Simonides was the intimate friend of Miltiades and Themistocles at Athens, of Pausanias at Sparta, and of the tyrants of Sicily. In the first named city he composed his epigrams on Marathon, Thermopylæ, Salamis, and Platæa--"poems not destined to be merely sung or consigned to parchment, but to be carved in marble or engraved in letters of imperishable bronze upon the works of the noblest architects and statuaries." In his elegy upon Marathon he carried away the prize from Æschylus. He was a most prolific poet, and his writings, comprising all the subjects that human life, with its joys and sorrows, its hopes and disappointments, could furnish, are noted for their sweetness and pure and exquisite polish. He particularly excelled in the pathetic; and the most celebrated of the existing fragments of his muse, the "Lamentation of Dan'a-ë," is a piece of this character. The poem is based upon a tradition concerning Danaë, the daughter of Acris'ius, King of Argos, and her infant son, the offspring of Jove. Acrisius had been told by the oracle that his life would be taken by a son that his daughter should bear, and, for his own preservation, when the boy had reached the age of four years, Acrisius threw both him and his mother into a chest and set them adrift on the sea. But they were rescued by Dictys, a fisherman of the Island of Seri'phus, whose brother Polydec'tes, king of the country, received and protected them. The boy grew up to manhood, and became the famous hero Per'seus, who accidentally killed Acrisius at the funeral games of Polydectes. The following is the Lamentation of Dan'a-ë. While, around her lone ark sweeping, Wailed the winds and waters wild, Her young cheeks all wan with weeping, Danae clasped her sleeping child; And "Alas!" cried she, "my dearest, What deep wrongs, what woes are mine; But nor wrongs nor woes thou fearest In that sinless rest of thine. Faint the moonbeams break above thee, And within here all is gloom; But, fast wrapped in arms that love thee, Little reck'st thou of our doom. Not the rude spray, round thee flying, Has e'en damped thy clustering hair; On thy purple mantlet lying, O mine Innocent, my Fair! Yet, to thee were sorrow sorrow, Thou wouldst lend thy little ear; And this heart of thine might borrow, Haply, yet a moment's cheer. But no: slumber on, babe, slumber; Slumber, ocean's waves; and you, My dark troubles, without number-- Oh, that ye would slumber too! Though with wrongs they've brimmed my chalice, Grant, Jove, that, in future years, This boy may defeat their malice, And avenge his mother's tears!" --Trans. by W. PETER.