Bacchylides
Proper noun
Meaning
Bacchylides
An Ancient Greek name, particularly borne by a 5th century Ancient Greek lyric poet.
Examples
Bacchylides celebrated such victories by Theseus in one of his dithyrambs, sung in the form of a dialogue between chorus and chorus-leader (poem 18).
Campbell, p. 414 As a composer of choral lyrics, Bacchylides was probably responsible also for the performance, involving him in frequent travel to venues where musicians and choirs awaited instruction.
Bacchylides prefers to observe the gentler play of shadow and sadness over the sensuous surface of his brilliant world.
Bacchylides had become, almost overnight, among the best represented poets of the canonic nine, with about half as many extant verses as Pindar, adding about a hundred new words to Greek lexicons.
Most modern scholars however treat Bacchylides as an exact contemporary of Pindar, placing his birth around 518 BC.
Ode 5 Bacchylides has often been compared unflatteringly with Pindar, as for example by the French critic, Henri Weil : "There is no doubt that he fails of the elevation, and also of the depth, of Pindar.