Mure*) down to the workshop or the sheepfold, from Jove and Apollo to the wandering mendicant, every rank and degree of the Greek community, divine or human, had its own proper allotment of poetical celebration. The gods had their hymns, nomes, pæans, dithyrambs; great men their encomia and epinicia; the votaries of pleasure their erotica and symposiaca; the mourner his threnodia and elegies; the vinedresser had his epilenia; the herdsmen their bucolica; even the beggar his iresione and chelidonisma." There were a hundred important occasions of public or private life, and each received its proper and distinct celebration, that is, a particular species of composition, measured out in appropriate rhythm, with music expressive of the feelings of the moment, and glorifying those feelings by association with legend and with similar occasions in the lives of gods. Technical names of more than fifty such distinct species of poetry have been preserved, though of their several characteristics we have generally only indistinct information, and of the history of their origin and their inventors scarcely any which is not either unintelligible or untrustworthy. The region of myths is not yet past, and there are frequent signs on the one hand that the labours of many have been attributed to one great name, on the other that what might seem a substantial and individual person is in reality only a reflexion of the career and attributes of a prototype perhaps not wholly real in his turn.

Those who were impelled to poetical expression at the beginning of this period found ready to their hand in the Homeric poems a store of characters and of legends ready cast by use and tradition into an artistic form, a high standard of taste, models of various and sustained eloquence, and perfected technicalities of art. They found a language clear and even superfluously full, made articulated and supple through the retention of free inflexions and by particles already finely discriminated to suit the quick changes of epic events, and in its very birth and mould adapted to light metrical forms. The only drawback was that but one metre was so far actually provided

Vol. III. p. 63.

to their hand. From the general use of the hexameter for oracles and in the older inscriptions, and from the silence of Homer as to other metres, it must be inferred that no other, or at least no other which was well defined, was as yet in use. Tentatively at first, and but slowly changing from this old simple verse, they proceeded to shape their new materials into the new forms of a less simple and sensuous, but more passionate and varied poetry. The later Greeks distinguished two chief periods in this advance, the elegiac and iambic period and the lyric period; and the second they subdivided into lyric proper and choral: but all three branches, if they did not originate at the same time, yet coexisted throughout their later growth, and were cultivated with more or less impartiality by the same poets.

There is no proof that the elegy was the first advance, but it seems the most natural transition from the hexameter, the change being no more than the omission of the last half of the third and sixth feet. But even this slight change produced a fundamental difference. For the sustained continuity of the hexameter there is substituted a series of short strophes or stanzas which forbid a connected narrative, but invite short and antithetic sentences complete in themselves and fitted to deal with a limited subject. Compared with the hexameter, the elegy is monotonous and less free and variable: compared with the lyrical metres, it is again less variable and is also less capable of adaption to a musical accompaniment; but on the other hand, within its own limits of form admits more freely than they do the substitution of long syllables for short and short for long, according as convenience or the nature of the subject may require. For the credit of its invention there are four or five claimants, between whom it is impossible to decide. But if Callinus or Tyrtæus anticipated Archilochus in its invention, to Archilochus appears to remain at least the credit of having freed it from the epic diction with which it is encumbered in their martial exhortations, and of having made it serviceable for subjects of common life. It was used by all the lyrical poets after him, generally for short compositions, which were often, but not always, of a plaintive character. In particular it became

from its short and equable stanzas and antithetic character the usual vehicle for political and moral sentiments in Solon and Theognis, with other less-known poets called Gnomists, or writer of sentences, whose verses may be regarded as the beginning of ethical philosophy in Greece.

A much greater advance was made in the iambic and trochaic metres, which from their treble or unequal (dimλáσɩɩ) times are better adapted than the equal dactylic flow of the hexameter or the elegy for rapidity and vehemence. Of the two the trochaic (or "runner"), descending from long to short, is the more light and rapid; the iambic, rising from short to long, is more forcible, and when constructed in lines of six feet combines the continuity of the heroic measure with a simplicity which is suited to common subjects. The invention, or at least the perfection, of both is probably due to Archilochus. This extraordinary genius the unanimous voice of antiquity pronounced to be on the whole the equal of Homer, in force and feeling and variety his superior.* Intense, passionate, individual, full of life and force, he influenced literature as no other poet but Homer has done before or since. Of four capital changes, each the source of many more in later times, he must be considered to have been the author. Firstly, he was the earliest to reduce to form, if not to invent, perhaps the elegy and almost certainly the trimeter iambic, the tetrameter trochaic, the anapæstic, choriambic, and Ionic metres, the bases of all later developments. In some cases the foot may have been earlier known, but it was he who defined the length of lines and the laws of versification; and the varied forms of lyric poetry in a nearly perfect form seem to have been as spontaneous expressions of the moods of his mind as are particular musical tones of the length and tension of a string. Secondly, he was the first, with the partial exception of Hesiod and perhaps of Callinus and Tyrtæus, to clothe in poetry personal and contemporary instead of legendary subjects. Thirdly, he first substituted common, terse and simple diction,

* Homer was thought superior in invention.

the parent of Ionic and Attic prose, for the diffuse pomp of the Epic style. Lastly, it is not too much to say that his habitual and unsparing vituperation of all men and human things was the commencement of criticism and satire in Greece.

So far the Ionians, always full of change, have taken the lead in invention. But lyrics proper were perfected by other races. Lyric poetry derives it name from its close association with instrumental music. It is probable that whilst the narrative parts of the Epic poems were in recitation accompanied, if accompanied at all, only by a continuous and monotonous strain, certain passages of a livelier spirit were arranged to livelier music under the names of Nomes or Arrangements. But so long as the lyre possessed only four strings even these can hardly have been much diversified. They became more various on the introduction of flutes or clarionets (from their great compass called ráμpavo avλoi), and still more when Terpander added three strings to the lyre. From this time poetry and music become closely united, and strictly lyrical poetry begins. From the first it was of two kinds.

One kind (the purely lyrical) consisted of a series of short and similar stanzas or strophes made up of lines also more or less similar in themselves, intended for recitation by an individual with a musical accompaniment entirely subordinated to the words. Such were the alcaic and sapphic stanzas, and others which are preserved only in Horace-measures adapted to express short bursts of individual passion but too monotonous in repetition for a long and continuous composition. They were cultivated, after Archilochus, chiefly by the passionate and impulsive Æolians of Lesbos and the neighbouring settlements, and perfected by Alcæus, Sappho, and the fervid Ionian Anacreon, whose harp was of twenty strings-the poets of love and wine. After Anacreon this kind of poetry seems to have declined before the choral forms and to have become confined to scolia or drinking catches, such as the song of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, extemporised or recited at banquets by various guests in their turns as the myrtle-branch was handed from right to left round the table.

In the other kind not only the music was relatively of more impor tance, but there was a further accompaniment of dancing which tended to become the dominant element of the whole, and the words were sung not by one voice but by the whole chorus or company of dancers. Hence this kind was known as choric or dance-poetry. This also was perfected by Æolians, but exclusively under Dorian patronage and in connection with Dorian games and dances and the worship of the Dorian god Apollo in the Peloponnese. It divided itself into several branches, varying with the nature of the subjects and with the different degrees of importance given to the words, the music, or the dance. In the pean, or Apollo-song, the most elevated and severe species, the poetry seems to have been dominant; as was the dance in the hyporcheme, a less severe variety, in which gestures and mimicry to a great extent superseded words. The artistic combination of the dancing with the poetry is attributed to Thaletas, and to Alcman, the Horace of Greece; the introduction of a trained professional chorus to Arion; and the perfection of a threefold arrangement in strophes, antistrophes, and epodes-that is, long stanzas of continuous and complex rhythm intended to be sung by the chorus advancing, corresponding stanzas to be sung by the chorus retreating, and concluding parts to be sung at rest-to Stesichorus: whence the "triad of Stesichorus" came to signify the elements of a liberal education. One peculiar form of choric ode is important both from its estimation and culture in Dorian Greece and from its connection with the Attic drama. Archilochus had composed pæans to Dionysus, like the pæans of Apollo. To these Arion gave the distinct form of the dithyramb or cyclic song of Dionysus, sung by a chorus of satyrs in circular dance round his altar with a poetical monologue or dialogue embodying some adventure of the god: and Lasus of Hermione (Pindar's master) freed them from the trammels of antistrophic arrangement. In character these dithyrambs were turbulent and enthusiastic. They seem in earlier times to have been commonly composed in the trochaic tetrameter. In subject the choral poems generally were for the most part grave and treated of legendary subjects and the adven