Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/129

107 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GUEECE. 107 expression of a later elegiac poet, himself played on the lotus-wood flute, and wore the mouthpiece (the <popfieih) used hy the ancient flute players when, together with his mistress, he led a comos*. And in en- tire agreement with this the elegiac poet Theogn is says, that his beloved and much praised Cyrnus, carried by him on the wings of poetry over the whole earth, would be present at all banquets, as young men would sing of him eloquently to the clear tone of little flutesf- Nevertheless, we are not to suppose that elegies were from the begin- ning intended to be sung, and to be recited like lyric poems in the narrower sense of the word. Elegies, that is distichs, were doubtless accompanied by the flute before varied musical forms were invented for them. This did not take place till some time after Terpander the Les- bian, who set hexameters to music, to be sung to the cithara, that is, pro- bably, not before the 40th Olympiad}. When the Amphictyons, after the conquest of Crissa, celebrated the Pythian games (Olymp. 47, 3 b.c. 590), Echembrotus the Arcadian came forward with elegies, which were intended to be sung to the flute : these were of a gloomy plaintive character, which appeared to the as- sembled Greeks so little in harmony with the feeling of the festival, that this kind of musical representations was immediately abandoned^. Hence it may be inferred that in early times the elegy was recited rather in the style of the Homeric poems, in a lively tone, though probably with this difference, that where the Homerid used the cithara, the flute was employed, for the purpose of making a short prelude and occasional interludes j|. The flute, as thus applied, does not appear alien to the warlike elegy of Callinus : among the ancients in general the varied tones of the flute^ were not considered as necessarily having a peaceful character. Not only did the Lydian armies march to battle, as Hero- dotus states, to the sound of flutes, masculine and feminine ; but the Sp.irtans formed their military music of a large number of flutes, in- stead of the cithara, which had previously been used. From this how- ever we are not to suppose that the elegy was ever sung by an army on its march, or advance to the fight, for which purpose neither the rhythm nor the style of the poetry is at all suited. On the contrary, we shall Hermesianax in Athen. xiii., p. 598 A. Kaitrt> ph Nawous, ToXrf V law -rokXaxt Xuru xnftcofa'i; (according to an emendation in the Classical Journal, vii. p. 238); xufiov; (rr%7x;t vun^aviuv (the hitter words according to Schweighaeuser's reading), f Theognis, v. 237, seq. X Plutarch, fie Musica, iii.4,8. § Pausan. x. 7, 3. From the statement of Chameleon in Athen. xiv. p. C20, that, the poems of Mimnermus as well as those of Homer were set to music (uiXalvfaai) it may be inferred that they were not so from the beginning. Anstoph. Av. 1428) ; and Solon is stated to have recited his elegy of Salamis abuv : but in these passages «Swv, as in the case of Homer, probably expresses a measured style of recitation like that of a rhapsodist : above, ch. iv. § 3 (p. 32). Comp. a'so Philochorus ap. Athen. xiv. t)3. ^1 fTdftQcovoi aiiXcU Pindar.
 * This, according to the most probable reading, is the moaning of the passage of
 * Archilochus says fiuv vvf «.l»Tri£os, probably in reference to an elegy (Schol.