(b Iulis [now Tzia], Keos; fl c470 bce). Greek lyric poet. He was a nephew of Simonides and contemporary of Pindar; there are many indications of intense rivalry between the two as composers of victory odes and dithyrambs. Unlike Pindar, Bacchylides had little to say of the power of music; his references are correct but conventional, rendered distinctive only by colourful adjectives. Thus in one of the many victory odes the champion has returned home to the triumphal accompaniment of auloi ‘that delight mortals’ and revel-songs ‘sweetly breathing’ (Edmonds, frag.40.72–3). In another, the sound of the phorminx and ‘clear-ringing’ choruses are alien to war (Edmonds, frag.41.12–15; liguklangēs is one of many Bacchylidean coinages). Two poems begin with references to the barbitos, ‘lyre with many strings’ (Edmonds, frags.70, 71); here the term appears to be used with precision.
F. Blass, ed.: Bacchylides: Carmina cum fragmentis (Leipzig, 1898, rev. 4/1912 by W. Suess, 5/1934 by B. Snell, 10/1970 by H. Maehler)
R.C. Jebb, ed. and trans.: Bacchylides: The Poems and Fragments (Cambridge, 1905/R)
J.M. Edmonds, ed. and trans.: Lyra graeca, iii (London and Cambridge, MA, 1927, 2/1928/R)
R. Fagles, ed. and trans.: Bacchylides: Complete Poems (New Haven, CT, 1961/R)
D.A. Campbell, ed.: Greek Lyric Poetry (London and New York, 1967, 2/1982)
D.A. Campbell, ed. and trans.: Greek Lyric, iv (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1992), 100–317
O. Crusius: ‘Bakchylides, §§2–3’, Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, ii/A (Stuttgart, 1898/R), 2793–801
A. Körte: ‘Bacchylidea’, Hermes, lxiii (1918), 113–47
A. Severyns: Bacchylide: essai biographique (Liège and Paris, 1933)
K. Preisendanz: ‘Bakchylides’, Der kleine Pauly, ed. K. Ziegler and W. Sontheimer, i (Stuttgart, 1964), 810–12
A.P. Burnett: The Art of Bacchylides (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1985)
WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN