 120 plays, but only seven have survived in a complete form: '' Ajax'', '' Antigone'', '' Women of Trachis'', '' Oedipus Rex'', '' Electra'', '' Philoctetes'', and '' Oedipus at Colonus''. For almost fifty years, Sophocles was the most celebrated playwright in the dramatic competitions of the city-state of Athens, which took place during the religious festivals of the Lenaea and the Dionysia. He competed in thirty competitions, won twenty-four, and was never judged lower than second place. Aeschylus won thirteen competitions and was sometimes defeated by Sophocles; Euripides won four.. The most famous tragedies of Sophocles feature Oedip ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cratinus
Cratinus (; 519 BC – 422 BC) was an Athenian comic poet of the Old Comedy. Life Cratinus won prizes for his plays on 27 known occasions, eight times at the City Dionysia, first probably in the mid-to-late 450s BCE (IG II2 2325. 50), and three times at the Lenaia, first probably in the early 430s (IG II2 2325. 121; just before Pherecrates and Hermippus). He was still competing in 423 BC, when his ''Pytine'' took the prize at the City Dionysia; he died shortly thereafter, at a very advanced age, about 97 years (test. 3). Little is known of his personal history. His father's name was Callimedes, and he himself was a taxiarch. The ''Suda'' accuses Cratinus of immorality, excessive cowardice, and habitual intemperance. His contemporaries offer no corroboration, except for the third charge, which is sustained by many passages of Aristophanes and other writers. They also refer the "Confession of Cratinus", which Cratinus himself seems to have treated the subject in a very amu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simonides
Simonides of Ceos (; ; c. 556 – 468 BC) was a Greek lyric poet, born in Ioulis on Kea (island), Ceos. The scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria included him in the canonical list of the nine lyric poets esteemed by them as worthy of critical study. Included on this list were Bacchylides, his nephew, and Pindar, reputedly a bitter rival, both of whom benefited from his innovative approach to lyric poetry. Simonides, however, was more involved than either in the major events and with the personalities of their times. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Lessing, writing in the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment era, referred to him as "the Greek Voltaire." His general renown owes much to traditional accounts of his colourful life, as one of the wisest of men; as a greedy miser; as an inventor of a system of mnemonics; and the inventor of some letters of the History of the Greek alphabet, Greek alphabet (). Such accounts include fanciful elements, yet he had a real influence on the so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anacreon
Anacreon ( BC) was an Ancient Greek lyric poet, notable for his drinking songs and erotic poems. Later Greeks included him in the canonical list of Nine Lyric Poets. Anacreon wrote all of his poetry in the ancient Ionic dialect. Like all early lyric poetry, it was composed to be sung or recited to the accompaniment of music, usually the lyre. Anacreon's poetry touched on universal themes of love, infatuation, disappointment, revelry, parties, festivals, and the observations of everyday people and life. Life Anacreon lived in the sixth century BC. His exact year of birth is not known, with the general scholarly consensus being that he was likely born in the 570s BC: Hans Bernsdorff says c. 575, David Campbell says c. 570. The Suda reports four possible names for his father: Eumelus, Aristocritus, Parthenius, and Scythinus. Ancient sources agree that Anacreon came from Teos, on the coast of Ionia (modern Turkey); this tradition is attested as early as Herodotus, and at least o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sappho
Sappho (; ''Sapphṓ'' ; Aeolic Greek ''Psápphō''; ) was an Ancient Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her lyric poetry, written to be sung while accompanied by music. In ancient times, Sappho was widely regarded as one of the greatest lyric poets and was given names such as the "Tenth Muse" and "The Poetess". Most of Sappho's poetry is now lost, and what is not has mostly survived in fragmentary form; only the Ode to Aphrodite is certainly complete. As well as lyric poetry, ancient commentators claimed that Sappho wrote elegiac and iambic poetry. Three epigrams formerly attributed to Sappho have survived, but these are actually Hellenistic imitations of Sappho's style. Little is known of Sappho's life. She was from a wealthy family from Lesbos, though her parents' names are uncertain. Ancient sources say that she had three brothers: Charaxos, Larichos and Eurygios. Two of them, Charaxos and Larichos, are mentioned in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hendecasyllable
In poetry, a hendecasyllable (as an adjective, hendecasyllabic) is a line of eleven syllables. The term may refer to several different poetic meters, the older of which are quantitative and used chiefly in classical (Ancient Greek and Latin) poetry, and the newer of which are syllabic or accentual-syllabic and used in medieval and modern poetry. Classical In classical poetry, "hendecasyllable" or "hendecasyllabic" may refer to any of three distinct 11-syllable Aeolic meters, used first in Ancient Greece and later, with little modification, by Roman poets. Aeolic meters are characterized by an Aeolic base × × followed by a choriamb – u u –; where – = a long syllable, u = a short syllable, and × = an anceps, that is, a syllable either long or short. The three Aeolic hendecasyllables (with base and choriamb in bold) are: Phalaecian hendecasyllable (): × × – u u – u – u – – This line is named after Phalaecus, a minor Hellenistic poet who used it in e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Athenaeus
Athenaeus of Naucratis (, or Nαυκράτιος, ''Athēnaios Naukratitēs'' or ''Naukratios''; ) was an ancient Greek rhetorician and Grammarian (Greco-Roman), grammarian, flourishing about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century AD. The ''Suda'' says only that he lived in the times of Marcus Aurelius, but the contempt with which he speaks of Commodus, who died in 192, implies that he survived that emperor. He was a contemporary of Adrantus. Athenaeus himself states that he was the author of a treatise on the ''thratta'', a type of fish mentioned by Archippus (poet), Archippus and other comic poets, and of a history of the Syrian kings. Both works are lost. Of his works, only the fifteen-volume ''Deipnosophistae'' mostly survives. The ''Deipnosophistae'' The ''Deipnosophistae'', which means 'dinner-table philosophers', survives in fifteen books. The first two books, and parts of the third, eleventh and fifteenth, are extant only in epitome, but otherwise the w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epigram
An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word derives from the Greek (, "inscription", from [], "to write on, to inscribe"). This literary device has been practiced for over two millennia. The presence of wit or sarcasm tends to distinguish non-poetic epigrams from aphorisms and adages, which typically do not show those qualities. Ancient Greek The Greek tradition of epigrams began as poems inscribed on votive offerings at sanctuariesincluding statues of athletesand on funerary monuments, for example "Go tell it to the Spartans, passersby...". These original epigrams did the same job as a short prose text might have done, but in verse. Epigram became a literary genre in the Hellenistic period, probably developing out of scholarly collections of inscriptional epigrams. Though modern epigrams are usually thought of as very short, Greek literary epigram was not always as short as later examples, and the divide between ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greek Anthology
The ''Greek Anthology'' () is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the Classical Greece, Classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature. Most of the material of the ''Greek Anthology'' comes from two manuscripts, the ''Palatine Anthology'' of the 10th century and the ''Anthology of Planudes'' (or ''Planudean Anthology'') of the 14th century.: Explanatory text for the book of W. R. Paton entitled "The Greek Anthology with an English Translation" (1916), the same text is also at the introduction in page http://www.ancientlibrary.com/greek-anthology/ before the facsimile copy of the pages of the same book The earliest known anthology in Greek was compiled by Meleager of Gadara in the first century BC, under the title ''Anthologia'', or "Flower-gathering." It contained poems by the compiler himself and forty-six other poets, including Archilochus, Alcaeus of Mytilene, Alcaeus, Anacreon, and Simonides of Ceos, Simonides. In his preface to his collection, Meleag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deipnosophistae
The ''Deipnosophistae'' (, ''Deipnosophistaí'', lit. , where ''sophists'' may be translated more loosely as ) is a work written in Ancient Greek by Athenaeus of Naucratis. It is a long work of Greek literature, literary, Ancient history, historical, and Antiquarian#Antiquarianism in ancient Rome, antiquarian references set in Rome at a series of banquets held by the protagonist for an assembly of Grammarian (Greco-Roman world), grammarians, lexicographers, jurists, musicians, and hangers-on. Title The Ancient Greek, Greek title ''Deipnosophistaí'' () is a Compound (linguistics), compound of ' ( ) and ''sophistḗs'' ( ). It and its English language, English derivative ''s'' thus describe people who are skilled at dining, particularly the refined conversation expected to accompany Greek symposium, symposia. However, the term is shaded by the harsh treatment accorded to sophist, professional teachers in Plato's Socratic dialogues, which made the English term ' into a pejora ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
