Much of Bacchylides's poetry was commissioned by proud and ambitious aristocrats, a dominant force in Greek political and cultural life in the 6th and early part of the 5th centuries, yet such patrons were gradually losing influence in an increasingly democratic Greek world. The kind of lofty and stately poetry that celebrated the achievements of these archaic aristocrats was within the reach of 'The Cean nightingale', yet he seems to have been more at home in verses of a humbler and lighter strain, even venturing on folksiness and humour.
Lyric poetry was still a vigorous art-form and its genres were already fully developed when Bacchylides started out on his career. From the time of the Peloponnesian War, around the end of his life, the art-form was in decline, as exemplified by the inferior dithyrambs of Philoxenos of Cythera. Meanwhile tragedy, as developed by Athenian dramatists of the calibre of Aeschylus and Sophocles, had begun to emerge as the leading poetic genre, borrowing the literary dialect, the metres and poetic devices of lyric poetry in general and the dithyramb in particular (Aristotle
Poetics IV 1449a). The debt however was mutual and Bacchylides borrowed from tragedy for some of his effects - thus Ode 16, with its myth of Deianeira, seems to assume audience knowledge of Sophocles's play,
Women of Trachis, and Ode 18 echoes three plays - Aeschylus's
Persians and
Suppliants and Sophocles's
Oedipus Rex. His vocabulary shows the influence of Aeschylus with several words being common to both poets and found nowhere else. The use of gripping and exciting narrative and the immediacy gained from the frequent use of direct speech are thought to be among Bacchylides's best qualities, influencing later poets such as Horace (who imitated him, according to Pomponius Porphyrion, in
Carmen I. 15, where Nereus predicts the destruction of Troy). These narrative qualities were modelled largely on the work of Stesichorus, whose lyrical treatment of heroic myth influenced, for instance, Ode 5. Whereas however Stesichorus developed graphic images in his poetry that subsequently became established in vase painting, Bacchylides merely employed images already current in his own day.
Simonides, the uncle of Bacchylides, was another strong influence on his poetry, as for example in his metrical range, mostly dactylo-epitrite in form, with some Aeolic rhythms and a few iambics. The surviving poems in fact are not metrically difficult, with the exception of two odes (Odes XV and XVI, Jebb). He shared Simonides's approach to vocabulary, employing a very mild form of the traditional, literary Doric dialect, with some Aeolic words and some traditional epithets borrowed from epic. Like Simonides, he followed the lyric tradition of coining compound adjectives - a tradition in which the poet was expected to be both innovative and tasteful - but the results are thought by some modern scholars to be uneven. Many of his epithets however serve a thematic and not just a decorative function, as for instance in Ode 3, where the "bronze-walled court" and "well-built halls" of Croesus (Ode 3.30-31 and 3.46) contrast architecturally with the "wooden house" of his funeral pyre (Ode 3.49), in an effect that aims at pathos and which underscores the moral of the ode.
Bacchylides is renowned for his use of picturesque detail, giving life and colour to descriptions with small but skilful touches, often demonstrating a keen sense of beauty or splendour in external nature: a radiance, "as of fire," streams from the forms of the Nereids (XVI. 103 if. Jebb); an athlete shines out among his fellows like "the bright moon of the mid-month night" among the stars (VIII. 27 if.); the sudden gleam of hope which comes to the Trojans by the withdrawal of Achilles is like a ray of sunshine "from beneath the edge of a storm-cloud" (XII - 105 if.); the shades of the departed, as seen by Heracles on the banks of the Cocytus, resemble countless leaves fluttering in the wind on "the gleaming headlands of Ida" (V. 65 if ). Imagery is employed sparingly but often with impressive and beautiful results, such as in the simile of the eagle in Ode 5 below.
Ode 5
Bacchylides has often been compared unflatteringly with Pindar, as for example by the French critic, Henri Weil:
"There is no doubt that he fails of the elevation, and also of the depth, of Pindar. The soaring wing was refused him, and he should never have compared himself, as he does somewhere, to an eagle."The image of the eagle occurs in Ode 5, which was composed for Hieron of Syracuse in celebration of his Olympic victory with the race-horse Pherenicus in 476 BC. Pindar's
Olympian Ode 1 celebrates the same race and the two poems allow for some interesting comparisons. Bacchylides's Ode 5 includes, in addition to a brief reference to the victory itself, a long mythical episode on a related theme, and a gnomic or philosophical reflection - elements that occur also in Pindar's ode and that seem typical of the victory ode genre. Whereas however Pindar's ode focuses on the myth of Pelops and Tantalus and demonstrates a stern moral about the need for moderation in personal conduct (a reflection on Hieron's political excesses), Bacchylides's ode focuses on the myths of Meleager and Hercules, demonstrating the moral that nobody is fortunate or happy in all things (possibly a reflection on Hieron's chronic illness). This difference in moral posturing was typical of the two poets, with Bacchylides adopting a quieter, simpler and less forceful manner than Pindar. Frederic G. Kenyon, who restored the papyrus poems, took an unsympathetic view of Bacchylides's treatment of myth in general:
Bacchylides however might be better understood as an heir to Stesichorus, being more concerned with story-telling per se, than as a rival of Pindar. But irrespective of any scruples about his treatment of myth, Bacchylides is thought to demonstrate in Ode 5 some of his finest work and the description of the eagle's flight, near the beginning of the poem, has been called by one modern scholar
"...the most impressive passage in his extant poetry."
- ::::::::...Quickly
- :::cutting the depth of air
- ::on high with tawny wings
- :::the eagle, messenger of Zeus
- ::who thunders in wide lordship,
- :::is bold, relying on his mighty
- ::strength, while other birds
- :::cower, shrill-voiced, in fear.
- ::The great earth's mountain peaks do not hold him back,
- :::nor the tireless sea's
- ::rough-tossing waves, but in
- :::the limitless expanse
- ::he guides his fine sleek plumage
- :::along the West Wind's breezes,
- :::manifest to men's sight.
- ::So now for me too countless paths extend in all directions
- :::by which to praise your [i.e. Hieron's] prowess...(Ode 5.16-33)
Bacchylides's image of the poet as an eagle winging across the sea was not original - Pindar had already used it earlier (
Nemean Odes 5.20-21). In fact, in the same year that both poets celebrated Pherenicus's Olympic victory, Pindar also composed an ode for Theron of Acragas (
Olympian 2), in which he likens himself to an eagle confronted with chattering ravens - possibly a reference to Bacchylides and his uncle. It is possible in that case that Bacchylides's image of himself as an eagle in Ode 5 was a retort to Pindar. Moreover Bacchylides's line
"So now for me too countless paths extend in all directions" has a close resemblance to lines in one of Pindar's Isthmian Odes (1.1-2),
"A thousand ways...open on every side widespread before me" but, as the date of Pindar's Isthmian Ode is uncertain, it is not clear in this case who was imitating whom. According to Kenyon, Pindar's idionsyncratic genius entitles him to the benefit of a doubt in all such cases:
"...if there be actual imitation at all, it is fairly safe to conclude that it is on the part of Bacchylides." In fact one modern scholar has observed in Bacchylides a general tendency towards imitation, sometimes approaching the level of quotation: in this case, the eagle simile in Ode 5 may be thought to imitate a passage in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (375-83), and the countless leaves fluttering in the wind on "the gleaming headlands of Ida", mentioned later in the ode, recall a passage in Iliad (6.146-9). A tendency to imitate other poets is not peculiar to Bacchylides, however - it was common in ancient poetry, as for example in a poem by Alcaeus (fragment 347), which virtually quotes a passage from Hesiod (
Works and Days 582-8).
Pindar's Olympian Ode 1 and Bacchylides's Ode 5 differ also in their description of the race - while Pindar's reference to Pherenicus is slight and general ("...speeding / by Alpheus' bank, / His lovely limbs ungoaded on the course...":
Olympian I.20-21), Bacchylides describes the running of the winner more vividly and in rather more detail - a difference that is characteristic of the two poets:
- ::When Pherenicos with his auburn mane
- :::ran like the wind
- ::beside the eddies of broad Alpheios,
- :::Eos, with her arms all golden, saw his victory,
- ::and so too at most holy Pytho.
- :::Calling the earth to witness, I declare
- ::that never yet has any horse outstripped him
- :::in competition, sprinkling him with dust
- ::as he rushed forward to the goal.
- :::For like the North Wind's blast,
- ::keeping the man who steers him safe,
- :::he hurtles onward, bringing to Hieron,
- ::that generous host, victory with its fresh applause.(Ode 5.37-49)
Ultimately, however, Bacchylides and Pindar share many of the same goals and techniques - the difference is largely one of temperament: