d, she leaped down from the Leucadian rock, seems to have been
an invention of later times.

ANACREON was a native of the Ionian city of Teos. He spent part of his
life at Samos, under the patronage of Polycrates; and after the death
of this despot he went to Athens at the invitation of Hipparchus. The
universal tradition of antiquity represents Anacreon as a consummate
voluptuary; and his poems prove the truth of the tradition. His death
was worthy of his life, if we may believe the account that he was
choked by a grape-stone.

SIMONIDES, of the island of Ceos, was born B.C. 556, and reached a
great age. He lived many years at Athens, both at the court of
Hipparchus, together with Anacreon, and subsequently under the
democracy during the Persian wars. The struggles of Greece for her
independence furnished him with a noble subject for his muse. He
carried away the prize from AEschylus with an elegy upon the warriors
who had fallen at the battle of Marathon. Subsequently we find him
celebrating the heroes of Thermopylae, Artemisium, Salamis, and
Plataea. He was upwards of 80 when his long poetical career at Athens
was closed with the victory which he gained with the dithyrambic chorus
in B.C. 477, making the 56th prize that he had carried off. Shortly
after this event he repaired to Syracuse at the invitation of Hiero.
Here he spent the remaining ten years of his life, not only
entertaining Hiero with his poetry, but instructing him by his wisdom;
for Simonides was a philosopher as well as a poet, and is reckoned
amongst the sophists.

PINDAR, though the contemporary of Simonides, was considerably his
junior: He was born either at, or in the neighbourhood of, Thebes in
Boeotia, about the year 522 B.C. Later writers tell us that his future
glory as a poet was miraculously foreshadowed by a swarm of bees which
rested upon his lips while he was asleep, and that this miracle first
led him to compose poetry. He commenced his professional career at an
early age, and soon acquired so great a reputation, that he was
employed by various states and princes of the Hellenic race to compose
choral songs. He was courted especially by Alexander, king of
Macedonia, and by Hiero, despot of Syracuse. The praises which he
bestowed upon Alexander are said to have been the chief reason which
led his descendant, Alexander the Great, to spare the house of the poet
when he destroyed the rest of Thebes. The estimation in which Pi