IL The Age of Lyric Poetry.-- Strictly speaking Lyric poetry should designate poetry sung to the lyre only, but the term lyric is rather loosely used to include elegiac and iam bic as well as melic (i.e., sung) poetry. Lyric poetry was the outcome of that turbulent period in Greek history which was characterized by social upheaval in many states in connection with the establishment of the successive polit ical stages of oligarchy, tyranny and democracy, W an age when men were more widely informed and were thinking for themselves. While lyric poetry flourished throughout the Greek world generally, and was composed by poets in the three chief dialects (lEolic, Doric and Ionic), it had its origin in Ionia. Elegy, strictly speaking, may be defined as mournful poetry, i.e., the funeral dirge sung to the accompaniment of the flute, but the term is applied to any poetry of a reflective, emotional character in the elegiac distich. This couplet consists of a dactylic hexameter followed by a dactylic pentameter (so-called). Elegy early lost its exclusively funereal character and was used for martial poetry by Callinus of Ephesus (first half of the 7th century B.c.) and by Tyrtmus (c. 640 a.c.) at Sparta. It was first used for the expression of love by Mimnermus of Smyrna (c. 620 a.c.) who thus was the father of the erotic elegy, a literary form popular among the poets of the Alexandrian Age, who, in turn, inspired the Roman elegists, e.g., Catullus, Ovid, Propertius and Tibullus. Theognis of Megara (c. 540 B.c.) is the chief exemplar of the gnomic, or moral, elegy. Of his writings some 1,400 lines are ex tant. Solon (c. 600 a.c.), the great Athenian law-giver, used the elegy for political moraliz ings ; Xenophanes employed it for philosophical teachings. The master of the funereal elegy is Simonides of Ceos who is famous for his com memorative epitaphs on the Greek heroes who fell in the Persian Wars.
Iambic poetry, contemporaneous with elegy, was "invented,'" as the Greeks said, or rather perfected, by Archilochus of Paros .(c. 660 B.c.), as a weapon of satire and invective. Semonides of Amorgos (c. 640 n.c.) and Hip ponax of Ephesus (c. 540 n.c.) (who invented the choliambic or shown) likewise employed the iambus for satire. But both the iambic and trochaic meters were used for purposes other than satire.
While iambic and elegiac poetry might be merely recited or declaimed, melic verse (lyric poetry proper) of necessity was sung to musical accompaniment. It was of two forms, monodic, of iEolic origin, for one voice, or choral, as developed by the Dorians, for a chorus. The monodic melic, whose first representative was Terpander (c. 675 Re.), is known to us through the poetry of Sappho, Alcmus and Anacreon. The fragments of the verse of the poetess Sappho of Lesbos (c. 600 a.c.), tantalizingly scanty, reveal poetic gifts of marvelous power and remarkable emotional intensity. Alczus, likewise of Lesbos, poet of love and of war, together with his contemporary Sappho, in spired much of the poetry of. Horace in sentip meat and form (e.g., the Alcai and Sapphic
stanzas). Anacreon of Teos (c. 530 n.c.), poet of pleasure, was an Ionian. His name is largely known to students of English poetry because of the spurious and much later 'Ana creontea> which long passed for genuine. (See ODES OF ANACREON and consult the pleasing versions of Byron). The Dorian choral lyric is represented by the scanty, but interesting, fragments of the melic poetry of Alcman (c. 650 p.c.) who lived at Sparta, of Stesichorus of Sicily (c. 620 a.c.), of Ibycus of Rhegium (c. 550 a.c.) and Simonides of Ceos (480 a.c.), an Ionian, who was renowned not only for his ele gies, as previously mentioned, but for his love lyrics, dirges, epinilcia and encomia. Greatest of all the Greek lyric poets, however, is Pindar of Thebes (c. 470 a.c.). While he won fame in all branches of melic poetry his chief renown was in epinikia, i.e., odes celebrating the victors in the four great Greek games. Of these mag nificent odes we have no less than 44. They are splendid in imagery and diction, bold in conception and lofty in style. Of this same period is Bacchylides of Ceos, nephew of Simonides, a lyric poet of distinction, but infe rior to Pindar.
III. The Attic Period (475-300 B.C.).— In the Attic Period, in the 5th and 4th centuries• B.C., the Greek genius revealed itself in all its splendor in magnificent achievements, especially in literature and art. In Athens, democracy and universal enlightenment stimulated remark able literary activity in varied forms. In poetry, the drama, both tragedy and comedy, flourished. In prose, crude literary beginnings were rapidly succeeded by complete mastery in history, in rhetoric and in philosophy.
A. The Drama—The °rigid of Greek trag edy is an open question at present writing. Some scholars find the origin in the ritual per formed by the chorus worshipping dead heroes at the tomb; others, in the ritual which cele brated the annual death and rebirth of vegeta tion that was a feature of the cult of Dionysus. The traditional view, however, is that tragedy developed from the dithyramb, a choral lyric of Dorian origin (first perfected by Anion, c. 600 a.c.) sung and danced at festivals by a cho rus of 50 men or boys in honor of Dionysus, the wine-god. As this chorus was sometimes dressed as satyrs (goat-like followers of Pan) their song was called tragoedia (goat-song). Thespis of Icaria in Attica (in the middle of the 6th century B.c.) took the next step in the de velopment of tragedy by stepping out from the chorus of satyrs and addressing verses to them. Here we have the germ of the drama. Com plete development came with the introduction of a second actor by /Eschylus, and a third by Sophocles, together with the reduction of the satyr chorus from 50 to 12 by /Eschylus, and to 15 by Sophocles and his successors. 'Tragedy was indebted to Homer and the epic cycle for subject-matter, the iambic verse perfected by Archilochus being substituted in the dialogue for the epic dactylic hexameter, and to lyric poetry for the choral element.