The Isles of Greece.
MIDAS THE GLORIOUS.
“The Glorious!” So Pindar names the flute player Midas the Sicilian,
who had twice obtained the laurel wreath by his performance on the
flutes at the Pythic games. It is in his twelfth ode that Pindar
celebrates the victory of Midas over all Greece upon that instrument
which Athene herself had invented, and he inscribes the ode thus:—
TO MIDAS OF AGRAGAS, WINNER OF
THE PRIZE FOR FLUTE PLAYING.
How strangely this sounds to us, and how little able are we to estimate
at its true significance the esteem in which flute players were held by
all the people of Greece.
Many records there are, telling unmistakably of the passion the Greeks
had for this music; of the wealth lavished on the famous players; of
the temples in which their names were cut in marble with every token
of pride and exultation; and of statues raised to their honour. But
greater tribute than any that was given, or than remains, is this,—that
Pindar thought the flute player worthy of one of his odes, and
immortalized him. His voice was the voice of national feeling, and, as
I have said, it sounds strangely to us. We are so civilized, have gone
so utterly beyond
“Earth’s early days,
When simple pleasures pleased,”
that we should not recognize the voice of Saturn; and if
“The dim echoes of old Triton’s horn”
reached our brass belaboured ears, how many think you would listen with
reverence?
Yet surely for a little while we should find some good in letting our
imagination dwell upon the scenes and surroundings that were real in
Greek life; some good also in cherishing the belief that the dead
beliefs of old humanity were once living beliefs.
Pindar, second only because Homer was first, was revered by the whole
Greek race, and considered their greatest lyric poet. From the pillars
of Hercules to the verge of India, wherever there were Greeks, there
Pindar was amongst them. How high an honour, therefore, it was that
fell to Midas the flute player.
STROPHE.
I pray thee, Queen of Splendour, city of peerless grace,
Persephone’s home; O thou that on thy tower-clad hill
Dwellest, fair Queen, beside the streams of pastoral Agragas!
Propitious greet, with favour of Heaven, and man’s good-will,
The crown, at Pytho’s festival, that glorious Midas won;
And welcome him victorious in that fair Art,—of old,
That Pallas found, ...
Then come antistrophe, and again strophe and antistrophe, but
without the intervening epode, by which it is known that this was a
processional ode. The poet weaves into his strain numerous allusions
to myths which were in common acceptance, and fully understood by his
hearers, and acclaimed forthwith. Needless, however, to be given here,
although scholars still find interest in them. Pindar goes on to state
how Maiden Athene fashioned the flute with its varied strain, and
bestowed it on man, and concludes with this
ANTISTROPHE.
Through slender brass it flows, through many a reedy quill,
That grew by the Graces town, for choral dance renowned,
In nymph Cephisis’ hallowed haunts; true witness of the dancers’ skill.
Ne’er, save by toiling, mortal aught of bliss hath found;
But all that lacks in our brief day can destiny’s power supply,
What fate ordains none may avoid; needs must a day befall
Of chances unforeseen that spite of all
Man’s scheming, part will grant, and part deny!
So ends he, with the poet’s right to moralize, by which we may infer
that our glorious Midas had to toil at the pipes, and practice some
hours daily as the price of attaining his great renown.
Pindar’s lines have been variously translated; one reading is thus
given:—
Through vocal vent its music flows,
Of brass with slender reed combined,
That near the festive city grows,
Where with light steps the graces move,
Marking the measured dance they wind
In cool Cephisis’ flowery grove.
That reads pleasantly; but what of this more stately flow in prose?
When it passes through the slender brass and through the
reeds, which grew near the city Charites, the city with
beautiful places for the dance.
How charmingly that lingers on the tongue, “the city with beautiful
places for the dance.” When will it be so said of our great city? Is it
a picture past praying for;—past hoping for?
Pindar, as we know, came of a family of flute players. He was born
at Thebes, or at an adjacent village, about 522 B.C. His family, we
are told, excelled in flute playing, the national art of Bœotia; and
he himself, in one of his odes, boasts of a descent from Spartan
ancestors, and on his mother’s side from an Arcadian nymph, Metope,
mother of Thebe, the mythical foundress of the Theban nation. Through
the country of Bœotia, the river Cephisus ran into the Copaic Lake,
and both river and lake were celebrated for the reed beds, from which
the Theban flute makers obtained their materials. So that our poet
was an authority upon flutes, and a critic in the art of playing the
instruments. A legend records that when a boy, a swarm of bees settled
on his lips whilst he was asleep and filled his mouth with honey. He
was also believed to be a familiar guest with the priests of Delphi,
where an iron chair, on which he sat to conduct his hymns, was shown
as one of the curiosities of the temple; whilst at Athens a statue was
erected to him, and the Rhodians engraved one of his odes in golden
letters on their temple to Minerva, and the site of his house beside
the fountain of Dirce was respected for centuries afterwards.
Flute playing was believed to be of Phrygian origin, and that it was
brought from Asia Minor into Greece may perhaps be indicated by the
fact that Pindar had in his house at Thebes (Grecian Thebes) a small
temple to the Mother of the Gods and Pan, the Phrygian deities to
whom the first hymns to the flute were supposed to have been sung.
Dion notices that at Thebes all but the Cadmea was in ruins, and that
a small votive statue of Hermes, set up for some victory in flute
playing, still stood up out of the weeds among the ruins in the ancient
Agora. The Pythic contests were held in the plains of Crissa, hard by
which stood the temple and oracle of Apollo, the especial god of the
Dorian race, and the patron of music and the arts. It was in the years
494 and 490 B.C. that Midas won his laurel crowns, and he had also
won once at the Panathenea. Curiously, we find that the first notable
flute player at the Pythian games, Sacadas, was victor on the first
(586 B.C.) and two subsequent occasions after the performance on that
instrument had been introduced as a regular part of the solemnity.
Pindar’s ode to Midas was sung at Agrigentum when the victor entered
the city in triumphal procession, and the whole town poured out to meet
him. The victor and his friends visited in proud succession the altars
of his religion, and the titular deities of the city were thanked for
their favour, and again his exploits were chanted in notes of solemn
joy.
We have one or two flute players who possibly have some idea of their
surpassing merits; but they would be aghast if they found themselves
recipients of such public honours as these in a modern city,—we are so
civilized. Yet stay, did we not receive intelligence how that Sarasate
received some such jubilee welcome on returning to his native place in
Spain, not very long ago! What an old-fashioned corner of the earth
that must be, where the old atmosphere remains unsmoked, and where
the peasants remain and get richly browned in the sun, and dance with
goatskins over their shoulders, and to them there are days of out-door
life still going on, such as are by our race clean forgotten.
To parallel Pindar and Midas, we should have to imagine Tennyson
writing an ode to Sarasate the passionate, the great artist, the dark
browed fiddler on the platform of St. James’s Hall, London! Ah! no,
it will not do; the parallel would be too shaky. We can run excursion
trains, and cram Albert Halls, and our people can shout themselves
hoarse in Fleet Street over the three o’clock winner, and the names of
Patti and Sims Reeves, and Melba, and Jean de Reszke may exhaust our
refined fervour, and the grandeur of heads fitted with unseen crowns
may raise a flickering illusion of glory, and the dazzling crush of
ladies plated with diamonds, may exalt the senses with the pride of
wealth,—but all this, the utmost of the get-up of modern effects, will
pale beside that uprising of citizens, that grand acclaim in open air
over the plain of Crissa to “glorious Midas!”
One day I do remember,—one day fit to be named with the days of
old. Stay a moment, and think what _was_ in those days. Imagine the
concourse of people from all ends of the world; a small world it was
then, and yet how great in men, aye, and in coming men. There, under
the shadow of the great towering crag of Delphi—the centre or “navel”
of the earth, as the Greek poets termed it—with the world-renowned
temple glowing in lily whiteness in the blue air, there the great
games were held,—duty, religion, race, patriotism, drew all men of
Greek birth or parentage to witness or to share in them. Week after
week, from every state and colony, from isle and creek and dented bay,
the flower of Hellas gathered in national pride to swell the host of
spectators at these Panegyreis, called by them “universal gatherings.”
Hither came statesmen and philosophers, merchants and traders, poets
and priests, and people of every degree; streaming up through gorge and
defile, up through groves of pine and laurel and cypress, up to the
broad, bright plain,
Around the spot where trod Apollo’s foot.
In that great day when Midas stood forth to meet the gaze of the vast
assembly, there were, as visitors, some of those who have written
their names indelibly on the pages of Time, some of those who have
made history. Who were they? Pindar, we know, was there,—what other?
At that day, Pythagoras walked upon the earth, and Æschylus was then
in the prime of manhood; Sophocles, a babe but one year old, nestled
in a mother’s arms; and Phidias, a child of seven summers, not yet
dreaming of his great fame, tripped over the grass, gathering garlands
of hyacinth, saffron, and asphodel; and fancy may picture him there
listening to the flutes of Midas, hearing the shout of victory, and
seeing the bestowal of the laurel crown. Imagine him—_one of the young
immortals_—lifted up in the exciting moment, his little heart throbbing
in sympathy with the pulse of the grand enthusiasm that ran through
that sunsmitten multitude!
Aye, those were glorious days! One such day I do remember, one worthy
to rank with those days of Grecian festivals; the day when our vast
city for a whole day welled out from every street and alley its
thousands, tens of thousands, mile upon mile, from morn to sunset,
to welcome Garibaldi. Then we knew what it was to feel the thrill of
genuine fervour. Then, for one day at least, we rejoiced in being of
human race, and believed in the wide kinship of patriotism. Men and
women counted themselves happy if they could touch but the folds of his
grey cloak. They who had looked into the depths of his calm grey eyes
felt themselves dwellers under a loftier sky and went away, comforted;
and to gaze upon his serene face was to receive into the heart a new
sense of the service of life. He was one of those
Men whom we
Build our love round, like an arch of triumph,
As they pass us on their way to glory
And to immortality.
Since glorious Midas won, 2397 years have come and gone, and Pindar’s
verse each year has kept the laurels green. Perhaps in after years
he personified the ideal or master flute player to the popular
imagination, for the statue here represented dates from the time
of Hadrian—that is six hundred years later—and is believed by the
archæologists to be a copy or adaptation of an earlier work, when a
pseudo-archaic style was in fashion. The original they say may, like
other earlier representations of deities, have been clad in actual
drapery. According to Pliny, Midas was the original inventor of the
_plagiaulos_ or side blown flute; but it was so customary to assign to
their heroes the origin of things considered benefits to the people,
that we may class this as a mythical reminiscence.
The figure is draped in a _chiton_, with sleeves which are fastened
down with studs; a circlet rests upon the head, and the hair falls in
long tresses over the shoulders; the beard is long, and of the peculiar
shape commented upon by ancient writers. The marble is beautifully
worked, the details very graceful, and the expression given to the
face remarkable. The statue was found in the villa of Antoninus Pius,
near Civita Lavinia. The right arm, left hand, the mouthpiece, and
part of the middle of the pipe are restorations; but the artist, being
in the dark as to the actual kind of flute originally represented,
made up a shape of mouthpiece from the fragments, for which his inner
consciousness alone is responsible.
[Illustration: _Midas the Flute Player_
_Fig. 24._]
The flutes represented are from a photograph of the instruments in the
British Museum, and there can be little doubt that this kind of pipe
was the one given to the player by the sculptor. The reed when placed
in the little tube would stand at half a right angle to the pipe, as
the bore indicates that degree of slant.
[Illustration: _The Ringed Flutes_
_Fig. 25._]
In taking leave of Greece and her flutes, I am pleased to be able to
quote from recent intelligence one incident which shows the permanence
of national character.
“Milo, the Island of the Cyclades, in which the famous ‘Venus of
Milo’ was discovered, has again been the scene of the unearthing of a
splendid example of ancient Hellenic art. The new ‘find’ is the marble
statue of a boxer, somewhat above life size, which is almost as perfect
after its burial under the dust of centuries as it was when it came
fresh from the hands of its sculptor.
“The shipping of the statue to Athens was made the occasion for a
characteristic Greek popular festival. The whole population, headed
by the civil magistrates and a band of musicians, and followed by a
regiment of soldiers, accompanied the newly found treasure in jubilant
procession to the ship, which had been sent from Athens for its
transport to the capital.”
The old ways remain! The Greeks are a young people yet; they show the
same spontaneity of enthusiasm, the same joy in the face of nature, the
same impulses under the influence of art. Theirs is still a small world
girdled by the sea, and they are not so far as we from the days when
Conquerors thanked the gods
With laurel chaplets crowned.
[Illustration]