the Homeric poems.

expect it of one so thoroughly steeped in the diction and style of To the same cause has been traced that tendency to idealize the past which is a specific aspect not only of Mimnermos himself in his sentimental-erotic mood but after him of the entire elegy.

To the period of Solon belongs the growth of the inscription in distichs. The acknowledged classic is Simonides and the type was continued by Aischylos and Phrynichos.

The period of Attic supremacy was marked by the rise of prose and of the drama. For the time being the elegy was relegated to the background as a mere parergon of writers whose real fame was derived from their work in other fields. Nevertheless the Attic school- the best representatives of it were Ion, Evenos, and Kritias-marks an advance. The influence of lyric and tragedy and of the new rhetorical technique of the sophists is to be felt in certain details.

The transition from the Old elegy to the New is represented by Antimachos of Kolophon, and it is significant for the character of the type soon to come that the intellectual and artistic pedigree of its great precursor takes us back to his fellow townsman Mimnermos. Upon the death of his beloved Lyde, Antimachos consoled himself for his loss by composing elegies in her honour, in which he retold from legend stories of those who like himself had loved and lost. The Lyde was thus a special development of the old threnodic mood. So too this use of myth, to which as the author of a famous epic (the Thebais) he would naturally be inclined, takes us back to Mimnermos. But this use of myth which appears to have been only occasional even in Mimnermos becomes in Antimachos for the first time a settled principle of elegiac composition afterwards used to advantage by the Hellenistic poets. His careful elaboration of details and his more extensive use of metaphorical diction, for both of which he was famous, also characterize him as a genuine forerunner of the New elegy.

A notable feature of Alexandrian literature was the prominence and popularity of the elegy. Every function of the department was cultivated and developed by authors whose names were deservedly famous in later times. In considering the elegy we must include also the elegiac epigram. Historically there is no hard and fast line between the two.1 The elegiac epitaph of Simonides, for example, which is said to have been developed first by Anakreon has been derived from the old threnodic mood of the elegy. But the characteristic Alexandrian epigram-erotic, sentimental, ironical, and what-not- of which many examples are preserved in the Greek Anthology, is even more closely related to the elegy. In fact it is nothing more nor less than an elegy in miniature and, as such, often the artistic development of themes already outlined, not only by the Attic poets and Theognis but even by the old Ionian school. This type of Alexandrian epigram is often. imitated and subjected to rhetorical expansion by the Roman elegiac poets, especially Propertius, but above all Ovid.2

The New elegy was a faithful reflection of the new culture. The establishment of an imperial system with continental possessions was responsible for pronounced changes in Greek life and thought. The new cosmopolitan ideal was strong both for good and for ill. The outlook of the average man was perhaps wider and more varied, but the conditions under which the great masterpieces of the past were produced had disappeared forever. Like all other private citizens, the poet was no longer concerned with the policies of the state. He might attach himself to some court, and many did so, but in any case his themes and his inspiration were now more distinctly those of a cosmopolitan living in an age of great learning and great intellectual and aesthetic refinement. Certainly, too, the period was profoundly affected by the fact that, with the growing importance of women which had followed the

1 The clear statement and exposition of this important fact are due to Reitzenstein, Epigramm und Skolion.

2 Hence, Jacoby's theory; see p. 23, n. I.

fall of the old city state, gradual feminization of life, literature, and art, with which we ourselves are not unfamiliar, had already begun.

In fact the Hellenistic period might perhaps be called the Age of Romanticism in Greek life. At all events it is in some ways the prototype and parallel of our own Romantic movement which, beginning with the nineteenth century, has profoundly modified the intellectual and social atmosphere of to-day. Conventional themes and methods of literary art give place to those which have been overlooked, forgotten, or ignored in previous times. There is a notable tendency to deal with ordinary men rather than with distinguished persons, gods, and heroes, as in other days. The shift of popular interest, by way of Euripides, from Die Leiden des alten Prometheus to Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, with the resulting change of tone, was as characteristic of the Alexandrian Age as it was of Goethe's time.

There was also a change in the point of view toward the literary and artistic inheritance of the race. Then as now we are in an age of scholarship and of great libraries. Philology, philosophy, natural science, the spirit of scientific investigation in general, come to the front and affect literary productivity in both matter and manner. As one might expect, the prevailing mood is the sentimental and erotic, occasionally even the neurotic. But then as now the idealist and the realist are side by side. Artistic naturalism which, as in Herondas and in the comedy, deals with ordinary and even with low life as it was, is opposed by the mood of gallantry and of sentimental eroticism which deals with high life as it never has been. On the other hand the protest against over-refinement finds expression in a reversion to the popular, antique, and primitive, in the use of local legends and folklore, in the deliberate archaism which prompted an author like Kallimachos to revive in his Bath of Pallas what appears to have been an old Dorian function of the elegy long since forgotten. But the most characteristic literary evidence of this protest is furnished by

the Idylls of Theokritos who expressly states that he was the friend and pupil of Philetas of Kos, distinguished as a teacher, Homeric scholar, philologist, and philosopher, but more distinguished, we may guess, as the founder and, with the possible exception of Kallimachos, as the greatest representative of the Hellenistic elegy.

In his elegiac poem Anμýτnp, Philetas related the Rape of Persephone. A good idea of his probable style and method may doubtless be gained from the charming stories of Hylas and of Polyphemos and Galatea told by Theokritos. Indeed, as Crusius well observes, these poems are themselves far more suggestive of the narrative elegy than of the epyllion. The books of poems dedicated to Bittis connect Philetas directly with the Lyde of Antimachos and more remotely with the Nanno of Mimnermos. Unfortunately the fragments are too slight to warrant any very definite conclusions. Perhaps it is safe to say, however, that Philetas had the idyllic touch and the tendency to genre reminding one of Theokritos. His language and style were probably simple and natural. It is likely also that the poems to Bittis were essentially lyric and subjective (cp. Hermesianax in Athenaios, 13, 598 F).1

Hermesianax (three books of elegies to Leontion) and Phanokles ("Epwres Kaλoí), younger contemporaries of Philetas, represent an archaistic type the inspiration of which appears to have been the Hesiodic Catalogi. In Hermesianax we find the ironical humour, in Phanokles the pursuit of poetic airia, which were both characteristic of the age. As in Antimachos and others the personal note is expressed in mythic material.

The next step, for which Kallinos and Mimnermos had already paved the way, was to make the myth itself the subject, and to reduce the personal note to a minimum. The step was taken by

1 If so, Jacoby's theory (see p. 23, n. 1) needs much revision. One could wish that we knew more of this collection. But at all events his thesis is neither supported nor protected by his assumption that the Bittis was an epikedeion or that it was a series of poems of the Catalogue type. See esp. M. Pohlenz in Xápires Friedrich Leo zum Sechzigsten Geburtstag dargebracht, Berlin, 1911, pp. 108-112.

Alexander the Aetolian, the first great representative in this period of the elegy as a vehicle for love stories (in his 'Añóλλwv) and after the type of Kritias-for literary gossip (in his Movσa). The growth of narrative elegy was encouraged not a little by the fact that both the poets and their readers were more interested in the legends and tales of the people than in the well-worn heroic myths. For such tales the traditional atmosphere of the elegy was better suited than that of the epic. According to the rules of the new school the story should be told briefly. Only the most effective incidents-for example the catastrophe-were worked out in detail, and as a matter of course the Romantic mood was emphasized. A good example on the Roman side is the exquisite Tarpeia elegy of Propertius (4, 4). The one long fragment of Alexander's 'Aπóλλwv is a genuine novella of the Milesian type. The style is simple and straightforward.

The many points of contact between the Roman elegy and the New comedy, the mime, and Herondas suggest that one of the Hellenistic contributions to our department was a type of elegy animated by a certain amount of the satiric and realistic spirit. This however is by no means certain. Moreover the Alexandrian poets generally prefer the epigram for the expression of this mood. For example the instructions of the lena to her charge, a stock theme in the Roman elegy - and as such the ancestor of countless Renaissance productions like the Rettorica delle Puttane of Pallavicino-are probably rhetorical expansions of such epigrams belonging to the Hellenistic period.1 Even yet there was no real distinction between the elegy and the epigram in distichs.

We now come to Kallimachos of Kyrene (310-240? B.C.), the most voluminous writer perhaps of all antiquity, the great representative of Alexandrian poetry, and according to later critics the master of the elegy. His commanding position is partly due to

1 Crusius, l.c. 5, p. 2283 and ref.; A. L. Wheeler, 'Erotic Teaching in Roman Elegy and the Greek Sources,' Class Philol. 5, pp. 447 f. Here too, especially, the direct influence of the véa is to be suspected.