(l. 655.)
Though Cyrnus does not heed him, he will yet make him immortal by his songs.[160]
Much more there is, similar in tone, chiefly advice as to the choice of friends and the like, but it would be an endless task to examine all this in detail. The reader may open the collection at random, and at once find further proof of what has been said here. Whatever the subject of the poems and whatever their occasion, they are all well-nigh equally remarkable for their dignity, their temperance, their manliness, and for their most un-Greek virtue of unselfishness, and remarkable, no less, for the absence from them of that meanness and spitefulness which even in modern times so often mark the unfortunate lover. It does one good to read these poems; they are keen and clear like a mouthful of mountain air; and it does one good, too, to think of the θοῖναι καὶ εἰλάπιναι where they were sung and where the spirit of them was understood. After all, modern writers may decry and defame these amantes contra naturam as much as they please, but they cannot deny that they were the first to teach that the mission of love was to make men better.[161]
The intimate connection between the poems that bear the name of Theognis and the Scolia has already been noticed; it will not therefore be surprising to find that the latter are almost as full as the former of references to our present subject, though, as it is in their nature to be commonplace, they need not detain us long.
Of the 25 Scolia preserved by Athenaeus,[162] 15 deal with friendships of this kind;[163] these may be roughly divided into two classes: those which sing the praises of famous pairs of friends, and those which contain general remarks on the subject. A striking instance of the first class is, of course, the well-known Scolion of Callistratus (9-12), in which it may be observed that in the second verse, where Harmodius is promised immortality among the celebrated heroes of antiquity, the two of these specially mentioned are Achilles, the lover of Patroclus, and Diomed, the lover of Sthenelus. Other examples are Scol. 21, referring to Admetus, and Scol. 17, 18 referring to Ajax, the latter of whom is a hero in the Scolia as early as the time of Alcaeus. In the second class, perhaps the most interesting are Scol. 23, with its very Theognis-like advice, and Scol. 19, of which we have already spoken.[164]
As is, of course, only to be expected, these poems do not add much to our knowledge of the subject or its treatment; but it was none the less worth while to call attention to them, owing to the fact that verse or doggerel of this kind, though it may not be of much importance itself, is yet able to furnish important evidence as to the nature of the popular feeling to which it owes its origin. The views expressed in these poems are not those of individual authors, they are the views of the whole community; and it is this fact which gives to the Scolia a far deeper significance than would at first sight appear to belong to them.
So far, the examination of such fragments of the early Greek literature as have survived, has resulted in the discovery of a body of evidence which, if not very voluminous, is yet remarkably unanimous. It remains to be seen in how far it is possible to supplement this from the works of the Attic tragedians, which have been preserved in a more perfect condition. At the first glance the prospect is not very promising; love altogether, as we have seen, plays a very subordinate part in the Attic drama, while that form of love which we are immediately considering, seems at first sight to be especially neglected. And indeed, to a certain extent, this is really the case, for very obvious reasons. In the early days of tragedy, when the love-element was well-nigh entirely excluded, in obedience to the then artistic canons, it was not to be expected that exception would be made in favour of this particular form of it;[165] later, when the love-element was gradually forcing itself into the drama, the playwrights were all, whether they cared to confess it or not, under the influence of Euripides, who, as we know, was a special student of feminine nature, and as such, felt only a qualified interest in the mutual relations of men.[166] But at the same time, a closer examination of the Attic tragedians will perhaps reveal that this characteristically Greek emotion has had a greater influence on their work than one would, at the first moment, be disposed to believe.
Two plays, the Myrmidones of Aeschylus and the Niobe of Sophocles, are specially mentioned by Athenaeus[167] as introducing ἀρσενικοὶ ἔρωτες; unfortunately, however, in neither case are the fragments preserved of a kind to throw much light on the method of treatment adopted.
The Myrmidones, which seems to have been the first play of a trilogy, treated of the death of Patroclus and Achilles’ lament for him,[168] which seems, to judge by such expressions as those preserved in Fr. 135,[169] 138, to have been of a passionate character; but whether the erotic element was the only interest in the play, and whether it was in any way developed in the latter part of the trilogy, it is impossible now to say. The Niobe recounted the misfortunes of that heroine, with her subsequent grief and exile from Thebes, the scene of the tragedy, to Lydia. But a striking feature, the most striking, perhaps, if we may draw any inference from the statement in Athenaeus[170] that this play was commonly known as ἡ τραγῳδία ἡ παιδεράστρια, was the relation represented as existing among Niobe’s sons.[171] This would appear to have been especially emphasised in the account of the death-scene[172]—a passage which we can gather indirectly to have been the most popular in the play;[173] whether it was at all prominent in the previous action we cannot tell; and, indeed, the fragments of the Niobe are of a quite particularly meagre description.