Then was there heard a most celestial sound
Of dainty music, which did next ensue
Before the spouse: that was Arion crowned
Who, playing on his harp, unto him drew
The ears and hearts of all that goodly crew;
That even yet the dolphin which him bore
Through the Ægean seas from pirates' view,
Stood still by him astonished at his lore,
And all the raging seas for joy forgot to roar.[396]
Simonides was one of the most prolific of the early poets of Greece, but only a few fragments of his compositions have descended to us. He wrote hymns, triumphal odes, and elegies, and in the last species of composition he particularly excelled. His genius was inclined to the pathetic; none could touch with truer effect the chords of human sympathy. The Lamentation of Danaë, the most important of the fragments which remain of his poetry, is based upon the tradition that Danaë and her infant son were confined by order of her father Acrisius in a chest and set adrift on the sea. The myth of her son, Perseus, has already been narrated.
Myths received their freest and perhaps most ideal treatment at the hands of the greatest lyric poet of Greece, Pindar (522 B.C.). In his hymns and songs of praise to gods and in his odes composed for the victors in the national athletic contests, he was accustomed to use the mythical exploits of Greek heroes as a text from which to draw morals appropriate to the occasion.[397]
The three great Tragic Poets of Greece have handed down to us a wealth of mythological material. From the plays of Æschylus (525 B.C.) we gather, among other noble lessons, the fortunes of the family of Agamemnon, the narrative of the expedition against Thebes, the sufferings of Prometheus, benefactor of men. In the tragedies of Sophocles (495 B.C.) we have a further account of the family of Agamemnon, myths of Œdipus of Thebes and his children, stories connected with the Trojan War, and the last adventure and the death of Hercules. Of the dramas of Euripides (480 B.C.) there remain to us seventeen, in which are found stories of the daughters of Agamemnon, the rare and beautiful narrative of Alcestis, and the adventures of Medea. All of these stories have been recounted in their proper places.
The Comedies of Aristophanes, also, are replete with matters of mythological import.
Of the later poets of mythology, only two need be mentioned here,—Apollonius of Rhodes (194 B.C.), who wrote in frigid style the story of Jason's Voyage for the Golden Fleece; and Theocritus of Sicily (270 B.C.), whose rural idyls are at once charmingly natural and romantic.[398]
(4) Historians of Mythology. The earliest narrators in prose of the myths, legends and genealogies of Greece lived about 600 B.C. Herodotus, the "father of history" (484 B.C.), embalms various myths in his account of the conflicts between Asia and Greece. Apollodorus (140 B.C.) gathers the legends of Greece later incorporated in the Library of Greek Mythology. That delightful traveler, Pausanias, makes special mention, in his Tour of Greece, of the sacred customs and legends that had maintained themselves as late as his time (160 A.D.). Lucian, in his Dialogues of the Gods and Dialogues of the Dead, awakens "inextinguishable laughter" by his satire on ancient faith and fable.
299. Roman Poets of Mythology. Virgil, called also by his surname, Maro, from whose poem of the Æneid we have taken the story of Æneas, was one of the great poets who made the age of the Roman emperor, Augustus, celebrated. Virgil was born in Mantua in the year 70 B.C. His great poem is ranked next to those of Homer, in that noble class of poetical composition, the epic. Virgil is inferior to Homer in originality and invention. The Æneid, written in an age of culture and science, lacks that charming atmosphere of belief which invests the naïve, or popular, epic. The myths concerning the founding of Rome, which Virgil has received from earlier writers, he has here fused into a literary epic. But what the Æneid lacks of epic simplicity, it makes up in patriotic spirit, in lofty moral and civic ideals, in correctness of taste, and in stylistic form.
Ovid, often alluded to in poetry by his other name, Naso, was born in the year 43 B.C. He was educated for public life and held some offices of considerable dignity; but poetry was his delight, and he early resolved to cultivate it. He accordingly sought the society of contemporary poets and was acquainted with Horace and saw Virgil, though the latter died when Ovid was yet too young and undistinguished to have formed his acquaintance. Ovid spent an easy life at Rome in the enjoyment of a competent income. He was intimate with the family of Augustus, the emperor; and it is supposed that some serious offense given to a member of that family was the cause of an event which reversed the poet's happy circumstances and clouded the latter portion of his life. At the age of fifty he was banished from Rome and ordered to betake himself to Tomi on the borders of the Black Sea. His only consolation in exile was to address his wife and absent friends. His letters were all in verse. They are called the "Tristia," or Sorrows, and Letters from Pontus. The two great works of Ovid are his "Metamorphoses" or Transformations, and his "Fasti," or Poetic Calendar. They are both mythological poems, and from the former we have taken many of our stories of Grecian and Roman mythology. These poems have thus been characterized: