παίγνιόν ἐστι τύχης μερόπων βίος, οἰκτρός, ἀλήτης,
πλούτου καὶ πενίης μεσσόθι ῥεμβόμενος.
καὶ τοὺς μὲν κατάγουσα πάλιν σφαιρηδὸν ἀείρει,
τοὺς δ' ἀπὸ τῶν νεφελῶν εἰς ἀΐδην κατάγει.[202]
Here again, but cadenced in iambics, is the Flight of Time (ii. 266):
ὦ τῆς βραχείας ἡδονῆς τῆς τοῦ βίου·
τὴν ὀξύτητα τοῦ χρόνου πενθήσατε·
ἡμεῖς καθεζόμεσθα καὶ κοιμώμεθα,
μοχθοῦντες ἢ τρυφῶντες· ὁ δὲ χρόνος τρέχει,
τρέχει καθ' ἡμῶν τῶν ταλαιπώρων βροτῶν,
φέρων ἑκάστου τῷ βίῳ καταστροφήν.[203]
The next epigram is literally bathed in tears (ii. 267):
δακρυχέων γενόμην καὶ δακρύσας ἀποθνήσκω·
δάκρυσι δ' ἐν πολλοῖς τὸν βίον εὗρον ὅλον.
ὦ γένος ἀνθρώπων πολυδάκρυτον, ἀσθενές, οἰκτρόν,
φαινόμενον κατὰ γῆς καὶ διαλυόμενον.[204]
When he chooses to be cynical, Palladas can present the physical conditions of human life with a crude brutality which is worthy of a monk composing a chapter De contemptu humanæ miseriæ. It is enough to allude to the epigrams upon the birth (ii. 259) and the breath (ii. 265) of man. To this had philosophy fallen in the death of Greece. One more quotation from Palladas has a touch of pathos. The old order has yielded to the new: Theodosius has closed the temples: the Greeks are in ashes: their very hopes remain among the dead (ii. 268):
Ἕλληνές ἐσμεν ἄνδρες ἐσποδωμένοι,
νεκρῶν ἔχοντες ἐλπίδας τεθαμμένας·
ἀνεστράφη γὰρ πάντα νῦν τὰ πράγματα.
With this wail the thin, lamentable voice of the desiccated rhetorician ceases.
Akin to these hortatory epigrams, in their tone of settled melancholy, are some of the satiric and convivial. It is necessary, when we think of the Greeks as the brightest and sunniest of all races, to remember what songs they sang at their banquets, and to comfort ourselves with the reflection that between their rose-wreaths and the bright Hellenic sky above them hung for them, no less than for ourselves, the cloud of death.
What more dismal drinking-song can be conceived than this? (i. 337):