MIMNERMUS, a Greek elegiac poet, born at Smyrna, lived about 600 b.c. His life fell in the troubled time when the old Greek city of Smyrna was struggling to maintain itself against the rising power of the Lydian kings. One of the extant fragments of his poems refers to the struggle and contrasts the present effeminacy of his countrymen with the bravery of those who had once defeated the Lydian king Gyges. The poet mentions in another fragment that he belonged to the stock of the Colophonians who had seized the Aeolic Smyrna. But his most important poems were a set of elegies addressed to a flute-player named Nanno; they were collected in two books called after her name. Hermesianax mentions his love for Nanno, and implies that it was unfortunate. Only a few fragments of these poems have been preserved; and their soft melancholy tone and delicate language give some idea of the poet’s character. His ideal is the sweet soft luxurious Ionian life, and he would enjoy it free from sorrow and die as soon as he could no longer enjoy it. Yet there is apparent some of the old stronger strain of character which in early time raised the Ionian cities to greatness, pride in the glories of his race and scorn for those that are unworthy of their fathers’ renown. His experience of life was evidently sad; he felt that his country was gradually yielding to the enemy it had once defeated, and he knew that his own hopes were disappointed. The sun himself has endless toils from rising to setting and again from setting to rising. The life of man is as transitory as the leaves of spring, he says, referring to a passage in the popular epic poetry of Ionia {Iliad, vi. 146). He wishes to die in his sixtieth year, a wish to which Solon replied bidding him reconsider and rather long to die ...