Editing Simonides of Ceos (section)

===Biographical themes===
Traditional accounts of the poet's life embody a variety of themes.

====Miraculous escapes====
As mentioned above, both Cicero and Quintilian are sources for the story that Scopas, the Thassalian nobleman, refused to pay Simonides in full for a victory ode that featured too many decorative references to the mythical twins, Castor and Pollux. According to the rest of the story, Simonides was celebrating the same victory with Scopas and his relatives at a banquet when he received word that two young men were waiting outside to see him. When he got outside, however, he discovered firstly that the two young men were nowhere to be found and, secondly, that the dining hall was collapsing behind him. Scopas and a number of his relatives were killed. Apparently the two young men were the twins and they had rewarded the poet's interest in them by thus saving his life. Simonides later benefited from the tragedy by deriving a system of mnemonics from it (see [[Simonides#The inventor|The inventor]]). Quintilian dismisses the story as a fiction because "the poet nowhere mentions the affair, although he was not in the least likely to keep silent on a matter which brought him such glory&nbsp;..."<ref>{{cite book |author=Quintilian |chapter=''Inst''. 11.2.11–16 |translator=Campbell, D. |title=Greek Lyric III |page=379}}</ref> This however was not the only miraculous escape that his piety afforded him.

There are two epigrams in the [[Palatine Anthology]], both attributed to Simonides and both dedicated to a drowned man whose corpse the poet and some companions are said to have found and buried on an island. The first is an epitaph in which the dead man is imagined to invoke blessings on those who had buried the body, and the second records the poet's gratitude to the drowned man for having saved his own life – Simonides had been warned by his ghost not to set sail from the island with his companions, who all subsequently drowned.<ref>''A.P.'' 7.7 and 7.516</ref><ref>Cicero ''de Div.'' 1.27.56; cited by D. Campbell in ''Greek Lyric III'', page&nbsp;589</ref>

====The inventor====
During the excavation of the rubble of Scopas's dining hall, Simonides was called upon to identify each guest killed. Their bodies had been crushed beyond recognition but he completed the gruesome task by correlating their identities to their positions (''loci'' in [[Latin language|Latin]]) at the table before his departure. He later drew on this experience to develop the 'memory theatre' or '[[memory palace]]', a system for [[mnemonic]]s widely used in [[orality|oral]] societies until the [[Renaissance]].<ref>[[Francis A. Yates]]. 'The Art of Memory', University of Chicago Press, 1966, p. 2</ref> According to Cicero, Themistocles wasn't much impressed with the poet's invention: "I would rather a technique of forgetting, for I remember what I would rather not remember and cannot forget what I would rather forget."<ref>Cicero ''de Fin.'' 2.104, cited by D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', Loeb Classical Library (1991), page 351</ref> 

The [[Suda]] credits Simonides with inventing "the third note of the lyre" (which is known to be wrong since the lyre had seven strings from the 7th&nbsp;century BC), and four letters of the Greek alphabet.<ref>Suda Σ&nbsp;439, cited, translated and annotated by D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', page 330.</ref> Whatever the validity of such claims, a creative and original turn of mind is demonstrated in his poetry as he likely invented the genre of the victory ode<ref>D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric Poetry'', Bristol Classical Press (1982), page 379</ref> and he gave persuasive expression to a new set of ethical standards (see [[Simonides#Ethics|Ethics]]).

====The miser====
In his play ''[[Peace (play)|Peace]]'', [[Aristophanes]] imagined that the tragic poet [[Sophocles]] had turned into Simonides: "He may be old and decayed, but these days, if you paid him enough, he'd go to sea in a sieve."<ref>Aristophanes, ''[[Peace (play)|Peace]]'' 695&nbsp;[[wikt:ff.|ff.]], translated by A.H. Sommerstein, ''Aristophanes: The Birds and Other Plays'', Penguin Books (1978), page 121</ref> A [[Scholion|scholiast]], commenting on the passage, wrote: "Simonides seems to have been the first to introduce money-grabbing into his songs and to write a song for pay" and, as proof of it, quoted a passage from one of Pindar's odes ("For then the Muse was not yet fond of profit nor mercenary"), which he interpreted as covert criticism of Simonides. The same scholiast related a popular story that the poet kept two boxes, one empty and the other full – the empty one being where he kept favours, the full one being where he kept his money.<ref>For scholiast see D.A. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', page 349</ref><ref>for Pindar's ode, see ''Isthmian'' 2, antistrophe&nbsp;1</ref> According to [[Athenaeus]], when Simonides was at Hieron's court in [[Syracuse, Sicily|Syracuse]], he used to sell most of the daily provisions that he received from the tyrant, justifying himself thus: "So that all may see Hieron's magnificence and my moderation."<ref>Athenaeus 14.656de, cited by D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', Loeb Classical Library (1991), page 349</ref> [[Aristotle]] reported that the wife of Hieron once asked Simonides whether it was better to be wealthy or wise, to which he apparently replied: "Wealthy; for I see the wise spending their days at the doors of the wealthy."<ref>Aristotle ''Rhet.'' 16 Feb, 1391a, cited by D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', Loeb Classical Library (1991), page 365</ref>

According to an anecdote recorded on a papyrus, dating to around 250&nbsp;BC, Hieron once asked the poet if everything grows old: "Yes," Simonides answered, "all except money-making; and kind deeds age most quickly of all."<ref>''Hibeh Papyrus'' 17, cited by D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', Loeb Classical Library (1991), page 365</ref> He once rejected a small fee to compose a victory ode for the winner of a mule race (it was not a prestigious event) but, according to Aristotle, changed his mind when the fee was increased, resulting in this magniloquent opening: "Greetings, daughters of storm-footed steeds!"<ref>Aristotle ''Rhet.'' 3 February 1405b, cited by D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', Loeb Classical Library (1991), page 383</ref> In a quote recorded by [[Plutarch]], he once complained that old age had robbed him of every pleasure but making money.<ref>Plutarch ''an Seni'' 768b, cited by D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', Loeb Classical Library (1991), page 365</ref>

All these amusing anecdotes might simply reflect the fact that he was the first poet to charge fees for his services – generosity is glimpsed in his payment for an inscription on a friend's epitaph, as recorded by [[Herodotus]].<ref>David Campbell, ''Greek Lyric Poetry'', Bristol Classical Press (1982), page 379, citing ''Herodotus'' 7.228.3–4</ref> Herodotus also mentions an earlier poet [[Arion]], who had amassed a fortune on a visit to Italy and Sicily, so maybe Simonides was not the first professional poet, as claimed by the Greeks themselves.<ref>Hdt. 1.24.1, cited by C.M. Bowra, ''Pindar'', Oxford University Press (reprint 2000), p.&nbsp;355</ref>

====The sage and wit====
[[File:Lyric-poetry-Walker-Highsmith.jpeg|thumb|390px|''Lyric Poetry'', painted by [[Henry Oliver Walker]] (Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington D.C.).<br>"''Simonides calls painting silent poetry and poetry painting that speaks''" — [[Plutarch]].]]
[[Plato]], in ''[[The Republic (Plato)|The Republic]]'', numbered Simonides with [[Bias of Priene|Bias]] and [[Pittacus of Mytilene|Pittacus]] among the [[Seven Sages of Greece|wise and blessed]], even putting into the mouth of [[Socrates]] the words "it is not easy to disbelieve Simonides, for he is a wise man and divinely inspired," but in his dialogue ''[[Protagoras (dialogue)|Protagoras]]'', Plato numbered Simonides with [[Homer]] and [[Hesiod]] as precursors of the [[sophist]].<ref>Plato ''Resp.'' i 331de and 335e, and ''Prot.'' 316d, cited by D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', Loeb Classical Library (1991), pages 357, 497</ref> A number of apocryphal sayings were attributed to him.

[[Michael Psellos]] accredited him with "the word is the image of the thing."<ref>Michael Psellos, ''On the Working of Demons'', cited by D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', Loeb Classical Library (1991), page 363</ref> Plutarch commended "the saying of Simonides, that he had often felt sorry after speaking but never after keeping silent"<ref>Plutarch, ''de garr.'' 514f-515a, cited by D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', Loeb Classical Library (1991), page 367</ref> and observed that "Simonides calls painting silent poetry and poetry painting that speaks"<ref>Plutarch, ''De gloria Atheniensium'' 3.346f, cited by D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', Loeb Classical Library (1991), page 363</ref> (later paraphrased by the Latin poet [[Horace]] as [[ut pictura poesis]]).

[[Diogenes Laërtius]], after quoting a famous epigram by [[Cleobulus#Works|Cleobulus]] (one of ancient Greece's 'seven sages') in which a maiden sculptured on a tomb is imagined to proclaim her eternal vigilance, quotes Simonides commenting on it in a poem of his own: "Stone is broken even by mortal hands. That was the judgement of a fool."<ref>Diogenes Laërtius, ''Lives of the Philosophers'', cited by D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', Loeb Classical Library (1991), page 465</ref> His rationalist view of the cosmos is evinced also in Plutarch's letter of consolation to Apollonius: "according to Simonides a thousand or ten thousand years are an indeterminable point, or rather the tiniest part of a point."<ref>Plutarch, ''consol. Apoll.'' 17, cited by D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', Loeb Classical Library (1991), page 501</ref>

Cicero related how, when Hieron of Syracuse asked him to define god, Simonides continually postponed his reply, "because the longer I deliberate, the more obscure the matter seems to me."<ref>{{cite book |author=Cicero |author-link=Cicero |title=De Natura Deorum |trans-title=On the Nature of the Gods |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Natura_Deorum |publisher=Academica |translator=Rackham, Harris |page=59 |year=1933 |orig-year=45 BC |id=1.22.60 }} [https://archive.org/stream/denaturadeorumac00ciceuoft#page/58/mode/2up Alt URL]</ref> [[Stobaeus]] recorded this reply to a man who had confided in Simonides some unflattering things he had heard said about him: "Please stop slandering me with your ears!".<ref>Stobaeus, ''Ecl.'' 3.2.41, cited by D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', Loeb Classical Library (1991), page 367</ref>