1. Work

Hermocles of Cyzicus lived in the late 4^th and the early 3^rd cent. BC. He was a lyric poet, who mainly wrote paeans. He was characterized as the mouthpiece of Athenian flattery.¹

The work of his life was the devotional praise of rulers. He wrote paeans for Antigonus I and Demetrius Poliorcetes. One of these paeans gave him the victory in a poetic competition against many other poets in 307 BC.

His only surviving work is a prosodion² in trimetre with interjecting verses in ithyphallic metre, handed down to us by Athenaeus.³ It was sung by a chorus during the Dionysia procession, when the Athenians welcomed their king – who returned to Athens from Lefkas and Corfu – burning incense and crowning him (in 306 BC or 291/290 BC).⁴ In this ithyphallic song, Hermocles compares Demetrius to Helios and his retinue to the stars.