Of Lycus we only know, on the authority of Cicero,[95] that he had a wart upon the finger, which Alcæus praised in one of his poems. It has also been conjectured that the line #oinos, ô phile pai, kai alathea#--"wine, dear boy, and truth"--which Theocritus quotes as a proverb at the beginning of his Æolic Idyl, was addressed to Lycus. A fragment of far greater interest is the couplet preserved by Hephæstion,[96] in which Alcæus calls on Sappho by her name: "Violet-crowned, pure, sweet-smiling Sappho! I want to say something, but shame prevents me." To this declaration Sappho replied: "If thy wishes were fair and noble, and thy tongue designed not to utter what is base, shame would not cloud thine eyes, but thou wouldst speak thy just desires." This is all we know about the love-passages between the greatest lyrists of the Æolian school. In this way do the ancient critics tantalize us. Aristotle,[97] in order to illustrate a moral proposition, Hephæstion, with a view to proving a metrical rule, fling these scraps of their wealth forth, little dreaming that after twenty centuries the men of new nations and other thoughts will eagerly collect the scraps, and long for more of that which might have been so freely lavished. Whether Sappho wrote her reply in maidenly modesty because the advances of Alcæus were really dishonorable, or whether she affected indignation to conceal a personal dislike for the poet, we cannot say. Aristotle or Hephæstion might, probably, have been able to tell us. But the one was only thinking of the signs of shame, while the attention of the other was riveted upon the "so-called _dodecasyllable Alcaic_." The most considerable remains of the lyrics of Alcæus are drinking-songs--praises of wine, combined with reflections upon life and appropriate descriptions of the different seasons. No time was amiss for drinking, to his mind: the heat of summer, the cold of winter, the blazing dog-star and the driving tempest, twilight with its cheerful gleam of lamps, mid-day with its sunshine--all suggest reasons for indulging in the cup. Not that we are justified in fancying Alcæus to have been a vulgar toper: he retained Æolian sumptuousness in his pleasures, and raised the art of drinking to an æsthetic altitude. One well-known piece from the _Paroenia_ of Alcæus is capable of translation into Elizabethan rhymed verse as follows: The rain of Zeus descends, and from high heaven A storm is driven: And on the running water-brooks the cold Lays icy hold: Then up! beat down the winter; make the fire Blaze high and higher; Mix wine as sweet as honey of the bee Abundantly; Then drink with comfortable wool around Your temples bound. We must not yield our hearts to woe, or wear With wasting care; For grief will profit us no whit, my friend, Nor nothing mend: But this is our best medicine, with wine fraught To cast out thought.