B

Bacchylides, of Iulis on Ceos, lyric poet, c.520-450. Like his uncle simonides, Bacchylides was commissioned to write poems in honour of the victors in the major competitive festivals. Fourteen are known from a papyrus purchased in Egypt in 1896 (by a nice coincidence, the date of Baron de Coubertin’s first Olympics). Bacchylides’ patrons included hieron of Syracuse, for whom he wrote three poems (he may have stayed at his court in Syracuse), and competitors from Metapontum, Phlius and Thessaly as well as his native Ceos. Like simonides and his contemporary pindar, Bacchylides wrote many works in other genres: dithyrambs, hymns, paeans, maiden songs. That it is mostly his victory songs which have survived is not entirely coincidental: they were important to more Greeks than those who paid for them.