THE POEMS OF BACCHYLIDES.* THIS is certainly the greatest classical

discovery of the literary kind that has been made since the golden age of the revival of learning, that happy time when scholars found lost classics as the lucky diggers that light upon a new gold placer find nuggets. In some respects Niebuhr's famous find of the palimpsest of Gains in the library of Verona was more important, but the jurisprudence of Gains cannot be called literature. Only to read complete poems of one of the great lyrists of Greece, hitherto only known to us by insignificant Iragments—the largest in Bergk's collection consists of twelve lines—ia a pleasure which marks an epoch in a scholar's life. To have the honour of giving this long-lost treasure to the world is a thing on which Dr. Kenyon is to be heartily congratulated. That other scholars will add much for which he has not had time or opportunity is certain. But to have had the laborious delight of bringing out the editio princeps is a distinction of which he will always have the right to be proud.

Where the papyrus by which this treasure has been pre- served was found is not, and probably never will be, known. As Professor Joles Nicole, the learned editor of the recently discovered fragment of Menander, remarks : "Les Arabes on lea fellahs, vendeurs d'antiquites mentent presque toujours sur la provenance de lears marchandiaes." Happily the genuineness of the manuscript is beyond all doubt. Dr. Kenyon, after a careful examination of the writing, attributes it to the middle of the first century B.C. The writing, which is in crucial charaeters, shows a transition from the Ptolemaic to the Roman type. It has been corrected (1) by a contempo- rary hand, (2) by a scribe who may have lived a century and a half later. It gives some accents—in four lines taken at random with twelve accented words there are three—harsh breathings, which are square shaped, and a punctuation more than usually complete. The dialect is of the usual conventional kind peculiar to the Greek lyric poets, mixed Doric and lEolio, with less of the latter than is found in Pindar, and without the occasional Bceotianisms which that poet uses. The style is remarkably simple. It would be difficult to find easier Greek. The contrast with Pindar in this respect is most marked. It is no small satisfaction to know tbat an addition of distinct value has been made to our educational apparatus. Our schoolboys, who may have heard with dismay of the dis- covery of a second Pindar, will have the pleasure of reading some beautiful verse with but little difficulty. The language is much the same as that with which the reader of Pindar is familiar, ornate, with a large proportion of picturesque com-

• The Poems of BatehylideA. Promo. Papyrus in the !Lit Munenm. Idited by Frederic G. Ken3ou, Litt.D. London: The Br.t eh Museum. Ms.] pound epithets. Most of the a rat sipni.cipos, which are a hundred and two in number—not to reckon some which late authors may probably have borrowed from our poet—are of this character. (efieemerprawael, "with the purple veil" (if eparlavo; may be represented by "veil"), licEp4yuto;, "with limbs of desire," are specimens. As examples of

the word-pictures which these splendours of diction help to make may be given the following about Automedes of Phlius, who had been victorious in the pentathlon by winning the three events of the quoit, the javelin-throw- ing, and the wrestling. Bacchylides sings : "He shone conspicuous as the bright-rayed moon that divides the month shines eminent above the splendours of the stars."

Hercules, again, in the regions of the dead, "saw by the streams of Cocytus the souls of hapless mortals thick as the leaves which the wind whirls among the gleaming sheep.

dotted crags of Ida." This, as Dr. Kenyon remarks, may

claim to be the first in time of a famous series of similes, of which Milton's— "Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks In Vallombrosa," may be called the latest.

The papyrus contains 1,070 lines either perfect or admitting of probable restoration. Of 198 more, fragments remaln ;

112 have perished entirely, but can be proved by the metre to have existed. The bulk of matter, reckoning the perfect or

quasi-perfect lines only, is a little more than the first eight Olympiacs of Pindar. (The lines, it may be remarked, are short, of about the same length as in the Tauchnitz edition of 1810, which has been employed for the purpose of this comparison; recent editors have arranged the verse in longer lines.) If we add the verses wholly or partially lost, we find the quantity fall short of the Olympiace by about a seventh. Though some of Bacchylides' work is not represented here, it is clear that he was not a prolific writer. We may, perhaps, call him the Gray of the Greek lyrists.

The poems are twenty in number, fourteen being epinikian, and so of the type of which Pindar gives so many specimens, and six what may be called generally hymns," a class which has hitherto been represented only by fragments (the Homeric or quasi-Homeric hymns are of a wholly different character). Of these six the second is peculiarly interesting. It is part of the Theseus legend, and is known to us by a passage in Pausanias (when he is describing the paintings on the walla of the Theseum) and by another in Hyginus. The hero, defending Peril:Iced, one of the seven maidens sent as an offering to the Minotaur, from King Minos, claims to be of divine parentage. If Minos claims Zeus as his sire, ha may claim Poseidon. Minos questions the Athenian's boasts, and puts him to the trial by throwing his ring into the sea and challenging him to fetch it back. His own descent is authen-

ticated by lightning sent in immediate answer to his appeal. Undismayed (the portent adds immensely to the courage of the act), the hero leaps into the sea, and is conducted by the dolphin to the hall of Nereus. There the sight of the Nereids impresses him with a dread which the matzos instant is tyranni had not produced. "There he trembled to see the glorious dau gh ters of great Nereus; for from their shining limbs there gleamed a splendour as of fire, and round their tresses circled the chaplets of woven gold, and they gladdened their heart in the dance with supple feet." In the end he brings back a robe and a chaplet, and though it is not mentioned, presumably the ring. Minos is astounded ; the hero's com- panions express their joy ; and with a brief and formal invo-

cation to Apollo the poem concludes. The third of this class is even more interesting, for it is a dramatic lyric, the two speakers being Medea and /Egens, the former asking her husband what is making him anxious, the latter replying with a description that a messenger has brought him of Theseus and his wonderful exploits. He ends with this de- scription of the hero, as the messenger had given it to the King :—

" He [the messenger] saith that two men only are with him, and that slung over his stalwart shoulders he hath a sword [here is an hiatus which may be supplied with a mention of the hero a club] and in his hands two polished javelins, and on his head with fiery locks a well wrought Spartan helm, and about his breast a purple cloak and a rough Thessalian mantle ; and that from his eyes there flasheth a bright fire as of a Lemnian forge ; in his first youth he is, but he knows the delights of war and battle and the conflict of the ringing bronze."

Of the Epinicia the most important is certainly the fifth. It is addressed to the same patron as Pindar's first Olympia; hero of Syracuse, and probably celebrates the same victory, that of hero's horse 'Pherepicus,' which won the single- horse race at Olympia in 476 B.C., as it had won two prizes at Delphi (the Pythian Games) in 482 and 478. This seems a very long career for a racehorse, but Dr. Kenyon learnedly compares the achievements of The Lamb,' which won the Grand National Steeplechase at nine years old, having won it, at three years, before. He might have quoted a more apposite instance in the team of four mares belonging to Cimon (the father of Miltiades) which won three prizes at Olympia. If they ran for the first time when four- year-olds they must have been aged twelve years when they won the last prize. This conclusively shows the lasting qualities of the Greek horse. Bacchylides, to return to the ode, begins with an address to hero, to whom his friend from "the isle divine" (Ceos, the poet's birthplace,—he was sister's son to Simonides) "sends or brings (eri,t.exal) the song which he has woven with the help of the deep-girded Graces." (It is an instance of the new lights which these poems will throw on the use of words that AccOK6u,o;, defined by the scholiast as an "epithet of barbarian women," is here applied to the ideal figures of the Graces). Bacchylides then com- pares himself to an eagle, probably in reply to deprecatory allusions by a rival, who may or may not have been Pinder. Then follows a reference, less brief than usual, to the occasion which he is celebrating, the victory of Pherenicus (a bay or chestnut, Exy0apt!), "the horse of whirlwind speed which Morn with the golden arms had seen victorious by broad flowing Alpheus and in Python the holy." "Never had he been sullied by the dust of horses before him in the race." After this we have a passage known to us by a quotation in what may be called the "commonplace book" of Stobmus, "Happy the man who has blessings from the gods, but no one is happy altogether." Then we hear of how the un- conquered son of Zeus, going down to fetch from Hades the dog of the jagged teeth (eeoxepacaare), met the shade of Meleager, and hears from him the piteous tale of his being done to death by his own mother. Hercules replies with the sentiment, already known to LIB from Stobmus, that the best thing for a man is that he should never see the light of the sun. "But wailing serves no end," he goes on to remark, and asks the practical question whether Meleager had an on- wedded sister like to him in form. "I would willingly make her my fair wife." Meleager in answer tells him of Deianeira. Here the story ends, the application probably being that neither Meleager, cut off in his prime, nor Hercules, who was to suffer through his wife, were altogether happy. A further address to hero follows, the most notable thing in it being a compliment to Hesiod as a Bcaotian, possibly intended to please the Bceotian Pinder.

There is nothing in Bacchylides, delightful as he is, to make us question for a moment the pre-eminence of Pinder. He never rises, or, we may venture to say, could rise, to the majestic dignity with which, in the second Pythian, the great Theban rebukes and warns the powerful hero himself.