Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/148

126 126 HISTORY OF THE these cnaracters are at times combined in the same poem. Thus the elegy was usually, as we have seen, sung at the symposion ; and, in most cases, its main subject is political ; after which it assumes either an amatory, a plaintive, or a sententious tone. At the same time the elegy always retains its appropriate character, from which it never departs. The feelings of the poet, excited by outward circumstances, seek a vent at the symposion, either amidst his friends or sometimes in a larger assembly, and assume a poetical form. A free and full expression of the poet's sentiments is of the essence of the Greek elegy. This giving a vent to the feelings is in itself tranquillizing; and as the mind disbur- dens itself of its alarms and anxieties a more composed state naturally ensued, with which the poem closed. When the Greek nation arrived at the period at which men began to express in a proverbial form general maxims of conduct, — a period beginning with the age*of the Seven Wise Men, these maxims, or y vwpai, were the means by which the elegiac poets subsided from emotion into calmness. So far the elegy of Solon, Theog- nis, and Xenophanes, may be considered as gnomic, although it did not therefore assume an essentially new character. That in the Alexandrine period of literature the elegy assumed a different tone, which was, in part, borrowed by the Roman poets, will be shown in a future chapter. § 18. This place is the most convenient for mentioning a subordinate kind of poetry, the epigram, as the elegiac form was the best suited to it ; although there are also epigrams composed in hexameters and other metres. The epigram was originally (as its name purports) an inscrip- tion on a tombstone, on a votive offering in a temple, or on any other object which required explanation. Afterwards, from the analogy of these real epigrams, thoughts, excited by the view of any object, and which might have served as an inscription, were called epigrams, and expressed in the same form. That this form was the elegiac may have arisen from the circumstance that epitaphs appeared closely allied with laments for the dead, which (as has been already shown) were at an early period composed in this metre. However, as this elegy compre- hended all the events of life which caused a strong emotion, so the epigram might be equally in place on a monument of war, and on the sepulchral pillar of a beloved kinsman or friend. It is true that the mere statement of the purpose and meaning of the object, — for exam- ple, in a sacred offering, the person who gave it, the god to whom it was dedicated, and the subject which it represented — was much prized, if made with conciseness and elegance ; and epigrams of this kind were often ascribed to renowned poets, in which there is no excellence besides the brevity and completeness of these statements, and the per- fect adaptation of the metrical form to the thought. Nevertheless, in general, the object of the Greek epigram is to ennoble a subject by elevation of thought and beauty of language. The unexpected turn of the thought and the pointedness of expression, which the moderns con