A boy, amid them, from a clear-toned harp Drew lovely music; well his liquid voice The strings accompanied.--_Lord Derby's Trans._ [77] Bergk (_Poetæ Lyrici Græci_, 3 vols., Leipsic, 1866) gives an old Greek Linus-song on p. 1297: O Linus, thee the gods did grace; For unto thee they gave, most dear, First among men the song to raise With shrill voice sounding high and clear; And Phoebus thee in anger slays, And Muses mourn around thy bier. [78] Many poems of the Syracusan idyllists are valuable historically as adaptations of the hexameter to subjects essentially lyrical. In the Adoniazusæ, the Epithalamium Helenæ, the Lament for Bion, etc., we trace a lyrical inspiration overlaid by the idyllic form. Theocritus must have worked on the lines of old choral poetry. [79] "Pour we libations to Memory's daughters, the Muses, and to the Muse-leading son of Leto." [80] Plutarch records with just indignation the honors of this sort paid by Aratus to Antigonus: "He offered sacrifices, called Antigonea, in honor of Antigonus, and sang pæans himself, with a garland on his head, to the praise of _a wasted, consumptive Macedonian_" (_Life of Cleomenes_). The words in italics strongly express a true Greek sense of disgust for the barbarian and the weakling. [81] See Frere, vol. ii. pp. 200, 201. [82] See Trans. of _Acharnians_, Frere, vol. ii. p. 17. [83] Frere's _Translation_, vol. ii. pp. 241-245. [84] See, however, the interesting archaic hymns to Dionysus, pp. 1299, 1300. [85] Bergk, p. 716; Pindar, _Olymp._, ix. 1. [86] It is interesting to observe that this custom of the funeral dirge, improvised with wild inspiration by women, has been preserved almost to the present day in Corsica. A collection of these coronachs, called _Voceri_ in the language of the island, was published in 1855 at Bastia, by Cesare Fabiani. [87] Translated by Mitchell, vol. ii. p. 282, in his _Dicast turned Gentleman_. [88] "To be in health is the best thing for mortal man; the next best to be of form and nature beautiful; the third, to enjoy wealth gotten without fraud; and the fourth, to be in youth's bloom among friends." The Greek suspicion of wealth, abundantly illustrated in the Gnomic elegies, might be further exemplified by this fragment ascribed to Timocreon: Would, blind Wealth, that thou hadst been Ne'er on land or ocean seen, Nowhere on this upper earth! Hell's black stream that gave thee birth Is the proper haunt for thee, Cause of all man's misery! [89] Athen., _Lib._, viii. 360. [90] This begs the question of the nationality of Tyrtæus, who, according to antique tradition, was of Attic origin, but who writes like a Spartan. [91] Compare Simonides (Bergk, vol. iii. p. 1143): #angele klyta earos hadyodmou, kyanea chelidoi.# Blithe angel of the perfume-breathing spring, Dark-vested swallow.