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Bacchylides: Complete Poems
Discovered in an Egyptian papyrus in 1896, the lyrics of Bacchylides are one of the great treasures of Greek poetry. These exquisite choral odes celebrate victories in the Pythian, Isthmian, Nemean, and Olympic games and chronicle the classical gods and heroes, eloquently revealing to us the spirit and world of Golden Age Greece. The poems are brilliantly translated by Robert Fagles, recently hailed by Garry Wills in the New Yorker as "the best living translator of ancient Greek drama, lyric poetry, and epic into modern English." First published in 1961, the book now includes a new translator's note by Fagles.
"[Fagles] has produced a work which is at once a faithful translation of Bacchylides in the fullest sense and something which stands and lives in its own right as a work of art."―Sir Maurice Bowra, from the Foreword
"Fagles has created . . . a musical and craftsmanly series of verses. As a translator, Fagles has the merits of . . . keeping the lilting rhythms of Bacchylides alive in one's ear . . . and unearthing metaphors behind faded Greek words, of splitting the strings of compound adjectives into pungent clauses which lose nothing in color but make coordinated English."―Emily Vermeule, American Journal of Philology
"The beauty, richness, and classic quality of Mr. Fagles's unrhymed verse make this translation a creative work and a valuable contribution to English letters."―Rae Dalven, Poetry
"[Fagles] has produced a work which is at once a faithful translation of Bacchylides in the fullest sense and something which stands and lives in its own right as a work of art."―Sir Maurice Bowra, from the Foreword
"Fagles has created . . . a musical and craftsmanly series of verses. As a translator, Fagles has the merits of . . . keeping the lilting rhythms of Bacchylides alive in one's ear . . . and unearthing metaphors behind faded Greek words, of splitting the strings of compound adjectives into pungent clauses which lose nothing in color but make coordinated English."―Emily Vermeule, American Journal of Philology
"The beauty, richness, and classic quality of Mr. Fagles's unrhymed verse make this translation a creative work and a valuable contribution to English letters."―Rae Dalven, Poetry
152 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 501
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September 22, 2022Bazı fragmanlar o kadar eksik ki bunların edebi bir zevkten ziyade araştırma yapmak için okunması icap eder.
December 5, 2018
To blame Bacchylides for not being Pindar is as childish a judgement as to condemn Vermeer for falling short of Rembrandt, or Marvell for missing the grandeur of Milton. —Robert Fagles, Introduction
Like the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles, Bacchylides' poems are the proper voice of Greek civilization. —Robert Fagles, Introduction
__________
Where songs compete for the Muses' joy,
Wrap Cean Bacchylides round with opening wreaths.
__________
Despite agreeing with Fagles' remarks above, the comparison with Pindar is one that cannot be avoided.
Pindar and Bacchylides were contemporaries, born near the end of the 6th Century BC. As far as Odes are concerned, where Pindar's are dense and shrouded in allegory, Bacchylides' are a little closer to Earth; a nice assessment is one made by Adam. M. Parry in a note:
. . . a beautiful midway point between Homer and Pindar.
Personally, I enjoyed his Dithyrambs and Fragments much more than his Odes, and it's a shame that so much of his work has been lost. In what does remain, there are some good pieces scattered throughout, and he should not be overlooked as part of the Greek Lyric corpus.
__________
Men must breed twin minds:
Consider tomorrow's sun your last—
And think you'll live out fifty years,
Each one steeped in wealth.
But strike your stand in piety:
There all the gain and gladness lies. (EO 3)
. . . you look on the luck
Of a moment calmly,
Knowing the life
Of man is brief. (EO 3)
None walk earth
Born blessed in all. (EO 5)
None hold joy
Through his length of time. (DP 54)
__________
Truth alone can fire my theme . . . (EO 8)
My skill and invincible truth
Brings out the blaze of man . . . ( Fr. 14)
Clio Queen of Song,
Steer my mind
In the straits of time,
Now as ever before. (EO 12)
They will resound your splendor of truth,
And resound too the rolling finesse
Of the nightingale of Ceos. (EO 3)
You will know my masterwork
From the Muse with violet wreath,
You of any who tread the earth
Will judge it rightly. (EO 5)
. . . perpetual glory
Thanks to the eloquent Muses,
Thanks to deathless song. (EO 13)
__________
All ends on the drift of time. (D 18)
Mine's the road
That leaps time . . . ( D 19)
Time the Victor of All
Will flourish grand achievement. (EO 13)
__________
The Muse is with me,
Her breath runs honey,
And here's her flower . . . (Fr. 20C)
Crown that flames
In opening roses. (DP 53a)
The lust of Cypris . . . (D 26)
The gifts of the Muses . . . (DP55)
. . . seized his heart
Obsessed him with wild thoughts . . . (EO 11)
__________
This is the goal . . . (EO 13)
Revel in luxury . . . (DP Edmonds 53)
Unrocked in realms of peace. (EO 5)
To probe the march of years. (EO 9)
In the lores of mind and art. (EO 10)
__________
EO=Epinician Ode
D=Dithyramb
Fr=Fragment
DP=Doubtful Pieces
July 10, 2017
Pindaros’un çağdaşı Bacchylides’in tüm zafer şarkılarını, şiirlerini ve fragmanlarını okuyucuya sunması sebebiyle akademik açıdan oldukça değerli bir eser olan "Bütün Şiirleri ve Fragmanları / Complete Poems and Fragments", keyifsiz bir okuma sunmasına rağmen kitabın başındaki zengin giriş kısmıyla Antik Yunan edebiyatı hakkında güzel bilgiler edinmenizi sağlıyor. Pindaros gibi süslü ve mecazi bir dil yerine daha sade bir dil tercih eden Bacchylides’in neden Pindaros’un hep gerisinde kaldığını okurken daha iyi anlıyorsunuz. Yine de çoğu fragmanı ve şiiri eksikler barındırdığı için kitap bir yerden sonra okuyucuya pek de bir şey ifade etmiyor. Antik Yunan tarihinde eksik kalmasın diyenlerin veya yazar hakkında akademik araştırma yapacakların okumasını öneririm.
08.05.2017
İstanbul, Türkiye
Alp Turgut
http://www.filmdoktoru.com/kitap-labo...
08.05.2017
İstanbul, Türkiye
Alp Turgut
http://www.filmdoktoru.com/kitap-labo...
June 16, 2017
Es ineludible pensar que Baquílides era el gran rival de Píndaro en cuanto a celebraciones a través de las Odas de los grandes tiranos de Grecia, y es comprensible aún más al leer sus Epinicios y Ditirambos. Uno de mis favoritos la visita de Heracles al valeroso Meleagro en los infiernos y cómo le encarga a su hermana, que será la futura esposa del héroes.
En uno de sus ditirambos habla sobre la embajada de Odiseo y Menelao antes de comenzar la guerra, y así siempre los líricos plagados de hermosos relatos mitológicos, donde constituye una red excelente de tejer.
En uno de sus ditirambos habla sobre la embajada de Odiseo y Menelao antes de comenzar la guerra, y así siempre los líricos plagados de hermosos relatos mitológicos, donde constituye una red excelente de tejer.
September 13, 2017
Could have been so much more...
I got a feeling from reading this book that Bacchylides could have been a brilliant poet. There are sparks of genius sprinkled throughout the text. In one short poem Heracles – for the Delphians, for example he begins with Apollo on holiday! “No songs of Apollo now […] But soon you’ll come/For the burst of paeans,/Lord Apollo of Pytho,/All the dances of Delphi/Pour before your radiant shrine.” He then uses this to shift the story to Heracles: “Till then, I sing Amphitryon’s son”, who after sacking Oechalia to get the maiden Iole, is inadvertently murdered by his wife, using a centaurs blood, which she mistakes for a love potion. However this is also described in a beautifully vague way:
“What a plot the desperate -
Starcrossed girl devised!
Ineluctable Envy laid her low,
And the blinding veil that masks the future,
When on the rosy verge of Evenus
She stooped to a centaur’s uncontrollable marvel.”
Unfortunately most of what survives of Bacchylides’s are odes to various aristocrats, who he glorifies to an uncomfortable degree: “None, Hiero vivid in praise,/Could claim that a man/Outgave you in gold to Apollo./All but the men fed fat with envy/Hail you high, you the commander/Loved by gods, adept horseman/Sceptred under the Lord of Laws;” or “Prizing Hiero, righteous lord/…/Only one among men who walk the earth/Brought off such feats by the fane/Where ocean licks at the coves of Cirrha.” He is so exaggerated in the praise of his patron that I was actually cringing at some of these passages. And the language he uses isn’t particularly inventive either, “Splendid in destiny”, “Marshal of men”, “Only one among men”. It’s all very wooden, kind of like a propaganda piece you sometimes get in some dictatorships nowadays. Actually that’s not even very far from the truth, since Hiero, the one who these odes are dedicated to was a little tyrant in Syracuse at the time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiero_I...).
It’s unfortunate, because in the second half of the book there are many poems that I enjoyed. Of the nine volumes he’s said to have written we only have less than two dozen poems left from Bacchylides. I wonder what would have been his reputation if instead of some of the odes we have there would have been more poems like the one I began with? I don’t know, but I can leave you with another sample of his brilliance, which unfortunately is somewhat ironic given the above:
“Yes, form the deed to Truth,
And its song will shore up life
Where only gods recline.
Merit cries in the teeth of death
The Muses’ eloquent bequest of craft.
Countless, the paths to mortal skills,
But gods’ decrees alone can light
What the dusk of night conceals.
Both bad and better wreck
On dooms of Zeus who tramps
The crashing clouds: all covered,
Who will shape fine work, who fail -
Till each has faced the mind
To probe the march of years.”
I got a feeling from reading this book that Bacchylides could have been a brilliant poet. There are sparks of genius sprinkled throughout the text. In one short poem Heracles – for the Delphians, for example he begins with Apollo on holiday! “No songs of Apollo now […] But soon you’ll come/For the burst of paeans,/Lord Apollo of Pytho,/All the dances of Delphi/Pour before your radiant shrine.” He then uses this to shift the story to Heracles: “Till then, I sing Amphitryon’s son”, who after sacking Oechalia to get the maiden Iole, is inadvertently murdered by his wife, using a centaurs blood, which she mistakes for a love potion. However this is also described in a beautifully vague way:
“What a plot the desperate -
Starcrossed girl devised!
Ineluctable Envy laid her low,
And the blinding veil that masks the future,
When on the rosy verge of Evenus
She stooped to a centaur’s uncontrollable marvel.”
Unfortunately most of what survives of Bacchylides’s are odes to various aristocrats, who he glorifies to an uncomfortable degree: “None, Hiero vivid in praise,/Could claim that a man/Outgave you in gold to Apollo./All but the men fed fat with envy/Hail you high, you the commander/Loved by gods, adept horseman/Sceptred under the Lord of Laws;” or “Prizing Hiero, righteous lord/…/Only one among men who walk the earth/Brought off such feats by the fane/Where ocean licks at the coves of Cirrha.” He is so exaggerated in the praise of his patron that I was actually cringing at some of these passages. And the language he uses isn’t particularly inventive either, “Splendid in destiny”, “Marshal of men”, “Only one among men”. It’s all very wooden, kind of like a propaganda piece you sometimes get in some dictatorships nowadays. Actually that’s not even very far from the truth, since Hiero, the one who these odes are dedicated to was a little tyrant in Syracuse at the time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiero_I...).
It’s unfortunate, because in the second half of the book there are many poems that I enjoyed. Of the nine volumes he’s said to have written we only have less than two dozen poems left from Bacchylides. I wonder what would have been his reputation if instead of some of the odes we have there would have been more poems like the one I began with? I don’t know, but I can leave you with another sample of his brilliance, which unfortunately is somewhat ironic given the above:
“Yes, form the deed to Truth,
And its song will shore up life
Where only gods recline.
Merit cries in the teeth of death
The Muses’ eloquent bequest of craft.
Countless, the paths to mortal skills,
But gods’ decrees alone can light
What the dusk of night conceals.
Both bad and better wreck
On dooms of Zeus who tramps
The crashing clouds: all covered,
Who will shape fine work, who fail -
Till each has faced the mind
To probe the march of years.”
December 3, 2018
This collection contains odes, dithyrambs, ecomia, and various small fragments. Whereas Pindar’s odes are long works that tie together various myths to athletic victories with some political commentary thrown in, Bacchylides prefers to write short episodic odes that are more focused. I have no idea if Callimachus read or appreciated his work, but I get the feeling that Bacchylides would be the kind of poet he would admire. The longer, complete odes don’t have the epic feeling of Pindar, and the shorter poems and fragments lack the flashes of brilliance found in other ancient fragments. Overall, it was an enjoyable if not altogether memorable read.
February 18, 2020
The Odes are interesting as evidence of Greek life. The Dithyrambs are good fun. The Fragments are OK.
April 20, 2021
Poor Bacchylides, always having to stand in Pindar's shadow. Luckily recent scholarship has been increasingly judging him on his own merits. Odes 5 and especially 17 should be on every classics student's reading list.
November 13, 2022
Epinician odes, dithyrambs, lyrical dialogue, aphorisms, epigraphs, and encomia abound.
March 10, 2023
Bacchylides had been known since antiquity as a lyric poet, the nephew of Simonides and younger contemporary of Pindar. But only short fragments of his works survived in quotations from other authors. Then near the end of the nineteenth century a papyrus roll was discovered in Egypt that contained about twenty odes by Bacchylides. Not all of these poems were fully intact, but they made it possible to see Bacchylides's personality and skill as a poet.
Richard Jebb's edition of these poems, plus all remaining fragments, came out in 1905. Even though the papyrus had been discovered only a few years before, there were already several earlier editions of the works, but it seems that Jebb's has become the standard. (Surprisingly, to me at least, Oxford Classical Press has never put out an edition, nor was Bacchylides included in the OCP volume of Greek lyric poetry.)
This book is a one-stop shop of everything you would ever want to know about Bacchylides or his works. The opening chapters give an excellent introduction to the world of Greek lyric poetry. The only thing I've read that compares with it is C.M. Bowra's Greek Lyric Poetry. As the actual Greek texts approach, Jebb has sections on the meter of each poem, then an analysis of each poem, then finally the poems themselves. In this section, the pages are almost Talmudic in the amount of information. The left side contains the Greek text, the right side Jebb's translation. Underneath both sides in small print is a textual apparatus, and then below that is Jebb's commentary. This commentary discusses unusual vocabulary (with comparison passages from other authors), interpretation, and even possible alternative readings. In this part of the book I maintained three sets of bookmarks, to consult the metrical analysis, introduction to each poem, and the poem itself. It turns out I should actually have used a fourth bookmark for the "Appendix" section, which offered extended commentary on certain passages that apparently wouldn't fit in the Talmudic layout.
In terms of content, this book is five stars all the way. Bacchylides is perhaps not in the top rank among poets, but he is a lot easier to read than Pindar and quite pleasurable. (Among other differences, when offering a victory ode to a successful athlete Bacchylides might actually describe the winning feats, whereas Pindar usually gets lost in mythical metaphors.) I had to dock a star, however, because the only version of this book that I was able to get was a public domain reprint. I've read some perfectly acceptable books of this type, but this one was quite frustrating. Literally half the pages were missing text along the margins. Some pages were dark or blurry. A few pages were clearly ripped, showing the text of following pages through the gaps. Whoever did the scanning for this book made no effort to do it well. And, sad to say, the reprint edition wasn't cheap! If you can get the book some other way, or better yet, if you can convince a reputable publisher to re-issue this classic text, we will all be much better served.
Richard Jebb's edition of these poems, plus all remaining fragments, came out in 1905. Even though the papyrus had been discovered only a few years before, there were already several earlier editions of the works, but it seems that Jebb's has become the standard. (Surprisingly, to me at least, Oxford Classical Press has never put out an edition, nor was Bacchylides included in the OCP volume of Greek lyric poetry.)
This book is a one-stop shop of everything you would ever want to know about Bacchylides or his works. The opening chapters give an excellent introduction to the world of Greek lyric poetry. The only thing I've read that compares with it is C.M. Bowra's Greek Lyric Poetry. As the actual Greek texts approach, Jebb has sections on the meter of each poem, then an analysis of each poem, then finally the poems themselves. In this section, the pages are almost Talmudic in the amount of information. The left side contains the Greek text, the right side Jebb's translation. Underneath both sides in small print is a textual apparatus, and then below that is Jebb's commentary. This commentary discusses unusual vocabulary (with comparison passages from other authors), interpretation, and even possible alternative readings. In this part of the book I maintained three sets of bookmarks, to consult the metrical analysis, introduction to each poem, and the poem itself. It turns out I should actually have used a fourth bookmark for the "Appendix" section, which offered extended commentary on certain passages that apparently wouldn't fit in the Talmudic layout.
In terms of content, this book is five stars all the way. Bacchylides is perhaps not in the top rank among poets, but he is a lot easier to read than Pindar and quite pleasurable. (Among other differences, when offering a victory ode to a successful athlete Bacchylides might actually describe the winning feats, whereas Pindar usually gets lost in mythical metaphors.) I had to dock a star, however, because the only version of this book that I was able to get was a public domain reprint. I've read some perfectly acceptable books of this type, but this one was quite frustrating. Literally half the pages were missing text along the margins. Some pages were dark or blurry. A few pages were clearly ripped, showing the text of following pages through the gaps. Whoever did the scanning for this book made no effort to do it well. And, sad to say, the reprint edition wasn't cheap! If you can get the book some other way, or better yet, if you can convince a reputable publisher to re-issue this classic text, we will all be much better served.
September 8, 2024
Fagles’s Homer was any introduction to the Iliad and odyssey. If you enjoyed those renditions you should try to find this translation of Bacchylides. He has a very balanced style and the commentary for the majority of poems is enlightening.
November 29, 2020
are these AI generated
March 20, 2025
Ne yazık ki dolandırıcılık gibi bir şey olmuş bu kitabı basmak. Girişi için sırf 2 puan
August 6, 2013
Enjoyed Bacchylides more than Pindar. The book could have benefited from a glossary of names and places.
March 15, 2013
Powerful, musical renditions of Greek verse into English by one of our greatest translators ever. A real inspiration.
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