[27] It may further be observed that the passage is to all appearances descriptive of the emotions of some person other than the writer himself, and there is certainly no reason to suppose that it was addressed to the woman in question. The difference between describing such an emotion generally, and describing it as one’s own, to the person who causes it, need hardly be dwelt upon.
[28] Cp. Fr. 71, 72.
[29] To endeavour, as some have done, to reconstruct the satires of Archilochus from those of Catullus, is simply labour thrown away, because between the periods in which the two poets lived, the whole way of regarding women had been revolutionised, and ideas which seemed obvious to the Latin writer would have been unintelligible to the Greek. To Catullus thwarted love was an agony; to Archilochus it was an insult, and no man of his time would, or could, have regarded it otherwise. Thus, to suppose, as Lafaye (op. cit. l.c.) does, that the satires of Archilochus were interspersed with erotic passages, like Catull. xxxix. (a poem he considers to be imitated from Archilochus), is to suppose an anachronism.
[30] His date, and the general character of his poems, make it more convenient to consider him here, than among the other choral lyric writers, of whom we shall speak later.
[31] Ἀρχύτας δὲ ὁ ἁρμονικός, ὥς φησι Χαμαιλέων, Ἀλκμᾶνα γεγονέναι τῶν ἐρωτικῶν μελῶν ἡγεμόνα, καὶ ἐκδοῦναι πρῶτον μέλος ἀκόλαστον, (ἀκόλαστον) ὄντα καὶ περὶ τὰς γυναῖκας, καὶ τὴν τοιαύτην μοῦσαν (εἰσαγαγεῖν) εἰς τὰς διατριβάς.
Athen. xiii. 600 F.
(The reading is uncertain.)
[32] It is noteworthy that Archytas (ap. Athen. l.c.), when wishing to illustrate Alcman’s love for this lady, can quote nothing more pointed than the lines
τοῦθ’ ἁδεᾶν Μωσᾶν ἔδειξεν
δῶρον μάκαιρα παρσένων