eek lyric devoted to what we should designate
love, with perhaps something like an exception in Alcman. In fact, while
moderns rarely make a tragedy or comedy, a poem or novel, without some
love-concern which is the pivot of the whole, all the great poems and
dramas of the ancients revolve on entirely different passions. Love,
such as we speak of, was of rather rare occurrence. Women were in such a
low position, that it was a condescension to notice them,--there was no
chivalrous feeling in regard to them; they were made to feel the
dominion of their absolute lords and masters. Besides this, the greater
number of them were confined to their private chambers, and seldom saw
any man who was not nearly related. Those who were on free terms of
intercourse with men, were for the most part strangers, whose morals
were low, and who could not be expected to win the respectful esteem of
true lovers. The men enjoyed the society of these--their tumbling,
dancing, singing, and lively chat; but the distance was too great to
permit that deep devotion which characterises modern love. Moreover,
when a Greek speaks of love, we have to remember that he fell in love as
often with a male companion as with a woman--he admired the beauty of a
fair youth, and he felt in his presence very much as a modern lover
feels in the presence of his sweetheart. We have, therefore, to examine
expressions of love cautiously. Anacreon says, for instance, that love
clave him with an axe, like a smith; but it seems far more likely that
the reference is to the affection excited by some charming youth.[1] We
have a specimen remaining of the nonchalant style in which he addressed
a woman, in the ode commencing "O Thracian mare!"--Schneidewin, Poet.
Lyr. Anac. fr. 47.

The great poet of Love was not Anacreon, but Sappho, whose heart and
mind were both of the finest. Her life is involved in obscurity, but it
is probable that she was a strong advocate of woman's rights in her own
land; and as she found men falling in love with other men, so she took
special pains to win the affections of the young AEolian ladies, to train
them in all the accomplishments suited to woman's nature, and to
initiate them into the art of poetry,--that art without which, she says,
a woman's memory would be for ever forgotten, and she would go to the
house of Hades, to dwell with the shadowy dead, uncared for and unknown.
We have two poems of hers which have come down to us tolerably compl