The temples of Helen and Heracles lie the one near the tomb of Alcman, the other close to the wall. On the right of this plot is a monument to Alcman “whose poems were not made the less sweet because he used the tongue of Sparta,” a dialect not too euphonious.
The spring near one of them is called Dorceian after Dorceus, and the plot near another, Sebrian after Sebrus. : Behind the colonnade which runs beside the Grove of Planes there are shrines of Alcimus and Enarsphorus and, close by, one of Dorceus, and adjoining this again one of Sebrus, all of whom are said to have been sons of Hippocoön. : Mankind is liable to this disease when the body contains too much moisture, and several victims of it are recorded, notably the poet Alcman and Pherecydes the Syrian. These choruses are three in number, the youths in front, the old men on the right, and the men on the left and they dance naked, singing songs by Thaletas and Alcman and the paeans of the Spartan Dionysodotus. These garlands, he says, are worn in memory of the victory at Thyrea by the leaders of the choruses which dance on the festival of that victory, which coincides with the Gymnopaidiae or Feast of Naked Youths. : “Thyreateic" :– This, according to Sosibius in his tract on Sacrifices, is the name of a kind of garland at Sparta, made of palm-leaves, and known nowadays as psilinos. 611) : Flourished Alcman, according to some authorities. 2 And twin continents dispute whether he is of Lydia or Laconia for the mothers of a minstrel are many.Īlcman was the salve of Agesidas, but received his freedom because he was a man of parts. You shall know this for Alcman, striker pre-eminent of the Laconian lyre, one possessed of the nine Muses. The tomb you see is small, but it holds the bones of a great man. 2 :Īlexander of Aetolia : Ancient Sardis, abode of my fathers, had I been reared in you I should have been a maund-bearer unto Cybelè or beaten pretty tambours as one of her gilded eunuchs but instead my name is Alcman and my home Sparta, town of prize-tripods, and the lore I know is of the Muses of Helicon, who have made me a greater king even than Gyges son of Dasyclus.Īntipater of Thessalonica on Alcman : Judge not the man by the gravestone. For instance they summoned Terpander, Thales, Tyrtaeus, Nymphaeus of Cydonia, and Alcman. Yet if ever they required the aid o the Muses on occasion of general sickness of body or mind or any like public affliction, their custom was to send for foreigners, at the bidding of the Delphic oracle, to act as healers and purifiers. The Spartans, who bent was for bodily exercises and feats of arms, had no skill in music. 1 Being a Spartan, he uses the Doric dialect. He wrote six Books of lyric poems, and was the first to adopt the practice of not accompanying the hexameter with music. He was of an extremely amorous disposition and the inventor of love-poems, but by birth a slave. 631-625), when Ardys father of Alyattes was king of Lydia. A lyric poet, the son of Damas or, according to some authorities, of Titarus. EDMONDS ALCMAN, LIFEĪlcman :– A Laconian of Messoa, wrongly called by Crates a Lydian of Sardis. ALCMAN LYRA GRAECA I ALCMAN FRAGMENTS, TRANSLATED BY J.
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