The Anthology gathers for us the epigrams, epitaphs, proverbs, fables, and little odds and ends which have been saved from the ruins of literature, and in turning its leaves one is impressed by the large number of references to childhood. It is as when, rambling through the streets of the uncovered Pompeii, one comes upon the playthings of children dead nigh two thousand years. Here are tender memorials of lost babes in inscriptions upon forgotten tombs, and laments of fathers and mothers for the darkness which has come upon their dwellings. We seem to hear the prattle of infancy and the mother’s lullaby. The Greeks, as we, covered their loss with an instinctive trust in some better fortune in store for the child, and hushed their skepticism with the song of hope and the remembrance of stories which they had come in colder hours to disbelieve. Here, for example, is an anonymous elegy:— “Thou hast not, O ruler Pluto, with pious intent, stolen for thy underground world a girl of five years, admired by all. For thou hast cut, as it were, from the root, a sweet-scented rose in the season of a commencing spring, before it had completed its proper time. But come, Alexander and Philtatus; do not any longer weep and pour forth lamentations for the regretted girl. For she had, yes, she had a rosy face which meant that she should remain in the immortal dwellings of the sky. Trust, then, to stories of old. For it was not Death, but the Naiads, who stole the good girl as once they stole Hylas.”[11] Perhaps the most celebrated of these tender domestic passages is to be found in the oft-quoted lines from Simonides, where Danaë sings over the boy Perseus:— “When in the ark of curious workmanship The winds and swaying waters fearfully Were rocking her, with streaming eyes, around Her boy the mother threw her arms and said: “‘O darling, I am very miserable; But thou art cosy-warm and sound asleep In this thy dull, close-cabin’d prison-house, Stretched at full ease in the dark, ebon gloom. Over thy head of long and tangled hair The wave is rolling; but thou heedest not; Nor heedest thou the noises of the winds, Wrapt in thy purple cloak, sweet pretty one. “‘But if this fearful place had fear for thee, Those little ears would listen to my words; But sleep on, baby, and let the sea-waves sleep, And sleep our own immeasurable woes. O father Zeus, I pray some change may come; But, father, if my words are over-bold, Have pity, and for the child’s sake pardon me.’”[12] II