Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/151

Rh  Elegy, as we have seen, was the first slight deviation from epos. But almost at the same time another species arose which had nothing in common with epos, either in form or in spirit. This was the iambic. The word iambos (iapto, to dart or shoot) was used in reference to the licensed raillery at the festivals of Demeter ; it was the maiden lambe, the myth said, who drew the first smile from the mourning goddess. The iambic metre was at first used for satire ; and it was in this strain that it was chiefly employed by its earliest master of note, Archilochus of Paros (670 B.C.). But it was adapted to the expression generally of any pointed thought. Thus it was suitable to fables. Elegiac and iambic poetry both belong to the borderland between epic and lyric. While, however, elegy stands nearer to epos, iambic stands nearer to the lyric. Iambic poetry can express the personal feeling of the poet with greater intensity than elegy does ; on the other hand, it has not the lyric flexibility, self-abandonment, or glow. As we see in the case of Solon, iambic verse could serve for the expression ot that deeper thought, that more inward self-communing, for which the elegiac form would have been inappropriate. But these two forms of poetry, both Ionian, the elegiac and the iambic, belong essentially to the same stage of the literature. They stand between the Ionian epos and the lyric poetry of the JMians and Dorians. The earliest of the Greek elegists, Callinus and Tyrtseus, use elegy to rouse a warlike spirit in sinking hearts. Archi lochus too wrote warlike elegy, but used it also in other strains, as in lament for the dead. The elegy of Mimnermus is the plaintive farewell of an ease-loving Ionian to the days of Ionian freedom. In Solon elegy takes a higher range ; it becomes political and ethical. Theognis represents the maturer union of politics with a proverbial philosophy. Xenophanes gives a philosophic strain to elegy. With Simonides of Ceos it reverts, in an exquisite form, to its earliest destination, and becomes the vehicle of epitaph on those who fell in the Persian wars. Iambic verse was used by Simonides of Amorgus, as by Archilochus, for satire, but satire directed against classes rather than persons. Solon s iambics so far preserve the old associations of the metre that they represent the polemical or controver sial side of his political poetry. Hipponax of Ephesus was another iambic satirist using the &quot; scazon &quot; or &quot; limping &quot; verse, produced by substituting a spondee for an iambus in the last place. But it was not until the rise of the Attic drama that the full capabilities of iambic verse were seen.

The lyric poetry of early Greece may be regarded as the final form of that effort at self-expression which in the elegiac and iambic is still incomplete. The lyric expression is deeper and more impassioned. Its intimate union with music and with the rhythmical movement of the dance gives to it more of an ideal character. At the same time the continuity of the music permits pauses to the voice, pauses necessary as reliefs after a climax. Before lyric poetry could be effective, it was necessary that some progress should have been made in the art of music. The instru ment used by the Greeks to accompany the voice was the four-stringed lyre, and the first great epoch in Greek music was when Terpander of Lesbos (660 B.C.), by adding three strings, gave the lyre the compass of the octave. Further improvements are ascribed to Olympus and Thaletas. By 500 B.C. Greek music had probably acquired all the powers of expression which the lyric poet could demand. The period of Greek lyric poetry may be roughly defined as from 670 to 440 B.C. Two different parts in its develop ment were taken by the ^Eolians and the Dorians.

The lyric poetry of the yEolians especially of Lesbos was essentially the utterance of personal feeling, and was usually intended for a single voice, not for a chorus. Lesbos, in the 7th century B.C., had attained some naval and commercial importance. But the strife of oligarchy and democracy was active ; the Lesbian nobles were often driven by revolution to exchange their luxurious home-life for the hardships of exile. It is such a life of contrasts and excitements, working on a sensuous and fiery temperament, that is reflected in the fragments of Alcreus. In these glimpses of war and love, of anxiety for the storm-tossed state and of careless festivity, there is much of the cavalier spirit ; if Archilochus is in certain aspects a Greek Byron, Alcajus might be compared to Lovelace. The other great representative of the ^Eolian lyric is Sappho, the only woman of Greek race who is known to have possessed poeti cal genius of the first order. Intensity and melody are the characteristics of the fragments that remain to us. Pro bably no poet ever surpassed Sappho as an interpreter of passion in exquisitely subtle harmonies of form and sound. Anacreon of Teos, in Ionia, may be classed with the /Eolian lyrists in so far as the matter and form of his work resem bled theirs, though the dialect in which he wrote was mainly the Ionian. A few fragments remain from his hymns to the gods, from love-poems and festive songs. The collection of sixty short pieces which passes current under his name dates only from the 10th century. The short poems which it comprises are of various age and authorship, all of them probably of the Christian era. They have not the pure style, the flexible grace, or- the sweetness of the classical fragments ; but the verses, though somewhat mechanical, are often pretty.

The Dorian lyric poetry, iu contrast with the ^Eolian, had more of a public than of a personal character, and was for the most part choral. Hymns or choruses for the public worship of the gods, and odes to be sung at festivals on occasions of public interest, were its characteristic forms. Its central inspiration was the pride of the Dorians in the Dorian past, in their traditions of worship, government, and social usage. The history of the Dorian lyric poetry does not present us with vivid expressions of personal character, like those of Alcseus and Sappho, but rather with a series of artists whose names are associated with improvements of form. Thus Alcmau (660 B.C.) is said to have introduced the balanced movement of strophe and antistrophe. Stesi- chorus, of Himera in Sicily, added the epode, sung by the chorus while stationary after these movements ; Arion gave a finished form to the choral hymn (&quot; dithyramb &quot;) in honour of Dionysus, and organized the &quot; cyclic &quot; or circular chorus which sang it at the altar.

The culmination of the lyric poetry is marked by two great names, Simonides and Pindar. Simonides was an Ionian of the island of Ceos, but his lyrics belonged by form to the choral Dorian school. Many of his subjects were taken from the events of the Persian wars : his epitaphs on those who fell at Thermopylae and Salamis were celebrated. In him the lyric art of the Dorians is inter preted by Ionian genius, and Athens where part of his life was passed is the point at which they meet. Simonides is the first Greek lyrist whose significance is not merely vEolian or Dorian but Panhellenic. The same character belongs even more completely to his younger contemporary. Pindar was born in Boeotia of a Dorian stock ; thus, as Ionian and Dorian elements meet in Simonides, so Dorian and yEolian elements meet in Pindar. Simonides was perhaps the most tender and most exquisite of the lyric poets. Pindar was the boldest, the most fervid, and the most sublime. His extant fragments represent almost every branch of the lyric art. But he is known to us mainly by forty-four Jfpinicia, or odes of victory, for the Olympian, Pythian, Nemean. and Isthmian festivals. The general characteristic of the treatment is that the particular victory is made the occasion of introducing heroic legends connected 