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 GREEK LITERATURE
 
 COLUMBIA 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
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 NEW YORK: 
 
 LEMCKE & BUECHNER 
 
 SO-3'2 West 2Tth Street 
 
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 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 A SEEIES OF LECTURES 
 
 DELIVERED AT 
 
 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
 
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 THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 1912 
 
 All rif/hts reserved
 
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 COPTKIGIIT, 1912, 
 
 By the COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1912. 
 
 • • • « • 
 
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 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 
 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 The lectures printed in this volume were given at the sug- 
 gestion of President Butler, under the auspices of the Depart- 
 ment of Classical Philology, in the spring of 1911. It was 
 the purpose of the Department, as set forth in the first 
 announcement of the lectures, that they should have special 
 reference to the universality and permanent power of Greek 
 Literature. This idea, therefore, has been made prominent 
 throughout, though more emphasis is laid upon it in some lec- 
 tures than in others, according as the subject matter or the 
 bent of tlie lecturer made such emphasis natural. 
 
 In a series of lectures written by different people, who in 
 many cases had not been able to consult one another, some 
 lack of unity is to be expected. This is not, we hope, suffi- 
 ciently marked to prevent the volume from being of use and 
 interest both to students and to the general reader. 
 
 The Department of Classical Philology would express its 
 sincere thanks to the scholars from other universities who 
 
 have so cordially lent their aid. 
 
 J. R. WHEELER, 
 E. D. PERRY, 
 GONZALEZ LODGE, 
 Committee of the Department.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PACE 
 
 The Study of Greek Literatcre ...... 1 
 
 Paul Shorey, The University of Chicago. 
 
 ^ Epic Poetry . . . . . . . . ' , . .34 
 
 Herbert Weir Smyth, Harvard University. 
 
 Lyric Poetry 58 
 
 Edvpard Delavan Perry, Cokimbia University. 
 
 ^ Tragedy 02 
 
 J. R. Wheeler, Columbia University. 
 
 Comedy . ..... ...... 124 
 
 Edward Capps, Princeton University. 
 
 History 152 
 
 Bernadotte Perrin, Yale University. 
 
 V Oratory 178 
 
 Charles Forster Smith, The University of Wisconsin. 
 
 Philosophy 200 
 
 Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, Columbia University. 
 
 Hellenistic Literature ........ 229 
 
 Henry W. Prescott, The University of Chicago. 
 
 Greek Influence on Roman Literature 267 
 
 Gonzalez Lodge, Columbia University. 
 
 VII
 
 THE STUDY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Professor IMahaffy for many years made it his mission to 
 broaden the narrow Hellenism of the universities by empha- 
 sizing the significance of authors and subjects beyond the 
 classical pale. Perhaps it is time to remind ourselves that 
 the illumination of these satellite studies is after all a re- 
 flected glory from the central sun. 
 
 The Iliad and Odyssey once stood in splendid isolation at 
 the entrance to Greek literature, like the twin lions at the 
 gateway of the Mycenaean citadel. But now we approach 
 them through a long vista of Minoan 1, Minoan 2, Minoan 3, 
 and with attention already fagged by the higher Homeric 
 criticism and minds befuddled with speculative anthropology 
 and craniological statistics. Bestowing a perfunctory glance 
 upon the stately beauty of the Propylaea, we press within to 
 ransack the tombs for shreds and fragments with which to 
 patch our philological restorations. Science of mythology, 
 science of religion, science of language, Homeric criticism, 
 palaeography, epigraphy, papyrology — endless are the 
 subsidiary disciplines which we have elaborated for the inter- 
 pretation of Greek literature. But the thought, the imagi- 
 nation, the diction, of the authors we take for granted — a 
 little weary, perhaps, of hearing Aristides called " the just," 
 Aeschylus "the sublime," Sophocles "the perfect," Plato 
 "the divine," Demosthenes "the eloquent." And if we 
 extend the purview beyond Demosthenes and Aristotle, the 
 range of the studies accessory to classical Greek literature is 
 still more appalling. The fragments of the Alexandrians are 
 collected and reconstructed, the secondary Greek writers 
 
 1
 
 2 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 of the Roman empire are minutely analyzed and traced back 
 to their sources in lost Alexandrian models ; the Greek 
 administration of Egypt is scrutinized down to the last tax 
 receipt ; the Byzantine empire is rehabilitated, and the 
 endless waste of Byzantine literature surveyed and regis- 
 tered in special Zeitschrifien, and the long history of the 
 KoivT^ is followed till it reemerges from the Turkish kata- 
 bothron as the KaOapemvaa of to-day. What Athenian tour- 
 ist who possesses a smattering of Greek is not thrilled by 
 the thought that the words which he overhears in an Athenian 
 street may be the words which three thousand years ago made 
 music on the lips of Odysseus and Nausicaa? Who that 
 turns the pages of the Palatine Anthology is not moved to 
 read side by side with epigrams that elate from Marathon 
 and Salamis verses that were almost contemporaneous with 
 Cressy and Poitiers? What student of any part of this, 
 the longest and noblest unbroken literary tradition in the 
 world, is not sustained and inspired by the consciousness of 
 its relation to the glorious whole ? And yet there would be 
 some loss in this enlargement of our horizon, if it led us to 
 forget that all that differentiates Hellenic Philology from 
 Sinology, Aegyptology, Assyriology, or the archaeology of the 
 American Indian, is the supreme beauty and significance of a 
 few poets and orators and thinkers who can be counted on the 
 fingers of the two hands and who, if we except Homer, lived 
 within two or three centuries. It is the originality, the stim- 
 ulating power, the indefectible charm of classic Greek liter- 
 ature, that vitalizes all these erudite accretions of philology 
 and archaeology and post-classical literature and history that 
 have associated themselves with it in our class rooms. 
 
 The world of scholarship is large enough to maintain every 
 type of specialist. But the student of humane letters must 
 be on his guard against the specialist's distorted perspective. 
 If Greek literature is to exercise its power of redemption upon 
 us and retain any significance for our hurried and distracted
 
 THE STUDY 3 
 
 culture, we must acquiesce in the miracle that it begins with 
 the muse of Homer, born full-panoplied of the brain and poetic 
 genius of early Hellas. It is clear that the Homeric Pan- 
 theon, the legends, the tale of Troy, the similes, the epithets, 
 the perfected harmonies of the hexameter, imply a long pre- 
 historic or embryonic evolution. "Ages of heroes fought and 
 fell that Homer in the end might tell," and generations of 
 singers must have left the vibration of their souls in the 
 timbre of the Homeric lyre. But as Wordsworth warns us : — 
 
 No tongue is able to rehearse 
 One measure, Orpheus, of thy verse. 
 Musaeus, stationed with his lyre 
 Supreme among the Olympian quire, 
 Is for the dwellers upon earth 
 Mute as a lark ere morning's birth. 
 
 Prehomeric bards and prehomeric ethnology are irretriev- 
 ably buried in the dark backward and abysm of time, and 
 excessive preoccupation with the pseudo-sciences that seek 
 to reconstruct them on insufficient evidence will merely 
 distort our image of Homer in a false focus. Homer was an 
 end as well as a beginning, but for us he is only a beginning. 
 Starting from Homer, we may understand, if not explain, the 
 supremacy of Greek literature. Homer himself we cannot 
 explain ; but if we abandon ourselves to him we shall under- 
 stand him better than those who try to explain him. 
 
 Macaulay's explanation was that Homer is the childhood 
 of humanity, and that childhood is more poetic than maturity 
 because it really Ijelieves in Little Red Riding Hood and the 
 Wolf, while we can only strive to make believe. But Homer 
 is no more a child than he is a savage. Homeric poetry 
 expresses not the childhood of humanity, but that heroic and 
 poetic adolescence of the Greek race, when the brave new 
 world was full of strange people and curious things, when 
 infinite horizons lured to heroic adventures on mysterious
 
 4 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 seas, when it was worth while to die for a beautiful face or to 
 avenge a friend, when passionate feeling and poetic sensibility 
 still predominated over the lucidity, the power of abstraction 
 and generalization and analysis, and the rhetorical fluency 
 that were to prove the distinguishing and abiding endowment 
 of the race. 
 
 For though the Greeks produced in Homer, Sappho, Pin- 
 dar, and Aeschylus four of the world's supreme poets, the 
 romantic imagination, the poetic intoxication of a Marlowe, 
 Shakespeare, Shelley, and Keats is not, on a survey of their 
 whole history, their dominant quality. 
 
 Without unduly pressing the comparison, we may conceive 
 the Greek genius, as Coleridge portrays himself in the Ode 
 to Dejection, divided between the two impulses of poetic 
 creation and reflective analysis, and gradually allowing the 
 first to be swallowed up in the second. When we pass from 
 Pindar to Simonides, from Aeschylus to Sophocles, we have 
 already crossed the line which divides the highest imagina- 
 tive poetry from the poetry of finished and perfect art. In 
 passing from Sophocles to Euripides, we enter the world of 
 self-conscious reflection and sophisticated rhetoric, a rhetoric 
 illumined with many an exquisite gleam of romance, but still 
 the dialectical rhetoric on which the Greek nation has lived 
 for two thousand years. The muse of poetry had fled before 
 her sister philosophy, never to return. Reflection and analy- 
 sis are the source of many of the greatest achievements of the 
 Greek mind, but the Greek genius might well have apostro- 
 phized this all-absorbing divinity as Coleridge did: — 
 
 But oh ! each visitation 
 
 Suspends what nature gave me at my birth, 
 
 My shaping spirit of Imagination. 
 
 Till that which suits a part infects the whole, 
 And now is almost grown the habit of my soul. 
 
 I 

 
 THE STUDY 5 
 
 I am far from deploring this inevitable evolution, as is done 
 by Nietzsche and Landor, who fiercely denounce Socrates 
 and Plato and all their works, and maintain that the only true 
 Greece is that younger Hellas to which Pindar and Herodotus 
 wistfully looked back : — 
 
 Before the sophist brood had overlaid 
 
 The last spark of man's consciousness with words. 
 
 If Socrates and Plato and Aristotle could come only through 
 the sacrifice of the gift of creative poetic imagination, the 
 price was well paid. The Latin and German races might 
 have produced an indigenous poetry of their own. But 
 though, as Mill says, philosophy is abundantly amenable to 
 general causes, it is probable that but for Socrates, Plato, and 
 Aristotle and what they represent, our European world would 
 never have developed either logic, philosophy, or science. 
 As it is, we have the philosophy and the poetry too, for the 
 poetry produced by the Greek race before abstraction dimmed 
 imagination and analysis confused the instinctive sense of 
 beauty is not a few Coleridgean fragments. It is the one 
 great body of poetry in the world that equally satisfies the 
 imagination and the reason, in which form and content are 
 perfectly balanced and harmonized ; the one poetry that 
 realizes Plotinus's definition of beauty — the irradiation of 
 the particular by the universal ; in short, the one poetr}^ that 
 is classic in the true sense of that much misapprehended word. 
 Yet the first quality that attracts a modern reader in Homer 
 is a certain fiery speed and divine intensity, differing from the 
 bitter concentrated passion of Dante, l)ut equally grateful 
 to the soul's innate longing for emotional expansion. This 
 is the energeia celebrated by Aristotle. This is the Homeric 
 fire so eloquently praised by Pope of all persons, and more 
 recently by Professor Mackail. This is the spirit Elysian 
 that did fill the bosom of Chapman with such a flood of soul 
 as swept Keats's little sonnet bark out upon the ocean of
 
 6 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 poesie. This is old Homer's sting that "stirs the sluggish 
 pulse like wine." It is the supralunar intoxication of song 
 which the Neoplatonists, in the endeavor to defend Homer 
 against Plato's censure, distinguish from the infralunar in- 
 ebriety of sense. "Since I read that book," said an old 
 French critic, "men are fifteen feet high and I cannot sleep." 
 Unless Homer affects you in that way, you have not read him. 
 He can hardly affect you so in a lecturer's quotations. You 
 must reread for yourselves the great tonic passages. But 
 as a faint indication of my meaning I will quote two illustra- 
 tions of the delight of battle which the Tennysonian Ulysses 
 had drunk with his peers far on the ringing plains of windy 
 Troy. The first in Chapman's translation {II. 13. 72): — 
 
 This Telamonius thus received, so too my heart, my hands 
 Burn with desire to toss my lance, each foot beneath me stands 
 Bare on bright fire to use his speed, my heart is raised so high, 
 That to encounter Hector's self I long insatiately. 
 
 The other, Ajax's defiance to Hector, no translation can repro- 
 duce. A close version runs : — 
 
 But for thee thyself I declare that the hour draws nigh when in thy 
 flight, thou shall lift thy hands in prayer to Zeus and all the immortal 
 Gods, that swifter than hawks may be the f ull-maned steeds that shall 
 sweep thee back to Ilion in a whirlwind of dust o'er the plain : — 
 
 o"ot 8 avT<S (ftyjixl crx^^ov 1/XyU.evat, oTTTrore <f>evy<DV 
 aprjcrrj Ait iraTpl Koi aAAot? aduvaTOtcTLV 
 6d(T<xova<; iprjKOiV tfxtvai KaXXcTpLxa<; Xttttov^, 
 
 O? CTC TToAlvS' oldOVai KOVLOVT€<i TTeStOtO. 
 
 In all this we are, as Matthew Arnold would say, praising 
 Homer too much like barbarians and assimilating him to the 
 eighteenth-century conception of Ossianic "poetic rage." 
 For the Greek poet in the very torrent, tempest, and whirl- 
 wind of passion preserves the temperance, the a-uxfypoa-vvrjj 
 the lucidity, the measure, and the sweet reasonableness of 
 the classic ideal. He does not seek to gild refined gold or
 
 THE STUDY 7 
 
 paint the lily, or pluck the wdngs from painted butterflies 
 to fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes; he does not 
 conjure the wandering stars and pile up hyperbole to make 
 Ossa hke a wart ; he does not, except in Aristophanes, whom 
 the romanticist Heine therefore admires above all the Greek 
 poets, he does not try to "come up through the lair of the 
 lion with love in his luminous eyes," or "ride with the reck- 
 less seraphim on the rim of a red-maned star." "Homer and 
 Pindar," says Landor, "Homer and Pindar soar, but keep their 
 feet on the ground " — a difficult feat for a literal imagina- 
 tion to conceive, but Landor's meaning is clear. 
 
 The Greek schohasts discovered all the arts and sciences in 
 Homer, though Swift protested that he had searched the 
 Iliad in vain for an adequate account of the spleen. We at 
 least may find there all the essential qualities of classic art, 
 and something more than the embryonic prefigurement of 
 the later forms of Greek literature. Plato and Aristotle were 
 more nearly right in caUing Homer the originator of the drama 
 than are the modern scholiasts who learnedly deduce it from 
 the dithyramb or the funeral chant. You have only, as Plato 
 says, to omit the descriptions between the speeches, and the 
 drama is in substance constituted. The interfused passion and 
 dialectic of the Oration on the Crown is already present in 
 Achilles's reply to Agamemnon's embassy, which Gladstone 
 pronounced the finest speech in the world. And a slight 
 measure of the ingenuity with which the philological world of 
 to-day is oversupplied would deduce from Homer lyric, elegy, 
 gnomic verse, and choral hymn, and find in him perhaps even 
 the suggestipns of epigram, satire, and comedy. There is no 
 lovelier small, sweet idyl in Theocritus or Tennyson than the 
 vision that illumines the horror of the battlefield for Hector's 
 perturbed spirit as he awaits the onset of Achilles's spear : — 
 
 No time is here for dalliance and soft speech, 
 Soft words of dalliance as when youth and maid 
 Linger in sweet discourse by rock or tree.
 
 8 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 These lines were greatly admired by the ancients, though 
 scholiasts anticipated the Germans, who athetize them on 
 the ground that "the moment is not suitable for such arti- 
 ficial flowers of speech." Such critics should study, in Tolstoi's 
 War and Peace, the psychology of the battle soliloquy which, 
 it appears, was not unknown to Homer. Mr. Walter Leaf 
 argues that the mention of rock and tree must be an allusion 
 to a primitive fable in which a rock and a tree hold debate. 
 For, says he, to suppose the rock and tree a background to 
 the scene of love-making is not " epic or even Greek." How- 
 ever it may be with the scholar in politics, the ''merely 
 philological" interpretation of literature is a spectacle to 
 rejoice the comic spirit. Even Coleridge chose to ignore 
 the fact that the parting of Hector and Andromache 
 is an idyl and a genre picture, and doubts the Homeric gen- 
 uineness of Andromache "smiling through her tears" — 
 SaKpvoev yeXdcraaa. It seems to him more like the prettiness 
 of Bion and Moschus. So Macaulay's New Zealander 
 will doubt the Shakespearian genuineness of the same 
 universal human touch in the tragedy of King Lear, and 
 prove it to be an interpolation from Tennyson's idyll 
 of Merlin and Vivien, where it is also found. Let us once 
 for all free our minds of this false science by affirming 
 that it is actually more scientific to believe naively with the 
 ancients and Mr. Andrew Lang that the universal genius of 
 Homer knew all heights and depths of the human spirit, 
 than it is to constitute an a priori type of the stern, simple, 
 primitive bard by the arbitrary excision of everything that 
 does not conform to it. We do not in the least know that 
 Homer was a barbarian, a savage, a primitive folk-bard. 
 We only know that he was a supremely great Greek poet ; 
 and, to return to the main thread of our discourse, a poet in 
 whom the fiery passion of the world's poetic youth is already 
 tempered and chastened by the serenity, the reasonableness, 
 and the restraint of Greek art. In another sense than that
 
 THE STUDY 9 
 
 in which Cowley applied tlie words to Vergil, he "made that 
 art which was a rage." 
 
 The Iliad is "the most important poetical monument 
 existing." But Homer is not the special theme of this intro- 
 ductory lecture, and we can only glance at some of the ways 
 in which the Iliad and Odyssey might illustrate the lucid 
 rationality of the Greek mind. There is first the architec- 
 tonic structure of the poems. It is easy for critics who them- 
 selves never constructed anything to pick fiaws in any plot. 
 But the Iliad and Odyssey remain the best-constructed long 
 poems in the world — not only in comparison with the 
 formless agglomerations of the Sanskrit epic, the loose-strung 
 songs of the Edda, the patchwork of the Kalewala, but in 
 comparison with the Aeneid or Paradise Lost, and still more, 
 of course, in comparison with such formless and aimless pro- 
 ductions as Shelley's Revolt of Isla?n. This architectonic- 
 imagiuation, as of a Platonic demiourgos, stamping form and 
 informing ideas on the rude indigest of chaos, reveals itself 
 throughout Greek literature : in the nicely distributed sym- 
 metry of Herodotus's full but never crowded narrative, in the 
 incredible genius that swings each of the great poetic strophe- 
 blocks of the Fourth Pythian Ode to more than Amphionic 
 music into its appointed place in a structure that outlasts 
 the Parthenon; in the still more complicated, but also still 
 more strictly predetermined, labyrinthine construction of 
 those Platonic dialogues, where only the naive fancy that 
 they are moving "whithersoever the wind may chance to 
 blow"; and in the cunningly-calculated, apparent careless- 
 ness with which Demosthenes marshals his weakest argu- 
 ments in the position least exposed to attack. 
 
 Secondly, the Greek gifts of lucidity and analysis manifest 
 themselves in the clear discrimination and distinct portrayal 
 of character within the well-ordered framework of the nar- 
 rative or plot. A German scholar has written a book on the 
 literary portrait in Greek literature, studying chiefly the hi.s-
 
 10 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 lories, the Platonic dialogues, the orators, Characters of Theo- 
 phrastus, and the New Comedy. The Greeks, of course, never 
 attempted or achieved the extreme refinement of modern 
 psychological analysis. They rarely if ever trace the gradual 
 growth or deterioration of character in the manner of George 
 Eliot, or, like Tolstoi, Howells, and James, turn the search- 
 light of explicit soliloquy on the revealing parole interieure 
 of half-conscious reflection, the ripples and undercurrents of 
 the stream of thought. They depicted character through 
 action, dramatic conflict, and the rhetoric of appeal or self- 
 justification, with more broad distinctness of type and per- 
 haps with not less truth of perspective and proportion than 
 our too curious scrutiny sometimes yields. Homer's pres- 
 entation of the characters of Ulysses, Hector, Achilles, 
 Agamemnon, Ajax, Telemachus, Nestor, Helen, Androm- 
 ache, Penelope, and how many others is the greatest single 
 creation of peers ever accomplished in the exercise of the 
 poet's kingly prerogative. Fully to appreciate this, we should 
 need not only to study each type in its lucid Homeric out- 
 line, but to trace its after-evolution from Homer to Soph- 
 ocles, from Sophocles to Vergil, from Vergil to Racine, from 
 Racine to Tennyson, Homer, as we said, does not refine so 
 far as the moderns do. But his characterizations are far 
 more subtly individualized than is generally believed. The 
 speeches of Achilles, for example, throughout the Iliad are 
 marked by a distinctive psychology, rhetoric, nay syntax, 
 of their own. The consistency not only of Hector's type, but 
 of his temperament, is preserved throughout. Coleridge 
 would not have found it easy to redeem his engagement 
 "to compil^ twelve books with characters just as distinct 
 and consistent as those in the Iliad from the metrical ballads 
 and other chronicles of England." 
 
 This intellectualism which, from the beginning, controlled 
 the sensibility and informed the imagination of the Greek, 
 we might, if time allowed, further illustrate by the clearly
 
 THE STUDY 11 
 
 defined, human beauty of the gods of the Homeric pantheon, 
 contrasted with the cloudy symbolisms and theriomorphic 
 divinities of other mythologies, ''pawing to get free their 
 hinder parts," or again by the Homeric style, with its clean- 
 cut, plastically defined similes, and its swift, lucid evolution 
 of the thought, which Arnold compares with Voltaire. And 
 then it would be the task of a fuller exposition to trace the 
 history of these qualities to their perfect balance with plastic 
 beauty in the pure classicism of Sophocles and Phidias, and 
 their excess in the literature of the decline. 
 
 "It appears that contention is not of one kind, but two — 
 one, the good emulation, a thing to be praised ; the other, 
 the evil strife of envy, a thing of reproach " ; so begins Hesiod's 
 Works and Days. Is this the primitive folk-poet, or the 
 Platonic Socrates, pointing out in his favorite phrase that if 
 equivocation is not to undo us we must distinguish Svo dSrj^ 
 two species? Montaigne said, "disiinguo is the first word in 
 my philosophy." It was the first and the last word in the 
 philosophy of the Greeks. Distinction, antithesis, mediation 
 and fluent coordination, we could follow them all together 
 with the development of abstraction, in poetry, architecture, 
 philosophy, oratory, and rhetoric, till rhetoric and dialectic 
 swallowed all. Jowett's essay on the Decline of Greek 
 Literature, in the introduction to his translation of Plato's 
 Phaedrus, contains some interesting observations on the 
 great "literary waste, or dead level, or interminable marsh 
 in which Greek literature was soon destined to disappear." 
 Plato, whom Joseph de Maistre detests as the chief repre- 
 sentative of this tendency, Jowett thinks foresaw it and 
 protested against its authors, the Sophists. Thve history of 
 its natural and perhaps inevitable development from the 
 defects, or rather the excesses of the qualities, of the Greek 
 mind remains to be written. 
 
 In this long evolution, Sophocles represents the central 
 culminating moment of the perfect equilibrium of imagina-
 
 12 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 tion and art, plasticity and thought ; and his tragedies are 
 the touchstone of our appreciation of the distinctive classic 
 beauty which the eighteenth century confused with the 
 pseudo-classic, and for which we substitute the romantic. 
 The mechanical procedure of pseudo-classicism is aptly 
 characterized in Campbell's description of the method of the 
 Greek artist : — 
 
 When first the Rhodian's mimic art array'd 
 The queen of Beauty in her Cj'prian Shade, 
 The happy master mingled on his piece 
 Each look that charm'd him in the fair of Greece. 
 
 The romantic beauty is that which thrills the modern reader 
 in Professor Murray's transfiguring translations of Euripides, 
 which seem to have been composed in confirmation of 
 Matthew Arnold's complaint that "the moderns will only 
 have the antique on the condition of making it more beauti- 
 ful (according to their own notions of beauty) than the 
 antique." ^ 
 
 But the true Hellenic beauty is that of Sophocles, in whom 
 the artistic presentment of the essential spiritual quality of 
 human action and passion is blurred by no touch of capricious 
 fantasy, sensational excess, inorganic ornament, or distract- 
 ing and disillusionizing detail. Sophoclean tragedy is for 
 the drama what the Parthenon is for architecture and sculp- 
 ture, the exemplification of the definition already glanced at 
 that beauty is the idea shining through the individual. 
 
 This ideal equilibrium is by the very law of human nature 
 unstable, and the change, not to use the question-begging 
 term "decadence," began with Euripides. The harmony of 
 
 ' As the conclusion of this paper will show {infra, p. 23), I am grateful to the 
 poetic interpreter who can heighten our enjoyment of the classics by roman- 
 tic coloring and perhaps fantastic associations and contrasts of modern feel- 
 ing. My reserves begin only when Professor Murray, speaking as a critic and 
 a scholar, argues from his own translation of , let us sa.y, Bacchae, 876-881, 
 997-1011, or Polybius, IV, 31, or the Leipsydrion Skolion.
 
 THE STUDY 13 
 
 form and content, another definition of the classic ideal, is 
 broken, never to be restored. Henceforth the idea tran- 
 scends the form in dialectic and symbolism, or the empty 
 form is elaborated in euphuism and rhetoric. Euripides 
 and Plato, the two chief representatives of Hellenism for the 
 sequent centuries, are also in a sense its destroyers. The 
 Greeks' native facility in abstraction, ratiocination, dialectic, 
 and the rhetorical expansion of the idea has definitively 
 triumphed over the imaginative and plastic genius that 
 achieved its perfect artistic embodiment. Euripides, charm-, 
 ing poet and fascinating dramatist though he be, belongs 
 distinctl\' with Schiller, the older Goethe, and George Eliot, 
 and Mr. Bernard Shaw, to the inferior type of artists whose 
 work exudes and obtrudes the ideas which it is unable to 
 assimilate. 
 
 Plato is himself a supreme artist in whom all contradictions 
 and seeming impossibilities are reconciled. But his writings 
 are the source both in Greek and in European literature of 
 two tendencies incompatible with the practice and the appre- 
 ciation of the purest Hellenic art — the tradition of dialectical 
 scholasticism, and the tradition of mystic symbolism. 
 
 The study of this evolution I must reserve for another 
 occasion. The present hurried survey must turn from the 
 generalized ideal Homeric or Sophoclean qualities of Greek 
 literature to the consideration of certain characteristics which 
 reveal themselves in the course of its historic life, and which 
 after its sheer artistic beauty contribute chiefly to the abiding 
 interest and significance that distinguish it from all other 
 literatures. There is first the interest which attaches to the 
 orderly sequence and full development of the possibilities of 
 each distinct literary form or kind before we pass to the next. 
 No secondary, imitative, and therefore partially artificial, 
 literature can exhibit this natural and artistic growth. 
 There is a certain painful dissonance between the rude 
 primitive style and culture of the early Romans and the
 
 14 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 sophisticated content of the Euripidean drama, Menandrian 
 comedy, Euhemeristic philosophy, and Sicilian cookbooks 
 which they translated and adapted side by side with Livius 
 Andronicus's Saturnian version of the Odyssey. A sense of 
 amateurish confusion results from the endeavors of the 
 Italian Renaissance, the French Pleiade, and the Elizabethans 
 to create out of hand on classical models a complete literary 
 assortment of dramas, epics, lyrics, Pindaric and Horatian 
 odes, and Juvenalian satires. But the Greeks invented or 
 evolved each literary form to meet a real need, and the orderly 
 development of Greek literature through epic, lyric, drama, 
 history, oratory, and philosoph}^, in contrast to the artifi- 
 ciality, and at the same time the amateurishness, of other 
 literatures, is at once natural, artistic, and professional. 
 Natural and artistic in the nice adaptation of each form to the 
 life out of which it grew and the sentiments which it expresses ; 
 artistic and professional in that each form was elaborated to 
 the exhaustion of its possibilities by a succession of competing 
 artists, early apprenticed and trained in guilds and schools 
 first to assimilate and then to surpass the work of their pre- 
 decessors. In this respect, Greek literature is the counter- 
 part of Greek sculpture and Italian painting, and illustrates 
 the truth on which Plato bases education in his ideal state 
 that those who are to achieve greatness in any art must 
 generally be TratSo^^ets, bred up to it in both play and 
 work from childhood. 
 
 Again, Greek literature is beyond all other literatures the 
 spontaneous outgrowth of the national life, and throughout 
 the classical period it remained in touch with life. The 
 science of literature will demonstrate this by proving the nice 
 and necessary adaptation of the ballad and epic to the 
 Homeric camp-fire or Mycenaean palace, of the personal lyric 
 to the expression of the passionate individualism of the age 
 of colonial adventure and political unsettlement, of the 
 choral hymn to embody the conservative ideals of the athletic
 
 THE STUDY 15 
 
 aristocracy of Boeotia and the Peloponnesus, of the drama 
 to be the teacher and entertainer of triumphant democracy 
 in the city state. But apart from these ambitious generaU- 
 zations, the very schoolboy who passes from his Caesar and 
 Cicero to Xenophon and Homer is at once aware that he has 
 emerged from the oratio obliqua and the oratorical period of 
 self-complacent statesmanship, with its thumb in its double- 
 breasted toga, into the presence of real people who do not 
 talk like a book. The only man who habitually talks like 
 a book in classical Greek literature is the orator Isocrates, 
 who is not an orator, but a schoolmaster and an essayist. 
 I do not count Thucydides, because his style, tortuous as it 
 appears to us, seems to have come as naturally to him as the 
 style of Mr. and Mrs. Browning's love letters did to them. 
 
 Colloquial Latin has to be studied as a thing apart, a sort 
 of low life below stairs, banished from the dignified drawing- 
 rooms of literature. But colloquialism and idiom are so 
 interwoven with the artistic fabric of Greek style that many 
 scholars are just beginning to suspect their existence. When 
 the skeptical Iphigeneia, in a passage marked by colloquial 
 idiom throughout, says, "Don't tell me that you're Orestes. 
 Argos and Nauplia are full of him," the German commen- 
 tators throw up their hands, and Professor Murray senti- 
 mentally translates : — 
 
 Argos is bright with him and Nauplia's shore. 
 
 But Iphigeneia's meaning is perfectly plain to a reader of 
 Bret Harte who remembers how the Arizona bad man 
 replies to the Boston tenderfoot who announces that he is a 
 prospector, — "Hell is full of such prospectors." 
 
 The Latin authors minded their grammatical p's and g's, 
 and rarely committed anacoluthon. But, always excepting 
 Isocrates, the best Greek writers, provided the meaning was 
 clear and the emphasis just, cared as little for the sequence 
 of tenses, the common concords, and the painfully explicit
 
 16 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 distributive reference of every pronoun to its proper antece- 
 dent as a vivacious woman does to-day. They all exhibit 
 what Wilamowitz calls the healthy nonchalance of Herodotus's 
 Ionian style. 
 
 The predominance of the living or spoken over the dead 
 or written word is another expression of the same quality. 
 Classical Greek is easier to follow when read aloud than 
 either German or Latin. It conforms to the psychology 
 and follows the rhythms of natural association and em- 
 phasis rather than the prescriptions of artificial logic and 
 syntax. Pre-dramatic poetry, if not always sung, was 
 usually recited. Even at Athens Homer was better known 
 by the recitals of the rhapsodes than by the eye. Greek 
 plays were published on the Dionysian stage in editions of 
 twenty thousand. Oratory in its very nature was composed 
 to be heard. Even history was recited in agonistic compe- 
 titions. Even philosophy in Plato assumes the form of 
 living and incomparably true and natural conversation which 
 makes the dialogues for those who know how to use them a 
 discipline of the dialectical faculties which, as Coleridge and 
 Mill remind us, no progress of science can replace. Even 
 the essayist Isocrates expects his essays to be read aloud. 
 Our exclusive reliance on the eye and habitual neglect of 
 the voice and ear in the study of Greek literature is the most 
 fatal of errors. 
 
 And being thus always in touch with life, Greek literature 
 is in the better sense of the word realistic. It does not push 
 realism to excess by reaction against the thin abstractness of 
 pseudo-classicism ; it does not observe Nature with a note- 
 book, and count the streaks in the tulip, or endeavor to 
 deduce moral thunder from daisies and buttercups and 
 celandines ; it does not describe fleeting moods and analyze 
 unconscious motives with falsifying emphasis. But it com- 
 poses with the eye on the object and unhampered by any 
 pseudo-classic canons of artificial taste or restrictions of
 
 THE STUDY 17 
 
 vocabulary. It calls a spade a spade, compares Ulyssey 
 tossing through a restless night to a haggis on the fire, and 
 Ajax to an ass, not with Pope to "the slow beast with heavy 
 strength endued." It is not afraid to show the infant 
 Achilles slobbering on the lap of Phoenix, to repeat the babble 
 of Orestes's nurse, or echo the shrieks of Philoctetes. " I 
 shall never cease crying to our French authors," exclaims 
 Diderot, "truth, nature, the ancients, Sophocles, Philoctetes. 
 The poet exhibited him on the stage crouching at the entrance 
 of his cave and covered with filthy rags." The antithesis of 
 classical and realistic is as false, then, as the opposition of 
 classic and romantic. In both cases, the other extreme is 
 the thin artificiality and false dignity of the secondary and 
 pseudo-classic, while the genuine Greek classic in the ter- 
 minology of Aristotle's Ethics holds the virtuous mean. 
 
 The theme of Greek poetry is in Plato's and Aristotle's 
 definition the imitation of human action, and only so much 
 stage setting of description of nature and motivation of psy- 
 chological introspection as conduce to truth and right per- 
 spective in that. It conveys less minute truth of a certain 
 order than some kinds of modern descriptive and meditative 
 verse. But it also has infinitely less error and extravagance. 
 If there are no Greek poems to match Keats's Ode to the Night- 
 ingale or Shelley's Ode to the West Wind, there is also nothing 
 like Browning's Childe Roland, Rossetti's Blessed Damozel, or 
 Poe's Al Aaraaf, and long communion with Sophocles and 
 Aeschylus and Pindar impairs the capacity to appreciate 
 them in the modern student. 
 
 In short, Greek poetry springs out of life, remains always 
 in touch with life, sees life steadily and sees it whole, and 
 therefore presents to the imaginative reason the broadest, 
 sanest, truest poetic criticism of life. One cause of this is 
 that the Greek race, like a happy man, came to each experi- 
 ence of life in its season and tasted its full flavor before 
 passing on to the next.
 
 18 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 That old Greek life has passed away. It is the business of 
 the professional archaeologist and historian to revive its 
 express image in the minutest ascertainable details. But for 
 education and humane culture a realistic generation may- 
 overemphasize this aspect of Greek studies. The technical 
 detail of Greek antiquities is not in itself so much more 
 valuable than that of Egypt, Assyria, China, Japan, or the 
 Middle Age that we should burden our memories with its 
 unretainable minutiae. As Emerson says, "time dissipates 
 to shining ether the solid angularity of facts" — a dangerous 
 text for the American collegian. But my meaning is, not 
 that we should dispense with facts, but that education and 
 culture must select the facts that concern us as men, not as 
 specialists, and not waste upon the history and structure of 
 the Dionysiac theatre, the topography of the Forum, or the 
 fashion of draping the toga, the scant time and attention that 
 is all too little for the appreciation of the drama of Sophocles 
 and the oratory of Cicero. The Greeks above all other 
 peoples extracted from every human and natural experience 
 its abiding spiritual significance. It is this that largely con- 
 stitutes the enduring value of their history and literature, 
 and it is on this that if we are wise we shall concentrate atten- 
 tion. A dozen literatures supply materials for the theory 
 of the epic, or studies in tribal morality and folk-lore. The 
 Chanson de Roland and the Nibelungenlied are almost as good 
 cadavers for dissection in the seminar-room as the Iliad. 
 But the Iliad and Odyssey are the only adequate mirrors of 
 the heroic and adventurous poetic adolescence of humanity. 
 The theory and conjectural origins of the lyric can be ex- 
 pounded in connection with the lyric of Provence, Italy, 
 Iceland, or the ballads of early England. But unless the 
 actual cadences of Sappho, Alcaeus, and Pindar are echoing 
 in our memories, we shall have missed the knowledge of the 
 highest reaches of song and go through life with ears attuned 
 to the second-best.
 
 THE STUDY 19 
 
 Realism brings out the analogies between Greek athletics 
 and our own, and antiquarianism writes treatises on the 
 order of events in the pentathlon. But the net outcome of 
 his athletics was for the Greek, and ought to be for us, the 
 Apoxyomenus and the Diadumenus, the sophrosyne of the 
 Platonic Charmides, the gracious form of Lysis in the pa- 
 laestra standing with the other boys and youths, wearing a 
 crown upon his head like a fair vision, and outsoaring and 
 outlasting all the epinician odes of that 
 
 Son of the lightning, fair and fiery star, 
 Strong-winged imperial Pindar, voice divine. 
 
 If we miss that, and how many professional classical scholars 
 do, what profit is there in the technical history of Greek 
 athletics ? 
 
 Many peoples and countless individuals have known the 
 indescribable thrill that comes with the first awakening of 
 the expanding intelligence to the enlarging conceptions of 
 new-born science and philosophy. But the pure quintessence 
 of that spiritual intoxication, caught by Lucretius, Bruno, 
 Emerson, Huxley, Tyndall, and how many others, is to be 
 tasted only in the pre-Socratic philosophic poets of Greece. 
 "It is as impossible to apprehend the true origins of science 
 without having studied these primitive savants, as to acquire 
 the sense of the highest poetry without knowing Homer," 
 says Renan. 
 
 Other peoples have had a popular drama, partly original, 
 and a secondary artistic drama derived from the Greeks. 
 The Greek drama was both popular and artistic, and the 
 source of all the rest. Other nations have had their Frois- 
 sarts and their Sir John Mandevilles, but Herodotus remains 
 the unapproachable type of the historian conteur and naively 
 entertaining traveler. Other peoples have analyzed their 
 own social and civic life and illustrated the drama of contem- 
 porary history by a perpetual accompaniment of discussion
 
 20 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 and moral and political comment, but none so exhaustively 
 and intelligently as the Greeks. Thucydides is still the 
 supreme exemplar of the hard-headed political positivist, 
 the prototype of Machiavelli and Guicciardini, of Hobbes 
 and La Rochefoucauld. There is no other historic narrative 
 at once so vivid and minute and so completely intellectual- 
 ized, so interpenetrated and fused with ethical and political 
 reflection, as his story of the Peloponnesian War. Artisti- 
 cally the despair of Gray and Macaulay, its deeper and phil- 
 osophic significance for the development of modern political 
 thought is not yet estimated nor even appreciated. 
 
 The interminable discussions of clever, disputatious young 
 men in the endeavor to settle the problem of the universe or 
 adjust themselves to it, are a familiar theme of half-wistful 
 satire in Thackeray. More philosophical observers, from 
 Bacon to Mill, have recognized their enormous potency in 
 shaping the opinions and ideals of the men whose thoughts 
 were to determine the thoughts of the next generation. But 
 the only adequate expression in literature of this great human 
 experience is the dialogues of Plato. They are the dramatic 
 idealization of this side of the spiritual life of that Athens of 
 Socrates and Pericles in whose large leisure men talked with 
 men seriously, passionately on other topics than business or 
 politics, and their discussions created the logic, the rhetoric, 
 the psychology, the metaphysics, and the ethical and political 
 philosophy of western Europe, and wrought out the distinc- 
 tions, the definitions, the categories that have shaped and 
 molded all subsequent speculation. 
 
 There have been other lost causes that did not please the 
 gods, though they pleased Cato ; but none that have left 
 such a splendid record of passionate yet thoughtful oratory 
 as the duel of Demosthenes and King Philip. And the Oration 
 on the Crown remains for all time the crowning expression 
 of the consolatory truth that there are some things better 
 than success, some defeats that are preferable to victory.
 
 THE STUDY 21 
 
 Other civilizations and other ideals of life have had their 
 poljTiiaths and systematizing philosophers to sum them up, 
 their Leibnitzes, their Kants, their Herbert Spencers. But 
 they all shrivel into insignificance compared with Aristotle's 
 encyclopaedic analysis of the experience of his race, the neglect 
 of which by the American universities of to-day is on the 
 broader view of history a far stranger phenomenon than its 
 slavish acceptance by the universities of mediaeval Europe. 
 
 In this rapid survey of the essential and abiding values of 
 Greek literature, I have already trenched upon my final 
 topic, the attitude of mind in which we should approach the 
 study of that literature and the methods of interpretation 
 and appreciation which we should prefer among the many 
 which the specialties or the literary fashions of the age 
 present to our choice. I should like to define and illus- 
 trate by horrible examples the method of undiscriminat- 
 ing erudition ; the philological Sherlock Holmes method of 
 completing the record by sweat-boxing the evidence ; the 
 method of evolution and the pure a priori science of litera- 
 ture ; the folk-lore method that makes Homer a lively 
 barbarian, interprets Plato by the Orphic tablets of south- 
 ern Italy, and finds something of the " medicine man " 
 in Sophocles's King Oedipus ; and, chief of all, the latest 
 English blend of sentimental mediaevalism with romantic 
 anthropology. But time fails, and this, too, must be re- 
 served for another occasion. It is better so, for the tone 
 that I should be forced to adopt might be thought unbecom- 
 ing in a professional student, and could easily be mistaken 
 for the wooing of a cheap applause by facile appeals to the 
 penchant that a general audience has to ridicule all minute 
 scholarship as pedantry. My objection is not to the minute- 
 ness, or even to the pedantry, of modern research, but to its 
 systematic and falsifying ingenuity, and its endeavor to 
 apply the rigid methods of science in alien matter. It is
 
 22 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 often urged that the scholar with a system and a bias and a 
 point to prove is harmless, helpful even by the stimulus he 
 imparts and the interest he awakens. But it is not so. He 
 diffuses a fog of hypothesis between the reader and the plain 
 facts of the tradition, w^hich are interesting enough without 
 adventitious stimulus, if we only can see them simply and 
 sanely in the white light of objectivity and the dry light of 
 the intellect. The first advice to give to the general reader 
 and the young scholar is to find out, if he can, the safe and sane 
 men, of whom Jebb is the consummate type, and confine his 
 reading, or at least pin his faith, to them. The ingenious sys- 
 tematizers and brilliant constructors of hypotheses cannot 
 be trusted to quote with relevancy or translate with accuracy. 
 Physical science eliminates this wild work by the tests of the 
 laboratory. But in the domain of literary and philological 
 investigation few of us realize the amount of misstatement 
 and unprovable assertion that circulates in reputable and 
 pretentious books. 
 
 After this diatribe, you will ask me what is my shibbo- 
 leth, my system? the point that I would prove? my 
 method for the study of Greek literature? If I must as- 
 sume a label, it is the unity of literature, the unity of the 
 human spirit — of the European spirit at least, from Ho- 
 mer to Tennyson, and the interpretation of literature by 
 Emerson's principle that all the best books seem to have been 
 written by one man. That principle is subject to many qual- 
 ifications, of which more soon. But it will prove a safer 
 guide than the systematic exaggeration of differences and 
 the over-curious observation concerned with irrelevant 
 details of local and historical color. It will at least save us 
 from the folly of condescending allowance for the imma- 
 turity of the great minds of antiquity ; the absurdity of 
 confounding the survivals of mythology, or the symbolism 
 of poetic personification in Sophocles and Aeschylus with 
 their religion of the imaginative reason ; and the senti-
 
 THE STUDY 23 
 
 mentality that alternately strives to bring the classics 
 nearer to us by mediaevalizing diction and strained fan- 
 tastic interpretations, or despairingly proclaims that they 
 must always remain sealed books to the Christian, the 
 modern, the romantic mind. 
 
 This is the burden of an eloquent paper by Professor 
 Bury — the anima naturaliter pagana — which we can never 
 recover ; and the absence of which vitiates, he thinks, the 
 neo-classic revivals not only of Keats and Shelley, but even 
 of Tennyson, Arnold, and Swinburne. Professor Bury's 
 warning against the intrusion of modern sentiment into our 
 scholarship and criticism was timely in 1891, and, as I have 
 already hinted, is still more so now. But I fail to see that 
 the impossibility of recapturing the anima naturaliter pagana 
 is any ground for despairing of our intelligent understand- 
 ing of Greek literature or rejecting the legitimate pleasure 
 which we derive from the exquisite neo-classic poetry of 
 England and the beautiful translations of Professor Murray. 
 Why should we wish to recover the Greek pagan soul, 
 or need to in order to appreciate Greek poetrj^ and art? 
 Professor Burj^ proves that we cannot hope to feel precisely 
 as the ancient Greeks did. True. A middle-aged man can 
 rarely feel as a youth of twenty. But he can understand and 
 sympathize and enjoy. The differences betw^een the an- 
 cient and modern mind are very real. But they arise nat- 
 urally out of conditions which we can comprehend, and no 
 more than the equally real differences in the psychology of 
 men and women do they preclude the larger inclusive intelli- 
 gence that heightens the spiritual values of companionship by 
 the piquant sense of contrast and identity in diversity. This 
 at least is the mood in which I prefer to approach Greek and 
 modern poetry, and in justification of it I will conclude these 
 imperfect hints and suggestions by dwelling for a few minutes 
 on some of the perhaps partly fanciful imaginative and emo-
 
 24 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 tional contrasts which, to my apprehension, seem to heighten 
 our enjoyment and deepen our appreciation of both. 
 
 The modern spirit is an organ of many stops, an Aeolian 
 lyre, subject to every skyey influence and tremulously re- 
 sponsive to gusts of feeling and winds of doctrine that blow 
 from very far. History and discovery, science and psychol- 
 ogy, have enlarged the world of nature and man beyond our 
 power to realize it in a single brain. The Greek polis was a 
 sunny clearing, sharply defined against the dark shades 
 of the impenetrable forest of uninvestigated nature and un- 
 explored barbaric civilization and history that girded it. 
 Our explorers have penetrated that selva selvaggia in many 
 directions and have brought back tidings of many a magic 
 fountain and many an enchanted castle hidden in its gloomy 
 depths. But they have found no issue to any Elysian Field 
 or Island of the Blest, no thoroughfare leading to any rock- 
 based City of God, and their travelers' tales have destroyed 
 our contentment with our bounded horizon and our child- 
 hood's sense of the completeness and stability of our tran- 
 sitory habitation. The men who compose a gathering of mod- 
 ern savants have in common only the universal feelings of 
 mankind, the indispensable elements of education, a thin var- 
 nish of culture, and a few philosophic generalizations. A large 
 part of every brain is filled by an unnatural parasitic growth 
 of specialized knowledge, cuneiform inscriptions, old French 
 epics, constitutional history of the German Empire, the chemis- 
 try of the carbon compounds, the embryology of the earthworm. 
 A body of cultivated Greeks knew and did nearly the same 
 things. They knew one language, whose adequacy for all the 
 needs of expression they never doubted, one literature, one 
 type of civilization, one religion, one art, one history. They 
 were hemmed in, it is true, by the ancient civilizations of the 
 East, and could see face to face what we must restore by 
 painful reconstruction. But it never really informed their 
 thoughts or touched their feelings. The Greek as we see
 
 THE STUDY 25 
 
 him in Herodotus gazes at the marvels of EgjT^t and the 
 East "with the naive, open-eyed wonder of Miranda, "Oh, 
 brave new world, that has such people in it." But he never 
 disturbed his childlike calm by any effort to enter into the 
 souls that dwelt in those strange shapes. His youthful 
 exuberance may have been momentarily dashed when 
 the Eg^'ptian priest told him that the Greeks were always 
 children and possessed no traditions hoary with eld, or when 
 his boast that his sixteenth ancestor was a god was met by 
 an array of two hundred and forty statues of successive high 
 priests that had lived since the days when the gods walked 
 on earth. But he felt no such awe as that which prompted 
 Rossetti's cry when the winged bull of Nineveh was hoisted 
 into the British Museum : — 
 
 Ah ! in what quarries lay the stone 
 From which this pygmy pile has grown, 
 Unto man's need how long unknown, 
 Since thj" vast temples, court and cone, 
 Rose far in desert history. 
 
 No such yearning sympathy with alien forms of spiritual 
 life as breathes through the question, " Dreamed they of this, 
 thy worshippers?" 
 
 And what we attempt for the Oriental civilization, which 
 the Greek was content to accept as part of the pictur- 
 esque external setting of his life, we try to do for every 
 period of history. We seek to reanimate, to enter dramati- 
 cally into the souls of them all, the Greek himself, the 
 Roman, his Teutonic conqueror, the mediaeval man, the 
 man of the Renaissance, the German, the French, the Rus- 
 sian. Here is one chief cause of the complication and range 
 of our poetry. Contrast the compact unity of the Greek 
 drama, confined to the legendary heroes of Greece, and gradu- 
 ally narrowing itself to the fortunes of a few great families : — 
 
 Thebes or Pelops' line, 
 Or the tale of Troy divine,
 
 26 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 with the infinite diversity of theme of the EHzabethan drama : 
 Greek legends, Roman history, medieval gesta, tales of 
 Turkish harems or Italian palaces. The Greek never at- 
 tempted to think or feel otherwise than as a Greek. The 
 modern poet is constantly essaying to enlarge his experi- 
 ence by nestling in the brain and thinking the thoughts 
 of alien men and looking out upon the world from the win- 
 dows of strange souls. Such poems as Tennyson's St. 
 Simon Stylites, Rossetti's Dante at Verona, Browning's 
 The Bishop Orders His Tomb, or Mr. Sludge the Medium 
 have no analogues in Greek literature. 
 
 Modern poetry is further sophisticated and refined by 
 literary reminiscence. The Greeks did not employ literary 
 reminiscence even in their own tongue quite in the modern 
 way. Homer, of course, was the common storehouse of 
 imagery and phrase, and each literary kind, as lyric, epic, 
 or drama, had its traditional formulas. The gnomic poets 
 learned at school were constantly quoted and paraphrased ; 
 and the parodies of Aristophanes assume intimate famili- 
 arity with a considerable body of lyric and dramatic po- 
 etry. But it took the form of direct simple quotation or 
 parody rather than of remote allusiveness. And in any 
 case the allusions were confined to one limited, compact 
 body of literature. But the modern English poet assumes 
 an equal familiarity with four literary traditions, the Greek, 
 the Latin, the Hebrew, and the English, and does not hesitate 
 to glance at any other that may be present to his memory. 
 The alternate mosaics from classical and biblical themes in 
 Dante's purgatorial staircase symbolize this double spiritual 
 world in which we must strive to be at home, that which has 
 its source in Homer, and that which starts from the Old 
 Testament — "From Pyrrha's pebbles or old Adam's seed." 
 It lends a wondrous variety of resource to our poetry. 
 A Greek poet could compare the beauty of his heroine to 
 Aphrodite rising from the sea, as Tennyson does at the
 
 THE STUDY 27 
 
 close of The Princess; but Tennyson can also trans- 
 port us to another world of feeling and imagination, by 
 telling us that she is " fairer than Rachel by the palmy well, 
 fairer than Ruth amid the fields of corn," and flashes us 
 into yet another by saying that she is more lovely than 
 the maid whom "Gwythion made by glamour out of flowers." 
 But we can never quite subdue this jarring material to the 
 emotional and artistic unity achieved by the Greeks. 
 There will always be a slight sense of discord in Milton's 
 Lycidas, who, though "mounted high, thro' the dear might 
 of Him that walked the waves," remains yet "the genius of 
 the shore to all that wander in that perilous flood"; or in 
 Dante's " Supreme Jove that wast for us nailed to the cross " ; 
 and we smile when Fletcher, singing the power of love in the 
 manner of the Greeks, tells us that "fair Callisto was a 
 nun." And yet again what a range, what a suggestiveness, 
 it lends to our poetry. Balder Dead is a Scandinavian tale, 
 told in Homeric formulas. In Sohrab and Rustum, Ho- 
 meric imagery is transposed to an Oriental key. William 
 Morris adds a strange piquancy to Greek legends by deck- 
 ing them out in fantastic medieval attire. The draught of 
 vintage for which Keats yearned tastes at once of Flora and 
 Provencal song and dance. In Tennyson's Ulysses, we 
 enjoy the distilled quintessence of Homer, Dante, and the 
 spirit of modern science. Godiva is an old English legend, 
 prefaced Ijy a bit of Theocritus, and adorned alternately 
 with biblical and Homeric imagery. The whole world of 
 Greek mythology lay open to the authors of Laodamia and 
 Oenone, but to what worlds of thought and feeling inacces- 
 sible to the Greek are we transported by such lines as — 
 
 The holy time is quiet as a nun 
 Breathless with adoration. 
 
 But o'er her meek eyes came a happy mist 
 Like that which kept the heart of Eden green 
 Before the useful trouble of the rain ;
 
 28 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 His countenance like richest alchemy ; ' 
 
 Or like an old world mammoth bulked in ice ; 
 
 Where the kneeling hamlet drains 
 The chalice of the grapes of God ; 
 
 The world is too much with us ; 
 
 Shadowing the snow-limbed Eve, from whom she came. 
 
 And just because through history and literature he re- 
 alizes the past so much more intensely, just because he is 
 ever listening to the lordly music, flowing from the illimi- 
 table years, the modern poet straining for a glimpse of the 
 vision of the world and all the wonder that shall be, sees or 
 divines more of the future than the Greek. He dwells 
 in spirit under the cope of the half-attained futurity, he strives 
 to identify himself with the prophetic soul of the wide world, 
 dreaming on things to come. He sings hymns unbidden 
 till the world is wrought to sympathy with hopes and fears 
 it heeded not. He dreams of what the world will be when 
 the years have passed away. This note is wanting in Greek 
 poetry. The Greek poet rarely fancied that the thoughts 
 of men were widened by the process of the suns. The an- 
 ticipations of Keats's Hyperion in Aeschylus are very faint, 
 and Professor Murray's argument, that because the Greeks 
 in fact progressed, they had our idea of Progress, is an obvi- 
 ous equivocation.' The Greeks either conceived history 
 as a gradual degeneration from a not very remote golden 
 age of pastoral simplicity, or more philosophically as a 
 series of recurrent cycles of civilization and decay. The 
 idea of progressive development was first suggested to 
 thoughtful Greeks by the empire of Rome. The humani- 
 tarian visions of Shelley, Wordsworth, and Byron, the an- 
 ticipations of Locksley Hall, had no place in the minds of 
 the Greeks. They felt no passion to reform the world, be- 
 
 1 Rise of the Greek Epic, Chapter I.
 
 THE STUDY 29 
 
 cause they could not conceive of a world fundamentally 
 different from the one they knew.^ No Greek poet ever 
 felt himself as a nerve over which wandered the else unfelt 
 oppressions of the world. No Greek poet brooded over the 
 fierce confederate storm of sorrow, barricadoed within the walls 
 of great cities. The life of a Greek gentleman was pleasant 
 enough, barring the inevitable limitations of life ; that the 
 lives of slaves and barbarians should be less dejightful was 
 a matter of course. 
 
 In many other ways, too, our world is larger and at the same 
 time more minutely apprehended in its details than the 
 Greek. For the tiny basin of the Mediterranean we have 
 substituted the whole terraqueous globe. We survey man- 
 kind from China to Peru, we hear the long wash of Aus- 
 tralasian seas, and breathe in converse seasons. 
 
 Past the wall unsiirmounted that bars out our vision with iron and 
 
 fire 
 We have sent forth our soul for the stars to comply with and suns 
 
 to conspire. 
 
 From this unsatisfying sense of vastness and complexity 
 springs much of the distinctive melancholy of modern poetry. 
 It is an error to suppose that the Greeks were always blithe 
 and happy and free from this taint of melancholy. From 
 Homer to the latest epigram of the Anthology, there runs 
 through Greek literature a continuous wail for the impo- 
 tence of man, the brief bloom of youth and beauty, the 
 arbitrary sway of fortune, the delusiveness of hope, the 
 inevitableness of age and death. But this natural melan- 
 choly, though freely expressed when the mood came, was 
 not an habitual attitude of mind, and passing attacks of 
 it were soon "boxed out of the Greek lad and spun out of 
 the Greek girl," as Iluskin tells us. The modern melan- 
 
 ' Plato is an exception to every limiting generalization.
 
 30 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 choly is a different thing. It is a sense of bewilderment 
 and bafflement at the complexity of the world ; a name- 
 less chill of horror and helplessness in the face of its pitiless, 
 unfeeling immensity — the feeling expressed with appalling 
 vividness and intensity in Robert Louis Stevenson's Pulvis 
 et umbra. To the fancy of the ancient poet, the stars were 
 a chorus of nymphs dancing about the altar of the moon ; 
 resplendent powers conspicuous in the ether, bringing note 
 of summer and winter to man ; the sparkling gems of the 
 plumage of Juno's peacock transferred to decorate the sky ; 
 bright eyes of love shining down upon the earth. To the 
 modern, if he lets his fancy wander from the literal truth 
 of science so far as to call them eyes, they are "innumerable, 
 pitiless, passionless eyes ; cold fires, yet with power to burn 
 and brand his nothingness into man"; and if imagination 
 peoples them, it is not with Plato's purified spirits await- 
 ing the new birth, but with souls as troubled and oppressed 
 as our own. 
 
 Hesper, Venus, were we native to that splendor, or in Mars, 
 
 We should see the Globe we groan in, fairest of their evening stars ; 
 
 Could we dream of wars and carnage, craft and madness, lust and 
 
 spite, 
 Roaring London, raving Paris, in that point of peaceful light ? 
 
 This is one source of our modern melancholy. Another 
 is allied to the feeling of a harassed, overworked student, 
 who has undertaken too many courses of study. We 
 start out with the proud boast of Emerson, "what Plato has 
 thought we may think ; what a saint has felt we may feel ; 
 what at any time has befallen any man we can understand." 
 We get us the gains of various men ; we give ourselves up so 
 many times to Homer and Paganism, to Aphrodite and 
 Apollo, to Buddha, to Christ; we ransack the ages, spoil 
 the climes; we gather into our palace of art all forms and 
 pressures past of painting and sculpture ; the gracious shapes
 
 THE STUDY 31 
 
 of every mythology, the aspirations of all religions, the for- 
 mulas of all philosophies; and drink deep of "the unsealed 
 springs where science bedews her daedal wings"; we fancy, 
 like Keats's Apollo, that knowledge enormous will make a god 
 of us ; names, deeds, gray legends, dire events, rebellions, 
 majesties, sovereign voices, agonies, creations, and destroy- 
 ings, all at once, pouring into the wide hollows of our brain. 
 But alas ! the hollows of our brains are no wider than those 
 of Sophocles or Plato. In giving to every passion some- 
 thing we have left for no passion truly anything. A man's 
 reach should exceed his grasp, our poet tells us, but it was not 
 in the mouth of a happy man that he put the saying. Our 
 palace of art has too many and too splendid apartments to 
 be a comfortable habitation for the spirit ; and we wander 
 restlessly from chamber to chamber like Caligula, or Nero 
 in his Golden House. We stand helpless before our accu- 
 mulated treasures ; they master us, we cannot master them. 
 We cannot apprehend, coordinate, or unify them ; they are 
 the possession of humanity, not of individual man. Heirs of 
 all the ages, we lack strength to enter upon our inheritance. 
 "The man in the street, finding no worth in himself which 
 corresponds to the force which built the town or sculptured a 
 marble god, feels poor when he looks on them," says Emer- 
 son. And the modern man, contemplating the gathered 
 .spoils of the ages, the relics of five civilizations, collected in 
 libraries and museums, murmurs with Keats, gazing help- 
 lessly at the Elgin marbles: — 
 
 My spirit is too weak ; mortality 
 Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep. 
 And each imagined pinnacle and steep 
 Of god-like hardship tells me I must die. 
 
 And so we yearn for the simple, sensuous life of the Greek, 
 who knew only a few things, but those perfect — his Homer, 
 his marble gods, his Sophoclean tragedy, and music, and
 
 32 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 gymnastic, and the blithe, wholesome life mider the clear 
 Attic sky. 
 
 It is in this mood that we deplore the victory of the 
 pale Galilean, sentimentalize over Charmides, write pas- 
 sionate hymns to Apollo and Persephone, make it our 
 mission to banish those pale spectres, virginity, mysticism, 
 and melancholy; pray to Our Lady of Pain to come down 
 and relieve us from virtue ; cry out to the modern spirit, 
 "why wilt thou cast the roses from thy hair" ; and attempt 
 with Heine to patch up the fictitious quarrel which Chris- 
 tianity has cooked up between mind and body. But this is 
 a false and morbid sentiment. We cannot reascend the 
 stream of time, and the effort to renounce Christianity, 
 chivalry, romanticism, and all the works of the modern and 
 mediaeval spirit would make of us at the best hungry Greek- 
 lings, not Greeks. ''Not to be scorned and rejected of 
 men," says Homer, "are the splendid gifts of the gods, which 
 they bestow according to their oAvn good pleasure, and no 
 man chooses for himself." We cannot renounce our psycho- 
 logical heritage, the more delicate and varied sensibilities 
 with which the centuries have endowed the modern soul. 
 A day with Charmides in the palaestra of Taureas would 
 perhaps prove inexpressibly wearisome to his most enthu- 
 siastic modern devotees, even were Socrates present to lead 
 the conversation ; and Pindar's athletes are far more precious 
 to us in the Olympian odes and in the marble of Phidias than 
 they would be in the flesh. The flower and quintessence of 
 that younger time abides with us in the winter of the world, 
 preserved in art and hterature, like "summer's distillation, 
 a liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass." "I pour thee 
 such wine," the genius of the past cries out to modern 
 man : — 
 
 Leave the flesh to the fate it was fit for! the spirit be thine! 
 
 By the spirit, when age shall o'ereome thee, thou still shalt enjoy 
 
 More indeed, than at first when unconscious, the life of a boy.
 
 THE STUDY 33 
 
 We cannot recover the habitual temper of mind that created 
 Greek poetry. But we can make of it an incomparable edu- 
 cational instrument in youth, and in our riper years a posses- 
 sion of beauty that will keep amid the turmoil and distrac- 
 tions of our fevered modern life "a bower quiet for us and a 
 sleep full of sweet dreams and health and quiet breathing." 
 
 Paul Shoret.
 
 EPIC POETRY 
 
 It is the unique distinction of the literature of the Greeks 
 that the best comes first. With other peoples the efflores- 
 cence of national genius waits upon slower processes of 
 germination. With the Greeks, at the very dawn of their 
 history, poetry had burst forth into immortal bloom. The 
 evolution in orderly sequence of the later products of Hel- 
 lenic literature can be fairly well discerned ; the antecedents 
 of the epic alone lie far beyond our vision, as they lay far 
 beyond the vision of the Hellenes themselves. The stories 
 of Achilles and Odysseus absorbed or displaced alike the 
 primitive hymns to the gods and the songs in honor of the 
 other heroes of the race. In their past the Greeks dis- 
 covered no authentic poetry older than Iliad or Odyssey. 
 All the rest had vanished in the thin air of irreparable loss. 
 
 Unlike the moderns, the Greeks were untroubled to dis- 
 cover the sources whose mingled currents made that large 
 stream of Homer whence were drawn all forms of eloquence 
 in Greece itself ; even as Homer himself says that all rivers 
 and fountains spring originally from Father Ocean. Thrice 
 and four times happy were the Greeks in their almost total 
 lack of prescience of the dread "Homeric Question," whose 
 persistent intrusion into literary criticism since Wolf's Pro- 
 Ugomena might well seem to indicate to the world at large 
 that those who deal with Greek at first hand find the per- 
 manent value of the Greek epic less in the great love and 
 long study of the art and humanity of its greatest monu- 
 ments than in chasing the ignis fatuus of a typical problem 
 of methodical research. If we are not to rob ourselves of 
 
 34
 
 EPIC POETRY 35 
 
 our serener joy, we must not "ask questions that would 
 cause a man to hang himself," as Dr. Johnson said to the 
 indefatigable Boswell. And such a question is the "Homeric 
 Question." 
 
 The literary appreciation of Homer has long had to pay 
 a large part of the cost of acquitting the poet from the 
 charge of writing either or both Iliad and Odyssey, and in 
 either case of possessing genius so audacious as to transcend 
 the critic's measure of human faculty. The just estimation 
 of the two national epics of Greece is impaired if we care 
 first for the parts and last for the whole, and are not con- 
 tent to remain, in guarded moments, incurious whether the 
 Iliad is a consohdation of a "Wrath of Achilles" and a " Fall 
 of Ilium " and whether the Odyssey contains a conflation of 
 two "Returns" of the hero. The scholar must be the most 
 searching of critics and at the same time preserve undis- 
 turbed another self that is able to estimate larger literary 
 values, and especially the unity of moral situation. Did 
 not the mighty Descartes acquiesce in a via media and bid 
 his obstinate questionings cease before the source of the 
 moral unity of the world ? We must learn to confess, at least 
 in moments of aesthetic calm, a certain apathy to the vicissi- 
 tudes of the struggle between Separatists and Unitarians; 
 we must regain the naivete of the Greeks themselves, and 
 yield an unconditional surrender to the grandeur and charm 
 of the Homeric poems by whomsoever written and at what- 
 ever time. The safety of unalloyed delight must not be 
 imperiled by agitation of the overhanging Question. 
 
 In certain passes of the Alps, the poet Gray says in his 
 Journal, the traveler is urged by his guides to press on lest 
 the very agitation of the air should loosen the snows above 
 and overwhelm the caravan. "I took their counsel," says 
 the poet, "and hastened on in silence": — 
 
 Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa.
 
 36 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 But in tacitly substituting Homer for my proper theme, 
 tlie Greek epic, it may seem that, like the Earl of Oxford 
 in Pope's time, I have an epical way of beginning in the 
 middle of things. And yet, in the final estimate of the 
 cultural influences of Greek literature upon the modern 
 world, no other poems, much less any other of the many 
 Greek epics, can rival Iliad and Odyssey in their enduring 
 value. 
 
 No other epic poet of Greece might venture to trespass 
 on Homer's themes. The lost epics of the tale of Troy 
 moved round the periphery of the circle at whose centre 
 stood the wrath of Achilles, and the home-coming of 
 Odysseus. The lost epics of the story of Oedipus and Heracles 
 paled before the radiance of Iliad and Odyssey. It was mere 
 similarity to the external form and style of Homer that 
 gave the name epic to the cosmogonical and didactic poems 
 of Hesiod and to the attempts of the early philosophers to 
 set forth the Nature of Things. The Greek epic owes its 
 indefeasible value neither to Hesiod's mythological pano- 
 rama of the evolution from chaos of the primal forces of 
 nature and its peerage of the Olympians, nor to his exposi- 
 tion of the homely moralities that give a spiritual setting to 
 the peasant's daily round of toil ; still less to the ''philosophic 
 epic" of Parmenides and Empedocles. The Greek epic lives 
 only through the two poems that have survived out of the 
 mass of heroic minstrelsy — the tale of battle and debate 
 of those fifty-one days (in a ten years' war) that witnessed 
 Achilles's wrath and Hector's death, and the picture of adven- 
 ture and social life in which the central figure is the war- 
 worn, storm-tossed, and home-sick son of Laertes, whose 
 story the poet has compressed within the span of the forty- 
 one days of the Odyssey. The revival of the heroic epic 
 in the Alexandrian and Roman ages is but the faint reflec- 
 tion of the waning splendor of the sun — the Argonautica, 
 a piece justificative, written to disprove the contention of the
 
 EPIC POETRY 37 
 
 autocrat of the Museum that the epic of Homer might not 
 suffer imitation, and the other artificial heroic epics — the Pos^- 
 homerica, the Diotiysiaca, the Taking of Ilium, the Capture 
 of Helen, and even, with all its sweetness, Musaeus's Hero 
 and Leander. From first to last the Greek epic is dominated 
 bj' Homer. 
 
 "In the kingdom of the beautiful in the world below," 
 said Saint e-Beuve, who styled himself a priest of Virgil, 
 " Homer as always and everywhere will be the first and most 
 like a god." The " divine" Homer has been a classic ever 
 since men applied their thought to the evaluation of literature. 
 For to be a " classic " is to possess the ability to persist through 
 different ages and among different peoples because an author 
 discloses, in simple, noble, and beautiful form, some truth 
 of universal humanity, because he lays hold of some passion 
 and gives it a vitality that renews itself, though generation 
 after generation, each with its owti moral and intellectual 
 and aesthetic affinities, seems to have exhausted the secret 
 of its power. Homer fives through his responsiveness to a 
 shifting environment, through his power of continual read- 
 justment, and not because he claims the charity of that sym- 
 pathy vouchsafed by some to the infancy of the race and to 
 those happy children whom we call "the ancients." 
 
 It is from the point of view that Homer, through his inex- 
 haustible vitality, has been longer contemporaneous than any 
 other poet of the world that I venture to approach the ques- 
 tion of the universality and permanent value of the Greek 
 epic. As a national poet Homer had an unexampled influ- 
 ence on the life and thought of his own people, and he con- 
 stitutes a dominant part of the cumulative cultural forces 
 of Hellas. He has helped to form the understanding and refine 
 the taste of many great men, and he has been a constant and 
 vivifying influence in European literature. And, finally, 
 the qualities that insured his authority in the past still appeal 
 to the modern world.
 
 38 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 A poet who speaks to all the world speaks most of all to 
 his own people. The united voice of Hellas proclaimed 
 Homer as The Poet. To the Greeks, above and beyond 
 Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, stood the poet of 
 Iliad and Odyssey. And in a more profound sense than in 
 the case of any teacher in verse Homer was the educator 
 of a nation. More than Hesiod he shaped that idealistic 
 ' conception of the gods, which, through him implanted in 
 the nation's faith, distinguishes the religion of Hellas from 
 the polytheisms that paralyzed the spirituality of the nearer 
 East. 
 
 In Homer's picture of the Trojan war the Greeks, his own 
 people, saw their first national achievement. Through 
 Homer they became conscious of themselves. The Greeks 
 who fought about the deep-eddying Scamander were their 
 ancestors ; and in the fortitude, ambition, nobility, resource- 
 fulness of these men and in their caution, pushed to the verge 
 of cunning, they discerned their own spiritual ideals. From 
 Homer youth learned the legends and the religion of the race. 
 Poets, philosophers, statesmen, orators, historians, scien- 
 tists, thinkers about God and the veriest triflers with human 
 life, all ranks, all ages, all conditions of men knew and 
 treasured his words. It was not only scholars like Aristarchus 
 who had far-reaching command of his verse. Many had 
 learned both Iliad and Odyssey word for word ; Alexander 
 the Great, whose soul burned to emulate Achilles's love of 
 glory, knew the Iliad by heart. For centuries professional 
 rhapsodes, attired in gorgeous apparel, declaimed at the 
 public festivals the verses of Homer before vast audiences. 
 A highly gifted people, whose civilization, if measured by the 
 standard of the number of perfected men it produced, may 
 well be pronounced not inferior to our own, acknowledged, in 
 all the vicissitudes of their national life, unswerving allegiance 
 to the sovereignty of their teacher-poet for more than a 
 thousand years.
 
 EPIC POETRY 39 
 
 So varied and so precise indeed was Homer's acquaintance 
 with life that the Greeks regarded his works as the epitome 
 of all knowledge. From him could be learned the arts of 
 eloquence, war, statesmanship, medicine, and even any craft. 
 This authority had no small part in establishing the or- 
 thodoxy of the Greeks' belief that a poet was preeminently a 
 teacher, — a doctrine that to the French has now become 
 I'heresie de V enseignement. The Greeks never surrendered 
 their moral canon of aesthetics, and Strabo inveighs against 
 the Gallic paradox of Eratosthenes that the poet's aim was 
 to delight the mind and not to instruct. Because of 
 the commanding position he enjoyed as the teacher of youth 
 Homer was made the chief object of Plato's attack in his 
 endeavor to utilize the ethical function of poetry as a means 
 to supplant the older morality of the epic by a more spiritual 
 creed. But the poet who represented men as men are and 
 the gods as his age conceived the gods to be was not to be 
 driven from the schools by the passionate protest of the phi- 
 losopher who could find no place for the educative forces of 
 feeling in a system built on abstract reason. Four centuries 
 after Plato boys were still studying Homer in school. The 
 teacher of the Emperor Julian bade his charge neglect the 
 pantomime dances of the day — "the Phaeacian youth danced 
 in nobler fashion." The Christians fell afoul of Homer as 
 the incarnation of paganism and borrowed some of their 
 weapons from the armory of Plato. St. Augustine's verdict 
 "dulcissime vanus" unites the condemnation of the rigid 
 moralist and the lingering sensibilities of the sinner. But 
 Basil the Great, in the fourth century of our era, encouraged 
 Christian youth to profit by the pagan poet whose every 
 teaching, he said, inclines to virtue. 
 
 For the varied exigencies of life the verses of Iliad and 
 Odyssey had an authority and a pertinence that has been 
 the lot of but one other book. A single line was warrant 
 enough for the " jingoes " of antiquity to back their claim to
 
 40 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 others' territory. In a verse built out of Homer the Spartan 
 envoy rejected Gelo's presumptuous demand of leadership 
 as his price for assisting Greece in her struggle for existence 
 against Persia : — 
 
 ^ K€ /u,€y' olfxwieuv 6 IleAoTrtST;? 'Aya/Ac'/xvwv. 
 
 The Roman conqueror of Corinth shed tears when one of 
 his captives, commanded to show his youthful skill in writing, 
 inscribed the verse ''Thrice and four times happy the Danaoi 
 who perished there in broad Troy land." The philosopher 
 Hierocles, when scourged in court, flung drops of his blood 
 into the face of his judge, exclaiming with Odysseus, 
 
 Come, Cyclops, drink my blood. 
 
 To give point, to establish an argument, to suggest to sculptor 
 and painter their ideal, to lend to talk the charm of apt 
 recourse to the poet's art, to furnish matter of dispute alike to 
 the learned, to " corner-buzzers," and to diners-out, to cheer, 
 to console, Homer's words were always on the lips of men. 
 
 In every age of the national life Homer renewed himself 
 through his sensitiveness to his surroundings. He had no 
 need of modernization for men at large ; that thinkers read 
 into him the ideas of their own times proved his "latent 
 correspondences with human nature." He never became out 
 of date; " clearest-souled " of poets, he never failed to make 
 an immediate appeal to heart and mind. In a larger sense 
 than Dante the poet of a nation, there was in him no mystery 
 of allegory to darken the ways of understanding; no insin- 
 cerity of belief in the age of chivalry he depicted, as in Tasso 
 or Ariosto ; no bias of theological dogma, as in Milton. 
 As he made known the emancipation of the human spirit 
 from Orientalism, so he remained the prophet and the guide 
 of the free Greek mind through all its history. 
 
 The permanent value of Homer lies also in the fact that 
 he constitutes a dominant part of the cumulative cultural
 
 EPIC POETRY 41 
 
 forces of our "spiritual ancestors" (as Amiel calls the Greeks) 
 by which the world still lives. Lyric and drama lie nascent 
 in him. Almost every form of the unique literature of the 
 Greeks confesses his authority in thought and language. 
 It is not a small thing for a people that the best comes first. 
 Homer established a standard of distinction which remained 
 a perpetual challenge; he left a legacy of noble artistic 
 ideals ; he was the arbiter of taste ; he imposed the law of 
 simplicity, lucidity, truth to nature, and self-imposed re- 
 straint. Homer first saw the vision of Greece — the equi- 
 hbrium of moral and physical beauty. Whatsoever things 
 are fair in Greece, whatsoever things the world has inherited 
 from Greece and is not content to let die, these things have 
 their fountain-head in Homer. 
 
 The more truly national a poet is, the more readily does 
 he pass the limits of his own nation and enlarge the area of 
 his quickening influence, if he appeals to a common human- 
 ity. 
 
 Rome is the first station in Homer's progress to the modern 
 world, whose culture unites in the recognition of its his- 
 torical continuity. It was at Rome that the art of transla- 
 tion of poetry had its first beginning, and Homer was the 
 first poet ever translated. When at last the Latin race, groAvn 
 to intellectual maturity through Greek tutelage, sought to 
 find a voice at once for its pride as mistress of the world, 
 and for its sense of devotion to the gods who had aided the 
 foundation of the urbs aeterna, it found its own Homer in 
 Virgil. No one would have been more astonished than the 
 poet of the Aeneid to hear that his poem was thought to be 
 superior or even equal to that of his master, to whom he 
 owed the general movement of his epic, motives both signifi- 
 cant and trifling, turns of phraseolgy, and countless matters 
 of detail that made up the dreary catalogue of his literary 
 larcenies compiled by Quintus Octavius Avitus. "Non est 
 erubescendum Vergilio si minorem se Homero vel ipse fatea-
 
 42 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 tur," says Macrobius. Virgil's aim was to enfranchise in 
 Latin speech, but in a nobler form than translation, the epic 
 of the sovereign poet 
 
 a quo ceu fonte perenni 
 Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis. 
 
 To Velleius, Lucan, Silius, Pliny, and Claudian, Homer still 
 remains the type of the immortal poet. But in a burst of 
 admiration on hearing part of the Aeneid read aloud, Pro- 
 pertius exulted that his countryman would win the palm 
 of victory over the Greeks. To Juvenal Virgil is the com- 
 peer of Homer. Both Homer and Virgil occupy the arx 
 musicae, says Priscian. To St. Augustine Virgil is "poeta 
 magnus omniumque praeclarissimus atque optimus." The 
 great controversy has begun. 
 
 It is the Roman's position as the poet of Italy, rather than 
 his inherent superiority to Homer, that made Virgil pre- 
 eminent in the falling Western Empire and in the Middle 
 Ages. While in the East Homer had inherited his large 
 legacy of fame and continued without serious interruption 
 his hold on the culture of the times, in Italy, with the division 
 of the Empire, the ability to read Greek was almost lost by 
 the fifth century. Knowledge of Homer was kept alive in the 
 West by the vogue of Virgil, and it is his fellow-countryman 
 rather than "that Greek, most cherished by the Nine" whom 
 Dante is naturally led to choose as his guide to the dolorous 
 realms of death. There is scarcely any touch of indebted- 
 ness to Homer in the Divine Comedy; yet with truth to fact 
 and to Virgil's modesty Dante makes his Master say : — 
 
 Mark Mm 
 Who in his right hand bears that falchion keen. 
 The other three preceding, as their lord. 
 This is that Homer of all bards supreme. 
 
 Petrarch stands on the threshold of the revival of Greek 
 studies. He could not read Greek, but he wrote an "enthu-
 
 EPIC POETRY 43 
 
 siastic letter " to Homer. In the National Library at Paris 
 there is a copy of a Latin translation of the Odyssey, at the 
 end of which, in a faltering hand, are notes written by the 
 dying poet. 
 
 Not until Homer was printed (in 1488) did he really reap- 
 pear in the West. The day of the indiscriminate taste of 
 the ]\Iiddle Ages had passed. Soon the poet was devoured 
 by the Humanists in the "holy orgy" of the Renaissance. 
 "I am refreshed and fed by the sight of his words (writes 
 Erasmus) even when I cannot understand him." The second 
 Scaliger, who said that "not to know Greek was to know 
 nothing," as a youth read Homer without a teacher in twenty- 
 one days. 
 
 With the sixteenth century there begins that wider acquain- 
 tance with the poet which distinguishes the culture of modern 
 Europe. Each nation in turn caught the passion for Greek 
 and for Homer. Like Geneva, in the proud words of a 
 participant in the congress of diplomatists at Vienna, Homer 
 was "not a grain of sand, but a grain of musk that filled all 
 Europe." In the sixteenth century there was published an 
 edition or a translation of the poet, either entire or in part, 
 on an average every eighteen months. 
 
 Inspired by Homer to write the Franciade, Ronsard gives 
 himself up to an intellectual debauch : — 
 
 Je veux lire en trois jours I'lliade d'Homere. « 
 
 He shuts himself up in his room and issues order to his 
 servant : — 
 
 Au reste, si un Dieu vouloit pour moi deseendre 
 Du ciel, ferme la porte et ne le laisse entrer. i 
 
 Homer stood in the centre of the battle begun by Perrault 
 in 1087 as to the relative superiority of the ancients and the 
 moderns. To the champions of the ancients Homer was the 
 absolute norm for all other epic poets ; the champions of 
 the moderns proclaimed that ho was soon to be dethroned, as
 
 44 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Aristotle had already been dethroned; that he was "tout 
 monstrueux" because he descended to the meanness of men- 
 tioning things unbecoming a heroic poet. To the age of 
 Louis XIV the epic bard must have a courtier's fastidious 
 nicety of taste. Homer's "black beans and peas" must 
 become "golden grain." Says the Earl of Roscommon: — 
 
 For who without a qualm hath ever look'd 
 On holy garbage though by Homer cook'd, 
 Whose toiling heroes and whose wounded gods 
 Make some suspect he snores as well as nods ? 
 
 And Fitzgerald, almost in our own time, could not forgive 
 Homer for his "brutal gods and heroes," though the genial 
 Celt confesses that he distrusts his own taste in the face of 
 the approbation of all the rest of the world. 
 
 The agitation of literary judgments in the early part of 
 the eighteenth century, with all its aberrancies, clarified 
 the understanding of Homer's art: the Iliad and Odyssey 
 were not models to follow but masterpieces to inform the 
 judgment ; they were not allegories composed to subserve 
 a moral purpose or to represent the conflict of civilization with 
 barbarism. But the age was not ripe for the appreciation 
 of Homer's naturalness, simplicity, and plainness. 
 
 The decline of classicism and the awakening to nature 
 meant the rediscovery of Homer. Virgil, to whom excel- 
 lence in judgment had been assigned, as invention to Homer, 
 lost, except in France, his position of preeminence. Racine 
 had read Homer with ease, Bossuet had known him by heart 
 — and there is a story that he regularly began the composi- 
 tion of his orations by reading his favorite Greek poet. 
 In Telemaque Fenelon had cast the spirit of Christianity 
 over an Odyssean epic tinged with ethics and philosophy. 
 But the genius of France was temperamentally Virgilian. 
 Voltaire reviled Homer as he reviled Shakespeare. The 
 appreciation of Homer had to wait for Andre Chenier, 
 Bernardin de Saint Pierre, and Chateaubriand.
 
 EPIC POETRY 45 
 
 But Germany was meantime swept by a contagion of enthu- 
 siasm for Hellenism. Schiller said that if a man has lived 
 only to read the twenty-third Iliad, he cannot complain 
 about life ; and from his musing over Homer, his companion 
 in his solitary walks in the valley of the Lahn, came Goethe's 
 first zeal for the poet, who (he said) had, together with Pol- 
 ygnotus, taught him every day that "in our own life here 
 above ground we have, properly speaking, to enact Hell." 
 
 In England the appreciation of Homer had never suffered 
 ecHpse. ]\Iilton molded his verse on Virgil's, but his 
 favorite book, next to the Bible, was Homer ; and his 
 daughter Dorothy used to read to her father in his blindness 
 the verses of the poet whom all the world then regarded as 
 the blind bard of Chios. Statesmen in solemn and in spor- 
 tive mood had recourse to the poet's words which English- 
 men, like the Greeks themselves, could fit into the occur- 
 rences of life. The dying Lord Granville turned for a 
 moment from consideration of the preliminary articles of 
 the Treaty of Paris to repeat the speech of Sarpedon : — 
 
 "Ah, friend, if once escaped from this battle, we were for- 
 ever to be ageless and immortal, neither would I myself 
 fight in the foremost ranks, nor would I send thee into the 
 war that giveth men renown, but now — for assuredly 
 ten thousand fates of death do every way beset us, and these 
 no mortal may escape or avoid — now let us go for- 
 ward." 1 
 
 Sheridan took Lord Belgrave to task for misquoting 
 Homer in the House of Commons. But his latest biogra- 
 pher pronounces apocryphal the story that when a member 
 of the House fresh from the University ended his speech 
 with a passage from Demosthenes, Sheridan began his reply 
 with the words, 
 
 Tov 8' d7ra/i.£t/3o/x£vo5 Trpoaicfir} SepiSavios 77/00)5. 
 
 • The translations cited in this article are from Lang, Leaf, and Myers's 
 Iliad and from Butcher and Lang's Odyssey.
 
 46 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Good Dr. Harrison in Amelia is ready with his Homer, 
 and Mrs. Atkinson thinks him superior to all other writers. 
 As captain of the Hampshire grenadiers, and a few 
 years before he conceived the idea of his great work. 
 Gibbon read Homer entire. Shelley said that " as a poet 
 Homer must be acknowledged to excel Shakespeare in tlie 
 truth, the harmony, the sustained grandeur, the satisfy- 
 ing completeness of his images." 
 
 To Carlyle, the poet of "the richest-toned artless music" 
 made equal appeal as to Milton: "I love it" (the Iliad), 
 he writes in a letter in 1834, "better than any other book, I 
 think, except the Bible." The French Revolution, which 
 was to be "such a book, quite an epic poem, an apotheosis 
 of sansculottism," is full of Homeric reminiscences. 
 
 Those who love Homer find him again in part in Clough's 
 Bothie. To Tennyson his own Marie d' Arthur was one of the 
 twelve books of a great epic, "faint Homeric echoes, nothing 
 worth." Oenone, Ulysses, Lucretius, The Princess, attest 
 the poet's love, Virgihan as he was, for "the Ionian father 
 of the rest." To Gladstone, Homer was a "palace of enchant- 
 ment," and Matthew Arnold pronounced judgment that 
 Iliad and Odyssey are the most important poetical monu- 
 ments in existence. 
 
 Such, then, has Homer been to the remoter and the nearer 
 past. What claim has he to occupy a permanent place in 
 the culture of the future ? 
 
 We are far removed from the temper of mind of the men 
 of the Renaissance, who "went down on their knees" to the 
 Greeks. To-day, the brilliant advance of the physical 
 sciences and the rise of the social sciences tend to displace the 
 centre of gravity of the world's culture. Those who love the 
 ancient classics have no quarrel with science, but they are 
 disturbed at the situation in our own country, where we are 
 now facing the danger of a society apparently intent on de- 
 priving itself of that general knowledge of Homer at first-
 
 EPIC POETRY 47 
 
 hand which has marked the culture of Europe for the last 
 four hundred years. "The further from the spring, the more 
 water loses its taste and strength," Luther said, when he 
 found he needed Greek to interpret the New Testament; 
 and his utterance loses none of its truth when applied to the 
 language of Homer : 
 
 Ce langage sonore aux douceurs souveraines, 
 Le plus beau qui aoit ne sur les l^vres humaines. 
 
 Homer's speech is born of his race and mirrors the total 
 effect of all that appeals to the finer outward sense ; it is 
 the flower of Greece in its springtime ; it is energetic, harmo- 
 nious, musical, varied, abounding in life. The diction of the 
 poet is itself confederate to the precision of his vision and the 
 brilUance of his external outline. Homer is vivid because 
 his visual imagery is concrete and because he translates 
 action and emotion into simple yet penetrating language. 
 His style has ease even when it is torrential in its vehemence ; 
 it can be plain without losing its nobility. Matthew Arnold's 
 most effective point in his analysis of Homeric diction is 
 that Homer's style retains its distinction alike when the 
 theme is elevated and when it is humble ; that it attains 
 magniloquence and avoids tumidity. 
 
 But Homer's language and his verse, the spiritual media of 
 his ideas and the echoes of his heroic theme, mean less to the 
 mass of men (who vnW always read him by proxy) than his pic- 
 ture of human life and of the visible sphere of man's activities. 
 
 Were Homer not a poet, he might be called an encyclo- 
 paedist. Unobtrusive there lie in Iliad and Odyssey materials 
 for the study of an entire age more abundant than exist in 
 the case of any other ancient people, the Jews alone excepted. 
 The age he mirrors was an age of justice and of moral feeling, 
 though law and morality were still unborn. It was an age 
 when men had come to recognize that war was dreadful, 
 and yet loved battle; and no one, not even Tolstoi, has
 
 48 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 ever pictured war with the vividness of Homer. It was 
 an age when man turned readily to God, upon whom rested 
 his entire dependence ; when the primal law of duty was to 
 keep thy word, to honor thy father and thy mother, and to 
 show mercy to the beggar and the suppliant within thy gates. 
 It was an age when belief in the visible presence of his gods 
 brought no enfeeblement of endeavor, but rather spurred man 
 to a completer manifestation of his humanity. Labor was 
 still noble. The spirit of generosity was abroad. Women 
 were treated with a chivalry unknown to the later days of 
 paganism. Insolence and lust had their end appointed in 
 the divine resentment. It was the age when men were 
 strong and brave, and instinctively refined ; and, though 
 uncheered by the consolation of a later faith, confronted the 
 thought of eternal gloom in the hereafter with a resignation ' 
 born neither of apathy nor of despair. 
 
 Upon the external world of Homer science has now laid 
 her hand. Iliad and Odyssey have become the quarry of 
 the sociologist and anthropologist. But the lover of poetry 
 will resist an appreciation of the poet which discovers his 
 only claim to permanence in the fact that he is the earliest 
 literary witness to the life of man in Europe; which regis- 
 ters with equal impartiality the boasting of Homer's heroes 
 and the Fijian abuse of their besieged enemies, and equates 
 in the cold light of science the lamentation over Hector's 
 corpse uttered by "that savage woman" Andromache, with 
 the somersaults of a newly bereaved wife in Queensland and 
 the ceremonial wailing of the people of the Zambezi. 
 
 But science may not depoetize a dream. To the sociolo- 
 gist Homer will justly remain a document of inestimable 
 value; but to a larger world he makes appeal, not because 
 he provides material to be pigeonholed into Spencer's 
 Sociology or Ratzel's History of Mankind, but because he 
 views human life, as a poet views it, through a prism that 
 tints the world with golden gleams.
 
 EPIC POETRY 49 
 
 And as a poet Homer's permanence is insured because 
 of his unique place in the Uterature of the world. The oldest 
 monuments of European poetry, Iliad and Odyssey are akin 
 both to the ''popular" epic (if one must retain that squinting 
 expression) and to the literary epic. It has not been without 
 a struggle that criticism has attained to the just perspective 
 of their position. Two centuries ago they were measured 
 by an abstract standard of literary art which postulated an 
 ideal model capable of reproduction in any language, in any 
 nation, and in any age. They were compared directly with 
 the Aeneid and Paradise Lost, as if Homer was the poet 
 of a mature and artificial civilization. A century ago it 
 was an axiom of the critic that Homer was a writer of ballad 
 poetry. 
 
 We have at last won a just estimate of Iliad and Odyssey 
 at least on this point. The}^ are neither ballads nor "popular " 
 epics like the Arthurian and Carlovingian romances or the 
 Nibelungenlied, nor are they immediately comparable to the 
 Aeneid, the Jerusalem Delivered, the Divine Comedy, or Para- 
 dise Lost. 
 
 To the "popular" epic they are related because they are 
 indigenous and appeal to the spontaneous sympathy of an 
 entire nation, because they deal with events that had won 
 a secure place in the national imagination, because their 
 heroes embody national ideals, because the utterance of 
 their poet is undisturbed by the pressure of personahty, with 
 its passing beliefs, its idiosyncrasies, and its constant inclina- 
 tion to force to the front the dissonance of the present and the 
 past. Furthermore, Homer's world has the finality of self- 
 completeness, and that moral harmony which displays no 
 discord between aspiration and achievement. In action, 
 thought, and sentiment. Homer touches common life closely, 
 and even in the Odyssean realm of fancy the human clement 
 preponderates over the supernatural. Homer, again, is 
 "popular" because he has perfect ease and grace and vivid-
 
 50 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 ness, because he has amphtude and secures totality of im- 
 pression by fullness of landscape. Like the popular epics, 
 Homer is plain in thought and plain in style. But, unlike 
 these epics, he is also rapid, and he is above all noble. 
 
 Iliad and Odyssey are the compeers of the great literary 
 epics because of the elevation and wide sweep of the mind 
 of their poet, because of their pervasive artistic excellence 
 in which the nobility of the style answers the nobility of 
 human nature, and because of their abiding and quickening 
 influence on those "sane, well-trained minds of very high 
 calibre whose admiration and delight (as Matthew Arnold 
 said) is the test of supreme excellence in literature." 
 
 The heroic epic of the Greeks, with its likeness both to 
 the Volksepos and to the literary epic, occupies a place 
 peculiarly its own. In Greece alone the epic, as an artistic 
 form of poetry, came first. In Greece alone the poet did not 
 have to balance alternatives; he whom the Muses inspired 
 was in the earliest period a singer of heroic lays, in the next 
 age a lyric poet, in the next a dramatist. The Greek epic 
 is thus isolated not only because, like all Greek literature, 
 it is untouched by foreign influence, but also because it is 
 the earliest product of that literature. By its isolation the 
 Greek epic gains its supreme originality in comparison with 
 all later poetry which lies under the attraction of the thoughts 
 and ways of thought of the past. Though Homer stands 
 at the end of the heroic age, in the freshness, sincerity, and 
 vividness with which he views the many-colored pageant 
 of human life, he seems almost dissociated from any past. 
 For his sentiment is projected warm from the heart of a race 
 in its adolescence ; his words express, do not suggest ; his 
 thought is not distilled, does not build any fabric of its own 
 subtle fancy. Homer does not bring a fruitage of ideas 
 already ripened into deeper mellowness because they have 
 been voiced by poets of the past and enriched by the expe- 
 rience of men of different race from age to age. He is un-
 
 EPIC POETRY 51 
 
 touched by the sense of the mysteries of things, by the sense 
 of Hfe's disharmonies that is born of the maturity of the race 
 of men. In his verse there is none of that proud dignity 
 that lingers in the steady and solemn cadences of Virgil, 
 the hving voice of Rome's imperial rule. Alone of the great 
 epic poets of the world he has not gleaned amid "aUen corn." 
 
 Virgil and Dante and Milton furnish to the scholar the 
 refined delight of discovering the contact of mind with mind 
 in associative reminiscence. But if Homer lacks this charm, 
 he has at least escaped the perils of indirectness and of labored 
 allusiveness. The leaves which typify to him the passing of 
 the generations of men are not strewn to his fancy in some 
 Greek Vallombrosa. Homer displays no sense of the con- 
 scious effort of literary craftsmanship ; the progress of his 
 ideas is not choked by undergrowths of thought ; he is not 
 subject to the tyranny of a style, like Milton's, that does 
 not give ample air to the fullness of his thought; of all epic 
 poets he is freest from bad ornament ; and he never shows 
 that lack of precision in sympathy which attends the study 
 of man and the visible world through books. Virgil looks 
 at both through Homer's eyes; he does not recreate in his 
 o\\Ti soul the emotion of his heroes — he has an index path- 
 ologicus made up chiefly out of Homer. Virgil is, too, a 
 courtier; the muse of Homer keeps her gaze level in the 
 presence of the great, and the poet is merely her inter- 
 preter. In Dante philosophy is striving to translate thought 
 into sensible form. Milton contemplates human life with 
 the vision of a priest. 
 
 At the outset, Greek poetry looks with the keenness of a 
 painter directly at nature and at man. Ut piciura poesis 
 is pervasively true of Homer, who sees only with his own 
 eyes. Scaliger, in scorn of the poet, says that he describes 
 the felling of a tree as if he were a carpenter ; and some 
 Gorman thinks the poet's knowledge of human anatomy is 
 such that he must have been an army-surgeon. With what
 
 52 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 nice minuteness he observes nature's shifting spectacle — the 
 warring of the winds ; the fury of the tempest, the rocking 
 ship, and the angrj^ god beneath the waves ; the roar of the 
 torrent heard by the lonely shepherd on the hills ; the light 
 that flashed from Achilles's spear before it pierced Hector he 
 Ukens to Hesperus, "fairest of all stars set in heaven." 
 
 Homer, too, foreshadows the national conception of natural 
 beauty, which found greater charm in the loveliness of 
 meadow and stream than in the majestic splendor of moun- 
 tain heights and ocean. To Homer nature is not something 
 distinct from man in the sense of Rousseau. He does not 
 recognize an animate and an inanimate nature. He paints 
 nature, as a Greek paints it, with man as spectator or auditor 
 of her sights and sounds ; he rarely finds in nature the mirror 
 of man's mental state; as he does when Patroclus says to 
 Achilles: "the gray sea and rugged precipices brought thee 
 forth, for rugged is thy heart." 
 
 The Greek poet moves by preference in the world of man. 
 Homer is the interpreter of the Muse in whose omniscience 
 fact and fancy have already merged their distinctive out- 
 lines ; he is not an historian, to whom events are of prime 
 value while their human agents stand in the second line. 
 Man is the central and driving force in Homer. "Upon 
 Homer's hero depends his world." Virgil's hero shines as 
 the divinely appointed founder of Rome, and his every action 
 is controlled by the decrees of the gods. Tasso's heroes 
 shine through reflection of their purpose to free the tomb of 
 Christ. But though it was the will of Zeus that Troy should 
 fall, the warriors on the Trojan plain gain no individual 
 lustre through their joint heroic enterprise. In the pan- 
 orama of the moving accidents of the Odyssey, in all the 
 shifting spectacle of dangers and enchantments, it is what 
 Odysseus does and feels, not what he sees and hears, that is 
 the main spring of interest. The external world is there for 
 man, not man for the external world. The immortals
 
 EPIC POETRY 53 
 
 themselves have their place on Oljinpus or on Ida or beneath 
 the gray sea only to behold the action that is the expression 
 of the will of man. In the centre of things is man swayed by 
 passion and unchecked save by moral restraint, self-imposed, 
 but figured as obedience to the promptings of the divine 
 regents of the world. In this human sphere, admitting the 
 verification of experience, will and action are justified by 
 speech. About half of the Iliad and Odyssey consists of 
 speeches; with good reason did Plato and Aristotle regard 
 Homer as the father of the drama. The Iliad excels in dra- 
 matic energy, the Odyssey in picturesque effect ; but in 
 both poems it is dramatic situation that gives intense 
 \itality and vividness to Homer's men and women, who are 
 all creatures of flesh and blood, and embody the essential 
 characteristics of human nature. Medea, Dido, Francesca 
 da Rimini, Ugolino, Rinaldo, Roland, Brunhilde, Lear and 
 Lady jNIacbeth are not more inalienable possessions of the 
 world's imagination than Achilles, Ajax, Diomed, Odysseus, 
 Hector, Paris, Helen, Penelope, and Nausicaa. 
 
 It is Homer's limitless faculty of invention that gives to 
 the denizens of his human sphere such varied individual- 
 ity. On his epic scene move graybeards and youths, maidens 
 and matrons, the innocent and the wanton, kings and beg- 
 gars, princes and demagogues, sages and satirists, rebels 
 and faithful vassals, men of action and men of words — a 
 great assembly of the differences of human faculty and human 
 estate — while high above all the rest towers Peleus's 
 matchless son; Odysseus, undaunted in every danger; 
 Hector, who pardons her who is the cause of his ruin, and is 
 the ideal of the pagan hero in the Christian epic ; the woman 
 of the fatal gift of beauty who gazes with shuddering into 
 the vistas of memory; and that other wife, unbetrayed to 
 surrender of her constancy by twenty long years of watching 
 and waiting for the home-coming of her lord. Above and 
 below and among this catholic and gracious humanity move
 
 54 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 in supremely beautiful and august forms the divine incarna- 
 tions of majesty and grace, dignity and loveliness, wisdom 
 and strength. 
 
 Homer's characters are limned only in outline and do 
 not appear before us complete; they develop as we watch 
 their attractions and repulsions, perpetually varying in their 
 interrelations. They do not, like Virgil's heroes, exist for 
 themselves alone. And the Greek poet knows well that in 
 literature it is speech, rather than description of action, that 
 serves best to mark the distinctive temper of individuality. 
 
 All Homer's heroes, save only Thersites, are brave. But 
 courage has its spiritual anatomy : Agamemnon and Mene- 
 laus and Ajax, Idomeneus and Sarpedon and Hector, are all 
 differently brave. Other epic poets do not succeed in keep- 
 ing Homer's precision of rudimentary outline in marking 
 individuality. Aeneas is an aggregation of piety; Sieg- 
 fried is an aggregation of excellence. No Homeric hero, 
 except perhaps Diomed, embodies the ideal of flawlessness 
 inherent in the romanticism of the Frank on either side of 
 the Rhine. Achilles excels all the rest in action and in 
 speech. He burns with indignation at all injustice whether 
 he or another is its victim ; but he is seen in nature's mirror, 
 not through the prism of idealism ; he discovers a momentary 
 savagery at the end of a war that has demoralized society 
 in arms. 
 
 The men and women of Homer are our heroized selves, and 
 they are all, save only Penelope perhaps, creatures of vigorous 
 action. The range of their action is as varied as are the 
 incidents that crowd the canvas of the poet. Difficulties and 
 dangers on land and sea, battle in countless forms, the gentler 
 scenes of peace and domestic life, move before our eyes in 
 an ever shifting panorama. But if action is omnipresent 
 and lends an intensity of interest that enthralls the reader, 
 no less significant are the thoughts and sentiments of the 
 actors in this epic drama. Stirred by natural passion and
 
 EPIC POETRY 55 
 
 energy and weaponed with a fine-tempered language, they 
 speak to us of human hfe in the language of a common human- 
 ity ; and whether the appeal is to understanding or emotion, 
 it is of universal human interest. Like the women who wail 
 over Patroclus, "in semblance for the dead, but each for her 
 own misery," so the joys and sorrows of successive ages find 
 individual voice in the joys and sorrows of Homer's men and 
 women. Though the poet does not search for scenes of 
 tenderness and pity, by a slightest touch, often by what he 
 leaves unsaid, he sounds the chords of pathos; when the 
 eyes are choked with tears or when the heart is aflame, abso- 
 lute simpHcity surpasses all studied craftsmanship. 
 
 The thoughts and sentiments uttered by Homeric person- 
 ages are compacted of a general experience ; they rouse the 
 spirit, they touch the heart, they inform the understanding ; 
 they have the note of eternity. 
 
 "Dear one," says Hector to Andromache, "I praj^ thee 
 not to be of oversorrowful heart ; no man against my fate 
 shall hurl me to Hades ; only destiny, I ween, no man hath 
 ever escaped, be he coward or be he valiant, when once he 
 hath been born." 
 
 Hector and his wife — "the stately flower of perfect wife- 
 hood" — have realized the substance of Odysseus's prayer 
 for the maiden Nausicaa : "And may the gods grant thee 
 all thy heart's desire : a husband and a home, and a mind 
 at one with his may they give — a good gift, for there is noth- 
 ing mightier and nobler than when man and wife are of one 
 heart and mind in a house." 
 
 In the presence of death the god of light says to the im- 
 mortals : "It must be that many a man lose even some 
 d(;arer one than this, his very own brother or perchance 
 a son, yet bringcth he his wailing and lamentation to an end, 
 for an enduring heart have the Fates given unto men." 
 
 When Glaucus has been accosted by Diomed in the press 
 of buttle, he says: "Son of Tydeus, of great soul, why
 
 56 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 askest thou my race ? Even as are the generations of leaves 
 such are those Ukewise of men ; the leaves that be the wind 
 scattereth over the earth, and the forest buddeth and put- 
 teth forth more again, when the season of spring is at hand ; 
 so of the generations of men one springeth up and another 
 passeth away." 
 
 In the fifth Iliad when Diomed has routed his mortal foes 
 and even turns to encounter Apollo, he is rebuked : "Desire 
 not to match thy spirit with gods, since there is no comparison 
 of the race of immortal gods and of men that walk upon the 
 earth." 
 
 But if mortal men must give way before the gods whom 
 they revere, they are never marionettes in the hands of the 
 puissant Olympians. Man's action may be modified or 
 diverted by the direct influence of a god ; but man's will is 
 never rudely overborne without a struggle, never destroyed 
 by divine command. Even those decisions which are ap- 
 parently suddenly formed on the appearance of a god are 
 already dormant in the hero's mind. The divine epiphany 
 is only the external sign of the reaction of the soul. 
 
 As to the gods themselves, though Milton may regulate 
 his divine mechanism with a profounder logic, yet Homer 
 has an artistic advantage over all the Christian poets in the 
 multiplicity of his supernatural beings, as he has also in 
 the range of his imagery. The sense of reality of Homer's 
 divine agents, the direct and visible participants in human 
 affairs, lends to the Greek epic a sincerity and a naturalness 
 beyond the power of later art to simulate. For the gods of 
 Homer are virtually men in whom the limits of human 
 physical finiteness have been extended or men freed entirely 
 from these Hmits. If they are therefore less awful and sub- 
 lime than the supernatural agents of other poets, they are 
 not philosophical or theological conceptions, as in Virgil 
 and Milton, which have taken on material form because they 
 were otherwise incapable of visualization.
 
 EPIC POETRY 57 
 
 But we may not demand of a national epic impregnated 
 with the Stoic conception of the world, or. of epics founded 
 on a revealed religion, the free play of the imaginative instinct 
 with regard to the divine that marks the adolescence of the 
 Hellenic race. If Homer's themes cannot vie in implicit 
 grandeur with Virgil's or Dante's or Tasso's or Milton's, 
 it is also to be borne in mind that it is not (as Arnold re- 
 minds us) the nature of their subject which occasions the fine 
 style of the greatest artists in words ; as it is also not the 
 nature of their theme that is the sole sprii^g of their ideas 
 
 On Man, on Nature and on Human Life. 
 
 As the immortals in Homer know each other whenever 
 they meet and in whatever disguise, so the greatest poets 
 of the world are akin, whatever their theme. It is Homer's 
 province to depict in all its freshness and strength and beauty 
 the irrecoverable youth of the world, to trace the lineaments 
 of human life still so simplified to nature that it rests on the 
 primal emotions of the heart, to picture an astonishing variety 
 of incident, and with minute precision to set forth abundant 
 riches of human experience, to catch the spirit of an age, and 
 to give more than any other poet of the Greeks themselves 
 the very essence of the Greek spirit. 
 
 If poetry is only dreamland, if the warring Greeks and 
 Trojans are as unsubstantial as Circe's spells, this far-off 
 poet of another clime sends us (as do our growing years) 
 into glad exile to our dreams. 
 
 Herbert Weir Smyth.
 
 LYRIC POETRY 
 
 Difficult as it is to summarize aptly the character of Greek 
 hterature as a whole, such an apergu is quite as hard to achieve 
 for one of its most interesting parts, the lyric poetry. For 
 this poetry is the product of many regions and periods, uses 
 many different forms of Greek language to express itself, 
 and reveals to us not only essential tribal peculiarities, but 
 also the marked individuality of the singer, and so illustrates 
 every mood of the Greek mind. The strongest contrast 
 to this many-sidedness of the lyric is afforded by the drama 
 and oratory. These, un-Attic as their beginnings may have 
 been, are essentially Attic as far as we can trace them ; the 
 Greek in which they are preserved is almost exclusively Attic, 
 their spirit not less Athenian ; and the period within which 
 their budding, their flowering, and the beginning of their 
 decay may be watched is fairly well limited to the two cen- 
 turies during which Athens was the intellectual leader of 
 Greece. 
 
 But for a thorough study of the Greek lyric poetry one 
 must explore every highway and byway of the literature; 
 alike the earliest epics and the latest writers of Byzantine 
 times, not only because many of the most precious remains of 
 the lyric are embedded, in the form of quotations, in the later 
 writings, but because in even the earliest epic we hear the 
 echo of voices of a still remoter age, chanting songs of rejoic- 
 ing or lament. The drama, too, contains some of the noblest 
 productions of the Hellenic lyric genius. Nor is our task 
 wholly done when the literature has been ransacked. To 
 comprehend the occasions which called forth much of the 
 
 58
 
 LYRIC POETRY 59 
 
 Greek song, we must learn to know Greek manners and cus- 
 toms, both secular and religious. There was hardly an occa- 
 sion in the life of Greece which did not find its accompani- 
 ment of song. The language itself sang, one may say with 
 little exaggeration, and fondness for beauty of poetic form 
 was innate in the Hellenic character. The matchless remains 
 of the lyric left us by the greatest poets are seen to have been 
 developed out of popular forms, and so, with all their elab- 
 oration, to have kept in touch with the life of the nation as a 
 whole. If I may repeat a comparison used in a recent lec- 
 ture, "it is everywhere as though we were viewing a garden, 
 the flowers in which are only better bred specimens of the 
 sorts to be found all about, outside the wall." Occasionally 
 in most unexpected places we come upon proof of the keen- 
 ness of this Greek sense of form. Here and there a broken 
 stone has kept faithful record of a touching grief or an honest 
 pride in achievement, sometimes phrased in artistic verse, 
 sometimes in a form that cannot quite reach the true poetic 
 grace of utterance. For example, a rudely inscribed stone 
 found some fifteen j^ears ago at Eretria in Euboea bears the 
 epitaph of a sailor, dating from perhaps 500 b.c, which may 
 be explained as the affectionate tribute of a sorrowing ship- 
 mate. The letters begin in fairly orderly fashion, but at 
 the end are crowded into a hopeless tangle ; some of the 
 words are misspelled ; the metre is very faulty ; but the epi- 
 taph is not bad poetry for all that, and the lyric touch of 
 style is there. It reads in translation : — 
 
 r Here Philo lies ; to him that sailed the wave 
 Earth scanty blessings in his lifetime gave, 
 And now — a grave. 
 
 The study of Greek lyric is very largely a study of dis- 
 jointed fragments. In no part of the literature has time 
 worked more ruthless havoc. In Symonds's fine comparison, 
 the fragments preserved are like the islands in the Aegean ;
 
 60 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 we know they are but the summits of mountain-chains that 
 lie hidden far below the surface of the sea. Much of the 
 destruction has been inevitable ; but it is hard to reconcile 
 ourselves to the burning — if the account is true — of the 
 Mss. of Alcaeus and Sappho at Rome in 1073, under Pope 
 Gregory VII. Bergk's collection of the lyric poets, exhaus- 
 tive when the latest edition was published in 1882, contains 
 all that was then known of one hundred and ten poets, many 
 of whom stand but as shadows of mighty names, and numer- 
 ous fragments that were anonymous even to the scholars 
 of Alexandria and Rome. Classical scholars await with 
 impatience each new publication of papyri discovered in 
 Egyptian tombs, for these, among thousands of documents 
 and letters, now and then yield a precious bit of literature, 
 although very rarely anything of such extent or importance 
 as the unique ms. of Bacchylides discovered in 1896. Only 
 four lyric poets, Theognis, Pindar, BacchyUdes, and Timo- 
 theus, have come down to us through the medium of individ- 
 ual MSS., if we except a few brief fragments rescued from 
 papyri, among which are some of Sappho, some of Alcaeus, 
 some of Corinna, and a splendid one which has with great 
 probabihty been assigned to Archilochus. But in the main 
 it is nearly as true as it was thirty years ago that we know 
 the Greek lyric poets, Theognis, Pindar, and Bacchylides ex- 
 cepted, only from quotation in later writers. 
 
 One kind of quotation, naturally the least satisfactory, 
 is where single words or brief phrases have been preserved 
 by compilers of obsolete or poetical expressions, writers on 
 grammar and dialect, makers of books of reference ; of such 
 we have hundreds, and any such stray notice may one day 
 enable us to identify a new fragment of importance. Iden- 
 tification is possible only because some scholar recognizes 
 in the deciphered text something — it may be a passage of 
 considerable length or merely a few words — that he had 
 seen elsewhere. Thus a fragment of over one hundred and
 
 LYRIC POETRY 61 
 
 thirty lines (some of them mutilated beyond recognition), 
 found in 1855, was recognized as part of a poem by Alcman 
 because one of the lines, almost meaningless by itself, had 
 been quoted by an ancient commentator on Homer. 
 
 Or the quotation may be of one or more verses adduced 
 to illustrate metrical principles or theories. A great pro- 
 portion of what we know of Sappho has come to us in one 
 or the other of these ways. The fragment in which a late- 
 marrying girl is compared to the apple on the topmost 
 bough : "Like the sweet apple that blushes on the top bough, 
 atop of the topmost, and the apple-gatherers forgot it — no, 
 not forgot it, but could not reach it " — these exquisite lines 
 are quoted merely to illustrate the word for the so-called 
 "sweet-apple," i.e. an apple grown by grafting on a quince- 
 tree. It is a most tantalizing mode of citation, often break- 
 ing off short in the middle of a phrase ; quite as if we had 
 to form a judgment of an English poet from a single torn 
 page containing a part of the "Table of First Lines." To 
 take another instance, we know from various sources that 
 Timocreon of Rhodes wrote most bitter attacks upon his 
 contemporaries Themistocles and Simonides, with the latter 
 of whom he seems to have carried on a lively controversy. 
 A writer on metric quotes the beginning of a poem by him 
 written in a particularly sarcastic and mocking measure, as 
 follows (it is hard to read it without singing it) : — 
 
 2i/ceX6s KOfx\f/bs dvrjp <^ ^ vy w 
 
 ttotI Tav fxar^p icpa Ky kj v^ ^^ 
 
 "A pretty man of Sicily said to his mother — " and there he 
 stops. It is a most promising opening for a satirical poem, 
 but probably we shall never hear what the mother heard. 
 Simonides is known to have spent the last years of his Hfe 
 in Sicily; and those who enjoy guessing may perhaps imag- 
 ine here the beginning of a lampoon upon him, describing 
 the effect of his personality upon some Sicilian dandy.
 
 62 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 But the pointing of morals and the adorning of tales have 
 preserved to our use and profit the greatest number of scraps 
 of the classical lyric. To Plutarch, Strabo, Athenaeus, and 
 others, including several Fathers of the Church, we owe most 
 of the lyric fragments that we possess. The two best pieces 
 of Sappho have been saved to us by the rhetoricians Dio- 
 nysius of Halicarnassus and the so-called Longinus, author of 
 the famous treatise "On the Sublime."^ 
 
 It has long been a commonplace of Greek literary history 
 that until late Alexandrian times the Greeks used no satis- 
 factory comprehensive term for what has ever since then 
 been styled "lyric" poetry. This want was undoubtedly 
 due to the extreme variety of the classes of poems which 
 could not be included under the epic or the drama. These 
 were well-marked divisions of poetry, many as their sub- 
 
 ' An interesting but difBcult question, for the solution of which the evi- 
 dence is very incomplete, is whether tradition is correct in ascribing to 
 Alexandrian scholars the formation of a "canon" or model collection of the 
 nine best lyric poets of the classical period. The eariiest datable direct 
 references to these nine poets as forming a class by themselves are found 
 in a passage of Seneca (about the middle of the first century after Christ), 
 in Petronius (about the same time), and in Quintilian, towards the end of 
 the same century. But when Horace, in the ode prefixed to the collection 
 which he dedicated to Maecenas in the year 23 B.C., at the age of 42, expresses 
 the hope that he too may be counted among the lyrici vatcs, he is probably 
 alluding to a universally recognized group. An epigram in the Greek 
 Anthology (A. P. ix. 184) invokes, also as though forming a group by them- 
 selves, the same nine poets that make up the so-called "Alexandrian Canon " ; 
 "be gracious," the author says, "ye that form the beginning and the end 
 of all lyric." But unfortunately author and date of the epigram are un- 
 known. It may go back to about 200 B.C., and thus form an indirect proof 
 of the existence of the Canon at that time. About eleven years ago Wila- 
 mowitz-Moellendorff, in an elaborate essay, tried to prove that these nine 
 poets, far from having been put into a class by themselves as representing 
 the highest degree and standard of excellence, were in fact the only ones 
 whose works had survived the destruction of time down to the third century 
 before Christ. Though backed by Wilamowitz's extraordinary learning 
 and acuteness, the theory can hardly be regarded as proved. Such whole- 
 sale destruction of the older literature, by 300 or 250 b.c, as it implies, has 
 not yet been made credible.
 
 LYRIC POETRY 63 
 
 divisions might be ; but the inclusion of all other kinds into 
 one group offered many difficulties. The most that could 
 be said in common of them was that they were neither epic 
 nor dramatic ; very much as, in the field of Greek dialec- 
 tology, everything was "Aeolic" that was neither Ionic nor 
 Doric. 
 
 The term "lyric," which seems to have been first used in 
 this connection about 100 B.C., is literally too broad, for 
 it should mean "sung to the lyre," and if pressed should 
 include the epic, which originally was doubtless always 
 chanted with that accompaniment ; and it should exclude 
 the whole body of elegiac poetry, a very extensive and impor- 
 tant development in the history of Greek lyric, which was at 
 first intoned or chanted with an accompaniment of the flute. 
 Another name much used is "melic" poetry; ^eXt/<^ TrotV^o-ts 
 is poetry that is "articulated," that is, divided into members, 
 or stanzas, not composed in verses of identical structure 
 following one another to any desired extent. But fortu- 
 nately convenience prevailed over etymological consistency, 
 and the two expressions have become fairly well fixed in 
 literary usage. I shall here employ them in the sense often- 
 est given them: "lyric" will be the wider term, including 
 first the elegiac and the iambic verse, which in historical 
 times came to be recited or declaimed, no longer chanted ; 
 and, secondly, the many varieties of "melic" poetry which 
 among Greek people in the classical period (whatever the 
 Roman usage may have been) were always composed as 
 songs. 
 
 The various forms of Greek lyric poetry, in particular 
 of melic poetry, are unintelligible except as connected with 
 music. The "book-lyric" simply did not exist before Alex- 
 andrian times; and to attempt a judgment of Greek lyric 
 upon principles applicable to the Roman is infallibly to go 
 far astray. There was no such "publication" of poetry 
 in the Greek towns of 600 or 500 b.c. as was possible in the
 
 64 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Rome of Augustus, and no such ''reading public." In fact, 
 it seems unlikely that any two copies of a text of Sappho's 
 poems, current a few years after her death, were exactly 
 alike, as copies of one and the same edition of a book pro- 
 duced by the mechanical process of printing are exactly 
 alike to-day. Perhaps no two early mss. included exactly 
 the same pieces. 
 
 The musical forms upon which the lyric verse-structure 
 is based were in their origin probably dance-measures, or 
 mostly so, and the whole choral lyric, throughout its history, 
 remains in close touch with the dance. 
 
 It is equally important to remember that all Greek lyric 
 is essentially "occasional poetry" in the best sense, i.e. 
 verse produced for special occasions, and preserved, if at 
 all, because it was thought to be worth preserving. For 
 every piece thus saved, hundreds of others must have been 
 soon forgotten. It is characteristic of the Greek view of 
 "literature" that only that which had been carefully worked 
 out, according to a definite plan, was regarded as really 
 worth while. A stray line from Critias, the contemporary 
 and friend of Socrates, says : — 
 
 "more are wise by training than by nature." Goethe's 
 
 Ein guter Mensch in seinem dunklen Drange 
 1st sich des rechten Weges wohl bewusst 
 
 is altogether at variance with the Greek view.^ 
 
 The occasions for which lyric poetry was composed were 
 of every conceivable kind. With the fondness for pigeon- 
 holing which was characteristic of them, the literary his- 
 torians of antiquity undertook to classify the vast number 
 
 • 1 Aristotle, indeed, saya (Poetics, ch. 17) : 5t6 ev(pvovs 17 ttoitjtiki^ (cttiv f) 
 IxavLKov, "Hence poetry implies either a happy gift of nature or a strain of 
 madness" (Butcher's transl.) ; but Aristotle would probably have been the 
 last to maintain that the eixpvrjs or the fiaviKds did not need fieX^rr),
 
 LYRIC POETRY 65 
 
 of songs and poems then accessible according to the purposes 
 for which they were composed. One such classification we 
 still have. Though undoubtedly based on earlier formula- 
 tions, it comes to us from the third century after Christ; 
 and even so, indirectly and incompletely, being known only 
 from copious extracts made from it six hundred years later. 
 The classification is not exhaustive, and not wholly satis- 
 factory even as far as it goes. It mentions twenty-one kinds 
 of "melic poems," named according to the occasions for 
 which they were written. By no means all of them are 
 represented by existing fragments. Some of the most im- 
 portant of them are : The Hymn ; the Prosodion, or Proces- 
 sional ; the Paean, mostly a song of thanksgiving or praise ; 
 the Dithyramb, sung in honor of Dionysus; the Nome, 
 a form of composition of great elaborateness, sometimes 
 entirely instrumental and so lying beyond the boundary of 
 poetry, but generally comprising a text of complicated 
 structure ; the Enkomion, or Laudation ; the Epinikion, or 
 Song of Victory ; the Skolion, or Drinking Song — a very 
 large and important class; the Wedding Song; and the 
 Partheneion, or Chorus of Girls. 
 
 Of all these the Epinikion is best known to us, chiefly from 
 Pindar, of whose odes of victory over forty have come down 
 to us, and from Bacchylides ; we have a fairly good specimen 
 of a Dithyramb of the later type, by Timotheus; some 
 examples of the Skolia ; and a very interesting fragment of 
 a Partheneion by Alcman. Of many of the other kinds we 
 have brief fragments. We owe the preservation of many 
 pieces and fragments to the custom of singing at feasts. 
 Favorite poems were included in collections made for purely 
 practical use as song-books. 
 
 Another principle of classification must be noticed, of 
 equal importance with that just mentioned, in fact to a 
 certain extent implied in it : that which divides the poems 
 of Greek lyric into poems intended for a single voice, whether
 
 66 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 to be intoned or sung, and those intended for a chorus, which 
 could only be sung. The first great group again separates 
 itself naturally into three : (l) poems in the elegiac distich, 
 i.e. a dactylic hexameter followed by a so-called pentameter ; 
 (2) poems in the various iambic measures, whether in iambic 
 trimeters repeated ad libitum or in other and more com- 
 phcated forms; and (3) the "individual lyric" of Lesbos 
 and Ionia, as represented by Alcaeus, Sappho, and Anacreon, 
 in a great variety of metres. The forms included under 
 (1) and (2) underwent such elaborate development as to 
 constitute in effect a separate division of poetry, which 
 soon came to be sharply differentiated from poetry of the 
 third type or Lesbian and Ionic melic. The connection of 
 elegiac and iambic poetry with music grew slighter and 
 slighter, until finally it was given up, the verses being 
 henceforth merely recited. 
 
 Those who are unfamiliar with Greek poetry at first hand 
 may not unnaturally ask why it should be classified in this 
 way ; why according to the metre ? The answer (of prime 
 importance for the history of Greek literature) is this : cer- 
 tain forms of verse became intimately associated with certain 
 types of literature, often to the exclusion of other forms. The 
 close correspondence — so dear to the Greek heart — between 
 matter and form is seen to particular advantage in this 
 field of the literature. Again, while many poets are known 
 to have used many forms of verse (as we should naturally 
 expect them to do), there was always some one field of poetry 
 •in which each one was particularly at home. Probably 
 most Greek poets tried their hand at the elegiac distich after 
 it had become popular, but Simonides is the first poet of the 
 choral lyric of whom this is definitely known. He was par- 
 ticularly skilful in the epigram, but we do not find that he 
 composed longer poems in elegiac measure ; nor does the 
 tragic writer produce comedies, or the prose-writer poetry 
 of any kind, in the best period, if we except the genial jack-
 
 LYRIC POETRY 67 
 
 of-all-trades Ion. Aristotle, indeed, achieved an ode to 
 "Virtue" or ''Excellence," but it is very mechanical poetry, 
 and one wonders if it was merely chance that led Professor 
 Smyth, in his edition of the Greek Melic Poets, to print 
 immediately after Aristotle's ode a brief fragment of unknown 
 origin, which says : "The gifts of the Muses are to be won by 
 hard struggle ; they lie not before us, for the first comer to 
 carry off." No less than thirty-three epigrams, some of 
 them very beautiful, are ascribed to Plato, but the evidence 
 is all against his authorship of them, though Mackail has 
 accepted some half dozen of them as genuine. 
 
 Elegiac and iambic poetry play so important a role lin 
 Greek civilization during more than two centuries as to 
 demand a somewhat fuller examination at this point. We 
 must remember that prose, as an artistic literary prod- 
 uct, is distinctly of late date in Greek literary history. 
 Before 450 B.C. there was no such thing as prose put to- 
 gether according to definite principles of style. The two 
 great literary achievements of the fifth century were the 
 marvelous development of the drama and the creation 
 of a serviceable prose style. But after the decay of the 
 epic, which we may roughly say to have begun about 700, 
 follow two centuries crowded with momentous happenings 
 in the Greek world. They form the period of transition 
 from older forms of political society, intensely aristocratic 
 in character, to democratic states, through the middle stage 
 of tyrannies or petty despotisms ; and the period of coloni- 
 zation, when city after city of the Aegean circuit, crowded 
 and turbulent at home and in many cases hard pressed by 
 the growing empires of Asia, sent out bands of its o^\^l people 
 to plant the seed of civilization in distant Mediterranean 
 or Euxine lands. Under such conditions the exclusive privi- 
 leges of a ruling class were quickly curtailed ; the man of 
 ability and enterprise, of "push," found his opi)ortunity. 
 He found it through the influence which he could exert upon
 
 68 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 his fellow-men, and that depended largely upon his power 
 of speech. The art of writing, though of course constantly 
 practised, was still used chiefly for commercial and official 
 purposes. The number of copies in circulation of any poem 
 must have been extremely small, and even these were as 
 a rule read aloud or used as aids to memorizing for reci- 
 tation. 
 
 These conditions necessitated the development of a style 
 easily memorized and understood. The vast popularity of 
 the epic poetry and the general intelligibility of the artificial 
 language in which it was composed gave not only a suggestion 
 of the kind of literary medium to be employed, but also the 
 material out of which it might be fashioned. The new form 
 of verse thus produced, the elegiac distich, was at once singu- 
 larly flexible and forcible. So well did it fulfil its purpose 
 that for at least two hundred years it continued to be the 
 chief medium of formal communication of ideas. It was in 
 effect the prose of Greek literature down to the fifth century, 
 and the vehicle of expression for one phase after another 
 of intellectual activity. The patriotic exhortations of Tyr- 
 taeus, the plaintive sentimentality of the love-sick Mimner- 
 mus, many of the stirring political manifestos of Solon, the 
 bold ethical and philosophical innovations of Xenophanes, 
 and much else of very diverse character — all these found 
 in the elegiac measure an effective medium of expression. It 
 gained a practical monopoly in the field of terse and pithy 
 utterance, in particular serving for the composition of 
 "epigrams" of every kind; it maintained itself in undimin- 
 ished popularity into the latest period of Greek litera- 
 ture, and met no less successfully the needs of Latin 
 poetry. 
 
 This elegiac verse came from above, from the hallowed 
 and dignified hexameter verse of the epic. Not so the second 
 variety of monodic IjtIc, the iambic and its congeners the 
 trochaic and trochaic-dactylic verse, the development of
 
 LYRIC POETRY 69 
 
 all of which runs parallel with that of the elegy. In the very 
 beginning of the post-epic period, let us say about 660 b.c, 
 a flaming meteor appears in the literary sky : Archilochus of 
 Paros. Of mixed descent, partly noble and partly of exceed- 
 ingly humble birth ; a soldier of fortune, intensely passion- 
 ate of temper, with an extreme frankness of self -revelation 
 and unfailing sense of literary form, commanding a vocabu- 
 lary of the greatest variety, he is known to us through frag- 
 ments of a power and beauty that reveal him as an artist 
 of the first rank. Of all the Greek voices that we hear as 
 one hears a distant singer in the night, when brief snatches 
 of melody come we know not whence, no tones are more 
 thriUing than those of Archilochus. The fragments show 
 us as though by brief lightning flashes the ups and downs 
 of the turbulent life of the man-at-arms who was unlucky in 
 love and apparently none too fortunate in anything else. 
 The episode of his final rejection by Neobule, daughter of 
 a well-to-do Parian, who had at first encouraged his suit, 
 became one of the most famous in literary history, even if 
 we need not believe that his beloved was goaded to suicide 
 by the fierce iambics which the discarded suitor launched at 
 her. The most beautiful as well as the bitterest verses of 
 Archilochus that we have refer to this experience; "it is 
 the first time in Greek literature — perhaps in the literature 
 of the world — that the whole gamut of such emotions finds 
 literary expression," says Crusius. Archilochus used the 
 elegiac verse in many poems, some of them of great dignity, 
 as, for instance, the restrained lament for some friends lost at 
 sea, coupled with an exhortation to courage and endurance 
 under adversity. But his real strength must have lain in his 
 iambic and trochaic verses, which show an extraordinary 
 variety of metrical treatment. The forms are evidently 
 elaborations, worked out with the greatest care and exact- 
 ness, with unerring adroitness and skill, of popular types 
 of verse which may have been in use for generations before
 
 70 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 his time. One of the best is the exhortation to his own soul 
 in time of distress : — 
 
 Soul, my soul, with troubles hopeless sore distressed, lift up thy 
 
 head ! 
 Boldly fronting them that hate thee, have of ambushed foe no 
 
 dread. 
 Boast not in the time of triumph ; beaten, sink not in distress, 
 House-bound, prostrate and lamenting ; take thy joy of happiness ; 
 Grieve at griefs ; yet all in measure ; ever keep before thy mind 
 What a tide of changes, chances, whirls about our human kind ! 
 
 In 1898, among some papyri now in Strassburg, were found 
 two scraps of a MS. written probably eight hundred years 
 after Archilochus. The larger, only a few inches square, 
 contains fourteen fairly legible lines of poetry, the smaller 
 ten, both in a metre which occurs among the fragments of 
 Archilochus. The language, too, and the exceedingly pol- 
 ished versification, remind us of him, and it is highly probable 
 that this chance find has restored to us two more specimens 
 of his verse. Only the longer one need be discussed here. 
 It breathes the fervent wish that misfortune may befall some 
 one (not to be identified from the fragment) ; that he may 
 be shipwrecked on the coast of Thrace at Salmydessus, a 
 particularly dangerous and savage part of the Euxine. The 
 lines, omitting the first few words of the fragment, which 
 form the end of a sentence, run as follows : — 
 
 At Salmydessus may the wild-haired Thracians give to him a 
 joyous welcome — how his cup of woe shall be full as he eats the 
 bread of slavery ! — to him naked and stiff with the cold ; and may 
 abundant seaweed, cast out of the surge, hold him fast ; may his 
 teeth chatter as he lies dog-like on his face in helplessness, on the 
 shore's edge, close to the waves. Such a sight may I see, for that 
 he has wronged me and trampled under foot his oaths — he that 
 aforetime was my friend ! 
 
 We may well imagine Archilochus paying his compli- 
 ments in this fashion to Lycambes, father of his beloved
 
 LYRIC POETRY 71 
 
 Neobule. The savage Tenth Epode of Horace is very likely 
 to have been modelled on this poem — another possible 
 indication of tlie authorship of the Greek fragment. Who- 
 ever the object of the poet's wrath may be, shipwreck is 
 wished for him, but not death, rather a fate far worse — slav- 
 ery among the barbarous Thracians ; whereas Horace prays 
 for a violent death for Mevius, and promises thank-offerings 
 if this comes about. 
 
 To turn Greek iambics and trochaics into the same metres 
 in English is humanly possible without great loss of the 
 rhythmic effect ; but to do this with the more strictly lyric 
 measures, or even dactylic hexameters or elegiac verse, is 
 practically impossible, because the phonetic quality of the 
 two languages is so different. Swinburne in his imitations 
 of Sappho has wrung much of the harshness out of our own 
 speech, and come nearer to the letter as well as the spirit of 
 the original ; but every verse is a labored tour cle force, and 
 as unnatural in English as such smoothness is natural to 
 the Greek. No language of Germanic type in the stage of 
 development which it has nowadaj^s reached is metrically 
 or musically phonetic in the way in which ancient Greek 
 must have been. The proportion of vowels was much 
 greater in Greek, their "color" much clearer, the metrical 
 value, that is, the time-value, of syllables much more accu- 
 rately developed. Italian verse makes an impression upon 
 the ear which seems to me likely to reproduce many more 
 characteristics of ancient Greek verse than English poetry can 
 imaginably do. French is better than English in this respect, 
 but German, with the power and grace of the elephant, is 
 generally worse. It is most instructive to take up such a 
 collection of fragments as Wharton's edition of Sappho, 
 where, besides the literal translation of each one, we find met- 
 rical versions of some of the most famous. In every case, 
 one may say, the renderings are "padded" to make them even 
 approximate the measures of the Greek. But for that matter,
 
 72 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 who has ever quite succeeded with Heine's Du hist wie eine 
 Blume — the simplest piece of verse imaginable? In fact, 
 the simpler, the more direct, the original, the worse for the 
 translator. Traduttore traditore} 
 
 In his metrical achievements no less than in the tone of 
 his satire and invective, Archilochus is the direct ancestor 
 of Attic comedy; and he proved an inexhaustible mine to 
 the Roman poets, who drew from him the metrical models 
 which they reproduced with such astonishing fidelity, in a 
 language by no means closely like the Greek in metrical 
 character. The Greek that Archilochus heard spoken around 
 him every day was already largely shaped to poetical use ; 
 but the Latin spoken in the streets of Rome must have con- 
 tained relatively few cadences that inspired Horace to im- 
 mortalize them in the numbers of his great predecessor. 
 
 Before passing to the third division of the individual lyric, 
 the poetry of Alcaeus, Sappho, and Anacreon, which forms 
 at the same time the first division of what we have agreed 
 to call the "mehc" poetry, we should glance at a particu- 
 larly interesting variety of the lyric, one which includes not 
 only many poems of elegiac and iambic type, but also, prob- 
 abl}^, most of those of Alcaeus and Anacreon, and some that 
 have been generally classed with the choral lyric. I refer to 
 the sympotic poetry, including the Skolia — poems composed 
 to be sung at feasts or in many cases composed extempo- 
 raneously at such gatherings. At the symposia of the politi- 
 cal or religious clubs that were so common in Greece, fre- 
 quent opportunity was given for the delivery of verses, wdth 
 musical accompaniment; at the better sort of such parties 
 the guests were expected to entertain themselves in this 
 intelligent fashion. A banquet of this kind, at which the 
 
 > Professor Gilbert Murray's exquisite metrical translations of Euripides 
 do not disprove my contention, for they are very free Nachdichtungcn, in 
 which even the imagery of the original is sometimes replaced by figures of 
 quite different character.
 
 LYRIC POETRY 73 
 
 entertainment consists of a series of glorifications of Eros 
 (but in prose, not in verse), is described for us in Plato's 
 Symposium. Probably many of Archilochus's poems were 
 composed for such occasions ; a very beautiful bit of verse 
 by Xenophanes describes an ideal supper-party of reason- 
 able men ; and there are many others. 
 
 One of the literary puzzles connected with ancient Greece 
 is a collection of nearly fourteen hundred elegiac verses 
 attached to the name of Theognis of Megara. The personal- 
 ity of this poet is a matter of great obscurity ; most probably 
 he lived till somewhat after 500. The researches into his 
 life and poems have yielded their best results in the by- 
 products, so to speak, of the process — in the increased knowl- 
 edge we have gained of the many-sidedness and richness of 
 this sympotic poetry. The collection is most heterogeneous ; 
 many lines which occur in quotations from other poets 
 cannot have been composed by Theognis at all ; and it is 
 often impossible to determine what should be assigned to 
 him. Scholars are divided as to whether the collection was 
 made for didactic purposes or to serve as a kind of song- 
 book at symposia. While the latter is more probable as a 
 whole, it must be admitted that some details of the arrange- 
 ment point to a didactic object. There is a great deal of 
 Lebensweisheit, proverbial philosophy of a kind always 
 popular among the Greeks ; some very graceful and charm- 
 ing toasts ; endless complaints that the world is going to the 
 dogs, now that the old aristocracy is crowded to the wall 
 and political upstarts and the newly rich have gained the 
 upper hand ; and some curious bits of very personal verse 
 addressed to undesirable companions at the party, one of 
 which (595-598) may be quoted here : — 
 
 Comrades we'll be, dear Sir, but at a distance ; 
 (Of all but wealth one may have quite too much !) 
 Be friends, perhaps, for long ; but your assistance 
 Pray give to those who understand your touch.
 
 74 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 A beautiful Greek legend of Orpheus, the mythical bard of 
 Thrace, says that when he was slain by Thracian women in 
 their frenzy and torn in pieces, and the fragments of his body 
 thrown into the sea, the head, floating upon the waves, was 
 carried southward to Lesbos, and there cast upon the shore. 
 
 The legend is but a poetic statement of the fact that in 
 Lesbos, at an early period of its history, arose a school of 
 poetry that produced works worthy to be called inspired. 
 And in truth the sudden efflorescence of genius in that some- 
 what remote island must have seemed not unmiraculous to 
 the Greeks of later times, particularly when contrasted with 
 the complete eclipse which it soon afterward suffered. Ter- 
 pander, a native of Lesbos, is said to have gone to Sparta 
 and established there a school of music and poetry, early 
 in the seventh century B.C. At the end of the same century 
 the island seems to have contained some of the most flourish- 
 ing of Greek communities, Mitylene, Methymna, and Eresus. 
 It was unusually favored by nature, its scenery and climate 
 having few rivals in any part of the Greek world. A high 
 degree of luxury prevailed, but this was tempered by an 
 artistic sense and a passion for the beautiful of an intensity 
 that have hardly been known elsewhere. The people of 
 Lesbos were of Aeolian stock, high-strung, quick-tempered, 
 intense alike in love and in hate. Political passion ran high, 
 and one murderous feud succeeded another with startling 
 rapidity, in which Pittacus, who achieved the honor of inclu- 
 sion among the "Seven Wise Men," played a leading part. 
 In these turbulent surroundings was developed an art of music 
 and poetry of such excellence as to give rise to various prov- 
 erbs : "after the Lesbian singer," because at Sparta the mem- 
 bers of the school of Terpander had the honor of singing first in 
 musical contests ; and one which Sappho embodied in her line 
 
 Eminent as the Lesbian bard among strangers, 
 which may have referred to Terpander himself.
 
 LYRIC POETRY 75 
 
 The two great lights of Lesbian poetry, Alcaeus and Sap- 
 pho, rose not far apart, about the end of the seventh cen- 
 tury. Dates cannot be set with exactness, but doubtless 
 both lived well beyond 600. One cannot say which was the 
 elder, nor does it much matter. Of course they were brought 
 into fancied relationship by later writers, even before the 
 time of Aristotle, and even recentlj^, more's the pity, 
 by Mr. Percy IMackaye. Alcaeus is revealed to us by the 
 fragments as most intimately concerned in the agitated life 
 of his native town ; they bear out as well the statement of 
 Athenaeus that he was a valiant fighter, a mighty drinker, 
 and an ardent lover. 
 
 To Alcaeus and Sappho are reasonably ascribed the elabora- 
 tion of the numerous rhythms represented in the fragments 
 of their poems, rhythms undoubtedly based upon forms al- 
 ready popular, which under the magic of their touch took 
 on new life and beauty. We cannot, however, say with 
 certainty what particular schemes we owe to each of them ; 
 it is even doubtful whether the stanzas called Alcaic and 
 Sapphic are inventions of Alcaeus and Sappho respectively. 
 ]\Iost of the relics of Alcaeus are explainable as sympotic 
 poems ; the social gatherings of men gave occasion alike for 
 political, for erotic, and for purely convivial verse. To him 
 we owe the earliest knowm comparison of the state with a 
 ship ; perhaps no conceit has lasted longer in literature. In 
 a fragment noted for its power and vividness he describes 
 the vessel laboring in a heavy sea, amid the strife of winds 
 that buffet her on this side and on that, and the waves that 
 threaten every moment to swamp the already water-logged 
 vessel. To any one that has spent a boisterous night on the 
 Aegean the details of the poem, the bilge-water splashing 
 about the mast, the rent and flapping sail, the thrashing 
 halliards, call up an exceedingly vivid picture ; and no Greek 
 who had gone very far from his o^vn door could fail to realize 
 all the details. When a Greek poet sings of the sea and
 
 76 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 ships, he knows what he is talking about, and that his hearers 
 will know he knows. 
 
 Alcaeus's feeling for nature, like that of all Greek poets, 
 is very keen. His descriptions are brief, directly and forcibly 
 characteristic. In bitterness against his enemies he almost 
 equals Archilochus. Indeed, it is hard to believe that the 
 Parian did not strongly influence the Lesbian, who was in 
 so many ways a kindred spirit. Yet the metrical prefer- 
 ences of the two are very different. The long choriambic 
 verses of Alcaeus remind us of nothing in Archilochus, though 
 he, too, employs long verses. The Lesbian is much more 
 distinctly musical. One can recite Archilochus's verses with- 
 out feeling that it is a foolish performance ; not so with those 
 of Alcaeus or of Sappho, which must be sung if their metrical 
 structure is to be clearly revealed. One of the best pieces 
 of Alcaeus is the description of his armory. The long, 
 swinging verses are beautifully expressive of the warrior- 
 poet's pride in his weapons and armor, kept bright and 
 ready against the day of use — and may it soon come ! 
 
 A story is told by Pliny and others of the Greek painter 
 Timanthes and his famous picture of the sacrifice of Iphi- 
 geneia, in which the artist depicted with great skill and a 
 subtle sense of proportion the various degrees of emotion 
 felt by the participants in that horrid rite, but recoiled before 
 the task of portraying the feelings of Agamemnon, whom he 
 represented with veiled face. The lecturer who faces the 
 problem of adequately characterizing Sappho must find him- 
 self somewhat similarly embarrassed, but unable to save 
 himself as Timanthes in the foolish story is made to do. 
 His way is placarded with warnings. "All criticism of 
 Sappho," says Professor Shorey in a recent review of Mac- 
 kail's Lectures on Greek Poetry, "is the endeavor to impart 
 to those who cannot read Greek an ecstasy which they can- 
 not feel." And Professor Mackail himself says: "All 
 praise of her poetry tends to become ecstatic and hyper-
 
 LYRIC POETRY 77 
 
 bolical; but these are just the epithets that can never be 
 appHed to her poetry itself. Most attempts that have 
 been made to reproduce it or to communicate its quahty 
 force the note : her own note is never forced." 
 
 No writer of antiquity has been so often alternately raised 
 on a lofty pedestal and dragged in the mire. This, however, 
 only with reference to her life ; concerning the transcendent 
 beauty of her poetry there has been but one voice, and those 
 critics who had before them the most complete collections 
 of her poems, the ancients, are loudest in her praise. "She 
 surpasses all other women in poetry as far as Homer sur- 
 passes all men"; "she is the tenth Muse" ; and so on 
 through endless repetitions and modifications of admiration. 
 
 Singularl}' little is really known of her life, or was known 
 to her countrymen in succeeding centuries, to judge by the 
 romantic tales about her that were current in ancient times. 
 She seems to have maintained a school of music and poetry 
 for j'oung women; her o^ti house she calls a /toto-oTroXo? 
 ot/cta, "a dwelling frequented by the Muses." She may 
 well have been the head of a kind of religious community 
 devoted to the cult of Aphrodite, who is often invoked in 
 her poems. We know from inscriptions that there was such 
 a ^taoros (as associations of that kind were called) of 
 Aphrodite at Paros, open only to women ; and we have testi- 
 mony of a form of cult in Lesbos from which women were 
 strictly excluded, which would thus have formed the exact 
 counterpart of such a ^tao-os as I have imagined for Sappho. 
 Apparently she was driven from Lesbos by political upheavals, 
 and spent many years abroad. But there is no fragment of 
 her poetry that cannot be referred quite naturally to the 
 conditions of life within the circle of her pupils and friends. 
 Many of the most beautiful come from wedding-songs, which 
 Sappho doubtless ^vrote for her pupils when they left her 
 school to be married. The dominant note of her poetry 
 is love, and the affection of kindred and friends ; and never
 
 78 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 have these emotions found more exquisite utterance. The 
 range of thought is not wide, but within the compass of indi- 
 vidual emotion there is great variety, and everywhere the 
 deepest sincerity and the most earnest intensity. 
 
 Intensity and directness, in fact, are the two great char- 
 acteristics of her poetry. "Would it were possible," says an 
 old Attic drinking-song, 'Ho open the breast of every one and 
 look in at his heart, to see what manner of man he is." 
 Sappho has opened her own heart for us ; and we may say, 
 without ecstasy or hyperbole or affectation, that it is a 
 sanctuary. "Pure must he be," we read in an extract from 
 an anonymous writer quoted by Clement of Alexandria, 
 "who enters a temple that is fragrant with incense; for 
 purity is the thinking of holy things." No temple has been 
 oftener polluted by the touch of unclean hands, by the 
 unseemly jest, by the name of the vulgar tourist scribbled on 
 the columns of dazzling marble, than the sanctuary of 
 Sappho's own personality. I have heard it said by a pro- 
 found student and unusually skilful and sympathetic inter- 
 preter of music that only those persons can properly judge 
 of the delicate and subtle beauty of the clavichord who play 
 it for themselves. Something like that seems to me to be 
 true of Sappho's poetry, except that it is comparable rather 
 to the violoncello, with its tones of incomparable richness 
 and softness. If it seems an unfeeling "counsel of perfec- 
 tion" to say to those who would learn to know Sappho as 
 well as the lapse of twenty-five hundred years will permit: 
 "Learn Greek, or it is a hopeless task" — there is after all 
 nothing else to say. But it may be comforting to some who 
 would know Sappho, yet cannot learn Greek, to be told that 
 perhaps very few of those who have learned it have really 
 made her acquaintance. 
 
 Six poets of the "canonical nine" of the Alexandrians 
 belong to the class of choral lyrists: Alcman, Stesichorus,
 
 LYRIC POETRY 79 
 
 Ibycus, Simonides, Pindar, Bacchylides. Only of Pindar and 
 of Bacchylides have we complete poems remaining, and of 
 Pindar only epinician odes in complete form. Among the 
 fragments of Alcman is the one mentioned above, of about 
 140 lines, our only specimen of a Partheneion ; of 
 Stesichorus and Ibycus there is very little left; of Simon- 
 ides we have a great number of fragments, but more than 
 half of these are in the elegiac distich, and the longest melic 
 fragment is only of twenty-two lines. 
 
 The choral lyric as a whole bears the stamp of Dorian 
 manners, of sedate and tranquil beauty. Dignified measures 
 prevail, though Pindar shows great fondness for certain 
 agitated rhj'thms in f time, the despair of most modern 
 metricians. The language is mainly Doric, but greatly 
 tempered from the vernacular types in local use, and enriched 
 with forms of Aeolic origin, here and there with borrowings 
 from epic diction. But of these six poets not one is known 
 to have been an out-and-out Dorian. Alcman, though his 
 artistic career was confined to Sparta, was born in Sardis, 
 perhaps of Dorian stock ; Stesichorus of Himera in Sicily 
 and Ibycus of Rhegium in Italy may have been, for all we 
 know, of very mixed parentage, as the population of both 
 these towns is known to have been ; Pindar was a Boeotian ; 
 and Simonides and Bacchylides were thorough lonians. 
 
 The loss of the music to which the choral lyrics were sung 
 has been far more serious than in the case of the monodic 
 lyric. The prerequisite of melody is tone, which cannot be 
 produced without the three essentials of pitch, duration, and 
 intensity. But a single tone is not melody, which appears 
 only when tone is modified by variations in one or more of 
 the three elements that compose it. Despite the discovery 
 of a few inscribed stones bearing the text of hymns with simple 
 designation of the notes, we still know very little of the details 
 of Greek music. The text of a poem of Pindar, for exami)le, 
 gives us no indication of the pitch-element or the stress-
 
 80 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 element of the melody ; it does give us some indication of 
 the time-element, of the rhythm, by the known "quantity" 
 of the syllables, i.e. the relative time taken for the utterance 
 of each one. But there is no indication of the length of the 
 rests, which we have to figure out for ourselves ; and there 
 is great disagreement among metricians on this score. We 
 have no specimen of notation of purely instrumental 
 music from classical times ; and if ancient writers on 
 metre had not handed doT^^l the doctrine of long and 
 short syllables, we could find in the texts no certain in- 
 dications of the rhji^hm, which was quantitative and had 
 nothing to do \Adth the system of written accents that 
 was introduced later. It is because the rhythms of choral 
 poetry (which was in most, if not all, cases performed with 
 a sort of dance or even pantomime) are vastly more elaborate 
 than those of the monodic lyric, that the loss of the melodies 
 has left us more in the dark concerning the actual effect of 
 the pieces when executed. A favorite plan of composition 
 was the "strophic" or "triadic." In this the greater met- 
 rical divisions of the poem were arranged in groups of three 
 elements, the first two, called strophe and antistrophe, corre- 
 sponding exactly in musical structure, the third differing from 
 them. Any number of such triads might be combined to 
 make up the whole poem. Pindar affords some of the briefest 
 and of the most elaborate examples, ranging from one triad 
 to a splendid aggregation of thirteen. It is noteworthy that 
 no two choral compositions of Pindar and the three tragic 
 poets that have survived show identical metrical structure. 
 
 This form of composition appears to have been the inven- 
 tion of Alcman, who may be dated approximately as a con- 
 temporary of Archilochus. The Sparta of his day was very 
 different from that of several centuries later. It was the 
 headquarters of choral music and dancing, the Mecca of 
 poets and musicians from all parts of the Greek-speaking 
 world. Alcman, though a foreigner, identified himself
 
 LYRIC POETRY 81 
 
 completely with Spartan life. He used in some of his poems 
 an extremer form of local vernacular than is elsewhere found 
 in the choral lyric. They show a singular sweetness and 
 old-fashioned quaintness, a grave and dainty playfulness ; 
 in reading them one has at times a sensation as of looking 
 at well-preserved daguerreotypes, with their delicate prim- 
 ness. His fondness for talking of himself makes of him 
 almost a poet of the individual lyric. Many of his poems 
 seem to have been composed to be sung by young girls, 
 and are most charming in their arch simplicity and grace 
 of language and verse. Among the shorter fragments two 
 are particularly beautiful and justly famous. One is of 
 four hexameter verses, wherein the poet, bent with old age, 
 complains to the sweet-voiced maidens that his Umbs can 
 no longer support him : — 
 
 Would, ah! would I were a halcyon that flies with the birds of 
 his flock over the foaming waves, with fearless heart, that sea- 
 purple bird of the spring. 
 
 The point of the verses lies in the allusion to a legend that 
 the male halcyon, when old and no longer able to fly, is car- 
 ried by his mates over sea to his resting-place. Perhaps it 
 is not too fanciful to imagine that Alcman longs to be trans- 
 ported by his faithful singers across the sea to be buried in 
 his native Sardis. If that was his wish, it was not carried 
 out, for Pausanias saw his grave at Sparta. The other frag- 
 ment is a singularly beautiful description of the sleep of 
 nature : — 
 
 Asleep are the summits and the crags of the mountains, the 
 headlands and ravines, and all the creeping things that the dark 
 earth nourishes, the mountain-ranging beasts and the race of bees, 
 the monsters in the depths of the purple sea, asleep the tribes of 
 long-winged birds. 
 
 No English words can reproduce the smoothness and liquid 
 beauty of the Greek. Tiiomas Campbell, in his well-known
 
 82 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 translation, while avoiding for the most part the danger 
 of "padding," is guilty of such a sputtering line as this: — 
 
 Its monsters rest, whilst wrapped in bower and spray. 
 
 Goethe's "Ueber alien Gipfeln ist Ruh," is inevitably com- 
 pared, and there is a good deal of sputtering in that, beautiful 
 as it is. We know it mostly in connection with Schubert's 
 exquisite music, which greatly enhances its beauty. If we 
 only had Alcman's music too ! — which, however, we might 
 find much too simple for our polyphonic taste. 
 
 Stesichorus and Ibycus have left us but little by which 
 their literary qualities can be judged. The former was 
 immensely popular for many generations. He is said to have 
 made the Homeric legends more familiar to the Western 
 Greeks, in Italy and Sicily, and to have worked them over 
 on a grand scale for use in his choral songs. Probably the 
 subjects, more than the mode of treatment, which seems to 
 have been of what we should call a romantic type, assured 
 the lasting performance and circulation of his works. We 
 know that his influence was felt and his poems used as school 
 texts in Roman times. 
 
 Ibycus, perhaps best known to moderns from the legend 
 of the cranes who betrayed his murderers, which was utilized 
 by Schiller for his famous poem, was the passionate poet 
 of love, unique in adding this note to the Dorian song of the 
 chorus. As far as we can judge from the few fragments, his 
 language was intense and highly colored, his figures vivid, 
 and his versification at once sonorous and agitated. 
 
 The caprice of fate is nowhere better illustrated than by 
 the case of Simonides. An Ionian by birth, he seems to have 
 made all of Greece his home by turns, dying at last in far-off 
 Sicily, full of years and of honors. In the anecdotal part 
 of Greek literary history he bulks large. Later writers never 
 weary of telling of his witticisms, and many inventions are 
 ascribed to him, some of which are earlier by one or more
 
 LYRIC POETRY 83 
 
 centuries than the time of his birth. Older than Pindar by 
 some thirty years, he was, like him, the friend and companion 
 of the great in all quarters of the Greek world, and many of 
 his jests bear upon such intimacies. When asked if it was 
 better to be wise or rich, he answered : "To be rich, for the 
 wise are to be found at the doors of the rich" — a joke which 
 receives its full explanation only when we remember that the 
 "wise" man is the poet, and the "rich" the prince. Ap- 
 parently Simonides was a thoroughgoing man of the world, 
 well versed in practical affairs, a welcome and valued coun- 
 sellor at many courts. His versatility was evidently very 
 great, and his literary production, continued to the last days 
 of his life, not less so. Of the epinician odes, written for 
 victors in the great games, we have but a few scanty frag- 
 ments that afford no fair means of comparison with Pindar. 
 He was particularly famous for Threnoi, or dirges, and for 
 epitaphs ; in some of the fragments of the former, and com- 
 plete specimens of the latter, the exquisite jGnish of his art is 
 especially conspicuous. The famous lines referring to Danae 
 and the infant Perseus tossed about on the sea in the chest 
 in which they had been cast adrift by her father Acrisius, 
 and a brief fragment from an Enkomion on those that fell 
 at Thermopylae, are perhaps the most characteristic that we 
 possess. Their beauty consists rather in the careful and ex- 
 haustive elaboration of a single idea, which is cut and pol- 
 ished like a diamond, and set in a bezel of cunningly chased 
 phrase, than in richness of thought or depth of feeling. There 
 is much pathos, but it tends to a sentimentaUty which is 
 apt to be a little overwrought. But the workmanship of 
 every fragment, every epigram and distich, is flawless. There 
 is an amusing story, told in Athenaeus, that by the richness 
 and variety of his mythological allusions he made life miser- 
 able for the poor schoolmasters who had to explain his 
 works. As an example of the elaborateness with which 
 he expresses a single thought, illuminating it from every
 
 84 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 side, I choose the fragment of the Enkomion just men- 
 tioned : — 
 
 Of them that died at Thermopylae glorious is the fate, and 
 happy the lot, and their tomb has become an altar ; in the place of 
 lamentations is recollection, and of mourning praise. Such a wind- 
 ing-sheet neither decay nor all-subduing time shall destroy. This 
 sepulchre of brave men has received as its indweller the glory of 
 Hellas ; witness Leonidas, king of Sparta, who has left behind him 
 a mighty glory of valor and everlasting fame. 
 
 But no translation can show the variety that is gained in 
 Simonides's diction by subtle changes in the order of words 
 and in the rhythmical phrasing ; the polished jewel is held 
 up to the light and turned to and fro that it may catch and 
 reflect every ray of the spectrum. 
 
 The greatest glory of the choral IjTic, however, shines for 
 us in Pindar, the proud Boeotian who claimed to be the equal 
 of the princes whom he extolled. His poetical career began 
 about 500 B.C., when he was hardly twenty years old, and for 
 more than half a century he remained by the side of his 
 rival Simonides (there was no love lost between them) in 
 the forefront of popular attention, favorite of princes, a 
 sojourner at Syracuse and Agrigentum, eagerly sought for 
 to glorify the achievements of those that won in the great 
 games. Only his epinician odes, composed for such victors, 
 have survived except in fragments, but his activity extended 
 over many fields of poetry, and in splendor of language the 
 fragments equal any parts of the complete poems. It is 
 hard to understand, in view of this, how the epinician poems 
 alone should have received the honor of constant recopy- 
 ing, which has been the means of preserving them for the 
 edification of modern readers. 
 
 The custom of celebrating a great athletic victory, gen- 
 erally after the victor's return to his home, with the added 
 splendor of a choral ode composed for the occasion by some 
 noted poet, seems to have been a short-lived fashion. Per-
 
 LYRIC POETRY 85 
 
 haps a century was the extent of its prevalence, but in that 
 period it called forth some of the most gorgeous poetry that 
 European literatures have known. Not every victor could 
 expect to secure a Simonides or a Pindar or a Bacchylides 
 to immortalize his achievements, or could afford to make 
 provision for proper performance of the elaborate choral 
 odes, which demanded the services of trained singers. The 
 most splendid of the odes are those- written for the great 
 princes of Sicily and Cyrene whose horses had won at Olym- 
 pia and Delphi ; the most elaborate of all, the Fourth 
 Pythian, was composed for Arcesilas of Cyrene in 466, 
 apparently as a commission from a nobleman of Cyrene 
 who had been exiled and was anxious to regain the favor of 
 the king. It is an imposing poem of three hundred long 
 lines, a cantata, which must have taken at least an hour to 
 perform ; but it is also, quite apart from its metrical and 
 musical splendor, a literary work of the first rank. 
 
 The principle of composition of these grand odes is prac- 
 tically the same throughout. Instead of the obvious and 
 matter-of-fact glorification of the victor to the exclusion 
 of other themes, which would soon become commonplace 
 and tiresome, Pindar adopts a far more artistic and effective 
 plan. Whether it was his own innovation or the invention of 
 Simonides, who preceded him in the composition of such odes, 
 we cannot say, as not one of Simonides's epinicians has come 
 down to us. It is, however, probable that Pindar merely 
 elaborated a custom which he had inherited. A story is told 
 by Cicero, Quintilian, and others, that Simonides wrote an 
 Enkomion for Scopas, a Thessalian prince, in which he had 
 so much to say of Castor and Pollux, and so little of Scopas, 
 that the prince paid him but half the sum agreed upon, 
 tolling him to go to the Dioscuri for the rest. After an intro- 
 duction of general character, Pindar soon turns to an account 
 of the founding of the games, or to some noted event in the 
 legends connected with them, or to the legendary history
 
 86 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 of the victor's family, or the past glories of his native city. 
 By far the greater part of every ode — except a few very 
 short ones — is taken up with such a myth or legend, told 
 with all the splendor of gorgeous diction and wealth of im- 
 agery that the poet has at his command. The narration 
 of the myth finished, the poet turns to the victor, but even 
 now his praises are sung in relatively restrained language. 
 It is as victor in the greatest, most glorious contests known 
 to man, or as worthy descendant of illustrious, even divine 
 ancestors, or as citizen who brings honor to a state already 
 justly famous, that he is extolled ; and throughout Pindar 
 insists upon the indispensable service that he is performing 
 in singing of the achievement, for, as he says in a stray 
 fragment, OvaaKu aiyaOlv KaXov tpyov, "the fair deed that is 
 unmentioned dies." 
 
 This praise by indirection is characteristic of much of the 
 best Greek work. A noble example of it is the Funeral 
 Oration which Thucydides puts into the mouth of Pericles, 
 purporting to have been dehvered at the public funeral 
 ceremonies of those Athenians who had fallen in the first 
 year of the Peloponnesian War. The whole is an enco- 
 mium of Athens, of her glorious past, her great achievements 
 in war and in peace, her liberal and enlightened constitu- 
 tion ; and it is only at the end that with a very swift transi- 
 tion he acclaims the dead as worthy sons of such a state, in 
 whose fame they are to find fame, comforts their surviving 
 kinsmen with the thought of their undying glory, and exhorts 
 these to noble emulation of such bravery and self-sacrificing 
 patriotism. 
 
 As an illustration of Pindar's way of working, I should like 
 to give as briefly as possible an abstract of one of the finest 
 of the odes, the Seventh Olympian. It was written in honor 
 of Diagoras of Rhodes, who won in boxing at Olympia in 
 464 B.C. He belonged to a family famed for its noble an- 
 cestry, and besides being the greatest of Greek boxers had
 
 LYRIC POETRY 87 
 
 the satisfaction of seeing his sons and grandsons win prize 
 after prize. Rhodes, his fatherland, Dorian to the core, 
 was devoted to the worship of the sun, and the brilliancy of 
 its life was noted throughout Greece. Its coins bore the 
 head of Helios-Apollo, or the rose, symbol of the sun. 
 The whole ode glows with color ; but across it there fall three 
 shadows. A blessed outcome, so the poet sings, may follow, 
 by the grace of God, even upon transgression. So famous 
 did the ode become, according to an ancient commentator, 
 that it was written in letters of gold and preserved in the 
 temple of Athena at Lindos. The poem begins with a strik- 
 ing comparison : "As when in wealthy hand one lifts a cup, 
 l^ubbling within with the dew of the vine, and gives it to 
 the young spouse of his daughter, pledging his health, a 
 gift from home to home, best of his golden treasures, bringing 
 honor to the joyous feast and to the alliance, and among 
 the friends that sit by makes him to be envied for the wed- 
 lock of souls ; so I, bringing a draught of nectar, gift of the 
 Muses, sweet fruit of my mind, do homage unto victors 
 at Olympia and Pytho." Then the poet turns rapidly to 
 his main theme, the praise of Rhodes. This is handled with 
 great adroitness ; three instances of wrong-doing (from the 
 legendary history of the island), are introduced, in reverse 
 chronological order, each one of which led, nevertheless, to 
 a happy result. Tlepolemus in sudden passion slew his 
 mother's brother. In expiation of the deed he was bidden 
 by the oracle to lead forth a colony to Rhodes. It was upon 
 Rhodes that Zeus sent down a shower of gold, at the time of 
 Athene's birth. This serves as transition to the next earlier 
 stage. The sun, as the god that sees all things, beheld the 
 birth of Athene, and bade his children in Rhodes be the first 
 to worship the new goddess. They went up to the citadel 
 to offer sacrifice, but forgot the fire, and so were forced to 
 sacrifice with fireless rites. Yet Zeus forgave them this and 
 rained down gold upon their land. Then Pindar goes back
 
 88 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 to the earliest period of all. How did Helios and his children 
 come into possession of Rhodes ? When Zeus divided up 
 the earth among the gods, Rhodes still lay beneath the 
 surface of the sea. Helios failed to come to the allotment, 
 and was left portionless. Zeus offered to redivide the earth, 
 but Helios stopped him, for he saw at that moment the island 
 rising from the sea, and took it as his portion ; and it remained 
 as a heritage to his children. For Tlepolemus, who led the 
 men of Tiryns to this lordly island, was ordained the honor of 
 sacrifice and of games. At these home games Diagoras won 
 great renown, yes, and at Isthmia and at Nemea, too, and at 
 Athens and elsewhere, and now at Olympia. The ode ends 
 with a prayer to Zeus for the future welfare of Diagoras, 
 "who walks in the straight way that abhors all inso- 
 lence." 
 
 No description can give an idea of the magnificence of 
 Pindar's diction ; it fairly glows with color, like a great cathe- 
 dral window filled with rich but harmonious stained glass. 
 But it is not garish or tawdry splendor ; and it is never 
 commonplace or vulgar. Not only in the great epinician 
 odes are Pindar's powers manifest. In some of the shortest 
 the same qualities appear, as in the Fourteenth Olympian, 
 composed in honor of a Boeotian boy, Asopichus of Orcho- 
 menus, an ancient seat of the worship of the Graces. The 
 poem is of only twenty-four lines, but the structure is mas- 
 sive in the extreme. The first twelve lines are taken up 
 with an eloquent praise of the Graces and the great part that 
 their inspiration has played in the civilization of men. In 
 the second half the Graces are invoked by name, and be- 
 sought to be propitious, now that a scion of their beloved 
 city is an Olympic victor. Then, unexpectedly but most 
 effectively, the poet turns to Echo, who is besought to enter 
 the dark-walled dwelling of Persephone, queen of the dead, 
 and to seek out the boy's father, that he may learn how his 
 son has crowned his youthful locks at glorious Olympia with
 
 LYRIC POETRY 89 
 
 the wreath of triumph. And many of the fragments from 
 poems of other classes are worthy mates of any passages 
 that the odes of victory can produce. Perhaps the most 
 famous of the fragments is that from the dithyramb in honor 
 of Athens : — • 
 
 O shining and violet-crowned illustrious Athens, full of song, 
 bulwark of Hellas, citadel divine ! 
 
 Many modern readers recoil from Pindar, and the indis- 
 criminate praise of former times has given place to a no less 
 uncritical depreciation. This is due, perhaps, partly to 
 the waning popularity of. poetry, partly to a feeling that 
 there is some incongruity between the magniloquent grandeur 
 of the treatment and the relative unimportance of the theme 
 (as it appears to many literal-minded moderns), and partly, 
 too, because one is apt to read too much at once. The odes 
 are strong, rich meat, highly seasoned, and not for mental 
 dyspeptics, or for a class whom Professor Gildersleeve rather 
 tartly calls ''devotees of the great goddess Anaemia." 
 
 Of Bacchylides, last and perhaps least of the nine poets 
 of the Canon, we happen nowadays to know more than was 
 known during the fifteen hundred years that ended with 
 the last century. The nephew of Simonides, he seems to 
 have learned much from him in the way of poetical composi- 
 tion, above all a marvelous facility and smooth melodious- 
 ness of style, for all the world like the music of Mendelssohn. 
 The discovery of the papyrus ms. to which reference was 
 made above restored to us not only many of his epinician 
 odes, but also two poems of a class hitherto unexemplified 
 among the relics of Greek poetry. One of these describes 
 in a very breezy and delightful fashion the defiance shown 
 by Theseus to King Minos of Crete on the voyage from Athens 
 to Cnossus, and the astonishing adventures of Theseus when 
 in response to the taunt of Minos he leaped overboard after 
 the ring which the king had cast into the sea. The poem
 
 90 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 gives literary illustration and explanation to several well- 
 known works of Greek art. 
 
 With Bacchylides the real history of Greek lyric poetry 
 comes to an end, except for the dithyramb, which entered 
 upon a new career of popularity, becoming, in fact, a sort of 
 ancient oratorio. The new fragment of the Persians of 
 Timotheus reveals an unexpected stage of turgid frothiness 
 which contrasts very painfully with the severe beauty of the 
 earlier lyric. 
 
 It is a long and devious way on which I have led my hearers 
 through the mass of ruins with which this ancient sanctuary 
 of the Muses is thickly strewn. Here and there a noble 
 building still stands nearly intact, but the most of our journey 
 has shown us only broken capitals, bits of architectural orna- 
 ment, fragments of sculpture, of exquisite workmanship, it 
 is true, but unrelated and heaped up in hopeless confusion. 
 Is it possible to discover a logical connection between these 
 myriad rehcs, to bring them into any clear relation to a con- 
 structive principle, or to trace their influence upon genera- 
 tions following those that produced them ? 
 
 The chief element that they have in common, not only, 
 in fact, with each other, but with all the best Greek work, 
 is that of direct practical applicability to the end in view. 
 The form is closely conditioned by the content. The letter 
 is not at war with the spirit ; it does not kill, but draws life 
 from the spirit and becomes its best ally. It is straight- 
 forward, honest expression that we find for the most part, 
 harmonious and graceful because the language was har- 
 monious and graceful. 
 
 The Greek was generally free from affectation and cant. 
 He often made the mistake, due to his ruling passion for 
 order and system, of assuming that what was beautiful to the 
 eye was also morally good ; but he was saved from the still 
 cruder mistake of assuming that external beauty must con-
 
 LYRIC POETRY 91 
 
 ceal some moral defect. There is a profound truth under- 
 h'ing the legend of Helen : the truth that beauty is not skin- 
 deep. But the Greek distinguished very clearly between 
 beauty and prettiness. The outlines of his spiritual land- 
 scape, as of his natural landscape, were exceedingly firm 
 and severe. And he felt himself as a human being, no more 
 I and no less, and was prepared to take the consequences. 
 
 Edward Delavan Perry.
 
 TRAGEDY 
 
 ( The Greek tragic poets were earnest students of the prob- 
 lems^and mysteries of human hfe. Man's relation to the 
 universe about him, his obUgations to the unseen powers 
 which control the universe, his duties to his fellow-beings, 
 the seeming conflicts between human and divine law, all 
 these form the material of Greek tragedy. The wide range 
 of the subject naturally makes it a difficult one to discuss 
 satisfactorily in a single lecture, and to separate those 
 features of it which are essential and universal from those 
 which are less so is not an easy matter. It seems neces- 
 sary at the outset to put aside questions which may be 
 called historical and which have to do with the origin of 
 Greek Tragedy and with the traditional elements in its com- 
 ponent parts. To trace the growth of this form of poetry 
 from its beginnings, such as may perhaps be witnessed 
 to-day in certain very primitive Greek communities,^ and 
 to understand its close relation to the epic and lyric poetry 
 which preceded it, and then to note how the dramatic ele- 
 ment forces that which is mainly lyric into a more and more 
 subordinate position — these are indeed matters of moment 
 to one who would understand the true character of Greek 
 Tragedy. It is, however, not tragedy in its becoming which 
 concerns us now, but in its completeness, as the three great 
 Attic masters of the fifth century B.C. produced it. I would 
 also avoid discussion of the vexed question of the stage and 
 of similar matters, for, as Aristotle says,^ the power of tragedy 
 
 » Cf. Journal of Hellenic Studies, XXVI, pp. 191 fif. >^ 
 
 2 Poetics, VI, § 19, XIV, §§ 1, 2. 
 92
 
 TRAGEDY 93 
 
 should be felt apart from representation and actors. Thus 
 the main consideration is to get at an estimate of Greek 
 Tragedy which shall indicate whether it possesses the essen- 
 tial qualities of really great poetry. If a person has read 
 much of such poetry in any language, he comes to know its 
 accent and thus gradually to form a standard by which he 
 ma}^ test his impressions. To attempt to define it is generally 
 unprofitable, but one may predicate certain of its essential 
 qualities without fear of contradiction. The poet must in 
 the first place draw his inspiration immediately from the 
 life and the world about him; for if he is inspired mainly by 
 other poets, his thoughts and his pictures may indeed be 
 beautiful, but they will after all be like the shadows of real 
 objects which the men see in Plato's description of the 
 cave.^ This perhaps is self-evident, even though, with senses 
 soothed by the beauty of sound and rhythmic movement, 
 we now and then forget the truth, until it is brought home 
 to us by some simple lyric which has not lost the tone of 
 pure folk-poetry, like the best lyrics of Burns or some of 
 Heine's, or a graphic line of Theocritus, or like one of those 
 wonderful phrases of Sappho, resplendent with human 
 passion and rich in human sympathy. There is another 
 quality also which the best poetry will certainly have, that 
 which enables it to make its appeal unconfined by bounds 
 of nationality and language — the quality of universality. 
 And it is naturally only the greatest poets who attain to 
 this, for to do so implies a mind which can read in its indi- 
 vidual experience the experience of humanity, and which 
 instinctively understands how to separate the adventitious 
 from the permanent and essential. This is the quality one 
 feels when startled by the penetrating truth and wisdom of 
 some of Shakespeare's lines, uttered with an ease which 
 seems thoughtless ; and a Uke power, with like magic of 
 phrase, is found in Sophocles. Thus one may without ques- 
 
 ' Republic, VII, init.
 
 94 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 tion accept Arnold's oft-quoted dictum that the noble and 
 profound application of ideas to life is the most essential 
 part of poetic greatness. (To understand then the life and 
 thought which has surrounded a great poet is of the highest 
 importance, if we seek to understand his poetry; and if the 
 age in which he lived shows tendencies in its spiritual life 
 which seem typical of the movements and changes in the 
 intellectual history of mankind, we shall expect to find that 
 a great poet in such a time ■v\-ill so interpret these tendencies 
 as to make his work typical of the thought of humanityj 
 
 Let us therefore briefly consider what the leading char- 
 acteristics were of the age during which the three great 
 tragic poets, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, lived — 
 the period, say, from about 525 to about 400 b.c. It is pre- 
 eminently the Attic period of Greek intellectual life, but the 
 elements which entered into it were the contributions of 
 manj^ parts of the Greek world. Ionian epic, lyric, and 
 elegiac poetry, Ionian philosophical speculation, the Dorian 
 choral lyric, and the Aeolian lyric of Lesbos all made them- 
 selves felt in the Athens of the sixth century B.C. The stimu- 
 lus also of Ionian plastic and graphic art was marked at this 
 time, and it penetrated deeply into the ideas of the common 
 people, as may be seen in the industrial work of the period. 
 Nor was the stirring atmosphere of political struggle lacking. 
 (The Athenians were strongly affected by the rising tide of 
 democracy which was spreading through the Greek world, 
 and early in the sixth century, as the Solonian legislation 
 shows, the pressure for social change became intense through 
 economic stress. There followed years of sharp struggle 
 between the growing democracy and the house of Pisistratus 
 — in many ways an enlightened dynasty — until toward 
 the close of the century, under the constitution of Cleisthenes, 
 a sure foundation was laid for the popular power that was 
 to develop during the next century. Of the religious influ- 
 ences during this sixth century we know little in detail, but
 
 TRAGEDY 95 
 
 it is certain that the Homeric and Hesiodic theologies were 
 being purified and spirituahzed, and it is likely that the 
 pantheism and the eschatology of the Orphic teaching was 
 beginning to have the effect which is evident in many writ- 
 ings of a later day. 
 (Hardly had the young Athenian state become securely 
 established when it was called upon to lead in the struggles 
 of the Persian Wars, and from these it came forth with 
 national consciousness strengthened by suffering. The time 
 of stress had brought to the front a number of very able men 
 as leaders in the constitutional development which followed. 
 Up to the time of the death of Pericles in 429 b.c, high 
 ability in the management of affairs is conspicuous. It made 
 possible the estabhshment of the Athenian naval supremacy 
 and the confederation of allies which was dependent on this, 
 and it held in check the excesses of the undisciplined democ- 
 racy. The period of about fifty years after the Persian 
 Wars was thus one of prosperity, high hope, and patriotic 
 enthusiasm. "; Athens became the intellectual centre of Greece, 
 and the rapid progress which took place in the develop- 
 ment of literature and art shows how well the men of the 
 previous century had laid the foundations. The drama 
 passed out of its early period of crudity and became the 
 most distinctive form of poetry, exerting a strong influence 
 on men's thoughts in many walks of life. History, too, in 
 the hands of Herodotus and Thucydides lost its genea- 
 logical and annalistic character and developed into a real 
 form of literature. Oratory began, stimulated by a wide- 
 spread interest in rhetoric and steadied in its growth by the 
 debates of the public assemblies and of the law-courts. Phil- 
 osophic speculation, too, was most active. The dark but 
 pregnant thought of Heraclitus, continuing and far surpass- 
 ing in its range the speculations of the early Ionic philos- 
 ophers, entered deeply into the intellectual life. Out of the 
 now matured colonies of Magna Graecia there flowed back
 
 96 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 upon the mother-country the differing stream of Eleatic 
 philosophic thought, and this, too, was a strong and stimulat- 
 ing influence. In still more immediate contact with many of 
 the leading minds of Athens was the inspiring teaching 
 of Anaxagoras ; and it would seem that the theories of the 
 Atomic philosophers must have added to thought something 
 of the same elements that have come to us through the pres- 
 ent era of scientific discovery. Such an atmosphere naturally 
 created a great demand for higher education, and to meet 
 this certain of the so-called sophists established themselves 
 in Athens.; Their teaching may have been in some ways 
 superficial, but it was calculated to provoke discussion and 
 often dissent, and thus to increase the ferment in the minds 
 of men. The powerful influence of Socrates also was felt in 
 the second half of this fifth century, and his searching analysis, 
 with its inductive reasoning and general definition, was 
 applied to the many problems, still little thought out, which 
 were in the air. 
 
 This same century was quite as remarkable on the side 
 of painting, sculpture, and architecture. The frescoes of 
 Polygnotus and his school, the sculptures of the Phidian 
 circle of artists, and the splendid Doric and Ionic archi- 
 tecture, of which we still have the ruins, played a brilliant 
 part in the general inteUectual activity. Nor was the in- 
 fluence of vigorous trade wanting. The Piraeus became a 
 busy mart which attracted merchants and manufacturers, 
 and many brought with them the liberalizing influence of 
 contact with a larger world. ^ As is natural, the literature 
 indicates on every hand that the serious questions of religion 
 were in men's thoughts. The older conceptions of the gods 
 had become inadequate, and we see them rejected in one way 
 or another by different minds. Euripides is above all others 
 the poet in whom this spirit of revolt appears, and with the 
 
 1 Cf. Aeschylus, Agamemnon, vs. 1043, for a remark which shows that 
 the society of the poet's day knew nouveaux riches.
 
 TRAGEDY 97 
 
 fading away of the old beliefs, he finds an outlet for his relig- 
 ious emotions in the Ufe immediately about him, through 
 deep s^nnpathy with human suffering. How typical of the 
 processes of human spiritual growth all this seems ! How 
 like some of the changes in thought among ourselves during 
 the last fifty or sixty years ! There was, however, one pecu- 
 liarity of the conditions at Athens which must have tended 
 greatly to increase the inspiration felt by the higher minds. 
 This point is well put by Professor Gilbert Murray, whom I 
 quote. "There was a circumstance that has rarely been 
 repeated in history — the fact that all the different advances 
 appeared to help one another. The ideals of freedom, law, 
 and progress ; of truth and beauty, of knowledge and virtue, 
 of humanity and religion ; high things, the conflicts between 
 which have caused most of the disruptions and despondencies 
 of human societies, seemed for a generation or two at this 
 time to He all in the same direction." ^ This is the spirit 
 of Periclean Athens, before it had been in a measure crushed 
 by the evil spirit of the Peloponnesian War. It shines forth 
 in the noble speeches which Thucydides puts into the mouth 
 of Pericles, it appears in the Athenian ideals as Herodotus 
 pictures them, and it is constantly illustrated in the patriotic 
 utterances of the three great tragedians. Plainly the popu- 
 lar mood was one of enthusiasm and high hope, such as might 
 well have inspired the great chorus in the Antigone of Soph- 
 ocles (w. 332 ff.) on man's power over nature. With this 
 spirit Sir Richard Jebb ^ suggests a comparison of Milton's 
 enthusiastic words in which after the battle of Marston 
 Moor he describes the "noble and puissant nation rousing 
 herself like a strong man after sleep." 
 
 As we turn now to consider the great poetic interpreters 
 of thought in this fifth century, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and 
 Euripides, one rather singular fact may be noted. Not only 
 does the period mirror to us much that is typical of all human 
 
 * Introduction to Euripides' Bacchae, p. xxiii. ■* Essays, p. 136.
 
 98 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 striving toward improvement, but these poets themselves 
 illustrate certain well-marked and diverse types of mind, 
 which are just as characteristic of humanity to-day as they 
 ever were. The subUme imagination of Aeschylus lifts him 
 to a region where the great forces of the universe seem to be 
 close about him. The moral government of all things, the 
 misery and mystery of sin, the wisdom which comes by 
 suffering form the background of his thought. Sophocles, 
 on the other hand, is in the good sense a man of the world. 
 He sounds the depths of hfe, but with the patience of one 
 who would not have progress break vnth tradition. In the 
 case of a complicated nature like that of Euripides, such gen- 
 eral characterization is difficult. Taking the hint from a 
 remark of the late Dr. James Adam, ^ I quote a passage 
 from Arnold's essay on "Barbarians, Philistines, and Popu- 
 lace," ^ in which he speaks of certain natures born in each 
 class of society who have a curiosity about their best self, 
 with a bent for seeing things as they are, for disentangling 
 themselves from social machinery, and for simply concern- 
 ing themselves with reason and the will of God. "This 
 bent," says Mr. Arnold, "always tends to take them out 
 of their class, and to make their distinguishing characteristic 
 not their Barbarianism or their Philistinism, but their 
 humanity. They have in general a rough time of it in their 
 lives ; . . . they set up a fire which enfilades, so to speak, 
 the class with which they are ranked; and, in general, by 
 the extrication of their best self as the self to develop, and 
 by the simplicity of the ends fixed by them as paramount, 
 they hinder the unchecked predominance of that class life 
 which is the affirmation of our ordinary self, and seasonably 
 disconcert mankind in their worship of machinery." Now 
 Euripides was exactly one of these disconcerting person- 
 alities ; a great thinker, a great poet, by no means an impec- 
 
 1 Religious Teachers of Greece, p. 319. 
 * Culture and Anarchy, 1895, p. 85.
 
 TRAGEDY 99 
 
 cable artist, and the prophet of a new era. When one thinks 
 of this triad, each so different from the others, one wonders 
 at the easy definitions of the Greek spirit and the talk about 
 the worship of physical beauty, etc., which are sometimes 
 heard. So characteristically human are the differing ten- 
 dencies of these three men that it is always interesting to 
 note the different types of people who specially admire the 
 one or the other of them. 
 
 Before taking up more directly the work of the three 
 masters, let us consider certain distinctive qualities of 
 Greek Tragedy which grow out of the conditions under which 
 it arose. It was connected with religious observance, as an 
 element in the festival of Dionysus, and its subject-matter 
 was inherited from the epic, and was thus in a measure 
 prescribed. One play, to be sure, the Persians of Aeschylus, 
 treats of a contemporary subject, and we hear of one or two 
 others, but they are merely exceptions which prove the rule, 
 and the tendency to select such subjects died out early. This 
 traditional nature of the tragic material, its national character, 
 and the knowledge the hearers had of the legends used must 
 be borne in mind, if one would understand Greek Tragedy. 
 The failure of Euripides to recognize some of the necessary 
 limitations of this situation was disastrous to the artistic 
 unity of certain of his plays. Contrast these conditions 
 A\nth the perfect freedom of choice in getting his subjects 
 which Shakespeare exercised, and the liberty he enjoyed in 
 doing anything he chose ^vith most of his characters. ( Greek 
 Tragedy is thus markedly representative of the Greek mind 
 as a whole and of a national consciousness, much more so 
 than modern tragedy could be, and, were it not for the very 
 universal character of the thought of the time, a fact which I 
 have already emphasized, the poets might have shown a 
 provincial tone in their Avritings. They were, however, 
 saved from this both by their intellectual surroundings, and 
 by the fact that, in dealing with the legends of their own great
 
 100 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 past, there was a natural tendency to idealize the characters 
 represented and thus to identify them with certain funda- 
 mental ethical relations. Such identification, however, does 
 not go so far as to make mere types or ethical abstractions 
 of the characters; they live, and their individuality is clear 
 and often striking, but the action is not determined pri- 
 marily within the individual soul. The characters of Antig- 
 one, Oedipus, and Orestes are indeed interesting in them- 
 selves, but we think comparatively little of their personali- 
 ties as distinct from the general considerations which they 
 bring before us. One has only to remember Hamlet to con- 
 trast the modern attitude with all this. The deepest part 
 of his tragedy lies within his own nature.^ If one wants a 
 modern instance of the ancient attitude, Wagner's drama of 
 Tannhduser might give it. Here we have as the tragic 
 theme the opposing influences of sacred and profane love — 
 Aphrodite Urania and Aphrodite Pandemus — as they mani- 
 fest themselves in the experience of Tannhauser. Speaking 
 generally then, and with the reservations which large gen- 
 eralizations commonly call for, Greek Tragedy is a drama of 
 ideas, modern tragedy a drama of character. The latter 
 gives its interpretation of life in character, the former 
 through character. The sequel, however, will show that the 
 Greek poets are constantly putting an increased emphasis on 
 character.^ y'With these general remarks as a preface, let 
 
 1 Cf. A. C. Bradley, Oxford Lectures on Poetry, p. 77. 
 
 ' It is interesting to observe how certain of these general tendencies in 
 Greek Tragedy seem to be summed up and, as it were, explained in the prin- 
 ciples of Tragedy which Aristotle enunciates in his Poetics, principles that 
 naturally depend upon the drama as it had developed in the century before 
 the philosopher lived. Take these words, for example, about plot: "The 
 plot, then, is the first principle, and as it were the soul of the tragedy ; char- 
 acter comes second. . . . Tragedy is the imitation of an action and of the 
 agents because of the action" (chap. 6), and other passages to the same effect. 
 (See especially, chap. 9, the remarks about the universal and particular.) Then 
 in the various remarks Aristotle has about the kind of person who will make 
 an effective tragic hero, he gives us valuable comment on the actual practice of
 
 TRAGEDY 101 
 
 us pass on to a nearer consideration of the three great 
 masters. 
 
 Aeschylus was born about 525 b.c. He was of the old 
 nobility, but in sympathy with the earlier ideals of the 
 Athenian democracy. He came from Eleusis, that home 
 of the Mj'steries, and source of some of the deeper currents of 
 Greek religious thought. It would appear that he showed 
 his literary ability early in life, but was called away from such 
 work by the terrible experiences of the Persian Wars. He 
 fought in the three great battles of Marathon, Salamis, and 
 Plataea, and his brothers, too, were soldiers at this time. 
 From the year 472, the date of his Persians, until the time 
 of his death in 456, Aeschylus was the leading Athenian poet, 
 even though his supremacy was occasionally called in question 
 by the rising genius of Sophocles. No doubt he had attained 
 to this position before the date mentioned, and his Suppliant 
 Women, an undated but earlier play, and our only really 
 archaic specimen of the Athenian drama, has much of high 
 poetic promise in it. Aeschylus appears to have been at 
 least three times in Sicily, and thus to have been familiar 
 with the wider aspects of Greek civilization, and in one or 
 two plays he shows an interest in geographical detail such as 
 might suggest a fondness for travel, and certainly a curiosity 
 about half-known or unknown lands. These are all the facts 
 in the life of Aeschylus which are reasonably certain ; and 
 those which were probably of chief importance in his spiritual 
 development are his early life at Eleusis, the experiences of 
 the Persian Wars, and his travel to distant regions. 
 
 Only seven of the ninety plays he wrote are preserved. 
 Each play is part of a trilogy, or series of three, through 
 
 Greek Tragedy. He limits the field of selection, as we should expect, and also 
 the qualities of character in the chief personages, though not quite so much, 
 I believe, as some scholars have been inclined to think. It should be remem- 
 bered, too, that his theory does not seem to meet quite adequately all the facts 
 even of Greek Tragedy.
 
 102 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 which some leading idea may be followed, but no trilogy 
 except the Oresteia {Agamemnon, Choephori, and Eumenides) 
 has been preserved, and the other four plays are, therefore, 
 in a sense fragments. This is a fact which often makes it 
 difficult to be sure whether we understand correctly the entire 
 bearing of a given drama. In the case of the Prometheus 
 Bound, for example, one of the best of all the plays, the loss 
 of the Prometheus Freed (probably the second play) makes 
 it impossible to understand how the poet's plan was finally 
 worked out. We are, however, able to conjecture what that 
 plan was, since a few fragments of this play have been pre- 
 served, and there are helpful remarks in scholiastic comment. 
 The third play of the trilogy, Prometheus the Fire-Bearer, 
 is practically unknown, though it is probable that in this 
 the reconciliation between Zeus and the Titan Prometheus 
 received its seal by the establishment of Prometheus as the 
 Attic divinity of fire.^ Thus honor was shown an existing 
 cult, as is the case in the third play of the Oresteia, the 
 Eumenides, in which the Furies become the Gentle Goddesses, 
 and receive honors of worship. To introduce into the drama 
 the beginnings of such religious cults is common also with 
 Euripides. 
 
 It is impossible here to attempt any analysis of the 
 plays of Aeschylus, but some notion of the quality of his 
 imagination may be gained by considering briefly the general 
 plan of the two trilogies referred to — those of Prometheus 
 and Orestes. The action of the Prometheus moves in super- 
 human regions. The old order of violence in the govern- 
 ment of the universe, represented by the Titans, has given 
 way before the enlightened rule of Zeus, through which the 
 ideas of cosmic order and justice shall prevail. Prometheus, 
 who is of the race of Titans, and his mother Themis have been 
 on the side of Zeus in the struggle. When this is over and 
 Zeus is seeking to organize his rule, he finds man sunk so 
 
 * Cf. Sophocles, Oedip. Col., 55, 6 Trvp(f>6pos 0e6s.
 
 TRAGEDY 103 
 
 low that he deems it necessary to let the old race die out, 
 and to create a new one in its place. In this purpose he 
 clashes with Prometheus, who is man's champion. Prome- 
 theus steals fire^jvhich has been concealed, and gives it to 
 mankind. Thus is man able to raise himself, and the pur- 
 pose of Zeus is thwarted. The play of Aeschylus depicts 
 the punishment of Prometheus for this rebellion; but the 
 Titan is immortal and caimot be utterly destroyed, and the 
 opening scene of the play represents Strength and Force, 
 with the god Hephaestus, fastening him to the storm-beaten 
 rocks of farthest Scythia. But Prometheus will not yield, 
 and he refuses to reveal a secret the knowledge of w^iich 
 would enable Zeus to protect his dynasty from final over- 
 throw. Zeus threatens the rebel, and at the end of the play 
 he casts him amid fire and storm, still unconquered, into the 
 abyss. A considerable part of the drama, which has no plot 
 in the sense in which this term is used of Sophocles and 
 Euripides, consists of conversations between Prometheus and 
 the chorus of Oceanides, and of an attempt by Oceanus 
 himself to move the captive from his stubborn mood. The 
 maddened lo, too, another victim of Zeus, is introduced, and 
 her w^anderings and their happy issue are foretold by Prome- 
 theus, perhaps with the idea, on the poet's part, of suggest- 
 ing that in the end the plans of Zeus may be benevolent. 
 The chorus, of Ocean's daughters, is a poetic creation of 
 great beauty, and in their sympathy for the prisoner and their 
 readiness to share his fate, in spite of a gentle disapproval 
 of his course, they seem in a way to sum up the impression 
 which the drama makes: "Lo! how thankless thy gift, 
 Beloved ! Speak — what help shall there be, and where ? 
 What succor from creatures of a day? Dost not see the 
 fe('i)le weakness, dreamlike, to which the blind race of man 
 is fettered? In no wise shall mortal counsels overpass the 
 harmony of Zeus." (Vv. 545 ff.) 
 
 Aeschylus has depicted the conflict between two actions
 
 104 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 each good in itself — a common enough cause of tragedy in all 
 ages.^ Prometheus suffers nobly for his love of man, but he 
 cannot grasp the great purposes of Zeus which work together 
 for good.^ Yet in the Prometheus Bound it is the Titan who 
 awakens sjonpathy, and Zeus is the harsh and unjust ruler. 
 This, however, could never have been the impression which 
 Aeschylus intended his whole trilogy to leave on the mind. 
 Years before in his Suppliant Maidens he wrote of Zeus : — 
 
 Justly his deed was done, 
 
 Unto what other one 
 
 Of all the gods, should I for justice turn ? 
 
 From him our race did spring ; 
 
 Creator he and King, 
 
 Ancient of Days and wisdom he, and Might. 
 
 As bark before the wind. 
 
 So, wafted by his mind. 
 Moves every counsel, each device aright. 
 
 (Vv. 590 ff. Morshead.) 
 
 Though the deep will of Zeus be hard to track, 
 
 Yet doth it flame and glance, 
 A beacon in the dark, 'mid clouds of chance 
 
 That wrap mankind. 
 Yea, though the counsel fall, undone it shall not lie, 
 Whate'er be shaped and fixed within Zeus' ruling mind — 
 Dark as a solemn grove, with somber leafage shaded, 
 
 His paths of purpose wind, 
 
 A marvel to man's eye. 
 
 (Vv. 86ff. Morshead.) 
 
 And again, many years after the Prometheus, he wrote in the 
 Agamemnon : — 
 
 And whoso now shall bid the triumph-chant arise, 
 To Zeus and Zeus alone. 
 
 He shall be found the truly wise. 
 'Tis Zeus alone who shows the perfect way 
 
 ' Cf . Bradley, Oxford Lectures on Poetry, p. 86. 
 
 2 Cf. Heraclitus, Frag. 61, Bywater, (rvvreXei Suravra 6 6ebi Trpdj apixovlav 
 rwv 6\wp, oiKovofxQiv to. <xv/x(pipovTa. "God accomplishes all things for the 
 harmony of the whole, ordering that which is for the best."
 
 TRAGEDY 105 
 
 Of Knowledge : He hath ruled, 
 
 Men shall learn wisdom by affliction schooled. 
 
 (Vv. 173 ff. Morshead.) 
 
 The poet then unquestionably reconciled the powers which 
 are so opposed in the Prometheus Bound, but how this was 
 done we cannot know in detail. 
 
 Turning now to the Oresteia, we are able to understand the 
 poet's method more clearly. The work was performed in 
 458 B.C., two years before the death of Aeschylus, and it 
 represents the most perfect development of his poetic genius. 
 Here^Jhe immediate surroundings are no longer superhuman. 
 The jtragedy, however, illustrates the working of two prin- ^c 
 cj^es conceived as eternal laws — that sin shall ultimately ^>V-/ 
 meet with punishment and that the evil deed begets a progeny r y 
 like unto itself — a progeny which may appear in succeeding ^^^y^- 
 generations. The first of these principles depends on what f f i 
 
 was a popular ethical maxim that it was for the " doer (the sin- .' ' ' 
 
 ner) to suffer. " ^ The second, that sin begets its children,^ is *^- 
 the poet's own belief, differing from the less spiritual popular 
 saying that an excessive prosperity engenders vice as its off- -^ 
 
 spring. These are the inexorable laws of life, necessary for 
 human development, but frequently involving the individual 
 in what seems unmerited suffering. He sins indeed himself, 
 but when the taint of sin is in his blood, how shall he escape ? 
 This ethical problem the poet does not solve. Perhaps we 
 may ask whether any one has solved it. In the Oresteia Aes- 
 chylus seeks a solution in the reconciliation which he effects 
 between Apollo, who has commanded Orestes to take ven- 
 geance for his father's death, and the Erinyes, whose func- 
 tion it is to haunt him who has unlawfully shed human 
 blood. But this is to avoid an ethical solution of the ques- 
 tion and to take refuge in the mythology of Greek religion.^ 
 
 * Cf. ChoSphori, vs. 313, bpaaavri iradeXu rpiydpuv /xOOoi rdde <pwveT. 
 
 * Cf. Agamemnon, vv. 750 ff. 
 
 ' Cf. Adam, Religious Teachers of Greece, p. 153.
 
 106 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Yet there is in this mythological solution the suggestion that 
 he who is innocent of evil purpose must be saved. In any 
 case, however, it is the collision between certain lines of duty 
 enjoined by eternal law ^ which gives Aeschylus his tragic 
 situation, and which produces what has been called the 
 "spiritual waste" (Bradley, I.e.) involved in all tragedy. 
 
 In the first play of this trilogy, the Agamemnon, the family 
 taint of inherited sin becomes manifest through the pride 
 of the conqueror of Troy. He had further done a deed of 
 blood in seeking to appease the wrath of Artemis by the 
 sacrifice of his child Iphigeneia, and had thereby incurred the 
 hatred of Clytemnestra, his wife. In the absence of the Greeks 
 at Troy, Clytemnestra had sinned with Aegisthus, against 
 her husband, and the guilty pair were in control at Argos. 
 The treacherous wife gives Agamemnon a false welcome on his 
 return ffomT^.oy, casts a net over him while he is in the bath, 
 and slays him, exulting in the deed. So ends the first play. 
 This sinful act begets as an offspring in the next generation the 
 slaying of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus by Orestes. The blood 
 of Agamemnon calls for vengeance, and Apollo commands 
 the matricide. The fulfilment of this command is the subject 
 of the second play, the Choephori, or Libation-Bearers.^ 
 
 1 Note the bearing on this of Professor Goodwin's convincing interpretation 
 offioTpa fxo'ipav {Agamem. vs. 1026), Trans. Am. Philol. Assoc. 1877, pp. 14 ff. 
 
 2 Browning {Pauline) in a few lines gives a vivid sketch of two great scenes 
 
 in these plays, that in the Agamemnon, in which the returned hero enters 
 
 the palace, and the second at the close of the Choephori, when the half-crazed 
 
 Orestes tries to justify the deed which has made him victor with the "curse 
 
 of pollution for his prize" (Choeph., vs. 1017) :— _, , . 
 
 The king 
 
 Treading the purple calmly to his death, 
 
 While round him, like the clouds of eve, all dusk, 
 
 The giant shades of fate, silently flitting, 
 
 Pile the dim outline of the coming doom. 
 
 And the boy 
 
 With his white breast and brow, and clustering curls, 
 
 Streaked with his mother's blood, and striving hard 
 
 To tell his story ere his reason goes. 
 
 (Quoted by Morshead in his translation.)
 
 TRAGEDY 107 
 
 After the bloody deed is done, the third play, the Furies or 
 Eumenides, opens with a wonderful scene in which Orestes 
 has taken refuge at Delphi from the pursuit of the Furies. 
 The grisly band are around him in slumber, as he clings to 
 the altar. Thus do they describe their office (vv. 307 ff.) : — 
 
 Of Justice are we ministers, 
 And whosoe'er of men may stand 
 Lifting a pure unsullied hand, 
 That man no doom of ours incurs, 
 And walks thro' aU his mortal path 
 Untouched by woe, unharmed by wrath. 
 But if, as yonder man, he hath 
 Blood on his hands he strives to hide, 
 We stand avengers at his side. 
 Decreeing, Thou hast wronged the dead; 
 We are doom's witnesses to thee. 
 The price of blood, his hands have shed, 
 We wring from him ; in life, in death. 
 
 Hard at his side are we ! (Vv. 307 ff. Morshead.) 
 
 So in the spirit of Orestes is the consciousness of having 
 followed divine law in exacting vengeance assailed by the re- 
 morse for his bloody deed. The poet transfers this conflict 
 to the realm of Greek religion, making the Olympian Apollo 
 represent one side, and for the other calling forth from the 
 valley of the shadow the dreaded Chthonian Erinyes. At 
 last by the persuasion and authority of Athena the fearful 
 Daughters of Night become Eumenides, or spirits of goodwill, 
 and the sufferer's soul is at peace. The mighty power in the 
 human spirit, Remorse, becomes, when sin is absent, the be- 
 neficent power which watches over all the ways of men.^ It 
 is a thought worthy of a great poet and seer who has revealed 
 
 A world above man's head to let him see 
 How boundless might his soul's horizon be. 
 
 But to make ch^ar with what splendor and wealth of thought 
 this revelation has been made would far exceed what is now 
 
 ' Eumenides, vs. O.'JO, Travra yap avrai to, Kar dvdpJnrov^ tXaxov bUireiv.
 
 108 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 possible. With a mind of such mystic and transcendental 
 quality it is not strange that the language of Aeschylus should 
 at times become overloaded with epithet, and that enough 
 of a bombastic tone should occasionally appear in it to justify 
 the good-natured fun of the Frogs of Aristophanes. In the 
 Oresteia, however, there is little trace of such tendencies, and 
 the same wealth of imagination which is shown in the general 
 conception of the trilogy appears also in the language ; it 
 is extraordinarily rich in beautiful metaphor and simile. In 
 spite of the many reminiscences of the epic in Aeschylus, his 
 language takes its main color from the lyric, and this may be 
 seen in the dialogue as well as in the choruses. His gifts as a 
 lyric poet are indeed quite as marked as his dramatic ability, 
 and nowhere is his creative imagination more evident than 
 in the best of the choral songs. Aeschylus, of course, shows 
 his varied powers with varying degrees of excellence in dif- 
 ferent plays, but in the Agamemnon there seems to be a 
 concentration of his abilities. The first three choral odes 
 have all the qualities which may be looked for in the greatest 
 poetry : there is the rapid and skilful narrative which Pindar 
 knows so well how to use ; there is the rich thought of a mind 
 that broods deeply on the mysteries of life ; there is great 
 beauty and pathos in all that has to do with the sacrifice 
 of Iphigeneia, and in the description of the deserted Menelaus, 
 to whom by night come visions of past happiness which forth- 
 with are gone ''on wings that follow the ways of sleep"; 
 and there is the bitter description of the woes which the strife 
 of battle brings to those who remain at home, when Ares, 
 war's money-changer, who traffics not in gold but in human 
 bodies, sends back in place of those who went forth only 
 scanty ashes in an urn. The great scene in this play in which 
 the captive Cassandra foretells the impending doom and her 
 own death shows a combination of lyric and dramatic power 
 that can hardly be. paralleled elsewhere. It strongly con- 
 firms the impression of great intellectual force and originality
 
 TRAGEDY 109 
 
 which the work of Aeschylus in general makes. As was 
 remarked in the case of the Prometheus, he has not the care- 
 fully constructed plot which is characteristic of his successors, 
 nor shall we generally find distinctly drawn human char- 
 acters, since his personages are used primarily to illustrate 
 the working of inexorable law, but to this rule there is one 
 splendid exception — that of Clytemnestra. Perhaps there 
 may have been others in the lost plays. In spite of the fact 
 that she is described (vs. 1500) as merely the ''grim avenger" 
 of the family in the semblance of Agamemnon's wife, her 
 fierce passion and masterful intellect appear with wonderful 
 distinctness. The great speeches which she makes are subtle 
 in thought, splendidly dramatic, and brilliant with forceful 
 rhetoric. Her powerful personality is clear. This fact it 
 is important to note, because in the subsequent develop- 
 ment of the drama not only the structure of the plot, but 
 the delineation of individual character becomes more and 
 more marked. We may now turn to Sophocles, whose 
 plays illustrate these changes, and others. 
 
 Sophocles was born about 495 B.C. and died in 405. His 
 father was apparently a prosperous manufacturer, and the 
 boy had all the advantages of careful education. His home 
 was at Colonus, a beautiful spot near Athens, and the scene 
 of his Oedipus Coloneus. His affection for the place comes 
 out very clearly in some fine lines of this play. As a lad of 
 fifteen he is said to have been chosen to lead the paean sung 
 in honor of the victory at Salamis. At the age of twenty- 
 eight he won his first prize in the tragic contests, over Aeschy- 
 lus, and from that time on he was often in the first place. 
 Sophocles held public office and took part in religious obser- 
 vance, even as priest. It would seem that he possessed a 
 charm of personality which made him welcome to all, and 
 gave him as happy a life as falls to man's lot. With a nature 
 keenly artistic, Sophocles found in the prosperous and hopeful
 
 no GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Athens of his youth and maturity an atmosphere eminently 
 suited to him, and he is of all the poets of Greece the most typi- 
 cally Athenian. A man of this temperament would never pro- 
 duce a drama of Aeschylean quality. Perhaps it msiy be said 
 that such work was out of his reach, but it is truer to say that 
 he would naturally turn, so far as the historical limitations of his 
 material would allow (and this is an important reservation), 
 to the study of human character. We hear of Sophocles 
 as introducing a third actor and giving up the trilogy as a 
 closely linked series of plays, but these things are merely 
 external, means to an end, the end being greater dramatic 
 concentration and a more distinct portrayal of the individual. 
 All this is thoroughly in the spirit of the time. The talk 
 of Socrates with the youth of Athens is constantly turned 
 toward the development of the individual soul. The same 
 thing may be seen in progress of art. From the middle 
 of the fifth century on, with the growing skill of the artists, 
 a realistic tendency asserts itself, and soon after the end of 
 the century the era of portraiture begins. To make this por- 
 trayal of character efTective, striking scenes are needed, and 
 situations which require the exercise of judgment and choice. 
 Hence the poet, whose attention is now concentrated on the 
 single play, must give great heed to plot. And so in the plays 
 of Sophocles (there exist but seven out of the hundred or 
 more which he wrote) we find a larger use of the peripeteia, 
 or reversal of fortune, of various types of anagnorisis, or 
 recognition, and of the tying up and unloosing of the tragic 
 knot — all the elements of which Aristotle makes so much 
 in his Poetics. He indeed places plot first, writing clearl}^ 
 under the strong influence of Sophocles's Oedipus Tyrannus, 
 but to draw the line very sharply between the two elements 
 is no great gain, since, though character only becomes ap- 
 parent through the action involved in plot, the nature, of the 
 action will often be determined by character. Now Soph- 
 ocles was no radical, and he found the Athenian drama with
 
 TRAGEDY 111 
 
 well-fixed traditions ; it had, moreover, grown up in close 
 association wdth religion, and Sophocles was by nature reli- 
 gious, with a regard for the religious beliefs and forms of the 
 people about him. It is not hkely that he shared these 
 beliefs in a literal sense, but as a true poet he spiritualized 
 the ideal elements in them. Neither Aeschylus nor Sophocles 
 trouble themselves about the contradiction which of course 
 arises when the legends which they use are in sharp oppo- 
 sition to their ideals, though they may reveal this opposi- 
 tion in the background. These legends are the accepted 
 material upon which the drama is conditioned. To create 
 characters, however, which shall be real and which shall at 
 the same time represent certain fundamental ethical prin- 
 ciples that depend on man's relation to a divine and unseen 
 world, and to do this without violating the traditions of the 
 Attic stage, is an artistic problem of extraordinary difficulty. 
 Sophocles solved it with high success, and Jebb's remark 
 that his greatness as a poet "depends primarily on his great- 
 ness as an artist" ^ is certainly true. All the seven plays, 
 though of varying merit, are good, and each has some charac- 
 ter, not always the chief one, who gives evidence of the poet's 
 power in subtle psychological analysis, and in the portrayal 
 of changing feehng. In the Antigone, which, with the possible 
 exception of the Ajax, is the earliest of the preserved plays, 
 the tragic situation arises out of the conflict between human 
 law, go(xl in itself, even if sometimes wrongly applied, and 
 the unwritten laws (vs. 454), begotten, as the poet says, 
 not of man's mortal nature, "Nay, nor shall forgetfulness 
 ever lull them to sleep ; God is mighty in them, and he grows 
 not old." ^ The background of the play is thus rather 
 Aeschylean in character, and so plain is the opposition be- 
 tween the conflicting laws, that the plot of the drama is very 
 simple. Its great power, apart from the beauty of language 
 
 * Classical Greek Poetry, p. 189. 
 
 * Oedipus Tyrannus, vs. 870.
 
 112 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 and workmanship, lies in the character of her who represents 
 divine law — Antigone. In her Sophocles has certainly 
 created one of the great characters of literature. She is 
 passionate and steadfast in her devotion to the right, tender 
 and gentle in her domestic affection, and her great qualities 
 of heart are but made clearer by her occasional impatience 
 with her weaker sister Ismene, and especially by her momen- 
 tary doubt at the end as to the mysterious ways in which the 
 gods have led her. Shortly before his death Sophocles gave 
 another picture of this beautiful character in his Oedipus 
 Coloneus, and here she is much the same, only it is the picture 
 of the patient and watchful daughter who has for years 
 sought to lighten her father's burdens. In the Deianeira 
 of the Maidens of Trachis we have another extraordinarily 
 subtle and very different dehneation of feminine character. 
 In this play, one of the later ones, the action, so far as Dei- 
 aneira is concerned, moves on a purely human level, and the 
 tragedy which overtakes her comes without the adequate 
 error on the sufferer's part which Aristotle would require. 
 This, however, does not detract from the picture of the gentle 
 and charming lady, dignified, self-controlled, and yet very 
 human, which Sophocles has created, a character worthy 
 to be placed beside the great gentleman whom he has given 
 us in the Theseus of the Oedipus Coloneus. Another remark- 
 able study in character is the Neoptolemus of the Philoctetes, 
 a late play, which has a romantic tinge, as indeed the Maidens 
 of Trachis has. Here the poet shows the successful struggle 
 of a young, fresh, and unspoiled mind against the sophistries 
 of the politician Odysseus. These examples (and many more 
 might be added) indicate how much the spirit of the drama 
 had changed in the matter of the presentation of character ^ 
 since the days of Aeschylus. 
 
 1 The saying attributed to Sophocles (Plutarch, De profectibus in virtute, c. 
 7) that his fully developed style was ■^OiKuiTarov seems to show his conscious 
 attitude toward this change.
 
 TRAGEDY 113 
 
 To see how great the change was in the construction of the 
 plot one has only to turn to the Oedipus Tyrannus. There 
 is no lack of skilful character-drawing in this play, but the 
 structure of its plot is one of the triumphs of dramatic art. 
 The plot and the characters are, however, so marvelously 
 interwoven in the drama's fine fabric that it seems almost a 
 failure in artistic appreciation to think of them separately. 
 The action moves with perfect sureness and chrectness to the 
 catastrophe; little by httle the king draws together the 
 different threads of evidence which shall reveal his identity, 
 at first quite unconsciously^, at last with a feverish haste born 
 of a suspicion that he cannot acknowledge even to himself. 
 No amount of re-reading seems to detract from the absorbing 
 interest of the scenes which lead up to the fearful revelation. 
 The choral work in the play calls also for special remark. 
 So perfectly do the choruses sum up the feeling which is 
 awakened by the dramatic situation at the point when each 
 song is introduced that one almost forgets the historic fact 
 of a Greek play's being made up of the two traditional ele- 
 ments, one lyric and one dramatic. Most of the choruses, 
 too, are of rare lyric beauty. 
 
 A drama of the character which Sophocles produced could 
 not be presented in a style Hke that of Aeschylus, and there 
 is some evidence that Sophocles toiled long before he devel- 
 oped the very dehcate diction which characterizes his dia- 
 logue.^ It is exact, restrained, and apparently simple, since 
 the vocabulary, in contrast with Aeschylus's, is that of every- 
 day life, but there are often subtle shades of meaning which 
 lurk beneath the surface. The simphcity is thus illusive. 
 This extraordinary skill and delicacy in the use of language 
 helps Sophocles in his mastery of the so-called "tragic 
 irony," which he uses more frequently and with more sub- 
 tlety than either Aeschylus or Euripides. The "ironical" 
 phrase, with its double, ominous meaning, is often uttered 
 * See the passage cited in the Note on page 112.
 
 114 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 by the victim of the coming tragedy himself, as in the case 
 of Oedipus, and the tragic effects of pity and fear are thereby 
 heightened throughout the course of the action. The late 
 Mr. Churton Colhns, in an essay on "Sophocles and Shake- 
 speare," has pointed out the resemblances between them. 
 These are very numerous, but there is one striking difference. 
 In Sophocles the divine background to the affairs of men is 
 more prominent, more real, and to understand the poet's 
 attitude toward the mystery of suffering (one cannot call 
 it an explanation of the mystery) we must keep in mind his 
 perpetual consciousness of a divine order. W]th Aeschylus^ 
 Jtis_a£temjaw_tliat_suffering is the reward of sin, though in 
 the case of Orestes the final reconciliation indicates that the 
 poet had la]sense_ pf t he injustice of suffering when the act 
 of the victim was without evil intent, ^o ^bocles. on the 
 other hand, clearly holds thatjthe^innocent do suffer, and 
 he seems to make a tacit confession that the ways of heaven 
 cannot always be reconciled to man's idea of justice. "For 
 the wise the divine decrees are as riddles, only to fools is 
 God a simple and quick teacher," he says in a fragment 
 (Nauck, 700). But suffering may not be wholly evil. 
 Sophocles accepts the old doctrine that wisdom com£a-hy 
 su ffering ( TrdOu ixdOos)^ and, as Professor Butcher has said, 
 "he raises it from a prudential or moral maxim into a reli- 
 gious mystery."^ Theseus through his trials has learned 
 to say (0. C, 568) to the aged Oedipus, "Well know I that 
 I am a man, and that in the morrow my portion is no greater 
 than thine" (Jebb). Very characteristic of the poet are 
 the famous lines, so Shakespearian in flavor, which Oedipus 
 addresses to Theseus: — 
 
 Fair Aegeus' son, only to gods in heaven 
 
 Comes no old age nor death of anything; 
 
 All else is turmoiled by our Master Time. 
 
 The earth's strength fades and manhood's glory fades, 
 
 ' Aspects of Greek Genius, p. 125.
 
 TRAGEDY 115 
 
 Faith dies, and unfaith blossoms as a flower. 
 And who shall find in the open streets of men 
 Or secret places of his heart's own love 
 One wind blow true forever? Lo! or soon 
 Or late sweet turns to bitter, and anon 
 The bitter changes once again to love. 
 
 {O.C., vv. 607 ff., G. Murray, except from "Lol" on.) 
 
 But in all the confusion "Sophocles seems," as has been well 
 said, "to invite us to lift our eyes from the suffering of the 
 individual to a consideration of the ulterior purpose which 
 Providence is seeking to fulfil."^ "Courage, my daughter, 
 courage," says the chorus to Electra (vs. 174), "great still 
 in heaven is Zeus, who sees and governs all." And again, in 
 the Maidens of Trachis (vs. 140) the chorus says to the anxious 
 Deianeira, "for who hath seen Zeus thus unmindful of his 
 children?" Mercy, too, Sophocles says, Zeus hath to share 
 his throne (O.C., 1269), even as Shakespeare enthrones her 
 "in the heart of kings." The serene light of Sophocles shines 
 forth in a verse of our own day : — 
 
 And all is well, though faith and form 
 
 Be sundered in the night of fear ; 
 
 Well roars the storm to those that hear 
 A deeper voice across the storm. 
 
 The atmosphere which one finds in the works of Euripides 
 is absolutely different from this. Instead of serenity, there 
 is revolt. Eurigkles was born in the year of the battle of 
 Salamis (b.c. 480). He was thus only fifteen years younger 
 than Sophocles, and he died in 406, a year before the latter 
 poet. The brief biographies which have come down to us 
 contain much apparently idle gossip, and it is not easy to 
 separate true from false. We gather from these, in spite 
 of the gibes of Attic Comedy, that the family of Euripides 
 was one of good standing, and that he had the advantages 
 of early schooling. Unlike his two great predecessors, he 
 
 * Adam, Religious Teachers of Greece, p. 173.
 
 116 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 was a recluse by nature, deeply interested in the philo- 
 sophic speculation of his day and greatly affected by it. 
 His dramas are a sufficient proof of the truth of this tradition. 
 Personally he was not popular, and his plays were little 
 appreciated during his lifetime, for he won only five first 
 prizes, and one of these was awarded after his death. As a 
 whole his life appears to have been an unhappy one, for he 
 represented the more restless spirit 'of his age so completely 
 that he lost touch with its conservative elements, and his 
 attitude was in large measure one of hostility to the society 
 about him. In 408 he left Athens, gladly it would seem, and 
 retired to the court of Archelaus of Macedon. Here he 
 appears to have been happier, for his last two plays, the 
 Bacchae and Iphigeneia at Aulis (the latter unfinished), are 
 without the gloom that chngs to several of the dramas dating 
 from the last years of his Athenian life. Out of some ninety- 
 two plays we have eighteen — a large proportion in com- 
 parison with the seven each from Aeschylus and Sophocles. 
 This fact is due to the great popularity of Euripides in the 
 years following his death, for he has qualities which suited 
 the taste of the Alexandrian period. 
 
 It is well-nigh impossible to avoid giving an unfair impres- 
 sion of Euripides in any brief characterization of his work. 
 His faults are easy to perceive; to appreciate his greatness 
 requires study, (fin the matter of form he introduced the 
 prologue which tells the story of the myth and explains the 
 beginning of the action. Many of the present prologues 
 are probably elaborated to suit the needs of non-Attic au- 
 diences, but the use of this opening is Euripidean.; One may 
 find fault with it, but the fault is after all not radical. Eurip- 
 ides, in many cases, closes his dramas by the interference of 
 divine power, the deus ex machina, or by a prophecy. One 
 can hardly dispute the truth of Aristotle's (Poet., xv) obser- 
 vation that such devices, if used, should be for matters exter- 
 nal to the action. It is difficult to see why Euripides so
 
 TRAGEDY 117 
 
 frequently made this histrionic appeal to divine agency, since 
 in many cases he might easily have avoided it. Possibly one 
 of his reasons was to counteract the popular prejudice 
 against his supposed atheism; or perhaps the human in- 
 stinct which makes inherited forms survive belief had some- 
 thing to do with it, and the poet, while making very 
 plain his disbelief in the worth of the traditional mythology, 
 was himself not ready to put aside the historic atmosphere 
 of the Attic drama. He was indeed something of an anti- 
 quarian. On the whole, then, with one or two exceptions, 
 the plots of Euripides are less well constructed than those of 
 Sophocles ; but in the dramatic vividness, intensity, and 
 pathos of some of the scenes the younger poet is unsurpassed, 
 and he often uses the so-called "recognition" with splendid 
 effect. In delineation of character, too, Euripides has great 
 power. Such virgin-martyrs as Macaria in the Heradidae, 
 Polyxena in the Hecuba, and Iphigenia in the Iphigenia 
 at Aulis are nobly conceived and beautifully portrayed. 
 Among his men there are none so interesting as the Oedipus 
 and Neoptolemus of Sophocles, though, within their lesser 
 range, Ion and the fine peasant of the Electra are well drawn 
 and attractive. But the impatience of Euripides with the 
 popular religion, and his own philosophic bent of mind, often 
 injure the consistency of his characters. To take an instance 
 from the Ion, a play which has real romantic beauty : Ion 
 is the natural son of Creusa, daughter of Erechtheus, king of 
 Athens, by Apollo, who had done the maid violence. The 
 child was exposed to death, but was spirited away by Apollo 
 to Delphi, where he was brought up as a temple ministrant 
 in holy innocence. The mother, supposing the child dead, 
 comes to Delphi in after years to consult the oracle, and Ion 
 hears the old tale of wrong, without knowing how he is con- 
 cerned in it. Now the play opens with a most beautiful 
 and romantic picture of Ion's innocent and peaceful life at 
 Deli)hi — there are few things more charming in Greek lit'
 
 118 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 erature — but as soon as he hears of the god's deed, he breaks 
 forth in this wise : — 
 
 But there is need, methinks, to expostulate 
 
 With Phoebus. What is this ? To force a maid 
 
 And then abandon ! Leave the helpless fruit 
 
 Of stolen joys to perish ! Nay, O Lord, I 
 
 Seek rather to be good as thou art strong. 
 
 For wickedness in man the gods chastise : I 
 
 What justice then that ye, who set the law j 
 
 To mortal man, should sin against the law ? i 
 
 If, if (to feign a thing impossible) j 
 
 For sueh-hke thefts upon humanity 
 
 Thou, or Poseidon, or the King of Heaven, 
 
 Should be amerced ; to quit the fines w^ould leave 
 
 Your temples empty. Ye, to have your will. 
 
 Do thoughtless wrong : then just it is to blame 
 
 Not imitative man, but them whose taste 
 
 Instructs our admiration what to ape. 
 
 (Vv. 436ff. Verrall.) 
 
 This passage not only shows lack of consistency in drawing 
 the character of Ion, but it also illustrates how ready Eurip- 
 ides is to bring forward the grosser side of Greek legend, and 
 to discredit the religion he did not believe in. This is of 
 course the exact opposite of the attitude in such matters of 
 Aeschylus and Sophocles. Euripides is out of harmony with 
 his material, and his eager and restless searching after truth ob- 
 scures his sense of artistic possibility. The modem conception 
 of Tragedy cannot be bounded by any cycle of legends, and 
 Euripides is the herald to the new era, although the seed of 
 the new growth may indeed be found in the subtle portrayal 
 of character in Sophocles. Euripides has also another ten- 
 dency which sometimes injures the effect of his characters. 
 This is a fondness for the sophistic rhetoric of debate in which 
 heroic personages approximate in their diction and thought to- 
 ward the "man in the street." Incongruity is the result, and 
 offense to conservative taste (and good taste for that matter),
 
 TRAGEDY 119 
 
 as the gibes of Aristophanes show. Aristotle {Poet., XXV) 
 quotes Sop hocles as saying that he himself made people as 
 they ou ght jto^be. {i.e. ought to be to meet the dramatic re- 
 quirements) ; Eu ripides made them as they are. But a mili- 
 tant realism is"not compatible A\ith heroic ideals. Euripides 
 also changed the function of the chorus by separating it in 
 great measure from the dramatic action, thus making its 
 songs often merely interludes. The change was very likely 
 partlj^ due to the influence of the new and more elaborate 
 school of music which came in at this time, bringing with it 
 a taste for monodies in the drama. By this method Eurip- 
 ides often attains to splendid choral effects, but he writes 
 the swan-song of the chorus as an integral part of the drama. 
 The comic side of some of these innovations is amusingly 
 put by Aristophanes in the Frogs. Euripides, and to some 
 extent Dionysus, are accusing Aeschylus of using overloaded 
 language and of introducing preposterous hybrid animals 
 into his plays. So Aeschylus says to Euripides : " What 
 then is your practice? " The latter replies : — 
 
 No cock-horse in my plays, by Zeus, no goat-stag there you'll see, 
 Such figures as are blazoned forth in Median tapistry. 
 When I first took the art from you, bloated and swoln, poor thing, 
 With turgid gasconading words and heavy dieting. 
 First I reduced and toned her down, and made her slim and neat 
 With wordlets and with exercise and poultices of beet, 
 And next a dose of chatter-juice, distilled from books, I gave her, 
 And monodies she took, with sharp Cephisophon for fiavor. 
 I never used haphazard words, or plunged abruptly in ; 
 Who entered first explained at large the drama's origin. 
 ******* 
 
 Canons of verse I introduced, and neatly chiseled wit ; 
 
 To look, to scan : to plot, to plan : to twist, to turn, to woo : 
 
 On all to spy ; in all to pry. Aesch. You did : I say so too. 
 
 EuRip. I showed them scenes of common life, the things we know 
 and see. 
 Where any blunder would at once by all detected be. 
 
 (Vv. 737 £f. Rogers.)
 
 120 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 With all his admitted faults, then, wherein lies the claim of 
 Euripides to be considered a very great poet ? As the prophet 
 of a new era he of course has great historic importance, and 
 his mind is as a mirror to reflect the deepest thought of his 
 day. Hecuba's invocation to Zeus in the Troades (she has 
 been to school in Athens, Mr. Adam remarks illustrates 
 this latter fact : — • 
 
 O earth's Upbearer, thou whose throne is Earth, 
 Whoe'er thou be, O past our finding out, 
 Zeus, be thou Nature's Law, or mind of man, 
 To thee I pray ; for treading soundless paths. 
 In justice dost thou guide all mortal things. 
 
 (Vv. 884 ff. Way.) 
 
 Here is a sort of epitome of the philosophical questions of the 
 time; but it is in the last line that the poet reveals one of 
 the great foundations of his power, the passion for Justice, 
 and justice to suffering humanity. "Think you," he says 
 in a fragment (Nauck, 508) of very modern tone : — 
 
 Think you that deeds of wrong spring to the gods 
 On wings, and then some one, on Zeus's book 
 Writes them, and Zeus beholding the record 
 Gives judgment ?• Nay, the whole expanse of heaven 
 Would not suffice, if Zeus wrote there man's sins ; 
 Nor could he send to each his punishment 
 From such review. Justice is on the earth. 
 Is here, is by us, if men will but see." 
 
 (Westcott.) 
 
 C This deep sympathy with man's life, of which we have a 
 gentler expression in the later poetry of the Anthology and of 
 Theocritus (cf. Idyl XXI), when combined, as it often is in 
 Euripides, with great intensity of tragic feeling, with splendid 
 power of language and of vivid expression, raises the best of 
 his poetry to the level of great art. It is a significant fact 
 
 ^Religious Teachers of Greece, p. 299.
 
 TRAGEDY 121 
 
 that in the early years of the last century, perhaps partly 
 under the influence of the German critic, August Wilhelm 
 von Schlegel, Euripides suffered a sort of eclipse. With the 
 growth of the humanitarian movement which characterizes 
 the latter part of the last century and the present one, his 
 real greatness has again been recognized, and his admirers 
 have become many and enthusiastic. Here is concrete 
 testimony to his universal power. Euripides lights up 
 many of his plays with a romantic charm, and he shows an 
 intense feeHng for the influence of nature. Neither Aeschy- 
 lus nor Sophocles lacks a keen sense of natural beauty, but in 
 Euripides nature seems a more objective thing around which 
 the poet's fancy loves to play. The Bacchae, one of the finest of 
 all Greek plays, is filled with this feeling. The poet, old man 
 as he was when he wrote it, has caught the note of the wood- 
 land. The hills of Macedonia have made him young again, 
 and in the Dionysiac gospel of enthusiasm he has found life. 
 The following beautiful rendering of one of the odes from this 
 play (vv. 863 ff.), by Professor Murray, well sums up many of 
 the qualities of Euripides which I have tried to bring out. 
 
 The damsels of the chorus sing first in the spirit of Bacchic 
 frenzy, and of intense longing for the solitudes of the w'ood- 
 land. Shall they escape to the peaceful forest as the fawn 
 which eludes its pursuers? The refrain, I believe, is an 
 exaltation of vengeance, so that here, too, the spirit is more or 
 less that of the frenzied Bacchanal. Its closing line is pro- 
 verbial and is associated with Theban legend as the burden 
 of the song at the wedding of Cadmus. Professor Murray, 
 however, interprets the refrain somewhat differently. In 
 the latter part of the song the tone changes. Here the poet's 
 thought is lifted up into the more spiritual regions of the 
 idealized religion of Dionysus. The gods will not suffer 
 unrighteousness to be ; have faith in the divine strength of 
 that which in the long ages has become the law and which 
 is grounded in nature. Yet is life sad, and its good things
 
 122 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 fall to men in no equal portions. Hope finds happy issue 
 and hope deceives, " one step enough for me." 
 
 Some maidens 
 
 Will they ever come to me, ever again, 
 
 The long long dances, 
 On through the dark till the dim stars wane ? 
 Shall I feel the dew on my throat, and the stream 
 Of wind in my hair ? Shall our white feet gleam 
 
 In the dim expanses ? 
 Oh, feet of a fawn to the greenwood fled, 
 
 Alone in the grass and the loveliness ; 
 Leap of the hunted, no more in dread. 
 
 Beyond the snares and the deadly press : 
 Yet a voice still in the distance sounds, 
 A voice and a fear and a haste of hounds ; 
 O wildly laboring, fiercely fleet, 
 
 Onward yet by river and glen. . . . 
 Is it joy or terror, ye storm-swift feet ? . . . 
 
 To the dear lone lands untroubled of men, 
 Where no voice sounds, and amid the shadowy green 
 The little things of the woodland live unseen. 
 
 What else is wisdom ? What of man's endeavour 
 Or God's high grace, so lovely and so great ? 
 To stand from fear set free, to breathe and wait ; 
 To hold a hand uplifted over Hate ; 
 
 And shall not Loveliness be loved forever ? ^ 
 
 Others 
 
 O Strength of God, slow art thou and still, 
 
 Yet failest never ! 
 On them that worship the Ruthless Will, 
 On them that dream, doth His judgment wait. 
 Dreams of the proud man, making great 
 
 And greater ever. 
 Things which are not of God. In wide 
 
 And devious coverts, hunter-wise, 
 
 1 The meaning of the Greek is more exactly, "What is wisdom, or what 
 fairer boon hath God given mortals than to raise the hand in victory o'er 
 the foe ? What is fair is loved forever.'*
 
 TRAGEDY 123 
 
 He coucheth Time's unhasting stride, 
 
 Following, following him whose eyes 
 Look not to Heaven. For all is vain. 
 The pulse of the heart, the plot of the brain, 
 That striveth bej'ond the laws that live. 
 And is thy faith so much to give, 
 Is it so hard a thing to see. 
 That the Spirit of God, whate'er it be, 
 The Law that abides and changes not, ages long, 
 The Eternal and Nature-born — these things be strong? 
 
 What else is Wisdom ? What of man's endeavour 
 Or God's high grace, so lovely and so great ? 
 To stand from fear set free, to breathe and wait ; 
 To hold a hand uplifted over Hate ; 
 
 And shall not Loveliness be loved forever ? 
 
 Leader 
 
 Happy he, on the weary sea. 
 Who hath fled the tempest and won the haven. 
 
 Happy whoso hath risen, free. 
 Above his striving. For strangely graven 
 
 Is the orb of life, that one and another 
 
 In gold and power may outpass his brother. 
 
 And men in their millions float and flow 
 And seethe with a million hopes as leaven ; 
 
 And they win their Will or they miss their Will, 
 
 And the hopes are dead or are pined for still ; 
 
 But whoe'er can know, 
 
 As the long days go. 
 That to Live is happy, hath found his Heaven !* 
 
 Such are the voices of these three great " Bards of 
 Passion," 
 
 ."Voices of unreturning days, which breathe 
 The spirit of a day that never dies." 
 
 J. R. Wheeler. 
 
 ' The meaning of the Greek ia, "Him I count blessed whose life is happy 
 from day to day.'l
 
 COMEDY 
 
 In a romantic wooded dell on the northeast slopes of Mt. 
 Pentelicus, a short half-day's journey from Athens, lie the 
 scanty remains of a little village which should be the Mecca 
 of all lovers of the drama, for it is the legendary birthplace 
 of both tragedy and comedy. The peasants who now Hve in 
 this beautiful valley call the place "Dionyso" — a lingering 
 reminiscence of the cult of the wine-god, which had here its 
 most ancient seat in Attica. On this site, something over 
 twenty years ago, enthusiastic young students of the Ameri- 
 can School at Athens, under the guidance of a distinguished 
 scholar of Columbia University, Professor A. C, Merriam, 
 sought and found the old Attic deme of Icaria, the place 
 where, as tradition says, the hero Icarius once received the 
 god Dionysus into his home. In return for his hospitality 
 Icarius received the gift of the vine. To the inhabitants 
 of Icaria the worship of Dionysus became a priceless heritage. 
 Centuries after the cult was established, it is said that the 
 poet Susarion came from Megara, gathered together a group 
 of Icarians, and organized the first comic chorus — an event 
 which tradition places in the first half of the sixth century 
 before Christ. A half century later, in the year 534, a native 
 of Icaria, Thespis, gave the first tragic performance in Athens, 
 at the newly established spring festival of Dionysus. Once 
 again, when tragedy was being transformed by the master 
 hand of Aeschylus into the most perfect expression of the 
 literary genius of the Greek race, Icaria gave to Athens an- 
 other of her sons, Magnes ; his name stands second among 
 the comic poets who in later times were remembered as hav- 
 
 124
 
 COMEDY 125 
 
 ing contributed notably to the development of Attic Comedy. 
 It is small wonder that, with such traditions and such achieve- 
 ment, this obscure mountain village was credited by the 
 ancients with the unique distinction of having originated the 
 two great branches of the classical drama. 
 
 But the tradition which names the birthplace and the 
 earhest poet, or rather chorus-leader, of Attic Comedy, does 
 not tell us the processes and stages by which Comedy came 
 into being and developed into a branch of literature worthy 
 to take its place by the side of its sister, Tragedy. A literary 
 form is not born full-fledged at a particular time and place. 
 It arises out of certain conditions, must go through slow 
 stages of growth, must adjust itself to its environment, and 
 finally receives the perfecting touch of some master artist. 
 If a contemporary had left us a description of the rude per- 
 formance of Susarion's chorus of Icarians, although some of 
 the lineaments of the Attic Comedy as it is known to us would 
 probably be traceable to the discerning eye, as the zoologist 
 detects in the embryo the rudiments of the body that is to 
 be born, yet no doubt these lineaments would have been so 
 strangely out of proportion as to seem incapable of being 
 molded into a symmetrical, well-organized body. 
 
 We have no complete specimen of the Attic Comedy earlier 
 than the Acharnians of Aristophanes, brought out in 425 B.C. 
 Of the Attic predecessors of Aristophanes we possess a few 
 hundred lines quoted from many different plays, none of 
 which, probably, is as early as 450 B.C. Of the great Sicilian 
 poet Epicharmus, who by the united testimony of antiquity 
 is entitled to be called the true founder of a literary comedy 
 among the Greeks, some two hundred lines have come down 
 to us in quotations, together with a number of representative 
 titles of his plays. These carry us back to the early years of 
 the fifth century. From these fragments and from the 
 eleven extant plays of Aristophanes we should not be able 
 to derive much precise information regarding the origins of
 
 126 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 this branch of Uterature. Fortunately, however, we have 
 other sources of information, notably several valuable state- 
 ments by Aristotle and other Greek writers, comic scenes 
 from early vase-paintings, and figurines of comic performers. 
 With the help of all these, and more particularly by the study 
 of the complex forms of the extant comedies of Aristophanes, 
 in which survivals of early elements have been detected, 
 some progress has been made in recent years toward the solu- 
 tion of the interesting problem of origin, and the region of 
 pure conjecture has been appreciably narrowed. 
 
 But the details of this problem, however fascinating for the 
 student of literary history, cannot engage our attention on 
 this occasion, except in so far as an understanding of the 
 beginnings of comedy among the Greeks is essential to our 
 present purpose, which is to give an intelhgible account of 
 the character and spirit and permanent achievements of the 
 Attic Comedy at its two great epochs, separated from each 
 other by the space of a century, and represented by the names 
 of Aristophanes and Menander respectively. It should be 
 made apparent in the course of this lecture that the comedy 
 of Aristophanes and his contemporaries, though unique in 
 its kind in the history of literature, though at first view law- 
 less and undisciplined in spirit as in form and structure, was, 
 on the one hand, considered as an organic structure, a direct 
 descendant of the primitive rites and practices that grew 
 up in connection with the worship of Dionysus, and, on 
 the other hand, from the point of view of spirit and content, 
 was the legitimate product of the social and political con- 
 ditions of the time in which it flourished ; furthermore, 
 that the comedy of manners of Menander and his con- 
 temporaries, which proved to be one of the greatest con- 
 tributions of Hellenism to the hterature of Europe, in its 
 turn also owed something of its universal character, so 
 strikingly in contrast with the transient and local character 
 of the old political comedy, to the cosmopolitan society in the
 
 COMEDY 127 
 
 midst of which it came into being ; and, finally, that the line 
 of descent from the beginning down to Menander is direct 
 and unbroken. 
 
 The word "comedy," Kw/xwSt'a, means "comus-song," "the 
 song of the comus." The name itself is modeled on the 
 pattern of "tragedy" — "goat-song" or "the song of the 
 satyrs" ; for tragedy developed and received a name earlier 
 than comedy. The comus was an ancient institution in 
 Attica — a band of mirthful revellers who made merry in 
 their own way at the winter festival of Dionysus, at the time 
 when the new wine was broached. Dressed in fantastic 
 costumes, preferably representing themselves as animals — 
 birds, frogs, horses, and the like — they sang impromptu 
 songs accompanied by lively dancing. On their first appear- 
 ance their leader addressed the bystanders, then the mas- 
 queraders sang their songs alternately with the speeches 
 chanted by their leader. At the end of the performance the 
 troupe marched gaily away, led by the flute-player, singing 
 and dancing as they retired. 
 
 The chorus of the Old Attic Comedy seems to have devel- 
 oped out of this ancient Dionysiac comus. In the perfected 
 comedy of the period of Aristophanes we see many of the 
 characteristics of the primitive comus: the same mas- 
 querade, with a marked predilection for animal masks, the 
 same exuberant vitality revealing itself in both song and 
 dance, the same frankness of appeal to the spectators, the 
 same alternation of speeches on the part of the leaders of the 
 half-choruses with songs by the half-choruses, and the same 
 jolly procession at the close. In the prologue, and in the 
 stasima which separate the several episodes, the influence of 
 tragedy is undoubtedly to be recognized ; but the structure 
 which is peculiar to the portion of the play that falls between 
 the prologue and the end of the parabasis, and also the 
 merry revel or ballet of the exodos, bear the unmistakable 
 marks of an independent origin, and this origin has been
 
 128 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 found in the comus of masqueraders from which the word 
 ''comedy" is derived.^ 
 
 The plot of a typical play of the early period of Aristoph- 
 anes is generally unfolded by means of the presence upon 
 the scene of two conflicting elements, the representatives of 
 opposing principles. After the situation in which the char- 
 acters find themselves has been revealed to the spectators in 
 the first part of the prologue, spoken by one or two actors, 
 a plan is suggested by one of the actors, and measures are 
 forthwith taken to put the plan into effect. But the natural 
 march of events is interrupted at the very beginning by the 
 introduction of the opposing element, whether actor or chorus, 
 and this opposition is represented in action as soon as the 
 chorus comes marching in. The opposing principles are 
 brought into collision. A conflict of words or of fists ensues. 
 The chorus is always interested in the struggle, and is often 
 an active participant in it. After a scene of wild excitement, 
 in which each party fights frantically for its cause, there 
 follows a pause in the action. The question at issue is sub- 
 mitted to judicial arbitration. In a lively debate speech is 
 answered by speech, with intercalated jests by a third party, 
 who plays the part of buffoon or clown. A decision is ren- 
 dered; one or the other side wins. This is the solution of 
 the plot, the true catastrophe of the play. Then follows the 
 parabasis. The actors leave the scene and the chorus marches 
 forward and addresses the spectators. In the first part of 
 the parabasis the chorus leader drops his mask and speaks 
 as the poet's mouthpiece on the poet's fife and circumstances, 
 on his ideals and hopes, or on his relations to his rivals and 
 
 1 In a valuable study on "Les origines et la structure technique de la 
 comedie ancienne, " which has just appeared in the Revue des etudes anciennes 
 (XIII, 1911, pp. 1 ff.), Professor Octave Navarre submits to a critical dis- 
 cussion the question of the origin of the several parts of the Old Comedy. 
 I am glad to find myself in agreement with him on many essential points, 
 especially as regards the contributions made respectively by the Attic comus 
 and the Sicilian comedy to the composite structure of the Old Comedy.
 
 COMEDY 129 
 
 the public. In the second part of the parabasis the bal- 
 anced structure which we have seen in the debate which fol- 
 lows the conflict, is again assumed : amoebaeic lyrics by the 
 two half-choruses alternate with balancing recitations by their 
 respective leaders. The mask of the chorus is preserved in 
 this part, the leaders speaking in their characters as wasps, 
 birds, or whatever they and their choruses are conceived to 
 be. After the parabasis comes a succession of short episodes, 
 usually not at all necessary to the plot. A comic person, 
 generally the leading figure in the first part of the play, stands 
 there, always in close touch with the audience, and goes 
 through a series of encounters with a motley variety of per- 
 sons, who stray in on one pretext or another. It is the poet's 
 way of illustrating in burlesque the advantages of the prin- 
 ciple or policy which has gained the upper hand in the pre- 
 ceding conflict. 
 
 A play of Aristophanes has been characterized ^ as a " dram- 
 atized debate." This description, however, applies only 
 to about one-third of the play. All that precedes the mock 
 conflict and debate is introductory, all that follows — the 
 victors' jollification — is more or less irrelevant horse-play. 
 From the time of its entrance to the end of the parabasis the 
 chorus dominates the scene. But in the loosely connected 
 burlesque scenes which fill the last half of the play the chorus 
 sinks into relative insignificance until the procession at the 
 end, and its mask is no longer significant in the action. 
 Furthermore, the two parts of the play stand out in sharp 
 contrast to each other structurally. The first part is char- 
 acterized by parallelism in arrangement, natural in a debate, 
 speech answering to speech, ode to ode ; the second by a com- 
 position similar to that in tragedy, episode following episode 
 with choral songs between. Furthermore, the balanced part 
 uses long tetrameter lines, the episodes the more conver- 
 sational trimeter. If the paired or double portion, which 
 
 • Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry, p. 372.
 
 130 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 constitutes the real plot of a play of Aristophanes, is rightly 
 traced back to the masquerading comus of Dionysiac rev- 
 ellers, to what origin shall we ascribe the single or unpaired 
 portion, the loosely attached episodes after the parabasis, 
 which could so readily be spared so far as the plot is concerned? 
 
 Scholars have found the answer to this question in the 
 Dorian comedy, especially as it was perfected by the genius 
 of the great Sicihan poet, Epicharmus. Aristotle tells us 
 that the fable or plot was brought into comedy by Epichar- 
 mus, and Plato calls him the "prince of comedy," placing 
 him in the same category of archegetes with Homer, Epi- 
 charmus flourished about 500 B.C. His fame as a comic poet 
 had spread among the Greeks some time before comedy at 
 Athens had reached a stage of development which entitled 
 it to admission, under the patronage of the state, into the 
 official programme of the great spring festival of Dionysus 
 — an event which is dated about 486 b.c. In the year 485, 
 after his home town of Hyblaean Megara was destroyed, Epi- 
 charmus took up his residence in Syracuse. There, in the 
 brilhant court of Hiero, he must have met Pindar, Simonides, 
 Bacchylides, and Aeschylus, and perhaps it was through 
 Aeschylus that the knowledge of his achievement in comedy 
 came to Athens. At any rate his comedy, either then or 
 later, became a formative factor in the development of Attic 
 comedy. 
 
 Among the Dorian peoples of the Peloponnesus, where 
 Dionysus was worshiped as the god of fertility, a kind of 
 sport was practised at his festivals which, though similar in 
 some respects to the Attic comus, was in some essential par- 
 ticulars different, and contained the germs of a distinct de- 
 velopment. In Corinth and elsewhere men dressed them- 
 selves up as goblin-like creatures, their faces stained with 
 wine-lees, their bodies ludicrously padded behind and in 
 front and equipped with obscene appendages. The pictures 
 and descriptions which we have of these grotesque and lusty
 
 COMEDY 131 
 
 followers of Dionysus show that they indulged in boisterous, 
 obscene dances, and suggest that the songs they sang were 
 of like character. We are told, too, that in Sparta were 
 acted improvised character-sketches of comic types taken 
 from daily life. In Megara these performances took on 
 some kind of dramatic form, and during the regime of the 
 democrac}^ there, in the early part of the sixth century, it 
 is probable that political satire became a recognized ingre- 
 chent of their buffoonery. Tradition saj'S that Susarion, 
 who first organized a comic chorus in Attica, was a native 
 of Megara. However this may be, the ribald exhibition of 
 the imps of Dionysus did not grow into anything literary 
 on the Greek mainland, but only in Southern Italy and in 
 Sicily, whither it was transplanted by Dorian colonists. The 
 mythological travesty in southern Italy and the Atellane 
 farce in the Oscan Campagna are witnesses to the persistence 
 of the so-called ''Dorian Comedy" in its new home, and to 
 the Italian Greeks' natural gift for the farce and the bur- 
 lesque. From the same stock sprang the comedy of Epi- 
 charmus toward the end of the sixth century. 
 
 The comedy of Epicharmus seems to have been a stage 
 performance from the first, no longer associated with the 
 worship of Dionysus. The subjects which he chose for por- 
 trayal were partly mythological — the doings of the gods 
 travestied — and partly taken from daily life. He was the 
 first, for instance, to bring upon the stage typical characters, 
 such as the parasite, the boor, the drunken man. Political 
 satire and personalities seem to have been entirely absent 
 from his plays. The important innovation introduced by 
 Epicharmus was that he transformed a rude and unliterary 
 comedy, which had consisted of a series of disconnected, or 
 at most loosely connected, burlesque scenes, and whose 
 humor lay chiefly in coarse jests and obscenity, into a com- 
 position which had at least the essential elements t)f a literary 
 and artistic form. Aristotle tells us that Epicharmus in-
 
 132 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 troduced the fable or myth. This does not necessarily mean 
 that there was a formal complication and a solution, but pos- 
 sibly only that there was at last a certain unity of subject, 
 a more or less orderly progression from one episode to another, 
 so that the comic subject received varied illustration in suc- 
 cessive scenes. An important fact is that, to all appearances, 
 there was no chorus in the Sicilian comedy. The goblin-like 
 fun-makers of the Dorian farce or mime were never organized 
 into a band under the direction of a leader, as the members 
 of the Attic comus were welded together into a chorus, but 
 remained individuals. Consequently the structure of a play 
 of Epicharmus was simple — a series of episodes consisting 
 of narration and dialogue, separated from each other, per- 
 haps, by dancing on the part of the actors, but not by cho- 
 ral performances. No trace is preserved of the balanced, 
 double structure which, as we have seen, is the peculiar char- 
 acteristic of the central or plot portion of a play of Aris- 
 tophanes. The plot may have been developed by means of 
 a conflict of principles taking the form of a debate ; indeed 
 there are traces of this dramatic device in the remains of 
 Epicharmus ; but the structure of such debates seems to have 
 resembled the dialogue debate of Attic tragedy rather than 
 that of Attic comedy with its delicate balancing of parts. 
 
 From the facts that have been presented the inference is 
 obvious that the Attic comedy of the time of Aristophanes 
 was a composite structure. The choral element was derived 
 from the Attic comus ; the balanced structure in monologue, 
 dialogue, and song was due to the interplay of the two half- 
 choruses, the two leaders of the half-choruses, and the leader 
 of the whole chorus. The unpaired element, on the other 
 hand — particularly the loosely connected episodes that 
 follow the parabasis — is of Dorian origin. In fact, there is 
 some reason to think that the actor element, taken by and 
 large, is Dorian. Aristotle tells us that comedy began with 
 improvisations, and originated with the leaders of the phallic
 
 COMEDY 133 
 
 performances. He probably refers to the comus, for though 
 its members did not wear the phallus, yet this emblem was 
 carried in the Dionysiac processions in which the comus 
 participated. But the phallus was a distinctive, characteris- 
 tic feature of the make-up of the Dionysiac goblins, whose 
 antics gave the impulse which led to the comedy of the 
 Dorians, and it was equally a part of the garb of the actors 
 in the Attic comedy, even in that of Aristophanes and his 
 contemporaries. 
 
 It was ine\atable that the artistic genius of the Athenians 
 should eventually eliminate from comedy the incongruous 
 elements due to its composite origin, and at the same time 
 should purge it of the frank indecency and unashamed 
 naturalness which were its inheritance from a less conven- 
 tional civilization. Only by such a process of purgation and 
 of submission to the severe canons of art could a form of 
 literature both universal and of permanent value have been 
 developed out of the Old Attic Comedy. 
 
 For a long time the comic performances in Athens were 
 given at the festivals of Dionysus in an entirely unofficial 
 manner, by performers who were volunteers and not the 
 accredited representatives of the state. By the year 486, 
 however, they had assumed such importance in the public 
 eye and had reached such a stage of literary excellence that 
 they were admitted to the programme of the City Dionysia, 
 the great spring festival. From now on comedy steadily in- 
 creased in importance and improved in technique. The 
 number of poets who devoted themselves to the comic muse 
 grew rapidly. By the admission of comedy into the January 
 festival, the Lenaea, about 442, opportunity was given for the 
 exhibition of ten comedies a year, instead of only five, by 
 as many competing poets — a number that was maintained, 
 ^vith temporary interruptions, throughout the fifth, fourth, 
 and third centuries. From the end of the age of Pericles 
 down to the death of Alexander the Great, i.e. from Aris-
 
 134 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 tophanes to Menander, comedy did not cease to grow, in re- 
 sponse to changing social and political conditions in Athens 
 and to the demands of literary art. We distinguish three 
 great periods: the Old Comedy, from the beginning down 
 to the death of Aristophanes ; the Middle Comedy, a transi- 
 tion-period of about fifty years; and the New Comedy, 
 which reached its zenith in Menander. 
 
 Attic comedy was not restricted to subjects drawn from 
 mythology-, as was tragedy. Any situation in politics or 
 society, any tendency in literature or religion or education or 
 ethics, the foibles of the people or the idiosyncrasies of in- 
 dividuals, the weaknesses of the Olympian gods themselves 
 — in short, any subject which the exuberant fancy of the poets 
 could summon up and turn to account for purposes of bur- 
 lesque, parody, or satire, made an acceptable theme for the 
 laughter-loving Athenians. We have already referred to 
 the mythological travesty, cultivated by Epicharmus and 
 the Attic poets who were most subject to his influence, in 
 which the heroes of mythology and even the gods were turned 
 to ridicule. Sometimes the mythological travesty was given 
 a political import also, as when Cratinus, in a burlesque upon 
 the judgment of Paris, put Pericles upon the stage under the 
 thin disguise of Dionysus, ''the king of satyrs," and charged 
 the scenes in which he appeared with bold innuendo relative 
 to Pericles's relations with Aspasia and with biting witticisms 
 on his public policies. A never-failing source of amusement 
 was furnished by parodies of the tragic poets, with whose 
 plays the comic poet could safely assume a remarkable degree 
 of familiarity on the part of his audience. The extant plaj^s 
 are sprinkled with pathetic Imes and touching situations 
 from tragedy, so distorted and put to uses so obviously in- 
 congruous as to be irresistibly funny, even to us. Imitations 
 of animal life were much in vogue in the Old Comedy. We 
 hear of choruses of snakes, ants, nightingales, goats, birds, 
 wasps, fishes, and frogs. Again we have choruses of villages,
 
 COMEDY 135 
 
 cities, laws, clouds, seasons, breezes, islands, and transport- 
 ships. These fantastic conceptions were often merely a cloak 
 for political or social satire, as we see in the Wasps and Clouds 
 of Aristophanes. Another favorite topic was derived from 
 folk-tales — stories about strange lands and peoples ; or 
 we are transported to some Utopia, where all good things 
 happen of themselves and everybody is rich and happy; 
 or we are taken back into a long-past golden age, to a prim- 
 itive state of innocence and happiness ; or, as in the Frogs 
 of Aristophanes, we accompany the hero on an adventurous 
 trip to Hades and witness there the squabbling of the illus- 
 trious dead over trivial matters of dramatic composition. 
 A survey of the titles of the lost comedies of the fifth century 
 reveals a great variety of dramatic subjects, and a mar- 
 velous ingenuity in finding for the chosen theme a scenic set- 
 ting that would lend itself to the unfolding of the poet's 
 fancy and at the same time be strikingly original. 
 
 The characteristic of the Old Comedy which distinguishes 
 it from that of Epicharmus on the one hand and from the 
 New Comedy on the other — the quality, in fact, which gives 
 it a unique position in the world's literature — is its self- 
 assumed cens orship of the po litical and social lif e of the period , / 
 coupled with a daring in The use oi mvective, a license in 
 ridiculing institutions and persons, altogether unexampled 
 on the comic stage. This quality can be traced in the earliest 
 fragments of Cratinus, apparently the first comic poet whose 
 plays were preserved to a later period, and it continued with 
 little abatement down to the end of the century. There 
 were plays which Avere political in warp and woof. There 
 were plays in which political satire and personal lampoon- 
 ing were incidental. But only rarely during this period was 
 a comedy produced in which the poet held himself aloof 
 entirely from contemporary topics and refrained from using 
 the scourge of invective against individuals. The line of 
 division between this political comedy and the Middle Com-
 
 136 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 edy which succeeded it was so clearly marked that Aristotle, 
 writing at about the time when the Middle Comedy was 
 passing into the New, could classify the comic poets of the 
 fifth century as "lampooners" and could characterize them 
 as users of coarse and indecent language and violent invective. 
 Except for the form in which they worked, these poets were 
 in spirit more akin to Archilochus, who used his iambics to 
 vent his spleen upon his personal enemies, than to Epichar- 
 mus. 
 
 Free speech was as the breath of life to the political comedy, 
 and the democratic institutions established by Pericles offered 
 full opportunity for its exercise. During the aristocratic 
 regime that followed the Persian Wars, comedy could hardly 
 have been intensely political, nor is it hkely that the right 
 to speak its mind freely about persons and policies was at 
 that time conceded to it. But a new spirit had come over 
 Athens by the time that Pericles became the recognized leader 
 of the popular party. Athens was then committed to the 
 policy of exploiting the empire in her own interests. The 
 body of free citizens had been enormously increased by the 
 indiscriminate extension of the franchise. The eager rivalry 
 of candidates for the popular favor led to a laxer administra- 
 tion of affairs. Pericles, pressed by his rivals, had em- 
 braced the dangerous democratic principle of ''giving the 
 people their own." A large and increasing number of citizens 
 fed at the public crib. In such a society men had plenty 
 of leisure for politics, and to the masses politics must have 
 been the subject of most absorbing interest. Incidentally, 
 politics was an amusement to them as well as an occupation. 
 When they gathered together in the assembly or loitered in 
 groups about the market-place or the chambers of court, 
 doubtless their gossip played most often about the political 
 events of the day, and their witticisms were levelled at the 
 heads of party leaders and public characters of every sort. 
 
 In such an atmosphere, charged with political interest, in
 
 COMEDY 137 
 
 which gossip flourished and freedom of speech was unre- 
 strained, it was inevitable that the comic poets, whose first 
 business was to amuse, should have apprehended the temper 
 of the Athenians and have offered for their amusement what 
 they desired. The poets, in fact, simply adapted to their 
 own use the principle which Pericles was applying to poUtics, 
 "to give the people their own," to serve up to them the 
 subjects most likely to win their applause — a principle which 
 Dr. Johnson frankly accepted for the playwright in the lines 
 
 The drama's laws the drama's patrons give ; 
 For we that live to please must please to live.^ 
 
 That the people welcomed the political comedy with open 
 arms is shown, not only by the favors which they showered 
 upon Cratinus, a shameless lampooner and master of in- 
 vective, but also by their doubling the number of comedies to 
 be exhibited each year. The number was increased from 
 five to ten, as we have seen, by the admission of comedy into 
 the Lenaean festival also. This took place about 442, some 
 ten years after Cratinus had gained his first victory. From 
 this time on the Athenians had their fill twice each year 
 of the yellow journalism of the comic stage, of muck-raking 
 and mud-flinging unchecked by law and untempered by pub- 
 lic opinion. Once or twice, indeed, during the next twenty- 
 five years the conviction gained ground that the license of 
 the comic poets should be curtailed, and certain restrictive 
 measures, we are told, were passed by the people. But 
 whatever the scope and intent of these measures, they proved 
 futile. Only after the Athenians had been saddened and 
 sobered by the losses, humiliations, and hardships of a long 
 and devastating war, after the heart had gone out of them, 
 did they submit to forego their annual orgies of scurrility. 
 But during the life of the political comedy it was essentially 
 the rampant people's comedy, its gossip the gossip of the 
 streets, its ridicule of policies and of persons the reflection of
 
 138 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 the jokes that circulated daily in the clubs and the gymnasia 
 and other gathering-places. 
 
 This conception of the purpose and aim of the Old Attic 
 Comedy is not the traditional view, which has come down 
 to us from antiquity, according to which the comic poets were 
 the scourges of vice, the austere censors of public and private 
 morals, as Horace evidently thought when he wrote : — 
 
 Cratinus, Eupolis, Aristophanes, 
 And others of the early comic school, 
 When they would brand a man as vagabond, 
 Adulterer, bravo, rogue, or otherwise 
 Notorious, spoke their minds without restraint. 
 
 (Hovenden.) 
 
 Nor yet is it the opinion that has been widely held in modern 
 times — an opinion also inherited from the ancients — 
 that Aristophanes and his fellows were statesmen, men of 
 keen discernment and unflinching courage who cherished 
 exalted ideals for the state and society and made comedy the 
 vehicle for their propaganda.^ We used to hear, for example, 
 of the "policy" of Cratinus as opposed to that of Pericles, 
 and of the measures advocated by Aristophanes as "the 
 leader of the conservative opposition to Cleon." But shall 
 we not be closing our eyes to the chief purpose of comedy, 
 whose business it is to amuse, and especially to the position 
 of comedy at Athens, where plays were brought out only in 
 competitive exhibitions, in which the poets were bound to 
 
 1 See Professor John Williams White's Introduction to Mr. James Loeb's 
 version of Professor M. Croiset's Aristophanes and the Political Parties at 
 Athens for an admirable characterization of the "serious interpretation of 
 a form of literature of which the primary intention must always be enter- 
 tainment and amusement." It should be noted, however, that Professor 
 White protests against "the mistaken disposition, recently manifested, to 
 regard Aristophanes simply as a jester and to deny that he had any other 
 purpose than to provoke laughter" as "an extreme, though natural, re- 
 action." The reader is referred also to an article by Wilhelm Siiss in the 
 Neue Jahrbiicher fiir das klassische Altertum (1910), pp. 400 ff., on the 
 "Technik der Aristophanischen Komodie."
 
 COMEDY 139 
 
 win the favor of the populace as the condition of success, 
 if we adopt either of these interpretations of the poHtical 
 corned}^ ? ^ And may we not credit the Athenian comic 
 poets with sufficient discernment to have perceived, what 
 all satirists in both literature and art must perceive, that 
 the subject of a caricature, to win instant attention, must 
 be a person more or less prominent in the public eye? In- 
 deed, no other form of ridicule or of comic misrepresentation 
 can count so surely upon achieving immediate success as 
 a clever caricature of an eminent person. A contemporary 
 of Aristophanes, the writer of a shrewd political pamphlet ^ 
 on the Athenian democracy, states as a fact what we might 
 have assumed as a matter of inference : — 
 
 The people do not permit the popular government to be lam- 
 pooned and vilified, because they do not care to hear themselves 
 vilified. But if anybody desires to lampoon an individual, they 
 give him full leave, well knowing that the object of comic ridicule 
 does not, as a general thing, belong to the people or to the masses. 
 He is rather a man of wealth or of noble birth or of great influence. 
 Very few persons who are poor and of the common classes are made 
 the butt of comedy, and not even these few unless they are meddle- 
 some or seek to have some advantage over the populace. 
 
 Lucian (Piscator § 25) expresses a similar judgment : — 
 
 jMost people are naturally inclined to like satire and ridicule, 
 especially when the things ridiculed pass for noble and stately. 
 For example, they used to be delighted with Aristophanes and 
 
 ' Since these words were written an interesting sketch of the "Early Attic 
 Comedy and its Bearings upon Political and Social Life at Athens" (Presi- 
 dential Address delivered before the Classical Association of Ireland on 
 Feb. 9, 1911) has come into my hands by the courtesy of its author, Mr. W.J. 
 M. Starkie. The distinguished editor of the Waaps, the Acharnians and the 
 Clouds takes essentially the same view of tht; political comedy as that pre- 
 sented above. Cf. "Aristophanes was a comic poet whose function it was to 
 excite laughter, to crystallize the gossip that passed from mouth to mouth at 
 Athens" (p. 12) ; "It was not the function of the comic poet to be just, but to 
 excite laughti-r" (p. 23). 
 
 2 The Pseudo-Xenophontic Polity of the Athenians, § 18.
 
 140 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Eupolis when they brought Socrates on the scene to make mock of 
 him. . . . These jests counted as a part of the festival of the god, 
 and very likely the god enjoyed them too, for he is a laughter- 
 loving god. 
 
 But the best testimony is that which the comic poets them- 
 selves furnish. Aristophanes no doubt does pose as a re- 
 former, as a censor of morals, as a sage adviser, and as a bene- 
 factor of the people.^ It is the pose habitual to the satirist, 
 a part of his stock in trade. As for the moral effect of the 
 ribald jokes and obscene buffoonery of our Athenian re- 
 former, the less said the better. They are not vicious, it 
 is true, and were perhaps not dangerous to the morals of the 
 average Athenian of the day, but their tendency cannot be 
 regarded as elevating or edifying, and the poet himself does 
 not pretend that it was. The indecency which he severely 
 reproves in one play he blithely practises in his next comedy. 
 He attacks the vicious, it is true, but he assails also the 
 innocent, and with equal venom. And as for praise, he 
 reserves that, with rare exceptions, for the dead. In denounc- 
 ing Cleon and the leaders of the popular party who suc- 
 ceeded Cleon we may concede that the poet w^as actuated by 
 a serious patriotic purpose ; he certainly vilifies and vitu- 
 perates them with a hearty good will. We may even grant 
 that he was a genuine conservative in politics, if it is worth 
 while to classify him at all. But we must not forget that the 
 political doctrines of the comic poets are likely to be nega- 
 tively expressed, and dressed up with buffoonery so extrav- 
 agant and jokes so obviously prepared as always to raise 
 a question as to their seriousness. This half-serious, half- 
 jesting attitude could not be better expressed than by the 
 words of Aristophanes himself. In one of his appeals {Peace 
 764) for a favorable verdict upon his play he defines the 
 whole duty of the comic poet thus : " to have caused little 
 
 1 Cf. Starkie, I.e., p. 7: "Ostensibly, the poets profess to be apostles at- 
 tempting to convert."
 
 COMEDY 141 
 
 vexation and given much pleasure," and again {Eccl. 1154) 
 he urges his wisdom and his jollity combined : — 
 
 But first a slight suggestion to the judges : 
 Let the wise and philosophic choose me for my wisdom's sake, 
 Those who joy in mirth and laughter choose me for the jests I make ; 
 Then with hardly an exception every vote I'm bound to win. 
 
 (Rogers.) 
 
 (To the ancients Aristophanes represented the culmination 
 of the Old Comedy. They saw in his dramas a harmonious 
 blending of all the dramatic and poetic qualities of his pred- 
 ecessors and contemporaries. In this judgment we who 
 are not in a position to make the comparison may acquiesce. 
 His work stands as the type of the class to which it belonged, 
 of a comedy which is unique in the history of literature be- 
 cause it arose in conditions which have never been repeated 
 and could not, in the nature of the case, be repeated. And 
 besides, Aristophanes was a genius, a creator of exceptional 
 imaginative and poetical power. He rose above the form in 
 which he worked and made of it a fit vehicle for his abound- 
 ing fancy, his gift of caricature, his inexhaustible humor, 
 and his rare lyrical powers. His plays are essentially dra- 
 matic, full of action. His plots are simple — even rudi- 
 mentary if compared with those of tragedy or the later comedy. 
 He seizes upon a single idea capable of ludicrous representa- 
 tion and demonstrates it before our eyes in the persons of 
 his fellow-citizens. There is httle use of the delicate technique 
 created by the legitimate drama, the technique of compUca- 
 tions, delays, recognitions, solutions. Nor does the poet 
 who travesties human affairs and human kind set before him 
 as an indispensable means to his art the faithful portrayal )' 
 of character. Comic exaggeration in character painting is 
 common to all comedy in dealing with certain types, but in the 
 topsyturvy world of Aristophanes, while typical characters, 
 like the slave, the Athenian woman, and the rustic, are hu-
 
 142 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 morously overdrawn, yet the characters taken from real life, 
 like Lamachus, Cleon, Socrates, and Euripides, are out- 
 rageously distorted, as the spirit of burlesque demands. As 
 a dramatist Aristophanes was first of all a fun-maker. The 
 remarkable thing is that his genius as a literary artist rises 
 so conspicuously above the buffoonery imposed upon him 
 by tradition. His verse and language are irreproachable, 
 and through them breathes a charm all his own. Plato 
 sums up this quality in him in his epigram : — 
 
 The Graces sought a heavenly shrine which ne'er 
 
 Should come to naught. 
 And in thy soul, immortal poet, found 
 
 The shrine they sought. 
 
 (Rogers.) 
 
 During the half-century following the death of Aristophanes 
 comedy underwent a gradual change in both form and spirit. 
 The Old Comedy, as we have seen, had cared little for the 
 niceties of plot-construction, for the blending of the parts 
 into an artistic whole. The chorus, inherited from the old 
 Attic comus, had indeed been skilfully used to enhance the 
 spectacle. Its numbers added materially to the animation 
 of the action. But its presence seriously interfered with 
 the dramatic proprieties, and illusion was often thro-^oi to 
 the winds. In the latest plays of Aristophanes we see the 
 beginning of a change in structure. The parabasis has dis- 
 appeared, and the part of the chorus has been cut down. 
 At the end of the period of transition, wi the plays of the New 
 Comedy, the chorus appears only beween acts, to furnish 
 entertainment and diversion for the spectators by dancing 
 and singing while the scene is clear of actors. It is still con- 
 ceived of as a comus, however — a band of revellers, ban- 
 queters, wedding-guests, and the Hke, who come into the 
 scene of action on some pretext furnished by the occasion. 
 \ With the disappearance of the chorus from the dialogue and 
 'action, the old balanced structure which was so remarkable
 
 COMEDY 143 
 
 a feature of the Old Comedy also disappears. The structure 
 of the play once more becomes episodic, as it was in the con- 
 temporary tragedy ^nd as it had been in comedy at the time 
 of Epicharmus. But for the presence of a chorus between 
 the acts, a play of the New Comedy is very similar in com- 
 position to a modern play, consisting of prologue, exposition, 
 and a succession of acts divisible into scenes, each conducing 
 to the development and solution of the plot. The place of 
 action, however, remained the same throughout a play, 
 as in the days when the constant presence of the chorus made 
 difficult the shifting of the scene. The absence of the chorus 
 during the dialogue also encouraged the use of the soliloquy 
 or monologue, which plays an important role in the New 
 Comed^O, 
 
 We can no longer trace in detail the influences which 
 brought about these structural changes, which trans- 
 formed a local and transient burlesque drama, peculiar 
 to the time and circumstances, into a comedy of man- 
 ners, universal in form and spirit. The influence of 
 tragedy, especially that of Euripides, has been thought 
 to have been a potent, if not a controlling, factor. How- 
 ever this may be, the change in spirit which came over 
 comedy is to be ascribed, in part at least, to the 
 ^changed political, social, and intellectual conditions at 
 Athens. /The Peloponnesian War had shattered the im- 
 periahstic'^aspirations of the Athenians, had broken the 
 spirit of the extreme democracy, had directed the atten- 
 tion of the people more to their internal affairs, had tempered 
 the violence of party strife, and paved the way for an im- 
 proved, if less confident and aggressive, social and pohtical 
 life. A second critical epoch was the overthrow of Athenian 
 freedom by Philip and Alexander, which brought in the 
 thoughtful and refined cosmopolitan society that characterized 
 the end of the fourth century. These events did not vio- 
 lently interrupt the normal growth of comedy, but only
 
 144 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 hastened a process that had already made notable head- 
 way. ) 
 
 Aristotle, writing at about the time when the New Comedy 
 was taking shape, remarks that the poet Crates, who was of 
 the generation preceding Aristophanes, had initiated an im- 
 portant change in the spirit of the Old Comedy, following 
 the example of Epicharmus. He had put aside the lampoon- 
 ing of individuals and had "generalized" his plots. The 
 kind of mirth which the other poets excited was essentially 
 malicious, for it involved the discomfiture of another. A 
 higher form of humor is that which derives pleasure from the 
 frailities and foibles of human nature in general, and in such 
 a way as not to inflict pain. In another passage Aristotle 
 draws attention to a difference between the Old Comedy and 
 that of his time in the matter of refinement and good taste. 
 The coarse obscenity habitual to the former has given way 
 to delicate innuendo. The remains of the Middle and New 
 Comedy which have come down to us bear witness to the 
 justice of these observations. . The element of personal satire 
 does not, indeed, die wholly out. The poets still occasionally 
 take a fling at individuals — at the philosophers, the poets, 
 the courtesans, and the man about town. But the tone is 
 that of light badinage rather than of venomous denunciation. 
 r Furthermore, the grotesque and indecent costume of the 
 comic actors of the earlier period has also disappearedi \^ 
 far as we can judge, the men and women of the New Comedy 
 are dressed as persons in ordinary life^^ The mirror which 
 the poet holds up to nature is no longer the concave mirror. 
 
 If the comic poets of the new age were constrained to quit 
 the field of politics and personal satire in choosing their sub- 
 jects, they found before them, practically uncultivated by 
 their predecessors, the most fertile field of all — human 
 nature and society. A nearer approach to real life is early 
 /detected in the Middle Comedy in the more frequent and 
 ( extensive use of stock characters, such as the loquacious cook,
 
 COMEDY 145 
 
 the blustering soldier, and the grovelling parasite. But the 
 transition was gradual. Before the ideal was realized to- 
 ward which the comic poets were groping — the faith- 
 ful representation of contemporary life and manners — at- 
 tempts were made in other directions. In particular, the 
 mythological travesty came into vogue once more. The 
 (Stories of the births, marriages, banquets, and gallant ad- 
 / ventures of the gods were humorously depicted, as in the 
 ' comedy of Epicharmus. This kind of subject had been 
 employed throughout the Old Comedy, but generally, if not 
 always, as a framework for political satire. It now becomes, 
 instead of the fantastic political allegory, in which Pericles 
 and Aspasia, for example, were seen under transparent masks, 
 more nearly an allegory of human life, disclosing the types 
 of mankind in the figures of the humanized Olympians. 
 Except for the supernatural element in it, the Amphitruo, 
 which Plautus has taken from the Greek, resembles the 
 comedy of domestic Hfe: Mercury, except for his name, is 
 a tjT^ical intriguing slave. In fact, we may suspect that 
 the mythological comedy was the bridge by which comedy 
 passed from the particular to the universal, from the study 
 of the ludicrous and grotesque in the individual to that of 
 the universal qualities which make the life of our fellow- 
 men always interesting and generally amusing. Mythology 
 furnished the situations and the names, contemporary society 
 the ethical traits. It was only a short step to that complete 
 universality at which, as Aristotle remarks, poetry aims, 
 and which, he tells us, was achieved in comedy when the 
 "poet first constructs his plot on the lines of probability and 
 then inserts characteristic names." A fragment from a play 
 of Antiphanes, a poet of the Middle Comedy, not onl}^ illus- 
 trates this statement of Aristotle, but shows us how much 
 importance the poets of the transition were already ascril)ing 
 to the construction of the plot. The tragic poets, Antiphanes 
 complains, have an easy task. A hint, a name like Oedipus,
 
 146 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 and the audience is in possession of the whole story. He 
 continues : — 
 
 Then when they're stalled for words and in their plots 
 
 Are absolutely stuck, they simply raise 
 
 Their god-machine, as one his finger lifts. 
 
 And thus with the spectators square themselves. 
 
 But we have none of this in comedy. 
 
 The plots entire our wits must needs invent, 
 
 New names devise, the antecedent tale, 
 
 The present circumstances, denouement, 
 
 The exposition. Then, if there's a slip 
 
 In Chremes' or in Pheidon's part, — for all 
 
 That Peleus or a Teucer might commit 
 
 Such faults at will — they hiss us from the stage I 
 
 The poets of the New Comedy dispensed with mythologi- 
 cal subjects, just as the Middle Comedy had renounced the 
 political. They had discovered that human conduct and the 
 play of human motives were more real and more entertaining 
 than the doings of the legendary figures of a remote past. 
 Furthermore, the element of the supernatural disappears 
 almost entirely. Sometimes, it is true, a god or an abstrac- 
 tion, like "Misapprehension," is introduced in the prologue 
 or in the exposition, but only to explain the antecedent and 
 present circumstances of the characters, not to interfere with 
 their freedom of action. } In limiting their themes to con- 
 temporary life the poets concentrate their attention more 
 closely upon the faithful delineation of character, the study 
 of the motives of conduct, and upon the construction of the 
 plot, with its delays and surprises. They gave a "mirror 
 of life," speculum vitae, and particularly of those aspects of 
 life that reveal the familiar frailties of mankind. The ob- 
 ject of the Old Comedy was to excite laughter, even malicious 
 laughter, by a portrayal of the ridiculous ; therefore it dealt 
 with characters worse than the average, as contrasted with 
 tragedy, which chose persons better than the average. | The
 
 COMEDY 147 
 
 New Comedy portrayed average characters, men like our- 
 selves ; its aim was mild amusement combined with edifica- 
 tion. The spectators should recognize their own kinship 
 wdth the men and women represented on the scene, and while 
 they might laugh at their imperfections and follies, they 
 should at the same time feel the touch of sympathy. In 
 such a comedy pathos obviously has its place as well as humor.\ 
 Except for the comic poet's humorous view of human affairs 
 and his exaggeration of individual traits in order to heighten 
 his comic effects, there is not a great difference between the 
 Greek comedy of manners at its best and the tragedy of 
 Euripides, whose realism tended to reduce his characters to 
 the common level, and who often, like the poet of comedy, 
 brought his plays to a happy ending. 
 
 Without attempting to describe the variety of motives 
 employed in this comedy, one element must be signalized 
 because it, above all the rest, establishes th^^kinship of the 
 New Comedy with modern romantic literature — I mean 
 the passion of love. Almost every play of this period has 
 its love story, or is a love story. Ovid says of Menander : — 
 
 fabula iucundi nulla est sine amore Menandri. 
 
 Sometimes it is the love of a man for his wife, more often de- 
 graded love ; but very often the disinterested and tender 
 attachment of a young man and maiden. And it is this love, 
 put to the test by some external circumstance that interrupts 
 the course of love, such as the objection of parents, a dif- 
 ference in social position, a misunderstanding, that brings 
 out the true character of the lovers and clothes them with 
 individual traits.^ /^ove scenes, however, are rarely placed 
 before the eyes of the spectators. Frequently the girl has 
 not even a speaking part in the play. As a consequence our 
 interest is less in the persons themselves than in the working 
 
 « Cf. the observations of M. Croiset in the Revue des deux mondes, 1909, 
 pp. 23 fif.
 
 148 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 out of their problem of happiness, more in the surprises of 
 the plot than in the purely personal fortunes of the lovers^ 
 In this respect there is a wide difference between the New 
 Comedy and the modern romance, due in considerable 
 measure to the difference between the Athenian habit of 
 mind and that of the modern theatre-goer or reader. The 
 novel and drama of to-day appeal to a public that can hardly 
 be compared with the Athenian public of the time of Menan- 
 der in respect of training in accurate observation, of knowl- 
 edge of ethical traits, and of imagination habituated to the 
 portrayal in dramatic form of fictitious stories based upon 
 human experience. 
 
 / The New Comedy reached its highest point in Menander, 
 wno brought out his first play, at the age of eighteen years, 
 in 324 B.C., the year before the death of Alexander the Greatj 
 He died in the year 291. In his career of thirty-three years 
 he exhibited over one hundred plays. The after world with 
 one accord recognized in him the unapproachable master of 
 comedy, the exquisite flower of Attic poesy. The great critic, 
 Aristophanes of Byzantium, exclaimed, "0 Menander and 
 Life, which of you imitated the other?" Until a few years 
 ago modern criticism had to content itself with the judgment 
 of antiquity, for no play of Menander had survived except 
 in the adaptations of Plautus and Terence. The numerous 
 quotations from his plays found in ancient writers preserved 
 many charming bits of moralizing, gem-like aphorisms, and 
 observations on life both humorous and grave. All this, 
 combined with the enthusiastic admiration of antiquity, 
 sufficed to convince the modern world that time had robbed 
 it of a priceless heritage, but not to reveal to us the quahties 
 of IVIenander's genius or the basis of his fame. But in the 
 past fifteen years the sands of Eg>T3t have restored to us con- 
 siderable portions of this poet. We may now form for our- 
 selves a fair idea of his style, of the general lines of his plots, 
 and of the qualities of his dramatic art.
 
 COMEDY 149 
 
 This is not the occasion, however, for the presentation of 
 An analysis and estimate of Menander's art in the Hght of 
 these new discoveries. The consensus of opinion to-day seems 
 to be that the testimony of antiquity regarding him is unim- 
 peachable. Has the judgment of the best writers of Greece 
 and Rome in their appraisement of literary values ever been 
 fomul seriously at fault? Without dwelling, then, upon 
 details, we may appropriately bring to a close this survey 
 of the history of Greek comedy by indicating brieflj'' the 
 position which Menander occupies in relation to his predeces- 
 sors and in relation to the later world. 
 
 IMenander summed up the experience in the observation 
 of life and in the practice of the dramatic art of the two cen- 
 turies which preceded him, and this not simply because he 
 was the last of the marvelous line of great poets, but also and 
 chiefly because of what he was. By birth and education 
 an Athenian of the Athenians, he inherited the most refined 
 Attic culture. He was trained in the contemporary philoso- 
 phy and rhetoric. One of these had inculcated the close 
 observation of life, had analyzed the motives of human 
 action, and had defined the ethical qualities by which char- 
 acters are distinguished ; the other had reduced to precepts 
 the art of representing appropriately the speech of every 
 variety of individual. Philosophy had also applied itself 
 to the principles of the dramatic art, considered both as the 
 art of imitating men in action in given situations, and as 
 the art of plot-construction. The practical application of 
 all this body of theory, with which Menander was familiar, 
 was found in the law-courts and in the theatre. Menander 
 knew well the applied rhetoric of the law courts. The 
 Attic orators from Lysias down supply an abundant com- 
 mentary on the charactor-spoechcs in his plays. Indeed, 
 Quintilian (10. 1, 69) goes so far as to say, for the guidance 
 of the future orator, that, in his judgment, "the tliligent 
 study of Menander alone suffices as a training in all the pre-
 
 150 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 cepts of oratory, so truly does he reproduce the complete 
 image of life, there is in him such fertility of invention and 
 easy grace of expression, and so readily does he adapt himself 
 to all situations, characters, and moods." But especially 
 on the side of the drama was Menander's competence the 
 result of discipline and of experience. His practical teacher 
 in the playwright's art was his uncle Alexis, one of the 
 most distinguished comic poets of the Middle and New 
 Comedy. But his inspiration he derived from the kindred 
 spirit of Euripides, who had sounded the depths of human ex- 
 perience as no other Greek poet had done. And finally 
 Menander saw life for himself, with his own ej^es. He was a 
 man of the world, not a recluse. As an eminent French 
 critic has recently said:^ "It seems that Athens, at the 
 moment when her historic destinies were drawing to a close, 
 had, as it were, gathered up and concentrated in this charm- 
 ing spirit the finest essence of her genius and all that was 
 most human in her tradition." 
 
 \^But Menander was more than the last great poet of x4.thens ; 
 he was the first great poet of HellenismJ It was through 
 Hellenism that Greek culture was destined to be diffused 
 throughout the Mediterranean civilization. Hellenism had 
 a wider outlook and a broader sympathy than Athens. The 
 spirit of Athens as revealed in her earUer comedy was cir- 
 cumscribed and parochial, while that of Hellenism was 
 essentially cosmopolitan. The Old Attic Comedy could 
 not possibly be dissociated from the social and political con- 
 ditions in which it arose. ''The great ideas of Hellenism," 
 on the other hand, to quote the words of Professor Butcher,^ 
 "disengage themselves from the local and accidental in- 
 fluences and make their appeal to a universal human senti- 
 ment." In this sense Menander's comedies were typically 
 Hellenistic. The New Comedy as represented in him dis- 
 
 1 Maurice Croiset, Revue des deux mondes, 1909, p. 5. 
 * Aristotle's Theory of Poetry, p. 373. 
 
 I 
 
 [ 
 
 f
 
 COMEDY 151 
 
 carded the elements which had Umited the scope and influence 
 of the earher Greek comedy. By two centuries of experi- 
 mentation there had been wrought out an artistic structure, 
 characterized by unity of the whole combined with harmony 
 of the parts, that left little room for succeeding ages to 
 improve upon. The appropriate subject-matter for a uni- 
 versal comedy of manners had been discovered. The faithful 
 portrayal of life in a spirit of broad sympathy for all that is 
 human, with room for both smiles and tears, had been estab- 
 lished as the comic poet's ideal. The literatures of Rome 
 and modern Europe bear witness to the qualities of universal- 
 itj^ and permanence in the New Comedy of Athens and of 
 its greatest representative, Menander. 
 
 Edward Capps.
 
 HISTORY 
 
 When Alexander the Great crossed into Asia on his long 
 career of conquest, he took a trained historian with him. 
 He was conscious of making history of which men after him 
 would be glad to read. But many centuries of Greek history 
 found no recording historians. They would have been in- 
 teresting to us, who are so absorbed in origins and develop- 
 ments, in causaHty and evolution, in ''historical relativity," 
 that Ave begrudge ol^livion any data whatsoever. But they 
 were not interesting enough to contemporary Greeks to find 
 chroniclers. Speaking broadly, it always required some 
 great spectacular struggle — the Trojan War, the Persian 
 Wars, the Peloponnesian War, the duel between Sparta and 
 Thebes, the Hellenic conquest of Asia — to elicit, as it were, 
 a great historian; and Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, 
 Xenophon, and Cleitarchus are the canonical names corre- 
 sponding to these spectacular struggles. There are others, of 
 course, but these tower above all, and the others are usually 
 little more than names to us. Polybius also was moved 
 to compose his great work by the transcendent struggle 
 tween Rome and Carthage ; but Polybius, though writing 
 in Greek, had become, by long residence in Rome, and in- 
 timate association with leading Romans, more than half 
 Roman in spirit. Not forgetting the sensational Duris of 
 Samos, nor the learned antiquarian Timaeus of Taurome- 
 nium, we may say that distinctively Greek historiography 
 ends with the historians of Alexander's career. And it ends, 
 as it begins, with a triumph of fancy and invention over fact 
 and re-presentation. In the middle ground, in Thucydides 
 
 152
 
 HISTORY 153 
 
 and Xenophon, the desire to inform is duly enthroned beside 
 the desire to please ; but the Greek hearer or reader usually 
 preferred a flight of the imagination to a statement of the 
 truth, and the sovereign names among the Greeks them- 
 selves were Homer, Herodotus, Ephorus, and Cleitarchus, 
 names representing a body of highly imaginative and mainly 
 fictitious poetry, and a body of highly imaginative and largely 
 fictitious prose. 
 
 Well on into that greatest century of Greek life and thought 
 which began five hundred years before Christ, the Homeric 
 poems, and especially the Iliad and Odyssey, were regarded 
 by most Greeks as authentic history. Achilles, Agamemnon, 
 Andromache, Odysseus, Laertes, and Penelope had actually 
 and in very person fought, ruled, suffered, wandered, grieved, 
 and been steadfast to the end, even as they are there de- 
 scribed. Thersites had railed at the Atreidae, Diomedes 
 had wounded Aphrodite, Hector had slain Patroclus, Achil- 
 les had slain Hector, and aged Priam had ransomed the 
 dead body of his son, even as we now read in the Iliad. 
 Ihos, the proud city of the Troad, commanding the Helles- 
 pont and the Euxine Sea, had been captured and sacked by 
 the leagued hosts of the Lord of Mycenae, a city which 
 dominated Peloponnesus, and the hosts had met with 
 various dooms on their various ways home. All this 
 had long been history to the Greeks, just as the book of 
 Genesis has long been history to Christian peoples. Skep- 
 ticism, doubt, and denial met with the same scornful re- 
 proaches in the first case which they have evoked in the second. 
 We now know — at least Professor Murray, and those who 
 think approximately as he does, know — that the Iliad and 
 Odyssey are traditional race-poems,^ slowly evolved through 
 the centuries which saw tribes of hardy Northerners sweep 
 gradually down into the Aegean basin and appropriate by 
 conquest and assimilation the rich culture existing there. 
 
 » Gilbert Murray, The Rise of the Greek Epic, 2d ed., Oxford, 1911.
 
 154 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 The ruins which amaze the discoverer at Troy, Cnossus, 
 Mycenae, and Orchomenus speak impressively of the power 
 and splendor of that submerged culture. 
 
 The invaders were a song-folk. They sang because they 
 had to sing. They sang of the achievements and adventures 
 of their gods and heroes. One generation of them would be- 
 come heroes and demigods to the next generation, and that 
 generation to the next, and each sang of the prowess of the 
 past. A traditional poesy arose, shot through with "a 
 fiery intensity of imagination," and served by a language 
 "more gorgeous than Milton's, yet as simple and direct as 
 that of Burns." Into the crucible of this traditional poesy 
 were poured for centuries the migrations and conquests of 
 tribes ; the oversea expeditions of thalassocratic cities ; 
 racial myths and legends. Into the crucible went also the 
 absolute fictions of a powerfully creative imagination labor- 
 ing at high pressure to supply a keen demand. The centre 
 of poetic activity shifted from the European to the Asiatic 
 side of the Aegean, and from Aeolians to lonians. Guilds 
 of poets flourished in the chief Ionian cities, who slowly 
 fashioned the molten material from the great crucible of epic 
 poesy into the definite structures of the Iliad and Odyssey, 
 and then went on to complete in later compositions the epic 
 cycle which the elder epics logically and chronologically 
 demanded. If material was lacking, the gap was filled by 
 fresh creation until the cycle was complete, and then the epic 
 impulse slowly died. These later epics, ascribed to indi- 
 vidual and historical poets, have perished. But the central 
 poems around which they had been made to cluster assumed 
 canonical form for use in national religious festivals, and 
 finally passed, with all the other rich fruits of Ionian culture, 
 across the sea again, flying before the conquering power of 
 Persia, to Ionian Athens. There they found the patronage 
 of a rich tyrant's brilliant court, and there they were learnedly 
 and skilfully edited into substantially the shape in which they
 
 HISTORY 155 
 
 have come dowii to us. At national religious festivals they 
 were recognized as national religious poems, and as national 
 history. The mythical, legendary, and purely fictitious 
 accretions in them were seldom distinguished from the genu- 
 inely historical nuclei. They were thought to be the work 
 of one man, a divine Homer. And yet they actually ''rep- 
 resent not the independent invention of one man, but the 
 ever mo\ang tradition of many generations of men. They 
 are wholes built up out of a great mass of legendary poetry, 
 re-treated and re-created by successive poets in successive 
 ages, the histories knitted together and made more interest- 
 ing to an audience by the instinctive processes of fiction." "• 
 
 WTien 'Omer smote 'is bloomiii' Ij're, 
 He'd 'eard men sing by land and sea ; 
 An' what he thought 'e might require, 
 'E went and took — the same as me ! 
 
 Multiply Kipling's blithe " 'Omer " many times, and dis- 
 tribute him through five or six centuries, and you have the 
 Homer of Professor Murray, my Homer, your Homer — 
 perhaps. 
 
 But besides the Homeric poems, Ionia also produced a 
 scientific spirit, which looked out on life observantly, and 
 drew inferences from it which were fatal to a belief in the 
 truth of those poems. It is characteristic of this period of 
 scientific inquiry, as Professor Bury has remarked,^ that 
 sages take the place of heroes in popular fancy, or, at least, 
 take a place beside them, and we have the myths of the Seven 
 Wise Men. Great historical personages also loom up from 
 the near past, like Polycrates, Periander, and Croesus, about 
 whom fiction weaves its fascinating web. The advance of the 
 Persian power from the Orient to the Aegean, and its spec- 
 tacular conquests of the Lydian dynasty first and then of the 
 
 ' Murray, op. cit., p. 154. (2d ed., p. 189.) 
 
 * J. B. Bury, The Ancient Greek Historians, New York, 1909.
 
 156 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Asiatic Greeks, made near and current events even more 
 attractive to the Greek fancy than what were supposed to 
 be the real events of the Homeric poems, or what the new 
 scientific spirit denounced as the falsehoods of those poems. 
 Truth, for a season at least, became stranger and more 
 fascinating than fiction. The geography and peoples of the 
 Orient were brought home to the Greek fancy by Hecataeus ; 
 the story of that all-conquering folk, the Persians, by Xanthus 
 the Lydian and Dionysius of Miletus. That story soon in- 
 cluded the invasions of Europe by Darius and Xerxes, and 
 the splendor of the story, even without the exaggerations 
 which the lively Greek fancy was sure to give it, made the 
 undertakings and achievements of the heroic age far less im- 
 pressive than they had been. In time, Thucydides could 
 allude to them with something of scorn. To put it briefly, 
 the new critical spirit brought the truth of the Greeks' An- 
 cient History, as it was presented in the Homeric poems, into 
 doubt and disbelief, and the Modern History of the Greeks 
 became so fascinating that it absorbed the active imagination 
 of the race. 
 
 But the Ancient History of the Greeks never emancipated 
 itself wholly from the influence of the epic poems. The re- 
 volt against it which we see in the chronological and didactic 
 poems of Hesiod, poems which were to tell men the truth in 
 contrast to the falsehoods of Homer, is still expressed in the 
 same hexameter verse. And even the later mythographers, 
 or logographers, such as Acusilaus, who retold the epic legends 
 in prose, merely lifted the myths to a slightly higher level of 
 credibility by naive rationalistic processes. The myths were 
 not rejected, nor even approximately reduced to their his- 
 torical meanings. The earliest rulers among men were still 
 directly descended from gods, and a clumsy chronology by 
 successive generations was made to show the connection of 
 the great families of the present with these early demigods. 
 Even Hellanicus, who established the first annual system of
 
 HISTORY 157 
 
 chronology' for current events, and tabulated those of so 
 late a period as the close of the Peloponnesian War, incor- 
 porated into his Attic History, to which Thucydides alludes, 
 this clumsy fabric of Ancient History. It is Thucydides Avho 
 first cuts adrift from it. And this gives us the succession of 
 writers who sought by what they wrote to inform rather than 
 to please ; to tell the truth, to tell of what really was, rather 
 than of what never was : Hesiod, Acusilaus, Hellanicus, 
 Thucydides, all devoted to fact more than to form. Each 
 in turn, it is true, accuses his predecessor of falsehood, Hesiod 
 Homer, Acusilaus Hesiod, and so on down the line. This is 
 one of the curious amenities of Greek historiography.^ But 
 each is honestly in quest of the truth rather than of a pleas- 
 ing form of the truth at the expense, it may be, of the truth. 
 And Hellanicus attains his quest with a tabulation of the 
 chief events in contemporary Greek history, first as they 
 are related to the j^ears of the priestesses of Hera in the temple 
 at Argos, and then, after these sacred records had perished 
 in the destruction of the temple by fire, as they are related 
 to the annual archons of Athens, now an imperial Greek city.^ 
 His work was an "annals," in the strictest sense, and could 
 have had no particular unity — no plan, culmination, or 
 conclusion. It afforded not only no room for play of fancy, 
 but none either for any artistic impulses. It was a catalogue 
 of events by years of Athenian archons. 
 
 But meanwhile the really colossal events and personages 
 of the Persian Wars, after being more or less fullj^ recorded 
 from the standpoint of Asiatic Greeks by Charon of Lamp- 
 sacus, Xanthus the Lydian, Dionysius, and Hecataeus of INIile- 
 tus, had also been committed to the processes of oral tradi- 
 tion, among a people of the liveliest fancy, from whom had 
 come, by slow evolution, two of the greatest imaginative 
 poems which the world has known. The wonders of Egypt 
 
 ^American Journal of Philology, XVIII (1897), pp. 255-274. 
 « American Journal of Philology, XXII (1901;, pp. 39-43.
 
 158 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 and Assyria, the marvels of India and Arabia, the mysteries 
 of Upper Asia and Scythia, had been brought by travellers 
 and merchants within the reach and play of the lively Hellenic 
 fancy. Wonderful facts and wondering fancy had ministered 
 to each other for more than half a century, during which time 
 a great Athenian empire had arisen, and the Age of Pericles 
 had begun. Books were rare, but tales were rife, and there 
 were professional tellers of prose tales as well as professional 
 reciters of epic song. Written and oral material of tradition 
 together made a thesaurus of fact and fancy before whose 
 glowing charm even the epic cycle paled, and these bewilder- 
 ing treasures were reduced to splendid literary form by him 
 who is called the "Father of History," Herodotus. 
 
 Though born in Dorian Halicarnassus, and long resident 
 in Ionian Samos and the Pan-Hellenic Thurii of Magna 
 Graecia ; though a traveller in all the parts of Asia, Africa, 
 and Europe where Hellenes came into touch with Barbarians, 
 Athens was his spiritual home, the Athens of Pericles. Here 
 his immortal work, the materials for which had been slowly 
 accumulating during more than thirty years of the most 
 kaleidoscopic experience, was given at last the form in which 
 it has come down to us. It was edited and published, as 
 we should say, during the first decade of the Peloponnesian 
 War, in Athens, probably, and for Athenians — at least in 
 fullest sympathy with the imperial ambitions of Athens. 
 It gives high artistic form to the reigning beliefs of the Peri- 
 clean party at Athens concerning the Persian Wars, two 
 generations of men after the wars were fought, and one 
 generation after the greatest hero of those wars, Themistocles, 
 had died. Meanwhile the oral tradition of those wars — 
 and the literary tradition was annaUstic and meagre — had 
 suffered the changes to which all oral tradition is naturally 
 liable, and, besides, had been directly influenced by an 
 entirely new set of loves and hates and jealousies arising from 
 the growth of the Athenian empire and the outbreak of the
 
 HISTORY 159 
 
 Peloponnesian War. These tended to distort and pervert 
 the stories of services to the national cause rendered by 
 states now in hostile relations with Athens, and to glorify 
 the services of Athens. So far as Herodotus writes history, 
 he writes it as a defender of Athens and the Periclean policies 
 which had led to the Peloponnesian War. He belittles the 
 Ionian Greeks of Asia and their heroic but ineffectual struggle 
 for freedom ; he treats Sparta with ironical depreciation ; 
 Corinth, Aegina, and Thebes with contemptuous hate ; 
 Argos and Macedonia, with whom Athens hopes yet to come 
 into alliance, with tender respect. He does this, as Professor 
 Bury says (op. cit., p. 65), as "a historian who cannot help 
 being partial," rather than as "a partisan who becomes a 
 historian for the sake of his cause." And he does it at a time 
 when, as Thucydides sa^'s (ii, 8, fin., Jowett's translation), 
 "the feeling of mankind was strongly on the side of the Lace- 
 daemonians, and the general indignation against the Athenians 
 was intense." We cannot take the word of Herodotus in 
 explanation of Sparta's defense of Thermopylae, or of the 
 stratagem of Themistocles at Salamis, or of the tactics of 
 Pausanias at Plataea, although what he says enables us to 
 penetrate to the truth in these matters. For he mirrors the 
 sentiments of the community in the midst of which he writes. 
 And this is his precise worth as a historian. We know 
 through him what Periclean Athens liked to think and feel 
 on these and other points. 
 
 "So far as Herodotus writes history," was said above; 
 for that is the least of what he does. He is a collector, on 
 a vast scale, of historical material, and an incomparable 
 artist in reducing this heterogeneous material to coherent 
 and attractive literary form in an age when the footnote was 
 unknown. Geographical, ethnological, mythological, genea- 
 logical, legendary, political, military, literary, economic, 
 architectural, and religious data, in both genuine and fictitious 
 sort, have been strung by him in bewildering profusion
 
 160 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 along one continuous thread — the strife between Hellenes 
 and Barbarians from earliest times down to the capture of 
 Sestos by the Athenians in 479. This greater theme, which 
 gives his work the character of a universal history, was prob- 
 ably suggested to him by the narrower theme of Xerxes' 
 invasion of Europe ; after he had treated this, he probably 
 elaborated the larger subject. This narrower theme occupies 
 the third triad of the nine books into which his history has 
 been conveniently divided - — books VII, VIII, and IX — 
 and I am willing to admit, with Mr. Macan,^ though I gIo 
 not think the argument for it can ever be made perfectly 
 convincing, that these three books were "the earliest portion, 
 or section, of the work to attain relative completeness and 
 definite form." They certainly constitute a distinct whole 
 by themselves, progressively climactic in the stories of Ther- 
 mopylae, Salamis, and Plataea, and they lend themselves to 
 subdivision far less than the first six, or the first two triads 
 of books. Mr. Macan well says that "no other equal portion 
 of the work of Herodotus exhibits so remarkable a coherence, 
 continuity, and freedom from digression, interruption, or 
 asides as this the third and last volume, or trio, of books." 
 
 In all the books, but especially in the last three, Herodotus 
 is not a historian in the strict sense of the term — not as 
 Hellanicus and Thucydides are historians. He does not 
 seek by investigation to sift the true from the false and tell 
 for all subsequent time what actually happened. He rather 
 seeks to cast the vast material which he has collected on the 
 narrower theme of Xerxes' invasion and the larger theme of 
 the strifes between Hellene and Barbarian into such shape 
 as is prescribed by the canons of epic and dramatic poetry, 
 the two regnant forms of literary art, but to do this in prose. 
 He is the prose Homer, and to some extent the prose Aeschy- 
 lus, of the thesaurus of fact and fancy constituted by the oral 
 and written tradition of what was to him modern and recent, 
 
 1 R. W. Macan, Herodotus, Books VII-IX, London, 1908.
 
 HISTORY 161 
 
 as contrasted with ancient and mythical time. His was the 
 genius first to perceive that modern history in prose was 
 capable of epic and dramatic treatment, especially of epic 
 treatment. Comprehensive discursiveness is the breath of 
 his nostrils. The tales which Hellenes and Barbarians have 
 told with or without pertinency, the marvels they have seen, 
 the divine judgments they have illustrated, the wealth they 
 have amassed, the crimes they have committed, their in- 
 trigues, loves, hates, and sorrows — these and more than 
 these are welcome to Herodotus, and if he does not find them 
 in sufficient abundance, then like a true Homeric poet he 
 invents or adapts to suit himself. It is often hard to distin- 
 guish what he invents from what he merely accepts, and it 
 often matters little, acceptance or invention being alike 
 heinous from the standpoint of the true historian. Creduhty 
 alternates in his work with reserve, and both are often childish. 
 He has lost his faith in the gods and heroes of Homer, for he 
 has travelled in Egypt ; but he has the most implicit con-' 
 fidence in oracles, and often warps his story to prove fulfil- 
 ment of them. He borrows largely from a predecessor like 
 Hecataeus, and pays him no thanks but ridicule. Andrew 
 Lang's priest in the City of the Ford of the Ox, who called 
 Herodotus in the tongue of the Arabians "The Father of 
 Liars," said that he "was chiefly concerned to steal the lore 
 of those who came before him, such as Hecataeus, and then 
 to escape notice as having stolen it." But all this simply 
 emphasizes anew the fact that Herodotus was the prose 
 Homer of the Persian Wars. Like Homer, he charmed his 
 hearers and will always charm his readers. It was this 
 charm which Thucydides could not forgive him. But Thu- 
 cydides despised Homer. Those who do not despise Homer, 
 but are edified by the play of fancy about fact, will agree with 
 what Dionysius of Halicarnassus says about Herodotus 
 {Epist. ad Pomp., 3, cited by Bury, p. 42) : "Herodotus knew 
 that every narrative of great length wearies the ear of the
 
 162 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 hearer, if it dwell without a break on the same subject ; but, 
 if pauses are introduced at intervals, it affects the mind 
 agreeably. And so he desired to lend variety to his work 
 and imitated Homer. If we take up his book, we admire it 
 to the last syllable, and always want more." 
 
 But it is a literary, not a scientific, enjoyment which He- 
 rodotus affords us. We know that the panorama of the peo- 
 ples and tribes of three continents which he unrolls for us 
 is colored by the fancy of the Greeks. Greek ideas and re- 
 flections are transferred to an Oriental or Barbarian setting. 
 We can hardly find in Herodotus what Assyria, Babylonia, 
 Lydia, Libya, Scythia, and Egypt really were in the sixth 
 century b.c, but rather how they mirrored themselves in the 
 Greek imagination. It is as though we had to reconstruct 
 for ourselves a mountain range from its distorted reflections 
 in the bosom of a lake. In this case, however, the distorted 
 reflection has been brought into natural perspective for us 
 'by one of the greatest literary artists of the race. He had 
 the genius to see, what is so easy for us now to see, that 
 Salamis and Plataea were points towards which all previous 
 Mediterranean history converged, and from which all sub- 
 sequent Mediterranean history must diverge. To have had 
 this vision first, establishes his right to be called "The Father 
 of History." 
 
 It was the attempt of the Oriental Persian Empire to con- 
 quer the Aegean basin which engaged the Homeric genius of 
 Herodotus; ThucycHdes depicts the struggle of Athens to 
 maintain her empire of this Aegean basin, and he does it as 
 a contemporary and participant. An imperial democracy 
 was a new thing in the world's experience, as was also the 
 historical treatment of contemporary events. Current 
 events had been chronicled in time-relations merely by 
 Hellanicus, but Thucydides was the first to apply to them 
 the laws of cause and effect, and, whatever his excellences 
 or defects, he was the founder of historical science as we now
 
 HISTORY 163 
 
 understand it, the creator of historical criticism, the discoverer 
 of its laws, and the first teacher of the art of writing history. 
 He whom many hold to be the greatest modern historian of 
 antiquity, Eduard Meyer, calls him the incomparable and 
 unequalled teacher of this art, but there are strong voices 
 of dissent from such high praise. Those who dissent often 
 fail to consider sufficiently the exceedingly narrow limits 
 which Thucychdes imposed upon himself; and those who 
 agree with and echo the praise are often blind to the inade- 
 quacies of Thucydides, even within his self-imposed limits. 
 Professor Bury, in his Harvard Lectures, seems to draw the 
 lines with dignity and justice. 
 
 "Thucydides, an Athenian," so begins the work, "wrote 
 the history of the war in which the Peloponnesians and 
 Athenians fought against one another. He began to write 
 when they first took up arms, believing that it would be great 
 and memorable above any previous war. For he argued 
 that both states were then at the full height of their military 
 power, and he saw the rest of the Hellenes either siding or 
 intending to side with one or the other of them. No move- 
 ment ever stirred Hellas more deeply than this; it was 
 shared by many of the barbarians, and might be said even to 
 affect the world at large." He began to write, that is, when 
 it broke out, the history of a great war, not a history of Athens 
 or of the Peloponnesian states; not a history of Hellenic 
 culture or of Athenian democracy ; not a description of un- 
 known countries, except as absolutely necessary, or of un- 
 known peoples and customs; not personal descriptions or 
 anecdotes of private life — Ion of Chios and Stesimbrotus 
 of Thasos could do that — but a war-history. And even 
 in writing a war-history his aim would not be to please and 
 entertain, as Herodotus did, l)ut to instruct. "If he who 
 desires to have before his eyes a true picture of the events 
 which have happened, and of the like events which may be 
 expected to happen hereafter in the order of human things,
 
 164 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 shall pronounce what I have written to be useful, then I shall 
 be satisfied. My history is an everlasting possession, not 
 a prize composition which is heard and forgotten." 
 
 Who is it that speaks with this new note of self-repression 
 and utilitarian purpose? A man who, at the time of which 
 he speaks, was about thirty-five years old, a citizen of Athens, 
 who belonged by descent to a princely family of Thrace, as 
 Cimon had, and still possessed rich estates in that country. 
 He was highly educated after the manner of the best Sophists, 
 and doubtless found Anaxagoras an intellectual father, as 
 Pericles did. He was emancipated from the undue authority 
 of tradition and custom, and given to logical analysis and 
 criticism. His intellectual processes, that is, were distinctly 
 modern. That he took active part in public life before the 
 year 424 b.c, may be safely inferred from the fact that in 
 that year he was made one of the ten Strategi, whose office 
 was the highest under the Empire. Assigned to command 
 on the coast of Thrace, he failed to prevent Brasidas from 
 capturing Amphipolis, the northern jewel of the Empire, and 
 was in consequence banished on pain of death. His pur- 
 pose to write a history of the war, however, was not thwarted 
 by this misfortune. Indeed, it may rather be inferred that he 
 had now the leisure, as he had always had the means and the 
 disposition, to continue the history which he had begun at 
 the outbreak of hostilities in 431. "The same Thucydides 
 of Athens," he writes in V, 26, "continued the history up to 
 the destruction of the Athenian Empire. For twenty years 
 I was banished from my country after I held the command 
 at Amphipolis, and associating with both sides, with the 
 Peloponnesians quite as much as with the Athenians, be- 
 cause of my exile, I was thus enabled to watch quietly the 
 course of events, and I took great pains to make out the exact 
 truth." It is safe inference that this banished Athenian spent 
 much time on his estates in Thrace, and that he travelled 
 much, where it was allowed him to travel, in the prosecution
 
 HISTORY 165 
 
 of his inquiries. He returned to Athens in 404, after the 
 war was over, and began to put his material into final form. 
 Eight years, perhaps, were employed in this task, when death 
 overtook him, before its completion. His work, unlike that 
 of Herodotus, is therefore a fragment. Seven of the twenty- 
 seven years during which the Athenian Empire was fighting 
 to maintain itself find no record in what has come down to 
 us from Thucydides, and the last of the eight books into 
 which the extant material has been judiciously divided by 
 ancient critics plainly lacks the author's final revision. But 
 three distinct manners are plainly to be seen in what we have 
 of the work — a philosophic manner, as in the first book ; 
 an annalistic manner, as in books two, three, four, and five 
 (resumed again in the incomplete eighth book) ; and an 
 episodic manner, as in the story of the campaign at Pylos 
 and Sphacteria, of the siege of Plataea, or the major story 
 of the Sicilian exjDedition. All three manners are alike char- 
 acterized by a dramatic method which projects events and 
 persons as it were upon a stage, and leaves them to act out 
 there the Fall of the Athenian Empire. Apparently, but 
 only in appearance, the author pronounces few judgments 
 on men and events, leaving them for the judgment of his 
 readers. His detachment, in all three manners, has certainly 
 never been surpassed. An oligarch in political convictions, 
 to whom an extreme democracy was "manifest folly," he 
 yet gives us a sympathetic and spirited picture of the Athenian 
 democracy under Pericles, in which inherent weaknesses are 
 not suffered to obscure pure and lofty ideals. An Athenian 
 to the core, he never behttles Spartan nobility and greatness, 
 but gives us in his portrait of Brasidas a character hardly 
 second to that of Pericles. An admirer of the Athenian 
 Empire, a participant in its honors, and stimulated to literary 
 activity by its splendor, as Herodotus had been by that of 
 the Persian Empire, he uncovers with relentless hand the 
 greed and cruelty which marked its growth, culmination, and
 
 166 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 decline. In historical philosophy our best modern historians 
 may well surpass him, especially as the appreciation of eco- 
 nomic laws is a modern acquisition. But in episodic power, 
 and, above all, in personal detachment from the characters 
 and events of his story, it is no exaggeration to say that he 
 remains unsurpassed. 
 
 The philosophic manner of Thucydides may be best illus- 
 trated by a brief outline of the general introduction to his 
 narrative of the war formed by his first book, which was 
 clearly written after the war was over, i.e. after 404 b.c. «i 
 
 A brief prooe?nium emphasizes the greatness of his theme. 
 The empire of the Hellenic world was at stake. The earlier 
 history of this Hellenic world is rapidly reviewed in the clear 
 light of reason, which uncovers the falsity of legend and 
 romantic oral tradition, and a new standard is set for the treat- 
 ment of ancient and recent history. Coming to the treat- 
 ment of contemporary and current history — a new art 
 entirely — he says : "Of the events of the war I have not ven- 
 tured to speak from any chance information, nor according 
 to any notion of my own ; I have described nothing but 
 what I either saw myself, or learned from others of whom I 
 made the most particular inquiry" (i, 22, 2). He catches 
 oral tradition, therefore, in the making, and not, as Herodo- 
 tus did, after a generation or two of romantic expansion or 
 partisan distortion. The war which he is to describe had 
 a deep, underlying general cause — the growth of the 
 Athenian Empire into formidable dimensions ; and also im- 
 mediate and special occasions, such as the Athenian alliance 
 with Corcyra and the siege of Potidaea. Both the immediate 
 occasions and the general cause are treated at length, and 
 then more briefly the various diplomatic steps which preceded 
 the actual declaration of war by Sparta and her Peloponne- 
 sian confederacy. This is a philosophical method, and, 
 though new in the world then, it can hardly be improved 
 upon now. Various economic relations may be brought into
 
 HISTORY 167 
 
 prominence in setting forth the general underlying cause of 
 the war, as Mr. Cornford has lately so well done,^ but, re- 
 membering that economic science is a development of the 
 nineteenth century, historical students may well rest satisfied 
 with the elaborate introduction of Thucydides. Contrast 
 the semi-playful tone with which Herodotus introduces his 
 story of the Persian Wars. Some Phoenicians carried off 
 lo from Argos, and in retaliation some Greeks carried off 
 Europa from Phoenicia. "Bearing these things in mind," 
 Alexander the son of Priam carried off Helen, and the Greeks 
 were fools enough, according to the Persian view, to make 
 a fuss about it and lead an army into Asia. Hence the emiiity 
 of the Persians. It is true that as regards the initial outrage 
 of the series the Phoenicians claim that lo was no better than 
 she should have been, and followed them of her own free will. 
 "Which of these two accounts is true," says Herodotus (i, 5, 
 Rawlinson's translation), "I shall not trouble to decide. 
 I shall proceed at once to point out the person who first 
 within my knowledge commenced aggressions on the Greeks, 
 after which I shall go forward with my history." The differ- 
 ence between the artistic story-teller and the philosophical 
 historian could not be made plainer. 
 
 The annalistic manner of Thucydides is often dry and 
 tedious. But it is certain that even this manner is an ad- 
 vance upon its greatest exponent hitherto, namely Hellanicus ; 
 and the fact that Thuc3'dides was obliged to establish his own 
 system of chronology makes us charitable. It is easy for us, 
 with our perfected calendar, to fix with precision the temporal 
 relations of events. It was not easy for Thucydides to do so. 
 Lists of archons, or other official personages, were used in 
 different cities of Hellas to mark the time of past events, 
 and Hellanicus had finally catalogued his events according 
 to Athenian archons, a good standard certainly throughout 
 the Athenian Empire. But, Thucydides objects (v, 20, 2), 
 
 • F. M. Cornford, Thucydides M ythistoricus, London, 1907.
 
 168 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 "whether an event occurred in the beginning, or in the middle, 
 or whatever might be the exact point, of a magistrate's term 
 of office, is left uncertain by such a mode of reckoning." 
 He therefore measured time by summers and winters, count- 
 ing each summer and winter as a half-year, and established 
 with infinite precision his initial year and event. In the 
 fifteenth year of the peace which was concluded after the 
 recovery of Euboea, the forty-eighth year of Chrysis the high- 
 priestess of Argos, "Aenesias being ephor at Sparta, and at 
 Athens Pythodorus having two months of his archonship to 
 run, in the sixth month after the engagement at Potidaea, 
 and at the beginning of spring, about the first watch of the 
 night an armed force of Thebans entered Plataea," and the 
 war was on. This impresses us as a large apparatus for small 
 resultant precision, since we can glibly say that at half-past 
 four o'clock on the morning of the 12th of April, 1861 a.d., 
 the first shot of our Civil War was fired. But since Thu- 
 cydides had devised a system of chronology far superior to 
 anything in use before him, it is small wonder that he makes 
 much of it, and so becomes wearisome to us moderns, espe- 
 cially if the events which he chronicles seem to us, as many of 
 them do, trivial. In relation to his theme, the behavior of 
 the Athenian Empire under stress and strain of war, they 
 can rarely be called trivial. 
 
 Of the third manner of Thucydides, which I have called 
 the episodic, i.e. the manner in which he narrates the great 
 episodes of the war, surely little need be said here, when so 
 good a judge of narrative as Macaulay has pronounced his 
 story of the Sicilian Expedition the "ne plus ultra of human 
 art." And time would fail to speak sufficiently here of his 
 digressions, few in number, always logically connected with 
 the main story, and always peculiarly telling from the fact 
 that they seem a condescension on the part of one whose aim 
 is far higher than merely to entertain. In Herodotus, the 
 entertaining digression rises almost to the dignity of a main
 
 HISTORY 169 
 
 object; in Thucydides, it is a rare jewel in a severe setting. 
 And yet how graceful and fanciful and altogether charming 
 Thucydides can be, in spite of his scorn for the historical 
 charmer, is to be seen in the digression which depicts the 
 career of Themistocles after his ostracism (i, 135-138). 
 Threading his way through the maze of legend which had 
 accumulated about the figure of Themistocles after his de- 
 parture from the better known parts of Hellas, Thucydides 
 has not the heart to eliminate from his story certain most 
 romantic features, and shows us in the scene at the palace 
 of Admetus, King of the Molossians, an ability to follow and 
 develop Homeric suggestions fully equal to that of Herod- 
 otus. It is like a smile upon a stern face (Ae'wv iyiXaa-ev 
 
 ivravOa 1) . 
 
 On the speeches also in Thucydides the whole time now 
 at our disposal might profitably be spent.^ A purely orna- 
 mental literary device in Homer and Herodotus has been 
 lifted by him into a means for securing that personal detach- 
 ment from the events and characters of his story which is 
 the despair of all who come after him, and an apparent ob- 
 jectivity of presentation which is seen only in the best drama. 
 These speeches range all the way from the brief hortatory 
 appeal of a commander to his soldiers just before a battle, 
 through the lengthy addresses of embassies to parliamentary 
 assemblies, up to the matchless speech put into the mouth 
 of Pericles ostensibly to commemorate the citizens of Athens 
 fallen in battle during an uneventful year of the war, but 
 really to set forth the historian's broad conception of the im- 
 perial democracy of Athens, now fallen, and of the high 
 ideals of that democracy's first ruler and guide. "I have 
 put into the mouth of each speaker," says Thucydides (i, 
 22, 1), "the sentiments proper to the occasion, expressed as 
 
 ' Scholiast on i, 126, 3. 
 
 2 R. C. Jebb, "The Speeches of Thucydides," in Abbott's Hellenica, 
 Oxford, 1880.
 
 170 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 I thought he would be Hkely to express them, while at the 
 same time I endeavored, as nearly as I could, to give the 
 general purport of what was actually said." As to Professor 
 Bury's interesting suggestion that the speeches composed 
 in his more obscure manner contain more of what Thucydides 
 thought was "proper to the occasion," and those com- 
 posed in his simpler manner more of "what was actually 
 said," we may be somewhat skeptical. And summing the 
 matter up, we may say that in Thucydides, as in Herodotus, 
 for all their deficiencies, there are certain high quahties, and 
 more in Thucydides and higher than in Herodotus, which 
 have never been surpassed by writers of history. How 
 potent still is the influence of Thucydides may be clearly 
 seen by those who know him in the pages of Mr. Rhodes's 
 great and now standard history of our Civil War. 
 
 The interrupted task of Thucydides was completed by 
 Xenophon, who tried to follow his methods and continue his 
 spirit, but succeeded with only a faint success. The modern 
 historian has nothing to learn from Xenophon that his master 
 does not better teach, except, perhaps, in the matter of 
 biography. The words of Grote are familiar : "It is at this 
 point that we have to part company with the historian Thu- 
 cydides. . . . The full extent of this irreparable loss can 
 hardly be conceived. ... To pass from Thucydides to the 
 Hellenica of Xenophon, is a descent truly mournful ; and 
 yet, when we look at Grecian history as a whole, we have 
 great reason to rejoice that even so inferior a work as the 
 latter has reached us." In Xenophon's completion of the 
 history of the Peloponnesian War we welcome the method 
 and manner of Thucydides, but we miss his discerning power, 
 and, above all, his detachment. For Xenophon had only 
 a mediocre talent, and besides was a partisan; a partisan, 
 too, not of Athens, his native city, but of Sparta. And in 
 his continuation of Greek history down to 362, we can never 
 forgive him the distortion of view which elevates so unduly
 
 HISTORY 171 
 
 the personality of Agesilaus of Sparta, and depreciates so 
 unduly, almost to the point of utter neglect, that of the 
 Theban Epaminondas, whom Cicero called "princeps Grae- 
 corum." It is not too harsh a judgment to call Xenophon 
 in history, as in philosophy, an agreeable dilettante. 
 
 Of his contemporary, Cratippus, whom Plutarch clearly 
 regards as the leading historian of Greece for the period follow- 
 ing the point at which Thucydides'swork breaks off, we know 
 too little to pass any broad judgment upon him, even allowing, 
 with some English scholars, that a considerable historical 
 fragment discovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt by the Messrs. 
 Grenfell and Hunt should be attributed to him and not to 
 Theopompus. And what little we can learn about Philistus 
 of Syracuse, the historian of Sicily and the two tyrants 
 Dionysius, leads us to think that Cicero was apt in styling 
 him a miniature Thucydides. 
 
 But now, with the disappearance of Epaminondas from 
 the scene of his triumphs, with the rise of the Macedonian 
 power to political supremacy in Greece, and with the remark- 
 able intellectual domination of all Hellas by the orator 
 Isocrates, a new political idea and a new literary form be- 
 came current, and forced into new lines the art of writing 
 history. The new political idea was that of the unity of 
 the Greeks against Persia, and the new literary form was 
 rhetorical prose. Historical writing became more widely 
 national, and rhetorical devices ministered to the pleasure 
 of hearers and readers as epic poetry or epic prose narrative 
 had once done. When, therefore, Ephorus of Cyme wrote 
 his Hellenica, or History of Greece, though he had a large 
 national theme, corresponding well to the imperial theme of 
 Thucydides, he did not continue the line of historical writers 
 who, like Hellanicus and Thucydides, were devoted to fact 
 more than to form, and wrote to instruct rather than to please 
 — as Hesiod the poet had done, in protest against Homer — • 
 but rather the line which culminated in Herodotus, and
 
 172 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 affected the Homeric manner and charm. The manner and 
 the charm of Ephorus were new, but they were his main 
 objects in writing. "The form was of more importance than 
 the substance, and freely shaped the substance to its needs." 
 And, in true Homeric fashion, he did not hesitate to cater to 
 the reigning taste by the embellishment or even the inven- 
 tion of detail. He sacrificed truth to rhetorical effect. And 
 yet he achieved an immense popularity, and established what 
 has been called "the Vulgate of Greek history." One might 
 be tempted to call his contemporary and rival, Theopompus 
 of Chios, the Thucydides of this rhetorical period, as Ephorus 
 was its Herodotus ; but in Theopompus also, in spite of his 
 erudition and industrious quest of the truth, especially in 
 his huge chronicle of contemporary history, the Philippica, 
 the rhetorical element triumphs over the didactic, and besides, 
 a certain bigotry and bitterness of partisanship, together with 
 a pessimistic skepticism and an undiscriminating censorious- 
 ness, combine to make him rather a soured and crabbed 
 Herodotus, if that is conceivable, than a later Thucydi- 
 des. From a historiography which is the slave of formal 
 rhetoric, the modern historian has nothing to learn except 
 how not to write history, and his regret that Ephorus and 
 Theopompus are known principally in the citations of later 
 compilers is tempered by the remembrance of the kind 
 fortune which has brought Herodotus, Thucydides, and 
 Xenophon down to him in their entirety. 
 
 But while Ephorus and Theopompus were yet writing, a new 
 personage had entered the ancient world, who, in an amaz- 
 ingly short time, completely transformed it. Alexander, 
 the son of Philip of Macedon, in a meteoric career of less than 
 twenty years, surpassed in actual and palpable achievements 
 all that the glowing imaginations of poets and prose romancers 
 had devised for men to admire and wonder at. Once more, 
 as in the sixth and fifth centuries, history became stranger 
 and more fascinating than romance had been, and led the
 
 HISTORY 173 
 
 way to still bolder flights of fancy in a new romance. The 
 wonders of India and the extreme East now eclipsed what 
 had once been wonderful in Persia and the nearer East, as 
 that had ecHpsed the wonders of the heroic age, and Greek 
 fancy grew by what it fed upon. On Alexander himself the 
 marvellous in his career seems to have produced some spell, 
 nor was it wholly from political reasons that he came to think 
 himself, and to wish others to think him, a god. On the 
 smaller spirits in his retinue the marvellous in their experience 
 produced the effect of an apparent incapacity to state a 
 cotomon fact as such. There were sober heads among them, 
 it is true — a Callisthenes, an Aristobulus, a Ptolemy, a 
 Nearchus, and from them we know the truth about Alex- 
 ander's campaigns, but only because the Graeco-Roman 
 Arrian, four centuries later, recurred to their testimonies. 
 Their contemporaries would none of them, but preferred the 
 extravagant exaggerations of Onesicritus, or the wilder 
 flights of fancy which marked the current and popular oral 
 tradition. For Alexander was accompanied from the first by 
 a travelling literary court of poets, philosophers, and historians, 
 and each of the momentous steps in his progress was cele- 
 brated by athletic and literary festivals to which the greatest 
 artists of Greece were summoned. His frequent exchange of 
 worn-out soldiers for fresher and younger ones also kept up 
 a constant line of oral communication between his deeds and 
 the riotous fancy of the stay-at-homes. But so rapid and 
 dazzling were his achievements that contemporary imagina- 
 tion could not keep pace with them. Especiall}^ after the 
 conqueror had vanished wholly from the view of the Hellenic 
 world during the three years of his Indian expedition did the 
 Hellenic imagination revel in the historical and mythological 
 possibilities of the case. Heracles and Dionysus were not 
 only imitated, but outdone, by this new god of conquest. 
 Moreover, the mental energies of the Ionian Hellenes, de- 
 flected from political life by the Macedonian supremacy,
 
 174 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 found vent more than ever in literary expression. Old forms 
 of expression were cultivated into decadence, and new forms 
 were devised. The literature of pure romance began. 
 There was, however, no such recognized channel, as yet, for 
 the flow of pure fancy and invention in prose as was afforded 
 later by professedly fictitious narrative — the romance and 
 the novel. These were yet to be set apart as distinct forms 
 of literary art. Fancy and invention therefore found play 
 in the realm of what should have been historical narrative. 
 And so it came to pass that before Alexander had been dead 
 thirty years, a mass of legend and romance had grown up 
 around the main authenticated facts of his career. This 
 mass has been varied in its rhetorical treatment rather 
 than sensibly increased by the romantic invention which has 
 ever since been busy with that career, down through the 
 middle ages, and into the times of our Old English literature. 
 This romantic version of Alexander's career, with its firm 
 basis of authenticated facts and its luxuriant envelope of 
 legend and fictitious anecdote, vague with all the vagueness 
 of popular tradition, found its Herodotus in Cleitarchus of 
 Colophon, a contemporary, but not a companion, of Alexander. 
 He was the son of Deinon of Colophon, who was an imagina- 
 tive historian of eastern realms, and a pupil of Stilpo of Meg- 
 ara, a rhetorician and philosopher celebrated above all for 
 grace and cleverness of literary style. His history of Alexan- 
 der, highly rhetorical, and full of the wildest flights of fancy, 
 became the standard, as the history of Greece down to Alex- 
 ander by Ephorus was standard. It forestalled the sober 
 testimonies of the four sober companions of Alexander to 
 whom Arrian, four centuries later, led the world back, for, 
 at the time, it met the world's demands. We know Clei- 
 tarchus chiefly through late Roman compilers like Diodorus 
 Siculus, Justin, and Quintus Curtius, but we understand 
 perfectly why the author of the treatise "On the Sublime" 
 calls him empty and bombastic, and why even Plutarch dis-
 
 HISTORY 175 
 
 credits him, "At this time," says Plutarch {Alexander, xlvi), 
 "most writers say that the Queen of the Amazons paid a visit 
 to Alexander, of whom are Cleitarchus and Onesicritus. 
 But Ptoleni}^ and Aristobulus say that this is fiction." Clei- 
 tarchus therefore followed Onesicritus in preference to Ptol- 
 emy and Aristobulus, and of Onesicritus, thanlvs to Lucian, 
 we can form a sure estimate. 
 
 Just after the great Indian campaign against Porus and 
 his elephants, and while Alexander and his army were de- 
 scending the Hydaspes in their extemporized flotilla, a certain 
 historian, so Lucian tells us (Quom. hist, scrib., xii), bent on 
 flattery, read aloud to Alexander what he had written about 
 a fierce duel between Alexander in person and the gigantic 
 Porus mounted on an elephant. Now we have in Arrian 
 what is substantially Ptolemy's account of the battle with 
 Porus, and there neither was nor could have been at any time 
 during the battle a duel between Porus and Alexander. But 
 just as at Issus and Arbela romantic historians insist, against 
 all the facts, on bringing Darius and Alexander into personal 
 combat, so in the struggle with Porus the flattering his- 
 torian thought that the two leaders must have their Homeric 
 duel. Here we can put our finger on Alexander-romance 
 in the very making. As the historian read aloud to Alexan- 
 der, thinking to gratify the king by inventing the most 
 fabulous exploits for him, Alexander caught away the writ- 
 ing from him and hurled it into the river, saying, "I ought 
 to do the same to you, my man, for fighting such a duel and 
 killing such elephants for me with a single javehn." This 
 historian, as we learn from another passage in the same work 
 of Lucian (chap, xl), was Onesicritus, the Munchausen of 
 Alexander's companions. And it is in all probability his 
 version of the visit of the Amazonian queen to Alexander 
 which Arrian mentions as "reported" (vii. 13, 3), only to 
 remark : "but this is recorded neither by Ptolemy nor Aris- 
 tobulus, nor by any one else capable of testimony in such
 
 176 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 matters. And personally, I do not believe that the race of 
 Amazons was surviving at that time, nor before Alexander's 
 time either, or Xenophon would have mentioned them." 
 This reputed visit of the queen of the Amazons to Alexander 
 may serve as a fair specimen of the countless bold inventions 
 which the history of Cleitarchus adopted. 
 
 With Cleitarchus and his history of Alexander, which 
 was for a long time canonical, we may well close this brief 
 survey of Greek historiography. In the century after 
 Alexander, Duris of Samos was led to write a history of Greece 
 in which, judging from the fragments of it which have come 
 down to us, startling effects were sought and gained by resort 
 to coarse and realistic sensationahsm, a new manifestation 
 of the Homeric and Herodotean desire to please rather than 
 to instruct, but not one which became dominant. With 
 Timaeus of Tauromenium and with Polybiusthe Roman spirit 
 manifests itself, and historiography ceases to be distinctively 
 Hellenic. "Distinctively Greek historiography," to repeat 
 from the opening paragraph of the lecture, "may be said 
 to end with the historians of Alexander's career. And it 
 ends, as it begins, with a triumph of fancy and invention over 
 fact and re-presentation. In the middle ground, in Thucyd- 
 ides and Xenophon, the desire to inform is duly enthroned 
 beside the desire to please; but the Greek hearer or reader 
 usually preferred a flight of the imagination to a statement of 
 the truth ; and the sovereign names among the Greeks them- 
 selves were Homer, Herodotus, Ephorus, and Cleitarchus, 
 names representing a body of highly imaginative and mainly 
 fictitious poetry, and a body of highly imaginative and largely 
 fictitious prose." And our survey has itself made plain, 
 without further definition, the permanent value of this body 
 of historical literature. It has such value if it does no more 
 than illustrate, by two splendid specimens in the works of 
 Herodotus and Thucydides, artistic success in writing history 
 that charms, and artistic success in writing history that
 
 HISTORY 177 
 
 edifies. Imagination a good historian must always have, 
 creative imagination even, especially in the problems of 
 psychological reconstruction, wherein the best modern his- 
 torians make most advance upon Thucydides ; and rhetori- 
 cal skill a good historian must have, in order to win readers 
 for the truths which he has laboriously elicited from complex 
 testimonies. But the imagination must not become in- 
 ventive purely, nor must the inventions of imagination or 
 the attractions of rhetoric ever become the main object of 
 the historian. How easy to illustrate from the works of 
 modern historians with which we are all familiar ! How 
 easy, also, to follow Professor Bury when he says, "Within 
 the limits of the task he attempted Thucydides was a master 
 in the craft of investigating contemporary events, and it may 
 be doubted whether, within those limits, the nineteenth 
 
 century would have much to teach him." 
 
 B. Perrin.
 
 ORATORY 
 
 With the Attic orators the object in view was always the 
 Demos on the Pnyx or in the Agora ; only gradually did they 
 come to think of that later and wider audience that might 
 read the speeches. So the test of a Greek speech, which 
 was meant to please and persuade quite as much as to con- 
 vince, was always oral ; the appeal was to the ear. The 
 Athenians came to an oratorical contest, ''to enjoy a critical 
 repast," as to an exhibition of mental acumen and skill and 
 strength. Their delight in oratory was one of the chief 
 secrets of the orator's success. They appreciated not merely 
 telling hits made against an adversary ; their ears must be 
 charmed by the chosen word, by euphonious arrangement. 
 Isocrates speaks of "the antitheses, the symmetrical clauses, 
 and other figures which lend brilliancy to oratorical displays, 
 compelling the listeners to give clamorous applause." 
 Gorgias was the legitimate successor of the Homeric rhap- 
 sodes ; his poetical rhetoric took the place of the rhapsodical 
 chants of which the world had grown tired. Isocrates would 
 doubtless have followed in his footsteps even more closely 
 if he had had voice and nerve ; but not being able to face the 
 crowd he tried to put into the written word all the beauty and 
 charm of speech. The orator has always depended largely 
 on the inspiration caught from a great mass of listening 
 people ; but no orators of any other people have succeeded 
 in retaining in the written records of their speeches so much 
 of the evanescent fervor and charm and beauty which cap- 
 tivated their audiences. This was due to their innate feeling 
 for beauty and to their taking infinite pains. "The artist 
 
 178
 
 ORATORY 179 
 
 should labor/' said Nietzsche, " over a page of prose as the 
 sculptor over a statue." The closet-orator Isocrates spent 
 ten years elaborating his Panegyricus; and something like 
 that intense and patient labor characterized all the great 
 orators of the Ecclesia. Pytheas reproached Demosthenes 
 because his speeches " smelled of the lamp." Plutarch relates 
 that Demosthenes could hardly ever be induced to speak off- 
 hand, however often called upon in public assemblies. He 
 was unwilling, he said, to "put his faculty at the mercy of 
 fortune." Consummate and unfailing beauty of language, 
 exquisite finish and perfect polish, characterize all his speeches. 
 That is because of his extreme care in composition — care 
 like that of Plato, whose note-book 'contained the initial 
 eight words of the Republic written in several difTerent orders 
 of arrangement. "The best words in the best order" — 
 Swift's definition of style — was the aim of Plato and Demos- 
 thenes, the aim of course of all who would be artists in lan- 
 guage. "It is not strange," says Dionysius,^ "if a man who 
 has won more glory for eloquence than any of those who 
 were renowned before him, who is shaping works for all the 
 future, who is offering himself to the scrutiny of all-testing 
 Envy and Time, adopts no thought, no word at random, 
 but takes much care of both things, the arrangement of his 
 ideas and the graciousness of his language." 
 
 It was not alone the genius of the orator, nor his sense of 
 beauty, that caused him to toil so hard for perfection. 
 The Demos at Athens was, in great part, the explanation of 
 his extraordinary eloquence. "Finish of workmanship is 
 not lost in any popular assembly," says Professor Butcher; - 
 " and the audience in the case of Demosthenes was a na- 
 tion of artists who enjoyed a political debate as they did 
 a dramatic or musical festival." The audiences that 
 Pericles and Pomosthenes used to address, in the fifth 
 and fourth centuries b.c, were probably the cleverest, 
 
 1 lUpl a-vvd^creus ivoiJ-diTuv c. 25. * Demosthenes, p. 1G4.
 
 180 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 quickest-witted popular assemblies the world ever saw. 
 The nearest parallel we can find to the Athenian Demos 
 is not any modern populace, but a representative as- 
 sembly like the British Parliament. "In Athens an in- 
 cessant struggle for independence, for power, or for liberty, 
 could not fail to rouse the genius of every citizen — to force 
 the highest talent to the highest station — to animate her 
 councils with a holy zeal, and to afford to her orators all that, 
 according to the profoundest writers of antiquity, is neces- 
 sary to the sublimest strains of eloquence." ^ 
 
 ]\Iarked intellectual activity and opermess of mind char- 
 acterized the Attic Demos, a sharp and penetrating under- 
 standing, a delicate and refined taste, and an insatiable love 
 of the spoken word. Their training differed from that of 
 any other populace. Everyday life at Athens was a sort of 
 university course : the theatrical exhibitions and the beau- 
 tiful processions on festal days, the daily sessions of the law- 
 courts in which Athens transacted the legal business of her 
 wide-spread empire, the frequent meetings of the assemblies 
 of the people to decide the weightiest matters whether of war 
 or peace, the athletic exercises and contests, the schools of 
 the sophists and of the philosophers, the noble art with which 
 all the public places were adorned — with such an environ- 
 ment the people were at school all the time. And the best 
 of it all was that with them it was not only business but 
 recreation. One of their chief pastimes was listening to 
 their orators, delighting in the keen and brilliant fencing of 
 the Ecclesia as at a spectacle.^ All this was part of "the 
 busy, rhythmic, colored life of Greece." It made fife for the 
 Athenians a sort of perpetual holiday. If one is asked for 
 the proofs that the Attic Demos had such artistic and lit- 
 erary taste beyond other peoples, it is enough to say that 
 Pericles and Demosthenes swayed them as no other speakers ; 
 
 ' Quoted by Lord Brougham in Inaugural Discourse (Speeches, iii, p. 82, 
 foot-note). 2 Cf. Thuc. iii, 38.
 
 ORATORY 181 
 
 that for them were composed the Agamemnon and Prometheus, 
 the Antigone and Oedipus Rex; for them Thucydides wrote 
 his immortal history, and Plato his incomparable dialogues ; 
 for their delectation Ictinus built and Phidias adorned with 
 marble sculptures the Parthenon. 
 
 Oratory as a fine art begins with Gorgias and Isocrates; 
 eloquence as a divine gift already characterized Achilles and 
 Odysseus, or at least the poet who created them. Oratory 
 has always been the handmaid of liberty, and we could be 
 sure, even if we did not know it from Homer, that the race 
 which first enjoyed freedom and developed popular govern- 
 ment would prize persuasive speech as one of the greatest of 
 human endowments. It was the voice of the people that 
 decided matters in the Greek host at Troy; the assemblies 
 in the Greek camp were but the counterpart of those in 
 Thessaly and Ithaca, and it was the voice of powerful and 
 persuasive speakers that swayed men in the one place or the 
 other. The Homeric triad of excellences was ''power of dis- 
 course" (ayopr]Tv<;) J "physical prowess" (<f>v^), and "good 
 sense" (</>p£Ves). Odysseus enumerates'^ the "three prime 
 endowments that can be received from the providence of the 
 gods — eloquence, beauty, and the power of thought." 
 Peleus sent along with Achilles to Troy the aged Phoenix 
 to train him to be "both a speaker of words and a doer of 
 deeds"; and this ideal of Hellenic manhood is represented 
 by the poet as the best fighter, the swiftest runner, the most 
 powerful speaker, and withal fond of music. Telemachus 
 made a very creditable first appearance in the assembly of 
 the people in Ithaca. That was no wonder ; he was the son 
 of Odysseus, of whom the poet said, "When he uttered his 
 great voice from his chest and words like unto the snow- 
 flakes of winter, then no mortal could contend with Odys- 
 seus." 2 And from such a speaker come fittingly words like 
 these: "The gods do not give every gracious gift to all, 
 
 » Od. viii. 168. 2 II. iii. 221 fif.
 
 182 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 neither shapeliness nor wisdom, nor skilled speech. For one 
 man is feebler than another in presence, yet the gods crown 
 his words with beauty, and men behold him and rejoice, and 
 his speech runs surely on its way with sweet modesty, and he 
 shines forth among the gathering of the people, and as he 
 passes through the town men gaze on him as a god." ^ 
 
 There were many kinds of eloquence among Homer's 
 heroes. It was in reminiscence that Nestor's speech "flowed 
 sweeter than honey." It might be pathos that is required, 
 and then the aged Priam will say to Achilles, "I have borne 
 what no one on earth has ever borne, to lift to my lips the 
 hand of the man who has slain my son." Of its kind nothing 
 could be more artful and effective than the plea of the hungry 
 outcast Odysseus to the maiden Nausicaa for protection and 
 food and raiment. For a proud warrior insulted and wronged 
 the reply of Achilles to Agamemnon's envoys, offering apolo- 
 gies and gifts, will perhaps remain forever unequalled. "It 
 seems to me that his speeches," says Gladstone, "may chal- 
 lenge comparison with all that we find in Homer, and with 
 all that the ebb and flow of three thousand years have added 
 to our records of human eloquence." ^ These Homeric 
 speakers were the forerunners of the great orators of the 
 Pnyx five hundred years later. "A faculty of debate," 
 says Gladstone, "never surpassed, if ever equalled in human 
 history, is found in both poems." It is just here that Jebb 
 rightly finds the secret of our liking for the speeches of Homer. 
 "Nor does any oratory," he says, "that the ancient world has 
 left approach so nearly as the Homeric to the modern ideal. 
 The reason of this is that the great orations of the Iliad are 
 made in debate, and the greatest of all are replies — as the 
 answer of Achilles to the envoys in the ninth book. Con- 
 densed statement, lucid argument, repartee, sarcasm, irony, 
 overwhelming invective, profound and irresistible pathos — 
 all these resources are absolutely commanded by the orators 
 
 1 Od. viii. 167 ff. ' Juventus Mundi, p. 432.
 
 ORATORY 183 
 
 of the Iliad, and all these must have belonged to him, or to 
 those, by whom the Iliad was created."^ "When we find 
 these speeches in Homer," saj'^s Gladstone, "we know that 
 there must have been men who could speak them, so from 
 the existence of units who could speak them, we know that 
 there must have been crowds who could feel them." ^ 
 
 It was with an elegy that the supposedlj^ crazy Solon 
 addressed the Athenians in the Agora, rousing them to retake 
 Salamis from the Megarians. But his words mark the orator 
 rather than the poet: "Let me be a Pholegandrian or a 
 Sicinete instead of an Athenian, exchanging my fatherland ; 
 for soon will this report go forth among men: 'An Attic 
 man this, one of the betrayers of Salamis.' Let us on to 
 Salamis, to fight for the lovely island, and wipe out the 
 bitter shame." The form is verse, but it clothes an impas- 
 sioned popular harangue. The leading spirit of the Persian 
 Wars, too, was preeminently "a speaker of words and a 
 doer of deeds." Thucydides (i. 138) thus describes The- 
 mistocles : "The ablest judge of the course to be pursued in 
 a sudden emergency and the readiest to divine what was 
 likely to happen in the remotest future. Whatever he had 
 in hand he had the power to set forth to others." 
 
 But speakers like Achilles and Odysseus, and later like 
 Solon and Themistocles, were only men of extraordinary 
 ora.torical gifts : it was not art, but nature ; and practice 
 made perfect. A speech might be a great one, but its 
 effect and influence were transitory ; or, not being written, 
 it was heard and forgotten. Oratory proper begins when 
 speeches begin to be written, and the history of Greek 
 oratory commences with Gorgias of Leontini. The epoch 
 may be dated from his embassy to Athens in 427 B.C. The 
 distinguishing element of his speech, which aimed above all 
 at beauty of expression — "to charm the ear, as much as to 
 amuse the mind" — was its poetical character. It "imi- 
 
 1 Attic Orators, i. p. cvii. ' Homer and the Homeric Age, iii. p. 107.
 
 184 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 tated the rhythm as well as the phrase of poetry." Poetical 
 phraseology, symmetrical arrangement, balance of clauses, 
 assonance, characterized a prose with a rhythm so striking 
 as to make an appeal much like that of verse. Gorgias used 
 ornamental epithets, some one has said, "not as a relish, but 
 as food." His oratory delighted men's ears ; for the time it 
 seemed artistic and beautiful, and aroused enthusiasm. 
 Judging from the specimens we have in fragments it is hard 
 to realize that Athenians of the close of the fifth century, the 
 same men that appreciated Sophocles in the theatre and 
 Pericles in the Agora, should have received Gorgias' brilliant 
 rhetoric with boundless applause ; that its effect should 
 have been sensational. But we come to Gorgias familiar 
 with the speeches of orators that had got rid of his defects 
 and had brought to perfection what was best in his method ; 
 in other words, Demosthenes has spoiled our taste for oratory 
 like that of Gorgias. Its defects are plain enough now ; but 
 when all deductions are made, the fact remains that Gorgias 
 was the founder of artistic prose. "On the whole his merit is 
 in having been for Thucydides almost what Isocrates was for 
 Demosthenes or Bossuet for Balzac. He rendered the in- 
 strument flexible, and put it into the hands of the great 
 artist." 1 
 
 The first name in the Canon, or list of ten best orators made 
 by later critics, is Antiphon. Tradition made Thucydides 
 his pupil ; and indeed in Gorgias and Antiphon ^ we have 
 perhaps the two influences which chiefly affected the style of 
 Thucydides. The speeches which the historian inserts in his 
 narrative are so important that they cannot be overlooked 
 in any treatment of Greek oratory. These speeches — • 
 forty-one in number, including the famous Funeral Oration 
 
 » Croiset, Abridged History of Greek Literature, p. 285. 
 * Limits of space prevent any discussion of the merits of Antiphon, An- 
 docides, Isaeus, Lycurgus, and Dinarchus.
 
 ORATORY 185 
 
 by Pericles — are represented as spoken by leading actors 
 in the great drama of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides 
 thus states the principles which guided him in their compo- 
 sition: "As to the various speeches made on the eve of the 
 war, or in its course, I have found it difficult to retain a 
 memory of the precise words which I had heard spoken ; 
 and so it was with those who had brought me reports. But 
 I have made the persons say what it seemed to me most 
 opportune for them to say in view of each situation ; at the 
 same time I have adhered as closely as possible to the general 
 sense of what was actually said." ^ No doubt we have here 
 a candid and truthful statement of Thucydides' procedure. 
 Here, as everywhere else in his history, he faithfully repre- 
 sents the cardinal facts of the situation as he saw them. 
 Many of the speeches that were actually made on various 
 occasions are doubtless given in substance, but the form is 
 the historian's. "The work is meant to be a possession 
 forever, not the rhetorical triumph of an hour." Thus the 
 great historian expresses his ideal ; and it is due largely to 
 the speeches that his aim has been realized. "It is chiefly 
 by these," says Jebb, "that the facts of the Peloponnesian 
 War are transformed into typical examples of universal laws 
 and illuminated with a practical significance for the students 
 of politics in every age and country." It was the speeches 
 doubtless which the elder Pitt had chiefly in mind when he 
 called Thucydides' history "that eternal manual of states- 
 men." How constituent a part they are of the work we can 
 realize by imagining the first seven books in the state in 
 which the eighth was left. We can as easily conceive of the 
 tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles without choruses, 
 as of the history of Thucydides without speeches. 
 
 Dionysius of Halicarnassus distinguishes three principal 
 styles of composition, the "austere" or grand, the "middle" 
 or smooth, and the "plain." His representative of the 
 
 1 Thuc. i, 22.
 
 186 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 "austere" style in lyric poetry is Pindar, in tragedy Aesch3'lus, 
 in history Thucydides, in oratory Antiphon. A part of his 
 description of the "austere" st3de seems especially applicable 
 to Thucydides. "As regards separate words, these are the 
 objects of its pursuit and craving. In whole clauses it shows 
 these tendencies no less strongly, especially it chooses the 
 most dignified and majestic rhythms. It does not wish the 
 clauses to be like each other in length or structure, or enslaved 
 to a severe syntax, but noble, simple, free. It wishes them 
 to bear the stamp of nature rather than that of art, and to 
 stir feeling rather than to reflect character. It does not 
 usually aim at composing periods as a compact framework 
 for its thought ; but if it should ever drift undesignedly into 
 the periodic style, it desires to set on this the mark of spon- 
 taneity and plainness. It does not employ, in order to round 
 a sentence, supplementary words which do not help the sense ; 
 it does not care that the march of its phrase should have stage- 
 glitter or an artificial smoothness ; nor that the clauses 
 should be separately adapted to the length of the speaker's 
 breath." 1 
 
 Voltaire's sarcasm, "Set speeches are a sort of oratorical 
 lie, which the historian used to allow himself in old times," 
 does not apply to Thucydides, though he was the originator 
 of that custom. His dramatic way of making historical per- 
 sons express, at critical moments of the war, ideas that 
 exerted an important influence, is conducive to the vivid and 
 truthful presentment of action. The language of the speeches 
 is wholly or chiefly his own ; dramatic truth is in the matter, 
 not the form, for there is little discrimination in the style of 
 the various speeches. The expression of character is like 
 that of Greek tragedy — typical rather than individual. 
 The dignity of history, as Thucydides conceived it, allowed 
 no greater latitude. If he had had before him the original 
 speeches, he would doubtless have remodelled the expression 
 
 1 Uepl avvd. ovo/j.. c. 22.
 
 ORATORY 187 
 
 to conform to his general plan, as he seems to have done with 
 the letter of Nicias in the seventh book. 
 
 It is in the speeches, or resumes of situations, that his 
 literary dialect, if it may be called so, is most marked ; and 
 it is here, according to Dionysius, that the force of his genius 
 is most manifest. The speeches are simple and plain in 
 structure, but so condensed in expression, so laden with 
 thought — "an inexhaustible mine of political observations 
 and profound reflections" — that even a popular Athenian 
 audience must have found them difficult to follow. Thu- 
 cydides has a great wealth of archaic or poetic words, and 
 coins a multitude of new ones ; the general effect of which is 
 to lend greater nobility to his language. In this the influence 
 of Gorgias may perhaps be seen. Thucydides' use and 
 sometimes abuse of antithesis, the constant balancing of 
 Ao'yos and «pyov, possibly his fondness for archaic and poetic 
 terms, may be signs of the Gorgian influence so strong at 
 Athens just when he was composing the history. I prefer 
 to believe, however, that he was influenced by Pindar and 
 Aeschylus rather than by Gorgias, both in his poetic vocabu- 
 lary and in his new-coined terms. Corresponding to all 
 this is his frequent use of neuter adjectives and participles 
 as substantives, his constant employment of verbal substan- 
 tives, especially those ending in -ti^s and -o-ts, and certain 
 peculiarities in orthography : (to- for tt^ iw for o-iV, -^s for 
 -CIS. The effect of the use of poetic terms familiar to Greek 
 readers from their great national text-l)ook. Homer, or asso- 
 ciated in their minds with all that had thrilled and purified 
 them in their great drama, was like borrowing biblical words, 
 which everybody knows and which are consecrated by asso- 
 ciation, to describe some event of unusual moment. Like 
 the great artist that he is, he gives just enough particulars 
 to make the picture clear and real, leaving all the rest to the 
 imagination. He is a master of stern and solemn pathos, the 
 pathos of naked, awful facts expressed by a few vivid touches
 
 188 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 in words fitly chosen or coined to reveal the depth and hope- 
 lessness of woe. 
 
 Perhaps the speeches that remain most distinctly impressed 
 on the memory are that of the Corinthians in Book I, those 
 spoken by Pericles, especially the great Funeral Oration, the 
 debate between Cleon and Diodotus, the appeal for life of the 
 condemned Plataeans, the speeches of Nicias and Gylippus 
 before the final sea-fight in the Great Harbor at Syracuse, 
 and Nicias's final appeal to his despairing army as they started 
 on the march that ended in the catastrophe at the river 
 Assinarus. For pathos perhaps nothing so touches us as the 
 despairing appeal of the Plataeans. There is nothing any- 
 where that so completely represents the spirit and glory of 
 Periclean Athens as the sublime Funeral Oration. " In a word 
 I declare," says the great statesman, "that our city as a whole 
 is the school of Hellas ; while every individual citizen among 
 us, it seems to me, would prove himself personally qualified, 
 without aid from others, to meet exigencies the most varied, 
 with a versatility the most graceful. That this is no mere 
 rhetorical vaunt, but the real truth, our political power, the 
 achievement of our national character, is itself proof. For of 
 all existing states Athens alone eclipses her prestige when put 
 to the test ; she alone causes no mortification to the invading 
 foe when he thinks by whom he is repulsed, no self-reproach 
 to the subject for being ruled by those who are not worthy. 
 So far from our supremacy needing attestation, shown with 
 the clearest proofs it will command the admiration of future 
 ages as it already does of our own ; we need no Homer to 
 sing our praises, nor any other poet whose verse may charm 
 for the moment, even though history mar the conception 
 he raises of our deeds." ^ 
 
 The logographers, or lawyers who wrote speeches to be 
 read or recited by others, contributed much to the develop- 
 ment of oratory. Among these men Lysias stands first, 
 
 1 ii, 41.
 
 ORATORY 189 
 
 The logographer did not appear in person for his cHent, and 
 it was his business in writing the speech to assume the char- 
 acter of the actual Htigant, who would generally be some man 
 of the people without experience in legal questions. He 
 needed to conceal himself behind his client and identify him- 
 self as completely as possible with him. This seems so na- 
 tural that we might have presumed that the early logo- 
 graphers had all done so. But no, it was a discovery of Lysias. 
 ]\Iost of the thirty-four extant speeches were composed for 
 clients to speak, and we are ready to believe that Lj^sias was 
 averse to the personal contests of the Agora. He lacked 
 the fighting spirit, oratorical fire, passion, vehemence. He 
 seems to have been really a Hterary man, a shrewd observer 
 of the varying types of human nature, with a pronounced 
 dramatic faculty ; a pleader because pleading was a means 
 of making a living, and for this he had extraordinary gifts. 
 With an exquisite feeling for language, he adopted a manner 
 which has always been considered the norm for the "plain 
 style," avoiding poetic terms and idioms and using the vo- 
 cabulary of current everyday speech. Apparently artless, it 
 was exquisitely artful. It was highly persuasive because 
 it seemed so natural. 
 
 His ethopoiia, or expression of character, Dionysius finds 
 displayed in three particulars — thought, diction, and com- 
 position ; that is, the idioms, the words, and the style are 
 recognized as exactly appropriate to the man for whom Lysias 
 wrote the speech, so that we feel, as the jury must have felt, 
 that the litigant was speaking for himself. And so we have 
 in each of the speeches individual types of men vividly rep- 
 resented. These live before our eyes. We hear with com- 
 plete sjTnpathy the plea of the genial cripple for his pension 
 of one obol per day, of which the malice of an enemy is about 
 to deprive him. It is clearly a sketch from life, in the spirit 
 of Herondas or Horace. The fee in this case could not have 
 meant anything to Lysias; what tempted him was the op-
 
 190 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 portunity to sketch a unique character whom every one knew. 
 Then there is the man accused of digging up a sacred ohve 
 stump, and his defense reveals a modest citizen who takes 
 pride in quietly and unostentatiously performing all his 
 public duties. A sketch from life, too, is Mantitheus, the 
 ambitious young Eupatrid standing his examination before 
 the Senate. What a pleasant impression all these leave on 
 our memories, and how apt we are, if we turn to one of these 
 sketches to verify a reference, to become interested, forget 
 the reference, and run through the whole sketch again! 
 
 That is due to the charm (xap's), that nameless grace which 
 is inexplicable and unanalyzable, but which all feel to be 
 there. To the Greek critic it was the final criterion of genu- 
 ine work of Lysias. "When I am puzzled," says Dionysius, 
 "about one of the speeches ascribed to him, and when it is 
 hard for me to find the truth,by other marks, I have recourse 
 to this excellence, as to the last piece on the board. Then if 
 the graces of speech seem to me to make the writing fair, I 
 count it to be the soul of Lysias ; and I care not to look 
 further into it. But if the stamp of the language has no 
 winningness, no loveliness, I am chagrined, and suspect that 
 after all the speech is not by Lysias ; and I do no more vio- 
 lence to my instinct, even though in all else the speech seems 
 to me clever and well finished, believing that to write well, 
 in special styles other than this, is given to many men, but 
 that to write winningly, gracefully, with loveliness, is the 
 gift of Lysias." ^ 
 
 Considered from the Greek point of view Lysias reasons 
 cogently and with force, but the quality which, along with 
 ethopoiia, especially distinguishes him is the gift of stating 
 a case. No other talent is more important for a lawyer or 
 public speaker. A great jurist once said that many a lawyer 
 wins his case with the jury before he begins his formal ar- 
 gument on the evidence, simply by the way in which he 
 
 1 Dion. H., De Lys. 11.
 
 ORATORY 191 
 
 states his case. The arrest of Lysias and his brother Pole- 
 marchus by Eratosthenes, and all the vividly enumerated 
 details of the pillage of the house, the murder of Polemarchus, 
 the escape and flight of Lysias, makeup a narrative in which we 
 see everything as it happens, and have a picture of the crimes 
 of the Thirty Tyrants that will forever remain a part of the 
 history of that period of anarchy and spoliation. This greatest 
 of his orations, the only one of those extant known to have 
 been spoken by Lysias himself, alone justifies his claim to all 
 the chief qualities enumerated by his partial critic — plainness 
 and easy versatility, purity of diction, simplicity, vividness. 
 
 The reader of the Eratosthenes, the Mantitheus, the Cripple, 
 the Sacred Olive, cannot fail to recognize that here is admi- 
 rable prose, that Lysias is a writer of extraordinary gifts. It 
 is his oratorical power that may be questioned. We have 
 touched upon his shining qualities; what are his defects? 
 "He was deficient in pathos and in fire," says Jebb; and it 
 seems a fair criticism. This may have been due to the same 
 sort of self-restraint that caused Thucydides simply to give 
 such a grouping of facts as would produce the effect, without 
 anything more. For history, that affords the greatest kind 
 of pathos ; but with the orator there must be more fervent 
 personal expression. At any rate, in the matter of pathos, 
 Lysias does not produce the effect of Thucydides. As to fire, 
 that is, the passion of the speaker, one needs only to compare 
 Lysias with Demosthenes to realize the vast difference. 
 He lacks two other things, his ancient admirer, Dionysius, 
 admitted — grandeur and spirit.^ "He touches, but does 
 not pierce the heart ; he charms, but fails to astonish or to 
 appal." The want of these qualities kept him out of the class 
 of Demosthenes, or even of Hyperides. But he taught, and 
 may still teach, an inestimable lesson — that the finest art 
 is that which conceals itself. And it would be impossible to 
 Bay how much his influence helped to check the tendency of 
 
 ' Dion. H., De Lys. c. 13.
 
 192 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 public speaking to yield to the allurement of artificial orna- 
 ments ; we do know that it was the style of Lysias on which 
 the advocates of Atticism later took their stand in the con- 
 flict with Asianism. 
 
 ''It might have seemed that a finished simplicity so conge- 
 nial to the Attic spirit had forever superseded the ideal of 
 Gorgias. But just as the influence of that ideal was declin- 
 ing, a pupil of Gorgias came forward to show that his master's 
 theory, though deformed by extravagances, was grounded in 
 truth. Isocrates proved that, without loss of ease and 
 fluency, prose may be artistically ornate in the general sense 
 of Gorgias (that is, with the aid of certain embellishments 
 proper to poetry), if only these are rightly chosen and tem- 
 perately used." ^ In these words Jebb makes the transition 
 from Lysias to Isocrates. Great things were expected from 
 the young Isocrates, as may be guessed from Plato's Phae- 
 drus.2 " Isocrates, is still young, Phaedrus," Plato makes Soc- 
 rates say, "but I don't mind telling you what I prophesy of 
 him." "And what may that be?" "He seems to me to 
 have a genius above the oratory of Lysias, and altogether to 
 be tempered of nobler elements. And so it would not sur- 
 prise me if, as years go on, he should make all his predecessors 
 seem like children in the kind of oratory to which he is now 
 addressing himself ; or if — supposing this should not con- 
 tent him — some diviner impulse should lead him to greater 
 things. My dear Phaedrus, a certain philosophy is inborn in 
 him. This is my message, then, from the gods of the place 
 to my pet Isocrates — and you have your message for your 
 Lysias." Such recognition from Plato was like Macaulay's 
 prediction about the young Gladstone, "The rising hope of 
 the stern and unbending Tories" ; or like the aged Goethe's 
 hail to the young Carlyle across the German ocean : " Carlyle 
 is a moral force of great significance. He has a great future 
 before him, and indeed we can see no end to all he will do and 
 
 1 Jebb, Attic Orators, ii. p. 427. ^ Phaedr. 278-279 e.
 
 ORATORY 193 
 
 effect by his influence." ^ Plato at that time evidently ex- 
 pected Isocrates to rise from the art of expression to the 
 search for truth. He remained always on the lower level; 
 but even thus our indebtedness to him is inestimable. 
 
 The object of Gorgias was oral and extemporary eloquence. 
 Isocrates' ideal might have been the same if he had had the 
 necessary qualifications to realize it. Endowed with great 
 talent and ambitious to excel in public oratory, Isocrates had 
 neither voice nor nerve equal to the demands of the Agora 
 and the Ecclesia. He doubtless has his own case in mind 
 when he says, in the Antidosis:^ "The physical and the 
 mental training will alike improve natural powers. But the 
 master of the palaestra cannot make a great athlete, nor the 
 teacher of philosophy a great speaker. To make the latter 
 three things are needed — capacity, training, and practice. 
 Capacity — which includes intellect, voice, and nerve — is 
 the chief requisite. Practice, however, can by itself make a 
 good speaker. Training is by far the least important of the 
 three. It may be complete, and yet be rendered useless by 
 the absence of a single quahty — nerve." Isocrates had a 
 weak voice and was timid ; so, shut out from the courts and 
 the Ecclesia, he opened a school of Rhetoric, or Philosophy as 
 he preferred to call it, and trained young men for public life. 
 Cicero^ compares this famous school to the Trojan horse, since 
 from it had come forth so many princes of eloquence. Modern 
 scholars have made up a list of forty-one persons eminent in 
 oratory or history who had studied in it. In the panegyrical 
 contest which the queen of Caria instituted in memory of her 
 husband, and which all the chief rhetoricians entered, tradi- 
 tion has it that of all the competitors there was not one who 
 was not a disciple of Isocrates. 
 
 Along with his school work he also became an active writer 
 on public questions of the day, a political essayist discussing 
 
 ' Conversations with Eckermann, July 25, 1827. 
 « Cf. §§ 180-192. ' De Oratore, ii. 2. 94.
 
 194 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 subjects of national, preferably of international, scope. His 
 chief hobby was the union of all the Greeks in the invasion of 
 Persia — the subject of his greatest work, the Panegyricus, 
 which he is said to have spent ten years in elaborating, and 
 of his Philippus. Isocrates is a true lover of Athens, but his 
 contemplation of large political questions, perhaps also his 
 association with clever youths from all parts of the Hellenic 
 world, gives him a wider outlook ; so that in a famous passage 
 of the Panegyricus ^ he anticipates the civilization of Hellen- 
 ism: "Athens has so distanced the rest of the world in power 
 of thought and speech that her disciples have become the 
 teachers of all other men. She has brought it to pass that 
 the name of Greek should be thought no longer a matter of 
 race, but a matter of intelligence ; and should be given to the 
 participators in our culture rather than to sharers of our 
 common origin." 
 
 Of the three harmonies or styles of composition 
 distinguished by Dionysius, Isocrates represents the 
 "smooth," and well does he illustrate it: "Nor is it 
 only between word and word that this style seeks apt 
 juncture and coherence. It desires that clause should be 
 closely knitted to clause ; that every sentence should be 
 rounded to a period ; that each segment of a period should 
 be neither shorter nor longer than the just mean ; and that 
 the whole period should be within the compass of one full 
 breath. A sentence not periodic, a period not jointed into 
 members, or a member not symmetrical with the rest, are 
 thoroughly foreign to its workmanship. The rhythms which 
 it employs are not the longest, but the middle or the shorter. 
 It wishes the last words of a period to be rhythmical and 
 firmly set, as on a base squared by line and rule — thus re- 
 versing, in the structure of these final clauses, its practice 
 in the ordinary harmonies of words. Ordinarily it makes 
 word slide into word. But it would have the closing words 
 
 1 Panegyr. 50.
 
 ORATORY 195 
 
 of a period to stand clear, and be seen, as it were, from every 
 side. The figures which it uses are not those which have an 
 antique air, or which are notable for majesty or impressive- 
 ness or ruggedness ; but rather the luxuriant and voluptuous 
 in which the elements of illusion and stage-glitter are strong. 
 To speak generally — the ' smooth ' or ' florid ' style is in es- 
 sentials the opposite of the austere." ^ 
 
 The discourses of Isocrates were meant to be read aloud, not 
 spoken. The chief marks of his prose are avoidance of poeti- 
 cal diction, an ampler period, elimination of hiatus, certain 
 rhythmical feet at the beginning and end of sentences. His 
 diction is characterized by a purity as great as that of Lj^sias, 
 though with a bent toward grandeur, at least in arrangement. 
 Where the austere school relied for effect on words, he relied 
 on composition ; in other words, he developed a literary prose 
 rhythm. Hiatus he so carefully avoided that Dionysius 
 went through the whole Areopagiticus without finding a single 
 example. He uses sparingly figures of thought, but abun- 
 dantly figures of language (antithesis), balance of clauses 
 (parisosis), assonance (paromoiosis). The distinctive mark 
 of the Isocratic period was amplitude. "Instead of aiming," 
 as Jebb well expresses it, "at the vigorous compression fittest 
 for real contests, it rejoices in rich diffuseness — it unrolls 
 itself like a clear river, luring the hearer on from bend to bend 
 through the soft beauties of its winding course." But avoid- 
 ance of hiatus involved excessive care, and might easily be- 
 come artificial. The perpetual seeking for symmetry in bal- 
 anced clauses is apt to become tiresome. The great fault 
 of his ample periods is monotony. They are too smooth, too 
 polished, too stately. His rhetoric is "for the palaestra, not 
 for the battlefield." Dionysius, comparing a passage from 
 Isocrates' De Pace^ with one from Demosthenes' Third 
 Olynthiac,^ finds the former a "display of graces," the latter 
 a "stirring summons to action." Isocrates was greatly defi- 
 
 > Dc comp. verb, c. 23. ' §§ 41-50. ' §§ 23-32.
 
 196 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 cient, the ancients agree, in that vehemence of oratory in 
 which the feeHng of the speaker fires his audience. The dis- 
 courses were not only not meant to be spoken, they were not 
 even adapted for declamation. Hieronymus, trying the ex- 
 periment, found they would not bear delivery with raised 
 tones or passion or gesture. "Isocrates had dropped his 
 voice to the key in which a slave reads aloud to his master." 
 His strongest claim upon our attention is that he was the 
 founder of literary artistic prose. He was not a great orator. 
 His chief merit is to have made possible the oratory of De- 
 mosthenes ; but his greatest influence upon the oratory of the 
 world was effected by means of Cicero, through whom the 
 doctrine and the style of Isocrates have influenced the rhetori- 
 cal and other prose not only of ancient but of modern times. 
 "His beauty and his majesty are genuinely Greek," says Jebb ; 
 "and until the sense of these is wholly lost Isocrates must 
 always rank as one of the great masters of expression." As 
 Isocrates' oratory was epideictic, meant for display, we 
 should look for its modern counterpart not to the courts or 
 to parliament, but to the pulpit. It is there, as a French 
 scholar pointed out, that we must go for something like the 
 effect of Isocrates' periods, perhaps especially to Bossuet, 
 who acknowledged indebtedness for his st3de to Plato, De- 
 mosthenes, and Isocrates. 
 
 There was one of Demosthenes' contemporaries — five 
 years older — whom many of the ancients preferred to De- 
 mosthenes himself. This was Hyperides, "the Sheridan of 
 antiquity." There was good ground for this popular pref- 
 erence. Hyperides had greater natural oratorical gifts, for 
 he combined vehemence and force with ready wit and grace ; 
 he was as simple and natural and easy as Lysias, and could 
 be as smooth and polished as his great master Isocrates. 
 Besides, he might have been a great actor if he had chosen. 
 We have to take his reputation mainly on faith, because the six 
 orations which Egyptian papyri have restored to us in the past
 
 ORATORY 197 
 
 century are so badly mutilated that no adequate judgment 
 can now be formed of his excellences. But the ancients had 
 fifty-two authentic speeches, and we have a great Greek critic's 
 estimate based thereon. "Hyperides hits his mark neatly," 
 says Dionysius, "but seldom lends grandeur to his theme. 
 In the embellishment of his diction he has surpassed Lysias ; 
 in the astuteness with which he disposes his subject-matter 
 he has surpassed all. Then he keeps to the issue throughout, 
 and insists on the really strong points of his arguments. He 
 commands the resources of a large intelligence ; he has ex- 
 quisite charm ; and while he appears simple is no stranger to 
 consummate art. He is especially to be imitated for the sub- 
 tlety and symmetry of his narrations, as well as in respect to 
 the avenues by which he approaches his case." ^ 
 
 But the fullest ancient notice of him is from the treatise 
 On Sublimity : ^ ''If merits were to be counted, not weighed, 
 Hyperides would stand far before Demosthenes. He has 
 more tones in his voice than Demosthenes, and a greater 
 number of excellences. In fact, like the pentathlete, Hy- 
 perides is second-best all round ; for the prize given in any 
 branch, he comes after the specialists, but before the laymen. 
 Besides imitating the merits of Demosthenes in everything 
 except composition, Hyperides has further mastered in an 
 eminent degree the excellences and graces of L3^sias. He 
 expresses himself in the plain manner where it is fitting — not 
 with the sustained and unvarying tension of Demosthenes ; 
 and he has moral persuasiveness, with the flavor of an un- 
 studied suavity. Incomparable wit plays about him ; his 
 sarcasm is in perfect keeping with political oratory ; he is 
 adroit with the weapons of irony ; his jokes are not jarring, 
 ill-bred, or importunate, in the 'Attic' manner of that genera- 
 tion ; when he does pull to pieces, he does it neatly, with much 
 humor, and with the pungency of well-aimed banter ; and with 
 all this, there is a l)eauty of style beyond imitation. He has 
 
 » Vet. Script. Cena., V. 6. « £)e Sublimilate, c. 34.
 
 198 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 great power of pathos ; in relating legends, he has a certain 
 luxuriance, and a facile inspiration that wafts him most 
 smoothly from point to point on his way." 
 
 But as Hyperides had many of the striking gifts of Fox 
 and Sheridan, he had also many of their personal weaknesses. 
 He lacked the great moral force that made Demosthenes 
 supreme, and he did not spend himself on the composition of 
 his discourses as did the author of the De Corona. But it is 
 an immense pity that his speeches are lost or fragmentary ; 
 for, besides his grace and wit and polish, he is as easy to read 
 as Bacchylides, and almost as charming as Simonides ; so that 
 he would probably have been the most popular of the Greek 
 orators with modern readers. The best idea of his power and 
 his charm may be gained through an extract from his Funeral 
 Oration for Leosthenes and his comrades who fell in the 
 Lamian War: "With us, and with all the living, they shall 
 ever have renown ; but in the dark under-world, suffer us to 
 ask, who are they that will stretch a right hand to the captain 
 of our dead? May we not deem that Leosthenes will be 
 greeted with welcome and with wonder by those demigods 
 who bore arms against Troy ? . . . Aye, and there, I ween, 
 will be Miltiades and Themistocles and those others who made 
 Hellas free, to the credit of their city, to the glory of their 
 names — men whom this man surpassed in courage and in 
 council, seeing that they repelled the power of the barbarians 
 when it had come against them, but he forbade its approach ; 
 theij saw the foemen fighting in their own country, but he 
 worsted his enemies on the enemy's soil. And surely they who 
 gave the people trusty proof of their mutual love, Harmodius 
 and Aristogeiton, will count no friends so near to themselves, 
 or so faithful to you, as Leosthenes and those who strove 
 beside him, nor will they so consort with any dwellers in the 
 place of the dead. Well may it be so, since these have done 
 deeds not less than theirs, but, if it may be said, even greater ; 
 for they put down the despots of their own city, but these put
 
 ORATORY 199 
 
 down the despots of Hellas. O beautiful and wonderful 
 enterprise, glorious and magnificent devotion, O soldier- 
 ship transcendent in dangers, which these men offered to the 
 freedom of Greece !" 
 
 Then, turning to the kinsfolk of the dead, he concludes on 
 this wise: "It is hard, perhaps, to comfort those who are in 
 such a sorrow ; grief is not laid to rest by speech or by ob- 
 servance ; rather is it for the nature of the mourner, and the 
 nearness of the lost, to determine the boundaries of anguish. 
 Still we must take heart and lighten pain as we may, and re- 
 member not only the death of the departed, but the good name 
 also that they have left behind them. We owe not tears to 
 their fate, but rather praise to their deeds. If they came not 
 to old age among men, they have the glory that never grows 
 old, and have been made blessed perfectly. Those among 
 them who died childless shall have as their inheritors the im- 
 mortal eulogies of Greece ; and those of them who have left 
 children behind them have bequeathed a trust of which their 
 country's love will assume the guardianship. More than this 
 — if to die is to be as though we had never been, then these 
 have passed away from sickness and pain and from all the acci- 
 dents of earthly life ; or if there is consciousness in the under- 
 world, and if, as we conjecture, the care of the Divine Power 
 is over it, then it may well be that they who have rendered 
 aid to the worship of the gods in the hour of its imminent 
 desolation are most precious to that Power's providence." ^ 
 
 Aeschines, the great rival of Demosthenes, five years his 
 senior, was of humble origin. As a boy he seems to have 
 assisted, as a sort of janitor, in his father's school ; later he 
 earned his living as scribe or secretary of certain inferior 
 magistrates ; then he became an actor, playing generally 
 tritagonist parts ; still later he was clerk of the Assembly. 
 His experience as actor and as assembly-clerk was of 
 great service to him in his preparation for a public career. 
 
 • The longer translations are all by Jebb.
 
 200 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 In the one he got excellent training for public speaking; 
 through the other he became familiar with Attic law and 
 the procedure of the courts. He had most of the prime requi- 
 sites of success as an orator, and prided himself on his natural 
 faculty of eloquence. He was fine-looking and of imposing 
 presence. His voice was magnificent and under perfect con- 
 trol. He had doubtless learned on the stage how effective 
 for him was the statuesque pose of Pericles, so that when 
 speaking in the Ecclesia he always refrained from vehement 
 action, keeping his hand under his robe. He aimed at dig- 
 nity, eloquence of manner, grace, and harmony, and the word 
 €VKoafj.La (good Order, in private and in public) was much on his 
 lips. He piqued himself, too, on his culture, and was fond of 
 quoting from the poets. His rhetoric was fluent, lucid, often 
 vehement, and generally characterized by elegant gravity. 
 His gift of narration or exposition is marked. He could assume 
 a gayety and lightness that was foreign to Demosthenes. But 
 he lacked his loftier thought and honesty of heart. The 
 moral elevation that characterized Demosthenes was wanting. 
 
 It is impossible for us now to do justice to the eloquence of 
 Aeschines, for during practically his whole public life he was, 
 as the head of the Macedonian party, in direct antagonism 
 to Demosthenes, and we come to him under the spell of the 
 latter's vehement denunciation. We read his speech against 
 Ctesiphon mainly for the light it may throw upon the reply 
 in which Demosthenes defended at once himself and his 
 mother-city. More than four-fifths of the jurors decided for 
 Demosthenes then; the whole world sides with him now. 
 For us Demosthenes is the patriot, and necessarily Aeschines, 
 who, consumed with jealousy and hatred, opposed all that he 
 did, bears much of the odium of the traitor. 
 
 If we could read them without prejudice, his three speeches, 
 against Timarchus, on the Embassy, and against Ctesiphon, 
 which are easy to read and have much interest and charm, 
 (the "three graces," the ancients called them) would be
 
 ORATORY 201 
 
 more popular. Time and space allow us here to give only a 
 single specimen of his eloquence, and, in fairness to Aeschines, 
 that should come from the peroration of the speech against 
 Ctesiphon. "Had he closed that noble performance," says 
 Lord Brougham, "before the last sentence, nothing was ever 
 more magnificent than his peroration would have been. . . . 
 Nothing prevented it from holding forever the place which 
 the celebrated oath in Demosthenes holds at the head of all 
 the triumphs of rhetoric, except that it was followed by this 
 divine passage, to which its merit is little inferior, and to 
 which it manifestly gave the hint." ^ 
 
 "And when at the end of his speech," says Aeschines, "he 
 calls as his advocates those who shared his bribes, imagine 
 that you see on this platform, where I now speak before you, 
 an array drawn up to confront their profligacy — the bene- 
 factors of Athens : Solon, who ordered the democracy by 
 his glorious laws, the philosopher, the good legislator, en- 
 treating you, with that gravity which so well became him, 
 never to set the rhetoric of Demosthenes above your oaths 
 and above the law ; Aristides, — who assessed the tribute of 
 the Confederacy, and whose daughters, after his death, were 
 dowered by the State — indignant at the contumely threat- 
 ened to Justice, and asking Are you not ashamed f When 
 Arthmios of Zeleia brought Persian gold to Greece, and visited 
 Athens, our fathers well-nigh put him to death, though he was 
 our public guest, and proclaimed him expelled from Athens, and 
 from all the territory that the Athenians rule; while Demos- 
 thenes, who has not brought us Persian gold, but has taken 
 bribes for himself, and has kept theyn to this day, is about to 
 receive a golden wreath from you! And Themistocles, and 
 they who died at Marathon and Plataea, aye, and the very 
 graves of our forefathers — do you not think they will utter 
 a voice of lamentation if he who covenants with barbarians 
 to work against Greece shall be — crowned?" 
 
 1 Dissertation on the Eloquence of the Ancients.
 
 202 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Schoolboys know the stories which biographers of De- 
 mosthenes tell about his indomitable persistency in over- 
 coming the difficulties that beset the path to the goal of his 
 ambition — to be an orator : how with pebbles in his mouth 
 he spoke against boisterous sea-waves ; how he shut himself 
 up in a grotto to work, shaving one side of his head to pre- 
 vent his yielding to the desire for human company ; how he 
 copied all Thucydides eight times ; how he was laughed at by 
 the Assembly on his first appearance, but was consoled by an 
 old man, who, remembering Pericles, said Demosthenes re- 
 minded him of the great Olympian, and was encouraged by 
 an actor who found him moping about the Piraeus and who 
 offered to give him lessons in elocution. These may be only 
 pretty tales ; but the fact is that physically he was greatly 
 handicapped for the career of an orator. A delicate and 
 sickly child of studious bent, he was sensitive and perhaps 
 morbid, having no part in ordinary physical training ; retir- 
 ing, doubtless shy of the comradeship of boys, and keep- 
 ing at home with his mother and younger sister, he grew 
 up spare and rather delicate in frame, and was never in robust 
 health. He must have had some sort of impediment of speech 
 difficult to overcome. The term "water-drinker," applied 
 to him by Aeschines, would suggest that he had to be careful 
 of his diet ; and the reproach of Aeschines, that he had never 
 been a sportsman, certainly indicates that he was not athletic, 
 and may imply neglect of exercise. At any rate he was in- 
 ferior in physique and voice and ready speech to the stalwart 
 and spontaneously eloquent Aeschines. But he had genius, 
 and every difficulty yielded to that. 
 
 He may not have copied Thucydides eight times, but it 
 is certain that he had been nourished by the study and 
 moulded by the spirit of that philosophic historian. " He 
 borrowed from him," says Dionysius, "his rapid movement, 
 his terseness, his intensity, his sting." He may not have been 
 actually a pupil of Isaeus, but the influence of Isaeus
 
 ORATORY 203 
 
 was direct and strong. Another of his literary masters was 
 certainly Isocrates. In matters of form — periodic sentence- 
 structure, avoidance of hiatus, euphonic arrangement — ■ 
 Demosthenes learned much from the great rhetorician ; but 
 in the application of all that he learned his genius taught him 
 to find a happy mean. The tradition that he was Plato's 
 pupil, which has little evidence to support it, is perhaps only 
 another instance of the perpetual attempt to associate great 
 names in the relation of master and pupil. Cicero says that 
 he read Plato studiously, even heard him, and had so stated 
 in a letter.! Plutarch makes the same statement, on the 
 authority of Hermippus, adding that he was much benefited 
 in style by the lessons learned from Plato.^ But as to direct 
 indebtedness modern scholars are divided. 
 
 Certainly from both Plato and Isocrates he might have 
 learned that the principles of ethics apply to states as well as 
 individuals ; that justice is binding on nations as well as on 
 their citizens, even more binding on the former "by reason 
 of their immortality." "Beware," he urged, "of exhibit- 
 ing as a nation conduct which you would shrink from as 
 individuals."^ "It is not possible, Athenians," he says 
 again, "it is not possible to found a solid power upon op- 
 pression, perjury, and falsehood. Such an empire may en- 
 dure for the moment or for the hour ; it may perhaps blossom 
 with the rich promise of hope, but time finds it out, and it 
 drops away of itself. As in a house, a vessel, or any similar 
 structure, the foundations should above all be strong, so 
 should the principles and ground-work of conduct rest upon 
 truth and justice." ^ By both the rhetorician and the phil- 
 osopher he would be strengthened in the conviction that the 
 dignity of eloquence must be enhanced by giving it a moral 
 content. According to Demosthenes the statesman must 
 show a fearless sincerity and speak the truth at all costs ; he 
 
 » Brut., 31, 121. » Plut. Demosth. 5. 
 
 » Contra Lept. 136. * Olynth. ii. 10.
 
 204 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 must have a profound sense of responsibility; good inten- 
 tions are not enough, a statesman must know what can be 
 done when he advises the people — and all that he might 
 have learned from the great Pericles as Thucydides represents 
 him. 
 
 Demosthenes' first work, after the suit against his guard- 
 ians, was writing speeches for the law-courts, the earliest of 
 them in private or civil cases — mostly for others to speak — 
 of which some nine or ten genuine ones are extant ; but all that 
 was, consciously or unconsciously, only a preparation for 
 public life. His greatest speeches in political trials {against 
 Androtion, agamst Leptines, against Denwcrates, against Aristo- 
 crotes), are still more distinctly preludes to his political career. 
 From his first close contact with public affairs in 355 b.c. 
 to his death in 322 everything is grouped around his de- 
 fense of Athens against the encroachments of Macedon. That 
 is what the world knows him by. Some eighteen extant 
 speeches — deliberative or forensic — belong to this period. 
 
 Demosthenes' speeches conform to the general Greek rules 
 of arrangement. All have an exordium, narrative or state- 
 ment of the case, argument, and peroration. But he is 
 "studiously irregular ; narrative, refutation, and proof are 
 blended or displaced according to the requirements of the 
 case." Here will be found directness of aim, a noble sincerity, 
 moral elevation, every proof of minute and incessant diligence, 
 close grappling with detail; further "a dramatic animation 
 of manner, a quick interchange of question and answer, a 
 pressing vehemence, sudden surprises, and novel turns of 
 thought or phrase, an incisive irony." One especially praise- 
 worthy peculiarity of his style Lord Brougham notes : ''Not 
 even in the beauty of collocation and harmony of rhythm is 
 the vast superiority of the chaste, vigorous, and manly style 
 of the Greek orators and writers more conspicuous than in the 
 abstinent use of their prodigious faculties of expression. . . . 
 Mark, I do beseech you, the severe simplicity, the subdued
 
 ORATORY 205 
 
 tone of the diction, in the most touching parts of the old man 
 eloquent's loftiest passages. In the oath when he comes to 
 the burial-place where they repose by whom he is swearing, 
 if ever a grand epithet were allowable, it is here — yet the 
 only one he applies is aya^ous." i 
 
 Demosthenes has pathos, but it is "austere and Thucydi- 
 dean in its reserve." He has little humor, and is not jocose 
 or witty. "No one ever laughs at Demosthenes' jokes except 
 Ctesiphon," sneered Aeschines. He is always serious; if he 
 has a fault, it is in this. Yet surely if a man ever had cause 
 to be serious, it was Demosthenes. "Complete, but helpless 
 prescience" — that characterizes Demosthenes. He clearly 
 foresaw all that was coming, yet could not avert it. All that 
 is in the face of the statue of the Vatican, a face that has 
 always haunted me more than any other ever chiselled in 
 marble. His was the voice of a lost cause that was right and 
 of supreme importance, not to Athens only, but to the whole 
 civilized world and to all coming ages. 
 
 The public career of Demosthenes may be divided into the 
 period before and the period after the battle of Chaeronea. 
 But there was something more and deeper than ordinary 
 patriotism in his opposition to the encroachments of Mace- 
 don. The policy which led up to and ended in Chaeronea 
 was simply the culmination of Demosthenes' life-purpose. " It 
 is a mistake," says Professor Butcher,^ "to think of him solely 
 as the author of Philippics, or to allow the main episode to ob- 
 scure the life. It was not the struggle with Macedon that gave 
 a bent and purpose to his thoughts. From the outset it was 
 his aim to revive public spirit in Athens. . . . He had studied 
 the history of Athens and gathered from it all that was no- 
 blest in her past, uniting the elements in an ideal portrait, 
 which became to him henceforth a power that moved his im- 
 agination and controlled his reason. This portrait of national 
 
 • Inaugurnl Discourse (Speeches, vol. iii. p. 87). 
 
 * Demosthenes, p. 140.
 
 206 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 character he set before his countrymen as an object of loving 
 imitation. Athens must identify herself with her liest mo- 
 ments and be made to feel that she was never more truly her- 
 self than when at her grandest." In all that he was simply fol- 
 lowing the admonition of the great Pericles. " Fix your eyes," 
 says the elder statesman, " upon the greatness of Athens until 
 you become filled with the love of her, and in the presence of 
 the spectacle of her glory reflect that this empire has been ac- 
 quired by men who knew their duty and dared to do it." 
 
 In his early career he was, naturally, simply an Athenian, 
 perhaps not seeing far beyond Attic borders. But after 
 Philip's capture of Olj'^nthus "the Athenian was sunk in the 
 Hellene." His prophetic spirit had moved on "from the 
 menaced independence of Athens to the vision of a death- 
 struggle between barbarism and Hellenism, between lawless 
 aggression on the one side and dignified freedom on the 
 other." In such a struggle Athens was bound to be the 
 champion of Greece ; her whole past history pledged her to 
 it. "Communities, like individuals," he said, "should ever 
 strive to mould their futures by the noblest chapters of their 
 past." ^ Plutarch says the Stoic Panaetius found that "the 
 principle which appears in the greater number of the speeches 
 of Demosthenes is that the honorable (to KaXov) is to be chosen 
 for its own sake." This spirit was the glory of Athens, and to 
 preserve it was a higher duty than self-preservation ; it was 
 the proud distinction of Athens that there had been crises in 
 her history when she staked her very existence. It was in 
 recalling such crises that he rose to the moral height of the 
 great oath. The statesman is responsible for prudent ad- 
 vice ; the issues of events are with the gods. Had he mis- 
 advised Athens, had she made a mistake in opposing Philip ? 
 "I say that if the event had been manifest to the whole world 
 beforehand, if all men had been fully aware of it, if you, 
 Aeschines, who never opened your lips, had been never so loud 
 
 > De Cor. § 95.
 
 ORATORY 207 
 
 or shrill in prophecy or in protest, not even then ought Athens 
 to have forsaken this course, if Athens had any regard for her 
 glory or her past or for the ages to come. Now, of course, 
 she seems to have failed ; but failure is for all when Heaven 
 so decrees. . . . But never, Athenians, never can it be said 
 that you erred when you took upon you that peril for the 
 freedom and safety of all ! No, by our fathers who met 
 the danger at Marathon ; no, by our fathers who stood in 
 the ranks at Plataea ; no, by our fathers who did battle on the 
 waters of Salamis and Artemisium ; no, by all the brave who 
 sleep in tombs at which their country paid those last honors 
 which she had awarded, Aeschines, to all of them alike, not 
 alone to the successful or the victorious. And her award was 
 just. The part of brave men had been done by all. The 
 fortune experienced by the individual among them had been 
 allotted by a power above man." 
 
 "Two thousand years have challenged," says Jebb, "a 
 tradition which lives and will always live, wherever there is 
 left a sense for the grandest music which an exquisite lan- 
 guage could yield to a sublime enthusiasm — that when 
 Demosthenes ceased, those who came from all parts of Greece 
 to hear, that day, the epitaph of the freedom which they had 
 lost, and a defense of the honor which they could still leave to 
 their children, had listened to the masterpiece of the old 
 world's oratory, perhaps to the supreme achievement of 
 human eloquence." "At the head of all the mighty masters 
 of speech," says Lord Brougham, "the adoration of ages has 
 consecrated his place ; and the loss of the noble instrument 
 with which he forged and launched his thunders is sure to 
 maintain it unapproachable forever." 
 
 As I have read or reread the Greek orators in the past few 
 months the question has often occurred to me : How much is here 
 offered that is indispensable to people of culture who are not 
 Greek scholars ? Antiphon, Isaeus, and Lycurgus, Greek schol- 
 ars must know, in order to have a fair understanding of the de-
 
 208 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 velopraent of Greek oratory, including legal procedure. Anti- 
 phon has a further claim, as one who was admired by and who 
 much influenced Thucydides. Isaeus ' relation to Demosthe- 
 nes gives him, too, a valid claim on our attention. Lycurgus, 
 pupil of Isocrates and financial statesman, with his single ex- 
 tant speech, helps to illustrate the maturity of civil eloquence. 
 But the man of culture who reads for the sake of literature 
 might perhaps neglect these, even if he could still read Greek. 
 As to Lysias it is different. Not a great orator, but a con- 
 summate speech-writer and literary artist, he merits atten- 
 tion from a wider circle than Greek scholars — from all 
 would-be public speakers who wish to acquire the difficult 
 art of stating a case and of saying things simply, directly, 
 and felicitously. Isocrates, too, deserves the study of public 
 speakers, and of all who, like Walter Pater, wish to achieve 
 an elaborate style in writing. A modern will perhaps tire 
 of him sooner than of Lysias ; but he is not for that reason to 
 be neglected. If the orations of Hyperides were preserved 
 in fairly good form, he would demand attention as much as 
 Lysias, and would be more eagerly read. But Demosthenes 
 — the most perfect orations of Demosthenes, e.g., the Third 
 Philippic, the Chersonese speech, and above all the De Corona, 
 these are in Greek oratory of a class apart. They belong to 
 the great literary creations of the world. Taken as a whole, 
 and especially in the great passages that every one knows, 
 they make the same impression as the Agamemnon and Pro- 
 metheus of Aeschylus, the Antigone, Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at 
 Colonus, and Ajax of Sophocles, as Thucydides, much of 
 Plato, the Danae of Simonides, certain odes of Pindar, and 
 Homer. "Such sermons feed me," an old friend used some- 
 times to say to me. Demosthenes's greatest passages feed 
 the spirit and are tonic to the higher nature. Such is the 
 thrill the classic masterpieces can still give. 
 
 Charles Forster Smith.
 
 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 It has long been customary to begin the history of philos- 
 ophy with Thales of Miletus. Tradition places his birth 
 in 640 B.C., and allows him the ripe age of ninety years. 
 There were doubtless philosophers before him, but they have 
 been forgotten so completely that Thales stands out in the 
 imagination of many historians as a wonder in need of ex- 
 planation, and has furnished the stimulus for much discourse 
 about the origin of philosophy. His preeminence seems to 
 rest, however, mainly upon a casual statement of Aristotle, 
 who named Thales as the first of those who looked for the 
 beginnings of things in water, air, or fire. There is consider- 
 able advantage in being named first by an authority. If 
 you were not first before, you may be first forever after. It 
 is the past, not as it was, but as it is recovered in the imagina- 
 tions of men, that makes history. So if you ask the cosmos, 
 the Greeks did not originate philosophy ; but if you ask 
 tradition, they did. Their originality is defined by the fact 
 that they were so long believed to be original. If we knew 
 their predecessors, that would help us to understand the 
 Greeks and might alter their future reputation ; but it could 
 not alter the fact that for twenty-five centuries they have 
 been the originators for the Western world of that peculiar 
 kind of curiosity which we call philosophy. The course of 
 events helped them wonderfully, but that was a character- 
 istic of the course of events, the bare fact of the Greek habit 
 of mind enduring amid vicissitude. We may therefore claim, 
 using the words of a favorite Greek distinction, that while 
 philosophy did not begin with the Greeks in the order of na- 
 ture, it does begin with them in the order of ideas. First 
 p 209
 
 210 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 they were not, but first they are. They achieved a distinc- 
 tion which nature had denied them. 
 
 Thales was their first philosopher. No undoubted word 
 of his remains among the Hterary fragments of his time. He 
 was a dim figure when men began to speak of him, yet you 
 could paint his picture as readily as if he sat for your brush. 
 With a shrewdness surpassing that of the Ionian farmers, 
 he worked up a corner in the olive market. As an engineer 
 he changed the course of a river and shaped a highway. He 
 had a great reputation for political skill. Like all true 
 philosophers, he was absent-minded, to the delight of the 
 milkmaid who saw him fall into a pit while looking at the 
 sky. He foretold gin eclipse of the sun, and thus provided 
 a sidereal date for historians. He wrestled with the calen- 
 dar, observing the progress of the seasons, the yearly march 
 of the sun, the summer and the winter solstice, the vernal 
 and the autumnal equinox. By the aid of geometry he meas- 
 ured the distance of ships at sea, and determined the height 
 of the pyramids from their own shadows. He attempted to 
 explain the inundations of the Nile. He made the first re- 
 corded observation on electricity. And with creative imag- 
 ination, suspicious of the permanency of things, he saw the 
 earth rising to the surface of a primitive ocean, sustained and 
 fed by its waters so that it blossomed and lived. From water 
 it came and into water it would again disappear; when 
 thoroughly dried by the heat of the sun, which process at 
 times made it crack and quake, it would once more sink to 
 be moistened" and refreshed anew. Upon his tomb, we are 
 told, the foll&wing inscription was written : — 
 
 You see this tomb is small ; but recollect 
 The fame of Thales reaches to the skies. 
 
 Such is the Thales of history. Would he recognize his por- 
 trait? Probably not, but it is the privilege of the great to 
 be painted.
 
 PHILOSOPHY 211 
 
 Thales is typical of the half of Greek philosophy if we have 
 in mind its dominant interests, for the Greeks cared very 
 much about two things — the order of nature and the excel- 
 lence of man. He was followed by a succession of eminent 
 men to whom nature was ever fresh and interesting, and who 
 pictured her with so much enthusiasm that at times they fell 
 to singing. It is worthy of note that, in the long tradition 
 about them, judgment is passed not only upon their opin- 
 ions, but also upon their style, whether they told of nature in 
 rough and untutored speech or with the accent of a finer 
 voice. It is evident that they admired her. Since they 
 regarded her whole-heartedly as furnishing man's abode 
 wherein he stands upright and looks aloft to the stars, they 
 did not charge her with inadequacy in providing and sustain- 
 ing vision. She was self-contained. The hand of God had not 
 shaped her, but the gods, if such there were, lived joyously 
 and superbly in her pleasant places or moved darkly in her 
 mysterious regions. Or she might herself be divine, embrac- 
 ing somehow the principle of divinity as the principle of her 
 order and beauty, or as the perfect type of being whose es- 
 sential excellence was her stimulus to productivity. 
 
 Thus Greek philosophy, addressing itself to the cosmos, 
 was natural and free. It sought to discover the world's 
 order, regarding the many indications of that order without 
 disparagement or suspicion. It could distinguish between 
 opinions which are hastily formed under the pressure of ex- 
 perience, and knowledge which is illuminated by pains-tak- 
 ing reflection. But it did not conceive itself as something 
 different from science. Or we should rather say, perhaps, 
 that the distinction between science and philosophy is one 
 which would have amused the Greeks more than it would 
 have enlightened them. Parmenides, it is true, thought he 
 had found that short road to truth which the moderns call 
 philosophy, a road which runs, as ho tells us, far from the 
 boaton track of men, avoiding such commonplaces as night and
 
 212 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 day, the sun, the moon, and the stars, the genesis of man, Uving 
 things, and the spectacular scenes of the cosmic play, but 
 leading to the unshaken heart of persuasive truth, to the 
 goddess of wisdom, whither the seeker may be carried by 
 vigorous steeds whose breath is fire, and tended by radiant 
 maidens whose seductions are wholly syllogistic. Thither 
 coming as a suppliant before the fast-bound doors of 
 truth's most distant dwelling-place, he may be allowed to 
 enter and hear high discourse of being and non-being ; and 
 having learned that only being can be, he may return to 
 the beaten track of men, in need of no higher information 
 and quite sure that inquiry into the natural order of 
 events is a little undignified. The immediate effect of the 
 excursion of Parmenides seems to have been, however, to 
 make men think about the indestructibility of matter, 
 and not to drive the eager horses of the soul around the 
 sphere whose centre is everj^vhere in general but nowhere 
 in particular. Plato immortalized Parmenides by mak- 
 ing a dialogue about him and affording scholars a rich 
 opportunity for the writing of explanatory books ; for Par- 
 menides was too great a figure for the great dramatist of 
 ideas to overlook. Indeed we may say it would have been 
 a pity if the versatile Greek mind could not have produced 
 at least one modern philosopher. Let us therefore set Par- 
 menides down as an instance of that versatility, and accord 
 him this praise, that since he would think about infinity, 
 beginninglessness and endlessness, spacelessness and time- 
 lessness, and completeness so complete that its incomplete- 
 ness completed, he none the less wrote of these things in 
 hexameter. 
 
 Before Parmenides, Anaximander, a fellow-toTVTisman of 
 Thales and his pupil according to tradition, had made the 
 perilous venture of the infinite. But he beheld it as the 
 boundless reaches of space, diffused through which was a 
 burning and steaming mist which tended to condense from
 
 PHILOSOPHY 213 
 
 every direction toward the centre, so that at last the earth 
 was formed there, a cyhndrical mass, self-poised, in need of 
 no support. Around it whirled masses of clouds through 
 which flamed here and there the inclosed fires which men call 
 the sun and moon and stars. Having got the earth, this man 
 went on to conceive life as originating in the sea, and birds 
 as fishes thrown out upon the land to change their fins to 
 wings. And it seemed incredible to him that man had no 
 prehuman history, for how could he have originated as a hu- 
 man infant and lived through his long infancy in the cosmic 
 struggle without parental care ? Through struggle living 
 beings, he thought, attain the forms they have, so that it is 
 only natural justice that at last all should return once more 
 to the boundless source from which they came, in order that 
 nothing should finally triumph in another's death. Let us 
 remember that Anaximander was born 2521 years ago. 
 
 It would be a pleasure to go on from such beginnings and 
 tell in detail the story of the Greek cosmologists : of An- 
 aximenes, bending, as it were, before the great cosmic wind 
 which blows the earth and planets through space, holds the 
 stars nailed, as it seems, against heaven's dome, and by its 
 thickening and thinning produces mist, rain, hail, and snow, 
 and, banked up in masses on the horizon, sends back the sun's 
 rays so reflected as to stretch a bow of colors over the earth ; 
 of Heraclitus, obscure in speech, but praising clarity of 
 thought, for whom this cosmos, made neither by man nor 
 God, was and is and will be fire everlasting, kindled according 
 to measure and, quenched according to measure, who sought 
 in the universal conflagration the divine law by which the 
 ever-changing things of the world are steered, the hidden har- 
 mony which to the mind is sweeter than any sounded music 
 to the ear; of Empedocles and Anaxagoras, wrestling with 
 the new-found notions, of changeless matter and contriving 
 force, the former finding>love and hate, which others, in fear 
 of being anthropomorphic, call attraction and repulsion, the
 
 214 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 architects of nature, shaping her in an upward struggle 
 through many haphazard, grotesque, and hideous forms to 
 those shapes which now please the eye ; and the latter find- 
 ing intelligence at work wherever from out the intricate mix- 
 ture of primal matter anything becomes distinguished ; and 
 of Democritus, who dissolved matter into space, so that matter 
 became atomic in structure and possessed only of those natural 
 movements which he conceived to belong to bodies left free, 
 so that order and selection arose solely from the interference 
 of material particles, until space was filled with systems of 
 worlds, and man followed to look out upon it all and laugh 
 for joy because the world could be such a merry dance and so 
 beautiful, a fit place for the sajdngs of Democritus, which 
 men have called golden, as "Strength of body is nobility 
 in beasts of burden and strength of character is nobility in 
 man." It would be a pleasure indeed to tell the story, but 
 it would be only a part of Greek philosophy, the part which 
 subsequent generations who knew not how to find nature in- 
 spiring neglected and preserved only by the way. The work 
 of scholars has rescued many a fragment. We piece them 
 together and, in our amazement at the resulting picture, 
 wonder if it can possibly be correct. It may not be, but the 
 greater wonder is that the pieces can make such a picture. 
 
 To speak of the Greek cosmologies as pictures is perhaps 
 an appropriate figure. They look at this distance more like 
 vast impressionistic sketches of the cosmos than the laborious 
 study of definite and isolated natural processes. The Greeks 
 lacked the instruments of experiment and precision which 
 we possess. They seem to have used color lavishly and line 
 little. They apparently liked sweep and disliked detail. If 
 we knew more about them — and the fragments of Empedo- 
 cles contain many startling and minute observations — we 
 might think differently about them. But we know them only 
 through tradition. That tradition leaves them as yet un- 
 surpassed in fertile conceptions about the order of nature,
 
 PHILOSOPHY 215 
 
 but leaves unchallenged for later ages the triumphs of ex- 
 perimental research. In thinking of these Greek pictures 
 painted with a fine imagination, with a spontaneous and free 
 love of natural things, and thinking also how men later had 
 to recover nature through a bitter struggle, through the 
 social ostracism of many a scholar, through imprisonment, 
 torture, and even death, against the charge of infidelity and 
 of corrupting all that is ennobling in human life, one feels 
 that there has been a tragedy in the life of thought. Athens, 
 it is true, loved not the cosmologist. She persecuted Anax- 
 agoras because he said that the sun was a rock on fire, and 
 Plato pictures Socrates disgusted with his book; but no 
 scholar is recorded as wishing to destroy him or his writings. 
 Yes, Athens loved not the cosmologist. She loved man 
 — not, however, man in general, but Athenians first and 
 other Greeks when necessary. Yet she loved so well that 
 her admiration begot conceptions universal in their vision, 
 even if she denied their application to slaves and barbarians. 
 The philosophy of Athens is humanistic through and through. 
 Even Aristotle, who performed the astonishing task of bring- 
 ing all Greek philosophy together in one imposing system, 
 never forgets the supreme emphasis on man. Many his- 
 torians who can conceive a given philosophy only as somehow 
 the outcome of a preceding philosophy have seen in Socrates, 
 Plato, and Aristotle a reaction against Democritus and his 
 predecessors, against a demoralized situation in life and 
 thought which the cosmologists had created. But the dates 
 alone make such a conception highly improbable. Democ- 
 ritus and his predecessors, with very few exceptions, lived 
 and died in the colonies of Greece. Attic philosophy was 
 city-born and city-bred. It grew out of society, politics, 
 and education, and not out of contemplation of the stars or 
 of the order of nature. It was philosophy taking a fresh 
 start because human relations had become acute and interest- 
 ing, not because speculations about nature had produced
 
 216 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 chaos. Attic philosophy is thus in its beginning not a de- 
 velopment of Greek philosophy, an evolution out of preceding 
 systems. Its roots are elsewhere, in the city streets, by the 
 dinner-table, in the theatre, the courts, the market-place. 
 It is of a city grown conscious that she has beaten the Per- 
 sian and become mistress of her own destiny. 
 
 It was a townsman and contemporary of Democritus, the 
 Sophist Protagoras, who went to Athens and said, " Man 
 is the measure of all things." He probably did not intend 
 to condense a theory of knowledge into an epigram or to 
 invite men to embrace a purely individualistic standard of 
 morals. The remark was bold, but not cryptic. It indicated 
 that since the measure of things is taken by man, the methods 
 and standards of measurement should be the chief objects of 
 human interest and the important factors in education. He 
 seems indeed to have been about the first professional edu- 
 cator, and consequently deserves much praise and much 
 blame. He did not propose to make young men competent 
 artisans, tradesmen, or statesmen, but he proposed to make 
 them good, to improve their manners, address, and con- 
 versation, to perfect their measuring ability, to make them 
 wise without compelling them to master anything but 
 themselves. He regarded all this as very important, and 
 called the teaching of it the teaching of virtue, just as we 
 call it the giving of a liberal education. He was very 
 much admired, and parents paid him large sums for 
 his services. He had many imitators. Young men in 
 those days apparently desired to be made virtuous, and there 
 was profit for the makers. So the Sophists prospered. 
 Their prosperity, however, led them into corruption, so that 
 to-day they are seldom regarded as the proper model for 
 teachers. Yet were Protagoras alive, I doubt not that he 
 would be the leading professor of philosophy in the world. 
 
 Historians have paid too much attention to the character 
 of the Sophists and too little to their existence. But their
 
 PHILOSOPHY 217 
 
 existence was the significant thing. It points to the fact 
 that the Greeks wanted to be the makers, not only of cos- 
 mologies or of beautiful buildings and statues or of immor- 
 tal verses, but also of superior men. It points to a social 
 eagerness for excellence. But there is considerable danger 
 in teaching young men after the manner of Protagoras, the 
 danger of cleverness and superficiality, of self-assurance 
 without clarity of mind, of producing virtuosity instead of 
 virtue. Socrates felt this danger keenly. He had a strange 
 affection for young men, a curious combination of the father, 
 the mother, and the sweetheart. He worried about their 
 destinies, and he liked simply to look at them and have them 
 near. To him there was nothing more attractive than beau- 
 tiful youths with eager minds. It is just because they have 
 minds that they are in danger of missing something, of run- 
 ning off on the wrong track, for the mind it is which makes 
 the estimate of life. That the estimate is made in ignorance 
 Socrates knew. He had tried the fact out by asking others 
 and by searching his own soul. He was conscious that he 
 had no knowledge to impart, but he could not leave young 
 men, for he loved them too well. So he bound them to him 
 by making them suspicious of the traditional sources of 
 knowledge and by stimulating in them a restless intellectual 
 hunger. Because it was he who created the appetite, they 
 looked to him for its satisfaction, and he kept them busy 
 making it keener. They always came so near the truth that 
 they would surely have it the next time. They thus became 
 more dependent on him than on the truth itself. Plato's 
 Phaedo may not be history, but it is dramatically true. 
 Socrates was about to die. His death meant the greatest 
 possible loss. Was there any compensation? There might 
 be if the soul could not die, if Socrates were going only on a 
 journey, and death did not mean to be utterlj'' gone. So they 
 talk about immortality and try hard to be convinced. But 
 Socrates is cautious. He will not be too sure. His great
 
 218 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 hold on them has been to keep them thinking, yet he would 
 now make them sure if he could, and certainly one can be 
 sure of being ready for the truth when found. But the cup 
 of hemlock is too strong an argument. They go away from 
 that last scene broken men, suffering an irreparable loss. 
 There was no Socratic philosophy, and that is why all efforts 
 to state it fail. There was only a man who could never be 
 forgotten. 
 
 Among the followers of Socrates was a youth named 
 Aristocles. Men dubbed him Plato for two good reasons, 
 his breadth of back and his breadth of mind. He was born 
 appropriately upon Apollo's birthday. He tried, however, 
 to escape his manifest destiny by turning philosopher, but 
 never quite succeeded, unless we are paradoxical enough to 
 see in him philosophy's greatest success. There is a story 
 that he wrote plays before he met Socrates, but after that 
 meeting burned them, and the strange conclusion has been 
 drawn that he made plays no longer. To explain, however, 
 whj^ his writings are dialogues, ingenious scholars have sup- 
 posed that he was in the habit of asking questions of his pupils 
 and reproduced his practice in literary form. In justifica- 
 tion of their opinion it should be stated that their own method 
 of teaching was probably different. It is far saner, if we are 
 going to use our imagination in the matter, to suppose that 
 for the young Plato the spectacle of Socrates, the ugly and 
 penniless Sophist, holding the youth of Athens enraptured 
 in a philosophical argument which could never end, but must 
 be interrupted by the intrusion of affairs, was a spectacle 
 more dramatic than any he had yet conceived. And surely 
 there are possibilities enough in the eager search for truth 
 on some pleasant afternoon with congenial friends, when one 
 seems to have all the time there is, and the argument has 
 carried us far away from the worries and details of life into a 
 clear and untroubled atmosphere where the prize hovers, the 
 secret our souls covet, and then, just as we are about to grasp
 
 PHILOSOPHY 219 
 
 it, it eludes us, or life intervenes with a trivial or a weighty 
 call. Plato's philosophy is the mind's aspiration thwarted 
 by circumstance and its own subtlety. Its literary form had 
 to be dramatic. 
 
 Committed thus to the dramatization of the conflict of 
 ideas, Plato depicted the comic and tragic in the life of 
 thought. His sweep is wide, but he likes best the themes 
 distinctlj^ human. He makes generals discourse on courage. 
 Sophists on wisdom, rhetoricians on rhetoric, psychologists 
 on the soul, friends on friendship, politicians on politics, the 
 pious on piety, and it is usually the play of ideas rather than 
 the conclusion which absorbs him. So if we look for a sys- 
 tem of philosophy in Plato, we shall probably not find it ; 
 but if we look for none, we may find most of the philosophies 
 ever written. That is why those who call him master are 
 so often unwilling to call one another disciples, and there 
 is consequently nothing so Platonic as the spectacle of Pla- 
 tonists contending. The greatest tribute I have ever heard 
 paid to his versatility is the assertion that "all that is good in 
 Aristotle is Platonic, and yet Aristotle thoroughly misunder- 
 stood his master. " 
 
 It is impossible in one lecture on the whole of Greek philos- 
 ophy to speak of Plato's contributions. It might be suflS- 
 cient to note that he makes philosophy necessary for every 
 one who reads him, and that he has produced more philos- 
 ophers than anybody else. But I should not leave him 
 without some expression of the things which are found in 
 him perennially significant. I turn to the Republic. It is 
 an odd city which Plato would have us build, a little town 
 secured from invasions from without, with the people told 
 a pleasant mj^th about their natural capacities, with all prop- 
 erty in the hands of the state, with women the equals of men 
 in all but strength of body, with a scarcity of poets because 
 only those who speak the truth are to be allowed, with every- 
 body adjusted to his proper work, with no families, but with
 
 220 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 the citizens perpetuated through the idylUc mating of the 
 choicest youths and maidens, with no opportunity for pastry- 
 cooks and consequently none for physicians, with a system 
 of education adequate to keep everybody free from corrup- 
 tion, and with my colleagues and me to manage it all. It is 
 an odd state, providing much that we all hope for and daring 
 much which in later years many have gladly approved. 
 Plato may have taken it literally, but I doubt it. The young 
 men he kept discussing it with Socrates all day long made 
 him admit it was impracticable, and that it could exist per- 
 haps only in heaven ; and they drove him at last to tell them 
 a story to divert their insistent questions and send them away 
 thinking of the perfect city in heaven and the life of man 
 on earth. The story is itself a commentary on the Republic. 
 It tells how a man named Er paid a visit to the other world 
 and returned to report how he had seen the souls there choose 
 their lot for their next pilgrimage on earth. "He who had 
 the first choice drew near and at once chose the greatest 
 tyranny; his mind having been darkened by folly and 
 sensuality, he did not well consider and therefore did not 
 see at first that he was fated among other evils to devour 
 his own children. But when he came to himself and saw 
 what was in his lot, he began to beat his breast and lament 
 over his choice. Instead of blaming himself as the author of 
 his calamity, he accused chance and the gods and everything 
 rather than himself. Now he was one of those who came 
 from heaven, and in a former life had dwelt in a well-ordered 
 state ; but his virtue was a matter of habit only, and he had 
 no philosophy. And this was more often the fortune of those 
 who came from heaven, because they had no experience of 
 life : whereas in general the dwellers upon earth, who had 
 seen and known trouble, were not in a hurry to choose."^ 
 How inconsistent, we exclaim, to put his city in heaven as 
 the perfect pattern of goodness and then to assert that those 
 
 ^ Jowett's translation.
 
 PHILOSOPHY 221 
 
 who come from heaven are hasty, rash, and tyrannous, while 
 those who have experienced the troubles of earth are cautious 
 and sane ! But with Plato such is human life — to see the 
 glories of heaven and need the discipline of earth. That, I 
 believe, is why he made Socrates the hero of his plaj's, as the 
 man who suffered and the man who saw. It is no wonder 
 that some of the Church Fathers thought that Plato must 
 have been a Christian, or that his philosophy could be de- 
 scribed in words borrowed from his own Phaedo as a medita- 
 tion on death. 
 
 There is that in Plato, but there is much besides, for the 
 vision of the perfect city in heaven evokes more than the 
 baffled cry of human experience. The Republic is a confi- 
 dent summons to read the virtues of the individual in the 
 larger letters of virtue socially conceived. Plato solves too 
 light-heartedly the civic and social problems with which men 
 have been busy ever since they began trying to live together. 
 His thought moves confined by the limited boundaries of the 
 Greek city state and the traditional and aristocratic classifi- 
 cation of its citizens. His city is military, not economic and 
 industrial. In his later years he planned to tell how that 
 city would conduct itself in war, as if in such conduct its su- 
 preme excellence would be disclosed. Those who entertain 
 the ideal of a successful democracy are offended by his pa- 
 ternalism and his contempt for the men who toil, the creatures 
 whom God made mostly of clay. Yet through these limita- 
 tions of time and place and circumstance runs the conviction 
 that it is futile to place any great confidence in individual 
 virtue unless it is the reflection of a virtuous social order. 
 For man is the maker of cities, and is to be judged by the 
 kind of city he makes. The types of government and the 
 types of man go hand in hand. Are men just, courageous, 
 temperate, and wise? Look to their city. That is Plato's 
 challenge to civilization, a challenge which knows no limita- 
 tions of time or place or circumstance.
 
 222 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 There is a similar universality in Plato's ideas on education. 
 We may be amused at students who try to master astronomy 
 while they neglect the stars. We may doubt that mathemat- 
 ics is the best medicine for the mind. We may be suspicious 
 of the civic eflficiency of philosophers trained principally in 
 dialectic. Many a detail may look absurd if we take it seri- 
 ously. What Plato desires to have us take seriously, how- 
 ever, is his conviction that education can promote civic 
 virtue only as by some means or other it succeeds in fixing 
 attention on the impersonal and the general. Nothing, he 
 urges, is clearly understood unless it is understood in its con- 
 text and seen in its relations. That is why if the minds of 
 the young are tied to the isolated and detached, no proper 
 estimate of anything is attained, and the desires and emotions 
 become enslaved to the immediate and the temporary. And 
 that is why philosophy is needed in education and should be 
 its life, insisting everywhere that there is a context apart 
 from which there is no intelligent reading of a single word in 
 the book of nature or in the book of man. To know is to get 
 at the meaning of those books, to find out what ideas they 
 contain. It is not to count their words or to make an index. 
 
 Plato's theory of education and his theory of ideas are the 
 same thing under different names. For individual things 
 are but the incitements to the comprehension of what they 
 amount to, what they express and illustrate, what they per- 
 form, what they signify, to what they point. Only as we 
 thus comprehend them can we tell what they are. Nothing 
 else suffices, but this suffices to reveal to an open mind a hint, 
 perhaps the vision, of the pattern which their meanings 
 make. It is a wonderful pattern, Plato would have us be- 
 lieve, for which no fashion of human speech can be too exalted ; 
 for when seen it discloses how each thing, even the com- 
 monest, is an indication of a perfect and abiding type, and 
 how these types themselves point to that idea of good "which 
 is the cause of all that is beautiful and right, parent in the
 
 PHILOSOPHY 223 
 
 visible world of light and its lord the sun, and in the world 
 of mind the sovereign source of intelligence and truth." 
 
 To turn from Plato to Aristotle is to turn to a rather tire- 
 some mass of technical terms, labored definitions and dis- 
 tinctions, frequent repetitions, cross-references, unfulfilled 
 promises of more on the same subject, and the absence, ex- 
 cept in very occasional passages, of anything like literature. 
 The first impression one is apt to receive is that here is a 
 rather crude attempt to glorifj^ the obvious. We are told 
 that it is better to be well than to be ill ; therefore the best 
 man will be healthy. It is better to be rich than to be poor ; 
 therefore the best man will not be poor. It is better to live 
 to a ripe age than to die in infancy ; therefore the best man 
 will be mature. It is better to live in society than in solitude ; 
 therefore the best man will be a citizen and have intimate 
 friends. ISIen are distinguished from other animals by pos- 
 sessing reason ; therefore the best man will be a reasoner ; 
 he will live rationally and exercise his rational faculty for the 
 pleasure of it. But this is not very thrilling, we exclaim. 
 Yet it is very sensible, Aristotle replies. But we want to be 
 enthusiastic. That is just the trouble, says Aristotle; too 
 many people prefer enthusiasm to sense. And we look out 
 on life and find it so, and realize that we have fallen into the 
 hands of a physician. 
 
 But with Aristotle as a whole it is the world's case that is 
 diagnosed — not that we are to suppose that the world is ill, 
 but that it is the business of philosophy to get at its structure 
 and its functions, its anatomy and its physiology, so to speak. 
 For the world, on account of its ceaseless productivity, is not 
 unlike a living being. What it is, therefore, what it does, 
 how it does it, and with what results, are the kind of ques- 
 tions which it is profitable to ask. If they could be truthfully 
 answered, the answers would constitute just that intellectual 
 achievement which the reason of man so much desires and 
 which seems to be reason's most significant enterprise.
 
 224 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 For that enterprise, however, no single science is sufficient, 
 because nature is too manifold and diverse. Often she is 
 wayward, hiding her processes from the inquisition which 
 would force her into unvarying regularity. Knowledge must 
 recognize, therefore, that it can deal only with the general 
 and the usual, and that there are factors irreducible to law. 
 Yet even so, it must also recognize that in the field of the gen- ' 
 eral and the usual there are differences of aspect and of opera- 
 tion which cannot be expressed in any common terms. So 
 we find in Aristotle a system of sciences, each with its own 
 special field assigned and with its relation to its fellows de- 
 termined. Physics, psychology, anatomy, physiology, nat- 
 ural history, politics, rhetoric, ethics, poetics, mathematics, 
 logic, metaphysics, sometimes as elaborate treatises and some- 
 times as special monographs on chosen topics — we find them 
 all, the great and almost single source of Europe's informa- 
 tion for centuries. Much of his work has no present signifi- 
 cance or value, but much of it still remains a living contribu- 
 tion to current thought. Would you write on rhetoric or 
 art, on psychology or ethics, on logic or metaphysics, on poli- 
 tics or the constitution of states, you will not slight the 
 Stagirite if you are wise. And slighting him is hardly pos- 
 sible, he is so intricately connected with the whole structure 
 of scholarship. He is responsible for the long life of many an 
 error ; he has ensnared many a feeble mind by affording it a 
 terminology which could be made a substitute for thought ; 
 but, taken all in all, he is one of the intellectual marvels of 
 history. 
 
 Among the Aristotelian writings, the misnamed Meta- 
 physics has a unique place. It is, like the other sciences, 
 restricted in its scope, inadequate for the grasp of nature in 
 her complexity. Yet it has a universality which none of 
 these possesses, for all objects of all thought fall within its 
 domain if we will conceive them stripped of those special and 
 peculiar characters which demand separate study for their
 
 PHILOSOPHY 225 
 
 comprehension. If there are any propositions true of all 
 things in spite of their variety, if anything can be said of na- 
 ture which is applicable to her as nature simply, rather than 
 as nature qualified and diverse, these propositions and say- 
 ings will constitute a science at once restricted and universal. 
 Or we may observe that since only a system of sciences is 
 adequate to the understanding of nature, those features of 
 nature which make this necessary may themselves be scru- 
 tinized and formulated. Now that which is most generally 
 characteristic of things is motion, but motion not restricted 
 to movement from place to place. It comprises such pro- 
 cesses as growth, decay, and qualitative change, so that with 
 Aristotle the germination of a seed and the generation of a 
 thought are as much motion as the revolution of a planet. 
 This motion is itself the principle of diversification, and is 
 concretely given in the ceaseless transformations of nature, 
 so that nature may be generally conceived in terms of mat- 
 ter and form. But the conception must provide for the 
 transition of matter into forms not yet realized, for it is just 
 such transitions that we observe. Form and matter are not 
 welded together as two metals might be forced to unite. The 
 stone becomes a doorstep, the boy a man, the man a general. 
 Motion is forward, progressive, productive, and it is ceaseless. 
 We are not to think of it as once beginning and by and by 
 to end, but we should rather think of it in its own terms, mak- 
 ing the fact of transition itself the initial and important fact. 
 With Aristotle, however, motion, just because it is transition, 
 is not self-sustained. We may not think of matter, even if 
 we endow it with the capacity for all possible forms, as shap- 
 ing itself, nor of form molding matter, as by a contriving 
 hand. The transition must be mediated, and in the works 
 of man's art it is mediated by the interposition of man him- 
 self as an efficient and designing factor. But the observation 
 cannot be transferred to nature without modification, since 
 we find there no artist at work and no evidence of a designing
 
 226 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 power. Indeed, human efficiency itself presents in its own 
 terms the situation we find in nature, for man's activity is 
 also that motion of transition from what is now to that which 
 shall be hereafter. But it contains at least this clue : man's 
 activity is evoked by the presence in him, realized in thought, 
 of that result he would attain. That presence does not cause 
 his hands to move nor guide his tools ; it is no substitute for 
 his muscles ; but it is that without which the movements of 
 his hands would be merely local and unproductive. Democ- 
 riius might appear to be satisfied with a world where things 
 in the last analysis only change their relative positions; but 
 for Aristotle, if such a change is at the same time the move- 
 ment of matter into form, the transition of the possible into 
 the actual, of stuff into a finished and different work, of a seed 
 into a flower and a germ into a man, there must be in nature 
 some factor whose presence has power to evoke activity and 
 keep it continuously sustained. " On such a principle heaven 
 and earth depend. Its life is always such as is ours in those 
 brief moments when our life is at its best." In these words 
 Aristotle speaks of what his master Plato called the good, 
 and joins him in the Greek refusal to think of nature's ulti- 
 mate meaning in less exalted terms. 
 
 Aristotle's philosophy is thus a philosophy of nature, a 
 cosmology once more, rich in its allusions to the past, 
 grounded in the history of Greek thought and developed 
 from it. Greek philosophy did not die with him, but it never 
 surpassed him — so completely, it would seem, did he realize 
 the Greek conception of nature as a living process the signifi- 
 cance of which is to be understood in the light of what it 
 achieves. Modern philosophers have rarely understood 
 this Greek conception of nature. Long habituated to see in 
 final causes either evidence of the existence and activity of 
 God or a silly substitute for mechanical forces, they have 
 looked for the significance of nature in theology or in physics, 
 turning the life of man into a religious problem or a chemical
 
 PHILOSOPHY 227 
 
 formula. "With Aristotle the significance of nature is seen 
 in her products. We may discover how these are produced, 
 but we should not conceive them to exist for the sake of prov- 
 ing that there is a God or that there are mechanical laws. 
 If they prove anything at all, they prove nature's capacities, 
 point to her possibilities, demonstrate that she can generate 
 and support the ideal. That she works by mechanical 
 means, Aristotle never doubts. But he sees in mechanism 
 instrumentation only. Since nature does produce, and there 
 was consequently a time when any specific product did not 
 yet exist, that time is inadequately conceived unless it is 
 prospectively conceived. The future is ideally in it, waiting, 
 as it were, for the quickening stimulus to live. Thus, as 
 Santayana puts it, with Aristotle " everything ideal has a 
 natural basis and everything natural an ideal development." 
 
 Yet Aristotle is a humanist. It is man that thinks of na- 
 ture after this fashion, and the world with which philosophy 
 deals is consequently man's world. All things exist for man. 
 This splendid Greek presumption sounds boastful to ears 
 accustomed to conventional and professional modesty. With 
 Aristotle, however, it is onlj^ the statement of an obvious 
 fact. He did not think that all things were made for man, 
 nor that philosophy is necessarily tainted with anthropo- 
 morphism, important only as a human pastime. He thought 
 it quite obvious that of all nature's products man is the one 
 who most successfully comprehends her. But since she pro- 
 duced him, his own natural significance cannot be less than 
 that of his discoveries. There are two types of philosophy 
 which for Aristotle are preposterous, — the one which can 
 view nature as a play where man is only a spectator or a 
 shifter of the scenes, and the one which seeks a significance 
 for human life apart from the natural history of man and a 
 vision of his possibilities. 
 
 There is no more to tell, unless one should go on to recount 
 how Greek philosophy still lived, unsupported by the na-
 
 228 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 tional life which gave it birth, to be adopted by other peoples 
 and adapted to other needs. It was its fate to become a 
 philosophy which men should study and lecture about. 
 What its permanent elements are, I do not know, and so I 
 have not ventured to state. Yet I may end with this asser- 
 tion : as a student of philosophy, I know of no period in the 
 history of human thinking which so well repays study, which 
 so sustainingly quickens the mind and encourages the soul. 
 There may be greater philosophical conceptions than those 
 the Greeks have left us, but I know not where they are un- 
 less they are in the future. Their attainment I can believe 
 to be possible only after we have recovered, as a habitual 
 possession, the Greek conception of nature which conceives 
 her as adequate for man's outlook because she has been ade- 
 quate for his production. The Phaedrus of Plato closes 
 with a prayer offered by Socrates, standing under a spreading 
 plane-tree on a grassy slope above the cool and Hmpid Ilissus, 
 in the shade of blooming and fragrant agnus castus, and with 
 the air summerlike and clear, alive with the song of the 
 cicalas : — 
 
 Dear Pan, and other gods who may be here, grant that I may 
 grow beautiful within. May what I have with what I am be 
 friendly. May I count the wise man rich, and let my store of gold 
 be such as only a sober man could take as his spoil. 
 
 Do we need anything else, Phaedrus? For me this is prayer 
 enough. 
 
 Frederick J. E. Woodbridge.
 
 HELLENISTIC LITERATURE 
 
 Our notions of what is peculiarly Greek are obtained 
 almost exclusively from the masterpieces of Greek art and 
 literature in the classical period. This is largely due to an 
 accident in the transmission of Greek literature. If the 
 interests of the earlier part of the Christian era had led to 
 the preservation of large masses of prose and poetry from 
 the centuries which form the subject of this chapter, it 
 would not be possible, without danger of contradiction, to 
 describe the Greeks as a people singularly serene and sane, 
 to isolate them from other races by virtue of their sense of 
 proportion and exquisite taste. As it is, the art of Sophocles 
 and his contemporaries embodies all that is distinctively 
 Greek to the layman of to-day. For most readers, the three 
 centuries preceding the birth of Christ mark a violent change. 
 An aftermath, an evening glow, its colors now subdued, 
 now brilliant, suggesting the disappearance of a greater 
 light rather than the coming of any new splendor — the 
 Hellenistic or Alexandrian period even to-day stands in the 
 minds of many people, including classical students, for 
 decadence. The term "purist" stamps the morbidly pure; 
 "Hellenistic" seems to suggest to some students of literature 
 a diseased form of the truly Hellenic. On the contrary, 
 the work of these later centuries is wholesome and of peculiar 
 significance, not so elevating as the odes of Pindar and the 
 dramas of Sophocles, yet of no less, but different import to 
 the modern reader. 
 
 The Greek world conquered by Alexander lost the equi- 
 poise of earlier days ; in social life it became unregulated, 
 dissolute ; in artistic expression it lacked the dignity and 
 
 229
 
 230 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 restraint that set the Greeks apart from other races in iso- 
 lated grandeur — up to recent times this was the conven- 
 tional estimate. The historian of the period begrudged it 
 praise, reminded his readers that every age of great achieve- 
 ment is succeeded by a period of depression, that the glory 
 of the Elizabethans makes later centuries seem dull and 
 drab, and in general that once literary standards have been 
 established there is nothing left to accomplish but slavish 
 imitation, elaboration of rules of art, and hstless mechanical 
 application of such canons to the old themes, with such 
 inventiveness as is possible in the refinement of details, 
 — that very refinement killing all vigor and spontaneity. 
 
 To-day the Hellenistic period, and, in general, the later 
 centuries of Greek life and thought, are occupying our 
 attention more largely than the classical period. The dis- 
 coveries of papyri in Egypt are slowly filling in the tre- 
 mendous gaps in Hellenistic literature. With new zest the 
 student of religion is finding in these later days the seed- 
 ground of Christianity. The history of language, of ancient 
 law and political organization, is set in a new light. The 
 student of literature is moved to look more deeply into the 
 scanty remains of artistic literary expression, to view them 
 and the life which they portray with a cheerful optimism 
 bred of historical insight, to renounce the depreciatory 
 estimate of earlier historians and substitute a reasonable 
 appreciation of what these artists achieved. They are no 
 longer to be regarded as a degenerate stock, but as a natural 
 and inevitable development, perhaps inferior to the earlier 
 growth, but at least a development, and desirable for the 
 best good of future generations. 
 
 In the days of the great tragedians of the fifth century, 
 Greek society was split up into a number of small municipal 
 units — Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Thebes — city-states, as we 
 now call them, each essentially independent, though by turns 
 securing supremacy for a time over the other city-states.
 
 THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD 231 
 
 Each city-state was compactly organized, each individual 
 under the constraint of an absolute family government, 
 each family linked indissolubly to other families of the 
 same tribe, the various tribes forming a close corporation — 
 the city-state. In such an organization, the attitude of the 
 individual toward the various duties and privileges of citi- 
 zenship is very different from what it is in modern society. 
 Much as he may gain from the consciousness of being a 
 member of the body politic, the average citizen easily be- 
 comes part, and a very small part, of a large machine ; a 
 considerable portion of his life is absorbed in involuntary 
 service; the state is omnipotent; individual initiative is 
 circumscribed. Moreover, whatever intellectual or indus- 
 trial liberty may as the result of general enlightenment be 
 open to him, the beginning and the end of his daily experience 
 and effort are found almost invariably in the small mu- 
 nicipality. Any widening of his horizon, any attempt to 
 construct a larger sphere of activity for himself and his 
 fellows, involves a disruption of the compact organism of 
 which he is an infinitesimal part. One of these munici- 
 palities, Athens, furnishes the literature of the fifth and part 
 of the fourth centuries, the literature to which we refer as 
 characteristic of the best Greek product. This literature 
 is a local product, and reflects the ideas of a small number 
 of people of very remarkable equipment ; the product can 
 continue only so long as this city-state continues ; by reason 
 of its size, isolation, and the limits it sets to individual 
 achievement, the city-state cannot hope for long life. The 
 best that may be hoped is that the ideas and the form of 
 expression may be transmitted to others, but in the very act 
 of transmission, the form and the content of the litera- 
 ture must change with the changed social and political con- 
 ditions of the new era. 
 
 This aggregate of political units, independent of one 
 another, and continually at odds with one another, the
 
 232 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 master-minds of Philip and Alexander of Macedon found it 
 easy to convert into a monarchy. Just before the beginning 
 of our period the new monarchy is firmly entrenched, and the 
 Macedonian conqueror has not only begun to organize the 
 Greek citj'-states into a new and larger national unity, but 
 has forced his way into foreign lands, conquering as he 
 goes, carrying with him Greek armies and Greek influence, 
 disseminating Greek culture among peoples hitherto known 
 to the Greeks as barbarians. The tremendous extent of 
 Alexander's conquests made it necessary to expand the 
 means of communication between remote parts of the new 
 empire ; military routes were established in the course of 
 conquest ; commercial routes followed the path of con- 
 quest ; the remote East and the remote West were made 
 accessible to each other. Meantime the change from city- 
 state to monarchy resulted, to the municipality, in a release 
 from bondage. In varying degrees in various communities, 
 individual opportunity is widened. The Greek is no longer 
 confined in his ambitions and in his daily experience to his 
 city-state ; he follows with interest the adventures of his 
 fellow-countrymen in Asia Minor and Eg>pt ; often he 
 sallies forth from his native city to establish himself along 
 the new paths of communication opened up as the result of 
 conquest. Plato and Aeschylus did indeed travel ; now 
 more often the average citizen travelled, carrying with him 
 the heritage of ideas and ideals that Plato and Aeschylus 
 conceived or transmitted. In this new contact of Greek 
 and barbarian, the Greek spirit becomes an animating force 
 infused into the chaotic mass of non-Greek peoples. Civili- 
 zation is no longer limited to Greece with Athens as its 
 centre. Greek intermarries with barbarian, assimilates his 
 rehgious views and rites, modifies his own local dialect under 
 the influence of other Greeks from other localities with 
 whom he is thrown ; there ensues an amalgamation of Greek 
 with Greek, and of Greek wdth barbarian, that affects all
 
 THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD 233 
 
 literature written in Greek ; it is now a world-literature, no 
 longer Athenian literature. 
 
 The centre of interest in this new cosmopolitan age is the 
 individual man. Biography emerges as a recognized liter- 
 ary type. History, in the hands of Polybius, becomes a 
 study of great personalities. Philosophy throws emphasis 
 upon individual ethics, constructs the ideal wise man. 
 Comedy turns from the political and social problems of the 
 city-state to universal phases of individual experience. 
 Love-poetry as a frank expression of personal feeling recovers 
 the position once gained for it by Alcaeus and Sappho. In 
 literary technique, character-treatment is successfully ini- 
 tiated, though never becoming so deeply introspective as in 
 modern literature. Even the artist's own personality is 
 more often intruded in the poetry of this period than 
 earlier. 
 
 Next in importance to the individual are the tangible con- 
 crete objects that surround him. The impetus given to 
 individual freedom and the new world suddenly opened to an 
 already intelligent people resulted in a predominant interest 
 in the realities of the immediate environment. This realism 
 in its wholesome manifestation is a faithful reproduction of 
 action and object, but naturally enough it often tends to 
 reproduce the sordid and base as well as the sublime and 
 elevating. It is this phase of reaHsm, combined with dis- 
 proportionate emphasis on detail and a lack of feeling for 
 some other qualities of the classical form, that leads to mis- 
 interpretation of the art of the period. Wholesome or 
 unwholesome, it is not decadent, but an inevitable evolu- 
 tion. Social experience has widened, and the first reaction 
 upon the new experience cannot produce a literature that 
 detaches the realities from life and idealizes them. The 
 interpretation of concrete environment rather than photo- 
 graphic reproduction is the goal, but as yet somewhat dis- 
 tant. Even in this period, the beginnings of an effort to
 
 234 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 elevate to idealize, are discernible ; Theocritus is a very 
 different sort of realist from Herondas. 
 
 It does not impair the essential truth of these generaliza- 
 tions if one points to traces of cosmopolitanism, of indi- 
 vidualism, of realism in the life and thought of the fifth 
 century before these social and political changes were in- 
 augurated. Euripides is the great forerunner of the Hellen- 
 istic period. In Plato, in Xenophon, in Isocrates, one may 
 find the seeds of many a fruitful growth in the succeeding 
 centuries. So, too, in another direction the classical period 
 leads the way to an important change in the thought and 
 practice of later days. The Ionic philosophers and the 
 enlightened discussion of fundamental problems at Athens 
 toward the end of the fifth century tended to undermine 
 religious faith. Even at that time, individuals questioned 
 the content of myths, doubted the efficacy of worship, de- 
 nied the existence of the Olympian gods. The broadening 
 of experience in the next centuries naturally led to the 
 spread of skepticism. Now the average citizen loses much 
 of his faith in the gods of the old era, in the forms of worship, 
 in the myths. Yet the new age is not irreligious. New 
 conditions require new ways of satisfying the old need of the 
 gods. To some extent the weakening of belief in the Olym- 
 pian gods simply issued in a more receptive attitude toward 
 non-Greek divinities ; the new contact with foreign peoples 
 brought a more intimate acquaintance with foreign, and 
 particularly Oriental cults ; emotional needs were readily 
 gratified by the adoption of orgiastic rites and of religious 
 doctrine permeated with mysticism ; for this, again, the fifth 
 century had prepared the way. But a more significant 
 result of skepticism was the attempt to explain away the 
 supernatural elements of orthodox belief ; the gods were 
 accounted for as human beings whose great achievements 
 justified deification ; and once this was granted, there was 
 nothing in the way of deifying the great contemporary cap-
 
 THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD 235 
 
 tains whose exploits in the present seemed to distinguish 
 them as benefactors of mankind ; not only, then, does the 
 Hellenistic Greek appropriate foreign cults, not only does he 
 lower gods to the position of deified human beings, but he 
 exalts Alexander and his marshals to godship. The full 
 significance of the movement is somewhat exaggerated in the 
 flippant paean of praise that greeted Demetrius Poliorcetes 
 on his arrival at Athens: "As the sun and the stars thou 
 appearest to us with thy companions, as the child of Posei- 
 don and Aphrodite. The other gods are far remote, or do 
 not exist at all, or do not hear us, but thee we see eye to 
 eye, not in wood or stone, but in the flesh. Therefore we 
 pray thee give us peace : for thou art our Lord and Master." 
 Skepticism, however, finds still another outlet. As a sub- 
 stitute for the Divine Will, for Providence, it exalts Fate 
 or Fortune, and regards human activity as subject only to 
 a despotic or capricious mistress. In all these various efforts 
 to meet the needs of the new nation one discerns the influ- 
 ence of contemporary philosophy and a characteristic at- 
 tempt to adapt the older beliefs to new conditions, to avoid 
 an absolute break with the past ; the rationalizing of the gods 
 and the deification of men is in consonance with the ideas of 
 the older generation in worshipping heroes after death ; the 
 supremacy of Fate was a notion fostered in some philo- 
 sophical schools. 
 
 Cosmopohtanism, individualism, a universal intelligent 
 interest in the affairs of a large world, unrestricted freedom 
 to initiate, to develop ; realism, rationalism, absorption in the 
 men and things of the known world, a matter-of-fact expla- 
 nation of the unknown in simple accordance with the hard 
 realities of the known world — these are dominant char- 
 acteristics of the Hellenistic period.^ In our own modern 
 life very similar conditions prevail. Hellenistic literature 
 
 ' The general characteristics of the Hellenistic period are more fully 
 treated in Wendland, Die hellenistisch-riymische Kuliur, Tubingen, 1907.
 
 236 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 is, with some obvious qualifications, essentially modern ; 
 the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, all the intervening cen- 
 turies, have enriched our experience. But in contrast with 
 the dramas of Aeschylus and Sophocles, a play of Menan- 
 der, an idyl of Theocritus, is modern in so far as the general 
 reader may approach and enjoy it without readjustment. 
 The content, excepting certain obvious miiversal truths, and 
 the form of the Prometheus Bound, of the Antigone, of the 
 Frogs of Aristophanes, or any other masterpiece of the Golden 
 Age of Greek Literature, are clearly intelligible only to him 
 who with patience and sympathetic interest transposes him- 
 self into the environment of the Athenian of the fifth cen- 
 tury and tries to visualize the life and comprehend the 
 thought of the city-state. A play of Menander, the Syracusan 
 idyl of Theocritus, the romance of Jason and Medea, are 
 almost immediately intelligible to every modern reader. 
 
 The modermiess of Hellenistic prose and poetry makes it 
 impracticable to define its qualities in general terms. Mod- 
 ernness is equivalent to complexity. Hellenistic literature 
 is a complicated phenomenon. It becomes difficult to 
 describe any literary type, most of all the literature as a 
 whole : simple naturalism over against pretentiousness 
 and pomposity ; here brutal realism, there pictures detached 
 from life, conventionalized or dimly idealized ; the idyllic 
 peace of the country side by side with the bustle of city life. 
 One poet expresses his thought with lucidity and grace, 
 another not only with awkwardness, but with a conscious 
 attempt to hide the thought in a maze of riddles. One poem 
 shows all the restraint and dignity peculiar to the classical 
 period ; another is lavish of detail, indulges in digression, 
 and digression within digression, revels in rhetorical orna- 
 ment and in false emotion. One poet is a Sicilian and reveals 
 the simple manners and poetic imagination of Sicilian 
 peasantry; another is a scholar at Alexandria who has 
 spent his life in explaining the meaning of Homer ; he in-
 
 THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD 237 
 
 trudes unrelated scraps of learning, or at best helps to 
 visualize the splendor and pomp of Alexandria, the new 
 metropolis of the new Greek world. Even the same poet 
 is elusive : read the hymns of Callimachus and then his 
 epigrams; the reconciliation of these two diverse products 
 of the same artist is a severe test of one's appreciation of 
 Hellenistic poetry. No wonder that the histories of the 
 period contain generalizations that even a superficial ac- 
 quaintance with the literature overthrows. All these con- 
 tradictory qualities are but the manifestation of the growing 
 freedom of the individual, his emancipation from the sim- 
 plicity and narrowness of life in one city-state into the 
 varied experiences of a big new world. Each individual, 
 each new experience, supplies the interpretation of the 
 resultant poem. The homogeneity of life in the city-state 
 tended to produce relative uniformity in artistic expression. 
 The new age promotes infinite variety. 
 
 Yet from this infinite variety there emerge a few note- 
 worthy qualities in content and form, of permanent signifi- 
 cance. 
 
 The content of Hellenistic literature was seriously affected 
 by the skepticism of the times. For centuries the higher 
 types of poetry — epos and tragedy — had dealt with the 
 old myths. The conservative tendencies of the people did 
 not readily admit of relinquishing these staple themes ; but 
 the life, the spirit of these myths, was dead or moril)und. 
 It was no longer possible to reinterpret them ; the poets 
 who continue to use them hardly succeed in more than a 
 reproduction of the main outlines, with changes in less 
 important details and lavish decoration of the skeleton with 
 rhetorical ornament. But the antiquarian interest of the 
 day provided a substitute for the old myths. Local his- 
 torians revealed a mine of legends ; many of these were 
 love-stories. To this new material poets and writers of 
 the less serious prose types turned with eagerness.
 
 238 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Along with this use of sentimental legends comes a frank 
 avowal of individual experience ; the epigram, if not the 
 elegy, often depicts the sweetness and bitterness of the 
 poet's real or imagined passion. Under similar social 
 conditions the song-poetry of Alcaeus and Sappho had 
 anticipated this personal love-lyric ; Euripides, again, 
 had emphasized the less agreeable phases of the great 
 passion in his tragedies. But in general the theme was 
 excluded from the sublimer types of poetry in the classical 
 period by the prevalent feeling that love was a mere disease, 
 irreconcilable with Greek notions of soundness and sanity, 
 and inappropriate in the higher forms of artistic expres- 
 sion. Calypso, Circe, Antigone, are no exceptions ; love in 
 Homer and Sophocles is a mere incident, and a cold incident, 
 though the splendid chorus to invincible Eros in the An- 
 tigone and philosophical discussion of love betray the under- 
 currents that reach the surface in the Hellenistic period 
 and have ever since swept through literature with tidal 
 force. 
 
 This new theme,^ however, does not entirely free itself 
 from the limitations imposed by Greek notions. Love 
 is a disease even in the Hellenistic period. The technique 
 of the love-story in prose or in verse is surprisingly simple. 
 Any psychological study is beyond the ken of the inter- 
 preter ; as a disease it appeals to him from a pathologi- 
 cal standpoint. The period of inoculation is short ; a mo- 
 ment is enough. The only efficient cause is that hero 
 and heroine are good-looking ; as an external agent Eros 
 plays a part with his fatal arrow. Once the two have suc- 
 cumbed, the fever waxes with astonishing rapidity ; the 
 interpreter delights to record the symptoms, almost exclu- 
 
 1 Rohde, Der griechische Roman, second edition, Leipzig, 1900 ; Schwartz, 
 Funf Vortrdge ilber den griechischen Roman, Berlin, 1896 ; essays on the 
 romantic vein in classical literature are contained in Some Aspects of the 
 Greek Genius by Butcher (London, 1904), pp. 245 ff., and in Lectures on 
 Classical Subjects by Hardie (London, 1903), pp. 132 ff.
 
 THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD 239 
 
 sively physical — the tremor, the ringing in the ears, loss 
 of speech, pallor, sleeplessness — a harrowing record of 
 love's bittersweetness, oftener with tragic than happy 
 issue. Necessarily emotion is unrestrained, and the earlier 
 convention of self-control breaks down in the realistic 
 love-story of these later days. 
 
 The form of Hellenistic literature is marked by a con- 
 scious effort to achieve style. Even the prose that deals 
 primarily with fact rather than fancy often strives for 
 the phrase. Every language has in its colloquial forms 
 means of enforcing the thought, of pleasing the ear ; Greek 
 was not wanting in such aids to forceful and elegant 
 expression. But the systematic study and conscious use 
 of rhetorical devices became prominent only toward the 
 end of the fifth century. Rhetoric speedily became an 
 important element in education. Philosophy, once hostile, 
 was eventually reconciled to it. In the classical period, 
 however, the movement was in the main controlled by a 
 sense of proportion and good taste. Antithesis and asso- 
 nance were judiciously employed. The ornament was not 
 obtrusive. The style remained direct and simple. But 
 the effect of intensive study soon became apparent. In 
 the Hellenistic period it is no doubt true that sound often 
 takes precedence of sense, that novelty of manner is more 
 essential than novelty of matter. Still this very straining 
 for novelty resulted in an important achievement : the 
 Hellenistic Greeks broke up the long flowing sentences 
 of earlier prose into short abrupt clauses — a style that 
 Seneca and Tacitus cultivated in Latin ; these short, crisp 
 sentences more easily became the vehicle of pointed epi- 
 grams ; antithesis and assonance enforced the point ; rhyth- 
 mical structure and poetic diction enhanced the effect. 
 This decorative style was not always exaggerated in our 
 period. The strong scientific interest of the day held the 
 movement to some extent in check by encouraging a
 
 240 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 rather crude form of expression. But later there developed 
 a florid euphuistic style so sharpl}' in contrast with the 
 directness and simplicity of the earliest standards that 
 reaction was inevitable ; and it is to the unpopularity in 
 later days of this ornamental style that the fragmentary 
 nature of our remains of Hellenistic literature is largely 
 due. The influence of Hellenistic style on Latin literature, 
 however, was potent, and through that medium it became 
 a significant factor in the development of form. 
 
 The injurious effect of striving for the phrase was pro- 
 moted by the practice of declamation. As school exercises 
 and public performances these formal speeches on subjects 
 far removed from the normal experiences of daily life by 
 their artificiality of form and content seriouslj^ interfered 
 vrith. naturalness and spontaneity. The declamation be- 
 came a feeble substitute for the oration of the classical 
 period. Oratory could no longer maintain the prestige 
 it enjoyed under Demosthenes in the city-state. The 
 loss of independence stifled the eloquence that once stirred 
 the people in the Athenian assemblies. The courts fur- 
 nished the chief natural occasion for public speaking, and 
 the speech in court was limited to the case in hand. 
 
 In general the prose types are of slight significance to the 
 student of literature. The scanty remains of Hellenistic 
 prose in any artistic form make it difficult to recon- 
 struct the characteristic features, although there are some- 
 times clear reflections in later Greek and in Latin litera- 
 ture. The scientific prose can hardly be called literature. 
 Much that needs to be said in an account of the culture 
 of the Hellenistic period would be out of place in a de- 
 scription of the prose as a form of art. Posidonius, for ex- 
 ample, exerted a considerable influence upon the content of 
 Latin prose and poetry, but the fragments of his Greek works 
 are so meagre that he is more fitly treated in an account 
 of Latin literature, or of Hellenistic culture, than here.
 
 THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD 241 
 
 Important as the doctrines of various philosophical 
 schools are in the history of thought Hellenistic philos- 
 ophy produced no significant masterpieces remotely com- 
 parable to the dialogues of Plato. Many of the philos- 
 ophers renounced literarj^ composition altogether ; others 
 composed dry technical treatises without literary finish. 
 But an important contribution was made to the develop- 
 ment of literary form in the use of new or remodelled types 
 of prose composition. The philosophical dialogue and the 
 symposium were cultivated ; the epistle — didactic, hor- 
 tatory, consoling — was so common as to be the subject 
 of parody, and the Christian epistle owes much to its Hel- 
 lenistic prototype. The masses were reached with great 
 effectiveness by a presentation in vivid, dramatic prose 
 adorned with figures, similes, quotations, anecdotes, epi- 
 gram, antithesis, and couched in short, conversational 
 sentences, of themes immediately affecting the conduct 
 of life, virtues and vices of all sorts ; this new form, known 
 as the diatribe, an anticipation of the sermon, was influ- 
 ential in unexpected ways ; for its spirit and tone as well 
 as its rhetorical form became so general as to permeate un- 
 related literary types, even of poetry. The Roman satir- 
 ists often echo this Hellenistic preachment to the masses. 
 
 The conquests of Alexander and his successors naturally 
 led to essays in history ; antiquarian activity and scientific 
 interest found expression in manifold prose treatises, but 
 few of them belong in the field of belles-lettres. Such prose 
 was written by practical persons for practical purposes. The 
 best example of it is contained in the history of Polybius, 
 who, however much he renounced the graces of literary style, 
 stands forth as a significant personality, a sane observer of 
 phenomena, a judicious appraiser of causes and effects, 
 vivid in his description of events, keen in analj^sis of character. 
 
 To us to-day a by-product of historical prose is of special 
 interest. History and myth in the Greek mind were not
 
 242 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 so carefully distinguished as they are at present. Fact and 
 fancy were not irreconcilable. Even the Iliad might pass as 
 a historical document. So it comes about that fictitious 
 prose narrative, which bulks so large in modern literature, 
 appears even before the Hellenistic period in the guise of 
 history. Early studies of alien peoples and unknown lands 
 often included legends, piquant love stories, tales of the 
 marvellous, picked up from more or less trustworthy in- 
 formants. Such fiction forms a considerable part of the 
 history of Herodotus. As Greek civilization developed, the 
 increase of travel and acquaintance with barbaric peoples 
 sharpened the contrast between the rude simplicity of un- 
 civilized folk and the complex, often vicious, development 
 of the Greek world; in time, idealists began to illustrate 
 their conceptions of the highest forms of social and political 
 organization by reference to the naturalism of barbaric 
 nations. Philosophers constructed Utopias peopled with 
 fanciful beings living under ideal social conditions. Into 
 such Utopian fiction were interwoven many features, many 
 tales, derived from historians and travelers who blended 
 fancy with fact. Naturally the Eastern world supplied 
 much of the material ; there is a distinct Oriental coloring. 
 In brief, one may detect, before our period and to a greater 
 extent during it, the beginnings of various forms of fictitious 
 prose narrative of love and adventure. Short stories, 
 mainly love-tales, not only adorned the pages of sober his- 
 tory, but were collected separately ; these were sometimes, 
 perhaps generally, grouped with reference to the region 
 whence they came ; an example is the famous Milesian Tales, 
 the date and precise nature of which are uncertain ; anti- 
 quarian interests in our period must have added consid- 
 erably to such collections, and the material was often made 
 over into verse. Utopian fiction as the expression of the 
 philosopher's idealism is as early as Plato ; in the Hellen- 
 istic period Hecataeus and Euhemerus used the form to
 
 THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD 243 
 
 express their rationalistic interpretation of religion ; the 
 latter imagined that he visited three islands on the way 
 from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean ; in the island of 
 Panchaea he found traces of those happy days when the gods 
 were but powerful men on earth ; the people are ideal folk 
 living in a small Paradise. This work was translated into 
 Latin by Ennius. There can be little doubt that tales of 
 travel and adventure without any didactic purpose were also 
 current. 
 
 This fictitious narrative appears in still another form. 
 Closely associated as it was with historical interest and 
 historical narrative, it naturally found its way into Hellen- 
 istic history, and in no other case more significantly than 
 into the accounts of Alexander's conquests. A fanciful 
 narrative of his exploits, in the form of letters, forms the 
 Hellenistic nucleus of what later became by constant accre- 
 tions, the Alexander-romance. The existence of historical 
 romance ^ in our period, therefore, has long been suspected. 
 This suspicion was recently confirmed by the discovery of a 
 papyrus fragment of some length which gives the torso of a 
 story of love and adventure with two famous historical char- 
 acters as hero and heroine, Ninus and Semiramis. The 
 story plays freely with historical facts ; little remains of 
 actual history save the main characters. Such material 
 points the way to that interesting body of later fiction which 
 we know as the Greek Romances, extending from the first 
 century after Christ to the Renaissance. In general, the 
 outlines of all this fictitious fanciful prose in the Hellenistic 
 period are tantalizingly vague ; the modern reader must 
 turn to the Roman novels of Petronius and Apuleius and to 
 the Greek Romances, and seek in the story of the matron of 
 Ephesus, in the adventures of the robbers in Apuleius, in 
 the story of Cupid and Psyche, in the incoherent narrative 
 
 ' Wilamowitz, Greek Historical Writing (translated by Gilbert Murray), 
 Oxford, 1908.
 
 244 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 of harrowing escapades of hero and heroine in the Romances, 
 the developed form of many types of fiction that make the 
 Hellenistic period significant to a reader of the modern 
 novel. It is worth noting that the general trend of such 
 fiction is away from realism ; it is a fanciful ideal world into 
 which most of this narrative carries us. 
 
 In turning to the poetry, we reach more certain ground. 
 The material is greater in amount and more immediately 
 appealing to the modern student. 
 
 The epic is represented by a single complete poem, the 
 Tale of the Argonauts by Apollonius of Rhodes. Tradi- 
 tion says it is the issue of an academic quarrel in which 
 Apollonius contended there was still room for the long, 
 unorganized Homeric epic. His poem, therefore, is remi- 
 niscent of Homer in language and structure. Like Odys- 
 seus, the hero Jason roams over the world and survives 
 many hazardous adventures in his effort to obtain the golden 
 fleece. Severe tasks are imposed upon him which he accom- 
 plishes with the aid of Medea ; she has fallen in love with 
 him at first sight, and by her magic power preserves him from 
 harm ; as a reward the hero steals her from her home and 
 parents and makes her his bride. The poem is full of Ho- 
 meric tags, Homeric diction, similes in Homeric style, though 
 often original in content ; the structure is very loosely 
 episodic, and lacks unity. But the poet reveals considerable 
 descriptive power, both in accounts of perilous adventure 
 and especially in the portrayal of feeling. Much less suc- 
 cessful is his handling of rapid narrative ; the character 
 treatment is weak and ineffectual, except in the case of the 
 hero and heroine and one or two incidental persons. The 
 poet's imagination strains after, rather than reaches by any 
 natural exercise, its very modest attainment. Yet, in spite 
 of some defects, the third book at least, and individual 
 passages in other parts of the poem, show no little power. 
 However simple and superficial the technique of it may be,
 
 THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD. 245 
 
 and however true it is that the reader of Vergil's story of 
 Dido finds in it only occasion for odious comparison, the 
 love-story of Jason and Medea is of permanent value as the 
 earliest complete example in extant Greek literature of 
 a romance in narrative form, essentially of the modern type. 
 Such qualities as it possesses may be illustrated in the 
 poet's description of the first interview between Jason and 
 Medea. Medea is already in love ; she comes to bring him 
 the magic charm ; awaiting his approach, she has bidden 
 her handmaidens sing and dance and gather flowers : — 
 
 But Medea, her thoughts unto nought else turned, upon nought 
 
 could be stayed. 
 Howsoever she sang — but never a song, howso'er she essayed. 
 Pleased her, that long its melody winged her feet for the dance ; 
 But ever she faltered amidst them, her eyes ever wandered askance 
 Away from the throng of her maidens unresting ; and over the ways. 
 Turning aside her cheeks, far off ever strained she her gaze. 
 O the heart in her breast oft fainted, whenever in fancy she heard 
 Fleet past her the sound of a footfall, the breath of a breeze as 
 
 it stirred. 
 But it was not long ere the hero appeared to her yearning eyes 
 Stately striding, as out of the ocean doth Sirius uprise. 
 Who climbeth the sky most glorious and clear to discern from afar, 
 But unto the flocks for measureless mischief a baleful star : 
 Even so came Aison's son to the maiden glorious to see, — 
 But with Jason's appearing dawned troublous misery. 
 Then it seemed as her heart dropped out of her bosom ; a dark mist 
 
 came 
 Over her eyes, and hot in her cheeks did the blushes flame. 
 Nor backward nor forward a step could she stir : all strength was 
 
 gone 
 From her knees ; and her feet to the earth seemed rooted ; and 
 
 one after one 
 Her handmaidens all drew back, and with him was she left alone. 
 So these twain stood — all stirless and wordless stood face to face : 
 As oaks they seemed, or as pines upsoaring in stately grace, 
 Which side by side all still mid the mountains rooted stand 
 When winds are hushed ; but by breath of the breeze when at last 
 
 they are fanned,
 
 246 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Stir they with multitudinous murmur and sigh — so they 
 
 By love's breath stirred were to pour out all in their hearts that lay. 
 
 This distress Jason comforts, asks for the magic herbs, and 
 praises her beauty ; the poet continues : — 
 
 Extolling her so spake he ; and her eyelids drooped, while played 
 
 A nectar smile on her lips ; and melted the heart of the maid 
 
 By his praising uplifted ; her eyes are a moment upraised to his 
 
 eyes 
 And all speech faileth ; no word at the first to her lips may rise ; 
 But in one breath yearned she to speak forth all her joy and pain. 
 And with hand ungrudging forth from her odorous zone hath she 
 
 ta'en 
 The charm, and he straightway received it into his hands full fain. 
 Yea, now would she even have drawn forth all her soul from her 
 
 breast 
 And had laid it with joy in his hands for her gift, had he made 
 
 request. 
 So wondx'ously now from the golden head of Aison's son 
 Did Love outlighten the witchery-flame ; and her sweet eyes shone 
 With the gleam that he stole therefrom, and her heart glowed 
 
 through and through 
 Melting for rapture away, from the lips of the rose as the dew 
 At the sun's kiss melteth away, when the day-spring is kindled 
 
 anew.^ 
 
 This passage not only illustrates the poet's imagery and his 
 power of suggesting emotional distress, but it introduces 
 one immediately to the new atmosphere of Hellenistic poetry. 
 Such unregulated emotion may seem un-Greek, but new 
 social conditions have made the portrayal of such feeling 
 legitimate even in the higher types of poetry. 
 
 Apollonius's poem was one issue of the dispute over the 
 propriety in these later days of the Homeric epic. The 
 chief opponent was Callimachus, who representing a reac- 
 tionary movement, a new modern spirit wearied by the 
 length of the old epic and its tedious iteration of old themes, 
 
 > The Tale of the Argonauts, translated by A. S. Way, London, 1901. 
 (Book III, 947-971, 1007-1020).
 
 THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD 247 
 
 declared that the new world must read its narrative poetry 
 in one sitting, or we should better say, hear it recited at one 
 sitting. To meet this demand the epyllium, or short epic, 
 was cultivated, marked by exquisite finish and a correspond- 
 ing defect of vigor and spontaneity ; in its best form it has 
 the grace and nicety of the miniature in contrast with the 
 broad fresco of the old epic, but in unskilful hands, it is marred 
 by copious detail, pedantry, and insincere feeling — weak- 
 nesses, however, that are not peculiar to the epyllium. 
 One may easily appreciate the charm and the tediousness of 
 this new creation by reading such Latin adaptations as we 
 have in Catullus's Peleus and Thetis, and in the Ciris at- 
 tributed to Vergil. The possibilities were best realized in the 
 fourth book of the Aeneid, but it is doubtful if any Hellenistic 
 poet matched Vergil's achievement. Callimachus himself il- 
 lustrated his conception of the epic in the Hecale, in which was 
 described the entertainment of Theseus, before his encounter 
 with the Marathonian bull, by Hecale, a poor old woman. 
 The poet dwelt upon the details of the humble surround- 
 ings and of the modest entertainment which the kindly old 
 woman offered the hero, to her a stranger. The details 
 were realistic, the setting idyllic ; the atmosphere of simple 
 human kindliness and divine appreciation is reproduced in 
 Ovid's story of Philemon and Baucis. 
 
 In epic poetry, and in some other types, there were often 
 intruded information and allusion and discussion, and even 
 diction, that betray academic interest. Pedantry has long 
 been regarded as a characteristic blemish in Hellenistic 
 poetry. Much of it may be explained as appealing to newly 
 awakened intellectual interests on the part of the reader or 
 hearer ; some of it is doubtless a selfish intrusion of the 
 artist's scholarly interest. But the extent of it is somewhat 
 less than most readers imagine. Not a few types — comedy, 
 the mime, epigram, for example — are quite free from such 
 inartistic features. In the less realistic, less personal poetry,
 
 248 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 pedantry has a freer range. It is a natural issue of the 
 scholarly, scientific tendency of the day. This tendency 
 found unimpeded expression in didactic poetry in which the 
 driest themes were set forth, in various metres, but most 
 frequently in hexameter verse. Of these didactic poems 
 several are important to the reader of Latin poetry ; Aratus's 
 Phaenomena, an astronomical poem, was translated by 
 several Romans, the Georgics and Metamorphoses of Nican- 
 der are part of the background of Vergil's and Ovid's poems 
 of the same names, but the Latin poets in both cases far 
 surpassed their Hellenistic model. 
 
 To the modern reader "elegy" and "epigram" describe 
 two very distinct literary types. The Greek forms, how- 
 ever, to which we loosely apply these names are misrep- 
 resented if the connotation attached to "elegy" and "epi- 
 gram" is transferred to the ancient types. From a Greek 
 standpoint an elegy is a relatively long poem written in 
 elegiac couplets; an epigram is a relatively short poem, 
 usually in elegiac couplets; the subject-matter of both 
 types is varied: "elegy" in the sense of a lament for the 
 dead describes only a small portion of Greek elegy; "epi- 
 gram" in the sense of a short satirical poem is too limited 
 in meaning to suggest the wide range covered by Greek 
 epigram. Elegy and epigram, in subject-matter, vary at 
 different periods of Greek literature, and in one and the 
 same period each type is often elastic ; but both are alike 
 in external form, in metre, save for a few epigrams in other 
 than elegiac verse. 
 
 There can be little doubt that the themes treated in 
 Hellenistic elegy were more varied than our extant mate- 
 rial suggests. In earlier days the elegy had served to ex- 
 press sorrow for the loss of friends and kin, patriotic ad- 
 monition, personal advice ; possibly its scope had been 
 widened to include various convivial themes in which 
 wine and woman were the central interest. It is unlikely
 
 THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD 249 
 
 that such flexibihty was restricted in the Hellenistic period. 
 But the extant fragments of Hellenistic elegy reveal a domi- 
 nant interest in mythological narrative ; the narrative 
 was often inspired by the poet's personal experience ; only 
 incidentally, however, does he reveal it. This mythologi- 
 cal narrative is usually sentimental, and in technique il- 
 lustrates the conventional features of the Hellenistic 
 love-story. The mythological basis, however, often tempted 
 the poet into learned digression. In many cases, there- 
 fore, the poems were a curious mixture of tender senti- 
 ment verging on sentimentality and pedantic argument. 
 In this respect elegy and epyllium had much in common. 
 
 The poet's personal experience, real or fancied, finds 
 no expression in extant elegy. The shorter elegiac poems, 
 however, known as epigrams, are very commonly a con- 
 fession of personal feeling. They, rather than the elegy, 
 seem in many instances to prepare the way for the love- 
 poems of Ovid, Tibullus, and Propertius, fori Roman el- 
 egy, in so far as it is concerned with the poet's own senti- 
 mental experience. This, however, is only one of many 
 topics treated in the epigram. The wide range of sub- 
 ject-matter, the great variety of authors represented in 
 our collections, make this type the most valuable docu- 
 ment that we possess for the discovery of essential charac- 
 teristics of Hellenistic poetry. 
 
 In the preceding centuries the epigram in the main had 
 served practical purposes. The tombstone and the vo- 
 tive offering to the god had chiseled upon them 1 few el- 
 egiac couplets, in the one case mentioning the name of 
 the dead, the family to which he belonged, his residence, 
 and a brief characterization ; in the other case the name 
 of the giver, of the divinity approached, and a suggestion 
 of the occasion of the offering. In the time of the Per- 
 sian Wars the patriotism of Greek warriors was celebrated 
 on the public monuments erected in their honor, and in
 
 250 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 this connection professional poets were called in to compose 
 the epitaphs. The private inscriptions were often the 
 work of unskilful hands, but the classical period had noth- 
 ing finer than the public inscriptions attributed to Simon- 
 ides. Beside this inscribed epigram in the classical period 
 there are traces of what for convenience we may call the 
 literary epigram, to be recited, or read from manuscript ; 
 these traces are vague and dubious, but even before the 
 Hellenistic period the Greeks used the short elegiac poem 
 for literary as well as practical purposes. We may even 
 grant the very plausible theory that on convivial occasions 
 brief recitations in elegiac couplets formed part of the enter- 
 tainment ; in that case there would be every reason why 
 a great variety of themes should be treated in short el- 
 egiac poems. In this great variety one would not be sur- 
 prised to find poems that were distinctly satirical, and in 
 any case without any satirical intent on the writer's part 
 the few couplets, often no more than three, which the poet 
 had at his service, would tempt to the making of a point, 
 and easily a barbed point. From this kind of epigram, 
 which was not very common until just before the time of the 
 Roman poet Martial, the modern term epigram gets its 
 specific connotation. 
 
 However far the classical Greeks may have gone in using 
 the epigram consciously as a literary type, and however 
 much the restriction to epitaph and votive offering may 
 have yielded as early as the sixth century to a more elas- 
 tic usag/of this metrical form, we shall not be far wrong 
 in saying that the literary epigram treating of almost any 
 conceivable theme is essentially a Hellenistic creation. 
 It now becomes the favorite mode of expressing any oc- 
 casional emotion, of celebrating any occasional event. The 
 inscribed epigram may still have been cultivated, and the 
 literary epigram suggested by the death of a friend or the 
 occasion of an offering to the gods is common. Indeed,
 
 THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD 251 
 
 the distinctive characteristics of the Hterary epigram are 
 those features that survive from the inscribed epigram. 
 The Hmits of space on the monument necessitated con- 
 ciseness and suggestiveness ; the thought must be complete' 
 when one reaches the end, and yet the very brevity of the 
 form makes the poem a failure unless there are implica- 
 tions, illuminating suggestions that enrich the content 
 without breaking the mold. It must not be "blurred 
 by afterthought," but the result is barren if the poet does 
 not mean somewhat more than he says. And the "fine tact" 
 appears in stopping short, and far short of the enigma as 
 well as in going beyond the obvious.^ 
 
 The rich variety of content, and even of form apart from 
 the metre, makes the large number of epigrams far from 
 monotonous reading. We can discern the budding forth 
 of the inscription into the imaginative poem. An origi- 
 nal inscription would have read: "Here lies Timonoe, 
 daughter of Timotheus, of Methymna ; her husband Euthy- 
 menes mourns her loss." But the Hellenistic poet presents 
 it all in a different form; he stops and reads the name, 
 then comments: "'Timonoe?' Who are you?" Read- 
 ing further, he exclaims: "Why, I had not known you 
 but for your father Timotheus's name upon the stone and 
 Methymna your native town. Yes, I grant you, your hus- 
 band Euthymenes does mourn your loss." Here all the 
 formulas of the inscription are retained,- but a dramatic 
 situation and added pathos enrich the content. This 
 conversational form may lead far beyond any inscribed 
 
 ' Translations of Hellenistic epigrams may be found in Mackail, Select 
 Epigrams from the Greek Anthology, second edition, London, lOOfi, accom- 
 panied by a stimulating introductory essay ; translations by various hands 
 into verse in Tomson, Selections from the Greek Anthology, London, 1SS9; 
 by Lilla Cabot Perry, From the Garden of Hellas, New York, 1S91. Many 
 love-poems of the fifth book of the Palatine Anthology are translated by 
 Paton, Anlhologiae Graecae Erotica, London, 1898. All these collections in- 
 clude epigrams of the later periods.
 
 252 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 epigram that we can imagine. In the following epigram it ex- 
 presses with delicate irony the prevailing skepticism toward 
 the myths of the other world ; the poet stops before the 
 tombstone, and speaks first to it, then to the dead be- 
 neath it: '"Does Charidas really rest beneath you?' 'If 
 you mean the son of Arimmas, of Cyrene, yes, he does.' 
 'Oh Charidas, how are things down below?' 'It's dark, 
 very dark.' 'And how about getting back to earth?' 
 ' That's a lie.' ' And how about Pluto ? ' ' Fiction.' ' There's 
 no hope !' 'Well what I have told you is the truth, but if 
 you prefer the pretty fancy — beef is cheap in Hades.'" 
 The poet may abandon all thought of tombstone and gi'ave ; 
 the poem then becomes simply a plaintive commemora- 
 tion of the death of a friend ; in this case of a brother-poet 
 whose immortal melodies, called nightingales, are con- 
 trasted with his own mortality : — 
 
 They told me, Heraclitus, thou wert dead, 
 
 And then I thought (and tears thereon did shed), 
 
 How oft we two talked down the sun ; but thou, 
 
 Halicarnassian friend, art ashes now. 
 
 Yet live thy nightingales of song ; on those 
 
 Forgetfulness shall ne'er her hand impose.^ 
 
 Such a contrast may be trite ; often the characterization is 
 subtler. In another epigram, perhaps intended for the stone, 
 there seems to be an extraordinary fullness of suggestion ; 
 the poem is interesting, too, as are many of these poems, in 
 bringing before us a curious type in Hellenistic life, the man 
 who read character from the face : "The tomb of Eusthenes : 
 reader of character, and clever in seeing the mind through the 
 eye ; his mates gave him burial, generously, though he was 
 a stranger in a strange land ; and the poet was his loyal 
 friend. All whereof has need, he has in death, a clever 
 artist ; though poor and weak he has, after all, mourners at 
 
 1 Translation by H. N. Coleridge.
 
 THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD 253 
 
 his grave." The almost satirical implication that the 
 reader of character emploj'ed his art to choose friends 
 who would pa}' his funeral expenses could hardly be more 
 neatly suggested. 
 
 Hardly any phase of Hellenistic life and thought fails to 
 be expressed in the epigram. Needless to say, love in all its 
 moods finds a prominent place, and here with striking an- 
 ticipations of Elizabethan manner and conceit. The com- 
 pass of three couplets is soon slightly exceeded, the dis- 
 tinctive features of the inscribed epigram become less 
 inevitable, and we find ourselves in the midst of what we 
 should call Ij^ic poetry. In varying degrees, in different 
 hands, and at different stages in our period, other types 
 exert their influence ; dramatic form, the diction of tragedy 
 and song-poetry, rhetorical ornament, all contribute to the 
 evolution of the epigram. The culmination of this develop- 
 ment may be illustrated by this poem of Meleager at the end 
 of our epoch ; the rich Oriental fancy, the rhetorical coloring 
 are individual traits, but the poem may suggest the possi- 
 bilities of the type. The English version, however, is a very 
 free expansion of the thought of the Greek original. 
 
 Now the bright crocus flames, and now 
 
 The slim narcissus takes the rain, 
 And, straying o'er the mountain's brow, 
 
 The daffodillies bud again. 
 The thousand blossoms wax and wane 
 
 On wold, and heath, and fragrant bough, 
 
 But fairer than the flowers art thou. 
 Than any growth of hill or plain. 
 
 Ye gardens, cast your leafy crown, 
 That my Love's feet may tread it down, 
 
 Like lilies on the lilies set ; 
 My Love, whose lips are softer far 
 Than drowsy poy)py petals are, 
 
 And sweeter than the violet.* 
 
 ' Translation by Andrew Lang.
 
 254 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 We have seen that the satirical epigram with a carefully 
 devised point deferred to the very end of the poem is only 
 one phase of development, and a phase assiduously culti- 
 vated only by a few authors near the beginnmg of the Chris- 
 tian era. By them possibly Martial was influenced, and 
 through Martial the modern use of the term epigram became 
 limited to its present connotation. But in its wider Greek 
 sense the Hellenistic epigram exerted an influence on Latin 
 poetry much earlier; the shorter poems of Catullus, some 
 odes of Horace, are epigrams ; even the love-elegies of Ovid, 
 Tibullus, and Propertius are by some believed to be mere 
 expansions of epigrams, but this theory can hardly be applied 
 to all elegies, however convincing it may seem in a few cases. 
 
 Not a few epigrams depict types from real life, like the 
 reader of character whom we met in an epigram ascribed to 
 Theocritus. In some cases these tj^Des seem to come, not 
 directly from life, but from Hellenistic comedies. The 
 comedy is primarily a product of Athens, unlike the other 
 literature of the period, and is significant of the change that 
 came over this particular city-state, which, however, in 
 general yielded much less readily than other parts of the 
 Hellenistic world to modern influences. The comedy of the 
 classical period, of Aristophanes, is as innocent of structural 
 unity as the Homeric Epic. Its subject-matter is largely 
 of local interest, and becomes unintelligible to the modern 
 reader because of constant criticism of contemporary art and 
 politics, and the abuse of individuals in the audience who are 
 insignificant to us ; in general, its value is dependent upon the 
 full knowledge of the life and thought of the city-state of 
 Athens. Only incidentally does it contain what is of uni- 
 versal application and interest. The New Comedy of 
 Hellenistic Athens concentrates our attention upon the 
 average citizen, upon characters and situations that are 
 common to the world at large ; its content is drawn from 
 the private life of the period ; it is realistic, no longer fan-
 
 THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD 255 
 
 tastic ; its form is coherent and forecasts more plainly than 
 Euripidean tragedy the modern five-act play. The plots 
 are undoubtedly monotonous ; the identification of lost 
 children — a theme derived from Euripidean tragedy, 
 the intriguing of slaves against their masters, recur with 
 tedious regularity; the characters are repeated from play 
 to play — the sentimental son, the stern father, the faithless 
 slave-dealer, the braggart soldier, the courtezan, now mer- 
 cenary, now faithful and considerate ; but the delineation 
 of character in Menander's hands must have been varied 
 and delicate. The ethical standards are low, the social 
 conditions unpleasing; but much of the repulsive side of 
 the New Comedy is not, at least to the extent in which it 
 appears in the plays, a faithful reproduction of contem- 
 porary Greek life ; the nature of the plots, the conventions 
 of the stage, account for the low moral standards, for the 
 prominence of the demi-monde : the plot of intrigue in- 
 evitably brings with it cunning and rascality ; the woman of 
 respectability in actual life was confined to the house ; the 
 stage-setting, therefore, which excludes interior scenes by 
 regularly representing the city-street as the foreground of 
 the action, more easily admits as heroine the only woman in 
 contemporary society who has free access to the street.^ 
 It is, however, unquestionably true that we should readily 
 sacrifice all the newly discovered fragments of Menander, 
 all the twenty-six plays of Plautus and Terence in Latin, 
 which are but adaptations of Hellenistic comedies, rather 
 than lose the Birds or the Frogs of Aristophanes. The 
 significance of this type is not in its distinction, in any 
 high literary value, but in the simple fact that in so far 
 as there is any classical element in Moliere and his kind, 
 Moliere is ultimately Menander and not Aristophanes, that 
 Hellenistic comedy is the initial stage in extant classical 
 
 • For an account of social conditions at Athens in .the Hellenistic period, 
 of. W. S. Ferguson, Hellenistic Athena (London, 1911), pp. 65 S.
 
 256 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 literature of the development that leads to the modern 
 comedy of manners and especially of intrigue. Perhaps it 
 would be too much to maintain that this comedy is a creation 
 of the age in which it first appears so prominently, although 
 there seems to be current a notion that Menandrian comedy 
 was evolved from Aristophanic comedy by omitting the 
 choral element and eliminating personal criticism. Such 
 an evolution is difficult to imagine ; the comedy of manners 
 flourished at least in Sicily even before the time of Aris- 
 tophanes ; at Athens in the fifth century it was to a consider- 
 able extent submerged by the local fantastic comedy ; in 
 the Hellenistic period new conditions call it forth into new 
 life ; it did not emerge without being modified, and no doubt 
 improved, and somewhat under the influence of Euripidean 
 tragedy ; but it is a regeneration, rather than a new crea- 
 tion.^ 
 
 Closely related to comedy is the type of poetry known to 
 the ancients as the mime ; it betrays in its name its chief 
 purpose — direct imitation. Back of the literary form which 
 it assumes in our period are cruder phases that before and 
 during the Hellenistic period served to entertain the people, 
 very much as the music-hall song and the monologue of the 
 vaudeville show to-day ; as recitation or song accompanied 
 by dramatic action these less artistic forms satisfied a demand 
 for mere amusement. Out of these developed a recitation, 
 probably by the poet himself, in which, at least in the hands 
 of Theocritus, perhaps under the influence of epic — also 
 intended for recitation — the verse was regularly the hex- 
 ameter ; somewhat nearer the dramatic form are the mimes 
 of Herondas in the iambic verse once cultivated by the early 
 poet Hipponax. Like the comedy, only in much shorter 
 
 1 The content and the form of the New Comedy have been fully treated 
 by Legrand, Daos : Tableau de la comedie grecque pendant la periode dite nou- 
 velle, Lyon et Paris, 1910. 
 
 The new fragment^ of Menander are translated by Unus Multorum, 
 Oxford and London, 1909.
 
 THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD 257 
 
 compass, the mime reproduced scenes from private life. 
 Like the comedy, too, it lent itself readily to the portrayal of 
 character types. 
 
 The work of Herondas, fully known to us only since the 
 year 1891, reveals an accurate observation and a clearness of 
 portrayal that his more famous contemporary Theocritus 
 cannot equal. But the clearness is that of photography; 
 there is no sense of proportion, of discrimination ; the char- 
 acters are drawn with a heavy hand, with extravagance, 
 with repellent realism. Yet there is hardly anything else 
 in Greek literature Avhich so easily convinces the reader that 
 the Greeks, however extraordinary, were thoroughly human. 
 The Penelope of the first mime, withstanding the insinuating 
 suggestions of her caller who would weaken her loyalty to 
 her absent husband ; the unsympathetic mother, incorrigible 
 schoolboy, and relentless pedagogue of the third mime; the 
 ladies in the temple of Aesculapius admiring with all the 
 "bromides" of the untutored art-critic the statuary before 
 them; the shoemaker exploiting his wares and browbeating 
 his customers — how modern his obsequious courtesy as 
 he exclaims "I cannot have you leave the shop, ladies, until 
 you are thoroughly satisfied!" — these are the average 
 citizen in all his commonplaceness. They serve as a not 
 unpleasant antithesis to the carefully fostered notions of 
 Greek sanemindedness.^ 
 
 In Theocritus one finds once more, and with peculiar 
 pleasure — for the relief furnished by Herondas is only a 
 temporary satisfaction — the recurrence of the old Greek 
 refinement and taste. Born probably in Sicily in the midst 
 of a peasantry who possessed, in spite of their humble occu- 
 pations, an unusual degree of poetic imagination, and an 
 unusual appreciation of the beauties of external nature, the 
 poet's own endowments found a natural outlet in depicting 
 
 1 The mimes have been translated into verse by Sharpley, A Realist of the 
 Aegean, London, 1906. 
 8
 
 258 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 this peasantry with all simplicity and charm, their pastoral 
 life, their romantic adventures, their store of legends. 
 With absolute naturalness they come before us : the keen- 
 witted Battus, the bumpkin Corydon, at the foot of the hill 
 tending their sheep and goats, Battus bantering Corydon 
 the while with vacant gawping seriousness ; their interest 
 in their flocks, in their sweethearts, interrupted by an occa- 
 sional recalcitrant goat or a thorn that pricks Battus's foot 
 — " How tiny a thorn, and yet how big a man it overcomes," 
 says Battus in the humorous moralizing tone of his class, 
 and Corydon is stupidly unconscious of the humor ; the 
 flocks have reached the hilltop, Battus and Corydon have 
 crossed it and passed out of our ken. A charming picture, 
 all true, but sweet and wholesome ; to-morrow, we think, 
 we shall seek them out again on the same hillside and hear 
 their new experiences, their new pastoral songs. There is 
 no sense of art, of poetry, only a refreshing glimpse of simple 
 folk, deep draughts of fresh air, warmed by the Sicilian sun, 
 with a background of bright flowers, the cool shade of trees, 
 and murmuring streams. 
 
 Naive, the casual reader says, and he is excusable ; in 
 fact, the art is there, and quite conscious art. Presently the 
 art comes perilously near to artificiality. In another poem 
 realism becomes a mere framework in which to set legendary 
 material ; in still another the same framework sets off, not 
 real herdsmen, but poets masquerading as herdsmen. So 
 in these pastoral mimes of Theocritus we have in micro- 
 scopic form the development of what we call the pastoral, 
 from apparent artlessness to obtrusive artificiality. Once 
 the poet Theocritus has introduced himself and his poet- 
 friends disguised as herdsmen into the seventh poem, it is 
 easier for Vergil to bring into his Eclogues literary men and 
 patrons of literature ; once the future emperor, Augustus, 
 has been celebrated in Vergil's pastoral verse, the poets of 
 the early empire under new social and political conditions
 
 THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD 259 
 
 easily make of the pastoral a court poem ; the court of 
 Charles the Great resurrects, or should we say, exhumes it. 
 The intrusion of alien elements once established, the pas- 
 toral becomes a mere mold in which to cast moral and 
 political satire, with courtiers, or priests, or bishops as 
 the masqueraders. From artistic realism to the hollowest 
 artificiality, from Theocritus through Vergil and Calpurnius 
 and Charles's courtiers to Petrarch and the Mantuan and 
 Marot and Spenser, the pastoral passes — a singular instance 
 of the almost unbroken continuity of a type created in the 
 Hellenistic period. 
 
 To the Greek, the pastoral was merely the mime of country 
 life. Theocritus may have contributed much to its artistic 
 form, especially in the choice of metrical form, but the mime 
 in prose had already been cultivated by his fellow-country- 
 man, Sophron, in the fifth century, and to him Theocritus 
 certainly owed something. Yet there is an individuality 
 in the art of the poet that inclines us to grant him a high 
 degree of creative power. This art appears most happily in 
 his handling of legendary material. The legend of Daphnis 
 had been a simple Sicilian folk-tale ; the folk-tale told of 
 Daphnis's love-affair with a nymph who made him promise 
 under heavy penalty that he would never indulge love for a 
 mortal woman ; Daphnis broke his vow and was blinded. 
 In Theocritus the tale is modified, probably under the influ- 
 ence of contemporary romantic fiction : Daphnis, ideal 
 herdsman, has sworn never to yield to love of woman ; this 
 oath has excited the wrath of Aphrodite, who stimulates in 
 him love for a maiden, a love apparently requited, for the 
 maiden seeks him through bush and brier; but Daphnis, 
 true to his vow, avoids her and chooses to pine away with 
 his love unsatisfied. We are in no position to know whether 
 the poet is to be credited with this modification, but his art 
 appears in the handling of the theme. The theme itself is 
 presented in a song l)y one of two herdsmen in response to
 
 260 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 the urgent entreaty of his fellow ; in this preHminary conver- 
 sation the poet reveals the setting with his usual luxury of 
 picturesque detail ; the song itself is a succession of stanzas 
 with changing refrain, the style now lyrical, now dramatic. 
 But the poet's skill is chiefly shown in choosing with truly 
 Sophoclean art the final chapter of the story, the death-scene, 
 as the centre of the action ; all nature is mourning the loss 
 of its favorite ; the rustic divinities come to sympathize, 
 to comfort ; even Aphrodite herself comes to exult, but 
 remains to pity, and to regret her vengeful spirit. Through 
 conversation between the herdsman and the divinities, the 
 poet beautifully suggests the situation, gradually unfolding 
 the suffering and its cause, slowly stimulating our curiosity, 
 awakening our sympathy, never gratifying us with explicit 
 information, but leading us on to the truth with delicate 
 hints and using dialogue and description to enrich our knowl- 
 edge of the hero's interests, his occupation, his stubborn 
 will, his intimacy with Pan, and the pathos of his case ; and 
 in the background are the creatures of wood and field with 
 despairing cries mourning the loss of him. 
 
 Such a singularly graceful bit of imaginative art could 
 hardly be without effect upon later poets. So, some genera- 
 tions later, we find the poet Bion retaining the background 
 of sympathetic nature, keeping much of the rich pathos of 
 the situation, of the graceful ornament of external form, but 
 putting in the foreground new characters — Aphrodite herself 
 and her lover, the handsome Adonis, slain by the wild boar 
 in his reckless enjoyment of the chase. But the situation is 
 less simple ; the reader cannot fully appreciate the new poem 
 without knowing more than the poem reveals ; yet it is 
 interesting to see how much nearer to our modern taste the 
 copiousness of detail, the luxury of emotional suggestion, 
 bring this poem of the latter end of the Hellenistic period. 
 In the East was celebrated a festival in honor of Adonis; 
 he and his divine mistress Aphrodite were represented in
 
 THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD 261 
 
 efEg>' laid out upon richly ornamented couches beneath an 
 arbor about which were disposed figures of the little Cupids. 
 Associated more or less with the ceremony was the legend 
 itself of the goddess's grief over the loss of her lover. The 
 poet again constructs his poem in stanzas with recurrent 
 refrain, but there is no framework of pastoral realism, only 
 bits of pastoral suggestion ; the poem is no longer a pastoral 
 at all, but from a modern standpoint lyrical. Yet to call 
 it lyrical quite misrepresents it : the poet in his stanzas 
 brings one picture after another before us without ever 
 intruding himself ; one moment we are by the side of Adonis 
 in the open, the next moment we are recalled to the effigies 
 beneath the green canopy at the festival ; the refrain sets 
 off the different pictures, marks the changes of mood ; the 
 form is that of song, but the poem is not a song.^ A 
 stanza or two from Mrs. Browning's very uneven translation 
 only faintly suggests this singularly modern poem : 
 
 Woe, Woe ! Cytherea ! Adonis is dead. 
 
 She wept tear after tear with the blood that was shed ; 
 
 And both turned into flowers for the earth's garden-close ; 
 
 Her tears to the windflower, his blood to the rose. 
 
 I mourn for Adonis — Adonis is dead, 
 
 Weep no more in the woods, Cytherea, thy lover 1 
 So, well ; make a place for his corse in thy bed, 
 
 With the purples thou sleepest in, under and over, 
 He's fair though a corse — a fair corse, like a sleeper — 
 
 Lay him soft in the silks he had pleasure to fold, 
 When, beside thee at night, holy dreams deep and deeper 
 
 Inclosed his young life on the couch made of gold ! 
 Love him still, poor Adonis ! cast on him together 
 
 The crowns and the flowers ! Since he died from the place, 
 Why let all die with him — let the blossoms go wither ; 
 
 Rain myrtles and olive-buds down on his face : 
 Rain the myrrh down, let all that is best fall a-pining. 
 
 For the myrrh of his life from thy keeping is swept ! 
 
 ' The best appreciation of Bion's poem is contained in the introduction 
 of Wilamowitz, Bion von Smyrna: Adonis, Berlin, 1900.
 
 262 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 The author of this poem was himself celebrated by a devoted 
 follower in a third version of the theme ; in this poem, in 
 which all the virtues of the work of Theocritus and Bion are 
 carried to ridiculous excess and become vices, there is little 
 to commend. But there was something fitting in commemo- 
 rating the poet Bion in a threnody modelled after the 
 song of Daphnis, the pastoral singer. Modern imitations 
 have usually adhered to this much of the setting ; Milton 
 in his Lycidas mourns the death of his poet-friend King, 
 Shelley in his Adonais the death of Keats, and Arnold in 
 his Thyrsis the death of Clough. There is no more signifi- 
 cant comparison than that between the passage of Bion's 
 poem in which the Cupids in turn bring their offerings, 
 render their final service to Adonis, and the ninth and follow- 
 ing sections of Shelley's Adonais, in which "the quick 
 dreams, the winged ministers of thought" flit about their 
 loved poet. The picture in Bion is thoroughly Hellen- 
 istic, is modern; yet the modern poet elaborates with a 
 wealth of imagination and feeling that is quite beyond the 
 reach of Bion ; and Shelley with extraordinary power culls 
 all the best from Theocritus, Bion, and Bion's unknown 
 admirer, and weaves it all into a new masterpiece. 
 
 Theocritus did not confine himself to pastoral mimes. The 
 life of the city with all its tragedy and bustling activity made 
 its appeal. The jealous lover, the strenuous and the timid 
 Syracusan ladies in Alexandria, he presents in different 
 degrees of realism. His masterpiece, and perhaps the most 
 characteristic product of the Hellenistic period, is the second 
 mime,i in which alone of all his poems he reveals his power 
 of expressing strong emotion. The theme itself is distinctly 
 Hellenistic ; to be sure the story of the abandoned sweetheart 
 is perennial, but it may be doubted if it could easily have 
 
 1 This poem is in some respects comparable to Victor Hugo's Guitare, 
 which may be found in A Book of Greek Verse by Walter Headlam (Cam- 
 bridge, 1907), p. 184.
 
 THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD 263 
 
 won its way into poetry of the classical period. If we 
 are reminded that Medea in Euripides's tragedy is the 
 same sort of heroine, we may retort that Euripides is Hellen- 
 istic ; or better still we may note that there is a significant 
 difference between the heroine of the tragedy and the heroine 
 of the mime, and in that difference lies the essential Hellen- 
 istic element : Theocritus feels no need to dignify his theme 
 by elevating his heroine; she is no barbaric queen, but 
 onh^ an average woman. It is true that the type of liter- 
 ature chosen makes it easier to portray the middle or low- 
 est class, but just therein we touch again the Hellenistic 
 trait : our period creates and develops types of poetry 
 that are free from the conventions of epic and tragedy, 
 that find room for the average citizen, even for the com- 
 monplace, but not without making the new subject worthy 
 of literary treatment. I have spoken in passing of cruder 
 forms of the mime that correspond to our music-hall ballad 
 and monologue. One of these the papyri have preserved 
 for us, and in connection with the second mime of Theoc- 
 ritus it is interesting to note that "The Maid's Lament," 
 as we call this music-hall song, is a solo sung by an 
 abandoned sweetheart appealing to the night and the stars 
 in her desperation as does Theocritus's heroine. 
 
 But again, as in the song of Daphnis, the art of this sec- 
 ond mime of Theocritus is in the elaboration as much as 
 in the choice of the situation. The mime is dramatic, as 
 most of these poems are ; the form is a monologue, though 
 a servant is present during the earlier part of the action, 
 and to her the heroine addresses a few commands. Again 
 the final act of the tragedy is chosen as in the story of Daph- 
 nis. The scene, as the poet helps us visualize it, is out 
 of doors, a night scene. In the dim light we discern the 
 outlines of the cauldron, of the woman standing beside 
 it ; we hear her calling for the magic herbs to burn in the 
 flame ; it is a magic rite to win back the lover who has
 
 264 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 betrayed and left her. She tells us just enough in her first 
 words to pique our curiosity, to win our sympathy. Then 
 begins her invocation of the moon, of Hecate, with all 
 the grim details that increase the uncanniness of the situ- 
 ation. In stanzas with a weird refrain she drops in the 
 cauldron one after another the herbs, melts the wax effigy 
 of her lover, and whirls the magic wheel; here and there 
 come details to inform us or to deepen the pathos : — 
 
 Hushed are the voices of the winds and seas ; 
 But O not hushed the voice of my despair. 
 He burns my being up, who left me here 
 No wife, no maiden, in my misery. 
 
 Turn, magic wheel, draw homeward him I love. 
 
 As yet her servant has stood waiting upon her; now the 
 woman sends her to smear the lintel of the lover's door. 
 Thus left alone she breaks forth into stanzas revealing in 
 narrative monologue her whole tragic experience, each 
 stanza set off by a new refrain : — 
 
 Bethink thee, mistress Moon, whence came my love. 
 
 The narrative is strongly realistic and admirably in har- 
 mony with the character and situation. She remembers, 
 as the psychologist tells us she should remember, every detail 
 of the first meeting, even the dress she wore, the fever of 
 love with all the physical symptoms, the despair, the sum- 
 mons to her lover, his fair speech, and the discovery of 
 his faithlessness, all with rapidity in spite of the fullness 
 of detail. The characterization is admirable ; the lover's 
 words immediately reveal the confident young athlete, 
 and in their fulsomeness readily prepare us for the issue ; 
 the woman's changing moods in the changing stages of the 
 narrative are true and convincing. The poet wisely leaves 
 us in suspense as to the issue : his Roman imitator's taste 
 was not so sure.
 
 THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD 265 
 
 Theocritus wrote other poems than the mimes. He did not 
 stay permanently in Sicily ; he travelled to Cos, the birthplace 
 of Herondas ; there he knew other great poets of the pe- 
 riod ; he went further to Alexandria, seeking the court of 
 the Ptolemies, as every literary man was likely to do sooner 
 or later. His experience grew, his subjects and his art 
 changed, not always for the better. He is not above taw- 
 dry flattery of crowned heads ; he describes a boxing-match 
 with the brutal realism of a sporting editor; but all in all 
 the final impression is that left by the pastoral and city 
 mimes, an impression of delicacy and grace and no little 
 strength withal, little depth of feeling or rather little power 
 to suggest strong emotion save in one poem, but a sweet 
 wholesomeness and genial humor that have always redeemed 
 the Hellenistic period from total neglect by lovers of good 
 literature.^ 
 
 Other types of poetry are less significant to the modern 
 reader, or are difficult to reconstruct from the fragmen- 
 tary remains. Hellenistic tragedy clung to the myths 
 of the classical drama. There is little evidence of any 
 attempt, as in comedy, to make contemporary social con- 
 ditions the material of tragedy. Rhetoric, and vagaries 
 in metre and music, probably served as ornament, and 
 rather tawdry ornament, of the dry skeleton of myth. A 
 development of form more closely approximating the five- 
 act play may be guessed. Euripidean influence was doubtless 
 predominant, but the precise effect of that influence can only 
 be vaguely surmised. Even in the Latin tragedies of Seneca 
 the Hellenistic elements cannot easily be discriminated. 
 
 Hellenistic literature is a natural outgrowth of social con- 
 ditions ; it is a significant literature, though not possessed 
 
 • Translations into prose of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus may be found 
 in Andrew. Lang, Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, second edition, London, 
 1889 ; of Theocritus into verse by Charles Stuart Calverley in hia Complete 
 Works (published by G. Boll and Sous, Loudon, 1901).
 
 266 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 of the high distinction of the best Hellenic product. The 
 modern reader may properly discover this significance to 
 some extent in the fact that Tennyson found Theocritus ^ 
 congenial, that William Morris sought a theme in the 
 epic of Apollonius, that Milton and Shelley and Arnold 
 were moved by the tragic fate of Daphnis, that Rossetti's 
 Sister Helen is a riddle partially solved by Theocritus' 
 second idyl, that many a Hellenistic epigram has ap- 
 pealed to various poets of all ages and countries. But 
 a full appreciation of modern literature will lead to a less 
 superficial estimate of such significance. The period effects 
 distinct changes in the content and form of classical litera- 
 ture; these changes bring the current of anCient literature 
 nearer the main stream of modern literature. The perma- 
 nence of the new tendencies is due not to the Hellenistic 
 Greeks but to the Romans who conquered them. In the 
 words of the latest essayist ^ on this theme : "As re- 
 gards the progress of poetry, what gives the age its mean- 
 ing is not that it was an age of decadence ; it is that it was 
 an age of difficult and delayed germination. The seeds 
 of new life were under the surface. Out of a silver age, 
 like that of Latin poetry under the Empire, nothing comes ; 
 it only dwindles away slowly and dies. But out of Alexan- 
 drianism came, with the touch of a new life in a new lan- 
 guage, Latin poetry," and I may add, much of the form 
 and content of Latin prose. 
 
 Henry W. Prescott. 
 
 1 On the influence of Theocritus, cf. Kerlin, Theocritus in English Litera- 
 ture, Lynchburg, 1910 ; Stedman, Tennyson and Theocritus,- in Atlantic 
 Monthly, XXVIII, 513 S. 
 
 2 Mackail, Lectures on Greek Poetry (London, 1910) ; pp. 177-272 contain 
 interesting chapters on Theocritus, Apollonius, and Alexandrianism.
 
 GREEK INFLUENCE UPON LATIN LITERATURE 
 
 No serious student of Latin literature can fail to remark, 
 very early in his study, the large number of paths which 
 lead directly back to Greece and to the literature of Greece. 
 It is almost a truism of criticism, even more in need of em- 
 phasis to-day than ever before, that to him who has no 
 knowledge of Greek literature, Latin literature is a labyrinth 
 without a thread. This fact would be borne in upon him by 
 the contents of the Latin authors, even if he had no direct 
 testimony from the Romans themselves. But in reality 
 they were the first to acknowledge without reserve their 
 indebtedness to Greece. Horace expressed this in a phrase 
 which immediately became classic : — 
 
 "Greece, conquered Greece, her conqueror subdued, 
 And clownish Latium with her arts imbued." 
 
 But this was only a general acknowledgment without regard 
 to the debt to individual authors. Plautus and Terence ex- 
 plained in their prologues that they had drawn largely upon 
 the New Greek Comedy. Ennius claimed to be the rein- 
 carnation of Homer. Vergil referred continually in his 
 Bucolics to the Sicilian Muse of Theocritus, and in the 
 Georgics to the Ascraean bard, Hesiod. Lucretius was proud 
 of his debt to Epicurus. Horace himself acknowledged 
 the influence of the poets of the Old Greek Comedy. Proi)or- 
 tius boasted that he was the Roman Callimachus, while 
 Cicero acknowledged everywhere, particularly in his philo- 
 sophical works, the utter dependence of Latin upon Greek. 
 Quintilian in his famous survey of Latin literature does in- 
 
 267 
 
 V
 
 268 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 deed rejoice that one department at least is wholly Roman, 
 namely Satire, but in this he can be referring only to the 
 form, for Horace had long before asserted the dependence of 
 Lucilius upon the Old Comedy. 
 
 During the long darkness which brooded over the world 
 from the sixth to the thirteenth centuries this dependence of 
 Latin literature upon Greece was lost sight of completely ; 
 for to the Western world antiquity meant Rome alone and 
 literature meant Latin. Greek influence was, it is true, not 
 wholly absent, but it was the influence principally of phi- 
 losophy, mathematics, and natural science, and it was exerted 
 through the medium of Latin translations. The revival 
 of learning brought again the possibility as well as the 
 spirit of comparison, and scholars began at once to re- 
 mark the great amount of Greek in Latin. Some German 
 scholars in particular became so impressed by this influence 
 that they came to regard Latin merely as a medium for the 
 tradition of Greek culture, and Latin literature in itself as 
 practically non-existent, while even those who did not go so 
 far acquiesced in the view that Latin literature was a reflec- 
 tion of Greek, showing some power in a few respects, but 
 with no national genius and no national form. 
 
 This controversy as to the merits of Latin versus Greek 
 actually began very early. Upon the publication of the 
 Aeneid of Vergil, envious critics began at once to cry down the 
 new poet as a plagiarist of Greek motif and even of Greek 
 expression. Succeeding critics, as late as the fourth century, 
 busied themselves with compiling lists of Vergil's borrowings 
 from Homer and other poets, quite oblivious of the truth of 
 Vergil's own remark, when twitted with this fault, that, if 
 his detractors would try it, they would find it easier to steal 
 his club from Hercules than a line from Homer. 
 
 More recently the application of the spirit of scientific 
 reasonableness has tended to qualify this wholesale depre- 
 ciation of Latin originality, and a sounder view has come to
 
 GREECE AND ROME 269 
 
 prevail in regard to the relative value of the Greek and 
 Roman elements in Latin literature. It is my purpose to 
 trace, as far as is possible in the time at command, the de- 
 velopment of the chief departments of Latin literature, and 
 to show how much of the Greek effect is due to the pouring 
 of Greek fountains into an ever broadening but always 
 Roman stream. 
 
 Latin literature is said to begin with the presentation 
 about the year 240 B.C. of a play transfused from Greek 
 originals by a certain tivius Andronicus, a Tarentine Greek, 
 who bears the proud title of the " Father of Latin literature." 
 But, according to tradition, when this play of Livius was 
 presented, the city of Rome had been in existence for five 
 hundred years. What had happened during those five hun- 
 dred years ? Had there been no literary beginnings at all ? 
 Without attempting to sketch the history of this period it 
 may be said that the general course of development is clear. 
 A small community on the Tiber, probably of various racial 
 elements, devoted mainly to agricultural pursuits, but with 
 an innate commercial tendency, was forced to maintain a 
 continual struggle with surrounding tribes for existence. 
 The great advantages of its location as a trading centre drew 
 people to it from many quarters, but this very expansion 
 caused many enmities, and more than once the community 
 was compelled to leave its home at the mercy of the attack- 
 ing force, whether Italian or Gallic. The extension of the 
 Roman hegemony was very gradual, and it was three 
 hundred years or more before the Roman name penetrated 
 across the Adriatic Sea, or the Roman came into contact 
 with the Greek outposts which had been planted along the 
 coasts of lower Italy and the adjoining island of Sicily. Still 
 another century was to elapse before the growing city dared 
 to tempt the gods of the sea in ships — a measure not of 
 peace but of war, and one which was destined to open the 
 way for a very rapid development.
 
 270 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 The history of these centuries shows httle or no place 
 for any attention to letters. They thrive not well within an 
 armed camp, nor in the busy hum of the market-place, and 
 during all this period Rome was but a combination of camp 
 and market-place. The parallel between the Roman state 
 and that of Sparta has often been made ; in fact the charac- 
 teristics are much the same. Life in both was an unending 
 round of the sterner duties, and in both this left scant room 
 for the smiling arts of culture. The history of Greek litera- 
 ture shows no great Spartan author 'during a period much 
 longer than these five hundred years of Roman incubation, 
 and we should accordingly not be surprised at even a total 
 absence of literary tendency in the Roman state. But there 
 is no such total absence. There are evidences, on the con- 
 trary, of vigorous literary growth. Indeed, nearly a century 
 ago the theory was unhesitatingly advanced that this period 
 was one of great literary activity. It was pointed out that 
 the Homeric epic could not have sprung at once into being, 
 no matter how scant the proof, or even indication, of the 
 existence of a Greek literature before Homer's time. In like 
 manner all the legendary stories that illumine the early pages 
 of Livy's narrative require, it was said, the assumption of an 
 epic period rich in literary elements, from which in due time 
 a second Iliad would have come. No one now believes any 
 such fantastic theory, for which we have no real foundation 
 at all, but that there was much more than the beginnings of 
 a national literature is abundantly evident. 
 
 Cicero refers in more than one passage, on the authority of 
 Cato, to the fact that the early Romans at their banquets used 
 to sing of the deeds of prowess of their great heroes, to the 
 accompaniment of the flute. What the form of these songs 
 was we have no means of knowing. They may have been 
 extemporized. But there was abundant material for them, 
 for it was customary for the great families to hand down from 
 generation to generation accounts of the deeds of their
 
 GREECE AND ROME 271 
 
 ancestors. Hence it is not unlikely that these gradually 
 assumed a more definite form as they were sung again and again. 
 There were also dirges sung at the funerals of great men, in 
 which their great deeds were celebrated. The suggestion that 
 these songs constituted lays in the Homeric sense is of course 
 absurd, but they certainly contained the material for them. 
 At religious festivals, songs in honor of the gods were chanted 
 by the priests, and the need of records and of ceremonial 
 observance made the priesthood literary even against its will. 
 There were also charms, lullabies, and other forms of folk- 
 poetry in aljundance. I am leaving out of consideration de- 
 crees, religious formulas, and laws, all of which, properly 
 considered, have a literary value. These may be taken for 
 granted. The important point to notice is the abundance 
 of the strictly literary material. 
 
 But there were other and more developed literary forms. 
 Thus we have the so-called Fescemiine verses, the existence 
 of which has been traced as far back as the middle of the fifth 
 century. These were rustic, impromptu verses of a bantering 
 kind, common at marriages and in triumphal processions, 
 where with the banter was frequently mingled indecent 
 abuse. We have also a kind of composition called Satura, 
 the first reference to which is connected with the plague of 
 365-364 B.C., when Etruscan performers were introduced 
 into Rome to dance to music. The name Satura is due to 
 Livy; the performance was probably a slightly developed 
 form of the Fescennine verses, with less extemporaneous and 
 more distinctl}^ dramatic elements. There is also the Fabula 
 Atellana, introduced about the beginning of the third century 
 from Campania. This was a dramatic performance with stock 
 characters, and represented the life of a country town. It has 
 been compared to our Punch and Judy show, and represents 
 a still higher type of dramatic development than the Satura. 
 
 In addition to the songs of the priests attempts at poetry 
 of a higher order are found also in epitaphs, some of which
 
 272 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 have come down to us from the early part of the third cen- 
 tury. 
 
 The form in which all these productions were written seems 
 to have been twofold. There is first of all the so-called 
 Saturnian metre. Concerning the nature of this metre 
 there has been a great deal of dispute ; and scholars have 
 been sharply divided, some regarding it as accentual, others 
 as quantitative. In any case, however, it was distinctly 
 Roman and has commonly been regarded as the one national 
 Roman metre. Religious songs and epitaphs were written 
 in Saturnians — possibly also the Fescennine verses. Other 
 early fragments were written in a three-eighths measure, 
 chiefly trochaic. The fact that the iambic-trochaic metre is 
 the medium of so much that is written in Greek has blinded 
 critics to another and far more important fact, that it is 
 better adapted to Latin than to Greek and is the natural 
 medium of Latin expression. Accordingly, no foreign in- 
 fluence is to be assumed to explain this form of early Latin 
 composition. 
 
 After its five hundred years of incubation the Roman state 
 had finally burst its Italian shell and emerged into the light of 
 the outside world. It had begun a career of conquest, which 
 in less than two hundred years was to put the nations under 
 its feet and to establish a government which should weld 
 the whole ancient world for centuries into a single state. 
 The population of the city had also grown enormously; no 
 longer was it necessary for all its citizens to be soldiers and 
 to stand ready to take the field for the state. Its wealth 
 had increased so that it was no longer incumbent upon every 
 one to work for a livelihood. With wealth had come leisure, 
 and with leisure the desire as well as the opportunity for a 
 more highly developed means of amusement than had con- 
 tented the less cultivated citizen. Individual culture and 
 refinement were soon to follow upon wealth. It is almost 
 impossible to appreciate fully the enormous expansion of the
 
 GREECE AND ROME 273 
 
 Roman view during the third century. Contact with abut- 
 ting nations had stimulated the Roman mind in everj' direc- 
 tion. It was not merely needs of the body that had to be 
 satisfied, but needs of the mind as well, and the rate of growth 
 during this century was so rapid that no native literary 
 effort could keep pace with it. It was accordingly inevitable 
 that this eager spirit should reach out in every direction for 
 satisfaction. The nearest as well as the best that was offered 
 to it was Greek, and this it grasped with intense eagerness. 
 
 Association with Greece had begun much earlier. The first 
 contact probably came in the course of trade along the coast, 
 as Greek vessels crept up to the Tiber's mouth. But the 
 gradual expansion of Rome on land was inevitably to bring 
 the Romans into contact with Greece, as the state pushed 
 its arms toward the South. Cumae was the first Greek city 
 to meet this movement, and in giving to the Romans the al- 
 phabet it forecasted the mighty role that Greek was to play 
 in Latin hterature. The first contact with the Greece of the 
 mainland occurred in 280 B.C., when P3Trhus sent his em- 
 bassy from Epirus to Rome. After this event this contact 
 became much more frequent, and we hear again and again 
 of Greeks who spoke Latin and of Romans who spoke Greek. 
 By the close of the First Punic War Rome was on terms of 
 intimacy, not to say alliance, with the Itahan Greeks. This 
 association, however, was, in the main, pohtical rather than 
 social. But little interchange of ideas or genuine association 
 of individuals can be discerned. Hence there is practically 
 no trace of Greek influence upon Latin thinking or upon 
 Latin literature until well on in the third century. As I 
 have said, such literary elements as we can discern were 
 distinctly Roman, rude as yet and uncouth, but with great 
 possibilities of development if the opportunity were offered. 
 Unfortunately this opportunity was not to be offered. The 
 Romans demanded immediate results. This meant the ab- 
 sorption of Greek.
 
 274 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Three names stand out preeminently in connection with 
 the third century, Livius Andronicus, Naevius, and Ennius ; 
 during the brief period which these three names span, the 
 native Roman hterature sank into obscurity, while Greek 
 literature came to monopolize more and more the minds of 
 literary Romans. Livius Andronicus was himself a Greek. 
 Brought to Rome by the event of war, he estabhshed himself 
 there and devoted himself to letters. In 240, at the request 
 of the aediles, he brought out a play adapted from the 
 Greek, for a performance at the public games. This was a 
 new departure, not so much in metrical form — for, as I have 
 said, the iambic-trochaic rhythm was genuinely Latin — but 
 in organized and fully developed plot. As compared with 
 the old Fahula Atellana, or Satura, its superiority could not 
 but be felt immediately, and it seems to have met with great 
 success. Thus encouraged Livius continued his dramatic 
 work, particularly in tragedy, though we have indications 
 of at least three comedies. The chief work, however, asso- 
 ciated with him is a translation of the Odyssey of Homer, 
 which became at once a school-book. To this fact Livius 
 owed the place in Latin literature which he always held. 
 As in the case of his plays, he used a Latin inetrical form 
 which had been already developed for the heroic lay, the 
 Saturnian. He had neither the capacity nor the desire to 
 transfer the Greek epic form. In this he showed good judg- 
 ment, for it is doubtful whether a Roman audience would 
 at this time have endured Greek form as well as Greek sub- 
 stance. 
 
 Naevius, his slightly younger contemporary, was an Italian, 
 if not a Roman, with a versatile and active mind. But for 
 external influence he would doubtless have made a great 
 name in purely Latin composition. The fashion set by 
 Livius, however, he was quick to follow, but he showed his 
 distinctly Roman feeling, as well as the originality of his 
 genius, by preparing, in addition to his adaptation of Greek
 
 GREECE AND ROME 275 
 
 plays to the Roman stage, certain distinctly Roman plays 
 in which the subjects were taken from Roman history and 
 Roman legend. In some of these plays with Roman themes 
 he showed himself a spiritual brother of Aristophanes by open 
 criticism of his contemporaries, a practice which the Romans, 
 in striking contrast to the Greeks, punished with imprison- 
 ment. In his advancing years he devoted his attention 
 to the composition of a Roman epic on the First Punic War. 
 This he naturally wrote in Saturnians. It was a rugged and 
 uncouth poem which moved the laughter of Horace two hun- 
 dred years later, but it was intensely Roman, strong, vigor- 
 ous, serious. 
 
 Ennius, though slightly later than Naevius, belongs to this 
 group because of the wide range of his work as well as by 
 reason of his historical position. In temperament a cosmo- 
 politan, with the ability to speak three languages, he added 
 to this a cultivation possessed by neither of his predecessors 
 as well as literary power of the highest order. He too fol- 
 lowed the example of Livius and Naevius in adapting Greek 
 comedy and tragedy for the Roman stage. In his tragedy 
 he won a distinguished success, but as a comic poet he was a 
 failure. The public at this time was composed mainly of the 
 vulgus ignohile, and it is likely that his very cultivation made 
 him ill-disposed to the kind of jest that would please such an 
 audience. But Ennius's claim to fame does not rest upon his 
 dramatic efforts. With his name is indissolubly connected 
 the molding of the Roman tongue to the laws of the Greek 
 hexameter. Perhaps under the influence of Naevius, but 
 doubtless also from natural inclination, he set himself to 
 write an epic of the history of Rome from its earliest begin- 
 nings in the period of misty legend and divine guidance. 
 But he boldly abandoned the Saturnian measure of Livius 
 and Naevius and came forward with a metrical form entirely 
 new. The magnitude of his task can hardly be appreci- 
 ated by a modern. We have often remarked the lack of
 
 276 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 success with which EngHsh poets have tried to write English 
 hexameters, but the genius of the Latin language was entirely 
 anti-dactylic and Ennius had to develop an almost new 
 vocabulary, and to modify the laws of Latin word-formation 
 so as to make the stern and solemn Roman trip along like a 
 nimble Greek. That he was not wholly successful, that 
 many of his lines were crude, many of them rough, is not 
 to be wondered at. The marvel is that he succeeded so 
 well ; for even in the hands of masters of rhythm like Vergil 
 and Ovid the Latin hexameter never achieved the lightness 
 and quickness of the Greek. With Ennius sets in the full 
 tide of Greek influence. We have only to watch its flow. 
 
 This period, however, is preeminently the period of Roman 
 comedy, which is represented chiefly by two names, Plautus 
 and Terence, although of a number of other writers we have 
 fragmentary remains. Plautus is in spirit the immediate 
 successor of Naevius and thus stands in sharp distinction to 
 Terence, who is related, si3iritually, rather to Ennius. Plautus 
 was an Italian, an Umbrian, who after a varied experience, 
 mainly in mercantile pursuits, became a playwright and a 
 manager, perhaps an actor. In seeking means of amuse- 
 ment for the public, he, hke Naevius, had recourse to the vast 
 mass of Greek material ready at hand in the New Comedy, 
 whose chief representative was Menander. This material he 
 used quite independently, combining, transforming, supple- 
 menting it as his histrionic feeling dictated. Of the twenty- 
 one plays which have come down to us in more or less com- 
 plete form every title is Latin, but the location and the plot 
 are Greek. Sometimes he has combined two Greek plays 
 into one, when the comic effect of one of them seemed too 
 meager. The spirit of Greek comedy was distinctly un- 
 Roman. The chief motif, illicit love, revolted the Roman 
 sense of propriety. The position of the courtesan and the 
 low esteem of the family relation were also distinctly un- 
 Roman. The carelessness with which serious matters were
 
 GREECE AND ROME 277 
 
 treated, the success that always attended upon knavery, 
 the role plaj'ed by the parasite and the pander, were utterly 
 foreign to the Roman taste. But all this material provided 
 abundant opportunity for comedy, and, inasmuch as it 
 represented Greek manners and morals, for which the Roman 
 had in general a profound contempt, not only was no umbrage 
 taken, but many of the plays were extremely successful. A 
 great part, however, of this success was unquestionably due 
 to Plautus's own skill in devising comic situations, or to the 
 purely Roman elements with which he amplified his originals. 
 Plautus was not restricted by any considerations of dra- 
 matic technique. Unity of time and place did not worry 
 him, nor did he, any more than Shakespeare, care about 
 geographical details. To most of his auditors one Greek 
 name was as good as another, and not one of his spectators 
 cared whether Thebes was a seaport or not. On the other 
 hand, a play where every allusion was Greek, every situation 
 was Greek, would naturally soon pall upon a Roman audi- 
 ence. Consequently the plays of Plautus are replete with 
 references to specifically Roman practices, situations, and 
 events. The habits of the Roman market-place, the regula- 
 tions of the Roman government, transactions among the 
 Romans themselves, are played upon again and again. We 
 even find the Roman Lar familiaris acting as tutelary deity 
 to an Athenian household. JNIanj- characteristics of manners 
 are also distinctly Roman. Thus the position occupied by 
 some of the matrons is much above their corresponding 
 position in Greece, and the severe and l^rutal treatment of 
 slaves is essentially Roman rather than Greek. There is 
 also an undercurrent throughout of that seriousness of mind 
 which never forsook the Roman even in his lighter moments. 
 There are numerous reflections on life and its problems, 
 such as would hardly belong to a mere comedy of manners. 
 When we come to Terence, on the other hand, we find 
 that his six plays all have Greek names, that the Roman
 
 278 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 allusion and in general the whole Roman element have 
 practically disappeared. While the thinness of the Greek 
 plot made it necessary to combine two plays, almost no 
 other liberty has been taken with the originals. There is, 
 however, a marked distinction between Terence and Plautus, 
 both in language and technique. Plautus is conversational 
 and rugged, Terence is refined and polished. It is remark- 
 able how much progress had been made in the development 
 of the Latin polite style during the period between Plautus 
 and Terence. The style of Terence is so pure, so clear, and 
 yet so Latin that it was the subject of unreserved praise by 
 the best critics of the Augustan Age. His friendship with 
 the elder Scipionic circle gave rise to the suggestion on the 
 part of his enemies that Terence, who was not a Roman, 
 had not written these plays himself, but that they were the 
 work of members of that circle in which were included the 
 most refined and cultivated men of Rome. While this 
 aspersion is undoubtedly false, it nevertheless serves to show 
 the perfection of his style. In the general matters of tech- 
 nique Terence clung with great closeness to his Greek originals. 
 The Roman element in his plays consists therefore solely in 
 the language. Terence was not a popular author in the 
 sense that Plautus was, that is, with the general public, 
 although one of his plays, the Eunuchus, was extremely well 
 received ; but this play approaches more nearly to the Plautine 
 spirit than any of the others. The very qualities that com- 
 mended Terence to his cultured friends made him less popu- 
 lar with the people. Hence with him Roman comedy ceases 
 to be a popular amusement and, as a consequence, dies. 
 
 During this period also, Roman tragedy had had a short 
 and more or less fitful success. No complete plays have 
 come down to us, but two great authors, Pacuvius and 
 Accius, are referred to again and again. These poets re- 
 stricted themselves almost entirely to Greek subjects and 
 to Greek treatment. There are indications that they tried
 
 GREECE AND ROME 279 
 
 Roman subjects occasionally, but their hearts seem not to 
 have been in such themes. We are unable to form any 
 clear idea of the structure of these plays. But the Roman 
 element was unquestionably very slight. How successful 
 they were in retaining popular approval it is also impos- 
 sible to say. The fragments seem to indicate that the 
 model was Euripides and that the problems of humanity 
 were treated rather than the relations of God and fate to 
 man. The appeal of Roman tragedy must have been 
 primarily to the cultivated class. The ordinary public of 
 Rome could have been interested only by a reaUsm which 
 was foreign to the Greek taste, and seems not to have been 
 present in the Roman imitations. Tragedy, therefore, was 
 never a popular form of literature among the Romans and 
 in the Imperial Age became merely a rhetorical pastime. A 
 collection of nine plays has come down to us under the 
 name of the Younger Seneca. These treat Greek themes 
 entirel}^ ; there is absolutely nothing Roman in them. 
 Metrically some change has taken place. The Greek chorus 
 has ceased to have any real part in the play and its place 
 is taken by a number of odes after the manner of Horace, 
 some of them extremely beautiful, but having little con- 
 nection with the dramatic action. The characters are no 
 longer Greek, to be sure, nor can they be said to be Roman. 
 They are essentially mythical and unnatural. Their speeches 
 are remarkable rhetorical productions, wrought out with 
 extreme care. The horrors are always performed in open 
 view, and the descriptions of incantation, witchcraft, and 
 murder are morbidly terrible. There is great strength in 
 much of Seneca's work, but it is obviously the production 
 of the study, and is intended for recitation, not for the stage. 
 This was inevita])le, for under the Empire there was no 
 chance at all for tragedy. Both the habits of the people 
 and the spirit and regulations of tlie government precluded 
 any freedom of composition. Literature was shackled.
 
 280 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 The old dramatic Satura, which fell into disfavor under 
 the tide of Greek influence when this set in so strongly with 
 Plautus and Ennius, reappears in a different form in the 
 work of Lucilius, who, like Terence, was a member of the 
 Scipionic circle, but at a later date. Lucilius wrote thirty 
 books of satire. The subjects treated embraced everything 
 that might fall under the consideration of an intelUgent and 
 cultivated man. Being an Italian and of the equestrian 
 order at Rome, his interest in Roman affairs was serious 
 and patriotic. Nor was it confined to public hfe ; it extended 
 to matters of grammar, literary criticism, and social habits. 
 The name Satire was originally applied to these occasional 
 poems because of the variety of their contents, but, in dis- 
 cussing political matters at Rome, LuciUus allowed himself 
 a freedom of criticism which reminds us of Naevius and 
 recalls the mordant bitterness of Aristophanes. He thus 
 attached to satire a characteristic which, though obscured 
 in some measure in Horace and- Persius, was to become 
 dominant in Juvenal and thereafter in all satiric writing. 
 In his earliest poems Lucilius employed the metres of comedy 
 as well as the elegiac couplet, but he finally settled upon the 
 hexameter as the best medium of expression. In this, too, 
 he set the style for all subsequent work ; for under this influ- 
 ence the heroic measure has become the vehicle of satire in 
 English and French. But in spite of the Greek metre every- 
 thing that Lucihus wrote was essentially Roman, and, so 
 far as we can judge, Greek influence was conspicuously 
 absent. 
 
 AYith Lucilius closes the pre-Ciceronian period of Latin* 
 literature. This period was essentially Roman in spirit. 
 Greek influence was steadily increasing, to be sure, but the 
 Roman element was everywhere predominant and the Greek 
 material was used with an independence which was to be 
 expected of men in whom the narrow national spirit was 
 still supreme and who were just feeling their way toward
 
 GREECE AND ROME 281 
 
 literature. It is significant that the Greek authors, imitated 
 or translated, belong to the best period of Greek literature, 
 the period of Homer, of tragedy and comedy. The Alex- 
 andrian literature had apparently made but little impres- 
 sion upon these sturdy writers. But now a change begins. 
 The Romans cease to be Italian and become cosmopoUtan. 
 Education is tinged more and more with contemporary 
 Greek thought. Leisure gives opportunity for learning. 
 Reflection paves the way for philosophy. The problems of 
 the gro^\^ng state give way to those of an organized govern- 
 ment, and with no concern for existence, the mind turns to 
 the problems of existence. Hence it happens that when 
 we reach the Ciceronian Age we find new influences at work, 
 on the one side Greek philosophy as shown in Lucretius and 
 the work of Cicero's advanced years, on the other the learned 
 poetry of Alexandria as developed and molded by Catullus 
 and more especially by Vergil. 
 
 Whether Lucretius is a greater poet than Vergil, or whether 
 the Mantuan bard is to hold the first rank among Roman 
 poets, has been a matter of controversy among scholars, 
 but the question is not a serious one, because there is in 
 reality but little ground for comparison. Their aims and 
 methods are so different, their subjects so diverse, that they 
 can be regarded as together occupying the highest peak 
 of the Roman Parnassus. In one particular, however, 
 Lucretius is antipodal to Vergil ; he is Roman through and 
 through. As I have indicated above, the old order was 
 changing, and everything that had been regarded with 
 veneration in Roman character and achievement was giving 
 way before the invasion of cosmopolitanism, with its atten- 
 dant carelessness of everything human and divine. The 
 dominant note of the early part of the first century was 
 bloodshed and cynicism. Lucretius, a man born out of 
 time, had been intensely moved by the conditions of his 
 age. We know nothing about his life (the dates even of
 
 282 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 his birth and death are disputed), but we know in general 
 that he was a contemporary of Cicero's youth, and we beUeve 
 that he died at the age of forty-four and that his great poem 
 was given to the world by Cicero. In the midst of the havoc 
 and cruel rapine of his earlier years he had doubtless brooded 
 long and deeply upon the problems of human life and the 
 universe in which he lived. As an educated Roman he had 
 gone to the sources of wisdom in the Greek philosophy, and 
 apparently he had finally calmed the bitterness of his soul 
 and stilled the yearnings of his heart by the adoption of 
 Epicureanism, a system whose chief tenet in the conception 
 of its founder consisted in the avoidance of everything that 
 would disturb the mind, particularly in the denial of a Ufe 
 beyond the grave. "Epicureanism was not hedonism; it 
 was rather a system of quietism," which must have appealed 
 strongly to one who was burdened with the cares of a suffer- 
 ing world. Lucretius was thus a missionary on whose con- 
 science was laid the duty of rescuing his fellow-men from 
 the despair in which they found themselves. For the gospel 
 that he preached he had recourse to Epicurus, but the form 
 in which he clothed it was his own. What we have of Epi- 
 curus is a collection of shapeless literary crudities. The 
 brilhancy of style which we associate with Greek was in 
 him no longer existent. It is the glory of Lucretius that he 
 took this uninspiring material and transmuted it into poetry, 
 genuine poetry in substance and expression. Epicurus was 
 his inspiration, but Greek didactic poetry was only very 
 remotely his model. His passion, his pity, his sympathy, 
 his keenness of vision, his boldness of imagination, his antici- 
 pation of modern scientific theories, his feeling for the im- 
 mensity of nature — these are all his own. His physical 
 facts are interpreted by the power of a divining fancy, and 
 his appreciation of the high nature of man makes him essen- 
 tially religious, even where he seems most atheistic. His 
 form is the hexameter, but a hexameter as far superior to
 
 GREECE AND ROME 283 
 
 that of Ennius and Lucilius as it was inferior to Vergil's. 
 He handled it with conscious power but with a carelessness 
 which regards it always as inferior to the thought it con- 
 veys. We find reminiscences of early Latin and the great 
 Greek authors, but these are not imitations and show merely 
 that he had steeped himself in the early literature. In thus 
 doing he was acting, as I have said, quite out of harmony 
 with the spirit of his times, for this was the age of the short 
 poem, of the occasional clever skit, of the finely polished 
 miniature, and the Romans who were his contemporaries 
 had given themselves to this kind of mediocrity. Only one 
 of them showed his genius in spite of it — Catullus. 
 
 In Catullus we find an intimate of the best circles at 
 Rome, a debauchee, almost a roue, a man without settled 
 purpose in life and without moral principle. If he professed 
 any philosophy at all he was a follower of Epicurus, not the 
 spiritual Epicurus of Lucretius but the sensual Epicurus of 
 modern interpretation. To him enjoyment meant sensual 
 delights, and he represents to the utmost the Rome of the 
 period. In all essentials the work of Catullus is Greek. 
 He domesticated in Latin the hendecasyllable, but he was 
 also facile as well as effective in the handUng of other metres. 
 As a writer of pure song he is without a peer in Latin, and, 
 while we may not agree with Mackail that he is one of 
 earth's three lyric poets, the other two being Sappho and 
 Shelley, his passion, melody, and lightsomeness raise him to 
 the highest rank. It is remarkable that one trammelled by 
 the fetters of Alexandrianism could have soared so high, 
 and in this we perhaps see the Roman spirit of independence 
 bursting the bonds of Greek conventionalism. We must 
 remember that the Empire had not yet come to pass, that 
 the domination of the Imperial system had not yet fully 
 throttled independence, that literature was still not the hand- 
 maid of a master, but a partner in the house. Hence it is 
 that a Roman in whose veins flowed the fire of a Celt could
 
 284 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 rise beyond his Greek models and strike, particularly in the 
 Lesbia poems, a note which in comparison with theirs was 
 instinct with reality, with naturalness, and also with strength. 
 The most distinguished of the Roman poets, the one whose 
 name comes immediately to the lips when Latin literature 
 is mentioned, is Vergil. He is also that one poet about whom 
 the dispute as to Greek influence has raged most fiercely. 
 The Aeneid, the work of his mature years, came to be re- 
 garded immediately as the embodiment of the spirit of Rome. 
 He deserves, as no other Roman author deserves, the epithet 
 of national, for he voiced, as no other poet voiced, the destiny 
 and glory of his country. Vergil's development in certain 
 respects is remarkable. The great men of old, Naevius and 
 Ennius, had found their inspiration in the great masters of 
 Greek literature, but when Vergil grew up the dominating 
 literary influence was Alexandrian. Vergil, perhaps naturally, 
 was divided in his allegiance between the school of Alexandria 
 and Lucretius. His first attempts at poetry are Alexandrian 
 of the Alexandrians. He seems then to move backwards 
 through the ages of Greek poetry, passing in his Georgics 
 under the spell of Hesiod, up to his greatest work, which is 
 so permeated with Homer that from the time of its appearance 
 up to the present there has been a constant dispute as to 
 whether he was to be allowed any original power at all. A 
 shrinking, timid, perhaps cowardly, but withal intensely 
 imaginative nature, Vergil essayed with unabated diffidence 
 the tasks laid upon him. He seems to have believed always 
 that his strength — if he had any at all — lay in the occa- 
 sional piece, not in the sustained effort. But with years 
 and work inevitably came power, and the man who in youth 
 recoiled with trembling before the prospect of an epic, in 
 his later years gave to Rome and to the world an example 
 of finished beauty which has made subsequent authors his 
 debtor and which is likely to retain its power as long as poets 
 write. During the last half century of the Republic a certain
 
 GREECE AND ROME 285 
 
 ideal of art had become as fully recognized in Rome as it had 
 already been recognized in the later Greek period. This 
 was, to sum it up in a word, the idea of literary inheritance. 
 Recognizing frankly that the time when a poet could browse 
 in an untouched field had passed, the writers of this age 
 aimed to build their own structures upon the broad founda- 
 tions of earlier genius. This principle has since dominated 
 all artistic literature. The Romans were most fortunate 
 in being heirs to only one foreign literature, as compared 
 with ourselves, who, in addition to inheriting from many, 
 are brethren at the same time to all our contemporaries 
 and under manifold obligations to them. False, therefore, 
 to the ideal of literary art was the poet who did not steep 
 himself in all that had preceded before essaying anything of 
 his own. Absolute originality was as impossible to a Roman 
 as it is to a modern. What originality was possible had 
 regard only to the spirit with which an author informed his 
 work. Vergil in temperament was particularly susceptible 
 to this principle of art, and we must therefore at the outset 
 assume that his work will show many reminiscences of his 
 predecessors, whether Greek or Roman, in phrase and met- 
 rical technique, as well as in the broader elements of theme 
 and structure. 
 
 The works on which Vergil's fame rests are the Bucolics, 
 the Georgics, and the Aeneid, all, it must be remarked, Greek 
 titles. The Bucolics owe their inspiration directly to The- 
 ocritus and his Sicilian Eclogues. In Theocritus, however, 
 the shepherds are real shepherds, and there is a glamour of 
 verisimilitude over all that he describes. But shepherds 
 were disappearing from Italian soil. The slave had taken 
 the place of the freeborn husbandman, and in Vergil's poem 
 the personages of the Sicilian muse seem strangely out of 
 place. How artificial the whole species of poetry was may 
 be gathered from the fact that Vergil felt no incongruity in 
 commingling Italian with Greek features of landscape and
 
 286 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 life. The resulting rural picture is such as could nowhere 
 be discovered unless perchance in some artificial park where 
 nature has been subjected to man's device. And yet as we 
 read we wish that these pictures could be realized. We lose 
 our sense of unreality in our enjoyment of the idyllic scene. 
 We muse and dream and sing with Vergil and care not at 
 all even if the Sicilian beech is made to spring from Mantuan 
 soil, and the Sicilian mountain to rise out of Italian plain. 
 
 The discerning vision of IVIaecenas remarked the power of 
 this youthful poet and suggested that he might further the 
 plan of the Princeps for bringing back the Golden Age and 
 recall the farmers to the soil by the witchery of his music. 
 Under this influence Vergil wrote the Georgics, a glorifica- 
 tion of labor and country life. Here his inspiration was 
 frankly Hesiod, although he drew from numerous other 
 sources, both Greek and Roman. Husbandry, vine-growing, 
 cattle-breeding, bee-keeping, all those pursuits to which 
 Italian soil is particularly adapted, are discussed in the four 
 books of this treatise. A most unpromising subject, truly; 
 and yet Vergil handled it in so masterly a manner that his 
 work was not merely regarded by subsequent writers on 
 agriculture as authoritative, but reached such a point of 
 poetic beauty as to be the despair of all subsequent imitators. 
 Farming details gave opportunities for story, description, 
 or homily, which were always seized and brilliantly im- 
 proved. We may be wearied by minute directions about 
 homely matters, but we lose this weariness in our admiration 
 for such brilliant passages as the combat of the bees, the 
 Scythian winter, the myth of Orpheus, and the glorification 
 of Italy. If Hesiod wrote for peasants, Vergil certainly 
 could give delight to the most highly cultured country 
 gentleman. 
 
 The Aeneid, the epic of Rome's national growth and des- 
 tiny, was so evidently based on Homer that immediately upon 
 its publication hostile critics drew attention to the many ob -
 
 GREECE AND ROME 287 
 
 vious imitations. Homer was, it is true, not the only source 
 from which Vergil drew. Close study of iearly Roman litera- 
 ture is everywhere indicated, and not merely the Homeric 
 cycle, but some of the later romantic poets were laid under 
 contribution. Still the Aeneid is essentially Homeric. In 
 the composition of this poem Vergil showed clearly the limi- 
 tations of his genius. By nature an episodic writer, he first 
 sketched the plan of the work in prose, and then proceeded to 
 elaborate those episodes which appealed to him particularly. 
 There is therefore a great unevenness in the poem, for much 
 that was necessary in the plan must have been singularly 
 unattractive to the poet's soul. Still, emphasizing as much 
 as we would the fact that the subject is borrowed, that much 
 of the treatment is borrowed, we yet find throughout such 
 a radical difference from the Homeric masterpiece that if 
 we did not have Homer we should never suffer in our ap- 
 preciation of the Latin poem. The simple, naive Homeric 
 image is not simple or naive in Vergil. Homer's clear-cut 
 vision appears in Vergil as a view in which all the elements 
 of landscape are at once commingled. The straightforward 
 story of Homer becomes in Vergil one that involves all 
 that has gone before and all that is to come after in human 
 destiny. The problem of life, which to Homer is clear, is 
 in Vergil surrounded by the haze of speculative musing. The 
 will of the gods, which in Homer determined arbitrarily the 
 life of man, is in Vergil, despite his own desire, wrapped about 
 with the yearning, the sufferings, and the wild endeavors of 
 man. The central figure, Aeneas, is one that has never ap- 
 pealed to our modern feeling. At first sight he is an un- 
 reality, a shrinking spiritual phantasm, but, as we study 
 him more closely, we see in him one who finds his highest 
 delight in doing the will of God, but who at the same time 
 never fails to be intensely human in sympathy, in tenderness, 
 and in a melancholy which often verges close upon despair. 
 Vergilian this is, not Homeric; Roman, not Greek. In
 
 288 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 painting such a picture, Vergil must have been pouring out 
 his own heart, and we shall not go far astray if we recognize 
 in Aeneas Vergil's ideal man, formed upon himself as a model. 
 The broodings of Aeneas are Vergil's broodings, the dreams of 
 Aeneas are Vergil's dreams ; Vergil himself would be brave as 
 Aeneas is brave and Aeneas's weakness is Vergil's weakness. 
 In striking contrast with the figure of Aeneas is that of Dido. 
 Here Vergil's own ignorance saved him from failure, for, him- 
 self without experience of woman's nature, but wonderfully 
 sympathetic and tender, he has drawn a picture of Dido 
 which makes her easily one of the great women in literature, 
 just because to the later romantic Greek model he has added 
 those qualities of his own on account of which he was called 
 Parthenios, the maidenlike. It is not necessary to go into 
 a detailed study of the Aeneid. It is only to be emphasized 
 that the spirit of the Aeneid is not Greek alone but Greek 
 molded by the overmastering genius of a Roman, in whom 
 were blended the traditions of the past and the breadth of 
 view and philosophic insight of one who brooded over the 
 affairs of men without being an actor therein. 
 
 The great representative of Roman cosmopolitanism and 
 genial Epicureanism is Horace. Like other cultivated 
 Romans he was trained from early youth in all the lore of the 
 Greeks, and was engaged in completing his education in 
 Athens at the time of the assassination of Caesar. His 
 literary activity falls into three periods, which may be roughly 
 designated the Roman period, the Greek period, and the 
 world period. To the first belong the earlier poems, namely 
 the Epodes and the Satires. In these he was distinctly 
 Roman. Finding on his return from Athens the chief lines 
 of literary work occupied by other men, he seems to have 
 chosen for his special field satire of the Lucilian type. To 
 this he was led also by the circumstances of his position and his 
 own temperament. In the Satires he employs the hexameter, 
 which, as we have seen, had been finally established by Lucilius
 
 GREECE AND ROME 289 
 
 as the vehicle for this kind of Hterature. He had, however, 
 experimented with other metres in the Epodes and so did 
 not come to the hexameter until he had proved by experi- 
 ment the inadequac}^ of any other metrical form. In his 
 treatment of the hexameter, Horace, while not attaining to 
 the finish of Vergil, represents a distinct advance over Lu- 
 cilius. The tone and content of these writings are distinctly 
 Roman, and, while there are occasional Greek illusions, they 
 are not sufficient even to color the whole. At the close of his 
 first period Horace had attained an assured position in the 
 circle of JNIaecenas and in the favor of Augustus. It was 
 doubtless at their suggestion that he directed his attention 
 to lyric poetry, in which he soon showed himself to be a 
 master. The way had been blazed by Catullus, but Horace's 
 ambition reached much further, in fact to the complete do- 
 mestication of the chief Greek literary forms in Latin. 
 Alcaeus and Sappho were his immediate models and furnished 
 the names for his chief metres. The subject-matter also was 
 greatly influenced by Greek, while language and allusion 
 keep us continually reminded of his masters. The last period, 
 that of the fourth book of the Odes and the Epistles, is less 
 Greek in form, but in subjects and in method of treatment 
 he took his place by the side of Cicero in the evident desire 
 to expound to his countrj-men the principles of artistic com- 
 position as set forth by Greek teachers. Compared with 
 Vergil Horace is always independently Roman, even in his 
 most Greek period. Archilochus may have captured his 
 fancy in his earlier years, and Aristotle was undoubtedly his 
 chief source in his later works, but these men only furnished 
 type and material ; treatment and illustration are Horace's 
 own. Even in his Odes his range of view goes far beyond 
 that of the Greek lyric poets. Many of these poems show 
 a curious similarity to the early Satires, and Horace's ex- 
 perience with the Bore, and his escape from the falling tree, 
 are but two different expressions of Horace's own self. No
 
 290 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 critic made haste to show Horace's indebtedness to his Greek 
 originals, as happened in the case of Vergil. He Avas evidently 
 a true Roman, working under the influence of his time, with 
 full appreciation of social and pohtical conditions, but with 
 a keen sense of humor and an easy tolerance of human foible, 
 which rendered him at once a poet of universal appeal, and 
 explains why he has always had a host of readers to whom 
 he was a friend, rather than a host of admirers to whom he 
 was a great poet. 
 
 The Golden Age was also distinguished for the high devel- 
 opment of another variety of literature, the elegiac. Elegiac 
 couplets had been written by Ennius and by Lucilius, but 
 it was reserved for the poets of this age, Tibullus, Propertius, 
 and especially Ovid, to fix finally the sphere of the elegiac 
 couplet as the expression of erotic sentiment. The Greek 
 practice had varied considerably and this measure was used 
 for warlike hymn or moral precept, for love-poem or drink- 
 ing-song. It had in the later Greek writers, however, been 
 given over particularly to love-poetry, and found its chief 
 exponent in Callimachus. He formed the model of the 
 Roman poets, and Propertius actually laid claim to being his 
 Roman counterpart. Elegiac poetry in Rome was therefore 
 artificial and intensely un-Roman, and, while it reached a 
 technical perfection in Ovid such as it had not reached 
 among the Greeks themselves, the metre nevertheless never 
 came to be regarded as national in the same way that the 
 hexameter did. 
 
 I have said nothing at all about the development of prose, 
 and yet prose, like poetry, has a history. In the earliest 
 times records were kept by priests and public officials as well 
 as by private families. These constitute the first attempts 
 at Latin prose. The most famous example is the Laws of the 
 Twelve Tables, which show even in their modernized form both 
 the power and the limitations of legal Latin, and even thus 
 early foreshadow the future greatness of this form of literature.
 
 GREECE AND ROME 291 
 
 Of the three great departments of Latin prose — oratory, 
 history, and philosoph}^ — only the last named shows any 
 strong Greek influence except in form. The early Romans had 
 neither time nor inclination to philosophize, and it is only in 
 the last century of the Republic that philosophy obtained ht- 
 erary treatment at Rome. The chief prose-writer is of course 
 Cicero. His philosophical treatises were written in his old 
 age, partly to relieve his mind from sorrow and care, partly 
 from the teacher's instinct, which seems to have been always 
 latent in every Roman. Cicero desired to put Greek phi- 
 losophy within reach of the Roman public. He shows in his 
 works little evidence of original thinking, but his Greek 
 material is treated from the Roman point of view and the 
 wealth of illustration is entirely his own. 
 
 Orator}^ and history go hand in hand. Success in pubhc 
 life at Rome required from the earliest times the ability to 
 speak. A democratic assembly is ruled more by the emotion 
 of the moment than by the dictates of quiet reason, and the 
 history of Rome is at the same time a history of Roman 
 oratory. The publication of speeches goes back as far as 
 Appius Claudius, the Censor, but in these early days nat- 
 ural ability took the place of training, and it was not till 
 the time of Cato the Elder that the need of training was felt. 
 It was at this time that the influx of Greek teachers of rhetoric 
 into Rome provided in the activities of the Grammatici a kind 
 of secondary education of a high grade, which involved in- 
 struction in Greek hterature, rhetoric, and oratory. Even 
 the Hellenophobe Cato, in the treatise which he composed for 
 his son's instruction, found it necessary to draw from Greek 
 models, especially Demosthenes, for his illustrations. At 
 this time rhetoric in Greece was in much the same position 
 as poetry. The Asiatic style was dominant, and this corre- 
 sponded to the Alexandrian style in poetical composition. 
 Art had taken the place of subject-matter, and, whereas 
 before this time teachers of rhetoric had aimed to reproduce
 
 292 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 the style of Lysias, with its clearness, its brevity, its delicate 
 handling of sentence-structure and its discrimination in the 
 choice of words, as well as its lack of adornment beyond 
 what really belonged to the material and the subject, we 
 now find exuberance, redundancy, conceits in the use of words, 
 and such a fulsome employment of pedantic and bombastic 
 imagery and metaphor that the idea is often almost entirely 
 obscured by the expression. Such a style could not appeal 
 to a normal Roman, and, just as the earlier period of Latin 
 literature recalls to us the noble age of Greek literature, so 
 Roman orators imitated the Attic canon and were but little 
 attracted to the vagaries of the Asiatic system. The educa- 
 tion, however, of a Roman youth who expected to qualify 
 for public life involved a careful study of all the princij^les 
 of rhetorical technique in which the Greek teachers were such 
 evident masters. And we have a detailed account of the 
 length to which that study could go in Cicero's recital of his 
 own training. In Cicero's youth the chief position in Ro- 
 man oratory was held by Hortensius in succession to the two 
 great orators of the previous generation, Antonius and 
 Crassus, all names familiar to us from Cicero's own treatises. 
 Their style, the so-called Attic, is best exemplified for us 
 in that style which we have come to associate with the name 
 of Caesar. Cicero's youthful enthusiasm at once pitted him 
 against Hortensius, from whom he was shortly to wrest his 
 glory. His own nature, being in startling contrast with the 
 Caesarian type, naturally inclined him to an exuberant and 
 somewhat redundant style, where rhetorical artifice was subj ect 
 only to an inherent good taste which was to make itself more 
 and more effective in subsequent years. In the early speech for 
 Roscius of Ameria, Cicero appears as an Asiatic, restrained 
 and modified by the limitations necessarily imposed by a 
 Roman audience. This speech, probably the most brilliant 
 speech delivered up to that time by a Roman, shows at once 
 a finish and an elaboration such as had not yet been known
 
 GREECE AND ROME 293 
 
 in Latin. When it is compared with early Roman efforts, 
 the result of Greek training is at once evident in the careful 
 structure of the period, the effective handling of antithesis, 
 anaphora, and chiasmus, the balancing of clauses, assonance, 
 repetition, asyndeton, and many other devices. There is 
 also a redundant exuberance which Cicero himself criticized 
 in his later j^ears, but which he never entirely avoided, or 
 deemed it desirable to avoid. If we compare with this speech 
 the greatest of his oratorical efforts, namely the Second 
 Philippic, we find the same general characteristics, tempered 
 and modified by a life of careful thinking and experimenta- 
 tion. In Cicero's style, however, perhaps the most important 
 element is the care which he devoted to the cadence at the 
 close of sentences, that rhythm which distinguishes his speeches 
 from ordinary prose as well as from verse. It is Cicero's 
 glory that by the action of his versatile Italian intellect upon 
 the rules of Greek technique he molded a Latin style which, 
 as a medium of artistic expression, has never been surpassed 
 and was destined for centuries to be the model of the world. 
 The development of historical writing at Rome was much 
 the same as that of oratory. In many cases the writers of 
 history were at the same time great political leaders. His- 
 tory, however, differed from oratory, from drama, from epic 
 in that it was to be read rather than listened to. Accordingly 
 some of the earliest of the Latin historians thought to pro- 
 vide for the permanence of their reputation by writing in 
 Greek. But this pedantic attitude was of short duration 
 and the native Latin soon asserted itself. Stylistically the 
 development followed the course of oratory and there was 
 the same conflict in later times between the adherents of the 
 Asiatic and the Attic systems of rhetoric. In the Golden 
 Age the chief representative of the Attic style, both in ora- 
 tory and history, was Caesar, and the best example of this 
 style is to be found in the Commentaries. Educated in all 
 the devices of the rhetoric of the period, like Cicero a student
 
 294 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 of Molo, the noted teacher of Rhodes, Caesar was nevertheless 
 deterred by the pecuHar cast of his mind from that careful 
 consideration of the means of expression to which Cicero 
 had devoted himself. He wrote as he fought, we are told, 
 and as Cicero reached the summit of success in oratory, so 
 Caesar in narrative reached a point of excellence which well 
 merited the approbation of Cicero and all subsequent critics. 
 In Caesar we have a style that is essentially Latin, not Greek. 
 He shows, to an extent attained by perhaps no other Latin 
 writer, the domination of the Roman over his instrument. 
 Rhetorical devices are everywhere evident, but these are the 
 result of unconscious reminiscence, not of design. The 
 effect of Caesar's language is due to the man, not to the words 
 themselves. His work was absolutely bare of adornment, 
 nudus as Cicero calls it, but it was unadorned beauty, venus- 
 tus, as Cicero also calls it, the admiration and the despair 
 of those who read it. 
 
 Contemporary with Caesar was Sallust. He, too, had 
 undergone the same training as other men of his time, and 
 after a checkered public career had devoted himself to the 
 writing of history. As Vergil and Propertius had claimed 
 to be the Theocritus and the Callimachus of their country, 
 so Sallust aimed to be the Roman Thucydides. That he 
 fell far short of his model is not to be wondered at. He had 
 not the genius of Tacitus. But to him perhaps even more 
 than to Thucydides history meant the study of movement 
 rather than the narrative of facts. Events were to be 
 traced back to their causes in the nature of man. Thucydides 
 may have been the father of the philosophy of history, but 
 without the mediation of Sallust his influence would not 
 have gone beyond the Greek boundaries, and if the later de- 
 velopment of history paid more and more attention to evo- 
 lution, this was due to Sallust's study of his model. In his 
 actual composition Sallust shows but little Greek influence. 
 We find in his writings manifold traces of his familiarity
 
 GREECE AND ROME 295 
 
 with early Roman literature, and he merits perhaps the name 
 of the first literary archaist in Rome. Old phrases, old 
 turns of expression, old constructions, old words came as 
 naturally to him as the forms of Shakespeare and the Bible 
 have come to many a modern writer. As a result the style 
 of Sallust was peculiarly Latin, and one which after a genera- 
 tion profoundly affected subsequent writers, particularly 
 those of the Silver Age. 
 
 It were idle to trace the Greek influence at Rome beyond 
 the great authors of the Golden Age. With these it cul- 
 minated and, broadly speaking, ceased. To subsequent 
 authors the literary heritage was neither Greek nor Latin, 
 but Graeco-Roman, and this influence was not merely potent 
 in the case of strictly Roman authors but among later 
 Greek authors as well. When we analyze the style of a 
 Tacitus, a Seneca, a Quintilian, a Pliny, we are led back 
 not to Greek but to Roman sources. 
 
 Our study of the movements of Latin literature should 
 have convinced us by this time of the essential unreality of 
 Horace's famous epigram. When Rome enslaved Greece, 
 she also made Greek literature her handmaid. In the 
 speech which Sallust in the Bellum Catilinae puts into the 
 mouth of Caesar, he is represented as saying with regard to 
 Roman character: "Anything serviceable noticed among 
 allies or enemies was followed up at Rome with the utmost 
 eagerness ; men preferred to copy rather than to envy good 
 ideas." And now4iere is this characteristic more evident 
 than in the domain of literature. It is usually maintained 
 that Greece gave to the world the various literary types, 
 but Rome had her epic and her drama, her oratory and her 
 history, before her contact with Greece — ■ rudimentary to 
 be sure, but instinct with life. And through all the history 
 of Roman literature after the so-called Greek invasion, we 
 see the independent Roman genius molding the material to 
 suit its needs. None of the great works of Latin literature
 
 296 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 would have been possible to a Greek. Even the greatest 
 Philhellene of them all, Vergil, never ceased for a moment 
 to be Roman, and the Aeneid, despite its origin, is a Roman 
 poem. The destiny of Rome, which Vergil declares in the 
 famous lines 
 
 Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento 
 (Hae tibi erunt artes), pacisque imponere morem, 
 Parcere subiectis et debellare superbos, 
 
 could never have been penned by a Greek. The very con- 
 ception would have been beyond the power of any Greek 
 leader, even a Pericles. When the Roman came to his full 
 stature and, recognizing the greatness of his destiny, took 
 measures to prepare himself therefor, he chose for his 
 teacher Greece, but Greece did not choose for her pupil 
 Rome. Greek literature remained always to the Roman his 
 most dearly prized slave, but none the less his slave. Properly 
 considered this reflects no discredit upon Greece or upon 
 Greek literature. On the contrary, to have had the mold- 
 ing of the most imperial race that up to this time had ap- 
 peared in the world was no mean glory. And to that must 
 be added the fact that the Greek spirit, which died in Greece 
 when Greece lost its freedom, combining with the Roman 
 spirit, formed in union a force which has always been equal 
 to all demands, and which has directed the course of civiliza- 
 tion up to this day. Even now this combined spirit, though 
 unmarked, dominates every department of human intel- 
 lectual progress ; and though it may suffer eclipse for a time 
 by the ignorant and commercial spirit of modern philistinism, 
 it will again shine forth to illumine the path of human 
 destiny. 
 
 Gonzalez Lodge.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Accius used Greek subjects and treat- 
 ment in his tragedies, 278-79 
 
 Acharnians, The, of Aristophanes, 125 
 
 Achilles, The story of, and of Odys- 
 seus, absorbed the earlier hymns 
 and songs, 34 ; the wrath of, a 
 center of lost epics, 36 
 
 Acusilaus retold the epic legends in 
 prose, 156 ; devoted to fact more 
 than to form, 157 
 
 Adolescence, The heroic and poetic, 
 of the Greek race, 3^ 
 
 Adonais, Shelley's, 262 
 
 Aegean basin. Conquest of the, by 
 Northerners, 153 ; the invaders 
 a song-folk, 154 ; traditional poesy 
 in the, 154 ; attempt of Persians 
 to conquer the, engaged Herodo- 
 tus, 162 ; Thucydides depicts the 
 struggle of Athens to hold the, 
 162 
 
 Aeneas, an aggregation of piety, 54 ; 
 Roman, not Greek, 287 
 
 Aeneid, The Iliad and Odyssey and 
 the, 9, 41, 49 ; urunatched by any 
 Hellenistic poet, 247 ; embodiment 
 of the spirit of Rome, 284, 285, 286 ; 
 essentially Homeric, yet radically 
 different, 287-88 ; despite its 
 origin, a Roman poem, 296 
 
 Aeolian lyric, The, at Athens, 94 
 
 Aeschines, rival of Demosthenes, 
 199-201; his training, 199-200; 
 head of the Macedonian party 
 and against Demosthenes, 200 ; 
 three great speeches of, 200 
 
 Aeschylus, one of the world's supreme 
 poets, 4 ; sublime imagination of, 
 98; facts in the life of, 101 ; plays 
 of, preserved, 101 ; general plan of 
 the Prometheus, 102-4 ; on Zeus, in 
 Suppliant Maidens and Agamem- 
 
 non, 104-5 ; method of, in the Ores- 
 teia, 105-9 ; the Agamemnon and the 
 crime of Clytemnestra, 106, 108-9 ; 
 vengeance in the Choephori, 106 ; 
 remorse of Orestes in the Furies or 
 Emnenides, 107-8 ; rich language 
 and thought in, 108 ; delineation 
 of individual character in Cly- 
 temnestra, 109; suffering the re- 
 ward of sin in, 1 14 ; influence of, 
 on Thucydides, 187 
 
 Agamemnon, Sacrifice of Iphigeneia 
 by, 106 ; slain by Clytemnestra, 
 and vengeance of Orestes, 106 ; 153 
 
 Agamemnon, The, 102 ; plot of, 106 ; 
 concentration of abilities of Aes- 
 chylus in the, 108; 208 
 
 Alcaeus, Highest reaches of song in, 
 18 ; MSS. of, burned at Rome, 60 ; 
 fragments of, preserved in papyri, 
 60 ; the " individual lyric " of, 66 ; 
 the sympotic poetry of, 72, 75 ; and 
 Archilochus compared, 76 ; the 
 love poetry of, 233, 238 
 
 Alcman, Fragment of a Parthencion 
 by, 65 ; a choral lyrist, 78-79 ; 
 strophic composition invented byi 
 80 ; specimens of verse by, 81-82 
 
 Alexander the Great knew the Iliad 
 by heart, 38 ; conscious of making 
 history, 152 ; romantic version of 
 career of, found its Herodotus in 
 Cleitarchus, 174 ; effect of the mon- 
 archy and conquests of, 232 
 
 Alexandrian Canon of lyric poets, 62n ; 
 six of the, choral lyrists, 78-79 
 
 Alexandrianism, Out of, came Latin 
 poetry, 266 ; influence of, on 
 Virgil, 284 
 
 Amphilruo, The, of Plautus, re- 
 semljles the comedy of domestic 
 life, 145 
 
 Anacreon, The " individual lyric " of, 
 66, 72 
 
 297
 
 298 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Anaxagoras, Inspiring teaching of, 
 96; persecuted at Athens, 215 
 
 Anaxinxander's theory of the infinite, 
 212-13 
 
 Anaximenes, 213 
 
 Andocides, 184n 
 
 Andromache, "smiling through her 
 tears," S; 10; "that savage 
 woman," 48; Hector to, 55; 153 
 
 Ajitidosis of Isocrates, 193 
 
 Antigone, one of the great characters 
 of literature, 112 
 
 Antigone, Inspiration of the great 
 chorus in the, 97, 111-12; 208; 
 knowledge required for clear under- 
 standing of, 236 ; chorus to Eros 
 in the, 238 
 
 Antiphanes on the Middle Comedy, 
 145-46 
 
 Antiphon, orator, Thucydides a 
 pupil of, 184 
 
 Aphrodite and Adonis, Legend of, 
 260-61 ; festival in the East in 
 honor of, 260-61 
 
 Apollo, orders the slajdng of Clytem- 
 nestra and Aegisthus, 105, 106 ; 
 conflict of, and reconciliation with 
 the Erinyes, 105, 107 ; Ion natural 
 son of, and Creusa, 117-18 
 
 Apollonius, of Rhodes, Tale of the 
 Argonauts by, 244-46 ; result of 
 dispute over the Homeric epic with 
 CaUimachus, 246 
 
 Apoxyomenos, The, 19 
 
 Apuleius, The novels of, 243-44 
 
 Aratus, Phuenomena of, translated 
 into Latin, 248 
 
 Arcesilas of Cyrene, The Fourth 
 Pythian Ode composed for, 85 
 
 Archilochus, Preserved fragment as- 
 signed to, 60 ; in elegiac and iam- 
 bic verse, 09-71 ; Crusius on, 69 ; 
 two translations from, 70 ; direct 
 ancestor of Attic comedy, 72 ; 
 poems of occasion, 73 
 
 Aristarchus, the scholar, 38 
 
 Aristobulus, 173, 175 
 
 Aristophanes of Byzantium on Me- 
 nander, 148 
 
 Aristophanes, on Euripides in the 
 Frogs, 119-20; Acharnians of, 125; 
 the comedies of, 126 ; characteris- 
 
 tics of the comus in plays of, 127; 
 structure of a play of, 128-30 ; a 
 play of, called a "dramatized de- 
 bate," 129; the Frogs of, 135; and 
 his fellows held to be statesmen, 
 138 ; Lucian on, 139-40 ; the pose 
 of, 140 ; on the duty of the comic 
 poet, 140-41 ; characterized, 141- 
 42 ; Plato's epigram on, 142 ; 
 change of structure in latest plays 
 of, 142 ; the Birds and Frogs of, 
 more prized than all of Menander, 
 Plautus, and Terence, 255 
 
 Aristotle, The energeia of, 5 ; called 
 Homer originator of the drama, 7 ; 
 definition of theme of Greek poetry, 
 17 ; on poetry, 64n ; ode to Virtue 
 or Excellence of, 67 ; Poetics, 92n, 
 111, 117, 119; on the principles 
 of Tragedy, lOOn ; on Epicharmus, 
 130, 131 ; on comedy, 132-33 ; 
 called the comic poets "lampoon- 
 ers," 136 ; on the Old Comedy and 
 the New Comedy, 144 ; never for- 
 gets the supreme emphasis on man, 
 215 ; diagnoses the world's case, 
 223 ; a system of sciences in, 224, 
 225 ; the misnamed Metaphysics of, 
 224-26 ; discussion of motion, 225— 
 26 ; a power in nature to evoke 
 activity, 226 ; conception of nature 
 as a living process, 226-27 ; a 
 humanist, 227. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, on praising Homer, 
 6 ; on the moderns and the an- 
 tique, 12 ; pronounced the Iliad 
 and Odyssey the most important 
 poetical monuments, 46 ; on Ho- 
 mer's style, 47 ; dictum of, on ap- 
 plication of ideas to life, 94 ; 
 Thyrsis of, on death of Clough, 
 262 
 
 Arrian, records the truth about Alex- 
 ander, 173, 175 ; on the visit of 
 the Amazonian Queen to Alexander, 
 175-76 
 
 Asiatic style. The, dominant in 
 rhetoric, 291-92 
 
 Atellane farce. The, 131, 271 
 
 Athenaeus preserved some lyrical 
 fragments, 62 ; on Alcaeus, 75 ; 
 story about Simonides in, 83
 
 INDEX 
 
 299 
 
 Athenians, Effect of Peleponnesian 
 ^^a^ upon the, 137, 143; overthrow 
 of the, by Philip and Alexander, 
 143 ; delight of the, in oratory, 
 178, ISO 
 
 Athens, Dramatic idealization of the 
 spiritual life of, in Plato's Dia- 
 logues, 20 ; dithjTamb in honor of, 
 by Pindar, 89 ; Ionian, Dorian, and 
 Aeolian poetry made themselves 
 felt at, 94 ; growth of democracy 
 in, 94 ; after the Persian Wars 
 became the intellectual center of 
 Greece, 95 ; the spirit of Peri- 
 clean, 97 ; first tragic performance 
 at, 124 ; comic performances in, 
 at festivals of Dionysus, 133 ; 
 political comedy at, in time of 
 Pericles, 136-37 ; position of 
 comedy at, 138-39 ; the spirit of, 
 150 ; events tabulated as related 
 to the annual archons of, 157, 
 167 ; the spiritual home of Herod- 
 otus, 158 ; the struggle of, to hold 
 the Aegean basin told by Thucyd- 
 ides. 162, 163-65, 166; Isocrates 
 on, 194 ; devotion of Demosthenes 
 to, 204, 205, 206; philosophy of, 
 humanistic, 215; furnishes the 
 best product of Greek literature, 
 231 
 
 Atomic philosophers. Theories of the, 
 96 
 
 Atomic theorj' of Democritus, 214 
 
 Attic Comedy, Earliest specimens of, 
 125 ; sources of information about 
 origins of, 125-26 ; chorus of the, 
 developed from the comus, 127, 
 132 ; a composite structure, 132 ; 
 purgation of the, 133 ; admitted 
 officially to festivals, 133, 137 ; 
 not restricted to mythological sub- 
 jects, 134 
 
 Attic style. The, of Antonius and 
 Crassus, 292 
 
 Avitus, Q. Octavius, Catalogue of 
 larcenies of Virgil by, 41 
 
 B 
 
 Bacchae, The, 110; song of the 
 chorus from the, 121-23 
 
 Bacchus, The DithjTamb sung in 
 honor of, 65 
 
 Bacchylides, Unique MS. of, dis- 
 covered, 60, 89 ; Songs of Victory 
 of, 65 ; nephew of Simonides, 89 ; 
 poem of, on adventures of Theseus, 
 89-90 
 
 Ballad and epic, Adaptation of the, 
 to the Homeric camp-fire or My- 
 cenaean palace, 14 
 
 Basil the Great on Homer, 39 
 
 Battus and Corydon, Story of, by 
 Theocritus, 258 
 
 Biography a recognized literary 
 type, 233 
 
 Bion and the legend of Aphrodite 
 and Adonis, 260-61 ; extract from 
 Mrs. Browning's translation, 261 ; 
 threnody on, 262 
 
 Birds, The, and Frogs, of Aristoph- 
 anes, more prized than all of 
 Menandcr, Plautus, and Terence, 
 255 
 
 Book-lyric, No, existed before Alex- 
 andrian times, 63-64 
 
 Brasidas captured Amphipolis, 104 ; 
 Thucydides on, 165 
 
 Brougham, Lord, on oratory in 
 Athens, 180 ; on Aeschines, 201 ; 
 on Demosthenes, 204-5, 207 
 
 Bury, Prof. J. B., on the aniina 
 naturaliter pagana, 23 ; on sages 
 replacing heroes, 155 ; on Herodo- 
 tus, 159; on Thucydides, 163; 
 177 ; on the speeches in Thucyd- 
 ides, 170 
 
 Butcher, S. H., Aspects of Greek 
 Genius, 114n; Aristotle's Theory 
 of Poetry, 129n ; on finish of work- 
 manship in Demosthenes, 179; 
 on the career of Demosthenes, 
 205-6 ; Some Aspects of the Greek 
 Genius, 238n 
 
 Caesar, chief representative of the 
 Attic style, in Commentaries, 293- 
 94 ; Cicero on, 294 
 
 Callimachus, Hymns antl epigrams 
 of, 237 ; tired of the length of the 
 Homeric epic, 246-47 ; the Hecale
 
 300 
 
 INDEX 
 
 of, 247 ; model of the Roman poets, 
 290 
 
 Callisthenes, 173 
 
 Canon of ten best orators, Antiphon 
 at head of, 184 
 
 Capps, Edward, Comedy, 124-51. 
 For analysis see Comedy 
 
 Carlyle, on the Iliad, 46 ; Goethe's 
 hail to, 192-93 
 
 Cato, authority that early Romans 
 sang hero songs at banquets, 270 ; 
 the Hellenophobe, drew from Greek 
 models, 291 
 
 Catullus, Shorter poems of, epigrams, 
 254 ; and his sensualism, 283 ; 
 writer of pure song bursting the 
 bonds of Greek conventionalism, 
 283-84 
 
 Chanson de Roland, The, good for 
 dissection, 18 
 
 Chapman, The Spirit Elysian in, 5 ; 
 translation of Homer, 6 
 
 Charon of Lampsacus, 157 
 
 Choephori, The, of Aeschylus, 102, 
 106 
 
 Choral hymn, may be found in 
 Homer, 7 ; adaptation of the, to 
 conservative ideals, 14 
 
 Choral lyric, The, mainly Doric, 79 ; 
 loss of music to the, 79-80 ; plan 
 of composition, 80; invention of 
 Alcman, 80 ; specimens from Ale- 
 man, 81 ; Threnoi and an En- 
 komion of Simonides, 83-84 ; in 
 Pindar the greatest glory of the, 
 84 ; composition of the odes of 
 Pindar, 85-88; Bacchylides, 89- 
 90 
 
 Chorus, The, of Old Attic Comedy, 
 developed from the comus, 127, 
 142 ; in a play of Aristophanes, 
 128-29; skilfully used, 142; dis- 
 appears from the dialogue and 
 action, 142-43 
 
 Cicero, opinion of Philistus, 171 ; in- 
 fluence of Isocrates through, 196 ; 
 acknowledged dependence of Latin 
 upon Greek, 267 ; on songs to heroes 
 at early Roman banquets, 270 ; the 
 poem of Lucretius given to the 
 world by, 282 ; speech of, for 
 Roscius, 292 ; Second Philippic of, 
 
 293 ; molded a Latin style unsur- 
 passed, 293, on Caesar, 294 
 
 Ciris, The, attributed to Virgil, 247 
 
 City-states, The, of the fifth century, 
 230-31 ; converted into a mon- 
 archy, 232 ; released from bond- 
 age, 232 ; homogeneity of life in, 
 237 
 
 Cleitarchus, a sovereign name in 
 Greek historiography, 152, 153, 
 176; the Herodotus of Alexan- 
 der's career, 174-75 ; discredited 
 by Plutarch, 175 ; adopted count- 
 less bold inventions, 176 
 
 Cleon, Aristophanes leader of oppo- 
 sition to, 138 ; denounced by 
 Aristophanes, 140 
 
 Coleridge, The two impulses of, 4 ; 
 on the parting of Hector and 
 Andromache, 8 ; on the charac- 
 ters in Homer, 10 
 
 Comedy (Edward Capps) 124-51 : 
 Icaria, birth-place of Comedy and 
 Tragedy, 124-25 ; Attic predeces- 
 sors of Aristophanes, 125 ; the 
 problem of origin, 126 ; Aristoph- 
 anes and Menander, 126 ; de- 
 fined, 127 ; the Dionysiac comus, 
 127 ; characteristics of the comus 
 in Aristophanes, 127 ; the plot of 
 an early play, 128 ; the parabasis, 
 in two parts, 128-29 ; the short 
 episodes, 129 ; contrast of the two 
 parts, 129 ; episodes traced to the 
 Dorian comedy of Epicharmus, 
 130 ; origin of the Dorian comedy, 
 130-31 ; the comedy of Epichar- 
 mus, 131-32 ; Old Attic comedy a 
 composite structure, 132-33 ; per- 
 formed at the City Dionysia and 
 the Lenaea, 133 ; three great 
 periods, the Old, the Middle, 
 and the New. 134; not restricted 
 as to subjects, 134-35 ; charac- 
 teristic of the Old, political satire 
 and personal lampooning, 135-42 ; 
 license luider Pericles, 136-37 ; 
 popularity of Cratinus, 137 ; this, 
 not the traditional view, 138 ; the 
 purpose of comedy, 138-39 ; Lu- 
 cian on, 139-40 ; testimony of the 
 comic poets themselves, 140-41 ;
 
 INDEX 
 
 301 
 
 Aristophanes the culmination of 
 the Old, 141 ; gradual change in, 
 following political crises, 142^4 ; 
 Aristotle on changes in, 144 ; 
 human nature and real life in the 
 Middle, 144-45 ; Antiphanes on, 
 145-46 ; poets of the New, 
 dropped m>'tholog>- and gave 
 comedy of manners, 146-47 ; pas- 
 sion of love introduced in, 147-48 ; 
 the New, reached its highest point 
 in Menander, 148 ; appreciation 
 of Menander, 149-51 ; turns to 
 universal phases of individual 
 experience, 233 ; Hellenistic, free 
 from pedantry, 247 ; primarily 
 a product of Athens, 254 ; inno- 
 cent of structural unitj% 254 ; 
 the New Hellenistic, realistic, 254 ; 
 plots monotonous, 255 ; ethical 
 standards low-, 255 ; plays of Plau- 
 tus and Terence adaptations of, 
 255 ; leads to the modern comedy 
 of manners and intrigue, 256 ; is 
 a regeneration rather than a 
 creation, 256 ; the mime closely 
 related to, 256 
 
 Composition, Three principal styles 
 of, distinguished by Dionysius, 
 185; the "austere" in Thucyd- 
 ides, 186; the "smooth" in Isoc- 
 rates, 190 
 
 Comus, The Dionysiac, 127 
 
 CorcjTa, Athenian alliance with, 166 
 
 Corinna, Fragments of, preserved in 
 papjTi, 60 
 
 Corinth, The cult of Dionysus at, 
 130-31 ; a city-state, 230 
 
 Cosmologies, The Greek, as pic- 
 tures, 214-15 
 
 Cosmologists, Story of the Greek, 
 213, 216 
 
 Cosmopolitanism, Traces of, in fifth 
 century, 234 ; characteristic of 
 the Hellenistic period, 235 
 
 Cosmos, The, in early Greek philos- 
 ophy, 211-15 
 
 Crassus, The Attic style of, 292 
 
 Crates put aside lampooning and 
 "generalized" his plots, 144 
 
 Cratinus burlesqued the Judgment 
 of Paris, 134 ; political satire in 
 
 earliest fragments of, 135 ; a 
 
 shameless lampooner, 137 ; the 
 
 "policy" of, opposed to Pericles, 
 
 138 
 Cratippus, historian, 171 
 Critical spirit, The new Ionian, 155 ; 
 
 discredited the Homeric poems, 
 
 156 
 Cumae gave the alphabet to the 
 
 Romans, 273 
 
 D 
 
 Dante, The bitter passion of, 5 ; 
 classical and biblical themes in, 26 ; 
 not indebted to Homer, 42 ; and 
 Homer, 57 
 
 Daphnis, The legend of, as told by 
 Theocritus, 259-60 
 
 Darius, The story of the invasion of 
 Europe by, eclipsed the achieve- 
 ments of the heroic age, 156 
 
 Demetrius Poliorcetes, Flippant 
 paean of praise to, 235 
 
 Democritus, The atomic theory of, 
 214; his golden sayings, 214; 
 lived and died a colonist, 215; the 
 world of, 226 
 
 Demosthenes, Skill of, 9 ; duel of, 
 wdth King Philip, 20 ; unwilling 
 to speak off-hand, 179 ; extreme 
 care of, in composition, 179 ; Dio- 
 nysius on, 179; Butcher on, 179, 
 205-6 ; stories of the life and 
 training of, 202 ; indebtedness of, 
 to Thucydides, Isacus, and Isoc- 
 rates, 202-3 ; possibly pupil of 
 Plato, 203 ; on the foundations 
 of a state, 203 ; and duties of a 
 statesman 203-4 ; work of, in the 
 law-courts, 204 ; arrangement in 
 his speeches, 204 ; Lord Brougham 
 on, 204-5 ; the voice of a lost 
 cause, 205 ; public career of, 205-6 ; 
 always an Athenian, at last an 
 Hellene, 206 ; rose to the moral 
 height of the great oath, 206-7 ; 
 Jebb and liroughara on, 207 ; 
 greatest passages of, feed the 
 spirit, 208 
 
 Did(!rot, on the realism of the Greeks, 
 17
 
 302 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Dinarchus, 184n 
 
 Dionysia, City, Comedy admitted 
 to programme of the, 133 
 
 Dionysiaca, The, 37 
 
 Dionysius of Halicarnassus preserved 
 a vaUiable fragment of Sappho, 
 62 ; on the Persian Wars, 157 ; 
 on Herodotus, 161-62 ; on the 
 painstaking of Demosthenes, 179 ; 
 
 • on styles of composition, 185-86 ; 
 on the genius of Thucydides, 187 ; 
 onLysias, 189, 190, 191 ; "smooth" 
 or "florid" style of composition, in 
 Isocrates, 194-95; on passages 
 from Isocrates and Demosthenes, 
 195 ; on Hyperides, 197 ; on De- 
 mosthenes' debt to Thucydides, 202 
 
 Dionysus, Tragedy an element in 
 the festival of, 99 ; gave the vine 
 to Icarius, 124 ; comedy sprang 
 from the rites and practices in 
 worship of, 124, 126 ; the spring 
 festival of, 124, 130 ; the imps of, 
 among the Dorians, 130-31 
 
 Dithyramb, The, sung in honor of 
 Bacchus, 65 ; by Timotheus, 65 ; 
 new popularity for, 90 
 
 Dorian comedy, The, perfected by 
 Epicharmus, 130, 131-32; ribaldry 
 in, 130-31 ; no chorus in, 132 
 
 Drama, the. Homer called origina- 
 tor of, 7 ; orderly development 
 through, 14 ; teacher and enter- 
 tainer of triumphant democracy, 
 15 ; source of all other, 19 ; unity 
 of, contrasted with the Eliza- 
 bethan, 25-26 ; had its traditional 
 formulas, 26 ; nascent in Homer, 
 41 ; essentially Attic, 58 ; contains 
 some of the noblest lyrics, 58 ; 
 development of, in the fifth cen- 
 tury, 67, 92 ; became the most 
 distinctive form of poetry, 95 
 
 Duris of Samos, 152 ; History of 
 Greece by, 176 
 
 E 
 
 Elegiac distich, Form of the, 66 
 Elegiac poetry, intoned or chanted, 
 to the flute, 63 ; included in lyric, 
 63 ; 66, 67, 68 ; success of Archilo- 
 
 chus with, 69 ; of the Golden Age, 
 290 ; TibuUus, Propertius, and 
 Ovid, 290 ; artificial and un- 
 Roman, 290 
 
 Elegiac verse, in effect the prose of 
 Greek literature clown to the fifth 
 century, 68 ; came from the hexam- 
 eter of the epic, 68 ; use of, by 
 Archilochus, 69 
 
 Elegy, The, may be found in Homer, 
 7, 69 ; from the Greek standpoint, 
 248-49 ; variety of themes in, 248 
 
 Empedocles and the architects of 
 nature, 213-14 ; startling and 
 minute observations in the frag- 
 ments of, 214 
 
 Enkomion, The, or Laudation, 65 ; 
 an, of Simonides, 83-84 
 
 Ennius claimed to be the reincarna- 
 tion of Homer, 267 ; adapted 
 Greek comedy and tragedy 275 ; 
 molded the Roman tongue to the 
 hexameter, 275-76 ; developed an 
 almost new vocabulary, 276 ; wrote 
 elegiac poetry, 290 
 
 Ephorus of Cyme, a sovereign name 
 in Greek historiography, 153, 176 ; 
 the Hellcnica of, 171-72 ; the 
 Vulgate of Greek history, 172 ; a 
 standard, 174 
 
 Epic, the. Orderly development of, 14 ; 
 adaptation of, to Homeric camp- 
 fire or palace, 14 ; materials for 
 theory of, 18 ; had its traditional 
 formulas, 26 ; antecedents of, 
 beyond the vision of the Hellenes, 
 34 ; similarity in form to Homer 
 gave name epic to poems of Hesiod, 
 36 ; the heroic, occupies a place 
 peculiarly its own, 50-51 ; echo of 
 lyric voices in, 58 ; decay of, after 
 700 B.C., 67; vast popularity of, 
 68 ; a single, in Hellenistic litera- 
 ture, 244 
 
 Epic poetry (Herbert Weir Smyth) 
 34-57 : The best comes first, 34, 
 41 ; Homer and the Homeric 
 Question, 34-35 ; no rivals to 
 Iliad and Odyssey, 36 ; Greek epic 
 lives only through Homer, 36-37 ; 
 universality and permanent value 
 of, 37 ; Homer the teacher-poet of
 
 INDEX 
 
 303 
 
 the nation, 3S-40 ; every form of 
 literature nascent in Homer, 41 ; 
 Rome the first station in progress 
 to the modern world, 41 ; Virgil 
 preeminent in Western Empire in 
 Middle Ages, 42 ; passion for 
 Homer in 16th century, 43 ; Homer 
 the norm for all other epic poets, 
 43 ; Homer in France, Germany, 
 and England, 44-46 ; Homer's 
 diction, 47 ; the age he mirrored, 
 47-48 ; Iliad and Odyssey akin 
 both to popular and literary epic, 
 49; not subject to tyranny of a 
 style, 51 ; Homer's nearness to 
 nature, 52 ; man the central and 
 driving force in, 52 ; denizens of 
 the human sphere in, 53 ; men and 
 women of Homer, 54 ; the im- 
 mortals of, 56-57 ; Homer gives the 
 very essence of the Greek spirit, 57 
 
 Epicharmus, founder of literary 
 comedy, 125 ; perfected Dorian 
 comedy, 130 ; account of, 130 ; 
 the comedy of, simple in structure, 
 131-32 
 
 Epicureanism, not hedonism but a 
 system of quietism, 282 ; adopted 
 by Lucretius, 282 ; Horace great 
 representative of, 288 
 
 Epicurus, The crudities of, trans- 
 muted by Lucretius, 282 
 
 Epigram, suggested in Homer, 7 ; 
 in Greek Anthology on the nine 
 poets of the Alexandrian ("anon, 
 62n ; Simonides skilled in, 66 
 
 Epigram, The, free from pedantry, 
 247 ; defined, 248 ; wide range of 
 subject in, 249, 251 ; early use of, 
 249-50; the literary, 250-51; 
 essentially Hellenistic, 250; the 
 inscription expanded into the im- 
 aginative poem, 251-53 ; love in 
 the, 253-54 ; the satirical, 254 ; 
 influence of, on Latin poetry, 254 ; 
 types from real life in, 254 
 
 Eratostheii.es, The, only speech spoken 
 Vjy Lysias, 191 
 
 Euhemerus and his ideal Paradise, 
 242-43 
 
 Euripidcaii drama. Sophisticated con- 
 tent of the, 14 
 
 Euripides, From Sophocles to, 4 ; 
 Murray's transfiguring translations 
 of, 12 ; the classic ideal broken by, 
 12-13 ; Homer above, 83 ; the poet 
 of religious revolt, 96-97, 115; the 
 humanity in, 98 ; prophet of a new 
 era, 99, 118, 120; lack of artistic 
 unity in some plays of, 99 ; ac- 
 count of, 115-16; eighteen plays 
 of, preserved, 110; made histrionic 
 appeal to divine agency, 117; 
 plots of, inferior to those of Soph- 
 ocles, 117; has great power in 
 delineation of character, 117; 
 impatience of, with the popular 
 religion, 117; story of Ion, 117— 
 IS; fondness of, for debate, 119; 
 ridiculed by Aristophanes in the 
 Frogs, 119-20; Hecuba's invoca- 
 tion to Zeus, 120 ; his passion for jus- 
 tice, 120 ; sympathy of, with man's 
 life, 120-21 ; under an eclipse, 121 ; 
 intense feeling of, for nature, 121 ; 
 chorus from the Bacchae, trans- 
 lated by Murray, 122-23; the 
 great forerunner of the Hellenistic 
 period, 234 ; love in, 238 
 
 Fabula Atellana, The, 131, 271 
 
 Fescennine verses, The, 271 ; pos- 
 sibly in Saturnian meter, 272 
 
 Fictitious prose narrative, 242-44 ; 
 Herodotus, 242 ; Utopias of the 
 philosophers, 242 ; the Milesian 
 Tales, 242 ; Hecataeus and Euhe- 
 merus, 242-43 ; the Alexander- 
 romance, 243 ; the Greek ro- 
 mances, 243 ; trend of, away 
 from realism, 244 
 
 Funeral oration by Pericles in Thucyd- 
 ides, an encomium of Athens, 
 86, 169, 184, 188 
 
 Funeral Oration for Lcosthenes and 
 his comrades by Hyperidcs, 197- 
 98 
 
 G 
 
 Gnomic poets, The, quoted and 
 paraphrased, 26 ; may be f<juiid in 
 Homer, 7
 
 304 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Gods, Human locality of the Ho- 
 meric, 11, 54; idealistic conception 
 of the, shaped more by Homer 
 than by Hesiod, 38 ; belief in 
 visible presence of the, 48 ; vir- 
 tually men, 56 ; older conceptions 
 of the, rejected, 96-97, 234-35; 
 existence of, denied, 234 ; ration- 
 alizing the, and deification of men, 
 234-35 
 
 Gorgias, legitimate successor of 
 Homeric rhapsodes, 178 ; oratory 
 begins with, 181, 183; poetical 
 character of his speech, 183-84 ; 
 founder of artistic prose, 184 ; 
 influence of, on Thucydides, 184, 
 187; Isocrates a pupil of, 192 ; ob- 
 ject of, oral and extemporary elo- 
 quence, 193 
 
 Greece, What things the world has 
 inherited from, have their foun- 
 tain-head in Homer, 41 ; first 
 association of Rome with, 273 
 
 Greek, Our notions of what is pe- 
 culiarly, obtained from the clas- 
 sical period, 229 
 
 Greek influence upon Latin Litera- 
 ture (Gonzalez Lodge) 267-96 : 
 Latin authors acknowledged their 
 debt to Greek authors, 267 ; lost 
 sight of for ten centuries, 268 ; 
 great amount of Greek in Latin 
 noted, 268 ; controversy over 
 Latin and Greek, 268-69 ; pouring 
 of Greek fountains into an always 
 Roman stream, 269 ; the first five 
 hundred years of Rome, 269-72 ; 
 Rome and Sparta compared, 270 ; 
 abundance of literary material of 
 the early Romans, 270-71 ; the 
 Saturnian meter better adapted to 
 Latin than to Greek, 272 ; ex- 
 pansion of Rome, 272-73 ; first 
 contact of Rome with Greece in 
 third century, 273 ; absorption 
 of Greek, 273 ; native Roman 
 literature gave place to Greek, 
 274 ; Livius Andronicus, 274 ; 
 Naevius, 274-75 ; Ennius, 275 ; 
 and the full tide of, 276 ; period 
 of Roman comedy adapted from 
 the New Comedy, 276-78 ; Greek 
 
 subjects and treatment in the 
 tragedies of Accius and Paeuvius, 
 278-79 ; nine plays of the Younger 
 Seneca treat Greek themes, 279 ; 
 conspicuously absent in Lucilius, 
 280 ; the pre-Ciceronian period 
 essentially Roman, 280-81 ; new 
 influences at work, Greek phi- 
 losophy and Alexandrian poetry, 
 281 ; Lucretius and Epicurean- 
 ism, 281-83 ; Catullus and his 
 Roman spirit, 282-83 ; Greek 
 influence on Virgil, 284-88 ; 
 Horace the great representative of 
 Epicureanism, 288 ; Greek lit- 
 erary forms domesticated in Latin 
 by Horace, 289 ; elegiac poetry 
 intensely un-Roman, 290 ; in 
 prose philosophy only shows strong 
 Greek influence, 291 ; Cicero, 
 
 291, 292-93; Greek teachers of 
 rhetoric in Rome, 291 ; Roman 
 orators imitated the Attic canon, 
 292 ; the Attic style in Caesar, 
 
 292, 293-94; Sallust the Roman 
 Thucydides, 294 ; but peculiarly 
 Latin, 295 ; ceased with the great 
 authors of the Golden Age, 295 ; 
 Roman genius molded material 
 to suit its needs, 295-96 ; com- 
 bined spirit of Greece and Rome 
 dominates all intellectual progress, 
 296. See also Literature, Greek. 
 
 Greek Romances, The, 243 
 Greeks, Cultivated, and modern 
 savants, compared, 24-29 
 
 H 
 
 Hecale, The, an epic by Callimachus, 
 
 247 
 Hecataeus brought the Orient home 
 
 to the Greek fancy, 156, 157 ; 
 
 Herodotus borrowed from, 161 ; 
 
 Utopian fiction of, 242-43 
 Hellanicus established first annual 
 
 system of chronology, 156-57, 
 
 162 ; devoted to fact more than 
 
 to form, 157, 171 ; Thucydides 
 
 an advance upon, 167 
 Hellas, The brain and poetic genius 
 
 of early, 3 ; the younger, the only
 
 INDEX 
 
 305 
 
 true Greece, 5 ; the united voice 
 of, proclaimed Homer "The Poet," 
 38 ; religion of, distinguished from 
 the polytheisms of the East, 38 
 
 Hellenes, Antecedents of the epic, be- 
 yond the vision of the, 34 ; strife 
 of, with Barbarians the greater 
 theme of Herodotus, 160-61 
 
 Hellenes, Ionian, Literary expres- 
 sion among the, 171-72 
 
 Hellenic conquest of Asia, The, and 
 Cleitarchus, 152 
 
 Hellenism, Euripides and Plato rep- 
 resentatives and destroyers of, 
 13 ; the comedy of manners of 
 Menander a great contribution 
 of, to literature, 126 ; Menander the 
 first great poet of, 150 ; Butcher 
 on the great ideas of, 150 ; the 
 civilization of, anticipated by 
 Isocrates, 194 
 
 Hellenistic I,iterature (Henry W. 
 Prescott) 229-66: Mistaken view 
 of work of Alexandrian period, 
 229-30 ; development rather than 
 degeneration, 230 ; the city-states 
 of the fifth centurj^ 230-32 ; the 
 monarchy of Alexander released the 
 municipality from bondage, 232 ; 
 indi\-idual opportunity widened, 
 232 ; biography a literary type, 
 233 ; interpretation of environment 
 an evolution, 233 ; traces of in- 
 dividualism and realism in fifth 
 century, 234 ; spread of skepti- 
 cism, 234-35 ; cosmopolitanism, 
 individualism, realism, and ration- 
 alism characteristics of the period, 
 235 ; essentially modern, 236 ; a 
 complicated phenomenon, 236-37 ; 
 seriously affected by skepticism, 
 237 ; sentimental legends replace 
 the old myths, 237-38; love- 
 stories classical and realistic, 238- 
 39 ; conscious effort to achieve 
 style, 239-40 ; oratory gave place 
 to declamation, 240 ; scanty re- 
 mains of Hellenistic prose, 240 ; 
 no masterpieces in philosophy, 
 241 ; essays in history, 241 ; fic- 
 titious prose narrative, Herodotus, 
 242 ; philosophical Utopias, 242 ; 
 
 the Milesian Tales, 242 ; the 
 Alexander-romance, 243 ; the 
 Greek Romances, 243^4 ; poetry, 
 the epic in Tale of the Argonauts 
 by Apollonius, 244-46; Callima- 
 chus and the epyllium, or short 
 epic, 246-47; pedantry a blemish, 
 247-48 ; elegy and epigram, 248 ; 
 the elegj% 248-49 ; the epigram, 
 249-54 ; in inscriptions, 249-50 ; 
 the literary epigram a Hellenistic 
 creation, 250-51 ; inscriptions, 
 251-53 ; love epigrams, 253-54 ; 
 comedJ^ 254-56 ; of the classical 
 period and the New Comedy, 254- 
 55 ; Menander, 255-56 ; the mime, 
 256-57; work of Herondas, 257; 
 Theocritus and the old Greek re- 
 finement and taste, 257-60 ; the 
 pastoral the mime of country life, 
 259-60 ; Bion, 260-62 : the second 
 mime of Theocritus, 262-64; 
 Travels of Theocritus, 265 ; other 
 forms of, 265 ; a natural out- 
 growth of social conditions, 265-66 
 
 Heraclitus, Influence of, 95 ; on the 
 purposes of God, 104n; the cos- 
 mos of fire everlasting of, 213 
 
 Herodotus, Symmetry in narrative 
 of, 9 ; nonchalance of Ionian style 
 of, 16; unapproachalile type of 
 historian confeur, 19 ; the Greek 
 as seen in, 24-25 ; Athenian ideals 
 pictured by, 97 ; a sovereign name 
 in Greek historiography, 152, 153, 
 176; the treasures reduced to 
 literary- form by, 157-58; gave 
 form to beliefs of Periclean party 
 on Persian Wars, 158-59 ; worth 
 of, as an historian, 159 ; a collec- 
 tor on a vast scale, 159 ; greater 
 and narrower themes of, 160; the 
 prose Homer of the Persian \\'ars, 
 100-61 ; Dionj-sius of Halicarnas- 
 sus on, 161-62 ; right of, to be 
 called "The Father of History," 
 162 ; a considerable part of, fic- 
 tion, 242 
 
 Herondas, The mimes of, 256-57 ; 
 repellent realism in, 257 ; shows 
 the Greeks were thoroughly hu- 
 man, 257
 
 306 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hesiod, Works and Days, 11 ; why 
 poems of, are called epic, 36 ; the 
 chronological and didactic poems 
 of, 156 ; devoted to fact more than 
 to form, 157, 171 ; inspired Vir- 
 gil's Georgics, 284, 286 
 
 Hexameter, Perfected harmonies of 
 the, 3 ; the Latin, never achieved 
 the lightness of the Greek, 276 
 
 Hipponax, The iambic verse of, cul- 
 tivated by Herondas, 256 
 
 Historical criticism and science, Thu- 
 cydides the creator of, 162-3 
 
 Historiography, Greek, ends with 
 the historians of Alexander's career, 
 152, 176 ; sovereign names in, 153, 
 176 ; a curious amenity of, 157 
 
 History (B. Perrin) 152-77: Spec- 
 tacular struggles and their chron- 
 iclers, 152-53 ; the Homeric poems, 
 153-55 ; period of scientific in- 
 quiry, 155-56 ; truth stranger 
 than fiction, 156 ; the invasions of 
 Darius and Xerxes, 156 ; Hellani- 
 cus and the first annual system of 
 chronology, 156-57 ; Thucydides 
 and his predecessors, 157 ; records 
 and traditions of the Persian Wars, 
 157-58 ; reduced to splendid 
 form by Herodotus, 158-62 ; Peri- 
 clean Athens and the Persian 
 Wars, 158-59 ; Xerxes' invasion of 
 Europe, 160 ; Herodotus the prose 
 Homer of the Persian Wars, 160- 
 62 ; Thucydides and the Pelopon- 
 nesian War, 162-70 ; his state- 
 ment of purpose, 163-64 ; the 
 man and his manners of writing, 
 164-69; Xenophon, 170-71; 
 Cratippus, 171 ; a new political 
 idea, and a new literary form, 171 ; 
 Ephorus and his Hellenica, 171- 
 72 ; Theopompus, 172 ; Alexander 
 and his retinue of historians, 172- 
 74 ; literature of pure romance, 
 174 ; Cleitarchus of Colophon, 
 174-75 ; Alexander-romance in 
 the making, 175 ; the sovereign 
 names among the Greeks them- 
 selves, 153, 176 ; permanent value 
 of, in Herodotus and Thucydides, 
 176 ; marks of a good historian, 177 
 
 History, Orderly development 
 through, 14 ; recited in agonistic 
 competitions, 16 ; the Greek con- 
 ception of, 28 ; in Herodotus and 
 Thucydides a real form of litera- 
 ture, 95 ; essays in, 241 ; develop- 
 ment of, at Rome, 293-95 ; Caesar, 
 293-94; Sallust, 294-95; later 
 historians, 295 
 
 Homer, the beginning, 3 ; how to 
 understand, 3, 35 ; Macaulay'a 
 explanation of, 3 ; one of the 
 world's supreme poets, 4, 8 ; the 
 fire and divine intensity of, 5-6 ; 
 Landor on, 7 ; called originator 
 of drama by Plato and Aristotle, 
 7, 53 ; what may be found in, 7-8, 
 41, 47; the universal genius of, 
 8 ; portrayal of character in, 10, 
 53-56; style in, 11, 47; better 
 known at Athens by recital than 
 by the eye, 16 ; no sense of high- 
 est poetry acquired without know- 
 ing, 19 ; the common storehouse 
 of imagery and phrase, 26, 47 ; 
 we yearn for, 30, 31 ; on the gifts 
 of the gods, 32 ; source of all elo- 
 quence in Greece, 34 ; inexhaus- 
 tible vitality of, has been longer 
 contemporaneous, 37 ; a constant 
 influence in European literature, 
 37 ; a national poet, 37 ; a teacher- 
 poet, 38-39 ; all conditions of men 
 knew, 38 ; works of, the epitome 
 of all knowledge to the Greeks, 39 ; 
 Plato's attack on, 39 ; words of, 
 always on the lips of men, 40 ; 
 permanent value of, 40 ; estab- 
 lished a standard of distinction, 
 41 ; the first poet ever translated, 
 41 ; controversy over relative 
 merits of Virgil and, 42 ; Dante 
 on, 42 ; devoured by the Human- 
 ists, 43 ; in the culture of modern 
 Europe, 43 ; the ancients and the 
 moderns, 43-44 ; the rediscovery 
 of, 44 ; in France and Germany, 
 44-45 ; in England, 45-46 ; what 
 the claim of, in the culture of the 
 future, 46 ; the qualities of, 47 ; 
 an encyclopedist, 47-48 ; per- 
 manence as a poet insured, 49 ;
 
 INDEX 
 
 307 
 
 characteristics of, 50-51 ; nature 
 in, 51-52 ; moves in the world of 
 man, 52-53 ; the men and women 
 of, 53-56 ; limitless faculty of 
 invention of, 53 ; heroes of, 54 ; 
 the gods of, 56-57 ; the province 
 of, 57 ; a sovereign name in Greek 
 historiography, 152, 153, 176 ; 
 Kipling on, 155; oratory in, 181- 
 83 ; Gladstone and Jebb on the 
 speeches in, 182-83 ; Demos- 
 thenes and, 208 ; love a mere in- 
 cident in, 238 ; permeates Virgil, 
 284 ; radical difference of Virgil 
 from, 287. See also Iliad and 
 Odyssey 
 Horace on lyrici vates, 62n ; the 
 savage Tenth Epode of, 71 ; the 
 spoken Latin of little use to, 72 ; 
 on the comic poets, 138; some 
 odes of, epigrams, 254 ; on debt 
 to conquered Greece, 267, 295 ; 
 asserted dependence of Lucilius 
 upon the Old Comedy, 268 ; rep- 
 resentative of Roman cosmopoli- 
 tanism and Epicureanism, 288 ; 
 the Roman period of his Epodes 
 and Satires, 288-89 ; his Greek 
 period in his lyric poetry, 289 ; his 
 last, world, period, that of the 
 fourth book of Odes and the 
 Epistles, 289 ; always indepen- 
 dently Roman, 289-90 
 Hortensius, Cicero pitted against, 292 
 Hyperides, "the Sheridan of antiq- 
 uity," 196; Dionysius on, 197; 
 account of, from treatise On Srib- 
 limity, 197-98 ; lacked the moral 
 force of Demosthenes, 198 ; ex- 
 tracts from Funeral Oration for 
 Leosthenes and his companions, 
 198-99 
 
 Iambic poetry. Structure of, 66, 67, 
 
 68-71 ; success of Archilochus 
 
 with, 69-71 
 Ibycus, a choral lyrist, 78-79 ; the 
 
 passionate poet of love, 82 
 Iliad and Odyssey, the Mycenaean 
 
 lions of Greek Literature, 1 ; ar- 
 
 chitectonic structure of the, 9 ; 
 portrayal of character in the, 
 9-10 ; beauty of the gods in the, 
 and the Homeric style, 11; the 
 only mirrors of the poetic adoles- 
 cence of humanity, 18 ; in their 
 past the Greeks found no earlier 
 poetry than, 34 ; no other poems 
 can rival, 36 ; pertinence of, ' to 
 life, 39 ; Matthew Arnold on, 46 ; 
 materials for study in, 47-48; 
 quarry for sociologist and archaeol- 
 ogist, 48; akin to the "popular" 
 and the literary epic, 49-50 ; 
 about half consists of speeches, 53 ; 
 authentic history to most Greeks, 
 153 ; traditional race-poems to 
 many now, 153-55 ; fashioned 
 from epic poesy, 154 ; thought to 
 be the work of a divine Homer, 
 155. See also Homer 
 
 Individual lyric, The, of Lesbos and 
 Ionia, 66 ; second division of, the 
 iambic, 68-72 ; third division of, 
 the first of the "melic" poetry, 
 72 
 
 Ion, genial jack-of-all-trades, 67, 163 
 
 Isaeus, 184n ; Demosthenes influ- 
 enced by, 202-3 ; scholars must 
 know, 207-8 
 
 Isocrates, habitually talks like a 
 book, 15 ; expects his essays to be 
 read aloud, 16 ; intellectual domi- 
 nation of Hellas by, 171 ; on figures 
 in oratory, 178 ; lacked voice and 
 nerve, 178 ; spent ten years on his 
 Panegyricus, 179, 194 ; oratory 
 begins with, 181 ; a pupil of Gor- 
 gias, 192; Jebb and Plato on, 192; 
 had neither voice nor nerve, 193 ; 
 opened a school of rhetoric, 193 ; 
 became a political essayist, 193- 
 94 ; advocated union of all Greeks 
 in the invasion of Persia, 194 ; 
 Phiiippus, 194 ; represents the 
 "smooth" style of Dionysius, 194- 
 95 ; discourses of, meant to be 
 read aloud, 195 ; Jebb on style of, 
 195, 190; founder of literary ar- 
 tistic prose, 196; influence of, 
 effected by Cicero, 196; Ho.ssuct in- 
 debted to, 196 ; deserves study, 208
 
 308 
 
 INDEX 
 
 I 
 
 Jason and Medea, The romance of, 
 intelligible to every modern reader, 
 236 ; earliest example of romance 
 of modern type, 245-46 
 
 Jebb, R. C, the type of the safe and 
 sane man, 22 ; on the spirit of 
 Periclean Athens, 97 ; on the 
 greatness of Sophocles, 111 ; on 
 the speeches in Homer, 182-83 ; 
 on the speeches in Thucydides, 
 169n, 185; on Lysias, 191, 192 
 
 Johnson, Dr., on questions, 35 ; on 
 the plajTvright, 137 
 
 K 
 
 Keats, 4 ; sonnet book of, 5 ; Ode to 
 the Nightingale, 17 
 
 Latin Literature, a labyrinth with- 
 out kno\dedge of Greek, 267 ; the 
 sole literature to the Dark Ages, 
 268; a reflection of Greek, 268; 
 said to begin with a play of Livius 
 Andronicus, 269 ; evidences of 
 vigorous literary growth in, 270 ; 
 songs at banquets, dirges, religious 
 chants, and folk-poetry, 270-71 ; 
 the Fescennine verses and Satura, 
 271—72 ; the Saturnian meter, 
 272 ; no trace of Greek influence 
 on, till third century, 273 ; liter- 
 ary elements of, distinctly Roman, 
 273 ; native Roman, sank into 
 obscurity, 274 ; Ennius aban- 
 doned the Saturnian measure for 
 the hexameter, 275-76 ; Roman 
 comedy, Plautus and Terence, 
 276-78 ; Roman tragedy almost 
 entirely Greek in theme and treat- 
 ment, 278-79 ; Lucilius creates 
 satire, 280 ; pre-Ciceronian period 
 of, closed, 280 ; the Ciceronian 
 Age and new influences, 281 ; 
 Lucretius, 281-83; Catullus, 283- 
 84; Vu-gil, 284-88; the Aeneid, 
 284-85, 286-88; the Bucolics, 
 285-86 ; the Georgics, 286 ; Horace, 
 
 288-90; elegiac poetry, Tibullus, 
 Propertius, and Ovid, 290 ; prose, 
 290-95; Cicero, 291-93; Caesar, 
 293-94; Sallust, 294-95 
 
 Literature, Greek, Power of, for cul- 
 ture, 2-3; architectonic imagina- 
 tion in, 9 ; the literary portrait 
 in, 9-10 ; development of literary 
 form in, 13-14 ; outgrowth of the 
 national life, 14-16 ; realistic, 
 16-17 ; essential and abiding 
 values of, 21 ; Prof. Bury on our 
 understanding of, 23 ; the best, 
 comes first, 34, 41 ; enduring 
 value of Iliad and Odyssey in the 
 cultural influences of, 36, 40-41; 
 every form of, confesses authority 
 of Homer, 41 ; looks directly at 
 nature and at man, 51 ; carefully 
 worked out, a characteristic view 
 of, 64 ; certain forms of \'erse as- 
 sociated with certain types of, 
 66 ; development of the drama, 
 and creation of prose style, 67 ; 
 the elegiac distich the prose of, 
 down to the fifth century, 68 
 
 Livius Andronicus, Saturnian version 
 of the Odyssey by, 14; "Father of 
 Latin literature," 269 ; brought 
 out a play at Rome, 274 ; trans- 
 lated the Odyssey, 274 
 
 Lodge, Gonzalez, Greek influence 
 upon Latin Literature, 267-96. 
 For analysis see Greek influence, etc. 
 
 Logographers, The, 188-89 ; wrote 
 speeches for clients, 189 
 
 Longinus preserved a valuable frag- 
 ment of Sappho, 62 ; on Cleitar- 
 chus, 174 
 
 Lucian on Aristophanes and Eupolis, 
 139-40 ; on Onesicritus, 175 
 
 Lucilius, Dependence of, upon the 
 Old Comedy, 268; wrote thirty 
 books of satire, 280 ; made the 
 hexameter the vehicle of satire 
 in English and French, 280 ; es- 
 sentially Roman in all he wrote, 
 280 ; wrote elegiac couplets, 290 
 
 Lucretius, and the philosophic poets, 
 19 ; proud of his debt to Epicurus, 
 267 ; Greek philosophy of, at work, 
 281-83; and Virgil, 281; in- 
 
 4 
 
 I 
 
 I
 
 INDEX 
 
 309 
 
 tensely Roman, he adopted Epi- 
 cureanism, 281-82; transmuted 
 the crudities of Epicurus into 
 genuine poetry, 282-83 
 
 Lycurgus, 184n ; 207-8 
 
 Lyric, may be found in Homer, 7, 
 41 ; orderly development of, 14 ; 
 adaptation of the, to expression 
 of passionate individualism, 14; 
 material for study of, 18 ; had its 
 traditional formulas, 26 
 
 Lyric poetry (Edward Delavan 
 Perry) 58-91: Many-sidedness of, 
 58 ; permeates Greek literature, 
 58-59 ; time's havoc with, 59-60 ; 
 Bergk's collection of, 60 ; known 
 chiefly by quotation in later 
 writers, 60-62 ; the preservers of 
 fragments of, 62 ; Alexandrian 
 canon of nine best lyric poets, 
 62n : term "lyric" first used, 63; 
 elegiac and melic included in, 63 ; 
 unintelligible, except as connected 
 ■with music, 63-64 ; essentially 
 "occasional" poetry, 64-65; clas- 
 sification of, 65-66 ; for a single 
 voice or chorus, 66 ; why classified 
 according to meter, 66 ; elegiac 
 and iambic poetry, 66-73 ; Les- 
 bos and schools of poetry, 74 ; Al- 
 caeus and Sappho, 75-78 ; the 
 choral lyrist, 78-90 ; the choral 
 lyric, 79-80; Alcman, 80-82; 
 Stesichorus and Ibycus, 82 ; Simon- 
 ides, 82-84; Pindar, 84-89; Bac- 
 chylides, 89-90 ; new popularity 
 for the dithyramb, 90 , common 
 element of best Greek work, 90-91 
 
 Lysias, first among logographers, 
 188 ; identified himself with his 
 client, 189; ethopoiia of, 189-90; 
 Dionysius on, 190, 191 ; gift of 
 stating a case, 190-91 ; lacks 
 pathos and fire, grandeur and 
 spirit, 191; Jebb on, 191, 192; Hy- 
 perides mastered the graces of, 197; 
 merits wider attention, 208 ; style 
 of, aimed at, 292 
 
 M 
 
 Magnes, of Icaria, a comic poet, 
 124-25 
 
 Martial, Influence of. the Greek epi- 
 gram on, 2.54 
 
 Meleager, A love epigram of, 253 
 
 Melic poetry, included in lyric, 63 ; 
 twenty-one kinds of, 65 ; the Les- 
 bian and Ionic, 66 ; first division 
 of, 72 
 
 Menander, The comedy of manners 
 of, 126-27 ; the unapproachable 
 master of comedy, 148 ; judg- 
 ment of antiquity upon, 148-49 ; 
 trained in philosophy and rhet- 
 oric, 149; Quintilian on, 149-50; 
 trained in the drama by Alexis, 
 150 ; Croiset on, 150 ; the first 
 great poet of Hellenism, 150; 
 greatest representative of the New 
 Comedy, 151 ; a play of, intelli- 
 gible to every modern reader, 236 ; 
 delicate delineation of character 
 by, 255 ; we would rather lose all 
 of, and Plautus and Terence, 
 than the Birds and Frogs of 
 Aristophanes, 255 ; Plautus drew 
 material from, 276 
 
 Menandrian comedy. Sophisticated 
 content of the, 14 ; not evolved 
 from the Aristophanic, 256 
 
 Middle Comedy, The, 134, 136; ap- 
 proaches real life, 144-45 ; myth- 
 ology in, 145 ; Aristotle on, 145 ; 
 Antiphanes on the plot in, 145-46 ; 
 renounced the political, 146 
 
 Milesian Talcs, The, 242 
 
 Milton, Bias of theological dogma 
 in, 40 ; Homer the favorite book 
 of, 45; and Homer, 51, 57; words 
 of, on the battle of Marston Moor, 
 97; Lycidas of, 27, 262 
 
 Mime, The Hellenistic, free from 
 pedantry, 247 ; the cruder phases 
 of, as recitation or song, 256 ; of 
 Theocritus in hexameter, 256 ; of 
 Herondas in the iambic of Hip- 
 ponax, 256 ; reproduced scenes 
 from private life, 257 ; repellent 
 realism of Herondas, 257 ; the old 
 Greek refinement and taste in 
 Theocritus, 257-60; Battus and 
 Corydon, 258 ; continuity of the 
 pastoral from Theocritus to Spen- 
 ser, 258-59 ; the legend of Daph-
 
 310 
 
 INDEX 
 
 nis, 259-60; Bion's Aphrodito 
 and Adonis, 260-61 ; extract from 
 Mrs. Browning's translation, 261 ; 
 modern imitations in Milton's 
 Lycidas, Shelley's Adonais, and 
 Arnold's Thyrsis, 262 ; realism of 
 second mime of Theocritus, 262- 
 64 
 
 Mimnermus, The love-sick, senti- 
 mentalized in the elegiac measure, 
 68 
 
 Murray, Gilbert, Translations of 
 Euripides, 12, 15, 23,, 72n ; on 
 progress among the Greeks, 28 ; 
 The Rise of the Greek Epic, 28n, 
 153n, 155 ; on high ideals in 
 Athens, 97 : translation of chorus 
 from the Bacchae, 121-23 
 
 Musaeus's Hero and Leander, 37 
 
 Mythological travesty of Epichar- 
 mus, 131, 134 
 
 Myths, The, not rejected, 156; con- 
 tent of, questioned, 234 ; the old, 
 for centuries the subjects of epos 
 and tragedy, 237 ; legends a sub- 
 stitute for, 237-38 
 
 N 
 
 Nae\nus wroLe Roman plaj's on 
 Roman subjects, 274-75 ; impris- 
 oned for criticising contempo- 
 raries, 275 ; wrote epic on the First 
 Punic War, 275 
 
 Nature, in Homer, 51-52; man's 
 power over, theme of the great 
 chorus in the Antigone, 97; in the 
 early Greek philosophy, 211 ; love 
 and hate the architects of, for 
 Empedocles, 213-14; fertile con- 
 ceptions about the order of, 214 ; 
 Aristotle's philosophy a philosophy 
 of, 226-27 
 
 New Comedy, The, 134, 136 ; use of 
 chorus in, 142-43 ; men and 
 women of the, 144 ; poets of the, 
 dropped mythological subjects, 
 146 ; portrayed average charac- 
 ters, 147 ; the passion of love in, 
 147-48 ; difference between the, 
 and the modern romance, 148 ; 
 reached its highest point in Me- 
 
 nander 148, 150-51 ; realistic, 254 ; 
 forecasts modern five-act play, 
 255 ; repulsive side of, not a re- 
 production of contemporary Greek 
 life, 255 ; a regeneration of the 
 comedy of manners, 256 ; Plautus 
 and Terence used the material of 
 the, 276-78 
 Nicander, The Georgics and Meta- 
 morphoses of, the background of 
 Virgil's and Ovid's, 248 
 
 O 
 
 Odysseus, The stories of Achilles and, 
 absorbed the earlier hymns and 
 songs, 34; the homecoming of, a 
 center of lost epics, 36 ; the main- 
 spring of the Odyssey, 52-53 ; 
 prayer of, for Nausicaa, 55; 153; 
 eloquence of, 181 ; on the gifts of 
 the gods, 181-82; plea of the 
 outcast, to Nausicaa, 182 
 
 Odyssey, the, Saturnian version of, 
 by Livius Andronicus, 14 ; a con- 
 flation of two " Returns" of the 
 hero, 35 ; the forty-one days of, 
 36 ; Petrarch's copy of Latin trans- 
 lation of, 43; Butcher and Lang's 
 translation of the, 45n ; Odj'sseus 
 the mainspring of the, 52-53: 
 excels in picturesque effect, 53 ; 
 translation of, bj' Livius Androni- 
 cus, a school-book at Rome, 274 
 
 Old Comedy, Political satire and 
 personal lampooning in the, 134, 
 135; free speech as the breath of 
 life to the, 136; poets of the, gave 
 the people their own, 137; this 
 not the traditional view of the, 
 138; interpretations of, 139-40 
 changes in the, 142-43; Aristotle 
 on the, 144; portrayed the ridicu- 
 lous, 146 
 
 Oratory (Charles Fohster Smith) 
 178-208 : Delight of the Greeks in, 
 178 ; the orator's sense of beauty 
 and infinite painstaking, 178-79 ; 
 the Attic Demos the audience, 
 179-80 ; as a fine art begins with 
 Gorgias and Isocrates, 181 ; in 
 Homer, 181-83; Solon in the
 
 INDEX 
 
 311 
 
 Agora, 183 : Gorgias of Leontini, 
 183-84 ; Antiphon, the first name 
 in the Canon, 184 ; the speeches 
 in Thucydidcs, 184-85, 186-88; 
 Dionysius's three styles of composi- 
 tion, 185-86; the "austere," 186; 
 the logographer, Lysias, 188-92; 
 Isocrates, 192-96 ; represents and 
 illustrates the "smooth" style, 
 194-95 ; Hyperides, 196-99 ; Aeschi- 
 nes, 199-201 ; Demosthenes, 202-7 ; 
 legacy of, toman of culture, 207-8 ; 
 Lysias, Isocrates, and Demosthenes, 
 208 
 
 Oratory, Orderly development 
 through, 14; Greek, essentially At- 
 tic, 58; Greek teachers of rhetoric 
 at Rome, 291; Hortensius and 
 Cicero, 292-93 
 
 Ovid, on Menander, 147; love- 
 elegies of, expansions of epigrams, 
 254; fixed the sphere of the elegiac 
 couplet, 290 
 
 Pacuvius used Greek subjects and 
 
 treatment in his tragedies, 278-79 
 Paean, The, a song of thanksgiving 
 
 or praise, 65 
 Palatine Anthology, Epigrams of, 2 
 Panaetius on the principle in speeches 
 
 of Demosthenes, 206 
 Papyri discovered in Egyptian 
 
 tombs, 60 ; slowly filling the gaps 
 
 in Hellenistic literature, 230 
 Parmenides and Empedocles, The 
 
 philosophic epic of, 36 
 Pericles, burlesqued by Cratinus, 
 
 134; gave the people their own, 
 
 136-37; the Athenian democracy 
 
 under, 165 
 Peripeteia, 110 
 Perkin, Bernadotte, History, 152- 
 
 77. For analysis see History 
 Perry, Edward Delavan, Lyric 
 
 poetry, 58-91. For analysis see 
 
 Lyric poetry 
 Persephone, Hymns to, 32; queen 
 
 of the dead, 88 
 Philip, Duel of Demosthenes and, 
 
 20; father of Alexander, 172; 
 
 Demosthenes and, 205-7; con- 
 
 verted city-states into a monarchy, 
 232 
 Philistus, historian of Sicily, 171 
 Philosophy (Frederick J. E. Wood- 
 bridge) 209-28 : Greeks origi- 
 nators of, for the Western world, 
 209; Thales of Miletus their first 
 philosopher, 209 ; his achieve- 
 ments, 210; two dominant in- 
 terests : The order of nature and 
 the excellence of man, 211; the 
 cosmos, 211; Parmenides, being, 
 and the infinite, 211-12; Anaxi- 
 mander, space, and the struggle for 
 life, 212-13 ; Anaximenes and the 
 cosmic wind, 213 ; Heraclitus and 
 fire everlasting, 213; Empedocles 
 with love and hate, 213 ; Anax- 
 agoras and intelligence, 213-14; 
 Democritus and his atomic theory, 
 214 ; Greek cosmologies as pic- 
 tures painted by tradition, 214-15; 
 nature recovered later through a 
 bitter struggle, 215 ; Attic phi- 
 losophy humanistic, city-born and 
 city-bred, 215-16; Protagoras, 
 the Sophist, the first professional 
 educator, 216; Socrates and his 
 love for young men, 217-18 ; Plato 
 and his contributions to, 218-19; 
 the Republic, 219-21 ; story of Er, 
 220 ; Plato's challenge to civili- 
 zation, 221 ; his theory of educa- 
 tion, 222; Aristotle, 223-27; sys- 
 tem of sciences in, 224 ; his 
 Metaphysics, 224-26 ; a philosophy 
 of nature, 226-27 ; no greater 
 philosophical conceptions, 228 ; 
 constructs the ideal wise man, 233 
 Pindar, one of the world's supreme 
 poets, 4; Landor on, 7; long 
 communion with, impairs appre- 
 ciation of some modern poems, 17 ; 
 the highest reaches of song in, 18; 
 Homer beyond, 38; MS. of, come 
 down to us, 60 ; Epinikion of, 65 ; 
 a choral lyrist, 78; agitated 
 rhythms in, 79 ; epinician odes of, 
 84-89; the Fourth Pythian, 85; 
 principle of composition, 85-86 ; 
 abstract of the Seventh Olympian, 
 86-88 ; magnificence of diction,
 
 312 
 
 INDEX 
 
 88; Fourteenth Olympian, 88; 
 dithyramb to Athens, 89 ; un- 
 critical depreciation of, 89 ; in- 
 fluence of, on Thucydides, 187; 
 Demosthenes and, 208 
 
 Plato, denounced by Nietzsche and 
 Landor, 5 ; called Homer origina- 
 tor of the drama, 7 ; labyrinthine 
 construction of Dialogues of, 9 ; 
 Jowett's introduction to Phaedrus 
 of, 11 ; and the Sophists, 11 ; a 
 representative and destroyer of 
 Hellenism, 13 ; the source of dia- 
 lectical scholasticism and mystic 
 symbolism, 13 ; l:)asis of education 
 of, 14 ; definition of theme of 
 Greek poetry, 17 ; the Dialogues 
 of, the only adequate expression 
 of the potency of discussions, 20 ; 
 an exception, 29n ; purified spirits 
 in the stars, 30 ; attack of, on 
 Homer, 39 ; epigrams ascribed to, 
 67 ; the Symposium of, 73 ; on 
 Epicharmus, 130 ; epigram on 
 Aristophanes, 142 ; care of, in 
 composition, 179 ; Demosthenes 
 and, 208 ; real name of, Aristocles, 
 218; why dubbed Plato, 218; 
 Socrates and his followers a dra- 
 matic spectacle to, 218; com- 
 mitted to the dramatization of the 
 conflict of ideas, 219 ; versatility 
 of, 219; the Republic of, 219-21; 
 a challenge to civilization, 221 ; 
 ideas of, on education, 222-23 
 
 Plautus, Plays of, adaptations from 
 Hellenistic comedies, 255 ; bor- 
 rowed from Menander, 276 ; in- 
 troduced purely Roman elements 
 and characteristics, 277 ; con- 
 versational and rugged, 278 
 
 Plutarch preserved some lyrical frag- 
 ments, G2 ; opinion of Cratippus, 
 171 ; on Demosthenes, 179 
 
 Poetry, Greek, The theme of, the 
 imitation of human action, 17 ; 
 no "publication" of, 63-64 
 
 Poetry, Greek and modern. Imagina- 
 tive and emotional contrasts be- 
 tween, 23-33 ; the modern spirit, 
 24 ; complication and range of 
 modern, 25-27 ; refined by literary 
 
 reminiscence, 26 ; variety of re- 
 source in modern, 26-28 ; artistic 
 unity in Greek, 27 ; divines more 
 of the future than the Greek, 28 ; 
 wail for the impotence of man in 
 Greek, 29 ; Greek poetry an in- 
 comparable educational instrument, 
 33 ; Aristotle on, 64n 
 
 Poly bins, moved to his great work, 
 152, 176 ; a study of great per- 
 sonalities, 233 ; a sane observer, 241 
 
 Posidonius, Influence of, on the 
 Latin, 240 
 
 Prescott, Henry W., Hellenistic 
 Literature, 229-66. For analysis 
 see Hellenistic Literature 
 
 Prometheus, Reconciliation between 
 Zeus and, 102 ; suffers for his love 
 of man, 104 
 
 Propertius on the Aeneid, 42 ; love- 
 elegies of, expansions of epigrams, 
 254 ; boasted he was the Roman 
 Callimachus, 267 ; fixed the sphere 
 of the elegiac couplet, 290 
 
 Prose, Artistic, of late date, 67 
 
 Prose, The crisp, of the Hellenistic 
 period, 239 ; scanty remains of, 240 
 
 Prose, see Latin prose 
 
 Protagoras the Sophist on man, 216; 
 the first professional educator, 216 ; 
 danger in the methods of, 217 
 
 Q 
 
 Quintilian refers to nine lyric poets, 
 62n ; on the study of Menander 
 by the would-be orator, 149-50 ; 
 claimed Satire was wholly Roman, 
 267-68 
 
 R 
 
 Realism, The, of Greek literature, 
 16-17 ; interest in, 233 ; traces of, 
 in life and thought of fifth century, 
 234 ; characteristic of the Hellen- 
 istic period, 235 
 
 Religion, Questions of, in men's 
 thoughts, 96 ; faith in, under- 
 mined, 234-35 
 
 Rhetoric, dialectical. The world of, 
 4; swallowed all, 11 ; an important 
 element in education, 239
 
 INDEX 
 
 313 
 
 Rhetoric of Western Europe, Source 
 of the. 20 
 
 Rhetorical fluency, an abiding endow- 
 ment, 4 
 
 Rhetorical prose, a new literary form, 
 171-72 
 
 Romans, Rude style and culture of 
 the early, 13 ; acknowledged their 
 indebtedness to Greece, 267 ; ban- 
 quet and festival songs, and dirges 
 of the, 270-71 ; folk-poetry of, 
 271 ; epitaphs from the third cen- 
 tury, 271-72; contact of, with the 
 Greeks, 273; imprisoned Naevius 
 for criticism of his contempo- 
 raries, 275 ; comedy popular with 
 the, 276-77 ; tragedy never popu- 
 lar among the, 279 ; cease to be 
 Italian and become cosmopolitan, 
 281 ; heirs to only one foreign 
 literature, 285 
 
 Rome, the first station in Homer's 
 progress to the modern world, 41 
 
 Rome, The beginnings of, 269 ; com- 
 pared with Sparta, 270 ; career of 
 conquest and expansion of, 272-73 ; 
 association of, with Greece, begun, 
 273 ; political intimacy of, with 
 the Italian Greeks, 273 ; made 
 Greek literature her handmaid, 295 
 
 Ruskin on melancholy in the Greeks, 
 29 
 
 S 
 
 Sallust, aimed to be the Roman 
 Thucydides, 294 ; familiar with 
 early Roman literature, 294-95 ; 
 style of, peculiarly Latin, 295 ; 
 on the Roman character, 295 
 
 Sappho, one of the world's supremo 
 poets, 4 ; the actual cadences of, 
 18 ; MSS. of, burned at Rome, 60 ; 
 fragments of, preserved in papyri, 
 GO ; two best pieces of, 62 ; prob- 
 ably no two copies of text of, alike, 
 64; use of the "individual lyric" 
 by, 66 ; Swinburne's imitations of, 
 71 ; Wharton's edition of, 71 ; criti- 
 cism of poetry of, 76-77; its tran- 
 scendent beauty, 77-78 ; defense 
 of, 78 ; tone of pure folk-poetry 
 in, 93 ; love poetry of, 233. 238 
 
 Satire, suggested in Homer, 7 ; 
 claimed by Quintilian to be wholly 
 Roman, 267-68 ; established in 
 the work of Lucilius, 280 
 
 Satura, The, dance-songs, 271 ; re- 
 appear in a different form in the 
 work of Lucilius, 280 
 
 Saturnian meter, The one national 
 Roman, 272 ; abandoned by En- 
 nius for the hexameter, 275 
 
 Seneca refers to nine lyric poets, 
 62n ; cultivated a crisp style, 239 
 
 Seneca, the younger. Nothing Roman 
 in the nine tragedies of, 279 
 
 Shakespeare, 4 ; quality of univer- 
 sality in, 93 ; freedom of, in choice 
 of subjects, 99 
 
 Shelley, 4, 28 ; the formless and 
 aimless Revolt of Islam of, 9 ; on 
 Homer as a poet, 46 ; AdoTmis of, 
 on death of Keats, 262 
 
 Shelley's Ode to the West Wind, No 
 Greek poem to match, 17 
 
 Shorey, Paul, The study of Greek 
 literature, 1-33 ; on Sappho, 76. 
 See Study of Greek Literature 
 
 Simonides, From Pindar to, 4 ; at- 
 tacks on, by Timocroon, 61 ; first 
 poet of the choral lyric to use the 
 elegiac distich, 66 ; a choral lyrist, 
 78-79 ; popularity and versatility 
 of, 82-83 ; lines of, on Danae and 
 Perseus, 83, Enkonnon of, on the 
 dead at TherniDpylac, 83-84; 
 story of Enkomion by, for Scopas, 
 85 ; the Danae of, 208 
 
 Smith, Charles Forster, Oratory, 
 178-208. For analyses .see Ora- 
 tory and names of orators 
 
 Smyth, Herbert Weir, Epic poetry, 
 34-57. For analysis see Epic poetry 
 
 Sociologist, The, and Homer, 48 
 
 Socrates, denounced by Nietzsche 
 and Landor, 5; the Platonic, 11; 
 influence of, in fifth century, 96; 
 affection of, for young men, 217; 
 method of instruction of, 2I7-1S; 
 the loss of, 218; prayer of, in the 
 Phaedrus of Plato, 228 
 
 Solon, Many manifestoes of, in the 
 elegiac measure, 6S; elegj' of, on 
 retaking Salamis, 183
 
 314 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Sophists, the, Plato protested against, 
 11; at Athens, 96; prosperity of, 
 216 ; significance of their existence, 
 217 
 
 Sophocles, From Aeschylus to, 4 ; 
 from, to Euripides, 4 ; pure clas- 
 sicism of, 11; the touchstone of 
 our appreciation of classic beauty, 
 11-12; the true Hellenic beauty 
 of, 12 ; long communion with, 
 impairs appreciation of some mod- 
 ern poems, 17 ; time for apprecia- 
 tion of, must not be wasted, 18 ; 
 poetic personification in, 22; Homer 
 above, 38 ; quality of universality 
 and magic of phrase in, 93 ; sounds 
 the depths of life, 98 ; facts about, 
 109-10 ; keenly artistic and typi- 
 cally Athenian, 110; portrayed 
 human character, 110; solved a 
 difficult problem. 111; power of, 
 in portrayal of changing feeling, 
 111; in delineation of feminine 
 character, in Antigone and Deia- 
 neira, 112; his Theseus and 
 Neoptolemus, 112-13; change in 
 construction of plot in Oedipus 
 Tyrannus, 113; the choral work 
 of rare beauty, 113; on his style, 
 113n; skill and delicacy of, in use 
 of language, 114; always con- 
 scious of a divine order, 114-15; 
 love a mere incident in, 238 
 
 Sophron cultivated the mime in 
 prose, 259 
 
 Sparta, School of music and poetry 
 at, 74 ; the Mecca of poets and 
 musicians, 80 ; Alcman buried at, 
 81 
 
 Stesichorus, a choral lyrist, 78-79; 
 poems of, used as school texts in 
 Roman times, 82 
 
 Stesimbrotus of Thasos, 163 
 
 Strabo on Eratosthenes, 39 ; pre- 
 served some lyrical fragments, 62 
 
 Study, The, of Greek literature (Paul 
 Shorey) 1-33 : The central sun, 1 ; 
 appalling range of accessory 
 studies, 1-2 ; longest unbroken 
 literary tradition, 2 ; distorted 
 perspective of the specialist, 2 ; 
 Homer the beginning, 3 ; from 
 
 poetic creation to dialectical rhet- 
 oric, 3-5; the one poetry that is 
 classic, 5 ; the Homeric fire and 
 lucidity, 5-7 ; drama, lyric, elegy, 
 and choral hymn begin in Homer, 
 7-8; architectonic structure of the 
 Iliad and Odyssey, 9 ; portrayal 
 of character in, 9-10 ; intellec- 
 tualism of the Greek, 10-11 ; lost 
 in a literary waste, 1 1 ; Sophocles 
 reached the culmination of true 
 Hellenic beauty, 11-12; Euripides 
 and Plato representatives and 
 destroyers of the sequent Hellen- 
 ism, 13 ; sequence and develop- 
 ment of each literary form, 13-14 ; 
 the spontaneous outgrowth of the 
 national life, 14-16 ; colloquial- 
 ism and idiom interwoven in Greek 
 style, 15 ; predominance of the 
 spoken over the written word, 16 ; 
 Greek literature realistic, 16-17 ; 
 Greek poetry springs out of life, 
 17 ; education and culture must 
 select the facts of enduring value 
 in history and literature, 18; out- 
 come of his athletics for the Greek, 
 19 ; the thrill of spiritual intoxica- 
 tion in the pre-Socratic philosophic 
 poets, 19 ; Greek drama the source 
 of all the rest, 19 ; Herodotus and 
 Thucydides, 19-20 ; the Dialogues 
 of Plato, 20 ; Demosthenes's Ora- 
 tion on the Crown, 20; Aristotle, 
 21 ; attitude of mind in which to 
 approach the study, 21 ; not by 
 undiscriminating erudition, 21 ; 
 nor by the falsifying ingenuity of 
 modern research, 21 ; the unity of 
 literature, from Homer to Tenny- 
 son, 22-23 ; Professor Bury on the 
 anima naturaliter pagana, 23 ; the 
 larger inclusive intelligence, 23 ; 
 the modern spirit, 24-25 ; a gath- 
 ering of modern savants and a 
 body of cultivated Greeks, 24-25 ; 
 the complication and range of 
 modern poetry, 25-33 ; literary 
 reminiscence in, 26-28 ; visions of 
 the future, 28-29 ; distinctive mel- 
 ancholy of, 29-31 ; lack of strength 
 to enter upon our inheritance, 31—
 
 INDEX 
 
 315 
 
 32 ; Greek poetry an incomparable 
 
 educational instrument, 33. .See 
 
 also Literature, Greek 
 Susarion, of Megara, organized first 
 
 comic chorus at Icaria, 124, 125 
 Swinburne's imitations of Sappho, 
 
 71 
 
 T 
 
 Terence, Plays of, adaptations of 
 Hellenistic comedies, 255, 277-78 ; 
 refined and polished, with a pure 
 and clear style, 278 ; Eunuchus of, 
 well received, 278 
 
 Terpander, of Lesbos, established 
 school at Sparta, 74 
 
 Thales of Miletus, first who looked 
 for the beginnings of things, 209; 
 achievements attributed to, 210 ; 
 typical of half of Greek philosophy, 
 211 
 
 Themistocles, The career of, de- 
 scribed by Thucydides, 169 ; attacks 
 on, by Timocreon, 61 ; "a speaker 
 of words," 183 
 
 Theocritus, Tone of pure folk-poetry 
 in, 93, 121 ; the Syracusan idyl of, 
 intelligible to every modern reader, 
 236 ; epigram of, on the reader of 
 character, 252-53, 254 ; recurrence 
 of the old Greek refinement in, 
 257 ; pastoral legends, 258-60 ; 
 Battus and Corydon, 258 ; the 
 pastoral from, to Spenser, 258-59 ; 
 handling of legendary material, 
 Daphnis, 259-60 ; life of the city 
 in his second mime, 262-64 ; 
 travels and other work of, 265 ; 
 estimate of, 265 ; translations of, 
 265n ; realism in, 285 
 
 Theognis of Megara, MS. of, come 
 down to us, 60 ; elegiac verses 
 assigned to, a literary puzzle, 73 
 
 Theopompus of Chios, a crabbed 
 Herodotus, 172 
 
 Thermopylae, Enkomion of Simon- 
 ides on the dead at, 83-84 
 
 Thespis, of Icaria, gave the first 
 tragic performance at Athens, 124 
 
 Thucydides, Style of, 15; value of 
 the story of the Peloponnesian 
 War, 20 ; a canonical name, 152 ; 
 
 desire to inform and to please in, 
 153 ; and the heroic age, 156 ; 
 devoted to fact more than to form 
 157, 171 ; on the general feeling 
 against the Athenians, 159 ; des- 
 pised Homer, 161 ; founder of 
 historical science, 162 ; first teacher 
 of the art of writing history, 163 ; 
 Edward Meyer on, 163 ; on his 
 own work and purpose, 163-64 ; 
 the man, 163-64 ; his work in- 
 complete, 165 ; his three manners, 
 165 ; his detachment, 165 ; the 
 philosophic manner, 166-67 ; the 
 annalistic manner an advance upon 
 Hellanicus, 167-68 ; the episodic 
 manner, 168-69 ; Macaulay on, 
 168 ; digression in, a rare jewel 
 in a severe setting, 169; story of 
 Themistocles, 169 ; the speeches 
 in, 169-70 ; Professor Bury on, 163, 
 170, 177; task of, completed by 
 Xenophon, 170-71 ; a pupil of 
 Antiphon, 184 ; the speeches in, 
 184-88; principles of their com- 
 position, 185; Jebb on, 185; 
 Dionysius on their style of com- 
 position, 186 ; literary dialect in 
 the speeches, 187-88; influence 
 of Gorgias on, 187 ; appeal of the 
 Plataeans, and Funeral Oration of 
 Pericles, 188; Demosthenes and, 
 208 ; influence of, extended by 
 Sallust, 294 
 
 Tibullus, Love-elegies of, expansions 
 of epigrams, 254 ; fixed the sphere 
 of the elegiac couplet, 290 
 
 Timaeus of Tauromenium, 152, 176 
 
 Timocreon of Rhodes, First lines of 
 lyric by, 61 
 
 Timotheus, MS. of, come down to us, 
 60 ; a dithyramb of, 65 
 
 Titan, The, in Prometheus, 102-4 
 
 Tlepolemos, The story of, in Seventh 
 Olympian, 87-88 
 
 Tragedy (James Rign.\ll Wheeler) 
 92-123: Wide range of the sub- 
 ject, 92 ; not traced in its becom- 
 ing, but in its completeness, 92 ; 
 the poet must draw his inspiration 
 from life, 93 ; must have the <|Uiil- 
 ity of universality, 93 ; be typi<al
 
 316 
 
 INDEX 
 
 of the thought of humanity, 94 ; 
 the age of the great tragic poets 
 the Attic period of Greek intellec- 
 tual life, 94 ; the atmosphere of 
 political struggle, 94 ; the strug- 
 gles of the Persian Wars, 95 ; 
 drama, the most distinctive form 
 of poetry, 95 ; history, oratory, 
 and philosophy, most active, 95 ; 
 demand for higher education, 96; 
 painting, sculpture, and architec- 
 ture, at their best, 96 ; questions 
 of religion in men's thoughts, 96 ; 
 Euripides the poet of this revolt, 
 96-97 ; the spirit of Periclean 
 Athens, 97 ; Aeschylus, Sophocles 
 and Euripides, the great poetic 
 interpreters of thought, 97 ; types 
 of humanity to-day as then, 98 ; 
 the imagination of Aeschylus, 98 ; 
 the man of the world, Sophocles, 
 98 ; the humanity of Euripides, 
 98 ; the human tendencies of this 
 trial, 99 ; distinctive qualities of 
 Greek tragedy, 99 ; traditional 
 and national character of its sub- 
 ject-matter, 99 ; markedly repre- 
 sentative of the Greek mind, 99 ; 
 idealization of characters in, 100; 
 a drama of ideas, interpreting life 
 through character, 100; Aristotle 
 on, lOOn ; facts in the life of Aes- 
 chylus, 101; seven plays only of, 
 preserved, 101 ; general plan of 
 the trilogies of Prometheus and 
 Orestes, 102-8 ; the Prometheus, 
 102-4 ; quotations from other 
 plays on Zeus, 104-5 ; the Oresteia, 
 105-9 ; Sophocles, 109-15 ; Eurip- 
 ides, 115-23. .See also Aeschy- 
 lus, Euripides, Sophocles 
 
 Tragedy, Hellenistic, clung to the 
 myths of the classical drama, 265 
 
 Tragedy, Influence of, on comedy, 127 
 
 Tragic poetry. Relation of, to the 
 epic and lyric, 92 ; one who reads 
 much, forms a standard, 93 ; must 
 have the quality of universality, 93 
 
 Troy, The lost epics of the tale of, 36 ; 
 the Taking of Ilium, 37 ; ruins of, 154 
 
 Tyrtaeus, The patriotic exhortations 
 of, made in the elegiac measure, 68 
 
 i 
 
 V 
 
 Virgil, Cowley on, 9 ; the Homer of 
 the Latin race, 41-42 ; literary 
 larcenies of, catalogued, 41, 268; 
 aim of, to enfranchise Homer in 
 Latin speech, 42 ; controversy 
 over relative merits of Homer and, 
 42-43 ; preeminent as the poet of 
 Italy, 42 ; lost his preeminence 
 except in France, 44 ; and Homer, 
 51, 57, 268; the hero of, 52, 54; 
 acknowledged his debt to Theoc- 
 ritus and Hesiod, 267 ; Lucre- 
 tius and, 281 ; remarkable 
 development of, 284 ; from Al- 
 exandrian back through Hesiod 
 to Homer, 284 ; the Acneid the 
 embodiment of the spirit of Rome, 
 284; the Bucolics inspired by the 
 Eclogues of Theocritus, 285; ar- 
 tificiality in, 285-86 ; the Georgics 
 inspired by Hesiod, 284, 286 ; 
 authoritative and of poetic beauty, 
 286 ; the Aeneid essentially Ho- 
 meric, yet radically different, 287 ; 
 Aeneas modeled upon Virgil 
 himself, 287-88; Dido one of the 
 great women in literature, 288 ; 
 never ceased to be a Roman, 296 
 
 W 
 
 Wheeler, James Rignall, Tragedy, 
 92-123. For analysis see Tragedy 
 
 WOODBRIDGE, FREDERICK J. E., 
 
 Philosophy, 209-28. For analy- 
 sis see Philosophy 
 
 Xanthus the Lydian and his story 
 of the all-conquering folk, 156, 157 
 
 Xenophanes philosophized in elegiac 
 verse, 68 ; sym.potic poem of, 73 
 
 Xenophon, a canonical name, 152 ; 
 the desire to inform and to please 
 in, 153 ; task of Thucydides com- 
 pleted by, 170; Grote on, 170; 
 a partisan of Sparta, 170 ; an agree- 
 able dilettante, 171 
 
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