among themselves a local supremacy over the richly fanciful system of Pagan superstition, on a spot where war could not enter, and where the very aspect of Nature was hallowed by the most imposing associations. Still more obviously were the Pythic, Olympic, and other public games, calculated to awaken not merely the corporeal energies, but the moral genius of a people. Amusements similar to those festivals had prevailed in remote times, but had fallen into disuse, and their renewal served to revive old heroic recollections. They were to the martial spirit of Greece what the tournaments were to the chivalry of modern Europe. And as song will always be found where there is enthusiasm, those games were the scenes of musical and poetical, as well as of athletic emulation. Still there were opposite and counteracting causes to retard the improvement of the mother-country. Crete, the earliest civilized of the Greek states, the probable model of Spartan government, a most ancient teacher of religion, and a great depository of its mysteries and traditions-this island possessed institutions which tended to civilize her only to a stationary point, and which promoted hardy and active, rather than elegant occupations. The Cretans had artists, but they derived the fine arts from Asia. They had some ancient poetical names, but no continued school of poetry, to rescue them from obscurity. Nothing is known of the old Cretan poet Thales, but that he was the friend of Lycurgus. The history of their far-famed Epimenides is involved in fable, and the fragments of works which he is said to have composed after his sleep* of fifty years, are scarcely better authenticated than the nap itself. The Cretans, in fact, when not engaged in war, commerce, or navigation, were fonder of hunting, and robust exercises, than the pursuits of inventive imagination, unless we choose to rank under this head those habits of marvellous anecdote, for which they unhappily became but too much reputed.+ * Epimenides, as we are gravely informed by Apollonius Dyosculus and Diogenes Laertius, was once sent out to the field by his father to seek for a lost sheep. About mid-day he got tired with walking in the heat of the sun, laid himself down in a grotto, and fell into a sleep, which lasted, without interruption, for fifty-seven years. He awoke, of course, perfectly refreshed, but quite unconscious that he had taken more than an ordinary siesta; and recollecting his father's orders, went out again in search of the sheep. As the animal, however, was already beyond the reach of recovery, Epimenides went back again to the farm to make the best apology he could for his failure. To his surprise, he found it in the possession of strangers, who, we may suppose, could make neither head nor tail of his story about the sheep. In this perplexity, he repaired to the city, and was entering his father's house, when he was stopped by people, demanding who he was. With much difficulty, and no less astonishment, he was at last recognised by his younger brother, who had by this time grown an elderly man, and who enabled him, by comparing dates, to ascertain the length of his slumber. † Among the poets of Crete may be remembered Hybrias, author of the following bravo song-I give the original as well as the translation: Neither could Corinth, though it gave birth to several poets, ever be said to have been a distinguished seat of the Muses. The Corinthians were admirably situated on their neck of land for the acquisition of power and prosperity, and they acquired them early. They also practised some of the fine arts; but there is no distinct evidence of their having invented any one of them. They could boast neither of orators nor philosophers. Indeed, we could hardly expect a city containing a thousand priestesses of Venus in a single temple, to have been an eminent school of moral philosophy. Athens had a very early poet in Tyrtæus, but he most probably imitated the Asiatic Callinus; and, in a general view, Athenian literature was late in coming to maturity. If we turn our attention during this period, when the Greek language was receiving its finest polish and harmony on the other side of the Ægean, to the Doric states of proper Greece, we shall not suspect those states to have kept on a par with the Asiatics in poetry until the time of Pindar. It is true, that a great deal of Doric poetry has been lost, and that no one can pretend to ascertain exactly what the poetical wealth of that dialect may have been between the time of Alcman and Pindar. It is true also, that we know the names and characters of several beautiful poets who wrote during that interval (generally) in the Doric dialect. But the best of those poets were not Greeks of the mother-country.‡ The most important of the Doric states, Lacedæmon, at least, was apparently ill calculated to be the region of poetry. Alcman, indeed, lived and wrote in that country, and the popularity of his graceful and amatory strains, among a people so ruggedly dissimilar to him in genius, is a fact for which it is not easy to account. But Alcman was a Lydian, if not by birth, at least by immediate SCOLION HYBRIE CRETENSIS. Εσι μοι πλότος, μεγα δόρυ, και ξίφος, χρωτος. Τότω γαρ αρω, τότω θερίζω, τότω Πάντες γονυ πεπτηοτες εμοι κυνεοντι SONG OF HYBRIAS THE CRETAN. My wealth's a burly spear and brand, But your wights that take no pride to wield Nor joy to draw the sword; * Herodotus (i. 23.) supposes that Arion first invented and taught the dithy rambic measure at Corinth. But Arion, of Dolphin memory, was an Asiatic, a native of that island (Lesbos) to which the head of Orpheus so obligingly floated, after it was separated from the body, and preserving the organs of speech uninjured by a long sea-voyage, delighted the people with a great many pleasant melodies. † Vide Meiner's Geschichte der Wissenschaften in Griechland und Rom. p. 17. #Stesichorus was of Sicily-Simonides and Bacchylides of Ceos. descent,* and brought with him the softer genius of Asia. Sparta invited and welcomed poets, but she interfered with the scope and character of their songs as rigidly as with the music that guided her marches into battle. Her iron institutions struck at the roots of some of the fine arts, and at the fruits of all of them. Her very liberty was a despotism over the most natural emotions and passions of the human breast. It is thus that Asiatic names so much predominate in the lyrical period of poetry, which commences about the seventh century before the Christian æra,† and exhibits the principal traits of Grecian genius that occur between the dates of Homer and Eschylus. For the Homerida were only a school of imitators; and Hesiod constituted no very high landmark of originality. But when we come to the names of Callinus, Archilochus, and Sappho, we find them associated with the appearance of new numbers, and fresh passions having been infused into the form and soul of poetry. All the productions of the period on which we are now entering, certainly could not be called lyrical; but the predominant character of its original works was such. This was decidedly the musical age of Greece. True it is that Homer always speaks of poets as singers, and almost always mentions their songs having been accompanied by the lyre. It is certain, nevertheless, that Greek music was importantly improved after the Homeric age, and that it must have been very imperfect during it. The primitive chaunt of long poetical narratives could have been but very rude, and the accompanying touches of the chord were, in all probability, only occasional. Accordingly Terpander, a bard of this new period, has the credit of having first perfected the melodies to which the works of Homer were chaunted, as well as the stringed instrument which accompanied them. Terpander, and all the great early lyrical masters, were eminent musicians, and thus impressed a thoroughly musical genius on Greek poetry, the stamp of which was transmitted to its drama, and was never effaced from it. Thus, though music might be said from her infancy to have been the associate of poetry, yet it was not until she had acquired a certain growth and degree of accomplishments that she became her most intimate companion. Before this æra the old religious hymns of Greece, those of The dispute about Alcman's native country is very old: we find it alluded to by Leonidas of Tarentum, who wrote in the days of the second Egyptian Ptolemy, in an epigram beginning Τὸν χαρίεντ' Αλκμανα, τον υμνητηρ' ὑμε valov-which is given in Brunck's and Jacobs's Analecta. I think it can scarcely be doubted that he was born in Lacedæmon. Statius, in the third book of his Sylvæ, speaks of him as the "tetricis Alcman cantatus Amyclis;" and that Amycle meant Sparta, appears from the Troades of Euripides, verse 986. But still his descent was Asiatic; and even his popularity in Sparta does not impugn the general justice of the observation, that in a country the institutions of which were so rigid, there could be no free and flourishing school of literature. † If Callinus really lived at the period of the Cimmerian irruption into Asia, we must assign the commencement of the lyric æra to the 8th century, B. C. Olen, for instance, (and of Orpheus, if he ever existed) had undoubtedly constituted a species of lyric poetry. But it was only a limited species, the object of which was confined to the excitement of religious enthusiasm; whereas the new lyrical strains appealed to all the passions, and embraced all the interests of life. This was also the birth-age of different kinds of composition, such as satire and elegy, which, though not strictly lyrical poetry according to modern ideas, yet in those times partook of its spirit and character. Pindar, in a later age, carried the Greek ode to perfection, and transferred the greatest glory of the lyre to proper Greece and to the Doric dialect. Yet if we possessed the entire works of all the lyrists who preceded him, it is likely that we should recognise in them a charm of fresh and artless feeling, which we should exchange with reluctance, even for the studied magnificence of Pindar. And without reckoning him, they form the memory of a mighty dynasty. Their poetry extended over an interesting diversity of themes and passions. We have the highest classical authority for believing that it was variously grand and beautiful. It was the record, to be sure, of vices as well as of virtues; but its spirit had freedom, and fire, and grace. Sappho's Love Ode is quoted as an instance of the sublime by Longinus, and with justice, for all sensations become sublime where they amount to perfect transport. Both language and music were now arrived at a rich and varied ripeness; yet music was still young, and far from the artificial maturity that divides her from poetry. The human mind had been kindled by new circumstances, and its sensibilities were still impetuous with novelty. A crisis so formed for lyrical excellence could hardly occur twice in the history of the world. Accordingly we find the poetical character to have now rather increased than diminished in its influence over society. More honoured than in Homer's age it could not well be; but it acquired more political importance. The Homeric poets are never described as interposing in the conduct of public affairs. But in the period on which we are now entering, we find Callinus quickening the pulse of his country's courage, and Alcæus defending freedom by his genius as well as his sword. What the ancients thought of those early lyrists, and how they felt their works, is still conspicuous in the studious imitations of them by their best poets, and the glowing eulogies pronounced on them by their most masterly critics. There is a mortifying contrast, however, between the vast admiration that was evidently paid to them by antiquity, and the scanty sum of their works that has been spared to us by time, or, we should rather say, by bigots‡ and barbarians. Only twenty-one lines * Ex. gr. Horace. † Longinus and Quinctilian. We have to thank the priests of Constantinople for having destroyed a great many of the works of Anacreon and other amatory Greek poets. have been preserved of the writings of Callinus,* the probable inventor of pentameter verse, and the precursor of Tyrtæus in war elegy. The history of Archilochust may well be supposed to have been exaggerated, but before his name could have become a by-word for the terrors of satire, the fulminations of his resounding iambics (his nxnevTES außor) must have dazzled and electrified the ancient world. Yet the few lines ascribed to him, which have been preserved (too few and too casually gleaned to give us an insight into any writer's character) happen to express rather a firmly suffering than a savage spirit, and are certainly not like fragments of works of genius, that were meant to drive his enemies to despair. Still scantier are the relics of Alcman, who is constantly spoken of as a graceful amatory poet, and distinguished among the masters of the lyre by the epithet delicious (λuxus) by an epigrammatist evidently acquainted with I have named Callinus first in the series of poets after Hesiod, on the authority of Strabo, who supposes him earlier than Archilochus, and quotes a line from him (Callinus), alluding to the Cimmerian irruption into Asia, which apparently fixes his date at the very beginning of the Olympiads. I refer the reader (unwilling to trouble him with chronological discussions) to Chauffepié's continuation of Bayle's Dictionary (article Callinus). Nor, though Athenæus is somewhat at variance with Strabo respecting the date of this poet, shall I stop to balance their testimonies. The fragment of Callinus above alluded to, is given in the "Analecta" of Brunck and Jacobs, and others, and in the "Poetæ Minores" (p. 426) of our own elegant scholar Gaisford. It is supposed to have been addressed by the poet to his countrymen the Ephesians, when engaged in war with their neighbours the Magnesians. It can be traced to no earlier preserver than Stobæus of the 5th Christian century, but I know of no direct argument against its authenticity. Camerarius, a distinguished luminary of the 16th century, thought so highly of its spirit, that he translated it into Latin, and inserted it in an ora tion which he addressed to all the powers of Europe, exhorting them to unite against the Turks. † Archilochus is put by Fabricius, on the authority of Herodotus (i. 12), and Cicero (Tusc. Quest.), as the contemporary of Gyges, and as flourishing in the 15th Olympiad; but he is generally placed by chronologists within the 7th century B. C. There is an interesting, though rather credulous detail of the traditions respecting him in Gillies's History of Greece. The article Archilochus in Bayle's Dictionary, in my opinion, evinces a great deal more research than impartiality respecting the character of this terrific old satirist. Pindar is quoted, to show that he despised him as an odious dealer in detraction (2d Pythic). But Pindar was a lover of the great, and might not be fair evidence on the subject. It is by no means clear, however, or rather there is a manifest improbability, that the old poet Archilochus was pointed at in the 2d Pythic. Pindar says he had seen him; but the great Iambist had been dead for ages before Pindar was born. He had seen him, however, he says, at a distance, ixas; a rather odd way of saying that he had heard of a dead man. Not even Heyne's high authority in conjecturing (for he only conjectures) that Exas alludes to distance of time, can demonstrate that there never was but one man of the name of Archilochus in Greece, (the name, by the way, occurs in Homer,) or that the Archilochus who is mentioned was not Pindar's contemporary. The story of Lycambes, who had refused our poet his daughter in marriage, having afterwards hanged himself in consequence of Archilochus's satires, may sound very credible; but one would fain hope that the sequel was only a piece of pathetic scandal, namely, that the beauty who had jilted the poet, and another young lady of the family, tucked themselves up after their father's example. |