Lasus of Hermione () was a

Greek lyric poet 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, s ...

of the 6th century BC from the city of

Hermione Hermione most commonly refers to: * Hermione (given name), a female given name * Hermione (mythology), only daughter of Menelaus and Helen in Greek mythology and original bearer of the name * Hermione Granger, a character in ''Harry Potter'' Hermi ...

in the

Argolid The regions of ancient Greece were sub-divisions of the Hellenic world as conceived by the ancient Greeks, shown by their presence in the works of ancient historians and geographers or in surviving legends and myths. Conceptually, there is no cl ...

. He is known to have been active at

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

under the reign of the

Peisistratids Pisistratus (also spelled Peisistratus or Peisistratos; ; – 527 BC) was a politician in ancient Athens, ruling as tyrant in the late 560s, the early 550s and from 546 BC until his death. His unification of Attica, the triangular p ...

Pseudo-Plutarch Pseudo-Plutarch is the conventional name given to the actual, but unknown, authors of a number of pseudepigrapha (falsely attributed works) attributed to Plutarch but now known not to have been written by him. Some of these works were included in s ...

's ''De Musica'' credits him with innovations in the

dithyramb The dithyramb (; , ''dithyrambos'') was an ancient Greek hymn sung and danced in honor of Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility; the term was also used as an epithet of the god. Plato, in '' The Laws'', while discussing various kinds of music m ...

hymn. With the aid of various changes in music and rhythm, he developed the dithyramb form into an artistically constructed choral song, with an accompaniment of several

flute The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...

s. It became more artificial and

mimetic Mimesis (; , ''mīmēsis'') is a term used in literary criticism and philosophy that carries a wide range of meanings, including ''imitatio'', imitation, Similarity (philosophy), similarity, receptivity, representation (arts), representation, m ...

in character, and its range of subjects was no longer confined to the adventures of

Dionysus In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, myth, Dionysus (; ) is the god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre. He was also known as Bacchus ( or ; ...

. Lasus further increased its popularity by introducing prize contests for the best poem of the kind. He avoided the letter

sigma Sigma ( ; uppercase Σ, lowercase σ, lowercase in word-final position ς; ) is the eighteenth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 200. In general mathematics, uppercase Σ is used as an operator ...

(on account of its hissing sound) in several of his poems, of one of which (a hymn to

Demeter In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, Demeter (; Attic Greek, Attic: ''Dēmḗtēr'' ; Doric Greek, Doric: ''Dāmā́tēr'') is the Twelve Olympians, Olympian goddess of the harvest and agriculture, presiding over cro ...

) a few lines have been preserved in

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 ...

(xiv. 624 E). According to

Herodotus Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the '' Histori ...

, Lasus also exposed

Onomacritus Onomacritus (; c. 530 – c. 480 BC), also spelled Onomacritos and Onomakritos, was a Greek chresmologue, or compiler of oracles, who lived at the court of the tyrant Pisistratus in Athens and prepared an edition of the Homeric poems. He was a col ...

's forgeries of the

oracle An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination. Descript ...

s of Musaeus.

7.6.3-5 Lasus is recorded to have written a now lost treatise on music, of which very little is known.

References

Sources

* * Ancient Argolis Ancient Greek lyric poets 6th-century BC Greek poets Immigrants to Archaic Athens Ancient Greek musicians Ancient Greek dithyrambic poets Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown 6th-century BC musicians {{AncientGreece-poet-stub