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These words of Teutiaplus failing to move Alcidas, some of the Ionian exiles and the Lesbians with the expedition began to urge him, since this seemed too dangerous, to seize one of the Ionian cities or the Aeolic town of Cyme, to use as a base for effecting the revolt of Ionia.

The AEolic cities covered the northern part of this coast, together with the islands of Lesbos and Tenedos; the Ionians occupied the centre, with the islands of Chios and Samos; and the Dorians the southern portion, with the islands of Rhodes and Cos.

Besides these there were men of Aeolic race, the Methymnians, subjects who provided ships, not tribute, and the Tenedians and Aenians who paid tribute. These Aeolians fought against their Aeolian founders, the Boeotians in the Syracusan army, because they were obliged, while the Plataeans, the only native Boeotians opposed to Boeotians, did so upon a just quarrel.

It was chiefly cultivated by the lyric poets. The Doric, a variety of the Aeolic, characterized by its strength, was spoken in Peloponnesus, and in the Doric colonies of Asia Minor, Lower Italy, and Sicily. The Ionic, the most soft and liquid of all the dialects, belonged to the Ionian colonies of Asia Minor and the islands of the Archipelago. It was the language of Homer, Hesiod, and Herodotus.

While the Peloponnesians were in the Hellespont, the Antandrians, a people of Aeolic extraction, conveyed by land across Mount Ida some heavy infantry from Abydos, and introduced them into the town; having been ill-treated by Arsaces, the Persian lieutenant of Tissaphernes.

The only ancient parallel is in the period of the Aeolic Greek civilisation which produced Sappho. The writer, a young, and apparently an unmarried woman, addresses him with a frankness of passion that has no idea of concealment. She does not even take the pains to seal her letters to him, though they contain what most women would hesitate to put on paper.

These two schools differed essentially in the subjects, as in the form and style of their poems. The Doric was intended to be executed by choruses', and to be sung to choral dances; while the Aeolic was recited by a single person, who accompanied his recitation with a stringed instrument, generally the lyre.

We hear of books on Alcaeus and on Homer, in which latter he is said to have made the startling remark that the poems 'should be pronounced in the Aeolic dialect'. Whatever this remark exactly meant, and we cannot tell without the context, it seems an extraordinary anticipation of modern philological discoveries.

But the period thus looked back on with a purely admiring regret, as perfect enough to suit a superior mind, is always a long way off; the desirable contemporaries are hardly nearer than Leonardo da Vinci, most likely they are the fellow-citizens of Pericles, or, best of all, of the Aeolic lyrists whose sparse remains suggest a comfortable contrast with our redundance.

"Rather shall you be my queen, dear Chloris, receiving all that I most prize." "But you are too domineering: and I am afraid to be alone with you and your big staff! Ah! not without knowing what she talked about did my mother use to quote her AEolic saying, The king is cruel and takes joy in bloodshed!" "Presently you will not be afraid of me, nor will you be afraid of my staff. Custom is all.