ELEGY

I. In the broad sense Latin Elegy may be sai everything in Latin written in the elegiac distich, popular metrical form from the days of the Ro down to the later medieval epoch. But Roman more restricted and commonly accepted use of the to the elegiac verse of a noteworthy group of literary activity belongs chiefly to that most int century of Rome preceding the Christian era, when fell and the Empire was built upon its ruins. The least two or three of these elegiac poets have al disappeared. Posterity, however, has been more k them, Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovidius first and last of these did not confine their literary to the elegiac distich, as in all probability the seco of the group did; but it is with elegy only that we cerned.

Pre-Roman Elegy

2. Like most other forms of Roman literature, el indebted to Greece for both its form and its con the origin of this type of poetry is beyond the literary historian, and most of its Greek masterp the centuries succeeding such origin have long sin Horace (A. P. 75-78) wrote:

versibus impariter iunctis querimonia primu post etiam inclusa est voti sententia compos; quis tamen exiguos elegos emiserit auctor, grammatici certant, et adhuc sub iudice lis es

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This case is still on the calendar, and dou will adjourn sine die before an ultimate de Perhaps of barbarian origin, the rhythm of t certainly used in early Ionian Asia in dirge mournful remembrance, before the advent of of the elegy as a literary type. The regular these early songs was the flute. Possibly two were sung responsively by a double chor names for this mournful pentameter, eyeov have been variously explained as derived fro 'Woe! Woe! cry woe!' (Suidas) or Aéy witz); but from the beginning it was probal the hexameter, either as an occasional vers hexameters, or in the form of a couplet, and early times used also to designate this couple form ἐλεγεία (ποίησις or ᾠδή) was favored late istic Greeks and the Romans preferred the elegi for poems in this measure. (The form peared quite early in Latin, was reserved mor sepulchral inscription or the epigram.)

3. The elegiac distich, apparently the measure, became the vehicle of expression for poetic sentiments, varying from funeral song As compared with the hexameter the pentame weak (mollis was the Latin epithet), and the two seemed to lend itself more easily to the v the human heart, leading as an intermediate highly developed forms of lyric poetry. Arc 650 B.C.), to whom is attributed the inventi forms, used elegiac verse not only for funeral treat of warlike themes, of travel, and of the The Ephesian Callinus, an older contempora employed the same metrical form for patrioti was long credited with having invented t 1Cf. P. W. 5, 2260 sqq.

Tyrtaeus likewise sang in the elegiac measure war songs to inspire the Lacedaemonians in the second Messenian war. Simonides (or Semonides) of Amorgos wrote elegies besides his

iambic poems.

4. With Mimnermus of Colophon, towards the end of the seventh century B.C., an important innovation appeared. He produced not only war songs, like his predecessors, but also a book, or books, of erotic elegies, celebrating his love for a beautiful flute-playing girl named Nanno. Himself a flute player too, he expresses subjectively the sympathetic passion of the lover, and mourns over the swift passing of youth and its ardent feelings. That this book, which he called Nanno after his darling, occupied a prominent place as a prototype of Roman elegy in general, and of Propertius and his Cynthia book in particular, cannot be doubted.1

5. From this time to the end of the great period of Greek literature elegy was popular and treated a great variety of topics. Many leaders in public life as well as in literature wrote elegy. Solon, the famous lawgiver of Athens (c. 638-559), wrote of political and ethical subjects, as well as of youthful joys and loves. Demosthenes in his speech on the false embassy had part of an elegy of Solon read to the court in support of his plea. This ethical, or gnomic, elegy is represented also by the rivals, Phocylides of Miletus and Demodocus of Leros, in the sixth century, and by Theognis of Megara, the only one of all these early Greek elegists whose works have survived to our time in anything like completeness. Theognis belonged to the latter half of this century, and suffered many political vicissitudes. There was an elegy of his (not extant) upon the citizens of Syracuse who were saved in the siege; and we have, attributed to him, a collection of wise sayings in two books, including many elegies addressed to special friends, such as Simonides, Clearistus, and Damocles, and especially to his dear young friend

1Cf. Prop. 1, 9, 11; Wilamowitz in Sitzungsberichte d. Kgl. Pr. Akad. d. Wiss. 1912, pp. 100 sqq. (reprint with additions in Sappho u. Simonides, Berlin, 1913).

ROM. EL. POETS-2

Cyrnus. In many cases at least they appear intended to be sung at banquets, and were of for the reading public without musical accomp achus, Dionysius Chalcus, two elegists n Paros, and Critias, one of the thirty tyrant many names of elegists during this period, Aristotle dabbled in elegy much as Cicero d and Pliny in erotic verse.

6. Simonides of Ceos (556-468 B.C.), the g talent expressed itself in so many forms, did patriotic idea, composing elegiac verses on Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea. But by h threnetic elegy, including certain famous epigra to recall the original mournful character of the to maintain the tradition concerning its natur vived to modern times in the significance of th Finally, Antimachus of Colophon, who flourishe paved the way for the Alexandrian school of ele manner. This appeared indeed in his epic especially noteworthy in the elaborate elegy in took to console himself for the death of his telling in rather wearisome detail of the unhapp ology, thus creating the objective erotic type, as the subjective type introduced by Mimnermus.

7. Among the famous group of scholars and who flourished in the Alexandrian epoch ele epigram were the most highly favored and dev poetry. The prevalent type was erotic. Learn and technique, rather than invention or emotion the Alexandrian school, thus determining to an in elements that were to be prominent in the Rom immediate model it was to become. The two n

1 Cf. Hor. Car. 2, 1, 38: Ceae retractes munera neniae; Cat. rimis Simonideis; though both these citations probably refer m lyric threnodies of Simonides. Cf. Nageotte, Vol. 2, p. 132.