Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/138

116 1 16 HISTORY OF THE ceptible temperament, but wanting in the power of steady resistance and resolute union, bids a half melancholy, half indifferent, farewell to liberty ; it is important, I repeat, to form a clear conception of this time and this people, in order to gain a correct understanding of the poetical character of Mimnermus. He too could take joy in valorous deeds, and wrote an elegy in honour of the early battle of the Smyrnaeans against Gyges and the Lydians, whose attack was then (as we have already stated) successfully repulsed. Pausanias, who had himself read this elegy*, evidently quotes from it^ a particular event of this war in question, viz., that the Lydians had, on this occasion, actually made an entrance into the town, but th-it they were driven out of it by the bravery of the Smyrnaeans. To this elegy also doubtless belongs the fragment (pre- served by Stobaeus), in which an Ionian warrior is praised, who drove before him the light squadrons of the mounted Lydians on the plain of the Hermus (that is in the neighbourhood of Smyrna), and in whose firm valour Pallas Athene herself could find nothing to blame when he broke through the first ranks on the bloody battle-field. As in these lines the poet refers to what he had heard from his predecessors, who had themselves witnessed the hero's exploits, it is probable that this brave Smyrnaean lived about two generations before the period at which Mimnermus flourished — that is precisely in the time of Gyges. As the poet, at the outset of this fragment, says — "Not such, as I heir, was the courage and spirit of that warrior," &c.j, we may conjecture that the bravery of this ancient Smyrnaean was contrasted with the effemi- nacy and softness of the actual generation. It seems, however, that Mimnermus sought rather to work upon his countrymen by a melan- choly retrospect of this kind, than to stimulate them to energetic deeds oi valour by inspiriting appeals after the manner of Callinus and Tyrtaeus: nothing of this kind is cited from his poems. § 10. On the other hand, both the statements of the ancients and the extant fragments, show that Mimnermus recommended, as the only consolation in all these calamities and reverses, the enjoyment of the best part of life, and particularly love, which the gods had given as the only compensation for human ills. These sentiments were expressed in his celebrated elegy of Nanno, the most ancient erotic elegy of antiquity, which took its name from a beautiful and much-loved flute player. Yet even this elegy had contained allusions to political events : thus it lamented how Smyrna had always been an apple of discord to the neio-h- bouring nations, and then proceeded with the verses already cited on the taking of the city by the Colophonians§ : the founder of Colophon, An- dreemon of Pylos, was also mentioned in it. But all these reflections on the past and present fortunes of the city were evidently intended only to recommend the enjoyment of the passing hour, as life was onlv worth
 * ix. 2«J. f iv. 21. J Fragm. 11. ad Gaisford. § Fragm. 9.