Ancient Greek poetry can be roughly divided into two categories: epic and lyric poetry. Speaking of ancient Greek epics, of course, Homer can't be ignored. The Iliad and Odyssey, two works handed down by blind poets, recorded important events in the formation of ancient Greek civilization with clever language and vivid metaphors. The battle scene is grand and spectacular, but it does not lose the depiction of the detailed characters, and even the rendering of the environment and scenery.
Poetry is narrated in the first person, full of dialogues and expressions of the characters in the poem, even like a tragic work that can be directly put on the stage. Homer's epic had a far-reaching influence on the shaping of ancient Greek character in the early Greek civilization. It eulogized people and heroes, revered God and nature, and preached fate and glory, all of which were injected into the blood of later Greeks. Different from epic poems with more than 10,000 lines, lyric poems in ancient Greece are closer to the essence of songs, that is, many poems are expressed by singing. Therefore, many lyric poems can be divided into double-tube songs and piano songs, solo poems and chorus poems. Compared with the grandeur of epic poems, lyric poems are mainly small themes such as praising nature, feelings for friends, personal feelings and small philosophies.
The famous lyric poets in ancient Greece mainly include Anacreon and Sappho. Anacreon's poems mainly praise nature and gods, with plain and smooth style, fresh content but full of philosophy, because they are widely circulated.
In contrast, Sappho's poems also involve the theme of personal love, which has a lot to do with her status as a poetess. The first western poetess is especially good at writing solo poems full of metaphors and mysteries. She is elegant, euphemistic, frank and natural, which can be said to have formed another style, which was imitated and respected by later poets.