Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/229

207 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 207 chorus was the organ of the poet's thoughts and feelings, is sufficiently proved (as has been already remarked) by the extant fragments. In a very beautiful fragment, the versification of which expresses the course of the feeling with peculiar art, Ibycussays*: "In the spring the Cydonian apple-trees flourish, watered by rivulets from the brooks in the untrodden garden of the virgins, and the grapes which grow under the shady tendrils of the vine. But Eros gives me peace at no season ; like a Thracian tempest, gleaming with fightning, he rushes from Cypris, and, full of fury, he stirs up my heart from the bottom." In some other extant verses he saysf : " Again Eros looks at me from beneath his black eyelashes with melting glances, and drives me with blandishments of all kinds into the endless nets of Cypris. I tremble at his attack ; as a harnessed steed which contends for the prize in the sacred games, when he approaches old age, unwillingly enters the race- course with the rapid chariot." These amatory odes of Ibycus did not however consist merely of descriptions of his passion, which could scarcely have afforded sufficient materials for choral representation. He likewise called in the assist- ance of mythology in order to elevate, by a comparison with divine or heroic natures, the beauty of the youth or his own passion. Thus in a poem of this kind, addressed to Gorgias, Ibycus told the story of Ganymedes and Tithonus, both Trojans and favourites of the gods ; who were described as contemporary, and were associated in the narrative. Ganymedes is carried off by Zeus in the form of an eagle, in order to become his favourite and cup-bearer in Olympus ; and, at the same time, Eros incites the rising Aurora to bear away from Ida, Tithonus, a Trojan shepherd and prince §. The perpetual youth of Ganymedes, the short manhood and the melancholy old age of Tithonus, probably gave the poet occasion to compare the different passions which they excited, and to represent that of Zeus as the more noble, that of Aurora the less praiseworthy. § 10. Leaving Ibycus in the obscurity which envelopes all the Greek lyric poets anterior to Pindar, we come to a brighter point in Simonides. This poet has been already described as one of the greatest masters of the elegy and the epigram ; but. a full account of him has been reserved for this place. Simonides was born at Julis in the island of Ceos, which was in- translation is made from the following alteration of the text: urip[!>n<ri Kgccraius f Schol. Plat. Parm. p. 137. A. (Fragm. 2. coll. Schneidewin). After the Little Iliad, in which Ganymedes is the son of Laomedon : Schol. Vat. ad Eurip. Troad. 822. Elsewhere Tithonus is his son. § This account of the poem of Stesichorus is taken from Schol. Apolion. Rhod. III. 158. compared with Nonnus Dionys. xv.278. ed. Graefe.
 * Fragm. 1. coll. Schneidewin. The end of the fragment is very difficult; the