Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/100

 76 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE S^ods, everlasting, sealed with broad oaths ; when any being stai)is his hand with sin of heart or szvears an oath of de- ceiving, aye, though he be a Spirit, whose life is for ever, for thrice ten thousand years he wanders away from the Blessed, growing, as the ages pass, through all the shapes of mortal things, passing from one to another of the weary ways of life. The might of the Aither hunts hifn to the Sea, the Sea vomits him back to the floor of Earth, and Earth flings him to the fires of Helios the unwearied, and he to the whirlwinds of yEther. He is received of one after another, and abhorred of all!' Empedocles remembered previous lives : " / have been a youth and a maiden and a bush and a bird and a gleaming fish in the sea.'' He hated the slaughter of animals for food : " Will ye never cease from the horror of bloodshedding? See ye not that ye devour your brethren, and your hearts reck not of it ? " But bean-eating was as bad : " Wretched, thrice-wretched, keep your hands from beans. It is the same to eat beans as to eat your fathers' heads!' This is no question of over-stimulating food ; beans vi^ere under some religious ^709 or taboo, and impure. Elegy and Iambus The use of the word ' lyric ' to denote all poetry that is not epic or dramatic, is modern in origin and inac- curate. The word implies that the poetry was sung to a lyre accompaniment, or, by a slight extension of meaning, to some accompaniment. But the epos itself was origin- ally sung. 'Homer' had a lyre, 'Hesiod' either a lyre or a staff. And, on the other hand, the ' lyric ' elegy and iambus began very soon to drop their music. All Greek