=Sappho’s Pupils.=—Doubtless many went forth from Sappho’s school to reflect, in their own accomplishments, the brilliancy of their mistress. History has preserved the names of two of her pupils—Damoph’yla of Asia Minor, noted for a Hymn to Diana; and ERINNA, a Rhodian maid who shone among the brightest lights of Sappho’s circle, and, if we may believe the story, died of a broken heart when compelled by her parents to exchange the delights of literature for the drudgery of the spinning-wheel. This cruel treatment Erinna made the subject of an affecting lament, “the Spindle,” a poem of three hundred hexameters, on which her reputation rests. Her death at the age of nineteen cheated the world of a writer who promised to rival Homer himself. “The Spindle” is lost; but the following epigram on a virgin of Lesbos, who died on the day appointed for her marriage, speaks for Erinna:— “The virgin Myrtis’ sepulchre am I; Creep softly to the pillar’d mount of woe; And whisper to the grave, in earth below, ‘Grave! thou art envious in thy cruelty!’ To thee, now gazing here, her barbarous fate These bride’s adornments tell; that, with the fire Of Hymen’s torch, which led her to the gate, Her husband burned the maid upon her pyre: Yes, Hymen! thou didst change the marriage-song To the shrill wailing of the mourners’ throng.” A pointed epitaph in the Greek Anthology shows the estimation in which the poetess was held by her countrymen:— “These are Erinna’s songs: how sweet, though slight! For she was but a girl of nineteen years; Yet stronger far than what most men can write: Had death delayed, whose fame had equalled hers?” =Anacreon.=—In the sixth century, Te’os, a seaport of Ionia, gave birth to the society poet, Anacreon; who, though an Ionian, wrote rather in the style of the Æolian lyrics. His verses, however, while soft and graceful, were marked by levity, and lacked the dignity and depth of the Æolic school. “The Muse, good humor, love, and wine,” Anacreon tells us, were his themes; accordingly his songs, brimming with sensuality, grew in popular estimation as Greece degenerated in public morality. When his native city fell a prey to Cyrus the Persian, Anacreon with the other inhabitants set sail for Thrace (540 B.C.). From Thrace, while yet in his youth, he withdrew to the island of Sa’mos whose tyrant, Polyc’rates, was a munificent patron of literature and art. Amid the gayety of the Samian court, the witty and pleasure-loving poet found a congenial home, Polycrates making him an intimate companion and confiding to him important state secrets. But the ruler of Samos was treacherously put to death by a Persian satrap; about which time, Anacreon was invited to Athens by the tyrant Hipparchus, who sent his royal trireme to bring his poet-laureate across the Ægean.