Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/165

143 LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 143 larly lengthening the penultimate short syllable. Some remains of this kind are extant. Hipponax likewise composed pure trimeters in tie style of Archilochus ; but there is no conclusive evidence that he mixed them with scazons. Ananius has hardly any individual character in literary history dis- tinct from that of Hipponax. In Alexandria their poems seem to have been re"-arded as forming one collection ; and thus the criterion by which to determine whether a particular passage belonged to the one or to the other, was often lost or never existed. Hence in the uncertainty which is the true author, the same verse is occasionally ascribed to both*. The few fragments which are attributed with cer- tainty to Ananius are so completely in the tone of Hipponax, that it would be a vain labour to attempt to point out any characteristic dif- ference t- § 14. Akin to the iambic are two sorts of poetry, which, though differing widely from each other, have both their source in the turn for the delineation of the ludicrous, and both stand in a close historical relation to the iambic : — the Fable (originally called olvoq, and after- wards, less precisely, [.wSoq and yoc), and the Parody. With regard to the fable, it is not improbable that in other countries, particularly in the north of Europe, it may have arisen from a child- like playful view of the character and habits of animals, which frequently surest a comparison with the nature and incidents of human life. In Greece, however, it originated in an intentional travestie of human affairs. The alvog is, as its name denotes, an admonition^, or rather a reproof, veiled, either from fear of an excess of frankness or from love of fun and jest, beneath the fiction of an occurrence happening among beasts. Such is the character of the ainos, at its very first appearance in Hesiod §. " Now I will tell the kings a fable which they will understand of themselves. Thus spake the hawk to the nightingale, whom he was carrying in his talons aloft in the air, while she, torn by his sharp claws, bitterly lamented — Foolish creature, why dost thou cry out? One much stronger than thou has seized thee ; thou must go whithersoever I carry thee, though thou art a songstress ; I can tear thee in pieces or I can let thee go at my pleasure." Archilochus employed the ainos in a similar manner in his iambics against Lycambes ||. He tells how the fox and the eagle had con- tracted an alliance, but (as the fable, according to other sources, goes I There is no sufficient ground for supposing that Herondas, who is sometimes mentioned as a choliambic poet, lived in this age. The minnambic poetry ascribed to him will be treated of in connexion with the Mimes of Sophron. % wut*'in<rn. See Philological Museum, vol. i. p. 281. § Op. et D. v. 202, seq. Fr, 38, ed. Gaisford ; see note on fr. 3'J.
 * As in Athen. xiv. p. 625 C.