(), called by the Attic and later Greek writers
Alcmaeon (Polit. p. 206; Anthol. Graec. i. p. 207, No. 3, p. 175, No. 80, ii.
p. 110, No. 56; in the Anthol. Palat. 7.709, 19, 18.) In the epigram last cited it is said,
that the two continents strove for the honour of his birth; and Suidas (l.c.) calls him a Laconian of Messoa, which may mean, however, that he was enrolled as
a citizen of Messoa after his emancipation. The above statements seem to be more in accordance
with the authorities than the opinion of Bode, that Alcman's father was brought from Sardis to
Sparta as a slave, and that Alcman himself was born at Messoa. It is not known to what extent
he obtained the rights of citizenship.
The time at which Alcman lived is rendered somewhat doubtful by the different statements of
the Greek and Armenian copies of Eusebius, and of the chronographers who followed him. On the
whole, however, the Greek copy of Eusebius appears to be right in placing him at the second
year of the twenty-seventh Olympiad. (Fr. 29),
that he lived to a great age, we may conclude, with Clinton, that he flourished from about 671
to about (631 B. C. ((Clinton, Fast. i. pp. 189, 191, 365; Hermann, Antiq. Lacon. pp. mortus pedicularis. (
The period during which most of Alcman's poems were composed, was that which followed the
conclusion of the second Messenian war. During this period of quiet, the Spartans began to
cherish that taste for the spiritual enjoyments of poetry, which, though felt by them long
before, had never attained to a high state of cultivation, while their attention was absorbed
in war. In this process of improvement Alcman was immediately preceded by Terpander, an
Aeolian poet, who, before the year 676 B. C., had removed from Lesbos to the mainland of
Greece, and had introduced the Aeolian lyric into the Peloponnesus. This new style of poetry
was speedily adapted to the choral form in which the Doric poetry had hitherto been cast, and
gradually supplanted that earlier style which was nearer to the epic. In the 33rd or 34th
Olympiad, Terpander made his great improvements in music. [TERPANDER.] Hence arose the peculiar character of the poetry of his younger
contemporary, Alcman, which presented the choral lyric in the highest excellence which the
music of Terpander enabled it to reach. But Alcman had also an intimate acquaintance with the
Phrygian and Lydian styles of music, and he was himself the inventor of new forms of rhythm,
some of which bore his name.
A large portion of Alcman's poetry was erotic. In fact, he is said by some ancient writers
to have been the inventor of erotic poetry. (s. v.) From his poems of this class, which are marked by a
freedom bordering on licentiousness, he obtained the epithets of "sweet" and " pleasant"
(
Among these poems were many hymeneal pieces. But the
Alcman's other poems embrace hymns to the gods, Paeans, Prosodia, songs adapted for
different religious festivals, and short ethical or philosophical pieces. It is disputed
whether he wrote any of those Anapaestic war-songs, or marches, which were called
His metres are very various. He is said by Suidas to have been the first poet who composed any verses but dactylic hexameters. This statement is incorrect; but Suidas sees to refer to the shorter dactylic lines into which Alcman broke up the Homeric hexameter. In this practice, however, he had been preceded by Archiochus, from whom he borrowed several others of his peculiar metres: others he invented himself. Among his metres we find various forms of the dactylic, anapaestic, trochaic, and iambic, as well as lines composed of different metres, for example, iambic and anapaestic. The Cretic hexameter was named Alcmanic, from his being its inventor. The poems of Alcman were chiefly in strophes, composed of lines sometimes of the same metre throughout the strophe, sometimes of different metres. From their choral character we might conclude that they sometimes had an antistrophic form, and this seems to be confirmed by the statement of Hephaestion (p. 134, Gaisf.), that he composed odes of fourteen strophes, in which there was a change of metre after the seventh strophe. There is no trace of an epode following the strophe and antistrophe, in his poems.
The dialect of Alcman was the Spartan Doric, with an intermixture of the Aeolic. The popular idioms of Laconia appear most frequently in his more familiar poems.
The Alexandrian grammarians placed Alcman at the head of their canon of the nine lyric
poets. Among the proofs of his popularity may be mentioned the tradition, that his songs were
sung, with those of Terpander, at the first performance of the gymnopaedia at Sparta (
Alcman's poems comprised six books, the extant fragments of which are included in the
collections of