INTRODUCTION. FOR that broad department of poetry coordinate with the epic and the drama which we call lyric, the Greeks had no comprehensive name. To the writers of the Alexandrian age,1 who introduced and gave currency to the expression, lyric meant primarily what the name imports-poetry sung to the accompaniment of the lyre. By an inexact but natural extension of the of the word, lyric came to include all verse sung to music without prejudice to the supremacy of the lyre, range 1λupikós appears for the first time in the Ars Gramm. (p. 6. 1. 10 Uhlig) of Dionysios Thrax, the pupil of Aristarchos, who speaks of λupikǹ wolnois. Plut. de liberis educ. 13 в has λupikǹ TÉxvn; the later introduction to the pseudo-Anakreontic collection (2 Bв, 2), λuρiкǹ μovoa. Cicero Orat. 55. 183 uses the Greek Xupikoi (cf. Plut. Numa 4), and his contemporary Didymos Chalkenteros wrote a treatise περὶ λυρικῶν ποιητῶν that was a storehouse of information to later students of literature. A tractate of no importance in Boissonade's Anecdota has the title repì λupikŵv (cf. Schmidt Didymi Frag. 395). Clem. Alex. (about 200 A.D.) quotes from Bacch. as a Xupikós (Strom. 5. 731). The title of the work by Euphorion (born 276 B.C.)—τeρì μeλoтov-is in agreement with the usage of the classical period and of later inscriptions. Plato sometimes (Phaidr. 243 A, Gorg. 449 D) uses μovσiký, μovσLKÓS where the modern equivalent is 'lyric.' Horace, Ovid, Quintilian and other Roman writers use lyricus to denote the melic poet. Aupikós appears under the name Anakreon in C. I. Sic. et Ital. 1132; and in a late inscr. from Egypt (C. I. G. 4716 add. d 44). |