Simonides KEOSSKY

Simonides KEOSSKY (ca. 556-468 BC), Greek lyric poet. A native of the island of CEOS, Simonides have been wandering in the Greek world. In particular, he enjoyed the hospitality of Hipparchus, the tyrant of Athens, until the death of the ruler in 514 BC. The last years of his life (after 476 BC), Simonides held in Sicily, mainly in the court of Hieron I of Syracuse, where there were also Pindar, Aeschylus, and other poets. Died Simonides in Akragante.

Under the name of Simonides reached about 100 epigrams (the authenticity of many highly dubious). Some of them - real inscriptions, tombstones or dedications, some are a funeral elegy, and a few - a parody or examples of technical ingenuity of the author. Best epigrams are devoted to Greco-Persian Wars. On the authority of Simonides reflected in the fact that it was him, Ionians, Spartans instructed to perpetuate the memory of their soldiers who died at Thermopylae. Simonides was known also as the author of choral lyric, from which only a few fragments have survived, he was the acknowledged master dithyramb and, apparently, contributed to the development epinikion (winning song). Triadic form of choral odes, so effectively used by Pindar, their emergence must Simonides. Idea of his dithyramb we can get the three severely affected papyrus and the poems Vakhilida.