Simonides is known to have been born in Keos (whose severe austerity laws are described by Strabo) and to have been so ugly that when he had composed a satire on the Corinthians, someone asked him how so ill-favored a man dared reproach a beautiful city. Nothing is known of his childhood, and I may have traduced a loving father who fostered his talent; but it seems that, once out of Keos, he felt no disposition to go back. It is not known whether he ever worked in Ionia before the Persian conquest, or in Samos either; but there is some evidence that at one time he lived in Euboia, before being invited to Athens by the Pisistratids.
His father’s name is known; so are the names of his sister and her husband, because they were the parents of Bacchylides, himself a gifted poet, and his uncle’s pupil and companion up to the time of his death in Sicily, at the age of eighty-eight. Theasides son of Leoprepes appears in Herodotos as a man of high repute among both the Spartans and the Aiginetans, who was allowed to arbitrate in a dispute between them, and thus averted a war. Unluckily his native city is not given; but Leoprepes, the name of Simonides’ father, is an unusual one. I have made them brothers by pure guess.
One of the most striking features of Simonides’ career is the respect with which he was welcomed back to Athens after the expulsion of Hippias, despite his long residence at the Pisistratid court. It seems probable that he left it after the murder of Hipparchos; the dates of his sojourn in Thessaly are not exactly known. Anakreon, who also found a refuge there, was also persona grata when he came back. It is probable that the Pisistratids were not so unpopular in Athens before the unforgivable defection of the exiled Hippias to Persia. It is also true that to the Greeks of the great age, good work was good work, and carried its own passport.
In the story of Harmodios and Aristogeiton, I have followed Thukydides’ account in every particular that he gives. The errors he corrects in the received tradition—that the friends were democrats, and that they killed the reigning tyrant—are the first known instance of distortion of history for political ends.
The name of Harmodios’ father is not known; but J. K. Davies, in his indispensable Athenian Propertied Families, 600-300 B.C., gives Proxenos as a family name.
The curious circumstance about Harmodios’ father, as with the dog in the Sherlock Holmes story, is that he did nothing. Whether or not he knew of Hipparchos’ attempts upon his son, the public humiliation of his daughter would have insulted him, as head of the family, more than any of its other menfolk. I have therefore inferred that, in an era when life-expectancy was short, he was already dead, and that this place was held by Harmodios himself.
A bronze statue-group of the “liberators,” set up in the Agora, was taken as a trophy by Xerxes during the Persian invasion, and carried back to Susa. The Athenians commissioned another statue-group to take its place. In the fourth century Susa fell to Alexander, who sent the original statues back to Athens. For some centuries the two groups stood in the Agora side by side.
CHRONOLOGY
SOME HISTORICAL EVENTS DURING THE LIFETIME OF SIMONIDES
B.C.
556
Simonides born. Pisistratos expelled from Athens for the second time.
550
Kyros establishes supremacy of Persians over Medes. Pisistratids in exile.
546
Kyros takes Sardis. Pisistratos returns to Athens.
540
Kyros conquers Babylon. Polykrates reigning in Samos.
530
Death of Kyros. Accession of Kambyses.
527
Death of Pisistratos. Hippias succeeds to the Tyranny.
525
Aischylos born.
522
Murder of Polykrates. Death of Kambyses. Darius succeeds. Pindar born.
514
Murder of Hipparchos by Harmodios and Aristogeiton.
510
Hippias expelled from Athens. Simonides in Thessaly.
499-494
Ionian revolt against Persia, ending in defeat.
496
Sophokles born. Herodotos born about this time.
495
Perikles born.
492
Persians invade Thrace. Simonides back in Athens about this time.
490
Darius invades Greece. Battle of Thermopylai. Simonides composes epitaph of the fallen Spartans. Persians (with Hippias) defeated at Marathon.
486
Death of Darius. Accession of Xerxes.
480
Xerxes invades Greece. Athens evacuated. Greek naval victory at Salamis, retreat of Xerxes. Euripides born.
c.476
Simonides retires to Syracuse, accompanied by Bacchylides.
472
Aischylos’ tragedy
The Persians
performed in Athens.
468
Death of Simonides.
A Biography of Mary Renault
Mary Renault (1905–1983) was an English writer best known for her historical novels on the life of Alexander the Great: Fire from Heaven (1969), The Persian Boy (1972), and Funeral Games (1981).
Born Eileen Mary Challans into a middle-class family in a London suburb, Renault enjoyed reading from a young age. Initially obsessed with cowboy stories, she became interested in Greek philosophy when she found Plato’s works in her school library. Her fascination with Greek philosophy led her to St Hugh’s College, Oxford, where one of her tutors was J. R. R. Tolkien. Renault went on to earn her BA in English in 1928.
Renault began training as a nurse in 1933. It was at this time that she met the woman that would become her life partner, fellow nurse Julie Mullard. Renault also began writing, and published her first novel, Purposes of Love (titled Promise of Love in its American edition), in 1939. Inspired by her occupation, her first works were hospital romances. Renault continued writing as she treated Dunkirk evacuees at the Winford Emergency Hospital in Bristol and later as she worked in a brain surgery ward at the Radcliffe Infirmary.
In 1947, Renault received her first major award: Her novel Return to Night (1946) won an MGM prize. With the $150,000 of award money, she and Mullard moved to South Africa, never to return to England again. Renault revived her love of ancient Greek history and began to write her novels of Greece, including The Last of the Wine (1956) and The Charioteer (1953), which is still considered the first British novel that includes unconcealed homosexual love.
Renault’s in-depth depictions of Greece led many readers to believe she had spent a great deal of time there, but during her lifetime, she actually only visited the Aegean twice. Following The Last of the Wine and inspired by a replica of a Cretan fresco at a British museum, Renault wrote The King Must Die (1958) and its sequel, The Bull from the Sea (1962).
The democratic ideals of ancient Greece encouraged Renault to join the Black Sash, a women’s movement that fought against apartheid in South Africa. Renault was also heavily involved in the literary community, where she believed all people should be afforded equal standard and opportunity, and was the honorary chair of the Cape Town branch of PEN, the international writers’ organization.
Renault passed away in Cape Town on December 13, 1983.