Anacreon’s main business was, as our poet suggests, the writing of banquet songs on love and wine. It is rather melancholy to reflect that his anacreontics were composed—according to his own prescription—on ten parts of water to five of wine; but all the ancients watered their liquor. How closely tyranny is to be associated with the revival of culture is proved by the careers of these two poets. Anacreon passed from the court of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, to Hipparchus, one of the tyrants of Athens. When he fell Anacreon went to the still more brilliant court of Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse. Simonides went with him, and there they were joined by Bacchylides, Pindar, and Æschylus.
Onomacritus was a strange person. It seems that Hipparchus had a hobby of collecting oracles, and had commissioned Onomacritus to edit a famous collection of poetical prophecies by Musæus, a half-mythical bard. Onomacritus was detected inserting some of his own compositions, and very properly expelled for a forger. If all the historical forgers of this period had been detected the modern historian’s lot would be a happier one.
One monument of this period is of especial interest, the stēlē or gravestone of Aristion.[35] It is a bas-relief, once adorned with colour, of a warrior in armour with a long spear in his hand. It is not likely that any attempt was made at a portrait of the deceased. As the stēlē was found at Peisistratus’ birthplace it has been suggested that this may be that very Aristion who proposed the decree which gave the tyrant his bodyguard. It certainly belongs to the right period of art, but Aristion was a common name; and is it likely that a record of such a man would have been permitted to survive?
It was the custom after dinner at Athens to pass round the harp, and for each guest as it came to him either to improvise a verse or to cap his neighbour’s impromptu or to sing a stave of some famous song. The most popular of all these “skolia” was “The Myrtle Bough.” One version of it runs:
“I will wear my sword in a myrtle bough,
Like Harmodius and Aristogeiton
When they killed the tyrant
And made Athens free.
“Dearest Harmodius, thou art not yet dead.
They say thou art in the Isles of the Blessed,
Where dwells Achilles swift of foot
And Diomede, Tydeus’ son.
“I will wear my sword in a myrtle bough,
Like Harmodius and Aristogeiton
When at the sacrifice of Athena
They killed Hipparchus the tyrant lord.
“Everlasting shall be your glory upon earth,
Dearest Harmodius and Aristogeiton,
For that ye killed the tyrant
And set Athens free.”
