Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/105

THE EARLY ELEGISTS 8i Alexandria, and has the special title Eunomia, ' Law and Order.' The greatest poet among the elegists is Mimnermus of Colophon. He is chiefly celebrated for his Namio* 3. long poem, or a collection of poems, on love or past lovers, called by the name of his mistress, who, like himself, was a flute-player. But his war fragments are richer than those of Tyrtaeus or Callinus, and apart from either love or war he has great romantic beauty. For instance, the fragment : — " Surely the Sun has labour all his days, And never any respite, steeds nor god, Since £os first, whose hands are rosy rays. Ocean forsook, and Heavetis high pathway trod; At night across the sea that woftdrous bed Shell-hollow, beaten by Hephaistos' hand, Of winged gold afid gorgeous, bears his head Half-waking on the wave, from eve's red strand To the Ethiop shore, where steeds and chariot are. Keen-mettled, waiting for the mortiing star." The influence of Mimnermus increased with time, and the plan of his Namio* remained a formative idea to the great elegiac movement of Alexandria and its Roman imitators. There is music and character in all that he writes, and spirit where it is wanted, as in the account of the taking of Smyrna. The shadowiness of these non-Attic poets strikes us as soon as we touch the full stream of Attic tradition in Solon, son of Exekestides (639-559 B.C.). The tradition is still story rather than history, but it is there : his travels, his pretended madness, his dealings with the tyrant Pisistratus. The travels were probably, in reality, ordinary commercial voyages, but they made a fine