Bacchylides

, the Greek lyric poet, was born at Julis, a town in the isle of Ceos. He was the nephew of Simonides, and the contemporary and rival of Pindar. Both sung the victories of Hiero at the public games. Besides odes to athletic victors, he was author of love verses, prosodies, dithyrambics, hymns, &c. The emperor Julian was a great admirer of his writings, and Hiero preferred him to Pindar. He flourished 452 B. C. and was the last of the nine lyric poets so famous in Greece. There are some fragments of his still in being, printed along with those of Alcceus, at the end of an edition of Pindar, Antwerp, 1567, 16 mo. ¹