For though the bowl's the grave of sadness, To Scythians leave these wild excesses, Come to Lethe's wavy shore, Tell them they shall mourn no more Thine their hearts, their altars thine Must they, Dian-must they pine? ODE LXIII.1 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! Listen to a people's prayer. Turn, to Lethe's river turn, There thy vanquish'd people mourn! ODE LXV.A LIKE some wanton filly sporting, Thou tripp'st away, with scornful ey ODE LXVLS To thee, the Queen of nymphs divi 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 neighborhood was the city called Magnesia, in favor 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 bat the Magnesians had been defeated. 4 This ode, which is addressed to some T exists in Heraclides, and has been imitated ve by Horace, as all the annotators have remark Dacier rejects the allegory, which runs so obvic the poem, and supposes it to have been addresse mare belonging to Polycrates. Pierius, in the fourth book of his Hieroglyphi ode, and informs us that the horse was the h emblem of pride. This ode is introduced in the Romance o Prodromus, and is that kind of epithalamium wh like a scolium at the nuptial banquet. Among the many works of the impassione which time and ignorant superstition have dep loss of her epithalamiums is not one of the leas plore. The following lines are cited as a relic of poems: Ολβιε γαμβρε. σοι μεν δη γαμος ὡς αρι Εκτετελεστ', εχεις δε παρθένον αν αρα See Scaliger, in his Poetics, on the Epithalar 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 unrivali'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!1 ODE LXVII.3 RICH in bliss, I proudly scorn ODE LXVIII.4 Now Neptune's month ur 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 Kurαριττος δε πεφυκοι σεν ενι κηπω. 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 podov, says, “Hortum quoque vocant in quo flos ille carpitur, et Græcis KηTOV SσTI το εφήβαιον γυναικών.” 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 illum pueri, multæ optavêre puellæ," with the slight alteration of nulli and nulle. Catullus himself, however, has been equally injudicious in his version of the famous ode of Sappho; having translated ycλwras ipepoev, but omitted all notice of the accompanying charm, ddv øwrovcas. Horace has caught the spirit of it more faithfully: Dulce ridentem Lalagen amabo, Dulce loquentem. 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, a 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. • Three fragments form this little ode, all of which are preserved in Athenæus. They are the eighty-second, seventyfifth, and eighty-third, in Barnes. 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 courtesan, 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 favor, and flattered himself with the preference. This circumstance resembles very much the subject of one of the tensons of Savari de Mauléon, a troubadour. See 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. The nursling fawn, that in some shade Its antler'd mother leaves behind, &c.] In the original:- "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." This fragment is preserved by the scholiast upon phanes, and is the eighty-seventh in Barnes. ODE LXXV? SPIRIT of Love, whose locks unroll'd, This is to be found in Hephæstion, and is ninth of Barnes's edition. I have omitted, from among these scraps, a ve able fragment imputed to our poet, Ξανθη δ' Ευρι &c., which is preserved in the twelfth book of Atl is the ninety-first in Barnes. If it was really An wrote it, "nil fuit unquam sic impar sibi." It is of gross satire, and abounds with expressions could be gracefully translated. • A fragment preserved by Dion Chrysostom. Regno. See Barnes, 93. 7 This fragment, which is extant in Athenæ 101,) is supposed, on the authority of Charle been addressed to Sappho. We have also a stanz to her, which some romancers have supposed to be to Anacreon. "Mais par malheur, (as Bayle sa vint au monde environ cent ou six vingt ans avant Aristo--Nouvelles de la Rép. des Lett. tom. ii. de Nove The following is her fragment, the compliment Oh Muse who sitt'st on golden throne, The Teian sage is taught by thee! He lately learn'd and sung for me. 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. This is generally inserted among the remains of Alcaus Some, however, have attributed it to Anacreon. See our poet's twenty-second ode, and the notes. * 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. This fragment is extant in Arsenius and Hephæstion. See Barnes, (69th,) who has arranged the metre of it very skilfully. • Barnes, 72d. This fragment, which is found in Athenæus, contains an excellent lesson for the votaries of Jupiter Hospitalis. Found in Hephaestion, (see Barnes, 95th,) and reminds one somewhat of the following: FROM dread Leucadia's frowning steep, I'll plunge into the whitening deep: And there lie cold, to death resign'd, Since Love intoxicates my mind!1 subject, I endeavored to enliven their u sometimes indulging in the liberties of pa Mix me, child, a cup divine, AMONG the Epigrams of the Anthologia, are found some panegyrics on Anacreon, which I had translated, and originally intended as a sort of Coronis to this work. But I found, upon consideration, that they wanted variety; and that a frequent recurrence, in them, of the same thought, would render a collection of such poems uninteresting. I shall take the liberty, however, of subjoining a few, selected from the number, that I may not appear to have totally neglected those ancient tributes to the fame of Anacreon. The four epigrams which I give are imputed to Antipater Sidonius. They are rendered, perhaps, with too much freedom; but designing originally a translation of all that are extant on the The cause of my love and my hate, may I die. I can feel it, alas! I can feel it too well, That I love thee and hate thee, but cannot tell why. 1 This is also in Hephaestion, and perhaps is a fragment of some poem in which Anacreon had opmmemorated the fate of Sappho. It is the 123d of Barnes. * Collected by Barnes, from Demetrius Phalareus and Eustathius, 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, Το δ' ως' Ανακρέοντος. $ 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 ΑΝΤΙΠΑΤΡΟΥ ΣΙΔΩΝΙΟΥ, ΕΙΣ ΑΝΑΚ ΘΑΛΛΟΙ τετρακορύμβος, Ανακρέον, αρχ ἁβρα τε λειμώνων πορφυρέων πεταλα πηγαι αργινόεντος αναθλίβοιντο γαλακτ ευώδες δ' από γης ήδυ χέοιτο μεθυ, οφρα κε τοι σποδίη τε και ύστεα τερψιν αρ ει δε τις φθιμένοις χρίμπτεται ευφροσυν ω το φιλον στερξας, φιλε, βαρβιτον, ω συ παντα διάπλωσας και συν ερωτι βιον. AROUND the tomb, oh, bard divine! Where soft thy hallow'd brow repose Long may the deathless ivy twine, And summer spread her waste of ros And there shall many a fount distil, And many a rill refresh the flowers: But wine shall be each purple rill, And every fount be milky showers. Thus, shade of him, whom Nature tau To tune his lyre and soul to pleasure Who gave to love his tenderest though Who gave to love his fondest measu Thus, after death, if shades can feel, Thou may'st, from odors round thee A pulse of past enjoyment steal, And live again in blissful dreaming! about his illness and death, which are menti by Pliny and others;-and there remain of few epigrams in the Anthologia, among w these inscriptions upon Anacreon. These re sometimes imputed to another poets of the whom Vossius gives us the following accour Thessalonicensis vixit tempore Augusti Cæs tantem viderit Pyladem, sicut constat ex qu grammate Ανθολογίας, lib. iv. tit. εις ορχεστρ Bathyllum primos fuisse pantomimos ac s ruisse, satis notum ex Dione, &c. &c." The reader, who thinks it worth observ strange oversight in Hoffman's quotation of Vossius, Lexic. Univers. By the omission o has made Vossius assert that the poet Antip the first pantomime dancers in Rome. Barnes, upon the epigram before us, ment it by Brodæus, which is not to be found in tor; but he more than once confounds Broda annotator on the Anthologia, Vincentius Obs given a translation of the epigram. a Pleraque tamen Thessalonicensi tribuenda viden tiones et Emendat. |