The Fragments of Simonides — Simonides
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ΣΙΜΩΝΙΔΟΥ ΑΠΟΣΠΑΣΜΑΤΑ
Translation/edition: J. M. Edmonds (Loeb Classical Library, 1924)
Language: English
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## The Fragments of Simonides

[Image: ]A 1900 depiction of the Battle of Marathon, which Simonides was commissioned to commemorate

## FRAGMENTS CONCERNING THE LIFE OF SIMONIDES

Strabo GeographyCEOS was originally a tetrapolis, but only two of the four remain as separate cities, Iulis and Carthaea, the former having absorbed Coresia and the latter Poieëssa. Iulis was the birthplace of the lyric poet Simonides and of his nephew Bacchylides, and later of the physician Erasistratus and the Peripatetic philosopher Ariston... There appears to have been a law here, mentioned by Menander in the lines ‘The Cean custom takes my fancy still, / The man who can’t live well shall not live ill,’ whereby, in order to make the supplies go round, all citizens who had reached the age of sixty should drink the hemlock. [hence partly perh. S.’s voluntary exile after middle-age; had the law been enforced in his case, much of his finest extant work would never have been done]
Herodotus HistoriesFollowing upon their track, the Persians came up with the flying Ionians at Ephesus, and when they turned and showed fight inflicted upon them a severe defeat, after which they put to the sword a number of well-known men, including the Eretrian commander Eualcides, who had taken the prize at crown-contests in the Games and been highly eulogised by Simonides of Ceos.
[Plato] Hipparchus... Hipparchus, the eldest and wisest of the sons of Peisistratus, who among other fine ways showed his wisdom... in inducing Simonides of Ceos by high pay and valuable presents to be in continual attendance upon him.
Aelian Historical MiscellaniesLeoprepes of Ceos, the father of Simonides, was sitting one day in a wrestling school, when some boys who had formed mutual friendships asked, the grown-up man how they could best make their friendship last; to which he replied: ‘By making allowance for one another’s dispositions instead of rousing one another’s anger by a challenge of spirit.’
Parian ChronicleFrom the time when the Ceian Simonides son of Leoprepes, the inventor of the system of memory-aids, won the chorus-prize at Athens, and the statues were set up to Harmodius and Aristogeiton, 213 years (B.C. 477).
Suidas LexiconSimonides (1st notice): — Son of Leoprepes, of Iulis, a city of the island of Ceos; a lyric poet; coming next to Stesichorus; called, because of the sweetness of his style, Melicertes; originator of the art of mnemonics. He also invented the signs for the long vowels, H and Ω, and the double letters Ξ and Ψ, [as well as the third note on the lyre]. He was born in the 56th Olympiad (B.C. 556-553) — or according to some accounts in the 62nd (532-529) — and lived till the 78th (468 — 465), attaining the age of eighty-nine. He wrote the following works in the Doric dialect: — The Kingdom of Cambyses and Darius, The Sea-fight with Xerxes, The Sea fight of Artemisium, these in elegiacs; The Sea-fight at Salamis in lyric metre; Dirges, Eulogies, Inscriptions, Paeans, Tragedies, etc. This Simonides had a very remarkable memory...
Life of AeschylusAccording to some authorities, Aeschylus was defeated by Simonides in the competition for an elegy on those who fell at Marathon. For the elegiac metre requires the fineness of detail which is associated with the rousing of sympathy, and that, as we have said, is foreign to Aeschylus.
Aristophanes BirdsPOET: I’ve written some lyrics to your Cloudcuckooborough, a lot of fine dithyrambs and some maiden-songs, and — you know, the Simonides trick.
The Same Wasps (see on Lasus p. 223).The Same Peace (Hermes and Trygaeus)H. She (Peace) first asked after Sophocles.T. He’s all right; but there’s something remarkable happening to him.H. What’s that?T. He’s changing into Simonides.H. Simonides? What d’ye mean?T. I mean that now that he’s old and off colour he’d go to sea on a hurdle to earn a groat.
Scholiast on the passageSimonides seems to have been the first to connect poetry with meanness of disposition and to write it for pay; which is what Pindar hints at in his Isthmians (2. 10), where he says, ‘For the Muse was no seeker of gain then, nor worked for hire....’
Scholiast on the passage of PindarHe means that nowadays they compose victory-songs for pay, a custom begun by Simonides...
Plutarch Should Old Men Govern?Simonides said to the friends who accused him of penuriousness, that the pleasure of making profit was the one and only pleasure he had left to tend him in his old age.
Stobaeus AnthologyWhen Simonides was asked why at his advanced age he was so careful of his money, he replied, ‘It is because I should rather leave money for enemies when I die than stand in need of friends while I live; for I know too well how few friendships last.’
Plato Republic‘But still,’ said I, ‘I find it difficult to disbelieve a great and inspired artist like Simonides.’
From a Papyrus of the 3rd Century B.C.On Expenditure: — Simonides: The following sayings of his are also esteemed for their truth to nature. When asked by the wife of Hiero if all things grew old, he replied ‘Yes, all, except love of gain; and acts of kindness sooner than anything else.’ Again, when he was asked why he was so penurious, he answered that it was because he got more vexation from debit than from credit; either was really negligible, though both derived importance from the passions and unreasonableness of men; and so neither of them did him any harm, or, strictly speaking, any good; but it was irksome to use another man’s staff instead of one’s own; moreover, borrowed money might cost little at the moment, but in the end it cost twice as much; and so we ought to count every penny. Lastly he declared that when he consumed only the necessary and natural food of man, simple food like that of the animals, he was borrowing from himself.
Introduction to Theocritus 16 (cf. 1. 10)The story goes that Simonides kept two boxes, the one for fees and the other for favours; and whenever any friend came asking a favour, he had the boxes brought in and opened before him, and cut short his importunity by discovering the favour-box to be empty and the fee-box full. [cf. Stob. Flor. 10. 39 where the story is told of a man who asked for a eulogy and said he would take it as a favour]
TheocritusMany indeed were the bondmen earned their monthly meed in the houses of Antiochus and King Aleuas, many the calves that went lowing with the horned kine home to byres of the Scopads, and ten thousand were the fine sheep that the shepherds of the plain of Crannon watched all night for the hospitable Creondae; but once all the sweet wine of their life was in the great cup, once they were embarked in the barge of the old man loathsome, the joyance and pleasure of those things was theirs no more: and though they left behind them all that great and noble wealth, they had lain among the vile dead long ages unremembered, had not the great Ceian cried sweet varied lays to the strings and famoused them in posterity, and had not the coursers that came home to them victorious out of the Games achieved the honour and glory which called the poet to his task.
Scholiast on the passage... By this he implies the possession of great riches, so as to be able to feed many retainers. ‘But all the same,’ says he, ‘their wealth would have been of no avail for the preservation of their glory, had their praises not been sung by Simonides.’... The Scopads were Crannonians by birth, and Crannon is a city of Thessaly, birthplace of Scopas son of Creon and Echecrateia. Compare Simonides in the Dirges... By ‘the great Ceian’ he means Simonides, who wrote victory-songs and dirges for the aforesaid great Thessalians.
Plutarch On Listening to PoetryAnd that is why, when they asked Simonides why the Thessalians were the only people he never cheated, he replied ‘They are too great dunces.’
Diogenes Laertius Lives of the PhilosophersAccording to Aristotle in the 3rd Book of his Treatise on Poetry (fr. 65)... Antimenidas and Alcaeus had a feud with Pittacus, Sosibius with Anaxagoras, and Timocreon with Simonides.
Plato Republic (Socrates and Polemarchus)What do you say, said I, that Simonides rightly says about justice? — That justice is to give every man his due.
Stobaeus AnthologySimonides: — When a friend of his once told Simonides that he was hearing a great deal of slander about him, he replied ‘Be so good as to stop defaming me with your ears.’
Plutarch GarrulityIn all things and for all these reasons we ought to bear in mind the saying of Simonides, that he had often repented speaking but had never repented holding his tongue.
Plutarch Dinner-Table ProblemsOne evening over the wine, when the poet Simonides saw a guest sitting absolutely silent, he exclaimed ‘If you’re a fool, my good sir, you’re wise in what you do; and if you’re wise, you’re a fool.’
The Same The Glory of AthensSimonides calls ‘painting silent poetry and poetry painting that speaks’; for the actions which painters depict as they are being performed, words describe after they are done.
Aristotle in Stobaeus AnthologyWe are told that when Simonides was asked what was meant by good birth, he replied ‘ancestral wealth.’
Michael Psellus The Function of Daemons... According to Simonides the word is the image of the thing.
Aristides On the Extempore Addition [how epitaphs prove that states are guilty of self-praise]So you may laugh at the fallen [for praising themselves] and call them underground babblers who cannot keep still; and some disciple of Simonides will retort ‘you are more dead above ground, my good man, than those are below it.’
Theon First Course in Grammar... Simonides gives harmful advice when he says we should play all our lives and never be entirely in earnest.
Aristotle PhysicsIn time everything comes into existence and passes out of it; and that is why some writers called Time wisest of things; though Paron the Pythagorean says it is foolishest, because we also forget in it — which indeed is more correct.
Ath. 2. 40 a [on wine]Simonides ascribes wine and music to one and the same origin.
Plutarch Consolation to ApolloniusOne day when the Spartan king Pausanias, who was suffering from swelled head, hade the lyrist Simonides tell him a wise tale with a jest in it, the poet, fully appreciating the king’s conceited humour, advised him to remember that he was human.
The Same Life of ThemistoclesAll the same he ingratiated himself with the people by calling every citizen by his name, and by putting his sure judgment at their disposal in matters of business. Indeed, when Simonides of Ceos made an improper request of him during the time of his command, he retorted that he would not be a good minister of state if he put favour before law, any more than Simonides would be a good poet if he sang out of tune.
Aristotle Rhetoric [on wealth]Thus when Simonides was speaking of wisdom and riches with the wife of Hiero, and she asked him which was better, to get wise or to get wealthy, he replied ‘To get wealthy; for I see the wise sitting on the doorsteps of the rich.’
Cicero The Nature of the GodsIf you were to ask me the nature and attributes of God, I should reply in the words of Simonides, who when asked this very question by the despot Hiero asked for a day’s notice of it, and when it was repeated the next day, requested two days more, and so on, doubling every time, till at last, when the wondering Hiero asked him to explain his strange behaviour, he replied that it was because the longer he thought about it, the more obscure it became. I believe that the truth is that Simonides, of whom tradition speaks not only as a delightful poet but in all respects a wise and learned man, despaired of the true answer because so many subtle definitions occurred to him that he could not decide among them.
Athenaeus Doctors at DinnerIf we may believe Chamaeleon, Simonides’ niggardliness is a real fact. For instance at Syracuse, where Hiero was in the habit of sending him daily a portion of food, Simonides used openly to sell most of it and keep only a small part for himself; and once, when he was asked the reason, replied that he did so as a testimony to Hiero’s munificence and his own moderation.
Plutarch Life of AratusEven if it be a terrible thins: to deal thus with one’s fellow-clansmen and kinsfolk by anger, still in Simonides’ words ‘In time of necessity even harshness is sweet,’ healing as it were and restoring the spirit when it is sick and fevered.
Timaeus quoted by the Scholiast on PindarThus Theron took umbrage on behalf both of his daughter (Demaretè) and her husband (Polyzelus), and made war upon Polyzelus’ brother Hiero, advancing to the Sicilian river Gela.... But not a blow was struck, and the war came to nothing. For we are told that the lyric poet Simonides came up in the nick of time and reconciled the two kings.
Aristotle MetaphysicsAll these things are irrational, and inconsistent both with one another and with what is rational, and we may apply to them the term ‘a long story’ as it is used by Simonides, a long story in that sense being the kind of account given by a slave when he will not talk sense.
Alexander of Aphrodisias on the passageThese words will be clear to any reader who has been told what is meant by the λογος of Simonides. This writer, in what he calls his ‘Aτακτοί Λόγοι or Prose Conversations, [meaning doubtful; apparently some sort of Mime] imitates [that is, gives a literary representation of] the answers erring slaves will generally make when their masters are enquiring why they have blundered, and makes them give extremely long and verbose excuses which have no sense — that is, plausibility — but are entirely off the point. This would seem to be characteristic of foreign birth and lack of education.
Pindar OlympiansSkilled is the man who knoweth much by nature; they that have but learnt — even as a pair of crows, gluttonous in their wordiness, these chatter vain things against the divine bird of Zeus.
Scholiast on the passageHe hints at Bacchylides and Simonides, calling himself an eagle and his rivals crows.
Scholiast on Pindar... Simonides often employs digression.
Eustathius Introduction to the Commentary on PindarIt is said that Pindar was a pupil also of Simonides.
Plutarch MusicPancrates usually avoided the chromatic scale, though he used it occasionally, thus showing that he did not avoid it from ignorance. Indeed he tells us himself that he imitates the musical style of Pindar and Simonides and, generally, what is now called the ancient style.
Longinus the RhetoricianSimonides and many after him have pointed out paths to remembrance, counselling us to compare images and localities in order to remember names and events, but there is nothing more in it than the concatenation and coobservation of the apparently new with what is similar to it.
Cicero On the Chief Good and the Chief EvilIs it in our power to remember or to forget? When Themistocles was once promised — by Simonides I think it was — a handbook of mnemonics or guide to remembrance, ‘I should prefer,’ he exclaimed, ‘a guide to forgetfulness; for I remember things I would not and cannot forget what I would.’
Scholiast on Dionysius of Thrace [on the Alphabet]As for the inventors of the remaining eight letters, namely the two long vowels, the three double letters, and the three aspirates, it is clear that Simonides of Ceos invented the H, the Ω, the Ξ and the Ψ, and Palamedes the Θ, the Φ, the X, and the Z, though some authorities ascribe these last four (?) to Epicharmus of Syracuse.
Plutarch Should Old Men Govern? Simonides won the chorus prize in his old age.Lucian Longevity: Simonides of Ceos lived to be over ninety.
Suidas LexiconSimonides (3rd notice): ... There was an Agrigentine General named Phoenix who, in the course of a war with Syracuse, with cynical ruthlessness pulled down the tomb of Simonides and made a bastion of the stones. At that spot the city was taken. [context implies Acragas; S. then apparently died there and not at Syracuse] This story would seem to be confirmed by Callimachus of Cyrene, who deplores the outrage and makes this writer of delightful verse say: ‘neither had he respect for the writing thereon which declared that beneath lay the son of Leoprepes of Ceos’; and a little further on: ‘nor yet had he any fear of you brethren, O Polydeuces, who made me, alone of all the guests, pass out ere the roof fell, when the house at Crannon came down alas! upon the mighty Scopadae.
Athenaeus Doctors at DinnerCompare the author of the play called The Helots: ‘It’s old-fashioned to sing Stesichorus, Alcman, or Simonides; but we can hear Gnesippus...
Scholiast on Aristophanes Wasps [‘mind you take up the catch properly’]It was an old custom for guests at table to continue where the first singer left off. The guest who began held a sprig of bay or myrtle and sang a lyric of Simonides or Stesichorus as far as he chose, and then handed the sprig to another, making his choice of a successor with no regard to the order in which the guests were seated. His successor then continued the song, and in turn passed on the sprig at his own caprice.
Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner... according to Chamaeleon in his treatise On Simonides.
Suidas LexiconPalaephatus: — An Egyptian, or according to some authorities, an Athenian; grammarian; wrote Arguments or introductions to the works of Simonides.
Palatine AnthologyThe Garland of Meleager: ... and a fresh young spray of the vine-buds of Simonides.
Catullus... a word of talk as sad as the tears of Simonides.
Suidas LexiconTryphon: — Son of Ammonius; of Alexandria; grammarian and poet; flourished in the reign of Augustus and earlier; wrote... on the Dialects in Homer and in Simonides, Pindar, Alcman, and the other lyric poets.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus Critique of the Ancient Writers— You should note in Simonides his choice of words and his nicety in combining them; moreover — and here he surpasses even Pindar — he is remarkable for his expression of pity not by employing the grand style but by appealing to the emotions.
Quintilian Guide to Oratory [the Nine Lyric Poets]Simonides, though in other respects not a commanding figure, may be praised for his choice of expression and for a certain sweetness; but his chief excellence lies in his pathos; indeed some critics consider that in this quality he surpasses all other writers of this class of literature.

## THE POEMS OF SIMONIDES


## BOOK I. HYMNS


## To Olympian Zeus

[1] Himerius DeclamationsOne day when Simonides was hastening to Pisa to honour Zeus with a hymn, the Eleans laid hold of his lyre and all with one accord bade him sing the city instead of Zeus.

## To Poseidon

[2] Scholiast on Euripides Medea [‘the all-golden pelt’]The fleece, which according to some authorities was entirely of gold, according to others of purple. Simonides in the Hymn to Poseidon says that it was dyed in sea-purple.
Etymologicum Magnumνάκη means a goatskin, κωδία and κώδιον a sheepskin. And so the Colchian fleece ought not to be called νακος, and Simonides is wrong in this.
Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes ArgonauticaMany have made the Fleece golden.... Simonides sometimes calls it white and sometimes purple.
[seems to imply that S. mentioned the Fleece in more poems than one; cf. Tzet. Chü. 1. 430 where S. is said to have applied the epithet to the lamb of Atreus]
[3] Scholiast on Euripides Medea [‘the Clashing Rocks’]These are called by Simonides the Together-moving Rocks
[4] Scholiast on Pindar [... ‘Lemnos, where the Argonauts gave proof of their limbs in a contest for a garment (or without their clothes),]... And indeed in Simonides’ account the clothing is the prize.
[5] Scholiast on Euripides MedeaWe are told that Medea was queen of Corinth by Eumelus, and by Simonides in the lines:
And when Jason returned he dwelt not at Magnesia but at Corinth, and ruled Cranum and Lechaeum as hearth-fellow of a Colchian spouse.
[6] Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes ArgonauticaThe marriage of Medea to Achilles on his arrival in the Elysian Plain is first told by Ibycus, and after him by Simonides.
[7] Introduction to Euripides MedeaAccording to Pherecydes and Simonides, Medea made Jason young again by boiling him.

## BOOK II. PAEANS

[8] Himerius DeclamationsTherefore I believe what Simonides says in praise of the Muses in his Lyric poems:
A dance is ever dear to the Muses, but when they espy Apollo about to lead a round, then more than ever put they forth their best in music and send down Helicon an all-harmonious sound.
[9] Julian LettersIt suffices the lyrist Simonides for praise of Apollo to call the God ‘Εκατος or
Far-Shooter
and to adorn him with that title instead, as it were, of another sacred mark — because, as he says, he slew the serpent Python with a hundred (εκατόν) arrows.

## BOOK III. PRAYERS

[10] Plutarch Political PreceptsBut since, as Simonides says:Every lark must have his crest
and every form of government involves some hatred and strife, it is particularly necessary for the statesman to have studied these things.
[11] Scholiast on the Odyssey [‘For I went to Delos with a large company’]This refers not to his own people but to the Grecian expedition as a whole, at the head of which Menelaus went to Delos with Odysseus after the daughters of Anius who were called the Turners-into-Wine. The story is given by Simonides in the Prayers.

## On the Sea-fight off Artemisium

[12-16] Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes Argonautica. [‘Thither came also Zetes and Calais, sons of the Northwind]...
According to Simonides, Oreithyia was carried off from Brilessus to the Sarpedonian Rock in Thrace... Oreithyia was the daughter of Erechtheus whom the Northwind carried off from Attica to Thrace, there to beget on her Zetes and Calais, as Simonides tells in the Sea-Fight.
[13,14] Priscian Metres of TerenceSimonides and Alcman, according to Heliodorus, not only end iambic lines with spondees, but put them [irregularly] elsewhere. Simonides in the Sea-Fight off Artemisinin puts a spondee in the second place in the catalectic dimeter:
the sea began to roar,
corresponding in the antistrophe to
they avert the Death-Goddesses
[15] Himerius DeclamationsA song shall loose the moorings of the vessel, the song which the holy chorus of Athenians sings to call the wind to the ship, that it may be present indeed and fly along with the sacred craft;[the sacred ship in the Panathenaic procession] and the wind, doubtless recognising the song which Simonides sang to it after the sea ⟨[-fight⟩, comes straightway at the call of the music, and blowing strong and full astern drives the bark on with its blast.
The Same EcloguesFor now desiring to call the wind in poetic wise, but being unable to utter poetic speech, I would fain call the wind according to the Ceian Muse... and softly spreading over the waves, cleave thou the purple waves about the bows; for in quest of no wicked desires would he sail thy sea, but in the hope of initiating all Ionia into the holy mysteries of virtuous living.
[16] Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes Argonautica [‘Sea-girt Sciathos’]Sciathos is an island of Thessaly close to Euboea; it is mentioned by Simonides.

## BOOK IV. DITHYRAMBS


## Memnon

[17] Strabo Geography [on Susa]It is said to have been founded by Tithonus father of Memnon... The acropolis was called the Memnonium, and the Susians are known as Cissian, a title which Aeschylus gives to the mother of Memnon; moreover Memnon is said to have been buried near Paltus in Syria, on the banks of the river Badas, as is told by Simonides in his Dithyramb Memnon included among the Deliaca.

## Europa

[18] Aristophanes of ByzantiumIn his Europa Simonides calls the bull not only a bull but also μηλον and πρόβατον [which usually are applied to sheep or goats.]

## BOOK V. EULOGIES


## To Scopas

[19] [Plato does not quote the rest of this stanza; if the poem is complete except for these lines and a line and a half below, this gap doubtless contained the personal application of the general statement to Scopas]
Plato Protagoras [beginning a fall discussion of the poem, whence this is reconstructed]For does not Simonides say to Scopas son of Creon the Thessalian:
It is hard to quit you like a truly good man fashioned without flaw in hand, foot, or mind, foursquare... And though it come of a wise man, I hold not with the saying of Pittacus, “Tis hard to be good.’ [i. e. P. does not go far enough for me] Such is the lot of a God alone; as for a man, he cannot but be evil if he be overtaken by hopeless calamity; for any man is good in good fortune and bad in bad, and take it all in all, they are best who are loved by the Gods. [i.e. lucky] Therefore never will I cast my portion of life profitless away upon a hope unaccomplisliable, by going in quest of what cannot be, to wit a man without spot or blemish among all of us who win the fruit of the wide-set earth, but if so be I should come upon him I will send you word of it. My praise and friendship is for all them that of themselves earn no disgrace: even Gods fight not against necessity... I am no faultfinder; enough for me is he that is not good nor yet too exceeding wicked, that knoweth that Right which aideth cities, a sound man. Him will I never blame. For the generation of the worthless is without number, and surely all is fair wherein is mixed nothing foul.
[20] Himerius DeclamationsSimonides of Ceos when bidding farewell to Hiero as the king left Sicily for abroad, touched the lyre, but mingled tears with the notes he played.

## BOOK VI. DIRGES


## On Those Who Fell at Thermopylae

[21] Diodorus of Sicily: Historical Library: And for this their valour has been lauded not only by the historians but by many of the poets, and among these the lyrist Simonides, who wrote them a eulogy worthy of their noble deed, in which he says:
To them that fell at Thermopylae belong a glorious fortune and a noble lot; for grave they have an altar, for libation-ewers remembrance, and the wine that comes thereof is praise. Such burial neither shall Decay darken, nor Time the all-vanquisher bedim. This shrine of brave men hath taken for its keeper the fair fame of Greece, witness Leonidas the king of Sparta by token of the great ornament of valour and the everlasting glory that he hath left behind.
[22] Menander On EulogiesHymns are said to be factitious when we personify abstractions as Gods and children of Gods or of spirits for the occasion, like Simonides when he makes a spirit of To-morrow, and others of Hesitation and what not.
Stobaeus Anthology [That human prosperity is uncertain because Fortune turns so easily]From the Dirges of Simonides:
If thou be’st a mortal man, never say what To-morrow will bring, nor when thou seest a man happy, how long he shall be happy. For swift is change — nay, not so swift the changing course of the wide-wingèd fly. [apparently ‘dragon-fly’]

## On the Scopads

[23] Scholiast on Theocritus [‘the Scopads’]These were of Crannon, which is a city of Thessaly whence came Scopas son of Creon and Echecrateia. Compare Simonides in the Dirges.
The Same [‘the Ceian bard’]That is, Simonides, because he wrote Victory-Songs and Dirges for the aforesaid famous Thessalians.

## On Antiochus

[24] Aristides Orations [The funeral speech on Eteoneus]What Simonides, what Pindar shall bewail such a thing as this? What tune or word shall Stesichorus find worthy of so great a calamity? What Dyseris of Thessaly ever made such lament for the death of an Antiochus, as this mother makes for her son?
Scholiast on Theocritus [‘many in the house of Antiochus and king Aleuas’]Antiochus was the son of Echecratidas and Dyseris, as we know from Simonides.

## On Lysimachus

[25] Harpocration Lexicon to the Attic OratorsTamynae: .... a city of the Eretrians in Euboea, containing a temple of Apollo, as we learn from the authors of the Euboica and from Simonides in the Dirge for Lysimachus of Erelria.
[26] Stobaeus Anthology [That life is short, of little account, and full of care]From the Dirges of Simonides:
For even they that were of old time and were born half-immortal sons of most high Gods, came not unto old age without toil, nor without the malice of men, nor without peril.
[27] Dionysius of Halicarnassus [On verse composition which greatly resembles prose]Take from the lyric poetry this of Simonides, which is here written with the pause-marks corresponding not to the metrical lines arranged by Aristophanes of Byzantium or another, but to the requirements of the words treated as prose. Pray consider the poem and read this part of it according to the pause-marks, and you may be quite sure that the rhythm of the poem will escape you and you will be unable to pick out strophe, antistrophe, or epode; the poem will appear to you mere prose. It is Danaë on the sea, bewailing her fate:
When the wind came blowing upon the carven chest and the swaying sea bent her towards fear and tears that would not be stayed from her cheeks, she threw a loving arm round Perseus, saying, ‘O babe, what woe is thine! and yet thou weepest not, but slumberest in thy suckling’s way as thou best night-bound in the black darkness [not of real night, but of the closed chest; the spray came through the air-holes which are represented on a vase-painting (Hermitage 1723, Harrison and MacColl 34) and through which Comatas was fed by the bees (Theocr. 7. 80)] of a dismal brass-ribbed bark, and reckest not of the salt of the passing wave so thick on thy hair, nay, nor the cry of the wind, lying in thy purple swathings with thy pretty face against me. For if the dire were dire to thee, thou’dst lend thy little ear to what I say. So sleep thou on, my baby, as I pray the sea may sleep and our great great woe may sleep; and come some change to us, Father Zeus, of thee. And whatsoever of my prayer be overbold and wrong, do thou forgive it me.’
[28] Stobaeus Anthology [On death and its inevitability]By Simonides:For all things come at last to the same horrible Charybdis, great achievements and riches too.
[29] Plutarch Letter of Consolation to ApolloniusFor Simonides says:
Little is man’s strength and his cares unavailing, and ’tis toil upon toil for him in a life that is short; for all he can do, there’s a death hangs over him that will not be escaped, in which both good men and bad must share alike.
[30] Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner [on the word γαλαθηνός ‘suckling’]And in another passage Simonides says of Archemorus:
They wept as the suckling babe of violet-crowned Eurydice breathed out its sweet soul.
[31] Diogenes Laertius [on Cleobulus]This man composed poems and riddles to the amount of 3000 lines, and is considered by some writers to be the author of the Epitaph on Midas: ‘A maiden of brass am I, and I lie on the tomb of Midas. So long as water shall flow and tall trees grow green, sun rise and shine and moon give light, rivers run and sea wash shore, ever shall I abide upon this sore-lamented tomb and tell the passers-by that this is the grave of Midas.’ And they find evidence for this in a poem of Simonides, where he says:
Who that hath understanding would praise Cleobulus the man of Lindus for his pitting of the might of a gravestone against the ever-running rivers and the flowers of the Spring, against the flame of sun and of golden moon, and against the eddies of the ocean-wave? All these are subject to the Gods; but a stone, even mortal hands may break it. This is the rede of a fool.
[32] Theophilus of Antioch To Autolycus [on Providence]Simonides:
None getteth achievement without the Gods, neither man nor city. He that can devise all is a God, and there’s nothing to be got among men without toil.
[33] The Same [that the judgment of God will come, and misfortune will take the wicked unawares]Simonides:
There’s no ill that a man must not expect, and ’tis not long ere God turneth all things upside-down.
[34] Plutarch Should Old Men Govern?From a lawful and democratic constitution the death of a man who has always suffered himself to be ruled for his advantage no less than to rule, receives in the fame his life has won, to quote Simonides, indeed
a fair funeral-offering; for such sinketh last of all offerings into the ground.
[35] Scholiast on Sophocles [‘on things full done’]Upon that which is done and cannot be cured; compare Simonides:
For what once hath happened cannot be undone.

## BOOK VII. VICTORY-SONGS FOR RUNNERS

[36] Photius Lexiconπεριαγειρομενοι ‘going round collecting’: ... after this it became the custom for the athletes to walk round and ‘collect’ or receive what was given them; whence Simonides says of Astylus:
Who among those of our time ever bound upon him so many victories with leaves of myrtle or wreaths of roses in a contest of the men of those parts?

## BOOK VIII. VICTORY-SONGS FOR FIVE-EVENT-CHAMPIONS

[37] Aristotle History of AnimalsThe halcyon nests about the time of the winter-solstice, and that is why, when the weather is fine at that time of year we call the days ‘halcyon-days,’ being seven before and seven after the shortest day of the year; compare Simonides:
As when in the month of winter Zeus monisheth [lit. ‘teaches to behave correctly, brings to a proper frame of mind’] the fourteen days, and mankind call it the sacred windless season when the pied halcyon rears her young.

## BOOK IX. VICTORY-SONGS FOR WRESTLERS

[38] Scholiasts on Aristophanes [‘First I took the lyre and bade him sing a song of Simonides about the shearing of the Ram’]The beginning of a song to (?) Crins (Ram) of Aegina [cf. Hdt. 6. 73, 85, 6. 50 — ]... It is (or he is) apparently famous. — This poem comes from a Song of Victory of Simonides... Crius was an Aeginetan wrestler... the poet says:
Master Ram yielded no scanty fleece when he came to the fine woody precinct of Zeus.

## BOOK X. VICTORY-SONGS FOR BOXERS


## For Glaucus of Carystus

[39] Lucian On Behalf of the PicturesBut think how a famous poet praised Glaucus saying:
Neither the might of Polydeuces would have lift hand against him, nay, nor the iron child of Alcmena. [Heracles]
Do you see to what Gods he likened him, or rather declared him to surpass? And neither was Glaucus himself offended at being praised at the expense of the Gods who are guardians of athletes, nor did those Gods punish either Glaucus or the poet for impiety. Far from it, both of them received honour and glory from all Greece, the one for his strength and the other for no poem that he wrote more than for this. [Glaucus won at Olympia in 480]

## BOOK XI. VICTORY-SONGS FOR THE FOUR-HORSE-CHARIOT-RACE

[40] [cf. Eust. Op. 279]
Aristophanes Knights[CHORUS to CLEON]: O how I wish you might throw up your mouthful [free dinners at the Town-hall] as readily as you found it. Then, it ever, should I sing
Drink, O drink when things go right;
and I believe that the man from lulls, being an old chap with an eye for the — loaves, [the Greek is ‘ogler of loaves’ for ‘ogler of lads’] would have sung his Hail-to-Apollo’s and Great-God-of-Wine’s with a right good will for the occasion.
Scholiast on the passageHe means: Then I should sing you Simonides’ song ‘Drink’ etc.: the song comes from Simonides’ Four-Horse-Chariot-Race Songs, and the word συμφορά [which usually means ‘misfortune’] is here used of good luck. For it is really colourless [meaning an event].

## For Xenocrates of Agrigentum

[41] [cf. Pind. P. 6]
Scholiast on Pindar Introduction to Pythian IThis Xenocrates won in the horse-race not only at the Isthmian Festival, but at the Pythian in the 24th Pythiad (B.C. 490) according to Aristotle’s list. Simonides includes both the victories in his celebration of the victor.

## For Orilias

[42] Diogenian Preface to ProverbsA ‘Carian tale’ is one which is told of a Carian fisherman who said when he saw an octopus one winter’s day ‘If I strip and dive for him I shall catch cold, and if I don’t take him my children will die of hunger.’ Timocreon uses this story in his Lyric Poems, and Simonides refers to it in his Epinician Ode for Orillas.
Proverbs (Cohn)‘The Carian tale’: — mentioned by Simonides in his praises of a charioteer who won at Pellenè and received for his prize a cloak with which he kept off the cold ⟨for the.... games were held⟩ at Pellenè in winter. They say that a fisherman said on seeing an octopus in the winter ‘If I don’t dive I shall starve,’ and that this is the Carian tale.
Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner [on octopuses]The Dorians, for instance Epicharmus, give it the ω, πώλυπος ‘octopus,’ and Simonides says:
searching for an octopus

## For Scopas

[43] Cicero On the OratorI am grateful to Simonides of Ceos for his invention — if his it was — of the art of mnemonics. For there is a story that one day when Simonides was dining at Crannon in Thessaly with a wealthy noble named Scopas, and sang a song which he had written in his honour and which contained by way of poetic ornament much praise of Castor and Pollux, Scopas ungenerously remarked that he should give the poet only half of the price agreed for it; be must please to go for the rest to the precious deities who had received half his praise. Shortly afterwards, having received a message that two young men wanted him urgently outside, Simonides rose from the table and went to the door, only to find nobody there. That very moment Scopas’ dining-chamber collapsed, and he and his perished in the ruins. Now when their kinsfolk wished to bury them they found it was impossible to identify the remains. But we are told that Simonides was able from his recollection of the place each guest occupied at table to do so for them in every case. This it was, they say, which led to his discovery that the chief aid to memory is arrangement.

## For Eualcides

[44] Herodotus History(see p. 247)
[45] Plutarch How to distinguish a Friend from a FlattererAnd moreover, as Simonides says:The rearing of horses goeth not with Zacynthus, but with fields that bear wheat.
Thus we see flattery not following after the poor or obscure or weak, but becoming a pitfall and a plague to great houses and mighty undertakings.

## BOOK XII. VICTORY-SONGS FOR THE MULE-CAR-RACE


## For Anaxilas of Rhegium

[46] [μεταμάνιos ‘to the winds’ is prob. connected with Aeol. for άνεμος ‘wind’]
Aristotle RhetoricOnce when Simonides was offered too small a fee by the victor in the mule-race, he refused to write him an ode, on the plea that he could not bring himself to write in honour of mules. But when he offered him sufficient pay, he took it and wrote:
Hail, ye daughters of storm-footed steeds!And yet they were also daughters of asses.
[47] Scholiast on Aristophanes Peace [‘... comes the report that thou wilt leave me to the birds and go to the deuce and the winds?’]: — The word μεταμώνιος is taken by some authorities to mean ‘vain and useless’; others say it means properly ‘that which goes aloft on both sides,’ quoting in support of this Simonides:
And the dust from the wheel went up to the winds.
[48] Plutarch Moral Virtue... just as Plato [Phaedr. 254] employs the simile of the draught-horses of the soul, the worser horse struggling against the better in the shafts, and disquieting the driver, who has for ever to be carefully holding them and tightening the rein,
lest he lose his hold on the crimson thongs in Simonides’ phrase.
[49] Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner [on the Pleiads]— Simonides calls them Peleiades in the following passage:
Now he that gives it thee [the prize to the winner] is Hermes God of the Games, Son of mountain Maia of the glancing eye, who was the fairest of all Atlas’ seven violet-tressèd daughters dear, that are called the Heavenly Peleiades.
[50] Scholiast on Pindar [‘of Pisa’]— The first syllable of Πισας must be made short to preserve the antistrophic correspondence; both Pindar and Simonides do this.
[51] [here follow the unplaceable lyric fragments]Tzetzes Chiliads: ... as Simonides writes of Orpheus:
Above his head there hovered birds innumerable, and fishes leapt clean from the blue water because of his sweet music.
[52] Plutarch Dinner-Table Problems [Why sounds are clearer at night than by day]— For a calm or absence of wind is favourable to sound, and the opposite unfavourable, as Simonides says:
For then there was wind not so much as the breath that maketh leaves quiver, to stay the honey-sweet voice from its goal in the ears of man.
[53] Stobaeus Selections [on those who explain divine things, and that the real truth of abstract conceptions is unattainable]— Simonides:
’Tis easy for a God to steal the wits of a man.
[54] Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes ArgonauticaApollonius makes Love the son of Aphrodite... Simonides of Aphrodite and Ares:
Thou cruel child of wile-contriving Aphrodite, whom she bore to wile-devising Ares.
[55,56] Plutarch Why the Oracles are no longer in Metre— So we went round and sat down on the southern basement of the temple, [of Apollo at Delphi] looking at the chapel of Earth and the water there. Whereupon Boëthus exclaimed that the place contributed to the stranger’s bewilderment. For there was a chapel of the Muses there, where the spring rises, which is why they used this water for libations; compare Simonides:
... where they draw the pure lustration-water from beneath the place of the fair-tressed Muses.And again Simonides addressing Clio says a little more elaborately:
Thou overseer of the pure lustration-water, receiver of the prayers of many a pitcher-carrier, who givest free course through a golden pipe to the lovely liquor that comes of the ambrosial cave; [cf. Poulsen Delphi 4]
Eudoxus, therefore, is wrong in agreeing with the writers who make out that it is the water of the Styx that is so called.
[57] Plutarch How a Man may perceive that he is progressing in VirtueJust as Simonides says thatThe bee consorteth with the flowers to contrive her yellow honey,
and neither likes nor takes anything else from them, whereas others like their colour and scent, so the man who, unlike those who have recourse to poetry for pleasure and amusement, finds for himself in it and adds to his store some treasure that is really worth having — such a man may be reckoned to have won by mere familiarity a power to appreciate what is beautiful and proper.
[58] Scholiast on the Iliad [on round numbers]... For Homer says ‘Nineteen were there of my one womb’ [Il. 24. 496], and Simonides:
And gracious be thou, O Mother of twenty children.
[59] [cf. Plut. Vit. Dion. 1, Arist. Il h. 1. 6, Cram. A.P. 1. 285. 8]
Scholiast on Pindar [‘how once before the walls of Dardanus the Corinthians were thought to be turning the issues of fights either way’]: — The Corinthians distinguished themselves on both sides at Troy, fighting both with the Trojans and with the Greeks... And this is why Simonides says:
Troy is not wroth with the men of Corinth, Greeks though they be;
for they were allies of both sides.
[60] Plutarch ExileIf a man will but bear this in mind and keep his head, he will prefer even to live in exile on an island such as Gyaros or Cinaros... without losing heart or lamenting or saying like the women in Simonides
The noise of the purple sea-waves about me holds me fast.
[61] Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner [on the Funeral Games of Pelias]Sound evidence that this poem is the work of Stesichorus is given by the poet Simonides, who in a passage about Meleager says:
who beat all the youth of Iolcos of the vineyards in throwing the spear across the eddies of Anaurus; for thus have Homer and Stesichorus sung to the peoples.
[62-64] Plutarch Life of TheseusAnd then, while Theseus cheered his father and boasted how he would vanquish the Minotaur, Aegeus gave the ship’s captain a spare white sail, bidding him hoist the white if he came home with Theseus saved alive, and if not, to sail with the black in token of what had happened. But according to Simonides the sail given by Aegeus was not white, but
a crimson sail dyed with the flower of the springing holm-oak
and Aegeus made this their token that all was well. The captain of the ship was
Phereclus son of Amarsyasaccording to Simonides.
Scholiast on Sophocles [‘What is it you have left undone?’]that is, what is wanting or lacking to you for this your need? ‘what is lacking’ means that it would have been better for him to come a moment sooner; and in Simonides, of the messenger sent to Aegeus:
I would have given thee reward more worth than life itself, hadst thou got hither sooner.
[65] Clement of AlexandriaCod preaches to us and Him we must believe:— ‘For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith “Whosoever believeth on him shall not be put to shame.”’ (Rom. 10. 10). Well may Simonides write:
There’s a tale that Virtue [the Greek word sometimes connotes achievement and the fame it brings] dwelleth on a rook hard to climb and with a pure band of Goddesses to watch over it, nor may she ever be seen by eye of mortal, unless heart-devouring sweat come out of one and he reach unto the very top of manliness.
[66] Herodian Words without Parallel, πΰρ, ‘fire’— There is no neuter monosyllable in -υρ except this, and Simonides for metre’s sake makes it disyllabic:
For fire is what the beasts hate most of all.
[67] Plutarch How to distinguish, a Friend from a FlattererThe false, counterfeit, base-minted friend... stands in awe of the better man, not ‘going afoot beside a Lydian chariot,’ but in Simonides’ phrase:
With pure refinèd gold to his hand, possessing not lead.
[68] Stobaeus Anthology [on Death and its inevitability]Simonides:But Death surely overtaketh him that runneth from the battle.
[69] Plutarch Sayings of Emperors [Augustus Caesar]When the philosopher Athenodorus asked to be allowed to return home because of his age, Augustus agreed; but when the old man on bidding him farewell added ‘When you are angry, Caesar, say nothing and do nothing till you have mentally repeated the alphabet,’ he took him by the hand saying, ‘I still have need of your presence’; and kept him a whole twelvemonth, adding
In silence also there’s a worth that brings no risk.
[70] Sextus Empiricus Against the MathematiciansHealth has been declared not only a good, but the first good, by many poets and prose-writers, indeed by all who write of the realities of life; Simonides the lyrist says:
There’s no joy even in beautiful Wisdom, unless one have holy Health.
[71] Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner [on luxury]And pleasure is considered a very great good by the keenest-witted of men, men with the highest reputation for wisdom, for instance Simonides, who says:
For what human life, nay, what throne; is desirable without pleasure? Without her the life of a very God is not to be envied.
[72] Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner [on love]... Sophocles (according to Ion) said to the guest sitting next him, ‘What a pretty phrase that is of Phrynichus: “The light of love shines upon crimson cheeks”!’ Whereupon the Eretrian or Erythraean — and he was an elementary schoolmaster — exclaimed, ‘You may be very clever, Sophocles, at poetry; but all the same, Phrynichus was wrong in calling the cheeks of the pretty one crimson. If the painter were to put crimson on this lad’s cheeks, he would no longer be pretty. And therefore what is pretty ought not to be likened to what is not so.’ To which Sophocles replied with a smile at the Eretrian, Then, sir, this of Simonides, highly approved by our countrymen in general, will likewise meet your censure:
The maid sent forth speech from her crimson lips.
[73] [cf. Sch. Od. 19. 518, Eust. 1875. 41]
Etymologicum MagnumGreen-hued nightingale (Od. 19, 518): — from the colour... Compare Simonides:
When the babbling nightingales, the green-necked birds of the Spring
[74] Scholiast on Aristophanes Birds [‘What birds are these’ etc.]Some say this comes from Alcaeus (fr. 141) and from Simonides:
Loud messenger of sweet-scented Spring, blue Swallow [loud: in the eaves of a morning, cf. Anacreont. 10]
[75] Scholiast on Pindar [‘praise thou old wine, but the flowers of new songs’]... This appears to be directed against Simonides, who when beaten by Pindar in the contest, wrote abuse of the judge for condemning a good poem. And it is because in this he said:
New wine can be known for this year’s gift of the vine, [lit. ‘not yet last year’s’; i. e. it is as easy to tell young work as new wine, and neither is good] and this tale is the work of a fool and a lad,
that Pindar here praises old wine.
[76] Scholiast on Euripides [‘appearance winneth even if it be beside the truth’]Compare Simonides:
Appearance forceth even the truth.
[77] Theodorus the Metochite PreludeIn the words of Simonides, The sky hath nought but the sun;
and in like manner those who concern themselves with philosophy have nought but Aristotle and his writings for a complete exposition of it.
[78] Scholiast on the Iliad [‘A fish leaping in the wave shall dart beneath the dark ripple’]φρίξ, ‘a ripple,’ is the beginning of a rising wind. Simonides tries to indicate it thus:
A breeze comes stippling the sea.
[79] The Same [‘sweet sleep’]... Poets after Homer also use the form without the ν, ήδυμος... Compare Simonides:
but he, possessing sweet slumber
[80] Cramer Inedita (Paris)νίκη ‘victory’: — Apollonius son of Archibius says that it stands for ο εν εικει, that is ‘that which yields to one,’ being formed by the dropping of the initial e and syncope of the diphthong et. [the etymology is hardly correct] Simonides alludes to the etymology of it in the lines:
To one alone did the Goddess yield when she mounted the chariot.
[81] Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner [on poultry]The forms άλεκτορίς ‘hen’ and αλέκτωρ ‘cock’ also occur: compare Simonides:
Deliglitsome-voicèd chanticleer
[82] Scholiast on the Iliad [‘a wave reared by the wind’]Simonides speaks of gates reared by the wind
[83] The Same [‘all-subduing sleep’]πανδαμάτωp means ‘that which leaves no man unsubdued’: Simonides calls sleep
man-subduing
[84] Choeroboscus on Theodosiusτρνγλωχιν ‘three-barbed’... the form ending in v rather than s, as in Simonides
three-barbèd arrow
is rarely found.
[85] Scholiast on Theocritus [‘This is Thyrsis of Etna’]Etna is a mountain in Sicily... According to Simonides, Etna decided between Hephaestus and Demeter when they quarrelled over the possession of the country.
[86,87,88] [cf. Ath. 5. 181b, Eust. 1166. 49: these three fragments are now generally ascribed to Pindar, prob. rightly]
Plutarch Dinner-Table Problems [What features Poetry and Dancing have in common]In short the saying of Simonides must be changed, he said, from painting to dancing, and we must say (not that painting but) that the dance is a silent poetry and poetry a speaking dance... And it would appear that, as if it were a matter of painting, the poems themselves are like the colours, and the dances to which they belong like the outlines which the colours fill. And the poet who is thought to have done his best and most expressive work in the Hyporcheme or Dance-Song proves that the two arts (of dancing and poetry) stand in need of one another; compare:
Come pursue the curving course of the tune, and imitate with foot a-whirl in the contest unapproachable horse or Amyclean hound;
or this:
And even as on the windy Dotian plain a hound doth fly to find death for a horned hind, and she turns the head upon her neck this, that, and every way
and the rest: — these passages may almost be said to call down the subject-matter of the dance from heaven above, and to pull and guide one’s hands and feet, or rather one’s whole body, with the puppet-strings of its music, the body being unable to keep still while they are being sung or said. At any rate he takes no shame to himself to praise his own dance any more than his own poetry; compare:
And when I shall sing the bride, I know well how to mingle the light dance of the feet. The style of it is called the Cretan, and the instrument of music is Molossian.

## BOOK XIII. ELEGIACS


## On the Battle of Marathon

[89-90] [cf. Vit. Aesch. Blog. Gr. 119 ‘According to some authorities Aeschylus was defeated by Simonides in the Elegy on Those who fell at Marathon’]
Scholiast on Aristophanes [‘Now if it is right, thou Daughter of Zeus, to honour him that is the best and most famous author of comedy in the world, great praise is due, says our poet, tome’]: This comes from Simonides’ Elegiacs:
But if it is right, thou Daughter of Zeus, [Truth] to honour him that is best, it was none but the people of Athens, though I say it, that did this thing.
[90] Scholiast on Gregory of NazianzenHe means that whereas guiltlessness is superhuman, to repair a small error marks the good man and true. Simonides, one of the Nine Lyric Poets, in an epigram [or inscription] he wrote on the Athenians who fell at Marathon has the following line:
To incur no guilt and accomplish all things is the mark of a God. [the ascription can hardly be correct, as the line occurs in the Chaeronea-epitaph Dem. Crown 288]

## On the Sea-fight at Salamis

[91] Plutarch Themistocles— The rest, their inferiority in numbers being compensated by the narrowness of the strait, which both prevented the Barbarians from using their whole force at once and caused their ships to fall foul of one another,
held out till fall of night
as Simonides says, and thus won a great and famous victory which outshone any deed of the sea whether Greek or Barbarian, alike in the fire and courage of the men and in the genius of their leader.

## On the Battle of Plataea

[92] Plutarch The Malignity of HerodotusBut of the Corinthians and their position in the battle, and what they gained from the conflict at Plataea, we may learn from Simonides, who writes:
Midmost stood the dwellers in Ephyra of the many fountains, men versed in every virtue of war:and this:
And those that live in Corinth town, the city of Glaucus, made unto themselves a right noble witness of their deeds by honouring the gold that is in the sky; [the sun] and that gold doth increase and spread wide their fame and the fame of their fathers; for whereas gold is the kindest of all hosts when it shineth in the sky, [it comes an evil guest unto those that receive it in their hand]. [they had refused the Persian bribes, cf. 117. 2]
He has not said this in any work for which he trained a chorus at Corinth nor in any poem written in honour of that city, but has simply recorded their deeds in an elegiac poem.
[93] Ammianus Marcellinus History. But the magnificence of these assemblies is spoilt by the uncouth irresponsibility of a few who forget their station in life, and through being allowed licence slip into licentiousness. As the lyrist Simonides says:
For he that would live completely happy must before all things belong to a country that is of fair report.
[94] Claudian Letters [to Probinus]:Fortune helps the brave
is the maxim of the poet of Ceos; and whither it leads, though you were silent, I should not hesitate to go.
[95] Plutarch Should Old Men Govern?Simonides’ dictumThe city is the teacher of the man
applies to those who have still time to be taught better and mend their ways.
[96] Cramer Inedita (Paris)Pray listen to what Crobylus said. He was an Athenian who advised his fellow-countrymen to turn a deaf ear to Philip of Macedon’s proposals for peace. ‘...if, that is, you will cease vain talk, if you will free Greece and regain your traditional hegemony, both of which are now, in the words of Simonides,
in bondage inexcusable.
For there’s no healing great things with little.’
[97] Stobaeus Anthology [That Life is short, of little account and full of care]Simonides: [Wil. ascribes to Semonides of Amorgus]
But there’s one saying of the man of Chios [Homer: cf. Plut. Vit. Horn. 283 Gale, Vit. Hom. Westerm. 28, Cram. A.P. 3. 98. 13]which passes all, ‘The life of man is even as the life of a green leaf’; yet few that receive it with the ear lay it away in the breast; for there’s a hope which springeth in every heart that is young, and so long as man possesseth the flowery bloom of youth there is much that his light heart deems to have no end, counting neither on age nor death, and taking no thought for sickness in time of health. Poor fools they to think so, and not to know that the time of youth and life is but short for such as be mortal! Wherefore be thou wise in time, and fail not when the end is near to give thy soul freely of the best.
[98] Plutarch Letter of Consolation to ApolloniusFor as Simonides says:
A thousand, aye, ten thousand years are but a point one cannot see, nay the smallest part of a point.
[99] [cf. Plut. Vit,. Thes. 10, Arist. Pol. 2. 1264 a 1]Plutarch Isis and Osiris: I hesitate, lest this be merely, in Simonides’ words, to
move what should be left alone, warring against long lapse of time and many tribes and sorts of men
who are inspired with the piety they feel towards these Gods.
[100] Stobaeus Selections [That God is the Creator of existing things, and orders all by the word of providence, and what he really is]: Simonides:
Great Zeus alone hath the medicines for all ills.
[101] Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner [on the word ‘to drink’]But my friend, when you have drunk you need not be afraid that the manner of your falling will be backward; for this can never happen to such as drink what Simonides calls
wine the defender against care
[102] The Same [on wines]For in the words of the poet of Ceos:Nothing that belongeth to Bacchus should be thrown away, nay, not a grapestone.
[103] The Same [on the cup called σκυφος]Simonides speaks of the earèd cup
[104] Etymologicum Magnumειριπόνοι δμωαί:bondwomen that work the woolSimonides, from εριοπονοι with loss of ο; so Herodian Inflexions.
[105] The SameAlera and Elara: — compare Simonides:the offspring of Elara
[106] Etymologicum Gudianumφύξιμος οδμή:a loathsome stench,literally ‘one that makes to flee’; Simonides of Ceos.
[Image: ]Pentonkion of Hiero I of Syracuse, Simonides’ final patron
[107] Old Etymologicum Magnumάμιθρησαι ‘to count’: — Simonides says άμιθρός for αριθμός ‘number’ by transposition; compare
to number the waves
[108] Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner [on drinking snow like Simonides]Callistratus in the 7th Book of his Miscellanies relates that once when the poet Simonides was dining out ‘in the season of mighty heat,’ the wine-bearers in mixing snow with the wine for the guests forgot to do so with his, whereupon he improvised the following lines:
Of that with which keen Boreas hies him from Thrace to wrap the sides of Olympus and gnaw the hearts of men who have no cloaks, that which thereafter is buried alive in a shroud of Pierian clay, of that let them fill me my share; for ’tis ill bringing to a friend a bumper that is hot.
[109] Palatine AnthologyA dedication to Zeus by Sosus and Soso; by Simonides:
Take, Saviour, this from Sosus and Soso,
For saving Sosus’ life and Soso woe.
[110] Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner [on heavy eaters and drinkers]And Timocreon the poet and champion athlete of Rhodes ate and drank his fill, witness his epitaph:
Your guttling o’er, your tippling done,
You’re lying still, Timocreon.
[111] Palatine Anthology. Simonides; an hexameter and the same arranged as a trochaic tetrameter by transposition of the words:
Sing me a song, blest Muse, of the fair-foot Midean’s offspring;
Sing me of the fair-foot Midean’s offspring, blessèd Muse, a song.
[Alcmena’s son Heracles; the first line is prob. a quotation from the opening of a poem by Timocreon of Rhodes, and the whole a skit; cf. Timocr. 10]
[112] Athenaeus Doctors at DinnerWith regard to hares Chamaeleon relates in his book On Simonides that when supping once with Hiero, the poet was left out when the jugged hare was served to the guests, whereupon as Hiero was sending him some, he improvised the following parody:
Wide though it was, it could not reach to me.
[113,114] The SameVerses of the nature of riddles were composed also by Simonides, if we may believe Chamaeleon of Heraclea in his book on that poet; let me quote these:
The father of the wayward kid,
The child of eve upon each lid,
With the fell fish lies jowl by cheek;
And so my quest is still to seek.
For they refuse their aid to lend
Lord Bacchus’ butcher-knight to mend.
Some explain it thus... Others say it was the custom at Iulis that the ox to be sacrificed to Dionysus should be killed with an axe by a boy. The festival being near, the axe had been sent to be repaired, and Simonides, who was then a lad, was sent off to the blacksmith’s to fetch it. Finding the man asleep and his bellows and tongs lying on the ground end to end, he returned to his companions and put to them the above conundrum. For the ‘father of the kid’ is the bellow’s, the ‘fell fish’ the ‘crab’ or tongs, ‘the child of eve’ sleep, and ‘Bacchus’ butcher-knight’ the axe. There is another piece by Simonides which puzzles readers who do not know the story:
Who would not be of cricket’s prize the winner,
To son of Panopeus shall carry dinner.
Now it is said that the poet used to stay at Carthaea while training the choruses there, and the training-school being high up by the temple of Apollo and far from the sea, all the chorus-men, including the pupils of Simonides, fetched their water from the spring in the lower part of the town. This they did by means of a jackass which they called Epeius after the Epeius who carries water for the Atreidae in the Trojan story, a story which was depicted on the walls of the temple of Apollo near which they were training.... Now it was arranged that any chorister who came late should provide the jackass with a quart of barley. This is what is referred to in the verses; he who would not be winner of the cricket’s prize means he who would not [learn to] sing, the son of Panopeus means the jackass, and the dinner the quart of barley.
[115] Plutarch On Restraining AngerIt seems that Marsyas perforce curbed the violence of his breath by a mouthpiece and cheekbands and thus prevented the ugly puffing-out of his face:
And he joined the fringed sides of his head with day-bright gold, and fitted his wanton mouth with backward-bounden thongs; [i. e. when playing the flute]
whereas anger, through its unseemly puffing and stretching of the face, makes the voice even more ugly and unpleasant than it would otherwise be.

## BOOK XIV. INSCRIPTIONS


## Epitaphs

[116] Planudean AnthologySimonides:
We were slain in a glen of Dirphys, and the mound of our grave is made beside Euripus at our country’s charge, and rightly so; for by abiding the onset of the cruel cloud of war we lost our lovely time of youth.
[cloud: the thick of the fight, ref. to operations against Chalcis 500 (?)]
[117] [cf. Aristid. 2. 511, where 1. 2 runs ‘and put to flight ninety thousand Medes’]
Lycurgus Speech against LeocratesThus we may see unimpeachable testimony to their valour engraven upon their tombs for all Greece to read, to the Spartans this: (119); and to your own ancestors this:
At Marathon the Athenians fought for Greece and scattered the might of the Mede and all his gold.
[118,119,120] Herodotus Histories [on the Battle of Thermopylae]They were buried where they fell, and with them the men who died before the withdrawal of those whom Leonidas sent to the rear; and the following inscriptions stand over their graves:
Here four thousand of the Peloponnese once fought with three thousand thousand.Such is the epitaph of the whole force; of the Spartans in particular this:Stranger, go tell the Lacedaemonians that we lie here in obedience to their word.And of the seer this:
This is the tomb of the famous Megistias, slain by the Medes beside the river Spercheius, the seer who well-knowing that his doom was nigh, would not forsake the leaders of Sparta.
The epitaphs and pillars, with the exception of the epitaph of the seer, were accorded them by the Amphictyons. The epitaph of the seer Megistias was put up by Simonides the son of Leoprepes because of the friendship he bore him. [the evidence of Hdt., who is concerned only with the setting-up of the epitaphs, must not be taken as indicating that S. did not write the first two as well as the third]
[121] [ascription doubtful]
Strabo GeographyOpus is the mother-city of the Locrians, witness the inscription on the first of the five pillars commemorating Thermopylae, the one near the general grave:
Of those who died for the sake of Greece against the Medes these are mourned by Opus the mother-city of the Locrians of the upright laws.
[122] [perh. by Mnasalcas (cf. A P. 13. 21)]Palatine Anthology. The Same (Simonides) on those who died with Leonidas the Spartan:
Famous are they this earth doth cover, slain here with thee, Leonidas king of spacious Lacedaemon, when they fought and abode the strength of many and many an arrow and swift-footed horse and man of Media.
[123] [cf. Plut. Hdt. mal. 39, who apparently does not ascribe it to S. ]
Dio Chrysostom Orations: And they (the Corinthians) fought the best at Salamis and were the prime cause of the victory. For I prefer the witness not of Herodotus but of their tomb and of Simonides, who wrote the following epitaph on the Corinthians who were buried at Salamis:
Once, O stranger, we lived in the well-watered citadel of Corinth, but now we dwell in Ajax’ isle of Salamis. [so the stone; literary tradition, i.e.. Plut, and Dio, adds ‘where we saved sacred Greece by taking Phoenician ships with Persians and Medes’]
[124] Plutarch Malignity of Herodotus [after 123]The cenotaph at the Isthmus bears the following inscription:
With our lives saved we all Greece when her fate hung by a single hair.
[125] The Same [after 124]And indeed Adeimantus himself, whom Herodotus always maligns most bitterly, and particularly in saying that he was the only general who resisted (Themistocles) with a view to making his escape from Artemisium, pray consider what fame he afterwards enjoyed:
This is the tomb of that Adeimantus, through whose counsels Greece put on the crown of freedom.
[126] Palatine AnthologySimonides:
These crowned their dear country with fame inextinguishable by wrapping round them the mist and gloom of death; though they died they are not dead, for their valour brings them back in glory from the world below.
[127] Palatine AnthologySimonides:
If the greatest part of virtue is to die well, that hath Fortune given, of all men, unto us; we lie here in glory unaging because we strove to crown Greece with freedom.
[128] The SameOf uncertain authorship, upon the Athenian vanguard:
... the children of the Athenians drove out the Persian host and saved their country from woeful servitude.
[prob. incomplete; ascription doubtful: ref. to Plataea?]
[129] The SameSimonides:
Because of these men’s manly virtue the smoke of the burning of spacious Tegea has not gone to the sky; for they chose to leave their children a country green and gay with freedom, and themselves to die in the forefront of the battle.
[130] [B refers these to Plataea, comparing Hdt. 9. 85, but cf. Paus. 9. 2. 5; perh. alternative suggestions for the same monument, both preserved in S.’s collected works]
The SameSimonides:
Let us remember the fair-fighting men whose tomb this is, who died to save the pastures of Tegea, wielding the spear for their country that their dear Greece might not doff freedom from her renowned head.
[131] Aristides On the Extemporary AdditionDo you perchance call such words as these mere boastfulness
... and those who died before Byzantium, to save the fishy straits of the sea, men swift in the work of war.
[132] Palatine Anthology[Simonides - ascription doubtful; cf. Paus. 10. 15. 4] on those who won distinction with Cimon at the Eurymedon:
These lost their splendid youth at the Eurymedon, fighting the van of the Median bowmen with the spear; both ashore and on swift shipboard they fought, and left when they died a right goodly memorial of their valour.
[133] The Same[Simonides] on the Greeks who fell at the Eurymedon:
In these men’s breasts the impetuous War-God washed the long-pointed arrow with crimson drops, and instead of javelineers this dust shrouds the living memorials of corpses without life.
[134] On a stone of the fourth or fifth century A.D. found near MegaraThe epitaph of the heroes who died in the Persian War and lie where they fell, being decayed through lapse of time, the high priest Helladius caused it to be inscribed to the honour of the fallen and of the city; the author is Simonides:
We received the lot of death because we were fain to exalt the day of freedom unto Greece and the Megarians.
The city has sacrificed a bull to them every year even to our own time.
[135] Palatine Anthology[Simonides] on the Athenian vanguard:
Farewell, ye glorious princes of war, noble young chivalry of Athens, who lost your youth fighting against the more part of all Greece for the sake of your country of the fair dances. [the stone belongs to the mid-5th cent.; ref. prob. to the Athenian defeat at Tanagra 457 (Thuc. 1. 108); S. died 468]
[136] The SameSimonides, on certain men who were shipwrecked: [prob. in the Corinthian Gulf on the way to Delphi with an offering from the spoils of the victory at Cumae in 474; the inscr. was on a cenotaph]
All these men, on their way to Apollo with first-fruits of the Tyrrhenian spoil, had their burial of one sea, one night, and one ship.
[137] Palatine Anthology[Simonides] on one Lion who was guarded by a lion of marble:
I am the most valiant of beasts, even as he whom now I guard in stone astride this grave was most valiant of men; if Lion had had my name without my nature, then had I never set foot upon this tomb.
[ascription doubtful; B, who wrongly rejects 3-4 as an addition, sugg. the L. of Hdt. 7. 180; Leonidas (Hdt. 7. 225) impossible, cf. Paus. 3. 8. 2]
[138] Anonymous MythographerFor it is not true that the soul leaves the body, but rather that the body leaves the soul. Hence both the poet Simonides... and Statius to the same effect in Book VIII of the Thebaid: ‘I hate the limbs and this fragile usage of a body that deserts the soul.’
e. g. For the body of such a man as this leaveth I at death his soul, not his soul the body.
[139] Thucydides HistoryAiantides the son of Hippoclus tyrant of Lampsacus soon after received Hippias’ daughter Archedicè in marriage, her Athenian father giving her to a Lampsacene because he knew that the rulers of that city had great influence with king Darius. Archedicè’s tomb is at Lampsacus, and bears the following inscription:
This dust covers Archedicè the daughter of Hippias the foremost Greek of his time; daughter, wife, sister, and mother, of despots, she lifted not up her heart unto presumptuousness.
[140] Palatine AnthologySimonides:
I shall remember; for she that lies here cannot lie unnamed, to wit Xanthippè the beauteous wife of Archenautes and grandchild’s grandchild of that Periander who gave the word of sovereignty to them of towered Corinth.
[the speaker is apparently the statue of a Siren or the like]
[141] The SameBy the same (Simonides), on Megacles:When I behold the tomb of Megacles, I pity you, poor Callias.[Callias: his father, son of Hipponicus ‘Ammon’ of the Alcmaeonidae?]
[142] The SameSimonides, on one that was shipwrecked on Geraueia and the Scironian Rocks:
Skyey Geraneia, thou evil crag, I would thou lookedst on Ister far away and upon Scythia’s distant Tanais, and that the Scironian Cliff dwelt not beside the sea by which Iphimenes sailed about the rock Moluris; but alas! he is a chill corpse in the deep, and this empty tomb proclaims a bitter seafaring.
[143] Palatine AnthologyBy the same (Simonides):
When Timomachus was breathing forth his precious youth in his father’s arms, he cried ‘Never will you cease to long, O son of Timenor, for the valour or the virtue of your dear son.’
[the son’s name is doubtful]
[144] The Same— [Simonides or] Simias, [more prob. Simias, cf. Ath. 11. 491c] epitaph of a girl named Gorgo:
These were the last words of Gorgo as she wept with her dear mother’s arms about her neck: ‘May you remain with my father, and bear, unto a better fortune, another daughter to care for you when you be grey-headed.’
[145] The SameSimonides, on Timarchus, who died young of an illness:
Alas, thou fell disease! Why dost thou grudge the souls of men their sojourn with lovely youth? Now it is the young Timarchus thou hast reft of delicious life, and that ere he might look upon a wedded spouse.
[146] The SameBy the same (Simonides), on Theognis of Sinopè:
I am the tomb of Theognis of Sinopè, to whom I was put up by Glaucus in return for a companionship of many years.
[147] Palatine Anthology. By the same (Simonides), on Cleisthenes of Ceos who perished at sea [on a cenotaph]:
Your tomb stands on no foreign soil, Cleisthenes, but the doom of death overtaking you in the Euxine Sea you have lost the sweet delicious home coming and returned no more to wave-washed Ceos.
[148] The SameSimonides, on Cleodemus who was killed by the Thracians:
Cleodemus too was led by Honour to a lamentable death, the which he met in a Thracian ambuscade by the mouth of the ever-flowing Theaerus, [perh. the Tearus of Hdt. 4. 90] and the name of his father Diphilus has been made famous by the deeds of his warrior son.
[149] The SameSimonides, on Nicodicus:
Each is hurt by the loss of his own; the loss of Nicodicus hurts both his friends and all this great city.
[150] The SameSimonides:
Some one rejoices that I, Theodorus, am dead; another will rejoice over him; we are all debts due to Death.
[151] Palatine AnthologySimonides, on Pythonax and his brother:
Here lie Pythonax and his brother, ere they might see the full perfecting of lovely youth, and their father Megaristus hath put up an immortal monument in honour of his mortal children dead. [the unnamed brother was peril, an infant]
[152] The Same:
Sir, you look not on the tomb of Croesus, but since your poor man needs but a little gravestone it is great enough for me.
[153] The Same:
Ere I might behold my bridal bed, I Gorgippus went down to the chamber unescapable of flaxenhaired Persephonè.
[154] The SameSimonides: an hexameter followed by a pentameter, two trimeters, and an hexameter:
Here lies Dandes of Argos, the runner of the single course, after glorifying the horse-breeding land of his birth by two victories at Olympia, three at Delphi, two at the Isthmus, fifteen at Nemea, and others well-nigh past counting.
[155] Palatine AnthologySimonides:This tomb did Spinther build for Spinther dead.[father for son?]
[156] The SameOn Brotachus: Simonides:I that lie here am Brotachus of Gortyn, a Cretan born, and I came not for this but on business.
[157-158] The SameSimonides on himself: Simonides, finding a corpse on a certain island, buried it and wrote this epitaph over the grave:
Grant, O God of Guest and Host, that those who slew me shall meet with like fortune, but those who put me under the sod may enjoy a happy life.
The ghost of the buried man now appeared to Simonides and urged him not to set sail. His fellow-travellers refusing to take the warning, Simonides stayed behind alone and was saved (from the death which overtook them). Whereupon he put over the grave the following lines:
This is he that saved the life of Simonides of Ceos, he who though dead yet showed his gratitude to the living.
[159] Pollux VocabularyEven Lycas the Thessalian hound was made famous by Simonides, who wrote this epitaph over her grave:
Methinks, huntress Lycas, even the dead white bones in this tomb must still affright the beasts of the field; for thy valour is well-known to great Pelion and far-seen Ossa and the towering sheep-walks of Cithaeron.

## Dedications

[160] [cf. Eust. Il. 984. 8]
Hephaestion Handbook of MetreEvery metrical line ends in a complete word; hence such lines as these of Simonides in the Inscriptions are incorrect:
A marvellous great light shone upon Athens when Aristogeiton and Harmodius slew Hipparchus.
[the word Aristogeiton, to come into the metre, has to be divided between the two lines — prob. inscribed beneath the statues of the tyrannicides erected in 477, cf. Mar. Par. 54 (above, p. 248)]
[161] [date of battles, 507; cf. Diod. Exc. Vat. 3. 40, A.P. 6. 343, Aristid. 2. 512 (after others by S.), Paus. 1. 28. 2, Him. Or. 2. 12]
Herodotus HistoryThe Athenians set up as a tithe of the ransom (of the Boeotian and Chalcidian prisoners) a chariot-and-four in bronze, which stands first on the left as you enter the Propylaea of the Acropolis, and bears the following inscription:
The sons of Athens, by subduing them with their deeds of war, extinguished in an iron chain [this would recall the actual chains of the ransomed Boeotian and Chalcid an prisoners; dedicated on the Acropolis where Hdt. saw them]of gloom the pride of the nations of Boeotia and Chalcis, whose tithe is here dedicated in these horses unto Pallas.
[162] Planudean AnthologySimonides:
The goat-footed Pan, the Arcadian, the enemy of Media, the ally of Athens, I was dedicated here by Miltiades.
[163] Plutarch Malignity of HerodotusThe offerings dedicated in the temple of Leto by Diodorus, one of the Corinthian commanders, bear the following inscription [ref. to Salamis]:
These arms of the Medes whom they sank in the sea the crew of Diodorus dedicated to Leto as a memorial of the sea-fight.
[164] The SameAnd then shall we believe what he says about a single individual or state, when in one word he robs Greece of the victory, destroys the trophy, and damns as mere boasting and bluff the inscription the Athenians dedicated to Artemis of the East? The inscription runs thus:
When the host of the Mede was destroyed, the sons of Athens defeated tribes of all manner of men from Asia in a fight upon this sea, and dedicated these tokens unto the Virgin Artemis. [ref. to Artemisium]
[165] The SameIt becomes clear that his object in concocting this lie was not to praise Democritus but to shame the Naxians, when we remark that he has passed over without a word the success of Democritus and the distinguished service indicated by the Inscription [more likely an Elegiac poem, but they may have formed a single Book with the Inscriptions] of Simonides:
... Democritus, as one of the three that commanded the fight when the Greeks fought the Medes on the sea off Salamis, took five ships from the foe, and for a sixth feat saved Doris [the Peloponnese] from falling into Barbarian hands.
[166] Scholiast on Pindar [‘Among them blooms Ares in the terrible spears of the young men’]— According to Theopompus, the Corinthian women, too, went to the temple of Aphrodite and prayed to her that their men should be filled with love of the battle for Greece against the Medes... and he declares that the following elegiac poem which was dedicated there is still to be seen on the left hand as you enter the temple: ‘These’ etc.
Athenaeus Doctors at DinnerAccording to Chamaeleon of Heraclea in his book On Pindar, it is an ancient custom at Corinth that when the city makes supplication to Aphrodite in any great crisis, the intercession shall be attended by as many as possible of the courtesans, who shall pray to the Goddess and afterwards be present at the sacrifice. Accordingly when Greece was invaded by the Persian, the Corinthian courtesans, if we may believe Theopompus and the 7th Book of Timaeus, went to Aphrodite’s temple and prayed for the salvation of Greece. And thus it was that when the Corinthians dedicated to the Goddess the tablet which is still extant and inscribed on it the name of each of the courtesans who had made that intercession and afterwards attended the sacrifice, the following inscription was dedicated along with it by Simonides: ‘These’ etc.
Plutarch Malignity of HerodotusAnd yet the fact that the women of Corinth, and they only of all the women of Greece, made that wonderful and beautiful prayer that the Goddess should fill their men with love of the battle against the barbarians, was probably well-known to the remotest Carian, let alone Herodotus. Indeed it was matter of common talk, and when bronze images were dedicated in the temple of Aphrodite an inscription was composed for them by Simonides to the following effect:
These women were dedicated in effigy after that they had made public intercession to the Cyprian for Greece and for their fair-fighting fellow-countrymen, ⟨that she should fill their men with love of the battle against the barbarous-tongued nations of the Medes;⟩ for the mighty Goddess would not deliver over the citadel of Greece into the hands of Median bowmen.
[167] Thucydides HistoryThe Spartan nobles carefully investigated Pausanias’ behaviour to see if he had departed from the established customs, and among other things fastened upon the following personal eulogy which he had seen fit some time before to have inscribed upon the tripod which the Greeks dedicated at Delphi as an offering from the spoil of the Medes (at Plataea):
When Pausanias in command of the Greeks destroyed the Median host he dedicated this memorial unto Phoebus.
This inscription was now at once erased by the Spartans, who engraved upon the offering the names of all the cities which had set it up after their combined defeat of the Barbarian.
[168] Diodorus of Sicily Historical Library: The Greeks (after Plataea) took a tithe of the spoil and made with it a gold tripod which they dedicated at Delphi with the following inscription:
This tripod was dedicated by the saviours of spacious Greece after that they had saved their cities from hateful servitude.
[169] Plutarch Malignity of HerodotusFinally the Athenians and Spartans wrote and engraved upon the altar (at Plataea):
This altar the Greeks did build to be an altar of the Zeus of Freedom common to a free Greece, after that their deeds of triumphant war had driven out the Persians.
[170] Scholiast on PindarIt is said that Gelo out of regard for his brothers dedicated to the God gold tripods thus inscribed:
I say that Gelo, Hiero, Polyzalus, and Thrasybulus, sons of Deinomenes, dedicated these tripods out of fifty talents and a hundred litres of the gold of Damaretè, [wife of Gelo who gave her name to a coinage generally identified with the fine silver coinage of the period; the couplet is therefore thought to be a later addition; cf. Diod. 11. 20, Ath. 6. 231 e: but perh. we should read ‘of gold in darics’. Homolle Mel. Weil, finding together at Delphi four tripod-bases, two larger (A and B) bearing dedicatory inscriptions of Gelo and [Hiero?] and two smaller (C and D) without inscr., believes the lost pedestal of C and D to have borne these lines; A’s inscr. speaks of a Nikè as well as a tripod, B’s (of apparently later date) of the weight in [talents and] minae; the historians make no mention of Pol. and Thras., perh. because our inscr. had disappeared; prob. A stood first alone to commemorate Himera (480), B, C, 1) were added by Hiero after Cumae (474) prob. in 468 (cf. Bacch. 3. 17); Sitzler Burs. Jahresb. ’07 reads Hiero for Gelo in Sch.; see Poulsen Delphi, Jebb Bacch. 452] being a tithe of the tithe of the booty they had of their victory over the Barbarian nations when they gave a great army to fight beside the Greeks for freedom.
[171] Aristides On the Four Great AtheniansAt the river Eurymedon, having won on both elements in the same day, Cimon set up commemorative monuments of fights both by sea and by land, and thus, amazed as the poets were by the earlier deeds of glory done when the Barbarians invaded Greece, one of them nevertheless sang of the later achievements — not indeed of all of them, but of those that were done on a certain single day.
Since the day the sea parted Europe from Asia and the impetuous War-God first haunted the cities of mankind, no fairer deed of earthly men ever befel at once on land and sea. For these men first destroyed many of the Medes ashore and then took a hundred ships of the Phoenicians on the sea, ships and shipmen too; and loud were Asia’s laments when she found herself smitten with both of their mightily-warring hands.
[to do a thing with both hands was to do it earnestly and thoroughly; there is double intention here, the hands being also ‘arms’ military and naval]
[172] [cf. Aesch. Pers. 460, Hdt. 9. 22, 60]Palatine Anthology: Simonides, on a bow and arrows dedicated in the temple of Athena:
This bow and its arrows that lie beneath the roof of Athena’s temple their lamentable warfare done, ofttimes amid the mournful mellay bathed themselves in the blood of the man-destroying horsemen of Persia.
[173] Palatine AnthologyA soldier’s offering to Zeus; Simonides:
Rest so, thou fine long ash, against the tall pillar, abiding ever sacred to Zeus the Diviner; for thy bronze point is grown old and thou thyself art worn out with much wielding in dreadful war.
[174] The SameA dedication of the same (Simonides):
Fifty and six, Simonides, were the bulls and the tripods you had won ere you set up this tablet, even so many were the times you mounted the splendid chariot of glorious Victory for teaching a delightful chorus of men.
[175] Aristides The Extemporary AdditionFor Simonides could say:
... and I declare that no man can rival in power of memory Simonides the son of Leoprepes, eighty years old though he be.
These are not the words of another man speaking of Simonides, but his own, and moreover he adds the second line to show that it is not a boast of his youthful prime.
[176] Maximus Planudes: Simonides was skilled in all poetry and music, winning prizes from youth to age: compare the inscription:
When the tribe Antiochis won a fine-wrought tripod, Adeimantus was arch on at Athens, [477 B.C.]Aristides son of Xenophilus was master of the well-taught chorus of fifty men, and the credit for the teaching fell to Simonides son of Leoprepes, being eighty years of age.
[177] Palatine Anthology[Bacchylides or Simonides]:
[ascription doubtful (Σιμωνίδης Steph. Byz. Άκαμάντιον): the true author, otherwise unknown, was prob. Antigenes (below)]
Oft have the Dionysian Seasons shouted with joy for the ivy-dight dithyramb at the dances of the tribe Acamantis, and shaded the shining locks of skilful singers with ribbons and with choice roses; but they who have made this tripod to be witness to their Bacchic prize are the men who were taught by Antigenes; and right well did Ariston of Argos nurse with outpourings of the sweet breath of his pure flute the delightful voice of Athenians, who were led in their ring of melody by Hipponicus son of Struthon from the chariot of the Graces, the which have bestowed upon his men name and fame and splendid victory by aid of the God and the violet-crownèd Muses.
[178] Planudean AnthologySimonides:
When you look here pray know that this is Theognetus the Olympian boy-victor, the skilful driver of the car of wrestling, fair to behold and his looks not belied by his prowess, the lad that put a crown upon the city of his noble parents.[he won in 476]
[179] Palatine AnthologyDedication to Hermes by Leocrates, by the same (Simonides):
When you dedicated, O Leocrates son of Stroebus, this sculpture unto Hermes, you were not forgotten of the fair-tressed Muses.
[cf. A.P. after 6. 213, Suid. άγοστω,Quint. 11. 2. 14; so the stone (1st half of 5th cent.): literary tradition adds ‘or of the delightful Academe in whose dell I proclaim your kindness unto him that comes thither’ ]
[180] The SameSimonides; an hexameter followed alternatively by a comic tetrameter short by two syllables, [trimeter short by one syllable?] and the Archilochian scazon or halting trimeter: [ascription doubtful; S. is more concise and elsewhere uses logaoedic metres only through metrical necessity]
In honour of his native place, the sacred city of Athena child of the dark earth, [like the grasshopper, autochthonous, Thuc. 1. 6] these pretty flutes made with the help of Hephaestus were dedicated to Aphrodite by Opis because of his love for the beautiful Bryson.
[181] Pausanias Description of Greece [on Olympia]Beside the chariot of Gelo is dedicated a statue of Philon, the work of Glaucias of Aegina. For this statue Simonides son of Leoprepes composed the following very clever lines: [because expressed in the usual metre in the simplest possible terms; cf. 182-3]
I hail from Corcyra, my name is Philon, I am the son of Glaucus, and I won the boxing twice at Olympia.
[182] Planudean AnthologyThe Same (Simonides):
At the Isthmus and at Delphi Diophon son of Philon won jump, race, disc, javelin, and wrestling.
[i. e. the pentathlon or five-event contest]
[183] The SameSimonides:Name self, sire, city, victory. Casmylus, Euagoras, Rhodes, boxing at Pytho.
[184] Palatine AnthologySimonides; an hexameter followed by a nine-syllable:
This statue is the offering of Nicoladas of Corinth, who won the footrace at Delphi, who took sixty jars of oil in five prizes at the Panathenaea, the number of jars varied with the importance of the event] whose rivals thrice upon end came not even before the oath-offerings at holy Isthmus; who won thrice at Nemea, four times at Pellene, twice at Lycaeus, and at Tegea, Aegina, and rocky Epidaurus, at Thebes and at Megara town; who at Phlius won the short course and the contest-of-five, and made great Corinth to rejoice.
[185] Planudean AnthologyThe Same (Simonides):
This is the noble statue of the noble Milon, who kept his feet victoriously six times by the stream of Pisa.
[kept his feet: the Gk. is ‘did not fall to his knees’ i.e.. wrestling at Olympia; prob. the stream is intended and not the town]
[186] Diogenes Laertius Lives of the PhilosophersThere have been three other men of the name of Arcesilaüs;... and another a statuary, to whom Simonides wrote the following inscription:
This is the statue of Artemis, the price of it two hundred Parian drachmas stamped with the goat, and the master that made it with aid of Athena was Arcesilaüs of Oaxus, son of Aristodicus.
[187] Palatine AnthologySimonides:
From Alcon of Crete, the son of Didymus, this wreath to Phoebus for the victory in boxing at the Isthmus.
[188] Tryphon [on hyperbaton]— Some writers have used hyperbaton or transposition even in syllables, for instance Simonides in the Inscriptions:
This statue of Hermes was dedicated in the porch by Demetrius after that he had won at Megara uprightly indeed, but upright, no;
where ‘upright no’ is for ‘not upright.’
[189] Plutarch Life of ThemistoclesBut it is clear that Themistocles was connected by birth with the Lycomids, because the place of initiation at Phlya, which belonged to them and was burnt down by the Persians, was restored by him and adorned with paintings, as we are told by Simonides. [prob. in a dedicatory inscription for the building]
[190] Pausanias Description of Greece [on a painting by Polygnotus at Delphi]In this part of the painting there is a couplet of Simonides:
Polygnotus of Thasos, son of Aglaophon, painted the sack of the citadel of Troy.
[191] Palatine Anthology:
This was painted by Iphion of Corinth, and small blame to his hand; for work is far better than fame.
[192] The SameOn the doors; by the same (Simonides):
The right hand of these doors did Micon paint,
The right as you come out, Dionysius.
[193] Aristotle Rhetoric:
For if an action exceeds what is expected of the actor’s powers or years, or surpasses the common standard of those whom he resembles; or if it is performed in a certain way or at a certain time or at a certain place, it will acquire thereby a greatness, be it of beauty, of excellence, of justice, or of their opposites. Hence the inscription for the statue of the Olympian victor:
In the old days with a galling basket on my shoulders I used to carry fish from Argos to Tegea, [but now... ]
[the lost second couplet doubtless contained name and victory]
[194] Palatine AnthologyDedication by Simonides:
Pray that your gifts, O Cyton, may bring even as full joy to the holy Son of Leto who rules the marketplace of the fair dances, as the praise you have both of stranger and them of Corinth and the crown of thanks that has fallen to your lot.
[prob. ref. to the voting of a crown by the people for services to the state, this being the inscr. written upon it when he dedicated it to Apollo]
[195] Herodian Words without Parallel [on ην ‘I was’]Speakers of Attic say ην εγω ‘I was’ and ην εκεινος ‘he was,’ and Simonides uses the same form for the first person plural, as for instance in the Inscriptions:
We were once a hundred cups belonging to either city
[Sparta and Athens?— ‘but now we are united into one tripod, as an offering to the God’? Ludwich]
— ην for ημεν.
[196] Scholiast on Pindar [‘Eileithuia that sittest beside the Fates’].. Aristodemus the pupil of Aristarchus gives a better account Sogenes [the winning boy] was born to Thearion when he was advanced in years, in answer to a prayer to the Goddess, and so the birth of his son was as it were a favour of Eileithuia. Thus it is owing to the peculiar circumstances of the athlete’s birth that the poet thus addresses the Goddess. Aristodemus’ view was based on an Inscription of Simonides.
[197] Athenaeus Doctors at Dinnerχορωνόν ‘wreath’: Apion in his book On the Latin Language declares that what is now called στέφανος was anciently known as χορωνόν because it was used by the χορευταί or chorus-men in the theatres, who both wore a wreath themselves and competed for one; compare this passage in the Inscriptions of Simonides, where the word χορωνόν occurs:
Phoebus, who leads the singing of the children of Tyndareus, is crowned with a wreath by these crickets of ours.
[198] Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner... a subject painted in the Portico of the Polemarch at Phlius by Sillax of Rhegium, who is mentioned by Epicharmus and Simonides.
[199] Stobaeus Selections [on Time’s nature and parts and of how many things he is the cause]From the Inscriptions of Simonides:
The greatest touchstone of any work is Time, who showeth even the heart of a man beneath his breast.
[200] Stobaeus Selections [on Time’s nature and parts and of how many things he is the cause]From the Inscriptions of Simonides:
... sharp-toothed Time grindeth all things up, aye, even the mightiest.
[201] Strabo Geography [the Indians]The Noseless are declared by Megasthenes to be gluttons, eaters of raw flesh, and shortlived, dying before they become old; moreover their upper lips are remarkably protruding. Of the Hyperboreans who live for a thousand years he gives the same account as Simonides, Pindar, and other mythologers.
[202] The Same [the Perrhaebians]Owing to their living side by side in the same district, Simonides gives the names Perrhaebian and Lapith to all the Pelasgiots inhabiting the eastward parts about Gyrton, the mouth of the Peneius, and Mounts Ossa and Pelion, as well as the district of Demetrias and the townships of the plain, Larissa, Crannon, Scotussa, Mopsium, Atrax, and the country of the Nessonian and Boebian Lakes.
[203] Scholiast on Theocritus [‘Nisaean Megarians, masters of the oar’](1) Because they are a nautical people, as Simonides testifies; (2) Simonides too praises the Megarians.
[204] [cf. Suid. s v. (‘proverbial of those who laugh at their own destruction’)]
Photius LexiconA Sardonic smile: ... According to Simonides, Talos, the man that Hephaestus made with his hands, took the Sardinians, who refused to carry him over to Minos, and leapt down with them into the fire, as he well might do being made of bronze, and there hugged them to his breast and slew them all grinning upon him.
Zenobius ProverbsAccording to Simonides, Talos before he went to Crete lived in Sardinia, and killed many of the inhabitants, who as they died grinned, whence the phrase ‘a Sardonic smile.’
[205] Philodemus On Piety [Atlas]Simonides represents him as carrying the sky on his shoulders, while in Hesiod [Theog. 517] he ‘holds the broad sky through mighty Necessity, standing erect with head and hands unwearying.’
[206] [cf. Serv. Verg. A en. 6. 576, 7. 658]
Scholiast on HesiodAccording to Alcaeus the Hydra had nine heads, according to Simonides fifty.
[207] Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes Argonautica [‘being of Ephyra by birth’]Ephyra means Corinth, from Ephyra daughter of Epimetheus, though according to Eumelus and Simonides she was daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, and wife of Epimetheus.
[208] Scholiast on Euripides OrestesIt is clear that the scene of the play is laid at Argos, whereas Homer puts Agamemnon’s palace at Mycenae, and Stesichorus and Simonides at Sparta.
[209] Scholiast on the Iliad [‘As Idomeneus strode away, Deiphobus cast at him his shining javelinfor he had ever an abiding hatred of him’]: As his rival for the love of Helen, witness Ibycus and Simonides.
[210] [Longinus] On the Sublime [on ‘images’]The imagery of Sophocles is of supreme excellence where the dying Oedipus goes to his grave amidst a gathering tempest, and also where, as the Greeks set sail from Troy, Achilles appears to them over his tomb; and yet the latter image could hardly be more vividly employed than it is by Simonides. But it is impracticable to quote every case in point.
[211] Scholiast on the Iliad [‘Nastes and Amphimachus, the glorious children of Nomion; and he came moreover to the war with, a gold trinket like a girl’]: The marginal mark is because ‘he’ refers to Amphimachus, though Simonides took it of Nastes and because the meaning is not that he came with golden arms, as again Simonides would have it, but with a gold ornament.
[212] Scholiast on Pindar [‘Among the Corinthians is the sweet-breathèd Muse’]that is, they are musical; for Corinth had very famous poets, including Arion, who is mentioned by Simonides.
[213] Scholiast on the Iliad [‘daughter of Marpessa’]Idas, the reputed son of Aphareus but true son of Poseidon, by race a Lacedaemonian, desiring a wife, went to Ortygia in Chalcis and carried away thence Euenus’ daughter Marpessa, travelling speedily with horses of Poseidon. Going forth to seek his daughter, Euenus came to the river Lycormas in Aetolia and there sank down; whence the Lycormas came to be known as the Euenus. But nigh to Arenè Idas was met by Apollo, who laid hold on Marpessa, whereat Idas stretched bow and began to fight him for his bride. Then became Zeus judge between them, and bade Marpessa choose her man; when for fear Apollo would leave her when she grew old, she chose Idas. Such is Simonides’ elaboration of the story.
[214] Plut. Life of Lycurgus: Nevertheless, although History is at a loss, we will try to base our account of the man upon such of the recorded facts as are least controverted or have the support of the best authorities. According to the poet Simonides, the father of Lycurgus was not Eunomus, but Lycurgus and Eunomus were sons of Prytanis. This is contrary to most of the authorities, etc.
[215] The Same Life of AgesilausAnd this is why Simonides is said to have called Spartabreaker-in of men
as, more than any other city, making her people obedient through her customs, like horses whose breaking-in is begun from the outset.
[216] Scholiast on Euripides Rhesus [‘the four-part watch of night’]The ancients divide the night into three watches... but Stesichorus and Simonides make it of five watches
[217] Scholiast on Pindar [‘on the mothers side from Astydameia and so sons of Amyntor’ ]... Pindar here makes her a daughter of Amyntor, but according to Hesiod and Simonides her father was Ormenus.
[218] Stephanus of Byzantium LexiconAcanthus: — ... there is also an Acanthus in Athamania. The ethnic adjective is Acanthius ‘Acanthian,’ whence the proverb ‘Acanthian cricket’ of taciturn people; for according to Simonides the crickets of that country do not chirp.
[219] Herodian On Solecismcompare I laughs
[if H. is not deceived by a false reading or explanation (which is quite possible), S. must have been joking (perh. in a riddle)]
in the lyric poet Simonides; for ‘I’ is of the first person and ‘laughs’ of the third, and so he has made a false concord, whereas he should have said ‘I laugh’ or ‘he laughs.’
[220] [cf. Suid., Philem. 141, Phot. (Reitz.) 96]Zonaras Lexicon άμύνεσθαι ‘to avenge oneself’
requite.. used by Simonides for ‘to repay a favour.’
[221] Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner [on word-coining]I know the poet Simonides somewhere calls Zeus best-ruler
[222] Scholiast on the Iliad [‘fair black-mounted swords’]that is, ‘iron-bound’... ‘having iron handles bound to them’... The handle is called the ‘bond’ or
binding by Simonides.
[223] The Same [‘astonishment held them as they looked on’]θαμβός astonishment is neuter in Homer, but masculine in Simonides.
[224] Scholiast on the Iliad [‘his comrades the dearest and most cherished of all’]κεδνότατοι really means ‘wisest,’ but Simonides calls friends κεδνοί
cherished
[225] The Same [‘coffers’]Aristarchus says that the word κιβωτόs chest is modern, not knowing that it occurs in Simonides and Hecataeus.
[226] Cramer Inedita (Oxford)Disyllables in -τος which do not change their form and have ρ in the penultimate are accented paroxytone, for instance κυρτος ‘weel,’ Mυρτος the city Myrtus, σκίρτος
frisky a word used by Simonides.
[227] Etymologicum Magnum πρώρα ‘prow’— With the ι... by the derivation from προϊεναι ‘to go forward,’ [the etymology is hardly correct] and by ‘separation,’ since it is found with the two vowels ‘separated,’ as in Homer κυανοπρωίρους and in Simonides κυανοπρώϊρα
blue-prowed
Some authorities write the latter half of the compound with an ι, as from -πρωρα with ‘separation’ of ι from ω, but Herodian writes it with the diphthong ει on the pattern of words in -ειρα.
[228] [cf. Anacr. 80]Tzetzes on Hesiod [‘a woman... babbling cozeningly’]Babbling:—’ speaking much’;babbling is an epithet of the swallow in Anacreon and Simonides because it is garrulous.
[229] Hesychius Lexicon νεαρησιν ‘ίπποι!‘Horses from Neaera,’ [the explanation is prob. wrong; the word is a special fern, of νιος ‘young,’ cf. πρίσβειρα] a place in Lemnos; Simonides uses the phrase νεαιραν γνάθον
youthful cheek
[230] The Same:Oeciades ‘Son of Oeceus’: Simonides; he was the father of Dexamenus and Hipponoiis.
[231] Old Etymologicum Magnum, υιος ‘son’— It is nominative υος, genitive υιος, like ιφις ‘snake,’ genitive οφιος; the nominative occurs in Simonides with ‘synaeresis’ or coalescing of the ι and the υ into the diphthong υι, υις
son; the genitive is υιος, accented acute on the first syllable, etc.
Scholiast on Dionysius of ThraceIf a syllable ends with a consonant the next to it will not begin with a ζ, unless the word be foreign like Ariobarzanes or a compound like the μελάνζοφος
pitch-dark of Simonides.