Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/120

 new dance, new music, new words-for each new occasion. Also, it is international. The great lyric poets are from Lesbos, Italian Locri, Rhegion, Keos, Boeotia; the earliest is actually said to be a Lydian. A poet can even send his composition across the sea to be represented, secure of having trained performers in another country who will understand the dancing and singing. The dialect is correspondingly international. It has Aeolic, 'Epic,' and Doric elements, the proportions varying slightly in various writers. These facts suffice to show that the choir-poem which we get even in Alcman, much more that of Simonides, is a highly-developed product. Our chief extant specimens, the prize-songs of Pindar, represent the extreme fulness of bloom upon which decay already presses.

What is the history implied in this mixture of dialects? The Aeolic is the language of song, because of Sappho and Alcaeus. No singer followed them who was not under their spell. The 'Epic' element comes from the 'Homer' which had by this time grown to be the common property of Greece (What this 'Homer' dialect was in Boeotia, or Lesbos, or Argos, we are not able to say. The 'Epic' element in our lyric remains has been Ionised and Atticised just as the Iliad has been.). The Doric element needs explanation.

The poets, as we have seen, were not especially Dorian; but the patrons of the poetry were, and so to a great extent was its spirit. It was the essence of the Ionian and Aeolian culture to have set the individual free; the Dorian kept him, even in poetry, subordinated to a larger whole, took no interest in his private feelings, but required him to express the emotions of the community. The earliest choir-poets, Alcman and Tisias,