[Alkman (Attic, Alkmaeon) flourished in Sparta about 650 B. C. His mother was a Lydian slave in Sardes, and he came into the possession of Agesides, who gave him his freedom.  His beautiful songs soon procured him the rights of a Lacedaemonian citizen.  He was appointed to the head-directorship in the entire department of music in Lacedaemon and succeeded in naturalizing the soft Lydian music.  His language was the Doric-Laconian.  After a life devoted to song, the pleasures of the table and of love, he is said to have died of a fearful disease.  From the frequent choruses of virgins (Parthenien) said to have been originally introduced by him, his frequent songs in praise of women, and the friendly relations in which he stood to the Spartan women (more especially to the fair Megalostrata), he gained the name of the woman’s poet.]

“Do you think then,” replied Phanes, “that I have no longing for my beloved Athens, for the scenes of our youthful games, for the busy life of the market?  Truly, the bread of exile is not less distasteful to my palate than to yours, but, in the society afforded by this house, it loses some of its bitterness, and when the dear melodies of Hellas, so perfectly sung, fall on my ear, my native land rises before me as in a vision, I see its pine and olive groves, its cold, emerald green rivers, its blue sea, the shimmer of its towns, its snowy mountain-tops and marble temples, and a half-sweet, half-bitter tear steals down my cheek as the music ceases, and I awake to remember that I am in Egypt, in this monotonous, hot, eccentric country, which, the gods be praised, I am soon about to quit.  But, Aristomachus, would you then avoid the few Oases in the desert, because you must afterwards return to its sands and drought?  Would you fly from one happy hour, because days of sadness await you later?  But stop, here we are!  Show a cheerful countenance, my friend, for it becomes us not to enter the temple of the Charites with sad hearts.”—­[The goddesses of grace and beauty, better known by their Roman name of “Graces.”]

As Phanes uttered these words, they landed at the garden wall, washed by the Nile.  The Athenian bounded lightly from the boat, the Spartan following with a heavier, firmer tread.  Aristomachus had a wooden leg, but his step was so firm, even when compared with that of the light-footed Phanes, that it might have been thought to be his own limb.

The garden of Rhodopis was as full of sound, and scent and blossom as a night in fairy-land.  It was one labyrinth of acanthus shrubs, yellow mimosa, the snowy gelder-rose, jasmine and lilac, red roses and laburnums, overshadowed by tall palm-trees, acacias and balsam trees.  Large bats hovered softly on their delicate wings over the whole, and sounds of mirth and song echoed from the river.

This garden had been laid out by an Egyptian, and the builders of the Pyramids had already been celebrated for ages for their skill in horticulture.  They well understood how to mark out neat flower-beds, plant groups of trees and shrubs in regular order, water the whole by aqueducts and fountains, arrange arbors and summerhouses, and even inclose the walks with artistically clipped hedges, and breed goldfish in stone basins.