Alcaeus

Alcaeus of Mytilene was a poet of wine, war, and politics, and composer of short hymns to the gods. He was a sixth-century BC Greek lyric poet from Lesbos island. He was an older contemporary of and an alleged lover of Sappho, with whom he may have exchanged poems. The scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria included Alcaeus in the canonical list of nine lyric poets. (Photo credit: courtesy of Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies)