During the centuries before the Persian Wars, the
Greeks produced a number of outstanding literary
figures whose works later inspired the more
famous Greek poets and playwrights.Among these
early figures of Greek literature was the poet Alcaeus.
Alcaeus was a native of the city of Mytilene,
which was on the island of Lesbos, off the coast of
modern-day Turkey in what was then known as
Ionia. During Alcaeus’s lifetime, the Greek islands
of Ionia were in a state of almost continuous disorder,
suffering invasion from outsiders, constant
infighting between city-states, and bitter internal
quarrels. Alcaeus involved himself in the political
disputes in Mytilene and was forced into exile as a
result.
Most of Alcaeus’s work has been lost, but some
survives.His poetry reflects the turmoil of the time
in which he lived. Editor Kenneth Atchity says of
him: “Extroverted and aggressive, better at hating
than loving, Alcaeus lived, drank hard, and wrote
primarily of wine, women, and war.” Poems such
as “To the Baseborn Tyrant” express his bitter hatred
toward the idea of tyranny and praise the
brave men who fight for honorable causes.He feels
only hostility toward those who betray their citystate,
since traitors had torn his own city apart.
Several surviving poems extol the beauty of
women, and many express Alcaeus’s favorite theme
of being happy in spite of troubled times. In “Winter
Evening,” after cursing the cold, the poet urges
men to nurture friendship and conviviality to keep
despair at bay:
Pile up the burning logs
and water the great flagons of red wine;
place feather pillows by your head, and
drink.
Let us not brood about hard times.
Alcaeus had a large influence on Greek and
Roman poets who came after him. The Roman
poet HORACE claimed Alcaeus as one of his great
models for metrical style (Alcaeus invented the Alcaic
meter) and poetic inspiration, as his Odes
demonstrate. The rhetorician QUINTILIAN approved
of Alcaeus in “his work where he assails tyrants; his
ethical value is also great; his style is concise, magnificent,
exact, very much like HOMER’s; but he
stoops to humor and love when better suited for
higher themes.”
An English Version of a Work by Alcaeus
Alkaiou Mele: The Fragments of the Lyrical Poems of
Alcaeus. Edited by Edgar Lobel. Oxford, U.K.: The
Clarendon Press, 1927.
A Work about Alcaeus
Martin, Hubert. Alcaeus. New York: Twayne Publishers,
1972.