Editing Alcaeus (section)

===Poetic genres===
The works of Alcaeus are conventionally grouped according to five genres.
* '''Political songs''': Alcaeus often composed on a political theme, covering the power struggles on Lesbos with the passion and vigour of a partisan, cursing his opponents,<ref>fr. 129</ref> rejoicing in their deaths,<ref name="autogenerated1">fr. 332</ref> delivering blood-curdling homilies on the consequences of political inaction<ref>fr. S262</ref> and exhorting his comrades to heroic defiance, as in one of his 'ship of state' allegories.<ref>fr. 6</ref> Commenting on Alcaeus as a political poet, the scholar [[Dionysius of Halicarnassus]] once observed that "if you removed the meter you would find political rhetoric".<ref>''Imit. 422'', quoted by Campbell in ''G.L.P.'', p. 286</ref>
* '''Drinking songs''': According to the grammarian [[Athenaeus]], Alcaeus made every occasion an excuse for drinking and he has provided posterity several quotes in proof of it.<ref>Athenaeus 10.430c</ref> Alcaeus exhorts his friends to drink in celebration of a tyrant's death,<ref name="autogenerated1">fr. 332</ref> to drink away their sorrows,<ref>Frs. 335, 346</ref> to drink because life is short<ref>fr. 38A</ref> and along the lines ''in vino veritas'',<ref>fr. 333</ref> to drink through winter storms<ref>fr. 338</ref> and to drink through the heat of summer.<ref>fr. 347</ref> The latter poem in fact paraphrases verses from [[Hesiod]],<ref>Hesiod ''Op.'' 582–8</ref> re-casting them in Asclepiad meter and Aeolian dialect.
* '''Hymns''': Alcaeus sang about the gods in the spirit of the [[Homeric hymns]], to entertain his companions rather than to glorify the gods and in the same meters that he used for his 'secular' lyrics.<ref>David A. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric Poetry'', Bristol Classical Press (1982), p. 286</ref> There are for example fragments in 'Sapphic' meter praising the [[Dioscuri]],<ref>fr. 34a</ref> [[Hermes]]<ref>fr. 308c</ref> and the river [[Maritsa|Hebrus]]<ref>fr. 45</ref> (a river significant in Lesbian mythology since it was down its waters that the head of [[Orpheus]] was believed to have floated singing, eventually crossing the sea to Lesbos and ending up in a temple of Apollo, as a symbol of Lesbian supremacy in song).<ref>David A. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric Poetry'', Bristol Classical Press (1982), pp. 292–93</ref> According to [[Pomponius Porphyrion]], the hymn to Hermes was imitated by Horace in one of his own 'sapphic' odes (C.1.10: ''Mercuri, facunde nepos Atlantis'').<ref>David Campbell, 'Monody', in ''The Cambridge History of Classical Literature: Greek Literature'', P. Easterling and E. Kenney (eds), Cambridge University Press (1985), p. 213</ref>
* '''Love songs''': Almost all Alcaeus's amorous verses, mentioned with disapproval by Quintilian above, have vanished without trace. There is a brief reference to his love poetry in a passage by [[Cicero]].<ref>Cicero, ''Tusc. Disp.'' 4.71</ref> [[Horace]], who often wrote in imitation of Alcaeus, sketches in verse one of the Lesbian poet's favourite subjects – Lycus of the black hair and eyes (C.1.32.11–12: ''nigris oculis nigroque/crine decorum''). It is possible that Alcaeus wrote amorously about Sappho, as indicated in an earlier quote.<ref>fr. 384; however, Liberman (1999) reads "Aphro" (Ἄφροι; a diminutive of "Aphrodite"), instead of "Sappho".</ref>
* '''Miscellaneous''': Alcaeus wrote on such a wide variety of subjects and themes that contradictions in his character emerge. The grammarian Athenaeus quoted some verses about perfumed ointments to prove just how unwarlike Alcaeus could be<ref>fr. 362, Athenaeus 15.687d</ref> and he quoted his description of the armour adorning the walls of his house<ref>fr. 357</ref> as proof that he could be unusually warlike for a lyric poet.<ref>Athenaeus 14.627a</ref> Other examples of his readiness for both warlike and unwarlike subjects are lyrics celebrating his brother's heroic exploits as a Babylonian mercenary<ref>fr. 350</ref> and lyrics sung in a rare meter (Sapphic Ionic in minore) in the voice of a distressed girl,<ref>fr. 10B</ref> "Wretched me, who share in all ills!" – possibly imitated by Horace in an ode in the same meter (C.3.12: ''Miserarum est neque amori dare ludum neque dulci'').<ref name="literature214">David Campbell, 'Monody', in P. Easterling and E. Kenney (eds), ''The Cambridge History of Classical Literature: Greek Literature'', Cambridge University Press (1985), p. 214</ref> He also wrote Sapphic stanzas on Homeric themes but in un-Homeric style, comparing [[Helen of Troy]] unfavourably with [[Thetis]], the mother of [[Achilles]].<ref>fr. 42</ref>