οὐδὲν ἁμαρτήσας γενόμην παρὰ τῶν με τεκόντων·
γεννηθεὶς δ' ὁ τάλας ἔρχομαι εἰς Ἀΐδην·
ὦ μῖξις γονέων θανατηφόρος· ὤμοι ἀνάγκης
ἥ με προσπελάσει τῷ στυγερῷ θανάτῳ·
οὐδὲν ἐὼν γενόμην· πάλιν ἔσσομαι ὡς πάρος οὐδέν·
οὐδὲν καὶ μηδὲν τῶν μερόπων τὸ γένος·
λειπόν μοι τὸ κύπελλον ἀποστίλβωσον, ἑταῖρε,
καὶ λύπης ἀκονὴν τὸν Βρόμιον πάρεχε.[205]
The good sense of Cephalas placed it among the epitaphs; for, in truth, it is the quintessence of the despair of the grave. Yet its last couplet forces us to drag it from the place of tombs, and put it into the mouth of some late reveller of the decadence of Hellas. It has to my ear the ring of a drinking-song sung in a room with closed shutters, after the guests have departed, by some sad companion who does not know that the dawn has gone forth and the birds are aloft in the air. The shadow of night is upon him. Though Christ be risen and the sun of hope is in the sky, he is still as cheerless as Mimnermus. If space sufficed, it would be both interesting and profitable to compare this mood of the epigrammatists with that expressed by Omar Khayyám, the Persian poet of Khorassan, in whose quatrains philosophy, melancholy, and the sense of beauty are so wonderfully mingled that to surpass their pathos is impossible in verse.[206] Here is another of the same tone (ii. 287):
ἠὼς ἐξ ἠοῦς παραπέμπεται, εἶτ' ἀμελούντων
ἡμῶν ἐξαίφνης ἥξει ὁ πορφύρεος,
καὶ τοὺς μὲν τήξας, τοὺς δ' ὀπτήσας, ἐνίους δὲ
φυσήσας ἄξει πάντας ἐς ἓν βάραθρον.[207]
And another with a more delicate ring of melancholy in the last couplet (ii. 289):
ὑπνώεις ὦ 'ταῖρε· τὸ δὲ σκύφος αὐτὸ βοᾷ σε·
ἔγρεο, μὴ τέρπου μοιριδίῃ μελέτῃ·
μὴ φείσῃ Διόδωρε· λάβρος δ' εἰς Βάκχον ὀλισθὼν
ἄχρις ἐπὶ σφαλεροῦ ζωροπότει γόνατος·
ἔσσεθ' ὅτ' οὐ πιόμεσθα, πολὺς πολύς· ἀλλ' ἄγ' ἐπείγου.
ἡ συνετὴ κροτάφων ἅπτεται ἡμετέρων.[208]
And yet another (ii. 294), which sounds like the Florentine Carnival Song composed by Lorenzo de' Medici—
Chi vuol esser lieto sia;
Di doman non è certezza—
πῖνε καὶ εὐφραίνου· τί γὰρ αὔριον ἢ τὶ τὸ μέλλον
οὐδεὶς γινώσκει· μὴ τρέχε, μὴ κοπία·
ὡς δύνασαι, χάρισαι, μετάδος, φάγε, θνητὰ λογίζου·
τὸ ζῆν τοῦ μὴ ζῆν οὐδὲν ὅλως ἀπέχει·
πᾶς ὁ βίος τοιόσδε ῥοπὴ μόνον· ἂν προλάβῃς σοῦ
ἂν δὲ θάνῃς ἑτέρου πάντα· σὺ δ' οὐδὲν ἔχεις.[209]
But the majority of the ἐπιγράμματα σκωπτικά, or jesting epigrams, are not of this kind. They are written for the most part, in Roman style, on ugly old women, misers, stupid actors, doctors to dream of whom is death, bad painters, poets who kill you with their elegies, men so light that the wind carries them about like stubble, or so thin that a gossamer is strong enough to strangle them; vices, meannesses, deformities of all kinds. Lucillius, a Greek Martial of the age of Nero, is both best and most prolific in this kind of composition. But of all the sections of the Anthology this is certainly the least valuable. The true superiority of Greek to Latin literature in all its species is that it is far more a work of pure beauty, of unmixed poetry. In Lucillius the Hellenic muse has deigned for once to assume the Roman toga, and to show that if she chose she could rival the hoarse-throated satirists of the empire on their own ground. But she has abandoned her lofty eminence, and descended to a lower level. The same may be said in brief about the versified problems and riddles (ii. pp. 467-490), which are not much better than elegant acrostics of this or the last century. It must, however, be remarked that the last-mentioned section contains a valuable collection of Greek oracles.
Of all the amatory poets of the Anthology, by far the noblest is Meleager. He was a native of Gadara in Palestine, as he tells us in an epitaph composed in his old age: