Such was the fate of blind Thamyris, but he has double security for immortality, having a place not only in the Iliad of Homer, but also in the Paradise Lost of Milton: Thee, Sion, and the flow'ry brooks beneath, BOOK III. Thus although the works of this famous bard have totally perished, and his heavenly voice is no more heard to sing, yet it has been his singular good fortune to be celebrated by the greatest poet of antiquity, and ranked with that very poet by the greatest of the moderns; and all three involved in the same visitation of blindness; an extraordinary concurrence! The fourth Musæus was son of Orpheus and President of the Eleusynian Mysteries: this is the Musæus, whom Justin Martyr says was instructed by his father in a more rational religion than he practised in the temple of Ceres, and taught the knowledge and worship of one supreme God,creator of all things. The fifth was Museus of Ephesus, an epic poet; the sixth a grammarian, whose treatise on the Isthmian games is quoted by Euripides; and the seventh and last, is that Musæus, whom the poet Martial mentions for having written Pathicissimos libellos, and the author as it is probable of the little poem upon Hero and Leander, now extant, which Scaliger so much admires. Archilochus flourished in Olymp. xxiii. and was a very early writer of lambics;-He excels, says Quintilian, in energy of style; his periods strong, compressed and brilliant, replete with life and vi gour: so that if he is second to any it is from defect of subject, not from natural inferiority of genius. He adds that ‹ Aristarchus was of opinion that of all the writers of Iambic verse Archilochus alone carried it to perfection, Athenæus has preserved a little epigram of his no otherwise worth recording than as it is the only relick of his muse, except one distich in long and short verse, purporting that he was devoted to Mars and the Muses the epigram may be translated as follows: Glutton, we ask thee not to be our guest, ARCHIL. Archilochus fell in battle by the hand of Calondas, who immolated his own son to the manes of the poet to atone the vengeance of Apollo: he was a man of great private virtue and distinguished courage, but a severe unsparing satirist. Tisias, commonly called Stesichorus from his invention of the chorus, which he sung to the accompaniment of his harp, was contemporary with Solon, and born at Himera in the island of Sicily; as a lyric poet he was unequalled by any of the Greeks but Pindar; his subjects were all of the epic cast, and he oftentimes rose to a sublimity, that rivalled Homer, upon whose model he formed himself: this he would have done throughout, according to the opinion of Quintilian, if his genius had not led him into a redundancy, but his characters are drawn with great dignity and preserved justly. He did not visit Greece till he was far advanced in age,and died in Olymp. lvi. in the city of Catana, in his native island of Sicily, where he was buried at the public cost with distinguished ceremony and mag nificence. A tomb was erected to his memory near one of the city gates, which was thenceforward called the gate of Stesichorus; this tomb was composed of eight columns, had eight steps and eight angles after the cabalistical numbers of Pythagoras, whose mysterious philosophy was then in general vogue; the cubic number of eight was emblematic of strength, solidity, and magnificence, and from this tomb of Stesichorus arose the Greek proverb Пáva Oxl, by which was meant any thing perfect and complete. Phalaris of Agrigentum erected a temple to his name, and decreed him divine honours; all the cities in Sicily conspired in lamenting the death of their favourite poet, and vied with each other in the trophies they dedicated to his memory. Epimenides of Crete, the epic poet, was contemporary with Solon, and there is a letter in the life of that great man inserted by the sophists which is feigned to have been written by Solon in his exile to Epimenides: this poet, as well as his contemporary Aristæas, is said to have had the faculty of stopping the functions of life and recalling them at pleasure: Aristmas wrote a poem entitled Arimaspea, containing the history of the northern Arimaspeans, a people of Scythia, whom he de. scribes as the fiercest of all human beings, and pretends that they have only one eye; he also composed an heroic poem on the genealogy of the deities: Strabo says, if ever there was a quack in the world, this Aristœas was one. Simonides the poet lived in the court of Hipparchus, and was much caressed by that elegant prince; he was a pleasing courtly writer, and excelled in the pathetic. Al. cæus was poet, musician, and warrior; Quintilian gives him great praise for the boldness of his satire against tyrants, and occasionally for the moral tendency of his writings, but admits that sometimes his muse is loose and wanton: it appears from some fragments preserved by Athenæus, that he wrote several poems or sonnets in praise of drinking; there is also a fragment in the martial style, describing the variety of armour, with which his house was adorned. Callimachus, Theocritus, Anacreon and Sappho, are to a certain degree known to us by their remains: Every branch of poetry, but the drama, was at this æra at its greatest perfection. NUMBER CXXV. THERE is a considerable fragment in Athenæus of a love-poem written by Hermesianax of Colophon to his mistress Leontium; the poet recommends his passion by telling her how love has triumphed over all the great geniuses in their turns, and begins with the instances of Orpheus and Musæus, and brings them down to Sophocles, Euripides, Pythagoras, and Socrates. This Hermesianax must have been a contemporary of Epicurus, forasmuch as Leontium was the mistress of that philosopher as well as of his disciple Metrodorus: it is plain therefore that the learned Gerard John Vossius did not advert to this circumstance, when he puts Hermesianax amongst the poets of a doubtful age. Leontium was an Athenian courtezan, no less celebrated for science than beauty, for she engaged in a philosophical controversy with Theophratus, of which Cicero takes notice [lib. 1. de Nat. Deor.] Pliny also records an anecdote of her being painted by Theodorus sitting in a studious attitude. This fragment may not improperly be called the amours of the Greek poets, and as it relates to many of whom we have been speaking, and is withal a very curious specimen of an author very little known even by name, I have inserted the following translation in the hope that it will not be unacceptable to my readers. Οι ην μὲν φίλος γὸς ἀνήγαγεν Ο άγροιο, &c. Athen. lib. xiii. SUCH was the nymph, whom Orpheus led, Th' undaunted minstrel smites the strings, Thus music charm'd the realms beneath, And beauty triumph'd over death. The bard, whom night's pale regent bore, In secret on the Athenian shore, Musæus, felt the sacred flame, And burnt for the fair Theban dame Antiope, whom mighty Love Made pregnant by imperial Jove; |