Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/109

 GNOMIC POETS. gj ely of other subjects, serious as well as satirical, and is said far ther to have first employed the Mixolydian mode in music. It displays the tendency of the age to metrical and rhythmical nov- elty, that Alkoeus and Sappho are said to have each invented the peculiar stanza, well-known under their respective names, -com- binations of the dactyl, trochee, and iambus, analogous to the asynartetic verses of Archilochus ; they by no means confined themselves, however, to Alkaic and Sapphic metre. Both the one and the other composed hymns to the gods ; indeed, this is a theme common to all the lyric and choric poets, whatever may be their peculiarities in other ways. Most of their compositions were songs for the single voice, not for the chorus. The poetry of Alkasus is the more worthy of note, as it is the earliest in- stance of the employment of the Muse in actual political war- fare, and shows the increased hold which that motive was acquir- ing on the Grecian mind. The gnomic poets, or moralists in verse, approach by the tone of their sentiments more to the nature of prose. They begin with Simonides of Amorgos or of Samos, the contemporary of Archilochus : indeed, the latter himself devoted some composi- tions to the illustrative fable, which had not been unknown even to Hesiod. In the remains of Simonides of Amorgos we trace nothing relative to the man personally, though he too, like Archilochus, is said to have had an individual enemy, Orodce- kides, whose character was aspersed by his muse. 1 His only p. 173, Reisk, and some striking passages of Himcrius, in respect to Sappho (i. 4, 16, 19; Maximus Tyrius, Dissert, xxiv, 7-9), and the encomium of the critical Dionysius (De Compos. Verborum, c. 23, p. 173). The author of the Parian marble adopts, as one of his chronological epochs (Epoch 37), the flight of Sappho, or exile, from Mitylene to Sicily somewhere between 604-596 B.C. There probably was something remark- able which induced him to single out this event ; but we do not know what, nor can we trust the hints suggested by Ovid (Heroid. xv, 51). Nine books of Sappho's songs were collected by the later literary Greeks, arranged chiefly according to the metres (C. F. Neue, Sapphonis Fragni. p 11, Berlin 1827). There were ten books of the songs of Alkaeus (Athc- nsms, xi, p. 481 ), and both Aristophanes (Grammaticus) and Aristarchus published editions of them. (Hephsestion, c. xv, p. 134, Gaisf.) Dikeearcbui wrote a commentary upon his songs (Athenneus, xi, p. 461). 1 Vekkcr, Simonidis Amorgini Iambi qui supersunt, p. 9