information about the country. Euhemerus, of Messana, in Sicily, a contemporary of Hecatæus, wrote a book entitled The Sacred Inscription. He pretended to have read on an altar at Panara, the capital of Panchaia, an inscription recording the deeds of Uranus, Cronus, and Zeus, from which it was clear that they had once been men. He went on to develop his theory that all gods were once kings or great men. The book was full of all sorts of fantastic details, most of which were by no means necessary for the support of the theory. There were undoubtedly, even at this early time, romances composed merely to amuse the reader, but they have disappeared entirely. Imitations. To this period belong many of the works falsely ascribed to earlier writers, such as Orpheus, Hecatæus of Miletus, Phocylides, and the sibyls. Some of these show signs of Jewish influence, and it is certain that AlexJewish-Greek andria had a large Jewish population which writings. spoke and wrote Greek. This is the time when the Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, was written. In the first part of the second century a certain Aristobulus, living at Alexandria, wrote an Explanation of the Law of Moses, to prove to the pagans that their philosophy was of Hebrew origin. CHAPTER XXXV ALEXANDRIAN POETRY Elegiac poetry-Philetas, about 340 to about 285 B. C.-His followers (Hermesianax, about 285 B. C., Phanocles, about 300 B. C., Alexander of Ætolia, about 275 B. C.)- Eratosthenes, born 276 B. C.---Parthenius, about 75 B. C.-Various lyrics-Asclepiades, about 300 B. C. -Simmias, about 280 B. C.-Posidippus, about 260 B. C.-Hedylus, about 260 B. C.--Anyte, about 260 B. C.-Leonidas of Tarentum, about 285 B. C.-The Anthology-Antipater of Sidon, about 120 B. C.Dioscorides, about 230 B. c.-Alcæus of Messene, about 210 B. C.— Meleager, about 90 or 80 B. C.-Farces-Sotades, about 280 B. C.-Rhinthon, about 300 B. C.-Herodas, about 275 B. C.-Theocritus, about 300 to about 245 B. C.-His idylls-His style-Bion, about 260 B. C.—Moschus, about 175 B. C.-Callimachus, about 310 to about 240 B. C.— Aratus of Soli, about 315 to about 240 B. C.-Nicander, about 160 B. C.— Apollonius of Rhodes, about 295 to about 215 B. C.-Euphorion, 276– 187 B. C.—Rhianus, about 240 B. C.-Lycophron, about 290 B. C.-Isyllus, about 280 B. C.-Delphic pæans, about 100 вB. C. THE somewhat dry enumeration of prose writers in the last chapter was necessary to give an idea of the great number of learned works produced in the Alexandrian period. Among the authors already mentioned some wrote poetry as well as prose, and even among those poets who were not also prose writers there was often as much learning as genuine poetic inspiration. Their poetry was written to be Alexandrian poetry. read, and to be read by the same educated public to which the prose literature was addressed. The New Comedy was written for the stage, but the comic poets were almost confined to Athens; other forms of poetry were now seldom employed in public festivals. A natural result was that the elaborate odes and dithyrambs, like those of Pindar or Bacchylides, which depended for their effect in great measure upon music and dancing, were no longer cultivated, but poetry was confined chiefly to elegies, short epics, epigrams, idylls, and mimes. Nor did the individual poets now confine their production to one or two kinds of poetry. The metres employed were generally simple, and each poet could write indifferently in all the different classes of poetry. Nevertheless, each poet owes his reputation as a rule to one kind of poetry, and a classification by the kind of composition will therefore be advisable, even though it may lead to some confusion of chronology. Elegiac poetry. Philetas. Elegiac poetry, which had in earlier times been employed for the expression of martial and patriotic sentiments, was in Alexandrian times almost exclusively devoted to love; indeed, love poems of various kinds were much in vogue. The earliest poet of amorous elegiacs was Philetas of Cos. He was born about 340 B. C., and was called to Alexandria by Ptolemy I (Soter) to be the tutor of his son. After some years at Alexandria he returned to Cos. He wrote several learned treatises, for he was a grammarian as well as a poet; love poems in elegiac verse addressed to his mistress Bittis; two collections of short poems, probably in great part epigrams; and two longer poems, one in elegiac verse entitled Demeter, and one in hexameters, entitled Hermes. He owed his great fame for the most part to his amorous elegies, in which he em Hermesi anax. Phanocles. bodied much mythological lore along with his expressions of sentiment. Very little of his poems remains. He seems to have expressed delicate sentiment in exquisitely finished verse. Theocritus speaks of him with admiration, and the Roman Propertius regards him as a great master of elegiac poetry. His chief pupils and imitators were Hermesianax of Colophon, Phanocles, and Alexander of Etolia. Somewhat later Eratosthenes wrote a mythological elegiac poem, Erigone, and in the early part of the first century B. c. Parthenius of Nicea wrote mythological elegies. These are lost, but a prose work by Parthenius, The Sufferings of Love, is preserved—a series of legendary love stories, usually ending with the death or metamorphosis of the chief characters. The religious poetry of this period had been almost entirely lost, though several poets to whom hymns were ascribed were known by name, until some poHymns, pæans, etc. ems engraved on stone were found in the later Isyllus. years of the nineteenth century. The first of these, found at Epidaurus, is by Isyllus, who flourished about 280 B. C. His poem consists in part of trochaic tetrameters, in part of dactylic hexameters, and contains also a pæan to Apollo and Asclepius in more complicated Ionic metre, in which the story of the birth of Asclepius is narrated. The simpler parts of the poem tell how the poet caused a procession to be conducted and prayers offered to Apollo and Asclepius. The poem has little literary merit, but is interesting as a specimen of the art of an otherwise unknown Epidaurian poet and also because it contains a complete pæan, a kind of poem otherwise little known. Two other pæans, one of which is nearly complete and both of which have the musical notation written above the words, were found at Delphi. They celebrate the deeds of Apollo. Both were written not far from 100 Delphic pæans. B. C. The author of the less complete of the two is named Aristonous. These poems show that there must have been a considerable number of hymns in honor of the gods composed in the Alexandrian period, but they give us no very high conception of their literary quality. Asclepiades of Samos, a contemporary of Philetas, wrote poems of various kinds, especially lyrics, which were probably love-songs in imitation of Alcæus and Sappho. The Asclepiades. greater and lesser Asclepiadean stanzas, which Horace used, derived their name from him, though he did not invent, but merely perfected them. He was ospecially noted for his epigrams, and the eighteen specimens preserved under his name in the Palatine Anthology show that he deserved his reputation. Less distinguished epigrammatists are Simmias, Posidippus, and Hedylus, several of whose epigrams are preserved in the Anthology. Several women also wrote epigrams, among whom Anyte of Tegea, in Arcadia, may be mentioned. Leonidas of Tarentum, younger than Philetas, but still belonging to the first half of the third century B. C., was a wandering beggar, whom the Muses loved and who consoled himself by writing epigrams and dreaming of his future fame. About one hundred of his epigrams are preserved. They belong to all classes: epitaphs, inscriptions on statues, sacred offerings, and portraits of poets or artists, as well as expressions of philosophical and moral sentiments. Simmias. Epigrams were popular among the poets throughout the Alexandrian period, and even later. Some forty poets The Anthology. of epigrams are known by name and by specimens of their poems. They have as a rule a pretty talent for versification, but lack origi nality. The best known among them are Dioscorides, Alcæus of Messene, Antipater of Sidon, and above all Meleager of Gadara in Syria. Meleager flourished Meleager. in the early part of the first century B. C. and became a Cynic like his fellow citizen Menippus (see page 362), whom he imitated in some satiric writings. also the author of a work on the Opinions of Philosophers; but his reputation rests upon his epigrams, which, though not always in perfectly good taste, are frequently charming in their delicacy and simplicity. An example of his sentiment is the following:1 1 He was 1 Anthologia Palatina, xii, 53. Translated by Andrew Lang. |