Callimachus deserves mention as a third with Meleager and Straton. His style, drier than that of Meleager, more elevated than Straton's, is marked by a frigidity of good scholarship which only at intervals warms into the fire of passionate poetry. In writing epigrams Callimachus was careful to preserve the pointed character of the composition. He did not merely, as is the frequent wont of Meleager, indite a short poem in elegiacs. This being the case, his love poems, though they are many, are not equal to his epitaphs.
To mention all the poets of the amatory chapters would be impossible. Their name is legion. Even Plato the divine, by right of this epigram to Aster:
ἀστέρας εἰσαθρεῖς ἀστὴρ ἐμός· εἴθε γενοίμην
οὐρανὸς ὡς πολλοῖς ὄμμασιν εἰς σὲ βλέπω—[226]
and of this to Agathon:
τὴν ψυχὴν Ἀγάθωνα φιλῶν ἐπὶ χείλεσιν ἔσχον·
ἦλθε γὰρ ἡ τλήμων ὡς διαβησομένη—[227]
takes rank in the erotic cycle. Yet we may touch in passing on the names of Philodemus and Antipater, the former a native of Gadara, the latter a Sidonian, whose epitaph was composed by Meleager. Their poems help to complete the picture of Syrian luxury and culture in the cities of North Palestine, which we gain when reading Meleager. Of Philodemus the liveliest epigram is a dialogue, which seems to have come straight from the pages of some comedy (i. 68); but the majority of his verses belong to that class of literature which finds its illustration in the Gabinetto Segreto of the Neapolitan Museum. Occasionally he strikes a true note of poetry, as in this invocation to the moon:
νυκτερινὴ δίκερως φιλοπάννυχε φαῖνε σελήνη,
φαῖνε δι' εὐτρήτων βαλλομένη θυρίδων·
αὔγαζε χρυσέην Καλλίστιον· ἐς τὰ φιλεύντων
ἔργα κατοπτεύειν οὐ φθόνος ἀθανάτῃ.
ὀλβίζεις καὶ τήνδε καὶ ἡμέας οἶδα σελήνη·
καὶ γὰρ σὴν ψυχὴν ἔφλεγεν Ἐνδυμίων.[228]
Antipater shines less in his erotic poems than in the numerous epigrams which he composed on the earlier Greek poets, especially on Anacreon, Erinna, Sappho, Pindar, Ibycus. He lived at a period when the study of the lyrists was still flourishing, and each of his couplets contains a fine and thoughtful piece of descriptive criticism.
Another group of amatory poets must be mentioned. Agathias, Macedonius, and Paulus Silentiarius, Greeks of Byzantium about the age of Justinian, together with Rufinus, whose date is not quite certain, yield the very last fruits of the Greek genius, after it had been corrupted by the lusts of Rome and the effeminacy of the East. Very pale and hectic are the hues which give a sort of sickly beauty to their style. Their epigrams vary between querulous lamentations over old age and death and highly colored pictures of self-satisfied sensuality. Rufinus is a kind of second Straton in the firmness of his touch, the cynicism of his impudicity. The complaint of Agathias to the swallows that twittered at his window in early dawn (i. 102), his description of Rhodanthe and the vintage feast (ii. 297),[229] and those lines in which he has anticipated Jonson's lyric on the kiss which made the wine within the cup inebriating (i. 107), may be quoted as fair specimens of his style. Of Paulus Silentiarius I do not care to allude to more than the poem in which he describes the joy of two lovers (i. 106). What Ariosto and Boiardo have dwelt on in some of their most brilliant episodes, what Giorgione has painted in the eyes of the shepherd who envies the kiss given by Rachel to Jacob, is here compressed into eighteen lines of great literary beauty. But a man need be neither a prude nor a Puritan to turn with sadness and with loathing from these last autumnal blossoms on the tree of Greek beauty. The brothel and the grave are all that is left for Rufinus and his contemporaries. Over the one hangs the black shadow of death; the other is tenanted by ghosts of carnal joy: