Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/128

106 106 HISTORY OF THE trical forms and the various states of mind required by the poem, is one of the remarkable features of the Grecian poetry, and to which we shall frequently have occasion lo advert. The word tXeyetov, therefore, in its strict sense, means nothing more than the combination of an hexameter and a pentameter, making together a distich ; and an elegeia (tXeyda) is a poem made of such verses. The word elegeion is, however, itself only a derivative from a simpler word, the use of which brings us nearer to the first origin of this kind of poetry. Elegos (k'Xtyoc) means pro- perly a strain of lament, without any determinate reference to a metri- cal form ; thus, for example, in Aristophanes, the nightingale sings an elegos for her lost Itys ; and in Euripides, the halcyon, or kingfisher, sings an elegos for her husband Ceyx* ; in both which passages the word has this general sense. The origin of the word can hardly be Grecian, since all the etymologies of it which have been attempted seem very improbable^ ; on the other hand, if it is borne in mind, how cele- brated among the Greeks the Carians and Lydians were for laments over the dead, and generally for songs of a melancholy cast}, it will seem likely that the Ionians, together with ditties and tunes of this kind, also received the word elegos from their neighbours of Asia Minor. However great the interval may have been between these Asiatic dirges and the elegy as embellished and ennobled by Grecian taste, yet it cannot be doubted that they were in fact connected. Those laments of Asia Minor were always accompanied by the flute, which was of great antiquity in Phrygia and the neighbouring parts, but which was unknown to the Greeks in Homer's time, and in Hesiod only occurs as used in the boisterous strain of revellers, called Comos§. The elegy, on the other hand, is the first regularly cultivated branch of Greek poetry, in the recitation of which the flute alone, and neither the cithara nor lyre, was employed. The elegiac poet Mimnermus (about Olympiad 40, 620 b. a), according to the testimony of Hipponax||, nearly as an- cient as himself, played on the flute the KpaSirjg vofiog ; that is, literally, " the fig-branch strain," a peculiar tune, which was played at the Ionic festival of Thargelia, when the men appointed to make atonement for the sins of the city were driven out with fig branches. Nanno, the beloved of Mimnermus, was a flute player, and he, according to the t The most favourite is the derivation from t s xiyuv ; but Xiyetv is here an im- proper form, and ought in this connexion to be x'oyo;. The entire composition is, moreover, very strange. J Garian and Lydian laments are often mentioned in antiquity (Franch Callinus, p. 123, seq.); and the antispastic rhythm ", in which there is something dis- pleasing and harsh, was called xxgixos ; which refers to its use in laments of this kind. It is also very probable that the word vm/a. came from Asia Minor (Pollux iv. 79), and was brought by the Tyrrhenians from Lydia to Etruria, and thence to Home. § Above, chap. iii. § 5.
 * Aristoph. Av. 218. Eurip. Iph. Taur. 1061.
 * In Plutarch de Musica, c. be. comp. Hesych. in x^lns v'cp.oz.