ALCAEUS

Suidas Lexicon: Dracon of Stratoniceia: A eram-
marian, writer of books . . . On the Poems of Pindar,
On the Metres of Sappho, On the Poems of Alcaeus.+

The Same: Horapollo: . .. a grammarian who
first taught at Alexandria and elsewhere in Egypt,
and afterwards at Constantinople under Theodosius.
He wrote . . . treatises On Sophocles, On Aleaeus,

and On Homer.

Herm. 1911. 420, 421: Homolle Mon. Grees i. 7.
p. 49."

THE POEMS OF ALCAEUS
Book 1

HYMNS

1 To Apotto

Himerius Crafions: I will tell you likewise one of Aleaeus”
tales, a tale which he sang in lyric verse when he wrote a
pavan to Apollo. And I tell it you not according to the
Lesbian verse—for Iam not of poetic humour—but changing
the actual metre of the lyric verse into prose. When Apollo
was born, Zeus furnished him forth with a golden headband
and a lyre, and giving him moreover a chariot to drive—and
they were swans that drew it—, would have him go to Delphi
and the spring of Castaly, thence to deliver justice and right
in oracles to Greece. Nevertheless once he was mounted in
the chariot, Apollo bade his swans fly to the land of the
Hyperboreans. Now when the Delphians heard of it, they
set a paean toa tune and held dances of youths about the

A. quoted; the date of the inscr. is not given, but it looks
as if fr. 1 was to the Delian and not the Pythian Apollo

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