For though the bowl's the grave of sadness, No, banish from our board to-night To Scythians leave these wild excesses, ODE LXIII. To Love, the soft and blooming child, ODE LXIV.2 HASTE thee, nymph, whose well-aim'd spear Wounds the fleeting mountain-deer! Dian, Jove's immortal child, Huntress of the savage wild! Goddess with the sun-bright hair! There thy vanquish'd people mourn! 3 ODE LXV.4 LIKE some wanton filly sporting, Thou trip'st away, with scornful eye, Thou'lt find this skilful hand can throw ODE LXVI.5 To thee, the Queen of nymphs divine, 1" This fragment is preserved in Clemens Alexandrinus, Strom. lib. vi. and in Arsenius, Collect. Græc."— Barnes. It appears to have been the opening of a hymn in praise of Love. 2 This hymn to Diana is extant in Hephæstion. There is an anecdote of our poet, which has led some to doubt whether he ever wrote any odes of this kind. It is related by the Scholiast upon Pindar (Isthmionic. od. ii. v. 1. as cited by Barnes) that Anacreon being asked, why he addressed all his hymns to women, and none to the deities? answered, "Because women are my deities." I have assumed, it will be seen, in reporting this anecdote, the same liberty which I have thought it right to take in translating some of the odes; and it were to be wished that these little infidelities were always allowable in interpreting the writings of the ancients; thus, when nature is forgotten in the original, in the translation "tamen usque recurret." 3 Turn, to Lethe's river turn, There thy vanquish'd people mourn!] Lethe, a river of Ionia, according to Strabo, falling into the Meander. In its neighbourhood was the city called Magnesia, in favour of whose inhabitants our poet is supposed to have addressed this supplication to Diana. It was written (as Madame Dacier conjectures) on the occasion of some battle, in which the Magnesians had been defeated. 4 This ode, which is addressed to some Thracian girl, exists in Heraclides, and has been imitated very frequently by Horace, as all the annotators have remarked. Madame Dacier rejects the allegory, which runs so obviously through the poem, and supposes it to have been addressed to a young mare belonging to Polycrates. Pierius, in the fourth book of his Hieroglyphics, cites this ode, and informs us that the horse was the hieroglyphical emblem of pride. 5 This ode is introduced in the Romance of Theodorus Prodromus, and is that kind of epithalamium which was sung like a scolium at the nuptial banquet. Among the many works of the impassioned Sappho, of which time and ignorant superstition have deprived us, the loss of her epithalamiums is not one of the least that we deplore. The following lines are cited as a relic of one of those poems: Ολβις γαμβρε, σοι μεν δη γαμος ὡς ἄρας, See Scaliger, in his Poetics, on the Epithalamium. And oh thou nuptial Power, to thee Look on thy bride, too happy boy, And while thy lambent glance of joy Plays over all her blushing charms, Delay not, snatch her to thine arms, Before the lovely, trembling prey, Like a young birdling, wing away! Turn, Stratocles, too happy youth, Dear to the Queen of amorous truth, And dear to her, whose yielding zone Will soon resign her all thine own. Turn to Myrilla, turn thine eye, Breathe to Myrilla, breathe thy sigh. To those bewitching beauties turn; For thee they blush, for thee they burn. Not more the rose, the queen of flowers, Outblushes all the bloom of bowers, Than she unrivall'd grace discloses, The sweetest rose, where all are roses. Oh! may the sun, benignant, shed His blandest influence o'er thy bed; And foster there an infant tree, To bloom like her, and tower like thee!! ODE LXVII.2 RICH in bliss, I proudly scorn ODE LXVIII.4 Now Neptune's month our sky deforms, ODE LXIX.5 THEY WOve the lotus band to deck 1 And foster there an infant tree, To bloom like her, and tower like thee!] Original Kurapetras de reponer riu i zyan. Passeratius, upon the words cum castum amisit florem," in the Nuptial Song of Catullus, after explaining “flos” in somewhat a similar sense to that which Gaulminus attributes to podev, says, " Hortum quoque vocant in quo flos ille carpitur, et Græcis zytov 167I TO SCHĒZIV TUKIZWY." I may remark, in passing, that the author of the Greek version of this charming ode of Catullus, has neglected a most striking and anacreontic beauty in those verses "Ut flos in septis, &c." which is the repetition of the line," Multi fllum pueri, multæ optavère puellæ," with the slight alter ation of nulli and nullæ. Catullus himself, however, has been equally injudicious in his version of the famous ode of Sappho; having translated years uses, but omitted all notice of the accompanying charm, bu çavovas. Horace has caught the spirit of it more faithfully:- Dulce ridentem Lalagen amabo, * This fragment is preserved in the third book of Strabo. Of the Tartessian prince my own;] He here alludes to Arganthonius, who lived, according to Lucian, an hundred and fifty years; and reigned, according to Herodotus, eighty. See Barnes. 4 This is composed of two fragments; the seventieth and eighty-first in Barnes. They are both found in Eustathius. 5 Three fragments form this little ode, all of which are preserved in Athenæus. They are the eighty-second, seventyfifth, and eighty-third, in Barnes. 6 And every guest, to shade his head, Three little fragrant chaplets spread;] Longepierre, to give an idea of the luxurious estimation in which garlands were held by the ancients, relates an anecdote of a courtezan, who, in order to gratify three lovers, without leaving cause for jealousy with any of them, gave a kiss to one, let the other drink after her, and put a garland on the brow of the third; so that each was satisfied with his favour, and flattered himself with the preference. This circumstance resembles very much the subject of one of the tensons of Savari de Mauléon, a troubadour. Sce L'Histoire Littéraire des Troubadours. The recital is a curious picture of the puerile gallantries of chivalry. 1 Compiled by Barnes, from Athenæus, Hephæstion, and Arsenius. See Barnes, 80th. 2 This I have formed from the eighty-fourth and eightyfifth of Barnes's edition. The two fragments are found in Athenæus. 3 The nursling fawn, that in some shade ODE LXXV.7 SPIRIT of Love, whose locks unroll'd, 5 This is to be found in Hephaestion, and is the eighty-ninth of Barnes's edition. I have omitted, from among these scraps, a very considerable fragment imputed to our poet, Ξανθη δ' Ευρυπυλη μέλει, δε which is preserved in the twelfth book of Athenæus, and is the ninety-first in Barnes. If it was really Anacreon who wrote it, "nil fuit unquam sic impar sibi." It is in a style of Its antler'd mother leaves behind, &c.] In the original:- gross satire, and abounds with expressions that never could Ος εν ύλη κερόεσσης "Horned" here, undoubtedly, seems a strange epithet; Madame Dacier however observes, that Sophocles, Callimachus, &c. have all applied it in the very same manner, and she seems to agree in the conjecture of the scholiast upon Pindar, that perhaps horns are not always peculiar to the males. I think we may with more ease conclude it to be a license of the poet, "jussit habere puellam cornua." 4 This fragment is preserved by the scholiast upon Aristophanes, and is the eighty-seventh in Barnes. be gracefully translated. 6 A fragment preserved by Dion Chrysostom. Orat. ii. de Regno. See Barnes, 93. 7 This fragment, which is extant in Athenæus (Barnes, 101.), is supposed, on the authority of Chamæleon, to have been addressed to Sappho. We have also a stanza attributed to her, which some romancers have supposed to be her answer to Anacreon. "Mais par malheur (as Bayle says), Sappho vint au monde environ cent ou six vingt ans avant Anacreon.” -Nouvelles de la Rép. des Lett. tom. ii. de Novembre, 1684. The following is her fragment, the compliment of which is ! finely imagined; she supposes that the Muse has dictated the verses of Anacreon: Κείνον, ο χρυσοθρους Μουσ' ενίσπες Πρέσβυς αγαυός. Oh Muse! who sit'st on golden throne The Teian sage is taught by thee! 1 Formed of the 124th and 119th fragments in Barnes, both of which are to be found in Scaliger's Poetics. De Pauw thinks that those detached lines and couplets, which Scaliger has adduced as examples in his Poetics, are by no means authentic, but of his own fabrication. 2 This is generally inserted among the remains of Alcæus. Some, however, have attributed it to Anacreon. See our poet's twenty-second ode, and the notes. 3 See Barnes, 173d. This fragment, to which I have taken the liberty of adding a turn not to be found in the original, is cited by Lucian in his short essay on the Gallic Hercules. 4 Barnes, 125th. This is in Scaliger's Poetics. Gail has omitted it in his collection of fragments. 5 This fragment is extant in Arsenius and Hephæstion. See Barnes (69th), who has arranged the metre of it very skilfully. 6 Barnes, 72d. This fragment, which is found in Athenæus, contains an excellent lesson for the votaries of Jupiter Hospitalis. 7 Found in Hephæstion (see Barnes, 95th), and reminds one somewhat of the following: FROM dread Leucadia's frowning steep, lation of all that are extant on the subject, I endeavoured to enliven their uniformity by sometimes indulging in the liberties of paraphrase. MIX me, child, a cup divine, AMONG the Epigrams of the Anthologia, are found| Odi et amo; quare id faciam fortasse requiris ; I love thee and hate thee, but if I can tell his illness and death, which are mentioned as curious by Pliny Carm. 53. and others;-and there remain of his works but a few epigrams in the Anthologia, among which are found these inscriptions upon Anacreon. These remains have been sometimes imputed to another poeta of the same name, of whom Vossius gives us the following account:-" Antipater Thessalonicensis vixit tempore Augusti Cæsaris, ut qui saltantem viderit Pyladem, sicut constat ex quodam ejus epigrammate Aveλayas, lib. iv. tit. eis ogxtorgidas. At eum ac Bathyllum primos fuisse pantomimos ac sub Augusto claruisse, satis notum ex Dione, &c. &c." That I love thee and hate thee, but cannot tell why. This is also in Hephæstion, and perhaps is a fragment of some poem, in which Anacreon had commemorated the fate of Sappho. It is the 123d of Barnes. 2 Collected by Barnes, from Demetrius Phalareus and Eus. tathius, and subjoined in his edition to the epigrams attributed to our poet. And here is the last of those little scattered flowers, which I thought I might venture with any grace to transplant; happy if it could be said of the garland which they form, Tod' w' AvangeovTOS. 3 Antipater Sidonius, the author of this epigram, lived, according to Vossius, de Poetis Græcis, in the second year of the 169th Olympiad. He appears, from what Cicero and Quintilian have said of him, to have been a kind of improvvisatore. See Institut. Orat. lib. x. cap. 7. There is nothing more known respecting this poet, except some particulars about The reader, who thinks it worth observing, may find a strange oversight in Hoffman's quotation of this article from Vossius, Lexic. Univers. By the omission of a sentence he has made Vossius assert that the poet Antipater was one of the first pantomime dancers in Rome. Barnes, upon the epigram before us, mentions a version of it by Brodæus, which is not to be found in that commentator; but he more than once confounds Brodæus with another anno. tator on the Anthologia, Vincentius Obsopous, who has given a translation of the epigram. a Pleraque tamen Thessalonicensi tribuenda videntur. - Brunck, Lectiones et Emendat. |