ALCMAN

flourished 7th century BC, , Sparta Greek poet, the first known writer of Dorian choral lyrics. Alcman's work survives in fragments, the longest being a parthenion (a choir song for girls) discovered in a 1st-century papyrus in Egypt in 1855. In the Suda lexicon (late 10th century AD) Alcman is described as a man of an extremely amorous disposition and the inventor of love poems. He was clearly a learned man, and his verse is full of geographic detail. One fragment, telling of the sleeping world at the end of the day, imitated by J.W. von Goethe in his Wanderers Nachtlied, is almost unique in Greek poetry for its sympathy with nature. Alcman's light, gay manner, so different from the later Spartan style, gave rise to the tradition that he was not a native Spartan. He is thought by some to have come from Sardis in Lydia, but this is uncertain.