ALCMAN or ALCMAEON (fl. in the 7th cent. B.C.), the founder of Doric lyric poetry, to whom was assigned the first place among the nine lyric poets of Greece in the Alexandrian canon. He was a Lydian of Sardis, who came as a slave to Sparta, where he was emancipated and given the citizenship. Alcman composed various kinds of poems in various metres; Parthenia (maidens' songs), hymns, paeans, prosodia (processionals), and love-songs, of which he was considered the inventor. The fragments are scanty, the most considerable being part of a Parthenion found in 1855 on an Egyptian papyrus; some hexameters discovered in 1898 are at tributed to Alcman or Erinna (Oxyr/iynchus papyri, i. 1898).
For general authorities see ALCAEUS.