I. LYRIC POETRY.
SIMON'IDES AND PINDAR.
The rapid progress made in the cultivation of lyric poetry preceding the Persian wars found its culmination, during those wars, in Simonides of Ceos, the most brilliant period of whose life was spent at Athens; and in Pindar, a native of Thebes, who is considered the greatest lyric poet of all ages. The life of Simonides was a long one, reaching from 556 to 469 B.C. "Coming forward at a time," says MAHAFFY, "when the tyrants had made poetry a matter of culture, and dissociated it from politics, we find him a professional artist, free from all party struggles, alike welcome at the courts of tyrants and among the citizens of free states; he was respected throughout all the Greek world, and knew well how to suit himself, socially and artistically, to his patrons. The great national struggle with Persia gave him the opportunity of becoming the spokesman of the nation in celebrating the glories of the victors and the heroism of the fallen patriots; and this exceptional opportunity made him quite the foremost poet of his day, and decidedly better known and more admired than Pindar, who has so completely eclipsed him in the attention of posterity." [Footnote: "Classical Greek Literature," vol. i., p. 207.]
Simonides was the intimate friend of Miltiades and Themistocles at Athens, of Pausanias at Sparta, and of the tyrants of Sicily. In the first named city he composed his epigrams on Marathon, Thermopylæ, Salamis, and Platæa—"poems not destined to be merely sung or consigned to parchment, but to be carved in marble or engraved in letters of imperishable bronze upon the works of the noblest architects and statuaries." In his elegy upon Marathon he carried away the prize from Æschylus. He was a most prolific poet, and his writings, comprising all the subjects that human life, with its joys and sorrows, its hopes and disappointments, could furnish, are noted for their sweetness and pure and exquisite polish. He particularly excelled in the pathetic; and the most celebrated of the existing fragments of his muse, the "Lamentation of Dan'a-ë," is a piece of this character. The poem is based upon a tradition concerning Danaë, the daughter of Acris'ius, King of Argos, and her infant son, the offspring of Jove. Acrisius had been told by the oracle that his life would be taken by a son that his daughter should bear, and, for his own preservation, when the boy had reached the age of four years, Acrisius threw both him and his mother into a chest and set them adrift on the sea. But they were rescued by Dictys, a fisherman of the Island of Seri'phus, whose brother Polydec'tes, king of the country, received and protected them. The boy grew up to manhood, and became the famous hero Per'seus, who accidentally killed Acrisius at the funeral games of Polydectes. The following is the
Lamentation of Dan'a-ë.
While, around her lone ark sweeping,
Wailed the winds and waters wild,
Her young cheeks all wan with weeping,
Danae clasped her sleeping child;
And "Alas!" cried she, "my dearest,
What deep wrongs, what woes are mine;
But nor wrongs nor woes thou fearest
In that sinless rest of thine.
Faint the moonbeams break above thee,
And within here all is gloom;
But, fast wrapped in arms that love thee,
Little reck'st thou of our doom.
Not the rude spray, round thee flying,
Has e'en damped thy clustering hair;
On thy purple mantlet lying,
O mine Innocent, my Fair!
Yet, to thee were sorrow sorrow,
Thou wouldst lend thy little ear;
And this heart of thine might borrow,
Haply, yet a moment's cheer.
But no: slumber on, babe, slumber;
Slumber, ocean's waves; and you,
My dark troubles, without number—
Oh, that ye would slumber too!
Though with wrongs they've brimmed my chalice,
Grant, Jove, that, in future years,
This boy may defeat their malice,
And avenge his mother's tears!"
—Trans. by W. PETER.
Simonides was nearly eighty years old when he gained his last poetical prize at Athens, making the fiftieth that he had won. He then retired to Syracuse, at the invitation of Hi'ero, where he spent the remaining ten years of his life. He was a philosopher as well as poet, and his wise sayings made him a special favorite with the accomplished Hiero. When inquired of by that monarch concerning the nature of God, Simonides requested one day for deliberating on the subject; and when Hiero repeated the question the next day, the poet asked for two days more. As he still went on doubling the number of days, the monarch, lost in wonder, asked him why he did so. "Because," replied Simonides, "the longer I reflect on the subject, the more obscure does it appear to me to be."
Pindar, the most celebrated of all the lyric poets of Greece, was born about 520 B.C. At an early age he was sent to Athens to receive instruction in the art of poetry: returning to Thebes at twenty, his youthful genius was quickened and guided by the influence of Myr'tis and Corin'na, two poetesses who then enjoyed great celebrity in Bœotia. At a later period "he undoubtedly experienced," says THIRLWALL, "the animating influence of that joyful and stirring time which followed the defeat of the barbarian invader, though, as a Theban patriot, he could not heartily enjoy a triumph by which Thebes as well as Persia was humbled." But his enthusiasm for Athens, which he calls "the buttress of Hellas," is apparent in one of his compositions; and the Athenians specially honored him with a valuable present, and, after his death, erected a bronze statue to his memory. It is probable, however, that while he was sincerely anxious for the success of Greece in the great contest, he avoided as much as possible offending his own people, whose sympathies and hopes lay the other way.
The reputation of Pindar early became so great that he was employed, by various states and princes, to compose choral songs for special occasions. Like Simonides, he "loved to bask in the sunshine of courts;" but he was frank, sincere, and manly, assuming a lofty and dignified position toward princes and others in authority with whom he came in contact. He was especially courted by Hiero, despot of Syracuse, but remained with him only a few years, his manly disposition creating a love for an independent life that the courtly arts of his patron could not furnish. As his poems show, he was a reserved man, learned in the myths and ceremonies of the times, and specially devoted to the worship of the gods. "The old myths," says a Greek biographer, "were for the most part realities to him, and he accepted them with implicit credence, except when they exhibited the gods in a point of view which was repugnant to his moral feelings; and he accordingly rejects some tales, and changes others, because they are inconsistent with his moral conceptions." As a poet correctly describes him, using one of the names commonly applied to him,
Pindar, that eagle, mounts the skies,
While virtue leads the noble way.
—PRIOR.
The poems of Pindar were numerous, and comprised triumphal odes, hymns to the gods, pæans, dirges, and songs of various kinds. His triumphal odes alone have come down to us entire; but of some of his other compositions there are a few sublime and beautiful fragments. The poet and his writings cannot be better described than in the following general characterization by SYMONDS:
"By the force of his originality Pindar gave lyrical poetry a wholly new direction, and, coming last of the great Dorian lyrists, taught posterity what sort of thing an ode should be. His grand pre-eminence as an artist was due, in great measure, to his personality. Frigid, austere, and splendid; not genial like that of Simonides, not passionate like that of Sappho, not acrid like that of Archil'ochus; hard as adamant, rigid in moral firmness, glittering with the strong, keen light of snow; haughty, aristocratic, magnificent—the unique personality of the man Pindar, so irresistible in its influence, so hard to characterize, is felt in every strophe of his odes. In his isolation and elevation Pindar stands like some fabled heaven-aspiring peak, conspicuous from afar, girdled at the base with ice and snow, beaten by winds, wreathed round with steam and vapor, jutting a sharp and dazzling outline into cold blue ether. Few things that have life dare to visit him at his grand altitude. Glorious with sunlight and with stars, touched by rise and set of day with splendor, he shines when other lesser lights are dulled. Pindar among his peers is solitary. He had no communion with the poets of his day. He is the eagle; Simonides and Bacchyl'ides are jackdaws. He soars to the empyrean; they haunt the valley mists. Noticing this rocky, barren, severe, glittering solitude of Pindar's soul, critics have not infrequently complained that his poems are devoid of individual interest. Possibly they have failed to comprehend and appreciate the nature of this sublime and distant genius, whose character, in truth, is just as marked as that of Dante or of Michael Angelo."
After giving some illustrations of the impression produced upon the imagination by a study of Pindar's odes, the writer proceeds with his characterization, in the following language: "He who has watched a sunset attended by the passing of a thunder-storm in the outskirts of the Alps—who has seen the distant ranges of the mountains alternately obscured by cloud and blazing with the concentrated brightness of the sinking sun, while drifting scuds of hail and rain, tawny with sunlight, glistening with broken rainbows, clothe peak and precipice and forest in the golden veil of flame-irradiated vapor—he who has heard the thunder bellow in the thwarting folds of hills, and watched the lightning, like a snakes tongue, flicker at intervals amid gloom and glory —knows, in Nature's language, what Pindar teaches with the voice of Art. It is only by a metaphor like this that any attempt to realize the Sturm and Drang of Pindar's style can be communicated. As an artist he combines the strong flight of the eagle, the irresistible force of the torrent, the richness of Greek wine, and the majestic pageantry of Nature in one of her sublimer moods." [Footnote: "The Greek Poets." First Series, pp. 171, 174.]
Pindar, as we have seen, was compared to an eagle, because of the daring flights and lofty character of his poetry—a simile which has been beautifully expressed in the following lines by GRAY:
The pride and ample pinion
That the Theban eagle bare,
Sailing with supreme dominion,
Through the azure deeps of air.
Another image, also, has been employed to show these features of his poetry. The poet POPE represents him riding in a gorgeous chariot sustained by four swans:
Four swans sustain a car of silver bright,
With heads advanced and pinions stretched for flight;
Here, like some furious prophet, Pindar rode,
And seemed to labor with th' inspiring god.
A third image, given to us by HORACE, represents another characteristic of Pindar, which may be called "the stormy violence of his song:"
As when a river, swollen by sudden showers,
O'er its known banks from some steep mountain pours;
So, in profound, unmeasurable song,
The deep-mouthed Pindar, foaming, pours along.
—Trans. by FRANCIS.
As a sample of the religious sentiment of Pindar we give the following fragment of a threnos translated by MR. SYMONDS, which, he says, "sounds like a trumpet blast for immortality, and, trampling underfoot the glories of this world, reveals the gladness of the souls that have attained Elysium:"
For them, the night all through,
In that broad realm below,
The splendor of the sun spreads endless light;
'Mid rosy meadows bright,
Their city of the tombs, with incense-trees
And golden chalices
Of flowers, and fruitage fair,
Scenting the breezy air,
Is laden. There, with horses and with play,
With games and lyres, they while the hours away.
On every side around
Pure happiness is found,
With all the blooming beauty of the world;
There fragrant smoke, upcurled
From altars where the blazing fire is dense
With perfumed frankincense,
Burned unto gods in heaven,
Through all the land is driven,
Making its pleasant place odorous
With scented gales, and sweet airs amorous.