Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/399

Rh gods. He shows himself now and again in touch with the great military events of his age, as when he speaks of Artemisium, “where the sons of the Athenians laid a brilliant foundation of liberty. But he is not fond of war, and in later times Polybius censured him for his support of his countrymen in their non-resistance to the Persians, as a peace-at-any-price man. And, indeed, peace is dear to him—she is a “kindly” goddess, a “daughter of Justice,” “holding the keys of counsel and war.” His views on a future life were mostly expressed in his Threnoi, or dirgies, of which only a few fragments remain. He describes the sun which makes the lower world light to its inhabitants, the meadows with their bright flowers and golden fruits, and the spirits engaged in the games or exercises in which they took pleasure on earth, cheered by music, rich banquets, fragrant odours, and burnt sacrifices. Death in his view is a relief from toil, especially happy for those who have been initiated in the mysteries. Still, there is a distinction between the good and the bad. To some favoured souls there is the hope that after due purification they may be restored to the upper air, and animate the bodies of the great and wise.

Elegiac poetry was used chiefly as a means of exhortation and encouragement to bravery in war, or to set out certain views as to politics and social conduct, or, lastly, to furnish epitaphs for those who fell in war. The earliest writer known to us is Callinus of Ephesus (about B.C. 700), the one fragment of whose work of any length is a kind of address