[178] Dionys. Hal. Ant. Rom. v, 82; Horat. Od. i, 32, ii, 13; Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i, 28; the striking passage in Plutarch, Symposion iii, 1, 3, ap. Bergk. Fragm. 42. In the view of Dionysius, the Æolic dialect of Alkæus and Sappho diminished the value of their compositions: the Æolic accent, analogous to the Latin, and acknowledging scarcely any oxyton words, must have rendered them much less agreeable in recitation or song.
[179] See Plutarch, De Music. p. 1136; Dionys. Hal. de Comp. Verb. c. 23, p. 173, Reisk, and some striking passages of Himerius, in respect to Sappho (i, 4, 16, 19; Maximus Tyrius, Dissert. xxiv, 7-9), and the encomium of the critical Dionysius (De Compos. Verborum, c. 23, p. 173).
The author of the Parian marble adopts, as one of his chronological epochs (Epoch 37), the flight of Sappho, or exile, from Mitylênê to Sicily somewhere between 604-596 B. C. There probably was something remarkable which induced him to single out this event; but we do not know what, nor can we trust the hints suggested by Ovid (Heroid. xv, 51).
Nine books of Sappho’s songs were collected by the later literary Greeks, arranged chiefly according to the metres (C. F. Neue, Sapphonis Fragm. p. 11, Berlin 1827). There were ten books of the songs of Alkæus (Athenæus, xi, p. 481), and both Aristophanês (Grammaticus) and Aristarchus published editions of them. (Hephæstion, c. xv, p. 134, Gaisf.) Dikæarchus wrote a commentary upon his songs (Athenæus, xi, p. 461).
[180] Welcker, Simonidis Amorgini Iambi qui supersunt, p. 9.
[181] Aristophan. Nubes, 536.
Ἀλλ᾽ αὑτῇ καὶ τοῖς ἔπεσιν πιστεύουσ᾽ ἐλήλυθεν.
[182] See Pratinas ap. Athenæum, xiv, p. 617, also p. 636, and the striking fragment of the lost comic poet Pherekratês, in Plutarch, De Musicâ, p. 1141, containing the bitter remonstrance of Music (Μουσικὴ) against the wrong which she had suffered from the dithyrambist Melanippidês: compare also Aristophanês, Nubes, 951-972; Athenæus, xiv, p. 617; Horat. Art. Poetic. 205; and W. M. Schmidt, Diatribê in Dithyrambum, ch. viii, pp. 250-265.
Τὸ σοβαρὸν καὶ περιττὸν—the character of the newer music (Plutarch, Agis, c. 10)—as contrasted with τὸ σεμνὸν καὶ ἀπερίεργον of the old music (Plutarch, De Musicâ, ut sup.): ostentation and affected display, against seriousness and simplicity. It is by no means certain that these reproaches against the more recent music of the Greeks were well founded; we may well be rendered mistrustful of their accuracy when we hear similar remarks and contrasts advanced with regard to the music of our last three centuries. The character of Greek poetry certainly tended to degenerate after Euripidês.
[183] Bias of Priênê composed a poem of two thousand verses, on the condition of Ionia (Diogen. Laërt. i, 85), from which, perhaps, Herodotus may have derived, either directly or indirectly, the judicious advice which he ascribes to that philosopher on the occasion of the first Persian conquest of Ionia (Herod. i, 170).