Selections used by permission of Cassell Publishing Company

ALCAEUS

(Sixth Century B.C.)

Alcaeus, a contemporary of the more famous poet whom he addressed as “violet-crowned, pure, sweetly-smiling Sappho,” was a native of Mitylene in Lesbos.  His period of work fell probably between 610 and 580 B.C.  At this time his native town was disturbed by an unceasing contention for power between the aristocracy and the people; and Alcaeus, through the vehemence of his zeal and his ambition, was among the leaders of the warring faction.  By the accidents of birth and education he was an aristocrat, and in politics he was what is now called a High Tory.  With his brothers, Cicis and Antimenidas, two influential young nobles as arrogant and haughty as himself, he resented and opposed the slightest concession to democracy.  He was a stout soldier, but he threw away his arms at Ligetum when he saw that his side was beaten, and afterward wrote a poem on this performance, apparently not in the least mortified by the recollection.  Horace speaks of the matter, and laughingly confesses his own like misadventure.

[Illustration:  Alcaeus]

When the kindly Pittacus was chosen dictator, he was compelled to banish the swashbuckling brothers for their abuse of him.  But when Alcaeus chanced to be taken prisoner, Pittacus set him free, remarking that “forgiveness is better than revenge.”  The irreconcilable poet spent his exile in Egypt, and there he may have seen the Greek oligarch who lent his sword to Nebuchadnezzar, and whom he greeted in a poem, a surviving fragment of which is thus paraphrased by John Addington Symonds:—­

     From the ends of the earth thou art come,
     Back to thy home;
     The ivory hilt of thy blade
     With gold is embossed and inlaid;
     Since for Babylon’s host a great deed
     Thou didst work in their need,
     Slaying a warrior, an athlete of might,
     Royal, whose height
     Lacked of five cubits one span—­
     A terrible man.

Alcaeus is reputed to have been in love with Sappho, the glorious, but only a line or two survives to confirm the tale.  Most of his lyrics, like those of his fellow-poets, seem to have been drinking songs, combined, says Symonds, with reflections upon life, and appropriate descriptions of the different seasons.  “No time was amiss for drinking, to his mind:  the heat of summer, the cold of winter, the blazing dog-star and the driving tempest, twilight with its cheerful gleam of lamps, mid-day with its sunshine—­all suggest reasons for indulging in the cup.  Not that we are justified in fancying Alcaeus a mere vulgar toper:  he retained Aeolian sumptuousness in his pleasures, and raised the art of drinking to an aesthetic attitude.”

Alcaeus composed in the Aeolic dialect; for the reason, it is said, that it was more familiar to his hearers.  After his death his poems were collected and divided into ten books.  Bergk has included the fragments—­and one of his compositions has come down to us entire—­his ‘Poetae Lyrici Graeci.’