the old myths. While the average standard of morals was none too high, the better minds were finding a surer motive for honesty and goodness than the wrath of the gods of the Homeric world. The old idea of the conflicting passions of independent gods had disappeared. The Olympic contests, religious in their impulse, were established as early as 776 B.C. The sanctuary and oracle of Apollo at Delphi became famous throughout the Greek world. Centuries later the critics of Alexandria, looking back to this period, distinguished nine lyric poets of the first rank. Their work covered two hundred years (650 to 450 B.C.). Only fragments remain, so beautiful and significant that the loss of the major part is most regrettable.

Sappho. Lyric poetry is subjective and has to do with the individual-his hopes, dreams, longings, and various moods. Greek lyric poetry was intended to be sung, either by a single voice (Æolian lyrics) or as chorals (Dorian lyrics). It was written in stanzas of widely differing length and metrical form. We distinguish court poets, poets of the aristocratic class, and poets of the people. Among the nine chief lyrists all parts of Greece and its colonies were represented. Mention must be made particularly of the Æolian island of Lesbos, famed for its charm of nature and greatness of art and for the cultivation of its people. This was the home of Sappho (sixth century B.C.), probably the greatest woman poet the world has known. Professor Jebb writes:

"The fragments of her poetry are unique, both for their wonderful melody and for the intensity of passion which the musical words express. They also show the finest sense of beauty in the natural world: in the night sky, when the stars pale before the full moon; or in places where cool streams are shadowed by fruit trees, and 'slumber is shed' on weary eyelids 'from the rustling leaves.""

She was the head of a school of poets in Lesbos. The following translation (by J. M. Edmonds), with conjectural restorations, is of a poem addressed to a pupil named Atthis, referring to another pupil, who had evidently taken up her residence across the sea at Sardis:

"Atthis, our beloved Mnasidica dwells at far-off Sardis, but she often sends her thoughts hither, thinking how once we used to live in the days when she thought thee like a glorious goddess, and loved thy song the best. And now she shines among the dames of Lydia as after sunset the rosy-fingered moon beside the stars that are about her, when she spreads her light o'er briny sea and eke o'er flowery field, while the good dew lies on the ground and the roses revive and the dainty anthrysc and the honey-lotus with all its blooms. And oftentime when our beloved, wandering abroad, calls to mind her gentle Atthis, the heart devours her tender breast with the pain of longing; and she cries aloud to us to come thither; and what she says we know full well, thou and I, for Night, the many-eared, calls it to us across the dividing sea."

Sappho's poems were arranged in nine books, but all have disappeared with the exception of a few precious fragments. Such of our English poets as Swinburne, Rossetti, Symonds, and others have translated these fragments with rare felicity. Note Symonds's free rendering of a brief poem of Sappho:

"Yea, thou shalt die,

And lie

Dumb in the silent tomb;

Nor of thy name

Shall there be any fame

In ages yet to be or years to come:

For of the flowering rose

Which on Pieria blows,

Thou hast no share:

But in sad Hades' house,

Unknown, inglorious,

'Mid the dim shades that wander there

Shalt thou flit forth and haunt the filmy air."

The following is a combination of two fragments translated by Rossetti and entitled "Beauty":

I

"Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough, A-top on the topmost twig,-which the pluckers forgot somehow,-Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none could get it till now.

II

"Like the wild hyacinth flower which on the hills is found, Which the passing feet of the shepherds for ever tear and wound, Until the purple blossom is trodden upon the ground."

Pindar. A considerable amount of the poetry of Pindar has been preserved. He and Simonides were the greatest representatives of the second period of Greek lyric poetry, which, instead of being local in its appeal, was addressed to all Greece. The Greeks themselves regarded Pindar as their chief lyric poet, and "he was so beloved by Apollo that he even received a share of the offerings." Centuries after his death there was displayed in the temple at Delphi an iron chair in which he had been accustomed to sit while chanting his songs to Apollo. His death did not occur until 443 B.C. Such of his poems as have come down to us entire are odes of victory celebrating the Olympic games. The fragments consist of hymns, songs of praise, choral songs, dirges, etc.—a great variety. His home was at Thebes, and he is the greatest of all Thebans. He accepted the religious beliefs of his time, but with striking reservations. His character seems to have been hard and selfcentered. "I mean to live for myself, not for someone else," he said to Simonides. Matthew Arnold speaks of Pindar as "the poet on whom above all other poets the power of style seems to have exercised an inspiring and intoxicating effect." Pindar's poems contain numberless images drawn from an astonishing variety of sources-from common life, from sports and pastimes, from nature, from travel. His odes are generally developed from mythological stories. Their religious and moral sentiments are striking. Pindar himself did not fail to recognize his originality as poet and artist. "Mine be it," he said, "to invent new strains, mine the skill to hold my course in the chariot of the Muses; and may courage go with me, and the power of ample grasp." Professor Jebb has translated passages showing Pindar's feeling for nature: "The chamber of the hours is opened, and delicate plants perceive the fragrant spring." Etna, "pillar of the sky, nurse of keen snow all the year," sends forth "pure springs of fire unapproachable." Pin

dar's love of art in every form is unequaled among the Greek poets. His poetry is noble and nobly conceived, though sometimes difficult and obscure. One of his fine emotional passages is thus translated by Mackail:

"Things of a day, what are we and what are we not? The shadow of a dream is humankind; yet when a god-given splendor falls, light shines radiant upon men and life is sweet."

Simonides. At the close of the lyric period the widespread Ionian culture was concentrating in Athens. Simonides (556469 B.C.) lived on the island of Ceos, close to Attica; much of his life was spent in Athens. The story is told that for a time he shared with Pindar and Eschylus the hospitality of Hiero, the tyrant of Syracuse. Simonides was a great and original poet. He wrote dirges and epitaphs, odes of victory, and odes in praise of men. His verses on the heroes of Thermopyla have a marked beauty and elevation even in the following translation, though the translator, Jebb, says that they have "a beauty of form which no prose version can even suggest":

"Glorious was the fortune of those who died at Thermopyla, and fair is their fate; their tomb is an altar. Others are bewailed, but they are remembered; others are pitied, but they are praised. Such a monument shall never moulder, nor shall it be defaced by all-conquering time. The sepulchre of brave men has taken the glory of Hellas to dwell with it; be Leonidas the witness, Sparta's king, who has left behind him the great beauty of prowess and an immortal name.”

Mackail pays tribute to the settled perfection of Simonides and to his "spontaneous balance of thought and expression which makes great literature." Wordsworth in a beautiful sonnet calls Simonides "the noblest Poet that can be, who sang in ancient Greece his moving lay." The finest fragment that survives of the poetry of Simonides is a dirge: the mother Danaë, with the infant Perseus asleep in her arms, is comforted at the thought that her babe is unconscious of the dangers of the dark and stormy sea. Dean Milman's version follows:

"When rude around the high-wrought ark
The tempests raged, the waters dark
Around the mother tossed and swelled;
With not unmoistened cheek, she held
Her Perseus in her arms, and said:
'What sorrows bow this hapless head!
Thou sleep'st the while, thy gentle breast
Is heaving in unbroken rest;
In this our dark unjoyous home,

Clamped with the rugged brass, the gloom
Scarce broken by the doubtful light
That gleams from yon dim fires of night.
But thou, unwet thy clustering hair,

Heed'st not the billows raging wild,

The moanings of the bitter air,

Wrapt in thy purple robe, my beauteous child!
Oh, seemed this peril perilous to thee,

How sadly to my words of fear

Wouldst thou bend down thy listening ear!
But now sleep on, my child! sleep thou, wide sea!
Sleep, my unutterable agony!

O change thy counsels, Jove, our sorrows end!
And if my rash intemperate zeal offend,

For my child's sake, his father, pardon me!""

It is not possible to dwell longer upon the poetry of the lyric period. The reader is referred especially to Mackail's remarkable study in his volume of "Lectures on Greek Poetry," to Symonds's "The Greek Poets," and to other similar books.

THE ATTIC AGE (480-300 B.C.)

We have now reached the great fifth century B.C., which was to witness the flowering of the Greek genius in Attica, with its center in Athens. The Athenian Greeks were Ionians, but they represented a racial blend which rendered them superior to the Ionians of the colonies. It is well to remember a few important dates and events: 492 B.C., the year of the first Persian expedition against Greece; 404, the year when the Athenian Empire was brought to