Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/109

 GNOMIC POETRY 85 not always very virtuous. The tyrant Periander occurs in some of the hsts, and the quasi-tyrant Pittacus in all : their wisdom was chiefly of a prudential tendency. A pretended edition of their works was compiled by the fourth-century (?) orator, Lobon of Argos. Riddles, as well as gnomes, are a form of wisdom ; and several ancient conundrums are attributed to the sage Kleobu- lus, or else to ' Kleobulina,' the woman being explained as a daughter of the man : it seemed, perhaps, a feminine form of wisdom. The gnome is made witty by the contemporaries Phokylides of Miletus and Demodocus of Leros (about 537 B.C.). Their only remains are in the nature of epigrams in elegiac metre. Demodocus claims to be the inventor of a very fruitful jest : " TJiis, too, is of Demodocus : The Chians are bad ; not this man good and that bad, but all bad, except Procles. And even P rocks is a Chian I " There are many Greek and Latin adaptations of that epigram before we get to Porson's condemnation of German scholars : " All save only Hermann ; and Her- mann's a German ! " The form of introduction, " This, too, is qf Phokylides" or " of Demodocus,' seems to have served these two poets as the mention of Kyrnos served Theognis. It was a ^ seal' which stamped the author's name on the work. We have under the name of Phokylides a poem in two hundred and thirty-nine hexameters, containing moral precepts, which Bernays has shown to be the work of an Alexandrian Jew. It begins, ''First honour God, and next, thy parents"; it speaks of the resurrection of the body, and agrees with Deuteronomy (xxii. 6) on the taking of birds' nests. Semonides of Amorgos {fl. 625 B.C.) owes the peculiar spelling of his name to grammarians who wished to