Greek Lyric Poetry

Between epic and philosophy lies the age of the lyre. From the seventh century the Greeks sang of the present moment and the single self: Archilochus’ iambic fire, Sappho and Alcaeus on Lesbos, Anacreon’s wine-bright grace, Ibycus’ love-choruses, Simonides’ epitaphs and odes, down to Pindar. Alexandria canonized nine lyric poets; of most, time has left fragments — lines quoted by grammarians, scraps of papyrus from the sands of Egypt.

Lyric was song: bound to the lyre and the aulos, to the symposium, the festival and the choral dance. In it the Greek soul first spoke in its own voice of love, mortality, fortune and the gods — the immediate ancestors of the questions philosophy would soon ask in prose.