What has been said about Simonides applies in a great measure also to Bacchylides, who was his nephew, pupil, and faithful follower. The personality of Bacchylides, as a man and a poet, is absorbed in that of his uncle—the greater bard, the more distinguished actor on the theatre of the world. While Simonides played his part in public life, Bacchylides gave himself up to the elegant pleasures of society; while Simonides celebrated in epigrams the military glories of the Greeks, Bacchylides wrote wine-songs and congratulatory odes. His descriptions of Bacchic intoxication and of the charms of peace display the same careful word-painting as the description by Simonides of Orpheus, with more luxuriance of sensual suggestion. His threnoi exhibit the same Ionian despondency and resignation—a dead settled calm, an elegant stolidity of epicureanism. That this excellent, if somewhat languid, lyrist may receive his due meed of attention, I have selected his most important fragment, the Praise of Peace, for translation (Bergk, vol. iii. p. 1230):
To mortal men Peace giveth these good things:
Wealth, and the flowers of honey-throated song;
The flame that springs
On carven altars from fat sheep and kine,
Slain to the gods in heaven; and, all day long,
Games for glad youths, and flutes, and wreaths, and circling wine.
Then in the steely shield swart spiders weave
Their web and dusky woof:
Rust to the pointed spear and sword doth cleave;
The brazen trump sounds no alarms;
Nor is sleep harried from our eyes aloof,
But with sweet rest my bosom warms:
The streets are thronged with lovely men and young,
And hymns in praise of boys like flames to heaven are flung.
The tone common to Simonides and Bacchylides in funeral poems will be illustrated by the four following fragments:[103]
Being a man, say not what comes to-morrow,
Nor, seeing one in bliss, how long 'twill last;
For wide-winged fly was ne'er of flight so fast
As change to sorrow.
Nay, not those elder men, who lived of yore,
Of sceptred gods the half-immortal seed,
Not even they to prosperous old age wore
A life from pain and death and danger freed.
Short is the strength of men, and vain their trouble,
Through their brief age sorrows on sorrows double;
O'er each and all hangs death escaped by none;
Of him both good and bad an equal lot have won.
For mortal men not to be born is best,
Nor e'er to see the bright beams of the day;
Since, as life rolls away,
No man that breathes was ever alway blest.
Here we must stop short in the front of Pindar—the Hamlet among these lesser actors, the Shakespeare among a crowd of inferior poets. To treat of Greek lyrical poetry and to omit Pindar is a paradox in action. Yet Pindar is so colossal, so much apart, that he deserves a separate study, and cannot be dragged in at the end of a bird's-eye view of a period of literature. At the time of Pindar, poetry was sinking into mannerism. He by the force of his native originality gave it a wholly fresh direction, and created a style as novel as it was inimitable. Like some high mountain-peak, upon the border-land of plain and lesser hills, he stands alone, sky-piercing and tremendous in his solitary strength.
Before, however, entering upon the criticism of Pindar's poetry, it will be of service to complete this review of the Greek lyric by some specimens of those later artificial literary odes, a few of which have been preserved for us by the anthologists and grammarians. The following Hymn to Virtue has a special interest, since it is ascribed to Aristotle, the philosopher, and makes allusion to his friend, the tyrant of Atarneus. The comparative dryness of the style is no less characteristic of the age in which the poem is supposed to have been written, than its animating motive, the beauty of Virtue, is true to the Greek conception of morality and heroism.
Virtue, to men thou bringest care and toil;
Yet art thou life's best, fairest spoil!
O virgin goddess, for thy beauty's sake
To die is delicate in this our Greece,
Or to endure of pain the stern strong ache.
Such fruit for our soul's ease
Of joys undying, dearer far than gold
Or home or soft-eyed sleep, dost thou unfold!
It was for thee the seed of Zeus,
Stout Herakles, and Leda's twins, did choose
Strength-draining deeds, to spread abroad thy name:
Smit with the love of thee,
Aias and Achileus went smilingly
Down to Death's portal, crowned with deathless fame.
Now, since thou art so fair,
Leaving the lightsome air,
Atarneus' hero hath died gloriously.
Wherefore immortal praise shall be his guerdon:
His goodness and his deeds are made the burden
Of songs divine
Sung by Memory's daughters nine,
Hymning of hospitable Zeus the might
And friendship firm as fate in fate's despite.