Page:The Golden verses of Pythagoras (IA cu31924026681076).pdf/66

 others together, and the women who were here distinguished, rivalled and even surpassed the men; Corinna and Myrtis did not yield either to Stesic̀horus, or to Pindar; Sappho and Telesilla effaced Alcæus and Anacreon.

It is said that the art with which Homer had put into action gods and men, had opposed heaven and earth, and depicted the combats of the passions; this art, being joined to the manner in which the rhapsodists declaimed his poems by alternately relieving one another, and covering themselves with garments of different colours adapted to the situation, had insensibly given rise to dramatic style and to theatrical representation. This, true in a sense, has need of a distinction: it will serve at the same time to throw light upon what I am about to say.

One should remember that the intellectual and rational poetry, or theosophical and philosophical, illustrated by Orpheus and which Homer had united with the enthusiasm of the passions in order to constitute epopœia, although