Studies of the Greek Poets (Vol 2 of 2)

by John Addington Symonds

FOOTNOTES:

[142]

Down the dark stream he went; the eddies drowned
The muses' friend, the youth the nymphs held dear.

[143] I may refer my readers to the chapter on the Cornice in my Sketches in Italy and Greece for a fuller treatment of this landscape.

[144] Not for us alone, as we once thought, friend Nicias, did Love's parent, whosoever among gods that was, beget Lord Eros. Not for us did fair things first reveal their fairness; we who are mortal men, and have no vision of to-morrow.

[145] One bright morning in the first week of June I went out into the fields at Borca below Macugnaga, which were then full of brilliant and sweet flowers. There I met an old woman, with whom I talked about her life in what seemed to me a terrestrial Paradise. She threw her arms and eyes to heaven, and looking round her, cried, "Che brutto paese!"—"Ah, what an ugly country to live in!" Compare Browning's Up at a Villa, Down in the City.

[146]

Now rests the deep, now rest the wandering winds,
But in my heart the anguish will not rest,
While for his love I pine who stole my sweetness,
And made me less than virgin among maids.

[147]

Adieu, dread queen, thou to the ocean turn
Thy harnessed steeds; but I abide and suffer:
Adieu, resplendent moon, and all you stars
That follow on the wheels of night, adieu!

[148]

Into the black wave
Fell headlong as a fiery star from heaven
Falls headlong to the deep, and sailors cry
One to another, Lighten sail; behold,
The breeze behind us freshens!

[149]

Would I were
The murmuring bee, that through the ivy screen
And through the fern that hides thee, I might come
Into thy cavern!

[150] Perhaps this is over-stated. In the later Greek literature of the Sophists we find many very exquisite concetti. Philostratus, for example, from whom Jonson translated "Drink to me only with thine eyes," calls the feet of the beloved one ἐρηρεισμένα φιλήματα, or "kisses pressed upon the ground." Even Empedocles (see vol. i. p. 220) and Pindar (see vol. i. p. 369) are not free from the vice of artificial metaphor. Compare, too, the labored metaphors and compound epithets quoted from Chæremon above, chap. xvi., and the specimens quoted below from Meleager, chap. xxi.

[151] How wonderfully beautiful is her description of Delphis and his comrade Eudamnippus: "Their cheeks and chin were yellower than helichrysus; their breasts more radiant far than thou, O Moon, as having lately left the fair toil of the wrestling-ground."

[152]

How of old
The goatherd by his cruel lord was bound,
And left to die in a great chest; and how
The busy bees, up coming from the meadows,
To the sweet cedar, fed him with soft flowers,
Because the Muse had filled his mouth with nectar.
Yes, all these sweets were thine, blessed Comatas;
And thou wast put into the chest, and fed
By the blithe bees, and passed a pleasant time.

Leigh Hunt's Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla.

[153] This ought probably to be printed, after Ahrens, αἰάζ' ὦ τὸν Ἄδωνιν. The exclamation occurs in a fragment of Sappho (Bergk, No. 63), whose lyric on the legend of Adonis may have suggested Bion's idyl.

[154]

Sleep, Cypris, no more, on thy purple-strewed bed;
Arise, wretch stoled in black—beat thy breast unrelenting,
And shriek to the worlds, "Fair Adonis is dead."

Translation by Mrs. Barrett Browning.

[155]

And the poor Aphrodite, with tresses unbound,
All dishevelled, unsandalled, shrieks mournful and shrill
Through the dusk of the groves. The thorns, tearing her feet,
Gather up the red flower of her blood, which is holy,
Each footstep she takes; and the valleys repeat
The sharp cry which she utters, and draw it out slowly.
She calls on her spouse, her Assyrian.—Ibid.

[156]

When, ah! ah!—she saw how the blood ran away
And empurpled the thigh; and, with wild hands flung out,
Said with sobs, "Stay, Adonis! unhappy one, stay!"

Translation by Mrs. Barrett Browning.

[157] This basket for holding flowers, the work of Hephæstus, had the tale of Io carved upon it. So Catullus, in the counterpane of Thetis, has wrought in needlework the story of Ariadne; and Statius, in the mantle given by Adrastus to Admetus, has woven that of Hero and Leander. Both of these Roman poets excel Moschus in picturesque effect.

[158] Italian art of the Renaissance in the designs of Mantegna and Raphael and Giulio Romano did full justice to these marine triumphs.

[159]

There came, O Bion, poison to thy mouth,
Thou didst feel poison! how could it approach
Those lips of thine, and not be turned to sweet?

Leigh Hunt.

[160]

Who now shall play thy pipe, oh! most desired one;
Who lay his lips against thy reeds? who dare it?
For still they breathe of thee, and of thy mouth,
And Echo comes to seek her voices there.—Ibid.

[161]

Echo too mourned among the rocks that she
Must hush, and imitate thy lips no longer.—Leigh Hunt.

[162]

No longer pipes he to the charmèd herds,
No longer sits under the lonely oaks,
And sings; but to the ears of Plato now
Tunes his Lethean verse.—Ibid.

---

CHAPTER XXI.
THE ANTHOLOGY.

The History of its Compilation.—Collections of Meleager, Philippus, Agathias, Cephalas, Planudes.—The Palatine MS.—The Sections of the Anthology.—Dedicatory Epigrams.—Simonides.—Epitaphs: Real and Literary.—Callimachus.—Epigrams on Poets.—Antipater of Sidon.—Hortatory Epigrams.—Palladas.—Satiric Epigrams.—Lucillius.—Amatory Epigrams.—Meleager, Straton, Philodemus, Antipater, Rufinus, Paulus Silentiarius, Agathias, Plato.—Descriptive Epigrams.

The Anthology may from some points of view be regarded as the most valuable relic of antique literature which we possess. Composed of several thousand short poems, written for the most part in the elegiac metre, at different times and by a multitude of authors, it is coextensive with the whole current of Greek history, from the splendid period of the Persian war to the decadence of Christianized Byzantium. Many subjects of interest in Greek life, which would otherwise have had to be laboriously illustrated from the historians or the comic poets, are here fully and melodiously set forth. If we might compare the study of Greek literature to a journey in some splendid mountain region, then we might say with propriety that from the sparkling summits where Æschylus and Sophocles and Pindar sit enthroned we turn in our less strenuous moods to gather the meadow flowers of Meleager, Palladas, Callimachus. Placing them between the leaves of the book of our memory, we possess an everlasting treasure of sweet thoughts, which will serve in after-days to remind us of those scenes of Olympian majesty through which we travelled. The slight effusions of these minor poets are even nearer to our hearts than the masterpieces of the noblest Greek literature. They treat with a touching limpidity and sweetness of the joys and fears and hopes and sorrows that are common to all humanity. They introduce us to the actual life of a bygone civilization, stripped of its political or religious accidents, and tell us that the Greeks of Athens or of Sidon thought and felt exactly as we feel. Even the Graffiti of Pompeii have scarcely more power to reconstruct the past and summon as in dreams the voices and the forms of long-since-buried men. There is yet another way in which the Anthology brings us closer to the Greeks than any other portion of their literature. The lyrists express an intense and exalted mood of the race in its divine adolescence. The tragedians exhibit the genius of Athens in its maturity. The idyllists utter a rich nightingale note from the woods and fields of Sicily. But the Anthology carries us through all the phases of Hellenic civilization upon its uninterrupted undercurrent of elegiac melody. The clear fresh light of the morning, the splendor of noonday, the mellow tints of sunset, and the sad gray hues of evening are all there. It is a tree which bears the leaves and buds and blossoms and fruitage of the Greek spirit on its boughs at once. Many intervals in the life of the nation which are represented by no other portion of its literature—the ending, for example, of the first century before Christ—here receive a brilliant illustration. Again, there is no more signal proof of the cosmopolitan nature of the later Greek culture than is afforded by the Anthology. From Rome, Alexandria, Palestine, Byzantium, no less than from the isles and continent of Greece, are recruited the poets, whose works are enshrined in this precious golden treasury of fugitive pieces.

The history of the Anthology is not without interest. By a gradual process of compilation and accretion it grew into its present form from very slight beginnings. The first impulse to collect epigrams seems to have originated in connection with archæology. From the very earliest the Greeks were in the habit of engraving sentences, for the most part in verse, upon their temples, statues, trophies, tombs, and public monuments of all kinds. Many of these inscriptions were used by Herodotus and Thucydides as authorities for facts and dates. But about 200 B.C. one Polemon made a general collection of the authentic epigrams to be found upon the public buildings of the Greek cities. After him Alcetas copied the dedicatory verses at Delphi. Similar collections are ascribed to Mnestor and Apellas Ponticus. Aristodemus is mentioned as the compiler of the epigrams of Thebes. Philochorus performed the same service for Athens. Neoptolemus of Paros and the philosopher Euhemerus are also credited with similar antiquarian labors. So far, the collectors of epigrams had devoted themselves to historical monuments; and of their work, in any separate form at least, no trace exists. But Meleager of Gadara (B.C. 60) conceived the notion of arranging in alphabetical order a selection of lyric and erotic poetry, which he dedicated to his friend Diocles. He called this compilation by the name of στέφανος, or wreath, each of the forty-six poets whom he admitted into his book being represented by a flower. Philip of Thessalonica, in the time of Trajan, following his example, incorporated into the garland of Meleager those epigrams which had acquired celebrity in the interval. About the same time or a little later, Straton of Sardis made a special anthology of poems on one class of subjects, which is known as the μοῦσα παιδική, and into which, besides ninety-eight of his own epigrams, he admitted many of the compositions of Meleager, Philip, and other predecessors. These collections belong to the classical period of Greek literature. But the Anthology, as we possess it, had not yet come into existence. It remained for Agathias, a Byzantine Greek of the age of Justinian, to undertake a comprehensive compilation from all the previous collections. After adding numerous poems of a date posterior to Straton, especially those of Paulus Silentiarius, Macedonius, Rufinus, and himself, he edited his κύκλος ἐπιγραμμάτων, divided into seven books. The first book contained dedicatory epigrams, the second descriptive poems, the third epitaphs, the fourth reflections on the various events of life, the fifth satires, the sixth erotic verses, the seventh exhortations to enjoyment. Upon the general outline of the Anthology as arranged by Agathias two subsequent collections were founded. Constantinus Cephalas, in the tenth century, at Byzantium, and in the reign of Constantinus Porphyrogenitus, undertook a complete revision and recombination of all pre-existing anthologies. With the patience of a literary bookworm, to whom the splendid libraries of the metropolis were accessible, he set about his work, and gave to the Greek anthology that form which it now bears. But the vicissitudes of the Anthology did not terminate with the labors of Cephalas. Early in the fourteenth century a monk, Planudes, set to work upon a new edition. It appears that he contented himself with compiling and abridging from the collection of Cephalas. His principal object was to expurgate it from impurities and to supersede it by what he considered a more edifying text. Accordingly he emended, castrated, omitted, interpolated, altered, and remodelled at his own sweet will: "non magis disposuit quam mutilavit et ut ita dicam castravit hunc librum, detractis lascivioribus epigrammatis, ut ipse gloriatur," says Lascaris in the preface to his edition of the Planudean Anthology.[163] He succeeded, however, to the height of his desire; for copies ceased to be made of the Anthology of Cephalas; and when Europe in the fifteenth century awoke to the study of Greek literature, no other collection but that of Planudes was known. Fortunately for this most precious relic of antiquity, there did exist one exemplar of the Anthology of Cephalas. Having escaped the search of Poggio, Aurispa, Filelfo, Poliziano, and of all the emissaries whom the Medici employed in ransacking the treasure-houses of Europe, this unique manuscript was at last discovered in 1606 by Claude de Saumaise, better known as Milton's antagonist Salmasius, in the Palatine Library at Heidelberg. A glance at this treasure assured the young scholar—for Saumaise was then aged only twenty-two—that he had made one of the most important discoveries which remained within the reach of modern students. He spent years in preparing a critical edition of its text; but all his work was thrown away, for the Leyden publishers to whom he applied refused to publish the Greek without a Latin version, and death overtook him before he had completed the requisite labor. Meanwhile the famous Palatine MS. had been transferred, after the sack of Heidelberg in 1623, to the Vatican, as a present to Pope Gregory XV. Isaac Voss, the rival of Saumaise, induced one Lucas Langermann to undertake a journey to Rome, in order that he might make a faithful transcript of the MS. and publish it, to the annoyance of the great French scholar. But Saumaise dying in 1653, the work, undertaken from motives of jealousy, was suspended. The MS. reposed still upon the shelves of the Vatican Library; and in 1776 the Abbé Giuseppe Spalletti completed a trustworthy copy of its pages, which was bought by Ernest, Duke of Gotha and Altenburg, for his library. In the year 1797 the MS. itself was transferred to Paris after the treaty of Tolentino; and in 1815 it was restored to Heidelberg, where it now reposes. Meanwhile Brunck had published, from copies of this MS., the greater portion of the Anthology in his Analecta Veterum Poetarum Græcorum; and Jacobs, between 1794 and 1814, had edited the whole collection with minutest accuracy upon the faith of the Abbé Spalletti's exemplar. The edition of Didot, to which I shall refer in my examination of the Anthology,[164] is based not only on the labors of Brunck and Jacobs, but also upon the MSS. of the unfortunate Chardon de la Rochette, who, after spending many years of his life in the illustration of the Anthology of Cephalas, was forced in old age to sell his collections for a small sum. They passed in 1836 into the possession of the (then) Imperial Library.

The Palatine MS., which is our sole authority for the Anthology as arranged by Cephalas, is a 4to parchment of 710 pages. It has been written by different hands, at different times, and on different plans of arrangement. The index does not always agree with the contents, but seems to be that of an older collection, of which the one we possess is an imperfect copy. Yet Cephalas is often mentioned, and always with affectionate reverence, by the transcribers of the MS. In one place he is called ὁ μακάριος καὶ ἀείμνηστος καὶ τριπόθητος ἄνθρωπος, "the blessed man, who is ever to be held in thrice affectionate and longing recollection," the sentiment of which words we in the middle of this nineteenth century may most cordially echo.

The first section of the Anthology is devoted to Christian epigrams upon the chief religious monuments and statues of Byzantium. However these may interest the ecclesiastical student, they have no value for a critic of Greek poetry. The second section consists of a poem in hexameters upon the statues which adorned the gymnasium of Zeuxippus. Some conception may be formed, after the perusal of this very pedestrian composition, of the art treasures which Byzantium contained in the fifth century. Authentic portraits of the great poets and philosophers of Greece, as well as works of imagination illustrative of the Iliad and the Attic tragedies, might then be studied in one place of public resort. Byzantium had become a vast museum for the ancient world. The third section is devoted to mural inscriptions from the temple of Apollonis in Cyzicus. The fourth contains the prefaces of Meleager, Philip, and Agathias, to their several collections. The fifth, which includes 309 epigrams, is consecrated to erotic poetry. The sixth, which numbers 358, consists of a collection of inscriptions from temples and public monuments recording the illustrious actions of the Greeks or votive offerings of private persons. In the seventh we read 748 epitaphs of various sorts. The eighth carries us again into the dismal region of post-pagan literature: it contains nothing but 254 poems from the pen of Saint Gregory the Theologian. The 827 epigrams of the ninth section are called by their collector ἐπιδεικτικά; that is to say, they are composed in illustration of a variety of subjects, anecdotical, rhetorical, and of general interest. Perhaps this part of the whole Anthology has been the favorite of modern imitators and translators. Passing to the tenth section, we find 126 semi-philosophical poems, most of which record the vanity of human life and advise mortals to make the best of their brief existence by enjoyment. The eleventh is devoted to satire. It is here that the reflex influence of Latin on Greek literature is most perceptible. The twelfth section bears the name of Straton, and exhibits in its 258 epigrams the morality of ancient Hellas under the aspect which has least attraction for modern readers. The thirteenth embraces a few epigrams in irregular metres. The fourteenth is made up of riddles and oracles. The fifteenth, again, has half a century of poems which could not well be catalogued elsewhere. The sixteenth contains that part of the Planudean collection which does not occur in our copy of the Anthology of Cephalas. It may be mentioned in conclusion that, with one or two very inconsiderable exceptions, none of the poems of the early Greek lyrists and Gnomic writers are received into the so-called Anthology.

To the student of Greek history and Greek customs no section of the Anthology is more interesting than that which includes the ἐπιγράμματα ἀναθηματικά, the record of the public and the private votive offerings in Hellas. Here, as in a scroll spread out before us, in the silver language of the great Simonides,[165] may be read the history of the achievements of the Greeks against Xerxes and his hosts. The heroes of Marathon, the heroes of Thermopylæ, Megistias the soothsayer, Leonidas the king, Pausanias the general, the seamen of Salamis, the Athenian cavalry, the Spartans of Platæa—all receive their special tribute of august celebration at the hands of the poet who best knew how to suit simple words to splendid actions. Again, the στήλη which commemorated in Athens the patriotic tyrannicide of Aristogeiton, the statue of Pan which Miltiades after Marathon consecrated in honor of his victory, the trophies erected by Pausanias at Delphi to Phœbus, the altar to Zeus Eleutherios dedicated in common by all the Greeks, the tripod sent to Delphi by Gelon and the other tyrants of Sicily after their victory over the Carthaginians, for each and all of these Simonides was called on to compose imperishable verse. Our heart trembles even now when we read such lines as these:

ὦ ξεῖν' ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε
κείμεθα τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.[166]

And who does not feel that the grandeur of the occasion exalts above all suspicion of prosiness the frigid simplicity of the following?

τόνδε ποθ' Ἕλληνες ῥώμῃ χερός, ἔργῳ Ἄρηος,
εὐτόλμῳ ψυχῆς λήματι πειθόμενοι,
Πέρσας ἐξελάσαντες, ἐλεύθερον Ἑλλάδι κόσμον
ἱδρύσαντο Διὸς βωμὸν Ἐλευθερίου.[167]

But it is not merely within the sphere of world-famous history that the dedicatory epigrams are interesting. Multitudes of them introduce us to the minutest facts of private life in Greece. We see the statues of gods hung round with flowers and scrolls, the shrines filled with waxen tablets, wayside chapels erected to Priapus or to Pan, the gods of the shore honored with dripping clothes of mariners, the Paphian home of Aphrodite rich with jewels and with mirrors and with silks suspended by devout adorers of both sexes. A fashionable church in modern Italy—the Annunziata at Florence, for example, or St. Anthony at Padua—is not more crowded with pictures of people saved from accidents, with silver hearts and waxen limbs, with ribbons and artificial flowers, with rosaries and precious stones, and with innumerable objects that only tell their tale of bygone vows to the votary who hung them there, than were the temples of our Lady of Love in Cneidos or in Corinth. In the epigrams before us we read how hunters hung their nets to Pan, and fishermen their gear to Poseidon; gardeners their figs and pomegranates to Priapus; blacksmiths their hammers and tongs to Hephæstus. Stags are dedicated to Artemis and Phœbus, and corn-sheaves to Demeter, who also receives the plough, the sickle, and the oxen of farmers. A poor man offers the produce of his field to Pan; the first-fruits of the vine are set aside for Bacchus and his crew of satyrs; Pallas obtains the shuttle of a widow who resolves to quit her life of care and turn to Aphrodite; the eunuch Alexis offers his cymbals, drums, flutes, knife, and golden curls to Cybele. Phœbus is presented with a golden cicada, Zeus with an old ash spear that has seen service, Ares with a shield and cuirass. A poet dedicates roses to the maids of Helicon and laurel-wreaths to Apollo. Scribes offer their pens and ink and pumice-stone to Hermes; cooks hang up their pots and pans and spits to the Mercury of the kitchen. Withered crowns and revel-cups are laid upon the shrine of Lais; Anchises suspends his white hair to Aphrodite, Endymion his bed and coverlet to Artemis, Daphnis his club to Pan. Agathias inscribes his Daphniaca to the Paphian queen. Prexidike has an embroidered dress to dedicate. Alkibie offers her hair to Here, Lais her mirror to Aphrodite, Krobylus his boy's curls to Apollo, Charixeinos his long tresses to the nymphs. Meleager yields the lamp of his love-hours to Venus; Lucillius vows his hair after shipwreck to the sea-gods; Evanthe gives her thyrsus and stag's hide to Bacchus. Women erect altars to Eleithuia and Asclepius after childbirth. Sophocles dedicates a thanksgiving shrine for poetic victories. Simonides and Bacchylides record their triumphs upon votive tablets. Gallus, saved from a lion, consecrates his hair and vestments to the queen of Dindymus. Prostitutes abandon their ornaments to Kupris on their marriage. The effeminate Statullion bequeaths his false curls and flutes and silken wardrobe to Priapus. Sailors offer a huge cuttlefish to the sea-deities. An Isthmian victor suspends his bit, bridle, spurs, and whip to Poseidon. A boy emerging into manhood leaves his petasos and strigil and chlamys to Hermes, the god of games. Phryne dedicates winged Eros as the first-fruits of her earnings. Hadrian celebrates the trophies erected by Trajan to Zeus. Theocritus writes inscriptions for Uranian Aphrodite in the house of his friend Amphicles, for the Bacchic tripod of Damomenes, and for the marble muse of Xenocles. Erinna dedicates the picture of Agatharkis. Melinna, Sabæthis, and Mikythus are distinguished by poems placed beneath their portraits. There is even a poem on the picture of a hernia dedicated apparently in some Asclepian shrine; and a traveller erects the brazen image of a frog in thanksgiving for a draught of wayside water. Cleonymus consecrates the statues of the nymphs:

αἳ τάδε βένθη
ἀμβρόσιαι ῥοδέοις στείβετε ποσσὶν ἀεί.

Ambrosial nymphs, who always tread these watery deeps with roseate feet.

It will be seen by this rapid enumeration that a good many of the dedicatory epigrams are really epideictic or rhetorical; that is to say, they are written on imaginary subjects. But the large majority undoubtedly record such votive offerings as were common enough in Greece with or without epigrams to grace them.

What I have just said about the distinction between real and literary epigrams composed for dedications applies still more to the epitaphs. These divide themselves into two well-marked classes: 1. Actual sepulchral inscriptions or poems written immediately upon the death of persons contemporary with the author; and, 2. Literary exercises in the composition of verses appropriate to the tombs of celebrated historical or mythical characters. To the first class belong the beautiful epitaphs of Meleager upon Clearista (i. 307), upon Heliodora (i. 365), upon Charixeinos, a boy twelve years old (i. 363), upon Antipater of Sidon (i. 355), and the three which he designed for his own grave (i. 352). Callimachus has left some perfect models in this species of composition. The epitaph on Heracleitus, a poet of Halicarnassus, which has been exquisitely translated by the author of Ionica, has a grace of movement and a tenderness of pathos that are unsurpassed:

εἶπέ τις, Ἡράκλειτε, τεὸν μόρον, ἐς δέ με δάκρυ
ἤγαγεν, ἐμνήσθην δ' ὁσσάκις ἀμφότεροι
ἥλιον ἐν λέσχῃ κατεδύσαμεν· ἀλλὰ σὺ μέν που,
ξεῖν' Ἁλικαρνησεῦ, τετράπαλαι σποδιή·
αἱ δὲ τεαὶ ζώουσιν ἀηδόνες, ᾗσιν ὁ πάντων
ἁρπακτὴς Ἀΐδης οὐκ ἐπὶ χεῖρα βαλεῖ.[168]

His epitaph on the sea-wrecked Sopolis (i. 325), though less touching, opens with a splendid note of sorrow:

ὤφελε μηδ' ἐγένοντο θοαὶ νέες· οὐ γὰρ ἂν ἡμεῖς
παῖδα Διοκλείδου Σώπολιν ἐστένομεν·
νῦν δ' ὁ μὲν εἰν ἁλί που φέρεται νέκυς· ἀντὶ δ' ἐκείνου
οὔνομα καὶ κενεὸν σῆμα παρερχόμεθα.[169]

The following couplet upon Saon (i. 360) is marked by its perfection of brevity:

τᾷδε Σάων ὁ Δίκωνος Ἀκάνθιος ἱερὸν ὕπνον
κοιμᾶται· θνάσκειν μὴ λέγε τοὺς ἀγαθούς.[170]

Among the genuine epitaphs by the greatest of Greek authors, none is more splendid than Plato's upon Aster (i. 402):

Ἀστὴρ πρὶν μὲν ἔλαμπες ἐνὶ ζωοῖσιν Ἑῷος·
νῦν δὲ θανὼν λάμπεις Ἕσπερος ἐν φθιμένοις.[171]

To Plato is also ascribed a fine monumental epigram upon the Eretrian soldiers who died at Ecbatana (i. 322):

οἵδε ποτ' Αἰγαίοιο βαρύβρομον οἶδμα λιπόντες
Ἐκβατάνων πεδίῳ κείμεθ' ἐνὶ μεσάτῳ.
χαῖρε κλυτή ποτε πατρὶς Ἐρέτρια· χαίρετ' Ἀθῆναι
γείτονες Εὐβοίης· χαίρε θάλασσα φίλη.[172]

Erinna's epitaph on Baucis (i. 409) deserves quotation, because it is one of the few pieces accepted by the later Greeks, but probably without due cause, as belonging to a girl whose elegiacs were rated by the ancients above Sappho's:

στᾶλαι καὶ Σειρῆνες ἐμαὶ καὶ πένθιμε κρωσσὲ
ὅστις ἔχεις Ἀΐδα τὰν ὀλίγαν σποδιάν,
τοῖς ἐμὸν ἐρχομένοισι παρ' ἠρίον εἴπατε χαίρειν,
αἴτ' ἀστοὶ τελέθωντ' αἴθ' ἑτέρας πόλιος·
χὤτι με νύμφαν εὖσαν ἔχει τάφος εἴπατε καὶ τό·
χὤτι πατήρ μ' ἐκάλει Βαυκίδα χὤτι γένος
Τηνία, ὡς εἰδῶντι· καὶ ὅττι μοι ἁ συνεταιρὶς
Ἤρινν' ἐν τύμβῳ γράμμ' ἐχάραξε τόδε.[173]

Sappho herself has left the following lament for the maiden Timas (i. 367):

Τιμάδος ἅδε κόνις, τὰν δὴ πρὸ γάμοιο θανοῦσαν
δέξατο Φερσεφόνας κυάνεος θάλαμος,
ἇς καὶ ἀποφθιμένας πᾶσαι νεοθᾶγι σιδᾶρῳ
ἅλικες ἱμερτὰν κρατὸς ἔθεντο κόμαν.[174]

In each of these epitaphs the untimely fading of a flower-like maiden in her prime has roused the deepest feeling of the poetess. This, indeed, is the chord which rings most truly in the sepulchral lyre of the Greeks. Their most genuine sorrow is for youth cut off before the joys of life were tasted. This sentiment receives, perhaps, its most pathetic though least artistic expression in the following anonymous epitaph on a young man. The mother's love and anguish are set forth with a vividness which we should scarcely have expected from a Greek (i. 336):

νηλεὲς ὦ δαῖμον, τί δέ μοι καὶ φέγγος ἔδειξας
εἰς ὀλίγων ἐτέων μέτρα μινυνθάδια;
ἢ ἵνα λυπήσῃς δι' ἐμὴν βιότοιο τελευτὴν
μητέρα δειλαίην δάκρυσι καὶ στοναχαῖς,
ἥ μ' ἔτεχ' ἥ μ' ἀτίτηλε καὶ ἣ πολὺ μείζονα πατρὸς
φροντίδα παιδείης ἤνυσεν ἡμετέρης;
ὃς μὲν γὰρ τυτθόν τε καὶ ὀρφανὸν ἐν μεγάροισι
κάλλιπεν· ἡ δ' ἐπ' ἐμοὶ πάντας ἔτλη καμάτους.
ἦ μὲν ἐμοὶ φίλον ἦεν ἐφ' ἁγνῶν ἡγεμονήων
ἐμπρεπέμεν μύθοις ἀμφὶ δικασπολίας·
ἀλλά μοι οὐ γενύων ἐπεδέξατο κούριμον ἄνθος
ἡλικίης ἐρατῆς, οὐ γάμον, οὐ δαΐδας·
οὐχ ὑμέναιον ἄεισε περικλυτὸν, οὐ τέκος εἶδε,
δύσποτμος, ἐκ γενεῆς λείψανον ἡμετέρης,
τῆς πολυθρηνήτου· λυπεῖ δέ με καὶ τεθνεῶτα
μητρὸς Πωλίττης πένθος ἀεξόμενον,
Φρόντωνος γοεραῖς ἐπὶ φροντίσιν, ἣ τέκε παῖδα
ὠκύμορον, κενεὸν χάρμα φίλης πατρίδος.[175]

The common topic of consolation in these cases of untimely death is the one which Shakespeare has expressed in the dirge for Fidele, and D'Urfey in his dirge for Chrysostom by these four lines:

Whilst we that pine in life's disease,
Uncertain-blessed, less happy are.

Lucian, speaking of a little boy who died at five years of age (i. 332), makes him cry:

ἀλλά με μὴ κλαίοις· καὶ γὰρ βιότοιο μετέσχον
παύρου καὶ παύρων τῶν βιότοιο κακῶν.

A little girl in another epitaph (i. 366) says to her father:

ἴσχεο λύπας,
Θειόδοτε· θνατοὶ πολλάκι δυστυχέες.

A young man, dying in the prime of life, is even envied by Agathias (i. 384):

ἔμπης ὄλβιος οὗτος, ὃς ἐν νεότητι μαρανθεὶς
ἔκφυγε τὴν βιότου θᾶσσον ἀλιτροσύνην.

But it is not often that we hear in the Greek Anthology a strain of such pure and Christian music as this apocryphal epitaph on Prote:

οὐκ ἔθανες, Πρώτη, μετέβης δ' ἐς ἀμείνονα χῶρον,
καὶ ναίεις μακάρων νήσους θαλίῃ ἐνὶ πολλῇ,
ἔνθα κατ' Ἠλυσίων πεδίων σκιρτῶσα γέγηθας
ἄνθεσιν ἐν μαλακοῖσι, κακῶν ἔκτοσθεν ἁπάντων·
οὐ χειμὼν λυπεῖ σ', οὐ καῦμ', οὐ νοῦσος ἐνοχλεῖ,
οὐ πεινῇς, οὐ δίψος ἔχει σ'· ἀλλ' οὐδὲ ποθεινὸς
ἀνθρώπων ἔτι σοι βίοτος· ζώεις γὰρ ἀμέμπτως
αὐγαῖς ἐν καθαραῖσιν Ὀλύμπου πλήσιον ὄντος.[176]

Death at sea touched the Greek imagination with peculiar vividness. That a human body should toss, unburied, unhonored, on the waves, seemed to them the last indignity. Therefore the epitaphs on Satyrus (i. 348), who exclaims,

κείνῳ δινήεντι καὶ ἀτρυγέτῳ ἔτι κεῖμαι
ὕδατι μαινομένῳ μεμφόμενος Βορέῃ,

and on Lysidike (i. 328), of whom Zenocritus writes,

χαῖταί σου στάζουσιν ἔθ' ἁλμυρὰ δύσμορε κούρη
ναυηγὲ φθιμένης εἰν ἁλὶ Λυσιδίκη,

and on the three athletes who perished by shipwreck (i. 342), have a mournful wail of their own. Not very different, too, is the pathos of Therimachus struck by lightning (i. 306):

αὐτόμαται δείλῃ ποτὶ ταὔλιον αἱ βόες ἦλθον
ἐξ ὄρεος πολλῇ νιφόμεναι χιόνι·
αἰαῖ, Θηρίμαχος δὲ παρὰ δρυῒ τὸν μακρὸν εὕδει
ὕπνον· ἐκοιμήθη δ' ἐκ πυρὸς οὐρανίου.[177]

It is pleasant to turn from these to epitaphs which dwell more upon the qualities of the dead than the circumstances of their death. Here is the epitaph of a slave (i. 379):

Ζωσίμη ἡ πρὶν ἐοῦσα μόνῳ τῷ σώματι δούλη
καὶ τῷ σώματι νῦν εὗρεν ἐλευθερίην.[178]

Here is a buffoon (i. 380):

Νηλειὴς Ἀΐδης· ἐπὶ σοὶ δ' ἐγέλασσε θανόντι,
Τίτυρε, καὶ νεκύων θῆκέ σε μιμολόγον.[179]

Perhaps the most beautiful of all the sepulchral epigrams is one by an unknown writer, of which I here give a free paraphrase (Anth. Pal. vii. 346):

Of our great love, Parthenophil,
This little stone abideth still
Sole sign and token:
I seek thee yet, and yet shall seek,
Though faint mine eyes, my spirit weak
With prayers unspoken.

Meanwhile, best friend of friends, do thou,
If this the cruel fates allow
By death's dark river,
Among those shadowy people, drink
No drop for me on Lethe's brink:
Forget me never!

Of all the literary epitaphs, by far the most interesting are those written for the poets, historians, and philosophers of Greece. Reserving these for separate consideration, I pass now to mention a few which belong as much to the pure epigram as to the epitaph. When, for example, we read two very clever poems on the daughters of Lycambes (i. 339), two again on a comically drunken old woman (i. 340, 360), and five on a man who has been first murdered and then buried by his murderer (i. 340), we see that, though the form of the epitaph has been adopted, clever rhetoricians, anxious only to display their skill, have been at work in rivalry. Sardanapalus, the eponym of Oriental luxury, furnishes a good subject for this style of composition. His epitaph runs thus in the Appendix Planudea (ii. 532):

εὖ εἰδὼς ὅτι θνητὸς ἔφυς, τὸν θυμὸν ἄεξε
τερπόμενος θαλίῃσι· θανόντι σοι οὔτις ὄνησις·
καὶ γὰρ ἐγὼ σποδός εἰμι, Νίνου μεγάλης βασιλεύσας.
τόσσ' ἔχω ὅσσ' ἔφαγον καὶ ἐφύβρισα, καὶ μετ' ἔρωτος
τέρπν' ἐδάην· τὰ δὲ πολλὰ καὶ ὄλβια κεῖνα λέλειπται.
ἥδε σοφὴ βιότοιο παραίνεσις ἀνθρώποισιν.[180]

We find only the fourth and fifth lines among the sepulchral epigrams of the Anthology of Cephalas (i. 334), followed by a clever parody composed by the Theban Crates. Demetrius, the Spartan coward, is another instance of this rhetorical exercise. Among the two or three which treat of him I quote the following (i. 317):

ἁνίκ' ἀπὸ πτολέμου τρέσσαντά σε δέξατο μάτηρ,
πάντα τὸν ὁπλιστὰν κόσμον ὀλωλεκότα,
αὐτά τοι φονίαν, Δαμάτριε, αὐτίκα λόγχαν
εἶπε διὰ πλατέων ὠσαμένα λαγόνων·
κάτθανε, μηδ' ἐχέτω Σπάρτα ψόγον· οὐ γὰρ ἐκείνα
ἤμπλακεν, εἰ δειλοὺς τοὐμὸν ἔθρεψε γάλα.[181]

Agathias writes a very characteristic elegy on Lais (i. 315):

ἕρπων εἰς Ἐφύρην τάφον ἔδρακον ἀμφὶ κέλευθον
Λαΐδος ἀρχαίης, ὡς τὸ χάραγμα λέγει·
δάκρυ δ' ἐπισπείσας, χαίροις γύναι, ἐκ γὰρ ἀκουῆς·
οἰκτείρω σέ γ', ἔφην, ἣν πάρος οὐκ ἰδόμην·
ἆ πόσον ἠϊθέων νόον ἤκαχες· ἀλλ' ἴδε Λήθην
ναίεις, ἀγλαΐην ἐν χθονὶ κατθεμένη.[182]

An epitaph on the inutility of epitaphs is an excellent novelty, especially when the witty poet (Paulus Silentiarius) has the humor to make the ghost eager to speak while the wayfarer is inattentive (i. 332):

οὔνομά μοι. τί δὲ τοῦτο; πατρὶς δέ μοι. ἐς τί δὲ τοῦτο;
κλεινοῦ δ' εἰμὶ γένους. εἰ γὰρ ἀφαυροτάτου;
ζήσας δ' ἐνδόξως ἔλιπον βίον. εἰ γὰρ ἀδόξως;
κεῖμαι δ' ἐνθάδε νῦν. τίς τίνι ταῦτα λέγεις;[183]

The value of the epitaphs on poets and great men of Greece is this—that, besides being in many cases of almost perfect beauty, they contain the quintessence of ancient criticism. Every epithet is carefully so chosen as to express what the Greeks thought peculiar and appropriate to the spirit and the works of their heroes.

Orpheus is the subject of the following exquisite elegy by Antipater of Sidon (i. 274):

οὐκέτι θελγομένας, Ὀρφεῦ, δρύας, οὐκέτι πέτρας
ἄξεις, οὐ θηρῶν αὐτονόμους ἀγέλας·
οὐκέτι κοιμάσεις ἀνέμων βρόμον, οὐχὶ χάλαζαν,
οὐ νιφετῶν συρμούς, οὐ παταγεῦσαν ἅλα.
ὤλεο γάρ· σὲ δὲ πολλὰ κατωδύραντο θύγατρες
Μναμοσύνας, μάτηρ δ' ἔξοχα Καλλιόπα·
τί φθιμένοις στοναχεῦμεν ἐφ' υἱάσιν, ἁνίκ' ἀλαλκεῖν
τῶν παίδων Ἀΐδην οὐδὲ θεοῖς δύναμις;[184]

Sophocles receives a gift of flowers and ivy, and quiet sleep from Simmias the Theban (i. 277):

ἠρέμ' ὑπὲρ τύμβοιο Σοφοκλέος, ἠρέμα, κισσέ,
ἑρπύζοις, χλοεροὺς ἐκπροχέων πλοκάμους,
καὶ πέταλον πάντη θάλλοι ῥόδον, ἥ τε φιλορῥώξ
ἄμπελος, ὑγρὰ πέριξ κλήματα χευαμένη,
εἵνεκεν εὐεπίης πινυτόφρονος, ἣν ὁ μελιχρὸς
ἤσκησεν Μουσέων ἄμμιγα κἀκ Χαρίτων.[185]

Among the nine epitaphs on Euripides none is more delicate than the following by Ion (i. 282):

χαῖρε μελαμπετάλοις, Εὐριπίδη, ἐν γυάλοισι·
Πιερίας τὸν ἀεὶ νυκτὸς ἔχων θάλαμον·
ἴσθι δ' ὑπὸ χθονὸς ὢν, ὅτι σοι κλέος ἄφθιτον ἔσται
ἶσον Ὁμηρείαις ἀενάοις χάρισιν.[186]

Where could a poet be better lulled to rest than among the black-leaved hollows of Pieria? But the most touching tribute to Euripides is from the pen of a brother dramatist, the comic poet Philemon (ii. 94):

εἰ ταῖς ἀληθείαισιν οἱ τεθνηκότες
αἴσθησιν εἶχον, ἄνδρες ὥς φασίν τινες,
ἀπηγξάμην ἂν ὥστ' ἰδεῖν Εὐριπίδην.[187]

Aristophanes is praised by Antipater of Thessalonica (ii. 37) as the poet who laughed and hated rightly:

κωμικὲ καὶ στύξας ἄξια καὶ γελάσας.

His plays are characterized as full of fearful graces, φοβερῶν πληθόμενοι χαρίτων. Over the grave of Anacreon, who receives more tributes of this kind than any other poet, roses are to bloom, and wine is to be poured, and the thoughts of Smerdies, Bathyllus, and Megistias are to linger. Antipater of Sidon in particular paid honor to his grave (i. 278):

θάλλοι τετρακόρυμβος, Ἀνάκρεον, ἀμφὶ σὲ κισσὸς
ἁβρά τε λειμώνων πορφυρέων πέταλα·
πηγαὶ δ' ἀργινόεντος ἀναθλίβοιντο γάλακτος,
εὐῶδες δ' ἀπὸ γῆς ἡδὺ χέοιτο μέθυ,
ὄφρα κέ τοι σποδιή τε καὶ ὀστέα τέρψιν ἄρηται,
εἰ δή τις φθιμένοις χρίμπτεται εὐφροσύνα,
ὦ τὸ φίλον στέρξας, φίλε, βάρβιτον, ὦ σὺν ἀοιδᾷ
πάντα διαπλώσας καὶ σὺν ἔρωτι βίον.[188]

The same poet begins another epitaph thus:

τύμβος Ἀνακρείοντος· ὁ Τήϊος ἐνθάδε κύκνος
εὕδει χἠ παίδων ζωροτάτη μανίη.

Less cheerful are the sepulchres of the satirists. We are bidden not to wake the sleeping wasp upon the grave of Hipponax (i. 350):

ὦ ξεῖνε, φεῦγε τὸν χαλαζεπῆ τάφον
τὸν φρικτὸν Ἱππώνακτος, οὗτε χἀ τέφρα
ἰαμβιάζει Βουπάλειον ἐς στύγος,
μή πως ἐγείρῃς σφῆκα τὸν κοιμώμενον,
ὃς οὐδ' ἐν ᾅδῃ νῦν κεκοίμικεν χόλον,
σκάζουσι μέτροις ὀρθὰ τοξεύσας ἔπη.[189]

The same thought is repeated with even more of descriptive energy in an epitaph on Archilochus (i. 287):

σῆμα τόδ' Ἀρχιλόχου παραπόντιον, ὅς ποτε πικρὴν
μοῦσαν ἐχιδναίῳ πρῶτος ἔβαψε χόλῳ,
αἱμάξας Ἑλικῶνα τὸν ἥμερον· οἶδε Λυκάμβης
μυρόμενος τρισσῶν ἅμματα θυγατέρων·
ἠρέμα δὴ παράμειψον, ὁδοιπόρε, μή ποτε τοῦδε
κινήσῃς τύμβῳ σφῆκας ἐφεζομένους.[190]

Diogenes offers similar opportunities for clever writing. The best of his epitaphs is this well-known but anonymous dialogue (i. 285):

εἰπὲ, κύον, τίνος ἀνδρὸς ἐφεστὼς σῆμα φυλάσσεις;
τοῦ κυνός. ἀλλὰ τίς ἦν οὗτος ἀνὴρ ὁ Κύων;
Διογένης. γένος εἰπέ. Σινωπεύς. ὃς πίθον ᾤκει;
καὶ μάλα· νῦν δὲ θανὼν ἀστέρας οἶκον ἔχει.[191]

The epitaphs on Erinna, who died when she was only nineteen, are charged with the thought which so often recurs when we reflect on poets, like Chatterton, untimely slain—what would not they have done, if they had lived? (i. 275):

ὁ γλυκὺς Ἠρίννης οὗτος πόνος, οὐχὶ πολὺς μὲν
ὡς ἂν παρθενικᾶς ἐννεακαιδεκέτευς,
ἀλλ' ἑτέρων πολλῶν δυνατώτερος· εἰ δ' Ἀΐδας οἱ
μὴ ταχὺς ἦλθε, τίς ἂν ταλίκον ἔσχ' ὄνομα;[192]

Sappho rouses a louder strain of celebration (i. 276):

Σαπφώ τοι κεύθεις χθὼν Αἰολὶ τὰν μετὰ Μούσαις
ἀθανάταις θνατὰν Μοῦσαν ἀειδομέναν,
ἃν Κύπρις καὶ Ἔρως σὺν ἅμ' ἔτραφον, ἇς μέτα Πειθὼ
ἔπλεκ' ἀείζωον Πιερίδων στέφανον,
Ἑλλάδι μὲν τέρψιν, σοὶ δὲ κλέος· ὦ τριέλικτον
Μοῖραι δινεῦσαι νῆμα κατ' ἠλακάτας,
πῶς οὐκ ἐκλώσασθε πανάφθιτον ἦμαρ ἀοιδῷ
ἄφθιτα μησαμένα δῶρ' Ἑλικωνιάδων;[193]

This is the composition of Antipater of Sidon, who excels in this special style. Without losing either the movement or the passion of poetry, he is always delicate and subtle in his judgments. His epigrams on Pindar are full of fire (i. 280):

Πιερικὰν σάλπιγγα, τὸν εὐαγέων βαρὺν ὕμνων
χαλκευτάν, κατέχει Πίνδαρον ἅδε κόνις,
οὗ μέλος εἰσαΐων φθέγξαιό κεν, ὥς ποτε Μουσῶν
ἐν Κάδμου θαλάμοις σμῆνος ἀνεπλάσατο.[194]

The very quintessence of criticism is contained in the phrases σάλπιγξ, χαλκευτάς. The Appendix Planudea (ii. 590) contains another epitaph on Pindar by Antipater, which for its beautiful presentation of two legends connected with his life deserves to be quoted:

νεβρείων ὁπόσον σάλπιγξ ὑπερίαχεν αὐλῶν,
τόσσον ὑπὲρ πάσας ἔκραγε σεῖο χέλυς·
οὐδὲ μάτην ἁπαλοῖς περὶ χείλεσιν ἐσμὸς ἐκεῖνος
ἔπλασε κηρόδετον, Πίνδαρε, σεῖο μέλι.
μάρτυς ὁ Μαινάλιος κερόεις θεὸς ὕμνον ἀείσας
τὸν σέο καὶ νομίων λησάμενος δονάκων.[195]

It is impossible to do justice to all these utterances on the early poets. Æschylus (i. 281):

ὁ τραγικὸν φώνημα καὶ ὀφρυόεσσαν ἀοιδὴν
πυργώσας στιβαρῇ πρῶτος ἐν εὐεπίῃ.

Alcman (i. 277):

τὸν χαρίεντ' Ἀλκμᾶνα, τὸν ὑμνητῆρ' ὑμεναίων
κύκνον, τὸν Μουσῶν ἄξια μελψάμενον.

Stesichorus (ii. 36):

Ὁμηρικὸν ὅς τ' ἀπὸ ῥεῦμα
ἔσπασας οἰκείοις, Στησίχορ', ἐν καμάτοις.

Ibycus (ii. 36):

ἡδύ τε Πειθοῦς,
Ἴβυκε, καὶ παίδων ἄνθος ἀμησάμενε.

Enough has been quoted to show the delicate and appreciative criticism of the later and lighter Greek poets for the earlier and grander. It is also consolatory to find that almost no unknown great ones are praised in these epigrams; whence we may conclude that the masterpieces of Greek literature are almost as numerous now as they were in the age of Nero. The philosophers receive their due meed of celebration. Plato can boast of two splendid anonymous epitaphs (i. 285):

γαῖα μὲν ἐν κόλποις κρύπτει τόδε σῶμα Πλάτωνος,
ψυχὴ δ' ἀθάνατον τάξιν ἔχει μακάρων.

And—

αἰετέ, τίπτε βέβηκας ὑπὲρ τάφον; ἢ τίνος, εἰπὲ,
ἀστερόεντα θεῶν οἶκον ἀποσκοπέεις;
ψυχῆς εἰμὶ Πλάτωνος ἀποπταμένης ἐς Ὄλυμπον
εἰκών· σῶμα δὲ γῆ γηγενὲς Ἀτθὶς ἔχει.[196]

It is curious to find both Thucydides (ii. 119) and Lycophron (ii. 38) characterized by their difficulty.

Closely allied in point of subject to many of the epitaphs are the so-called hortatory epigrams, ἐπιγράμματα προτρεπτικά. These consist partly of advice to young men and girls to take while they may the pleasures of the moment, partly of wise saws and maxims borrowed from the Stoics and the Cynics, from Euripides and the comic poets. Lucian and Palladas are the two most successful poets in this style. Palladas, whose life falls in the first half of the fifth century, a pagan, who regarded with disgust the establishment of Christianity, attained by a style of "elegant mediocrity" to the perfection of proverbial philosophy in verse. When we remember that the works of Euripides, Menander, Philemon, Theophrastus, and the Stoics were mines from which to quarry sentiments about the conduct of life, we understand the general average of excellence below which he rarely falls and above which he never rises. Yet in this section, as in the others of the Anthology, some of the anonymous epigrams are the best. Here is one (ii. 251):

εἰς ἀΐδην ἰθεῖα κατήλυσις, εἴτ' ἀπ' Ἀθηνῶν
στείχοις, εἴτε νέκυς, νίσεαι ἐκ Μερόης·
μὴ σέ γ' ἀνιάτω πάτρης ἀποτῆλε θανόντα·
πάντοθεν εἷς ὁ φέρων εἰς ἀΐδην ἄνεμος.[197]

Here is another, which repeats the old proverb of the cup and the lip (ii. 257):

πολλὰ μεταξὺ πέλει κύλικος καὶ χείλεος ἄκρου.

And another, on the difference between the leaders and the followers in the pomp of life (ii. 270):

πολλοί τοι ναρθηκοφόροι παῦροι δέ τε βάκχοι.

Equally without author's name is the following excellent prayer (ii. 271):

Ζεῦ βασιλεῦ τὰ μὲν ἐσθλὰ καὶ εὐχομένοις καὶ ἀνεύκτοις
ἄμμι δίδου· τὰ δὲ λυγρὰ καὶ εὐχομένων ἀπερύκοις.[198]

Lucian gives the following good advice on the use of wealth (ii. 256):

ὡς τεθνηξόμενος τῶν σῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀπόλαυε,
ὡς δὲ βιωσόμενος φείδεο σῶν κτεάνων·
ἔστι δ' ἀνὴρ σοφὸς οὗτος ὃς ἄμφω ταῦτα νοήσας
φειδοῖ καὶ δαπάνῃ μέτρον ἐφηρμόσατο.[199]

Agathias asks why we need fear death (ii. 264):

τὸν θάνατον τί φοβεῖσθε, τὸν ἡσυχίης γενετῆρα,
τὸν παύοντα νόσους καὶ πενίης ὀδύνας;
μοῦνον ἅπαξ θνητοῖς παραγίνεται, οὐδέ ποτ' αὐτὸν
εἶδέν τις θνητῶν δεύτερον ἐρχόμενον·
αἱ δὲ νόσοι πολλαὶ καὶ ποίκιλαι, ἄλλοτ' ἐπ' ἄλλον
ἐρχόμεναι θνητῶν καὶ μεταβαλλόμεναι.[200]

The remainder of my quotations from this section will all be taken from Palladas. Here is his version of the proverb attributed to Democritus that life's a stage (ii. 265):

σκηνὴ πᾶς ὁ βίος καὶ παίγνιον· ἢ μάθε παίζειν
τὴν σπουδὴν μεταθεὶς ἢ φέρε τὰς ὀδύνας.[201]

Here, again, is the old complaint that man is Fortune's plaything (ii. 266):

παίγνιόν ἐστι τύχης μερόπων βίος, οἰκτρός, ἀλήτης,
πλούτου καὶ πενίης μεσσόθι ῥεμβόμενος.
καὶ τοὺς μὲν κατάγουσα πάλιν σφαιρηδὸν ἀείρει,
τοὺς δ' ἀπὸ τῶν νεφελῶν εἰς ἀΐδην κατάγει.[202]

Here again, but cadenced in iambics, is the Flight of Time (ii. 266):

ὦ τῆς βραχείας ἡδονῆς τῆς τοῦ βίου·
τὴν ὀξύτητα τοῦ χρόνου πενθήσατε·
ἡμεῖς καθεζόμεσθα καὶ κοιμώμεθα,
μοχθοῦντες ἢ τρυφῶντες· ὁ δὲ χρόνος τρέχει,
τρέχει καθ' ἡμῶν τῶν ταλαιπώρων βροτῶν,
φέρων ἑκάστου τῷ βίῳ καταστροφήν.[203]

The next epigram is literally bathed in tears (ii. 267):

δακρυχέων γενόμην καὶ δακρύσας ἀποθνήσκω·
δάκρυσι δ' ἐν πολλοῖς τὸν βίον εὗρον ὅλον.
ὦ γένος ἀνθρώπων πολυδάκρυτον, ἀσθενές, οἰκτρόν,
φαινόμενον κατὰ γῆς καὶ διαλυόμενον.[204]

When he chooses to be cynical, Palladas can present the physical conditions of human life with a crude brutality which is worthy of a monk composing a chapter De contemptu humanæ miseriæ. It is enough to allude to the epigrams upon the birth (ii. 259) and the breath (ii. 265) of man. To this had philosophy fallen in the death of Greece. One more quotation from Palladas has a touch of pathos. The old order has yielded to the new: Theodosius has closed the temples: the Greeks are in ashes: their very hopes remain among the dead (ii. 268):

Ἕλληνές ἐσμεν ἄνδρες ἐσποδωμένοι,
νεκρῶν ἔχοντες ἐλπίδας τεθαμμένας·
ἀνεστράφη γὰρ πάντα νῦν τὰ πράγματα.

With this wail the thin, lamentable voice of the desiccated rhetorician ceases.

Akin to these hortatory epigrams, in their tone of settled melancholy, are some of the satiric and convivial. It is necessary, when we think of the Greeks as the brightest and sunniest of all races, to remember what songs they sang at their banquets, and to comfort ourselves with the reflection that between their rose-wreaths and the bright Hellenic sky above them hung for them, no less than for ourselves, the cloud of death.

What more dismal drinking-song can be conceived than this? (i. 337):

οὐδὲν ἁμαρτήσας γενόμην παρὰ τῶν με τεκόντων·
γεννηθεὶς δ' ὁ τάλας ἔρχομαι εἰς Ἀΐδην·
ὦ μῖξις γονέων θανατηφόρος· ὤμοι ἀνάγκης
ἥ με προσπελάσει τῷ στυγερῷ θανάτῳ·
οὐδὲν ἐὼν γενόμην· πάλιν ἔσσομαι ὡς πάρος οὐδέν·
οὐδὲν καὶ μηδὲν τῶν μερόπων τὸ γένος·
λειπόν μοι τὸ κύπελλον ἀποστίλβωσον, ἑταῖρε,
καὶ λύπης ἀκονὴν τὸν Βρόμιον πάρεχε.[205]

The good sense of Cephalas placed it among the epitaphs; for, in truth, it is the quintessence of the despair of the grave. Yet its last couplet forces us to drag it from the place of tombs, and put it into the mouth of some late reveller of the decadence of Hellas. It has to my ear the ring of a drinking-song sung in a room with closed shutters, after the guests have departed, by some sad companion who does not know that the dawn has gone forth and the birds are aloft in the air. The shadow of night is upon him. Though Christ be risen and the sun of hope is in the sky, he is still as cheerless as Mimnermus. If space sufficed, it would be both interesting and profitable to compare this mood of the epigrammatists with that expressed by Omar Khayyám, the Persian poet of Khorassan, in whose quatrains philosophy, melancholy, and the sense of beauty are so wonderfully mingled that to surpass their pathos is impossible in verse.[206] Here is another of the same tone (ii. 287):

ἠὼς ἐξ ἠοῦς παραπέμπεται, εἶτ' ἀμελούντων
ἡμῶν ἐξαίφνης ἥξει ὁ πορφύρεος,
καὶ τοὺς μὲν τήξας, τοὺς δ' ὀπτήσας, ἐνίους δὲ
φυσήσας ἄξει πάντας ἐς ἓν βάραθρον.[207]

And another with a more delicate ring of melancholy in the last couplet (ii. 289):

ὑπνώεις ὦ 'ταῖρε· τὸ δὲ σκύφος αὐτὸ βοᾷ σε·
ἔγρεο, μὴ τέρπου μοιριδίῃ μελέτῃ·
μὴ φείσῃ Διόδωρε· λάβρος δ' εἰς Βάκχον ὀλισθὼν
ἄχρις ἐπὶ σφαλεροῦ ζωροπότει γόνατος·
ἔσσεθ' ὅτ' οὐ πιόμεσθα, πολὺς πολύς· ἀλλ' ἄγ' ἐπείγου.
ἡ συνετὴ κροτάφων ἅπτεται ἡμετέρων.[208]

And yet another (ii. 294), which sounds like the Florentine Carnival Song composed by Lorenzo de' Medici—

Chi vuol esser lieto sia;
Di doman non è certezza—

πῖνε καὶ εὐφραίνου· τί γὰρ αὔριον ἢ τὶ τὸ μέλλον
οὐδεὶς γινώσκει· μὴ τρέχε, μὴ κοπία·
ὡς δύνασαι, χάρισαι, μετάδος, φάγε, θνητὰ λογίζου·
τὸ ζῆν τοῦ μὴ ζῆν οὐδὲν ὅλως ἀπέχει·
πᾶς ὁ βίος τοιόσδε ῥοπὴ μόνον· ἂν προλάβῃς σοῦ
ἂν δὲ θάνῃς ἑτέρου πάντα· σὺ δ' οὐδὲν ἔχεις.[209]

But the majority of the ἐπιγράμματα σκωπτικά, or jesting epigrams, are not of this kind. They are written for the most part, in Roman style, on ugly old women, misers, stupid actors, doctors to dream of whom is death, bad painters, poets who kill you with their elegies, men so light that the wind carries them about like stubble, or so thin that a gossamer is strong enough to strangle them; vices, meannesses, deformities of all kinds. Lucillius, a Greek Martial of the age of Nero, is both best and most prolific in this kind of composition. But of all the sections of the Anthology this is certainly the least valuable. The true superiority of Greek to Latin literature in all its species is that it is far more a work of pure beauty, of unmixed poetry. In Lucillius the Hellenic muse has deigned for once to assume the Roman toga, and to show that if she chose she could rival the hoarse-throated satirists of the empire on their own ground. But she has abandoned her lofty eminence, and descended to a lower level. The same may be said in brief about the versified problems and riddles (ii. pp. 467-490), which are not much better than elegant acrostics of this or the last century. It must, however, be remarked that the last-mentioned section contains a valuable collection of Greek oracles.

Of all the amatory poets of the Anthology, by far the noblest is Meleager. He was a native of Gadara in Palestine, as he tells us in an epitaph composed in his old age:

πάτρα δέ με τεκνοῖ
Ἀτθὶς ἐν Ἀσσυρίοις ναιομένα, Γάδαρα.[210]

It is curious to think of this town, which from our childhood we have connected with the miracle of the demoniac and the swine, as a Syrian Athens, the birthplace of the most mellifluous of all erotic songsters. Meleager's date is half a century or thereabouts before the Christian era. He therefore was ignorant of the work and the words of One who made the insignificant place of his origin world-famous. Of his history we know really nothing more than his own epigrams convey; the two following couplets from one of his epitaphs record his sojourn during different periods of his life at Tyre and at Ceos:

ὃν θεόπαις ἤνδρωσε Τύρος Γαδάρων θ' ἱερὰ χθών·
Κῶς δ' ἐρατὴ Μερόπων πρέσβυν ἐγηροτρόφει.
Ἀλλ' εἰ μὲν Σύρος ἐσσί, Σάλαμ· εἰ δ' οὖν σύγε Φοῖνιξ,
Ναίδιος· εἰ δ' Ἕλλην, χαῖρε· τὸ δ' αὐτὸ φράσον.[211]

This triple salutation, coming from the son of Gadara and Tyre and Ceos, brings us close to the pure humanity which distinguished Meleager. Modern men, judging him by the standard of Christian morality, may feel justified in flinging a stone at the poet who celebrated his Muiscos and his Diocles, his Heliodora and his Zenophila, in too voluptuous verse. But those who are content to criticise a pagan by his own rule of right and wrong will admit that Meleager had a spirit of the subtlest and the sweetest, a heart of the tenderest, and a genius of the purest that has been ever granted to an elegist of earthly love. While reading his verse, it is impossible to avoid laying down the book and pausing to exclaim: How modern is the phrase, how true the passion, how unique the style! Though Meleager's voice has been mute a score of centuries, it yet rings clear and vivid in our ears; because the man was a real poet, feeling intensely, expressing forcibly and beautifully, steeping his style in the fountain of tender sentiment which is eternal. We find in him none of the cynicism which defiles Straton, or of the voluptuary's despair which gives to Agathias the morbid splendor of decay, the colors of corruption. All is simple, lively, fresh with joyous experience in his verse.

The first great merit of Meleager as a poet is limpidity. A crystal is not more transparent than his style; but the crystal to which we compare it must be colored with the softest flush of beryl or of amethyst. Here is a little poem in praise of Heliodora (i. 85):

πλέξω λευκόϊον, πλέξω δ' ἁπαλὴν ἅμα μύρτοις
νάρκισσον, πλέξω καὶ τὰ γελῶντα κρίνα,
πλέξω καὶ κρόκον ἡδύν· ἐπιπλέξω δ' ὑάκινθον
πορφυρέην, πλέξω καὶ φιλέραστα ῥόδα,
ὡς ἂν ἐπὶ κροτάφοις μυροβοστρύχου Ἡλιοδώρας
εὐπλόκαμον χαίτην ἀνθοβολῇ στέφανος.[212]

Nothing can be more simple than the expression, more exquisite than the cadence of these lines. The same may be said about the elegy on Cleariste (i. 307):

οὐ γάμον ἀλλ' Ἀΐδαν ἐπινυμφίδιον Κλεαρίστα
δέξατο, παρθενίας ἅμματα λυομένα·
ἄρτι γὰρ ἑσπέριοι νύμφας ἐπὶ δικλίσιν ἄχευν
λωτοὶ καὶ θαλάμων ἐπλαταγεῦντο θύραι·
ἠῷοι δ' ὀλολυγμὸν ἀνέκραγον, ἐκ δ' Ὑμέναιος
σιγαθεὶς γοερὸν φθέγμα μεθαρμόσατο·
αἱ δ' αὐταὶ καὶ φέγγος ἐδᾳδούχουν παρὰ παστῷ
πεῦκαι, καὶ φθιμένᾳ νέρθεν ἔφαινον ὁδόν.[213]

The thought of this next epigram recalls the song to Ageanax in Theocritus's seventh idyl (ii. 402):

οὔριος ἐμπνεύσας ναύταις Νότος, ὦ δυσέρωτες,
ἥμισύ μευ ψυχᾶς ἅρπασεν Ἀνδράγαθον·
τρὶς μάκαρες νᾶες, τρὶς δ' ὄλβια κύματα πόντου,
τετράκι δ' εὐδαίμων παιδοφορῶν ἄνεμος·
εἴθ' εἴην δελφὶς ἵν' ἐμοῖς βαστακτὸς ἐπ' ὤμοις
πορθμευθεὶς ἐσίδῃ τὰν γλυκύπαιδα Ῥόδον.[214]

These quotations are sufficient to set forth the purity of Meleager's style, though many more examples might have been borrowed from his epigrams on the cicada, on the mosquitoes who tormented Zenophila, on Antiochus, who would have been Eros if Eros had worn the boy's petasos and chlamys. The next point to notice about him is the suggestiveness of his language, his faculty of creating the right epithets and turning the perfect phrase that suits his meaning. The fragrance of the second line in this couplet is undefinable but potent:

ὦ δυσέρως ψυχὴ παῦσαί ποτε καὶ δι' ὀνείρων
εἰδώλοις κάλλευς κωφὰ χλιαινομένη.[215]

It is what all day-dreamers and castle-builders, not to speak of the dreamers of the night, must fain cry out in their despair. The common motive of a lover pledging his absent mistress is elevated to a region of novel beauty by the passionate repetition of words in this first line:

ἔγχει καὶ πάλιν εἰπὲ πάλιν πάλιν Ἡλιοδώρας.[216]

In the same way a very old thought receives new exquisiteness the last couplet of the epitaph on Heliodora:

ἀλλά σε γουνοῦμαι Γᾶ παντρόφε τὰν πανόδυρτον
ἠρέμα σοῖς κόλποις μᾶτερ ἐναγκάλισαι.[217]

The invocation to Night, which I will next quote, has its own beauty derived from the variety of images which are subtly and capriciously accumulated:

ἓν τόδε παμμήτειρα θεῶν λίτομαί σε φίλη Νύξ
ναὶ λίτομαι κώμων σύμπλανε πότνια Νύξ.[218]

But Meleager's epithets for Love are, perhaps, the triumphs of his verbal coinage:

ἔστι δ' ὁ παῖς γλυκύδακρυς ἀείλαλος ὠκὺς ἀταρβὴς
σιμὰ γελῶν πτερόεις νῶτα φαρετροφόρος.[219]

Again he calls him ἁβροπέδιλος ἔρως (delicate-sandalled Love) and fashions words like ψυχαπάτης, ὑπναπάτης (soul-cheating and sleep-cheating), to express the qualities of the treacherous god. In some of his metaphorical descriptions of passion he displays a really fervid imagination. To this class of creation belong the poem on the Soul's thirst (ii. 414), on the memory of beauty that lives like a fiery image in the heart (ii. 413), and the following splendid picture of the tyranny of Love. He is addressing his Soul, who has once again incautiously been trapped by Eros:

τί μάτην ἐνὶ δεσμοῖς
σπαίρεις; αὐτὸς ἔρως τὰ πτερά σου δέδεκεν,
καί σ' ἐπὶ πῦρ ἔστησε, μύροις δ' ἔρρανε λιπόπνουν,
δῶκε δὲ διψώσῃ δάκρυα θερμὰ πιεῖν.[220]

Surely a more successful marriage of romantic fancy to classic form was never effected even by a modern poet. This line again contains a bold and splendid metaphor:

κωμάζω δ' οὐκ οἶνον ὑπὸ φρένα πῦρ δὲ γεμισθείς.[221]

Meleager had a soul that inclined to all beautiful and tender things. Having described the return of spring in a prolonged chant of joy, he winds up with words worthy of a troubadour on Minnesinger in the April of a new age:

πῶς οὐ χρὴ καὶ ἀοιδὸν ἐν εἴαρι καλὸν ἀεῖσαι;[222]

The cicada, δροσεραῖς σταγόνεσσι μεθυσθείς (drunken with honey-drops of dew), the αὐτοφυὲς μίμημα λύρας (nature's own mimic of the lyre)—a conceit, by the way, in the style of Marini or of Calderon—the bee whom he addresses as ἀνθοδίαιτε μέλισσα (flower-pasturing bee), and all the flowers for which he has found exquisite epithets, the φίλομβρος νάρκισσος (narcissus that loves the rain of heaven), the φιλέραστα ῥόδα (roses to lovers dear), the οὐρεσίφοιτα κρίνα (lilies that roam the mountain-sides), and again τὰ γελῶντα κρίνα (laughing lilies), testify to the passionate love and to the purity of heart with which he greeted and studied the simplest beauties of the world.[223] In dealing with flowers he is particularly felicitous. Most exquisite are the lines in which he describes his garland of the Greek poets and assigns to each some favorite of the garden or the field, and again those other couplets which compare the boys of Tyre to a bouquet culled by love for Aphrodite. Βαιὰ μὲν ἀλλὰ ῥόδα (slight things perhaps, but roses): these are the words in which Meleager describes the too few but precious verses of Sappho, and for his own poetry they have a peculiar propriety. Τεαὶ ζώουσιν ἀήδονες, (thy nightingales still live) we may say, quoting Callimachus, when we take leave of him. His poetry has the sweetness and the splendor of the rose, the rapture and full-throated melody of the nightingale.

Next in artistic excellence to Meleager among the amatory poets is Straton, a Greek of Sardis, who lived in the second century. But there are few readers who, even for the sake of his pure and perfect language, will be prepared to put up with the immodesty of his subject-matter. Straton is not so delicate and subtle in style as Meleager; but he has a masculine vigor and netteté of phrase peculiar to himself. It is not possible to quote many of his epigrams. He suffers the neglect which necessarily obscures those men of genius who misuse their powers. Yet the story of the garland-weaver (ii. 396), and the address to schoolmasters (ii. 219), are too clever to be passed by without notice. The following epigram on a picture of Ganymede gives a very fair notion of Straton's style (ii. 425):

στεῖχε πρὸς αἰθέρα δῖον, ἀπέρχεο παῖδα κομίζων
αἰετέ, τὰς διφυεῖς ἐκπετάσας πτέρυγας,
στεῖχε τὸν ἁβρὸν ἔχων Γανυμήδεα, μηδὲ μεθείης
τὸν Διὸς ἡδίστων οἰνοχόον κυλίκων·
φείδεο δ' αἱμάξαι κοῦρον γαμψώνυχι ταρσῷ
μὴ Ζεὺς ἀλγήσῃ τοῦτο βαρυνόμενος.[224]

To this may be added an exhortation to pleasure in despite of death (ii. 288).[225]

Callimachus deserves mention as a third with Meleager and Straton. His style, drier than that of Meleager, more elevated than Straton's, is marked by a frigidity of good scholarship which only at intervals warms into the fire of passionate poetry. In writing epigrams Callimachus was careful to preserve the pointed character of the composition. He did not merely, as is the frequent wont of Meleager, indite a short poem in elegiacs. This being the case, his love poems, though they are many, are not equal to his epitaphs.

To mention all the poets of the amatory chapters would be impossible. Their name is legion. Even Plato the divine, by right of this epigram to Aster:

ἀστέρας εἰσαθρεῖς ἀστὴρ ἐμός· εἴθε γενοίμην
οὐρανὸς ὡς πολλοῖς ὄμμασιν εἰς σὲ βλέπω—[226]

and of this to Agathon:

τὴν ψυχὴν Ἀγάθωνα φιλῶν ἐπὶ χείλεσιν ἔσχον·
ἦλθε γὰρ ἡ τλήμων ὡς διαβησομένη—[227]

takes rank in the erotic cycle. Yet we may touch in passing on the names of Philodemus and Antipater, the former a native of Gadara, the latter a Sidonian, whose epitaph was composed by Meleager. Their poems help to complete the picture of Syrian luxury and culture in the cities of North Palestine, which we gain when reading Meleager. Of Philodemus the liveliest epigram is a dialogue, which seems to have come straight from the pages of some comedy (i. 68); but the majority of his verses belong to that class of literature which finds its illustration in the Gabinetto Segreto of the Neapolitan Museum. Occasionally he strikes a true note of poetry, as in this invocation to the moon:

νυκτερινὴ δίκερως φιλοπάννυχε φαῖνε σελήνη,
φαῖνε δι' εὐτρήτων βαλλομένη θυρίδων·
αὔγαζε χρυσέην Καλλίστιον· ἐς τὰ φιλεύντων
ἔργα κατοπτεύειν οὐ φθόνος ἀθανάτῃ.
ὀλβίζεις καὶ τήνδε καὶ ἡμέας οἶδα σελήνη·
καὶ γὰρ σὴν ψυχὴν ἔφλεγεν Ἐνδυμίων.[228]

Antipater shines less in his erotic poems than in the numerous epigrams which he composed on the earlier Greek poets, especially on Anacreon, Erinna, Sappho, Pindar, Ibycus. He lived at a period when the study of the lyrists was still flourishing, and each of his couplets contains a fine and thoughtful piece of descriptive criticism.

Another group of amatory poets must be mentioned. Agathias, Macedonius, and Paulus Silentiarius, Greeks of Byzantium about the age of Justinian, together with Rufinus, whose date is not quite certain, yield the very last fruits of the Greek genius, after it had been corrupted by the lusts of Rome and the effeminacy of the East. Very pale and hectic are the hues which give a sort of sickly beauty to their style. Their epigrams vary between querulous lamentations over old age and death and highly colored pictures of self-satisfied sensuality. Rufinus is a kind of second Straton in the firmness of his touch, the cynicism of his impudicity. The complaint of Agathias to the swallows that twittered at his window in early dawn (i. 102), his description of Rhodanthe and the vintage feast (ii. 297),[229] and those lines in which he has anticipated Jonson's lyric on the kiss which made the wine within the cup inebriating (i. 107), may be quoted as fair specimens of his style. Of Paulus Silentiarius I do not care to allude to more than the poem in which he describes the joy of two lovers (i. 106). What Ariosto and Boiardo have dwelt on in some of their most brilliant episodes, what Giorgione has painted in the eyes of the shepherd who envies the kiss given by Rachel to Jacob, is here compressed into eighteen lines of great literary beauty. But a man need be neither a prude nor a Puritan to turn with sadness and with loathing from these last autumnal blossoms on the tree of Greek beauty. The brothel and the grave are all that is left for Rufinus and his contemporaries. Over the one hangs the black shadow of death; the other is tenanted by ghosts of carnal joy:

When lust,
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
But most by lewd and lavish acts of sin,
Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
The soul grows clotted by contagion,
Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose
The divine property of her first being.
Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp
Oft seen in charnel-vaults and sepulchres,
Lingering, and sitting by a new-made grave,
As loath to leave the body that it loved,
And linked itself by carnal sensuality
To a degenerate and degraded state.[230]

Before taking leave of the erotic poets of the Anthology, I shall here insert a few translations made by me from Meleager, Straton, and some anonymous poets. The first epigram illustrates the Greek custom of going at night, after drinking, with lighted torches to the house of the beloved person, and there suspending garlands on the door. It is not easy to find an equivalent for the characteristic Greek word κωμάρειν. I have tried to deal with it by preserving the original allusion to the revel:

The die is cast! Nay, light the torch!
I'll take the road! Up, courage, ho!
Why linger pondering in the porch?
Upon Love's revel we will go!

Shake off those fumes of wine! Hang care
And caution! What has Love to do
With prudence? Let the torches flare!
Quick, drown the doubts that hampered you!

Cast weary wisdom to the wind!
One thing, but one alone, I know:
Love bent e'en Jove and made him blind!
Upon Love's revel we will go!

The second, by Meleager, turns upon the same custom; but it is here treated with the originality of imagination distinctive of his style:

I've drunk sheer madness! Not with wine
But old fantastic tales I'll arm
My heart in heedlessness divine,
And dare the road nor dream of harm!

I'll join Love's rout! Let thunder break,
Let lightning blast me by the way!
Invulnerable Love shall shake
His ægis o'er my head to-day.

In a third, Meleager recommends hard drinking as a remedy for the pains of love:

Drink, luckless lover! Thy heart's fiery rage
Bacchus who gives oblivion shall assuage:
Drink deep, and while thou drain'st the brimming bowl,
Drive love's dark anguish from thy fevered soul.

Two of these little compositions deal with the old comparison between love and the sea. In the first, the lover's journey is likened to a comfortless voyage, where the house of the beloved will be for him safe anchorage after the storm:

Cold blows the winter wind: 'tis Love,
Whose sweet eyes swim with honeyed tears,
That bears me to thy doors, my love,
Tossed by the storm of hopes and fears.

Cold blows the blast of aching Love;
But be thou for my wandering sail,
Adrift upon these waves of love,
Safe harbor from the whistling gale!

In the second, love itself is likened to the ocean, always shifting, never to be trusted:

My love is like an April storm
Upon a false and fickle sea:
One day you shine, and sunny warm
Are those clear smiles you shower on me;
Next day from cloudy brows you rain
Your anger on the ruffled main.

Around me all the deeps are dark;
I whirl and wander to and fro,
Like one who vainly steers his bark
Mid winds that battle as they blow:—
Then raise the flag of love or hate,
That I at last may know my fate!

The peculiar distinction of Meleager's genius gives its special quality to the following dedication, in which the poet either is, or feigns himself to be, made captive by Love upon first landing in a strange country:

The Lady of desires, a goddess, gave
My soul to thee;
To thee soft-sandalled Love hath sent, a slave,
Poor naked me:
A stranger on a stranger's soil, tight-bound
With bands of steel:—
I do but pray that we may once be found
Firm friends and leal!

Yet thou dost spurn my prayers, refuse my love,
Still stern and mute;
Time will not melt thee, nor the deeds that prove
How pure my suit.

Have pity, king, have pity! Fate hath willed
Thee god and lord:
Life in thy hands and death, to break or build,
For me is stored!

The next specimen is an attempt to render into English stanzas one of Meleager's most passionate poems:

Did I not tell you so, and cry:
"Rash soul, by Venus, you'll be caught!
Ah, luckless soul, why will you fly
So near the toils that Love had wrought?"

Did I not warn you? Now the net
Has tangled you, and in the string
You vainly strive, for Love hath set
And bound your pinions, wing to wing;

And placed you on the flames to pine,
And rubbed with myrrh your panting lip,
And when you thirsted given you wine
Of hot and bitter tears to sip.

Ah, weary soul, fordone with pain!
Now in the fire you burn, and now
Take respite for a while again,
Draw better breath and cool your brow!

Why weep and wail? What time you first
Sheltered wild Love within your breast,
Did you not know the boy you nursed
Would prove a false and cruel guest?

Did you not know? See, now he pays
The guerdon of your fostering care
With fire that on the spirit preys,
Mixed with cold snow-flakes of despair!

You chose your lot. Then cease to weep:
Endure this torment: tame your will:
Remember, what you sowed, you reap:
And, though it burns, 'tis honey still!

Here, lastly, is an Envoy, slightly altered in the English translation from Straton's original:

It may be in the years to come
That men who love shall think of me,
And reading o'er these verses see
How love was my life's martyrdom.

Love-songs I write for him and her,
Now this, now that, as Love dictates;
One birthday gift alone the Fates
Gave me, to be Love's scrivener.

One large section of the Anthology remains to be considered. It contains what are called the ἐπιγράμματα ἐπιδεικτικά, or poems upon various subjects chosen for their propriety for rhetorical exposition. These epigrams, the favorites of modern imitators, display the Greek taste in this style of composition to the best advantage. The Greeks did not regard the epigram merely as a short poem with a sting in its tail—to quote the famous couplet:

Omne epigramma sit instar apis: sit aculeus illi:
Sint sua mella: sit et corporis exigui.[231]

True to the derivation of the word, which means an inscription or superscription, they were satisfied if an epigram were short and gifted with the honey-dews of Helicon.[232] Meleager would have called his collection a beehive, and not a flower-garland, if he had acknowledged the justice of the Latin definition which has just been cited. The epigrams of which I am about to speak are simply little occasional poems, fugitive pieces, Gelegenheitsgedichte, varying in length from two to twenty lines, composed in elegiac metre, and determined, as to form and treatment, by the exigencies of the subject. Some of them, it is true, are noticeable for their point; but point is not the same as sting. The following panegyric of Athens, for example, approximates to the epigram as it is commonly conceived (ii. 13):

γῇ μὲν ἔαρ κόσμος πολυδένδρεος, αἰθέρι δ' ἄστρα,
Ἑλλάδι δ' ἥδε χθών, οἵδε δὲ τῇ πόλεϊ.[233]

The same may be said about the lines upon the vine and the goat (ii. 15; compare 20):

κἤν με φάγῃς ἐπὶ ῥίζαν ὅμως ἔτι καρποφορήσω
ὅσσον ἐπισπεῖσαί σοι τράγε θυομένῳ:[234]

and the following satire, so well known by the parody of Porson (ii. 325):

πάντες μὲν Κίλικες κακοὶ ἀνέρες· ἐν δὲ Κίλιξιν
εἷς ἀγαθὸς Κινύρης, καὶ Κινύρης δὲ Κίλιξ.[235]

Again the play of words in the last line of this next epigram (ii. 24) gives a sort of pungency to its conclusion:

ἀτθὶ κόρα μελίθρεπτε, λάλος λάλον ἁρπάξασα
τέττιγα πτανοῖς δαῖτα φέρεις τέκεσιν,
τὸν λάλον ἁ λαλόεσσα, τὸν εὔπτερον ἁ πτερόεσσα,
τὸν ξένον ἁ ξείνα, τὸν θερινὸν θερινά;
κοὐχὶ τάχος ῥίψεις; οὐ γὰρ θέμις οὐδὲ δίκαιον
ὄλλυσθ' ὑμνοπόλους ὑμνοπόλοις στόμασιν.[236]

The Greek epigram has this, in fact, in common with all good poems, that the conclusion should be the strongest and most emphatic portion. But in liberty of subject and of treatment it corresponds to the Italian sonnet. Unquestionably of this kind is the famous poem of Ptolemy upon the stars (ii. 118), which recalls to mind the saying of Kant, that the two things which moved his awe were the stars of heaven above him and the moral law within the soul of man:

οἶδ' ὅτι θνατὸς ἐγὼ καὶ ἐφάμερος· ἀλλ' ὅταν ἄστρων
μαστεύω πυκινὰς ἀμφιδρόμους ἕλικας,
οὐκέτ' ἐπιψαύω γαίης ποσίν, ἀλλὰ παρ' αὐτῷ
Ζηνὶ θεοτρεφέος πίμπλαμαι ἀμβροσίης.[237]

The poem on human life, which has been attributed severally to Poseidippus and to Plato Comicus, and which Bacon thought worthy of imitation, may take rank with the most elevated sonnets of modern literature (ii. 71):

ποίην τις βίοτοιο τάμῃ τρίβον; εἰν ἀγορῇ μὲν
νείκεα καὶ χαλεπαὶ πρήξιες· ἐν δὲ δόμοις
φρόντιδες· ἐν δ' ἀγροῖς καμάτων ἅλις· ἐν δὲ θαλάσσῃ
τάρβος· ἐπὶ ξείνης δ', ἢν μὲν ἔχῃς τι, δέος·
ἢν δ' ἀπορῇς, ἀνιηρόν· ἔχεις γάμον; οὐκ ἀμέριμνος·
ἔσσεαι· οὐ γαμέεις; ζῇς ἔτ' ἐρημότερος·
τέκνα πόνοι, πήρωσις ἄπαις βίος· αἱ νεότητες
ἄφρονες, αἱ πολιαὶ δ' ἔμπαλιν ἀδρανέες·
ἦν ἄρα τοῖν δισσοῖν ἑνὸς αἵρεσις, ἢ τὸ γενέσθαι
μηδέποτ' ἢ τὸ θανεῖν αὐτίκα τικτόμενον.[238]

The reverse of this picture is displayed with much felicity and geniality, but with less force, by Metrodorus (ii. 72):

παντοίην βιότοιο τάμοις τρίβον· ἐν ἀγορῇ μὲν
κύδεα καὶ πινυταὶ πρήξιες· ἐν δὲ δόμοις
ἄμπαυμ'· ἐν δ' ἀγροῖς φύσιος χάρις· ἐν δὲ θαλάσσῃ
κέρδος· ἐπὶ ξείνης, ἢν μὲν ἔχῃς τι, κλέος·
ἢν δ' ἀπορῇς μόνος οἶδας· ἔχεις γάμον; οἶκος ἄριστος
ἔσσεται· οὐ γαμέεις; ζῇς ἔτ' ἐλαφρότερος·
τέκνα πόθος, ἄφροντις ἄπαις βίος· αἱ νεότητες
ῥωμαλέαι, πολιαὶ δ' ἔμπαλιν εὐσεβέες·
οὐκ ἄρα τῶν δισσῶν ἑνὸς αἵρεσις, ἢ τὸ γενέσθαι
μηδέποτ' ἢ τὸ θανεῖν· πάντα γὰρ ἐσθλὰ βίῳ.[239]

Some of the epigrams of this section are written in the true style of elegies. The following splendid threnody by Antipater of Sidon upon the ruins of Corinth, which was imitated by Agathias in his lines on Troy, may be cited as perfect in this style of composition (ii. 29):

ποῦ τὸ περίβλεπτον κάλλος σέο, Δωρὶ Κόρινθε;
ποῦ στέφανοι πύργων, ποῦ τὰ πάλαι κτέανα,
ποῦ νηοὶ μακάρων, ποῦ δώματα, ποῦ δὲ δάμαρτες
Σισύφιαι, λαῶν θ' αἱ ποτὲ μυριάδες;
οὐδὲ γὰρ οὐδ' ἴχνος, πολυκάμμορε, σεῖο λέλειπται,
πάντα δὲ συμμάρψας ἐξέφαγεν πόλεμος·
μοῦναι ἀπόρθητοι Νηρηΐδες, Ὠκεανοῖο
κοῦραι, σῶν ἀχέων μίμνομεν ἁλκυόνες.[240]

It is a grand picture of the queen of pleasure in her widowhood and desolation mourned over by the deathless daughters of the plunging sea. Occasionally the theme of the epigram is historical. The finest, perhaps, of this sort is a poem by Philippus on Leonidas (ii. 59):

πουλὺ Λεωνίδεω κατιδὼν δέμας αὐτοδάϊκτον
Ξέρξης ἐχλαίνου φάρεϊ πορφυρέῳ·
κἠκ νεκύων δ' ἤχησεν ὁ τᾶς Σπάρτας πολὺς ἥρως·
οὐ δέχομαι προδόταις μισθὸν ὀφειλόμενον·
ἀσπὶς ἐμοὶ τύμβου κόσμος μέγας· αἶρε τὰ Περσῶν
χἤξω κεἰς ἀΐδην ὡς Λακεδαιμόνιος.[241]

Few, however, of the epigrams rise to the altitude of those I have been lately quoting. Their subjects are for the most part simple incidents, or such as would admit of treatment within the space of an engraved gem. The story of the girls who played at dice upon the house-roof is told very prettily in the following lines (ii. 31):

αἱ τρισσαί ποτε παῖδες ἐν ἀλλήλαισιν ἔπαιζον
κλήρῳ, τίς προτέρη βήσεται εἰς ἀΐδην·
καὶ τρὶς μὲν χειρῶν ἔβαλον κύβον, ἦλθε δὲ πασῶν
ἐς μίαν· ἡ δ' ἐγέλα κλῆρον ὀφειλόμενον·
ἐκ τέγεος γὰρ ἄελπτον ἔπειτ' ὤλισθε πέσημα
δύσμορος, ἐς δ' ἀΐδην ἤλυθεν, ὡς ἔλαχεν·
ἀψευδὴς ὁ κλῆρος ὅτῳ κακόν· ἐς δὲ τὸ λῷον
οὔτ' εὐχαὶ θνητοῖς εὔστοχοι οὔτε χέρες.[242]

Not the least beautiful are those which describe natural objects. The following six lines are devoted to an oak-tree (ii. 14):

κλῶνες ἀπῃόριοι ταναῆς δρυός, εὔσκιον ὕψος
ἀνδράσιν ἄκρητον καῦμα φυλασσομένοις,
εὐπέταλοι, κεράμων στεγανώτεροι, οἰκία φαττῶν,
οἰκία τεττίγων, ἔνδιοι ἀκρεμόνες,
κἠμὲ τὸν ὑμετέραισιν ὑποκλινθέντα κόμαισιν
ῥύσασθ', ἀκτίνων ἡελίου φυγάδα.[243]

Here again is a rustic retreat for lovers, beneath the spreading branches of a plane (ii. 43):

ἁ χλοερὰ πλατάνιστος ἴδ' ὡς ἔκρυψε φιλεύντων
ὄργια, τὰν ἱερὰν φυλλάδα τεινομένα·
ἀμφὶ δ' ἄρ' ἀκρεμόνεσσιν ἑοῖς κεχαρισμένος ὥραις
ἡμερίδος λαρῆς βότρυς ἀποκρέμαται·
οὕτως, ὦ πλατάνιστε, φύοις· χλοερὰ δ' ἀπὸ σεῖο
φυλλὰς ἀεὶ κεύθοι τοὺς Παφίης ὀάρους.[244]

Of the same sort is this invitation (ii. 529):

ὑψίκομον παρὰ τάνδε καθίζεο φωνήεσσαν
φρίσσουσαν πυκινοῖς κῶνον ὑπὸ Ζεφύροις,
καί σοι καχλάζουσιν ἐμοῖς παρὰ νάμασι σύριγξ
θελγομένων ἄξει κῶμα κατὰ βλεφάρων.[245]

And this plea from the oak-tree to the woodman to be spared (ii. 63):

ὦνερ τὰν βαλάνων τὰν ματέρα φείδεο κόπτειν,
φείδεο· γηραλέαν δ' ἐκκεράϊζε πίτυν,
ἢ πεύκαν, ἢ τάνδε πολυστέλεχον παλίουρον,
ἢ πρῖνον, ἢ τὰν αὐαλέαν κόμαρον·
τηλόθι δ' ἴσχε δρυὸς πελέκυν· κοκύαι γὰρ ἔλεξαν
ἁμῖν ὡς πρότεραι ματέρες ἐντὶ δρύες.[246]

Among the epigrams which seem to have been composed in the same spirit as those exquisite little capricci engraved by Greek artists upon gems, few are more felicitous than the three following. The affection of the Greeks for the grasshopper is one of their most charming naïvetés. Everybody knows the pretty story Socrates tells about these Μουσῶν προφῆται, or Prophets of the Muses, in the Phædrus—how they once were mortals who took such delight in the songs of the Muses that, "Singing always, they never thought of eating and drinking, until at last they forgot and died: and now they live again in the grasshoppers, and this is the return the Muses make to them—they hunger no more, neither thirst any more, but are always singing from the moment that they are born, and never eating or drinking." Thus the grasshoppers were held sacred in Greece, like storks in Germany and robins in England. Most of the epigrams about them turn on this sanctity. The following is a plea for pity from an imprisoned grasshopper to the rustics who have caught him (ii. 76):

τίπτε με τὸν φιλέρημον ἀναιδέϊ ποιμένες ἄγρῃ
τέττιγα δροσερῶν ἕλκετ' ἀπ' ἀκρεμόνων,
τὴν Νυμφῶν παροδῖτιν ἀηδόνα, κἤματι μέσσῳ
οὔρεσι καὶ σκιεραῖς ξουθὰ λαλεῦντα νάπαις;
ἠνίδε καὶ κίχλην καὶ κόσσυφον, ἠνίδε τόσσους
ψᾶρας, ἀρουραίης ἅρπαγας εὐπορίης·
καρπῶν δηλητῆρας ἐλεῖν θέμις· ὄλλυτ' ἐκείνους·
φύλλων καὶ χλοερῆς τὶς φθόνος ἐστὶ δρόσου;[247]

Another epigram on the same page tells how the poet found a grasshopper struggling in a spider's web and released it with these words: "Go safe and free with your sweet voice of song!" But the prettiest of all is this long story (ii. 119):

Εὔνομον, ὤπολλον, σὺ μὲν οἶσθά με, πῶς ποτ' ἐνίκων
Σπάρτιν ὁ Λοκρὸς ἐγώ· πευθομένοις δ' ἐνέπω.
αἰόλον ἐν κιθάρᾳ νόμον ἔκρεκον, ἐν δὲ μεσεύσᾳ
ᾠδᾷ μοι χορδὰν πλᾶκτρον ἀπεκρέμασεν·
καί μοι φθόγγον ἑτοῖμον ὁπανίκα καιρὸς ἀπῄτει,
εἰς ἀκοὰς ῥυθμῶν τὠτρεκὲς οὐκ ἔνεμεν·
καί τις ἀπ' αὐτομάτω κιθάρας ἐπὶ πῆχυν ἐπιπτὰς
τέττιξ ἐπλήρου τοὐλλιπὲς ἁρμονίας·
νεῦρα γὰρ ἓξ ἐτίνασσον· ὅθ' ἑβδομάτας δὲ μελοίμαν
χορδᾶς, τὰν τούτω γῆρυν ἐκιχράμεθα·
πρὸς γὰρ ἐμὰν μελέταν ὁ μεσαμβρινὸς οὔρεσιν ᾠδὸς
τῆνο τὸ ποιμενικὸν φθέγμα μεθηρμόσατο,
καὶ μὲν ὅτε φθέγγοιτο, σὺν ἀψύχοις τόκα νευραῖς
τῷ μεταβαλλομένῳ συμμετέπιπτε θρόῳ·
τοὔνεκα συμφώνῳ μὲν ἔχω χάριν· ὃς δὲ τυπωθεὶς
χάλκεος ἁμετέρας ἕζεθ' ὑπὲρ κιθάρας.[248]

So friendly were the relations of the Greeks with the grasshoppers. We do not wonder when we read that the Athenians wore golden grasshoppers in their hair.

Baths, groves, gardens, houses, temples, city-gates, and works of art furnish the later epigrammatists with congenial subjects. The Greeks of the Empire exercised much ingenuity in describing—whether in prose, like Philostratus, or in verse, like Agathias—the famous monuments of the maturity of Hellas. In this style the epigrams on statues are at once the most noticeable and the most abundant. The cow of Myron has at least two score of little sonnets to herself. The horses of Lysippus, the Zeus of Pheidias, the Rhamnusian statue of Nemesis, the Praxitelean Venus, various images of Eros, the Niobids, Marsyas, Ariadne, Herakles, Alexander, poets, physicians, orators, historians, and all the charioteers and athletes preserved in the museums of Byzantium or the groves of Altis, are described with a minuteness and a point that enable us to identify many of them with the surviving monuments of Greek sculpture. Pictures also come in for their due share of notice. A Polyxena of Polycletus, a Philoctetes of Parrhasius, and a Medea, which may have been the original of the famous Pompeian fresco, are specially remarkable. Then again cups engraved with figures in relief of Tantalus or Love, seals inscribed with Phœbus or Medusa, gems and intaglios of all kinds, furnish matter for other epigrams. The following couplet on the amethyst turns upon an untranslatable play of words (ii. 149):

ἡ λίθος ἐστ' ἀμέθυστος, ἐγὼ δ' ὁ πότης Διόνυσος·
πεισάτω ἢ νήφειν μ', ἢ μαθέτω μεθύειν.

Amid this multitude of poems it is difficult to make a fair or representative selection. There are, however, four which I cannot well omit. The first is written by Poseidippus on a lost statue of Lysippus (ii. 584):

τίς πόθεν ὁ πλάστης; Σικυώνιος· οὔνομα δὴ τίς;
Λύσιππος. σὺ δὲ τίς; Καιρὸς ὁ πανδαμάτωρ·
τίπτε δ' ἐπ' ἄκρα βέβηκας; ἀεὶ τροχάω. τὶ δὲ ταρσοὺς
ποσσὶν ἔχεις διφυεῖς; ἵπταμ' ὑπηνέμιος·
χειρὶ δὲ δεξιτερῇ τὶ φέρεις ξυρόν; ἀνδράσι δεῖγμα
ὡς ἀκμῆς πάσης ὀξύτερος τελέθω.
ἡ δὲ κόμη τὶ κατ' ὄψιν; ὑπαντιάσαντι λαβέσθαι.
νὴ Δία τἀξόπιθεν δ' εἰς τὶ φαλακρὰ πέλει;
τὸν γὰρ ἅπαξ πτηνοῖσι παραθρέξαντά με ποσσὶν
οὔτις ἔθ' ἱμείρων δράξεται ἐξόπιθεν.
τοὔνεχ' ὁ τεχνίτης σε διέπλασεν; εἵνεκεν ὑμῶν,
ξεῖνε· καὶ ἐν προθύροις θῆκε διδασκαλίην.[249]

The second describes the statue of Nemesis erected near Marathon by Pheidias—that memorable work by which the greatest of sculptors recorded the most important crisis in the world's history (ii. 573):

χιονέην με λίθον παλιναυξέος ἐκ περιωπῆς
λαοτύπος τμήξας πετροτόμοις ἀκίσι
Μῆδος ἐποντοπόρευσεν, ὅπως ἀνδρείκελα τεύξῃ,
τῆς κατ' Ἀθηναίων σύμβολα καμμονίης·
ὡς δὲ δαϊζομένοις Μαραθὼν ἀντέκτυπε Πέρσαις
καὶ νέες ὑγροπόρουν χεύμασιν αἱμαλέοις,
ἔξεσαν Ἀδρήστειαν ἀριστώδινες Ἀθῆναι,
δαίμον' ὑπερφιάλοις ἀντίπαλον μερόπων·
ἀντιταλαντεύω τὰς ἔλπιδας· εἰμὶ δὲ καὶ νῦν
Νίκη Ἐρεχθείδαις, Ἀσσυρίοις Νέμεσις.[250]

The third celebrates the Aphrodite of Praxiteles in Cnidos, whose garden has been so elegantly described by Lucian (ii. 560):

ἡ Παφίη Κυθέρεια δι' οἴδματος ἐς Κνίδον ἦλθε
βουλομένη κατιδεῖν εἰκόνα τὴν ἰδίην·
πάντη δ' ἀθρήσασα περισκέπτῳ ἐνὶ χώρῳ,
φθέγξατο· ποῦ γυμνὴν εἶδέ με Πραξιτέλης;[251]

The fourth is composed with much artifice of style upon a statue of Love bound by his arms to a pillar (ii. 567):

κλαῖε δυσεκφύκτως σφιγχθεὶς χέρας, ἄκριτε δαῖμον,
κλαῖε μάλα, στάζων ψυχοτακῆ δάκρυα,
σωφροσύνας ὑβριστά, φρενοκλόπε, λῃστὰ λογισμοῦ,
πτανὸν πῦρ, ψυχᾶς τραῦμ' ἀόρατον, Ἔρως·
θνατοῖς μὲν λύσις ἐστὶ γόων ὁ σός, ἄκριτε, δεσμός·
ᾧ σφιγχθεὶς κωφοῖς πέμπε λιτὰς ἀνέμοις·
ὃν δὲ βροτοῖς ἀφύλακτος ἐνέφλεγες ἐν φρεσὶ πυρσὸν
ἄθρει νῦν ὑπὸ σῶν σβεννύμενον δακρύων.[252]

In bringing this review of the Anthology to a close, I feel that I have been guilty of two errors. I have wearied the reader with quotations; yet I have omitted countless epigrams of the purest beauty. The very riches of this flower-garden of little poems are an obstacle to its due appreciation. Each epigram in itself is perfect, and ought to be carefully and lovingly studied. But it is difficult for the critic to deal in a single essay with upwards of four thousand of these precious gems. There are many points of view which with adequate space and opportunity might have been taken for the better illustration of the epigrams. Their connection with the later literature of Greece, especially with the rhetoricians, Philostratus, Alciphron, and Libanius, many of whose best compositions are epigrams in prose—as Jonson knew when he turned them into lyrics; their still more intimate æsthetic harmony with the engraved stones and minor bass-reliefs, which bear exactly the same relation to Greek sculpture as the epigrams to the more august forms of Greek poetry; the lives of their authors; the historical events to which they not unfrequently allude—all these are topics for elaborate dissertation.

Perhaps, however, the true secret of their charm is this: that in their couplets, after listening to the choric raptures of triumphant public art, we turn aside to hear the private utterances, the harmoniously modulated whispers of a multitude of Greek poets telling us their inmost thoughts and feelings. The unique melodies of Meleager, the chaste and exquisite delicacy of Callimachus, the clear dry style of Straton, Plato's unearthly subtlety of phrase, Antipater's perfect polish, the good sense of Palladas, the fretful sweetness of Agathias, the purity of Simonides, the gravity of Poseidippus, the pointed grace of Philip, the few but mellow tones of Sappho and Erinna, the tenderness of Simmias, the biting wit of Lucillius, the sunny radiance of Theocritus—all these good things are ours in the Anthology. But beyond these perfumes of the poets known to fame is yet another. Over very many of the sweetest and the strongest of the epigrams is written the pathetic word ἀδέσποτον—without a master. Hail to you, dead poets, unnamed, but dear to the Muses! Surely with Pindar and with Anacreon and with Sappho and with Sophocles the bed of flowers is spread for you in those "black-petalled hollows of Pieria" where Ion bade farewell to Euripides.