Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/130

108 find in Tyrfcaeus, Archilochus, Xenophanes, Anacreon, and especially in Theognis, so many instances of the reference of elegiac poetry to ban- quets, that we may safely consider the convivial meeting -, and especially the latter part of it, called Comos, as the appropriate occasion for the Greek elegy*.

§ 3. That the elegy was not originally intended to make a completely different impression from the epic poem, is proved by the slight devia- tion of the elegiac metre from the epic hexameter. It seems as if the spirit of art, impatient of its narrow limits, made with this metre its first timid step out of the hallowed precinct. It does not venture to invent new metrical forms, or even to give a new turn to the solemn hexame- ter, by annexing to it a metre of a different character : it is contented simply to remove the third and the last thesis from every second hexa- meter t ; and it is thus able, without destroying the rhythm, to vary the form of the metre in a highly agreeable manner. The even and regular march of the hexameter is thus accompanied by the feebler and hesi- tating gait of the pentameter. At the same time, this alternation pro- duces a close union of two verses, which the hexametrical form of the epos, with its uninterrupted flow of versification, did not admit ; and thus gives rise to a kind of small strophes. The influence of this metri- cal character upon the structure of the sentences, and the entire tone of the language, must evidently have been very great. § 4. Info the fair form of this metre the Ionic poets breathed a soul, which was vividly impressed with the passing events, and was driven to and fro by the alternate swelling and flowing of a flood of emotions. It is by no means necessary that lamentations should form the subject of the elegy, still less that it should be the lamentation of love ; but emo- tion is always essential to it. Excited by events or circumstances of the present time and place, the poet in the circle of his friends and countrymen pours forth his heart in a copious description of hit; experience, in the unreserved expression of his fears and hopes, in cen- sure, and advice. And as the commonwealth was in early times the first thought of every Greek, his feelings naturally gave rise to the poli- tical and warlike character of the elegy, which we first meet with in the poems of Callinus. The age of Callinus of Ephesus is chiefly fixed by the allusions to the expeditions of the Cimmerians and Treres, which occurred in his poems. The history of these incursions is, according to the best ancient authorities, as follows : — The nation of the Cimmerians, driven out by above, p. 21 (ch. iii. § 5). t Thus, in the first lines of the Iliad and the Odyssey, by omitting the thesis of the third and sixth feet, a perfect elegiac pentameter is obtained. AvS^a f/.oi 'inim Moulira woXur^ovov o; fia.cc t«X|A«.
 * The flute is described as used at the Comus in the passage of Hesiod cited