Editing Simonides of Ceos (section)

====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>