Alcaeus of Mytilene

Alcaeus (Greek Ἀλκαῖος, Latinized Alcaeus, Alcaeus ) (c. 630 BC in Mytilene on Lesbos; † 580 BC) was an ancient Greek poet and in addition to his contemporary of Sappho, the most important representatives of the Aeolian lyric poetry. He belongs to the Alexandrian canon of the nine lyric poets.

Life

Alkaios was born around 630 BC in Mytilene, the most important town on Lesbos. His family belonged to the aristocratic upper class, and participated in local politics, while also Alkaios participated in the fighting against the tyranny ( for an aristocracy ). The involvement of family members in the resistance against the tyrant Melanchros and Myrsilos was probably the reason for his exile in Egypt.

When he tried to force the return to Lesvos with its allies, he fell to the new rulers Pittacus hands. After the reconciliation Pittacus, one of the Seven Sages, he could stay on Lesbos, where he died around 580 BC.

Named after Alkaios is the Alcaic stanza, a four Strophenmaß.

Works

His work, love songs, drinking songs and hymns, is preserved only in fragments and as quotations ( the Alexandrian edition of works included 10 books). Alkaios used in his poems often mythological figures, he designated as Helena as " a plague on the Greeks ", in another it is the chaste Thetis compared ( fragment 44 LP). A special feature in dealing with mythology represent a kind of narrative poems is that are apparently not told as an example, but for the sake of the story, see, eg, Fragment 298 HP over Ajax and Cassandra. In his hymns he sings, inter alia, the Olympian gods ( Apollo, Hermes, etc. ). The so-called stasiotika ( " fight songs " ) are directed against the single ruler of Lesbos ( Myrsilos, Pittacus later ). The life in exile is discussed. Famous are his ship poems, of which at least some as an allegory may be interpreted in terms of a " ship of state " (for which there is already ancient documents, see 306 LP).

Ασυννέτημμι τὼν ἀνέμων στάσιν, τò μὲν γὰρ ἔνθεν κῦμα κυλίνδεται, τò δ ἔνθεν, ἄμμες δ ὂν τò μέσσον νᾶϊ φορήμμεθα σὺν μελαίναι χείμωνι μόχθεντες μεγάλωι μάλα · πὲρ μὲν γὰρ ἄντλος ἰστοπέδαν ἔχει, λαῖφος δὲ πὰν ζάδηλον ἤδη, καὶ λάκιδες μέγαλαι κὰτ αὖτο ... No longer to interpret I know the winch stand, For soon from there to circulate the wog ' approach, And soon from there, and we in the midst of Adrift, as the ship sweeps us Laboriously struggling resist violence of the storm; Because even the mast foot washes the flood, And from zerborstnen sailing bleak Flutter down the mighty shreds. Emanuel Geibel

Expenditure

• D. Campbell: Greek Lyric I, 2nd edition, 1990 ( Volume 142 of Loeb -Series: very viable bilingual edition, Greek - English, Sappho and Alcaeus of annotated )
• Edgar Lobel, Denys Lionel Page: poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta. Oxford 1955 ( standard edition, after quoting the fragments of Sappho and Alcaeus )
• Alcaeus. Greek and German. Edited by Max litter. 3rd edition, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-7765-2002-7
• January Maarten Bremer, Anna Maria van Erp Taalman Kip, Simon R. Slings: Some Recently Found Greek Poems: Text and Commentary. In: Mnemosyne. Supplementum. Vol 99, Brill, Leiden; New York, 1987, ISBN 90-04-08319-7 ( Archilochus, Alcaeus, anonymous comment to Hipponax, Stesichorus, limited preview on Google Book Search ).