Simonides of Ceos
born c. 556 bc, Iulis, Ceos [now Kéa,
Greece]
died c. 468 bc, Acragas [now Agrigento,
Sicily, Italy]
Greek poet, noted for his lyric
poetry, elegiacs, and epigrams; he was
an uncle of the Greek lyric poet
Bacchylides.
Simonides began writing poetry on
Ceos, but he was soon called to the
court of the Peisistratids (the tyrants
of Athens), which was a lively cultural
and artistic centre in the 6th century
bc. (See ancient Greek civilization: The
later Archaic periods.) He later visited
other powerful figures in Thessaly, in
northern Greece, such as Scopas, ruler
of Crannon.
Simonides lived in Athens after the
fall of the Peisistratid tyranny and the
founding of the democracy. He was close
to important people there, including the
politician and naval strategist
Themistocles, and he achieved numerous
successes in dithyrambic competitions.
(A later poet credited Simonides with 57
victories.) In the competition,
Simonides was selected (above such
celebrated poets as Aeschylus) to
compose the elegiac verses commemorating
those who fell in the battle of
Marathon. He celebrated the Greek
victories of the Persian Wars, including
a famous encomium for the Spartan dead
at Thermopylae. Simonides maintained
close ties with the Spartan general and
regent Pausanias. He traveled to Sicily
as a guest of the courts of Hieron I,
tyrant of Syracuse, and Theron, tyrant
of Acragas; tradition there made him and
Bacchylides the rivals of Pindar. He is
said to have reconciled the two tyrants
when they quarreled.
Of Simonides’ extensive literary
corpus, only fragments remain, most of
them short. There are many epigrams
written in elegiac couplets intended to
be carved on monuments to celebrate a
death, a victory, or other deeds worthy
of memory. (However, scholars suspect
that many of the epigrams attributed to
Simonides were not composed by him.)
Simonides’ threnoi, songs of lamentation
used for funerals, were particularly
famous in antiquity—as the praise of the
poets Catullus and Horace and the
educator Quintilian demonstrates—because
they showed genius in combining
affecting poetry with praise of the
deceased. Simonides played an important
role in the development of the epinicion,
a song in honour of an athletic victory.
He is the author of the earliest
epinicion for which the date (520 bc)
and the victor (Glaucus of Carystus, for
boy’s boxing) are certain. The fragments
display an epinician tone that contrasts
with Pindar’s high seriousness, as
Simonides praises the victor with ironic
and humorous references. Simonides was
known for his tendency toward concision
and his rejection of prolixity. He
defined poetry as a speaking picture and
painting as mute poetry.
There emerges from his longer
fragments, such as the encomium of
Scopas, an original and nonconformist
personality that questions the innate
and absolute values of the aristocratic
ethic, which are the basis of Pindar’s
worldview. Simonides’ worldview, in
contrast, is in sympathy with the social
setting determined by the rise of the
new mercantile classes. His moral
outlook is pragmatic, realistic, and
relativistic; he is conscious of the
imperfection and frailty of human
accomplishments.
Simonides changed the conception and
practice of poetic activity by insisting
that a patron who commissioned a poem
owed the poet fair remuneration.
Simonides’ professional policy gave rise
to many anecdotes about his greed. The
most famous in antiquity concerned a
poem he was commissioned to write for
Scopas of Thessaly. When Simonides
delivered the poem, Scopas paid him only
half the sum they had agreed on, telling
him to get the rest from the Dioscuri,
to whose praise the poet had devoted
much of the poem. During the banquet at
the palace to celebrate Scopas’s
victory, Simonides was summoned outside
at the request of two young men; when he
went outside, the young men were gone.
When the palace then collapsed and he
alone survived, he realized that the
young men had been the Dioscuri. Having
insisted on being paid and having been
credited with the invention of a (lost)
method of memorization, Simonides can be
seen as a precursor of the 5th-century
Sophists.
In 1992 new papyrus fragments of his
elegies were published; among them are
parts of a long composition on the
battle of Plataea (479 bc), in which the
decisive role of the Spartans is
emphasized. The fragments also include
pederastic works and poems that were of
the type meant for symposia (dinner
parties).