Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/236

214 HISTORY OF THE glitter with gold and ivory; corn-bearing ships bring hither from Egypt, across the glancing deep, the abundance of wealth. To such heights soars the spirit of the drinker. Here too we remark that ela- borate and brilliant execution which is peculiar to the school of Simo- nides ; and the same is shown in all the longer fragments of Bacchy- lides, among which we shall only quote the praise of peace : " To mortals belong lofty peace, riches, and the blossoms of honey- voiced song. On altars of fair workmanship burn thighs of oxen and thick-fleeced sheep in golden flames to the gods. The cares of the youths are, gymnastic exercises, flute-playing, and joyous revelry (avXol ical Kuifj.01). But the black spiders ply their looms in the iron-bound edges of the shields, and the rust corrodes the barbed spear-head, and the two-edged sword. No more is heard the clang of brazen trumpets and beneficent sleep, the nurse and soother of our souls, is no longer scared from our eyelids. The streets are thronged with joyous guests, and songs of praise to beautiful youths resound*." We recognise here a mind which dwells lovingly on the description of these gay and pleasing scenes, and paints itself in every feature, but without penetrating deeper than the ordinary observation of men reaches. Bacehylides, like Simonides, transfers the diffuseness of the elegy to the choral lyric poem ; although he himself composed no elegies, and followed the traces of his uncle only as an epigrammatist. The reflec- tions scattered through his lyrics, on the toils of human life, the insta- bility of fortune, on resignation to inevitable evils, and the rejection of vain cares, have much of the tone of the Ionic elegy. The structure of Bacehylides' verse is generally very simple ; nine tenths of his odes, to judge from the fragments, consisted of dactylic series and trochaic dipo- dias, as we find in those odes of Pindar which were written in the Doric mode. Bacehylides, however, gave a lighter character to this measure ; inasmuch as in the places where the syllable might be either long or short, he often preferred the latter. We find, in his poems, trochaic verses of great elegance ; as, for ex- ample, a fragment, preserved by Athenseus, of a religious poem in which the Dioscuri are invited to a feast f. But its character is feeble and languid ; and how different from the hymn of Pindar, the third among the Olympian odes, in celebration of a similar feast of the Dioscuri, held by Theron in Agrigentum ! § 14. The universal esteem in which Simonides and Bacehylides were held in Greece, and their acknowledged excellence in their art, did not prevent some of their contemporaries from striking into various other paths, and adopting other styles of treating lyric poetry. Lasos op Hermione was a rival of Simonides during his residence in Athens, and • Stobaeus, Serm. LI II. p. 209. Grot. Fr. 12. Neue. f Athen. xi. p. 500 B. Fr. 27. Netie.