Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/147

125 LITERATURE OK ANCIENT GREECE. 125 of ancient poets on the battles of Titans, or giants, or centaurs, and such like stories. From this it is evident that Xenophanes took no pleasure in the ordinary amusements at the banquets of his countrymen; and from other fragments of the same writer, it also appears that he viewed the life of the Greeks with the eye of a philosopher. Not only does he blame the luxury of the Colophonians, which they had learnt from the Lydians*, but also the folly of the Greeks in valuing an athlete who had been victorious at Olympia in running or wrestling, higher than the wise man ; a judgment which, however reasonable in our eyes, must have seemed exceedingly perverse to the Greeks of his days. § 17. As we intend in this chapter to bring down the history of the elegy to the Persian war, we must also mention Simonides of Ceos, the renowned lyric poet, the early contemporary of Pindar and iEschylus, and so distinguished in elegy that he must be included among the great masters of the elegiac song. Simonides is stated to have been vic- torious at Athens over jEschylus himself, in an elegy in honour of those who fell at Marathon (Olymp. 72, 3 ; 490 b. a), the Athenians having instituted a contest of the chief poets. The ancient biographer of JEs- chylus, who gives this account, adds in explanation, that the elegy re- quires a tenderness of feeling which was foreign to the character of iEschylus. To what a degree Simonides possessed this quality, and in general how great a master he was of the pathetic is proved by his cele- brated lyric piece containing the lament of Danae, and by other remains of his poetry. Probably, also, in the elegies upon those who died at Marathon and at Plataea, he did not omit to bewail the death of so many brave men, and to introduce the sorrows of the widows and orphans, which was quite consistent with a lofty patriotic tone, particularly at the end of the poem. Simonides likewise, like Archilochus and others, used the elegy as a plaintive song for the deaths of individuals ; at least the Greek Anthology contains several pieces of Simonides, which appear not to be entire epigrams, but fragments of longer elegies lamenting with heartfelt pathos the death of persons dear to the poet. Among these are the verses concerning Gorgo, who d ing, utters these words to her mother: — "Remain here with my father, and become with a happier fate the mother of another daughter, who may tend you in your old age." From this example we again see how the elegy in the hands of different masters sometimes obtained a softer and more pathetic, and sometimes a more manly and robust tone. Nevertheless there is no reason for dividing the elegy into different kinds, such as the military, political, symposiac, erotic, threnetic, and gnomic; inasmuch as some of were, according to Xenophanes (in Athen. xii. p. 526), together in the market-place, formed an aristocratic body among the citizens (ro -roXiTivfta) ; such as, at this time of transition from the ancient hereditary aristocracies to dt itineracy, also existed in Rhegium, Locri, Croton, Agrigentum and Cjme in v^olis.
 * The thousand persons cloathed in purple, who, before the time of the Tyrants,