[In the following essay, Mulroy discusses Alcaeus's poems, as well as references to him in works by Heraclitus and Athenaeus.]

The poetry of Alcaeus gives us a different perspective on the politics of Archaic Greece. The scene is Mytilene, the main city of the island of Lesbos and one of the original Aeolic settlements.

For centuries Mytilene had been ruled by the Penthilid clan, supposed descendants of Orestes. The head of the clan was the king of the city. The last Penthilid king was killed and the clan's power broken in the second half of the seventh century. Thereafter, other aristocrats competed for power. The struggle led to the emergence of three successive tyrants. The first, Melanchrus, was overthrown between 612 and 609 by a faction that included a tyrant-to-be named Pittacus and Alcaeus' brothers. Apparently, Alcaeus himself was too young to participate. The second tyrant was named Myrsilus. It is not known exactly when he gained power or how long he kept it. Alcaeus' fragment 6 implies that the poet and a group of comrades including Pittacus laid plans to overthrow Myrsilus, but Pittacus switched sides at the last minute. Some of the conspirators lost their lives in an ensuing battle, while others including Alcaeus went into exile, cursing Pittacus.

Eventually, Myrsilus died. Alcaeus was ecstatic (fragment 15), but his joy was short-lived. The Mytilenaean assembly voted to give Pittacus supreme power, making him an anomaly—an elected tyrant. He governed the city well from 590 to 580, finally allowing Alcaeus' faction to return, and he then enjoyed ten years of retirement.

At some point in Alcaeus' lifetime, Mytilene fought Athens for control of the coast east of Lesbos, ancient Troy, and vicinity. After one battle, Alcaeus wrote a poem in which he, like Archilochus, claimed to have thrown his shield away to save his life. His poetry is also the likeliest source of a legendary feat by Pittacus: defeating an Athenian general, an Olympic victor named Phrynon, in single combat.

Alcaeus is most often remembered as the earliest known poet to use the ship-of-state metaphor (1, 8, 9): Myrsilus' growing power is a storm that threatens to sink Mytilene. In general, Alcaeus exhibits the values and attitudes of the conservative aristocrats of his generation. The center of his existence is a group of noble comrades, probably kinsmen. In times of war, they constitute a unit in the Mytilenaean army. Otherwise, they drink together and conspire to preserve their power and independence. They pride themselves on courage and loyalty, but display little interest in broader issues.

PAPYRUS FRAGMENTS

Oxyrhynchus papyri have yielded eight important fragments of Alcaeus' poems. Oxyrhynchus papyrus 1789 (1st cent. a.d.) contains seven intelligible lines from the end of a poem. Words still legible in earlier lines overlap with a quotation from Alcaeus that is preserved by Heraclitus as an example of allegory (see fragment 9). Combining the two sources, the poems reads:

Another breaker is heading our way,
bad as the last. We will have to bail
until we drop. …
[Three lines are lost.]
Sail at full speed
into the mighty harbor!
Not one of us goes soft
or wavers. A great prize is in sight.
Think of our previous struggle.
Give proof of your manhood.
We must not disgrace our noble fathers
beneath the earth by turning coward.

[1]

The next fragment is based on the combination of two papyrus scraps with overlapping texts: Oxyrhynchus papyrus 2302 (1st cent. a.d.) with Cologne 2021 (1st cent. a.d.). Among the legends of Troy was the story that Ajax the Lesser (Ajax son of Oileus) raped the priestess Cassandra in the temple of Athena during the sack of Troy. This angered Athena, who proceeded to make it difficult for the Greek warriors to get home safely. Alcaeus apparently compared an enemy to Ajax the Lesser. Attribution of the poem to him is based on the occurrence of the words “son of Hyrrhas” (= Pittacus) among the remnants of the poem's later lines.

It would have been far better for the Greeks
if they had killed the cursed man.
They would have had a calmer
sea when they rounded Aegae.
But in the temple Priam's child
clung to Athena's sacred statue,
goddess of plunder, touching
its chin. The enemy marched
through the city. … They killed
Deiphobus. Shouts of oimoi! rose
from the wall and cries of children
filled the Dardanian plain.
Ajax possessed by a murderous rage
entered pure Athena's temple,
most terrible goddess of all
to those who dishonor the gods.
With both of his hands, the Locrian tore
the virgin away from the holy statue
and violently used her, despising
Zeus' warlike daughter.

[2]

Oxyrhynchus papyrus 1233 actually consists of numerous scraps of papyrus, of which several contain only two or three letters. Four passages, however, are well enough preserved for continuous translation. Attribution of these fragments to Alcaeus is based on a minute coincidence. Plutarch happens to quote Alcaeus as saying in one of his poems, “Pour myrrh upon my long-suffering head” (Convivial Questions 647E). A small, isolated scrap of 1233 preserves the Greek equivalent of “… upon my long-s …” Papyrologists infer that this is a portion of the Alcaean line quoted by Plutarch, which makes it likely that the scroll contained a collection of Alcaeus' poetry. Since the style of the surviving fragments is compatible with this hypothesis, the attribution is considered certain.

In the first comprehensible portion of 1233, Alcaeus alludes to the myth of Sisyphus, who extended his life by outsmarting Death, but died in the end and spent eternity pushing a boulder up a hill.

Drink up with me, Melanippus! What makes
you think you can cross the coiling Acheron,
then see the sun's clean light
again? Set no grandiose goals!
King Sisyphus, Aeolus' son
and the smartest man alive, hoped
to conquer Death, but he had to cross
the river again, wise as he was,
and Zeus keeps him hard at work
below.

[3]

The next comprehensible section contrasts the adulteress Helen with Achilles' virtuous mother, the nymph Thetis.

Helen, they say that you and your evil
deeds were bitter pain to Priam
once and his sons, when Zeus burned
holy Ilium.
Noble Peleus took a different
kind of woman in marriage, the delicate
virgin Nereus gave him, and all
the gods were invited.
In Chiron's house he loosened the virgin's
robes. Love blossomed between
him and the best of Nereus' daughters.
A year went by.
She bore him a son, the noblest of heroes,
a charioteer renowned for his chestnut horses,
but the Trojans perished for Helen's sake,
they and their city.

[4]

This is followed by the remains of an idyllic scene.

Hebrus, most beautiful of rivers,
from Thrace disgorged, you splash past
Aenus town to the violet sea
Young girls crowd your banks
… of their thighs … with soft hands
… they are charmed … your wondrous water
like a salve.

[5]

Finally, we have an invocation of the friendly deities Castor and Polydeuces, who were thought to take the form of what a later age named St. Elmo's fire, an electrical discharge sometimes seen in stormy weather around the prominent points of airplanes and ships.

Forsaking Pelops' island, graciously
show yourselves to me, O mighty
sons of Leda and Zeus, Castor
and Polydeuces,
who travel the spreading land and sea
on horses fleet of foot and easily
rescue men from the chilly grasp
of death,
who dart to the top of well-girded vessels
and dance on the rigging, shedding your light,
bright from afar, on ships overtaken
by darkness.

[6]

Oxyrhynchus papyrus 2165 (2nd cent. a.d.) preserves parts of two poems that Alcaeus seems to have written in exile after Myrsilus and Pittacus (“son of Hyrrhas”) combined to defeat his faction. The ostensible purpose of the first fragment is dedicating a temple, but Alcaeus soon digresses. Diogenes Laertius (1.81) lists “The Gut” as one of Alcaeus' pejorative names for Pittacus.

                                        This magnificent, sunny
shrine, open to all, and the altars
of the blessed immortals within
were built by men of Lesbos,
who entitled Zeus the “Lord of Suppliants,”
and you, O glorious, Aeolian Hera
“Bearer of All” and the third,
Dionysus, who eats raw
flesh, they named “Kemelios.”(1) Come,
O gods, with kind hearts. Hear
our prayers and save us from present
hardship and bitter exile.
And let the Fury of others pursue
the son of Hyrrhas, since once we vowed
never …
even one of our comrades,
but either to die, wrapping ourselves
in a blanket of dirt, overcome by those
who … or else to kill them,
freeing the people from sorrow.
The Gut never so much as considered
those words in his heart, but casually kicking
his oath aside, he now
makes a feast of our city.

[7]

The second fragment is merely an exile's lament.

                                                                                I lead
the grueling life of a peasant.
O Agesilaidas, I long to hear
the herald summon assembly
or council! But I have been driven
from lands my father and grandfather
clung to throughout their lives
in the midst of these treacherous townsmen.
I became a backwoods wanderer,
an Onymacles,(2) alone with the wolves.
[Five lines are lost.]
Stepping carefully, I live
where once a year one sees
women of Lesbos in trailing
gowns being judged for beauty
and hears their clamorous invocations.

[8]

QUOTATIONS

Heraclitus (1st cent. a.d.), the scholar who uses Archilochus' fragment 5 to exemplify allegory, gives two examples from Alcaeus and one from Anacreon (fragment 1):

We will also find the lyric poet of Mytilene using allegory; for he makes a similar comparison of the disorders associated with tyrants to the stormy condition of the sea:

I cannot tell the winds' direction.
Breakers unfurl from this side
and that; we go wherever
our benighted ship is driven,
desperately battling the storm.
Water edges over the masthold;
the sail, long worn thin,
now has gaping holes;
The anchor lines are slack.

[9]

From that maritime image, who would not at first think that sailors' fear of the sea was the subject? But it is not so. Myrsilus is described and the growing movement for a tyranny over the Mytilenaeans. In another passage, Alcaeus makes a veiled reference to the things done by him.

Another breaker is heading our way,
bad as the last. We will have to bail
until we drop. [= fragment 1.1-3]

The islander uses the sea abundantly in allegories and likens most of the evils suffered on account of tyrants to storms at sea.

The Greeks usually mixed their wine with water. In a discussion of the proper ratio, Athenaeus speaks of Alcaeus' fondness for drinking:

I recall the words of the lyric poet Alcaeus. Somewhere he says:

Pour it one to two.

[10]

Some people think that he is not speaking of the proportion of wine to water, but that being moderate he only drank unmixed wine one or two cups at a time. Chamaeleon of Pontus has interpreted the statement this way, being ignorant of Alcaeus' fondness for wine. He is a poet who is found drinking in every season and situation. In winter,

Zeus sends rain, a great
storm from heaven, and the streams are frozen.
[Two lines are lost.]
Pile up a fire to beat the weather
down and brim our pots with wine
as sweet as honey, after you circle
your temples with a band of fleecy wool.(3)

[11]

In summer,

Wet your lungs with wine. The star wheels round
and the difficult season. All is parched and thirsts.(4)

[12]

In spring,

I have felt the onset of spring, season of flowers.

Going on, he says:

Mix up a krater of honey-sweet soon as you can!

[13]

In the midst of disasters,

Never surrender your spirit to troubles;
brooding leads nowhere, Bycchis.
The one excellent cure
is pass the wine and get drunk.

[14]

To celebrate,

Time to get drunk! to pass
your limit! Myrsilus is dead.

[15]

And he gives this general advice:

Plant no other tree before the vine!

[16]

How then could one so fond of wine be abstemious and call for only one or two cups at a time? As Seleucus says, the poem itself contradicts those who interpret in that way; for it says,

Why wait for the lamps at day's last inch?
Let us drink! Go get some grand, colorful cups!
The son of Zeus and Semele endowed us with wine
to forget our cares. Pour it one to two,
full to the top. Let the bowl be surrounded by jostling cups.

[17]

In a later discussion of the emotional effects of music, Athenaeus mentions another of Alcaeus' idiosyncrasies.

In ancient times, music was an incitement to courage. Alcaeus, who was musical if anyone ever was, considered manliness more important than poetry, being warlike to a fault. For example, he proudly says:

The great hall is ablaze
with bronze; ranks of bright helmets
cover the ceiling and spill
white horsehair crests, ornamentation
for masculine heads. Glistening
metal greaves, legs' rampart
against the arrow's force,
hang on the wall on unseen pegs.
Fresh linen corselets
and hollow shields clutter the floor;
here are blades from Chalcis;
here, belts in abundance and tunics.
From the moment we took on this job,
these are things we could not forget.

[18]

Perhaps, it would have been more appropriate for his house to be full of musical instruments.

John Tzetzes (12th cent. a.d.), commenting on Dionysus' titles in the Alexandra, a proverbially obscure poem by Lycophron (4th/3rd cent. b.c.), says that Dionysus is sometimes depicted as a bald old man because

people who are drunk reveal things that should not logically be spoken. Thus also Alcaeus says:

Wine reveals the interior man.

[19]

Notes

1. Kemelios is a transliteration of the cult title given to Dionysus. Its meaning is not known.

2. Nothing is known of Onymacles except what can be inferred from this context: he was a proverbial lone wolf.

3. The meter shows that at least two lines have been omitted. This was probably the poem that inspired Horace's Ode I.9, the “Soracte Ode.”

4. Proclus on Hesiod Works and Days 584 quotes these lines, adding:

   but the cricket sounds sweet in the leaves.
   The artichoke blooms. Women are at their worst,
   and men are feeble, for Sirius is scorching
   their head and knees.

   The passage is a close imitation of Works and Days 582-88.

Translations

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. Vol. 1 (Sappho fragment 3), B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt. London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1898. Vol. 10 (Alcaeus fragments 3-6), B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt. London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1914. Vol. 15 (Alcaeus fragment 1, Ibycus fragment 1), B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt. London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1922. Vol. 17 (Ibycus fragment 1), A. S. Hunt. London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1927. Vol. 18 (Alcaeus fragments 7-8), E. Lobel, C. H. Roberts, and E. P. Wegener. London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1941. Vol. 21 (Alcaeus fragment 2), E.