[Footnote EB: Alcæus of Mytilene, in Lesbos, the first of the Æolian lyric poets, flourished in the 42nd Olympiad, about 600 B.C. He wrote odes, songs, and epigrams, and was the inventor of the Alcaic metre, called after his name. "During the civil war Alcæus engaged actively on the side of the nobles, whose spirits he endeavoured to cheer by a number of most animated odes, full of invectives against the tyrant; and after the defeat of his party, he, with his brother Antimenidas, led them again in an attempt to regain their country." (Mr. Philip Smith in the _Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography_.)--ED.] [Footnote EC: I am indebted to Mr. H. T. Rhoades, Rugby, for the following note on Alcæus:--"There is nothing exactly corresponding to 'Woe, woe, to Tyrants' in the fragments of Alcæus which have come down to us--which are chiefly drinking songs--the nearest is an exultation over a dead tyrant, νῦν χρὴ μεθύσθην ... ἐπειδὴ κάτθανε Μύρσιλος--but he wrote verses which Pittacus thought dangerous, and for which he was banished. Horace, _Od._ IV. ix. 7, has 'Alcæi minaces camenæ,' and Wordsworth has perhaps had this in his mind."--ED.] [Footnote ED: Sappho. Her ode to Aphrodite--of which Longinus said it was "not one passion, but a congress of passions"--is the most perfect in Greek literature. It is to it that Wordsworth refers; and as there has been much controversy as to the character of this magnificent erotic ode--compare the discussion by Welcher (_Rheinisches Museum_, 1857); by Mure (_Critical History of the Language and Literature of Ancient Greece_, vol. iii. chap. V. 11); by Müller (_Literature of Ancient Greece_, pp. 175, 178); and by J. A. Symonds (_Studies of the Greek Poets_, 1st Series, p. 129), Wordsworth's verdict-- Not unhallowed was the page With finest touch of passion swayed, is noteworthy.--ED.] [Footnote EE: In 1752, during the excavations at Herculaneum, the villa of an Epicurean philosopher was discovered, in which were 1800 rolls of papyri, containing fragments of Epicurus' work _On Nature_. Only about 350 of these charred MSS. have as yet been unwound. When the discovery was first made that a library of ancient literature had been unearthed, European scholars everywhere anticipated a bursting forth Of genius from the dust. Hence Wordsworth's allusion to the possible discovery of the long buried fragments of classical antiquity, such as the poems of Simonides, or the lost books of Livy and Tacitus, for which others longed.--ED.]