Biographies of the Epigrammatists

Simonides of Ceos, B.C. 556-467, the most eminent of the lyric poets, lived for some years at the court of Hipparchus of Athens (B.C. 528- 514), afterwards among the feudal nobility of Thessaly, and was again living at Athens during the Persian wars. The later years of his life were spent with Pindar and Aeschylus at the court of Hiero of Syracuse. He was included in the "Garland" of Meleager (l. 8, "the fresh shoot of the vine-blossom of Simonides"), fifty-nine epigrams are under his name in the Palatine MS., and eighteen more in Planudes, besides nine others doubtfully ascribed to him. Several of his epigrams are quoted by Herodotus; others are preserved by Strabo, Plutarch, Athenaeus, etc. In all, according to Bergk, we have ninety authentic epigrams from his hand. There were two later poets of the same name, Simonides of Magnesia, who lived under Antiochus the Great about 200 B.C., and Simonides of Carystus, of whom nothing definite is known; some of the spurious epigrams may be by one or other of them.

Beyond the point to which Simonides brought it the epigram never rose. In him there is complete ease of workmanship and mastery of form together with the noble and severe simplicity which later poetry lost. His dedications retain something of the antique stiffness; but his magnificent epitaphs are among our most precious inheritances from the greatest thought and art of Greece.

Select Epigrams from The Greek Anthology