SOURCE: Kirkwood, G. M. “Alcaeus.” In Early Greek Monody: The History of a Poetic Type, pp. 53-99. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974.

[In the following essay, Kirkwood analyzes Alcaeus's poetry and what the fragments reveal of his political thought.]

Both Alcaeus and Sappho are the spiritual successors of Archilochus, because both continue his contemporaneity of subject matter and his intensity of self-expression. They may owe specific debts; there is, as we shall see, some evidence of direct imitation by Alcaeus. But it is a long step from Archilochus's asynartetic verses and epodes to the four-line stanzas of Alcaic and Sapphic strophe.¹ The choral poetry of Alcman and Stesichorus,² who wrote contemporaneously or shortly before them, bears no striking similarities to their poetry; any influence, in either direction, can have been only slight. But there were other possible models. Traditional songs associated with work, religion, or social activities, which have been mentioned in Chapter One, may have influenced the poetry of Sappho and Alcaeus; some of the melic forms familiar from them may have been used earlier by forgotten poets; and, finally, there was a history of lyric composition on Lesbos, associated principally with the name Terpander.

From native tradition, the Lesbian poets no doubt inherited their strong dependence on local, non-epic, and presumably non-literary diction. Just as the Aeolic meters of their poetry are further from epic hexameter than other contemporary forms of verse are, so too the dialect and the vocabulary of the monodists are further from epic language. This linguistic difference continues for long to be a dividing mark between the poetic types and a symptom of a difference both of tradition and of concern, not unlike the medieval distinction in which Latin was retained for poetic forms and themes consciously and directly in the public tradition, while the vernacular languages were more often the vehicles for personal and lyric expression. In archaic Greece the differences of medium and origin were less pronounced; Archilochus, who in both forms and themes straddled the types, tended also to straddle the linguistic distinction. Alcaeus and Sappho vary in the intensity of their localism in accordance with the nature of their themes and to some degree of the forms of their poems.

About Terpander and his place in poetry perhaps the only important thing is that he existed on Lesbos before Alcaeus and Sappho. In specific points their debt to him may be small, for the few remaining lines alleged to be his give little evidence of an individual poetic style. Heavily spondaic, they are written in a language much more indebted to Homer than theirs is. Terpander must have derived much more from the public, epic tradition than from local art. His subjects were similarly public and impersonal. Extant fragments that have been ascribed to him include opening lines of poems praising Zeus, Apollo, the Muses, and the Dioscuri; and a poem of his concerning Dionysus was known in antiquity. All the fragments are in a stately style, rich in Homeric epithets. These lines have questionable value as specific evidence, since they are not at all likely, in their present form, to have been composed by Terpander;³ yet they may convey a tradition of what his poetry was like. If reliance can be placed on ancient reports, he lived about the middle of the seventh century.⁴ Advances in musical composition⁵ and in the form of the lyre⁶ are ascribed to him, and he is credited with inventing various types of nome.⁷ Perhaps his principal contributions were in music rather than poetry, yet his name was great in poetry too, and his excellence gave rise to a saying to describe the second best: “After the Lesbian poet.”⁸ He may have been one of numerous poets imported to Sparta,⁹ and perhaps his poem to the Dioscuri can be connected with a Spartan sojourn; one fragment (Bergk, PLG 6) is in praise of Sparta, where “the valor of young men flourishes, and the clear-voiced Muse; and Justice, sponsor of noble deeds, walks in wide streets.”

There was, then, a famous Lesbian poet before Alcaeus and Sappho, and it would be wrong to entertain the romantic idea of a sudden creation ex nihilo of formal lyric poetry at the end of the seventh century, with the emergence of two extraordinary figures using the same poetic forms at the same time. Behind these two remarkable poets there lie a local tradition of artistic literature, a history of ritual and popular songs, and a broad Hellenic stream of iambic, elegiac, epic, and hymnal poetry in varying degrees of relationship to the Homeric fountainhead.

Alcaeus and Sappho share, as a result of their local heritage, a very striking similarity of forms and diction. But they are utterly different in content, spirit, values, and interests. It is possible that Alcaeus occasionally shows some Sapphic influence;¹⁰ Sappho seems to have gone her way as a poet without a trace of influence by Alcaeus. It is not known which was the elder, but it is convenient to begin with Alcaeus because some account of the politics of Lesbos in the seventh century b.c. is necessary for an approach to his poetry.

The political life of the island of Lesbos revolved largely around that of its principal city, Mytilene, and it is only of Mytilene that we have any substantial political information. Until about the middle of the seventh century the city had apparently been ruled by hereditary monarchs of the family of the Penthilidae, whose eponymous founder, Penthilus, was reputedly a son of Orestes. The Penthilidae were notorious for arrogance and cruelty; Aristotle in the Politics (1311b26) tells us that they dispensed arbitrary beatings to the citizens, and it was partly at least because of their bad behavior that they were reduced, in time, to a position of equality with other aristocratic families. At the end of the seventh century b.c., when Alcaeus was in young manhood, they still had enough prestige to make an alliance with them valuable for a politically ambitious man.

Thus in Alcaeus's earliest years the state was under the unstable rule of an aristocratic oligarchy. The forms of government already in force in Mytilene long enough to count as traditional were the council and assembly usual in archaic Greek politics.¹¹ This pattern was broken at least three times during Alcaeus's life by the elevation to power of a tyrant or single ruler of similar powers. Three such rulers were attacked by Alcaeus in poetry; the same three were conspired against by a faction, probably aristocratic, to which Alcaeus belonged. The first was Melanchrus, about whom very little is known. He is named in one brief fragment of Alcaeus (331),¹² and is mentioned in a passage of Strabo, who tells us that Melanchrus was one of the tyrants of that period of civil unrest that forms the subject matter of Alcaeus's Stasiôtika or “Partisan Songs.”¹³ The second tyrant known from Alcaeus's poetry and Strabo's account was Myrsilus, who held power at some point in the period between 605 and 590. From poems of Alcaeus and some other supporting evidence it appears certain that after Myrsilus had seized power a conspiracy of hetairoi, literally “companions” but in this context clearly political confederates, was formed against him, of which Alcaeus and Pittacus were members. Thereafter Pittacus left the conspiracy and was allied in power with Myrsilus. The only further fact known about Myrsilus is his death, exulted in by Alcaeus in a classic shout of joy at the fall of the tyrant (332):

νυ̑ν χρη̑ μεθύσθην καί τινα πρὸs(14) βίαν
πώνην, ἐπεὶ δὴ κάτθανε Μύρσιλοs.
Now it is right to get drunk, a man must drink
With all his might, for Myrsilus is dead.

The third in the series of rulers is a much more substantial historical figure and one whose period of dominance in Mytilene is generally reputed to have been both beneficial and welcome to most of the citizens. This is Pittacus, one of the Seven Sages, and the traditional source of numerous utterances of political and moral wisdom. His early career was perhaps not altogether admirable. To his credit, it is recorded that he was the leader in deposing the tyrant Melanchrus.¹⁵ Also, in the Sigean War, fought between Lesbos and Athens in a dispute as to who should have control over the promontory of Sigeum, the northwest tip of the Troad, Pittacus was the leader of the Lesbian forces, and won a temporary advantage for his fellow citizens over Athens when he defeated in single combat the Athenian champion, an Olympic victor named Phrynon. This Homeric victory for possession of Homeric territory was nullified shortly thereafter, when Periander of Corinth, called in as arbitrator, awarded Sigeum to Athens. But we are told that Pittacus's later appointment as ruler of Mytilene was made in gratitude for his services on this occasion. Against these favorable points in Pittacus's early history, we must set two questionable actions: Pittacus broke away from the conspiracy against Myrsilus and was then associated in power with that tyrant; and, it seems, he made a marriage alliance with the hated house of Penthilus, even as Cypselus married a Bacchiad and became tyrant of Corinth. Since both these points about Pittacus are conveyed to us by the hostile report of Alcaeus, it may be that they reflect less discredit than Alcaeus would have us believe. At any rate, the rest that is known of Pittacus is admirable. At some point, in all likelihood after the death of Myrsilus, he was given a position of dictatorial power, the position called by Aristotle aisymnêtês. The exact nature of it is not clear, but it was certainly conferred by those to be ruled, not seized in the traditional tyrant fashion. Aristotle calls it “tyranny by choice.”¹⁶ After ten years of rule Pittacus voluntarily surrendered his power. So far as is known, the state went back to its aristocratic form of government.

Alcaeus's position has been indicated, but there are a few points to add. His aristocratic place in Lesbian society is strongly suggested by his reference, in Fr. 130, to the possessions and rights of his father and grandfather. A notice in Diogenes Laertius¹⁷ and a fragment of Alcaeus (75) have been put together to suggest that at the time of the overthrow of Melanchrus Alcaeus was still a child.¹⁸ The earliest action that we know him to have been concerned in is the Sigean War; at this point, 607/6, he must have been of military age, for on this occasion he lost his shield (428). That he was in exile at Pyrrha, a place in Lesbos, is certified by his own reference to it (130). Whether he himself was ever exiled beyond Lesbos, as some of his contemporaries were, is uncertain but probable. He was exiled more than once; a commentary (to 114) speaks of his “first” exile and says that it was to Pyrrha; another commentary refers to “the second exile.”¹⁹ That Alcaeus was regarded as a force to be reckoned with is apparent from Aristotle,²⁰ who says that Pittacus was given unlimited power against the exiles, of whom Alcaeus and his brothers were the leaders. Pittacus is reported to have spared Alcaeus on one occasion.²¹ Finally, it appears that Alcaeus lived long enough to have become gray (50), but it is uncertain whether he was then in exile. Perhaps Pittacus's voluntary resignation of dictatorial powers after a decade indicates that the storm that led to Alcaeus's exile had then spent itself sufficiently for him and his friends to be safely tolerated in the state.²²

Alcaeus's political life cannot be disregarded in the study of his poetry, because his political fortunes occupy a large place in it and appear to affect its spirit profoundly. It is therefore exasperating to discover that it is impossible to arrive at a satisfactory judgment of his politics. Traditionally, it has been supposed that the poet's professions of idealism and concern for the damos, the Lesbian body politic, are to be taken seriously, that he and his companions were high-minded fighters against tyranny, and that the political lyrics are calls to a higher and more universal concept of life.²³ But there are difficulties. All sources of information except Alcaeus are unanimous in finding Pittacus's rule beneficial to the state. Yet Alcaeus is as blindly hostile to him and as convinced that his rule is ruinous as he is concerning the tyrants Melanchrus and Myrsilus. There is no sign that he ever learned to value Pittacus more justly. A number of recent critics have concluded that Alcaeus was a hot-headed partisan with a thoroughly undeveloped sense of political progress, and that the Stasiôtika were what they were called and nothing more: songs of a partisan. “All through his stormy life he had neither might nor right on his side,” is Denys Page's verdict;²⁴ and another recent critic speaks of “the violent and largely empty-headed politics of Alcaeus.”²⁵

Alcaeus was certainly on the wrong side, in some ways at least, but cynicism is not justified. We have no intrinsic grounds for finding Alcaeus's protestations of concern for the damos and for political freedom insincere or wrong in aim. There is, in some of the odes, a suggestion that he sought concord and an end of strife; in one celebrated poem (326 and 208) representing the state as a storm-tossed vessel, he can quite reasonably be thought to be writing of the danger of civil strife. And from a fragment of a commentary (305) which contains lemmata from poems on political matters, we know that Alcaeus, addressing a certain Mnemon, who had “provided a skiff for the return of Myrsilus,” declared that “he did not blame him or take issue with him on that account.” One lemma in the commentary consists of the words “let there not be war.” There is nothing here that seems either violent or empty-headed.²⁶

The impression of Alcaeus's ill-tempered pugnacity comes from one matter, his ceaseless abuse of Pittacus, who as aisymnêtês no doubt ruled by the will of the people and ruled beneficently. We know that Alcaeus had special reason to nourish a deep and undying hostility toward Pittacus. Rightly or wrongly, Alcaeus thought that Pittacus's conduct in betraying his friends, selling out to the tyrant Myrsilus, and marrying into the house of Penthilus was all for political advantage. It would be too much to expect a man of passionate nature (and such, beyond doubt, Alcaeus was) to feel anything but everlasting hatred for such an adversary. Moreover, as will appear in the course of this examination of Alcaeus's poetry, a unifying factor throughout the poet's work is a tendency to decided moral judgments, with strong emphasis on the virtue of loyalty. To the treachery of Paris and Helen he reacted as he did to the treachery of Pittacus—with poetry that expresses a hatred of disloyalty. It was Alcaeus's misfortune that Pittacus was with the tide of history and he himself against it.

It is hard to estimate how much poetry Alcaeus wrote. The number of books in the Alexandrian edition of his works is unknown; the highest number referred to is ten. The organization of the books is also unknown. It cannot have been by meter, as it was in the edition of Sappho's poetry, since Poem 1 of Book 1 began with the first line of an Alcaic strophe, while 1. 2 was in Sapphic strophes. Since both were hymns, it is possible that arrangement was by type, as in the edition of Pindar's works. Papyrus finds have given no information about books, and no papyrus fragment is assignable to a specific book. The passage already cited from Strabo (13. 617) indicates that the political poetry, or some of it, may have formed a unit, since it was designated poêmata stasiôtika.

Few of the extant fragments even give a clear idea of the form of the poems from which they survive. Seldom is it possible to conjecture reasonably what their length was, apart from the likelihood that most of Alcaeus's poems, as Sappho's, were short, from eight to thirty-two lines.²⁷ It is a matter of some importance: if ten lines remain, it makes a difference to one's comprehension of the poetry if it can be known whether what remains was ten of twelve or ten of thirty-two or a hundred and thirty-two lines. Only one poem, 42, on Helen and Thetis, is complete enough to be studied with entire confidence concerning its form.²⁸

The patterns of structure are not readily apparent in most fragments of Alcaeus's poetry. Two Sapphic strophes, describing an otherwise unknown incident in the political or military career of Alcaeus, illustrate this structural indefiniteness (69):

Zευ̑ πάτερ, Λύδοι μὲν ἐπασχάλαντεs
συμφόραισι δισχελίοιs στάτηραs
ἄμμ' ἔδωκαν, αἴ κε δυνάμεθ' ἴραν
ἐs πόλιν ἔλθην,
οὐ πάθοντεs οὐδάμα πὦσλον οὐδ' ἔν
οὐδὲ γινώσκοντεs · ὀ δ' ὠs ἀλώπαξ
ποικιλόφρων εὐμάρεα προλέξαιs
ἤλπετο λάσην.

Father Zeus, the Lydians were troubled at our misfortunes and gave us two thousand staters if we could make our way to the (holy?) city,

Though they had never had any good from us, or known us. But he, like a crafty-minded fox, foretelling an easy issue, thought he would deceive us.

It is a reasonable guess that the fox is Pittacus, that “we” are in exile, and that the Lydians, perhaps to divide and conquer, are backing the exiles in an assault on a city of Lesbos which may have been Mytilene or a city, otherwise unknown, named Hiera or Ira. The nature of the fox's deceit is obscure, but the general point of the eight lines is obvious enough: to contrast the straightforward cooperativeness of the Lydian strangers with the double-dealing of the fox. The two strophes may be a whole poem. The sense seems complete, the structure implies no connection with anything following, and papyrus evidence reveals that nothing preceded these lines.²⁹ The end coincides with the bottom of a roll and lacks the usual indication, by the coronis, that this is the end of the poem. It is tempting to assume that these eight lines, with their succinct dramatic and moral picture, are the entire poem; and both the brevity and the dramatic, contrastive form would accord very well with what appears to be Alcaeus's style in poems on mythological matters. But since in fact the political poems whose dimensions can be judged are substantially longer it is hard to be confident of such brevity here, and the stanzas themselves offer no guidance.

The most obvious feature of Alcaeus's poetry is the degree to which it is concerned with politics. In this characteristic it continues the intensely personal and self-centered spirit of Archilochus. Sappho's expression of this aspect of the lyric tradition is as intense, but very different in content. There is barely a word in the whole range of Sappho's remaining poetry that can be connected with politics. Though she must surely have been aware of the turmoil going on, since she was, apparently, materially affected by it, politics did not stand in any central position in Sappho's emotional life.

A second outstanding feature of Alcaeus's poetry is its range. Though politics fills probably half the substantial surviving pieces, the variety of the rest is still very striking: convivial songs of various types and moods, literary hymns to deities and other objects of real or nominal veneration, poems on a variety of mythical topics, a few poems of love, and poems of friendship and moral or philosophical reflection. Variety of form is substantial; in addition to the Alcaic and Sapphic strophes, which are the most commonly used in what remains, there are several four-line strophe forms of other Aeolic cola and one in Ionic (10), several two-line strophes of Aeolic cola, and some iambic and dactylic meters. There is also an impressive variety and, it seems, independence in the treatment of themes. The use of allegory is extensive and varied.³⁰ Alcaeus's treatment of myth includes a wide choice of standard stories. There are Trojan War themes such as Helen and Paris (283), Thetis and Achilles (44), Ajax and Cassandra (248); there is a probable reference to the story of Perseus (255); the stories of Sisyphus (38), the Hydra (443), Endymion (317),³¹ and the Dioscuri (34) occur. There is also a good deal of rather learned, special, localized material, such as a hymn to an obscure Thessalian form of Athena (325).

A particularly striking example of Alcaeus's apparent originality in composition is provided by Fr. 10, of which only three lines, not consecutive, preserve more than single words. In the first line of the poem, a speaker of feminine gender refers to herself in desperate terms:

ἔμε δείλαν, ἔμε παίσαν κακοτάτων πεδέχοισαν …
Wretched me, participant in every sorrow …

The other preserved lines, known from papyrus evidence to have been the fourth and fifth of the poem, are too uncertain in exact meaning to justify inclusion, but there is a very good likelihood that they give the reason for the speaker's distress, and that it is the mating cry of a stag, inspiring fear in the breast of the speaker, presumably a doe. Both form and content are most unusual. The pure Ionic meter is a striking and relatively rare rhythm, especially in verses as long as this; the nearest parallel in monody occurs in a part-line of Alcaeus which may come from this poem. The use of the first person, in the first line of the poem, by a speaker who cannot be identified with the poet, introduces a style of dramatic presentation unique in early poetry. Archilochus had already introduced speaking animals, in his fables, but the analogy is not very close, nor is that of the passage (Fr. 22) in which Archilochus ascribes words of apparent wisdom to “Charon the carpenter.” In none of these Archilochian fragments is there evidence of the apparent emotional empathy that makes this passage so remarkable.

One more general characteristic to be noted is Alcaeus's penchant for literary imitation. Surprising though it is in a poet whose work so often seems to reflect his immediate life, and whose life seems so active and impulsive, this literary quality is a substantial fact in the poetry of Alcaeus. The most striking of these imitations is a summons to an unnamed friend to drink; the summer heat and the consequent general thirst provide the occasion (347):

τέγγε πλεύμοναs οἴνῳ, τὸ γὰρ ἄστρον περιτέλλεται,
ἀ δ' Ὤρα χαλέπα, πάντα δὲ δίψαιs' ὐπὰ καύματοs,
ἄχει δ' ἐκ πετάλων ἄδεα τέττιξ …
ἄνθει δὲ σκόλυμοs, νυ̑ν δὲ γύναικεs μιαρώταται
λέπτοι δ' ἄνδρεs, ἐπεὶ … κεφάλαν καὶ γόνα Σείριοs
ἄσδει …
Wet your lungs with wine, for the star returns
And the cruel season; everything thirsts from the heat.
The grasshopper chirps sweetly from the leaves …
The artichoke blooms, and now women are a plague
And men are weak, when Sirius burns head and knees …

These lines are a close imitation, in places only a rendering from hexameters to Asclepiads, of Hesiod, Works and Days 582-87. But it is no mere copy. There is ingenuity, for instance, in the echoing of ἠχέτα τέττιξ by ἄχει … τέττιξ, preserving the sound as well as the sense, even though wording and syntax have to be changed. The transformation from Hesiod's picture of a hot summer day, fit for a shady seat, wine, milk, and curds—essentially a pastoral picture—to what is in essence an invitation to drink, is both reminiscent and original in tone and effect. Alcaeus changes Hesiod's women from μαχλόταται, “most lustful,” to μιαρώταται, literally “most foul,” his men from ἀφαυρότατοι, “most feeble” to λέπτοι, literally “thin,” or “slight.” The point is not clear, because we do not know exactly the tone and connotations of Alcaeus's words, both of which seem oddly chosen in relation to context and to Hesiod's words. I assume that the words were meant to be surprising, especially in relation to the Hesiodic model, and that their effect is that of light satire.

Less extreme but still clear instances of literary imitation are the Hymn to the Dioscuri (34), which has echoes of a Homeric Hymn to the Dioscuri, a version of Thetis's plea to Zeus in Iliad 1. 44, and an account of how Alcaeus—like Archilochus—abandoned his shield.³² It is reasonable to assume that Alcaeus really lost his shield, and did not simply pretend to have, because of Archilochus's poem. The abandonment of a shield must have been a common phenomenon of battle, but most men did not write poems on the subject, and it seems probable that Alcaeus was led to write about the incident because Archilochus had done so. From Archilochus he took also the political allegory of storms at sea, some phraseology for an attack on the traitor Pittacus,³³ and perhaps the use of animal imagery with moral connotations, as in the fox of Fr. 69. The likelihood of Sapphic influence has already been mentioned.³⁴

Alcaeus, a man of action and the poet of those actions, is, like Archilochus, also a man of the Muses, though he was not, to our knowledge, moved to declare himself so, as Archilochus was. This responsiveness to literary influence fits with Alcaeus's learnedness about the forms of myth that he follows—the rare Itonian Athena, the western version of the story of Endymion, the unusual parentage (Iris and Zephyrus) he gives for Eros—either a learned allegorical sally or a reflection of an obscure version.

Though Alcaeus apparently had a reputation as a poet of love, including the love of boys, there is remarkably little evidence of it in the fragments. Of the poems addressed to boys there is little or no trace;³⁵ we have only Horace's declaration that Alcaeus “sang of Lycus, beautiful with his dark hair and dark eyes” (Odes 1. 32. 10). Only three fragments certainly deal with love, and not one of them is a personal love poem of Alcaeus. One is a mere scrap in which “the wiles of the Cyprian born” are mentioned (380); another perhaps concerns the love experience of a friend,³⁶ and is chiefly memorable for a fine phrase descriptive of nature, “The gates of spring” (296b); the third (10), which we have already examined, forms part of a dramatic poem, whether monologue or dialogue.³⁷

A number of fragments reveal a warm and articulate feeling for nature. In addition to the phrase just quoted from 296b there are several other fragments like it. A single-line fragment speaks of (319)

βλήχρων ἀνέμων ἀχείμαντοι πνόαι
The stormless breaths of gentle breezes,

and another short passage (345) describes the arrival of various birds from Oceanus and the limits of the earth. The beginning of a poem (45) addressed to the river Hebrus suggests the poet's interest in nature and, though the fragment is in bad condition, there is enough to suggest that its description of girls bathing in the Hebrus—possibly a reminiscence of the incident of Nausicaa and her attendants at the beginning of Odyssey 6—was a vivid scene. A papyrus fragment (286), badly broken, has something about “much flowering,” “harsh frost,” and “calm over the surface of the sea;” perhaps it was a song celebrating the return of spring, and it may, as Page suggests,³⁸ be imitated in Horace's solvitur acris hiems. One other fragment of nature description (115a) has words reminiscent of Sappho's ostrakon hymn (LP 2), and possibly owes something to it in phraseology. It is striking how often the evidence of papyrus fragments differs from that of the indirect tradition. We had been led to expect much on love; we find little on love, and that little not as personal and emotional as we should expect. In a man who spent his life in the excitement of political strife the storms that drive the Ship of State are appropriate enough, but we do not expect to find sensitivity to the quiet charm and the flowering of nature.

In this variety there are four dominant topics or types: poems on political themes, poems of fellowship and wine, hymns, and poems on themes of mythology. If we examine the principal fragments in each group, it will, I think, help to illuminate some formal qualities of Alcaeus's poetry, to the extent that form can be determined, as well as illustrate his ways of handling different themes.

Two fragments, 129 and 130, are the longest examples of Alcaeus's political poetry, and they exemplify most of the qualities of Alcaeus's poetry in general. 129 is in Alcaic strophes; the length of the original poem is unknown, but it is not improbable that the thirty-two lines of which the papyrus gives evidence were the entire poem. The first twenty-four lines (if the first line apparent on the papyrus is in fact the first line of the poem) are, apart from the beginnings of the first two lines and a few gaps elsewhere, intact:

                                        … τόδε Λέσβιοι
          … εὔδειλον τέμενοs μέγα
ξυ̑νον κάτεσσαν, ἐν δὲ βώμοιs
ἀθανάτων μακάρων ἔθηκαν
κἀπωνύμασσαν ἀντίαον Δία
σὲ δ' Αἰολeαν κυδαλίμαν θέον
πάντων γενέθλαν, τὸν δὲ τέρτον
τόι δε κεμήλιον ὠνύμασσαν
Zόννυσσον ὠμήσταν. ἄγιτ' εὔνοον
θυ̑μον σκέθοντεs ἀμμετέραs ἄραs
ἀκούσατ', ἐκ δὲ τω̑νδε μόχθων
ἀργαλέαs τε φύγαs ρύεσθε ·
τὸν '′Uρραον δὲ παι̑δα πεδελθέτω
κήνων 'Ερίννυs Ὤs ποτ' ἀπώμνυμεν
τόμοντεs ἄ …
μηδάμα μηδ' ἔνα τoν ἐταίρων
ἀλλ' e θάνοντεs γα̑ν ἐπιέμμενοι
κείσεσθ' ὐπ' ἄνδρων οi τότ' ἐπικ … ην
ἤπειτα κακκτάνοντεs αὔτοιs
δα̑μον ὐπὲξ ἀχέων ρύεσθαι.
κήνων ὀ φύσγων οὐ διελέξατο
πρὸs θυ̑μον ἀλλὰ βραϊδίωs πόσιν
ἔμβαιs ἐπ' ὀρκίοισι δάπτει
τὰν πόλιν ἄμμι δέδ … αιs
οὐ κὰν νόμον
Μύρσιλ …

… This the Lesbians built as a great and far-seen shrine, to be shared by all, and in it they set altars of blessed immortal gods,

And called upon Zeus as the god of suppliants, and upon you, glorious Aeolian goddess, as the parent of all, and this third one, treasured deity, they called

Dionysus the devourer of raw flesh. Now with propitious spirit hear our prayer, and deliver us from these toils and from the grief of exile;

But as for the son of Hyrrhas, may the Erinys of those men pursue him, because once we swore a solemn oath … never to forsake any one of the companions,

But either to die, and clad in earth to lie, downed by those men who then held power, or else to kill them and deliver the state from its woes.

But that pot-belly took no account of their will, and readily trampled upon the oaths, and snaps at the city …³⁹

There are small fragments of one further strophe, probably containing the name of Myrsilus, and the presence of a coronis shows that the poem ended one strophe beyond that. For the political and religious history of Lesbos it provides evidence of great importance. The son of Hyrrhas is Pittacus, and we have here first-hand confirmation of the exile of Alcaeus and the defection of Pittacus from the party to which Alcaeus belonged; the assumption can hardly be resisted that the conspiracy referred to was against Myrsilus. The trinity of Zeus, Hera, and Dionysus is apparently a local Lesbian cult, mentioned also in a poem by Sappho (17).⁴⁰

The spirit and the general trend of thought are clear: a solemn invocation of the Lesbian trinity is followed by the poet's supplication to the deities of that trinity; the supplication is in two closely linked parts, a prayer for deliverance from exile, balanced by a curse upon the son of Hyrrhas, with the rest of the fragment giving the reason for the curse by describing the conspiracy and Pittacus's betrayal of it. The language is simple, with scarcely any kind of striking metaphor. Here as elsewhere in Alcaeus's poetry a vividly evoked scene—here the sanctuary of the trinity, elsewhere sometimes a vignette from mythology—has the force often provided by poetic imagery; the emotional center of the poem is the curse which embodies the reminiscence of the conspiracy, and the emphasis on the shrine and the trinity lends solemnity to the curse. The closeknit organization of invocation, prayer, and imprecation lends dramatic energy, and is supported by the repeated κήνων (“those men,” lines 15 and 21), each time at the beginning of the verse, with its stress on the remote but powerful presence of those of the conspirators who died (for surely Erinys in line 14 ensures that “those men” are in fact dead); they remain a general (such is the effect of the pronoun) and menacing force to underline and justify the intensity of the poet's hatred.

The abuse of Pittacus after the solemn oath is somewhat unfortunate in emotional effect. There is power in the steady movement from the description of the sanctuary to the prayer to the curse; but in the climactic expression Alcaeus gives to his anger there is more violence than power. Violence of statement is not necessarily bad, but here it damages the impression of the passage as a whole. A deeply serious, religious atmosphere has been created; with the abusive and not particularly relevant word φύσγων (“pot-belly”) the tone changes at once. The image created is comic, we are suddenly in the realm of satire, and Alcaeus's anger runs the risk of appearing to have more personal animus than political idealism.

The other long papyrus fragment of political poetry (130) consists of very broken scraps of fifteen lines, a section of twenty lines fairly well preserved, scraps of four more lines, and the coronis indicating that the thirty-ninth line of the fragment was the final line of a poem. It is probable that a new poem begins at line 16.⁴¹ If it does, then we again have much the largest part of a poem. The meter is a four-line stanza with a combination of cola not found elsewhere though entirely within the normal range of Aeolic metrical form. Once again the poet is in exile:

                                                  … ὀ τάλαιs ἔγω
ζώω μοι̑ραν ἔχων ἀγροϊωτίκαν
ἰμέρρων ἀγόραs ἄκουσαι
καρυζομέναs ὦγεσιλαῒδα
καὶ βόλλαs · τὰ πάτηρ καὶ πάτεροs πάτηρ
καγγεγήραs' ἔχοντεs πεδὰ τωνδέων
τoν ἀλλαλοκάκων πολίταν
ἔγωγ' ἀπὺ τούτων ἀπελήλαμαι
φεύγων ἐσχατίαιs', ὠs δ' 'Ονυμακλέηs
ἔνθαδ' οἶοs ἐοίκησα λυκαιμίαιs
                              … ον πόλεμον · στάσιν γὰρ
πρὸs κρ … οὐκ ἄμεινον ὀννέλην
                    … μακάρων ἐs τέμενοs θέων
                    … μελαίναs ἐπίβαιs χθόνοs
                                        … συνόδοισι μ' αὔταιs
οἴκημμι κάκων ἔκτοs ἔχων πόδαs,
ὄππαι Λεσβίαδεs κριννόμεναι φύαν
πώλεντ' ἐλκεσίπεπλοι, περὶ δὲ βρέμει
ἄχω θεσπεσία γυναίκων
ἴραs ὀλολύγαs ἐνιαυσίαs

… Unhappily I live, enduring a rustic lot, longing, O son of Agesilaos, to hear the assembly summoned,

And the council. What my father and my father's father grew old possessing among these citizens who destroy one another, from those things I am driven away,

And as an exile at the fringes I live here alone, like Onymacles, in wolf thickets (?) … planning war, for to destroy our faction against (those who are stronger) is not the better choice.

… Near the shrine of the blessed gods, … treading the black earth … in the assemblies … I dwell, keeping my steps free of trouble,

Where the Lesbian women in contests of beauty go to and fro in their trailing robes, and the marvellous cry of women fills the air, the sacred yearly chant …

Here the poem breaks off, with only scraps of the last stanza visible.⁴²

Alcaeus, we are here told, had an inherited preeminence in the state; the “assembly” and the “council” are most unlikely to have had the democratic inclusiveness of the fifth-century Athenian institutions of like name.⁴³ The council, at least, would have been restricted to an aristocratic minority. Nothing is known about the son of Agesilaos. The beauty contests of Lesbos, formerly known only from later writers,⁴⁴ took place at a shrine of Hera, and hence it is probable that Alcaeus's place of exile is the same as in 129, the shrine of the trinity.⁴⁵

The simplicity and directness of the poet's emotions, as expressed in the first part of the poem, are given some depth by the evocation of lost dignity, and the reminiscence of Achilles in Book 1 of the Iliad, longing for the cry of battle and staying away from “the assembly that brings glory to men,” whether or not the echo is deliberate, adds dimension to this. Alcaeus becomes, for the moment, a reflection of Achilles. At the end there is another sharply imagined scene, full of localism and particularity, and with it the Homeric epithet ἐλκεσίπεπλοι (“with trailing robes”), which continues, slightly but definitely, the more remote, epic tone introduced by the evocation of Achilles. The combination of longing for the past and the poet's emotional and aesthetic reaction to the ceremonial beauty contest has some of the dramatic quality that is found elsewhere in Alcaeus's poems. The contrast of scenes is made sharp by the contrast between the herald's summons and the religious cry of the women in the ceremony. The sense of resignation of the intervening reflection, “To destroy our faction is not the better choice,” forms a bridge from the poet's despair to a perception of the beauty of the scene around him. But it cannot be said that the fragment conveys any concerted, organized sense, beyond the mere fact of its sensitive report of Alcaeus's emotional experiences.

Alcaeus's abuse of Pittacus was celebrated. A sentence in Diogenes Laertius⁴⁶ tells us that “he called him ‘flat-foot’ … and ‘chap-foot,’ because of the cracks on his feet … and ‘prancer,’ … and physkôn (the same word as occurs in Fr. 129. 21) and gastrôn because he was fat, and ‘him who sups in the dark’ as being without lamps (presumably a reference either to stinginess or uncouthness) and ‘swept up’ because he was slovenly and dirty.” The list is not notable for any suggestion of subtlety or elegance in Alcaeus's attack. It reads rather like a reference to Aristophanic passages; Alcaeus's words are comically abusive rather than seriously critical. The words are also graphic, and this is the manner also of the two most legible papyrus fragments that illustrate Alcaeus's abuse of Pittacus. Fr. 72, extremely uncertain in meaning, appears to be an attack on Pittacus's forebears:

πίμπλεισιν ἀκράτω … ἐπ' ἀμέρᾳ
καὶ νύκτι παφλάσδει …
ἔνθα νόμοs θάμ' …
κη̑νοs δὲ τούτων οὐκ ἐπελάθετο
Ὤνηρ, ἐπεὶ δὴ πρω̑τον ὀνέτροπε,
παίσαιs γὰρ ὀννώρινε νύκταs,
τo δὲ πίθω πατάγεσκ' ὀ πύθμην.
σὺ δὴ τεαύταs ἐκγεγόνων ἔχῃs
τὰν δόξαν, οἴαν ἄνδρεs ἐλεύθεροι
ἔσλων ἔοντεs ἐκ τοκήων …

… fills (the cups) with unmixed wine … day and night foams … where custom often …

But that man did not forget these things when first he brought disorder, for he roused up all the nights, and the bottom of the wine cask kept ringing.

But you, sprung from such a woman, are you to have the same repute as free men, men from goodly parents?

“That man” may be Pittacus's father, Hyrrhas, and his reputed Thracian origin⁴⁷ would provide a ready basis for attack on him as a rowdy drinker, since Thracians traditionally had this reputation.⁴⁸ (The “ringing” presumably means that the cask kept being emptied.) The “you” is then Pittacus, but there is no clue as to why Alcaeus refers thus to his mother, of whom our only other information is that she was “a woman of Lesbos.”⁴⁹ The strain of vigorous personal abuse is about all that is clear in this puzzle. The contrast and confrontation suggested by “But that man …” and “But you …” are in their terseness and dramatic vigor like the sudden turn to “the son of Hyrrhas” at line 13 of Fr. 129, but here the drama is hard to see in the midst of general textual confusion. A tone of aristocratic exclusiveness is conspicuous in the adjectives ἔσλων and ἐλεύθεροι.

Fr. 70 is another attack on Pittacus, combined with a call for unity and an end to strife among kindred. Twelve lines remain, three four-line stanzas of an Aeolic combination of cola. The first preserved stanza is apparently concerned with the carousing of Pittacus, for it refers to “the lyre, feasting with idle braggarts,”⁵⁰ and then the poet continues:

κη̑νοs δὲ παώθειs 'Ατρεῒδαν …
δαπτέτω πόλιν ὠs καὶ πεδὰ Μυρσίλω
θα̑s κ' ἄμμε βόλλητ' '′Αρευs ἐπὶ τεύχεσι(51)
τρόπην · ἐκ δὲ χόλω τω̑δε λαθοίμεθ' …
χαλάσσομεν δὲ τὰs θυμοβόρω λύαs
ἐμφύλω τε μάχαs, τάν τιs 'Ολυμπίων
ἔνωρσε, δα̑μον μὲν εἰs αὐάταν ἄγων
Φιττάκῳ δὲ δίδοιs κυ̑δοs ἐπήρατον.

But let that man, become kin with the Atridae, snap at the city as he did with Myrsilus, until Ares is pleased to turn us to our weapons. But would that we might forget our anger,

And let us end soul-devouring strife and battle among kindred, which some one of the immortals has raised, bringing the state to ruin⁵² but giving Pittacus the glory he prayed for.

Apparently Alcaeus is calling for a closing of the ranks of his own group, no doubt largely the same group as in the conspiracy of Poem 129. Perhaps the defection of Pittacus caused general dissension in the party; but there is likely to have been some lapse of time, since this poem clearly comes after the death of Myrsilus, whereas 129 appears to have been composed immediately on the defection of Pittacus from the hetairia. Though “Atridae” is a legitimate title for descendants of Orestes, there is obviously mockery in this Homeric allusion to Pittacus's politically expedient marriage. But the Homeric suggestions of the disastrous quarrel raised by an immortal are grimly earnest, like the reminiscence of Achilles in Poem 130. The contrastive, dramatic style (from κη̑νοs, “that man,” to the “we” of χαλάσσομεν, “let us end,” and the particles μέν … δέ at the end) is like that of 129, 130, and 72.

Political poetry contains several examples of Alcaeus's use of what was to become the most familiar of political allegories, the Ship of State. Fr. 326 is quoted by the commentator Heraclitus (first century a.d.?) in the Quaestiones Homericae. It is the beginning of a poem (two stanzas of Alcaic strophe and a line of a third remain), and Heraclitus says that it has to do with Myrsilus and “the tyrannical conspiracy being raised against the Mytileneans”:

ἀσυννέτημμι τoν ἀνέμων στάσιν,
τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἔνθεν κυ̑μα κυλίνδεται,
τὸ δ' ἔνθεν, ἄμμεs δ' oν τὸ μέσσον
να̑ϊ φορήμμεθα σὺν μελαίνᾳ
χείμωνι μόχθεντεs μεγάλῳ μάλα ·
πὲρ μὲν γὰρ ἄντλοs ἰστοπέδαν ἔχει,
λαι̑φοs δὲ πὰν ζάδηλον ἤδη,
καὶ λάκιδεs μέγαλαι κὰτ αὖτο,
χόλαισι δ' ἄγκυραι, τὰ δ' ὀήϊα …
I do not understand the set(53) of the winds,
For on this side one wave rolls up
And on that another, and we in the midst
Are carried along in our black ship
Much distressed by the great storm.
Shipped water rises about the mast stand,
The sail is now torn through,
Great rents appear in it,
The anchors are loose,(54) and the rudders …

There is not enough to tell us much about the application of the image. The scene is not as effective in suggesting political troubles as the beetling cliffs and black clouds of Archilochus' political allegory (56). Alcaeus appears less interested in the appropriateness of the image than in its intrinsic expressiveness and pictorial vividness. The emphasis is like that of the Homeric simile, with its tendency to independent development.⁵⁵ There is also an analogy in some of Sappho's poems, notably Fr. 96.⁵⁶

There appears to be political meaning in a small papyrus fragment (73), likewise in Alcaics:

καὶ κύματι πλάγεισα
ὄμβρῳ μάχεσθαι …
φαι̑s' οὐδὲν ἰμέρρην …
δ' ἔρματι τυπτομένα
κήνα μὲν ἐν τούτ …
τούτων λελάθων ὠ …
σύν τ' ὔμμι τέρπ …
καὶ πεδὰ Βύκχιδοs …
τo δ' ἄμμεs ἐs τὰν ἄψερον …

Wave-beaten, she declares that she has no desire to fight the storm, but striking a reef …

She, then … in this … forgetting these things … (I would) take my pleasure, and be festive with you and with Bycchis,

But we for the next (day) …

A ship is represented as declaring itself (or, with a slightly different restoration, having somebody declare it) ready to give up the struggle and dash itself upon a reef. Then the poet seems to turn from the ship and speak in his own person. The fragment may suggest something like this: the ship is too completely shattered to continue her voyage, that is, our immediate cause is lost (Myrsilus has succeeded in seizing power?); but, friends, let us not lose our ability to enjoy life; tomorrow we shall try some new approach for our cause.⁵⁷

The resilience of spirit and the absence of abusiveness are refreshing, but of course abuse may be lacking only because we do not have the whole poem.⁵⁸ The turn from the wrecked ship to the survivors has, in wording and spirit, something of the dramatic contrast that we have noticed frequently in Alcaeus. The ship is sometimes taken, needlessly, to mean only the faction of Alcaeus, not the whole state. I see no grounds for thinking that Alcaeus distinguished between disaster for Lesbos and disaster for his faction. In 326 the ship can well be the state as a whole, and it seems also to be such in one further example of the Ship of State that deserves special mention. Fr. 6, in Alcaics as are all the political metaphors metrically identifiable, again is concerned with the upheaval caused by Myrsilus:

τὸ δ' αὖτε κυ̑μα τo προτέρω νόμῳ(59)
στείχει, παρέξει δ' ἄμμι πόνον πόλυν
ἄντλην, ἐπεί κε να̑οs ἔμβᾳ
φαρξώμεθ' ὠs Ὤκιστα να̑α
ἐs δ' ἔχυρον λίμενα δρόμωμεν,
καὶ μή τιν' ὄκνοs μόλθακοs
λάβῃ · πρόδηλον γάρ …
μνάσθητε τo πάροιθε …
νυ̑ν τιs ἄνηρ δόκιμοs γενέσθω ·
καὶ μὴ καταισχύνωμεν
ἔσλοιs τόκηαs γα̑s ὔπα κειμένοιs …
Here again a wave like the one before
Comes on, and we shall have much toil
To bale it out, when it enters the ship …
Let us shore up our ship as quickly as we can
And run into a secure harbor,
And let no soft hesitation come
Upon us; clear before us …
Be mindful of the former …
Now let each man be steadfast
And let us not put to shame
Our brave forebears lying underground …

Traces of another seventeen lines remain, but they yield nothing consecutive, and only one word, “monarchy,” that helps the interpretation of the poem. Only that word gives any internal indication of allegory. But there is no reasonable doubt;⁶⁰ the references to the ancestors, the mention of hesitation, the thought of the forebears lying under the ground, all sound more like a call to battle than to save a ship in distress.

Other fragments introduce the same or a closely related metaphor. In 249 Alcaeus warns, “One must look from the land before a voyage; once at sea, he must obey the wind that prevails.” In 167 the name Phrynon and the word “ship” appear in close proximity. But these and other scraps of political poetry, though they provide glimpses of Alcaeus's emotions and experiences and no doubt would deserve close attention in a biographical essay,⁶¹ add little to our picture of Alcaeus's poetry.

It is tempting to try to chart the voyage of Alcaeus's Ship by reconstructing a time-table of political events out of the statements and moods of the political poems. One might guess at the following: 249 gives the first warning against the troubles the poet foresees; 6 and 326 (plus 208) are rallying cries against the imminent threat of Myrsilus, with the second describing a later and more desperate state of affairs than the first. Fr. 73 comes after Myrsilus has seized power and the ship of the Lesbian state has run on the rocks. To this period belongs another fragment of political poetry, 114, which gives us nothing more than a dozen intriguing line beginnings, with the words “well,” “may they grant,” “thus … a man … bravery … now,” and “others … this land” (we may yet fare well; may the gods grant us aid; thus with bravery may a man win out, though now others hold this land[?]), but is accompanied by a commentary which says that the poem was written during Alcaeus's first exile, when, after Alcaeus and his group had plotted against Myrsilus and the plot had been revealed, they escaped before harm came and fled to Pyrrha. The first three of these poems show a relatively self-contained though urgent mood. Then, in 73 and 114, an encounter has been lost, Myrsilus is in power, Alcaeus and his group are in exile; courage remains, and a zest for life, and hope of future success. This is the period of the aristocratic conspiracy against Myrsilus, and perhaps the songs of conviviality are from it. Where precisely the death of Myrsilus fits into the pattern is unknown. Disaster struck when Pittacus, and perhaps others less notable, defected, whether justifiably and even nobly, or, as Alcaeus thought, basely. 129 must come early in this period, when the wound of Pittacus's betrayal is very fresh. Then come the poems of bitterness, the attacks on Pittacus and his family (70, 72), the endless words of abuse, and the anguish and loneliness of 130. But this is of course all speculation.⁶²

Poem 73 is political, but it is also a poem of conviviality; Alcaeus bids his friends join him in festiveness. The surviving fragments and the witness of Horace let us know that Alcaeus was noted for poetry on convivial themes. Before we turn to some other poems on this topic a further word on Alcaeus's use of allegory is necessary. In 73, as in the other examples we have looked at, the meaning is political, but allegory is used in other contexts too. A fragment of commentary (306, fr. 14, col. ii) explains an elaborate image in a poem not preserved except in a few lemmata of the commentary. The state does not appear, but a ship does, and is likened to an aging courtesan. Which was metaphor and which objective reality is not certain, but some phrases in the commentary seem to say that points concerning the ship stand for aspects of the woman, and so it seems more likely that the ship is here again the image, the woman the real subject. If she is, the poem was perhaps the model for Horace's unkind poems on aging mistresses (Odes 1. 25; 4. 13). Whichever is the metaphor,⁶³ the evidence of the commentary suggests that Alcaeus pursued it with a good deal of ingenuity and, it would seem, originality.⁶⁴

The Ship of State is Alcaeus's most conspicuous contribution to the language of poetry, and to a remarkable degree he is, apparently, responsible for the development of this metaphor. He may have been familiar with Archilochus's metaphors in Frs. 56 and 56a, but there is no evidence that the particularity and realism that mark his use of it have any precedent. There are, of course, similes of the sea and ships in the Iliad, the Odyssey is full of voyages and storms, and Archilochus—apart from Fr. 56—has poetry on shipwreck, the savage dyspemptikon (79a), the elegy on the loss of his brother-in-law at sea, and the new iambic fragment (POxy 2310, fr. 1), the latter part of which is concerned with a voyage and shipwreck. For an islander like Alcaeus the language of ships is natural, not only because he is likely to be experienced in ship travel and its perils, but because he is in daily life kept aware of the sea and its moods. Alcaeus's ship-pictures are dramatic and intense reflections of his political experience. It is suggestive for Alcaeus's affinities that in Greek literature the fullest development of the Ship of State subsequent to his use of it is in the drama of the fifth century.

Although Alcaeus's Ship is usually called an allegory, the term is a bit misleading; it is not so explicitly allegorical as the figure later became, as in Horace's Ship of State, Odes 1. 14.⁶⁵ Allegory is clearly the appropriate term for Theognis 667-82, where, though the figure of the ship in a storm is drawn with care, even more care is taken to ensure that the reader is aware of the political events that are being illustrated. Some of the alleged shipboard activities are more germane to the city of Megara than to a voyage (677-80):

χρήματα δ' ἁρπάζουσι βίῃ, κόσμοs δ' ἀπόλωλεν,
          δασμὸs δ' οὐκέτ' ἴσοs γίνεται ἐs τὸ μέσον ·
φορτηγοὶ δ' ἄρχουσι, κακοὶ δ' ἀγαθω̑ν καθύπερθεν.
          δειμαίνω, μή πωs ναυ̑ν κατὰ κυ̑μα πίῃ.
They seize our property with violence, order is destroyed.
          No fair and common division of tribute is made;
Our rulers are dealers in cargo; the low are above the noble.
          I fear that a wave will drink down the ship.

The ship in line 680 is an afterthought to bolster the allegory. Objective reference is carefully maintained, but the image is dulled by the introduction of such non-nautical words as χρήματα (“money”) and δασμόs (“tribute”). To Alcaeus the state becomes the ship; “the reality is quite subordinated to the image,”⁶⁶ just as in Fr. 96 of Sappho the distinction between a beautiful girl and a moonlit night-scene is hardly maintained and the two concepts blend. As in the political contexts of 129 and 130, Alcaeus's imagination is gripped by a vivid and familiar scene. His myths, as we shall see, are like this, and the same precision, detail, and realism mark his description of a hall full of armor that awaits use in battle (357).

This delight in vivid and detailed description of the world of the poet's experience—ships, armor, familiar Homeric stories—has its parallel in Sappho's poetry, though Sappho's range is narrower, more personal, and more sensuous. Both poets are close in this respect to Homer. Alcaeus is closer because of the similarity of matter; Homer's descriptions, both the detailed precision of the similes and the repeated incidents of arming, sacrifice, embarkation, and the like, have the same concern for accuracy and the particular. In Alcaeus these detailed scenes are the principal adornment of the poetry. There is very little of the varied imagery that is so strikingly prevalent in Pindar's poetry.

Athenaeus, to whom we owe so much Greek convivial poetry, preserves this example of Alcaeus's symposiac art (346):

πώνωμεν · τί τὰ λύχν' ὀμμένομεν; δάκτυλοs ἀμέρα ·
κὰδ δ' ἄερρε κυλίχναιs μεγάλαιs, οὔατα ποικίλαιs ·
οἶνον γὰρ Σεμέλαs καὶ Δίοs υῖοs λαθικάδεα
ἀνθρώποισιν ἔδωκ'. ἔγχεε κέρναιs ἔνα καὶ δύο
πλήαιs κἀκ κεφάλαs, ἀ δ' ἀτέρα τὰν ἀτέραν κύλιξ
ὠθήτω.
Let us drink. Why wait for the lamps? Only a finger of the day is left.
Lift down the large drinking cups with decorated ears.(67)
For the son of Semele and Zeus gave wine to man to bring
Surcease from care. Mix one of water with two of wine
And pour and fill the cups to the brim, and let one cup
Crowd another.

The lines are in the long greater Asclepiadean meter; the style and language are informal and dramatic; asyndeton abounds, strengthening the air of abrupt urgency in this call to pleasure. The cups are to be festive, large, well-filled, and frequent, the mixture unusually strong;⁶⁸ the justification, with its credentials from myths, is naive and plain. Other fragments dedicated to the pleasure of the symposium are 322, with its allusion to the kottabos (“The last drops flying from Teian cups”), a game in which the last drops of wine were thrown at a target,⁶⁹ and 338, with its picture of storm without, comfort and wine within, which Horace imitates at the start of Odes 1. 9, Vides ut alta stet. In the same context with 346, Athenaeus gives us one Alcaic strophe, almost certainly the first of a poem, in much the same mood, but more lyrically, less dramatically, expressed (335):

οὐ χρη̑ κάκοισι θυ̑μον ἐπιτρέπην,
προκόψομεν γὰρ οὐδὲν ἀσάμενοι
ὦ Βύκχι, φαρμάκων δ' ἄριστον
οἶνον ἐνεικαμένοιs μεθύσθην.
To yield the spirit to sorrows is not right;
Grieving gets us nothing;
The best of remedies, my Bycchis, is
To bring wine and get drunk.

There is less gaiety here, and more tension; it sounds as though Alcaeus were seeking relief from political disappointments, of which he had an abundance, and in which Bycchis apparently shared, to judge from Fr. 73.

In 73 we saw the themes of wine and politics brought together; another small fragment, 206, seems to combine a call for courage in battle with the setting up of the mixing bowl,⁷⁰ and another, famous as a Horatian model, is the cry of joy at Myrsilus's death, already quoted, which brings wine into a frantic celebration of triumph. Alcaeus unites conviviality also with an artful literary tour de force, in his imitation of a Hesiodic passage.⁷¹ Almost the only detail in these lines that is not taken from Hesiod is the abrupt and authoritative opening command:

τέγγε πλεύμοναs οἴνῳ, τὸ γὰρ ἄστρον …
Moisten your throat with wine, the star (is here) …

But this detail transforms the piece into a drinking song for summer. The venerable and didactic Hesiod lends an authority that parallels the justification by mythology in Fr. 346. The most finished and complex of the extant drinking songs combines conviviality with reflections on the meaning of life. The poem is in couplets of lengthened glyconics; the sense is complete in twelve lines and so may the poem be (38):⁷²

πω̑νε καὶ μέθυ' ὦ Μελάνιππ' ἄμ' ἔμοι · τί φαι̑s
ὄταμε … διννάεντ' 'Αχέροντα μεγ …
ζάβαιs ἀελίω κόθαρον φάοs ἄψερον
ὄψεσθ'; ἀλλ' ἄγι μὴ μεγάλων ἐπιβάλλεο ·
καί γὰρ Σίσυφοs Αἰολίδαιs βασίλευs ἔφα
ἄνδρων πλει̑στα νοησάμενοs θανάτω κρέτην.
ἀλλὰ καὶ πολύιδριs ἔων ὐπὰ κα̑ρι δὶs
διννάεντ' 'Αχέροντ' ἐπέραισε, μ …
αὔτῳ μόχθον ἔχην Κρονίδαιs βασίλευs κάτω
μελαίναs χθόνοs · ἀλλ' ἄγι μὴ τα …
… τ' ἀβάσομεν αἴ ποτα κἄλλοτα …
… ην ὄττινα τω̑νδε πάθην τάχα δἳ̑ θέοs.
Drink (and get drunk), Melanippus, with me. Why (do you fancy)
That when once (you have) crossed eddying Acheron
You will see again the pure light of the sun?
No, do not (aim at) great things;
Why even Sisyphus, Aeolus's son, a king,
Wisest of men, who thought to cheat death,
Even he, for all his cunning, twice by order of fate
Crossed over eddying Acheron, …
And the king, Cronus's son, (caused) him to have toil
Below the black earth. But come, do not (have such hopes).
While we are young, if ever, (it is right)
(To take) whatever of these things the gods give.

The mutilation is great, but the general movement of the poem is clear.⁷³ The Horatian theme of carpe diem is set forth with a proof from mythology, a proof that contrasts the toil and gloom of what inevitably follows life with the pleasures of the moment. The repetition of the phrase “eddying Acheron” does not have the effect of ring composition which we will find often in Sappho's poems, but only of the naïveté of Lesbian lyric style, which shows no hesitation about casual repetition of words and phrases. The fact that the lines have several Homeric phrases (ποταμἳ̑ ἐπὶ διννήεντι, Xανθἳ̑ ἐπὶ διννήεντι, etc.) perhaps lends them a degree of special solemnity justifying repetition. “Black earth” is of course Homeric, but it has also the particular force of emphasizing the contrast between the darkness of the world below and the bright pleasure of this one.⁷⁴

Of the other two categories that exemplify Alcaeus's range of subject and style, the hymns need only brief mention, because only one remains in any substantial form. We know of hymns to Apollo, a Thessalian form of Athena, Eros, Hermes, the Dioscuri, and, if hymn is the appropriate word, to the river Hebrus. The hymn to Hermes is said to have been the model for Horace's ode to Hermes,⁷⁵ and the incident of the stealing of Apollo's quiver (9-12) is specifically said to have come from Alcaeus. Only the first strophe of Alcaeus's poem, a Sapphic strophe, has been preserved (308). In phraseology, it is like the openings of the two Homeric Hymns to Hermes; deliberate imitation seems a reasonable assumption.⁷⁶ Of the rest of the poem we know only that it celebrated the birth of Hermes, as we should have supposed, and was the second poem of Alcaeus's first book. The first poem of the first book was a hymn to Apollo, of which only the opening line remains (307), the first line of an Alcaic strophe. The principal source of information about this poem is an extensive paraphrase of it given by Himerius,⁷⁷ from which it is clear that Alcaeus, surprisingly for an eastern Greek, tells the story of the Delphic Apollo; that Alcaeus is, in spirit, in accord with the Delphic part of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo; and that, in details, he is strikingly independent of it and of any known picture of Apollo. Once again we find in Alcaeus's poetic procedure a breadth of interest beyond the local stories and versions of the Aeolian world, an affinity for the Homeric tradition, and a good deal of special knowledge in the detailed treatment of his subject. In the hymn to Hermes too, in spite of the likeness of the opening to the tradition of the Homeric Hymns, his story was different in details from the usual tradition.

The one hymn remaining to us with enough of its form preserved to provide substantial evidence of what the poem was like is the hymn to the Dioscuri (34). What remains is the first three of what were originally six stanzas, in Sapphic strophe. It is a “cletic,” that is, an invocatory hymn⁷⁸ but there is no way of knowing the occasion of its composition. It may have been composed for a festival in honor of Castor and Pollux, but it may equally well have had a less formal occasion. Perhaps it served as a petition for the patronage of the Dioscuri on the occasion of a voyage to be undertaken. The preserved part is as follows:⁷⁹

δευ̑τέ μοι να̑σον Πέλοποs λίποντεs
παι̑δεs ἴφθιμοι Δίοs ἠδὲ Λήδαs,
ἰλλάῳ θύμῳ προφάνητε Κάστορ
καὶ Πολύδευκεs,
οi κὰτ εὔρηαν χθόνα καὶ θάλασσαν
παι̑σαν ἔρχεσθ' ὠκυπόδων ἴπ' ἴππων,
ρη̑α δ' ἀνθρώποιs θανάτω ρύεσθε
ζακρυόεντοs
εὐσδύγων θρoσκοντεs oν ἄκρα νάων
πήλοθεν, λάμπροι πρότον' ὀντρέχοντεs
ἀργάλεᾳ δ' ἐν νύκτι φάοs φέροντεs
να̑ϊ μελαίνᾳ.
Come to me, leaving the island of Pelops,
Valiant sons of Zeus and Leda,
Appear, Castor and Polydeuces,
With favoring spirit;
Who over the broad earth and all the sea
Journey, borne on swift-footed horses,
And easily deliver men from
Death that chills,
As you leap upon the masts of their well-benched ships
From afar, and, climbing on the forestays, shine,
Bringing light in the grievous night
To the black ship.

What is striking in these stanzas is the combination of tradition and originality. There are two brief Homeric Hymns to the Dioscuri, 17 and 33. To 17 Alcaeus's poem bears no resemblance; with 33 it shares a few phrases, and the general theme of the Dioscuri as saviors in storms at sea. Alcaeus's phraseology is thoroughly Homeric (broad earth, swift-footed horses, well-benched ships, black ships, the gods coming from afar); the reference, in the invocation, to a place where the worship of the invoked powers is prevalent is a feature also of one of Sappho's hymns to Aphrodite (Fr. 2) and several of the Homeric Hymns begin with similar references. The phenomenon of phosphorescent fire, “St. Elmo's fire,” which was in antiquity thought to herald the arrival of the Dioscuri and rescue from the storm, is possibly alluded to in the Homeric hymn, but the emphasis given to it is probably Alcaeus's own idea.⁸⁰ It is really this picture, along with the transformation of Homeric language into Sapphic strophe, that gives the passage its character. The brightness of the arriving deities and their easy leap onto the riggings of the distressed ship contrast with the labor of the mariners. The last phrase preserved interweaves the two contrasting elements of the scene: the ship is black not just because Homer's ships are black, but as a part of the poet's picture, contrasting a dark storm with the bright and benign power of the Dioscuri. Once again, the art of the poem lies principally in the felicity of a sharply and dramatically drawn scene and event.

Mythological references occur in a number of short fragments. We have already looked at the drinking song addressed to Melanippus (38), where the fate of Sisyphus illustrates the inevitability of death and the fragility of human powers in a passage, probably a whole poem, just twelve lines long.⁸¹ A poem (44) which was complete in eight verses, four Asclepiadean couplets, apparently alludes to the appeal of Achilles to Thetis and Thetis's consequent appeal to Zeus, as in Iliad 1. The few words that remain of this small poem suggest that it was Homeric in phrasing as in matter. About another mythological poem, Fr. 255, we know still less. Scraps of eight lines survive, with half a dozen decipherable words and no meaningful phrases. One of the words is kibisis, which virtually ensures that the poem dealt with the story of Perseus and Medusa, since kibisis, a Cyprian word, according to Hesychius, is the usual word for the wallet in which Perseus carries the Gorgon's head, and is not likely to have got into Alcaeus's vocabulary in any other context.

In these meager fragments we have no way of telling whether the myth was used as an illustration for a specific contemporary scene or occasion, as it is in Poem 38, or used in no immediate connection with the contemporary world. We know, however, that Alcaeus wrote at least one poem, apart from his hymns, in which the content is purely mythological. Fragments of two poems concerning Helen remain. One, Fr. 42, is complete in sixteen verses, four Sapphic strophes, of which only the line endings are missing:

ὠs λόγοs, κάκων ἄχοs ἔννεκ' ἔργων
Περράμῳ καὶ παι̑σί ποτ', Oλεν', ἦλθεν
ἐκ σέθεν πίκρον, πύρι δ' Ὤλεσε Zευ̑s
'′Ιλιον ἴραν.
οὐ τεαύταν Αἰακίδαιs ἄγαυοs
πάνταs ἐs γάμον μάκαραs καλέσσαιs
ἄγετ' ἐκ Nήρηοs ἐλων μελάθρων
πάρθενον ἄβραν
ἐs δόμον Kέρρωνοs · ἔλυσε δ' ἄγναs
ζω̑μα παρθένω · φιλόταs δ' ἔθαλε
Πήλεοs καὶ Nηρεῒδων ἀρίσταs,
ἐs δ' ἐνίαυτον
παι̑δα γέννατ' αἰμιθέων φέριστον
ὄλβιον ξάνθαν ἐλάτηρα πώλων ·
οἰ δ' ἀπώλοντ' ἀμφ' 'Ελένᾳ Φρύγεs τε
καὶ πόλιs αὔτων.
The story goes that sorrow in return for evil deeds
Once came on Priam and his sons, O Helen,
Bitter sorrow, through you, and Zeus destroyed
Holy Troy by fire.
Not such a bride the great son of Aeacus
Calling to his wedding all the blessed ones,
Took from Nereus's halls and led,
A tender virgin,
To Chiron's home. He loosed the girdle
Of a pure virgin; and the love of Peleus
And the best of the Nereids flourished.
In a year
She bore a son, strongest of demigods,
Illustrious driver of tawny horses;
But for Helen the Phrygians were destroyed,
They and their city.

The exact wording is questionable in some places,⁸² but of the scope, meaning, and structure of the poem there can be no doubt. Here alone we have a poem of Alcaeus in which we can discern a unified whole, in which the relationship of the parts is clear and comprehensible. The contrast with Fr. 130, lines 16-39 of which probably contain a poem nearly as complete as 42, is conspicuous; in 130 there is no clear unity, in 42 the unity is striking. The poem is built on a contrast between the ruin brought on Troy by Helen and the glory that came from the marriage of Thetis. That Helen came to Troy as no bride but a runaway wife is alluded to clearly enough by the emphasis on Thetis's virginity. The connection of the two women with the destruction of Troy links the contrasting themes, and the poem ends as it begins, with the fall of Troy.⁸³ The style is simple, as in the hymn to the Dioscuri. The language is strong in Homeric echoes (“sacred” Troy, the patronymic Aiakidas and Nereides, the phrase “driver of horses”) yet much modified by non-Homeric, Lesbian forms (Perramus, iran in place of hieran, Cherronos, aimitheon); the combination gives a pleasant blend of local poetic dialect and epic tradition. The material follows Homeric mythological tradition, and squeezes a good deal of myth—a miniature history of the Trojan War—into its small space. It is not a profound thought; the irony of the destructiveness of Achilles is ignored and the awkwardness that Thetis is hardly more a model wife than Helen is disregarded. But the vivid, dramatic confrontation, achieved with economy of description, and the somber illustration of moral consequences give this poem shape and substance.

The other Helen poem is harder to judge. It is on a similar theme, but there is no indication of length, and both beginning and end are lost. It may have had contemporary references. The surviving fragment (283) consists of four Sapphic strophes, with bits remaining both before and after:⁸⁴

κ' Αλέναs ἐν στήθεσιν ἐπτόαισε
θυ̑μον 'Αργείαs, Τροῒω δ' ὐπ' ἄνδροs
ἐκμάνεισα ξενναπάτα 'πὶ πόντον
ἔσπετο να̑ϊ,
παι̑δα τ' ἐν δόμοισι λίποιs' ἐρήμαν
κἄνδροs εὔστρωτον λέχοs, Ὤs F' ὐπείκην
πει̑θ' ἔρῳ θυ̑μοs διὰ τὰν Διώναs
παι̑δα Δίοs τε
… κασιγνήτων πόλεαs μέλαινα
γαι̑' ἔχει Τρώων πεδίῳ δάμενταs
ἔννεκα κήναs,
πόλλα δ' ἄρματ' ἐν κονίαισι …
ἤριπεν, πόλλοι δ' ἐλίκωπεs …
… 'στείβοντο, φόνω δ …
… 'Αχίλλευs
And roused to passion the spirit of Argive Helen
Within her breast, and she, driven mad by the Trojan,
The host-deceiver, followed him in his ship
Over the sea,
And left her daughter deserted at home
And her husband's bed of fair coverlet, because
Her spirit bade her yield to love, through the daughter
Of Zeus and Dione
… many brothers the black earth
Holds in the Trojans' plain, fallen
On her account,
And many chariots overturned in the dust
And many glancing-eyed …
… trampled … slaughter …
… Achilles.

The moral earnestness is like that in 42. The emotion is somewhat more intense; there, the contrast between Helen's fault and Thetis's virtue was mostly implicit, and the emphasis was on Thetis's virtue. Here the descriptions are rather livelier: Helen is “roused”—the word is apparently the same as in Sappho's famous description of her violent symptoms of love⁸⁵—and “maddened,” and Paris is clearly a figure of evil, not only as “host-deceiver,” but in that he is responsible for the death of “many brothers,” presumably his own brothers, as in Iliad 6, where Hector speaks of his “many goodly brothers, who may fall in the dust at the hands of their foes” (452-53). The precise connection of Achilles with the rest of the poem is not clear; perhaps there was again, as in 42, a specific contrast between Paris and Achilles, but Achilles may stand only for the avenging might of the Achaean besiegers. Homeric reminiscences are at least as profuse as in 42. The fragments are much alike in style; both are strongly moralistic, with an urgent and dramatically framed insistence on cause and effect. The difference in spirit between this poem and Sappho 16, where Helen's flight is also mentioned, is a measure of the difference between the two poets. Alcaeus uses the incident to create a dramatic scene that vividly makes a moral generalization. Sappho, though she acknowledges the moral point, is not concerned with it; in her poem the flight of Helen exemplifies the power of love, and forms a mythological excursus on an immediate, specific situation and feeling.

In both these mythological poems of Alcaeus we find the same combination of epic theme and language with Lesbian forms. Both have the same clarity and precision of style and outlook. It seems unnecessary to look elsewhere than to Alcaeus's own moral view to understand them. The influence of Stesichorus as a link between epic and lyric is by no means improbable.⁸⁶ It is likely, however, that the practice of treating epic themes in lyric form is Alcaeus's main debt to the Sicilian poet; the outlook and the dramatic presentation are so consistent and so well in keeping with what we know otherwise of Alcaeus that they seem certainly to be his own.

We have arrived at something of a paradox in the poetry of Alcaeus. If we take the political poems on the one hand, especially the two relatively long pieces, 129 and 130, and the two poems on mythological topics, 42 and 283, on the other hand as representing two discernible extremes in the way that they illustrate the style and spirit of Alcaeus's art, we find that each group has certain qualities that the other is without. In the political poems there is the excitement of partisan struggle, the emotional intensity of conspiracy and enmity, the pathos of loss and loneliness, and there is vivid description, as in the scene of the beauty contest, and in the Ship of State, but there is little evidence of general, formal unity, or of a unifying theme in any one poem. There is, apparently, a tendency to sacrifice overall design to the scenes and emotions of the moment; anger and invective take command. The myth-poems have a gemlike orderliness of form and a clear point of view, but because they are set entirely in the world of myth (so far as we can tell), they have a spirit of relative detachment. In the political poems Alcaeus shows himself to be an absorbing witness and an intense participant in an age and place that were full of excitement, but as a creator of formal expressions of his ideas he is on the whole disappointing. His sense of organization, his range of style, and his learning are more evident in the poems of mythology.

Perhaps the scattered and informal impression of the political poems is deliberate. But their spirit is of such wholehearted concern that it is hard to believe in the degree of objectiveness that a contrived informality would require. The serial quality that marks these poems, with scenes or ideas strung along, and no apparent over-arching unity,⁸⁷ is a frequent characteristic of archaic Greek poetry, corresponding in its way of presenting ideas to the serial style of syntax typical of archaic writers, called by Aristotle (Rhetoric 1409a29) λέξιs εἰρομένη, “run-on style.” Much early elegy is in this style, particularly the political and martial elegy of Tyrtaeus and Solon. Where Solon's elegy is least prone to such looseness, as in the poem to the Muses (Fr. 1 D), he is farthest from political poetry. Alcaeus, with his sensitivity to various poetic traditions, may in his political poems have been drawn toward the manner of expression that had been used for such material. Also, the abusiveness that seems to have been a feature of Alcaeus's political poems is usually associated with satire. Perhaps Alcaeus was using lyric form for material that had no lyric tradition and was therefore less successful in organizing this material than that which had already been put in this form by other poets, by Alcman, by Stesichorus, and perhaps by Sappho.

In the poems of mythology that we have examined, Alcaeus does not do, essentially, what Alcman and Sappho do. These poems of Alcaeus have no frame or parallel drawn explicitly from the contemporary world; in Alcman's Partheneion (PMG 1), and in a number of Sappho's poems, the combination of mythological and contemporary world is conspicuous and, in the poetry of Sappho as later in the poetry of Pindar, artistically essential. What Alcaeus does instead, in these poems, is to interweave two incidents or themes, two contrasting parts of a picture combining to present, by their contrast, a moral point. Where Sappho's use of myth has the effect of expanding or universalizing the immediate, contemporary incident or scene, Alcaeus's method is dramatic; it is the method of confrontation and contrast, for example, Helen against Thetis. Instead of the myth as poetic center, as in Sappho and Pindar, we have the dramatic suggestiveness and allusiveness that are found later in the dithyrambs of Bacchylides. So far as can be known, Alcaeus is here an innovator. That he was highly experimental in another kind of essentially dramatic poetry appears certain from Fr. 10. Elsewhere in his poetry we find indications of the more usual employment of myth as an illustration paralleling contemporary experience, as in 38, where the story of Sisyphus creates justification for seeking the pleasures of life, specifically the pleasures of the symposium.

One more fragment of mythological poetry, again epic-inspired, remains to be mentioned, and it apparently introduces, in a political context, the combination of contemporary setting and extended mythological reference that is elsewhere absent from the poetry of Alcaeus. The poem has come to light in two separate papyri, first in POxy 2303, which consists of partial lines of three Alcaic stanzas, providing enough intelligible phrases to permit the general sense to be made out; it tells the story of the rape of Cassandra by Oïlean Ajax and of his consequent punishment. A Cologne papyrus first published by Reinhold Merkelbach in 1967⁸⁸ adds four preceding stanzas in a poor state of preservation; it provides a small amount of further information for the earlier-known stanzas, and continues, in a second column, with twenty-two additional line-beginnings. There are a few not very illuminating marginal notes. Neither beginning nor end is present, nor is there any indication of how much longer than the forty-nine detectable lines the poem was. The new papyrus fragment adds significantly to what we can tell about Alcaeus's handling of the myth. Even more important for the general picture of Alcaeus's poetry is the indication, slight but inescapable, that there was a contemporary political framework.

Nearly all the preserved lines are or may be concerned with the story of Ajax. Three extremely fragmentary lines at the beginning seem to express a generalization to the effect that “one who has done shameful and unjust things ought to be executed,” and apparently transition is then made to the story of Ajax as an example of the generalization: “Just so, it would have been better for the Achaeans had they stoned Ajax.” (In the Iliou Persis, as we know from Photius's summary of the Chrestomathy of Proclus, the Achaeans intended to stone Ajax, but he escaped by fleeing for refuge to the altar of Athena.) Then follows, in the main body of the fragment, the story of the rape and the punishment. The last twenty-two lines add only one piece of information, in the letters ωυρραδον at line 47. There seems little choice but to interpret these letters as addressing “the son of Hyrrhas,”⁸⁹ and thus to conclude that the poet has moved from myth to the contemporary world and to politics.

It then becomes a probable supposition that the words at the beginning of the fragment refer to the same contemporary situation, and that in fact Alcaeus is urging that Pittacus be executed for his villainous behavior; it is altogether likely that the context is again Pittacus's betrayal of the ἔταιροι, the conspirators against Myrsilus.

It must be recognized that the evidence for contemporary allusion is very restricted. The opening part need not be so interpreted, and could instead be a moral generalization, perhaps about the inevitability of punishment for iniquity; it is only the part-line fragment at the end that provides real evidence.⁹⁰ On present information, however, it seems right to believe that Pittacus is addressed and that the poem combines myth and a contemporary reference.

What we have of the poem is essentially still the myth. The intelligible part is as follows (Page, LGS 138. 6-27):⁹¹

… παρπλέοντεs Αἴγαιs
… ἔτυχον θαλάσσαs
          … ἐν ναύῳ Πριάμω πάιs
… 'Αθανάαs πολυλάιδοs
          … ἐπαππένα γενήω
… νεεs δὲ πόλιν ἔπηπον
                    … Δαῒφοβόν τ' ἄμα
… οἰμώγα δ' ἀπὺ τείχεοs
… καὶ παίδων ἀύτα
                    … πέδιον κάτηχε.
… λύσσαν ἦλθ' ὀλόαν ἔχων
          … ἀγναs Πάλλαδοs ἀ θέων
φώτεσσι θεοσύλαισι πάντων
δεινοτάτα μακάρων πέφυκε.
χείρεσσι δ' ἄμφοιν παρθενίκαν ἔλων
                    … παρεστάκοισαν ἀγάλματι
                    … ὀ Λόκροs οὐδ' ἔδεισε
                    … οs πολέμω δοτέρραν
γόργωπιν · ἀ δὲ δει̑νον ὐπ' ὄφρυσιν
σμ … πελιδνώθεισα κὰτ οἴνοπα
ἄιξε πόντον ἐκ δ' ἀφάντοιs
ἐξαπίναs ἐκύκα θυέλλαιs.
… as they sailed by Aegae
… found the sea (smoother)
… Priam's child in the temple
Of Athena, giver of rich spoils
… touched her chin
… seized the city
          Deiphobus …
… A groan from the walls
… and the wail of children
          … held the plain
          … came, possessed of deadly madness
          … of chaste Pallas, who of all
The gods is fiercest against the violence
Done by men to sacred shrines;
And seizing with both hands the maiden
As she stood before the (holy) statue
The Locrian (took her) and did not fear
… the giver of war,
The grim-eyed; but she glared with a dark
And frowning look, and over the sea
Wine-hued she swooped, and stirred
A sudden dark tempest of winds …

As in the other poems about myths, there is an animated description of wickedness and its punishment. The theme is epic, but only partially Homeric; the incident of the rape was in the Iliou Persis; the punishment of Ajax is mentioned in the Odyssey (4. 499-511) and very briefly in the Nostoi in Proclus. There is a good deal of traditional epic diction, as in oinopa ponton (“wine-hued sea”) and hup' ophrusin (“frowning”), but one of the most striking phrases, polemou doterran (“giver of war”), uses a word found not in Homer but in Hesiod, in the grim phrase (Works and Days 356) thanatoio doteira. “Giver of death” is precisely what Athena is in this poem, although in the reference to the death of Ajax in Odyssey 4 it is Poseidon who brings his doom. The transfer of agency to Athena is quite natural, since the crime of Ajax was a desecration of her shrine and image; this directness of moral consequence fits well with what we see in Alcaeus's other mythological poetry, and the point may have been his own innovation.⁹² Once again dramatic compression and mythological allusiveness give an impressive forcefulness and liveliness. So rapidly and intensely does divine anger follow hybris that it is striking to remember that Alcaeus is here condensing what in epic narration occupies a considerable period of time. The rapidity with which the poet moves from the picture of the returning Greek fleet, off the Euboean promontory Aegae, to the scene in the temple of Athena, with a glance at the general picture of disaster at the fall of Troy, and back to the main event, the storm and (presumably) the death of Ajax, gives far the best extant example of Alcaeus's skill in compressed dramatic narrative. It has the intensity and drama of the best of Browning's short poems, and gives a new dimension to the earliest Greek lyric.

What is most remarkable about this fragment, in terms of its revelation of Alcaeus's range and tendencies as a poet, is the fact that even if—as appears—it arises from a contemporary, political context, one concerning which, to judge from the other evidence in Alcaeus's poetry, Alcaeus was deeply emotional, nevertheless the treatment of the myth shows the same brilliant, objective skill that we saw in the poems in which there seems to be no contemporary frame. The intrusion of the hated Pittacus is so controlled that the specific contemporary application of the myth is not even apparent. The gist is not, “the Greeks should have punished Ajax,” which would be the expected lesson-analogue for urging action against Pittacus, but “deity punishes the wicked.” Rather than a specific, propagandistic case illustration, Alcaeus gives a general moral observation, and does so with a picture drawn from mythology with admirable skill.

We now have a poem that bridges the gap between the other dramatic poems on mythological subjects and the political poems. Elsewhere the gap seems very wide. But the dramatic manner, featuring succinct, vividly drawn scenes and strong contrasts, is eminently characteristic also of the political poems. There are a number of stylistic features that bear this out: Alcaeus's way of making a sudden transition with a demonstrative pronoun—the κήνων of 129. 14 and 21, the κη̑νοs of 70. 6 and 72. 7, the ὀ δέ of 69. 6; evocative passages like the description of the Lesbian beauty contests (130. 32-35) and, in the same poem, the poet's longing for the life of political activity (16-18); and the vivid scenes in the metaphors of the Ship of State. These are essentially dramatic devices, though the effect of some of them is marred by the fragmentary condition of their contexts.

Like Archilochus, Alcaeus was a man of violent feelings, strong friendship, implacable enmity. On the whole, his political passions are not as successfully transmuted into poetry as are the emotions of Archilochus, but his adaptation of political material to fully developed lyric forms constitutes a significant broadening of the range of lyric poetry. Like Sappho, he wrote poems in which myth plays an integral, effective part in the form and the meaning of the poetry, but generally the worlds of myth and contemporary life remain separate. He is one of the most varied of archaic Greek writers. With his extraordinarily wide range of interests and his openness to the influences both of literature and of personal experience, he has an important and perhaps even momentous role in the development of lyric poetry.⁹³

Notes

1. As A. M. Dale points out, in “Stichos and Stanza,” CQ N.S. 13 (1963) 46-50, the trochaic tetrameter, as used by Archilochus (who is the earliest user of it), is a two-line stanza; the part of the verse after the diaeresis has a clausular effect. But it seems most likely that there were other models for the stanzas of the Lesbian poets, with their concentration on Aeolic cola.

2. A fragment of choral poetry (Page, PMG 939) traditionally ascribed to Arion, a contemporary of Stesichorus, is obviously from a much later time.

3. B. A. van Groningen, “A propos de Terpandre,” Mnemosyne 4. 8 (1955) 177-91, maintains that of the four brief fragments traditionally ascribed to Terpander, two are authentic, one the opening lines of a nome, the other probably the beginning of a hymn to Zeus. Page, PMG, prints these two fragments under Terpander's name but comments (362), “Terpandri fragmenta melica extant me iudice nulla.” Wilamowitz, Textgeschichte, likewise considers all spurious. In Bergk, PLG, six short fragments are ascribed to him.

4. Mar. Par. 34, Eusebius, Chron., Migne 19, Col. 455.

5. Athenaeus 14. 37, Timotheus, Persae 225-28.

6. Aristotle, Probl. 19. 32, Plutarch, De musica 12.

7. Van Groningen, op. cit., argues that the Terpandrian nome was relatively simple, with only archa, omphalos, and sphragis.

8. Suda, μετὰ Λέσβιον oδόν, Sappho 106. Van Groningen, op. cit., believes that the Terpandrian nome was entirely in hexameters, and that the essential difference between it and the Homeric Hymns was that it was sung, while they were recited.

9. Suda, ibid., Aelian, Varia Hist. 12.50.

10. Alcaeus 283 may, but need not, show its author's consciousness of Sappho 16; for a comparison of the two poems see ch. 4. Alcaeus 115 has phrases strongly reminiscent of Sappho's poetry, expecially of Fr. 2. Fr. 137 of Sappho preserves a tradition of Alcaeus as suitor of Sappho and Sappho's rejection of his suit. There is a good deal of uncertainty about the nature of the fragment; and if Aristotle, to whom we owe the tradition, is correct in saying that the poetry of this fragment reflects such a relationship, it is more likely to be evidence of a fairly casual and probably largely literary acquaintance than of intimacy. It is almost inconceivable, given two poets who spoke mainly about themselves and their experiences, that we would have no more evidence than this if the relationship had been close. If the fragment does in fact give evidence of a relationship between the two poets it does not add any information as to literary influence; but it lends strength to the probability of it, and the fact that it is Alcaeus who makes the approach, which Sappho rejects, says something about the direction that such influence is likely to have taken. On the fragment, see Page, SA 104-9. The one other reference to Sappho in Alcaeus, a single line preserved by Hephaestion (Fr. 384), is in the same meter and may be from the same poem. In it, the epithet ἄγνα suggests a relationship of admiration rather than anything erotic. On the line and the problems of its authenticity cf. especially Alessandra Rome, “L'Uso degli Epiteti in Saffo e Alceo,” SCO 14 (1965) 210-46. The article is a valuable examination of the epithets of the two poets, especially those inherited from the epic tradition. See also Bruno Gentili, “La Veneranda Saffo,” Quaderni Urbinati 2 (1966) 37-62.

11. Alcaeus (130) refers to his loss, by exile, of “what his father and his grandfather possessed.” Since this directly follows a mention of the council and the assembly, the reference might be thought to suggest that the oligarchy had existed through much of the seventh century. This need not be so; the council and the assembly would very likely have existed, in Homeric fashion, under the monarchy.

12. He is called αἴδωs ἄξιοs, which would most naturally mean “worthy of respect.” Treu translates “dieser Ehrenmann,” with the note “muss ironisch gemeint sein” (37, 145). Perhaps it means “worthy of shame,” since αἰδώs can designate what calls for ashamedness as well as what calls for respect, as in Iliad 16. 422, 17. 336. There may be a deliberate, ironic ambiguity. The word occurs only here in Alcaeus.

13. Strabo 13. 617.

14. LP have πέρ for πρόs, thus eliminating Attic correption (mute plus liquid not giving metrical length). There is nothing else amiss with πρόs here; the phrase need not, as Lobel thinks (Σάπφουs Μέλη xlv) mean “against one's will,” since Euripides' Andromache 730 provides a clear case to the contrary. Πρὸs τὸ βίαιον, Aeschylus, Agamemnon 130, is analogous; Fränkel's translation, “with violence,” is correct; Moira, who performs the act of violence, is not under duress. Attic correption occurs elsewhere in Lesbian poetry; it should not be removed here.

15. Suda, s.v. Πιττακόs.

16. Politics 1285a31: αἱρετὴ τυραννίs.

17. Life of Pittacus 1.

18. Page, SA 151-52.

19. POxy 2506 fr. 98.

20. Politics 1285a31-38.

21. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Pittacus 3.

22. POxy 2506 fr. 98 refers to “the third return.” Since we have no evidence for a fourth exile (only two are attested, but a third is implied by this fragment), there is some reason to suppose that Alcaeus ended up in Mytilene.

23. Cf. Treu, Alkaios 122-23 and Jaeger, Paideia 1. 182 ff.

24. SA 243.

25. A. Andrewes, The Greek Tyrants (London 1956) 96.

26. There is perhaps some slight further evidence in a new papyrus fragment tending toward the rehabilitation of Alcaeus's reputation. In fr. 77 of POxy 2506 a commentary containing biographical information on a number of the lyric poets, there is apparently a refutation of allegations that Alcaeus had been guilty of a murder.

27. The length of eleven of Alcaeus's poems is known or can be fairly confidently guessed within a few lines: Fr. 6 (28 lines; 1-28), 33a (8 lines; 3-10), 34 (fr. a and lines 1 and 2 of b; the poem had 24 lines), 38a (12 lines; 1-12), 42 (16 lines), 43 (8 lines), 44 (8 lines), 129 (32 lines), 130 (24 lines; 16-39), 283 (probably about 24 lines), 296a (8 lines; 1-8).

28. Fr. 130 if, as is probable (cf. Page, SA 200-201), a new poem begins at 16, is almost all extant; but the last stanza is virtually blank.

29. Cf. Ox. Pap. 18 (1941) 2166c. Page, SA 326, lists this as complete in eight lines, but on page 226 says that “the first two stanzas are preserved.” POxy 2307 fr. 1 (LP 306 fr. 1) has the opening words as a lemma in a commentary. There is some marginal evidence confirming that this is the beginning of a poem.

30. The Ship of State appears in several poems: 6, 73, 208a-366, and 249. A beached and neglected ship represents an aging and spent prostitute, 306 fr. 14, col. ii (see also pp. 79-80). Fr. 119 contains what is almost certainly an allegory of the growth and ripening of crops and vines, but its context is so unreadable that the reference of the allegory is doubtful; it may be a poem of love (Treu, Alkaios 166-68) or it may apply to politics and Pittacus (Page, SA, and Carl Theander, Aegyptus 32 [1952] 179-90). On Alcaic allegory generally see G. Perrotta, “Alceo,” A & R 4 (1936) 221-41.

31. Cf. Page, SA 273.

32. On the nature of this incident and the question of his throwing his shield away see above, ch. 2 n. 27.

33. Line 23 of Fr. 129 echoes line 12 of Archilochus 79.

34. Cf. n. 10, above.

35. Fr. 368 bids someone call τὸν χαρίεντα Μένωνα, if Alcaeus is to have pleasure in a symposium; the two lines of the fragment take us no further. The reference may or may not be erotic. The fragment is not certainly by Alcaeus.

36. Page, SA 297-98, so takes it. Barner, Neuere Alkaios-Papyri 16-30, calls it a “Frühlingslied,” and, following earlier suggestions, believes that it may refer to a festival in a grove of Aphrodite. Lobel, whom Barner quotes, sees in it reference to “some alfresco festivity.” Such a setting neither ensures erotic content nor renders it improbable.

37. It is probable that these three fragments represent only two poems. 380 is in the same Ionic meter as 10, a meter not much used by Alcaeus.

38. SA 289-90. Barner, Neuere Alkaios-Papyri 11-16, thinks that the poem was a propemptikon, sung at a symposium for a friend about to embark on a sea voyage at the beginning of spring. The evidence is meager. More cogently, Barner calls attention (13) to the feeling for the seasonal changes of nature that the fragment reveals.

39. Several words and passages are doubtful of meaning. εὔδειλον is a hapax and can only be guessed at; the customary assumption is that it is a variant of the Homeric εὐδείελοs, “far-seen,” or “sunny.” Gentili, “Note ad Alceo,” Maia 3 (1950) 255-60, relates it to Homeric δείλη, “afternoon,” and translates “che s' illumina al tramonto”; this would still be related to εὐδείελοs; see Chantraine, Dictionnaire Etymologique de la Langue Grecque, s. v. δείελοs. The place of the sanctuary, according to L. Robert, REA 62 (1960) 304-5, was not a high place (as has often been assumed, from εὔδειλον) but a conspicuous sea-side plain at Messon, modern Mesa, near ancient Pyrrha, which would make either meaning of εὐδείελον feasible. Appropriate ruins have been discovered at Mesa. Jerome D. Quinn, “Cape Phokas, Lesbos—Site of an Ancient Sanctuary,” AJA 65 (1961) 391-93, proposes Cape Phokas, on the south coast of Lesbos, and is endorsed by Picard, “L'Asyle Temporaire du Poète Alcée,” RA 1962, 2. 43-69.

    Page, SA 164, urges that ἐπωνύμασσαν be translated “named.” But the verb can mean “invoke,” “call upon as” as Beattie, “A Note on Alcaeus Fr. 129,” CR 6 (1956) 189-91, argues; nor is it likely that the Lesbians invented all these titles, since Antiaeus was probably a traditional title equivalent to ἱκέσιοs, cf. Picard, BCH 70 (1946) 457-58. The point of the epithets is to designate which of the many aspects of these deities were emphasized in their worship at this shrine. The epithet of Dionysus, κεμήλιοs, is an enigma, and two suggestions about it are of roughly equal merit: a) that it is a variant of κειμήλιοs, which is proposed by the editor princeps and followed by a number of critics; b) that it is related to κεμάs and means “god of the fawn,” an idea put forward by Picard, BCH 70 (1946) 463-65 and RA 1962.2.54, and by Gentili, Maia 3 (1950) 256-57. Beattie, op. cit., suggests Σεμελήϊον for δεκεμήλιον.

    The phrase κήνων οὐ διαλέξατο πρὸs θυ̑μον, 21-22, has been much disputed. I am convinced that the interpretation followed by Page, Treu, and Bowra is wrong. If it means “these matters,” as they believe, it ought to be accusative, not genitive. Kamerbeek, Mnemosyne 13 (1947) 108, is essentially right, if the text is sound: “eorum voluntatis rationem non habens,” with διαλέξατο used as in Iliad 11. 407. Perhaps the text should be emended to κη̑ν' ὦν. Then the pronoun would mean what Page, Treu, and Bowra want it to mean, and a connective would be provided. The asyndeton is not a serious objection to the papyrus reading, though it would be in a poem by Sappho. If the text is right, κήνων will refer to the betrayed men. This interpretation is grammatically sound, Anacreon providing an excellent parallel for πρὸs θυ̑μον (95 Bergk, 55 Gentili, who comments, ad. loc., on the analogy of usage); and it is stylistically far superior for two reasons: it justifies the asyndeton, because it is a dramatic breaking away from the immediate thought back to the dead men; and it fits with Alcaeus's use of demonstrative pronouns in an emphatic way, where a name might be expected, as τωνδέων 130. 21, κη̑νοs 70. 6 and 72. 7, ὀ δέ 69. 6.

40. Cf. Picard, “La Triade Zeus-Hera-Dionysus dans l'Orient Hellenique,” BCH 70 (1946) 455-73, Edouard Will, “Autour des Fragments d'Alcée,” RA 6.39 (1952) 156-69, Stella, “Gli dei di Lesbo in Alceo 129 LP,” PP 11 (1956) 321-34, and especially Robert, REA 62 (1960) 285-94. Stella and Robert maintain that the goddess is not Hera; on the basis of inscriptions Robert believes that she is simply Αἰολήια κυδαλίμα θέοs, πάντων γενέθλα, related to the later θεὰ Αἰολὶs καρποφόροs, with whom the Agrippinas are honorifically identified on inscriptions.

41. Cf. Page, SA 200-1.

42. The fragment has its share of lacunae and doubtful words. The term ἐσχάτιαι (24), according to Robert, op. cit., 304-5, refers to “the edges of the polis, the frontier region between poleis.” λυκαιμίαιs (25) is very doubtful; for discussion, reporting many suggestions, see Page, SA 205. Lines 26-27 are particularly disputable; the text is incomplete and almost certainly corrupt, and yet there is enough to hint at the original meaning and to suggest that that meaning is of importance for the outlook of Alcaeus. I follow in part the restoration and interpretation of Bolling, AJP 82 (1961) 151 ff., which takes στάσιs in its meaning of “faction” or “party”. Bolling makes a tempting further suggestion, to restore πρὸs κρέσσονοs instead of the usual πρὸs κρέσσοναs, and translate “to destroy our faction at the bidding of him who has power …” This would give a good Alcaic sentiment, but it demands too much of πρόs with the genitive; I do not believe that the Greek can mean this. Beattie, JHS 77 (1957) 320, offers the interesting suggestion οὐκ ἄρμενον, to patch the meter without changing the sense. Page, SA 206-7, doubtingly translates: “For it is ignoble (?) to renounce rebellion against …” and Bowra, GLP 146, suggests, “For it is not good (?) to give up rebellion against the …” Neither is adequate for ἄμεινον or for ὀννέλην, which, as Bolling insists, means “destroy,” not “renounce.” Others have changed ὀννέλην; thus Kamerbeek, “De novis carminibus Alcaei,” Mnemosyne 13 (1947) 94-120, reads ὀννέχην “take up,” or “maintain.” Another approach is to take the negative with the infinitive; thus Latte, MH 4 (1947) 142: “Besser den Kampf mit der Übermacht nicht aufzunehmen.” As Treu shows, Alkaios Lieder 135, this thought can be found in Hesiod (WD 210 is a very close parallel), Herodotus, and Pindar, and may well reflect a maxim. Antonino Luppino, “Sul Carme di Alceo in l'Esilio,” RFIC 90 (1962) 34-38, adds further instances of the proverb but maintains that Alcaeus is contradicting it: “It is not better …” In any case the problem of the wrong meaning of ὀννέλην remains. Kamerbeek, Mnemosyne 4. 6 (1953) 92, argues that the metrical anomaly of ἄμεινον ὀνν- (c–c– for –cc–) is paralleled in Alcaeus 167, where line 17 has c–c–, lines 3 and 19 –cc–. While there is no assurance that these lines are all in the same poem, it is probable, and the parallel metrical usage seems to me to justify ἄμεινον here.

    To interpret stasis as “faction,” as I follow Bolling in doing, is possible also in the one other Alcaic use of the word, which admits of the same ambiguity: in 326 τω̑ν ἀνέμων στάσιν, στάσιs can be either the “strife” or the “set” of the winds. Information about other early uses of the word does not determine which is more likely in Alcaeus. Solon was already using it in the sense of “strife” (4. 19), but “faction,” implying as it does “position” or “stand,” is actually closer to the literal meaning of the word, and the meaning “strife” seems necessarily to imply it. This interpretation of the passage assumes that Alcaeus was in the same mind as in Fr. 70. 7-8: “Let Myrsilus snap at the city until Ares is pleased to turn us to our weapons.” Alcaeus does not want to destroy the hetairia by premature, improperly-planned action against a stronger opponent. He is willing to wait and plan.

43. Luppino, op. cit., argues that Alcaeus is complaining that Pittacus has done away with the council and assembly, not that they continue while he, in exile, is barred from them. This interpretation goes against the wording and the spirit. The verb ἀπελήλαμαι would have far less point, and the entire picture of exile, including the reminiscence of Achilles in the Iliad, would be less effective. His longing must be for something that exists but is beyond his reach when in exile.

44. Cf. Page, SA 160, n. 4.

45. For the location of the shrine see n.39, above. According to Robert, the shrine was a federal sanctuary shared by several neighboring poleis.

46. The sentence occurs in the Life of Pittacus and is quoted as LP Fr. 429 of Alcaeus.

47. Cf. Suda, s. v. Πιττακόs, and Diogenes Laertius, Life of Pittacus 1.

48. Cf. Anacreon, Fr. 11, and Horace, Odes 1. 27. 1, 2: Natis in usum laetitiae scyphis/pugnare Thracum est.

49. For discussion, see Page, SA 171-74. Bowra, GLP 148-49, calls attention to the improbabilities of Page's analysis and offers an unsatisfactory alternative interpretation, suggesting that “you” may be either Pittacus or a friend of Alcaeus. In the latter case the question may imply good family, not lowly; Alcaeus wonders why his friend is dishonoring his family by his conduct. But this does not explain why Alcaeus has seen fit to refer to his friend's family by referring to his mother. Many critics take τεαύτηs as though it referred to “stock” or “family,” but, as Page insists, this is a mere evasion of the problem; τεαύτηs ἐκγεγόνων can only naturally mean “from such a mother.” Benedetto, “Pittaco e Alceo,” PP 41 (1955) 97-118, and Gomme, “Interpretations of Some Poems of Sappho and Alcaeus,” JHS [Journal of Hellenic Studies] 77 (1957) 255-66, think that κη̑νοs is Pittacus's mother's father. I find it incredible that Alcaeus would have had so lively an interest in Pittacus's maternal grandfather. It is conceivable that κη̑νοs may be Myrsilus. The fact that Pittacus's connection with him was through a woman may have induced the poet more readily to make reference to Pittacus's mother.

50. It is not certain that the participle εὐωχήμενοs modifies βάρμοs, but the following stanza certainly has a new subject in κη̑νοs.

51. 'Επὶ τεύχεσι (ἐπί in tmesis with τρόπην) is proposed by Kamerbeek, Mnemosyne 4. 6 (1953) 89; the papyrus has επιτ.ύχε.. [.

52. Barner, Neuere Alkaios-Papyri 105, n. 1, takes αὐάτην as “madness,” and thinks that it refers to the election of Pittacus, comparing 348, βαρυδαίμονοs πόλιοs. But αὐάτη here is the result of the strife and battle, and as such is paired with Pittacus's glory. The pre-Aeschylean usage of ἄτη is analysed in a Cornell doctoral thesis, “The Use and Meaning of ATH in the Seven Extant Plays of Aeschylus,” by Richard E. Doyle, S. J. Doyle's analysis of types of usage indicates that “ruin” is more likely here. This passage is discussed on p. 30 of Doyle's thesis.

53. The two basic meanings of stasis, “strife” and “stand,” are both possible in the only two places where Alcaeus uses the word, here and in 130. 26 (cf. n. 42, above). Here the ambiguity helps the metaphor: Alcaeus is concerned by both the direction and the conflict of the winds.

54. The word for “anchors,” ἄγκυραι, has been questioned and replaced by some editors; Reinach in the Budé text has ἄγκυλαι, “cables,” Page, SA ἄγκονναι, “wooldings,” for which Barner, Neuere Alkaios-Papyri 129, thinks that the marginal gloss to line 2 of Fr. 208a, col. ii, provides support. The grounds for doubt are that the ship is in motion, not at anchor. The difficulty has been exaggerated: the meaning may be that the ship is in unintended motion, the anchor failing to hold to the bottom. We may suppose the ship to have hove to in a storm; then, as can happen in a bad storm, the anchors are unable to hold.

    Fr. 208a probably belongs to the same poem, according to the indication of the fragments of a commentary (305, col. ii), which seems to be about 326 and 208a; see lines 20 and 29. This does not prove that they are from the same poem, but it strongly suggests it. 208a adds this much: “Both feet (?) (remain) in the sheets, and this alone (saves) me; the cargo … (lost).” See also n. 55, below.

55. Cf. Page, SA 189. Just as the appropriateness of the details of a Homeric simile to the situation that gives rise to the simile is subject to great differences of opinion, so it is with the words of 208a quoted at the end of note 54. Though Page (188) holds that “one might think that there must be some limits to allegory and that the detail here has passed beyond them,” it is easy to see an allegorical meaning for these words: “It is only my stubborn personal concern that keeps me from giving in, engulfed in the storm of political disasters, even as the prosperity of the state has vanished.” Kamerbeek, Mnemosyne 4. 6 (1953) 90-91, takes πόδεs as the bottoms of the sails, which still remain, held by the sheets, and may yet save the ship. This would be a little simpler to interpret allegorically, but would not materially change the meaning. As Barner, Neuere Alkaios-Papyri 130, points out, ἀμφότεροι suggests that Alcaeus means his feet; if sails or ropes, why the emphasis on “both”?

56. For discussion, see ch. 4.

57. It is generally assumed that the poet writes from exile; the occasion is probably the exile at Pyrrha.

    Fr. 306 gives a number of pieces of a commentary on several poems, possibly including 73, and specifically speaks of allegory twice (fr. 14, col. i and col. ii). Fr. 14, col. i, may refer to 73 (cf. Page, SA 192) but this is far from certain. That col. ii refers to 73 seems most unlikely. G. L. Koniaris, “Some Thoughts on Alcaeus's Frs. D15, X14m, X16,” Hermes 94 (1966) 385-97, undermines quite effectively the supposed connections between 306, fr. 14, col. ii, and 73.

58. It has been suggested with not much probability that 73 and 326 are parts of the same poem. The grounds are common meter and allegory. But the tone and circumstance are entirely different.

59. The best MS support is for νέμω; one MS has νόμω, which, as Page suggests, could be from νόμῳ “in the manner of.” I accept this not very probable emendation to give a text to translate. Other suggestions include A. Y. Campbell's (CR 7 [1957] 4) 'ν σχερώ, “following close,” and J. Taillardat's (RPh 39 [1965] 80-83) λαμπροτέρω 'νέμω, “of a stronger wind.”

60. Heraclitus, Quaest. Hom. 1. 8, says specifically that 1-3, all that he quotes, are allegorical.

61. For a thorough and responsible exploitation of these fragments cf. Barner, Neuere Alkaios-Papyri. Among further hints of the life and politics of Alcaeus are: 69, on the contrast between the Lydians' treatment of “us” and Pittacus's (see pp. 61-62, above); 296a, on somebody's “thought” which was followed by disaster to the city and death, by the will of Zeus (Page's reconstruction, SA 299, is extremely speculative); 305, col. i, a commentary on at least two poems, one of which has the phrase “drawing from the salt sea,” which the commentator explains as meaning unremitting war, the other the phrase “let there not be war” (see p. 59, above); 306, fr. 9, a commentary on two poems, one suggesting a moment of success over Pittacus, the other containing a lemma with the name Zeus and referring to the oath broken by Pittacus. In the small and scattered fragments that probably contain political poetry there is recurrent mention of Pittacus, of Zeus, and of oaths, further testimony to the searing and lasting effect on Alcaeus's spirit, as well as on his political fortunes, of Pittacus's defection from the hetairoi. Among these scraps are 112 (but the elaborate restoration by Diels, which appears in Treu's edition, p. 38, is not to be taken seriously as historical evidence), 114, 75, 106, 67, 348, and (perhaps) 200.

62. Fr. 114, with its mention of the “revealing” of the plot against Myrsilus, may be a reference to Pittacus's betrayal of the hetairoi. If it is, the distinction between a period of defeat but spirited resistance and one of despair is weakened. Fr. 249, with its prudent advice about planning a voyage before entrusting one's ship to the waves, may be early, as I have suggested, or it may, as Barner thinks (Neuere Alkaios-Papyri 124), indicate an experienced and reflective mood and hence a later stage in Alcaeus's political life. To such a period could be accomodated the note of biding one's time that perhaps is to be seen in 130. 26-27, 70. 10-11, and possibly the reconciliatory suggestions of 305. 14-21.

63. On the question of which is allegory see Page SA 194-96. Page decides, uncertainly, that the ship is the real subject, even though the explanation, in the commentary, that “sand” in the poem signifies impurity seems to suggest that the ship is the allegory. Page thinks that even “if the ship is the real subject” Alcaeus “may still try to relate ‘sand’ to the allegorical subject.” I do not see why Alcaeus would talk about sand in an allegorical description of an aging courtesan. See further on this topic Koniaris, op. cit.

64. The allegory of Fr. 119 (cf. above, n. 30), intractable though it is, gives clear further evidence of Alcaeus's extensive and complex use of this mode of expression.

65. Cf. Gennaro Perrotta, “Alceo,” A & R 3. 4 (1936) 221-41, on allegory, especially 229-31; “Non è una figura rettorica composta a freddo, dove ogni elemento è simbolo di qualche cosa, dove a ogni simbolo corrisponde la cosa simboleggiata. Non è un enimma, insomme, que abbia bisogno di una spiegazione. … È un' immagine che parla alla fantasia del poeta … Poichè nei poeti, sopratutto nei grandi poeti antichi, non domina la logica, domina la fantasia” (230).

66. Page, SA 189.

67. The manuscripts of Athenaeus have in line 2 αιτα, which is probably corrupt, though some editors defend it as a vocative. Cf. SA 307. I suggest οὔατα as the likeliest word in the context. There are Homeric antecedents for the use of this word, “ears,” for “handles.” The probability of decorated handles on cylices in Mytilene at this period may be doubted, but it is not a far-fetched idea; and Alcaeus may be in exile. Being an unfamiliar form, οὔατα would be easily miscopied and corrupted in late antiquity.

68. See Page, SA 308, for an excellent note on the ancient Greek mixtures of wine and water. Two of water to one of wine was usual. In the phrase giving the proportion of water to wine, the amount of water is usually put first.

69. For a description of the game and references to ancient sources see Page, SA 314.

70. For discussion of what themes may be touched on see Barner, Neuere Alkaios-Papyri 99-102.

71. See above, pp. 64-65.

72. So Page, SA 301. As often, the crucial left margin is missing, and thus the possibility of a coronis; there is no extra space, but neither is there before line 1, where the coronis confirms what sense and style would suggest, the beginning of a poem.

73. I follow Page's text in SA; the restorations are by various editors.

74. Barner (11-12) instances this poem, with others, to exemplify the prominence of the inescapable power of Zeus in the thought of Alcaeus. There is support elsewhere for this view; but in this poem Zeus is mythologically appropriate for the story of Sisyphus, and what the poem illustrates more strikingly is the typical archaic resignation to the power of deity. Moreover, the son of Cronus may in this context be Hades, not Zeus.

75. Odes 1. 10; the scholiast Porphyrio is our informant about the Alcaic model.

76. Page thinks otherwise, SA 255: “These are conventional formulas, which none needs to borrow from another.” Yet Horace's ode to Hermes has a very different opening. Had Alcaeus not wanted to reflect the Homeric tradition he could have avoided the traditional phrases.

77. Orat. 14.

78. On the cletic hymn generally, see the discussion of Sappho, Fr. 1, in ch. 4.

79. I follow Treu's text, Alkaios 24.

80. As Page points out, SA 267.

81. The hymns too were probably short poems. The hymn to the Dioscuri was, according to the indications of the papyrus, of twenty-four lines; the lengths of other hymns are unknown. Horace's ode to Hermes, a short poem, is some slight evidence that its model was short. Himerius's paraphrase could, as Page observes, SA 246, be of quite a short poem. Edmonds, in Lyra Graeca, gets it all into a composition of twenty-four lines.

82. I follow the supplements printed by Page, SA 278-79.

83. Thus there is ring composition. But the verbal echo in Page's text, Ὤλεσε (3), ἀπώλοντ' (15) is only conjectural, Ὤλεσε being a restoration.

84. Page's supplements (SA 275) are followed. The only supplements that make a substantial conjecture about meaning are, a) to take θυ̑μοs as subject of πει̑θ' (line 9) (though the word θυ̑μοs is certain its ending is missing; it may be object, and something else, possibly Aphrodite, subject); and b) the introduction of Aphrodite in lines 9-10; there is probably a reference to “the child of Zeus and …,” but the mother is uncertain; it may, e.g., be Leda (so some editors).

85. The word is probably ἐπτόαισε; cf. Sappho 31. 6.

86. Page, SA 280-81, suggests specifically that 42, with its attack on Helen, may reflect Stesichorus.

87. This feature of archaic literary style has been convincingly described and illustrated by Hermann Fränkel, “Eine Stileigenheit der Frühgriechischen Literatur.”

88. Reinhold Merkelbach, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 1 (1967) 81-95. The poem has been further studied in the light of the new papyrus by Hugh Lloyd-Jones, “The Cologne Fragment of Alcaeus,” GRBS 9 (1968) 125-39, and is Fr. 138 in Page, Lyrica Graeca Selecta, Oxford 1968.

89. '′Uρραδον (ωυρραδον = ὦ '′Uρραδον) is not an acceptable patronymic for Pittacus, yet it is hard to believe that it is not connected with him. The patronymic '′Uρραοs is attested by Fr. 129. 13, '′Uρραον. The statement by Dionysius Thrax (Grammatici Graeci 3. 221) that there are three types of patronymics, those in -δηs, those in -ιων, and a special Lesbian form in -διοs, as an example of which Dionysius gives ‘Uρράδιοs, both provides a second form of patronymic for Pittacus and excludes the papyrus form, which could, if vocative, be only a masculine in -ων or a neuter. Lloyd-Jones (135-36) reasonably suggests that the form in the papyrus is a mistake for ὠυρράδιον, in “some such phrase as 'Uρράδιον γένεθλον.” The papyrus indicates that the ω and the υ are separate syllables; this would of course create a metrical problem, but since there is obviously synizesis the papyrus indication must be wrong. Voigt, SetA, adopts Snell's suggestion, ὦ '′Uρρα (vocative of Hyrrhas) δον-.

    In spite of the imperfections of assuming that the letters are some form of address to Pittacus there seems to be nothing else that can reasonably be done with them. No other known word is probable, and the resemblances to other references to Pittacus cannot be ignored.

90. Lloyd-Jones observes (136) that the letters κελητο in the line after ωυρραδον are reminiscent of the passage in the Odyssey (5. 371) in which Odysseus, shipwrecked by Poseidon, bestrides a plank, “as if riding a race horse” (κέληθ' ὡs ἵρρον). It is more likely that the shipwrecked Ajax, in the myth, is in a similar situation than that the κέληs here has a connection with Pittacus. Does the poet then return to the myth after mentioning Pittacus? Or has he after all never left the myth?

91. As is inevitable in so fragmentary a text, there is much that is in doubt. I have reproduced, for the most part, the text of Page, LGS. Lines 25-31 are obelized in the papyrus; probably 24 was too, since it begins the stanza which 25-27 continue. Page suggests that what this signifies is not that the lines are spurious but that they are out of place, and that 32-39 ought to have preceded them.

92. It is possible that Poseidon comes into the story in the fragmentary lines of the second column. The agency of Athena in the incident of the storm is reminiscent of the brief mention of the general troubles of the returning Achaeans in Odyssey 5. 108-9.

93. This survey of Alcaeus's poetry has given attention to most but not all of the principal fragments. One conspicuous omission is 357, an eight-line (or sixteen-line if we follow Page in dividing the long lines into two metrical units each) fragment, which may be a complete poem except for an opening line, describing weapons and armor, piece by piece, as they stand in the hall, ready for use in “the task,” no doubt the task of civil strife. Its contents are analyzed at length by Page, SA 209-23. As Barner, Neuere Alkaios-Papyri 52-62, points out, Fr. 179, col. ii appears to be another description of weapons.

Abbreviations

Note: Ancient authors and works are usually abbreviated in accordance with the practice of Liddell-Scott-Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon; see pp. xvi-xlvi of that work.

AFC: Anales de Filologia Clasica

AJA: American Journal of Archaeology

AJP: American Journal of Philology

ALG: See Diehl.

A & R: Atene e Roma

Barner, Neuere Alkaios-Papyri: Wilfried Barner, Neuere Alkaios-Papyri aus Oxyrhynchos. Spudasmata, Bd. 14. Hildesheim 1967.

BCH: Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique

Bergk, PLG (or PLG⁴): Poetae Lyrici Graeci, edited by Theodor Bergk. 4th ed., Leipzig 1878-82. Unless another edition is specified, the fourth is cited.

Bowra, GLP (or GLP²): C. M. Bowra, Greek Lyric Poetry from Alcman to Simonides. 2d ed., Oxford 1961.

Campbell, GLPS: Greek Lyric Poetry, a Selection, edited by David A. Campbell. London and New York 1967.

CJ: Classical Journal

C & M: Classica et Mediaevalia

CP: Classical Philology

CQ: Classical Quarterly

CW: Classical World

Diehl (or D), ALG: Anthologia Lyrica Graeca, edited by Ernst Diehl. Leipzig 1924-52. Fascicles 1, Poetae Elegiaci (1949), 2, Theognis et al. (1950), and 3, Iamborum Scriptores (1952), are cited in the 3d edition, completed after Diehl's death by Rudolf Beutler. Fascicle 4, Poetae Melici: Monodi (1935), is cited in the second edition, fascicle 5, Poetae Melici: Chori (1924), in the first.

Edmonds, Elegy and Iambus: Elegy and Iambus, Greek Elegiac and Iambic Poets, edited and translated by J. M. Edmonds. 2 vols. Loeb Classical Library. London and New York 1931.

Edmonds, Lyra Graeca: Lyra Graeca, Greek Lyric Poets from Eumelus to Timotheus excepting Pindar, edited and translated by J. M. Edmonds. 3 vols. Loeb Classical Library. London and New York 1922-27.

Färber: Hans Färber, Die Lyrik in der Kunsttheorie der Antike. Munich 1936.

Fränkel, DuP: Hermann Fränkel, Dichtung und Philosophie des frühen Griechentums. Philological Monographs, published by the American Philological Association, Vol. 13. New York 1951. 2d ed. revised, Munich 1962.

Fränkel, “Eine Stileigenheit”: Hermann Fränkel, “Eine Stileigenheit der frühgriechischen Literature,” Wege und Formen frühgriechischen Denkens (2d ed., Munich 1960) 40-96.

Friedländer-Hoffleit: Paul Friedländer and Herbert B. Hoffleit, Epigrammata. Berkeley and Los Angeles 1948.

Gentili, Anacreon: Anacreon, edited by Bruno Gentili. Rome 1958.

Gerber, Euterpe: Douglas E. Gerber, Euterpe: An Anthology of Early Greek Lyric, Elegiac, and Iambic Poetry. Amsterdam 1970.

GRBS: Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies

Hamm: Eva Maria Hamm, Grammatik zu Sappho und Alkaios. Berlin 1957.

HTR: Harvard Theological Review

IG: Inscriptiones Graecae. Berlin 1873-1939. Editio minor 1913-40.

Jaeger, Paideia: Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, translated by Gilbert Highet. 2d ed., New York 1945.

JHS: Journal of Hellenic Studies

Lasserre, Les Épodes: François Lasserre, Les Épodes d'Archiloque. Paris 1950.

Lasserre-Bonnard: Archiloque, Fragments, edited by François Lasserre, translated by André Bonnard. Collection Budé. Paris 1958.

Lobel, Alkaiou Melê: Alkaiou Melê, the Fragments of the Lyrical Poems of Alcaeus, edited by Edgar Lobel. Oxford 1927.

Lobel, Sapphous Melê: Sapphous Melê, the Fragments of the Lyrical Poems of Sappho, edited by Edgar Lobel. Oxford 1925.

LP or Lobel-Page: Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta, edited by Edgar Lobel and Denys Page. Oxford 1955.

MH: Museum Helveticum

OCD: The Oxford Classical Dictionary. 2d ed., Oxford 1970.

Ox. Pap.: The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, edited by Bernard P. Grenfell and others. London 1898-1971.

Page, LGS: Lyrica Graeca Selecta, edited by D. L. Page. Oxford 1968.

Page, PMG: Poetae Melici Graeci, edited by D. L. Page. Oxford 1962.

Page, SA: Denys Page, Sappho and Alcaeus. Oxford 1955.

PCPS: Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society

Powell, Collectanea Alexandrina: Collectanea Alexandrina, Reliquiae minores Poetarum Graecorum Aetatis Ptolemaicae, edited by J. U. Powell. Oxford 1925.

POxy: Individual papyri in the volumes of Ox. Pap., q.v.

PP: La Parola del Passato

PQ: Philological Quarterly

RA: Revue Archéologique

RBPH: Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Histoire

RE: Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, edited by A. Pauly, G. Wissowa, W. Kroll, and Karl Mittelhaus. Stuttgart 1894-1968.

REA: Revue des Études Anciennes

REG: Revue des Études Grecques

RFIC: Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica

RhM: Rheinisches Museum

SCO: Studi Classici e Orientali

SIFC: Studi Italiana di Filologia Classica

SO: Symbolae Osloenses

TAPA: Transactions of the American Philological Association

Treu, Alkaios: Alkaios, Griechisch und Deutsch, edited and translated by Max Treu. Munich 1952.

Treu, Archilochos: Archilochos, Griechisch und Deutsch, edited and translated by Max Treu. Munich 1959.

Treu, Sappho: Sappho, Griechisch und Deutsch, edited and translated by Max Treu. 2d ed., Munich 1958.

Treu, Von Homer zur Lyrik: Max Treu, Von Homer zur Lyrik. Zetemata, Heft 12. Munich 1955.

Voigt, SetA: Sappho et Alcaeus, edited by Eva-Maria Voigt. Amsterdam 1971.

Wilamowitz, SuS: Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Sappho und Simonides. Berlin 1913.

Wilamowitz, Textgeschichte: Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Die Textgeschichte der Griechischen Lyriker. Berlin 1900.

WS: Wiener Studien