Eumelus of Corinth or Eumelos of Korinthos, of the clan of the Bacchiadae

Bacchiadae

The Bacchiadae , a tightly-knit Doric clan, were the ruling family of archaic Corinth in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE, a period of Corinthian cultural power. Corinth had been a backwater in eighth-century Greece...

, is a semi-legendary early Greek poet

Cyclic Poets

Cyclic Poets is a shorthand term for the early Greek epic poets, approximate contemporaries of Homer. We know no more about these poets than we know about Homer, but modern scholars regard them as having composed orally, as did Homer. In the classical period, surviving early epic poems were...

, the Corinthian author of the Prosodion

Prosodion

Not to be confused with prosodyProsodion in ancient Greece was a processional song to the altar of a deity, mainly Apollo or Artemis, sung ritually before the Paean hymn. Prosodia had been composed by Eumelus of Corinth and Limenius, as well the various winners in art competitions...

, the treasured processional anthem of Messenian

Messene

Messene , officially Ancient Messene, is a Local Community of the Municipal Unit , Ithomi, of the municipality of Messini within the Regional Unit of Messenia in the Region of Peloponnēsos, one of 7 Regions into which the Hellenic Republic has been divided by the Kallikratis...

 independence that was performed on Delos

Delos

The island of Delos , isolated in the centre of the roughly circular ring of islands called the Cyclades, near Mykonos, is one of the most important mythological, historical and archaeological sites in Greece...

. One small fragment of it survives in a quote by Pausanias

Pausanias (geographer)

Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is famous for his Description of Greece , a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from firsthand observations, and is a crucial link between classical...

. To Eumelus was also attributed authorship of several antiquarian epics composed in the Corinthian-Sicyonian cultural sphere, notably Corinthiaca, an epic narrating the legends and early history of his home city Corinth

Corinth

Corinth is a city and former municipality in Corinthia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Corinth, of which it is the seat and a municipal unit...

. The Corinthiaca is now lost, but a written version of it was used by Pausanias in his survey of the antiquities of Corinth.

The epics Europia, Bougonia (perhaps the same as Europia), Titanomachy

Titanomachy (epic poem)

The Titanomachy is a lost epic poem, which is a part of Greek mythology. It deals with the struggle that Zeus and his siblings, the Olympian Gods, had in overthrowing their father Cronus and his divine generation, the Titans....

and Return from Troy (one of the Nostoi

Nostoi

The Nostoi , also known as Returns or Returns of the Greeks, was a lost epic of ancient Greek literature. It was one of the Epic Cycle, that is, the "Trojan" cycle, which told the entire history of the Trojan War in epic verse...

) were also ascribed to Eumelus by various later authors. Eumelus was traditionally dated between 760 and 740 BC. According to Martin West

Martin Litchfield West

Martin Litchfield West is an internationally recognised scholar in classics, classical antiquity and philology...

 the epics appear to have been composed in the late seventh or sixth century BC, later than the date traditionally ascribed to Eumelus in the Greek chronographic tradition used, for instance, by Eusebius of Caesarea

Eusebius of Caesarea

Eusebius of Caesarea also called Eusebius Pamphili, was a Roman historian, exegete and Christian polemicist. He became the Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine about the year 314. Together with Pamphilus, he was a scholar of the Biblical canon...

.

Sources

• Greek epic fragments ed. and tr. Martin L. West (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003) pp. 220–251.