Stesichorus was deservedly honored as the founder of Greek chorus music, and a statue was erected to his memory. Among those next following his era we find Ibycus, a poet-musician attached to the court of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos. This mighty sea king and despot had a considerable liking for music; for we learn also that he kept a choir of beautiful boys, whose duty it was to sing sweet Lydian melodies during his meals. About 580-70 B. C. Alcæus and Sappho became leaders in Grecian musical culture, or poetry, for the two are inseparable. The two poets seem to have formed a mutual friendship. Of Sappho we have remaining an ode to Aphrodite which makes it a matter of regret that the remains of her poetry are so fragmentary.[28] At Mytilene she seems to have gathered around her a large and elegant circle, composed entirely of females to whom she taught poetry and music; in fact her house must have been a musical university for her list of scholars embraces names from all parts of Greece. Ottfried Müller[29] compares her life, surrounded by all these fair followers, with that of Socrates surrounded by the flower of Athenian youth. Sappho’s career is the more wonderful from the fact, that among the ancient Greeks, the entire mission of woman was supposed to consist in rearing her family, attending to the first education of her sons, who at an early age passed into the hands of their teachers, teaching housewife’s duties to her daughters, and attending to them herself; according to Pericles, that woman was most to be prized of whom no one spoke, either in praise or blame. Sappho’s poetry had great effect even on the rough character of Solon, the law giver; hearing for the first time one of her songs, which his nephew sang to him, he vehemently expressed the wish that he might not die before he had committed to memory so beautiful a song. Sappho’s name is almost the only female one in the whole realm of ancient Greek music, which was pure, noble, and uncontaminated. Latterly, even her character has been assailed, but the accusation has been refuted by Herr Welcker, of Bonn, (in the _Rheinisches Museum_,) Ottfried Müller and other learned writers. After her, music as practiced by the female sex, was handed over to the most degraded, (the _Hetarae_) and seems to have borrowed from Egypt many lowering qualities,[30] including dancing girls and ribald songs. Anacreon of Teos, introduced into Greece the light, airy songs, in praise of woman, wine, etc., “It is no great stretch of fancy,” says a thoughtful writer,[31] “to imagine his songs as expressing our modern _Allegretto Grazioso_, _Andante Scherzoso_, etc.” From precisely this point however (the lack of signs of expression in all Greek music) another writer[32] deduces the opinion that Greek music must always have been in a crude state, and by no means of the beauty which some enthusiasts ascribe to it.