were daily sung, while the lyre and myrtle-branch passed from hand to hand.
With the Greeks, poetry seemed to enter into the character of every man. It was cultivated by the annual contests between its highest professors; and the honor which awaited the victor was an inducement to exertion of the noblest kind. It was the surest road to the favor and patronage of the great. Not the cold and chilling assistance which the Medici held out to the genius of their land, and which seemed to calculate the least expense with which the credit of a protector of learning could be bought, but the ready and regal munificence of a man who regards the gifts of genius as the highest with which a mortal can be favored. He who could enchant such a people need take no care for the future. Kings disputed for the honor of his presence, and states were overjoyed to support him. Let not the example of Homer be brought to controvert this. He lived long before poetry thus became the delight of the people; and, after all, to say that he 'begged his bread' is but a bold poetic license. Beside, the eagerness with which the 'Seven Cities' disputed for the Mœonian, show what would have been his fate had he not 'fallen on evil days.' In after ages he was honored, and ranked all but with the gods.
In the same mood, the highest reward, the fullest honor, that could be given to the rescuer of his country was to have his name inserted in the inscription that marked the scene of his victories.[A] In this spirit, no national event took place, no great battle was won, no instance of heroic self-devotion occurred, that the genius of the highest poets was not called upon to commemorate it in some noble or pathetic inscription, which, in after ages, calls forth as much admiration as the deed which originated it. The glorious death of the three-hundred takes place at Thermopylæ; the Athenians propose a contest for the honor of placing an inscription to mark the spot; and crowds are gathered to adjudge the prize; for, in those days, crowds were judges. Among the competitors are Æschylus and Simonides; and, amid the roar of that immense multitude, the victor-palm is awarded to Simonides, for two lines which will live to the end of time:
Ω ξειν' αγγειλον Λακεδαιμονιοις ὁτι τηδε
Κειμεθα, τοις κεινων ῥημασι πειθομενοι.
Their noble simplicity is almost untranslatable, yet we will attempt it:
Ye who see this! to Lacedemon tell
Here, honoring her sacred laws, we fell!
Or, more literally:
Stranger! tell Sparta that one common grave
Here holds our dust, who kept the laws she gave!
The few of these majestic inscriptions which yet remain to us, all bear the same imprint of lofty poetic feeling. Expressed with the utmost simplicity, they would seem bald, were it not for the skill of the poet, and the glorious associations that they call up around us.
The subject of Thermopylæ appears to have been a favorite with Simonides. Here is another which breathes the same spirit: