LIFE OF ALCAEUS

Hephaestion On Graphical Signs: The asterisk is
usually employed if the poem which follows is in
a different metre. This is more often the ease with
these composed in triads than with the mono-
strophic poems of Sappho, Anacreon, and Alcaeus.
The poems of Aleaeus are peculiar in this. that in
the Aristophanic edition the asterisk was used only
to mark a change of metre, but in the now current
edition of Aristarchus it marks a fresh poem what-
ever the metre.

Athenaeus Doclors αἱ Dinner: Having completed
my digression on ancient methods of mixing wine,
1 will resume my theme and consider what the lyric
poet Aleacus means by the phrase ‘Mix ere you
pour it one and two.’ Some authorities hold that
he does not refer to the proportion of wine to water
but, being a temperate man, would have us drink
first one ladleful of unmixed wine and then two, and
no more. This is the interpretation of Chamacleon
of Pontus, but he doves not realise how fond of the
bottle Alcaeus was.1

The Save [on the collabos|: The love of the
Sicilians fer this game is proved by the fact that
they went so far as to build special rooms to play it

in, as we are told by Dicaearchus in his tract On
Alcacus.*

Strabo Geography [on Lesbos]: the historian Hel-
lanieus, too, was a Lesbian. and Callias the com-
mentator on Sappho and Alcacus.®

1 of. fr. 164 2 ef. fr. 85 and Ath. 15. 666 b, 11. 460 f
3. οὗ ἢ". 89