SELECTIONS FROM THE GREEK OF

A

ALCEUS.

LCEUS was a native of Mitylene, on the island of Lesbos. He was born

between 611 and 620 B. C. His family was influential and powerful, and he himself early joined Pittacus and others to relieve his native city from the tyranny of Melanchrus, whom they deposed and slew. Alcæus was the inventor of the metre which bears his name, and his muse embraced every variety of subject; but, unfortunately, only a few fragments of his poetry remain. He was a friend of Sappho, the Greek poetess.

THE CONSTITUTION OF A STATE.

What constitutes a state?

Of linen roll'd;

mounds,

Thick wall or moated gate;

Not cities fair with spires and turrets crown'd. No! Men-high-minded men

With powers as far above dull brutes endued,

In forest, brake or den,

The routed losers of the day

Have cast away.

Euboean falchions too are seen,
With rich-embroidered belts between
Of dazzling sheen;
And gaudy surcoats piled around,

Men who their duties know,

May there be found.

maintain,

Frevent the long-aimed blow, And crush the tyrant, while they rend the

chain.

POVERTY.

The worst of ills, and hardest to endure-Past hope, past cure

Is Penury, who with her sister-mate,
Disorder, soon brings down the loftiest state
And makes it desolate.

This truth the sage of Sparta told,
Aristodemus old:

THE STORM.

Now here, now there, the wild waves sweep, Whilst we, betwixt them o'er the deep,

In shatter'd tempest-beaten bark, With laboring ropes, are onward driven, The billows dashing o'er our dark Upheaved deck; in tatters riven Our sails, whose yawning rents between The raging sea and sky are seen.

Translation of ABRAHAM MILLS, A. M.

UST on the summit of the towering and precipitous rock of Scylla stood the castle of the prince of Tolfi; it commanded a magnificent view of Sicily in all its grandeur. Here, during the wars of the Middle Ages, when the fertile plains of Italy were devastated by hostile factions, those prisoners were confined for whose ransom a costly price was demanded. Here, too, in a dungeon excavated deep in the solid rock, the miserable victim was immured whom revenge pursued-the dark, fierce and unpitying revenge of an Italian heart.

Vivenzio, the noble and the generous, the fearless in battle and the pride of Naples in her sunny hours of peace-the young, the brave, the proud Vivenzio-fell beneath this subtile and remorseless spirit. He was the prisoner of Tolfi, and he languished in that rock-encircled dungeon, which stood alone, and whose portals never opened twice upon a living captive. It had the semblance of a vast cage, for the roof and floor and sides were of iron, solidly wrought and spaciously constructed. High above there ran a range of seven grated windows, guarded with massy bars of the same metal, which admitted light and air. Save these and the tall folding-doors beneath them, which occupied the centre, no chink or chasm or projection broke the smooth black surface of the walls. An iron bedstead

littered with straw stood in one corner, and beside it a vessel with water and a coarse dish filled with coarser food.

Even the intrepid soul of Vivenzio shrank with dismay as he entered this abode and heard the ponderous doors triple-locked by the silent ruffians who conducted him to it. Their silence seemed prophetic of his fate, of the living grave that had been prepared for him. His menaces and his entreaties, his indignant appeals for justice and his impatient questioning of their intentions, were alike vain. They listened, but spoke not. Fit ministers of a crime that should have no tongue! How dismal was the sound of their retiring steps! And as their faint echoes died along the winding passages a fearful presage grew within him that nevermore the face or voice or tread of man would greet his senses. He had seen human beings for the last time, and he looked his last upon the bright sky and upon the smiling earth and upon a beautiful world he loved and whose minion he had been. Here he was to end his life-a life he had just begun to revel in. And by what means? By secret poison or by murderous assault? No, for then it had been needless to bring him thither. Famine, perhaps a thousand deaths in one. It was terrible to think of it, but it was yet more terrible to picture long, long years of captivity in a solitude so appalling, a loneliness so dreary, that thought, for want of fellowship, would lose itself in madness or stagnate into idiocy. He could not hope to

escape unless he had the power with his bare hands of rending asunder the solid iron walls of his prison; he could not hope for liberty from the relenting mercies of his enemy. His instant death under any form of refined cruelty was not the object of Tolfi, for he might have inflicted it, and he had not. It was too evident, therefore, he was reserved for some premeditated scheme of subtile vengeance; and what vengeance could transcend in fiendish malice either the slow death of famine or the still slower one of solitary incarceration till the last lingering spark of life expired, or till reason fled and nothing should remain to perish but the brute functions of the body?

It was evening when Vivenzio entered his dungeon, and the approaching shades of night wrapped it in total darkness as he paced up and down revolving in his mind these horrible forebodings. No tolling bell from the castle or from any neighboring church or convent struck upon his ear to tell how the hours passed. Frequently he would stop and listen for some sound that might betoken the vicinity of man, but the solitude of the desert, the silence of the tomb, are not so still and deep as the oppressive desolation by which he was encompassed. His heart sunk within him, and he threw himself dejectedly upon his couch of straw. Here sleep gradually obliterated the consciousness of misery, and bland dreams wafted his delighted spirit to scenes which were once glowing realities for him, in whose ravishing illusions he soon lost the remembrance that he was Tolfi's prisoner.

sultry noon, for he could measure time by no other note of its progress than light and darkness. He had been so happy in his sleep amid friends who loved him, and the sweeter endearments of those who loved him. as friends could not, that in the first moments of waking his startled mind seemed to admit the knowledge of his situation as if it had burst upon it for the first time, fresh in all its appalling horrors. He gazed round with an air of doubt and amazeinent, and took up a handful of straw upon which he lay as though he would ask himself what it meant. But Memory, too faithful to her office, soon unveiled the melancholy past, while Reason, shuddering at the task, flashed before his eyes the tremendous future. The contrast overpowered him. He remained for some time lamenting like a truth the bright visions that had vanished and recoiling from the present, which clung to him as a poisoned garment.

When he grew more calm, he surveyed hist gloomy dungeon. Alas! the stronger light of day only served to confirm what the gloomy indistinctness of the preceding evening had partially disclosed-the utter impossibility of escape.

As, however, his eyes wandered round and round and from place to place, he noticed two circumstances which excited his surprise and curiosity. The The one, he thought, might be fancy, but the other was positive. His pitcher of water and the dish which contained his food had been removed from his side while he slept, and now stood near the door. Were he even inclined to doubt this by supposing he had mistaken the spot where he saw them overnight, he could not; for the pitcher now in his dungeon was of neither the same form nor color