Bacchylides

c. 518 BCE–c. 451 BCE · Ceos

Bacchylides (c. 518 - c. 451 BCE) was a Greek lyric poet from the island of Ceos, a nephew of the poet Simonides and a contemporary and rival of Pindar. Like Pindar he composed victory odes for athletic champions, as well as choral songs on mythological themes. His poetry was largely lost until a papyrus discovered in Egypt in the late nineteenth century restored a substantial body of his work, allowing him to be read and appreciated again.

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CeosCyclades

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About Ceos

Ceos (modern Kea) is an island of the Cyclades in the western Aegean, near the coast of Attica. It was the birthplace of the lyric poet Bacchylides and of his uncle, the poet Simonides; the sophist Prodicus was likewise a native of the island.

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The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Bacchylides’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.