COURTESANS. poems, the one in elegiac, and the other in lyric verse, and they both entitled their poems "Lyde." I omitted also to mention the female flute-player Nanno, the mistress of Mimnermus, and Leontium, the mistress of Hermesianax of Colophon. For he inscribed with her name, as she was his mistress, three books of elegiac poetry, in the third of which he gives a catalogue of things relating to Love; speaking in the following manner:—
71.
You know, too, how Œager's much-loved son,
Skilfully playing on the Thracian harp,
Brought back from hell his dear Agriope,
And sail'd across th' inhospitable land
Where Charon drags down in his common boat
The souls of all the dead; and far resounds
The marshy stream slow creeping through the reeds
That line the death-like banks. But Orpheus dared
With fearless soul to pass that lonely wave,
Striking his harp with well-accustom'd hand.
And with his lay he moved the pitiless gods,
And various monsters of unfeeling hell.
He raised a placid smile beneath the brows
Of grim Cocytus; he subdued the glance
So pitiless of the fierce, implacable dog,
Who sharpen'd in the flames his fearful bark,
Whose eye did glare with fire, and whose heads
With triple brows struck fear on all who saw.
He sang, and moved these mighty sovereigns;
So that Agriope once again did breathe
The breath of life. Nor did the son of Mene,
Friend of the Graces, the sweet-voiced Musæus,
Leave his Antiope without due honour,
Who, amid the virgins sought by many suitors
In holiest Eleusis' sacred soil,
Sang the loud joyful song of secret oracles,
Priestess of Rharian[1] Ceres, warning men.
And her renown to Pluto's realms extends.
Nor did these bards alone feel Cupid's sway;
The ancient bard, leaving Bœotia's halls,
Hesiod, the keeper of all kinds of learning,
Came to fair Ascra's Heliconian village,
Where long he sought Eoia's wayward love;
.—Od. in Cerer. 450.
</poem> ]
- ↑ Rharia was a name of Ceres, from the Rharian plain near Eleusis,
where corn was first sown by Triptolemus, the son of Rharus. It is
mentioned by Homer:—
<poem>
[Greek: Es d' ara Rharion ixe, pheresbion outhar apourês
to prin, atar tote g' outi pheresbion alla hekêlon
heistêkei panaphyllon, ekeuthe d' ara kri leukon
mêdesi Dêmêtros kallisphyrou
