Alcæus flourished in the latter part of the seventh century B.C. He was a noble of Lesbos, and lived in the stirring times when the constitutional and the aristocratic party contended for the sovereignty. In this struggle Alcæus appears as the deadly foe of democratic rule; when his friend Pittacus was clothed with supreme authority by the people, Alcæus directed against him the keenest shafts of his satire. Pittacus defeated him in an attempt to overthrow the government, but generously spared his life, saying, "Forgiveness is better than revenge." Of the poet's subsequent career we are ignorant. The ancients were loud in their praises of Alcæus. poems were polished, full of vehemence and passion, sublime in their denunciations of tyranny and encomiums of freedom. Love and wine were two of his favorite topics; yet even his jovial pieces were pervaded by a loftiness of sentiment foreign to mere sensual songs. Among his most beautiful compositions were the odes to Sappho, whose love he once sought, but whose genius soared to greater heights than his. We take from Alcæus THE CONSTITUTION OF A STATE. "What constitutes a state? Not high-raised battlement or labored mound, Not cities fair, with spires and turrets crowned: With powers as far above dull brutes endued, As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude-- Know too their rights, and knowing, dare maintain; And crush the tyrant, while they rend the chain." His The Lesbian Poetesses.-Lesbos was the centre of lyric song. To its shores, the waves of ocean are fabled to have borne the lyre of Orpheus, which the people hung in Apollo's : THE LESBIAN POETESSES. 165 temple thus traditionally distinguished by fate, it became renowned as the home of Grecian poetesses. The Lesbian women were not confined to domestic duties, but were allowed to take part in public affairs. They founded societies for the cultivation of their literary tastes, and before all Greece vindicated the genius of their sex. And Lesbos was the very clime for poetry to ripen in. The love of the beautiful was fed on every side. The island was a paradise of groves and rivulets, of blossoms and perfumes. Among its olive-clad hills, at its fountains set in violets and fringed with fern, under its stately pines, and in its temples shining with ivory and gold, its poetesses received their inspiration. Sappho.-Greatest of these, and queen of her sex in intellectual endowments, was Sappho, "the Lesbian Nightingale," "spotless, sweetly-smiling, violet-wreathed," as Alcæus fondly described her, whom all Greece knew as The Poetess. In her history it is difficult to separate the true from the fabulous. Born at Mytile'ne, the capital of the island, in the latter part of the seventh century B.C., she was deprived of a mother's care at the age of six. In early womanhood, a new calamity befell her in the loss of her husband, and thenceforth she devoted her genius to letters, making the elevation of her countrywomen the great object of her life. Her reputation soon spread throughout Greece. Mytilene became the seat of a brilliant sisterhood eager in the study of the polished arts; sparkling conversation enlivened its meetings; music and poetry were the branches its members specially cultivated; love was the common subject of their verse; their lives were above reproach. In the centre of this constellation of gifted women blazed Sappho, "Star of Lesbian Song." Greece, captivated by her sweet numbers, accorded her a place by Homer's side-then raised her to the level of its goddesses as "the Tenth Muse." Ancient story made Sappho the victim of disappointed love. Overcome with passion for Pha'on, a beautiful Mytilenean youth notorious for his heart-breaking propensities, and finding Phaon indifferent to her advances, she is said to have thrown herself from the Leuca'dian promontory* and drowned her passion in the Ionian Sea. There is, however, no evidence *The Leucadian promontory projects from the southern shore of the island of Leucadia, off the coast of Acarnania (see Map, p. 132). On the bluff stood a temple of Apollo, to whom, in very ancient times, human sacrifices were yearly offered, a victim being hurled from the rock into the sea below. The priests some SAPPHO AND HER STYLE. 167 to support the story; on the contrary, the poetess seems to have been implicated with Alcæus in a conspiracy against Pittacus, who then ruled in Lesbos, and to have been banished in consequence. She is thought to have found an asylum in Sicily. SAPPHO'S STYLE.-Simplicity, tenderness, concentrated passion, and brilliancy of description, are characteristic of Sappho's verse. Her poetry is the very language of harmony; no more musical measures than hers were known to the Greeks. Her favorite stanza, an invention of her own, consisted of four lines with a cadence like the following: Tenderest mistress of the heart's emotion, Over whom love sweeps as the mighty ocean, In depicting love, Sappho is unmatched. Her utterances, indeed, were so intense as to be misconstrued by the sensual Greeks of a later day, and give rise to reports injurious to her good name; or possibly she may have been confounded with another Sappho, of a different character; but we have no doubt that her life was as pure as her poetry is charming. Her imagery, when imagery she used, Sappho gathered from the times took the place of these unfortunates, but on such occasions carefully avoided danger by fastening to their persons flocks of live birds, the flapping of whose pinions during the descent broke their fall. This rite was gradually modified; and at one time we find the leap from the cliff used as an ordeal to test the guilt of suspected persons. In Sappho's day it was customary for those suffering the pangs of unrequited affection to take the Lover's Leap from the precipice, after secretly uttering their vows in the sanctuary of the god. Some, intent on suicide, were dashed to pieces on the rocks below or perished in the waves; others took the precaution to buoy themselves up with feathers or bladders, trusting to a plunge in the cold sea or the bruises they might receive, to cure their passion. Queen Artemisia, of Halicarnassus, lost her life in taking the Lover's Leap, after putting out the eyes of the youth who would not return her attachment; and one case is recorded in which a man four times resorted to this perilous remedy.-The modern Greek sailor still calls the promontory "the Lady's Cape." bright-tinted flowers, the starry skies, and fragrant zephyrs of Lesbos, where, as she sung, "Through orchard plots, with fragrance crowned, The clear cold fountain murmuring flows; Invite to soft repose." Judging from her fragments, we must admit that in her peculiar department Sappho stands without a peer. Indeed, her own graceful lines may well be applied to herself: "The stars that round the beauteous moon Attendant wait, cast into shade Their ineffectual lustres, soon As she, in full-orbed majesty arrayed, Her silver radiance showers Upon this world of ours,”— for the lesser lights of lyric poesy pale in the lustre of her genius. Addison, in his Spectator, makes the following remarks on Sappho, which are fully justified by the praises of ancient critics :-" Among the mutilated poets of antiquity, there are none whose fragments are so beautiful as those of Sappho. One may see, by what is left, that she followed nature in all her thoughts, without descending to those little points, conceits, and turns of wit, with which many of our modern lyrics are so miserably infected. Her soul seems to have been made up of love and poetry. She felt the passion in all its warmth and described it in all its symptoms. I do not know, by the character that is given of her works, whether it is not for the benefit of mankind that they are lost. They were filled with such bewitching tenderness and rapture, that it might have been dangerous to have given them a reading.” It is told that a physician, by studying the symptoms of love as described by Sappho, detected in the mysterious sickness of the young Anti'ochus, son of the king of Syria, a hidden passion for his step-mother. The treatment was in accord |