It is certain, at least, that the age (670-600) immediately
succeeding Terpander,—comprising Archilochus, Kallinus, Tyrtæus, and
Alkman, whose relations of time one to another we have no certain
means of determining,[147] though Alkman seems to have been the
latest,—presents a remarkable variety both of new metres and of new
rhythms, superinduced upon the previous daktylic hexameter. The
first departure from this latter is found in the elegiac verse,
employed seemingly more or less by all the four above-mentioned
poets, but chiefly by the first two, and even ascribed by some to
the invention of Kallinus. Tyrtæus in his military march-songs
employed the anapæstic metre, but in Archilochus as well as in Alkman
we find traces of a much larger range of metrical variety,—iambic,
trochaic, anapæstic, ionic, etc.,—sometimes even asynartetic or
compound metres, anapæstic or daktylic, blended with trochaic or
iambic. What we have remaining from Mimnermus, who comes about the
close of the preceding four, is elegiac; his contemporaries Alkæus
and Sappho, besides employing most of those metres which they found
existing, invented each a peculiar stanza of their own, which is
familiarly known under a name derived from each. In Solon, the
younger contemporary of Mimnermus, we have the elegiac, iambic, and
trochaic: in Theognis, yet later, the elegiac only. But both Arion
and Stesichorus appear to have been innovators in this department,
the former by his improvement in the dithyrambic chorus or circular
song and dance in honor of Dionysus,—the latter by his more elaborate
choric compositions, containing not only a strophê and antistrophê,
but also a third division or epode succeeding them, pronounced by the
chorus standing still. Both Anakreon and Ibykus likewise added to the
stock of existing metrical varieties. And we thus see that, within
the century and a half succeeding Terpander, Greek poetry (or Greek
literature, which was then the same thing) became greatly enriched in
matter as well as diversified in form.
[147] Mr. Clinton (Fasti Hellen. ad ann. 671, 665, 644) appears
to me noway satisfactory in his chronological arrangements of
the poets of this century. I agree with O. Müller (Hist. of
Literat. of Ancient Greece, ch. xii, 9) in thinking that he makes
Terpander too recent, and Thalêtas too ancient; I also believe
both Kallinus and Alkman to have been more recent than the place
which Mr. Clinton assigns to them; the epoch of Tyrtæus will
depend upon the date which we assign to the second Messenian war.
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