Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/231

209 LlTEit TURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 209 age. Scarcely any poet of antiquity enjoyed so much consideration in ins lifetime, or exercised so much influence upon political events, as Simonides. He was one of the poets entertained by Hipparchus the Pisistratid (Olymp. 63. 2. — 66. 3. b. c. 527—14.), and was highly esteemed by him. He was much honoured by the families of the Aleuads and Scopads, who at that time ruled in Thessaly, as powerful and wealthy nobles, in their cities of Larissa and Crannon, and partly as kings of the entire country. These families attempted, by their hospitality and liberality to the poets and wise men whom they enter- tained, either to soften the rough nature of the Thessalians, or, at least, to cover it with a varnish of civilization. That, however, they were not always equally liberal to Simonides, appears from the anecdote that Scopas once refused to give him more than half the promised reward, and referred him for the other half to the Dioscuri, whom he had also praised in his ode ; and that, in consequence, the Dioscuri saved Simonides when the house fell upon the impious Scopas *. Simonides appears to have passed much of the latter part of his life in Sicily, chiefly with the tyrant of Syracuse. That he was in high honour at this court is proved by the well attested story, that when, after Gelo's death, a discord arose between the allied and closely connected families of the tyrants of Syracuse and Agrigentum, Hiero of Syracuse and Theroof Agrigentum, with their armies, were standing opposite to each other on the river Gelas, and would have decided their dispute with arms, if Simonides (who, like Pindar, was the friend of both tyrants) had not restored peace between them (Olymp. 76. 1. B. c. 476). But the high reputation of Simonides among the Greeks is chiefly apparent in the time of the Persian war. He was in fiiendly intercourse both with Themistocles and the Spartan general Pausanias ; the Corin- thians sought to obtain his testimony to their exploits in the Persian war; and he, more than any other poet, partly at the wish of others, and partly of his own accord, undertook the celebration of the great deeds of that period. The poems which he wrote for this purpose were for the most part epigrams ; but some were lyric compositions, as the panegyric of those who had fallen at Thermopylae, and the odes on the sea-fijrhts of Artemisium and Salamis. Others were elegiac, as the elegy to those who fought at Marathon, already mentioned. § 11. The versatility of mind and variety of knowledge, which Simo- nides appears from these accounts to have possessed, are connected with his facility of poetical composition. Simonides was probably the most prolific lyric poet whom Greece had seen, although all his productions did not descend to posterity. He gained (according to the inscription this story, appears from Quintilian, Inst. xi. 2. 1 1 ; it is however certain that the family of the Scopads at that time suffered some great misfortune which Simonides lamented in a threne : Phavorin. ap. Stob. Semi. CV. 62. P
 * That the ancients themselves had difficulties in ascertaining the true version of