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Updated: May 25, 2025
Alcaeus, the greatest poet of his day, and Charaxus, the brother of that Sappho whose odes it was our Solon's last wish to learn by heart, came here to Naukratis, which had already long been the flourishing centre of commercial communication between Egypt and the rest of the world.
In his sterner moods he gravitated to Latin, and wrought the noble iron of that language to effects that were, if anything, a trifle over-impressive. He found for his highest flights of contemplation a handy vehicle in Sanscrit. In hours of mere joy it was Greek poetry that flowed likeliest from his pen; and he had a special fondness for the metre of Alcaeus.
Sappho, who had derided her brother for marrying one beneath him, soon became an enthusiastic admirer of the beautiful widow and rivalled Alcaeus in passionate songs to her praise. After the death of the poetess, Rhodopis returned, with her little daughter, to Naukratis, where she was welcomed as a goddess.
One of the pieces most current was the following epigram: Naked and tombless see, O passer-by, The thirty thousand men of Thessaly, Slain by the Aetolians and the Latin band, That came with Titus from Italia's land: Alas for mighty Macedon! that day, Swift as a roe, king Philip fled away. This was composed by Alcaeus in mockery of Philip, exaggerating the number of the slain.
Mitford adopted the rather confused account of Herodotus, without taking the ordinary pains to ascertain dates, which to every one else the very names of Periander and Alcaeus would have suggested.
In another castle called Caenum, Pompey found and read with pleasure several secret writings of Mithridates, containing much that threw light on his character. For there were memoirs by which it appeared that besides others, he had made away with his son Ariarathes by poison, as also with Alcaeus the Sardian, for having robbed him of the first honors in a horse-race.
I doubt if ever she saw form of man Or maiden either whom, being beautiful, She hath not loved. When Alcaeus protests, "But not with passion!" she rejoins, All That breathes to her is passion, love itself All passionate.
Among the Ionic cities themselves Miletus and Ephesus were the most flourishing, Grecian literature took its rise in the AEolic and Ionic cities of Asia Minor. Homer was probably a native of Smyrna. Lyric poetry flourished in the island of Lesbos, where Sappho and Alcaeus were born. The Ionic cities were also the seats of the earliest schools of Grecian philosophy.
Alcaeus took an active part in the civil dissensions of his native state, and warmly espoused the cause of the aristocratical party, to which he belonged by birth. When the nobles were driven into exile, he endeavoured to cheer their spirits by a number of most animated odes, full of invectives against the popular party and its leaders.
Miletus, he tells us, was then the greatest of the cities, mistress of the sea; and certainly some of the most famous among her citizens, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Hecataeus and Thales, belong approximately to this epoch, as do equally famous names from other Asiatic Greek communities, such as Alcaeus and Sappho of Lesbos, Mimnermus of Smyrna or Colophon, Anacreon of Teos, and many more.
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