ALCMAN

Book IV
LOVE-SONGS
130

Avhenacus Devers af “νον [om love}: Avehyvtas the
writer on musical theory maintains accerding to Chamaeleon
that the originator of love-sones was Aleman, and that he was
the first to give out to the schools? song that was licentious
in matters concerning women, and other poetry of that kind,
and that hence he says in one of his songs:

Lo, at the Cyprian’s hest, sweet Love distils upon
me and melts my heart.

And he says two that he fell wildly in love with Mevalostrata,
who was both a poetess and had the power of attracting
lovers by her conversation. He speaks of her thus:

to whem hath been shown the gift of the
sweet Muses at the hands of one that is right
happy among maidens, to wit the flaxen-haired
Megalostrata.

131
Hepheestion Favelouk of Mefre (the eretic}: And it will
le a eatalectic hexameter—namely that called Aleman’s —
composed entirely of cretics, as:

It is not Aphrodite: but wild Love, like a child,
plays me touch-me-not-with-your-little-reed, tread-
ing sofcly on tiptoe."

1 i... set choruses to learn in the song-svbouls : ef. Theophr.
Cher, SOO YS ἐμαότιον ἐκδοῦναι πλῦναι, ‘send his claak to be
cleaned” ? ref. to seme game like our ‘touch’ or tg”
lee means he is not really in love, it is * only a tlutter’

110