Antimachus, falling in love with some Lydian lady, married her, and went to live with her in her native country. Afterwards, on her death, he returned to Colophon, where he composed, in her memory, the elegy Lyde, a poem containing, in the form of digressions, accounts of most of the unhappy lovers of tradition or mythology.[193]
Now, in this there are two features which it is impossible to parallel in any previous Greek poem. The Lyde of Antimachus was a love-poem addressed to his wife, and written after her death. In these two facts we recognise, on the part of the writer, a view both of married life and of women in general, which is entirely new. Mimnermus had said that life without love was not worth living, but his was hardly the love to last after his lady’s death. Simonides had sung the charms of the ideal housekeeper, but one would not expect to find emotional poetry addressed even to the most perfect housekeeper, as such. Euripides had expatiated on the powers and the capabilities of women; but there is a difference between regarding a woman as a particularly cunning and dangerous sort of beast, and regarding her as a fit object for a life’s devotion. In Antimachus, for the first time, we meet with the new spirit which animates the new literature and forms the foundation of the Greek romantic conception; for it is respect for women and, above all, for marriage, that constitutes the fundamental principle of the romantic feeling throughout the later Greek poetry.[194] It was this spirit which rendered possible the artistic treatment of the story of Acontius and Cydippe, and the growth of the novel, with its one inviolable canon that, whatever trials or temptations might befall them, the two lovers must throughout remain pure and faithful to one another.[195] It was this that rendered possible the New Comedy, with its endless variations on the ever-fresh theme of the unhappy lover, made happy at the last by marriage with his lady.[196] It was this that rendered possible the Battis of Philetas and the Leontium of Hermesianax, just as it rendered possible the Delia and the Lycoris of a later time. Under the old régime none of these things could have been. When Antimachus first sat down in his empty house at Colophon to write an elegy to his dead wife, consciously or unconsciously, he was initiating the greatest artistic revolution that the world has ever seen.
The circumstances under which the Lyde was produced were thus in themselves sufficiently unusual to have made a deep impression, and there is reason to believe further that the way in which Antimachus there treated his subject was also strikingly original. Not only was the actual literary form a novel one, and one that subsequently became very popular, but the general tone evidently differed in a marked manner from that of any love-poetry which had gone before. It was, above all things, noticeable for its seriousness, its gravity, and its self-restraint, characteristics entirely foreign to any previous love-poetry addressed to women. Thus Poseidippus expressly contrasts the temperate Antimachus with the licentious Mimnermus.[197] Something similar seems equally implied by the epithet σεμνοτέρη in the epigram of Asclepiades (Anth. Pal. ix. 63, 2). Indirect evidence of the same nature is to be found in the remark of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who refers to Antimachus as an instance τῆς αὐστηρᾶς ἁρμονίας.[198] Lastly, it is not, perhaps, too far-fetched to suppose that in Catullus xcv. the contrast between the Smyrna and the Lyde is not intended to be confined merely to the literary form, but is meant to further imply the poet’s preference for the story of Myrrha over the less highly spiced anecdotes in Antimachus. Very interesting too, from this point of view, are the relations of mutual admiration which are known to have existed between Antimachus and his younger contemporary Plato, an admiration illustrated by several striking anecdotes.[199] That the philosopher’s views on love were directly influenced by the poet cannot, of course, be absolutely proved. At the same time, the well-authenticated story of this intimacy, coupled with all that we know of the Lyde, is very suggestive of this, and might well furnish the subject for more elaborate research on the part of some Platonist. In spite therefore of the very scanty references to the Lyde, and the still scantier remains of the poem itself, it seems to be clear beyond doubt that, both in its circumstances of origin and its style, it was entirely different from any love-poem which had preceded it; and, further, that both circumstances and style may justly be described as romantic. In other words, the Lyde was a romantic love-poem.
But this is not in itself enough to show that the origin of the romantic feeling which appears in Alexandrian literature was due to its influence. It is further necessary to prove that those writers in whose works this feeling first appeals—viz. Asclepiades and Philetas—were actually readers and admirers of Antimachus.
This it is, perhaps, possible to do more conclusively than the general absence of evidence on the whole subject would have led one to expect. It is just Asclepiades and his particular followers who speak with the greatest enthusiasm of Antimachus. Very noteworthy are the words of Asclepiades himself—
Λύδη καὶ γένος εἰμὶ καὶ οὔνομα· τῶν δ’ ἀπὸ Κόδρου
σεμνοτέρη πασῶν εἰμὶ δι’ Ἀντίμαχον.
τίς γὰρ ἔμ’ οὐκ ἤεισε; τίς οὐκ ἀνελέξατο Λύδην,
τὸ ξυνὸν Μουσῶν γράμμα καὶ Ἀντιμάχου;