ter world of liberal
accomplishment to educate their children; for the Dorians thought it
beneath the dignity of a Dorian citizen to practice these things
themselves.

His poetic remains indicate a social freedom at this period hardly in
keeping with the Spartan rigor alleged to have been practiced without
break from the ancient time of Lycurgus; perhaps this communal
asceticism was really a later growth, when the camp of militant
slave-holders saw their fibre weakening under the art and luxury they
had introduced. He boasts of his epicurean appetite; with evident
truthfulness, as a considerable number of his extant fragments are
descriptions of dishes. He would have echoed Sydney Smith's--

"Fate cannot harm me--I have dined to-day."

In a poem descriptive of spring, he laments that the season affords but
a scanty stock of his favorite viands.

The Alexandrian grammarians put Alcman at the head of the lyric canon;
perhaps partly because they thought him the most ancient, but he was
certainly much esteemed in classic times. _Aelian_ says his songs were
sung at the first performance of the gymnopaedia at Sparta in 665 B.C.,
and often afterward. Much of his poetry was erotic; but he wrote also
hymns to the gods, and ethical and philosophic pieces. His 'Parthenia,'
which form a distinct division of his writings, were songs sung at
public festivals by, and in honor of, the performing chorus of virgins.
The subjects were either religious or erotic. His proverbial wisdom, and
the forms of verse which he often chose, are reputed to have been like
Pindar's. He said of himself that he sang like the birds,--that is, was
self-taught.

He wrote in the broad Spartan dialect with a mixture of the Aeolic, and
in various metres. One form of hexameter which he invented was called
Alcmanic after him. His poems were comprehended in six books. The scanty
fragments which have survived are included in Bergk's 'Poetae Lyrici
Graeci' (1878). The longest was found in 1855 by M. Mariette, in a tomb
near the second pyramid. It is a papyrus fragment of three pages,
containing a part of his hymn to the Dioscuri, much mutilated and
difficult to decipher.

His descriptive passages are believed to have been his best. The best
known and most admired of his fragments is his beautiful description of
night, which has been often imitated and paraphrased.

NIGHT

Over the drowsy earth still night prevails;
Calm sleep the