Fiction & other works · novel

The Praise Singer

by Mary Renault

The Praise Singer is a historical novel by British novelist Mary Renault first published in 1978. Its narrator and main character is the real-life lyric poet Simonides of Ceos, whose life (ca. 556 BC-469 BCE) spanned the transition from an oral to a written culture in Ancient Greece. Renault's fiction argues that this transition was in part responsible for the cultural flowering known as the Golden Age of Athens—though she also gives credit to Hipparchus, Tyrant of Athens, who attracted talented artists like Simonides to live in his city. Renault depicts him as having the works of Homer set down in writing for the first time. The book contains portraits of several other historical figures, such as the mathematician/philosopher Pythagoras, and the erotic poet Anakreon.

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