is to Athens that the sages come to teach and to be taught."
[Footnote: "The Greek Poets." First Series, p. 19.]

* * * * *

I. LYRIC POETRY.

SIMON'IDES AND PINDAR.

The rapid progress made in the cultivation of lyric poetry
preceding the Persian wars found its culmination, during those
wars, in Simonides of Ceos, the most brilliant period of whose
life was spent at Athens; and in Pindar, a native of Thebes,
who is considered the greatest lyric poet of all ages. The life
of Simonides was a long one, reaching from 556 to 469 B.C.
"Coming forward at a time," says MAHAFFY, "when the tyrants had
made poetry a matter of culture, and dissociated it from politics,
we find him a professional artist, free from all party struggles,
alike welcome at the courts of tyrants and among the citizens of
free states; he was respected throughout all the Greek world,
and knew well how to suit himself, socially and artistically,
to his patrons. The great national struggle with Persia gave
him the opportunity of becoming the spokesman of the nation in
celebrating the glories of the victors and the heroism of the
fallen patriots; and this exceptional opportunity made him quite
the foremost poet of his day, and decidedly better known and
more admired than Pindar, who has so completely eclipsed him
in the attention of posterity." [Footnote: "Classical Greek
Literature," vol. i., p. 207.]