Simonides
of Ceos
(c.556-468BC)
Poet from Ceos who lived both in Athens and Thessaly. In Athens he became famous for celebrating the heroes and battles against the Persians. He is said to have written some of the epigrams that were put on plaques at Thermopyle in memorandum of the great battle between the Greecs and the Persians. One of them said "Here fought once against three million barbarians, four thousand Peloponnesian men." His last years were spent on Sicily, at the court of the tyrant Hero in Syracusae.
