Thenceforth Archilochus led a wandering life, full of vicissitudes, but replete with evidences of his merit. "While Hesiod was in the poor and backward parts of central Greece, modifying with timid hand the tone and style of epic poetry, without abandoning its form, Archilochus, storm-tossed amid wealth and poverty, amid commerce and war, amid love and hate, ever in exile and yet everywhere at home--Archilochus broke altogether with the traditions of literature, and colonized new territories with his genius." [Footnote: "Classical Greek Literature," vol. i., p.157.] He is said to have returned to Paros a short time before his death, where, on account of a victory he had won at the Olympic festival, the resentment and hatred formerly entertained against him were turned into gratitude and admiration. His death, which occurred on the field of battle, could not extinguish his fame, and his memory was celebrated by a festival established by his countrymen, during which his verses were sung alternately with the poems of Homer. "Thus," says an old historian, "by a fatality frequently attending men of genius, he spent a life of misery, and acquired honor after death. Reproach, ignominy, contempt, poverty, and persecution were the ordinary companions of his person; admiration, glory, respect, splendor, and magnificence were the attendants of his shade." With the exception of Homer, no poet of classical antiquity acquired so high a celebrity. Among the Greeks and Romans he was equally esteemed. Cicero classed him with Sophocles, Pindar, and even Homer; Plato called him the "wisest of poets;" and Longinus "speaks with rapture of the torrent of his divine inspiration." ALC'MAN. Passing over Simonides of Amorgos, who is chiefly celebrated for a very ungallant but ingenious and smooth satire on women, and over Tyrtæ'us, whose animating and patriotic odes, as we have seen, proved the safety of Sparta in one of the Messenian wars, we come to the first truly lyric poet of Greece--Alcman-- originally a Lydian slave in a Spartan family, but emancipated by his master on account of his genius. He flourished after the second Messenian war, and his poems partake of the character of this period, which was one of pleasure and peace. They are chiefly erotic, or amatory, or in celebration of the enjoyments of social life. He successfully cultivated choral poetry, and his Parthenia, made up of a variety of subjects, was composed to be sung by the maidens of Tayge'tus. "His excellence," says MURE, "appears to have lain in his descriptive powers. The best, and one of the longest extant passages of his works is a description of sleep, or rather of night; a description unsurpassed, perhaps unrivalled, by any similar passage in the Greek or any other language, and which has been imitated or paraphrased by many distinguished poets." [Footnote: "History of Greek Literature," vol. iii., p. 205.] The following is this author's translation of it: