Bibliography
the poems were collected into critical editions sometime in the late 3rd century BC by the Alexandrian scholar, Aristophanes of Byzantium, who probably restored them to their appropriate metres after finding them written in prose form.[31] They were arranged in nine 'books', exemplifying the following genres[6]
(Bacchylides in fact composed in a greater variety of genres than any
of the other lyric poets who comprise the canonic nine, with the
exception of Pindar, who composed in ten):[32]
- dithyrambs
- paeans
- hymns
- prosodia
- partheneia
- hyporchemata
- epinikians
- erotica
- encomia
The Alexandrian grammarian Didymus (circa 30 BC) wrote commentaries on the work of Bacchylides and the poems appear, from the finding of papyri fragments, to have been popular reading in the first three centuries AD.[34] Their popularity seems to have continued into the 4th century also: Ammianus Marcellinus (xxv. 4) observed that the emperor Julian enjoyed reading Bacchylides, and the largest collection of quotations that survived up until the modern era was assembled by Stobaeus (early 5th century).[35] All that remained of Bacchylides's poetry by 1896, however, were sixty-nine fragments, totalling 107 lines.[36][37] The oldest sources on Bacchylides and his work are scholia on Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Aristophanes, Apollonius Rhodius and Callimachus. Other fragments and 'notices' are sprinkled through the surviving works of ancient authors, which they used to illustrate various points they were making.
