8. AEOLIC LYRIC POETS.--Alcaeus (fl. 611 B.C.), born in Mytilene in the island of Lesbos, being driven out of his native city for political reasons, wandered about the world, and, in the midst of troubles and perils, struck the lyre and gave utterance to the passionate emotions of his mind. His war-songs express a stirring, martial spirit; and a noble nature, accompanied with strong passions, appears in all his poems, especially in those in which he sings the praises of love and wine, though little of his erotic poetry has reached our time. It is evident that poetry was not with him a mere pastime or exercise of skill, but a means of pouring out the inmost feelings of the soul. Sappho (fl. 600 B.C.) the other leader of the Aeolic school of poetry, was the object of the admiration of all antiquity. She was contemporary with Alcaeus, and in her verses to him we plainly discern the feeling of unimpeached honor proper to a free-born and well-educated maiden. Alcaeus testifies that the attractions and loveliness of Sappho did not derogate from her moral worth when he calls her "violet-crowned, pure, sweetly smiling Sappho." This testimony is, indeed, opposed to the accounts of later writers, but the probable cause of the false imputations in reference to Sappho seems to be that the refined Athenians were incapable of appreciating the frank simplicity with which she poured forth her feelings, and therefore they confounded them with unblushing immodesty. While the men of Athens were distinguished for their perfection in every branch of art, none of their women emerged from the obscurity of domestic life. "That woman is the best," says Pericles, "of whom the least is said among men, whether for good or for evil." But the Aeolians had in some degree preserved the ancient Greek manners, and their women enjoyed a distinct individual existence and moral character. They doubtless participated in the general high state of civilization, which not only fostered poetical talents of a high order among women, but produced in them a turn for philosophical reflection. This was so utterly inconsistent with Athenian manners, that we cannot wonder that women, who had in any degree overstepped the bounds prescribed to their sex at Athens, should be represented by the licentious pen of Athenian comic writers as lost to every sense of shame and decency. Sappho, in her odes, made frequent mention of a youth to whom she gave her whole heart, while he requited her love with cold indifference; but there is no trace of her having named the object of her passion. She may have celebrated the beautiful and mythical Phaon in such a manner that the verses were supposed to refer to a lover of her own. The account of her leap from the Leucadian rock is rather a poetical image, than a real event in the life of the poetess. The true conception of the erotic poetry of Sappho can only be drawn from the fragments of her odes, which, though numerous, are for the most part very short.