Choirilos of Samos

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Choirilos of Samos ( ancient Greek Χοιρίλος , also Χοιρίλλος ; Latinized Choerilus ) was an ancient Greek-Macedonian writer, poet and poet of historical epics . He was born in the first half of the 5th century BC. Born in BC and died between 413–399.

Choirilos spent his youth during the Persian Wars . There are two dated events in his life. According to Plutarch , in 404 BC Choirilos accompanied Chr. Lysander after its victory in the Ionian War of Samos , where the festival in honor of Hera was renamed Lysandreia. There he took part in an agon in encomiastic poetry in honor of Lysander. Choirilos is the earliest known Greek poet to write a hexametric epic on a contemporary theme, the Persian Wars. He ushered in a new epoch in the epic, as he no longer presented material from the sagas of gods and heroes , but was the first to present historical material, the victory of the Athenians over the Persian king , in his epic Persika . He reproduced in a new way the Panhellenic themes that Phrynichus and Aeschylus had already used in their tragedies and also used by Herodotus in his historiography. For this, Choirilos was partly praised but also criticized. It is not certain whether he met Herodotus personally and was his pupil, but the historian's themes were similar to those of the poet. Also the fact that Herodotus had a residence on Samos for a while. It seems certain, however, that Choirilos did not begin to write his works until Herodotus' historiography was published. Choirilos stayed at the court of the Macedonian king Archelaos I in Pella ; there he died.

Text output

  • Paola Radici Colace (Ed.): Choerili Samii Reliquiae. L'Erma di Bretschneider, Rome 1979, OCLC 490090085 (critical edition with commentary)

literature

  • Michael Reichel : Epic Poetry. 4. Pseudo-Homerica and other epics of the archaic and classical epochs. In: Bernhard Zimmermann (Hrsg.): The literature of the archaic and classical times (= manual of the Greek literature of antiquity , volume 1). Beck, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-57673-7 , pp. 66-78, here: 75 f.
  • Marco Fantuzzi: Choirilos from Samos. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 2, Metzler, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-476-01472-X , Sp. 1137 f.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Plutarch, Lysander 18.
personal data
SURNAME Choirilos of Samos
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Choerilus; Choirilos
BRIEF DESCRIPTION ancient Greco-Macedonian epic poet
DATE OF BIRTH 5th century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH 5th century BC BC or 4th century BC Chr.