SIMO'NIDES, a celebrated Greek lyric poet, was born at Inds, in the island of Ceos, in the year 556 B.C., and educated probably with a view to making music and poetry a profession. He left Ids native island on the invitation of Hipparcrius, who, by means of great rewards, induced him to reside at Athens, where also lived at that time Anacreon and Lams, the teacher of Pindar, although no intimacy seems to have sprung up between Simonides and his two rivals. It was probably after the expulsion of Hippies (510 ac.) that he took up his residence in nessely, under the patronage of the Aleuads and Scopads, who appear to have treated him in a very niggardly fashion. Shortly before the invasion of Greece by the Persians, he returned to Athens, and employed his poetic powers in the composition of elegies, epigrams, dirges, etc., in connection with that momentous struggle, taking the prize, in regard to the battle of Marathon, out of the hands of his rival iEschylus. In the year 477 B.c., when Simonides was 80 years of age, he came off victor for the 56th time in a poetical contest at Athens. Shortly after this be went to reside at the court of Hiero of Syracuse, where he died in 467 ri.c,, at
the age of 90. Simonides appears to have scandalized his contemporaries by writing for hire; and Pinder, Ids great rival, accuses him, apparently not without good reason, of excessive avarice. His poetry is imbued with a comparatively high' morality. He brought to perfection the elegy and epigram, and excelled in the dithyramb and tri umphal ode; he seems also to have completed the Greek alphabet by the addition of the double letters and long vowels, and to have invented the art of artificial memory. The characteristics of his poetry arc sweetness, polish .combined with simplicity, genuine pathos, and great power of expression, although in originality he is much inferior to his contemporary finder. The best edition of his fragments is that of Schneidewin, entitled Sinionidis Cei Carntinum Reliquice (Brunswick, 1835).
This Simonides must•be carefully. distinguished from the iambic poet Smomoks of Amorgos, who flourished about 100 years previous to Simonides of Ceos.