The iambic metre, built upon the primitive iambus, or coarse and licentious jesting,[151] which formed a part of some Grecian festivals (especially of the festivals of Dêmêtêr as well in Attica as in Paros, the native country of the poet), is only one amongst many new paths struck out by his inventive genius; whose exuberance astonishes us, when we consider that he takes his start from little more than the simple hexameter,[152] in which, too, he was a distinguished composer,—for even of the elegiac verse he is as likely to have been the inventor as Kallinus, just as he was the earliest popular and successful composer of table-songs, or Skolia, though Terpander may have originated some such before him. The entire loss of his poems, excepting some few fragments, enables us to recognize little more than one characteristic,—the intense personality which pervaded them, as well as that coarse, direct, and out-spoken license, which afterwards lent such terrible effect to the old comedy at Athens. His lampoons are said to have driven Lykambês, the father of Neobulê, to hang himself: the latter had been promised to Archilochus in marriage, but that promise was broken, and the poet assailed both father and daughter with every species of calumny.[153] In addition to this disappointment, he was poor, the son of a slave-mother, and an exile from his country, Paros, to the unpromising colony of Thasos. The desultory notices respecting him betray a state of suffering combined with loose conduct which vented itself sometimes in complaint, sometimes in libellous assault; and he was at last slain by some whom his muse had thus exasperated. His extraordinary poetical genius finds but one voice of encomium throughout antiquity. His triumphal song to Hêraklês was still popularly sung by the victors at Olympia, near two centuries after his death, in the days of Pindar; but that majestic and complimentary poet at once denounces the malignity, and attests the retributive suffering, of the great Parian iambist.[154]
Amidst the multifarious veins in which Archilochus displayed his genius, moralizing or gnomic poetry is not wanting, while his contemporary Simonides, of Amorgos, devotes the iambic metre especially to this destination, afterwards followed out by Solon and Theognis. But Kallinus, the earliest celebrated elegiac poet, so far as we can judge from his few fragments, employed the elegiac metre for exhortations of warlike patriotism; and the more ample remains which we possess of Tyrtæus are sermons in the same strain, preaching to the Spartans bravery against the foe, and unanimity as well as obedience to the law at home. They are patriotic effusions, called forth by the circumstances of the time, and sung by single voice, with accompaniment of the flute,[155] to those in whose bosoms the flame of courage was to be kindled. For though what we peruse is in verse, we are still in the tide of real and present life, and we must suppose ourselves rather listening to an orator addressing the citizens when danger or dissension is actually impending. It is only in the hands of Mimnermus that elegiac verse comes to be devoted to soft and amatory subjects. His few fragments present a vein of passive and tender sentiment, illustrated by appropriate matter of legend, such as would be cast into poetry in all ages, and quite different from the rhetoric of Kallinus and Tyrtæus.
The poetical career of Alkman is again distinct from that of any of his above-mentioned contemporaries. Their compositions, besides hymns to the gods, were principally expressions of feeling intended to be sung by individuals, though sometimes also suited for the kômus, or band of festive volunteers, assembled on some occasion of common interest: those of Alkman were principally choric, intended for the song and accompanying dance of the chorus. He was a native of Sardis in Lydia, or at least his family were so; and he appears to have come in early life to Sparta, though his genius and mastery of the Greek language discountenance the story that he was brought over to Sparta as a slave. The most ancient arrangement of music at Sparta, generally ascribed to Terpander,[156] underwent considerable alteration, not only through the elegiac and anapæstic measures of Tyrtæus, but also through the Kretan Thalêtas and the Lydian Alkman. The harp, the instrument of Terpander, was rivalled and in part superseded by the flute or pipe, which had been recently rendered more effective in the hands of Olympus, Klonas, and Polymnêstus, and which gradually became, for compositions intended to raise strong emotion, the favorite instrument of the two,—being employed as accompaniment both to the elegies of Tyrtæus, and to the hyporchemata (songs, or hymns, combined with dancing) of Thalêtas; also, as the stimulus and regulator to the Spartan military march.[157]
These elegies (as has been just remarked) were sung by one person, in the midst of an assembly of listeners, and there were doubtless other compositions intended for the individual voice. But in general such was not the character of music and poetry at Sparta; everything done there, both serious and recreative, was public and collective, so that the chorus and its performances received extraordinary development. It has been already stated, that the chorus usually, with song and dance combined, constituted an important part of divine service throughout all Greece, and was originally a public manifestation of the citizens generally,—a large proportion of them being actively engaged in it,[158] and receiving some training for the purpose as an ordinary branch of education. Neither the song nor the dance, under such conditions, could be otherwise than extremely simple. But in process of time, the performance at the chief festivals tended to become more elaborate, and to fall into the hands of persons expressly and professionally trained,—the mass of the citizens gradually ceasing to take active part, and being present merely as spectators. Such was the practice which grew up in most parts of Greece, and especially at Athens, where the dramatic chorus acquired its highest perfection. But the drama never found admission at Sparta, and the peculiarity of Spartan life tended much to keep up the popular chorus on its ancient footing. It formed, in fact, one element in that never-ceasing drill to which the Spartans were subject from their boyhood, and it served a purpose analogous to their military training, in accustoming them to simultaneous and regulated movement,—insomuch that the comparison between the chorus, especially in its Pyrrhic, or war-dances, and the military enomoty, seems to have been often dwelt upon.[159] In the singing of the solemn pæan in honor of Apollo, at the festival of the Hyakinthia, king Agesilaus was under the orders of the chorus-master, and sang in the place allotted to him;[160] while the whole body of Spartans without exception,—the old, the middle-aged, and the youth, the matrons, and the virgins,—were distributed in various choric companies,[161] and trained to harmony both of voice and motion, which was publicly exhibited at the solemnities of the Gymnopædiæ. The word dancing must be understood in a larger sense than that in which it is now employed, and as comprising every variety of rhythmical, accentuated, conspiring movements, or gesticulations, or postures of the body, from the slowest to the quickest;[162] cheironomy, or the decorous and expressive movement of the hands, being especially practised.
We see thus that both at Sparta and in Krête (which approached in respect to publicity of individual life most nearly to Sparta), the choric aptitudes and manifestations occupied a larger space than in any other Grecian city. And as a certain degree of musical and rhythmical variety was essential to meet this want,[163] while music was never taught to Spartan citizens individually,—we farther understand how strangers like Terpander, Polymnêstus, Thalêtas, Tyrtæus, Alkman, etc., were not only received, but acquired great influence at Sparta, in spite of the preponderant spirit of jealous seclusion in the Spartan character. All these masters appear to have been effective in their own special vocation,—the training of the chorus,—to which they imparted new rhythmical action, and for which they composed new music. But Alkman did this, and something more; he possessed the genius of a poet, and his compositions were read afterwards with pleasure by those who could not hear them sung or see them danced. In the little of his poems which remains, we recognize that variety of rhythm and metre for which he was celebrated. In this respect he (together with the Kretan Thalêtas, who is said to have introduced a more vehement style both of music and dance, with the Kretic and Pæonic rhythm, into Sparta[164]) surpassed Archilochus, and prepared the way for the complicated choric movements of Stesichorus and Pindar: some of the fragments, too, manifest that fresh outpouring of individual sentiment and emotion which constitutes so much of the charm of popular poetry. Besides his touching address in old age to the Spartan virgins, over whose song and dance he had been accustomed to preside.—he is not afraid to speak of his hearty appetite, satisfied with simple food and relishing a bowl of warm broth at the winter tropic.[165] And he has attached to the spring an epithet, which comes home to the real feelings of a poor country more than those captivating pictures which abound in verse, ancient as well as modern: he calls it “the season of short fare,”—the crop of the previous year being then nearly consumed, the husbandman is compelled to pinch himself until his new harvest comes in.[166] Those who recollect that in earlier periods of our history, and in all countries where there is little accumulated stock, an exorbitant difference is often experienced in the price of corn before and after the harvest, will feel the justice of Alkman’s description.
Judging from these and from a few other fragments of this poet, Alkman appears to have combined the life and exciting vigor of Archilochus in the song properly so called, sung by himself individually,—with a larger knowledge of musical and rhythmical effect in regard to the choric performance. He composed in the Laconian dialect,—a variety of the Doric with some intermixture of Æolisms. And it was from him, jointly with those other composers who figured at Sparta during the century after Terpander, as well as from the simultaneous development of the choric muse[167] in Argos, Sikyôn, Arcadia, and other parts of Peloponnesus, that the Doric dialect acquired permanent footing in Greece, as the only proper dialect for choric compositions. Continued by Stesichorus and Pindar, this habit passed even to the Attic dramatists, whose choric songs are thus in a great measure Doric, while their dialogue is Attic. At Sparta, as well as in other parts of Peloponnesus,[168] the musical and rhythmical style appears to have been fixed by Alkman and his contemporaries, and to have been tenaciously maintained, for two or three centuries, with little or no innovation; the more so, as the flute-players at Sparta formed an hereditary profession, who followed the routine of their fathers.[169]
Alkman was the last poet who addressed himself to the popular chorus. Both Arion and Stesichorus composed for a body of trained men, with a degree of variety and involution such as could not be attained by a mere fraction of the people. The primitive dithyrambus was a round choric dance and song in honor of Dionysus,[170] common to Naxos, Thebes, and seemingly to many other places, at the Dionysiac festival,—a spontaneous effusion of drunken men in the hour of revelry, wherein the poet Archilochus, “with the thunder of wine full upon his mind,” had often taken the chief part.[171] Its exciting character approached to the worship of the Great Mother in Asia, and stood in contrast with the solemn and stately pæan addressed to Apollo. Arion introduced into it an alteration such as Archilochus had himself brought about in the scurrilous iambus. He converted it into an elaborate composition in honor of the god, sung and danced by a chorus of fifty persons, not only sober, but trained with great strictness; though its rhythm and movements, and its equipment in the character of satyrs, presented more or less an imitation of the primitive license. Born at Methymna in Lesbos, Arion appears as a harper, singer, and composer, much favored by Periander at Corinth, in which city he first “composed, denominated, and taught the dithyramb,” earlier than any one known to Herodotus.[172] He did not, however, remain permanently there, but travelled from city to city, exhibiting at the festivals for money,—especially to Sicilian and Italian Greece, where he acquired large gains. We may here again remark how the poets as well as the festivals served to promote a sentiment of unity among the dispersed Greeks. Such transfer of the dithyramb, from the field of spontaneous nature into the garden of art,[173] constitutes the first stage in the refinement of Dionysiac worship; which will hereafter be found still farther exalted in the form of the Attic drama.
The date of Arion seems about 600 B. C., shortly after Alkman: that of Stesichorus is a few years later. To the latter the Greek chorus owed a high degree of improvement, and in particular the last finished distribution of its performance into the strophê, the antistrophê, and the epôdus: the turn, the return, and the rest,—the rhythm and metre of the song during each strophê corresponded with that during the antistrophê, but was varied during the epôdus, and again varied during the following strophês. Until this time the song had been monostrophic, consisting of nothing more than one uniform stanza, repeated from the beginning to the end of the composition;[174] so that we may easily see how vast was the new complication and difficulty introduced by Stesichorus,—not less for the performers than for the composer, himself at that time the teacher and trainer of performers. Both this poet and his contemporary the flute-player Sakadas of Argos,—who gained the prize at the first three Pythian games founded after the Sacred War,—seem to have surpassed their predecessors in the breadth of subject which they embraced, borrowing from the inexhaustible province of ancient legend, and expanding the choric song into a well-sustained epical narrative.[175] Indeed, these Pythian games opened a new career to musical composers just at the time when Sparta began to be closed against musical novelties.
Alkæus and Sappho, both natives of Lesbos, appear about contemporaries with Arion, B. C. 610-580. Of their once celebrated lyric compositions, scarcely anything remains. But the criticisms which are preserved on both of them place them in strong contrast with Alkman, who lived and composed under the more restrictive atmosphere of Sparta,—and in considerable analogy with the turbulent vehemence of Archilochus,[176] though without his intense private malignity. Both composed for their own local audience, and in their own Lesbian Æolic dialect; not because there was any peculiar fitness in that dialect to express their vein of sentiment, but because it was more familiar to their hearers. Sappho herself boasts of the preëminence of the Lesbian bards;[177] and the celebrity of Terpander, Perikleitas, and Arion, permits us to suppose that there may have been before her many popular bards in the island who did not attain to Hellenic celebrity. Alkæus included in his songs the fiercest bursts of political feeling, the stirring alternations of war and exile, and all the ardent relish of a susceptible man for wine and love.[178] The love-song seems to have formed the principal theme of Sappho, who, however, also composed odes or songs[179] on a great variety of other subjects, serious as well as satirical, and is said farther to have first employed the Mixolydian mode in music. It displays the tendency of the age to metrical and rhythmical novelty, that Alkæus and Sappho are said to have each invented the peculiar stanza, well-known under their respective names,—combinations of the dactyl, trochee, and iambus, analogous to the asynartetic verses of Archilochus; they by no means confined themselves, however, to Alkaic and Sapphic metre. Both the one and the other composed hymns to the gods; indeed, this is a theme common to all the lyric and choric poets, whatever may be their peculiarities in other ways. Most of their compositions were songs for the single voice, not for the chorus. The poetry of Alkæus is the more worthy of note, as it is the earliest instance of the employment of the Muse in actual political warfare, and shows the increased hold which that motive was acquiring on the Grecian mind.
The gnomic poets, or moralists in verse, approach by the tone of their sentiments more to the nature of prose. They begin with Simonidês of Amorgos or of Samos, the contemporary of Archilochus: indeed, the latter himself devoted some compositions to the illustrative fable, which had not been unknown even to Hesiod. In the remains of Simonidês of Amorgos we trace nothing relative to the man personally, though he too, like Archilochus, is said to have had an individual enemy, Orodœkidês, whose character was aspersed by his muse.[180] His only considerable poem extant is devoted to a survey of the characters of women, in iambic verse, and by way of comparison with various animals,—the mare, the ass, the bee, etc. It follows out the Hesiodic vein respecting the social and economical mischief usually caused by women, with some few honorable exceptions; but the poet shows a much larger range of observation and illustration, if we compare him with his predecessor Hesiod; moreover, his illustrations come fresh from life and reality. We find in this early iambist the same sympathy with industry and its due rewards which are observable in Hesiod, together with a still more melancholy sense of the uncertainty of human events.