Πάσι καὶ πάσαις! Why Herodotus was among the first authors to enter our library is quite obvious; far less obvious is our choice in favor of Mimnermus—about whom we would now like to say a few words.

🟧 A native of Smyrna in Asia Minor (fr. 9), Mimnermus reached his ἀκμή in the 630s BCE. He probably wrote two books: the poetry collection Ναννώ and the poem Σμύρνεις. The title of the first book is usually taken to be the name of a girl—a flute-player and Mimnermus’ beloved (a practice soon to be followed by the Roman elegists Propertius and Tibullus). And yet the name of Mimnermus is heard far less often than those of Sappho, Callimachus, or Pindar. So why is he still so dear and interesting to us? D. Kannelakis answers this question best—and most fully—in his monograph (pp. 35–50) (this and other works are listed in our commentary to Mimnermus’ fragments, already available in our app). Here we will note only two main factors.

🟧 In Kannelakis’ own words, Mimnermus’ poetry has become firmly “anchored” to deep pessimism and an Asiatic hedonism; and although many arguments can be made against this view (if only because the surviving fragments are so sparse), these very traits set him sharply apart from the other early lyric poets and still resonate with us in a strangely tender way.

🟧 Yet this “mask” of Mimnermus was fashioned neither by us nor by modern scholars, but apparently by the Greeks themselves. Thus, for example, in Mimnermus fr. 20:
> may the Moira of death come at sixty years!
his younger contemporary Solon replies:
> erase that… and sing it so: may the Moira of death come at eighty years!

🟧 Solon seems to set his Athenian, balanced optimism against Mimnermus’ pessimism. The mention of Solon here is crucial: if he drew his patriotism and, so to speak, his statism primarily from Tyrtaeus, he could hardly have failed to inherit his elegiac refinement from Mimnermus—whom he read and to whom he directly responds.

ὁ ἔχων ὦτα ἀκροῶ! — AKRO