[179] See Plutarch, De Music. p. 1136; Dionys. Hal. de Comp. Verb. c. 23, p. 173, Reisk, and some striking passages of Himerius, in respect to Sappho (i, 4, 16, 19; Maximus Tyrius, Dissert. xxiv, 7-9), and the encomium of the critical Dionysius (De Compos. Verborum, c. 23, p. 173). The author of the Parian marble adopts, as one of his chronological epochs (Epoch 37), the flight of Sappho, or exile, from Mitylênê to Sicily somewhere between 604-596 B. C. There probably was something remarkable which induced him to single out this event; but we do not know what, nor can we trust the hints suggested by Ovid (Heroid. xv, 51). Nine books of Sappho’s songs were collected by the later literary Greeks, arranged chiefly according to the metres (C. F. Neue, Sapphonis Fragm. p. 11, Berlin 1827). There were ten books of the songs of Alkæus (Athenæus, xi, p. 481), and both Aristophanês (Grammaticus) and Aristarchus published editions of them. (Hephæstion, c. xv, p. 134, Gaisf.) Dikæarchus wrote a commentary upon his songs (Athenæus, xi, p. 461). The gnomic poets, or moralists in verse, approach by the tone of their sentiments more to the nature of prose. They begin with Simonidês of Amorgos or of Samos, the contemporary of Archilochus: indeed, the latter himself devoted some compositions to the illustrative fable, which had not been unknown even to Hesiod. In the remains of Simonidês of Amorgos we trace nothing relative to the man personally, though he too, like Archilochus, is said to have had an individual enemy, Orodœkidês, whose character was aspersed by his muse.[180] His only considerable poem extant is devoted to a survey of the characters of women, in iambic verse, and by way of comparison with various animals,—the mare, the ass, the bee, etc. It follows out the Hesiodic vein respecting the social and economical mischief usually caused by women, with some few honorable exceptions; but the poet shows a much larger range of observation and illustration, if we compare him with his predecessor Hesiod; moreover, his illustrations come fresh from life and reality. We find in this early iambist the same sympathy with industry and its due rewards which are observable in Hesiod, together with a still more melancholy sense of the uncertainty of human events. [180] Welcker, Simonidis Amorgini Iambi qui supersunt, p. 9.