Stand firm. Let no unlooked-for triumph move
To empty exultation, no defeat
Cast down. But still let moderation prove
Of life’s uncertain cup the bitter and the sweet.”
Mure.
Greek satire had other representatives, whose names will be found at the end of this chapter; but their genius was of a lower grade.
ÆOLIC AND DORIC SCHOOLS.
Lyric poetry was the peculiar province of the Æolian and Dorian Greeks, who carried it to perfection. The Æolic writers were replete with intense passion, and employed lively metres of simple structure. The Dorian lyric, intended to be sung by choruses or to choral dances on great occasions, funerals, marriages, or public festivals, was a much more majestic, but at the same time a more intricate and artificial composition. The most distinguished composers of the Æolic School were Alcæus and Sappho; of the Doric, Simonides and Pindar.
Alcæus flourished in the latter part of the seventh century B.C. He was a noble of Lesbos, and lived in the stirring times when the constitutional and the aristocratic party contended for the sovereignty. In this struggle Alcæus appears as the deadly foe of democratic rule; when his friend Pittacus was clothed with supreme authority by the people, Alcæus directed against him the keenest shafts of his satire. Pittacus defeated him in an attempt to overthrow the government, but generously spared his life, saying, “Forgiveness is better than revenge.” Of the poet’s subsequent career we are ignorant.
The ancients were loud in their praises of Alcæus. His poems were polished, full of vehemence and passion, sublime in their denunciations of tyranny and encomiums of freedom. Love and wine were two of his favorite topics; yet even his jovial pieces were pervaded by a loftiness of sentiment foreign to mere sensual songs. Among his most beautiful compositions were the odes to Sappho, whose love he once sought, but whose genius soared to greater heights than his. We take from Alcæus