Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/136

114 114 HISTORY OF TIIK the Ionians the elegy naturally took this turn at a much earlier period, and all the various feelings excited by the use of wine, in sadness or in mirth, were doubtless first expressed in an elegiac form. It is natural to expect that the praise of wine was not dissociated from the other orna- ment of Ionic symposia, the Hetaerae (who, according to Greek manners, were chiefly distinguished from virgins or matrons by their participation in the banquets of men) ; and there is extant a distich of a symposiac elegy of Archilochus, in which " the hospitable Pasiphile, who kindly receives all strangers, as a wild fig tree feeds many crows," is ironically praised ; in relation to which an anecdote is preserved by Athenseus*. This convivial elegy was allowed to collect all the images fitted to drive away the cares of life, and to pour a serene hilarity over the mind. Hence it is probable that some beautiful verses of the Ionic poet Asius, of Samos, (already mentioned among the epic poets,) belonged to a poem of this kind ; in which a parasite, forcing himself upon a marriage feast, is described with Homeric solemnity and ironical seriousness, as the maimed, scarred, and gray-haired adorer of the fvagrancy of the kit- chen, who comes unbidden, and suddenly appears among the guests a hero rising from the mudf. § 8. This joyous tone of the elegy, which sounded in the verses of Archilochus, did not however hinder this poet from also employing the same metre for strains of lamentation. This application of the elegy is so closely connected with its origin from the Asiatic elegies, that it probably occurred in the verses of Callinus ; it must have come from the Ionic coast to the islands, not from the islands to the Ionic coast. An elegy of this kind, however, was not a threnos, or lament for the dead, sung by the persons who accompanied the corpse to its burial place : more probably it was chanted at the meal (called TrepldeiTn'ov) given to the kinsmen after the funeral, in the same manner as elegies at other banquets. In Sparta also an elegy was recited at the solemni- ties in honour of warriors who had fallen for their country. A distich from a poem of this kind, preserved by Plutarch, speaks of those whose only happiness either in life or death consisted in fulfilling the duties of both. Archilochus was induced by the death of his sister's husband, who had perished at sea, to compose an elegy of this description, in which he expressed the sentiment that he would feel less sorrow at the event if Hephaestus had performed his office upon the head and the fair limbs of the dead man, wrapt up in white linen ; that is to say, if he had died on land, and had been burnt on a funeral pilej. § 9. Even in the ruins in which the Greek elegy lies before us, it is still the best picture of the race among which it chiefly flourished, viz., f Athen. iii. 125. The earliest certain example of parody, to which we will return in the next chapter. On Asius, see above, ch. ix. I Fragm 6.
 * Fragm. 44.