ALCMAN

Lire

Suidas Lexicon: Aleman :—A Laconian of Messoa,
wrongly called by Crates a Lydian of Sardis. A
lyric “poet, the son of Damas or, according to some
authorities, of Titarus. He flourished in “the 37th
Olympiad (8... 631-625), when Ardys father of
Alyattes was king of Lydia. He was of an extremely
amorous disposition and the inventor of love-poems,
but by birth a slave. He wrote six Books of lyric
poems, and was the first to adopt the practice of not
accompanying the hexameter with music.} Being a
Spartan, he uses the Doric dialect.

Aelian Ilistorical Miscellanies [see above on Ter-
pander, p. 27].

Velleius Paterculus Roman History: The Spartan
claim to Aleman is false.

Palatine Anthology: Alexander of Aetolia:

Ancient Sardis, abode of my fathers, had I been
reared in you 1 should have been a maund-bearer
unto Cybelé or beaten pretty tambours as one of her
gilded eunuchs ; but instead my name is Aleman and
my home Sparta, town of prize-tripods, and the
lore I know is of the Muses of Helicon, who have
made me a greater king even than Gyges son of
Dascylus.

The Same: Antipater of Thessalonica on Aleman :

lor: ‘of singing to the lyre or flute songs whose (chief)
metre was not hexameter ’?

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