My wealth's a burly spear and brand,
And a right good shield of hides untanned,
Which on my arm I buckle:
With these I plough, I reap, I sow,
With these I make the sweet vintage flow,
And all around me truckle.
But your wights that take no pride to wield
A massy spear and well-made shield,
Nor joy to draw the sword:
Oh, I bring those heartless, hapless drones,
Down in a trice on their marrow-bones,
To call me king and lord.
This catch brings before our eyes in a very lively picture the lawless Freiherr of early Dorian barbarism. Another species of the scolion is more sentimental: "Would that I were a fair lyre of ivory, and that fair boys bore me to the Bacchic Choir; would that I were a fair, new, and mighty golden jar, and that a fair woman bore me with a pure heart." Again, we find moral precepts in these catches. "Whoso betrayeth not a friend hath great honor among men and gods, according to my mind."
While on the subject of scolia, it will not do to pass over the most splendid specimen we have in this order of composition. It is a fragment from Pindar (Bergk, p. 327), to translate which, I feel, is profanation:
O soul, 'tis thine in season meet,
To pluck of love the blossom sweet,
When hearts are young:
But he who sees the blazing beams,
The light that from that forehead streams,
And is not stung;—
Who is not storm-tost with desire,—
Lo! he, I ween, with frozen fire,
Of adamant or stubborn steel,
Is forged in his cold heart that cannot feel.
Disowned, dishonored, and denied
By Aphrodite glittering-eyed,
He either toils
All day for gold, a sordid gain,
Or bent beneath a woman's reign,
In petty broils,
Endures her insolence, a drudge,
Compelled the common path to trudge;
But I, apart from this disease,
Wasting away like wax of holy bees,
Which the sun's splendor wounds, do pine,
Whene'er I see the young-limbed bloom divine
Of boys. Lo! look you well; for here in Tenedos,
Grace and Persuasion dwell in young Theoxenos.
Of the many different kinds of lyric poetry consecrated to love and intended for recitation by single musicians, it is not possible to give a strict account. That the Greeks cultivated the serenade is clear from a passage in the Ecclesiazusæ of Aristophanes, which contains a graceful though gross specimen of this kind of song. The children's songs (Bergk, 1303-1307) about flowers, tortoises, and hobgoblins are too curiously illustrative of Greek manners not to merit a passing notice, nor can I here omit a translation of the only Swallow-song preserved to us. Athenæus, to whom we owe this curious relic, localizes the Chelidonisma in Rhodes, referring it particularly to the district of Lindus.[89] In spring time the children went round the town, collecting doles and presents from house to house, and singing as they went:
She is here, she is here, the swallow!
Fair seasons bringing, fair years to follow!
Her belly is white,
Her back black as night!
From your rich house
Roll forth to us
Tarts, wine, and cheese:
Or if not these,
Oatmeal and barley-cake
The swallow deigns to take.