Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/126

104 li) 1 HISTORY OF THE may be questioned whether the epic poets would have acquired this spirit if they had never moved out of the beaten track of their ancient heroic song, and if other kinds of poetry had not arisen and re- vealed to the Greeks the latent poetical character of many other feelings and impressions besides those which prevailed in the epos. We now turn to those kinds of poetry which first appear as the rivals of the epic strains*. CHAPTER X. 6 1. Exclusive prevalence of Epic Poetry, in connexion with the monarchical period; influence of the change in the forms of Government upon Poetry. — § 2. Elegeion, its meaning ; origin of Elegos ; plaintive songs of Asia Minor, accompanied by the flute ; mode of Recitation of the Elegy. — § 3. Metre of the Elegy. — § 4. Po- litical and military tendency of the Elegy as composed by Callinus ; the circum- stances of his time. — § 5. Tyrtaeus, his Life ; occasion and subject of his Elegy of Eunomia. — § 6. Character and mode of recitation of the Elegies of Tyrtaeus. § 7. Elegies of Archilochus, their reference to Banquets ; mixture of convivial jollity (Asius). — § 8. Plaintive Elegies of Archilochus. — § 9.Mimnermus ; his Elegies ; the expression of the impaired strength of the Ionic nation. — 6 10. Luxury a consolation in this state; the Nanno of Mimnermus. — § 11. Solon's character; his Elegy of Salamis. — § 12. Elegies before and after Solon's Legislation; the ex- pression of his political feeling; mixture of Gnomic Passages (Phocylides). — § 13. Elegies of Theognis; their original character. — § 14. Their origin in the political Revolutions of Megara. — § 15. Their personal reference to the Friends of Theognis. — § 16. Elegies of Xenophanes ; their philosophical tendency.— § 17. Elegies of Simonides on the Victories of the Persian War; tender and pathetic spirit of his Poetry ; general View of the course of Elegiac Poetry. . § 18. Epigrams in elegiac form ; their Object and Character; Simonides, as a Composer of Epigrams. § 1. Until the beginning of the seventh century before our era, or the 20th Olympiad, the epic was the only kind of poetry in Greece, and the hexameter the only metre which had been, cultivated by the poets with art and diligence. Doubtless there were, especially in connexion with different worships, strains of other kinds and measures of a lighter movement, according to which dances of a sprightly character could be executed ; but these as yet did not form a finished style of poetry, and were only rude essays and undeveloped germs of other varieties, which hitherto had only a local interest, confined to the rites and customs of particular districts. In all musical and poetical contests the solemn and majestic tone of the epopee and the epic hymn alone prevailed ; and the soothing placidity which these lays imparted to the mind was the only feeling which had found its satisfactory poetical expression. As yet the heart, agitated by joy and grief, by love and anger, could not give utter- will be noticed in the chapter on the poetry connected with the Mysteries.
 * Some epic poems of the early period, as the Minyis, Alemaotiis, and Thesprotia,