Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/475

453 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 453 and political interests of the time, the elegy had political features also, and statesmen often expressed in this form their opinions on the course to be adopted for Greece in general and for the different republics in par- ticular. This must have been the case with the elegies of Dionysius, who was a considerable statesman of the time of Pericles, and led the Athenians who settled at Thurii, in the great Hellenic migration to that place. The Athenians by way of joke called him "the man of copper," because he had proposed the introduction of a copper coinage in addition to the silver money which had been exclusively used before that time. It is to be wished that we had the continuation of that elegy of Dionvsius which ran thus : " Come here, and listen to good intelligence : adjust your cup-battles, give all your attention to me, and listen."* The political tendency appeared still more clearly in the elegies of Critias, the son of Callacschrus, in which he said bluntly that he had recommended in the public assembly that Alcibiades should be recalled and had drawn ujj the decreet The predilection for Lacedaemon, which Critias had im- bibed as one of the Eupatridae and as a friend of Socrates, declares itself in his commendations of the old customs, which the Spartans kept up at their banquets : I nevertheless we have no right to suppose in this an early manifestation of the ill-affected and treasonable opinions with regard to the democracy of Athens, which only gradually and through the force of circumstances developed themselves in the character of Critias with the fearful consetpiences which often convert a single false step of the politician into a disastrous and criminal progress for the rest of his life. From this elegiac poetry, which was cultivated in the circle of Attic training, we must carefully distinguish the elegies of Antimachus of Colophon, which we may term a revival of the love-sorrows of Mimner- mus. Antimachus, who flourished after 01. 94, b.c. 404, was in general a reviver of ancient poetry, one who, keeping aloof from the stream of the new-fashioned literature, applied himself exclusively to his own studies, and on that very account found little sympathy among the people of his own time, as indeed appears from the well-known story that, when he was reciting his Thelitis, all his audience left the room with the single exception of Plato. His elegiac poem was called Lydc, and was dedi- cated to the remembrance of a Lydian maiden whom Antimachus had loved and early lost. § The whole work, therefore, was a lamentation for her loss, which doubtless gained life and warmth from the longing and ever-recurring recollections of the poet. It is true that Antimachus, as we are told, availed himself largely of mythical materials in the execution of his poem, but if be had only adorned the general thought, that his love had caused him sorrow, with examples of the similar destiny of X Athen. X. p. 432, D. § According to the passage in llcirnesianax,
 * Athen. XV. p. GC.9, B. f Plutarch, Alcib. 3:5.