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gracefully delivered and appositely addressed; in fine, that his merit consists in the middle style of writing.'-Talents of this sort probably recommended him to the unreserved applause of all, whom superiority of genius in another affects with envy and provokes to detraction. Many such, besides the grammarian Daphidas, were found to persecute the name of Homer with malevolence, whilst he rose superior to their attacks: the rhapsodists, whose vocation it was in public and private to entertain the company with their recitations, were so constantly employed in repeating Homer's poems preferably to all others, that in time they were universally called Homerists: Demetrius Phalereus at length introduced them into the theatres, aud made them chaunt the poems of his favourite author on the stage: the poet Simonides, celebrated for his memory, repeated long passages of Homer, sitting in the public theatre on a seat erected for him on the stage for that purpose; Cassander, king of Macedonia, had the whole Iliad and Odyssey by heart, and was continually repeating, not in company only, but in his private hours to himself: Stesichorus also, the sublimest of all poets next to Homer, and his greatest imitator, was remarkably fond of chaunting forth passages in the Iliad and Odyssey; it is related also that he used frequently to repeat verses of Hesiod, Archilochus, Mimnermus, and Phocylides the Milesian, who is the supposed author of the poem entitled Parænesis yet extant. We are obliged to the grammarians for many scraps or fragments from the wrecks of authors, but in the case of Hesiod's Eoics meet with one remnant only preserved by Pausanias, and this relates to Iphigenia, who, by Hesiod's account, was by the favour of Diana reprieved from extinction and

immortalized in the person of the goddess Hecate.

As for the bards of the Orphean family, it is difficult to adjust their chronologies and descents; I have already enumerated five poets of the name of Orpheus, and said in general terms, that there were several of the name of Museus; they may be thus described; viz. first, Musæus, son of Antiphemus and disciple of Orpheus, styled an epic poet; he wrote a long poem of four thousand verses, containing precepts, addressed to his son Eumolpus, and thence entitled The Eumolpiad; he wrote a hymn to Ceres, a poem on the cure of diseases, and published certain prophetic verses, though his title to these has been brought into dispute by the artifices of one Onomacritus, a plagiarist and pretended diviner in the time of Hipparchus, who put off these verses of Musæus as his own. The second Musæus was grandson of the first and son of Eumolpus; various poems are given to this Musæus, particularly The Theogony, The Sphere, The Mysteries of Initiation and Lustration, The Titans, &c. The third Musæus, a Theban, was son of Thamyris and grandson of Philammon; he flourished about the time of the Trojan war: his father Thamyris is recorded by Homer.

And Dorion fam'd for Thamyris' disgrace,
Superior once of all the tuneful race,
Till vain of mortals' empty praise he strove
To match the seed of cloud-compelling Jove;
Too daring bard! whose unsuccessful pride
Th' immortal Muses in their art defy'd;
Th' avenging Muses of the light of day
Depriv'd his eyes, and snatch'd his voice away;
No more his heav'nly voice was heard to sing,
His hand no more awak'd the silver string.

POPE. IL. 2.

Such was the fate of blind Thamyris, but he has double security for immortality, having a place not only in the Iliad of Homer, but also in the Paradise Lost of Milton:

Thee, Sion, and the flow'ry brooks beneath,
That wash thy hallow'd feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit; nor sometimes forget
Those other two equall'd with me in fate,
So were I equall'd with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides.

BOOK III.

Thus although the works of this famous bard have totally perished, and his heavenly voice is no more heard to sing, yet it has been his singular good fortune to be celebrated by the greatest poet of antiquity, and ranked with that very poet by the greatest of the moderns; and all three involved in the same visitation of blindness; an extraordinary concurrence!

The fourth Musæus was son of Orpheus and President of the Eleusynian Mysteries: this is the Musæus, whom Justin Martyr says was instructed by his father in a more rational religion than he practised in the temple of Ceres, and taught the knowledge and worship of one supreme God,creator of all things. The fifth was Museus of Ephesus, an epic poet; the sixth a grammarian, whose treatise on the Isthmian games is quoted by Euripides; and the seventh and last, is that Musæus, whom the poet Martial mentions for having written Pathicissimos libellos, and the author as it is probable of the little poem upon Hero and Leander, now extant, which Scaliger so much admires.

Archilochus flourished in Olymp. xxiii. and was a very early writer of lambics;-He excels, says Quintilian, in energy of style; his periods strong,

compressed and brilliant, replete with life and vi gour so that if he is second to any it is from defect of subject, not from natural inferiority of genius.

He adds that 'Aristarchus was of opinion that of all the writers of Iambic verse Archilochus alone carried it to perfection, Athenæus has preserved a little epigram of his no otherwise worth recording than as it is the only relick of his muse, except one distich in long and short verse, purporting that he was devoted to Mars and the Muses the epigram may be translated as follows:

:

Glutton, we ask thee not to be our guest,
It is thy belly bids thee to our feast.

ARCHIL.

Archilochus fell in battle by the hand of Calondas, who immolated his own son to the manes of the poet to atone the vengeance of Apollo: he was a man of great private virtue and distinguished courage, but a severe unsparing satirist.

Tisias, commonly called Stesichorus from his invention of the chorus, which he sung to the accompaniment of his harp, was contemporary with Solon, and born at Himera in the island of Sicily; as a lyric poet he was unequalled by any of the Greeks but Pindar; his subjects were all of the epic cast, and he oftentimes rose to a sublimity, that rivalled Homer, upon whose model he formed himself: this he would have done throughout, according to the opinion of Quintilian, if his genius had not led him into a redundancy, but his characters are drawn with great dignity and preserved justly. He did not visit Greece till he was far advanced in age,and died in Olymp. Ivi. in the city of Catana, in his native island of Sicily, where he was buried at the public cost with distinguished ceremony and mag

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nificence. A tomb was erected to his memory near one of the city gates, which was thenceforward called the gate of Stesichorus; this tomb was composed of eight columns, had eight steps and eight angles after the cabalistical numbers of Pythagoras, whose mysterious philosophy was then in general vogue; the cubic number of eight was emblematic of strength, solidity, and magnificence, and from this tomb of Stesichorus arose the Greek proverb Пáva Oxl, by which was meant any thing perfect and complete. Phalaris of Agrigentum erected a temple to his name, and decreed him divine honours; all the cities in Sicily conspired in lamenting the death of their favourite poet, and vied with each other in the trophies they dedicated to his memory.

Epimenides of Crete, the epic poet, was contemporary with Solon, and there is a letter in the life of that great man inserted by the sophists which is feigned to have been written by Solon in his exile to Epimenides: this poet, as well as his contemporary Aristaas, is said to have had the faculty of stopping the functions of life and recalling them at pleasure: Aristmas wrote a poem entitled Arimaspea, containing the history of the northern Arimas peans, a people of Scythia, whom he de. scribes as the fiercest of all human beings, and pretends that they have only one eye; he also composed an heroic poem on the genealogy of the deities: Strabo says, if ever there was a quack in the world, this Aristaas was one. Simonides the poet lived in the court of Hipparchus, and was much caressed by that elegant prince; he was a pleasing courtly writer, and excelled in the pathetic. Alcæus was poet, musician, and warrior; Quintilian gives him great praise for the boldness of his satire

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