Here famed Megistias is laid, whom once the Mede
slew at the crossing of Spercheius' flood:
this prophet clearly saw the Fates' attacking wings
but did not stoop to leave the Spartan kings.(Epigr. gr. 6)
Possibly Simonidean is a couplet from a statue group commemorating the Athenian tyrannicides:
Harmodius and Aristogeiton slew
Hipparchus, and brought Athens light anew.(Epigr. gr. 1)
But the puzzles that confront scholars in studying archaic literature are epitomized by this couplet's
doubtful attribution, and by the fact that an inscribed version from the Athenian agora shows that there, at
least, another couplet followed this one (previously known from quotation).
A great poet's attention to a written genre heralds a new literary epoch in which prose and poetry were
composed to be read, not heard. Religious songs were still composed, although no great names succeed
Pindar and Bacchylides. But by the beginning of the fifth century, secular, informal monody was in
decline, and by its close the songs sung at symposia to aulos or lyre were not new compositions, but the
heritage of archaic poetry already becoming classics.