ALCMAN

Form: Gr. Alkman.

The founder of Dorian lyric poetry, a Lydian of Sardes. He came to Sparta in his youth as a slave, was set free, and seems even to have received the citizenship; he flourished in the latter half of the 7th century B.C. He abandoned the old nomic or dithyrambic poetry, written in hexameters, and composed in various metres Hymns, Paeans, Prosodia, Parthenia, Scolia, and Erotics, the last of which he was supposed to have invented. His dialect was the Doric, softened by Epic and Aeolic forms. Of his six books of poems a few fragments only are preserved; one, a rather long one, was found in Egypt.