Indifferently afflicts the fair and vile.
Then cares wear out the heart; old eyes forlorn
Scarce serve the very sunshine to behold--
Unloved of youths, of every maid the scorn--
So hard a lot gods lay upon the old."
Even from Solon the Sage, maker of constitutions, we possess some amorous verses, of so questionable a character that it would hardly be fitting to present them in this volume. They are ascribed to his early youth. They afforded much comfort to the libertines of antiquity, who were glad to be able to cite so respectable an exemplar; but the good people were scandalized by these couplets.
Ibycus resembles Sappho in the intensity of his passion and in his conception of Eros as a concrete existence. "Love once again looking upon me from his cloud-black brows, with languishing glances drives me by enchantments of all kinds to the endless nets of Cypris. Verily, I tremble at his onset as a chariot horse, which hath won prizes, in old age goes grudgingly to try his speed in the swift race of cars."
Anacreon, to English readers the best known of the erotic poets of Greece, had as his mistress the golden-haired Eurypyle. He was very susceptible to the influence of love, and, owing to the grace and sweetness and ease of expression in his verses, has won an enduring fame. Many of his verses and numerous imitations of his poems are extant, and in these love is the constant theme.
Stesichorus was the composer of love poems with a plot, which were highly popular among the ladies of ancient days. As forerunners of the Greek Romance they possess unique literary importance, and as love stories of an early day they throw much light on the status and ideals of woman. Aristoxenus had preserved an outline of the plot of the Calyce: "The maiden Calyce having fallen madly in love with a youth, prays to Apollo that she may become his lawful wife; and when he continues to be indifferent to her, she commits suicide." Ancient critics favorably comment on the purity and modesty of the maiden, and the story indicates that marriages were not always a matter of arrangement, that love at times determined one's choice, and that to the ancient highborn maiden death was preferable to dishonor. Another of these romantic poems, called Rhadina, tells also a tale of unhappy love, how a Samian brother and sister were put to death by a cruel tyrant because the sister resisted his advances.
Yet we cannot hold that woman had in this period universally assumed a lower status than that accorded her in the Homeric poems. Among Ionian peoples, this was doubtless true; but among Æolians and Dorians, woman had not only attained a greater degree of freedom than was permitted her in the Heroic Age, but had also shown herself the equal of man in literary and æsthetic pursuits. In this transition age, the name of one woman--Sappho--presents itself as the bright morning star in the history of cultured womanhood.