Listed 4 sub titles with search on: Ancient literary sources for wider area of: "ERESSOS-ANTISSA Municipality LESVOS" .
ANTISSA (Ancient city) LESVOS
Lyric Poetry. While among the Greeks the elegiac and iambic poetry, which
forms the transition from epic to lyric composition, was practised by the Ionians,
lyric poetry proper, or, as it was more commonly called, melic poetry (melos,
"a song"), the song accompanied by music, was cultivated by the Aeolians
and Dorians. This is due to the talent for music peculiar to these races. That
playing on stringed instruments and singing were cultivated even in mythical times
in Aeolia, in the island of Lesbos, is shown by the legend that the head and lyre
of Orpheus, who had been torn to pieces by Thracian women, were washed ashore
on that island, and that the head was buried in the Lesbian town of Antissa. Antissa
was the native place of Terpander, who gave artistic form to the nomos, or hymn
to Apollo, by elaborating the laws of its composition. Settling at Sparta in B.C.
676, he laid the foundation of the Dorian music. While he had closely followed
Homeric poetry in the texts which he wrote for his musical compositions, there
afterwards arose a greater variety in the kinds of songs, corresponding to the
greater variety of musical forms, springing from the foundation laid by him. In
the Aeolian lyric the pathetic prevails, as might be expected from the passionate
nature of the people; the feelings of love and hatred, joy and sorrow are their
principal themes. As to the metrical form we find short lines with a soft, melodious
rhythm, which make up a small number of short strophes. They are written in the
Aeolic dialect; we may suppose that they were solos sung to the accompaniment
of stringed instruments. In Lesbos the Aeolian lyric was brought to its highest
perfection by Alcaeus of Mitylene (about 600), and by his contemporary Sappho,
also a Lesbian, and teacher of the poetess Erinna. The joyous poems of Anacreon
of Teos (born about 550), whose subjects are love and wine, were also in the Aeolian
style, but in the Ionic dialect. An echo of the Aeolian lyric are the scolia...
Scolion (skolion, sc. melos). A short lyrical poem, usually consisting
of a single strophe, and intended to be sung after dinner over the wine. The ancients
ascribed its invention to Terpander, and it received its first development among
the Lesbians, and was written by such masters of song as Alcaeus, Sappho, Praxilla,
Timocreon, Simonides, and Pindar. The last mentioned, however, gave it a more
artistic form, with several strophes, in accordance with the rules of Dorian lyric
verse. This class of poetry found a congenial home in the brilliant and lively
city of Athens, where, to the very end of the Peloponnesian War, it was the regular
custom at banquets, after all had joined in the paean, to pass round a lyre with
a twig of myrtle, and to request all guests who had the requisite skill to sing
such a song on the spur of the moment. To judge from the specimens that have been
preserved, their contents were extremely varied: invocations of the gods, gnomic
sayings, frequently with allusions to common proverbs and fables, and the praises
of the blessings and pleasures of life. The most famous scolion was that by a
certain Callistratus on Harmodius and Aristogiton, who had killed the tyrant Hipparchus,
son of Pisistratus. It consists of four strophes, but the last three are only
variations of the first.
ERESSOS (Ancient city) LESVOS
Then, after Pyrrha, one comes to Eressus; it is situated on a hill and extends down to the sea.
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