a celebrated lyric poet of Greece, and Simonides, one of the greatest masters of the elegy and the epigram which the world has yet known, was born at Julis, in the island of Ceos, about 566 B.C. He belonged to a family of lyric poets. His paternal grandfather had been a poet; his nephew Bacchylides was a poet; and his grandson, Simonides the younger, was a poet. His attention accordingly was early directed to impassioned verse as a vehicle for communicating his thoughts, and time fully ripened those powers which he had bestowed on lyrics from his earliest years. Simonides was originally chorus-teacher in the town of Carthusa in Ceos, and lived, while he held that office, at the chorus-house, near the temple of Apollo. He restrained early the lively genius of his island race by the cultivation of philosophy, and the practice of moderation. So much was this the case, that the moderation (H. Συμπαθεία ἐνδοξοποιοῦσα) of the poet became proverbial. Many apothegms and wise sayings are likewise attributed to him, which show that he must have been a man much given to reflection. The evasive answer ascribed to him, when King Hiero of Syracuse asked, "What is God?" he must share with the philosopher Thales, as it has been recorded of both of them. He has been accused of avarice by nearly all his biographers, founded partly on the very insecure evidence of tradition, and partly on the alleged enormity which he committed in selling the products of the divine gift within him for a few pieces of base gold. All our writers at the present day do likewise, but then the sin of Simonides consisted in anticipating the present generation in the matter of literary bargain-making by upwards of twenty centuries. One would think he might be excused, at this date, for having got so far ahead of his contemporaries. Simonides, no doubt, committed an unheard-of act in asking moneyed remuneration for his effusions. But it is one of the prerogatives of genius to be guilty more or less of some outrage upon the current practices of men. From all accounts left of the poet Simonides, he must have been a keen, far-seeing man, with no great amount of what is called character, with a very noble disposition, and a delicacy that sometimes bordered upon weakness. He was in the highest sense a wise, and in some instances a very politic man. He seems likewise to have possessed the rare gift, granted but to few, of being capable of looking to the present life and its wants, while he sang, as very few have ever sung, the glories of victories and the sad wail of dirges, the honours of heroes and the lustre which hung upon an Olympic crown. To possess this eminently practical faculty, in combination with such high poetic powers, is granted only to such poets as Shakspeare, Molière, and Goethe.

The greater portion of the later years of the poet was passed in Sicily, at the court of Hiero of Syracuse. He was in friendly intercourse with this monarch, and what astonishes us more, with his professed opponent, Thero of Agrigentum. The poet was the friend of Themistocles, and of the Spartan general, Pausanias. He gained a high reputation among the Greeks during the time of the Persian war. He wrote a splendid lyric on the heroes who had fallen at Thermopylae, two grand odes on the sea-fight of Artemision, and the triumphant naval engagement of Salamis, and he poured out all his sublime pathos on those who had fallen at Marathon. A Thermopylean epigram from his pen has been preserved. "Stranger, tell the Lacedemonians that we lie here in obedience to their laws." He was, on the whole, perhaps the most prolific lyrist which Greece has known. He wrote hymns and prayers, psalms and hyporchemes, dithyrambs and parthenia for public festivals. He composed matchless dirges and noble songs of victory for private individuals. It was in the dirge that Simonides excelled most. If Pindar could outstrip him in a lofty flight, he could not equal him in grace where less wing... SIMPLICIUS was required. Simonides yielded himself to the genuine feelings of human nature, while Pindar, mounted grandly upon the pinions of his imagination, could outshine the tempest in wild grandeur, or lend a plaintive grace to the sighing of the hollow evening wind. Simonides polished his verses with infinite care, while Pindar flung them from him in a somewhat careless style, but completely saturated with his genius. Pindar was the lyrist of majesty, Simonides of pathos. The one could chant a triumph to the armies of the world; the other could sing a threnode which would make the nations weep. Simonides died in his ninety-eighth year, A.D. 468. Very little of his poetry now remains, if we except the Lament of Danae. To Simonides has been ascribed the invention of certain of the Greek characters; but this is not well authenticated. His fragments will be found collected by Schneider in his Simonidis Cei Carminis Reliquiae, 1835, 8vo.