LEONIDES AND HIS EPIGRAMS

When Leonides gave up astrology and took to poetry, he became, he tells us, ‘everybody's darling’. The world has not lately regarded him with much affection or indeed troubled itself to cultivate his acquaintance. It is customary to spell his name incorrectly, and the few who have thought it their duty to express an opinion about him generally dismiss with curt contempt a performance which is often regarded as unworthy even of accurate description; or the critic may positively detest him, and call him bad names.

But Leonides had some justification for his complacency. The emperor Nero's mother, Agrippina, and his wife, Poppaea, receive epigrams as birthdaypresents from him; so does Caesar himself, whether Nero or Vespasian. The poet who was patronised by the Imperial family might fairly claim to be ‘well-known to Italians in high society’, εὐγενέταις γνώριμος Ἰταλίδαις. And when he adds that everybody loved him, the exaggeration is comprehensible: the court-poet, in favour with Nero, would receive compliments enough from friends or flatterers in Roman society. The ‘Nile-born’ astrologer has come a long way.

The reason for the contrast between ancient and modern opinion is plain enough. The epigram was one of the most popular literary forms of Leonides' time, as indeed it had been for several centuries past and was to remain for centuries to come; and Leonides amused the literary world by making a novel and surprising type of epigram – one which exhibited all the characteristics generally admired, and also concealed within itself a popular parlour-game.