The Nine Lyric Poets of

Ancient
Greece
Greek and Roman Literature
Introduction
Even today Ancient Greek poets such as Homer are widely read
and remain influential. The Greeks especially revered lyric poetry,
which was often performed accompanied by music or sung by
choruses. Nine lyric poets became seen as canonical in Hellenistic
Greece and these are known as the Nine Lyric Poets of Greece (or the
Melian poets).

These poets lived in different areas of Ancient Greece, at different

times; Hellenistic scholars grouped them together based on their
brilliance, innovations, and influence. The choice of there being
specifically nine canonical poets was to reflect the Nine Muses.
The Nine Lyric Poets of Ancient Greece
01 Alcman of Sparta (7th century BC)
02 Alcaeus of Mytilene (620-580 BC)
03 Anacreon (582-485 BC)
04 Bacchylides (518-451 BC)
05 Pindar (518-443 BC)
06 Ibycus (550-500 BC)
07 Sappho (620-550 BC?)
08 Simonides (556-448 BC)
09 Stesichorus (630-555 BC)
Alcman of Sparta
(7th century BC)
Alcman may have originally been a slave
and was possibly of non-Greek origin. He
became famous for his choral songs. Six books
of his songs survived to Classical times but
today we only have fragments of his many
works.  His style was lighthearted and he
wrote many poems on nature, were widely
imitated by later writers such as Vergil. Alcman
was so esteemed in Sparta that he was
reputedly buried next to Helen of Troy.
Alcaeus of Mytilene
(620-580 BC)
Alcaeus was born in an aristocratic family,
and he became involved in many of the civil
conflicts of Mytilene (Lesbos). He was later
exiled and became a mercenary. Warfare was a
common theme for Alcaeus. In one poem he
relates how he threw away his shield to save
his life. He developed the Alcaic stanza which
was very popular. The poet was allegedly a
lover of Sappho’s, but this may only be a latter
invention. His works have been lost to us, but
his verse influenced Horace among others.
Anacreon
(582-485 BC)
Anacreon was probably born in Teos in
Asia Minor. He fought against the Persians
during their conquest of the Ionian cities. He
fled and found shelter with the tyrant of
Samos. Later he moved to Athens where he
was received with great honors by Hipparchus.
In Athens he became friendly with many of the
leading cultural figures of the day. When
Hipparchus was assassinated, he appears to
have moved to either Teos or Thessaly. His
verse celebrated love, wine and pleasure, but
most of his work has been lost to posterity.
Bacchylides
(518-451 BC)
Bacchlyides was born on the island of
Keos and was reputedly the nephew of
Siminodes, one of the greatest Greek poets.
His career was often overshadowed by his
uncle. Bacchylides composed choral odes and
dithyrambs for the Dionysian festival
celebrated in Athens, and he also wrote love
poetry, as well as odes celebrating military
victories and Olympic champions. His work
was not popular when he was alive but grew in
popularity after his death.
 Pindar
(518-443 BC)
Pindar is regarded as one of the greatest of all
Greek literary figures. He was born not far from Thebes
and claimed aristocratic birth. According to one story he
was stung by a bee on his lips while young, and this
allowed him to sing honey-like songs. He studied poetry
in Athens, and later fled the Persians when they
occupied Thebes and Boeotia. Pindar was famous in his
day for his choral odes. Many of his surviving poems are
celebrations of Olympic victors. He was perhaps the
first poet to reflect on the nature of poetry and the
role of the poet in society. Only a fraction of his work
has survived, but his Victory Odes have influenced
figures such as Goethe and Nietzsche.
 Ibycus
(550-500 BC)
Ibycus was born in Rhegium. We know little else
about his early life. It appears that he travelled widely and
spent some time at the court of the tyrant of Samos,
Polycrates. After the death of the tyrant he returned to his
wanderings. Ibycus was famous for his love poems to his
younger male lovers. One report of Ibycus’ death says that
he was captured by bandits, and as they were about to kill
him, he pointed to cranes that were flying overhead, and
told the robbers that they would avenge him. After the
bandits killed Ibycus, the cranes were seen overhead again,
and the bandits laughed when they recalled that Ibycus
believed that they would avenge him. Passers-by heard the
bandits boasting and informed the local rulers, who them
apprehended and executed the murderers of the old poet,
as he had foretold.
Sappho
(620-550 BC)
Sappho is often seen as one of the greatest
female poets who has ever lived. In fact, 
Plato called her the ‘10th Muse’. She was born on the
island of Lesbos and was famous for her love poetry.
The poetess is celebrated for her verses on her love
for other women, because of their language and
eroticism. Sappho later married and had a daughter.
Like her reputed lover Alcaeus, she was exiled from
Lesbos because of political in-fighting. One legend has
her committing suicide for love of the handsome
Phaon. Much of what we know about Sappho comes
from unreliable sources and we only have a small
number of poems and fragments, of her work. The
word lesbian is a reference to Sappho, as she was a
native of Lesbos, but in the Ancient World she was
often portrayed as a promiscuous heterosexual
Simonides
(556-448 BC)
Simonides was born on the island of Ceos. He
lived in Athens at the court of Hipparchus and
became acquainted with many leading poets. After
the assassination of the tyrant, he went to live in
Thessaly. During the 2nd Persian invasion of Greece,
he became well known for his commemorative
verse such as his lines on 
the Spartans who fell at Thermopylae. Later
Simonides lived in Sicily and helped to negotiate a
peace treaty between two local tyrants. The poet
was often depicted as a miser and was also
credited with inventing new letters of the alphabet
and a system of mnemonics.  Simonides defined a
poem as a ‘speaking painting and painting as silent
poetry’.
Stesichorus
(630-555 BC)
Stesichorus was born in Metauros,
Magna Graecia (Southern Italy). He was
famous for his choral and narrative poems.
Stesichorus was a member of the
aristocracy, and later in life he was forced
into exile and lived in Himera, in Sicily.
Many of his works were based on myth
and they were performed by choruses and
were very popular with the great Greek
dramatists. In total, he wrote 26 books of
poetry, most of which are now lost.
 Rome
• Among the major extant Roman poets of the classical period, only 
Catullus (nos. 11, 17, 30, 34, 51, 61) and Horace (four books
of Odes) wrote lyric poetry, which however was no longer meant to
be sung, but read or recited.
• What remained were the forms, the lyric meters of the Greeks
adapted to Latin. Catullus was influenced by both archaic
and Hellenistic Greek verse and belonged to a group of Roman
poets called the Neoteroi ("newer poets"), who spurned 
epic poetry, following the lead of Callimachus, and instead
composed brief highly polished poems in various thematic and
metrical genres.
• The Roman love elegy of Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid (Amores
, Heroides), with its focus on the poetic "I" and the expression of
personal feeling, may be the thematic ancestor of much medieval,
renaissance, Romantic and modern lyric poetry, but these works
were composed in elegiac couplets, and so were not lyric poetry in
the ancient sense.[6]
The Historians
Greek and Roman Literature
Herodotus
“The Father of History”. Herodotus is the author The
Histories, a giant work that is perhaps most famous
for its account of the Greco-Persian Wars that
occurred in the early 5th century BC. This being said,
much of Herodotus’ work is dedicated to events
before these Wars, with a significant portion of The
Histories focusing on events that occurred between
550 BC and the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC.
Herodotus’ stated purpose of his work was, above
all, to explain why the Greeks and ‘barbarians’ (non-
Hellenes) went to war in the early 5th century BC.
Herodotus’ Histories seems to have been his life
work, composed during the mid/late 5th century BC.
Thucydides
The follow on historian from Herodotus. In the
late 5th century BC, at roughly the same time that
Herodotus’ histories was published, the next
great war in the Central Mediterranean occurred.
This time, however, it was not a conflict that
could be framed as Greeks vs barbarians
(although Greeks did fight on the Persian side
during the Persian Wars), but one that was
Greeks vs Greeks.
This was the Peloponnesian War, fought primarily
between Athens and Sparta but also a whole host
of other ancient powers stretching from Sicily to
the Black Sea.
One of our main historians for this war is the
contemporary Thucydides.
Thucydides
Thucydides was an aristocratic Athenian, who
witnessed this war first-hand and indeed played
an active role in it as a general. In 424 however,
Thucydides was exiled by the Athenians after
failing to carry out an assignment as commander
in the northeast. It was during his time in exile
that it seems Thucydides wrote his history of the
Peloponnesian War. Both Thucydides and
Herodotus relied heavily on eyewitness accounts
and oral tradition when creating their histories.
Thucydides’ history breaks off in 411 BC, 7 years
before the Peloponnesian War reached its end.
Xenophon
Xenophon is our other main ancient Greek
historian that covered the Peloponnesian War. It
is Xenophon’s narrative in his Hellenica that
begins at the point where Thucydides’ narrative
cuts off in Book VIII and continues the story of
the War down to its conclusion in 404 BC.
Xenophon himself was an Athenian, writing in the
4th century BC. Perhaps his most famous work is
the Anabasis, in which Xenophon records the
March of the Ten Thousand, a large army of
Greek mercenaries that accompanied Cyrus the
Younger on his failed attempt to oust his elder
brother Artaxerxes from the Persian throne.
Xenophon
Stranded deep in Persian heartlands following
Cyrus’ defeat at the Battle of Cunaxa,
Xenophon’s Anabasis tells the tale of how
Xenophon and the mercenaries made their way
back to the Mediterranean through a series of
hostile lands.
Xenophon is also the author of several other
works, including a biography about the Spartan
King Agesilaus II, philosophical works, and short
treatise of horsemanship and hunting.
Polybius
Polybius was born into a high-ranking family
in the Achaean League. He was alive, and
active, when the Romans were cementing
their authority over Greece and Western
Asia Minor. He was taken to Rome as a
hostage, after the Romans defeated King
Perseus of Macedon at the Battle of Pydna
 in 168 BC. It was at Rome that Polybius on
good terms with two prominent military
figures of the time: Lucius Paullus and
Scipio Aemilianus.
Polybius
Polybius accompanied Scipio to Carthage in 146
BC, and witnessed the city’s destruction.
His Histories cover the period between the
outbreak of the First Punic War (264 BC) and the
Sacks of Carthage and Corinth (146 BC), covering
in depth the Punic Wars as well as Rome’s
conflicts against the great Hellenistic powers
further east.
Polybius states that the purpose of his Histories is
to explain just how Rome was able to conquer so
many prestigious powers in the Mediterranean in
such a short amount of time and achieve
dominance throughout the Mediterranean.
Sallust
The earliest-known Roman historian with
surviving works. Sallust wrote a history of the
Jugurthine War, a war fought between Rome and
the Numidian king Jugurtha from 111 to 105 BC.
It was in this war that both Gaius Marius and
Lucius Cornelius Sulla achieved notable
successes.
Sallust is also the author of The Conspiracy of
Catiline, a failed plot by a group of Roman citizens
lead by Lucius Catilina to gain power in Rome.
He became a close supporter of Julius Caesar.
 Livy
Livy was a Roman historian writing under the
Principate of the Emperor Augustus. Ab Urbe
Conditia, Livy’s Magnum Opus and sole surviving
work, tracked the history of Rome from its early
history, shrouded in legend, down to the death of
Augustus.
Livy hailed from Patavium, in what was Cisalpine
Gaul. Although he was close to the Emperor
Augustus, Livy probably returned to Patavium
after Augustus’ death and remained there until his
own death a few years later.
  Diodorus Siculus
The author of one of the largest works of antiquity.
Diodorus Siculus was active in the 1st century BC. A
Greek from the Siciliote-Greek city of Agyrium,
Diodorus was writing under the Roman Republic and
spent a lot of his life in Rome. The Library, his
historical work, is a history of the ancient
Mediterranean stretching from mythological times
to the mid 1st century BC.
Originally, Diodorus’ work consisted of 40 books, but
only 15 of these survive in full. Some of the most
notable chapters include Books 16, 17 and 18,
where Diodorus tracks the rise of Macedon under
Philip II, the conquests of Alexander the Great, 
the campaigns of his Successors and also the rise of
Agathocles in Syracuse.
Tacitus
Considered one of the greatest Roman historians,
Tacitus was active during the late 1st and early 2nd
centuries AD. As a young Roman aristocrat, he
experienced the standard political career and held a
series of administrative and military postings.
Although neither of them survive in full, Tacitus’
central works were his Histories and his Annals. 
The Annals (that survive) cover the reigns of Tiberius,
Claudius and Nero, meanwhile the Histories cover
the years from 69 AD to 96 AD.
Alongside his Annals and Histories, Tacitus is also the
author of two smaller works. One is the Agricola, a
biography of Tacitus’ father-in-law Agricola who
defeated the Caledonians at the Battle of Mons
Graupius. The other is the Germania.
Suetonius
Suetonius was a Roman equestrian, born in c.70
AD. He enjoyed the patronage of Pliny the
Younger, who had witnessed the Vesuvius
eruption, and went on to serve as imperial
secretary ‘for studies’ in the early 2nd century AD.
Many of his works are now lost, although two
notable ones that survive are his On Illustrious
Men (which survives partly) and Lives of the
Twelve Caesars, his greatest work.
Suetonius’ Lives of the Twelve Caesars include
biographies about the first 12 Emperors of Rome,
included within which is a biography of 
Julius Caesar. It has survived largely intact.
Arrian
Arrian of Nicomedia was a Greek writer active during
the 2nd century AD. He was a prominent figure in the
Roman Empire, who achieved the highest positions both
in Rome (as consul) and in the provinces (for instance as
provincial governor of Cappadocia).
Arrian’s most famous work is his Anabasis, a detailed
account of Alexander the Great’s campaigns in the East.
He used a series of contemporary Alexander historians,
most notably the Successor Ptolemy.
Alongside the Anabasis, Arrian is also the author of
several other works including the Indica, which follows
the voyage of Alexander’s admiral Nearchus back from
India to the Persian Gulf. Another work to mention is
Arrian’s Periplus of the Euxine Sea, a guidebook about
the lands that border the Black Sea.
Plutarch
Plutarch was a Greek historian writing during the
Roman Imperial Period. He hailed from
Chaeronea, a city in Boeotia that had witnessed
several grand-scale battles in its long history.
Plutarch’s greatest work was his Parallel Lives, a
series of 48 biographies about some of the most
important Greeks and Romans of antiquity.
These biographies are coupled, with Plutarch
making comparisons between several figures
including Cicero and Demosthenes, Julius Caesar
and Alexander the Great and Quintus Sertorius
and Eumenes.
Alongside his Parallel Lives, Plutarch also wrote a
series of other works including the Moralia.
Cassius Dio
Cassius Dio was a Roman statesman
/ historian who thrived under the
Severan dynasty. He is remembered
for his Roman History, a giant work
that covered more than a millennia
of history and myth stretching from
Aeneas to the beginning of the
Third Century Crisis.
The ANCIENT GREEK
AND ROMAN
PLAYWRIGHTS
Greek and Roman Literature
Aeschylus
(Greek, ca. 525 – ca. 456 BCE)
The father of tragedy, Aeschylus was
born in a small town outside of Athens
and worked in a vineyard during his
youth. One night in a dream, he was
visited by a vision of Dionysus (the god
of wine, partying, and theatre) and was
inspired to begin writing plays. He
began writing as soon as he woke, and
his first play, a tragedy, was performed
in 499 BCE when he was only 26 years
old.
Aeschylus
(Greek, ca. 525 – ca. 456 BCE)
Trivia: Aeschylus was killed by blunt
force trauma to the head — an eagle
has dropped a tortoise on
Aeschylus’s head, thinking the head
was a rock appropriate for opening
the turtle’s shell.
Popular Plays: Prometheus Bound, The
Persians, Seven Against Thebes, The
Suppliants, Agamemnon, The Libation
Bearers, and The Eumenides
Euripides
(Greek, ca. 480 – ca. 406 BCE)
Not much is concretely known about
Euripides, only that his father
wanted him to be an athlete, but
Euripides’ passion for playwriting
took hold. By the time the writer
had died in the solitude of a
Macedonian village at the age of 74,
he had written at least 92 plays.
Euripides
(Greek, ca. 480 – ca. 406 BCE)
Trivia: Euripides featured strong female
characters in his plays, so much so
that male audience members were
often shocked by the words or
actions of characters such as Medea
or the Trojan women.

Popular Plays: Medea, Hippolytus,

Electra, The Trojan
Women, and Bacchae
Aristophanes
(Greek, ca. 446 – ca. 386 BCE)
Aristophanes, the father of 
Old Comedy, was famous for calling
out political and societal figures for
their hypocrisy, extravagance, and
misdeeds through satirical plays.
Though not much is known about
his personal life, we do know that he
was a comic poet writing for
theatrical audiences.
Aristophanes
(Greek, ca. 446 – ca. 386 BCE)
Trivia: Though many artistic renderings
of Aristophanes depict him as
having a full head of hair, comedic
lines in his scripts indicate that he
may have been completely bald.

Popular Plays: The Wasps, Lysistrata,

The Frogs, Ecclesiazusae, The
Clouds, and The Birds
Sophocles
(Greek, ca. 406 – ca. 407 BCE)
Sophocles wrote 120 plays over the
course of his life, but, unfortunately,
only 7 have survived in completion.
Sophocles was the most celebrated
playwright in the dramatic
competitions of Athens for over 50
years. He competed in 30
competitions, won 18 of them, and
never earned anything below
second place.
Sophocles
(Greek, ca. 406 – ca. 407 BCE)
Trivia: Sophocles was the first
dramatist to introduce a second
character onstage (besides the
central figure and the chorus). This
allowed for more conflict between
characters and more dialogue.

Popular Plays: Ajax, Antigone, Oedipus

the King, Electra, Oedipus at Colonus,
Philoctetes, and The Women of
Trachis
Plautus
(Roman, ca. 254 – 184 BCE)
Though not much is known about
Plautus, we do know that he wrote
about 130 plays, with 20 of them
having survived. He studied Greek
drama in his spare time. Most of his
plays were adaptations of Greek
plays re-written for Roman
audiences.
Plautus
(Roman, ca. 254 – 184 BCE)
Trivia: Before he was a playwright, he
was stage-carpenter or scene-
shifter in his youth, which may have
inspired him to become a
playwright.

Popular Plays: Amphitryon, Persa,

Trinummus, Epidicus,
Casina, and Asinaria
Terence
(Roman/African, ca. 195 – ca. 159? BCE)
Terence’s life is mainly a mystery, but his
influence over Roman drama featured a
conversational style of dialogue which
was not commonly seen in other Roman
or Greek playwrights’ dramas. Terence
was brought to Rome from Africa as a
slave and was educated in the classics.
He was freed by his master, and after
writing a number of plays, took a boat to
Greece. It is presumed that Terence died
at sea, but all six plays he wrote have
survived.
Terence
(Roman/African, ca. 195 – ca. 159? BCE)

Trivia: Because his plays contained

clear language, his works were
heavily used in monasteries and
convents during the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance so that Scribes
could learn Latin.

Popular Plays: Andria, Hecrya, Heauton

Timorumenos, Phormino,
Eunchus, and Adelphoe
Seneca
(Roman, ca. 4 BC – AD 65)
Also known as Seneca the Younger,
this playwright was also a tutor and
later advisor to the Roman emperor
Nero (who was also kind of crazy).
His plays were read widely in
Elizabethan England, especially by
Shakespeare and his
contemporaries.
Seneca
(Roman, ca. 4 BC – AD 65)
Trivia: Nero forced Seneca to commit
suicide after Nero suspected Seneca
of being involved in a plot to
assassinate Nero. (A suspicion that
was never proved.)

Popular Plays: Thyestes, Hercules

Oetaeus, Octavia, Phaedra, Troades,
and Phoenissae
The Philosophers
Greek and Roman Literature
 Greek Philosophers
Philosophers – “lovers of wisdom”
Sophists – “workers of wisdom”
– Teachers

phileo = love
sophia = wisdom

If sophia = wisdom and moron = fool, then a sophomore is a “wise

fool.”
 Thales of Miletus
636-546 B.C.
● Earliest known philosopher
● Studied Egyptian and
Babylonian astronomy and
mathematics
● Believed that the universe
was controlled by fixed laws
● Basic element – water.
● Got rich with olive presses!
 Pythagoras
582-500 B.C.
● The universe could only be
understood thru numbers.
● Sun, moon, and earth revolved
around a central fire.
● Each planet produces a tone!
● Famous for the Pythagorean
Theorem:

a +b =c
2 2 2
 c2
a2
b2

● Pythagorean Theorem: a2 + b2 = c2
 Protagoras
485 - 410 B.C.
● Most famous of the Sophists
● Believed that reason and knowledge
should be used to achieve a
comfortable, safe, and happy life.
● Teachings to equip citizens for life in
the polis:
1. Public speaking – oratory and rhetoric
2. Politics
3. Grammar – language
4. The art of being respectable

● Plato named one of his dialogues after

him.
 Hippocrates
460-377 B.C.
● Founded a school of medicine
● Rejected that sickness comes from the
gods
● Careful observations of symptoms
■ Acute
■ Chronic
● “Holistic” healing
■ Hygiene
■ Diet
■ Curative powers of nature
● The Hippocratic Oath
 Democritus
460 - 360 B.C.
● Developed the atomic theory.
● Taught that the universe was
formed out of chaos through
the joining of atoms of like
shape and size.
● Atoma = indivisible particles.
● “the laughing philosopher”
 Euclid
c.300 B.C.
● One of the most prominent
mathematicians
● Wrote The Elements
■ Widely used till about 1903.

■ 2nd only to the Bible in numbers of

translations, publications, and study

■ Greek – Arabic – Latin

● Said to Ptolemy: “There is No Royal
Road to geometry!”
 Archimedes
287 - 212 B.C.
● Greek mathematician –
Geometry
● War machines and other devices
● Theory of buoyancy - “Eureka!”
● Law of the lever
● Archimedean screw
 The Three Most Famous Philosophers

Socrates Plato Aristotle

 Socrates
469 - 399 B.C.
● Critic of the Sophists
● Encouraged students to think
● Left no writings – skeptical
● Dialectic method
■ Conversational
■ Based upon reason and logic

● Popular among the youth

● a “gadfly” in Athens
● Placed on trial for impiety and corrupting the
youth
● Was executed in 399 – drank poison hemlock
 Socrates
469 - 399 B.C.
“The
unexamined life
is not worth
living.” - Socrates -
 Socrates
469 - 399 B.C.
Socratic Method:
I. Admit ignorance.

II. Never rely on tradition.

III. Continuously question.

IV. Formulate your own opinions.

V. Test your opinions with others.

 Socrates
469 - 399 B.C.
● Socrates’ dialectic method was a
departure from earlier
philosophers.
● Earlier philosophers were
interested in the nature of the
universe and basic elements.
● Socrates’ approach was more
rigorous and was the forerunner
of logic.
● Most famous student: Plato
 Plato
427 - 347 B.C.
● Preserved and perpetuated the work of
Socrates
● Most important source of info on Socrates
● Founded the Academy
● Wrote dialogues
● Universal Forms was a recurring
theme
● The Republic – most important
dialogue
“Those things which are beautiful
are also difficult.”
 Aristotle
384 - 322 B.C.
● Most famous student of Plato
● Most famous teacher of
Alexander the Great
● Developed Logic as a field of
study
● Devised a complex system of
classification
● Used in biology
● Views on Government
 Aristotle
384 - 322 B.C.
● Views on Government
■ 3 Good Governments:
● Monarchy
● Aristocracy
● Democracy
■ 3 Bad Governments:
● Tyranny
● Oligarchy
● Mob Rule
 Aristotle
384 - 322 B.C.

● “All things in moderation”

● “Man is by nature a
political animal.”