LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 19") claim, " Oh father Zeus, were he but my husband* !" was doubtless in a Parthenion. If we inquire more minutely into the relation of the poet to his chorus, we shall not find, at least not invariably, that it as yet possessed that character to which Pindar strictly adhered. The chorus was not the mere organ of the poet, and all the thoughts and feelings to which it gave utterance, those of the poet f. In Alcman, the virgins more frequently speak in their own persons ; and many Parthenia contain a dialogue between the chorus and the poet, who was at the same time the instructor and the leader of the chorus. We find sometimes addresses of the chorus of virgins to the poet, such as has just been mentioned; sometimes of the poet to the virgins asso- ciated with him ; as in that beautiful fragment in hexameters, " No more, ye honeyvoiced, holy-singing virgins, no more do my limbs suffice to bear me; oh that I were a Cerylus, which with the halcyons skims the foam of the waves with fearless heart, the sea-blue bird of spring I !" But, doubtless, Alcman composed and directed other choruses, since the Parthenia were only a part of his poetical works, besides which Hymns to the Gods, Paeans, Prosodia§, Hymeneals, and love- songs, are attributed to him. These poems were generally recited or represented by choruses of youths. The love-songs were probably sung by a single performer to the cithara. The clepsiambic poems, consisting partly of singing, partly of common discourse, and for which a peculiar instrument, bearing the same name, was used, also occurred among the works of Alcman, who appears to have borrowed them, as well as many other things, from Archilochus||. Alcman blends the sentiments and the style of Archilochus, Terpander, and Thaletas, and, perhaps, even those of the yEolian lyric poets : hence his works ex- hibit a great variety of metre, of dialect, and of general poetical tone. Stately hexameters are followed by the iambic and trochaic verse of Archilochus, by the ionics and cretics of Olympus and Thaletas, and by various sorts of logacedic rhythms. His strophes consisted partly of verses of different kinds, partly of repetitions of the same, as in the ode which opened with the invocation to Calliope above mentioned %. The connexion of two corresponding strophes with a third of a different
- Schol. Horn. Od. VI. 244.
f There are only a few passages in Pindar, in which it has heen thought that there was a separation of the person of the chorus and the poet; viz. Pyth. v. 68. (96.) ix. 98. (174.) Nem. i. 19. (-29.) vii. 85. (125.); and these have, by an accu- rate interpretation, been reduced to the abovementioned rule. I Fragin. 12. See Miiller's Dorians, b. iv. ch. 7. § 1 1. § rLwoSia, songs to be sung during a procession to a temple, before the sacrifice. || Above, p. 139, note f, with Aristoxenus ap. Hesych. in v. KXs^V/3«f. «V MSS &y%, KaXXiiflw, tCyane Aw. Dactylic tetrameters of this kind were com- bined into strophes, without hiatus and syllaba anceps, that is, alter the manner ot systems. 2
