SIMONIDES OF CEOS (c. 556-469 B.c.), Greek lyric poet, was born at Iulis in the island of Ceos. During his youth he taught poetry and music in his native island, and composed paeans for the festivals of Apollo. Later he went to live at Athens, at the court of Hipparchus, the patron of literature. After the murder of Hipparchus (514), Simonides withdrew to Thessaly, where he enjoyed the patronage of the Scopadae and Aleuadae (two celebrated Thessalian families). Apparently some disaster overtook the Scopadae, which resulted in the extinction of the family. After the battle of Marathon Simonides returned to Athens, but soon left for Sicily at the invitation of Hieron, at whose court he spent the rest of his life.
His reputation as a man of learning is shown by the tradition that he introduced the distinction between the long and short vowels (e, o, co), afterwards adopted in the Ionic alphabet which came into general use during the archonship of Eucleides (403). He was also the inventor of a system of mnemonics (Quintilian xi. 2, I So unbounded was his popularity that he was a power even in the political world ; we are told that he reconciled Theron and Hieron on the eve of a battle between their opposing armies. He was the intimate friend of Themistocles and Pausanias the Spartan, and his poems on the war of libera tion against Persia no doubt gave a powerful impulse to the national patriotism. For his poems he could command almost any price: later writers, from Aristophanes onwards, accuse him of avarice, probably not without some reason.
Of his poetry we possess two or three short elegies (Fr. 85 seems from its style and versification to belong to Simonides of Amorgos, or at least not to be the work of our poet), several epigrams and about ninety fragments of lyric poetry. The epi grams written in the usual dialect of elegy, Ionic with an epic colouring, were intended partly for public and partly for private monuments. There is strength and sublimity in the former, with a simplicity that is almost statuesque, and a complete mastery over the rhythm and forms of elegiac expression. Those on the
heroes of Marathon and Thermopylae are the most celebrated. In the private epigrams there is more warmth of colour and feel ing, but few of them rest on any better authority than that of the Palatine anthology. One interesting and undoubtedly genuine epigram of this class is upon Archedice, the daughter of Hippias the Peisistratid, who, "albeit her father and husband and brother and children were all princes, was not lifted up in soul to pride." The lyric fragments vary much in character and length: one is from a poem on Artemisium, celebrating those who fell at Ther mopylae, with which he gained the victory over Aeschylus; an other is an ode in honour of Scopas (commented on in Plato, Protagoras, 339 b) ; the rest are from odes on victors in the games, hyporchemes, dirges, hymns to the gods and other varie ties. The poem on Thermopylae breathes a lofty national pride; the others are full of pathos and feeling, combined with a genial worldliness. "It is hard," he says (Fr. 5), "to become a truly good man, perfect as a square in hands and feet and mind, fash ioned without blame. Whosoever is bad, and not too wicked, knowing justice, the benefactor of cities, is a sound man. I for one will find no fault with him, for the race of fools is infinite." His most celebrated fragment is a dirge, in which Danae, adrift with the infant Perseus on the sea in a dark and stormy night, takes comfort from the peaceful slumber of her babe. Simonides here illustrates his own saying that "poetry is vocal painting, as painting is silent poetry." Of the many English translations of this poem, one of the best is that by J. A. Symonds in Studies on the Greek Poets. Fragments in T. Bergk, Poetae lyrici Greed; standard edition by F. G. Schneidewin (1835) and of the Danae alone by H. L. Ahrens (1853). Other author ities are given in the exhaustive treatise of E. Cesati, Simonide di Ceo (1882) ; see also W. Schroter, De Simonidis Cei melici sermone (1906).