In style Simonides is always pure and exquisitely polished. The ancients called him the sweet poet—Melicertes—par excellence. His σωφροσύνη, or tempered self-restraint, gives a mellow tone not merely to his philosophy and moral precepts, but also to his art. He has none of Pindar's rugged majesty, volcanic force, gorgeous exuberance: he does not, like Pindar, pour forth an inexhaustible torrent of poetical ideas, chafing against each other in the eddies of breathless inspiration. On the contrary, he works up a few thoughts, a few carefully selected images, with patient skill, producing a perfectly harmonious result, but one which is always bordering on the commonplace. Like all correct poets, he is somewhat tame, though tender, delicate, and exquisitely beautiful. Pindar electrifies his hearer, seizing him like the eagle in Dante's vision, and bearing him breathless through the ether of celestial flame. Simonides leads us by the hand along the banks of pleasant rivers, through laurel groves, and by the porticos of sunny temples. What he possesses of quite peculiar to his own genius is pathos—the pathos of romance. This appears most remarkably in the fragment of a threnos which describes Danaë afloat upon the waves at night. It is with the greatest diffidence that I offer a translation of what remains one of the most perfect pieces of pathetic poetry in any literature:
When, in the carven chest,
The winds that blew and waves in wild unrest
Smote her with fear, she, not with cheeks unwet,
Her arms of love round Perseus set,
And said: O child, what grief is mine!
But thou dost slumber, and thy baby breast
Is sunk in rest,
Here in the cheerless brass-bound bark,
Tossed amid starless night and pitchy dark.
Nor dost thou heed the scudding brine
Of waves that wash above thy curls so deep,
Nor the shrill winds that sweep,—
Lapped in thy purple robe's embrace,
Fair little face!
But if this dread were dreadful too to thee,
Then wouldst thou lend thy listening ear to me;
Therefore I cry,—Sleep, babe, and sea be still,
And slumber our unmeasured ill!
Oh, may some change of fate, sire Zeus, from thee
Descend, our woes to end!
But if this prayer, too overbold, offend
Thy justice, yet be merciful to me!
The careful development of simple thoughts in Simonides may best be illustrated by the fragment on the three hundred Spartans who died at Thermopylæ:
"Of those who died at Thermopylæ glorious is the fate and fair the doom; their grave is an altar; instead of lamentation, they have endless fame; their dirge is a chant of praise. Such winding-sheet as theirs no rust, no, nor all-conquering time, shall bring to naught. But this sepulchre of brave men hath taken for its habitant the glory of Hellas. Leonidas is witness, Sparta's king, who hath left a mighty crown of valor and undying fame."
The antitheses are wrought with consummate skill; the fate of the heroes is glorious, their doom honorable. So far the eulogy is commonplace; then the same thought receives a bolder turn: their grave is an altar. We do not lament for them so much as hold them in eternal memory; our very songs of sorrow become pæans of praise. What follows is a still further expansion of the leading theme: rust and time cannot affect their fame; Hellas confides her glory to their tomb. Then generalities are quitted; and Leonidas, the protagonist of Thermopylæ, appears.
In his threnoi Simonides has generally recourse to the common grounds of consolation, which the Ionian elegists repeat ad nauseam, dwelling upon the shortness and uncertainty and ills of life, and tending rather to depress the survivors on their own account than to comfort them for the dead.[102] In one he says, "Short is the strength of men, and vain are all their cares, and in their brief life trouble follows upon trouble; and death, that no man shuns, is hung above our heads—for him both good and bad share equally." It is impossible, while reading this lachrymose lament, to forget the fragment of that mighty threnos of Pindar's which sounds like a trumpet-blast for immortality, and, trampling under feet the glories of this world, reveals the gladness of the souls who have attained Elysium:
For them the night all through,
In that broad realm below,
The splendor of the sun spreads endless light;
'Mid rosy meadows bright,
Their city of the tombs with incense-trees,
And golden chalices
Of flowers, and fruitage fair,
Scenting the breezy air,
Is laden. There with horses and with play,
With games and lyres, they while the hours away.
On every side around
Pure happiness is found,
With all the blooming beauty of the world;
There fragrant smoke, upcurled
From altars where the blazing fire is dense
With perfumed frankincense,
Burned unto gods in heaven,
Through all the land is driven,
Making its pleasant place odorous
With scented gales and sweet airs amorous.
The same note of melancholy reflection upon transient human life may be traced in the following fragment ascribed to Simonides. He is apparently rebuking Cleobulus of Lindus in Rhodes for an arrogant epigraph inscribed upon some stelé.
Those who are wise in heart and mind,
O Lindian Cleobulus, find
Naught in thy shallow vaunt aright;
Who with the streams that flow for aye,
The vernal flowers that bloom and die,
The fiery sun, the moon's mild rays,
The strong sea's eddying water-ways,
Matchest a marble pillar's might—
Lo, all things that have being are
To the high gods inferior far;
But carven stone may not withstand
Even a mortal's ruthless hand.
Therefore thy words no wisdom teach
More than an idiot's idle speech.