Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/209

187 LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 187 freshness of age, are subjects for epigrams ; and for epigrams like those composed in the first century before Christ (especially by Meleager), and not like those of Simonides. Throughout these odes love is represented as a little boy, who carries on a sort of mischievous sport with mankind ; a conception unknown to ancient art, and closely akin to the epigram- matic sports which belonged to the literature of a later period, and to the analogous representations of Cupid in works of art, especially on gems, where he appears, in various compositions, as a froward mischievous child. None of these works are more ancient than the time of Lysippus or Alexander. The Eros of the genuine Anacreon, who " strikes at the poet with a great hatchet, like a smith, and then bathes in the wintry torrent *," is evidently a being different both in body and mind. The language of these odes is also prosaic and mean, and the versifica- tion monotonous, inartificial, and sometimes faulty f. These objections apply to the entire collection ; nevertheless, there is a great difference between the several odes, some of which are excellent in their way, and highly pleasing from their simplicity ; while others are feeble in their conception and barbarous in their language and versification. The former may, perhaps, belong to the Alexandrian period; in which (notwithstanding its refined civilization) some poets attempted to express the simplicity of childish dispositions, as appears from the Idylls of Theocritus. Those of inferior stamp may be ascribed to the later period of declining paganism, and to uncultivated writers, who imitated a hackneyed style of poetical composition. However, many even of the better Anacreontics may have been written at as late a period as that of the national migrations. There can be no doubt that the century which produced the epic poetry of Nonnus, and so many inge- nious and well-expressed epigrams, possessed sufficient talent and know- ledge for Anacreontics of this kind. § 16. With Anacreon ceased the species of lyric poetry, in which he excelled : indeed he stands alone in it, and the tender softness of his song was drowned by the louder tones of the choral poetry. The poem (or melos) destined to be sung by a single person, never, among the Greeks, acquired so much extent as it has since attained in the modern English and German poetry. By modern poets it has been used as the vehicle for expressing almost every variety of thought and feeling. The ancients, however, drew a more precise distinction between the f The prevailing metre in these Anacreontics o_o_cj_o (a dimeter iambic catalectic) does not occur in the fragments, except in Hephcest. p. 30, Schol. Aristoph. Plut. 302. (fr. 92. Bergk.) The verses there quoted are imitated in one of the Anacreontics, od. 38. Hephaestion calls this metre, the " so called 'AvCtXglOVTllM.'' I One of the best, viz. Anacreon's advice to the toreutes, who is to make him a cup, (No. 17 in the collection.) is cited by Gellius N. A. xix. '.), as a work of Ana- creon hiir.self; but it has completely the tone and character of the common Ana- creontics.
 * Fragm. in Hephaest. p. 68. Gais. fr. 45. Bergk.