The comparison of various passages referring to the Olympia, Isthmia, and Nemea (Thucydidês iii, 11; viii, 9-10; v, 49-51; and Xenophon, Hellenic. iv, 7, 2; v, 1, 29) shows that various political business was often discussed at these Games,—that diplomatists made use of the intercourse for the purpose of detecting the secret designs of states whom they suspected, and that the administering state often practised manœuvres in respect to the obligations of truce for the Hieromenia, or Holy Month.
[143] Himerius, Orat. iii, p. 426, Wernsdorf—ἀγέρωχοι καὶ ὑψαυχένες.
[144] For the whole subject of this chapter, the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth chapters of O. Müller’s History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, wherein the lyric poets are handled with greater length than consists with the limits of this work, will be found highly valuable,—chapters abounding in erudition and ingenuity, but not always within the limits of the evidence.
The learned work of Ulrici (Geschichte der Griechischen Poesie—Lyrik) is still more open to the same remark.
[145] These early innovators in Grecian music, rhythm, metre, and poetry, belonging to the seventh century B. C., were very imperfectly known, even to those contemporaries of Plato and Aristotle who tried to get together facts for a consecutive history of music. The treatise of Plutarch, De Musicâ, shows what very contradictory statements he found. He quotes from four different authors,—Herakleidês, Glaukus, Alexander, and Aristoxenus, who by no means agreed in their series of names and facts. The first three of them blend together mythe and history; while even the Anagraphê or inscription at Sikyon, which professed to give a continuous list of such poets and musicians as had contended at the Sikyonian games, began with a large stock of mythical names,—Amphion, Linus, Pierius, etc. (Plutarch, Music. p. 1132.) Some authors, according to Plutarch (p. 1133), made the great chronological mistake of placing Terpander as contemporary with Hippônax; a proof how little of chronological evidence was then accessible.
That Terpander was victor at the Spartan festival of the Karneia, in 676 B. C., may well have been derived by Hellanikus from the Spartan registers: the name of the Lesbian harper Perikleitas, as having gained the same prize at some subsequent period (Plutarch, De Mus. p. 1133), probably rests on the same authority. That Archilochus was rather later than Terpander, and Thalêtas rather later than Archilochus, was the statement of Glaukus (Plutarch, De Mus. p. 1134). Klonas and Polymnêstus are placed later than Terpander; Archilochus later than Klonas: Alkman is said to have mentioned Polymnêstus in one of his songs (pp. 1133-1135). It can hardly be true that Terpander gained four Pythian prizes, if the festival was octennial prior to its reconstitution by the Amphiktyons (p. 1132). Sakadas gained three Pythian prizes after that period, when the festival was quadrennial (p. 1134).
Compare the confused indications in Pollux, iv, 65-66, 78-79. The abstract given by Photius of certain parts of the Chrestomathia of Proclus (published in Gaisford’s edition of Hephæstion, pp. 375-389), is also extremely valuable, in spite of its brevity and obscurity, about the lyric and choric poetry of Greece.
[146] The difference between Νόμος and Μέλος appears in Plutarch, De Musicâ, p. 1132—Καὶ τὸν Τέρπανδρον, κιθαρῳδικῶν ποιητὴν ὄντα νόμων, κατὰ νόμον ἕκαστον τοῖς ἔπεσι τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τοῖς Ὁμήρου μέλη περιτιθέντα, ᾅδειν ἐν τοῖς ἀγῶσι· ἀποφῆναι δὲ τοῦτον λέγει ὀνόματα πρῶτον τοῖς κιθαρῳδικοῖς νόμοις.
The nomes were not many in number; they went by special names; and there was a disagreement of opinion as to the persons who had composed them (Plutarch, Music. p. 1133). They were monodic, not choric,—intended to be sung by one person (Aristot. Problem. xix, 15). Herodot. i, 23, about Arion and the Nomus Orthius.
[147] Mr. Clinton (Fasti Hellen. ad ann. 671, 665, 644) appears to me noway satisfactory in his chronological arrangements of the poets of this century. I agree with O. Müller (Hist. of Literat. of Ancient Greece, ch. xii, 9) in thinking that he makes Terpander too recent, and Thalêtas too ancient; I also believe both Kallinus and Alkman to have been more recent than the place which Mr. Clinton assigns to them; the epoch of Tyrtæus will depend upon the date which we assign to the second Messenian war.