SIMONIDES (or SEMONIDES) OF AMORGOS  , Greek iambic poet, flourished in the middle of the 7th century B.C . He was a native of Samos, and derived his surname from having founded a colony in the neighbouring island of Amorgos . According to Suidas, besides two books of iambics, he wrote elegies, one of them a poem on the early history of the Samians . The elegy included in the fragments (85) of Simonides of Ceos is more probably by Simonides of Amorgos . We possess about thirty fragments of his iambic poems, written in clear and vigorous Ionic, with much force and no little harmony of versification . With Simonides, as with Archilochus, the iambic is still the vehicle of bitter satire, interchanging with melancholy, but in Simonides the satire is rather general than individual . His " Pedigree of Women " may have been suggested by the beast fable, as we find it in Hesiod and Archilochus; and as it recurs a century later in Phocylides; it is clear at least that Simonides knew the works of the former . Simonides derives the dirty woman from a hog, the cunning from a fox, the fussy from a dog, the apathetic from earth, the capricious from sea-water, the stubborn from an ass, the incontinent from a weasel, the proud from a high-bred mare, the worst and ugliest from an ape, and the good woman from a bee . The remainder of the poem (96—118) is undoubtedly spurious . There is much beauty and feeling in Simonides's description of the good woman . See Fragments in T . Bergk, Poetae lyrici Graeci; separate editions by F .

T .

Welcker (1835), and especially by P . Malusa 1900), with exhaustive introduction, bibliography and commentary .