Everything about Simonides Of Ceos totally explained
Simonides of Ceos (c.
556 BC-
468 BC), Greek
lyric poet, was born at Ioulis on
Kea. He was included, along with
Sappho and
Pindar, in the canonical list of
nine lyric poets by the scholars of
Hellenistic Alexandria. He is the narrator and main character of
Mary Renault's
historical novel The Praise Singer.
Biography
During his youth he taught
poetry and
music, and composed
paeans for the festivals of
Apollo. Finding little scope for his abilities at home, he went to live at
Athens, at the court of
Hipparchus, the patron of
literature. After the murder of Hipparchus (514 BC), Simonides withdrew to
Thessaly, where he enjoyed the protection and patronage of the Scopadae and
Aleuadae (two celebrated Thessalian families).
Cicero (
De oratore, ii. 86) tells the story of the end of his relations with the Scopadae. His patron, Scopas, reproached him at a banquet for devoting too much space to a praise of
Castor and
Pollux in an ode celebrating Scopas' victory in a
chariot-race. Scopas refused to pay all the fee and told Simonides to apply to the twin gods for the remainder. Shortly afterwards, Simonides was told that two young men wished to speak to him; after he'd left the banqueting room, the roof fell in and crushed Scopas and his guests.
(External Link
) During the excavation of the rubble, Simonides was called upon to identify each guest killed. He managed to do so by correlating their identities to their positions (loci) at the table before his departure. After thanking Castor and Pollux for paying their half of the fee by saving his life, Simonides drew on this experience to develop the 'memory theatre' or
'memory palace', a system for information management widely used in
oral societies until the
Renaissance. He is often credited with inventing this ancient system of
mnemonics (
Quintilian xi.2,n).
After the
Battle of Marathon, Simonides returned to Athens, but soon left for
Sicily at the invitation of
Hiero I of Syracuse, 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 (ε, η, ο, ω), afterwards adopted in the Ionic alphabet that came into general use during the
archonship of Eucleides (403 BCE).
So unbounded was his popularity that he was a power even in the
political world; we're told that he reconciled Hiero and Thero 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 liberation 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. To Hiero's queen, who asked him whether it was better to be born rich or a
genius, he replied "Rich, for genius is ever found at the gates of the rich." Again, when someone asked him to write a laudatory poem for which he offered profuse thanks, but no money, Simonides replied that he kept two coffers, one for thanks, the other for money; that, when he opened them, he found the former empty and useless, and the latter full.
Poetry
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 90 fragments of lyric and
choral poetry. The epigrams 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's almost statuesque, and a complete mastery over the
rhythm and forms of elegiac expression. Those on the heroes of Marathon and the
Battle of Thermopylae are the most celebrated.
» Ὦ ξεῖν’, ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε
» κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.
» O xein', angellein Lakedaimoniois hoti têde
» keimetha tois keinon rhémasi peithomenoi.
which may be translated literally as "Stranger, tell the Spartans that we lie here, obedient to their utterances/orders/laws." (note: "ῥήμασι" most literally means "according to the verbiage.") See
here for a list of English translations in rhyme.
Thomas Bullfinch wrote that Simonides "particularly excelled" in the genre of elegy: "His genius was inclined to the pathetic, and none could touch with truer effect the chords of human sympathy."
In the private epigrams there's more warmth of colour and feeling, but few of them rest on any better authority than that of the
Greek 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, wasn't 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
Thermopylae, with which he gained the victory over
Aeschylus; another 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 varieties.
Ethics
Simonides requires no standard of lofty unswerving rectitude. "It is hard," he says (Fr. 5),
» to become a truly good man, perfect as a square in hands and feet and mind, fashioned 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. ... I praise and love all men who do no sin willingly; but with necessity even the gods don't contend.
Virtue, he tells us elsewhere in language that recalls
Hesiod, is set on a high and difficult hill (Fr. 58); let us seek after
pleasure, for "all things come to one dread
Charybdis, both great virtues and
wealth" (Fr. 38).
Yet Simonides is far from being a
hedonist; his
morality, no less than his art, is pervaded by that virtue for which
Ceos was renowned —
self-restraint. His most celebrated fragment is a dirge, in which
Danaë, 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," a formula that (through
Plutarch's
De Gloria Atheniesium) became
Horace's famous "
ut pictura poesis."
Translations
» This entry is adapted from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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 Graeci; standard edition by
F.W. Schneidewin (1835) and of the Danae alone by
H.L. Ahrens (1853). Other authorities are given in the exhaustive treatise of
E. Cesati,
Simonide di Ceo (1882); see also
W. Schroter,
De Simonidis Cei melici sermone (1906).
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