Well, let it go! I and my purse remain:
To-morrow’s bull-skin may be just as good.”
Insult met him at every step, till a poetical victory at the Olympic Games restored him to popular favor. He went back to Paros, an old man, to redeem his reputation as a soldier by dying in battle with the Naxians. Then all Greece awoke to the greatness of his genius; and the prediction of an oracle before his birth, that he would be “immortal among men in the glory of his song,” was fulfilled.
Fertility of invention, and an intimate acquaintance with human nature, were conspicuous in the poetry of Archilochus. Elegies and love-songs flowed from his pen, and his philosophical poetry gained for him from Plato the epithet of “Wisest;” but it was in satire that classical writers conceded to him the highest rank. Archilochus likens himself to a hedgehog bristling with quills, whose “one great resource is worth all the devices of more powerful animals.” From his birthplace, ill-natured satire has been called Parian verse.
So little remains of the writings of this author that we can hardly decide whether his countrymen judged aright in reckoning him second only to Homer. The two represented distinct departments of poetry; each in his own, it was claimed, fell little short of perfection. Where Homer praised, Archilochus reviled. Their birthdays were celebrated in one grand festival, and a single double-faced statue perpetuated the memory of the Epic Poet and the Parian Satirist.
ARCHILOCHUS TO HIS SOUL.
“My soul, my soul, by cares past all relief
Distracted sore, bear up! with manly breast
And dauntless mien, each fresh assault of grief
Encountering. By hostile weapons pressed,