constitutional position was ill-defined, and
who was perhaps all the more exigent of deference on that account, may have
found the genial Ionian a more agreeable courtier than Pindar, an
aristocrat of the Boeoto-Aeolic type, not unmindful of "his fathers the
Aegidae," and rather prone to link the praises of his patron with a lofty
intimation of his own claims (see, _e.g._, _Olymp._ i. _ad fin._). But,
whatever may have been the true bearing of Pindar's occasional innuendoes,
it is at any rate pleasant to find that in the extant work of Bacchylides
there is not the faintest semblance of hostile allusion to any rival. Nay,
one might almost imagine a compliment to Pindar, when, in mentioning
Hesiod, he calls him [Greek: Boiotos aner].

Plutarch (_de Exilio_, p. 605 c) names Bacchylides in a list of writers,
who after they had been banished from their native cities, were active and
successful in literature. It was Peloponnesus that afforded a new home to
the exiled poet. The passage gives no clue to date or circumstance; but it
implies that Peloponnesus was the region where the poet's genius ripened
and where he did the work which established his fame. This points to a
residence of considerable length; and it may be noted that some of the
poems illustrate their author's intimate knowledge of Peloponnesus. Thus in
Ode viii., for Automedes of Phlius, he draws on the legends connected with
the Phliasian river Asopus. In Ode x., starting from the Argive legend of
Proetus and Acrisius, he tells how the Arcadian cult of Artemis [Greek:
Hemera] was founded. In one of his dithyrambs (xix.) he treated the legend
of Idas (a Messenian hero) and Marpessa in the form of a _hymenaeus_ sung
by maidens of Sparta.

The Alexandrian scholars, who drew up select lists of the best writers in
each kind, included Bacchylides in their "canon" of the nine lyric poets,
along with Alcman, Sappho, Alcaeus, Stesichorus, Ibycus, Anacreon,
Simonides and Pindar. The Alexandrian grammarian Didymus (_circ._ 30 B.C.)
wrote a commentary on the epinikian odes of Bacchylides. Horace, a poet in
some respects of kindred genius, was a student of his works, and imitated
him (according to Porphyrion) in _Odes_, i. 15, where Nereus predicts the
destruction of Troy. Quotations from Bacchylides, or references to him,
occur in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Strabo, Plutarch, Stobaeus, Athenaeus,
Aulus Gellius, Zenobius, Hephaestion, Clement of Alexandria, and various
gramm