Quam potes hinc tacitus tranfi, ne forte crabronem Hipponactis enim quæ natos fæva latravit Leonidas on Hipponax. Glide gently by this tomb, for quiet's fake, ΘΕΟΚΡΙΤΟΥ εις τον αυτον. Ο μουσοποιος ενθαδ' Ιππώναξ κειται : Grotii Verfio. Vates fepultus hic quiefcit Hipponax; See here the bard Hipponax lie; Hence from his grave, if wicked, fly! And, if thou wish it, fleep fecure. Hipponax was a native of Ephefus, and he is celebrated by Athenæus as the inventor of parody: but his title to that invention is in some meafure controverted by the Abbé Sallier, in his Differtation on the Origin and Character of Parody, in the Memoirs of the French Academy. Bayle has an article on Hipponax, in which he has collected many curious examples of perfons who have fuffered from the dangerous feverity of literary vengeance. The enmity between the fculptor of Chios and the Ephefian fatirift will probably recall to the recollection of an English reader the fimilar enmity between those bitter and powerful antagonists, Hogarth and Churchill. From the flight fragments that remain of Hipponax, I am inclined to believe that his Satires, celebrated as they have been, were inferior in genius, and perhaps in acrimony, to the vindictive performance of the English poet, which contains fo many beautiful paffages, (beautiful both in fentiment and expreffion,) that although good-nature must wish the quarrel which produced it had never exifted, the poem is ftill admirable as a masterpiece of poetical indignation. NOTE XV. Ver. 326. Whofe very filence cried aloud," Be free!" The paffion of the Greeks for liberty was at once proclaimed and nourished by the various honours which they paid to the memory of Harmodius and Ariftogiton. These celebrated young friends had perished in their perilous exploit of delivering Athens from the tyranny of Hipparchus: but the grateful Athenians revered them as the reftorers of freedom; and according to the animated expreffions of Demofthenes in their praife, the veneration which they received from public gratitude was equal to that of heroes and of gods. The four ftatuaries, Antenor, Critias, Antigonus, and Praxiteles, had diftinguished themselves, at different periods, in executing the ftatues of these favourite public characters. Pliny relates that this work of Praxiteles was carried off by Xerxes, in the plunder of Athens, and restored to that city by Alexander the Great, after his conquest of Perfia. Arrian appears fo much pleafed with this munificence of his hero to Athens, that he has mentioned the reftitution of these interesting statues in two different paffages of his Hiftory; and exultingly says, in his account of them, they are now in the Ceramicus *!" Paufanias afferts that the ftatues were reftored to Athens by Antiochus; and Valerius Maximus afcribes the honour of their reftitution to Seleucus. Thefe contradictory accounts may be reconciled, if we recollect that many ftatues were executed of thefe idolized martyrs to freedom; and as it is probable that feveral of these were carried out of their country by the Perfian plunderers, the honour of their reftitution might of course be truly afcribed to more than one victorious friend to the arts and monuments of Greece. Sculpture and Poetry feem to have vied with each other in their endeavours to immortalize these young tyrannicides. The Athenian fong of Harmodius is proverbially famous; and its potent enthusiasm is thus forcibly defcribed by our learned and eloquent Lowth, in his admirable Prælectiones: "Tam vehemens tamque animofum poefeos genus.... permultum "habuiffe momenti neceffe eft in hominum mentibus, cum ad omnem "honeftatem erigendis tum a fcelere abfterrendis; maxime vero in fo"vendo et fuftentando illo vigore animi atque generofa awo, quæ "libertatis et alumna eft eadem et cuftos. Num verendum erat ne quis tyrannidem Pifistratidarum Athenis inftaurare auderet, ubi in " omnibus conviviis, et æque ab infima plebe in compitis, quotidie "cantitaretur Exoxov illud Calliftrati nefcio cujus, fed ingeniofi certe poetæ et valde boni civis........ Quod fi poft Idus illas Martias e ty 66 * Αφίκετο δε ες Σεσα Αλεξανδρος εκ Βαβυλωνος εν ημέραις είκοσι και παρελθών εις την πόλιν τα τε χρήματα παρέλαβεν, οντα αργύρια τάλαντα ες πεντακισμυρία, και την αλλην κατασκευην την βασιλικήν πολλα δε και αλλά κατελήφθη αυτά, οσα Ξέρξης απο της Ελλάδος αγων ήλθε, τα τε άλλα, και Αρμοδίας και Αριστογείτονος χαλκαι εικονες και ταύτας Αθηναίος πέμπει οπίσω Αληξανδρος, και νυν κεινται Αθήνησιν εν Κεραμεικῳ αι εικονες. - ARRIAN, de Expedit. Alexandri. lib. iii. -- "rannoctonis quifpiam tale aliquod carmen plebi tradidiffet, inque "fuburram, et fori circulos, et in ora vulgi intuliffet, actum profecto "fuiffet de partibus deque denominatione Cæfarum; plus mehercule "valuiffet unum Apμodie μeλos quam Ciceronis Philippicæ omnes. LoWTH, Prælectiones, edit. oct. p. 15. To return to the brazen ftatues.-They gave rife to a very spirited but dangerous repartee of, Antiphon; who being afked by the tyrant Dionyfius what kind of brafs was esteemed the beft, replied, "That "which forms the ftatues of Harmodius and Ariftogiton." NOTE XVI. Ver. 398. The future funshine of a fairer hour. Among the infinite number of interesting perfonal anecdotes which the hiftory of ancient fculpture displays, there are hardly any more pleafing to the fancy, or more calculated to exhibit the Grecian character in a favourable point of view, than the anecdotes preserved by Paufanias, concerning the Athenian women and their children, who having found a friendly refuge in the walls of Træzene, when the Perfian invafion reduced them to the neceffity of flying from their native city, had their ftatues erected in a portico of the Træzenian Forum. I prefume that these ftatues were a prefent from the people of Athens. They were fuch memorials as every patriot of Greece must have contemplated with peculiar delight: they were graceful monuments of Grecian courage, benevolence, and gratitude, |