Simonides (c. 556–c. 468 BC)

Greek choral poet and epigrammatist. His longer poems include hymns composed to celebrate victories in the athletic games of Greece, and other competition pieces for choral performance. He was extremely successful, internationally famous, and reputedly avaricious. He wrote the epigram on the Spartans who died fighting the Persians at Thermopylae 480 BC: ‘Go, stranger, and report to the Spartans that here, obedient to their words, we lie.’ His work exists in fragments only.

Simonides was born at Iulis in Ceos. Having visited Hipparchus in Athens, he stayed for a time with Scopas in Thessaly, and returned to Athens at the beginning of the Persian wars. He moved to the court of Hieron at Syracuse about 476 BC.