“Archedicè, the daughter of King Hippias,
Who in his time
Of all the potentates of Greece was prime,
This dust doth hide;
Daughter, wife, sister, mother, unto kings she was,
Yet free from pride.”—Hobbes.
Pindar, the friend and pupil of Simonides, the greatest master of the Doric School, adorned the golden age of Grecian literature, and will there be considered as the representative of lyric poetry.
MINOR ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETS.
- Mimnermus of Colophon (634-590 B.C.),
the first to adapt the elegiac couplet to plaintive and erotic themes: he bewails the enslavement of his degenerate country by Lydia. Old age the terror of the poet; life without “the gold-haired goddess” of love not worth living; a characteristic saying of his, “When the flower of youth is past, it is best to die at once; may death strike me at my sixtieth year.” - Solon, the Athenian lawgiver (638-559 B.C.),
the first gnomic poet: embodied his moral maxims (gnomes) in elegiac verse: also a master of the martial elegy, as his famous “Salaminian Ode” shows. Plato declared that if Solon had devoted his genius to the Muses, Homer might not have stood alone in his glory. - Theognis (583-495 B.C.),
a noble of Meg’ara, who opposed the democratic faction, and was in consequence expelled from the state and deprived of his hereditary lands by the Commons. He sang his songs in elegiac verse. Distinguished also as a gnomic poet. The following thoughts are culled from among his sayings:—“Wealth is almighty.”—“Easy among men is the practice of wickedness, but hard the method of goodness.”—“No one descends to Hades with his riches, nor can he by paying ransom escape death.”—“Prefer to live piously on small means to being rich on what is gotten unjustly.” - Phocyl’ides of Miletus (550-490 B.C.),
an Ionian gnomic poet whose didactic couplets, generally marked by sound sense, sometimes breathing a worldly spirit, began with the introductory phrase, “And this too is Phocylides’.” The following are maxims of his:—“First get your living, and then think of getting virtue.”—“A small city set upon a rock and well-governed is better than all foolish Nineveh.” - Xenoph’anes of Colophon (about 540 B.C.),
founder of the Eleatic sect of philosophers: also an elegiac poet: condemns the effeminacy of his countrymen, and derides a prevailing preference for physical over intellectual culture.