FOOTNOTES:

Meum est propositum,In taberna mori, etc.

It need not be remarked that of the genuine poems of Anacreon we possess but few (pp. 1011-1045 of Bergk). His great popularity in Greece led to innumerable imitations of his lighter style.[99]These are fully preserved in Bergk'sCollection(pp. 1046-1108).

The Dorian style offers a marked contrast to the Æolian. In the case of the Ionian satirists and elegists, and in that of the Æolian lyrists, the national peculiarities of the art resulted from national qualities in the artists. This is not the case with the so-called Dorian poets. The great lyrists of this school are, withone exception, of extraction foreign to the Dorian tribe. Alcman was a Lydian; Stesichorus acknowledged an Ionian colony for his fatherland; Arion was a Lesbian; Simonides and Bacchylides were Ionian; Pindar was Bœotian; Ibycus of Rhegium alone was a Dorian. Why, then, is the style called Dorian? Because the poets, though not Dorian by birth, wrote for Dorian patrons in the land of Dorians, to add splendor to ceremonies and solemnities in vogue among the Dorians. The distinctive features of this, the most sublime branch of Greek lyrical poetry, have been already hinted at: these elaborate choral hymns, in which strophe answers to antistrophe, and epode to epode, chanted by bands of singers and accompanied at times by dancing, were designed to give expression, no longer to personal emotions, but to the feelings of great congregations of men engaged in the celebration of gods and heroes and illustrious mortals. Why this species of choral poetry received the patronage and name of the Dorian tribe may be seen by glancing at the institutions peculiar to this section of the Hellenic family. The Dorians, more than any other Greeks, lived in common and in public. Their children were educated, not at home, but in companies, beneath the supervision of state-officers. Girls as well as boys submitted to gymnastic training, and were taught to sacrifice domestic and personal to political and social interests. Tutored to merge the individual in the mass, habituated to associate together in large bodies, the Dorians felt no need of venting private feeling. Their personal emotions were stunted: they had no separate wants and wishes, aspirations and regrets, to utter. Yet the sense of melody and harmony which was rooted so profoundly in the Greek temperament needed some outlet even here; while the gymnastic and athletic exercises practised by the Dorians rendered them peculiarly sensitive, not only to the beauties of the human body, but also to the refinements of rhythmical movement. The spiritual enthusiasm for great and glorious actions, which formed the soul of the Greek race, flamed with all the greater brilliancy among Dorians, because it was not narrowed, as among the Æolians, to the selfish passions of the individual, or diverted, as among Ionians, to meditation or satire; but was concentrated on public interests, on religious and heroic traditions, on all the thoughts and feelings which stimulate a large political activity. The Dorians required a poetry which should be public, which should admit of the participation of many individuals, which should give utterance to national enthusiasms, which should combine the movements of men and women in choric evolutions with the melodies of music and the sublime words of inspired prophecy. In brief, the Dorians needed poets able—

"to inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public civility, to allay the perturbations of the mind, and set the affections in right tune; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God's Almightiness, and what he works, and what he suffers to be wrought with high Providence.... Lastly, whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable or grave; whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and reflexes of man's thoughts from within; all these things, with a solid and treatable smoothness, to paint out and describe."

But here arose a difficulty. With all their need of the highest and most elaborate poetry, with all their sensibility to beauty, the Dorians thought it beneath the dignity of a citizen to practise the arts. Their education, almost exclusively military and gymnastic, unfitted them, at all events in Sparta, for studies indispensable towards gaining proficiency in any science so elaborate as that of choral poetry. Drilled to abstinence, obedience, and silence, dwelling in a camp, without privacy or leisure, how could a Spartan, that automaton of the State, be expected to produce poetry, or excel in any fine art? A Spartan king, on being shown the most distinguished musician of his age, pointed to his cook as the best maker of black broth. Music, if music they must have; poetry, if poetry were required by some divinely implanted instinct; dancing, if dancing were a necessary compliment to the Deity, must be imported by these warriors from foreign lands. Thus the Spartans became the patrons of stranger artists, on whom they imposed their laws of taste. They pressed the flexible Ionian, the passionate Lesbian, the languid Lydian, the acute Athenian, into their service, and made them use the crabbed Dorian speech. They said: We want such and such odes for our choruses; we wish to amuse our youths and maidens, and to honor the gods with pompous harmonies; you, men of art, write for us, sing for us; but be careful to comprehend our character; and remember that, though you are Ionians or Lesbians, your inspiration must be Dorian. They got what they required. The so-called Dorian lyric is a genuine product of the Dorian race, although its greatest masters were foreigners and aliens. Much after the same fashion did England patronize Handel in the last century; in the same way may Handel's oratorios be called English music; for though the English are not musicians, and are diffident in general of the artist class, yet neither Germans nor Italians nor French have seen produced upon their soil such colossal works of art in the service of a highly intellectual religion.

It is interesting to reflect upon the influence of the Dorian race in the evolution of Greek art. That, as a nation, they possessed the germs of artistic invention, and that their character expressed itself very clearly in æsthetic forms, is evident from the existence of the Dorian style in architecture, and the Dorian mood in music, both of which reflect their broad simplicity and strength disdaining ornament. The same stamp they impressed upon Greek poetry, through the instruments they selected from other tribes. Had it not been for the strict legislation of Lycurgus, which, by forcing Sparta into a purely political development, and establishing a complete community of life among the citizens, checked the emergence of that individuality which is so all-important to the artist, Sparta might have counted her great sculptors, poets, musicians, orators, and painters, in rivalry with Pheidias, Sophocles, Damon, Pericles, Polygnotus. As it was, though without hands to paint and carve, without lips to sing and plead, the stubborn Dorian race set its seal on a wide field of Greek art.[100]

The elaborate works of the choral lyrists may be regarded as the highly wrought expansions of rudiments already existing among the Dorians. Alcman, Arion, and Stesichorus, the three masters who formed choral poetry from the materials indicated to us in the poems of Homer, and who had to blend in one harmonious whole the sister arts of dancing, music, and poetry, so as to present a pompous appeal to the intellect through speech, and through the ear and eye, found ready to their hands such simple songs as may be read in Bergk, pp. 1297-1303. The dithyramb of the women of Elis: "Come, hero, Dionysus, to the holy sea-temple, attended by the Graces, and rushing on with oxen-hoof! Holy ox! Holy ox!" The chorus of the old men, men, and boys at Sparta: "We once were stalwart youths: we are; if thou likest, try our strength: we shall be; and far better too!" The march-song of the Spartans in their rhythmic revels: "Advance, boys, set your feet forward, and dance in the reel better still." From these had to be trained the complex and magnificent work of art, which culminated in a Pythian ode of Pindar! Alcman was a native of Sardis, and a slave of Agesilaus the Spartan. He flourished at Sparta between 671 and 631 B.C., composing Partheniafor the maidens of Taygetus. Who does not know his lines upon the valley of Eurotas? "Sleep holds the mountain summits and ravines, the promontories and the watercourses; leaves, and creeping things, and whatsoever black earth breeds; and wild beasts of the hills, and bees, and monsters in the hollows of the dark blue deep; and all the wide-winged birds are sleeping." Junior to Alcman was Arion, who spent most of his time with Periander at Corinth. His contribution to choral poetry was the elaboration of the dithyramb. But of his work we have unfortunately not a single fragment left. The piece that bears his name (Bergk, p. 872) has to be ascribed to some tolerable poet of the Euripidean period. His life is involved in mythology; most beautiful is the oft-told tale of his salvation from the sea waves by an enamoured dolphin—a fish, by the way, which Athenæus dignified by the title of φιλῷδος τε καὶ φίλαυλος (song-loving and flute-loving), and which Aristotle calls φιλάνθρωπος (affectionate to men). Rather more is known about Stesichorus. He was a native of Himera in Sicily, but possibly a Locrian by descent. His parents called him Tisias, but he took his more famous name from his profession. Stesichorus is a title that might have been given to any chorus-master in a Greek city; but Tisias of Himera won it by being emphatically the author of the choric system. Antiquity recognized in him the inventor of strophe, antistrophe, and epode, with the corresponding movements of the dance, which were designated the Triad of Stesichorus. A remark made by Quintilian about this poet—that he sustained the burden of the epos with his lyre—forms a valuable criticism on his style. In the days of Stesichorus, the epic proper had lost its vitality; but people still felt the liveliest interest in heroic legends, and loved to connect the celebration of the past with their ceremonies. A lyrical poet had therefore so to treat the myths of Hellas that choruses should represent them in their odes and semi-dramatic dances. It is probable that Stesichorus made far more use of mythical material than Pindar, dealing with it less allusively and adhering more closely to the epic form of narrative. When we hear of his ode, the Orestea, being divided into three books (whatever that may mean), and read the titles of the rest—Cerberus, Cycnus, Scylla, Europa, the Sack of Troy, the Nostoi, and Geryonis—we are led to suspect that his choral compositions were something of the nature of mediæval mystery-plays—semi-lyrical, semi-dramatic poems, founded on the religious legends of the past. Stesichorus did not confine himself to this species of composition, but wrote hymns, encomia, and pæans, like other professional lyrists who succeeded him, and invented a curious kind of love-tale from real life. One of these romantic poems, called Calycé, was about a girl who loved purely but unhappily, and died. Another, called Rhadina, told the forlorn tale of a Samian brother and sister put to death by a cruel tyrant. It is a pity that these early Greek novels in verse are lost. We might have found in them the fresh originals of Daphnis and Chloe, or of the romances of Tatius and Heliodorus. Finally, Stesichorus composed fables, such as the Horse and the Stag, and pastorals upon the death of Daphnis, in which he proved himself true to his Sicilian origin, and anticipated Theocritus. Enough has been said about Stesichorus to show that he was a richly inventive genius—one of those facile and abundant natures who excel in many branches of art, and who give hints by which posterity may profit. Yet with all his genius he was not thoroughly successful. His pastorals and romances were abandoned by his successors; his epical lyrics were lost in the tragic drama. Like many other poets, he failed by coming at a wrong moment, or else by adhering to forms of art which could not long remain in vogue. In his attempt to reconcile the epical treatment of mythology with the choric system of his own invention, heproved that he had not fully grasped the capabilities of lyrical poetry. In his endeavor to create an idyllic and romantic species, he was far before his age.

The remaining choral poets of the Dorian style, of whom the eldest, Ibycus, dates half a century later than Arion, received from their predecessors an instrument of poetical expression already nearly complete. It was their part to use it as skilfully as possible, and to introduce such changes as might render it more polished. Excellence of workmanship is particularly noticeable in what remains of Ibycus, Simonides, Bacchylides. These latter lyrists are no longer local poets: under the altered circumstances of Hellas at the time of the Persian war, art has become Panhellenic, the artists cease to be the servants of one state or of one deity; they range from city to city, giving their services to all who seek for them, and embracing the various tribes and religious rites of the collected Greeks in their æsthetic sympathy. Now, for the first time, poets began to sell their songs of praise for money. Simonides introduced the practice, which had something shocking in it to Greek taste, and which Plato especially censures as sophistic and illiberal in hisProtagoras. Now, too, poets became the friends and counsellors of princes, mixing freely in the politics of Samos, Syracuse, Agrigentum, Thessaly; aiding the tyrants Polycrates, Hiero, Theron, the Scopads, with their advice. Simonides is said to have suspended hostilities between Theron and Hiero by his diplomatic intercession after their armies had been drawn up in battle-array. Petrarch did not occupy a more important place among the princes and republics of mediæval Italy. Under these new conditions, and with this expansion of the poet's calling, the old character of the Dorian lyric changed. The title Dorian is now merely nominal, and the dialect is a conventional language consecrated to this style.

Ibycus was a native of Rhegium, a colony of mixed Ionians and Dorians. To which of these families he belonged is not certain. If we judged by the internal evidence of his poems, we should call him an Ionian; for they are distinguished by voluptuous sweetness, with a dash of almost Æolian intensity. Ibycus was a poet-errant, carrying his songs from state to state. The beautiful story of the cranes who led to the discovery of his murder at Corinth, though probably mythical, like that of Arion's dolphin, illustrates the rude lives of these Greek troubadours, and shows in what respect thesacer vates, servant of the Muses and beloved of Phœbus, was held by the people. Ibycus was regarded by antiquity as a kind of male Sappho. His odes, composed for birthday festivals and banquets, were dedicated chiefly to the praise of beautiful youths; and the legends which adorned them, like those of Ganymede or Tithonus, were appropriate to the erotic style. Aristophanes, in theThesmophoriazusæ, makes Agathon connect him with Anacreon and Alcæus, as the three refiners of language. It is clear, therefore, that in his art Ibycus adapted the manner of Dorian poetry to the matter of Æolian or Ionian love-chants. Of his poetry we have but few fragments. The following seems to strike the keynote of his style: "Love once again looking upon me from his cloud-black brows, with languishing glances, drives me by enchantments of all kinds to the endless nets of Cypris: verily I tremble at his onset, as a chariot-horse, who hath won prizes, in old age goes grudgingly to try his speed in the swift race of cars." In another piece he compares the onset of Love to a downrush of the Thracian north wind armed with lightning. This fragment, numbered first in Bergk'sCollection, is taken from Athenæus, who quotes it to prove the vehement emotion of the poet:

In spring Cydonian apple-trees,Watered by fountains ever flowingThrough crofts unmown of maiden goddesses,And young vines, 'neath the shadeOf shooting tendrils, tranquilly are growing.Meanwhile for me Love never laidIn slumber, like a north-wind glowingWith Thracian lightnings, still doth dartBlood-parching madness on my heart,From Kupris hurtling, stormful, wild,Lording the man as erst the child.

It is interesting to compare the different metaphors whereby the early lyrists imaged the assaults of the Love-god. Sappho describes him in one place as a youth arrayed with a flame-colored chlamys descending from heaven; in another she calls him "a limb-dissolving, bitter-sweet, impracticable wild beast;" again, she compares the state of her soul under the influence of love to oak-trees torn and shaken by a mountain whirlwind. Anacreon paints a fine picture of Love like a blacksmith, forging his soul and tempering it in icy torrents. The dubious winged figure armed with a heavy sword, which is carved upon the recently discovered column from the Temple of Ephesus, if he be the Love-god, and not, as some conjecture, Death, seems to have been conceived in the spirit of these energetic metaphors. The Greeks, at the period of Anacreon and Ibycus, were far from having as yet imagined the baby Cupid of Moschus, the Epigrammatists, and the Alexandrian Anacreontics. He was still a terrible and passion-stirring power—no mere malicious urchin coming by night with drenched wings and unstrung bow to reward the poet's hospitality by wounding him; no naughty boy who runs away from his mother and steals honeycombs, no bee-like elf asleep in rosebuds.

Simonides is a far more brilliant representative than Ibycus, both of Greek choral poetry in its prime, and also of the whole literary life of Hellas during the period which immediately preceded and followed the Persian war. He was born in the islandof Ceos, of pure Ionian blood and breeding; but the Ionians of Ceos were celebrated for their σωφροσύνη (reserve, or self-restraint), a quality strongly marked in the poems of Simonides. In his odes we do not trace that mixture of Æolian passion and that concentration upon personal emotions which are noticeable in those of Ibycus, but rather a Dorian solemnity of thought and feeling, qualifying Simonides for the arduous functions to which he was called, of commemorating in elegy and epigram and funeral ode the achievements of Hellas against Persia. Simonides belonged to a family of professional poets; for the arts among the early Greeks were hereditary; a father taught the trade of flute-playing and chorus-leading and verse-making to his son, who, if he had original genius, became a great poet, as was the fate of Pindar; or, if he were endowed with commonplace abilities, remained a journeyman in art without discredit to himself, performing useful functions in his native place.[101]Simonides exercised his calling of chorus-teacher at Carthæa in Ceos, and lived at the χορηγεῖον, or resort of the chorus, near the temple of Apollo. But the greater portion of his life, after he had attained celebrity, was passed with patrons—with Hipparchus, who invited him to Athens, where he dwelt at amity with Anacreon, and at enmity with Pindar's master, Lasos; with the Scopads and Aleuads of Thessaly, for whom he composed the most touching threnoi and the most brilliant panegyrics, of which fragments have descendedto us; finally, with Hiero of Syracuse, who honored him exceedingly, and when he died consigned him to the earth with princely funeral pomp. The relations of Simonides to these patrons may be gathered from numerous slight indications, none of which are very honorable to his character. For instance, after receiving the hospitality of Hipparchus, he composed an epigram for the statue of Harmodius, in which he calls the murder of the tyrant "a great light rising upon Athens." Again, he praised the brutal Scopas, son of Creon, in an ode which is celebrated, both as being connected with the most dramatic incident in the poet's life, and also as having furnished Plato with a theme for argument, and Aristotle with an ethical quotation—"To be a good man in very truth, a square without blame, is hard." This proposition Plato discusses in theProtagoras, while Aristotle cites the phrase, τετράγωνος ἄνευ ψόγου (four-square without fault). From the general tenor of the fragments of this ode, from Plato's criticism, and from what is known about the coarse nature of Scopas, who is being praised, we must conjecture that Simonides attempted to whitewash his patron's character by depreciating the standard of morality. With Ionian facility and courtly compliment, he made excuses for a bad man by pleading that perfect goodness was unattainable. Scopas refused to pay the price required by Simonides for the poem in question, telling him to get half of it from the Dioscuri, who had also been eulogized. This was at a banquet. While the king was laughing at his own rude jest, a servant whispered to the poet that two goodly youths waited without, desiring earnestly to speak with him. Simonides left the palace, but found no one. Even as he stood looking for his visitors, he heard the crash of beams and the groans of dying men. Scopas with his guests had been destroyed by the falling of the roof, and Simonides had received a godlike guerdon from the two sons of Tyndareus. This story belongs, perhaps, to the same class asthe cranes of Ibycus and the dolphin of Arion. Yet there seems to be no doubt that the Scopad dynasty was suddenly extinguished; for we hear nothing of them at the time of the Persian war, and we know that Simonides composed a threnos for the family.

The most splendid period of the life of Simonides was that which he passed at Athens during the great wars with Persia. Here he was the friend of Miltiades, Themistocles, and Pausanias. Here he composed his epigrams on Marathon, Thermopylæ, Salamis, Platæa—poems not destined to be merely sung or consigned to parchment, but to be carved in marble or engraved in letters of imperishable bronze upon the works of the noblest architects and statuaries. The genius of Simonides is unique in this branch of monumental poetry. His couplets—calm, simple, terse, strong as the deeds they celebrate, enduring as the brass or stone which they adorned—animated succeeding generations of Greek patriots; they were transferred to the brains of statesmen like Pericles and Demosthenes, inscribed upon the fleshy tablets of the hearts of warriors like Cleomenes, Pelopidas, Epaminondas. We are thrice fortunate in possessing the entire collection of these epigrams, unrivalled for the magnitude of the events they celebrate, and for the circumstances under which they were composed. When we reflect what would have become of the civilization of the world but for these Greek victories—when we remember that the events which these few couplets record transcend in importance those of any other single period of history—we are almost appalled by the contrast between the brevity of the epigrams and the world-wide vastness of their matter. In reviewing the life of Simonides, after admitting that he was greedy of gain and not adverse to flattery, we are bound to confess that, as a poet, he proved himself adequate to the age of Marathon and Salamis. He was the voice of Hellas—the genius of Fame, sculpturing upon her brazen shield with a pen of adamant, in austere letters of indelible gold, the achievements to which the whole world owes its civilization. Happy poet! Had ever any other man so splendid a heritage of song allotted to him?

In style Simonides is always pure and exquisitely polished. The ancients called him the sweet poet—Melicertes—par excellence. His σωφροσύνη, or tempered self-restraint, gives a mellow tone not merely to his philosophy and moral precepts, but also to his art. He has none of Pindar's rugged majesty, volcanic force, gorgeous exuberance: he does not, like Pindar, pour forth an inexhaustible torrent of poetical ideas, chafing against each other in the eddies of breathless inspiration. On the contrary, he works up a few thoughts, a few carefully selected images, with patient skill, producing a perfectly harmonious result, but one which is always bordering on the commonplace. Like all correct poets, he is somewhat tame, though tender, delicate, and exquisitely beautiful. Pindar electrifies his hearer, seizing him like the eagle in Dante's vision, and bearing him breathless through the ether of celestial flame. Simonides leads us by the hand along the banks of pleasant rivers, through laurel groves, and by the porticos of sunny temples. What he possesses of quite peculiar to his own genius is pathos—the pathos of romance. This appears most remarkably in the fragment of a threnos which describes Danaë afloat upon the waves at night. It is with the greatest diffidence that I offer a translation of what remains one of the most perfect pieces of pathetic poetry in any literature:

When, in the carven chest,The winds that blew and waves in wild unrestSmote her with fear, she, not with cheeks unwet,Her arms of love round Perseus set,And said: O child, what grief is mine!But thou dost slumber, and thy baby breastIs sunk in rest,Here in the cheerless brass-bound bark,Tossed amid starless night and pitchy dark.Nor dost thou heed the scudding brineOf waves that wash above thy curls so deep,Nor the shrill winds that sweep,—Lapped in thy purple robe's embrace,Fair little face!But if this dread were dreadful too to thee,Then wouldst thou lend thy listening ear to me;Therefore I cry,—Sleep, babe, and sea be still,And slumber our unmeasured ill!Oh, may some change of fate, sire Zeus, from theeDescend, our woes to end!But if this prayer, too overbold, offendThy justice, yet be merciful to me!

The careful development of simple thoughts in Simonides may best be illustrated by the fragment on the three hundred Spartans who died at Thermopylæ:

"Of those who died at Thermopylæ glorious is the fate and fair the doom; their grave is an altar; instead of lamentation, they have endless fame; their dirge is a chant of praise. Such winding-sheet as theirs no rust, no, nor all-conquering time, shall bring to naught. But this sepulchre of brave men hath taken for its habitant the glory of Hellas. Leonidas is witness, Sparta's king, who hath left a mighty crown of valor and undying fame."

The antitheses are wrought with consummate skill; the fate of the heroes is glorious, their doom honorable. So far the eulogy is commonplace; then the same thought receives a bolder turn: their grave is an altar. We do not lament for them so much as hold them in eternal memory; our very songs of sorrow become pæans of praise. What follows is a still further expansion of the leading theme: rust and time cannot affect their fame; Hellas confides her glory to their tomb. Then generalities are quitted; and Leonidas, the protagonist of Thermopylæ, appears.

In his threnoi Simonides has generally recourse to the common grounds of consolation, which the Ionian elegists repeatad nauseam, dwelling upon the shortness and uncertainty and ills of life, and tending rather to depress the survivors on their own account than to comfort them for the dead.[102]In one he says, "Short is the strength of men, and vain are all their cares, and in their brief life trouble follows upon trouble; and death, that no man shuns, is hung above our heads—for him both good and bad share equally." It is impossible, while reading this lachrymose lament, to forget the fragment of that mighty threnos of Pindar's which sounds like a trumpet-blast for immortality, and, trampling under feet the glories of this world, reveals the gladness of the souls who have attained Elysium:

For them the night all through,In that broad realm below,The splendor of the sun spreads endless light;'Mid rosy meadows bright,Their city of the tombs with incense-trees,And golden chalicesOf flowers, and fruitage fair,Scenting the breezy air,Is laden. There with horses and with play,With games and lyres, they while the hours away.On every side aroundPure happiness is found,With all the blooming beauty of the world;There fragrant smoke, upcurledFrom altars where the blazing fire is denseWith perfumed frankincense,Burned unto gods in heaven,Through all the land is driven,Making its pleasant place odorousWith scented gales and sweet airs amorous.

On every side aroundPure happiness is found,With all the blooming beauty of the world;There fragrant smoke, upcurledFrom altars where the blazing fire is denseWith perfumed frankincense,Burned unto gods in heaven,Through all the land is driven,Making its pleasant place odorousWith scented gales and sweet airs amorous.

The same note of melancholy reflection upon transient human life may be traced in the following fragment ascribed to Simonides. He is apparently rebuking Cleobulus of Lindus in Rhodes for an arrogant epigraph inscribed upon some stelé.

Those who are wise in heart and mind,O Lindian Cleobulus, findNaught in thy shallow vaunt aright;Who with the streams that flow for aye,The vernal flowers that bloom and die,The fiery sun, the moon's mild rays,The strong sea's eddying water-ways,Matchest a marble pillar's might—Lo, all things that have being areTo the high gods inferior far;But carven stone may not withstandEven a mortal's ruthless hand.Therefore thy words no wisdom teachMore than an idiot's idle speech.

What has been said about Simonides applies in a great measure also to Bacchylides, who was his nephew, pupil, and faithful follower. The personality of Bacchylides, as a man and a poet, is absorbed in that of his uncle—the greater bard, the more distinguished actor on the theatre of the world. While Simonides played his part in public life, Bacchylides gave himself up to the elegant pleasures of society; while Simonides celebrated in epigrams the military glories of the Greeks, Bacchylides wrote wine-songs and congratulatory odes. His descriptions of Bacchic intoxication and of the charms of peace display the same careful word-painting as the description by Simonides of Orpheus, with more luxuriance of sensual suggestion. His threnoi exhibit the same Ionian despondency and resignation—a dead settled calm, an elegant stolidity of epicureanism. That this excellent, if somewhat languid, lyrist may receive his due meed of attention, I haveselected his most important fragment, thePraise of Peace, for translation (Bergk, vol. iii. p. 1230):

To mortal men Peace giveth these good things:Wealth, and the flowers of honey-throated song;The flame that springsOn carven altars from fat sheep and kine,Slain to the gods in heaven; and, all day long,Games for glad youths, and flutes, and wreaths, and circling wine.Then in the steely shield swart spiders weaveTheir web and dusky woof:Rust to the pointed spear and sword doth cleave;The brazen trump sounds no alarms;Nor is sleep harried from our eyes aloof,But with sweet rest my bosom warms:The streets are thronged with lovely men and young,And hymns in praise of boys like flames to heaven are flung.

The tone common to Simonides and Bacchylides in funeral poems will be illustrated by the four following fragments:[103]

Being a man, say not what comes to-morrow,Nor, seeing one in bliss, how long 'twill last;For wide-winged fly was ne'er of flight so fastAs change to sorrow.Nay, not those elder men, who lived of yore,Of sceptred gods the half-immortal seed,Not even they to prosperous old age woreA life from pain and death and danger freed.Short is the strength of men, and vain their trouble,Through their brief age sorrows on sorrows double;O'er each and all hangs death escaped by none;Of him both good and bad an equal lot have won.For mortal men not to be born is best,Nor e'er to see the bright beams of the day;Since, as life rolls away,No man that breathes was ever alway blest.

Being a man, say not what comes to-morrow,Nor, seeing one in bliss, how long 'twill last;For wide-winged fly was ne'er of flight so fastAs change to sorrow.

Nay, not those elder men, who lived of yore,Of sceptred gods the half-immortal seed,Not even they to prosperous old age woreA life from pain and death and danger freed.

Short is the strength of men, and vain their trouble,Through their brief age sorrows on sorrows double;O'er each and all hangs death escaped by none;Of him both good and bad an equal lot have won.

For mortal men not to be born is best,Nor e'er to see the bright beams of the day;Since, as life rolls away,No man that breathes was ever alway blest.

Here we must stop short in the front of Pindar—the Hamlet among these lesser actors, the Shakespeare among a crowd of inferior poets. To treat of Greek lyrical poetry and to omit Pindar is a paradox in action. Yet Pindar is so colossal, so much apart, that he deserves a separate study, and cannot be dragged in at the end of a bird's-eye view of a period of literature. At the time of Pindar, poetry was sinking into mannerism. He by the force of his native originality gave it a wholly fresh direction, and created a style as novel as it was inimitable. Like some high mountain-peak, upon the border-land of plain and lesser hills, he stands alone, sky-piercing and tremendous in his solitary strength.

Before, however, entering upon the criticism of Pindar's poetry, it will be of service to complete this review of the Greek lyric by some specimens of those later artificial literary odes, a few of which have been preserved for us by the anthologists and grammarians. The following Hymn to Virtue has a special interest, since it is ascribed to Aristotle, the philosopher, and makes allusion to his friend, the tyrant of Atarneus. The comparative dryness of the style is no less characteristic of the age in which the poem is supposed to have been written, than its animating motive, the beauty of Virtue, is true to the Greek conception of morality and heroism.

Virtue, to men thou bringest care and toil;Yet art thou life's best, fairest spoil!O virgin goddess, for thy beauty's sakeTo die is delicate in this our Greece,Or to endure of pain the stern strong ache.Such fruit for our soul's easeOf joys undying, dearer far than goldOr home or soft-eyed sleep, dost thou unfold!It was for thee the seed of Zeus,Stout Herakles, and Leda's twins, did chooseStrength-draining deeds, to spread abroad thy name:Smit with the love of thee,Aias and Achileus went smilinglyDown to Death's portal, crowned with deathless fame.Now, since thou art so fair,Leaving the lightsome air,Atarneus' hero hath died gloriously.Wherefore immortal praise shall be his guerdon:His goodness and his deeds are made the burdenOf songs divineSung by Memory's daughters nine,Hymning of hospitable Zeus the mightAnd friendship firm as fate in fate's despite.

The next is a Hymn to Health, hardly less true to Greek feeling than the Hymn to Virtue. Simonides, it will be remembered, had said that the first and best possession to be desired by man is health. The ode is but a rhetorical expansion of this sentence, showing that none of the good things of human life can be enjoyed without physical well-being.

Health! Eldest, most august of allThe blessed gods, on thee I call!Oh, let me spend with thee the restOf mortal life, securely blest!Oh, mayst thou be my house-mate still,To shield and shelter me from ill!If wealth have any grace,If fair our children's face;If kinghood, lifting men to bePeers with the high gods' empery;If young Love's flying feetThrough secret snares be sweet;If aught of all heaven's gifts to mortals sent,If rest from care be dear, or calm content—These goodly things, each, all of them, with theeBloom everlastingly,Blest Health! Yea, Beauty's yearBreaks into spring for thee, for only thee!Without thee no man's life is aught but cold and drear.

As an example of the pæan or the prosodial hymn, when it assumed a literary form, I may select an ode to Phœbus, which bears the name of Dionysius. Apollo is here addressed in his character of Light-giver, and leader of the lesser powers of heaven. The stars and the moon are his attendants, rejoicing in his music, and deriving from his might their glory.

Let all wide heaven be still!Be silent vale and hill,Earth and whispering wind and sea,Voice of birds and echo shrill!For soon amid our choir will bePhœbus with floating locks, the Lord of Minstrelsy!O father of the snow-browed morn;Thou who dost drive the rosy carOf day's wing-footed coursers, borneWith gleaming curls of gold unshornOver heaven's boundless vault afar;Weaving the woof of myriad rays,Wealth-scattering beams that burn and blaze,Enwinding them round earth in endless maze!The rivers of thy fire undyingBeget bright day, our heart's desire:The throng of stars to greet thee flyingThrough cloudless heaven, join choric dances,Hailing thee king with ceaseless cryingFor joy of thy Phœbean lyre.In front the gray-eyed Moon advancesDrawn by her snow-white heifers o'erNight's silent silvery dancing-floor:With gladness her mild bosom burnsAs round the dædal world she turns.

From these specimens we may infer the character of that semi-ethical, semi-religious lyric poetry which was produced so copiously in Greece, and of which we have lost all but accidental remnants. Though not to be compared for grandeur of style and abundance of grace with the odes of Pindar and the fragments of Simonides, they display a careful workmanship, a clear and harmonious development of ideas, that make us long, alas too vainly, for the treasures of a literature now buried in irrevocable oblivion.

FOOTNOTES:[76]τοῖσιν δ' ἐν μέσσοισι πάϊς φόρμιγγι λιγείῃἱμερόεν κιθάριζε· λίνον δ' ὑπὸ καλὸν ἄειδενλεπταλέῃ φωνῇ.—_Iliad_, xviii. 569.A boy, amid them, from a clear-toned harpDrew lovely music; well his liquid voiceThe strings accompanied.—Lord Derby's Trans.[77]Bergk (Poetæ Lyrici Græci, 3 vols., Leipsic, 1866) gives an old Greek Linus-song on p. 1297:O Linus, thee the gods did grace;For unto thee they gave, most dear,First among men the song to raiseWith shrill voice sounding high and clear;And Phœbus thee in anger slays,And Muses mourn around thy bier.[78]Many poems of the Syracusan idyllists are valuable historically as adaptations of the hexameter to subjects essentially lyrical. In the Adoniazusæ, the Epithalamium Helenæ, the Lament for Bion, etc., we trace a lyrical inspiration overlaid by the idyllic form. Theocritus must have worked on the lines of old choral poetry.[79]"Pour we libations to Memory's daughters, the Muses, and to the Muse-leading son of Leto."[80]Plutarch records with just indignation the honors of this sort paid by Aratus to Antigonus: "He offered sacrifices, called Antigonea, in honor of Antigonus, and sang pæans himself, with a garland on his head, to the praise ofa wasted, consumptive Macedonian" (Life of Cleomenes). The words in italics strongly express a true Greek sense of disgust for the barbarian and the weakling.[81]See Frere, vol. ii. pp. 200, 201.[82]See Trans. ofAcharnians, Frere, vol. ii. p. 17.[83]Frere'sTranslation, vol. ii. pp. 241-245.[84]See, however, the interesting archaic hymns to Dionysus, pp. 1299, 1300.[85]Bergk, p. 716; Pindar,Olymp., ix. 1.[86]It is interesting to observe that this custom of the funeral dirge, improvised with wild inspiration by women, has been preserved almost to the present day in Corsica. A collection of these coronachs, calledVoceriin the language of the island, was published in 1855 at Bastia, by Cesare Fabiani.[87]Translated by Mitchell, vol. ii. p. 282, in hisDicast turned Gentleman.[88]"To be in health is the best thing for mortal man; the next best to be of form and nature beautiful; the third, to enjoy wealth gotten without fraud; and the fourth, to be in youth's bloom among friends." The Greek suspicion of wealth, abundantly illustrated in the Gnomic elegies, might be further exemplified by this fragment ascribed to Timocreon:Would, blind Wealth, that thou hadst beenNe'er on land or ocean seen,Nowhere on this upper earth!Hell's black stream that gave thee birthIs the proper haunt for thee,Cause of all man's misery![89]Athen.,Lib., viii. 360.[90]This begs the question of the nationality of Tyrtæus, who, according to antique tradition, was of Attic origin, but who writes like a Spartan.[91]Compare Simonides (Bergk, vol. iii. p. 1143):ἄγγελε κλυτὰ ἔαρος ἁδυόδμου,κυανέα χελιδοῖ.Blithe angel of the perfume-breathing spring,Dark-vested swallow.[92]Those who are curious in the matter of metres will find the Sapphic stanza reproduced in English, with perfect truth of cadence, in Swinburne's "Sapphics" (Poems and Ballads). The imitations by Horace are far less close to the original.[93]Bergk, p. 935.[94]Carm., i. 32, thus translated by Conington:Thou, strung by Lesbos' minstrel hand,The bard who 'mid the clash of steel,Or haply mooring to the strand,His battered keel,Of Bacchus and the Muses sung,And Cupid, still at Venus' side,And Lycus, beautiful and young,Dark-haired, dark-eyed.[95]De Nat. Deorum, i. 28.[96]See Bergk, p. 948.[97]Rhet., i. 9.[98]Bergk, p. 936.[99]The people of Athens gave him a statue on their Acropolis. The Teians struck his portrait on coins. Critias said that his poems would last as long as the Cottabos in Hellas. He did in fact exactly represent one side, and that the least heroic side, of the character of the Greeks—their simple love of sensual pleasure. As mere Hedonism grew, so did the songs and the style of Anacreon gain in popularity, whereas the stormier passion of Sappho became unfashionable.[100]It is unhistorical to confound the Dorians with the Spartans, who were a specially trained section of the Dorian stock. Yet it will be seen that, in relation at least to lyric poetry, Sparta fairly may be taken astheDorian state.[101]The dramatic art was hereditary among the Athenians. Æschylus left a son, Euphorion, and two nephews, Philocles and Astydamas, who produced tragedies. The last is reported to have written no fewer than two hundred and forty plays. Iophon, the son, and Sophocles, the grandson, of the great Sophocles, were dramatists of some repute at Athens. Euripides had a nephew of his own name, and Aristophanes two sons who followed the same calling. It is only from families like the Bachs that we can draw any modern parallel to this transmission of an art from father to son in the same race.[102]The reputation gained by Simonides among the ancients for the sorrow of his song is proved by the phrase of Catullus,—"Mœstius lachrymis Simonideis" (more sad than tears shed by Simonides).[103]See Bergk, vol. iii. pp. 1128, 1129, 1132, 1227.

[76]τοῖσιν δ' ἐν μέσσοισι πάϊς φόρμιγγι λιγείῃἱμερόεν κιθάριζε· λίνον δ' ὑπὸ καλὸν ἄειδενλεπταλέῃ φωνῇ.—_Iliad_, xviii. 569.A boy, amid them, from a clear-toned harpDrew lovely music; well his liquid voiceThe strings accompanied.—Lord Derby's Trans.

[76]

τοῖσιν δ' ἐν μέσσοισι πάϊς φόρμιγγι λιγείῃἱμερόεν κιθάριζε· λίνον δ' ὑπὸ καλὸν ἄειδενλεπταλέῃ φωνῇ.—_Iliad_, xviii. 569.A boy, amid them, from a clear-toned harpDrew lovely music; well his liquid voiceThe strings accompanied.—Lord Derby's Trans.

τοῖσιν δ' ἐν μέσσοισι πάϊς φόρμιγγι λιγείῃἱμερόεν κιθάριζε· λίνον δ' ὑπὸ καλὸν ἄειδενλεπταλέῃ φωνῇ.—_Iliad_, xviii. 569.

A boy, amid them, from a clear-toned harpDrew lovely music; well his liquid voiceThe strings accompanied.—Lord Derby's Trans.

[77]Bergk (Poetæ Lyrici Græci, 3 vols., Leipsic, 1866) gives an old Greek Linus-song on p. 1297:O Linus, thee the gods did grace;For unto thee they gave, most dear,First among men the song to raiseWith shrill voice sounding high and clear;And Phœbus thee in anger slays,And Muses mourn around thy bier.

[77]Bergk (Poetæ Lyrici Græci, 3 vols., Leipsic, 1866) gives an old Greek Linus-song on p. 1297:

O Linus, thee the gods did grace;For unto thee they gave, most dear,First among men the song to raiseWith shrill voice sounding high and clear;And Phœbus thee in anger slays,And Muses mourn around thy bier.

[78]Many poems of the Syracusan idyllists are valuable historically as adaptations of the hexameter to subjects essentially lyrical. In the Adoniazusæ, the Epithalamium Helenæ, the Lament for Bion, etc., we trace a lyrical inspiration overlaid by the idyllic form. Theocritus must have worked on the lines of old choral poetry.

[79]"Pour we libations to Memory's daughters, the Muses, and to the Muse-leading son of Leto."

[80]Plutarch records with just indignation the honors of this sort paid by Aratus to Antigonus: "He offered sacrifices, called Antigonea, in honor of Antigonus, and sang pæans himself, with a garland on his head, to the praise ofa wasted, consumptive Macedonian" (Life of Cleomenes). The words in italics strongly express a true Greek sense of disgust for the barbarian and the weakling.

[81]See Frere, vol. ii. pp. 200, 201.

[82]See Trans. ofAcharnians, Frere, vol. ii. p. 17.

[83]Frere'sTranslation, vol. ii. pp. 241-245.

[84]See, however, the interesting archaic hymns to Dionysus, pp. 1299, 1300.

[85]Bergk, p. 716; Pindar,Olymp., ix. 1.

[86]It is interesting to observe that this custom of the funeral dirge, improvised with wild inspiration by women, has been preserved almost to the present day in Corsica. A collection of these coronachs, calledVoceriin the language of the island, was published in 1855 at Bastia, by Cesare Fabiani.

[87]Translated by Mitchell, vol. ii. p. 282, in hisDicast turned Gentleman.

[88]"To be in health is the best thing for mortal man; the next best to be of form and nature beautiful; the third, to enjoy wealth gotten without fraud; and the fourth, to be in youth's bloom among friends." The Greek suspicion of wealth, abundantly illustrated in the Gnomic elegies, might be further exemplified by this fragment ascribed to Timocreon:Would, blind Wealth, that thou hadst beenNe'er on land or ocean seen,Nowhere on this upper earth!Hell's black stream that gave thee birthIs the proper haunt for thee,Cause of all man's misery!

Would, blind Wealth, that thou hadst beenNe'er on land or ocean seen,Nowhere on this upper earth!Hell's black stream that gave thee birthIs the proper haunt for thee,Cause of all man's misery!

[89]Athen.,Lib., viii. 360.

[90]This begs the question of the nationality of Tyrtæus, who, according to antique tradition, was of Attic origin, but who writes like a Spartan.

[91]Compare Simonides (Bergk, vol. iii. p. 1143):ἄγγελε κλυτὰ ἔαρος ἁδυόδμου,κυανέα χελιδοῖ.Blithe angel of the perfume-breathing spring,Dark-vested swallow.

[91]Compare Simonides (Bergk, vol. iii. p. 1143):

ἄγγελε κλυτὰ ἔαρος ἁδυόδμου,κυανέα χελιδοῖ.Blithe angel of the perfume-breathing spring,Dark-vested swallow.

ἄγγελε κλυτὰ ἔαρος ἁδυόδμου,κυανέα χελιδοῖ.

Blithe angel of the perfume-breathing spring,Dark-vested swallow.

[92]Those who are curious in the matter of metres will find the Sapphic stanza reproduced in English, with perfect truth of cadence, in Swinburne's "Sapphics" (Poems and Ballads). The imitations by Horace are far less close to the original.

[93]Bergk, p. 935.

[94]Carm., i. 32, thus translated by Conington:Thou, strung by Lesbos' minstrel hand,The bard who 'mid the clash of steel,Or haply mooring to the strand,His battered keel,Of Bacchus and the Muses sung,And Cupid, still at Venus' side,And Lycus, beautiful and young,Dark-haired, dark-eyed.

[94]Carm., i. 32, thus translated by Conington:

Thou, strung by Lesbos' minstrel hand,The bard who 'mid the clash of steel,Or haply mooring to the strand,His battered keel,Of Bacchus and the Muses sung,And Cupid, still at Venus' side,And Lycus, beautiful and young,Dark-haired, dark-eyed.

Thou, strung by Lesbos' minstrel hand,The bard who 'mid the clash of steel,Or haply mooring to the strand,His battered keel,

Of Bacchus and the Muses sung,And Cupid, still at Venus' side,And Lycus, beautiful and young,Dark-haired, dark-eyed.

[95]De Nat. Deorum, i. 28.

[96]See Bergk, p. 948.

[97]Rhet., i. 9.

[98]Bergk, p. 936.

[99]The people of Athens gave him a statue on their Acropolis. The Teians struck his portrait on coins. Critias said that his poems would last as long as the Cottabos in Hellas. He did in fact exactly represent one side, and that the least heroic side, of the character of the Greeks—their simple love of sensual pleasure. As mere Hedonism grew, so did the songs and the style of Anacreon gain in popularity, whereas the stormier passion of Sappho became unfashionable.

[100]It is unhistorical to confound the Dorians with the Spartans, who were a specially trained section of the Dorian stock. Yet it will be seen that, in relation at least to lyric poetry, Sparta fairly may be taken astheDorian state.

[101]The dramatic art was hereditary among the Athenians. Æschylus left a son, Euphorion, and two nephews, Philocles and Astydamas, who produced tragedies. The last is reported to have written no fewer than two hundred and forty plays. Iophon, the son, and Sophocles, the grandson, of the great Sophocles, were dramatists of some repute at Athens. Euripides had a nephew of his own name, and Aristophanes two sons who followed the same calling. It is only from families like the Bachs that we can draw any modern parallel to this transmission of an art from father to son in the same race.

[102]The reputation gained by Simonides among the ancients for the sorrow of his song is proved by the phrase of Catullus,—"Mœstius lachrymis Simonideis" (more sad than tears shed by Simonides).

[103]See Bergk, vol. iii. pp. 1128, 1129, 1132, 1227.

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