724 Mahaffy (J. P.) M.A. A History of 
 Classical Oreek Literature, Vol. I., Part 
 II.,* The Dramatic Poets, Third Edition, 
 cr. 8vo, doth, 3s 1891 
 
 Bat lettered as a complete book.
 
 CLASSICAL GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 VOL. I. PART II.
 
 PRINTKD BY 
 
 SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STKt ET S'.ifARR 
 LONDON
 
 A HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 CLASSICAL GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. J. P. MAHAFFY, M.A. 
 
 KNIGHT OF THE ORDER OF THE REDEEMER 
 FELLOW AND PROF. OF ANCIENT HISTORY, TRIN. COLL. DUBLIN 
 
 HON. FELLOW OF QUEEN'S COLL. OXFORD 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'SOCIAL LIFE IN GREECE* 'GREEK LIFE AND THOUGHT 1 
 'THE GREEK WORLD UNDER ROMAN SWAY' ETC. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 
 VOL. I. PART II. 
 THE DRAMATIC POETS 
 
 THIRD EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED 
 
 Uon&on 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 1891 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 'AXXo yap OVK Iv ruts \6yois XP^I TOVTOIS rSiv fTnrrtSfv/j.d-rtav 
 f/jreii' TOS Kaiv6rrtras, tv ols otfre irapa5o|ov oijr' fariarov oftr' 
 tw TOIV vofti^pnevtav oiiSfv i^fffrtv fiirtlv, aAA.' fiyflffBai -TOVTOV 
 XaptftfTarov, &s tiv rcav Sifffirapfievtev tv rats Ttav &\\cav Siav/iiats 
 a.Bpo'tffai TO ir\f7ara SvvrjOrj ical <ppdiai Kd\\tarra irepl a\>r5>v. 
 
 ISOCRATES.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XIV. DRAMATIC TENDENCIES IN THE SIXTH CENTURY THE 
 RISE OF TRAGEDY AND SATYRIC DRAMA. THE EX- 
 TERNAL APPLIANCES OF GREEK PLAYS .... I 
 
 XV. AESCHYLUS t 24 
 
 xvi. SOPHOCLES 55 
 
 XVII. EURIPIDES 97 
 
 XVIII. THE LESSER AND THE LATER TRAGIC POETS . . . 168 
 
 XIX. THE ORIGIN OF COMEDY THE DORIC SCHOOL, EPICHAR- 
 
 MUS, SOPHRON THEOCRITUS AND HIS SCHOOL . . 175 
 
 XX. THE OLD ATTIC COMEDY UP TO ARISTOPHANES . . 199 
 
 XXI. ARISTOPHANES 217 
 
 XXII. THE HISTORY OF COMEDY FROM ARISTOPHANES TO 
 
 MENANDER 249 
 
 INDEX 271
 
 HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 GREEK LITERATURE. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 DRAMATIC TENDENCIES IN THE SIXTH CENTURY. THE RISE 
 OF TRAGEDY AND SATYRIC DRAMA. THE EXTERNAL 
 APPLIANCES OF GREEK PLAYS. 
 
 1 60. WE have now reviewed a long series of Epic and 
 Lyric poems, all of which originated in Asia Minor, and from 
 there -passed into Greece and westward. The development of 
 the ^Eolic and Ionic colonies if colonies they can be called 
 had been more rapid than that of the motherland. But 
 the Ionic literature had also taken quick root and flourished 
 in the old country. It was probably to Solon or to Peisis- 
 tratus that we owe the ordering and systematising of the 
 epos. The elegy found its Hellenic representatives in Solon, 
 in Theognis and Tyrtseus ; the choral poetry of Terpander and 
 of Arion made its home not only in Peloponnesus, but with 
 Stesichorus in Sicily, where the rarity of Homeric recitations 
 left it open to the poet to bring the old myths into his choral 
 songs, and give the people what the rhapsodists had elsewhere 
 supplied. It was, in fact, the ^Eolic songs of Lesbos only 
 that bloomed and faded on their own soil, without wafting 
 their seed across the ^Egean to take root and flourish in older 
 Greece. But the personal outpourings of anger, of sorrow, of 
 
 VOL. i. 2 B
 
 2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xiv. 
 
 wisdom, of experience, which the Ionian elegist and iambist 
 had substituted for the calm of old epic recitation; the 
 common choric song in honour of the gods, with its accom- 
 paniments of music and dancing these had found their way to 
 Greece, and had soon passed on into peculiar developments. 
 The chorus of Alcman, the Lydian Greek, had learned to 
 speak the poefs sentiments to his hearers, and so to mediate 
 between the personality of the elegy and the impersonality of 
 the choral hymn. The chorus of Stesichorus had learned to 
 introduce the national legends with a new dress and a. lyric 
 treatment, and so long as these legends were alive and growing 
 in Greek hearts, they were the sheet anchor of Greek poetry 
 the Atlas whereon the whole world of its literature found a 
 sure support in all its gyrations. 
 
 Both these un-Ionic features are found in the highly 
 developed and perfectly finished lyrics of Pindar. The myth 
 is now an integral part of the choric hymn ; so is also the 
 word of the poet as a master of wisdom addressing the people 
 through his chorus. But as calm critics have remarked, the 
 occasion of these remarkable poems was not high enough, or 
 the subjects worthy enough, for the splendour of their art. 
 They celebrated local, often trivial, victories ; they praised 
 professional trainers, and obscure ancestors, often, we may 
 suspect, by means of invented genealogies. And, in any case, 
 they were the poetry of the aristocracy, and not of the people. 
 This art was consequently also professional, composed and 
 performed for patrons and for pay, offered to the gods, not by 
 the people themselves, but for them, at the hands of singers by 
 trade. These facts agree with the non-patriotic attitude of 
 Pindar, on which I have commented in its place. 1 
 
 The rising democracy of Athens would naturally demand 
 some very different worship, some very different festivals, from 
 those of the old aristocracies. The people who now took part 
 in politics must also take an active part in public religion and 
 its festivals. 2 And for this the first suggestion, as in so many 
 
 1 149- 
 
 * Wilamowitz, Herakles, i. p. 77, quotes the Polity of the Athenians 
 to show how the Demos abolished professional performances of choral 
 music, and undertook this duty itself. This tract, as is well agreed, is not
 
 CH. xiv. DITHYRAMBS AND GOAT-CHORUSES. 3 
 
 other directions, had been given by Peisistratus. With the 
 intention of raising the people and their life to a higher level, 
 while he depressed the aristocrats, he had favoured and pro- 
 moted the worship of Dionysus, hitherto a rustic religion be- 
 yond the pale of the epic Pantheon, but fascinating the old 
 Greeks, as Oriental orgies and cults long afterwards fascinated 
 the effete world of Plutarch, with its violent emotions and en- 
 grossing mysteries. This worship of Dionysus was no doubt 
 diffused through the northern Peloponnesus. We hear of 
 Arion naturalising the dithyramb at Corinth, in which the 
 sorrows and escapes of Dionysus were sung by his chorus. 
 
 But it is more than doubtful ' that the dithyrambs of Attica 
 were the real ancestors of any poetry but that of the fourth 
 century, known under the same name. Dithyrambs were in 
 vogue all through classical Athenian literature, but perhaps 
 more eminently so before and after the bloom of tragedy. 
 This latter had, then, its origin in some other choral poetry 
 which came in with the woiship of Dionysus from Doric 
 neighbours. Among these we know of one whose name gives 
 us the clue the goat choruses, in which the singers, with that 
 peculiar desire of escaping from themselves into some wild 
 disguise a desire as universal as civilisation assumed the 
 mummery of satyrs, and thus posing as personal companions 
 of the God, entered with an intenser sympathy into the story of 
 his anthropomorphic adventures. These choruses seem not 
 to have been professional, or even strolling, as the early men- 
 tion of a tent for their background would suggest, but rather 
 village choruses, prepared for the vintage feasts of the god. 
 
 We shall turn presently to the names of the earliest in- 
 ventors of tragedy, and the few facts known about them, but 
 it may be well here to say a few words upon the peculiarities 
 of the Attic drama. It has been shown with great ability by 
 Von Wilamowitz-Mollendorf, in the book cited, that the cele- 
 brated definition of tragedy which Aristotle lays down and 
 expounds in his Poetic, however applicable to tragedy generally, 
 however applicable it might have been to the tragedies of 
 
 by Xenophon, but by some earlier aristocratic author writing in the days 
 and in the temper of Alcibiades. Cf. vol. ii. of this work, 476. 
 1 Cf. the whole argument ia Wilamowitz, Herakles, i. pp. 78-80. 
 if 2
 
 4 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH xiv. 
 
 Euripides, had he been able to break wholly with tradition 
 and choose his subjects from actual life, misses the mark as a 
 description of Attic tragedy. 1 In fact, the definition omits 
 essential and includes unessential points. For ^Eschylus, the 
 great creator of this splendid national poetry, in which the 
 people through their chorus took part ; in which the service of 
 the god was satisfied ; in which the poet, as a teacher of 
 wisdom, could speak his word through a transparent disguise 
 ^Eschylus not only determined that the Ionic recitation of 
 iambics should be fused with the Doric choral song a fusion 
 never so complete as to efface the distinctness of each of the 
 components but also, like Homer, like Stesichorus, imported 
 into his new creation the national legends, and determined 
 once for all that no subject but the lives and acts of the heroes, 
 as known in epic mythology, should attain the dignity of 
 the Attic stage. Phrynichus, as we shall see, in the youth 
 of tragedy's first development, tried an advance into recent 
 history. His attempt was condemned by the Athenian public. 
 To define, therefore, Attic tragedy without mention of the 
 definite subject-matter to which it was bound, is to omit its 
 ' essential difference.' 
 
 To assert, moreover, with Aristotle, that the 'purification of 
 terror and pity ' was the invariable object, errs in two directions. 
 In the first place, the poets were probably not conscious of 
 this aesthetic subtlety, and seem to have openly accepted the 
 simpler role of moral teachers. Such, at least, is the opinion 
 of Aristophanes, as expressed in his Frogs. In the second 
 place, there are other emotions than mere pity and terror 
 pious awe, fervent patriotism which are certainly the pro- 
 minent emotions in our most famous plays. But to Aristotle, 
 a sceptic and an alien, neither piety nor patriotism were 
 likely to appear in their proper force. Yet so intimately 
 were these three factors, faith in the heroic legends, piety to- 
 wards the gods, devotion to the state, in the life-blood of Attic 
 tragedy, that with them it sank into decay, and passed through 
 Euripides into Menander, whose comedies were the successors, 
 not of Aristophanes', but of Eutipides' plays. Here, then, is 
 the proper definition : 'An Attic tragedy is a story from the 
 
 1 See this Def. stated and discussed ki vol. ii. 575 of the present work.
 
 CH. xiv. THE TRAGEDY OF AESCHYLUS. 5 
 
 heroic legends, complete in itself, treated poetically in a dig- 
 nified style to suit a chorus of Attic citizens and two or three 
 actors, intended also for performance as part of the public 
 worship of Dionysus.' 1 
 
 The chorus, then, is the main factor, as we see in the earlier 
 tragedies of ^schylus, who brought his new creation through all 
 its stages up to its highest perfection. The long recitation of 
 the messenger, in which the turning-point of the action is told, 
 is no make-shift or device, but evidently a relic of the very 
 earliest form, where the actor had no other function but to tell 
 his story to the chorus. The freedom in the treatment of 
 characters, which was so often censured by Alexandrian and 
 Roman critics, is no inconsistency, but rather the special 
 point of originality in which the master showed his skill. The 
 framework of the story was given in the myth ; not so the 
 finer shades in the character and emotions of the heroes ; it is 
 only a vapid criticism, based upon a rigid abstraction from 
 the epic and tragic stories themselves, which compares the 
 creators with a poor image of their work, and declares them 
 at fault. The pedants who censured the Medea of Euripides 
 because she is torn by conflicting emotions, and bursts into 
 uncontrollable tears before she steels her heart and murders 
 her children ; the pedants who think that the Iphigenia who 
 offers her life as a heroine should not have pleaded for that 
 life with strong crying and tears, 2 were, after all, but miserable 
 art critics. Not much better is Horace with his fixed types 
 \i\<*> flebilis Ino, his tristis Orestes. ^Eschylus has even elements 
 of low and common life upon his stage, though Greek comedy 
 in all its history was severed from tragedy by a great gulf, and 
 Plato hazards as a mere drunken fancy what Shakspere has 
 realised for us the compatibility of tragic and comic genius in 
 the same poet. 
 
 Tragedy, therefore, inasmuch as it absorbed and reproduced 
 in its own form all, or almost all, the earlier species of poetry 
 the epic recitation, the iambic repartee, the elegist's philosophy, 
 the melic song of excitement with musical accompaniment, the 
 choral song of Dorian lands is the climax and the consum- 
 mation of Hellenic song. It was perfected by a single genius 
 
 1 Wilamowitz, op. cit. p. 107. 8 Cf. below, 203, 217.
 
 6 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xiv. 
 
 in a single generation, and when two rivals arose who took from 
 him the torch, and kept alive the flame Sophocles could make 
 no advance, and Euripides shows the imminence of decay. 
 
 161. We have referred to a rustic and jovial dithyramb 
 common among the lower classes in Peloponnesus, where 
 the choruses imitated the sports and manners of satyrs in 
 attendance on the god, and it is not improbable that these 
 came more into fashion according as the serious choruses 
 to Dionysus wandered from their original purpose, and were 
 even applied to celebrate other personages than the god 
 Dionysus. The proverb uvcev irpac rov Atorviroi' (' there is no 
 Dionysus in it') preserves the objections of old-fashioned 
 people to such innovations, and these objections were per- 
 manently respected by the essentially satyric dithyramb, which 
 was brought to Athens by PRATINAS' of Phlius, who with 
 Chcerilus and other poets put it on the stage as a proper com- 
 pletion and necessary adjunct to the nascent tragedy. This 
 Pratinas was a brilliant poet, to judge from a fragment pre- 
 served by Athenaeus, in which he complains of the increasing 
 prominence of the instrumental accompaniments to the 
 dithyrambs, possibly those of his rival Lasus, and vindicates 
 for his chorus their proper functions. 2 He is called the son of 
 
 1 According to Fick (Griech. Personennamen, p. xxxv), this name, 
 which is derived from the Doric form for irpaJros, and is a collateral form 
 for irfi&r'ivos ( = irp<ariovos), should be pronounced Tlpcnivas. I cannot find 
 any direct authority in the classics for this quantity. 
 
 8 Tfs 6 06pv&os 88 f ; rl rciSe TO xoptvpara ; 
 
 ris vflpis f^iO\ev iri AiuvvffidSa TroA-UTroVcrya tivntKav ; 
 
 ^ubs ffJ.bs 6 Ep6fj.ios ' e'yiie Set Ke\a8e'it>, f/j.e SeT irarayiiv 
 
 av' opta ffvfj.evov utrci Na'idStav 
 
 ola re KVKVOV &yovra. TroiKi\6irTepov fie\os. 
 
 TO.V aoiSav Kaiearaae Fliepls ^affi\eiav ' 6 5' av\bs 
 
 ijffTfpov x.opeve-rui- *cal yap ead' inrriperas. 
 
 K'Ji/j.ca n6vov 8vp(ifjLu\ois re Truy/j.axiatffi vtiav 6(\fi vapolvuv 
 
 %(j./j.eva,i ffrpaftjhdras. 
 
 Trait, iroTe rbv 3>pvy aoiSov 
 
 iroi/ciAou irpoaxfovra' 
 
 <p\eyt rbv u 
 
 rapa.(j.e\opv6fi.ofidra.v 6'
 
 CH. xiv. THE SATYRIC DRAMA. 7 
 
 Pyrrhonides, and said to have composed thirty-two satyric 
 dramas with fifty tragedies ; he contested in Ol. 70 with 
 ^Eschylus and Cheer ilus, but was only once successful in carry- 
 ing off the first prize. His son Aristias was equally celebrated 
 as a satyric dramatist, and was second when yEschylus won 
 with the Seven against Thebes, but apparently with a satyric 
 drama of his father's. Chcerilus was active from 524 to 468 B.C. 
 (if we believe Suidas), and is celebrated as one of the old trage- 
 dians, but still more for his satyric drama, which appears from 
 the proverb, ' When Choerilus was king among the Satyrs.' 
 
 162. In fact all the early dramatists, not excluding 
 ^Eschylus, laid great stress upon this peculiar style, which, 
 however, passed out of fashion in the next century, especially 
 when Euripides had devised the expedient of supplying its 
 place with a melodrama, or tragedy with comic elements, like 
 the Alcestis. The remarkable point about the satyric drama is 
 its marked separation from comedy, and its close attachment to 
 tragedy. It is called ' sportive tragedy} and was never com- 
 posed by comic poets. We have only one extant specimen 
 the Cyclops of Euripides in which we observe that the pro- 
 tagonist or hero (Odysseus) is not the least ridiculed or lowered 
 in position ; in fact, we have no play in which he appears so 
 respectable, but he is accompanied by a chorus of satyrs whose 
 odes show no small traces of the old phallic songs in the 
 rural dithyramb. The general character of the subjects left us in 
 the titles of the satyric plays, and of the fragments (many of 
 which, among the fragments of yfCschylus and Sophocles, strike 
 us by their open coarseness), lead us to compare the satyric 
 drama of the Greeks to that peculiar species of drama among us 
 which is comic, though quite distinct from comedy, and which 
 treats some familiar legend or fairy tale with grotesque and 
 conventional accessories. The reader will already have guessed 
 that I refer to the pantomimes of the English stage, in which 
 the earlier part is some adaptation of a well-known fairy tale, 
 
 viral rpvirdrta S(fj.as ireTT\aff/J.fVOv. 
 
 i)v iSov a$( ffoi 5e(a 
 
 ,K</>a, 0pia/u./3o5i6vpau.0f' 
 
 a, &KOue TO.V tuav Aiaptov -^optlav.
 
 8 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xiv. 
 
 such as Sinbad or Blue Beard, in which there are horrible and 
 tragic adventures, and generally a respectable chief character, 
 coupled with grotesque accessories and conventional dancing. 
 This curious parallel will illustrate to the English reader many 
 of the difficulties in the position of the satyric drama at Athens. 
 
 It is remarkable that the old dithyrambs were spoken 
 of as introductions to the more solemn cyclic choirs, whereas 
 their dramatic outcome was always played after the tragedies. 
 The critics are ready with sesthetical reasons for this, but we 
 are left at a loss for historical facts. Though a flavour of 
 humour was not foreign to the tragedy of Euripides, nor even 
 to that of ^Eschylus, there seems no doubt that the early Greek 
 drama did not afford scope for the violent contrasts so striking 
 in Shakespeare, and preferred to relegate the low and the 
 grotesque into a separate play associated with solemn tragedy. 
 The extant Cyclops is a sort of farce without much extrava- 
 gance, observing in its hero the decorum suited to a tragic 
 writer, and giving to Silenus and to his attendant satyrs an 
 evidently conventional character of laziness, drunkenness and 
 license. The real contest was in that day among the tragedies, 
 and this afterpiece was probably given while the public was 
 discussing the previous plays. In later days the satyric drama 
 seems to have been abandoned, and therefore all the other 
 extant specimens were lost. It is a misfortune that we do not 
 possess at least one from the hands of an acknowledged 
 master in this department, or from the epoch when it had real 
 importance. But the Cyclops explains to us the structure and 
 style of these pieces. These few words may suffice to dispose 
 of this byway of the Greek drama. I now return to the more 
 important history of serious tragedy. 
 
 163. All our authorities are agreed that despite the various 
 approaches and hints at tragedy before Thespis the Pelopon- 
 nesians counted sixteen poets of Dorian tragedy before him 
 he was really the originator of that sort of poetry. We only 
 know that he belonged to the deme or village of Icaria, on the 
 borders of the Megarid, and doubtless in constant intercourse 
 with these people, among whom the worship of Dionysus 
 was said to be particularly at home. It is to be noticed that the
 
 CH. xiv. THESPIS. 9 
 
 neighbouring town of Eleusis, to which all Icarians must have 
 constantly come, was apparently the chief place for the deeper 
 worship of Dionysus Zagreus, and it is not unreasonable to 
 suppose that this double experience of the local choruses to 
 Dionysus at Icaria, and the solemn mimic rites of the mys- 
 teries, were the determining features of his great discovery. 
 
 For in what did this discovery consist ? As was well known, 
 tragic elements were present in Homer, and the characteristic 
 dialogues in the old epics were far more dramatic than the 
 early tragedies not only of Thespis, but of ^schylus. The 
 misfortunes of heroes had already been sung by the dithyrambic 
 choruses at Sicyon, and a mimetic character given to such per- 
 formances by the expressive gestures of the choirs of Lasus. 
 We have no reason to think that Thespis added a dialogue to 
 the cyclic choruses, or lyrical element from which he started. 
 From what is told us we merely infer that he to some extent 
 separated the leader of the chorus from the rest, and made him 
 introduce and interrupt the choral parts with some sort of epic 
 recitation. Whit metre he used for this recitation we know 
 not, nor the subjects he treated, for the titles transmitted by 
 Suidas are of forgeries by Heracleides Ponticus, and Thespis 
 probably left nothing written. Yet he certainly aimed at some 
 illusion, by which he escaped from himself, and entered into 
 the feelings of another person, when he undertook, as we are 
 told, to perform the part of leader to his chorus. For he dis- 
 guised himself, and so far imitated reality that Solon is said (by 
 Plutarch) to have been greatly offended at the performance, and 
 to have indignantly denounced the deliberate lying implied in his 
 acting, Of course we must cast aside the nonsense, talked by 
 Horace, of his being a strolling player, going about in a cart to 
 fairs and markets. Not only did Horace confuse the origins 
 of tragedy and of comedy, but the poetical requirements of 
 the Athenian public trained by the enlightened policies of 
 Solon and Peisistratus. In the Athens where Lasus, and 
 Simonides, and Anacreon, and presently Pindar, found favour, 
 no rude village song could find favour ; nay, we rather see an 
 over-artificial taste prevailing in the lyric poetry of that date. 
 
 Thespis composed his dramas from about Ol. 61 for city
 
 io HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xiv. 
 
 feasts and for an educated audience. The mere setting up of a 
 stage, and donning of a mask, could not in such an atmosphere 
 give to any poet the title of a great originator. Though the 
 story just cited from Plutarch contradicts the inference, we 
 would fain believe that an acquaintance with the mysteries, and 
 deeper theology of the day, suggested to Thespis the represen- 
 tation of human sorrow for a moral purpose. There seems no 
 trace of this idea in the earlier dithyrambs, which sang or acted 
 the adventures of Dionysus merely as a cult, and not as a 
 moral lesson. But it seems that with Thespis may have arisen 
 the great conception which we see full-blown in ^Eschylus the 
 intention of the drama to purify human sympathy by exercising 
 it on great and apparently disproportioned afflictions of heroic 
 men, when the iron hand of a stern and unforgiving Providence 
 chastises old transgressions, or represses the revolt of private 
 judgment against established ordinance. 
 
 164. It is quite plain that the portraiture of suffering was 
 fully comprehended by the next among the old tragedians, 
 Phrynichus, son of Polyphradmon, whom Aristophanes ' often 
 refers to as an old master of quaint sweetness, and in his 
 day still a favourite with the last generation. There are several 
 other persons of the name, one of them a comic poet, 2 so that 
 we cannot be sure concerning the allusions to him. His son 
 Polyphradmon, evidently called after the grandfather, seems to 
 have contended with ^Eschylus. We have not sufficient fragments 
 remaining to form a strict judgment, nor can we now decide 
 how much of the development of tragedy was directly due to him. 
 He is said to have been the first to introduce female characters, 
 and to use the trochaic tetrameter in tragedy. It is also cer 
 tain that he understood the use of dialogue, by separating the 
 
 1 Av. 748 : tvQev oxrirepsJ /xe'AiTTO 
 
 Qpvvixos a.fnppo<Tiwi> jueAeW airf&6ffKero Kapirbv 
 
 usl <f>po>v yXvKtiav (fSav. 
 Vesp. 219 : ft.ivvpiovT6s /J.f\rj 
 
 Cf. also v. 269. I quote uniformly from the 5th ed. of Dindorf s Poeta 
 Scenici. 
 
 - Cf. on these various persons the discussion of Meineke, Hist. Com. 
 Grtzc. pp. 146, sq.
 
 CH. xiv. PHRYNICHUS. 11 
 
 actor from the leader of the chorus, and making them respond 
 to each other. Trimeters and Ionics a minore were metres not 
 unknown to him, but he was most esteemed among later Greeks 
 foi his lyrical excellence, as the scholiasts on Aristophanes tell us. 
 Pausanias 1 alludes to his having first introduced the fatal brand 
 in the story of Meleager in Greek tragedy, not, however, as an 
 invention of his own, and quotes the lines in question. 2 His 
 Ph&nisscz was a particularly celebrated play; but we must 
 imagine chiefly a succession of lyrical choruses, with little or 
 no action, like the earlier tragedies of ^Eschylus. It seems 
 that the play was brought out 3 by Themistocles as Choregus, 
 and with special reference to his own achievements, which were 
 growing old in the memories of the Athenians, in Ol. 75,4; 
 and this is the earliest exact notice we have of a tragic com- 
 petition such as was afterwards the rule at Athens. It is said 
 that this play was the model on which ^Eschylus formed his 
 Per see. More celebrated is the story of the Capture of Miletus 
 (M(/\//-ou uAw<m-), brought out by the poet in Ol. 71, which 
 described lyrically the capture and destruction of the greatest 
 of Ionic cities. The whole theatre, says Herodotus, burst into 
 tears, fined him 1,000 drachmas for having reminded them 
 of their domestic troubles, and directed that no one for the 
 future should use this drama. 4 There has been a great deal 
 of aesthetic lucubration on this celebrated act of the Athenian 
 public much talk of the ideal, and the desire to escape from 
 the woes of common life into an ideal atmosphere. I feel 
 more confidence in the critics who suspect a political reason 
 for the play, and still more for the heavy fine. Possibly 
 the poet belonged to a party who had urged active aid for 
 Miletus, and his drama was a bitter and telling reproof to 
 the timid or peace party, who may, nevertheless, have been 
 politically the leaders of the people, and able to inflict upon 
 him a fine for harrowing the public mind with his painful and 
 
 1 x. 31, 4. 
 
 Kpvfpbv yap OVK 
 
 fjAvJey /J.6pov, wKfla 8e viv </>\J>| KarfSaiffaro, 
 SaAou irepdofj.fvov /j.arpbs vii divas KaKou.rix.avov. 
 
 * Themist. 5, as Plutarch tells us. 
 
 4 vi. 21. I suppose he means use this story for a drama.
 
 12 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xiv. 
 
 distressing play. We see from the success of ./Eschylus' 
 Persae that they had no objection to being reminded of their 
 domestic successes certainly domestic in as real a sense as 
 the events of Miletus and I fancy covert allusions to present 
 politics or other events were always well received by the 
 Athenians; but they were certainly right to discourage the pre- 
 senting of recent events upon the stage, for Greek tragedy was 
 in no way suited for historical purposes. 
 
 There remain about seven titles of Phrynichus' plays, most 
 of them the names of nations, which seems to imply the im- 
 portance of his chorus. All the older tragic poets were said to 
 be dancing-masters, and to have taught anyone who wished to 
 learn ; it is even said that the Athenians appointed Phrynichus 
 to a military command, on account of his skill in performing 
 the Pyrrhic war dance. 
 
 165. Having now given a sufficient account of the forerun- 
 ners of ^Eschylus, it may be well to say something of the ma- 
 terials at the disposal of the Greek tragic poets, of their theatres, 
 stage, actors, and general appointments. 1 
 
 It is necessary to give a brief description of the Greek 
 theatres themselves, in order to help the reader better to imagine 
 for himself the old tragic performances, and in order to obviate 
 certain errors which were current on the subject, and have only 
 been removed by recent researches. The earliest stone theatre 
 of which we know the date was the theatre of Dionysus at 
 Athens, built (Ol. 70) against the south slope of the Acropolis. 
 It was adorned and enlarged by the orator Lycurgus (about Ol. 
 112), when administering the finances. We are told that before 
 its building a wooden structure was used for plays, but that on 
 the occasion of a contest between yEschylus and Pratinas it 
 broke down, and then the Athenians determined to erect a 
 permanent one for the purpose. We are not told where 
 the old wooden theatre was situated, but as the story implies 
 that the spectators fell (for the stage always remained a 
 
 1 These questions have been discussed in several special works, founded 
 upon recent researches. Those of Albert Muller (Griech. Biihnenalter- 
 thiimer) and of Mr. Haigh (The Attic Theatre, Oxford, 1889), are both 
 excellent. Dr. Dorpfeld's researches are not yet fully reported.
 
 CH. xiv. THE THEATRE. 13 
 
 wooden platform), it is unlikely that the old site could have 
 coincided with the new, where the steep incline of the hill 
 made all artificial scaffolding unnecessary. If the site was re- 
 tained, we should imagine the audience of the primitive trage- 
 dies and, no doubt, of the older cyclic choruses, to have sat all 
 round the performance, so that while at one side the hill served 
 for tiers of seats, on the other a corresponding incline was con- 
 structed of wood. It would then have been this side only 
 which could break down, and the new stone theatre may have 
 been on the modified principle of enlarging one side of the 
 primitive amphitheatre to hold all the spectators, and giving the 
 actors a better stage with a rear and side entrances a necessary 
 change when the various illusions of varying dress and scenery 
 were invented and came into use. While this conjecture would 
 explain the occurrence of the accident on the present site of 
 the theatre, it must be carefully noted that quite a different place 
 at Athens also bore the name of orchestra} or dancing place, 
 and may have had wooden seats applied in the same way. This 
 orchestra was a small platform on the north slope of the Areo- 
 pagus, just above the agora, on which the statues of Harmodius 
 and Aristogeiton, and these only, were set up. Being above the 
 throng of the agora, it seems to have been used in later days 
 as a place for book-stalls. However this may be, the stone 
 theatre of Dionysus became the model for similar buildings all 
 over the Greek world, which everywhere (except at Mantinea) 
 utilised the slope of a hill for the erection of stone seats in 
 ascending tiers. These great buildings were also used by 
 democracies for their public assemblies. Many of them still 
 remain, though in no case, of course, has the wooden stage 
 survived ; but most of them have been modified by Roman 
 work, especially in the form of permanent and lofty walls of 
 masonry at the back of the stage. Happily in some cities the 
 Roman theatre was built separately, and near the Greek, and 
 this is the case at Athens and at Syracuse. The others which 
 are most perfect, such as that of Aspendus in Pamphylia, and 
 
 1 This word is never used for the middle of the theatre by Aristophanes, 
 or by any of the early Comic poets. Its absence from the Fragg. Com. 
 Grtzc. is striking.
 
 14 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XIV 
 
 Taormina in Sicily, contain Greek and Roman work jumbled 
 together. But there are remains throughout all Greek-speaking 
 lands of these theatres, in which plays were performed as soon 
 as Athens had shown the way. At Epidauros, Argos, Mantinea, 
 Megalopolis, in the Peloponnesus alone, there are huge remains 
 of Greek theatres. The smallest and steepest known to me is 
 that of Chaeronea in Bceotia. 
 
 The whole circuit of seats, generally semicircular (sometimes 
 even a greater, but never a less segment of a circle), was called TO 
 KolXoj', and held the sitting room (icioXior) of the spectators, who 
 were called tJie theatre, as we say the house, in old times. It was 
 separated into concentric strips by one or more walks called 
 ia^arn. A radiating series of flights of steps (/vra-uro/m/), as- 
 cending from below, divided these strips of seats into wedge- 
 formed divisions (k-epKihs). In most cases, the spectators came 
 in at the sides, between the stage and the seats, and ascended 
 by these steps. The sweats were broad and comfortable, but each 
 person brought a cushion, or had it brought for him by a slave, 
 who was not allowed to wait during the performance. In some 
 later theatres there were outside staircases, which brought the 
 spectators to the top of the theatre, where they entered the 
 highest level through a colonnade. The audience had no cover- 
 ing over them, and were exposed to all extremes of weather. 
 We do not know what was done in the case of rain, but 
 it is probable that the stage had a penthouse projecting from 
 the back wall, which protected the actors. The price of 
 admission was fixed at two obols for the Athenian theatre, 
 which went to the manager for its support, and which was paid 
 from the public funds to the poorer citizens at Athens, in the 
 days of the Athenian Empire, by way of affording all of them the 
 opportunity of joint religious enjoyment which the feast of 
 Dionysus offered Women and boys were admitted to the tra- 
 gedies, but the former were certainly excluded from the comedies 
 in older days, and for obvious reasons. There were reserved 
 seats in front, and tne privilege of admission to them (Trporfpla) 
 was highly prized. It was given to magistrates and foreign 
 ambassadors in early days, but on the marble armchairs of the 
 front row in the theatre of Dionysus, as re-discovered in 1862,
 
 CH. xiv. THE THEATRE. 15 
 
 the names of religious dignitaries are inscribed, the priest 
 of Dionysus Eleutherios possessing the central stall. This 
 arrangement may not, however, date before the days of He- 
 rodes Atticus. There is no evidence whatever that the Athenian 
 democracy allowed the front seats to be reserved for the richer 
 classes who could pay a higher entrance fee. 1 
 
 The current statement that the Athenian theatre held 
 nearly 30,000 (cf. Mr. Haigh, op. at. p. 122) is based on the 
 misprision of a remark in Plato's Symposium, and has long 
 since been rejected by me after a careful measurement. Dr. 
 Dorpfeld's plan will show 15,000 to be the maximum. But 
 Greek theatres were large and open. It is consequently evident 
 that all could not have seen or heard delicate points. This 
 had no small effect upon the way in which Greek tragedies were 
 brought upon the stage. Nevertheless, in the great theatre of 
 Syracuse, I myself tested its acoustic properties, and found 
 that a friend talking in his ordinary tone could be heard 
 perfectly at the farthest seat this, too, with the back of the 
 stage open ; whereas it was in the old performances closed 
 by lofty scenes, and an upper story from which gods were 
 shown. 
 
 1 66. We pass from the circle of spectators to the part of the 
 building (opx^" T P a ) corresponding to the pit of modern theatres. 
 The greater part of this was smoothed, empty, and strewed with 
 sand, hence called Kuritrrpa. In the centre was an altar to Dio- 
 nysus (tivpiXr]), the relic of the old times when nothing but 
 choral dances had been held in the area round the altar. But 
 in the part nearest the stage, which corresponds to our stage 
 boxes and orchestra, was a raised floor of wood, called, more 
 specially and scenically, orchestra, or dancing place of the 
 chorus, beginning at the altar, and communicating by steps 
 with the stage, which was somewhat higher. The chorus was a 
 sort of stage audience, at times addressing the actors, and 
 answering them through their leader, at times reflecting upon 
 them independently, especially in the choral songs, which 
 
 1 This has been often asserted, owing to a misconception of the pas- 
 sage in Plato, Apol. Socr. 26, which speaks of buying the work of Anaxa- 
 goras at the other orchestra above mentioned for a drachme.
 
 16 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xiv. 
 
 divided what we may call the acts of the play. The chorus was 
 not an ideal spectator, far from it, but rather represented the 
 average morality or courage of the public, as contrasted with 
 the heroic character of the protagonist, or chief actor. Thus 
 we find it frequently supporting the deuteragonist, or second 
 actor, who was a foil for the principal personage. As M. Patin 
 admirably remarks, apropos of the chorus of the Antigone : 1 'It 
 has not been sufficiently observed what moral defects the Greek 
 poets attach to the part which in these plays represents the 
 interests of general morality. While assigning to the chorus 
 those lofty ideas of order and of justice which dwell in every 
 heart, and come naturally from the lips of all as the voice ot 
 conscience, they took care to add to this somewhat imaginary 
 role, by way of realism, the vulgar features common to every 
 multitude. The speech of the chorus was pure and noble ; its 
 conduct cowardly, cautious, selfish, and marked by the weak- 
 ness and egotism which are the vice of the common herd, and 
 are only wanting in the exceptional few, both of tragedy and 
 of real life.' But when it watched the progress of the play, the 
 scenes must have been not unlike the play within the play in 
 Hamlet, except that the great personages were in the Greek play 
 the observed of the inferior observers. The entrances to the 
 orchestra were the same as those of the audience, from the 
 sides (TrdpoSot), between the stage and the tiers of seats, and it is 
 certain that there was no separate place for musicians, as the 
 accompaniments to the choral songs, which were sung ap- 
 parently in unison, were of the slightest kind perhaps a single 
 fluteplayer behind the scenes. 
 
 From the orchestra we mount by a few steps to the stage, 
 and its appurtenances. It was technically called Trpoo-u/rtov, or 
 the place in front of the o-/^)'//, which was originally the king's 
 tent, or dwelling of the chief character, but, in ordinary Greek 
 parlance, nothing more than the background of the stage. A 
 particular place in the centre of the proscenium, or stage, ap- 
 pears to have been slightly raised, and specially used in great 
 declamations: this was called the \oytlov. The whole stage was 
 
 1 Sophodc, p. 260.
 
 CH. xiv. STAGE-ARRANGEMENTS. 17 
 
 very high and narrow, spanning all the way from one side of the 
 huge circle of spectators to the other. As the chorus were 
 brought forward to their place in the orchestra, the Greek 
 theatre required no deep stage room, and had ample space for 
 its very few characters within a narrow place. 1 There was cer- 
 tainly one passage leading out from under the stage, and known 
 technically as Charon's stairs ; but the old stages which I have 
 examined show such complicated substructures, so many separate 
 short walls and passages in their foundations, that I fancy there 
 must have been more to be done under the Greek stage than 
 most scholars imagine. The front of the raised stage, which 
 was hidden by the scenic orchestra, was called viroaKi'jnor. 
 
 167. There was not much change of dress in the Greek 
 plays, but still some green room must have been required ; it is 
 never alluded to by our authorities, and was, I fancy, a wooden 
 structure at the side of the stage, which could be removed 
 with the other woodwork. In the back wall of the stage, the 
 doors, three in number, indicated the position of the actor 
 who first entered through them. 2 The middle door was for 
 the chief actor, the right for his foil or supporter (deuteragonist), 
 the left for his contrast or opponent (tritagonist). These 
 parts were as much fixed as those of the soprano, tenor, and 
 barytone in modern operas, but of course for musical and ses- 
 thetical reasons the two principal voices are there co-ordinated, 
 whereas this was never done by the Greeks. Messengers, who 
 played an important part in reciting stirring scenes, came in, if 
 from the home or city of the actors, by the right parodos ; if 
 from abroad, by the left side of the theatre, and went out by 
 
 1 With the decay of the chorus, the stage was made narrower, and the 
 ornamental front with marble figures, which we admire in the present re- 
 mains of the theatre at Athens, was not built till the third century A.D., 
 and was moved back eight or nine yards from the original limit of the 
 proscenium, in the days of elaborate choric dances, and of dialogues be- 
 tween the chorus and the actors. The decoration of this surface seems to 
 imply that no scaffolding for an orchestra was then required in front of it. 
 
 2 It is not to be imagined that this was an absolute rule. The chief 
 personage was in most plays easily to be distinguished without any sucti for- 
 mality. Cf. Bernhardy, ii. p. 93. 
 
 VOL. I. 2 C
 
 1 8 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xiv. 
 
 the orchestra ; we find that in some theatres an additional door 
 at each end of the stage was provided for this purpose. These 
 fixed arrangements served to a certain extent instead of play 
 bills, which the Greeks did not use. The back scene was, as I 
 have said, lofty, and made of painted wooden panels and hang- 
 ings, for when the Romans came to build similai theatres, they 
 built up this scene of masonry, which still remains in many 
 places most perfectly at the splendid theatre of Aspendus in 
 Pamphylia. The upper story represented by this architectural 
 front was called episcenium, and the wings, when they came for- 
 ward and closed the ends of the stage, parascenia. When 
 change of place was required, there existed scene shifting, in 
 the sense of drawing back to the sides temporary structures. 
 As there was seldom, if ever, more than one change of scene 
 in a Greek tragedy, we can imagine the movable scenes used 
 first, and drawn away, along with the revolution of the periacti, 
 to make way for the view painted on the permanent back 
 scene of the stage. For it is certain that at the parascenia 
 were fixed two lofty triangular prisms, called revolvers (irtpiakTOt), 
 on each face of which a different scene was painted, so 
 that, according as the ' foreign parts ' especially of the play 
 changed, the light trtfiiaKToc. yuT/xai'j; was turned (fKKVK\tiv). 
 These prisms must also have served to conceal such scenes as 
 were drawn back, when not required. There was some compli- 
 cated machinery in the upper story of the back scene, which 
 enabled the gods to appear in the air, and address the actors 
 from a place called the gods' stage (fleoXoyetor). This machinery 
 seems to have been hidden by a large curtain (raro/jA^/in) hung 
 from above, but I suspect that this device did not exist in the 
 early days of tragedy. 
 
 It is important to notice the lofty and permanent character 
 of the wooden, and afterwards brick, structures at the back of 
 the stage, as it destroys various sentimental notions of modern 
 art critics about the lovely natural scenery selected by the Greeks 
 to form the background of their stage. It is still believed by 
 many that the Greeks desired to combine the beauties of a 
 lovely view with the ideal splendour of mythical tragic heroes.
 
 CH. xiv. SCENE-PAINTING. 19 
 
 Modern research has completely exploded the absurd idea. It 
 is possible that, at the highest and worst back seats, some 
 lofty mountain behind the stage might have been visible, 
 but I am sure the intention of all the arrangements was to 
 exclude such disturbance, and to fix the attention of the 
 spectators on the play and its scenic surroundings. The 
 sites of the Greek theatres were simply determined by the 
 ground, and if almost every ascending slope near a city in 
 Greece affords a fair prospect of sea and islands, and rugged 
 outlines, we know that the Greeks of all civilised people thought 
 least about landscapes as such, and neglected the picturesque. 
 1 68. This reflection leads me naturally to say a few words 
 about the scene-painting of the Greeks. When ^Eschylus arose, 
 painting was in its infancy, and it was not till the empire of Athens 
 was well established that the first great artist Polygnotus (about 
 Ol. 78) rose into fame. But he was altogether a figure painter, 
 and seems to have known nothing of perspective. Towards the 
 end of ^Eschylus' life, Agatharchus first began to study the art 
 of scene-painting, with the view of producing some illusion by 
 means of perspective, and wrote a treatise on the subject. The 
 optical questions involved were taken up by Anaxagoras and 
 Democritus, and Apollodorus (about 400 B.C.) may be regarded 
 as having brought to perfection this branch of art Both he 
 and Agatharchus are classed as skenographers, or skiographers 
 (Tojvoypa^oi, ffcioypd^oi), these terms being used as synonymous, 
 and showing that the painting of shadows was first attempted in 
 order to produce effects of perspective in scene-painting. There 
 can be no doubt, from an analysis of the scenes of our extant 
 plays, that the great majority of these paintings was architectu- 
 ral, and the representation of Greek palaces and temples, with 
 their many long straight lines, particularly required a knowledge 
 of perspective. It is not certain that the old Greeks, in spite 
 of their philosophic studies, were very perfect in this respect, 
 for the architectural subjects in the Pompeian frescoes are very 
 faulty, perhaps, however, because they were the work of igno- 
 rant persons, who never learnt the better traditions of the 
 ancients. Some few plays were laid in camps, and wild deserts,
 
 20 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CK. xiv. 
 
 such as the Ajax and Philoctetes of Sophocles ; but by this 
 time scene-painting had become an established art. To judge 
 from the landscapes of Pompeii, these scenes had a very lofty- 
 blue sky painted above them, which was doubtless intended to 
 exclude the natural background from the spectators. In the 
 comedies, concerning which we have but little information in 
 detail, familiar and everyday scenes in Attica must have been 
 painted, and it would be most interesting to know what amount 
 of reality satisfied the Athenian audience. In the tragedies, the 
 scenes were either of remote palaces, or at least of palaces and 
 cities in ancient and mythical times, so that no close approxi- 
 mation to the cities of the period would be required. 
 
 169. Above all, we must insist upon the staid and conserva- 
 tive character of all the Attic tragedy. The subjects were almost 
 as fixed as the scenery, being always, or almost always, subjects 
 from the Trojan and Theban cycle, with occasional excursions 
 into the myths about Heracles. But in treating the Trojan myths, 
 we find a distinct avoidance of the Iliad and Odyssey, and a 
 use of the cyclic poems instead. There are indeed a few titles 
 from our Homer, but they are so constantly satyric dramas, that 
 I suppose this was according to some rule, and that Homer, 
 from his sanctity, or owing to the too great familiarity of the 
 audience with him, was deliberately avoided. 
 
 The uniformity of subjects was moreover paralleled by the 
 uniformity of the dress the festal costume of Bacchus and by 
 the fixed masks for the characters, which allowed no play of 
 feature. So also I fancy the older actors to have been mono- 
 tonous and simple in their playing. Later on we know that they 
 became popular and were a much distinguished class, and then 
 they began to take liberties with their texts, as we hear from many 
 scholia. These liberties were repressed by a wholesome law 
 of the orator Lycurgus, who enacted that official copies of 
 the plays of the three great tragic masters should be made, and 
 no new performance of them allowed without the applicant for 
 the chorus and his company having their acting copies com- 
 pared with the state MS. 
 
 As soon as tragic choruses and other dramatic performances
 
 CH. xiv. COMPETITIONS. 21 
 
 became recognised by the state at Athens, they were not left to 
 chance or to individual enterprise. The chorus was dressed 
 and trained at the public expense, and the poet who desired to 
 have his piece performed must go to the archon, 1 and ask 
 to have a chorus assigned to him. The actors were said to 
 have been distributed by lot, but in later days, we find parti- 
 cular actors so associated with poets that some more permanent 
 connection must be assumed. The archon granted choruses to 
 the most' promising applicants, so that young and unknown 
 poets were fain to produce their piece under the name of an 
 influential friend. The poet, with the aid of a professional 
 choir master, trained his chorus in the lyrical songs, and in 
 early days took the chief acting part himself. 
 
 1 70. Unfortunately we know hardly anything of the way in 
 which the competitions were managed, or how many plays were 
 produced on the same day, and in succession. We know certainly 
 that they were composed (even by Euripides) in tetralogies, in 
 groups of four, and their average length being moderate, I fancy a 
 trilogy would not take up more time than the playing of Ham- 
 let, followed by a short farce or satyric drama. But how could 
 the audience endure more than this at one time ; and yet we 
 know that many of our extant plays obtained the third prize, 
 showing that twelve plays must have been acted. It is abso- 
 lutely certain that such a competition must have lasted several 
 days, and I believe that twelve plays was the limit ; for when I 
 note the difficulty of ' obtaining a chorus,' and that even good 
 poets were refused ; when I also observe that the third place 
 was considered a disgrace, I infer that the number of competi- 
 tors must have been limited, and that there were not lower 
 places than the third to be assigned. But when we hear that 
 Sophocles contended, ' play against play,' by way of novelty, 
 and that single plays from a group were called victorious, and 
 yet that Euripides competed with groups, none of which has 
 survived entire, we find ourselves in hopeless perplexities. 
 
 As to the adjudication of the prizes, it was made by judges 
 selected from the audience by lot, and no doubt led by the 
 
 1 The (ponymus at the Dionysia, the king archon at the Lenaa.
 
 '22 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XIV. 
 
 public reception of the piece ; but their decision seems often to 
 have been exceedingly bad. As we have not the rival pieces of 
 any competition for comparison, we may not dogmatise ; but 
 still, when the scholiasts wonder at the CEdipus Rex being de- 
 feated, and when we find the Medea disgraced by obtaining the 
 third place, we cannot help suspecting that the judgment of the 
 day was utterly wrong. Each victory was commemorated by a 
 tripod, which was erected on an ornamental pillar or building 
 like the choragic monument of Lysicrates, still extant at Athens, 
 and from these inscribed monuments were drawn the valu- 
 able didascalia which Aristotle first collected, and from which 
 Aristophanes (of Byzantium) afterwards compiled his invaluable 
 prefaces to all the plays. Our extant prefaces seem to copy 
 their chronological data the year of the play, its competitors, 
 and its place whenever they vouchsafe us such information. 
 Had Aristophanes' work been preserved, the whole history ot 
 the drama would be in a far different condition. 
 
 171. There is still some hope of further light on this im- 
 portant point Fragments of lists of dramatic authors, and their 
 victories, are still being found about the acropolis and the theatre 
 at Athens, and from the publications of them by Kumanudes 
 in the Athenaion, Bergk has endeavoured to reconstruct the 
 chronology of the drama. 1 His conclusions have been con- 
 tested by Kohler, 2 and are as yet uncertain. But he has pro- 
 bably established this much, that while the tragic contests were 
 carried on at the greater Dionysia in the city, and in spring 
 time, and recorded since about Ol. 64, the winter feast of the 
 Lensea in the suburbs was originally devoted to comedy, which 
 was not recognised by the state till about Ol. 79. In Ol. 84 
 new regulations were introduced, probably by Pericles, accord- 
 ing to which tragic contests were established at the Lensea, and 
 comic admitted to the greater Dionysia. From this time both 
 kinds of contests were carried on at both feasts, and in the great 
 theatre. 3 But as the Lenaa was only a home feast, and not 
 
 1 Cf. Rhein. Mus. for 1879, pp. 292, sq. 
 
 y In the Memoirsofthe German Arch. Inst. of Athens, vol.iii. pp. 104, sq. 
 
 3 The lesser or country Dionysia were celebrated at a theatre in the 
 
 Peiraeus, which has recently been discovered. Cf. 'AOijvoior for August 1880.
 
 CH. xiv. PRIZES. 23 
 
 attended by strangers, a victory gained there was by no means 
 of the same importance as a victory before the great concourse 
 of citizens and visitors in the spring, and consequently they 
 were separately catalogued. This accounts for variations in the 
 number of prizes ascribed to the poets, some lists comprising 
 all, others only the city prizes. No poet (except Sophocles) 
 seems to have gained this latter distinction often, and many 
 prolific authors obtained it only once or twice.. But, as has 
 been already remarked, the verdict of the judges is not to be 
 taken as a conclusive estimate of real merit.
 
 24 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xv. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 172. THE facts known to us about the life of ^Eschylus are 
 few, and decked out with many fables. He was the son ol 
 Euphorion, born at Eleusis, the town of the Mysteries, in 525 
 B.C. He contended with Choerilus and Pratinas, as well as 
 Phrynichus, fiom about 500 B.C., and there is no doubt that 
 he learned a great deal from the art of the latter. His first 
 tragic victory was in Ol. 73, 4 (485), and from this time down to 
 the middle of the century he worked with all the energy and 
 patience of a great genius at his art. He fought in the battles 
 of the great Persian war, and was wounded, it is said, at 
 Marathon, at which his brother Kyngegirus fell. He contended 
 against Simonides with an elegy to be inscribed over the fallen, 
 but was defeated. According to the most credible account 
 he won thirteen tragic victories. He confessed it impossible 
 to excel the Hymn to Zeus of the obscure Tynnichus, on 
 account of its antique piety, which gave it the character of 
 an inspiration. 1 And yet he is reported to have been exceed- 
 ingly hurt at the success of Sophocles in tragedy, by whom he 
 was defeated in 468 B.C. This may have induced him to leave 
 Athens and go to Sicily, an island which he had already visited 
 in Ol. 76 at the invitation of Hiero, for whom he had written a 
 local piece called the sEtnceans, to celebrate the foundation of 
 the city of ^Etna on the site of the earlier (and later) Catana. 
 He also brought out at Syracuse a new edition of his Persians. 
 A better cause alleged for his second departure from Athens 
 was the suspicion or accusation under which he lay of having 
 divulged the Mysteries. He is even said to have been publicly 
 attacked, and, though he pleaded that he was unaware of his 
 ' Cf. Bergk, FLG., p. mi.
 
 CH XV. LIFE OF AESCHYLUS. 25 
 
 crime, was saved with difficulty by the Areopagus. If this be 
 so, we can understand his splendid advocacy of that ancient 
 and venerable court, when attacked by Ephialtes, in his 
 Eumenides, the third play of the extant trilogy with which 
 he conquered in Ol. 80, 2 (458). He must have been at this 
 moment one of the most important leaders of the conser- 
 vative party, and have had far more weight through his plays 
 than most men could attain by their eloquence on the bema. 
 Nevertheless we hear of his dying at Gela in Sicily within three 
 years of this great triumph. The people of Gela erected 
 him a splendid tomb ; the Athenians not only set up his statue 
 in public, but rewarded and equipped any choregus in after 
 days who would bring out again his works upon the stage. 
 
 Even this brief sketch can hardly be called certain as to 
 its facts ; the many fables about his relationships, about his 
 death, and about his professional jealousies have been here 
 deliberately omitted. Three personal recollections of him still 
 survive, beyond the remark on Tynnichus. He was sitting 
 beside Ion of Chios at the Isthmian games ; the audience cried 
 out when one of the boxers got a severe blow, whereupon he 
 nudged Ion, and said : ' See what training does ; the man who 
 is struck says nothing, while the spectators cry out.' 1 He is said 
 to have described his tragedies as morsels (re/m^) gathered 
 from the mighty feasts of Homer. Pausanias (i. 14, 5) says 
 that when his end was at hand, he made mention of none of 
 his fame as a poet, but wrote the name of his father and city, 
 and that the grove of Marathon and the Medes who dis- 
 embarked there were witnesses of his valour. This points to 
 some epitaph which Pausanias regarded as genuine. Of his 
 plays there remain seventy-two titles, of which over sixty seem 
 genuine, and a good many fragments, but only seven actual 
 pieces : the Supplices (i/ren^e), probably brought out in Ol. 71, 
 or 72 ; the Perstf, 76, 4 ; the Seven against Thebes, 78, i 2 ; 
 the Prometheus Vinctus, not before 75, 2, in which the eruption 
 
 1 This is reported by Plutarch, De prefect, in virt. c. 8. 
 
 - The statement put into ^schylus' mouth in the Frogs (v. 1026, sq.) 
 seems as if this usually received order were wrong, and the Seven against 
 Thebes came earlier than the Persa.
 
 26 HISTORY OF CREEK LITERATURE. CH. xv. 
 
 of A^tna. alluded to in the play occurred, but probably as late 
 as Ol. 79. Lastly, his greatest and most perfect work, the 
 Orestean trilogy, consisting of the Agamemnon, Choephori, and 
 Eumenides, in Ol. 80, 2, shortly before his death. 
 
 173. I take the Supplices first, because it is decidedly a 
 specimen of the early and simple tragedy developed by ^Eschy- 
 lus; nor do I agree with some great critics who have thought it 
 composed as late as Ol. 79, on account of its complimentary 
 allusions to Argos. In the first place the chorus is the principal 
 actor in this play the daughters of Danaus, who have come as 
 Suppliants to Argos, to escape the marriage of their cousins, 
 the sons of ^Egyptus. In the next place, the number of the 
 chorus in the play seems to have been fifty, whereas in JEs- 
 chylus' later days it was reduced to fifteen or twelve persons. 
 There is indeed a notice of Suidas that Sophocles raised 
 the old number twelve to fifteen, which would imply twelve 
 Suppliants only ; but the fixed traditional number of the 
 Danaides, and the ample space on the orchestra, in a play 
 where there was no dancing, seem to make the full number not 
 impossible in this piay. I have no doubt that it was the 
 requirements of this play which at all events made the critics 
 think of fifty choristers. The main body of the piece consists in 
 long choric songs complaining of the violence of the sons of 
 ./Egyptus, the unholy character of the marriage they proposed, 
 and the anxieties of the fugitives. These odes are merely 
 interrupted by the actors their father Danaus, Pelasgus, the 
 King of Argos, and the petulant Egyptian herald, who endea- 
 vours to hurry them off to the ship which has just arrived to 
 bring them back. The King of Argos is represented as a 
 respectable monarch, who, though absolute, will not decide 
 without appealing to the vote of his people, who generously 
 accept the risk of protecting the Suppliants. But the cautious 
 benevolence of Pelasgus, and the insolence of the Egyptian 
 herald, can hardly be called character-drawing, and the whole 
 drama, having hardly any plot, is a good specimen of that 
 simple structure with which Attic tragedy developed itself out 
 of ?. mere cyclic chorus. It is remarkable, however, that 
 though the individuals are so slightly sketched, there is the
 
 CH. xv. THE SUFPLICES. 27 
 
 most distinct characterising of nationalities throughout the 
 play. Not only is the very speech of the Danaides full of 
 strange-sounding words, as if to suggest their foreign origin, 
 but there is the strongest aversion conveyed by the poet for 
 the Egyptians, as a violent and barbarous people, whose better 
 few can only find protection in Argos. The Argives, again, 
 are described as an honourable, somewhat democratic people, 
 not perhaps very different from the stage Athenians under 
 Theseus. There is little known of the other plays in the 
 trilogy, or of the satyric piece which followed. The horror 
 of a marriage with cousins seems so absurd in the Egyptian 
 princesses that it must have been explained by the course 
 of a preceding play, and the critics are agreed that the so- 
 called Danaides followed, wherein the marriage and murder 
 of the sons of ^gyptus took place, and the trial of Hyperm- 
 nestra, who alone disobeyed her father. She seems to have 
 been acquitted by the interference of Aphrodite herself, on the 
 ground of her own all-powerful influence on the human mind, 
 and from her speech Athenseus has preserved for us some fine 
 lines. 1 
 
 Though this play is the least striking of those extant, and, 
 from the little attention paid to it, very corrupt, and often 
 hard to decipher, there are all the highest J2schylean features 
 in germ throughout it. Thus in the very first chorus, not to 
 speak of the elegant allusion to the nightingale, already cele- 
 brated in the Odyssey, there is a splendid passage on the 
 Divine Providence, which breathes all the lofty theology so 
 admirable in ^Eschylus. 2 
 
 ipa fj.ft> ayvbs ovpavbs rpcaffai x^Mva, 
 tpias 5e yaiav \a/j.f$dvfi yd/j.ov rvxfiv 
 opflpos 8' aw' fvvdevros ovpavov itr<iit> 
 fKvtre ydtav' rj Se riKrerai frpoTols 
 H^\a>v Tf O<TK&S leal &tov Ari/j.'firpiov' 
 SevSp&ris &pa S' e'*c vorl&vros yd/jiov 
 T(\ft6s iffTt. rSiv 8' yci> vapainos. 
 vv. 86, sq. : Aibs '1/j.epos OVK evB'fiparos 
 irdvra rot <p\eyfOei 
 KO.V ffK6T(f fj.f\aiv<f 
 u,(p6irtffffi Aaois,
 
 28 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xv. 
 
 So also future punishments are threatened. 1 The concluding 
 prayer of blessing on Argos, sung by the gratetul Suppliants, is 
 very fine, and there is all through the play an abundance of 
 that mighty diction in which the epithets and figures come 
 rolling in upon us like Atlantic waves. It is this feature in 
 yEschylus which makes him so untranslateable. 2 
 
 I will observe, in conclusion, that the description of lo's wan- 
 derings (in the ode, w. 525, sq.) is a foretaste of the much 
 fuller treatment of the same subject in the later Prometheus. 
 
 iriiTTft 5" aff<f>a.\fs ou5' M vtertfi, 
 Kopu(pa. Atbs f KpavOfj 
 
 oav\ol yap irpcnriSaiv 
 SdffKiol Tf rtlvovffiv iropot, 
 
 Idirrfi 5' t\irl$a>v 
 a<j>' fynrvpytav Ttuvta\fis /Jporouy, 
 /3iav 8' oCrtv" 4oir\lfi, 
 
 TO.V &TTOIVOV Saiuovitav ^fj-tvov Uvu (pp6fT)fj.d trots 
 avT6dfV feirpafv euTray, fSpdvwv e<p' ayv<iiv. 
 And vv. 590, sq. : 
 
 rli? &v Ofiav tvintwrepoiffiv 
 KfK\ol/j.av ev\6yo>s ^ir' tpyots. 
 
 ytvovs Tra\aid<j>pcav fjtfyas 
 TKT(av, rb irav nrj^ap ovpios Zevs. 
 uir' apxas 8' oUnvos Oodfav 
 TO fjLflov Kpeiffff6v(av Kparvvtiv 
 O&TIVOS 5.va>6fv ij/j.fvov fff&tt Kara). 
 irdpfffTt 5' tpyov us tiros 
 ffvevfai TI T&V @ov\tos tptptt (ppiiv. 
 
 1 vv. 227-33, and v. 416. 
 
 2 Thus we have (vv. 34, sq. ) : 
 
 <tv9a- 8i \ai\airi 
 Viry, jSpoi/rp (rrepoirfj T* 
 v r' avf^ois ayplca 
 rfs u\oivro. 
 
 Again, v. 350 : \vKo5ioiKrov us Sd/uaAxv Up irtrpais 
 
 ii\i&dTOts, T/' a\K<} iri<rvvos fj.efj.vKe 
 
 tppdov<ra fiorripi 
 
 Ard 
 
 &XP OV O'KlOapiv $aKpvoy 
 And the wonderful 
 
 oy ol6<j>puv
 
 CH. xv. THE PERS^E. 29 
 
 1 74. The Pers<z is profoundly interesting, apart from literary 
 questions, for it is the first approach to a piece of contem- 
 porary history among the Greeks. Here we have the battle 
 of Salamis described by an eyewitness, and the impressions 
 made on the heroes of Marathon recorded with a poet's 
 utterance. 1 The problem of making an ideal picture from 
 materials of the present day was more imperative for a Greek 
 than for any modern poet, and it is with no small acuteness 
 that Racine (in the preface to his Bajazef) explains the artifice, 
 and applies it in his own way. As M. Patin well puts it : ' il 
 depaysa, en quelque sorte, son sujet, et lui donna cette per- 
 spective lointaine necessaire a 1'illusion tragique.' 2 Racine 
 thought that to his audience the Turks were strange and mys- 
 terious enough for ideal purposes, just as ^Eschylus had de- 
 vised the plan of laying his scene at the Persian court, where 
 even living characters would not strike the audience as too 
 close to themselves. By this means yEschylus avoids all the 
 difficulties which beset him, and moreover was able to convey 
 certain moral lessons to his audience by his picture of the 
 despotic society in which Xerxes lived. It has been re- 
 marked that though the play teems with Persian names, not 
 a single Athenian is mentioned; nay, even the celebrated 
 Ameinias, whom many commentators call the poet's brother, is 
 anonymous, and his ship only noted as a ' Greek ship.' Of 
 course, the mention of any special name in the Attic theatre 
 would have excited all manner of disturbing sympathies and 
 antipathies. 
 
 The general features of the play being borrowed, as we are 
 told, from the celebrated Pfmnisstz of Phrynichus, it was of 
 that archaic and simple structure which admitted almost no 
 
 1 The differences between ^Eschylus and Herodotus, which are less than 
 might be expected, have often been discussed by critics. Cf. Blakesley's 
 Hei-od. vol. ii. p. 404. The introduction of modern subjects had already 
 been attempted by Phrynichus (a!x>ve, p. n), not only in his Captiire of 
 Miletus, but in his Pkoanustz. It was again attempted in later days by 
 Moschion and Philiscus in their Themistocles, and probably by others also. 
 Cf. Meineke, Hist. Com. Gr<zc< p 522. 
 
 2 Eratosthenes says it was brought out at Syracuse at Hiero's request, 
 which gives still more point to Patin's remark.
 
 30 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE., CH. xv. 
 
 action, and very little play of various feeling. The chorus is 
 here also of the first importance, and takes its place as an actor 
 in the play. It is composed of elders left in charge of Xerxes' 
 kingdom during his absence, who in the opening scene express 
 their anxieties concerning the state of the Persian Empire. 
 Atossa, the king's mother, next appears to tell her alarms, and 
 then a breathless messenger narrates the defeat and destruction 
 of the great host in a very splendid narrative. The chorus, in 
 despair, are advised by Atossa to help her in calling up the spirit 
 of Darius, who is represented as a great and just ruler, whose 
 prophetic advice might still save his people. But he merely 
 foretells, with calm dignity, the remaining defeat at Platsea, and 
 gives no hope of returning fortune. After a choral song in 
 praise of his great conquests, Xerxes appears in strong con- 
 trast, and the play ends with a long commos or ode of lamenta- 
 tion for him and the chorus a common feature at the close 
 of Greek tragedies, for which we moderns feel little sympathy. 
 The play is not very difficult, and the text in a much better 
 condition than that of most of ^Eschylus' other plays. Its merits 
 have been generally underrated, and it seems to have been left 
 for M. Patm to discover, with the delicate sense of his nation, 
 the finer points missed by other critics. The ghost of Darius in 
 particular is to be noted as, perhaps, the only character ghost in 
 the history of tragedy. He is brought up mainly to enable the 
 poet to gather together the various triumphs of the Greeks, 
 which could not be embraced in the limits of the action. But 
 far beyond this particular requirement, ^Eschylus has endowed 
 the vision of the great monarch with a certain splendid calm, a 
 repose from the troubles of this mortal life, an indifference to 
 all violent despair, which comes out strangely in his opening 
 words to Atossa, and in his parting farewell. 1 The con- 
 trast with the erring, suffering, perturbed spirit of Hamlet's 
 father will strike every reader. As for the other charac- 
 ters of the play, they merely exhibit various phases of grief, 
 all modulated and varied according to the natural require- 
 ments of the persons. The grief of the messenger is patri- 
 otic, he thinks of the losses of Persia only ; and yet there 
 
 1 vv. 706-8, and 840-2.
 
 CH. xv. THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES. 31 
 
 is in him that fullness and explicitness of detail which mark 
 the self-importance of a man of little dignity, when he be- 
 comes the bearer of weighty, even though lamentable, news. 
 The grief of the queen is personal, she has her mind fixed 
 on her son. That of the chorus is vehement and headstrong, 
 almost seditious ; that of Xerxes, gloomy and despairing ; that 
 of Darius, as we have said, is a calm and divine melancholy, 
 which cannot disturb his eternal serenity. Thus a single 
 theme is varied through all manner of tempers. Though the 
 general merit of the piece is greater than that of the Supplices, 
 there are not so many fine and striking passages. More espe- 
 cially the theology preached by Darius is by no means so lofty 
 as that cited above from the earlier play. The lines in which 
 Atossa describes the offerings of the dead are very beautiful, 
 and very like in grace to the writing of Sophocles. 1 
 
 The invocation of Darius also shows the use of the refrain, 
 which is so effective in ^Eschylus, and is not common in the 
 other tragedians. We are told in the didascaliae that this trilogy 
 viz. the Phineus, Pers<c,Glaucus, with the Prometheus Pyrphoros 
 gained the first prize. Of the other plays we know hardly 
 anything, save that the Boeotian campaign, and the Carthaginian 
 defeat in Sicily, were treated. There is a good edition by Teuffel. 
 
 175. The Seven against Thebes brings us to a more ad- 
 vanced stage of the poet's development. Though the plot 
 is still simple, it is not the chorus, but Eteocles who opens 
 the play, and sustains the principal part. Moreover, the drawing 
 of his character is very clear and sharp, and quite as striking 
 as the warlike characters of the most developed tragedies. 
 After his patriotic speech, a messenger details, with great 
 
 1 vv. 610-18 : 
 
 vfitpolffi yUetAi/CTTjpja, 
 fio6s T' a</>' ayvfjs XtvKbv eviroTov -yaXa, 
 TTJS r' avBepovpyov <rrdy/j.a, Tra/J.(f>aes .ue'Ai, 
 \ifi<i<riv v$pT)\cus vaoBevov irriyris fifra 
 a.K-i]pa.r6v re ftfirpbs aypias &iro 
 trorbv ira\aias a/j^f\ov yavos rdbe 
 TTJS T' atfv iv <t>v\\oiffi Oa,\\oi><rris laav 
 av6ris eAaia? Kapirbs fvc'Sys -jnipa, 
 
 aia^ rttva.
 
 32 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xv. 
 
 beauty, the sacrifice and oath of the seven hostile captains, who 
 ?wear to meet death rather than to turn back from Thebes. l 
 Thzparodos of the chorus is composed with great skill, the pre- 
 cipitous hurried rythms and apparent disorder of the structure 
 speaking clearly the agitation of the Theban maidens at the 
 approach of the enemy. Eteocles breaks in upon them, and 
 reproves them sharply for disturbing the town, and dispiriting 
 the citizens with their lamentations, and prayers to the gods. 
 After a long dialogue, he exhorts them to raise a paean to the 
 gods, and encourage the people. But the chorus in an 
 anxious and very beautiful strain, still harp upon their fears, 
 upon the horrors of war, and upon the miseries of captured 
 cities. 2 
 
 1 Mr. A. W. Verrall, in his excellent edition (Macmillan, 1887), 
 throws new light on the whole plot, showing especially that the seven 
 were only leaders of the assault, chosen by Adrastus. 
 
 e w. 321-62 : 
 
 oiKTpbv yap ir6\iv 8' ayvyiay 
 'AtSq; irpo'idtyat, Sophs Hypav, 
 $ov\iav fyafyapq ffiroSw 
 
 ao Oe60ev 
 
 irepBofitvav ari.uas, 
 
 ray 8e KX l P eo / x '*' as &y f 
 
 ii], vfas Tf Kal iraXcuas 
 
 )3oa 8' 
 
 \atSos 6\\vfj.tvas [J.io6p6ov 
 
 fiapelas roi ri>xas irporapPia. 
 
 ifAourbv 8' aprirp6trois wuoSp6ira>v 
 
 vou.iu.tav irpovdpoiOfv 5iau.ffyou 
 
 $<a/j.d:T(av ffTvyfpav 6S6v. 
 
 fi ; rbc <$>Qiu.evov yap irpo\tyu 
 
 fi(\Tfpa rcavSe irpatrcreiv. 
 
 vo\\a ydp, elrf irroKis $au.atrdji, 
 
 ii), tivarvx?) T6 irpdfffffi. 
 
 &\\os 8' &\\ov &yei, 
 
 <t>ovevei, ra 8e Kal irvptyopft' 
 
 Kiiirvt? xpaivfrai irbkiPfii a.ra.v. 
 
 uawOfJifvos 8' fanrvei
 
 CH. XV. THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES. 33 
 
 Then follows the celebrated scene in which the messenger 
 describes the appearance of each chief, while Eteocles and 
 the chorus answer. The length to which it is expanded 
 has been criticised by Euripides. The picture of the sixth, 
 the seer Amphiaraus, 1 is said by Plutarch to have 'brought 
 down the house' by its plain allusion to Aristeides, then in 
 the theatre. When Polynices is described, last of all, the 
 rage of Eteocles bursts forth uncontrollably, and the awful 
 curse resting upon the house of Laius urges him consciously to 
 meet his brother in the field, in spite of the deprecating 
 entreaties of the chorus. After an ode on the sorrows ot 
 CEdipus, the news of the Theban victory and the death of the 
 brothers arrives. Presently the bodies are brought in, fol- 
 lowed by Antigone and Ismene, who sing a commas over them, 
 consisting of doleful reproaches and laments. 
 
 But in the last seventy lines the poet blocks out the whole 
 subject of Sophocles' Antigone. The herald forbids the burial of 
 Polynices, Antigone rebels, and by a curious device the chorus, 
 dividing, take sides with both Antigone and Ismene, in upholding 
 
 fj.ia.tvwv evff0fiav "Apijs. 
 KopKopvyal 5' civ' &CTTV, 
 ITOT\ ir r r6\iv 8' dpitdva trvpyuns. 
 irpbs avSpbs 8' av^p (rreks 8opl 
 /3Aoxl 8' aifJ.ar6f(Tffai 
 Ttav tirifiaffTiSluv 
 &pTi f3pe<piav ftpffjioVTai. 
 ap-jrayal 8e SiaSpofiav 6fj.al/J,OfS' 
 f t/jUj8oAe7 (pfpcav (pfpovn, 
 Kal Kfvbs Kfvbv Ka\ei, 
 tyvvofiov 6e\tav eXfiv, 
 otfre /jLfwv oSr' tffov \e\ifj.ft.(voi. 
 T'IV eit rcevS' eiKaffai \6yos irdpa ; 
 irafToSairbs Se Kapirbs 
 Xa.fj.dSts iffffhv a\y6vfi Kvpfiffas. 
 xLKpiiv 5' 6/JL/J.a * 
 iro\\a 8' a.KpiT6<pvpros 
 yas Soerts oiirtSavo'is 
 eV poBiuis $opeiT<u. 
 1 w. 592^. 
 
 VOL. I. 2 D
 
 34 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xv. 
 
 and rejecting the decree of the city. 1 M. Patin notes that the 
 same device has been adopted by Schiller in his Bride of 
 Messina, and that such a division was not at all unnatural in a 
 Greek chorus. Far from being an ideal spectator, ' les poetes 
 grecs ne se piquaient pas de donner au chceur, re'present- 
 ant de la foule, des sentiments heroi'ques, et il me semble 
 qu'Eschyle, dans cette peinture rapide, a fort ingenieusement 
 caracterise' les commodes apologies de la poltronnerie politique. 
 Aristophanes, in his Frogs, makes ^Eschylus quote this play 
 specially for its warlike tone, and for the good effects it pro- 
 duced upon the spirit of the spectators. It won the first prize 
 with its trilogy, consisting of the Lotus, the (Edipus, the 
 Septan, and as a satyric afterpiece, the Sphinx. This information 
 having been copied from the Medicean didascalise discovered in 
 1848, it is interesting to study the earlier lucubrations of the 
 Germans as to the place of the Septan in its trilogy. Only one 
 of their guesses was true, and that was shortly abandoned by 
 its author, Hermann, for more elaborate hypotheses. This 
 collapse of the learned combinations about the grouping of 
 Greek plays has decided me to pass them by in silence, merely 
 giving the facts when preserved in the Greek prefaces, which 
 are acknowledged trustworthy. 
 
 176. The Prometfieus Vinctus brings us to the perfection 
 of ^Eschylus' art, and to a specimen, unique and unapproach- 
 able, of what that wonderful genius could do in simple tragedy, 
 that is to say, in the old plotless, motionless, surpriseless 
 drama, made up of speeches and nothing more. There is cer- 
 tainly no other play of ^Eschylus which has produced a greater 
 impression upon the world, and few remnants of Greek 
 literature are to be compared with it in its eternal freshness 
 and its eternal mystery. We know nothing of the plays 
 connected with it, save that it was followed by a Prometheus 
 Unbound, with a chorus of Titans condoling with the god, 
 who was delivered by Heracles from the vulture that gnawed 
 his vitals, and was reconciled with Zeus. Thus this group may 
 
 1 So Aristophanes, in his Acharnians (w. 520, sq.) divides his chorus, 
 half of which is persuaded by Dicaecpolis, while the other half remains 
 obstinate and hostile.
 
 CH. xv. THE PROMETHEUS. 35 
 
 have had a peaceful and happy termination, like the great 
 extant trilogy; and we can fancy that the pious ^Eschylus, 
 when he brought upon the stage conflicts among the gods, 
 would not allow his plays to close in wrath and anguish, as he 
 did the GEdipodean trilogy just discussed. The work before 
 us shows clear marks of development above the earlier plays. 
 Three actors appear in the first scene, the silent figure of 
 Prometheus being evidently a lay figure, from behind which 
 the actor afterwards spoke. The chorus is even more re- 
 stricted than in the Seven against Thebes, and occupies a posi- 
 tion not more prominent than in the average plays of Sophocles 
 or Euripides. The dialogue is paramount, and possesses a 
 terseness and power not exceeded by any of the poet's later 
 work. As Eteocles, the heroic warrior, is in the Seven the 
 central and the only developed character, so here Prome- 
 theus, the heroic sufferer, sustains the whole play. In the first 
 scene he is riven, with taunt and insult, to the rocks by the 
 cruel or timid servants of Zeus. Then he soliloquises. Then 
 he discourses with the sympathetic chorus of ocean nymphs and 
 their cautious father. Then he condoles with the frantic lo, and 
 prophesies her future fates. Lastly, he bids defiance to Zeus, 
 through his herald Hermes, and disappears amid whirlwind and 
 thunder. Yet the interest and pathos of the play never flag. 
 
 With a very usual artifice of the poet, satirised by Aristo- 
 phanes, the chief actor is kept upon the stage silent for some 
 time, during which the expectation of the spectators must 
 have been greatly excited, even though diverted by the ex- 
 quisite pathos of Hephaestus' address to the suffering god. 
 The outburst of Prometheus, as soon as the insolent minis- 
 ters of Zeus have left him manacled, but have freed him from 
 the far more galling shackles of proud reserve, is among the 
 great things in the world's poetry. The approach of the 
 ocean nymphs is picturesquely conceived : indeed the whole 
 scenery, laid in the Scythian deserts beyond the Euxine, among 
 gloomy cliffs and caverns, with no interests upon the scene 
 save those of the gods and their colossal conflicts, is weird and 
 wild beyond comparison. The choral odes are not so fine as in 
 the earlier plays, but the dialogue and soliloquies more than com-
 
 36 HISTORY OF CREEK LITERATURE. CH. xv. 
 
 pensate for them. The play is probably the easiest of the extant 
 seven, and the text in a good condition, though the critics sus- 
 pect a good many interpolations made by actors in their stage 
 copies. 
 
 177. But the external features of this splendid play arc 
 obscured, if possible, by the still greater interest attaching to its 
 intention, and by the great difficulties of explaining the poet's 
 attitude when he brought it upon the stage. For it represents 
 a conflict among the immortal gods a conflict carried out by 
 violence and settled by force and fraud, not by justice. Zeus 
 especially, his herald, and his subject gods, are represented as 
 hard and fierce characters, maintaining a ruthless tyranny among 
 the immortals; and the suffering Prometheus submits to centuries 
 of torture from motives of pure benevolence to the wretched 
 race of men, whom he had civilised and instructed against the 
 will of Zeus. For this crime, and no other, is he punished by 
 the Father of the Gods, thus set forth as the arch enemy of man. 
 
 How did the Athenian audience, who vehemently attacked 
 the poet for divulging the Mysteries, tolerate such a drama ? and 
 still more, how dicL-Eschylus, a pious and serious thinker, venture 
 to bring such a subject on the stage with a moral purpose ? As 
 to the former question, we know that in all traditional religions, 
 many old things survive which shock the moral sense of more 
 developed ages, and which are yet tolerated even in public 
 services, being hallowed by age and their better surroundings. 
 So we can imagine that any tragic poet, who adhered to the facts 
 of a received myth, would be allowed to draw his characters in 
 accordance with it, especially as these characters were not 
 regarded as fixed, but only held good for the single piece. In 
 the Middle Ages much license was allowed in the mystery plays, 
 but it was condoned and connived at because of the general 
 religiousness of the practice, and because the main outlines of 
 biblical story were the frame for these vagaries. Thus a very 
 extreme distortion of their gods will not offend many who 
 would feel outraged at any open denial of them. It is also to 
 be remembered that despotic sovereignty was the Greek's ideal 
 of happiness for himself , and that most nations have thought it 
 not only reconcileable with, but conformable to, the dignity of
 
 CH. xv. THE PROMETHEUS. 37 
 
 the great Father who rules the world. No Athenian, however 
 he sympathised with Prometheus, would think of blaming Zeus 
 for asserting his power and crushing all resistance to his will. 
 I do not therefore think it difficult to understand how the 
 Athenians not only tolerated but appreciated the play. 
 
 The question of the poet's intention is far more difficult, 
 and will probably never be satisfactorily answered. The number 
 of interpretations put upon the myth by commentators is as- 
 tonishing, and yet it is possible that the poet had none of them 
 consciously before his mind's eye. They have been well 
 summed up by Patin 1 under six heads. There are first the 
 historical theories, such as that of Diodorus Siculus, a scholiast 
 of Apollonius Rhodius, and others, that make Prometheus a 
 ruler of Egypt or of Scythia, who suffered in his struggles to 
 reclaim his country and its people. Secondly, the philo- 
 sophical, which hold it to be the image of the struggles and 
 trials of humanity against natural obstacles. This seerns the 
 view of Welcker, and is certainly that of M. Guignaut Thirdly, 
 the moral, which place the struggle within the breast of the 
 individual, and against his passions, as was done by Bacon, by 
 Calderon, and also by Schlegel, as well as by several older 
 French critics. Fourthly, the Christian, much favoured by 
 Catholic divines in France, supported by Jos. de Maistre, 
 Edgar Quinet, Ch. Maquin, and others, who see in the story 
 either the redemption of man, the fall of Satan, or the fall of 
 man, dimly echoed by some tradition from the sacred Scriptures. 
 Garbitius, a Basle editor of the Prometheus in 1559, seems 
 to have led the way in this direction. But as Lord Lytton 
 justly observes, 'whatever theological system it shadows forth 
 was rather the gigantic conception of the poet himself than the 
 imperfect revival of any forgotten creed, or the poetical dis- 
 guise of any existing philosophy.' Yet there is certainly some- 
 thing of disbelief or defiance of the creed of the populace. 
 Fifthly, the scientific, which regard it as a mere personification 
 of astronomical facts, as is the fashion with comparative 
 mythologies. Similar attempts seem to have been made of old 
 by the alchemists. Sixthly, there is the political interpretation 
 
 1 Etudes, i. p. 254. I have added Mr. Lloyd's, from his Age of Perictes.
 
 3 8 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xv. 
 
 of Mr, Watkiss Lloyd, who thinks the genius of Themistocles 
 and the ingratitude of Athens were the real object of the poet's 
 teaching, though disguised in a myth. 1 There is lastly to be 
 noticed an unique theory, which may be called the romantic, 
 propounded by Desmaretz in 1648, when he published a 
 rationalistic imitation of Euemerus, entitled La Verite des 
 fables ou Phistoire des dieux de Vantiquite, He explains how 
 Prometheus betrays his sovereign, Jupiter, for the love of his 
 mistress Pandora, a lady as exacting as any princess of chi- 
 ralry. He retires in despair to the wastes of the Caucasus, 
 where remorse daily gnaws his heart, and he suffers agonies 
 more dreadful than if an eagle were continually devouring his 
 entrails. Prometheus at the French court of the seventeenth 
 century was sure to cut a strange figure. 
 
 There can be no doubt that an acquaintance with the 
 Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries told upon yEschylus' theology, 
 and made him regard the conflicts and sufferings of gods as 
 part of their revelation to men, and we can imagine him 
 accepting even the harshest and most uncivilised myths as part 
 of the established faith, and therefore in some way to be 
 harmonised with the highest morals. Yet it seems very strange 
 that he should represent Zeus as a tyrant, and Prometheus a 
 god not by any means of importance in public worship a 
 noble sufferer, punished for his humanity. Still worse, Zeus is 
 represented as the enemy of men, and completely estranged 
 from any interest in their welfare. I do not know how these 
 things are to be explained in such a man as ^Eschylus, and 
 cannot say which of the more reasonable theories is to be 
 preferred. This seems certain, that the iron power of Destiny 
 was an extremely prominent idea in his mind, and that no 
 more wonderful illustration could be found than this story, in 
 which even the Ruler of the Gods was subject to it, and thus at 
 the mercy of his vanquished but prophetic foe. 
 
 178. The history of opinion about the Prometheus is some- 
 what curious. The great French critics of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury could not comprehend it, and Voltaire, Fontenelle, and la 
 Harpe were agreed that it was simply a monstrous play, and the 
 1 Cf. Bernhardy's Comm. on most of these theories, LG, iii. p. 272, sq.
 
 CH. xv. ITS LASTING INFLUENCE. 
 
 39 
 
 work of an uncultivated boor with some sparks of genius. The 
 colossal conceptions of the great Greek, and the gigantic words 
 with which he strove to compass his thought, were essentially 
 foreign to the rigid form and smooth polish of the French 
 tragedians. Of late years all this feeling has changed. 
 Lemercier, Andrieux, and Edgar Quinet 1 have adopted the 
 tone of Schlegel and Goethe, and everybody is now agreed as to 
 the merit of the play. I would they were equally persuaded 
 of the impossibility of imitating it. There are allusions to two 
 translations or adaptations by the Romans, attributed to Attius, 
 Varro, or Msecenas. Cicero seems to have been particularly 
 attracted by it. In modern days Calderon's Estatuta dt 
 Prometheo is said to be a moral allegory on the conflicts in 
 human nature. Milton's Satan is full of recollections of Pro- 
 metheus, and even the Samson Agonistes, though rather built 
 on an Euripidean model, has many like traits. Byron tells us 
 that this was his great model for all the rebellious heroes who 
 conflict with the course of Providence. Shelley so loved to 
 depict the struggle with a tyrannous deity that he reconstructed 
 for us the Prometheus Unbound on his own model. But as Lord 
 Lytton observes, ^Eschylus' power lies in concentration, 
 whereas the quality of Shelley is diffuseness. Keats' Hyperion 
 shows the impress of the same original. Goethe attempted, 
 but never finished a Prometheus. Apart from the unworthy 
 portraits in the Pandora of Voltaire and the Prometheus of 
 Lefranc de Pompignan, E. Quinet has symbolised the fall of 
 paganism and rise of Christianity in his drama (Paris, 1838), 
 and several later French poets, MM. Lodin de Lalaire, V. de 
 Laprade, and Senneville, have touched the subject the latter 
 in a tragedy on Prometheus Delivered (i$^}. Thus we have 
 before us in this play of ^Eschylus one of the greatest and 
 most lasting creations in human art, a model to succeeding 
 ages, and commanding their homage. But no modern in- 
 
 1 I am surprised to find ip Villemain (Lift, du xviti" te sttcle, iii. 299) 
 the expression : ' piece monstrueuse, ou Ton voit arriver 1'Ocean qui vole, 
 porte sur un animal aile, et d'autres folies poetiques de 1'imagination 
 grecque.' This is a curious sentence for so enlightened and elegant a 
 critic.
 
 40 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xv. 
 
 terpreter has ever equalled the mighty original. As M. Patin 
 says, it is owing to the unequal satisfaction provided for two 
 very diverse requirements a combination of great poetic 
 clearness with a religious and philosophic twilight that the 
 work of ^Eschylus preserves its immortal freshness. There 
 are German translations by Hartung and F. Jacobs. All earlier 
 English versions may be forgotten in the presence of that of 
 Mrs. Browning. There are editions by Wecklein and Schmidt. 
 
 1 79. We now arrive at the Oresteia, the three plays on the 
 fortunes of the house of Atreus, which were ^Eschylus' last and 
 greatest work. These plays, the Agamemnon, Choephori, and 
 Eumenides, are the only extant specimen of a trilogy, and 
 are inestimable in showing us the way in which the older tragic 
 poets combined three plays on a single subject. But unfor- 
 tunately our single specimen is quite insufficient to afford us 
 materials for an established theory. 
 
 The first of the series, the Agamemnon, is the longest and 
 the greatest play left us by ^Eschylus, and, in my opinion, the 
 greatest of the Greek tragedies we know. There is still no 
 complication in the plot ; the scenes follow one another in 
 simple and natural order ; but the splendid and consistent 
 drawing of the characters, the deep philosophy of the choral 
 songs, and the general grandeur and gloom which pervade the 
 whole piece, raise it above all that his successors were able to 
 achieve. The central point of interest is the matchless scene be- 
 tween Cassandra and the chorus a scene which drew even from 
 the writer of the dry didascaliae an expression of the universal ad- 
 miration it produced. The play opens with a night view of 
 the palace at Argos, from the roof of which a watchman, in a 
 most picturesque prologue of a homely type, details the long 
 weariness of his watch, and betrays in vague hints the secret 
 sores that fester within the house. But his soliloquy is broken 
 by a shout at the sudden flashing out of the long-expected 
 beacon-light that heralded the fall of Troy, Then follows a 
 long and difficult chorus which reviews all the course of the 
 Trojan war, the omen of the eagles, the prophecies of Calchas, 
 and the sacrifice of Iphigeneia. The hymn marches on in its 
 course, each member closing with the solemn refrain
 
 CH. xv. THE AGAMEMNON; 41 
 
 a'ikivov eiTre, TO 2' tv vcjozrw. The moral views of God and of 
 his Providence are very pure and great, and remind us of the 
 passages above quoted from the Supplices,^ 
 
 It is not necessary to follow step by step the plot of a play 
 so easily read in good translations. The character of Cly- 
 temnestra is boldly and finely drawn. She is evidently the 
 master spirit of the palace, and seems stronger, not only 
 than ^Egisthus, but than Agamemnon, who does not awake 
 in us much interest. Cassandra is of course a character of 
 situation, but is remarkable as the pure creation of the poet, 
 and not suggested by the old forms of the myth. Her pro- 
 phetic frenzy, her attempts to speak plainly to the sympathetic 
 chorus, her ultimate clearness, and noble despair as she 
 c^sts away the fillets of the god and enters the house of 
 her doom all combine to form a scene without parallel in the 
 Greek drama, and which has never been approached by the 
 highest effort of either Sophocles or Euripides. But the play 
 not only stands out alone for dramatic greatness ; it abounds 
 everywhere in picturesqueness in picturesqueness of descrip- 
 
 1 Zus, Sffris TTOT' fffrlv, el rdS' ou- 
 T(f <pi\ov KeicXyfitvcp, 
 rovro viv irpoffevveirca. 
 OVK e^co irpofffiKdffai, 
 iravr' fTriffTa6fj.cafj.evos, 
 
 irA^j/ Aio's, el rb fj-drav oiri (ppovriSos &x8os 
 Xprj ftaAfW frriTvpcas. 
 ovS' offris irdpoiOfv ?jv fJ-fyas, 
 irafj.fj.dxf Opdffei Ppvcav, 
 ovStv ki> \e%at irplv &v, 
 t>s 8' fTreir' ftpv, rpta- 
 Krrjpos ordered TVX&V. 
 Zriva 8e TIS TrpotypSvcas firtviKia, K\d<av 
 TufTOi <ppfviv rb TTO.V ' 
 rbv (ppoveiv ftporovs 65<6- 
 ffavra, rbt> iraUfi fj.d6os 
 Qivra. Kvpicas fX ftv - 
 ardfci 8' fv 6' virvcf irpb /copSias 
 uvrtffiirr)/J.cav ir6vos' Kal irop 4r- 
 Kovras $\0e ffoMppoveiv. 
 Saifi6vcav 8e irov 
 Bialws ffe
 
 42 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xv. 
 
 tion, as in the speeches of the watchman and the herald 
 Talthybius ; in picturesqueness of lyric utterance, as in the 
 famous chorus on the flight of Helen, and the anguish of the 
 deserted Menelaus. 1 Most striking also is the picture of the 
 treacherous beauty under the image of a lion's whelp, brought 
 up and petted in the house, and suddenly turning to its native 
 fierceness. 2 
 
 1 ayovffd T' avritytpvov 'IXiiji <f>9opdv, 
 
 Pifiaictv pijj.tpa Sia TTV\U.V, 
 &r\ara rKaffa Tro\\a 8' firrevov 
 
 lii> lea Sw/xa Sco/xa Kal irp6fi.oi, 
 
 irdpeffri ffiyatr', &TI/J.OS, a.\oiSooos y 
 
 aSiffTOS a<pe/j.vav I5f?v. 
 
 ir68ip 8' inrepirovrias 
 
 (pdff/J.0. 8Jei S6fj.a>v avdcrfffiv. 
 
 f \tfji6 ptycav 8f KO\o<Tff(at> 
 
 tiiv 8' tv a^Tlviais fppfi iracr" 1 'A(f>poSira. 
 ovfip6<$avTOi Sf irevd'h/juivfs 
 irdpeiffiv SoKal tyfpovffat xdpw fJLO.Ta.iav. 
 ndrav yap, f5r' av ecr9\d ris $OK<UI> 6pa, 
 irapa\\da<ra Sin x e p^ 
 f$f$aKfv 5'jtts oil fjteOvffTepov 
 irrtpois oiraSoDo-' Sirvov Kf\(v9ots. 
 ra nfv /COT' olitovs iff>' firrlas &xf] 
 rdS' fffrl Kal ruivS' inrep^aTiilTfpa. 
 4 rb trav 8' cup' 'E\\d5os alas ffvvop/j.fvois 
 
 S6/j,<av eicdffTOV irptirfi. 
 iro\\a yovv Oiyydvet irpbs rjirap 
 ovs ftfv ydp TIS fwefj,\]/t> 
 olSev avrl 8e <p<ariav 
 revx~n Kal ffiroSbs fls fKaffrov 
 6 xp vffa f jl - ot fibs 8" "Aptjs ffuftd-rco 
 Kal Ta\avrovxos ev fJ.dxy Sooby 
 irvpcadfv ^ 'I\(oi 
 (piXoiffi Trewret fiapb 
 \l/r)y/j.a SvffSavpvrov av- 
 T'tivopos (TTroSoC yefj.1- 
 
 8 vv. 735, sq.
 
 CH. XV. THE AGAMEMNON. 
 
 43 
 
 There is one passage which has excited much criticism con- 
 cerning the chorus. When the voice of Agamemnon is heard 
 within, crying that he is fatally wounded, there seems to be a 
 regular deliberation of the chorus, each member offering his 
 opinion, and summed up by the leader at the end of twenty- 
 five lines. This delay seems very absurd, except we have re- 
 course to the natural solution, that the various members of the 
 chorus were made to speak simultaneously, so producing a con- 
 fused sound of agitated voices, which is precisely what is most 
 dramatic at such a moment. It is well known to actors now 
 that this confused talking of a crowd is only to be produced 
 by making each person on the stage say something definite 
 at the same moment ; and I believe ^Eschylus to have here 
 used this expedient. Why has this natural explanation oc- 
 curred to no critic? It is remarkable how the chorus, who 
 even after the murder treat Clytemnestra with respect, and 
 only bewail before her their lost king in bitter grief, start up 
 into ungovernable rage when the craven vEgisthus appears to 
 boast of his success. They will not endure from him one word 
 of direction ; and so the play ends with the entreaty of the over- 
 wrought queen to avoid further violence on this awful day. 
 
 The Agamemnon suggested the subject of plays to Sophocles 
 and to Ion among the Greeks, and gave rise to various imita- 
 tions among the early Roman tragedians, as well as by Seneca. 
 In modern days, after a series of obscure attempts among the 
 French of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was imitated 
 (in 1738) by Thompson, in a play which was .translated and 
 produced with success in France. It was also imitated by 
 Alfieri (1783), and then in 1796 by Lemercier in a somewhat 
 famous version. But all these modern Agamemnons differ 
 from that of yEschylus in introducing the two main innova- 
 tions of modern tragedy an interesting plot or intrigue, and a 
 careful and conscious painting of human passions. The great 
 original appeals to far loftier interests. Thus Alfieri alto- 
 gether disregards and omits the splendid part of Cassandra, 
 both from his extreme love of simplicity, and in order that he may 
 find room for painting what ^Eschylus assumes as long since 
 determined the struggle in Clytemnestra's mind between 
 passion, duty, vengeance, and honour. This development of the
 
 44 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xv. 
 
 mental conflicts in Clytemnestra is reproduced by Lemercier, 
 who has, however, not made the error of omitting Cassandra. 
 But the Clytemnestra of ^Eschylus has been for years tutored by 
 her criminal passion. Her struggles with duty have long ceased, 
 and her resolve is fixed. This is no mistake in psychology, 
 no passive adherence (as M. Villemain thinks) to the received 
 legend, but a well-known mental state in a degraded woman. 
 
 Among English translations 1 1 may specially notice the ele 
 gant but not accurate one of the late Dean Milman, in a volume 
 already often cited on the lyric poets. Mr. Fitzgerald, the well- 
 known translator of Omar Khayyam, has given us a fine, but 
 free and modified version of the play in his ' Agamemnon, a 
 tragedy taken from the Greek,' most of which, and the best parts 
 of which, are literal translations. So have Conington, Professor 
 Kennedy, Mr. Morshead, and Miss Swanwick ; the last also 
 published in a magnificent edition with Flaxman's illustrations. 
 Lastly, Mr. Robert Browning has given us an over-faithful 
 version from his matchless hand matchless, I conceive, in 
 conveying the deeper spirit of the Greek poets. But in this 
 instance he has outdone his original in ruggedness, owing to 
 his excess of conscience as a translator. 
 
 1 80. The Choephori, so called from the chorus carrying 
 vessels with formal offerings for Agamemnon, which follows, is 
 unfortunately very corrupt, and even mutilated at its opening in 
 our MSS. This, as well as the intrinsic sombreness and gloomy 
 vagueness of the play, makes it probably the most difficult of 
 our tragedies in its de-tail. But the main outline is very 
 simple and massive. The scene discloses the royal portal, and 
 close to it the tomb of Agamemnon. The proximity of the 
 tomb to the palace seems merely determined by stage reasons, 
 and does not rest in any sense upon a tradition that Aga- 
 memnon was buried in his citadel, as might be inferred from 
 Dr. Schliemann's conjectures. Indeed, the whole tradition of 
 Agamemnon's being buried at Mycenae seems unknown to 
 ^Eschylus, who ignores Diomede, and makes the seat of the 
 great empire of the Atreidse at Argos. 
 
 Orestes 2 in the opening scene declares his return to Argos to 
 
 1 For editions, cf. 184. 
 
 2 In a passage criticised for its redundancy by Aristophanes in the Frogs.
 
 CH. xv. THE CHOEPHORL 
 
 45 
 
 avenge the murder of his father, but he and Pylades stand aside 
 when the chorus of female domestics (probably Trojans) come 
 out in solemn procession to offer libations to the dead. Here 
 Orestes sees and recognises Electra, who discusses with the 
 chorus how she is to perform the commands of Clytemnestra, 
 lately terrified by an ominous dream. They then find the lock of 
 hair offered at the tomb by Orestes, and his foot-tracks, by which 
 Electra is at once convinced of his return. It is evident that 
 ^Eschylus laid no stress on the recognition scene, and that any 
 marks sufficed for his purpose. But he has naturally not 
 escaped the censure of Euripides, who ridicules this scene 
 in the parallel passage of his Electra. When Orestes discovers 
 himself, there follows a splendid dialogue and chorus, I had 
 almost said duet and chorus, in which the children of Agamem- 
 non and their friends pray for help and favour in their vengeance. 
 This scene occupies a large part of the play. At its close 
 Orestes tells his plan of coming as a Phocian stranger and an- 
 nouncing his own death, so as to disarm suspicion, and thus 
 obtaining access to the palace. Here we. see the first dawning 
 of a plot, or of that complex tragedy which soon supplanted the 
 simpler form. The chorus, who in this play are strictly not only 
 the confidants but accomplices of the royal children, aid in the 
 deception, and when Orestes has been invited within by Clytem- 
 nestra, persuade the nurse, who is sent for ^Egisthus, to disobey 
 her instructions, and desire him to come alone. This character 
 (Kilissa), with her homely lament over Orestes, and her memories 
 of the vulgar troubles of the nursery, gives great relief to the 
 uniform gloom of the play, and, in her coarsely expressed 
 real grief, contrasts well with the stately but affected lamentation 
 of the queen. 1 After ^Egisthus has passed in, and his death- 
 cry has been heard, comes the magnificent scene in which Cly- 
 temnestra, suddenly acquainted with the disaster, calls for her 
 double-axe, but is instantly confronted by her son, and sees her- 
 self doomed to die. There is here not an idle word, not a touch 
 of surprise or inquiry. She sees and recognises all in a moment. 
 An instant of weakness, the protest of Pylades, a short, hurried 
 
 1 Sophocles seems to have produced a similar character in his Niobe, 
 cf. fr. 400 ; and this nurse was translated into marble in the famous Niobe 
 group, of which we see a Roman copy at Florence.
 
 46 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xv. 
 
 dialogue between mother and son, and she is brought in to be 
 slain beside her paramour. The scene is then rolled back, and 
 shows Orestes standing over the dead, but already stricken in 
 conscience, and terrified at the dread Furies with which his 
 mother had threatened him. With his flight the play concludes. 
 So great a subject could not but find imitators. Yet 
 Sophocles and Euripides took quite a different course, as the 
 very title of their plays indicates. Their Electras bring into 
 the foreground the sorrows and hopes of the princess, who 
 was doomed by her unnatural mother to long servitude and 
 disgrace, and was sick at heart with hope deferred of her 
 brother's return. Her despair at the announcement of his death, 
 the ill-disguised mental relief of Clytemnestra, the sudden return 
 of Electra's hope, the recognition of Orestes these have afforded 
 to Sophocles one of his most splendid, and to Euripides a 
 very affecting tragedy. But a far more interesting analogy is 
 suggested by the unconscious parallel of Shakspeare, whose 
 Hamlet, dealing with the very same moral problem, gathers into 
 one the parts of Electra and of Orestes, and represents not only 
 the vengeance of the murdered king's son, but the long mental 
 doubts and conflicts of the avenger, living in the palace, and 
 within sight of his adulterous mother and her paramour. 
 Shakespeare has made the queen-mother a weaker, and far less 
 guilty character, and therefore has consistently recoiled from the 
 dreadful crisis of matricide. 1 With him the uncertainty of evi- 
 dence, in Hamlet, takes the place of the uncertainty of hope, in 
 Electra, whether her brother would indeed return. Instead 
 of the oracles that urge Orestes, and the ever-present tomb 
 of Agamemnon, he employs the apparition of the king in per- 
 son. These, and other kindred features, make Hamlet a very 
 curious and instructive parallel to the Choephori, the more 
 curious because accidental. But, like all moderns (even in- 
 cluding the later Greeks), Shakespeare has turned from the dis- 
 cussion of great world-problems to personal and psychological 
 interests, and therefore his magnificent play wants the colossal 
 grandeur and the mystic gloom of the less developed, less 
 elaborated, but greater conception of ^Eschylus. 
 
 1 There is also, of course, the influence of Christianity in its repugnance 
 to bloodshed, a repugnance which the Greek poet would not feel.
 
 CH. xv. THE EUMENIDES. 47 
 
 1 8 1. The Eumenides forms a fitting conclusion to the 
 trilogy. It is a play remarkable for many curious features. 
 First, we may notice the quick changes of scene, which violate 
 the ordinary niceties of time and place. We have the rocky 
 fane at Delphi, and its surroundings, in the opening scene, then 
 the inside of the temple, with the sleeping Furies camped about 
 the suppliant ; then again the Acropolis of Athens, and then, 
 apparently, the neighbouring Areopagus. The extraordinary 
 character of the chorus is also to be noted. They are not only 
 the chief actors in the play, but in hostility to the other players, 
 and representing a separate principle. Their terrible appear- 
 ance, their awful attributes, and the dread incantations where- 
 by they seek to charm their victim, so impressed the ancients, 
 that all manner of anecdotes are current as to the effect they 
 produced. The refrain of their song is very striking. l 
 
 The whole play, though revolving round Orestes' deed, 
 and though calling in at its close a jury of Athenian citizens, 
 is, like the Prometheus^ a conflict of gods and of great world 
 principles, in which mortals seem hardly worthy to take part. 
 
 1 &ri 8e T<f rfQvfn4v<f 
 
 r65e yu.eA.os, irapaKoira, 
 , vapatyopa. <ppevoSa\-fis, 
 
 vfivos ^| ''Epivvtav, 
 Seffuios cppevuv, a<p6p- 
 H.IKTOS, avova j8pOTO?s. 
 
 TOVTO yap \dxos Siavrala 
 
 fidip' ire'/c\ctf<T6V e/tire'Sois X "'> 
 
 QvaTSiv Tolaw avTOvpyiai v/j.Treff<iifftv UOTCUOI, 
 
 rots 0/j.apreiv, o(pp' &v yav vire\9ri- Oavwv 5' 
 
 OVK &yav t\fi>0fpos. 
 
 ir e rip r 
 T(55e jueAos, TrapaKOird, 
 
 vfjLvos e| 'Epivvcav, 
 Sfff/J.ios (fipevtav, acp 
 (H.I.KTOS, avova Ppor 
 
 yiyvofj.fvata'i Aa%?7 
 aBavdrtav 5' ct7rex f 
 ffvvba'iTtap nerdKoi 
 jra*fi.fVKcav be irfir
 
 48 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xv. 
 
 Yet the play also gives us the first specimen of that love of 
 trial scenes which runs through all the later drama. The 
 Athenians were, as we know, peculiarly addicted to this duty, 
 and became, indeed, a whole nation of jurymen. But in 
 the present case ^schylus was promoting another object, and 
 one which, in the hands of a lesser genius, might have spoilt 
 his artistic work. He wished to show the august origin and 
 solemn purpose of the Court of the Areopagus, which was at 
 that very time being attacked by Ephialtes and Pericles. It 
 should also be observed that this trilogy, unlike that on CEdipus, 
 ends with a peaceful result, and with the solemn settlement of 
 the Furies, under the title of Eumenides> in their sacred retreat 
 beneath the rock of the Areopagus. The weary curse which 
 had persecuted the house of Atreus thus becomes exhausted, and 
 Orestes returns purified and justified to his ancestral kingdom. 
 
 Though it is deeply to be regretted that no other speci- 
 men of a trilogy has survived, it is more than probable 
 that never again was such perfection attained, either in indi- 
 vidual plays or in their artistic combination. We have the last 
 and greatest outcome of ^Eschylus' genius, and Sophocles had 
 already set the example of contending with separate plays. It 
 is, I confess, somewhat shocking to think that a satyric drama, 
 the Proteus, was performed after this complete and satisfying 
 series. From the stray fragments of our poet's satyric muse 
 which remain (especially from the ooroXdyot), we know that a 
 good deal of coarse jesting was permitted and beast nature in- 
 troduced in these merry afterludes ; and we cannot but fancy 
 that the great effect of the trilogy must have been consider- 
 ably effaced by such an appendix. 
 
 182. The fragments of ^Eschylus, though many, are not 
 interesting dramatically, as they seldom give us an insight into 
 the structure of a lost piece, or even poetically, for he was not a 
 poet who strewed his canvas with lyric flowers or sententious 
 
 HflOtpOS, &K\7lpO$ fTV-X.Ql\V. 
 
 So>p.drcav yap fl\6fj.av 
 avarpoirds, Sraf"A.pi)t 
 TiOaffbs &v (pi\ov eXjj. 
 ST! r6v, 5, SuJuecoi 
 Kparepbv ovff, duottas 
 ua.vpuvi.iev vtt>' a'luaTOS vf-iv.
 
 CH. xv. THE FRAGMENTS. 49 
 
 aphorisms, like his successors. He was essentially a tragedian, 
 and every word in his play was meant for its purpose, and for its 
 purpose only. He consequently afforded little scope for col- 
 lectors of beautiful lines of general application. On mythical 
 questions he is often quoted, and is a most important autho- 
 rity ; likewise on geographical questions, for which he had a 
 special fancy, as appears very plainly from his extant plays. He 
 lived at the very time when the Milesian school of Hecataeus 
 had stimulated a taste for these studies, and when the Greeks 
 were beginning to interest themselves about foreign lands. The 
 play which seems to me our greatest loss is the Myrmidons, in 
 which the subject was the death of Patroclus, and therefore 
 taken directly from the Iliad, but modernised in a remarkable 
 way by the warmer colouring given to the affection subsisting 
 between Achilles and his friend. It would indeed have been 
 interesting to see more fully the treatment of such a subject by 
 such a poet. The Ransom of Hector was also taken from the 
 Iliad, but several other plays on the Trojan cycle were drawn 
 from the events preceding and following the Anger of Achilles. 
 
 183. The intelligent student, who has read for himself 
 the extant plays of ^Eschylus, will form a better judgment of 
 his genius than can be suggested by any general remarks in a 
 sketch like the present. What I here offer by way of reflection 
 is rather meant to guard against false theories and mistaken 
 estimates, than to supply any substitute for the student's 
 own knowledge of so capital a figure in Greek Literature. A 
 comparison with Pindar and Simonides shows how great an ad- 
 vance he made, and how independently he approached the 
 great moral problems which the Greek poets the established 
 clergy of the day were obliged to expound. ^Eschylus was, 
 indeed, essentially a theologian, meaning by that term not 
 merely a man who is deeply interested in religious things, but 
 a man who makes the difficulties and obscurities of morals and 
 of creeds his intellectual study. But, what is more honourable 
 and exceptional, he was so candid and honest a theologian, 
 that he did not approach men's difficulties for the purpose of 
 refuting them, or showing them weak and groundless. On the 
 contrary, though an orthodox and pious man, though clearly 
 convinced of the goodness of Providence and of the pro- 
 
 VOL. i. 2 E
 
 50 HISTOR Y OF GREEK LITERA TURE. CH. xv. 
 
 found truth of the religion of his fathers, he was ever stating 
 boldly the contradictions and anomalies in morals and in 
 myths, and thus naturally incurring the odium and suspicion 
 of the professional advocates of religion and their followers. 
 He felt, perhaps instinctively, that a vivid dramatic statement 
 of these problems in his tragedies was better moral education 
 than vapid platitudes about our ignorance, and about our diffi- 
 culties being only caused by the shortness of our sight. He 
 knew the strength of human will, the dignity of human liberty, 
 the greatness of human self-sacrifice, and yet he will not abate 
 aught from the omnipotence of Providence, the iron constraint 
 of a gloomy fate, the bondage of ancestral guilt. It is quite plain 
 that the thought of his day was influenced by two dark under- 
 currents, both of which must have touched him the Orphic 
 mysteries, with their secret rites of sanctification, their dogmas of 
 personal purity and future bliss; and, on the other hand, the Ionic 
 philosophy, which in the hands of Heracleitus had not shunned 
 obscurity and vagueness, but had shown enigmas in all the 
 ordinary phenomena of human life. These influences conspired 
 with the strong unalterable genius of the poet, and produced 
 results quite unique in the history of Literature. For it is evi- 
 dently absurd to attribute the massiveness and apparent un- 
 couthness of yEschylus, as Schlegel does, to the conditions of 
 nascent tragedy. Phrynichus, his contemporary, was famed 
 for opposite qualities, for gentle sweetness and lyric grace. At 
 no epoch could ^Eschylus have been softened down into a con- 
 ventional artist. Many critics speak of him as almost Oriental 
 in some respects in his bold metaphors, in his wild and irregu- 
 lar imaginings, and yet he is censured by Aristophanes for too 
 much theatrical craft. I suppose the former mean to compare 
 him with the greatest of the Hebrew prophets ; nor does the com- 
 parison seem unjust, if we confine it to this, that both found 
 strange and striking.images to rouse their hearers' imagination, 
 and that neither felt bound by the logic of ordinary reasoning. 
 In this matter Heracleitus and ^Eschylus are the masters 
 of bold and suggestive inconsequence. But the obscurity of 
 both was that of condensation a pregnant obscurity, as con- 
 trasted with the redundant obscurity of some modern poets, or 
 the artificial obscurity of the Attic epoch. His philosophy is
 
 CH. xv. THE GENIUS OF AESCHYLUS. 51 
 
 in the spirit, and not in the diction of his works in vast con- 
 ceptions, not in laconic maxims. Both Sophocles (as he himself 
 confesses) and Thucydides, the highest types of the Periclean 
 epoch, are often obscure, but, as I said, are so artificially, not 
 from endeavouring to suggest great half-grasped thoughts, but 
 from a desire to play at hide-and-seek with the reader, and 
 surprise him by cleverness of expression. We always feel that 
 yEschylus thought more than he expressed, that his strained 
 compounds are never affected or unnecessary. Although, there- 
 fore, he violated the rules which bound weaker men, it is false to 
 say that he was less an artist than they. His art was of a differ- 
 ent kind, despising what they prized, and attempting what they 
 did not dare, but not the less a conscious and thorough art. 
 Though the drawing of character was not his main object, his 
 characters are truer and deeper than those of poets who at- 
 tempted nothing else. Though lyrical sweetness had little place 
 in the gloom and terror of his Titanic stage, yet here too, when 
 he chooses, he equals the masters of lyric song. So long as a 
 single Homer was deemed the author of the Iliad and the 
 Odyssey, we might well concede to him the first place, and say 
 that ^Eschylus was the second poet of the Greeks. But by the 
 light of nearer criticism, and with a closer insight into the 
 structure of the epic poems, we must retract this judgment, and 
 assert that no other poet among the Greeks, either in grandeur 
 of conception, or splendour of execution, equals the untrans- 
 lateable, unapproachable, inimitable ^Eschylus. 1 
 
 Before passing on, let me direct attention to the very in- 
 genious and suggestive, but little cited Prolegomena to ^Eschylus 
 by R. Westphal (Leipzig, 1869), a very high authority on the 
 musical side of Greek poetry. He shows the strict adherence 
 to fixed forms in the poet, and even considers the Prometheus, 
 from its remarkable variations in this respect, to be a much 
 interpolated and deformed piece. It was yEschylus' habit to 
 construct his piece with four choric songs, and one commas or 
 lament, replaced by a processional hymn, if the plot did not 
 admit of the threnos. Westphal examines carefully the structure 
 
 1 Aischulos' bronze-throat eagle-bark at blood 
 Has somehow spoilt my taste for twitterings ! 
 
 R. BROWNING, Arist. Ap. p. 94. 
 
 E 2
 
 52 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xv. 
 
 of these choral pieces, and starting from the taunt of Euripides 
 in Aristoph. Frogs, 1281 , argues that the old Terpandrian nome, 
 expanding from a centre (6/z^a\6c) into pairs of parallel mem- 
 bers, was the real model of the poet, so that the strophic form 
 does not give us the key to the sense. Thus there is always 
 an apx<i, o/jityaXoc, and ff^pny/c ; there may be two transition 
 members (/corarpoTra and /ueracararpoTrn) joining them ; there 
 may be further a proem and epilogue. On this model Westphal 
 analyses all the choral odes in the plays. 1 
 
 The commie or processional odes, with which the plays 
 usually conclude, are framed upon a totally different model, 
 that of the aulodic Threnos, which was always amoebean, and is 
 divided between actors and chorus, or between sections of the 
 chorus. The effect seems here to have been chiefly musical, 
 as the text has little meaning, and consists in responsive utter- 
 ances of woe, each side taking its clue from the other. In the 
 Septem and Persa this musical performance was not given to 
 the chief actor. The whole theory is most ingenious, and his 
 rearrangement of the amcebean strains convincing ; but why 
 did yEschylus preserve the strophic form, if the nomic form was 
 the real basis of his choral odes ? This difficulty still remains 
 unanswered. The application of this theory to Pindar's odes 
 has been mentioned in its place. 
 
 184. Bibliographical. Turning to the question of JEs- 
 chylean literature, we find the whole criticism of our texts to 
 depend on one MS. of the tenth century, the celebrated 
 Plut. xxxii. 9, of the Laurentian library at Florence, which con- 
 tains, with Sophocles and Apollonius Rhodius, the seven 
 plays written out in a beautifully neat hand with very slight, 
 somewhat slanting characters ; it has numerous scholia, but is 
 unfortunately mutilated through most of the Agamemnon and 
 opening of the Choephori. From copies of the thirteenth and 
 fourteenth centuries, at Florence, Venice, and Naples, these 
 defects, and some gaps in the scholia, have been partially 
 remedied. The scholia seem to be more Byzantine than Alex- 
 andrian, and it does not appear that, with the exception of the 
 arguments prefixed by Aristophanes, much attention was paid 
 
 1 E.g. Agamemnon, 105-8 irpooifjuov ; 109-59 &px<i ; 110-84 op.<f>a\6s ; 
 185-254 ffQpayis ; 255-8 lTri\oyos.
 
 CH. xv. EDITIONS. 53 
 
 to the poet by the great critics. Indeed, the same thing may 
 be said of both Roman and French imitators. While they 
 understood and copied Sophocles and Euripides, yschylus was 
 neglected as an uncouth and rude forerunner of the real drama. 
 We must acknowledge this much merit in Schlegel, that he led 
 dramatic criticism into a sounder and deeper course. 
 
 The Prometheus, Persce, and Septem, which stand first in the 
 MSS., were very much more read than the rest, and are far 
 better preserved. The editio princeps of the text was that of 
 Aldus (1518) ; that of Robortellus (Venice, 1552) first gave the 
 scholia. The whole Agamemnon appears in Victorius', and in 
 the ed. Steph. 1557. Good early critics were Dorat, Canter, 
 Stanley. Person turned his critical acumen to bear upon the 
 text in the Glasgow edition of 1794, which was followed by the 
 editions of Butler, of five plays by Blomfield, of Peile, and 
 of Paley. In the present day the editions best worth studying 
 are those of God. Hermann, W. Dindorf, and H. Weil for 
 criticism, Merkel's careful ed. of the Florentine MS., that of 
 Mr. Davies on the Agamemnon, Choephori and Eumenides, 
 and those of Kock, Gilbert (and Enger, 1874), Kennedy 
 (1878), on the Agamemnon l ; Mr. Margoliouth's Agamemnon 
 (Macmillan, 1884), and Mr. Yen-all's (1890), the latter as revolu- 
 tionary as regards the plot as the former is on the text ; now 
 Schneidewin and Hense (Berlin, 1883). Mr. A. Sidgwick has 
 also supplied us with a handy edition (1881), the most service- 
 able for ordinary use. It is the result of long study spent on 
 separate editions of the plays ; we have also Mr. Prickard's 
 edition of the Perstz. Wellauer and Linwood have composed 
 ^Eschylean lexicons which are useful, but even the latter (1848) 
 now somewhat antiquated. Wecklein's complete critical text 
 of ^Eschylus (Berlin, 1885) is a repertory of all the best re- 
 searches on the poet. The German translations are endless. 
 Those of Voss, Droysen, and Donner may specially be named. 2 
 
 1 Cf. also Paley's Supp. and Choeph., with scholia (Camb. 1888); cf. 
 Kennedy's older and newer eds. (1878, 1882), which differ notably. 
 
 2 Full information on all the German versions of the Ortsteia, from Von 
 Halem (1785) to Donner (1854), will be found in an article by EichhofFin 
 the Neue Jahrbucher fur Philologie, voL cxv.
 
 54 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xv. 
 
 The French have rather imitated than reproduced, if we except 
 the versions of Du Theil and Brumoy. In English we have 
 the respectable version of Potter, the Agamemnons of Prof. 
 Blackie (1850), Symmons, those already mentioned above 
 (p. 44), Mr. J. F. Davies', and very spirited versions of select 
 passages by Lord Lytton in his Rise and Fall of Athens. I 
 call special attention to the very able criticism accompanying 
 these translations. Mrs. Browning has given us an admirable 
 Prometheus and lastly, Mr. Browning has turned his genius 
 for reproducing Greek plays upon this masterpiece, and has 
 given a version which will probably not permit the rest to 
 maintain their well-earned fame, though it is in itself so difficult 
 that the Greek original is often required for translating his 
 English. I confess that even with this aid, which shows the 
 extraordinary faithfulness of the work, I had preferred a more 
 Anglicised version from his master hand. 
 
 The truest and deepest imitation of the spirit of ^Eschylus 
 in modern times is not to be sought in the stiff formalism of 
 Racine or Alfieri, but in the splendid Atalanta in Calydon of 
 Mr. Swinburne, whose antitheisrri brings him to stand in an 
 attitude between human freewill and effort on the one side, and 
 ruthless tyranny of Providence on the other, not approached 
 in poetry (so far as I know) from vEschylus' day down to our 
 own. Unfortunately, the very poetical odes of his chorus are 
 diffuse, and written with all that luxuriance of rich sound which 
 in Mr. Swinburne often dilutes or hides the depth and clear- 
 ness of his thought. The English reader must therefore by no 
 means regard this part of the play as modelled upon yEschylus, 
 nor as at all representing his poetry. It is in the plot, and 
 in the nervous compressed stichomuthia, or dialogue in alter- 
 nate lines, and in the gloomy darkness which broods over the 
 action, that the modern poet has caught the spirit of his great 
 predecessor. Since the Samson Agonistes of Milton, we have 
 had no such reproduction of the Greek drama, and those who 
 are not in sympathy with Mr. Swinburne's other poems should 
 not fail to turn to this exceptional work, which he has never 
 since equalled. The Prometheus Unbound of Shelley, as he 
 himself tells us, is not intended to be an imitation of ^Eschylus, 
 but as a wholly independent work.
 
 CH. xvi. 55 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 185. THERE is even less told us about the life of Sophocles 
 than about that of ^schylus, and, indeed, there seems to have 
 been little that was eventful to be told. He was too young to 
 take part in the great struggle of the Persian war, and his cam- 
 paign to Samos, in middle life, was evidently no serious warfare. 
 He refused, we are told, to leave Athens, which he loved, at 
 the invitation of foreign cities and princes, and thus avoided 
 the adventures of travelling which were fatal to both his rivals ; 
 and though he took part in politics on the oligarchical side, 
 as he was perhaps a Probulus when the four hundred were es- 
 tablished, he seems never to have been a strong or leading poli- 
 tician. His gentleness, and beauty, and placid disposition 
 seem to have saved him from most of the buffets and trials of 
 the world ; and he is, perhaps, the only distinguished Athenian 
 now known who lived and died without a single enemy. 
 
 He was born in the deme Colonus, within half an hour's 
 walk of Athens, in the scenery which he describes in his famous 
 chorus of the second GEdipus, and which has hardly altered up 
 to the present day, amid all the sad changes which have seamed 
 and scarred the fair features of Attica. I know not, indeed, 
 why he calls it the white (apyrjra) Colonus, for it was then, as 
 now, hidden in deep and continuous green. The dark ivy and 
 the golden crocus, the white poplar and the grey olive, are still 
 there. The silvery Cephissus still feeds the pleasant rills, with 
 which the husbandman waters his thickly wooded cornfields ; 
 and in the deep shade the nightingales have not yet ceased 
 their plaintive melody. 
 
 His father's name was Sophillus, and the scholiasts wrangle 
 about the dignity of his position in life ; though he seems to 
 have been no more than a man of middle rank, making his
 
 XVI. 
 
 56 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. 
 
 income by practising or directing a trade. Concerning his 
 mother and brethren there is absolute silence. Born about 
 496-5 B.C., he was chosen, for his beauty and grace, to lead 
 the solemn dance in honour of the victory at Salamis. He 
 was educated by Lampros, a rival of Pindar and of Pratinas, 
 as a scientific musician ; and this special training in mustl 
 enabled him, in spite of his weak speaking voice, to act with 
 great success the parts of Thamyras and of Nausicaa, in the 
 plays which he wrote concerning these personages. In 468 
 he came forward as a tragic poet, and at the age of 28, with his 
 first piece, defeated the great ^Eschylus, who had been for a 
 generation the master of the tragic stage. What made the 
 victory more remarkable was the selection of Kimon and his 
 victorious colleagues as judges, instead of the ordinary proce- 
 dure by lot From this date till his death, at the age of 
 90, the poet devoted all his energy to the production of those 
 famous works of art, which gave him such a hold over the 
 Athenian public, that he came to be considered the very ideal 
 of a tragic poet, and was worshipped after his death as a hero, 
 under the title Dexion (Ae&W.) He is said to have won 
 eighteen or twenty tragic victories, and though sometimes post- 
 poned to Philocles and others, was never placed third in all his 
 life. The author of the Poetic and the Alexandrian critics 
 follow the judgment of the Attic public, and most modern critics 
 have agreed with them that the tragedies of Sophocles are the 
 most perfect that the world has ever seen. It is, indeed, no 
 unusual practice to exhibit the defects of both ^Eschylus and 
 Euripides by comparison with their more successful rival. 
 
 The Athenian public were so delighted with his Antigone 
 that they appointed him one of the ten generals, along with 
 Pericles, for the subduing of Samos ; as regards which Pericles 
 is said to have told him that he knew how to compose well 
 enougn, but not how to command. It is conjectured that on 
 this expedition he met and knew Herodotus, by whom several 
 passages in his plays, and one in the fragments, 1 seem suggested. 
 
 1 Fr. 380, about Palamedes' invention of games, like the Lydians' in- 
 vention in Herod i. 94. This coincidence has not yet, I think, been 
 noticed. So also the famous chorus in 0. C. 1211, sq., seems copied
 
 CH. xvi. SOPHOCLES' PERSONAL CHARACTER. 57 
 
 If the passage of the Antigone (which many critics declare 
 spurious) be genuine, it was composed before the poet went to 
 Samos ; and the conjecture here breaks down. Yet I have per- 
 sonally no doubt that Herodotus, who lived much at Athens, 
 suggested these passages ; and I am not disposed to admit that 
 any of them is spurious, though they may belong to second 
 editions of their respective plays. He was (in 443 B.C.) one of 
 the Hellenotamia, or administrators of the public treasury a 
 most responsible and important post. He sided with the oli- 
 garchy in 411, if he be the Probulus then mentioned. When 
 Aristophanes brought out his Frogs in 405 B.C., the poet was but 
 lately dead, and, amid the conflict of schools of poetry, is acknow- 
 ledged the genial favourite of all ; ! the comic Phrynichus, 
 in his Muses, of the same date, spoke of him in very similar 
 terms. A splendid portrait statue of him, found a few years ago 
 at Ostia, and now in the Lateran at Rome, is doubtless a copy 
 of that set up in the theatre at Athens by Lycurgus, and repre- 
 sents him as worthy in dignity and beauty of all the praises 
 bestowed upon him. The various anecdotes which bear upon 
 his character, and which seem to be partly, at least, drawn from 
 the high authority of the memoirs of the contemporary Ion 
 of Chios, 2 all speak in the same tone, and describe him as of 
 easy temper, and much given to the pleasures of love. He is 
 even contrasted with Euripides in the more Greek complexion 
 of his passion. Most of his German panegyrists areunable to 
 refute the jibe of Aristophanes, 3 that in his old days he turned 
 miser, and worked for money like a second Simonides, but are 
 indignant at the report that he became attached, late in life, to a 
 courtesan named Theoris, of Sikyon. He is, moreover, quoted 
 in the first book of Plato's Republic, speaking of Eros as a fierce 
 tyrant, from whose bonds he had escaped by advancing years. 
 But this probably alludes to the passions formed in the palaestra, 
 of which other dialogues of Plato tell us a great deal. He is 
 
 from Artabanus' speech, Herod vii. 46. The attack on Egyptian manners 
 in the same play (vv. 337, sq. ) is a still clearer case, perhaps also O. T. 
 981. Lastly, we have Antig. vv. 909, sq. Cf. vol. ii. p. 19. 
 
 Cf. fr. I of Ion in Muller's FUG. Pax,
 
 58 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvi. 
 
 said to have had a second family by this Theoris. All the 
 Alexandrian authorities believed that his legitimate son was 
 lophon, son of his wife Nikostrate, but that of Theoris was born 
 Ariston, who was father of the younger Sophocles. But the 
 testimony of inscriptions, 1 which speak of a Sophocles corre- 
 sponding with the younger of that name, and even of an lophon, 
 son of (apparently this) Sophocles, makes it probable that the 
 Life and scholiasts are wrong about the grandson. We have 
 no more certain information about the more famous story of 
 lophon's attempt to take the old poet's property out of his 
 hands by an action at law, and how he was defeated by the 
 reading of the famous chorus in the CEdipus at Colonus, then 
 just composed. Most critics now think that this play was not, 
 like the Philoctetes, the product of Sophocles' old age, but of his 
 mature life, though it seems not to have been brought out 
 till after his death, probably by lophon, with considerable 
 interpolations. Aristophanes (in the frogs) speaks of lophon 
 as a poet of uncertain promise, but still as the best of the 
 Epigoni. Other stories, about the respect shown him by the be- 
 sieging Spartans, when he died, and how his friends were allowed 
 to bury him eleven stadia on the way to Dekeleia may be read in 
 the Life. It seems odd he should not have been laid in his home 
 at Colonus, which is quite close to Athens, but possibly, with 
 this modification, the anecdote may be true. He was com- 
 monly called the Honey Bee, and was said, as almost every other 
 great Greek poet, to have been peculiarly imbued with Homeric 
 thoughts and style. This vague statement is not verified by 
 his extant plays, though he is said in others to have adapted 
 the Odyssey repeatedly. Indeed, we may suspect, with Mr. 
 Paley, that the Homer alluded to by these old critics includes 
 the Cyclic epics, from which he certainly borrowed almost all 
 his plots. 
 
 But there are other and more definite things reported con- 
 cerning his style, his method, and his influence on the history 
 of the drama. These we shall best consider when we have 
 given a sketch of the extant plays and fragments. Of the 
 
 1 See Dindorfs Poeta Trag. p. 12, note. The younger lophon would 
 naturally be called after his grandfather.
 
 CH. xvi. THE ANTIGONE. 59 
 
 elegies, the paeans, the prose essay on the chorus, 1 the seventy 
 tragedies, the eighteen satyric dramas, which the poet (after 
 making due deductions) seems fairly to be credited with, there 
 remain only seven tragedies, and of the 1,000 fragments, 
 but few are of any length or importance. A great many of 
 them are indeed only quoted (chiefly by Hesychius) for the 
 sake of curious and rare words which the poet had employed 
 a remarkable feature in these fragments. Of the seven 
 tragedies now extant only two can be dated, even approxi- 
 mately the Antigone, which was brought out just before the 
 expedition of Pericles to Samos (440 B.C.), and the Philuctetes^ 
 which may possibly be the last play he wrote, and which ap- 
 peared in 409. Both these plays won the first prize, and if we 
 cannot expect immaturity in the one, we cannot find decay in 
 the other. But considering these, as we are bound, first and 
 last, we are at liberty to arrange the rest in whatever order is 
 most convenient for critical purposes. 
 
 1 86. The Antigone was said to be Sophocles' thirty-second 
 work, and must, from its date, have at all events been the work 
 of his mature and ripe genius. It is, therefore, in every respect 
 suitable to show us the contrasts with the old masterpieces, and 
 the supposed improvements which mark the epoch of the per- 
 fect Greek drama. The play formed no member of a trilogy, 
 but stood upon its own basis, nor are we at all justified, 
 with some loose critics, in supplementing the character of the 
 heroine from the other plays on the Theban legend (the two 
 (Edipuses\ plays written in after years, and without any 
 intention of being viewed in connection with the Antigone. 
 It is never to be forgotten that as soon as the tragic poets 
 abandoned connected plays, they assumed the liberty of 
 handling the same personage quite differently at different 
 times, nor do they feel in the least bound by an earlier con- 
 ception. This apparent inconsistency, which contrasts so 
 strongly with the practice of modern dramatists, is due to the 
 fact, that while the moderns have an unlimited field for the 
 choice of subjects, and therefore naturally choose a new title 
 to embody a new type, the Greeks were very limited in the 
 1 This, which rests upon Suidas alone, is very doubtful.
 
 60 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, en. xvr. 
 
 legends which they treated, and must therefore constantly re- 
 produce the same heroes and heroines. But they avoided the 
 consequent monotony by the poetic license of varying the 
 character to suit the special play. We must therefore study 
 the characters in each play by themselves, and without re- 
 ference to their recurrence in other works of the same poet 
 
 The first point to be remarked hi the play is the subordination 
 of everything else to the character of Antigone. In ^Eschylus' 
 conception the deepest conception of a tragedy, the actors 
 were, so to speak, subordinated to the progress of a great moral 
 conflict, which involves them in its mysterious course. They 
 act with apparent liberty and force of character, but are really 
 the exponents of great opposing agents, which they cannot stay 
 or control. In the tragedy of Sophocles, where character-draw- 
 ing (j/floTi-oua, as it was called) was the first object, the power of 
 human will is the predominant feature, and the real conflict of 
 moral and social forces is thrown into the background. 
 
 ./Eschylus, as has been already noted (p. 33) had blocked 
 out the whole plot briefly at the end of his Theban trilogy, and 
 indicated where a tragic conflict might be found. But when 
 Sophocles takes up the subject, the firm determination of 
 Antigone to perform the sacred duties of fraternal love is op- 
 posed to no principle of parallel importance, to no law which 
 commands any respect, but simply to the timid submissiveness of 
 her foil, Ismene, to the arbitrary decree of a vulgar and heart- 
 less tyrant, and to the cold and self-interested apathy of a 
 mean and cowardly chorus. Antigone is accordingly sustained 
 from the beginning by a clear consciousness that she is ab- 
 solutely right, the whole sympathy of the spectator must go with 
 her, and all the course of the play is merely interesting as 
 bringing out her character in strong and constant relief. But as 
 she consciously faces death for an idea, she may rather be en- 
 rolled among the noble army of martyrs, who suffer in the day- 
 light of clear conviction, than among the more deeply tried who 
 in doubt and darkness have striven to feel out a great mystery, 
 and in their very failure have ' purified the terror and the pity ' 
 of awe-struck humanity. A martyr for a great and recog- 
 nised truth is not the best central figure of a tragedy in the
 
 CH. xvi. THE ANTIGONE. 61 
 
 highest and proper sense. The Antigone is therefore not a very 
 great tragedy, though it is a mcst brilliant and beautiful 
 dramatic poem. The very opening scene brings out the some- 
 what hard and determined character of the heroine, in con- 
 trast to her weaker sister. As the chorus hints, 1 she had 
 inherited this fierce nature from her father. But the fatal 
 effects of the ancestral curse on the house of CEdipus, though 
 often alluded to, are no moving force in the drama. The 
 chorus appears in the parados unconscious of the plot, 
 and sings a beautiful ode on the delivery of Thebes, rele- 
 vant enough to the general subject, but not bearing on the 
 real interest of the play ; and this remark may be applied to 
 all the following choral odes, which with much lyric beauty 
 celebrate subjects akin to the action, but outside it. The 
 decree against Polynices' burial is then formally announced by 
 Creon, when one of the watchmen enters, a very striking and 
 well-conceived character, whose vulgar selfishness and low 
 cowardice seem meant as the opposite extreme in human nature 
 to the heroine. The homely and somewhat comic vein in which 
 he speaks may indeed be shocking to dignified French imi- 
 tators of classic suffering, but affords an interesting parallel 
 .to the contrasts so affectingly introduced in the greatest 
 English tragedies. The reader will not have forgotten the nurse 
 Kilissa in ^Eschylus' Choephori. Then follows the brilliant 
 narrative of the capture of Antigone, and her interrogation by 
 Creon. She here shows no vestige of fear or of quailing, and 
 even Ismene braves death, though harshly checked and even 
 insulted by her more masculine sister. The chorus suggests 
 that Creon's son was betrothed to the princess, yet does not press 
 the point, but upon her sentence sings the woes of the Labda- 
 kidae, and the horrors of an ancestral taint. The appearance of 
 Hsemon is a point of deep interest, and has been treated by 
 
 v. 471 : $r)\oi rb 
 
 TT\S iratSds' flxfiv 8' OVK firiffrarai xaxoTs. 
 
 I quote these words to justify myself against the able criticism of Mr. 
 Evelyn Abbott on the parallel argument concerning Antigone in my Social 
 Life in Greece. I cannot but sympathise deeply with his enthusiastic 
 reading of the character in tne Journal of Philology, vol. viii. pp. i, sq.
 
 62 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvi. 
 
 the poet in a very peculiar way. The young prince argues the 
 policy of Creon to be a mistaken public policy, and cites the 
 general murmuring of discontent against it, all the while con- 
 cealing his own strong personal interest in Antigone. Creon 
 and the chorus both see through the young man's mind, the one 
 by repeatedly taunting him as Antigone's advocate, the other, 
 upon his angry exit, singing a famous ode on the powers of 
 Eros, which is not directly suggested by the preceding dia- 
 logue. 1 
 
 It seems likely that to the Athenian public of that day 
 any pleading of Haemon's on the ground of love would be 
 thought unseemly and undignified, until Euripides had taught 
 them that even on the stage art must not ignore nature. Still 
 more remarkable is the absence of any allusion to Haemon 
 in the long commos sung by Antigone and the chorus, as she 
 passes across the stage, on the way to her tomb. For she 
 complains bitterly of the loss of bridal song and nuptial bliss, 
 as every dying Greek maiJen did, thus exactly reversing the 
 notions of modern delicacy. A modern maiden would have 
 lamented the separation from her lover, but certainly not the 
 loss of the dignity and the joys of the married state. The 
 commos of Antigone has been criticised from another point 
 of view, as unworthy of the brave and dauntless character 
 of the heroine. It is thought unnatural that she who had 
 deliberately chosen death for the sake of duty, should shrink 
 and wail at its approach. But sound critics have justly 
 
 ' "EpoDS av'tKare /j.dxa-v, 
 "f,pus, ty fv T" avtipdffi imrrejj 
 ?>s ev /j.a\aKats irapftais 
 vedviSos fvvvxfvfts, 
 
 (poiras 8' inrepTr6vTios <tv T' aypov6ft.ois av\atf 
 icai ff' O&T' adavdruv <j>vifi.os ovSfls 
 odO' auepicov ^ir' a.v&p<Snr<av, 6 5' f^tnv u.fu.r)vev. 
 <rv ical SiKaioiv aSixovs 
 (ppevas Trapaffiras firl \ca/3<' 
 trv KCU r6St vfticos avSpwv 
 ^vvaifiov ?xijTopa|as' 
 
 fiKa 8' tvapy^s @\t(pdp<av Ififoos fvhfterpw 
 i>vft,(f>as t rcov fifyd\a>v oi>xl irdpetipos 
 f/j.Traifi Otbs '
 
 CH xvi. THE ANTIGONE. 63 
 
 vindicated this as a human feature, though a weakness, and 
 therefore more interesting and affecting than its absence or 
 contradiction. In my opinion there is even yet a lack of 
 humanity in the character, and I should be sorry to see this 
 very interesting passage condemned. But I confess that the 
 counter revulsion from quailing and fear to a bold facing of 
 death, such as Euripides has painted it in his Iphigenia, appears 
 to me not only nobler but more natural. For it is impossible to 
 escape the suggestion in the Antigone that her bold defiance of 
 Creon was ostentatious, and that it breaks down in the face of the 
 awful reality. l I would further call attention to the remarkably 
 unsympathetic and cold attitude of the chorus, who far from 
 being ' ideal spectators,' or even ' accomplices,' look on with re- 
 spectful but heartless tears, and offer such cold comfort to An- 
 tigone, that her complete isolation affects the spectator with the 
 deepest pity. Nowhere (I think) does the chorus declare for 
 the laws of religion and humanity against the arbitrary voice of 
 the tyrant. The entrance of Teiresias marks the commencement 
 of the ireptirlreta, or catastrophe, and his character is conceived, 
 as in the (Edipus Rex, to be that of a noble and gloomy 
 prophet. But the poet does not fail to put sceptical sneers in 
 the mouths of his opponents. As soon as Teiresias has passed 
 off with his threatening prophecy, the chorus in alarm warn 
 Creon of his danger, and the tyrant is made to change his 
 mind and pass from obstinacy to craven cowardice, with a sud- 
 denness only to be excused because this character excites no 
 interest, and must have wearied us had its changes been treated 
 in detail. The catastrophe of the deaths of Antigone and 
 Haamon, which reminds us of the end of Romeo and Juliet, is 
 followed by that of Eurydice, the wife of Creon. The lamen- 
 tations of the tyrant, which the spectator views rather with 
 satisfaction than with pity, conclude the play. 
 
 1 Yet I am not sure and this is a great heresy that Sophocles 
 thought of more than the immediate situation when he composed this 
 commos. I will show other instances by and bye, where he seems to have 
 sacrificed consistency of character distinctly for the sake of dwelling upon 
 an affecting situation, and writing affecting poetry. This is a vice gene- 
 rally attributed to Euripides. I think we can show it to exist no less in 
 Sophocles ; cf. behnv, pp. 66, 68, 86.
 
 64 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvi. 
 
 This is the drama which has not only struck ancient critics as 
 one of the greatest works of its great author, 1 but which has fas- 
 cinated modern taste more than any other remnant of Greek 
 tragedy. This latter effect is easily understood, for in the first 
 place the conflicting interests are easily comprehended, and in- 
 volve no mystery, and secondly, the whole play turns on strictly 
 human interests and actions, and is absolutely devoid of any 
 interference of the gods, which must be foreign to the modern 
 stage. The conflict of liberty against despotism became in fact 
 the dominant idea of the last century, and thus men turned with 
 interest to the old Greek expression of the same conflict. But 
 long before this, the subject was treated by Euripides in a lost 
 tragedy, in which the love of Hsemon and Antigone was not 
 handled with the coldness and reserve of the Periclean age. 2 
 Then came a celebrated paraphrase or imitation by the Roman 
 Attius, which is said to have suggested some points even 
 to Vergil. The treatment of the story in Seneca's Thebais, 
 a tragedy of which most is preserved, and in Statius' epic 
 poem of the same title, is quite independent of Sophocles. 
 Polynices' wife, Argia, shares Antigone's heroism, and neither 
 expresses the least fear of death shown by the greater and more 
 natural Antigone of the Greek poet. These inferior works were 
 unfortunately the models of most of the French imitators. 
 There was, however, an old French translation by Bai'f, in 1573. 
 Gamier in 1580, Rotrou in 1638, and d'Assezan in 1686 
 brought out Antigones based upon Sophocles and all the Roman 
 versions of the story, with features added not only from Euri- 
 pides' Phcenissa, but from the weak sentimentality of the 
 French stage. No antique subject was more certain to attract 
 Alfieri, with his monomaniac hate of tyranny and tyrants. But 
 his Antigone (1783), though a bold attempt to reintroduce sim- 
 plicity into his subject, is evidently based upon the French 
 travesties of the play, and of course the relations of Haemon 
 
 1 Strangely enough, there was an opinion abroad in old times that it 
 was spurious, being really the work of lophon, and not of Sophocles. I can 
 hardly fancy this opinion existing without some definite evidence. We only 
 have it in a passage published in Cramer's Anecdota, and without reasons. 
 
 2 Cf. Euripides, frag. 157 sq., and the remarks of Aristophanes (the 
 grammarian) in his preface to Sophocles' Antigone.
 
 CH-. xvi. THE ELECTRA. 65 
 
 and Antigone come into the foreground. His play is forcible, 
 but monotonous, as he fails in all those delicate touches, and 
 various contrasts of character, in which Sophocles, with all 
 his simplicity, abounds. Marmontel's libretto for Zingarelli's 
 opera (1790) seems to have excited little attention. A prose 
 version of the legend by Ballanche (1814) is apparently very 
 popular and highly esteemed in France. 
 
 The taste of the present century has fortunately reverted to 
 the pure art of Sophocles, and in 1844 a peculiar attempt was 
 made, with the aid of Mendelssohn's noble music, to reproduce 
 the Greek Antigone in a form approaching the original perform- 
 ance. But, in my opinion, this revival is a complete failure, not 
 only from the character of the music, which would have been 
 to a modern audience intolerable, had it been Greek, but on 
 account of the modern playing of the parts, in which a quantity 
 of action was introduced quite foreign to the antique stage. Of 
 the English versions that of Mr. Plumptre is not only the most 
 recent, but the best. 
 
 187. A certain general resemblance leads us to consider the 
 Electra next in order. The relation of the heroine to her sister 
 Chrysothemis is very similar to that of Antigone and Ismene. 
 There is also the same hardness in both heroines, a hardness 
 amounting to positive heartlessness in Electra, who, when she 
 hears her brother within murdering his and her mother, actually 
 calls out to him to strike her again (v. 1415). This revolting 
 exclamation, and, indeed, the easy way in which matricide is 
 regarded all through the play, contrasts strongly with the far 
 deeper, more human, and more religious conception of JEs- 
 chylus' Choephori, and reduces the Electra as a tragedy to a far 
 lower level. In fact, here as elsewhere, Sophocles has sacri- 
 ficed the tragedy for the sake of developing a leading character. 
 He desires to fix the sympathy of the spectator on Electra and 
 Orestes. He therefore treats the command of Apollo as an 
 absolute justification of the crime, and puts out of sight the 
 dread Eumenides, with their avenging horrors. This is dis- 
 tinctly the old epic view of the matter, more than once 
 suggested in the Odyssey, in contrast to the conception of 
 Stesichorus, and perhaps other lyric poets, with whom the notion 
 of blood-guiltiness, and the necessity of purification for sin, 
 
 VOL. i. 2 F
 
 66 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, en. xvi. 
 
 became of primary importance, and who served as a model for 
 y^schylus. Thus here also Sophocles was truly Homeric, but 
 may be held to have made a retrograde step in the deeper his- 
 tory of morals. There are, moreover, many Euripidean features 
 in the play. 1 The angry wranglings of his characters, which 
 occur often in Sophocles, are by most critics forgotten, when 
 they come to censure his successor. There is also not a 
 little inconsistency in the effusiveness of the heroine on re- 
 cognising her brother, an effusiveness which amounts to folly, 
 and her stern repression of words when JEgisthus desires to 
 plead for his life. This inconsistency was admitted, I venture 
 to think, on account of the seductive lyrical opportunity offered 
 by the scene of recognition. The same weakness is still more 
 obvious when a pathetic lament is uttered by Electra over the 
 unreal ashes of her brother, which the spectator, who is aware 
 of the truth, admires but cannot hear with any real pity. But 
 the speech was too affecting to be omitted. 2 
 
 1 Wilamowitz has since (Hermes, xvii. 242, sq.) tried to prove this 
 play an answer to Euripides' Electra, and therefore one of Sophocles' 
 latest works. He adduces metrical reasons, as well as supposed allusions 
 to Euripides, and corrections of the myth. 
 
 2 w. 1126-60 : 
 
 ifu%^s 'OpeffTov \oiir6v, Sis 
 ovx Siv-irep Qevffiirov flffe8tdfj.riv. 
 vvv f*.ev yap ovSfv Svra ftaffrdfa xepoiV, 
 $6/j.a>v 8e ff\ S> Trail, KafjiTrpbv e|Tre/u.^' tyti 
 ois <pf\ov irdpoidev ficKiireiv ftiov, 
 vplv is fvr)v tre yaiav eKtre/j.\^ai xfpo"n> 
 KXetycwa Tcuvtie KavaffctxraffOai tf>6vov, 
 Sirois Qavtav fKfuro rfj r60' yuepa, 
 rv/j./3ov irarpcpov KOtvbv ei\rixias fitpos. 
 vvv 5' eKrbs olitaiv Ko.trl yrjs &\\T)S <t>vyas 
 KCIKCOS a.ir<l}\ov, crfjs Ka.<Ti-yvi\rr\s 8ix<* ' 
 KOJJT' ev tf>i\aiffi xepcrlv r] rd\aiv' fyin 
 \ovrpots ff" 1 fK6ff/j.Triff' afire ira/i^AeKTOw vvpos 
 a.vei\6nT)v, us elit6s, &Q\iov fidpos. 
 a\X' ev faction x P< r ^ KriSev6els roXos 
 ffniKpbs irpoo-{)Kfis oyitos tv ffpiKpf Kvret. 
 oJ/uo( TaAatj/a TTJS fj.rjs ird\ai rpcxprjs 
 avdxpe^rov, T^V eyk 6d^ a.fj.<pl ffol 
 
 fcf ydp -itott
 
 CH. xvi. SCENE OF THE ELECTRA. 67 
 
 I cannot fancy ^Eschylus thus utilising an artificial situa- 
 tion. It is the victory of sentiment over greater and nobler 
 interests, and in this Sophocles, and not Euripides, marks the 
 rise of a new epoch an epoch like that opened by Raffaelle 
 and by Weber in other arts, where the master is still great, but 
 is the author of a rapid and melancholy decay into sentimen- 
 talism. The attitude of the chorus diifers notably from that 
 of the Antigone. It is the confidant and helper of the king's 
 children, and takes an active part in the progress of the play. 
 But for this very reason, the choral odes, which are strictly 
 to the point, are lyrically very inferior to the beautiful poems 
 inserted in the Antigone. It is remarkable that while ^Eschylus 
 never mentions Mycenae, and lays the scene of his Choephori 
 at Argos, Sophocles, more accurately, makes Mycenae his scene, 
 and in the opening even describes the relative positions of the 
 two cities ; but I am at a loss, though personally familiar with 
 the country, to find the point of view from which the old 
 pedagogue and Orestes approach it, and should not be sui 
 prised if this were one of the instances of geographical inac- 
 curacy with which Strabo charges both Sophocles and Euri- 
 pides. 1 I suppose the recent reassertion of Mycenae, by the 
 appearance of its citizens in the Persian war, must have made 
 its name momentarily prominent in the youth of Sophocles, 
 
 jUTjrpbs ffv y' fiffBa, /j.a\\ov $) KO./J.OV <>iAos 
 oW ol /car' olKov ?jffav, aAA' ejlti Tpofyos 
 y<5> 8' aJSeX^ ffol irpoa"nv5(a^.rjv ad. 
 vvv 5' e/cAeAonre TOUT' ei/ V^epa /xi 
 6av6vrt avv ffoi. iravra yap ffvvapirdffas 
 0i;eAA' STTOJS {SeBrjicas. of^erou irariip 
 TeOvriK' fjii> ffoi <ppovSos avrbs fl Oavdv 
 yeXiaffi 8' e^6pol fnaiverai 5' ify' y 
 )U^jT7)p a/J.iiT<ap, $!$ f/ioi ffv iroAAaKJS 
 <J>rj/uas \ddpa irpoijTr/j.ires us fyavoviitvo 
 rifiuphs avT&s. a\\a ravO' 6 Svffrvx^ 
 5ai/j.aiv o <r6s re /ca/ibs ta<f>et\fTo f 
 '6s <? >$e fi.01 jrpovire/j.^/ev O.VT\ <f>i\raTr] 
 (j.opit>rjs O"jro56v re Kal ffKiav a.vta(pf\7i. 
 
 t/lfHH OL. 
 
 1 Cf. on frag. 530. 
 
 F 2
 
 68 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvi. 
 
 and before ^Eschylus brought out his Orestean trilogy. 1 The 
 scene of the drama must, therefore, have been determined 
 by the local politics of the day, which would put forwardi 
 Mycenag, if Argos and Athens were at variance. But this is 
 a mere conjecture. The critics have animadverted upon the 
 anachronism of representing Orestes as killed at the Pythian 
 games, but there is surely no sense in the objection. Almost 
 all the games in Greece were ascribed to mythical, nay, even 
 to divine founders, and to assign to any of them a late and 
 historical origin would have offended Greek taste. About the 
 beauty of the narrative there can be no question. It is remark- 
 able that Sophocles reverses the order of the murders, and 
 makes Clytemnestra suffer before ^Egisthus, an arrangement 
 which destroys the awful climax in the Choephori indeed, when 
 the mother has been sacrificed little interest remains about her 
 paramour. The French critics are almost indignant at the 
 idea of a king on the stage, who only comes in to die. But of 
 course his death is necessary to the piece, and if Sophocles did 
 not require him as a character, he shows true and great art in 
 only introducing him when necessary. A perfect library has 
 been written on the three Electros of the three Greek poets, 
 generally with the object of detracting from yEschylus, and still 
 more from Euripides, to extol Sophocles. The reader has 
 already seen how false such an estimate is towards ^schylus. 
 I shall not enter upon the Electro, of Euripides till we have 
 become acquainted with that poet in the course of the present 
 history. 
 
 1 All the critics follow Pausanias in assuming that Mycenae remained 
 independent up to 468 B.C., and that the <rwoiKttffji6s of this and other 
 towns by Argos took place, through fear of Sparta, after the Persian wars. 
 I cannot conceive this policy to have arisen so late, and believe the auto- 
 nomy, and perhaps even the existence, of Mycenae to have ceased at latest 
 when Argos became great under Pheidon, about a century earlier. My 
 views were published in the fifth number of Hermathena, and ultimately 
 converted Dr. Schliemann, as I had predicted that no fifth century remains 
 would be found in his excavations. He has translated my article in the 
 French edition of his Mycencz. The evidence he has produced points to a 
 very old destruction of the city, perhaps even at the time of the Doric 
 invasion, or else not later than Pheidon of Argos (circ. 660 B.C.)
 
 CH. XVI. IMITATIONS OF THE ELECTRA. 69 
 
 Let us now pass to the imitations of the story, or the im- 
 provements attempted upon it, in subsequent times. There can 
 be little doubt that there were several Roman versions. Cicero 
 speaks of two, Suetonius alludes to them, and so evidently does 
 Vergil, when using in a simile the ' Agamemnonius scenis agitatus 
 Orestes.' But none of them have survived. The Orestes ridi- 
 culed by Juvenal may have been a mere fiction, but the choice 
 of this title proves the popularity of the subject. In the i6th 
 century, there was a translation by L. Bai'f. But in 1 708, Crebil- 
 lon brought out his Electra, a play which introduced a series of 
 love affairs between Orestes, Electra, and a son and daughter of 
 ^Rgisthus, fabricated for the purpose. These novelties, together 
 with storms and other adventures, so complicated and changed 
 the play, that the author could fairly boast his own originality, 
 and proclaim that he had taken nothing from Sophocles, whom 
 he had never read. Passing by the now unknown work of 
 Longepierre in 1719, we come to Voltaire's Oreste (1750), which 
 is said to owe it a good many thoughts. Some of Crebillon's 
 inventions are also adopted, but the main novelty is the ex- 
 citement produced by the dangers which Orestes encounters in 
 attaining his vengeance. For greater detail upon this and suc- 
 ceeding efforts, the reader should consult the history of French 
 Literature in connection with the drama of Sophocles in M. 
 Patin's admirable sketch. 1 He has forgotten to mention how 
 closely the Athalie in Racine's celebrated play has been copied 
 from Sophocles' Clytemnestra. The very device of a disturb- 
 ing dream is employed to rouse Athalie's fears, and Joas stands 
 to her in a similar relation to that of Orestes and Clytemnestra. 
 The famous Orestes of Alfieri was of course based on Cre- 
 billon and Voltaire ; indeed, we know that the poet's very de- 
 fective education did not then permit him to read a Greek play 
 in the original. As was his habit, he simplifies the plot, and 
 gets rid of all superfluous characters ; but the great strain he 
 keeps up, and the monotony of his speakers, make it a tedious 
 play to read. He is noted as having been the first to paint the 
 quarrels and the remorse of the adulterous pair, and with his 
 usual hatred of tyrants, he makes ^Egisthus weep with terror 
 
 1 Sophocle, pp. 366, sq.
 
 70 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XVI. 
 
 when he finds he must die. There are several later versions, 
 up to the Orestie of Alexandre Dumas. 
 
 1 88. We may take up the Trachinice next, because its 
 heroine the only other extant heroine in Sophocles stands 
 in marked and pleasant contrast to those we have just discussed. 
 As to the date of the play, it is agreed that it comes either very 
 early or very late in the poet's career. The differences from 
 the other plays, and supposed inferiority, are the grounds which 
 have led to this opinion. Some have even declared it spurious, 
 and the work of lophon, or some other weaker hand. It is 
 impossible to decide the dispute about its age, though its 
 genuineness must certainly be asserted. On the whole, I rather 
 mcline to place it as the earliest extant work of Sophocles. 
 There seems a certain hesitation in the author, who desires to 
 make Deianira the protagonist, and yet chooses a myth of 
 which Heracles is necessarily the central figure. Thus there 
 are two distinct catastrophes that of the heroine, which is first 
 in interest, but is treated as a mere incident ; and that of the 
 hero, who is absent during all the action, but whose death 
 forms the solemn conclusion of the play. It almost seems to 
 me as if the poet were feeling his way to making the character 
 of a woman the prominent feature of the play, and yet afraid to 
 do so without weaving in another catastrophe, afraid also to 
 entitle his play (like his Antigone and Electra) Deianira. It is 
 the only extant play of Sophocles which takes its name from 
 the chorus, and when we reflect that at least one half of 
 ^tschylus' plays are so named, while less than one-third of 
 Sophocles' and mostly satirical plays follow this rule, we 
 may draw another slight argument in favour of its early date, 
 before the poet had abandoned, perhaps, the ^Eschylean fashion 
 of calling his plays after their most important feature the chorus. 
 Again, as the Philoctetes, which shows no sign of weakness or 
 failure, appeared in 409, and the pcet did not survive the year 
 405, it seems very strange that so rapid a decadence should 
 take place in these years, in which no tradition mentions any 
 play but the (Edipus at Colonus. Internal evidence from style 
 has been freely employed by the advocates of both opinions, 
 but is in any case, by itself, of little worth. The character of
 
 CH. xvi. THE TRACHINI^E. 71 
 
 Deianira can only be compared with that of Tecmessa, a 
 second-rate character in the Ajax, and differs completely from 
 the poet's so-called heroines. But there is the deepest pathos 
 in his drawing of a feeble, patient wife, ever widowed afresh 
 for weary months, and now too exiled from her home and 
 seeking in vain for tidings of her husband. His enforced 
 absence (to atone for a homicide), his careful disposition of his 
 affairs before he departed, and the vague voice of old oracles, 
 all conspire to fill her heart with sorrow and despondency. 
 The aged nurse suggests the sending out of HyJlus to obtain 
 news, and after a short dialogue, in which he repeats the vague 
 reports of his father's return to Euboea, and his mother cites 
 with fear the threatening oracles about this very place, the 
 chorus of Trachinian maidens enters, and in a very beautiful 
 ode to Helios, prays for tidings of the wandering hero. De- 
 ianira's weariness of life saddens her first address to the chorus, 
 whose virgin days of security she envies, while she reflects on 
 the cares of married life. 1 
 
 Then comes a self-appointed messenger, who has hurried 
 in advance of Lichas, and tells her of Heracles' victory, and the 
 momentary delay of the herald, who presently enters with the 
 spoils and slaves from CEchalia, and gives his account to De- 
 ianira. But she is chiefly struck by the beauty of a fair captive, 
 concerning whose history and parentage she inquires, both from 
 Lichas, who answers evasively, and from the girl herself, who 
 preserves absolute silence. Nothing can exceed the tender- 
 ness and grace of this passage. 2 It contrasts strongly with 
 
 1 vv. 140-50 : ireirt/<r/ueVij fj.ev, ois ffd<p' flKdffai, irdpfi 
 vd9ri/j.a rov/j.6v is 8 : ey&i 6v/j.o(p6opv 
 /irjr' Kfj.d9ois iraQovva., vvv 5' &iretpos el. 
 rb yap vedov ev rcioTa'Se /36<TKTa.L 
 ^(apoiffiv avToii, Kai viv ov Od\iros deov, 
 ovS' ojj.$pos, ovSe irvevudrtov ovSev K\ovfi, 
 
 ts rovQ', fas ris avrl irapOfvov yvvri 
 K\-n8fi, \dflri r' ff VVKT\ (ppovriScav pepos. 
 
 This sentiment reappears in frag. 517 of the poet, and also in 
 Euripides. 
 
 vv. 294-334.
 
 72 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvi. 
 
 the imperious harshness of Clytemnestra to the captive Cassan- 
 dra, and may possibly have been composed with this inten- 
 tion. But the first messenger, who has heard the gossip of the 
 town, and is eager to make himself important, comes forward 
 again, as soon as Lichas has entered the palace, and with that 
 love of telling bad news which infects the lower classes, informs 
 the queen of the real truth about lole. The scene in which 
 Deianira extracts the confirmation of the report from the un- 
 willing Lichas, when he reappears, is one of the finest in the 
 tragedy. The largeness of heart with which the wife treats her 
 husband's passion for another woman is far more splendid 
 than the heroism of harder women on matters that cannot 
 touch them so deeply. * We must remember that we are read- 
 ing of Greek heroic times and manners, when such license 
 was freely accorded to princes, and when the attachment to 
 lole, though a great hardship to the wife, would never have 
 been regarded as a breach of good morals. When, therefore, 
 some critics have sought the tragic justice of the play in 
 Heracles' punishment for conjugal faithlessness, they have 
 merely talked irrelevant nonsense. There is no finer conclusion 
 of a fine scene than the chorus which follows, and which 
 describes the desperate conflict of Heracles for the possession 
 of this very Deianira, who is now slighted and forgotten. 
 Then follows the hasty resolve of the wife to recover her hus- 
 band by the potent charm of Nessus' garment, her fear and 
 forebodings when she finds, after it is sent, that the wool with 
 which she had laid on the unguent had been consumed when 
 heated by the sun. She anticipates the whole catastrophe, and 
 is now as clear sighted as she was formerly dull of inference. 
 Then comes the terrible news by Hyllus, and his fierce accusa- 
 tion of his mother, who rushes in the silence of desperate resolve 
 from the stage. After an interrupting chorus, her death-scene 
 is affectingly described, so affectingly as almost to rival the death 
 of Alcestis in Euripides. 
 
 1 Elle ne s'irrite ni centre sa rivale ni centre 1'homme qui la trahit : sa 
 douleur est celle d'une epouse, et non pas d'une amante, et cette nuance, 
 qu'on a peine a exprimer, est indiquee par le poete avec une exquise deli- 
 catesse. Patin, Sophocle, p. 73,
 
 CH. XVI CHARACTER OF DEIANIRA. 
 
 73 
 
 Here the main interest in the piece ends for moderns ; and 
 I may observe, before passing on, that it is hardly creditable to 
 the critics that they have not better appreciated so noble and 
 natural a character. Deianira is a woman made to suffer and 
 to endure, who submits to a hard fate with patience and sweet- 
 ness, but whose love is strong, and will not waver with the 
 rudest shocks. When she sees a growing beauty brought into 
 the home in which years and anxieties have caused her own 
 charms to decay, she has recourse to a remedy ordinary in 
 those days, and approved by the maidens who befriend her. 
 And yet this device of the gentle, uncomplaining wife lets 
 loose a terrific agency which robs all Greece of its greatest 
 benefactor, and the human race of its proudest hero. The 
 oracle must indeed be fulfilled ; Heracles must die, but with 
 what tragic irony ! The wretched worker of the catastrophe 
 wanders for a while through the house, amazed, aimless, heart- 
 broken, bursting into tears at every familiar face and object, 
 then with sudden resolve she bares her side, and strikes the 
 sword into her heart ! 
 
 But among the ancients, the official catastrophe, the lyrical 
 wailing of Heracles, his wrestling with agony, and final victory, 
 his calm review of his life all this was far more celebrated and 
 striking. Such lyrical dialogues, when the excited actor spoke 
 in turn with the chorus, were highly prized on the Greek stage, 
 and were a leading feature in most tragedies. Cicero l gives us 
 a version of the agony of Heracles, and there are many modern 
 French versions. Seneca and Ovid have reproduced the 
 story, but have altogether missed the delicacies of Sophocles' 
 treatment. Among French imitators by far the best was 
 Fe'nelon, who has given a very elegant prose version in his 
 Telemaque. All the rest, for want I suppose of both taste and 
 knowledge of Greek, followed Seneca's travesty. 
 
 189. The (Edipus Tyrannus, which serves as a sort of canon 
 in the Poetic of Aristotle, has been placed by the scholiasts, and 
 by most modern critics, at the very summit of Greek tragic art, 
 and certainly dates from the best period of Sophocles' literary 
 life. But when some exercise their ingenuity in suggesting 
 1 Tusc. ii. 8-9.
 
 74 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvr. 
 
 that the opening scene was painted from the horrors of the 
 plague at Athens, and that by CEdipus the poet means to con- 
 vey the failure of Pericles, and his melancholy death, they seem 
 to have actually found the one impossible date for the play. The 
 Lacedaemonians, in opening the war, had demanded from Athens 
 the exile of Pericles, as blood-guilty through his ancestors in the 
 massacre of the Kylonians, and had affected to make the refusal 
 their casus belli. To bring out the CEdipus, when this demand, 
 and the plague which shortly after ensued, were still fresh in 
 men's minds, would not only have been a profound disloyalty to 
 the Athenian cause, and a justification of Sparta, but a direct 
 personal attack on the memory of Pericles. We know that 
 Sophocles, of ail Athenians, was most free from personal ani- 
 mosities, and we have also reason to think he was a friend of 
 Pericles. This period, therefore, of the poet's life is the only 
 one at which the CEdipus cannot have been brought out 
 
 It may perhaps rather be referred to an earlier period, when 
 sceptical opinions, and especially a contempt of oracles, came 
 into fashion with the rising generation during the supremacy of 
 Athens. The moral lesson conveyed is distinctly the im- 
 portance of oracles and prophecies, which interpret to men 
 the secret and inexplicable ways of Providence, and the awful, 
 nay, to us disproportionate, vengeance which ensues upon their 
 neglect. This apparent injustice is even vindicated as being 
 the necessary course of the world appointed by its ruler, Zeus 
 in fact, by an appeal to religious, as distinguished from 
 moral, laws. 
 
 The progress of the play is so well known that I will only 
 notice its perfections and defects from a critical point of view. 
 Nothing can be nobler and more natural than the opening 
 dialogue of CEdipus and the priest, and in this, and the short 
 scene when Creon appears with the answer of the oracle, the 
 character of CEdipus, as an able, benevolent, but somewhat 
 self-conscious man, is laid clearly before us. The old objec- 
 tion, why the murder of Laius had never been before investi- 
 gated, may be coupled with another, why the plague had 
 been so long delayed, seeing that the cause of it existed since 
 CEdipus had come to Thebes. These difficulties are, however,
 
 CH. xvr. THE CEDIPVS REX. 75 
 
 not objections to the play, but to the supposed antecedents 
 of the play, though they are real objections. Sophocles 
 would probably have answered them by saying that he 
 sought a dramatic situation in which to develop the character 
 of his hero, and that he despised such inquiries into an- 
 tecedent probabilities. But unnatural assumptions cannot 
 enter a work of art with impunity, and nature will avenge 
 herself upon the artist, however great, as we shall see in 
 the sequel of this very play. The choral hymn to Apollo, as 
 the healer, which follows, is a good specimen of a dactylic 
 p<zan. Indeed, if we except the second (Edipus, the choruses 
 of this play are much grander than is usual with Sophocles; 
 and this is attributable to the character of the chorus, which 
 here, if anywhere, is the ideal spectator, though not without 
 some touches of vulgar complaisance. 1 But the principal 
 character maintains an importance so much higher than in 
 Sophocles' other plays, that the chorus assumes the purer 
 function of observing the action, rather than that of encouraging 
 or deprecating the hero's sentiments. 
 
 Passing by the imprecation scene, which has greatly benefited 
 by Ribbeck's transposition of a few lines, 2 we come to the unwil 
 ling appearance of Teiresias, the impatience of GEdipus, and a 
 consequent angry wrangle, in which the outspokenness of the 
 prophet seems to me a great flaw in a play so much admired for 
 the gradual development of the plot. Teiresias tells him so ex 
 plicitly that he is the murderer of Laius, and is the husband of 
 his mother, that a man who knew his Corinthian parentage was 
 doubtful, that an oracle had predicted to him these very crimes, 
 and that he had committed a homicide, could not but hit upon 
 the truth. In fact he does so presently at a far less obvious sug- 
 gestion of locasta's. The excuse for this defect is, I suppose, 
 that CEdipus was in a rage when Teiresias discloses the facts, 
 and that his rage makes him perfectly blind. But this seems 
 quite too artificial an answer to the objection, though it has been 
 urged as a subtle psychological point, that the same man who 
 cannot perceive the plainest indications in the heat of dispute, 
 
 1 Cf. Patin, Sophocle, p. 183. 
 
 2 vv. 252-72 before v. 246; cf. Bernhardy, LG. iii. p. 355.
 
 76 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvr. 
 
 when he calms down, fastens on a trivial detail in friendly con- 
 versation, and starting from it, unravels for himself the whole 
 mystery. The spectator is hurried on by the angry violence 
 of CEdipus, who turns accuser instead of defendant, and 
 roundly charges both Teiresias and Creon with being the real 
 murderers of Laius, and accomplices in seeking to oust 
 from the kingdom its rightful lord. But surely here the 
 antecedent improbabilities assert themselves with irrefragable 
 force. If the murder of Laius and the present events were in- 
 deed twenty years apart, the charge of QEdipus becomes 
 ridiculous. The ambitious claimants for the throne murder 
 Laius, and then rest silent for twenty years, when they vamp up 
 a charge of the murder against his long-established successor ! 
 The matter will not bear the light of common sense, unless we 
 conceive the murder followed closely by the accession of CEdipus, 
 the plague, and the threatening oracle. But here the legend 
 which gives time for the birth of four children seems to interpose 
 an impassable barrier. The important tragic point to be noted 
 in this dispute is that the violence of CEdipus, and especially 
 his sneers at the venerable and respected soothsayer, are meant 
 to palliate our sense of horror at the extremity of his punishment. 
 The same may be said of locasta, whose feeble and shallow 
 scepticism is with great skill represented by the poet as failing 
 in the hour of terror and of need. Her account of the death 
 of Laius, intended to soothe CEdipus, is so framed as to stir up 
 his deepest mind with agitation, and that, too, by means of an 
 apparently trifling detail. Even though the plain speaking of 
 Teiresias had more than prepared us, this passage is of the 
 greatest dramatic beauty. Indeed, these double confidences of 
 the husband and wife form a scene which has perhaps not been 
 equalled of its kind. The result is now plain before CEdipus' 
 mind, yet he and locasta cling to the faint hopes arising 
 from false details of the murder. It is very remarkable that 
 the chorus, here rising above the special situation, sings a 
 solemn ode l upon the insolence and folly of scepticism, 
 and the decay of belief in the old tenets of religion. At its 
 close locasta appears, bearing suppliant offerings to the god 
 1 w. 860-910.
 
 CH. xvi. THE (ED I PUS REX. 
 
 77 
 
 whose oracles she has just despised, but to whom she turns in 
 dismay at the mental agony of her husband, for which she can 
 find no remedy. 
 
 The appearance of the messenger announcing the deatn 
 of Polybus comes too late in the play, and the sudden return of 
 (Edipus to confidence on this point is strange. He had long 
 ago doubted his alleged origin, and the previous course of 
 the play had so confirmed these doubts, that his easy accep- 
 tance of the solution is not natural, and is a flaw in the work. 
 At an earlier period, and just after the warnings of Teiresias, 
 we may fancy such a delay in the catastrophe better placed. 
 But the intention of the poet is here to approach the second 
 crime of (Edipus, his incestuous marriage, and he approaches 
 it with the somewhat ridiculous fears of (Edipus that he 
 may unwittingly marry the aged Merope, whom he knows 
 perfectly well. This leads to the final explanation of his 
 birth, and presently of the details of his father's murder, 
 which the Corinthian messenger, the aged shepherd, and the 
 king discover in a dialogue of awful and breathless interest. I 
 will only notice from the end of the play that the character of 
 Creon is that of a calm and just ruler, far different from his 
 figure in the Antigone, and also that in his lamentations 
 (Edipus lays great and natural stress on the indelible stain 
 which adheres to his daughters, and which will make their 
 marriage impossible a consideration never mentioned, I think, 
 in the Antigone. This proves, if it be necessary to prove it, the 
 complete independence of these plays, which critics are always 
 citing in connection, when they discuss the characters of 
 Sophocles, and wish to explain the unresolved harshness of his 
 morality. The concluding scene with his infant daughters is 
 very affecting, but thoroughly Euripidean, and may be intended 
 to introduce the softer element of pity where terror too much 
 predominates. 
 
 Indeed, the whole play is a terrible exhibition of the iron 
 course of Fate, which ensnares even great and good men in 
 its adamantine chains, and ruins the highest human prosperity 
 with calm omnipotence. There can be no crime urged against 
 (Edipus and his parents but the neglect of oracles, or an
 
 78 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XVL 
 
 attempt to evade them, and it is evidently this scepticism or 
 carelessness which brings upon them consequences too horrible 
 to bear. I do not think that the haughtiness of (Edipus a 
 feature which the Greeks did not consider inconsistent with an 
 ideal character has any direct relation to the catastrophe, and 
 the homicide was evidently regarded not as an act of violence, 
 but of fair retaliation, until the person of the victim throws 
 a horrible complexion over the act, and makes it a hideous 
 crime. After all, CEdipus is a noble man mocked by an awful 
 destiny ; he suffers without adequate evil desert ; and the lesson 
 of the play is not that of confidence in the final result of a 
 great moral struggle, but rather of awe and despair at the possible 
 cruelties of an arbitrary and irresponsible Fate. 
 
 It may have been this grave objection, it may have 
 been its orthodoxy, or it may have been the defects of plot 
 above noticed, which caused its defeat by a play of Philocles, 
 or brought out by Philocles, the nephew of ^Eschylus, 
 at the same time. Subsequent criticism has reversed this 
 decision. Not only is the very name of Philocles' play for- 
 gotten, but the scholiasts and other critics express their wonder 
 at the bad taste of the Athenian public, and exhaust themselves 
 in praise of the CEdipus Tyrannus. Seneca spoilt it in a 
 rhetorical version. Among the moderns, both Corneille (1659) 
 and Voltaire composed plays on this subject, not to speak of 
 inferior attempts. Corneille added amorous and poetical in- 
 trigues, and borrowed rather from Seneca than from Sophocles. 
 Voltaire degraded it into a formal attack on the justice and wis- 
 dom of the gods in fact, a vehicle for the scepticism which he 
 preached. Many faults of economy in his play, which dis- 
 satisfied him as an early and crude production, have been 
 noticed by his own Lettres. The CEdipus of Dryden and Lee, 
 given in 1679, is one of the few adaptations of the Greek dram?, 
 upon the English stage; Lacroix's translation (1858) has just 
 been reproduced in Paris. Dryden's play does not avoid any of 
 the faults of the French stage pompousness, needless complica- 
 tion, irrelevant love affairs, false rhetoric and is, moreover, said 
 to have added some of those to be found in his own country. 
 
 190. A very different picture is presented to us by the
 
 CH. xvi. THE CEDIPUS AT COLONUS. 79 
 
 (Edipus at Colonus, wherein the poet, probably in later years, 
 seems to have softened and purified the figure of the deeply 
 injured hero by a noble and dignified end. We know that the 
 play was not exhibited till four years after Sophocles' death, and 
 tradition speaks of it as the last composed by the old man ; 
 but later critics seem more disposed to place its composition 
 in the best period of his life. 1 I hardly think their arguments, 
 based on its purity of metre and strength of diction, will weigh 
 against the current tradition, backed up by the strong feeling 
 of every reader from Cicero to our day, that its mildness 
 and sadness, nay even its weariness of life, speak the long 
 experience and sober resignation of an old man near the 
 grave. The choral odes are, however, far more brilliant and 
 prominent than those of the Philoctetes, whose late date is un- 
 doubted, and indeed the chorus holds a sort of yschylean 
 position in the play. The lyrical writing, especially in the 
 choral odes on Colonus, and on the miseries of human life, may 
 safely be pronounced the most perfect we possess of the poet's 
 remains. Nevertheless, the moral attitude of the chorus in the 
 action is low and selfish. Their attempt to break faith with 
 (Edipus, their vulgar obtrusiveness about his past history, 
 and the rapid change in their estimate of him, when they 
 find he will be useful to them all these features mark the 
 vulgar public which ordinarily appears in the Greek tragic 
 chorus. The play may be composed with some reference to 
 the earlier (Edipus, at least with the intention of soften- 
 ing the cruel treatment of CEdipus, which is there portrayed. 
 Though worn out with age and suffering, there is a splendid 
 dignity about him, a consciousness of innocence, an oft-ex- 
 pressed conviction that he did all his so-called crimes un< 
 wittingly, and without moral guilt, and that he is justified by 
 the important mission assigned him by the gods that of pro- 
 
 1 There have been endless discusdons as to the date, and efforts to 
 deduce it from the political temper of the play, and its very friendly allu- 
 sions to Thebes. But according as this or that line is declared spurious, 
 or this or that passage interpolated, the theories vary, and the doctors 
 differ. The main result of the controversy is to show that no result is 
 attainable.
 
 So HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvi. 
 
 tecting for ever the land which affords him a hallowed resting- 
 place. He even approaches with assurance and without fear the 
 dread Eumenides, whom others will scarcely name, and whose 
 grove men hurry by with averted face. This spiritual great- 
 ness separates the dying CEdipus widely from King Lear, with 
 whom he is often compared. But in his violent and painful 
 execration of his ungrateful but repentant son a jarring chord 
 in the sweet harmony of the play he reminds us of the angry 
 old man in Shakespeare, though still more of his vehement 
 and haughty self in the CEdipus Tyrannus. But Creon is 
 here changed, and represented in his low and insolent type, 
 as in the Antigone. This heroine, also, is not consistently 
 drawn, and does not here manifest the strong features which 
 Sophocles had given her in his early play. These points show 
 how little the Athenian public cared to compare the plays of 
 different years, and how little they attached a fixed type of 
 character to mythic names. It was possibly on account of 
 these liberties that the tragic poets avoided as a rule the Iliad 
 and Odyssey, for in a play derived from them any marked de- 
 viation might, perhaps, have offended a public really familiar 
 with their texts. 
 
 The episode of Polynices, though it delays the main action 
 of the play, is singularly striking from the contrast it affords to 
 the position of CEdipus. Both father and son are approaching 
 their fate, but the father, an innocent offender, and purified by 
 long suffering, shines out in the majesty of a glorious sunset 
 after a stormy day ; while the son, who violated his filial duties 
 through selfishness and hardness of heart, is promptly punished 
 by exile ; but even when apparently repentant, and seeking 
 forgiveness for his offence, the leaven of ambition and revenge 
 has so poisoned his heart, that when stricken by his father's 
 awful curse, he rushes upon his doom, partly in despair, partly 
 in contumacy, partly from vanity and a fear of ridicule : 
 
 ' His honour rooted in dishonour stood, 
 And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.' 
 
 It is this combined insincerity and desperation in Polynices 
 which alone can justify the violence of CEdipus' curse, and ever
 
 CH. xvi. THE (ED I PUS AT COLONUS. 81 
 
 so it is a painful prelude to his solemn translation to the nether 
 world. 
 
 Nothing at first sight can appear to modern notions more 
 monotonous than the way in which (Edipus fixes himself to 
 the single spot which he will not leave, while all the other 
 characters pass in succession before him. But nothing could 
 be more pathetic or striking to the Greek mind than these 
 divers efforts to subdue or persuade the inflexible old man, 
 whom the divine curse has hardened in his wrath. The 
 changing scenes give endless variety to the monotony of the 
 situation, or rather of the main figure, whose very monotony 
 is his greatness, because it expresses the endurance of his 
 misfortunes and of his hate. 1 In the finest and truest Eng- 
 lish reproduction of Greek tragedy the Samson Agonistes of 
 Milton Samson, who has great points of resemblance with 
 (Edipus, occupies a similar fixed position, while the vari- 
 ous actors pass before him. The episode of Dalila takes 
 the place of the scene with Polynices, and brings out 
 the angry element in Samson. There are, however, many 
 other Greek plays, and many ^Eschylean and Euripidean 
 features, imitated in the Samson, though all these materials 
 are fused into harmony with a great poet's highest art. 
 The commas of the sisters after his departure is the es- 
 sentially Greek feature of the play, which a modern writer 
 would omit, but which is formed closely upon the model of 
 the end of .^Eschylus' Seven against Thebes. But on the whole, 
 for vigour, for variety, and for poetic beauty, no play of 
 Sophocles exceeds this (Edipus, and I am even disposed to 
 agree with those who rank it the first of his dramas. As, 
 however, each new critic makes this assertion about a different 
 play, it is idle to attempt a decision. 
 
 The essentially antique nature of the tragedy, its special 
 glorification of Theseus, of Athens, of Colonus, made it less fit 
 than others, as M. Patin observes, for modern imitation. 
 Nevertheless, in 1778, long after the other chefs itceuvre of the 
 Greek drama had been imitated or travestied on the French 
 stage, Ducis brought out his (Edipe chez Admete, a sort of com- 
 
 1 Cf. Villemain, Litt. du xviii mt siede, ili. p. 312. 
 VOL. I. 2 G
 
 82 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvi. 
 
 bination of the (Edipus Coloneus with Euripides' Alcestis, which 
 seems as much imitated from King Lear as from (Edipus, and 
 misses the perfections of both. An abridged and altered version 
 appeared in 1797 under the exact title of the Greek play. 
 There was, moreover, an opera on the same subject, with 
 music by Sacchini, brought out in 1787. An imitation by 
 Chenier, which is not much praised by the critics, and one by 
 the Italian Niccolini, who translated some of ^Eschylus' plays, 
 are the most important modern attempts in this special field. 
 In all the French imitations the Christianity of the writers was 
 so shocked by the relentless cursing of Polynices by (Edipus, 
 that they reject this feature, and introduce a scene of forgive- 
 ness, which the gods, however, will not ratify. The worship of 
 old Greek poetry in the eighteenth century was as inaccurate as 
 the worship of Greek architecture. In both the results were at- 
 tempted without any real knowledge of the principles involved, 
 or of the spirit which produced every detail in strict harmony 
 with the original design, and for some definite purpose beyond 
 mere ornament. 
 
 191. In variety and richness the play just considered con- 
 trasts strongly with the Ajax, which stands perhaps more re- 
 mote than any of Sophocles' works from modern notions. 1 If 
 a modern dramatist were told to compose a play upon such a 
 subject the madness of a hero from disappointed ambition, 
 the carnage of flocks of sheep in mistake for his rivals and 
 judges, his return to sanity, remorse and suicide, and a quarrel 
 about his funeral he would, I suppose, despair of the materials ; 
 and yet Sophocles has composed one of his greatest character 
 plays upon it. There is no finer psychological picture than the 
 awakening of Ajax from his rage, his deep despair, his firm 
 resolve to endure life no longer, his harsh treatment of 
 Tecmessa, and yet his deep love for her and his child. Even 
 his suicide is most exceptionally put upon the stage, for the 
 purpose, I think, of the most splendid monologue which 
 Greek tragedy affords us. He is for one day, we are told, 
 under the anger of Athene, and if he can escape it, he will be 
 
 1 The interesting parallel of the Hercules Furens of Euripides will 
 come under discussion in the chapter on that poet.
 
 CH. xvi, THE AJAX. 8 3 
 
 safe, and this inspires the spectator with a peculiar tragic pity, 
 when he sees a great life lost, which might so easily have been 
 saved. But the action of Athene is not otherwise of import- 
 ance in the play. She appears not at the end (as usual), but 
 only at the opening, and in those hard and cruel features 
 which are familiar to us in Homer. J Thus in this play also, 
 religion and morals are dissociated, no doubt unconsciously, 
 by the tragic poet, who sought to be a moral teacher of his 
 people. This momentary introduction of gods at the open- 
 ing and close of tragedies shows plainly the process of 
 humanization which was completed by Euripides, and which 
 made the gods a mere piece of stage machinery, tolerated 
 by tradition, but only to be called in when the web of human 
 passion required prompt and clear explication. But in old 
 Greek plays they furthermore performed the important tragic 
 service of justifying the cruel side, the iron destiny, of the 
 drama. They were the main agents in purifying the terror 
 of the spectator, which had else been akin to despair at the 
 miseries entailed by necessity upon the human race. 
 
 As regards the haughty, unyielding character of Ajax, I 
 cannot agree with the critics that the poet meant to regard 
 his pride as justly punished, and meant to show that brute 
 force must succumb to a heroism tempered by wisdom and 
 forethought This would be to assume -that the Ajax of the 
 play was the hero of the Iliad, which is not the case. 
 Sophocles' Ajax is not the least wanting in refinement, or in 
 sensitiveness, nay, his appeal to all the calm beauty of nature 
 around him, in contrast to his own misery, his undisguised 
 lamentations and despair, show a mind which steels itself with 
 effort to a high resolve, and which does not possess the brute 
 courage of insensibility. Moreover, he consistently considers 
 himself unjustly treated, and would never acquiesce in the fair- 
 ness either of the decision of the Atridas or of the persecution 
 of Athene. And in this conviction he draws even the modern 
 spectator with him, far more the Greek public, which did not 
 
 1 I am bound to say that M. Patin, an excellent critic, speaks of 
 Athene's language as 'grave and sublime,' and regards her as a lofty ex 
 ponent of moral laws. Let the reader of the play judge between us. 
 
 G 2
 
 84 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvi. 
 
 reprove self-assertion except as dangerous on account of the 
 jealousy of the gods. The inferiority of Odysseus in perso- 
 nal courage is brought out pointedly in the very first scene, 
 but at the same time his prudence and his favour with the 
 gods. His appearance at the end of the play is calm and 
 dignified, but having obtained a complete victory over his 
 rival, we feel that his generosity, though just what it ought to 
 be, is cheap, and consists merely in the absence of vindictiveness. 
 The whole of the wrangling scene between the Atridse and 
 Teucer concerning the burial of Ajax, is very inferior to the 
 earlier part of the play, is called ' rather comic ' by the scholiast, 
 and is certainly open to all the criticism brought against the 
 wrangling scenes in Euripides. Some critics even think it the 
 addition of an inferior hand to an unfinished play of Sophocles. 
 But this is mere random effort to save the uniform greatness of 
 a poet, who was known by the ancients to be unequal, and 
 often to sink to an ordinary level. The Atridae are drawn as 
 vulgar tyrants, and without any redeeming feature. It was of 
 course fashionable, in democratic Athens, to make every ab- 
 solute ruler a villain, so much so that respectable actors would 
 not play such ungrateful parts. The Tecmessa of the play is a 
 patient, loving woman, almost as tragic as Andromache, who 
 attracts the reader from the outset, and seems to me far more 
 interesting, and more natural, than the poet's fierce and wran- 
 gling heroines. The choral odes are not very striking, if we 
 except a beautiful hyporcheme to Pan. 1 The chorus is 
 throughout the confidant of Tecmessa, and by their conversa- 
 tions the action is artfully disclosed ; they are also the affec- 
 tionate followers of Ajax, though they do not forget that their 
 personal safety depends upon him. The praise of Salamis, and 
 the glory of a hero from whom the proudest Athenians claimed 
 descent, were collateral features likely to recommend the play to 
 an Athenian audience. 
 
 The story of the suicide of Ajax, though alluded to in 
 
 the Odyssey, when Odysseus encounters the shade of the 
 
 hero in the nether world, 2 was borrowed by Sophocles from 
 
 the Little Iliad of Lesches. It had already afforded Ms- 
 
 1 w. 692, sq. 2 x, 541-64.
 
 CH. xvi. THE PHILOCTETES. 85 
 
 chylus the subject of a trilogy, in which the middle piece 
 described the suicide in very different terms, laying special 
 stress on the supposed invulnerability except in a single spot, 
 which his evil fate discloses to him. Sophocles, too, com- 
 posed a Teukros and an Eurysakes, but, as was his custom, 
 without mutual connection. No subject was .more attractive 
 to the Greeks than this dispute of Ajax and Odysseus. 
 Besides the tragedies, there were celebrated pictures of it by 
 Timanthes and Parrhasius, and rhetorical versions of it, such 
 as that alluded to in the tragedy of the rhetor Theodectes, 
 in Aristotle's Rhetoric, and the countless imitations of Greek 
 and Roman followers. Ennius, Pacuvius, and Attius appear 
 to have contaminated ^schylus with Sophocles in their ver- 
 sions. A fine fragment of Pacuvius' play is cited by Cicero. 
 Even the Emperor Augustus attempted an Ajax, but told a 
 courtly inquirer ' that his Ajax has fallen upon the sponge.' In 
 Ovid's Metamorphoses 2 there is an elegant version, and both 
 Horace and Juvenal allude to it as the best known of sub- 
 jects, both for moral and scholastic purposes. 3 There was a 
 parody of the rhetorical exercises in the Menippea of Varro. 
 We may judge from these incomplete details, that of all the 
 subjects handled upon the Attic stage, none was more widely 
 popular among the Romans. The modern version of Sivry 
 (1762) is so ridiculous as to excite the amusement of even 
 French critics. The reader will find a sketch of it at the close 
 of M. Patin's admirable chapter, which I have here mainly 
 followed. 
 
 192. We close our list with the Philoctetes, in which Ger- 
 man critics, since the ascertainment of its date (409 B.C.), have 
 found marks of decaying power, which were formerly unknown, 
 and which would doubtless be again ignored if our information 
 were found incorrect. The Philoctetes is, like the Ajax and the 
 Antigone, essentially a drama of character ; the interest of the 
 plot is nothing as compared to the study of the characters of 
 Philoctetes and Neoptolemus, The whole piece is Euripidean 
 in construction. There is indeed no proper prologue, but the 
 
 1 De Oral. ii. 46. 2 Lib. xii. 
 
 * Cf. Sat. ii. 3, 187, sq. ; Od. i. 7, 21 ; ii. 4. Juvenal, Sat. xiv. 283.
 
 86 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvi. 
 
 dialogue of Odysseus and Neoptolemus, in which the former 
 explains the object of their mission, answers the purpose. He 
 tells how the Greeks on their way to Troy had been obliged, at 
 his advice, to leave on this island of Lemnos, where the scene 
 is laid, the hero Philoctetes, who had been bitten by a viper 
 in the foot on the neighbouring isle of Chrysa, and whose 
 cries and execrations, as well as the disgusting nature of his 
 wound, made him intolerable to his friends. But now the seer 
 Helenus has foretold that Troy cannot fall without him and 
 his famous arrows of Heracles, and so Odysseus has undertaken 
 to bring him back. For this purpose he associates with him 
 the youthful Neoptolemus, who had no share in the abandon- 
 ment of Philoctetes, and to whom he suggests a fictitious account 
 of a quarrel with the Atreidas about Achilles' arms, which had 
 sent him home to Scyros in disgust, as a suitable means of en- 
 trapping Philoctetes on board, and carrying him back to Troy. 
 Neoptolemus protests strongly against lying, but is easily I 
 think too easily seduced by the prospect of the glorious con- 
 sequences of his deceit. Accordingly, he undertakes his part, 
 and, upon Odysseus retiring, is presently hailed with delight by 
 Philoctetes, whose den or cave he had at the opening of the 
 play already found, with manifest tokens of the hero's misery 
 and his loathsome disease. A long series of mutual con- 
 fidences between the heroes takes place, Neoptolemus in par- 
 ticular telling his father's friend all the doleful tidings of the 
 great heroes who had fallen before Troy. But at last he bids 
 him farewell, and is about to leave for his vessel, when Philoc- 
 tetes addresses him with a very touching appeal not to leave 
 him on this desolate and desert island, but to take him away 
 to his home. 
 
 This celebrated speech, in Sophocles' best style, is one of 
 the great beauties of the play, but is not, I think, naturally 
 introduced. It was no part of Neoptolemus' scheme to seem 
 hard-hearted, or to treat Philoctetes as anything but an old 
 guest-friend, nor can we see how his assumed heartlessness, 
 which is with difficulty overcome by the chorus, is in any way 
 calculated to increase the confidence of his victim. As they 
 are delaying their departure, a pretended merchant comes
 
 CH. xvi. THE PHILOCTETES. 87 
 
 to tell Neoptolemus that the Greeks have sent Phoenix and 
 the Tyndaridse to tetch him back, and then throws in by acci- 
 dent that, according to the oracle, Diomede and Odysseus 
 were also coming for Philoctetes. This urges the latter to 
 depart ; but while returning to his den to gather some leaves 
 which he used as anodynes, he is overtaken by a paroxysm of 
 his disease, which rends him with such anguish that he sur- 
 renders his bow and arrows to Neoptolemus, saying that of 
 him he will take no oath for their safe keeping, and sinks into 
 deep sleep. This episode seems to have been imitated from 
 the Philoctetes of vEschylus. The chorus at once suggest that 
 they should decamp with the weapons. To this Neoptolemus 
 will hardly deign a reply, and presently Philoctetes revives re- 
 freshed, and again master of himself. Then Neoptolemus breaks 
 to him the news that he must go to Troy, and refuses to give him 
 back his bow. But he is so shaken by the powerful appeal of 
 Philoctetes that he is about to yield, when he is stopped by the 
 opportune advent of Odysseus, who immediately assumes a tone 
 of command, insists on carrying off Philoctetes by force, or if 
 not, threatens to carry his arms to Troy, and wield them hirrsclf, 
 or place them in the hands of Teucer. The prayers, the lamen- 
 tations, the execrations of Philoctetes are passionate beyond 
 the utterance of any other Greek hero ; but he is not for one 
 moment to be shaken in his resolve, that neither by force 
 nor persuasion will he return to Troy. At last the others 
 leave him, the chorus being ordered to wait for a few mo- 
 ments, as the lonely man supplicates to have human company, 
 and despairs at another return to solitude. Then follows the 
 great scene where Neoptolemus comes back, followed anxiously 
 by Odysseus, who exhausts arguments and threats to dissuade 
 him from his resolve. He has been conquered by Philoctetes' 
 iron constancy, and determines to give him back his arms. He 
 then beseeches him, on the ground of gratitude, to change his 
 purpose, and come to Troy ; but Philoctetes, though far more 
 sorely tried by kindness than by fraud or force, is still absolutely 
 firm. Thus he finally conquers Neoptolemus, all the policy ot 
 Odysseus is set at naught, and the miserable suppliant in rags 
 and tears, whose lamentations have occupied the stage for
 
 88 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvi. 
 
 many scenes, is actually leaving the island victorious, and on 
 the way to his home, when this conclusion, which would violate 
 all mythic history, is reversed by the divine interposition of 
 Heracles, who directs him to return to Troy, and aid in the 
 destruction of the city. 
 
 A more manifest character play cannot be conceived. The 
 hero is in rags and in misery, his lamentations have offended 
 ancient philosophers, as teaching unmanliness, and occupied 
 modern critics, as requiring justification on aesthetic grounds. 
 But the constancy and inflexible sternness of an unimpression- 
 able, blunt nature is no interesting psychological fact, nor do 
 we come to admire Philoctetes' heroism, till we are made fully 
 to feel the horror of his condition, and the despair which 
 filled his mind. The character of Neoptolemus has been 
 greatly and perhaps unduly praised. His spasmodic chivalry is 
 after all that of a youthful enthusiast, who spoils a great policy, 
 and endangers the life of a far greater hero. For it seems to 
 me that Odysseus is clearly intended to be the great man in 
 the play. An Athenian audience did not censure his duplicity 
 as we do, but thought it more than justified by the important 
 ends he had in view. No doubt many of them regarded Neo- 
 ptolemus as an obstinate young fool, whose misplaced gene- 
 rosity would have foiled a great national cause, had the gods 
 not miraculously interfered. I will only repeat that this play 
 contains most of the features objected to by the critics in 
 Euripides, who even speak as if the latter had invented the 
 knave-Odysseus, a conception probably dating from the 
 comedies of Epicharmus, and perhaps as Old as the Cyclic 
 poems. 
 
 The story of Philoctetes is alluded to by Homer in the 
 Catalogue of the Iliad and by Pindar in his first Pythian ode, but 
 was taken, like many other tragedies, from the Little Iliad by 
 Sophocles, who seems however to have added the all-impor- 
 tant part of Neoptolemus. The subject had already been 
 handled both by ^schylus and by Euripides, the Philoctetes 
 even of the latter preceding that of Sophocles by more than 
 twenty years, for it is ridiculed in the Acharnians of Aristo- 
 phanes. But both these poets had represented the' island of
 
 CH. xvi. THE FRAGMENTS OF SOPHOCLES. 89 
 
 Lemnos as inhabited, and the chorus was composed of the 
 natives, whereas Sophocles, far more poetically, though unhis- 
 torically, makes it a savage desert. Both, again, seem to have 
 represented the hero vanquished by having his arms purloined, 
 whereas Sophocles makes him superior even to this fierce com- 
 pulsion. In ^schylus Odysseus was so aged as not to be 
 recognised by Philoctetes ; in Euripides, Athene had disguised 
 him. These and other details are given by Dion Chrysostom, 
 who not only compares the three works, but gives an ab- 
 stract of the opening scenes of Euripides' play. 1 It appears 
 manifest that in this case, at all events, Sophocles had far sur- 
 passed both his rivals. There were also versions by Philocles, 
 Antiphon, and Theodectes, and a play of Attius, founded 
 apparently on that of ^Eschylus, and of which a good many 
 fragments remain. Cicero cites it, and Ovid touches the story 
 in his Metamorphoses. Quintus Calaber not only gives us a full 
 account of Philoctetes at Lemnos, probably according to the 
 version of Euripides, but brings him to Troy, and thus to the 
 period handled in another play of Sophocles. In modern days, 
 Fe'nelon has an elegant prose paraphrase in his Telemaque, re- 
 markable for its simplicity and faithfulness, when we consider 
 the ridiculous travesty of Chateaubriand (1754), who attempts 
 endless improvements on Sophocles. 2 He gives Philoctetes a 
 daughter Sophia, with a governess, in order that Neoptolemus 
 may fall in love with Sophia ! The version of La Harpe (1783) 
 is less ridiculous, but not more faithful. The Greek play itself 
 has been more than once performed in French seminaries, 
 owing to the interest excited by Fenelon's paraphrase. 
 
 193. We need not delay in this history over the Frag- 
 ments, which are only of interest to the very special student of 
 Sophocles. 3 In no case can we reconstruct the plan of any lost 
 drama from them, even with the help of the fragments of 
 Attius and Pacuvius, who imitated him, though loosely. The 
 myths he used, and the possible conjectures as to their treat- 
 ment, have been classified and expanded, with endless learn- 
 
 1 These interesting passages from Dion's orations are cited in full in 
 Dindorf s edition of the fragments of Euripides' play. 
 3 Cf. Nauck's Fragg. Tragg. Grczc. (1890). 
 a Cf. Campbell's Sophocles, ch. xv.
 
 90 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvr. 
 
 ing, by Welcker, in whose great work the curious student may 
 see how small is the result of all his combinations. As I re- 
 marked above (p. 59), a great many of the fragments are mere 
 citations of yXuxTcrai, or curious words, which the poet used, 
 and which form a strange and exceptional vocabulary. 1 A few 
 passages have been preserved, for their beauty and philosophic 
 depth, by Stobaeus ; others are cited by the scholiast on Euri- 
 pides as parallel passages. The finest is probably the following : 
 
 T fl iroTSes, 1} TOI Kvirpis ov Kinrpts povov, 
 aAA' fffrl iro\\iai> ovop.a.riav eTrcavvfj.os. 
 tffriv fj.(v"AiSr]s, tcrri $' &<p6iTOS fiia, 
 fffrtv Se \vffffa uaivas. fffrt 8' i'ufpos 
 &Kpa.TOS, for' oifia>y/j.6s. fv Ktivri rb itav, 
 ffTrovScuov, rjffvxcuov, es /3iav &yov. 
 fVTTiKfTai "yap irvev^vcov, offots tvi 
 ^UX')- T ' s "X^ T'/o'Se TTJS 6tov /3opd ; 
 elffip\fTo.i u.iv IjfQvtav ir\<or(f ytvei, 
 evfffri 5' tv x*P ffov rcrpaffKiKtiyovy- 
 ixafiif 8' fv oliavdiai rovKfivrjs irrfpov, 
 ev drtpfflv, Iv fiporoiffiv, tv Oeols &vo>. 
 rlv' ov iraAoiovo"' es rpls (K/3d\\fi 6(<av ; 
 T fj.01 8f/j.ts, Qfpus Sf ToATjflj) \fytiv, 
 Aibs rvpavff'i TrvVfi6viav &vev Sop6s, 
 fij/eu ffiS'hpou iravra TOI ffWTffj.verai 
 Kvirpts ra Qvrfriav Kal 6eoi>v /3ov\fv/j.a.Ta. 
 
 But there are fine thoughts and rich poetic expressions to be 
 found scattered everywhere through them. 
 
 194. The technical improvements made by Sophocles in his 
 tragedies were not many or important He reduced the chorus, 
 it is said, from fifteen to twelve. He added a third actor, and 
 in the (Edipus at Colonus a fourth may possibly have been em- 
 ployed. Above all, he abandoned the practice of connecting 
 his dramas in tetralogies, and introduced the competing in 
 single tragedies with his rivals. As they, however, continued to 
 write in tetralogies, it is a riddle which none of our authorities 
 
 1 We are accordingly not surprised to hear (Schol. in Elect. 87, on 
 yijs Iff6/j.oip' arip) that he was parodied by the comic poet Pherecrates. 
 This is, perhaps, the only hint we have of any criticism upon the Attic 
 darling in his own day.
 
 CH. xvi. HIS RELATION TO AESCHYLUS. 91 
 
 have thought fit to solve for us, how a fair competition could 
 be arranged on such terms. 1 He is also said to have added 
 scenography, or artistic decoration of the stage, with some 
 attempt at landscape painting an improvement sure to come 
 with the lapse of time, and marked accidentally as to date 
 by Sophocles. But these outward changes, in themselves 
 slight, are the mark of far deeper innovations in the tone and 
 temper of Greek tragedy. Sophocles is not the last of an 
 old school ; he is not the pupil of ^schylus : he is the head 
 of a new school ; he is the master of Euripides. We still 
 possess his "own judgments as regards both these poets, and his 
 relation to them. Plutarch reports him to have said 2 : 'that 
 having passed without serious effort through the grandiloquence 
 of ^Eschylus, and then through the harshness and artificiality of 
 his own (earlier) style, he had at last adopted his third kind of 
 style, which was most suited to painting character, and (therefore) 
 the best.' Whatever reading we adopt, the sense as regards 
 Sophocles seems certainly to be that in early years, and before 
 he had seriously settled down to write, he had got rid of any 
 dominant influence from ^Eschylus. We have indeed no 
 traces of ^Eschylean style or of ^Eschylean thinking in any of 
 the plays or fragments ; there is ground for separating the 
 second CEdipus and the Philoctetes from the rest, and regard- 
 ing them as the representatives of the milder and smoother 
 tone of his ripest years. But who can deny that this 
 
 1 We should be disposed to question the truth of the statement, which 
 rests upon Suidas alone, and refer it merely to the disconnecting of plays 
 in subject, which were yet performed successively, were not all the didas- 
 caliae silent concerning any trilogy or tetralogy of Sophocles, while they 
 frequently mention them in Euripides, and speak of the practice as still 
 subsisting. The satyric dramas of Sophocles, which can hardly have been 
 acted by themselves, seem, however, to prove that Sophocles brought out 
 several plays together, though he is always reported to have conquered 
 with one. We have not sufficient evidence to solve this puzzle. 
 
 2 Here is the text of this much disputed passage : ttxrirep yap 6 2. eAeye, 
 rbi> Pd(f)(v\ov 8(a7r6irai^<i)S oyKOf, e7ra rb irtKpbv *cai KaraTf^vov Trjs avrov 
 KaraffKfvris, rpirov tfSri rb Trjs Ae'|eais fi.fra.fid.\\fiv [/teTaAa/Setj/] eTSos, '6irtp 
 effrlv ridiKcararov Kal fie\TKrrov. The word Siaireiroix^s troubles the critics, 
 who suggest 5(O7reirA.aKcos, 5<eMrerrA.ixcos, and St
 
 92 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvi. 
 
 change of style was most probably caused by the rivalry of 
 Euripides ? For there is in the earlier plays a great deal of 
 that affected ingenuity of diction, which Thucydides describes 
 (in the mouth of Cleon) as the fashion of those days at Athens. 
 Prose writing had sprung up, political speeches were becoming 
 frequent, and the historian paints with curious felicity the re- 
 spective efforts of the speakers and the audience in that too 
 highly tempered generation the one to astonish by some new 
 and unexpected point ; the other to outrun the speaker, and 
 anticipate the surprise. Thus Sophocles, like the speakers in 
 Thucydides, displays his subtlety to his hearers, and often 
 when his expression seems at first sight easy, a further reflection 
 discloses unobserved difficulties and new depths of meaning. 
 In this I would compare him to his greatest Roman imitator, 
 Vergil, who, under an Apparent smoothness of style, hides great 
 difficulties, and often new and unsuspected meanings. 1 But 
 the easy and transparent writing of Euripides must have im- 
 pressed his generous rival, and hence we may reckon this to be 
 one of the points in which Sophocles improved by contact with 
 his great successor in art. Nor was the influence limited to 
 mere style. The scholiast at the close of the Orestes, in com- 
 menting on the melodramatic 2 endings of the Alcestis and 
 Orestes, notes that the Tyro of Sophocles ended with a happy 
 recognition scene. 
 
 195. The contrast between the poets is said (in Aristotle's 
 Poetic) to have been expressed by Sophocles in the famous words, 
 ' that he had painted men as they ought to be, Euripides as they 
 were.' After many years' study of both poets, and after a careful 
 reading of all the expositions of this passage, and proofs of it, 
 offered by the critics, I am unable to change my deliberate 
 opinion that, if Sophocles intended to say this, it is not true. 
 There is no kind of heroism in Sophocles to which we 
 
 1 This is the description of Vergil's style which I have often heard from 
 the lips of the late Dr. James Henry, who knew more than all the rest of 
 the world put together about Vergil. He used to say that the obvious 
 meaning was very frequently the wrong meaning in Vergil, and could be 
 proved so. 
 
 2 He calls them comic, by which he of course means like the new 
 comedy.
 
 CH. xvi. HIS RELATION TO EURIPIDES. 93 
 
 cannot find adequate parallels in Euripides ; there are no 
 human weaknesses or meannesses in Euripides which we 
 cannot fairly parallel in the scanty remains of Sophocles, and 
 which would not, in all probability, be amply paralleled 
 had we larger means of comparison. The chorus, which in 
 ^Eschylus was a stirring actor in the progress of the play, 
 was not by Euripides, but by Sophocles first degraded to be 
 a mere spectator of the action sometimes an accomplice, 
 sometimes a mere selfish, sometimes an irrelevant, observer. 
 Rags and lamentations are not monopolised by Euripides, 
 neither are dishonesty and meanness the apanage of his stage. 
 The wrangling of heroes and heroines is as common in the 
 model poet as in his debased successor. Thus we can hardly 
 defend the statement even if we interpret it, as Welcker does, 
 to mean this : that Sophocles represented men as a tragic poet 
 ought to represent them, Euripides as they were. It is a far 
 more probable and modest translation, yet even here we 
 are not borne out by the facts. But there is in any case 
 one point of real importance in the remark. It implies the 
 essential truth that Sophocles, like Euripides, made the charac- 
 ters and passions of men his object, and did not dwell upon the 
 Divine or supernatural element in the moral order of the 
 world. As Socrates brought down philosophy, so Sophocles 
 brought down tragic poetry from heaven to dwell upon earth. 
 The gods are thrown into the background, and are there 
 merely to account for moral difficulties, and justify cruelties 
 which human reason cannot but resent In his latest play (the 
 Philoctetes), the Deus ex machina actually comes in to reverse 
 the result, and undo all that has been so laboriously worked 
 out by human passion and human resolve. There is here 
 already a great gulf separating us from ^Eschylus a difference 
 in kind ; we can pass over to Euripides easily, and by an ill- 
 defined boundary. 
 
 196. Nevertheless, ancient and modern critics have agreed 
 to place Sophocles first among the Attic tragedians. Though 
 an inferior poet to ^Eschylus, and an inferior philosopher to 
 either, Sophocles may be regarded a more perfect artist It 
 is for this reason that he was so perpetually imitated by the
 
 94 HTSTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvi. 
 
 Romans and the French, while among our deeper poets both 
 ^Eschylus and Euripides have maintained a greater influence. 
 For as an artist, as a perfect exponent of that intensely Attic 
 development which in architecture tempered Doric strength 
 with Ionic sweetness, which in sculpture passed from archaic 
 stiffness to majestic action, which in all the arts found the 
 mean between antique repose and modern vividness, as the 
 poet of Athens, in the heyday of Athens, Sophocles stands 
 without an equal. His plots are more ethical than those of 
 Euripides, his scepticism is more reverent or reticent, his 
 religion more orthodox. He does not disturb his hearers with 
 suggestions of modern doubts and difficulties. He is essentially 
 ti/voXoe, as Aristophanes calls him, without angles or contra- 
 dictions. And thus he is wisely set aside by the comic critic 
 in the great controversy between the old and the new, for he 
 belonged to the new, and yet had not broken with the old. I 
 will only add that his greatness has been enhanced by the pre- 
 servation of only a few, and those his greatest, works. Had we 
 eight or ten additional plays, of the quality of the TrachinicR 
 for the poet was known to be unequal in power the compari- 
 sons with Euripides, who has survived in his weakness as well 
 as his strength, might possibly have been more just and a little 
 less foolish. 
 
 197. Bibliographical. The recension of the text of our ex- 
 tant plays depends altogether on the Medicean codex, already 
 mentioned in connection with JEschylus. Venetian MSS. sup- 
 plied the Editio princeps of Aldus (Venice, 1502), a beautiful 
 little book, and not uncommon in good libraries. Three of the 
 plays, the Ajax, Electra, and (Edipus 2yrannus, were much 
 more studied than the rest, and exist in many MSS., which are, 
 however, not so pure, and have been corrupted in the Byzantine 
 age. From this inferior text came all the editions from Turne- 
 bus (1533) to Brunck (1786), who first recognised the superior 
 value of the Parisinus A, but the Medicean L is preferred since 
 Elmsley's day. 1 In the present century the three editions of 
 G. Hermann (1817-48), those of Wunder, of G. Dindorf, of 
 Schneidewin and Nauck, of Bergk, are best known. Wecklein's 
 1 It has been photographed by the enterprise of the Hellenic Society.
 
 CH. xvi. EDITIONS AND TRANSLATIONS. 95 
 
 school editions are the newest, as well as (Edipus Col. 
 Bellerman (Teubner, 1883). We have besides English editions 
 by Linwood, Blaydes, Campbell, and of some plays in the 
 Catena Classicorum published at Cambridge. An elaborate 
 and valuable prose translation, with Greek text and notes, by 
 Professor R. C. Jebb, is now in process of publication. On 
 the whole, the text is not so corrupt as that of the other dra- 
 matists, although, apart from the Byzantine corruptions, the 
 German critics have noted many lines which they suppose due 
 to early stage traditions, nay even some of them to the family 
 of Sophocles. It is obvious that when we throw back interpola- 
 tions to such an age, their discovery depends altogether on sub- 
 jective taste, and need not detain us here. The reader will find 
 these suspected lines printed at the foot of Dindorf's text in 
 his Poettf scenici and elsewhere. 
 
 There is a good deal of sound ancient learning preserved to 
 us in the prefaces and scholia, first published by Lascaris at 
 Rome (1518) without the text, then by Junta at Florence in 
 1544, and then several times before the edition of Stephanus 
 in 1568. The best of the notes came from what are called the 
 {/TTo^rjjjucmora/, who certainly as early as the Alexandrian 
 period wrote on the text, and collected the Didascalia as to the 
 performances. Aristophanes is known to have paid attention 
 to Sophocles. Aristarchus is also named, but Didymus seems 
 the chief source of the extant scholia. Those on the CEdipus 
 at Colonus are particularly full. There is a good edition of 
 the scholia by Elmsley and Gaisford in 1826, and several 
 special lexicons of Sophocles' language, of which the best are 
 those of F. Ellendt, and of G. Dindorf : the latter was prose- 
 cuted by Ellendt's representatives, and the edition suppressed, 
 so that copies of this most valuable book are now scarce. Of 
 complete translations the most celebrated among the many 
 German is that of Donner ; other scholars, like Scholl and 
 Bockh, have done single plays. The French, besides the 
 imitations above cited under the separate plays, have the Theatre 
 of Brumoy, and Villemain mentions with praise a literal ver- 
 sion of Sophocles by Malezieux. In English we have Potter 
 (1788), and in our own day Dale, whose book is now very
 
 96 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvi. 
 
 rarely to be found ; also Mr. Plumptre's version a meri- 
 torious work and recently Professor Campbell's complete 
 volume, as well as Mr. Whitelaw's (1883), a work of rare 
 excellence. Special studies on Sophocles, both generally and 
 on particular plays, are endless in Germany. Welcker's is of 
 course the most exhaustive ; Klein's, inaccurate and capricious, 
 but very suggestive ; Bernhardy's, simply laudatory and full of 
 empty wordiness in criticism, together with deep and accurate 
 learning as to facts. Our great living poets, who are accom- 
 plished Grecians, have, so far as I know, said nothing of con- 
 sequence on Sophocles. 1 
 
 1 Professor Campbell's monograph now supplies the English reader 
 with a detailed and most enthusiastic estimate of the poet's genius and of 
 his extant plays. It will be observed that none of the points in which I 
 have suggested imperfections are adopted by Mr. Campbell, and that the 
 poet is everywhere vindicated from any attempt (I will not say at adverse, 
 but even) at depreciative criticism. Though I deeply respect this large- 
 hearted enthusiasm, it does not appear to me the only way of stimulating 
 the study of any writer ; and hence I do not regret that the views set forth 
 in the previous chapter were written and printed before I had the advan- 
 tage of being influenced by the elaborate analysis of so competent a 
 scholar. I will not attempt to criticise his work, which differs from mine 
 mainly in this contrast of spirit, and no doubt in the greater elegance of its 
 language, but will only add that there are many facts in the history of the 
 poet and his works which may be learned from the present chapter even 
 after the perusal of his more detailed work.
 
 CH. XVII. 
 
 97 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 198. EURIPIDES was born in the year of the battle of Salamis 
 (480 B.C.) nay, according to the legends, on the very day of 
 the battle (2oth of Boedromion) and apparently on the island, 
 whither his parents had fled, with other Athenians, for refuge. 
 He is said to have afterwards had a fancy for this island, and to 
 have composed his tragedies there in a retired spot, within view 
 of the sea, from which he borrows so many striking metaphors. 
 His father, Mnesarchus or Mnesarchides, is said to have for- 
 merly lived in Boeotia, but most probably as a foreigner, and 
 afterwards in the Attic deme of Phlyi'a, according to Suidas. 
 Some of the Lives say he was a petty trader^ but this is incon- 
 sistent with his son's apparent wealth and literary leisure, and 
 would hardly have been passed over in silence by Aristo- 
 phanes. The mother's name was Kleito, and she was perpe- 
 tually ridiculed by the comic poets as an herb-seller. The 
 story is most probably false, and rests upon some acci- 
 dental coincidence of name, or some anecdote which gave 
 contemporaries a sufficient handle for their joke, though it 
 is lost to us. The youthful poet is said to have been trained 
 with some success for athletic contests by his father, and 
 perhaps to this we may ascribe the strong contempt and 
 aversion with which he speaks of that profession. There 
 were, moreover, pictures shown at Megara, which were ascribed 
 to him, so that he evidently had the reputation of a man of 
 varied culture. But he abandoned his earlier pursuits, whatever 
 they may have been, for the study of philosophy under Anaxa- 
 goras, probably also Protagoras, and possibly Prodicus, and in 
 mature life seems to have stood in close contact to Socrates. 
 He was essentially a student, and such a collector of books 
 that his library was famous, but he took no part in public 
 
 VOL. i. 2 H
 
 98 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERA TURK. CH, xvil. 
 
 affairs. 1 But he began at the age of twenty-five to compete in 
 tragedy (with his Pcliades), and continued all his life a prolific 
 and popular, though not a successful poet. He was known to 
 have won the first prize only five times, 2 though he may have 
 written ninety tragedies, and, even if we hold him always to have 
 contended with tetralogies (or trilogies followed by a satyric or 
 melodrama), must have contended over twenty times. He was 
 twice married, and unfortunately: first to Choerile, who was 
 mother of his three sons, Mnesarchides, a merchant; Mnesilo- 
 chus, an actor ; and the younger Euripides, who wrote dramas, 
 and brought out some of his father's posthumous works, such as 
 the Iphigenia in Aulis, and Bacchce. The comic poets do not 
 scruple to reflect upon the unfaithfulness of his wives, and 
 deduce from it his alleged hatred of women. Late in life he 
 removed to the court of Archelaus of Macedon, where he was 
 received with great honour, and wrote some plays (especially 
 the Archelaus and BacchoB) on the local legends. He appears to 
 have died there at the age of seventy-four, having been attacked 
 and torn by sporting-dogs, which were set upon him maliciously. 
 He was honoured with a pompous tomb in Macedonia, and a 
 cenotaph at Athens, on which the historian Thucydides is said 
 to have inscribed an epitaph. 3 
 
 1 His moral portrait cannot be better expressed than in the words in 
 which he may possibly have meant to describe his own aspirations : 
 
 fjirir' is aS'iKovs Trpafsis 6p/j.wif, 
 a\\' aOavaTov KaOopwv fyvaecos 
 Kofffiov ayriptav, ITTJ re ffvvfffTij 
 
 Kal "nrri Kal oirtas. 
 rots 5e roiovrois ouSeiror' alffxp&v 
 (pytav (if\erri/j.a irpoffi(i (fr. 902). 
 
 1 Cf. the learned and interesting note in Meineke's Comic Fragments, 
 ii. p. 904, on the small number of victories gained by the greatest poets, 
 and the frequent preferment of obscure names. It was not unfrequent, as he 
 notes in the text, for .great poets to be even refused a chorus by the 
 f.rchon, a slight of which both Sophocles and Cratinus had to complain. 
 1 nvfifna nti> 'EAAos airao' EvpnriSou, 6<rrfa 5* tffX* 1 
 
 yri MaKfScov rp yap Se'faro rep/j.a fiiov. 
 irarpls 5' 'EAAiiSos 'EAAos, 'A.Orjva.1. Tt\eiara 5* Moixras 
 rtpyas (K TroAAciv KOI rbv fvaiyov X {< -
 
 CH. xvn. HIS PERSONAL CHARACTER. 99 
 
 The aged Sophocles is said to have shown deep sorrow at the 
 death of his rival, in this contrasting strongly with Aristophanes, 
 who chose the next performance for his bitterest and most 
 unsparing onslaught upon him (in the Frogs). The poet is de- 
 scribed, upon not the highest authority, to have been of gloomy 
 and morose temper, hating conviviality and laughter. There is 
 no Greek author whose portrait is so distinctive and familiar 
 in museums of ancient art The sitting statue in the Louvre, and 
 two busts at Naples, probably copied from the statue set up by 
 Lycurgus in the theatre at Athens, are the most striking. The 
 face is that of an eMerly and very thoughtful man, with noble 
 features, and of great beauty, but not without an expression of 
 patience and of sorrow such as beseems him who has been 
 well called der Prophet des Weltschmerzes. As we should expect, 
 the face is not essentially Greek, but of a type to be found 
 among thoughtful men of our own day. His social position 
 and comfortable means are proved not only by his possession of 
 a valuable library, but by his holding one or two priestly offices, 
 which were probably rich sinecures, and would in no case have 
 been intrusted to a man of mean origin or low consideration. 
 
 As regards the possible ninety-two dramas written by the 
 poet, the ancients seem to have known seventy-five, of which 
 the names, now partly erased, were engraved on the pedestal of 
 the extant sitting statue. We possess about one fifth of the 
 number, viz. seventeen tragedies and one satyric drama, 
 excluding the Rhesus, as of very doubtful authorship. This 
 large legacy of time, if we compare the scanty remains of 
 ^Eschylus and Sophocles, does not seem to comprehend any 
 choice selection of his chefs d'oeuvre, but a mere average collec- 
 tion, of which our estimate is probably lower than that we 
 should have formed, had fewer plays, and the best, survived. 
 The dates of some of them are fixed by the didascaliae, and of 
 others (partly at least) by the allusions in Aristophanes' plays. 
 The usual d priori argument, which infers from laxity of metre or 
 style either crudity or decadence of genius, fails signally in the 
 case of Euripides, for his latest plays which are known are far 
 stricter in form than others preserved from preceding years, 
 
 such as the Helena. 
 
 H 2
 
 I00 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, CH. xvn. 
 
 199. Innumerable attempts have been made to gather from 
 his writings an estimate of his politics, of his social views, and of 
 his religion. But although the ancients have led the way in 
 this course, and have everywhere assumed that the philosophic 
 utterances of the poet's characters were meant to convey his 
 own sentiments, such an inference must be very dangerous in 
 the case of a thoroughly dramatic poet, and especially a dra- 
 matic poet who paints upon his stage the violence of human 
 passion. There is indeed an anecdote of little authority, but of 
 great aptness, preserved, in which we are told that the audience 
 cried out against the immorality of the praise of wealth above 
 virtue, but that the poet himself came forward and bid them 
 wait to see the punishment of the character who uttered it. 1 
 Thus, again, had the famous line, ' my tongue has sworn, but my 
 heart is free/ which Cicero and others quote with reprobation 
 from the Hippolytus, been preserved as a mere fragment, we 
 could not have known that this very speaker actually loses his 
 life rather than break his oath. It is therefore an inquiry of 
 great interest, but of greater uncertainty, to reconstruct this 
 poet's mind from the words of his characters, and with this 
 caution I refer the reader to the special tracts of Liibker, 
 Haupt, Goebel, and others, as well as to the fuller work of 
 Hartung. A great many more books are also indicated in 
 the exhaustive discussion of Bernhardy. 2 As a general rule, I 
 should be disposed to lay down this axiom, that the poet's own 
 views are likely to be found either (a) in the soliloquies of his 
 characters, where they may be imagined turning to the audi- 
 ence, or (/3) in theyfrj/ strophe and antistrophe of his choruses, 
 which usually express general sentiments, before passing into the 
 special subject of the play in the second strophe. I have else- 
 where 3 remarked on this feature in Euripides. But of course 
 the actors may have had some conventional sign for express- 
 ing elsewhere the poet's thoughts, which made them clear to 
 the audience, but which we have now irreparably lost. 
 
 As to his works I will here follow, with a few exceptions, the 
 order critically determined by W. Dindorf, noting its uncer- 
 
 1 Cf. Plutarch, cited on the passage of the Ixion. 
 
 * Vol. iii. 119. Social Greece, p. 197.
 
 CH. xvn. THE ALCESTIS. 
 
 lor 
 
 tainties as we proceed. The vexed question not merely of 
 the poet's merits, but of his own views of his mission, and the 
 consequent intention of his writing, will be discussed when our 
 survey has been completed. 
 
 200. The Alcestis is the earliest play which has survived, 
 if it was performed as the last play, along with the Kpi/Tircif, 
 'AXkfj.cu.wv o ta ^wiplcoe, and T/yXe^oe, in Ol. 85, 2 (438 B.C.). 
 But as the same prefatory note calls it his sixteenth work, there 
 may be something wrong in the figures, for he probably com- 
 posed more tragedies before that date. The poet obtained the 
 second prize, Sophocles being placed first. The Telephus seems 
 to have struck the fancy of the age, for its ragged hero, who 
 suffered from an incurable and agonising wound, like Sophocles' 
 Philoctetes, is often ridiculed by Aristophanes. But to us the 
 Alcestis is a curious and almost unique example of a great 
 novelty attempted by Euripides ' a novelty which Shaks- 
 peare has sanctioned by his genius I mean the mixture of 
 comic and vulgar elements with real tragic pathos, by way 
 of contrast. The play before us is not indeed strictly a 
 tragedy, but a melodrama, with a happy conclusion, and was 
 noted as such by the old critics, who called the play rather 
 comic, that is to say, like the new comedies in this respect. 
 The intention of the poet seems to have been to calm the 
 minds of the audience agitated by great sorrows, and to tone 
 them by an afterpiece of a higher and more refined character 
 than the satyric dramas, which were coarse and generally ob- 
 scene. But while no great world-conflict is represented, while no 
 mighty moral problem is held in solution, there are a series of 
 deep and practical moral lessons conveyed by the exquisite 
 character-painting of the play. The first scene is between 
 Apollo, who is peculiarly attached to the house of Admetus, 
 and Death, who has arrived to take away the mistress of the 
 nouse, for she alone has consented to die for her husband. 
 There is something comic in the very prologue, which describes 
 how Admetus, ' having tested and gone through all his friends, 
 
 1 For this purpose he seems to have adopted and glorified by his 
 refined art a subject treated in a burlesque way, as a satyric drama, by his 
 predecessor Phrynichus. This, at least, is the clever suggestion of 
 Wilamowitz in his Herakles, i. 92.
 
 102 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvn. 
 
 his aged father and the mother who bore him,' can find no one 
 else to volunteer to die for the mere purpose of saving his life. 
 The short dialogue between Apollo and Death is, however, very 
 striking and justly admired. Then enter the chorus in sus- 
 pense, and expecting hourly the death of Alcestis, but they are 
 more minutely informed in the matchless narrative of a waiting 
 maid, who describes how Alcestis bade farewell to all her happi- 
 ness, her home, her children, her servants, and calmly, though 
 not without poignant regrets, faced death from pure self-denial 
 for the sake of her husband. She is presently led in by him, 
 and in a most affecting dialogue gives him her parting direc- 
 tions, prays him not to replace her in his affections by a second 
 wife, and apparently dies upon the stage a most exceptional 
 thing in Greek drama amid the tearful outcries of her infant 
 son and her husband. There is no female character in either 
 ./Eschylus or Sophocles which is so great and noble, and at 
 the same time so purely tender and womanly. 
 
 The effect is heightened by the contrast of Admetus, whose 
 selfishness would be quite grotesque were it not Greek. After 
 going the round of all his friends in search of a substitute, he 
 deeply resents the gross selfishness of his parents, whose 
 advanced age made it ridiculous, in his opinion, that they should 
 not sacrifice themselves for his comfort. He complains bitterly 
 of his dreadful lot in losing so excellent a wife, but here again 
 evidently on selfish grounds, and vows eternal hatred to and 
 separation from his father, who comes with gifts for the dead, 
 and defends himself against his son's attack by protesting his 
 own equal love of life, and that it was no Greek fashion to 
 sacrifice the parent for his child. This is the only feature of the 
 play which modern critics have been able to reprehend, and 
 they have done so with some unanimity, whether they regard the 
 play as one of the worst of Euripides, like Scholl, or as one of the 
 best, like Klein and Patin. It seems to me that they have totally 
 missed Euripides' point, and the most profound in the play, by 
 this criticism. The poet does not conceive the sacrifice of 
 Alcestis, as the speaker in Plato's Symposium (179 B) does, to 
 be a sacrifice of one lover for another an aspect sure to pre- 
 dominate in all the modern versions. It is not for the love of
 
 CH. xvii. CHARACTER OF ADMETUS, I0 3 
 
 Admetus that she dies. She represents that peculiar female 
 heroism, which makes affection the highest duty, but obeys the 
 demands of affection in the form of family ties, as the dictates 
 of the highest moral law. We see these, the heroines of common 
 life, around us in all classes of society. But I venture to assert 
 that in no case does this heroic devoiion of self-sacrifice come 
 out into such really splendid relief, as when it is made for selfish 
 and worthless people. It is therefore a profound psychological 
 point to represent Admetus a weak and selfish man, blessed, as 
 worthless men often are, by special favours of fortune in wealth 
 and domestic happiness, and very ready to perform the ordinary 
 duties of good fellowship, such as hospitality, but wholly un- 
 equal to any real sacrifice. It is for such an one that Alcestis 
 dies in fact, she dies not for Admetus, but/0r her husband and 
 children's sake, and would have done so had she been given in 
 marriage to any other like person. This is the true meaning of 
 those disagreeable but profoundly natural scenes, which shocked 
 those advocates of rhodomontade in tragedy who make Admetus 
 vie with his wife in heroism. If M. Patin holds that such senti- 
 ments, though natural, are concealed within the breast, and 
 never confessed, he forgets that Euripides wrote in a vastly more 
 outspoken society than ours. 
 
 This curious and very comic dialogue is, however, interrupted 
 by the entrance of Heracles, who comes on his journey to 
 visit his guest friend, and is received with the truest hospitality 
 by Admetus, who conceals his misfortune, in order to make his 
 friend at home. As M. Patin observes, the height of pathos 
 already attained would be impossible to sustain, and therefore 
 the tone of the play is most skilfully changed. 1 The rollicking 
 and convivial turn of Heracles is in sharp discord with the 
 
 1 The contrast of grief and of mirth, brought out by this scene, which 
 greatly disgusted Voltaire, and is totally opposed to French notions of 
 tragic dignity, has been by later French critics compared with the musi- 
 cians' scene near the end of Romeo and Jtiliet. It is remarkable that 
 Milton's preface to the Samson Agonistes, which adopts the tone of the 
 French drama (I suppose quite independently), specially censures the in- 
 troduction of low comic characters in tragedy, and sets up the great Greek 
 tragedies as the proper models, apparently in opposition to Shakspeare's 
 school.
 
 104 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvir. 
 
 profound grief of the household, and no one is more pained 
 by it than the worthy hero himself, who with true practical 
 energy sets about at once to rescue Alcestis from death, and 
 so requite his friend for his kindness. The character of Heracles 
 is not inferior in drawing to any of the rest, and every fair critic 
 will be justly astonished at this profound and curious antici- 
 pation of many strong points in the modern drama. The chorus 
 is throughout a sympathetic spectator of the action, and the 
 choral odes are not only highly poetical and elegantly con- 
 structed, but all strictly to the point. Thus even in the ode 
 which is supposed to express the poet's mind, 1 the learning 
 alluded to by the chorus is that Thracian learning which was 
 naturally accessible to Thessalians. The usual attacks on Euri- 
 pides' lyrics have therefore no place here. 
 
 20 1. There is a strange external resemblance between the 
 concluding scene and that of the Winter's Tale, which has not 
 escaped the commentators. No subject has proved more attrac- 
 tive than this beautiful legend, and yet no one has ever ap- 
 proached in excellence its treatment by Euripides. There is an 
 old Indian parallel in the Mahabharata, where Savitri, like 
 Alcestis, rescues from the power of Yama, the Lord of the nether 
 world, her husband's life. Euripides' play was parodied by Anti- 
 phanes in a comedy brought out in the io6th Olympiad. There 
 were two Latin versions, one by Attius, and another of doubtful 
 authorship. Buchanan produced a Latin translation in 1543, 
 which was acted by the pupils of the College de Bordeaux. It is 
 not worth while specifying the series of travesties or modifica- 
 tions which occupied the French stage from 1600 to the end of 
 the last century. Racine, it may be observed, turns aside in 
 the Preface to his Iphigenie to defend it against the shallow 
 criticism of his day. Gluck's famous music has perpetuated 
 through Europe a very poor Italian libretto by Calzabigi in 
 1776. But in 1798 Alfieri, who had abandoned writing, was 
 so struck with the play, which he then learnt to know in the 
 original, that he not only translated it, but wrote an Alcestis of 
 his own, which was published after his death. As usual, he has 
 
 1 vv. 962, sq. : fya> 5ia MotWj 
 
 Kal ufrdpffios pa K.r.\.
 
 CH. xvn. THE MEDEA. 105 
 
 made all the characters great stage heroes at the sacrifice 
 not only of nature but of all real interest. Like the French 
 imitators, he makes Admetus, and even Pheres, heroes, and 
 creates a romantic ground of natural love and respect for the 
 sacrifice of Alcestis, and for a competition between husband and 
 wife, which completely spoils Euripides' deep and subtle plan. 
 Translations and moderately faithful imitations were produced 
 on the Paris stage in 1844 and 1847 ; others have been since 
 published in France. Among English poets Milton has alluded 
 to the legend in his 23rd sonnet, 
 
 Methought I saw my late espoused saint 
 Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave ; 
 
 and recently Mr. Wm. Morris has given a beautiful and original 
 version, not at all Euripidean, in the first volume of his Earthly 
 Paradise. There is a good translation by Banks (1849). By far 
 the best translation is Mr. Browning's, in his Balaustioris Adven- 
 ture, but it is much to be regretted that he did not render the 
 choral odes into lyric verse. No one has more thoroughly 
 appreciated the mean features of Admetus and Pheres, and 
 their dramatic propriety. A tolerably faithful transcript, adapted 
 for the lyrical stage by Frank Murray (from Potter's version), 
 was set to music by Henry Gadsby, on the model of Mendels- 
 sohn's Antigone, which seems likely to inspire a good many 
 imitations. There are excellent special editions by Monk and 
 G. Hermann, as well as a recension by G. Dindorf. 
 
 202. The Medea came out in 431 B.C. along with the 
 poet's Philoctetes, Dictys, and the satyric Reapers (the last was 
 early lost). It was based upon a play of Neophron's, and only 
 obtained the third prize, Euphorion being first, and Sophocles 
 second. It may accordingly be regarded as a failure in its 
 day an opinion apparently confirmed by the faults (viz. ^Egeus 
 and the winged chariot) selected from it as specimens in Aris- 
 totle's Poetic. There is considerable evidence of there being a 
 second edition of the play, and many of the variants, or so- 
 called interpolations, seem to arise from both versions being 
 preserved and confused. Nevertheless there was no play of 
 Euripides more praised and imitated by both Romans and
 
 io6 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvn. 
 
 moderns. It is too well known to demand any close analysis 
 here. The whole interest turns upon the delineation of the 
 furious passion of Medea, and her devices to punish those who 
 have offended her. The other characters, with the exception 
 of the two aged and faithful servants, who admirably introduce 
 the action, are either mean or colourless. lason is a sort of 
 JEnesiS, who endeavours to justify his desertion of his wife by 
 specious falsehoods, and is not even, like the hero of Virgil, in- 
 cited by the voice of the gods. His grief for his children is 
 considered by some critics to atone for these grave defects. 
 The rest are not worth mentioning, if we except the chorus of 
 Corinthian women, which in this play justifies the censure of the 
 critics, inasmuch as it coolly admits the confidences of Medea 
 and hears fearful plots against the king and the princess of the 
 land, without offering any resistance. It remonstrates but feebly 
 even with her proposed murder of her children. The most 
 celebrated chorus, which is a beautiful eulogy upon Athens, 
 is merely suggested by the accident that ^Egeus, its king, 
 is about to harbour a sorceress and a wholesale murderess, 
 even of her own family. Yet the passage, though quite irrele- 
 vant, is very famous. 1 The whole episode of^Egeus, who is 
 introduced in order that the omnipotent sorceress, with her 
 winged chariot, may not be cast out without a refuge, has been 
 justly censured in the Poetic and elsewhere as a means not 
 required, and as an otiose excrescence to the play, not without 
 offensive details. 2 Nevertheless the vehement and command- 
 ing figure of the heroine has fascinated the great majority of 
 critics, who, like every public, seem to miss finer points, and 
 appreciate only the strong lines, and the prominent features of 
 violent and unnatural passion. 
 
 M. Patin 3 draws a most interesting comparison with the Tra- 
 
 1 w. 824^45. 
 
 2 If Medea, as some critics suppose, and as the chorus appears to 
 assume (v. 1385), really offers herself in marriage to the childless ^Egeus 
 in this scene, I can hardly conceive Aristophanes passing over such a 
 feature. According to the legend, she did live with him, and bore him a 
 son called Medus. She seems to have appeared as his wife in Euripides' 
 tragedy of yEgeus, in which she endeavours to poison Theseus. 
 
 1 Euripide, i. p. 118.
 
 CH. XVIT. MEDEA'S IRRESOLUTION. 107 
 
 chinicz of Sophocles, which certainly bears some relation of con- 
 scious contrast to the Medea, but unfortunately we do not know 
 which of the two plays was the earlier, and therefore which of 
 the poets meant to criticise or improve upon the other. I ven- 
 ture to suppose that Sophocles desired to paint a far more 
 natural and womanly picture of the sufferings of a deserted 
 wife, who, without the power and wickedness of Medea, still 
 destroys her deceiver, and brings ruin on herself, in spite of her 
 patience and long-suffering. The coincidence of the two plays, 
 the foreign residence of both heroines, the poisoned robe, the 
 pretended contentment of both to attain their ends, is very 
 striking. But the Trachinitz, in my opinion the finer play, has 
 made no mark in the world compared to the Medea, whose 
 fierce fury has always been strangely admired. 
 
 The Greek critics even went so far as to censure what we 
 should call the only great and affecting feature of the play 
 the irresolution and tears of the murderess, 1 when she has re- 
 solved to sacrifice her innocent children for the mere purpose 
 of torturing her faithless husband. This criticism is apparently 
 quoted in the Greek argument as the opinion of Dicsearchus 
 and of Aristotle. Surely it may be affirmed, that if this feature 
 caused the failure of the piece, we may indeed thank Euripides 
 for having violated his audience's notions of consistency. The 
 scene of irresolution and of alternation between jealous fury 
 and human pity must always have been, as it now is, a capital 
 occasion for a great display of genius in the actor or actress of 
 the part, and this is doubtless the real cause of the permanent 
 hold the piece has taken upon the world. I may also call 
 attention to the great speech of Medea to lason, 2 which argues 
 indeed the very strongest case, but is nevertheless, especially 
 at its conclusion, an admirable piece of rhetoric. 
 
 203. We actually hear of six Greek Medeas, besides the early 
 play of Neophron, 3 not to speak of the comic parodies. Ennius 
 
 1 vv. 1021, sq. * vv. 465, sq. 
 
 3 The text of the inr60tffts to our Medea, which mentions this play, 
 being corrupt, some critics have thought that the play of Neophron, from 
 which Stobaeus cites the monologue of Medea, was an imitation by a poet 
 of the date of Alexander. I do not think the author of the argument can 
 possibly have meant this, however the words are taken.
 
 io8 HISTORY OF GREEK L1TERA TURE. CH. xvn. 
 
 imitated the play of Euripides, 1 and both Cicero and Brutus 
 are said to have been reading it or citing it in their last 
 moments no mean distinction for any tragedy. The opening 
 line? are very often cited in an elegant version by Phaedrus. 
 Horace too alludes to it, and Ovid's earliest work was a 
 Medea, which was acted on the Roman stage with applause, 
 when the author, years after, was in exile. It is praised by 
 Tacitus and Quintilian, and does not seem to have been a mere 
 translation from Euripides. There remains to us, unfortunately, 
 a Medea among the works of Seneca, who could not refrain 
 from handling a subject so congenial to Roman tastes. But in 
 this play the magic powers of the sorceress are the great 
 feature, the age having turned from an effete polytheism to the 
 gloomy horrors of magic and witchcraft. The fury of the mur- 
 deress is exaggerated even beyond the picture of Euripides, 
 and the whole play glitters with the false tinsel of artificial 
 rhetoric. Buchanan gave a Latin version of the play, and 
 Dolce an Italian, but Pe'rouse followed Seneca in his French 
 play (1553), as did Corneille (1635), and Longepierre (1694). 
 These poor imitations dilated on the amours of lason, and re- 
 presented Creon and his daughter in a sort of auto dafe on the 
 stage ; but Voltaire, in criticising them and Seneca's Medea, 
 thinks fit to include the Greek play, which, as M. Patin ob- 
 serves, he seems not to have read. There was an English ver- 
 sion by Glover in 1761, which humanises and christianises both 
 lason and Medea, and makes her crime the result of a delirious 
 moment. Grillparzer's trilogy (the Golden fleece] in its last play 
 likewise softens the terrible sorceress, and drives her to the crime 
 by the heartlessness of her children, who will not return to her 
 from the amiable Creusa, when the latter desires to surrender 
 them. The same features mark the Medeas of Niccolini, of 
 Lucas, brought out in Paris in 1855, and of Ernest Legouve', 
 
 1 Cicero speaks of it as a literal translation from the Greek, but this is 
 not verified by the fragments, which both in this and the other Ennian 
 imitations cannot be found in our Greek originals. This variation from 
 the models is too persistent to be accounted for by first editions, or by 
 emended copies of the Greek plays used by Ennuis, and must be taken as 
 conclusive evidence that his versions were free renderings, paraphrasing the 
 Bense, and changing the metres, as we can show from extant fragments.
 
 CH. xvn. THE HIPPOLYTUS. 
 
 109 
 
 which in its Italian dress has afforded Mde. Ristori one of her 
 greatest tragic triumphs, and which is still performed in Paris. 
 But the play is no longer the savage and painful play of Euri- 
 pides, and is. I confess, to me not inferior. The opera offers 
 us Hoffmann's elegant version, set to music by Cherubini, and 
 I might add the Norma of Bellini, where the main situation is 
 copied from the Medea, though compassion prevails. The 
 best editions are Kirchhoffs (1852) and Prinz' (1879) for 
 criticism, those of Wecklein (1879) and A. W. Verrall (1881) 
 for exegesis also, the last excellent 
 
 Klinger's modern reproduction is praised by the Germans. 
 The beautiful epic version of Mr. Morris, in the last book of 
 his Life and Death of lason, handles the myth (as is his wont) 
 very freely, and dwells chiefly on the gradual estrangement of 
 lason through the love of Glauce, and the gradual relapse of 
 Medea from the peaceful and happy wife to the furious sorceress. 
 
 204. The Hippolytus (ore^avtac, or crowned, to distinguish 
 it from the earlier KaXvn-To^t'oc, veiled, of which the expla- 
 nation is now lost) appeared three years after the Medea, in 
 428 B.C., and is our earliest example of a romantic subject in 
 the Greek drama, 1 We are told that it obtained the first place 
 against lophon and Ion's competition, but we are not told 
 whether or what other plays accompanied it, nor of the plays 
 it defeated. The earlier version of the play was not only read 
 and admired, but possibly copied in the play of Seneca ; 
 yet it failed at Athens, chiefly, it is thought, because of the 
 boldness with which Phaedra told her love in person to her 
 stepson, and then in person maligned him to his father. In 
 Seneca she uses incantations to the moon, and justifies her 
 guilt by Theseus' infidelities. It is only upon his death that 
 she confesses her guilt and dies. This may have been the plan 
 remodelled in the play before us, and it is a literary fact of no 
 small interest to know that Euripides certainly confessed his 
 earlier failure and strove to improve upon it, with success, while 
 at the same time he allowed the earlier form to be circulated. 
 For it implies both a real desire to please the Athenian audi- 
 ence, and also a certain contempt for their censure, in which 
 the smaller reading public of the day probably supported him. 
 
 1 We have lost ^Eschylus' Myrmidons, perhaps an earlier example.
 
 i io HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvn. 
 
 The delineation of the passion of Phaedra is the great 
 feature of the play, and it is indeed drawn with a master hand. 
 But in one point 1 the modern reader feels shocked or dissatisfied, 
 in her sudden determination, not adequately motived in the 
 play, of involving Hippolytus in her ruin by a bare falsehood, 
 and it is peculiarly Greek that this odious crime should not be 
 held to prevent her dying with honour and good fame (tv^Xirii ). 
 In our day we should be more disposed to pardon unchastity 
 than this deliberate and irremediable lying, nor would any 
 modern poet paint it in a woman of Phaedra's otherwise good 
 and noble character. 
 
 All the advances to Hippolytus, and the inducements to 
 crime, which Phaedra at first honestly and nobly resists, are 
 suggested by her nurse, a feeble and immoral old woman, who 
 perhaps talks too well, but plays a very natural pait. The 
 character of Hippolytus, which is admirably sustained through 
 the play, is cold and harsh, and what we might call offensively 
 holy. It was a character with which no Greek public could 
 feel much sympathy, as asceticism was disliked, and even cen- 
 sured on principle. There is indeed no commonplace more 
 insisted upon all through the tragedies than that the delights of 
 moderate love (as compared with the agonies of extreme pas- 
 sion) are to be enjoyed as the best and most leal pleasure in this 
 mortal life. It is, therefore, from this point of view that the 
 poet, while he rewards Hippolytus' virtue with heroic honours 
 after death, makes him a capital failure in life. The hatred 
 of Aphrodite, who is drawn in the worst and most repulsive 
 colours, seems to express the revenge of nature upon those who 
 violate her decrees. Probably the spite of Aphrodite, as well 
 as the weakness of Artemis, the patron goddess of the hero, 
 is also intended to lower the conception of these deities in 
 the public mind. It is a reductio ad absurdum of Divine 
 Providence, when the most awful misfortunes of men are 
 ascribed to the malice of hostile and the impotence of friendly 
 deities. Some good critics have indeed defended Artemis, and 
 called her a noble character in this play ; but what shall we say 
 of a deity who, when impotent to save her favourite, threatens ' 
 
 1 Aristoph. Apology, p. 26. * v. 1420.
 
 CH. xvii. HIPPOLYTUS* OATH. m 
 
 that she will be avenged by slaying with her arrows some 
 favourite of Aphrodite? This is verily to make mankind 
 the sport of malignant gods. Euripides cannot have given them 
 these miserable parts, without intending to satirise the popular 
 creed, and so to open the way for higher and purer religious 
 conceptions. The chorus is a weak, and sometimes irrele- 
 vant spectator of the action, a necessary consequence, indeed, of 
 its being present during the whole of the action, and, there- 
 fore, not fairly to be censured. One very elegant chorus on 
 the power of Eros l may be compared with the parallel ode in 
 Sophocles' Antigone. There is a chorus of attendants (what was 
 called a irapa-^o^-yriua) which accompanies Hippolytus at the 
 opening, and which is distinct from the proper chorus a rare 
 device in Greek tragedy. Nothing will show more clearly the 
 sort of criticism to which Euripides has been subjected, in ancient 
 and modern times, than the general outcry against a celebrated 
 line uttered by Hippolytus : ' My tongue has sworn, but my 
 mind has taken no oath ' (// y\G>a<i w^w/jo^', >/ cit ^pi^va^w^orot-). 
 He exclaims this in his fury, when the old nurse adjures him by 
 his oath not to betray her wretched mistress. It seems indeed 
 hard that a dramatic poet should be judged by the excited 
 utterances of his characters, but it is worse than hard, it is shame- 
 fully unjust, that the critics should not have read on fifty lines, 
 where the same character Hippolytus, on calmer consideration, 2 
 declares that, were he not bound by the sanctity of his oath, 
 he would certainly inform Theseus. And he dies simply 
 because he will not violate this very oath, stolen from him 
 when off his guard. I doubt whether any criticism, ancient or 
 modern, contains among its myriad injustices, whether of negli- 
 gence, ignorance, or deliberate malice, a more flagrantly absurd 
 accusation. And yet Aristophanes, who leads the way in this 
 sort of falsehood, is still extolled by some as the greatest and 
 deepest exponent of the faults of Euripides. 
 
 yEschylus and Sophocles, as might be expected, did not 
 touch this subject, but Agathon appears to have treated it. 3 
 
 1 vv. 525-64 ; translated for me by Mr. Browning in my monograph 
 on Euripides, p. 116. 
 
 1 v. 657. ' Aristoph. Thesmoph. 153.
 
 H2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvn. 
 
 There was an Hippolytus by Lycophron, and though the older 
 Roman tragedians have left us no trace of a version, the allu- 
 sions of Virgil in the ./Eneid, 1 and the perpetual recurrence 
 of the subject in Ovid, 2 show how well it was known in the 
 golden age of Roman literature. 
 
 The Hippolytus of Seneca, from which the scene of Phaedra's 
 personal declaration to Hippolytus was adopted by Racine 
 in his famous play, is still praised by French critics. It was 
 highly esteemed, and even preferred to the Greek play, in the 
 Renaissance. It was acted in Latin at Rome in 1483, and 
 freely rehandled by Gamier, in a French version, in 1573. 
 The next celebrated French version was that of Gilbert, Queen 
 Christina's French minister in 1646. But his very title, 
 Hippolyte ou le Garfon insensible, sounds strange, and the play 
 is said nevertheless to have admitted a great deal of gallantry 
 in the hero. In 1677 Racine produced his famous Ptiedre, of 
 which the absolute and comparative merits have been discussed 
 in a library of criticism. A hostile clique got up an opposition 
 version by Pradon, and for a moment defeated and disgusted 
 the poet, but the very pains taken by Schlegel, and even by 
 French critics, to sustain Euripides against him, shows the real 
 importance of the piece. For a long time, in the days oi 
 Voltaire and La Harpe, and of the revolt against antiquity, 
 Euripides was utterly scouted in comparison. But now-a-days, 
 when the wigs and the powder, the etiquette and the artifice, of 
 the French court of the seventeenth century can hardly be toler- 
 ated as the decoration for a Greek tragedy, it is rare to find 
 the real merits of Racine admitted, in the face of such tasteless 
 and vulgar anachronism. Yet for all that, Racine's Phedre 
 is a great play, and it is well worth while to read the poet's short 
 and most interesting preface, in which he gives the reasons for 
 his deviations. He grounds the whole merit of his tragedy, as 
 Aristophanes makes ^Eschylus and Euripides argue, not on its 
 poetical features, but on its moral lessons. He has spoilt Hip- 
 polytus by giving him a passion for the princess Aricie, whom 
 Theseus, for state reasons, had forbidden to marry. But this 
 
 1 vii. 761. 
 
 2 Fasti, iii. 266, vi. 733 ; Metam. xv. 492 ; Epist. Her. iv.
 
 CH. xvii. THE ANDROMACHE. 113 
 
 additional cause of Hippolytus' rejection of Phaedra's suit adds 
 the fury of jealousy to her madness, and is the main cause of 
 her false charge against him, thus giving a motive where there 
 is hardly a sufficient one in Euripides. The passage in which 
 she shrinks from the death she is seeking, at the thought ot 
 appearing before her father Minos, the judge of the dead, is 
 very finely conceived ; on the whole, however, she exhibits too 
 much of her passion in personal pleading on the stage, and so 
 fells far behind Euripides' Phaedra in delicacy. 
 
 There was an English Phaedra by Edmund Smith in 1 707, 
 based on both Racine's and Pradon's, and like them full of court 
 intrigues, captains of the household, prime ministers, and the 
 like. There were operas on it attempted by Rameau (1733), 
 and by Lemoine (1786), neither of which is now known. The 
 Greek play was put on the German stage faithfully in 1851, but 
 was found inferior to Racine's for such a performance. There 
 are special editions by Musgrave, Valckenaer, Monk, and lastly 
 by Berthold. 1 We know from the fragments of lost plays, and 
 from the criticisms of Aristophanes, that Euripides chose the 
 painful subject of a great criminal passion for several plays, the 
 Phrixus, Sthenobxa (Bellerophon}, and certainly the Phoznix, 
 built upon the narrative of the aged hero in the ninth book of the 
 Iliad. If we could trust Aristophanes, we might suppose that 
 he was the first to venture on such a subject, but the allusions 
 of the critics to Neophron's Medea, and the traces of similar 
 subjects in the fragments of Sophocles, make it uncertain 
 whether he was the originator, as he certainly was the greatest 
 master, in this very modern department of tragedy. 
 
 205. The AndromacJie need not occupy us long, being 
 one of the worst constructed, and least interesting, plays of 
 Euripides. The date is uncertain, as it was not brought 
 out at Athens, perhaps not till after the poet's death, and is 
 only to be fixed doubtfully by the bitter allusions to Sparta, 
 with which it teems. It has indeed quite the air of a 
 political pamphlet under the guise of a tragedy. It must, 
 
 1 I can recommend a very faithful poetical version by Mr. M. P. Fitz- 
 gerald (London, 1867), in a volume before cited, and entitled Thi Crowned 
 Hippolytus. Another by Miss Robinson has since appeared. 
 
 VOL. I. 2 I
 
 114 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvn. 
 
 therefore, have been composed during the Peloponnesian war, 
 possibly about 419 B.C. 1 The character of Andromache (now 
 the slave and concubine of Neoptolemus), who opens the play 
 as a suppliant telling her tale and mourning her woes in elegiacs 
 (a metre never used elsewhere in our extant tragedies), is well 
 conceived, and the scene in which her child, whom she had 
 hidden, is brought before her by Menelaus, and threatened with 
 instant death if she will not leave the altar, is full of true Euri- 
 pidean pathos. The laments of mother and child, as they are 
 led away to execution, are in the same strain, but are inter- 
 rupted by the surprise of Peleus appearing just in time a rare 
 expedient in Greek tragedy. On the other hand, the characters 
 of the jealous wife Hermione, and her father Menelaus, are 
 violent, mean, and treacherous beyond endurance. They 
 represent the vulgarest tyrants, and are rather fit for Alfieri's 
 stage. All this is intended as a direct censure on Sparta, 
 a feeling in which the poet hardly varied, as Bergk justly ob- 
 serves, though it is seldom so unpleasantly obtruded upon us as 
 in this play. 2 When Andromache and her child are saved, after 
 a long and angry altercation between Peleus and Menelaus, the 
 play, is properly concluded, but is awkwardly expanded by a 
 sort of afterpiece, in which Hermione rushes in, beside herself 
 with fear at what she has dared in the absence of her husband. 
 This emotional and absurd panic opens the way for the appear- 
 ance of Orestes, with whom she at once arranges a manage de 
 convenance^ the most prosaic kind, and flies. Then follows the 
 elaborate narrative of the murder of her former husband Neop- 
 tolemus at Delphi, owing to the plots of Orestes. The lamen- 
 
 1 The choral metres, which are chiefly dactylico-trochaic, instead of the 
 glyconics afterwards in favour, and which Dindorf considers a surer internal 
 mark than general anti-Spartan allusions, point to an earlier date, and 
 agree with the schol. on v. 445, which conjectures the play to have been 
 composed at the opening of the Peloponnesian War. On the other hand, 
 the allusion to this play at the end of the Orestes (vv. 1653, sq.) seems as 
 if its memory were yet fresh, and suggests a later date. 
 
 2 The Helena is an exception (below, p. 129). When Menelaus asserts 
 (vv. 374 and 585) that he will kill Neoptolemus' slaves, because friends 
 should have all their property in common, this seems like a parody on the 
 habits, or supposed habits, of the club life led by the Spartans at home.
 
 CH. xvii. THE HERACLEID&. 1:5 
 
 tations of Peleus, and the divine interposition, and settlement of 
 the future, by Thetis, conclude the play. Though justly called a 
 second-rate play by the scholiasts, it was well enough known to 
 be quoted by Clitus l on the undue share of glory obtained by the 
 generals of soldiers who bore the heat and burden of the day, and 
 thus it cost him his life at the hands of the infuriated Alexander. 
 The Audromac/ieofEnmus, of which we have a considerable frag- 
 ment, seems to embrace the time of the capture of Troy, and not 
 the period of this play ; but the 5th book of Vergil's ^Eneid is 
 evidently composed with a clear recollection of it. 2 The 
 famous Andromaque of Racine only borrows the main facts 
 from the story as found in Euripides and Vergil, and expands it 
 by introducing a motive which does not exist in the Greek 
 play, that of the passion of love. He moreover felt bound to 
 soften and alter what Euripides had frankly put forward, not 
 only as the usage of heroic times, but even of his own day the 
 enforced concubinage of female captives, however noble, and 
 the very slight social stain which such a misfortune entailed. 
 On this I have elsewhere commented. 8 The ode on the 
 advantages of noble birth 4 strikes me as peculiarly Pindaric in 
 tone and diction more so than any other of Euripides' choral 
 songs. The tirade 5 against the dangers of admitting gossiping 
 female visitors to one's house seems just like what Aristophanes 
 would recommend, and may be a serious advice intended by 
 the poet. 
 
 206. The Heradrida, a play less studied than it deserves, 
 owes some of this neglect to its bad preservation. It dates 
 somewhere in Ol. 88-90, and celebrates the honourable conduct 
 of Athens in protecting the suppliant children of Heracles, and 
 her victory over the insolent Argive king Eurystheus, who in- 
 vades Attica to recover the fugitives. The play was obviously 
 intended as a political document, directed against the Argive 
 party in Athens during the Peloponnesian War. It is cer- 
 tain that at this agitated time the tragic stage, which should 
 
 1 w. 693, sq. 
 
 2 The contrasts between the conception of Vergil and that of Euripides 
 have been admirably pointed out by Patin, Euripide, i. p. 291. 
 
 * Social Greece, p. 119. 4 vv. 764, sq. * vv. 930, sq. 
 
 I 2
 
 n6 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvn. 
 
 have been devoted to joys and griefs above mean earthly 
 things, was degraded, as its modern analogue the pulpit has 
 often been, to be a political platform, but a platform on which 
 one side only can have its say. But together with this main 
 idea, Euripides gives us a great many beautiful and affecting 
 situations, and it may be said that for tragic interest none of his 
 plays exceed the first part, ending, unfortunately, with a huge 
 gap after the 6 29th line. Many critics have censured it in 
 ignorance of this capital fact, and also of some lesser mutila- 
 tions at the end, which is now, as we have it, clearly unfinished, 
 and therefore unsatisfactory. 1 
 
 The play opens with the altercation between the violent 
 and brutal Argive herald, Kopreus, who is very like the herald 
 in ^Eschylus' Supplices, and the faithful lolaos, who in extreme 
 age and decrepitude endeavours to guard the children of his old 
 comrade in arms. It is remarkable how Greek tragedians seem 
 consistently to ascribe this impudence and bullying to heralds,' 
 so unlike those of Homer. The chorus interferes, and presently 
 Demophon appears, and dismisses the insolent herald, not with- 
 out being seriously tempted to do him violence. The poet 
 evidently had before him the other version of the legend, that 
 this herald was killed by the Athenians. But when the Athen- 
 ian king has undertaken the risk of protecting the fugitives, 
 the prophets tell him that a noble virgin must be sacrificed to 
 ensure his victory. This news gives rise to a pathetic scene of 
 despair in lolaos, who has been driven from city to city, and 
 sees no end to the persecution. But the old man's idle offer 
 of his own life is interrupted by the entrance of Macaria, one 
 of the Heracleidae, who when she hears of the oracle, calmly 
 offers herself, despising even the chance of the lot among her 
 sisters. Nothing can be finer than the drawing of this noble girl, 
 one of Euripides' greatest heroines. But unfortunately the 
 play breaks off before the narrative of her sacrifice, and there 
 is doubtless also lost a kommos over her by Alcmena and the 
 
 1 These lacunae are obvious from the fact that more than one ancient 
 citation from the play is not in our texts. Kirchhoff was (I believe) the 
 first to lay stress on this, and to seek the exact places where the gaps 
 occur. The name Macaria does not occur in the text.
 
 CH. xvn. THE SUPPLICES. 
 
 117 
 
 chorus. The interest of the spectator is then transferred to the 
 approaching battle, and the warlike fire of the decrepid lolaos, 
 who insists on going into the ranks ; and as the putting on of 
 armour would, I suppose, have been impossible to an actor on 
 the Greek stage, the messenger, a servant of Hyllus, discreetly 
 offers to carry it till he has reached the field. The manifestly 
 comic drawing of lolaos in this scene appears to me a satire on 
 some effete Athenian general, who, like our Crimean generals, 
 undertook active service when no longer fit for it. But by a 
 miracle, which is presently narrated, he recovers his youth, and, 
 with Hyllus, defeats and captures Eurystheus. The mutilated 
 concluding scene is again a discussion of a matter of present 
 interest the fate of prisoners taken in battle. Alcmena, with 
 the ferocity which Euripides generally depicts in old women, de- 
 mands his instant death. The chorus insist that by the laws 
 of Hellenic warfare an adversary not killed in battle cannot be 
 afterwards slain without impiety. Eurystheus seems to facili- 
 tate his own death by prophesying that his grave will serve 
 Athens ; in this, very like the later CEdipus at Colonus of 
 Sophocles a play with which the present has many features 
 in common. The chorus appears to yield ; the real settlement 
 of the dispute is lost. 
 
 The imitations of this play are few. Dauchet's (1720) and 
 Marmontel's (1752) are said to contain all the vices of the 
 French tragedy in no ordinary degree. The only special edi- 
 tion quoted is that of Elmsley. To many ordinary students of 
 Greek literature the very name of Macaria is unknown. 
 
 207. I take up the Supplices next, of which the date, also 
 uncertain (most probably 420 B.C., shortly after the battle of 
 Delium), is not far removed from that of the Heradeida, and 
 of which the plan is very similar, though the politics are quite 
 different. For as in the former play hostility to Argos, and its 
 wanton invasion of Attica, were prominent, so here alliance and 
 eternal friendship with Argos are most solemnly inculcated. If 
 it be true, as all critics agree, that these plays were brought on 
 the stage within three or four years of one another, during the 
 shifting interests and alliances of the Peloponnesian War, it 
 will prove how completely Euripides regarded them as tern-
 
 n8 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvn. 
 
 porary political advices, varying with the situation, and in 
 which the inconsistencies were not of more importance than 
 would be the inconsistencies in a volume of political speeches. 
 I think, moreover, that we may clearly perceive in the discus- 
 sions on monarchy, democracy, and general statecraft, which 
 lead away the characters from their proper business, a growing 
 tendency in tragedy to become a written record, and to appeal 
 to a reading public, instead of the listening crowd in the 
 theatre. Euripides, in the long and interesting debate between 
 the Theban herald and Theseus, is so conscious of this, that 
 he makes Theseus comment on the volubility of the herald in 
 matters not concerning him, and wonder at his own patience in 
 replying to him. It is thus quite plain that what are called 
 rhetorical redundancies in this and other Euripidean plays are 
 deliberately admitted by the poet as subservient to an important 
 purpose that of the political education of the people from his 
 point of view. 
 
 The author of the argument, of which only a fragment 
 remains, regards the play as an encomium of Athens. But this 
 direct or indirect laudation of Athens occurs so perpetually all 
 through Greek tragedy, that it seems a mistake to make that 
 the main object of the play in which it differs only in degree 
 from so many others. I think the wearisome recurrence of 
 this feature, and the favour with which we know it was received, 
 bespeak a very vulgar vanity on the part of the Attic public, 
 and a great deficiency in that elegance and chastity of taste 
 which they and their modern critics perpetually arrogate as 
 their private property. 
 
 This play is among the best of Euripides. After a short 
 prologue from ^Ethra which is really an indirect prayer to 
 Demeter at Eleusis the chorus enters with a truly ^Eschylean 
 parodos, as indeed, all through the play, the chorus takes a 
 prominent part in the action. It consists of the seven mothers 
 of the slain chiefs before Thebes, together with their seven 
 attendants. At the end of the play there is, besides, a chorus 
 of the orphans. The long dialogue between Theseus and 
 Adrastus, who accompanies the suppliants, is full of beauty, and 
 also of proverbial wisdom, on which account it has been also
 
 CH. xvn. THE HECUBA. fig 
 
 considerably interpolated. Theseus is, as usual, represented as 
 a constitutional monarch, who practically directs a democracy 
 probably on the model afforded by Pericles. But when he 
 determines to help the suppliants and to send a herald to 
 demand the burying of the slain, he is anticipated by the Theban 
 herald, who comes to threaten Theseus and to warn him not to 
 take these steps. The long discussion between them, ending, as 
 usual, in an agitated stretto of stichomuthia, 1 is the most interest- 
 ing exponent of the poet's political views in all his extant works. 
 The two divisions of seven in the chorus sing an amcebean 
 strain of anxious suspense, till in a few moments a messenger 
 comes in, and (in violation of the unity of time) narrates at 
 length Theseus' victory. Then come in the bodies of the slain 
 chiefs with Theseus, and there follows a great lamentation 
 scene, in which Adrastus speaks the eloge of each. Presently 
 Evadne, the wife of Capaneus, and sister of Hippomedon, 
 followed upon the stage by her father Iphis, from whom she 
 has escaped in the madness of her grief, enters upon a high 
 cliff over the stage, and casts herself into the pyre. The 
 laments of Iphis are written with peculiar grace. The con- 
 tinued wailing of the two choruses, children and parents of the 
 seven chiefs, are interrupted by Adrastus' promise of eternal 
 gratitude. Lastly, Athene comes in ex machina in a perfectly 
 otiose and superfluous manner, to enforce the details of the 
 treaty between Athens and Argos. 
 
 The subject had been already treated in ^Eschylus's Eleu- 
 sim'ans. The celebrity of the present play may be inferred from 
 the dream of Thrasyllus, on the night before Arginusse, that he 
 and his six colleagues were victorious in playing the P/icenissa 
 against the hostile leader's Supplices, in the theatre of Athr ns, 
 but that all his colleagues were dead. Elmsley's and G. Her- 
 mann's are the best editions, Elmsley's completing Markland's 
 labours. 
 
 208. The Hecuba was brought out before the Clouds of 
 Aristophanes, where it is alluded to (in Ol. 89, i). From a 
 
 1 M. Patin (ii. p. 195) notices this just representation of nature by 
 the Greek tragic poets, for discussions, at first cool, are apt to become 
 violent, and compares it to the parallel feature in the modern opera.
 
 120 HISTORY OF CREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvn. 
 
 further allusion in the play itself to the Deliac festival, restored 
 in Ol. 88, 3, it seems tolerably certain that it must have ap- 
 peared in Ol. 88, 4 (425 B.C.), and may therefore have been 
 earlier than the plays last mentioned. But it belongs to the same 
 period of the poet's style, and differs considerably in this 
 respect from the Troades, which treats almost the same sub- 
 ject, but was brought out eight or nine years later. I will 
 therefore not discuss them in conjunction, as some critics 
 have done, but follow in preference the order of time. The 
 Hecuba has always been a favourite play, and has not only 
 been frequently imitated, but edited ever since Erasmus' time 
 for school use. It is by no means so replete with political 
 allusions as the Sufpltces, and is on the whole a better tragedy, 
 though not so interesting to read. It treats of the climax of 
 Hecuba's misfortunes, the sacrifice of Polyxena at the grave of 
 Achilles, 1 and the murder of Polydorus, her youngest son, by 
 his Thracian host, Polymestor. The chorus of Trojan captives 
 sings odes of great beauty, especially that on the fall of Ilium, 3 
 but does not enter into the action of the play. The pleading of 
 Hecuba with Odysseus, who comes to take Polyxena, is full 
 of pathos ; and so is the noble conduct of the maiden, who is 
 a heroine of the same type as Macaria, but varied with that 
 peculiar art of Euripides which never condescends to repeat 
 itself. Macaria has the highest motive for her sacrifice the 
 salvation of her brothers and sisters. Polyxena is sacrificed to 
 an enemy, and by enemies, and is therefore obliged to face 
 death without any reward save the escape from the miseries 
 and disgrace of slavery. Yet though she dwells upon these very 
 strongly, she seems to regret nothing so much as the griefs of 
 her wretched and despairing mother. 
 
 The narrative of her death (which in Macaria's case is unfor- 
 tunately lost) forms a beautiful conclusion to the former half of 
 the play, which is divided, like many of Euripides', between two 
 interests more or less loosely connected. In the present play 
 
 1 It is to be noted that the scene being laid in Thrace, and the tomb of 
 Achilles being in the Troad, the so-called unity of place is here violated, 
 as often elsewhere in Greek tragedy. 
 
 * vv. 905, sq. : arv ueV, S> warpls '1A$, K.T.A.
 
 CH. xvii. IMITATIONS OF THE HECUBA. 121 
 
 the nexus, though merely accidental, is most artfully devised, for 
 the fellow slave, who goes to fetch water for Polyxena's funeral 
 rites, finds the body of Polydorus tossing on the shore. This 
 brings out the fierce element in the heart-broken mother. She 
 debates, in an aside not common on the Greek stage, 1 whether 
 she will plead her case of vengeance to Agamemnon, and then 
 she does so with great art, if not with dignity. Upon his acquie- 
 scence, she carries out her plot vigorously, murders Polymestor's 
 children, and blinds the king himself, whose wild lamentations, 
 with Hecuba's justification by Agamemnon, and the Thracian's 
 gloomy prophecies, conclude the play. The change of the 
 heart-broken Hecuba, when there is nothing more to plead for, 
 from despair to savage fury, is finely conceived, and agrees with 
 the cruelty which Euripides is apt to attribute to old women in 
 other plays. M. Patin compares her to the Margaret in Shak- 
 speare's Richard III. Nevertheless Hecuba's lamentation for 
 her children is conceived in quite a different spirit from that of 
 the barbarous Thracian, who is like a wild beast robbed of its 
 whelps, as the poet more than once reminds us. 
 
 It may fairly be doubted whether Sophocles' Polyxena was 
 superior, or even equal to Euripides' heroine. Ennius selected 
 the Hecuba for a translation, which was admired by Cicero and 
 Horace. Vergil and Ovid recur to the same original in some of 
 their finest writing. The earliest modern versions were by Eras- 
 mus into Latin, Lazare Baif into French, and Dolce into Italian. 
 In Hamlet the sorrows of Hecuba are alluded to as proverbial, 
 but probably in reference to Seneca's play, which will be con- 
 sidered when we come to the Troades. Contaminations of the 
 two plays were common in France all through the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries. M. Patin selects for special censure 
 those of Pradon (1679), and Chateaubrun (1755). Person 
 and G. Hermann have spent critical labour on the recension 
 and illustration of this play ; the scholia upon it are unusu- 
 ally full. There was an anonymous English version called 
 'Hecuba, a tragedy,' catalogued as by Rich. West, Lord 
 
 1 This feature recurs in the famous dialogue between Ion and Creusa 
 (Ion, 424, sq.), and elsewhere in that play, and may belong to the later 
 style of Euripides.
 
 122 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvn. 
 
 Chancellor of Ireland, published in London in 1726.' Though 
 the author, who does not name himself, says nothing about 
 his handling of the play, and speaks of it as a translation, 
 he has made notable changes ; in fact, it is rather a French 
 than a Greek tragedy. The chorus and second messenger's 
 speech are omitted, and both Polymestor and Hecuba have 
 attendants, with whom they converse. The plot is consider- 
 ably changed. There is now a good edition of the play by 
 Wecklein (1877). 
 
 209. The Raging Heracles ('Hpac\Je puvo/ztyoc), which 
 is among the plays preserved to us by the Florentine MS. 
 called C, is one of the most precious remains of Euripides, and 
 is full of the deepest tragic pathos. It seems to have been 
 brought out about Ol. 90, a year or two later than the Hecuba, 
 and is counted one of his best plays in metre and diction by 
 the critics. Here, again, as in the Hecuba, two apparently 
 distinct actions are brought together really by an unity of in- 
 terest, but technically by a new prologue of Iris, who explains 
 the sequel of the drama. Nothing can be more suited to 
 excite our pity and terror than the plot, unconventional as it is. 
 The prior part of the play, which is constructed very like that 
 of the Andromache and the Heradeida, turns upon the persecu- 
 tion of the father, wife, and children of the absent Heracles, 
 by Lycos, tyrant of Thebes. With a brutal frankness then often 
 appearing in Athenian politics, but which it was fashionable to 
 ascribe to tyrants, he insolently insists upon their death, and 
 proposes to drive them from their asylum in the temple of Zeus 
 by surrounding them with fire. The aged Amphitryon is for 
 excuses and delays, in the hope of some chance relief, and 
 shows far more desire for life than the youthful Megara, who 
 faces the prospect of death with that boldness and simplicity 
 often found in Euripides' heroines. Her character is drawn 
 with great beauty, as is also the attitude of the chorus of old 
 men, who fire up in great indignation at Lycos, but feel unable 
 to resist him. When the woeful procession of the family of 
 
 1 It was brought out at Drury Lane Theatre ; but, as the author com- 
 plains in his preface, ' a rout of young Vandals in the galleries intimidated 
 the young actresses, disturbed the audience, and prevented all attention.'
 
 (ii. xvii. THE MAD HERACLES. 123 
 
 Heracles, who have obtained the single favour of attiring 
 themselves within for their death, reappears on the stage, and 
 M egara has taken sad farewell of her sons, Heracles suddenly 
 appears ; and there follows a splendid scene of explanation, 
 and then of vengeance, the tyrant being slain within, in the 
 hearing of the chorus, just as in the parallel scene of the Aga- 
 memnon. The chorus sing a hymn of thanksgiving ; and so 
 this part of the drama concludes. 
 
 But at the end of the ode they break out into horror at the 
 sight of the terrible image of Lytta, or Madness, whom Iris brings 
 down upon the palace, and explains that now Heracles is no lon- 
 ger protected by Fate, as his labours are over, and that he is 
 therefore open to Here's vengeance. * There is no adequate 
 motive alleged for this hatred, but to a Greek audience it was , 
 so familiar as to be reasonably assumed by the poet. The 
 dreadful catastrophe follows, and takes place during an agitated 
 and broken strain of the chorus, who see the palace shaking, 
 and hear the noise, but learn the details from a messenger in 
 a most thrilling speech. The devoted wife and affectionate 
 children, whom Heracles has just saved from instant death, 
 have been massacred by the hero himself in his frenzy; and he 
 was on the point of slaying his father, when Athena appeared 
 in armour, and struck him down into a swoon. The awaken- 
 ing of Heracles, the scene of explanation between him and 
 Amphitryon which follows, the despair of the hero, who is 
 scarcely saved from suicide by the sympathy of Theseus, and who 
 at last departs with him for Athens all this is worked out in 
 the poet's greatest and most pathetic style. M. Patin specially 
 notices the profound pyschology in painting the method of 
 Heracles' madness, so unlike the vague rambling often put 
 upon the stage, and compares with this scene the parallel one 
 in the Orestes. The awakening of the hero may be intended 
 to rival the corresponding scene in Sophocles' Ajax, to which the 
 play shows many striking resemblances. Indeed, the resolve 
 of Heracles to face life, after his pathetic review of his ever- 
 
 1 The student should notice the trochaic tetrameters here, which be- 
 come more frequent in Euripides' late plays, so affording an internal test 
 where there is no date.
 
 124 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvn. 
 
 increasing troubles, is far nobler and more profoundly tragic 
 than Ajax' resolve to fly from disgrace by a voluntary death. 
 
 The choral odes are of great, though not of equal, merit, es- 
 pecially the famous complaint against age, and praise of youth,' 
 so like Shakspeare's Crabbed Age and Youth ; indeed, the whole 
 play is well worthy of greater study than it usually receives. 
 The sceptical outbreaks against Zeus and other gods are here par- 
 ticularly bold, but are tempered by the poet's splendid utterance, 
 that all their crimes are but ' the inventions of idle singers.' 
 The praise of archery 2 seems to imply a feeling that light- 
 armed troops were coming into fashion, and that their usefulness 
 was now recognised. We know that Plutarch was fond of this 
 play, and Cicero refers to the ode on old age in his tract De 
 Senectute. We have a Hercules Furens among the plays of Seneca, 
 exhibiting all the faithless and inartistic copying of great models 
 which we find in the other Latin tragedies of this school. The 
 Herakles of Von Wilamowitz-Mollendorf has now superseded 
 all earlier editions. We can cite the admirable translation in 
 Mr. Browning's Aristophanes' Apology, as giving English readers 
 a thoroughly faithful idea of this splendid play. The choral 
 odes are, moreover, done justice to, and translated into ade- 
 quate metre in this an improvement on the Alcestis, to which 
 I have already referred. 
 
 210. The Ion seems to date from the same period. The 
 mention of the obscure piomontory of Rhion, where a great 
 Athenian victory was gained in 429, and the stress laid on the 
 architectural wonders at Delphi, where the Athenians, accord- 
 ing to Pausanias, built a stoa in honour of the victory, seem to 
 fix it not earlier than 42 5. But the prominence of monodies in 
 the play rather points to a more recent date, when Euripides was 
 about to pass into his later style. The play is no tragedy, but a 
 melodrama with an ingenious plot full of surprises, and was cer- 
 tainly one of the earliest examples of the kind of plan adopted 
 by the genteel (or new) comedy of the next century. Were 
 there not great religious and patriotic interests at stake, which 
 make the play serious throughout, it might more fairly be called 
 a comedy than the Alcestis or Orestes. Even the most violent 
 detractors of Euripides are obliged to acknowledge the perfec- 
 
 1 vv. 637, sq. * vv. 190, sq.
 
 CH. xvii. THE ION. 
 
 125 
 
 tion of this play, which is frequently called the best he has left 
 us. But surely excellence of plot in a Greek play is not so 
 high a quality as great depth of passion and sentiment. The 
 /on, however, is not failing in these, the peculiar province of 
 the older tragedy, which has but little plot. 
 
 Passing by Hermes' prologue, which is tedious and dull, and 
 is in my opinion altogether spurious, though defended by good 
 critics, we come to the proper opening scene, one of the most 
 beautiful of the Greek stage, in which Ion, the minister of Apollo's 
 temple at Delphi, performs his morning duties about the temple, 
 and drives away the birds which are hovering round the holy 
 precincts. 1 There is no character in all Greek tragedy like this 
 Ion, who reminds one strongly of the charming boys drawn by 
 Plato in such dialogues as Charmides and Lysis. In purity and 
 freshness he has been compared to Giotto's choristers, and 
 has afforded Racine his masterpiece of imitation in the Joas 
 of the Athalie. But I would liken him still more to the child 
 Samuel, whose ministrations are painted with so exquisite 
 a grace in the Old Testament. For Euripides represents 
 him to us at the moment when his childlike innocence, and 
 absence of all care, are to be rudely dissipated by sudden con- 
 tact with the stormy passions and sorrows of the world. The 
 chorus (of Creusa's retinue) come in to wonder at the temple and 
 its sculptures ; and presently Creusa herself enters to inquire of 
 the god, cloaking her case under the guise of a friend's distress. 
 Then follows a scene of mutual confidences between the 
 unwitting son and mother, which is full of tragic interest. 
 
 I will not pursue further the various steps by which Ion is 
 declared first a son of Xuthus, then hated by Creusa as a step- 
 child, her consequent attempt to murder him, and at last her 
 recognition of him by the clothes and ornaments with which she 
 had exposed him. The agitated monologue of Creusa, when 
 confessing her early shame, is in fine contrast to the innocent 
 
 1 In support of my belief in the spuriousness of the prologue, which 
 only makes the whole splendid dialogue of Ion and Creusa idle repetition, 
 I may mention that the Andromeda and Iphigenia in Aulis, both without 
 prologues, opened with the actor's attention fixed on the heavens, as 
 in the monody of Ion.
 
 126 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvil. 
 
 freshness of the monologue of Ion. The refusal of the boy 
 to follow his new father to Athens is in thorough keeping with 
 his character, but expressed with such political insight as shows 
 the poet plainly speaking through the character. As I noted 
 two prologues in the Heracles, so here there are two resolu- 
 tions of the plot as it were, by two dii ex machina one by the 
 Delphic priestess, the other by Athena, who appears at the end 
 to remove all doubt. With very good taste Apollo, who could 
 hardly appear with dignity, and Xuthus, who has been deceived, 
 are kept out of sight. But in spite of much sceptical question- 
 ing and complaint, the chorus insists at the end that the gods 
 ways are not our ways, and that their seeming injustices are 
 made good in due time. This and the glorifying of the mythic 
 ancestors of the Athenians are the lessons conveyed in the spirit 
 of the play. We can hardly call Creusa one of Euripides' 
 heroines, for she is altogether a victim of circumstances, but 
 still she powerfully attracts our sympathy in spite of her weak 
 and sudden outburst of vindictiveness. The situation of a dis- 
 tracted mother seeking her son's death unwittingly was again 
 used by Euripides, apparently with great success, in the Cres- 
 phontes, from which one beautiful choral fragment remains. 
 
 The chorus in this play is more than elsewhere the accom- 
 plice, and even the guilty accomplice, of the chief actress, and 
 its other action is merely that of curious observers, if we ex- 
 cept one most appropriate ode, 1 in which Euripides draws a fairy 
 picture of Pan playing to the goddesses, who dance on the grassy 
 top of the Acropolis, while he sits in his grotto beneath. The 
 grotto is there still, 2 and so are the ruined temples, but no ima- 
 gination can restore the grace and the holiness of the scene, 
 now a wreck of stones and dust, of pollution and neglect. 
 
 There have been fewer imitations of this play than might be 
 expected. It was translated into German by Wieland, and about 
 the same time (1803) brought on the stage at Weimar by A. W. 
 
 1 vv. 452, sq. 
 
 2 This play decides a question which has divided archaeologists, whether 
 the grottoes of Apollo and of Pan, on the north-western slope of the 
 Acropolis, were identical or not. A comparison of vv. 502-4 with v. 938 
 shows that they were.
 
 CH. xvii. THE TROADES. 127 
 
 Schlegel, but unfortunately in a very vulgar and degraded version, 
 which gave Xuthus a principal part and produced Apollo on 
 the stage, and which so displeased the Weimar students, that old 
 Goethe, in imitation of whose Iphigenia the play was written, and 
 who had taken great pains about its representation, was obliged 
 to stand up and command silence in the pit. There was an 
 English imitation by W. Whitehead in 1754. The Ion of Tal- 
 fourd has only the general conception of Ion in common with 
 the Greek play, from which it is in no sense imitated. As to com- 
 mentaries, after Hermann's recension (i827)we havethree most 
 scholarly editions by C. Badham (1851, 1853, and 1861), of 
 which the second is the fullest and best. Mr. Verrall has also 
 given us an edition (1890) with an excellent metrical transla^ 
 tion, and, as usual, a brilliant Preface. 
 
 211. The Troades came out in 415 B.C. as the third play 
 with the Alexander and Palamedes: it was followed by the 
 Sisyphus as the satyrical piece. It was defeated by a tetralogy 
 of Xenokles the CEdipus, Lycaon, Bacchce, and Athamas. 
 Treating of the same subject as the Hecuba, it somewhat varies 
 the incidents and the characters, the death of Astyanax sup- 
 planting that of Polyxena, and both Cassandra and Andromache 
 appearing. There is, however, far less plot than in the Hecuba, 
 and we miss even the satisfaction of revenge. It is indeed more 
 absolutely devoid of interest than any play of Euripides, for it 
 is simply ' a voice in Ramah, and lamentation Rachel weeping 
 for her children, and would not be comforted, because they were 
 not.' It is the prophet's roll ' which was written within and with- 
 out with mourning and lamentation and woe.' Nevertheless the 
 wild and poetic fervour of Cassandra reminds us of the great 
 passage in the Agamemnon. The litigious scene in which Hecuba 
 and Helen argue before Menelaus, and the constant appear- 
 ances of Talthybius, are not agreeable diversions. Above all. the 
 ruthless murder of the infant Astyanax is too brutal to be fairly 
 tolerable in any tragedy. As regards the loose connection of 
 the scenes, Patin very properly 1 shows how, in what maybe 
 called Euripides' episodic pieces, he reverts to the trilogistic idea 
 of /Eschylus, but crowds together the loosely connected plays 
 
 1 333-
 
 128 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvn. 
 
 of the trilogy into the loosely connected scenes of a single play. 
 This sort of tragedy, which is in effect very like the old lyrical 
 pieces, such as the Supplices and Persa, was put on the stage 
 in contrast to the tragedies of intrigue, the one being in- 
 tended to affect the heart, the other to excite the imagination of 
 the spectator, The main sign of Euripides' later style is the 
 prevalence of monodies, in which he excels, in spite of all 
 Aristophanes' ridicule, and which are the most splendid features 
 in both the Ion and in this play. 
 
 The many imitations have so naturally contaminated the 
 Troades with the Hecuba, that it is not easy to treat them sepa- 
 rately. Several passages in Vergil's ^Eneid, such as the appeal 
 of Juno to ^Eolus, and the awful picture of the fall of Troy, 
 are plainly adopted from the Troades. The Troades of Seneca 
 is considered by good critics as the finest of that collection of 
 Latin plays, and, in spite of its faults of tinsel, of false rhetoric, 
 and of overdone sentiment, has real dramatic merit. The 
 deaths of Polyxena and of Astyanax are both wrought in, thus 
 copying features from each of Euripides' tragedies. But there is 
 a very splendid tragic scene added on the attempts of Andro- 
 mache to deceive Ulysses, and hide her child. Her violent 
 fury and her threats are, however, foreign to the conception 
 of both Homer, Vergil, and Euripides. Thus again, Seneca's 
 Talthybius is led into sceptical doubts at the sight of the 
 Trojan misfortunes, and a whole chorus is devoted to the 
 denial of any future life a grave and inartistic anachronism. 
 There is a French Troades by Gamier (1578), built as much 
 on Seneca as on Euripides, one by Sallebray (1640), and 
 numerous obscure imitations towards the end of the last 
 century. I cannot but think that the epics of Homer and 
 Vergil have been the real reason of the great popularity of these 
 subjects upon the stage. I do not suppose that either of 
 Euripides' plays would have sufficed to lead the fashion. 
 
 2 1 2. The Helena, which comes to us, like some other plays, 
 through the Florentine codex C alone, and in a very corrupt 
 and much corrected state, has been placed very low among the 
 plays of Euripides. It seems to have come out with the 
 Andromeda, in 412 B.C. (Ol. 91, 4), and was certainly ridiculed
 
 CH. xvii. . THE HELENA. 129 
 
 with it by Aristophanes in his Thesmophoriazusce, not without 
 reason. The play is a very curious one, and to be placed on a 
 par with the Electro, (which distinctly * alludes to it) on account 
 of its very free handling of the celebrated legend of the rape 
 of Helen. The version which kept the heroine in Egypt, and 
 denied that she had ever been in Troy, was first given by Stesi- 
 chorus, and was repeated by the Egyptian priests to Herodotus, 
 whose history did not appear till about this time. Stesichorus, 
 moreover, invented or found the notion of a phantom Helen 
 at Troy. The palinode of Stesichorus (cf. Part I. p. 223) was very 
 celebrated, and is repeatedly alluded to by Plato. Neverthe- 
 less, it seems very bold to transfer to the stage the fancy of a 
 few literary men, or in any case to contradict the greatest and 
 the best established of all the popular myths. It is evident 
 that this innovation did not prosper. Isocrates, in his Enco- 
 miu?n, takes no notice of it, and no modern has attempted to 
 reproduce it except the German Wieland. Apart from this 
 novelty, there is throughout a friendly and even respectful hand- 
 ling of Sparta and the Spartans, which contradicts the general 
 tone of the poet's mind, and stands, I think, alone among 
 his extant plays. Again, though there is much scepticism ex- 
 pressed, especially of prophecies, as was his wont at this period, 
 the noblest character is a prophetess, who possesses an unerring 
 knowledge of the future. Menelaus, too, who is elsewhere a 
 cowardly and mean bully, is here a ragged and distressed, but 
 yet bold and adventurous hero, with no trace of his usual stage 
 attributes. And, lastly, Helen is a faithful and persecuted 
 wife, though in the Troades, which shortly preceded, and the 
 Orestes, which followed, this play, she appears in the most odious 
 colours, and in accordance with the received myth. All these 
 anomalies make the Helena a problem hard to understand, and 
 still harder when we compare it with the masterly Iphigenia in 
 Tauris, which is laid on exactly the same plan, and is yet so 
 infinitely greater, and better executed. The choral odes are 
 quite in the poet's later style, full of those repetitions of words 
 wh'.ch Aristophanes derides. 2 The ode on the sorrows of 
 
 1 v. 1271. 
 
 * Mr. Browning has not failed to reproduce this Euripidean feature with 
 
 VOL. I. 2 K
 
 130 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvn. 
 
 Demeter is absolutely irrelevant, though gracefully com- 
 posed. 
 
 Nevertheless, there is at least one scene, that of the recog- 
 nition of Menelaus and the real Helen, witnessed by an old and 
 faithful servant, which is of the highest merit in beauty and 
 pathos, and we wonder how the poet should have chosen 
 that mythical couple, whose conjugal relations in all his other 
 tragedies were most painful, to exemplify the purest and most 
 enduring domestic affection. This recognition scene should 
 take its place in Greek literature with the matchless scene in 
 the Odyssey, for the love of husband and wife was rarely 
 idealised by the Greeks, and these grand exceptions are worthy 
 of especial note. I suppose that by this bold contradiction not 
 only of the current view of Helen, but of his own treatment of 
 her and Menelaus in other plays, the poet meant to teach that 
 the myths were only convenient vehicles for depicting human 
 character and passion, and had no other value. Since Her- 
 mann's recension, the most important special edition is that of 
 Badham, 1 who has done much for the text. 
 
 213. We may choose next in order the Iphigenia, among 
 the Tauri, a play of unknown date, but evidently a late produc- 
 tion of the poet's, to judge from the metres, the prevalence of 
 monodies, and the irrelevant choruses. It is very like in plot to 
 the Helena. In fact, the main elements are the same in both 
 plays. Iphigenia, like Helen, is carried off by a special interpo- 
 sition of the gods to a barbarous land, where she is held in 
 honour, but pines to return to her home. Both plays turn on the 
 mutual recognition of the heroines and their deliverers, the hus- 
 band and the brother, and then upon the dangers of the escape, 
 the deceiving of the barbarian king in attaining it, and the supe- 
 rior seamanship and courage of the Greek sailors. But in this 
 second play, Euripides has not contradicted any received myth, 
 or distorted any well-known mythical type, and has, moreover, 
 woven in the mutual friendship of Orestes and Pylades, and 
 
 great art and admirable effect in his version of the Heracles. We might 
 adduce examples from a totally different school, the lyrics of Uhland and 
 Platen, and how beautiful they are ! 
 J Along with the Jfh. Taur. in 1851.
 
 CH. xvil. IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS. : 3I 
 
 made Iphigenia a heroine not only of situation, but of character. 
 In both plays, though he has not scrupled to make barbarians 
 talk good Greek, he has avoided the objections to a barbarian 
 chorus, by giving the heroine a following of Greek attendants, 
 who are naturally her accomplices. They even interfere actively 
 in the Helena by literally laying hold of the enraged king, and 
 striving to turn away his vengeance from his priestess sister; 
 in the Iphigenia, by the more questionable expedient (unique, 
 I think, in the extant tragedies) of telling the anxious mes- 
 senger a deliberate falsehood to delay the king's knowledge 
 of the prisoners' and the priestess' escape. 1 
 
 The prologue, spoken by Iphigenia herself, explains how she 
 had been snatched from under the knife of Calchas and carried 
 by Artemis to the Tauric Chersonese, where, as her priestess, 
 she was obliged to prepare for sacrifice (Euripides has here 
 artistically softened the fierce legend) such luckless strangers as 
 were cast upon the coast. Doubtless early Greek discoverers 
 and adventurous merchantmen often met this fate at the hands 
 of the wild Scythians, and it added to the excitement which 
 enveloped the commerce of the early Greeks ' cette race,' 
 says Dumas, 'qui a fait du commerce une poesie.' The 
 first ode of the chorus 2 embodies this feeling with great spirit. 
 But Iphigenia has been agitated by a dream, which portends 
 to her the death of Orestes, upon whom she had long fixed 
 her vague and undefined hopes of restoration to her home. 
 The dream is admirably conceived, but it seems to me that the 
 absolute certainty which it breeds in her mind, and her conse- 
 quent sacrifice of libations, is somewhat of a flaw in the action 
 of the play. At no epoch have men been forthwith persuaded 
 by mere dreams without any other evidence. In the next scene 
 Orestes and Pylades appear, who have been directed by Apollo, 
 in spite of the acquittal before the Areopagus, to complete the 
 recovery of Orestes by carrying off the image of the Tauric 
 goddess to Attica a detail which gives the story a local interest to 
 
 1 It is remarkable that Iphigenia addresses them individually (vv. 
 1067, sq.) a device not elsewhere used in Greek tragedy, so far as I can 
 remember. Cf. Patin, iv. 109, on the point. 
 
 2 vv. 392, sq. 
 
 K 2
 
 IJ2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvir. 
 
 the audience. The long responsive monodies of Iphigenia and 
 the chorus over their funeral libations are interrupted by the 
 fine narrative of a shepherd, who tells of the discovery of the 
 friends, the madness of Orestes, the devotion of Pylades, and 
 the difficult capture of the heroic young men. The soliloquy of 
 Iphigenia when she hears the news is peculiarly beautiful. 1 
 After the above-mentioned most appropriate chorus, they are 
 led in bound, and there ensues between Iphigenia and Orestes 
 the finest dialogue left us by any Greek tragic poet. At its close 
 she proposes to save Orestes and send him with a letter to 
 Argos, but she is stayed by his devotion, for he will not escape 
 at the cost of his friend's life. The contest between Orestes and 
 Pylades, as to which should sacrifice himself for the other, has 
 afforded all the imitators great scope for a dramatic scene, but 
 was evidently not prominent to Euripides, who treats it with 
 some reserve and coldness. The recognition by means of the 
 letter of which Iphigenia tells the contents has been praised ever 
 since Aristotle, and the ensuing scene may be compared with 
 the rejoicings of brother and sister in Sophocles' Electra, which 
 it closely resembles. The devices to overreach king Thoas, the 
 attempted flight and danger of the three friends, and the inter- 
 position of Athene conclude a play second to none of Euripides' 
 in depth of feeling and ingenuity of construction. The last ode 
 on the establishment of Apollo's worship at Delphi is perfectly 
 irrelevant, but very Pindaric in style and feeling, and is, like 
 all the odes of the play, full of lyric beauty. 
 
 Aristotle mentions a play on the same subject by Polyidos, 
 in which Orestes was actually led to the altar, and recognised 
 by his passionate comparison of his own and his sister's fate. 
 
 1 vv 344-53 : & xapSia rd\aiva, irplv fjifv 4s (vovs 
 ya\r]vbs tfffda ical <j)i\oiKrip/u.(av oe, 
 4s 6ovfji6<pv\ov ava/jLerpovnevi] Sditpv, 
 "E\\r)i>as &vSpas fyiK 1 es X*P as ^dfiois. 
 vvv 5' e| oveiptav olffiv ijypi<o/j.f6a, 
 SoKovff' 'Opfarr\v ju.7jK0' 9j\toy j8AVeic, 
 Svffvovv fj,f \-f}^/f(rff, o'lrivts iroO' %KfTf. 
 Kal TOUT' dip' ?iv a\i)04s, ytrBofiriv, <pi\ai, 
 
 ouroi KO\O>S irpdavTes ov <ppovov<nv fit.
 
 CH. xvn. MODERN IPHIGENIAS. 133 
 
 Sophocles had composed an AZetes, and an Erigonc, both based 
 on the adventures of the characters upon their return to Greece. 
 Euripides was imitated perhaps by Ennius, certainly by Pacuvius 
 in his famous Dulorestcs, in which, according to Cicero, the 
 mutual contest of the friends to encounter death for each other 
 excited storms of applause. One of the earliest Italian dra- 
 matists, Ruccellai, composed a Tauric Iphigenia about 1520. 
 There was another by Martello, about two centuries later. The 
 French dramatists insisted, as usual, on improving on Euripides, 
 especially by introducing a love affair. The Scythian king filled 
 the gap, and appeared on the stage, as the French say, en 
 soupirant. Even in Racine's sketch, which is preserved, and 
 which gives a short abstract of the matter for the scenes of a 
 first act, the king's son is enamoured of the heroine, and would 
 evidently have been made the means of saving Orestes and 
 Pylades from their impending death. This element was ex- 
 aggerated, and the splendours of a French court and of foreign 
 diplomacy added to the Oreste of Le Clerc and Boyer, and to 
 the Oreste et Pylade of Lagrange- Chan eel, the supposed suc- 
 cessor of Racine. Guimond de la Touche's play (1757) is said 
 to be more simple, and pleased everybody at the time except 
 Voltaire, Grimm, and Diderot ! But with the aid of Gluck's 
 music, the opera of 1778 laid permanent hold of public taste. 1 
 There yet remains the very famous Iphigenia of Goethe for 
 our consideration. This excellent play has been extolled far 
 beyond its merits by the contemporaries of its great author, but 
 is now generally allowed, even in Germany, to be a somewhat 
 unfortunate mixture of Greek scenery and characters with 
 modern romantic sentiment. It therefore gives no idea what- 
 ever of a Greek play, and of this its unwary reader should be 
 carefully reminded. Apart from the absence of chorus, and the 
 introduction of a sort of confidant of the king, Arkas, who does 
 nothing but give stupid and unheeded advice, the character of 
 Thoas is drawn as no barbarian king should have been drawn 
 a leading character, and so noble that Iphigenia cannot bring 
 herself to deceive him, a scruple which an Athenian audience 
 
 1 Gluck brought out both the Iph. Aul. and Taur. Cf. Patin, iii. p. 6, 
 and iv. p. 127, who gives 1774 and 1778 as the years of their appearance.
 
 I 3 4 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XVII. 
 
 would have derided. Equally would they have derided Orestes' 
 proposal, of which Thoas approves, to prove his identity by 
 single combat, and still more the argument which Iphigenia 
 prefers to all outward marks the strong yearning of her heart 
 to the stranger. The whole diction and tone of the play is, 
 moreover, full of idealistic dreaming, and conscious analysis 
 of motive, which the Greeks, who painted the results more 
 accurately, never paraded upon the stage. The celebrity of this 
 so-called imitation will afford an excuse for so much criticism. 
 
 214. The Electro, must have appeared during the closing 
 years of the Peloponnesian War, and was fresh in men's memory 
 when, as Plutarch tells us, 1 during the deliberations about the 
 fate of conquered Athens, a Phocian actor sung the opening 
 monody of Electra, and moved all to pity by the picture of 
 a whilome princess reduced to rags and to misery. The 
 incident is said to have had a distinct influence in saving the 
 city from destruction. This testimony to the merit of at 
 least one scene in the play is hardly admitted by the majority 
 of critics, who have made the Electra a source of perpetual 
 censure and perpetual amusement, and have generally set it 
 down as the weakest extant production of Euripides, and a 
 wretched attempt to treat with originality a subject exhausted 
 by his greater predecessors. I need not go into detail as regards 
 these objections, which have been set forth with great assurance 
 and with an air of high superiority by A. W. Schlegel, who never- 
 theless, as I have already stated (above, p. 126;, himself sig- 
 nally failed in his endeavours to improve upon the Ion of the 
 despised Euripides. 
 
 Turning to the play itself, the first remark to be made 
 is that it was clearly meant as a critique on certain defects 
 in the earlier Electras. Apart from its intention as a drama, it 
 is a feuilleton sptritttel, as M. Patin calls it, and so far takes 
 its place with the literary criticism common in the Middle 
 Comedy. Euripides attacks 2 the three various signs of re- 
 cognition which satisfied the simpler Electra of ^Eschylus, 
 viz. a likeness of colour and texture in the hair, an identity in 
 the size of the foot, shown by deep footprints, and the design 
 
 1 Lys. c. 15. -* w, 524, sq.
 
 CH. xvil. THE ELECTRA. 
 
 135 
 
 of a garment which must have been long since worn out. The 
 new Electra ridicules all these tokens, and passing by without 
 comment the family ring used by Sophocles, is content with a 
 scar on the forehead of the unknown brother, which has not 
 escaped similar criticism, but which, we must remind the 
 triumphant objectors, is not discovered by the young princess, 
 but by an aged servitor, who had known Orestes as a child, and 
 was merely directed by this mark to tax his memory of the face. 
 As soon as the recognition is completed, the poet plainly criti- 
 cises the long and dramatically absurd scene of Electra's re- 
 joicing in Sophocles, by cutting short these ebullitions and 
 proceeding at once to the plot against the royal murderers. 1 
 He implies a censure of both his predecessors' economy by set- 
 ting aside as impossible and hopeless what they had admitted 
 without hesitation an attack on the reigning tyrants in their 
 own palace and makes the success of the attempt turn on the 
 absence of both from their fortress and their guards. This 
 alters the plan of his play he represents ^Egisthus as slain at 
 a sacrifice to which he had invited the strangers, and Clytem- 
 nestra as enticed to visit Electra's peasant home under pretence 
 of a family sacrifice. But these are only external points. 
 
 The really important ethical criticism of his predecessors is 
 his approval of ^Eschylus, and condemnation of Sophocles, in 
 painting the hesitation of Orestes when he sees his mother ap- 
 proaching, and the outburst of dread and of remorse in both 
 brother and sister when the deed is done a pointed contrast to 
 the happy piety of the pair in Sophocles (above, p. 65), where 
 the voice of Apollo's oracle sets at rest every scruple of filial duty 
 or of natural conscience. In other respects Euripides' Electra 
 is nearer to the conception of Sophocles : she is harder and 
 fiercer than her brother, and is brought in acting at the matri- 
 cide, instead of being more delicately removed from the action, 
 as in the play of ^schylus. But he surely intended it as a 
 further, and a sound, criticism when he represents JBgisthus 
 unable to bear with this sharp-tongued Irreconcileable, and 
 the mother as a sort of weak defender of her child, submitting 
 
 1 Wilamowitz (Hermes, xvii. 214, sq.) argues the opposite view, and 
 thinks Sophocles' play a criticism on Euripides. This view I cannot accept.
 
 136 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvn. 
 
 to the ignoble compromise of marrying her to a peasant. 
 He has moreover attributed a certain gentle contrition to 
 Clytemnestra, 1 which makes her an amiable contrast to Electra, 
 and excites some sympathy in spite of her crimes, so that we 
 come to look upon her as we do upon the queen in Hamlet, 
 erring, and even defending her errors with criminal sophistry, 
 but not reprobate. This point gives peculiar bitterness to the 
 remorse of the murderers, at least in the spectator's mind. 
 
 If we continue our study of the play, and observe its 
 general temper, it strikes us as of all the extant tragedies 
 the most openly democratic in tone. In many other of his 
 plays, Euripides has represented trusty slaves of noble cha- 
 racter and self-devotion, and reiterated the sentiment that sla- 
 very is an accident, and that there is nobility in men of low 
 degree. But these instances are almost all in the retinue of 
 princes. In the present play Euripides not only puts peasants 
 on the tragic stage, but makes them the noblest and most 
 intelligent of his characters. Electra's husband is the moral 
 hero of the play, as Orestes testifies in a remarkable aside ; 2 
 the aged farmer from the Spartan frontier is the moving spirit 
 in the devising of the plot. Not only are these excellent 
 people in every respect equal to their tragic parts, but the 
 obscurity of their life secures them from the misfortunes and 
 miseries to which great houses are almost hereditarily exposed. 
 Orestes and Electra are the playthings of oracles and family 
 curses, and of an ambitious position, which forces them into 
 exile and into crime. When the catastrophe is over, the poor 
 people who have helped them return to their simple and un- 
 eventful life, only altered by the gratitude of their princes. If 
 Euripides was indeed ever influenced by what the Germans call 
 the Ochlocracy, it was in this drama, where he vindicates the 
 dignity of the lower classes, and exhibits the dangers and respon- 
 sibilities of greatness. The grace and nature of the bucolic 
 scenes at the opening show a remarkable idyllic power in the 
 poet, unlike anything we possess before Theocritus, and we may 
 well wonder at the curious want of taste in the critics who 
 have ridiculed this part of the play 
 
 1 W. IIO2-IO. 8 VV. 367, sq.
 
 CH. xvii. THE ORESTES. 137 
 
 Triumphant play, wherein our poet first 
 Dared bring the grandeur of the Tragic Two 
 Down to the level of our common life, 
 Close to the beating of our common heart. 1 
 
 The choral odes are slight and unimportant ; the fawning flat- 
 tery shown to Clytemnestra, whose danger they know, and 
 have prepared, exhibits a degradation very unusual in any 
 but the later plays of Sophocles or Euripides, when the chorua 
 was waning rapidly in importance. I cannot but think that 
 this play was rather intended for a reading public than for th 
 stage. Hence, though it never made its mark as a tragedy, it is 
 among the most characteristic and instructive pieces left us in 
 early criticism. 
 
 215. The Orestes, brought out in 409 B.C. (in the archon- 
 ship of Diokles, Ol. 92, 4), is agreed on all hands to exhibit 
 most strongly both the merits and defects of the author. In the 
 looseness and carelessness of the metre, in the crowding of in- 
 cidents at the end of the play, in the low tone of its morality 
 they are all base, says the scholiast, except Pylades, and yet even 
 he advises a cold-blooded murder for revenge's sake there is no 
 play of Euripides so disagreeable. On the other hand, for dra- 
 matic effect, as the same scholiast observes, there is none more 
 striking ; but this applies only to the opening scenes. The sub- 
 ject is the same as that of ^Eschylus' Eumenides, but instead of 
 visible Furies in visible pursuit, the consequences of remorse, 
 the horrors of a distraught imagination, and the suffering of 
 disease, are put upon the stage, and the purely human affection 
 of a sister seeks to relieve the woes which the gods can hardly 
 heal in ^Eschylus. Yet all through the play there are satiri- 
 cal and even comic elements, which have led to the reasonable 
 conjecture that it was meant, like the Alcestis, to supply the 
 place of a satyric drama. 
 
 Thus, after Electra's prologue, of which Socrates is said 
 to have peculiarly admired the first three lines, Helen, who 
 has just arrived from sea, proposes to her to bring fune- 
 ral offerings to the tomb of Clytemnestra, under pretence 
 of her own unpopularity and Hermione's youth. This ab- 
 
 1 R. Browning, Aristoph. Apol. p. 357.
 
 138 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH.XVII. 
 
 surdly tactless and evidently selfish request is politely but 
 venomously declined by Electra, who comments upon the 
 niggard offering of Helen's hair. 1 The arrival of the chorus, 
 whom Electra strives with intense anxiety to quiet, for 
 fear of disturbing Orestes, leads to his awakening, and to 
 the famous scene, which has excited the wonder of all 
 its readers, and which I will not profane by a dry abridg- 
 ment. 2 The arrival of Menelaus leads to a dialogue which 
 shows him both cowardly and selfish ; but in the speech of old 
 Tyndareus, who comes in to urge the death of Orestes, and to 
 dissuade Menelaus from interfering, there are most wise and 
 politic reflections on the majesty of the law, and the necessity 
 of submitting men's passions to its calm decrees. Granting, 
 he argues, that Clytemnestra did murder his father a most 
 shocking crime, which he will not palliate Orestes should 
 have brought an action against her, and ejected her for- 
 mally from his palace. 3 but not have propagated bloody 
 violence from generation to generation. 4 This very en- 
 lightened argument, one which was familiar to the Athenian 
 democracy of the day, but has not since asserted itself until 
 now, and even now only partially through Europe, is surely 
 the most advanced and modern feature in the literature of the 
 Periclean age. The character of Pylades, who supports 
 the tottering Orestes to the public assembly, where his fate 
 is to be decided, their touching affection, and the sarcas- 
 tic description of the meeting and of the speakers, in which 
 critics have found portraits of the demagogue Cleophon and of 
 
 1 VV. 126-31 : 5 tpiiffts, ev a.v6p<airoiffiv &s /uey' eT KO.KOV, 
 
 ff<or-fipi6i> TG rols KaXS>s KeKTrififvois. 
 fiSerf irap' tixpas us airtOpiffev rptxas, 
 ff<&ov<m KO\\OS ; fffri 5' ^ iroAat yvvrt. 
 0foi fff fjna"fiffftav, &s fiC airc^Aecras 
 Kal r6vS( iraffdv 8' 'EAAc5'. & rd\atv' 3y6. 
 
 2 vv. 211-313. 3 vv. 496-502. 
 
 * 523-25 : afnvvSi $', ScrovTrep Swarfo e/u, rf v6fii<>, 
 rb 6i]pica$fs TOVTO Kal uianiovcH 
 iravuv, t> Kal yrtv Kal irdAeis o\Kvff dl
 
 en. xvii. THE ORESTES. 
 
 139 
 
 Socrates l all this is still on a high level, and worthy of its 
 great author. But when Orestes and Electra turn, at the 
 advice of Pylades, from pathetic laments to revenge, and 
 invoke the aid of Agamemnon to murder Helen and Electra, 
 our sympathies are estranged, and no interest remains except 
 in the very comic appearance of the Phrygian slave, and his 
 remarkable monody. The reconciliation and betrothal of 
 the deadly enemies at the end is plainly a parody on such 
 denouements. There are, as usual, many sceptical allusions 
 throughout the play, and one remarkable assertion of physical 
 philosophy. 2 
 
 Though the quotations and indirect imitations of the 
 Orestes, as well as translations from the great scene, have 
 been frequent in all ages, the defects of the whole as a play have 
 naturally prevented any direct reproduction on the modern 
 stage. The famous lines upon the blessed comfort of sleep 
 to the anxious and the distressed, may be paralleled in many 
 conscious imitations, yet in none of them more closely than 
 in two passages of Shakspeare. 
 
 The ravings of Orestes have suggested to Goethe his wild 
 wanderings at the moment when his sister declares herself; 
 but anyone who will compare the elaborate and far-fetched 
 images of Goethe's, with the infinite verity and nature of Euri- 
 pides' scene, will see how far the great imitator here falls be- 
 hind his model. Above all, Goethe misses the truth of mak- 
 ing the moment of waking a moment of calm and sanity, and 
 cures Orestes suddenly, upon the prayer of his sister and a 
 manly personal appeal from Pylades. So much nearer were 
 the Greeks to nature ! 
 
 The actors have tampered a good deal with the text, as may 
 be seen from the many lines rejected by later critics, but our 
 text is exceptionally noted in the MSS. as corrected by a col- 
 lation of divers copies. The second argument, which discusses 
 why Electra should sit at Orestes' feet, and not his head, is a 
 curious specimen of Alexandrian or rather Byzantine pedantry. 
 There are special recensions by Hermann and Person. 
 
 216. The Phoenissce seem to have appeared, according to a 
 
 1 w. 866-959. " w. 982, sq.
 
 140 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvir. 
 
 very corrupt and doubtfully emended prefatory note in a Vene- 
 tian MS., along with the (Enomaus ard Chrysippus, 1 of which 
 a few fragments remain. It gained the second prize in the 
 archonship of an unknown Nausicrates, 2 probably during Ol. 
 93. It is really a tragedy on the woes of the house of Labdacus, 
 but is called after its chorus, which is composed of Phoenician 
 maidens on their way to Delphi, and stopped on their passage 
 through Thebes by the invasion of the Seven Chiefs under 
 Adrastus. There would indeed be some difficulty in naming 
 the play otherwise, for it is an episodic one, consisting of a series 
 of pictures, all connected with GEdipus' family, but without one 
 central figure among the nine characters an unusual number 
 who successively appear. The name Thebai's, given to it by 
 modern imitators, suggests an epos and not a drama. Perhaps 
 locasta is the most prominent figure, but yet her death is, so 
 to speak, only subsidiary to the sacrifice of Mencekeus, and 
 the mutual slaughter of the brothers. All the scenes of 
 the play, though loosely connected, are full of pathos and 
 beauty, and hence no piece of Euripides has been more fre- 
 quently copied and quoted. The conception of the two 
 brothers is very interesting. Polynices, the exile and assail- 
 ant, is the softer character, and relents in his hate at the 
 moment of his death. Eteocles, on the contrary, is made, with 
 real art, to die in silence ; for he is a hard and cruel tyrant, 
 and defends his case by a mere appeal to possession of the 
 throne, and the determination to hold by force so great a 
 prize. Antigone is introduced near the opening only for the 
 sake of the celebrated scene on the wall, when her old nur- 
 sery slave 3 tells her the various chiefs, as in the scene 
 
 1 According to Meineke (Com. Frag. ii. 904, note) the schol. on 
 Ran. 44 would imply that it came out as the middle play with the Hyp- 
 iipyle and Antiope, and won the first prize. But the scholiast may be re- 
 ferring to these plays as separate specimens of Euripides' excellence, and he 
 only calls them /coAo, which implies general approbation, but not neces- 
 sarily the first place. 
 
 2 Dindorf suggests that he was a suffectus, or locum fenens, the proper 
 archon having died or resigned. 
 
 3 waiSaya>y6s. Schiller, in his version of the passage, is seduced by 
 French influences, I suppose, into calling him the Hofmeister.
 
 CH. xvir. THE PHCENISS&. 
 
 141 
 
 between Helen and Priam in the Iliad. 1 She again ap- 
 pears at the close, with the features given her by Sophocles 
 in his Antigone and CEdipus Coloneus combined. Perhaps 
 the most brilliant part of the play is the dialogue between 
 the brothers, and locasta's efforts to reconcile them, fol- 
 lowed by the narrative of their death-struggle. The speech 
 of Eteocles, 2 asserting that as he holds the tyranny he will keep 
 it by force in spite of all opposition, is a peculiarly character- 
 istic passage, and may be compared with the advice given to 
 Solon by his friends (Part I. p. 196). If the choruses, which are 
 very elegant, do not help the action of the play, and are rather 
 calm contemplations of the mythical history of Thebes, Euri- 
 pides might defend himself by pleading that he had accordingly 
 assigned them to a body of foreign maidens, who could feel but 
 a general interest in the action. It is not unlikely that the 
 crowding of incident was intended as a direct contrast to 
 ^Eschylus' Seven against Thebes, which, with all its unity of pur- 
 pose and martial fire, is very barren in action. The long de- 
 scription of the Seven Chiefs in that play is distinctly criticised 
 as undramatic by Euripides. 3 There are, indeed, all through 
 the play, reminiscences ofboth^Eschylus and Sophocles. 
 
 There were parodies of the play, called Phcentssa, by Aristo- 
 phanes and Strattis. There was also a tragedy of Attius, and 
 an Atellan farce of Novius, known under the same title, the 
 former a free translation of Euripides. Apart from Statius' 
 Thebais, there is a Thebaid by Seneca, and then all man- 
 ner of old French versions, uniting the supposed perfec- 
 tions of both these, which they could read, with those of 
 Euripides, whom they only knew and appreciated imperfectly. 
 Exceptionally enough, there is an English version almost 
 as old as any of them, the locasta of George Gascoigne and 
 Francis Kinwelmersh (1566), a motley and incongruous piece, 
 built on the basis of the Phoenissa. It professes to be an 
 independent translation of Euripides, but I was surprised to 
 
 1 This idea has been borrowed from Homer very frequently indeed. 
 M. Patin cites parallel passages from Statius, from Tasso, from Walter 
 Scott (in Ivankoe), and from Firdusi. 
 
 2 vv. 500, sq. * vv. 751-2.
 
 I 4 2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvu. 
 
 find it really to be a literal translation of Dolce's Italian version, 
 without any trace of an appeal to the original. Thus the 
 Traicctywyoe is called the Bailo, a regular Venetian title. Its 
 chief literary interest lies in the loose paraphrase of Eteocles' 
 speech, above noticed, which appears to have suggested directly 
 to Shakspeare the speech of Hotspur in the first part of 
 Henry IV. (i. 3) . 
 
 By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap 
 
 To pluck bright Honour from the pale-faced moon, 
 
 Or dive into the bottom of the deep 
 
 Where fathom-line could never touch the ground, 
 
 And pluck up drowned Honour by the locks ; 
 
 So he, that doth redeem her hence, might wear 
 
 Without corival all her dignities. ' 
 
 There is the translation of Dolce (Italian) called locasta^ 
 and Antigones of Gamier (1580) and Rotrou (1638). Then 
 comes the early play of Racine, for which he apologises, the 
 Thebaide, ou les Freres ennemis. He rather adds to than alters 
 incidents in Euripides. But as to characters, he makes 
 Eteocles the favourite with the people, he misses the finer 
 points of Polynices, and makes Creon a wily villain pro- 
 moting the strife for his own ends. The love of Hsemon and 
 Antigone is of course brought in ; but at the end, upon the 
 death of Haemon, old Creon suddenly comes out with a pas- 
 sionate proposal to Antigone, and on her suicide slays himself. 
 He is in fact the successful villain of the piece, whose golden 
 fruit turns to ashes at the moment of victory. Alfieri in 1783 
 rehandled the well-worn subject in his Polinice, to whom he 
 restored the interest lent him by Euripides, but made Eteocles 
 the horrible and hypocritical villain of the piece. The almost 
 successful reconciliation is broken off by Eteocles' attempt (at 
 
 1 So far as I know, this is the only direct contact with, or rather direct 
 obligation to, the Greek tragedy in Shakespeare. Here are the lines which 
 Correspond in Euripides the likeness is but slight, yet it is real : 
 
 &ffrp<av &v A0oiyu.' aiOtpos irpbs avroXas 
 KCU 7775 tvfpOf, Svvarbs 3>v Sputrat Ta'5, 
 TJJV devv jU7iffT7jv Siar *x (iv Ti;/>am'8a K.T.\.
 
 CH. xvn. IPHIGENIA IN AULIS. 143 
 
 the instigation of Creon) to poison Polynices, whom he after- 
 wards treacherously stabs, when coming to seek pardon for 
 having defeated and mortally wounded him. This version was 
 done into French by Ernest Legouve' in 1 799. Schiller has not 
 only given an excellent and literal version of part of the play, 
 but has taken a great deal from its incidents in his Brant von 
 Messina; there is a translation in Halevy's Grece tragique. 
 Its popularity gave rise to many interpolations by actors, and 
 the general reputation of the play has produced a large body 
 of scholia. The best special editions are by Valckenaer, Per- 
 son, Hermann, Wecklein (1881, re-ed. of Klotz), and Geel 
 (Leiden, 1846), with a critical appendix by Cobet. 
 
 217. After Euripides' death, the younger Euripides brought 
 out at Athens from his father's literary remains a tetralogy con- 
 taining the Iphigenia in Aulis, Alcm&on (6 ^ta KopivOou), ac- 
 th(e, ' and a forgotten satirical play. With this tetralogy he gained 
 the first prize a clear proof how little effect upon the Athenian 
 audience had been produced by Aristophanes' -/TY^J, which chose 
 the moment of the great master's death to insult and ridicule 
 him. It is not impossible that a recoil in the public from such un- 
 generous enmity may have contributed to the success of the pos- 
 thumous dramas. But we might well indeed wonder if the two 
 plays which are extant had failed to obtain the highest honours. 
 Unfortunately, the Iphigenia was left incomplete by the master, 
 and required a good deal of vamping and arranging for stage 
 purposes. Hence critics have in the first instance attri- 
 buted some of its unevennesses to the subsequent hand. But 
 other larger interpolations followed, some by old and well- 
 practised poets, who understood Attic diction, others by mere 
 poetasters, who have defaced this great monument of the 
 poet's genius with otiose choral odes and trivial dialogue. Such 
 seems to be the history of the text, which has afforded insol- 
 uble problems to higher criticism. I suspect that, as usual, 
 the German critics have been too trenchant, and that on the 
 evidence of their subjective taste they have rejected, as early 
 interpolation, a good deal that comes, perhaps unrevised, from 
 the real Euripides. But allowing all their objections, and 
 
 1 We learn this from the schol. on Aristophanes' Ran. v. 67.
 
 144 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XVII. 
 
 even discounting all that W. Dindorf, for example, has enclosed 
 in brackets, there remains a complete series of scenes, fin- 
 ished in composition, exquisite in pathos, sustained in power, 
 which not only show us clearly the conception of the master, 
 but his execution, and compel us to place this tragedy among 
 the greatest of all his plays. It is evident that, like Sophocles, 
 whose Philoctetes was produced in advanced age, Euripides 
 preserved his powers to the last, and was even then perfecting 
 his art, so that his violent death, at the age of seventy-four, may 
 literally be deplored as an untimely end. 
 
 The prologue, at least in substance, of the play, comes 
 in, not at the opening, but after a very beautiful and dra- 
 matic scene between the agitated Agamemnon and an old 
 retainer, who through the night has watched the king writing 
 missives, destroying them again, and evidently racked by 
 perplexity or despair. With a passing touch the poet describes 
 the stillness of the calm night and the starlit sky ; and though 
 his approximation of Sirius * to the Pleiades may be astronomi- 
 cally untenable, he seems to have caught with great truth the 
 character of a long spell of east wind, which is wont to blow 
 in southern Europe, as with us, at the opening of the ship- 
 ping season, and, having lasted all day, to lull into a calm. 
 Hence the objection brought against this scene, that the fleet 
 at Aulis was detained by contrary winds, loses its point. For 
 calm nights were of no service to early Greek mariners, who 
 always landed in the evening, and might thus be wind-bound in 
 a spell of east wind with the stillest night. 
 
 This dialogue in anapaests is to us a far more dramatic 
 opening than the prologue, and even when it comes, as 
 an explanation from Agamemnon, it interrupts the action 
 tamely enough. But here already there are marks of inter- 
 polation, and it seems as if a prologue was clumsily adapted 
 to fill up a gap in the dialogue. 2 With anxious detail the 
 
 1 It only means a bright planet, according to Weil, who gives evidence. 
 
 * This plan of blending the prologue with the opening dialogue appears 
 in the Knights and Wasps of Aristophanes, but not elsewhere in tragedy. 
 But in the frags, of the Andromeda, preserved in the scholia on Aristo- 
 phanes' Thesmophoriazusce (v. 1038), we have the opening lines a lyric
 
 CH. xvii. THE IPHIGENIA IN AULIS. 145 
 
 old man is at last despatched by Agamemnon to counter- 
 mand the arrival of Clytemnestra, and of Iphigenia, who 
 had been sent for under the pretence of a proposed mar- 
 riage of the princess with Achilles, but really to be sacrificed 
 to Artemis, and obtain favourable weather for the fleet. This 
 deceit is discovered by the old man, when he asks in wonder 
 how Achilles will tolerate the postponement of his marriage, 
 which had been announced in the camp. On his departure, 
 the chorus of maidens from Aulis begin an ode descriptive 
 of the splendours of the Greek fleet and army, which seems 
 considerably interpolated, though the main idea is doubtless 
 that intended by Euripides. The next scene opens with an 
 angry altercation between Menelaus and the old man, who 
 has been intercepted by the former, and his missive opened 
 and read. The old man protests against such dishonourable 
 conduct, and upon Agamemnon coming out. the dispute passes 
 into the hands of the two brothers. Menelaus upbraids Aga- 
 memnon's weakness, and his breaking of his word ; Agamem- 
 non retorts with pressing his claims as a father and a king. The 
 dispute descends, as always with Euripides, into wrangling, and 
 the imputing of low motives ; in the midst of it Agamemnon is 
 terror-stricken by the news that his wife and daughter with the 
 little Orestes have reached the camp, and have been received 
 with acclarhation by the army. His despair melts the ambitious 
 heart of Menelaus, who gives way, and beseeches his brother 
 not to sacrifice Iphigenia. But now Agamemnon in his turn 
 remains firm, chiefly, however, from cowardice, and a feeling 
 that as his daughter has really arrived, her fate is now beyond 
 his control. 1 
 
 The chorus, in an ode of which the genuine part is very 
 beautiful, deprecate violent and unlawful love, with its dread 
 consequences. Then follows the greeting of Agamemnon by 
 
 monody of the heroine, and a night scene. This proves those critics to he 
 wrong who insist upon Euripides having always opened his plays with i 
 prologue. I believe the Ion to be another example, where the dialogue of 
 I">n and Creusa replaced the prologue the existing one being wholly 
 spurious. 
 
 1 Cf. the parallel of Polynices in Sophocles, above, p. 80. 
 
 VOL. I. 2 L
 
 146 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XVII. 
 
 his innocent daughter, and his ill-concealed despair a scene 
 which none of the imitators has dared to modify ; and Cly- 
 temnestra begins asking motherly practical questions about 
 her future son-in-law. But when Agamemnon proposes that 
 she shall return home, and leave him to arrange the wedding, 
 she stoutly refuses, and asserts her right to the control of do- 
 mestic affairs. This adds to the perplexity of the wretched 
 king, who leaves the stage defeated in his schemes of petty 
 deceit. Presently Achilles enters, and is hailed by Clytem- 
 nestra, to his great surprise, as her future son-in-law. This 
 somewhat comic situation is redeemed by the perfect man- 
 ners, and the graceful courtesy of Achilles, whose character in 
 this play approaches nearest of all the Greek tragic charac- 
 ters to that of a modern gentleman. But the scene be- 
 comes tragic enough when the old retainer stops Achilles, 
 who is leaving to seek Agamemnon, and discloses to him 
 and to Clytemnestra the horrible design. Achilles responds 
 calmly and nobly to Clytemnestra's appeal for help, and pro- 
 mises to protect her daughter with the sword, should she be 
 unable to persuade her husband to relent. He deprecrates 
 with great courtesy Clytemnestra's proposal to bring Iphi- 
 genia in person from the tents to join her in personal sup- 
 plications. After a choral ode on the marriage of Peleus and 
 Thetis, Agamemnon returns, and is met by Clytemnestra, who 
 has left her daughter in wild tears and lamentation l on hear- 
 ing of her proposed fate, and compels him to confess his whole 
 policy. She then attacks him in a bitter and powerful speech, 
 which is meant to contrast strongly with that of Iphigenia. 
 This innocent and simple pleading of an affectionate child 
 for life at the hands of her father, with her despair at the 
 approach of death, and her appeal to her infant brother to join 
 in her tears, is the finest passage in Euripides, and of its 
 kind perhaps the finest passage in all Greek tragedy. Upon 
 Agamemnon's craven flight, she bursts out into a lyrical 
 monody, which is interrupted by an approaching crowd and 
 tumult, and the actual entrance of Achilles in arms, who tells 
 
 1 v. 1 IOI : ToXAcky ie?cra uera/BsAas oSvp/jidruv.
 
 CH. xvn. MODERN IMITATIONS. 147 
 
 Clytemnestra that the whole camp are in arms against him, that 
 nis own soldiers have deserted him and are led on by Odysseus, 
 but that he will do battle for her to the death. This rapid 
 dialogue in trochaic metre is followed by -the second great 
 speech of Iphigenia (in the same metre) in which, with sudden 
 resolve, she declares that her death is for the public good, and 
 that her clinging to life will but entail misery upon her friends ; 
 she therefore devotes herself to the deity, and resignedly braves 
 the fate from which she had but lately shrunk in terror. Achilles 
 is struck with admiration, and speaks out his regrets that the 
 pretended marriage was no reality, but he bows to her decision, 
 perhaps because it would have been impious to defraud the 
 gods of a voluntary victim ; yet he proposes to bring his arms 
 to the altar, in case she should change her mind at the last. 
 The affecting adieus of the princess to her mother and her 
 little brother, and her enthusiastic hymn as she leaves them for 
 her sacrifice, conclude the genuine part of the play. A messen- 
 ger's narrative of her death was doubtless intended by the poet, 
 but he did not live to complete the work. It appears from two 
 verses cited by yElian, in which Artemis announces that she 
 will substitute a horned hind for Iphigenia, that the piece really 
 ended with this consolation, from the goddess ex machina. But 
 to modern readers the epilogue is no greater loss than the pro- 
 logue, if such there was. The real drama is complete, and 
 requires not the dull interpolations with which our MSS. 
 conclude. 
 
 There were Iphigenias by both ^Eschylus and Sophocles, 
 which were soon obscured by the present play. Both Naevius 
 and Ennius composed well-known tragedies upon its model. 
 Erasmus translated it into Latin in 1524 ; T. Sibillet into 
 French in 1549. Dolce gave an Italian version in 1560. There 
 are obscure French versions by Rotrou (1640), and by Leclerc 
 and Coras (1675), the latter in opposition to the great imitation 
 of Racine in 1674. Racine's remarkable play, written by a man 
 who combined a real knowledge of Euripides with poetic talent 
 of his own, is a curious specimen of the effects of French court 
 manners in spoiling the simplicity of a great masterpiece. In 
 order to prevent the sacrifice of so virtuous a person as Iphi-
 
 U 8 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XVIL 
 
 genia, Racine takes from an obscure tradition an illegitimate 
 daughter of Helen (by Theseus), whom he makes the rival of 
 Iphigenia in the love of Achilles, and a main actor in the play. 
 He substitutes Ulysses for Menelaus, and inserts many features 
 from the first book of the Iliad into the disputes between Aga- 
 memnon and the angry lover. As Racine himself honestly 
 confesses, the passages directly borrowed from Homer and 
 Euripides were those which struck even his Paris audience. The 
 character of Agamemnon is, however, spoilt by giving him that 
 absolute control over his family and subjects, which only 
 priestcraft could endanger, and the French Iphigenia, with her 
 court manners, and her studied politeness, is a sorry copy of 
 the equally pure and noble, but infinitely more natural Greek 
 maiden. A comparison of her speech to her father, when 
 pleading for her life, in both plays, will be a perfect index to the 
 contrast. l 
 
 An English version of Racine's play, called ' Achilles, or Iph. 
 in Aulis,' was brought out at Drury Lane in 1 700, and the author 
 in his preface to the print boasts that it v,as well received, 
 though another Iphigenia failed at Lincoln's Inn Fields about 
 the same time. This rare play is bound up with West's Hecuba 
 in the Bodleian. The famous opera of Gluck (1774) is based 
 on Racine, and there was another operatic revival of the play in 
 Dublin in the year 1846, when Miss Helen Faucit appeared as 
 the heroine. The version (by J. W. Calcraft) was based on 
 Potter's translation, and the choruses were set to music, after 
 the model of Mendelssohn, by R. M. Levey. I fancy this 
 revival was limited to Dublin. Schiller translated Euripides' 
 
 1 Qui ne sent la difference des deux morceaux? C'est, chez Racine, 
 une princesse qui detourne d'elle-meme sa douleur, et la reporte sur les 
 objets de son affection [sc. sa mere et son amant] ; qui, soigneuse de sa 
 dignite, demande la vie sans paraitre craindre la mort. C'est, chez 
 Euripide, une jeune fille, surprise tout a coup, au milieu de 1'heureuse 
 securite de son age, par un terrible arret, qui repousse avec desespoir le 
 glaive leve sur sa tete, qui caresse, qui supplie, qui cherche et poursuit la 
 nature jusqu'au fond des entrailles d'un pere, &c. (Patin, Etudes, iii. p. 
 35.) But I quite differ with him when he thinks that the elegant verses of 
 Racine are in any degree approaching in excellence to the passionate 
 prayer in Euripides.
 
 CH. xvn. THE BACCH&. 
 
 149 
 
 play (1790), and there is an English poetical version by Cart- 
 wright, about 1867 (with the Medea and Iph. Taur.}. 
 
 The translation of Schiller, which ends with the depar- 
 ture of Iphigenia, is very good indeed. It is divided into 
 acts and scenes, and might be played with the omission of 
 the choruses. He has appended not only notes, comparing 
 his own version of certain passages with that of Brumoy, 
 but a general estimate of the play, in which he has been too 
 severe in discovering defects, though he highly appreciates 
 the salient beauties of the piece. Thus he thinks the weak 
 and vacillating Agamemnon a failure, whereas this seems to 
 me one of the most striking and natural, as well as Homeric, 
 of personages. He also protests against the dark threat of 
 Clytemnestra, which may not be very noble or appropriate to 
 the fond mother of the stage, but is certainly very Greek and 
 very human. 
 
 The special editions of note are Monk's, Markland's (with 
 additions of Elmsley's, Leipzig, 1822), then G. Hermann's, and 
 Vater's (1845), now Weil's (among his Sept Tragedies). A great 
 number of critical monographs are cited by Bernhardy, of which 
 those of Vitz (Torgau, 1862-3) and H. Hennig (Berlin, 1870) 
 are good, and discuss fully the many difficulties of the play. 
 
 218. The JSaahce, which was composed for the court of 
 Archelaus, is a brilliant piece of a totally different character, and 
 shows that the old connection of plays in trilogies had been 
 completely abandoned. Instead of dealing with the deeper 
 phases of ordinary human nature, the poet passes into the 
 field of the marvellous and the supernatural, and builds his 
 drama on the introduction of a new faith, and the awful punish- 
 ment of the sceptical Pentheus, who, with his family, jeers at 
 the worship of Dionysus, and endeavours to put it down by 
 force. His mother Agave, and her sisters, are driven mad 
 into the mountains, where they celebrate the wild orgies of 
 Bacchus with many attendant miracles. Pentheus, who at first 
 attempts to imprison the god, and then to put down the Bac- 
 chanals by force of arms, is deprived of his senses, is made 
 ridiculous by being dressed in female costume, and led out by 
 the god to the wilds of Cithaeron, where he is torn in pieces by
 
 ISO HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvir. 
 
 Agave and the other princesses. The lament of Agave, when 
 she comes in with the bleeding head, and is taught by old 
 Cadmus of her fearful delusion, has been lost ; but we know its 
 general tenor from the rhetor Apsines and from an imitation in 
 the religious drama called Christus Patiens (ascribed to Gregory 
 Nazianzen). While the wild acts of the new Msenads, whom 
 the god has compelled to rush from Thebes into the moun- 
 tains, are told in two splendid narratives of messengers, the 
 chorus, consisting of Asiatic attendants on the god, show 
 by contrast in their splendid hymns what joys and hopes a 
 faithful submission will ensure. These lyric pieces are very 
 prominent in the play, which, though sometimes called Pentheus, 
 is more rightly called after its most important chorus, and 
 is among the best left us by Euripides. It is of course un- 
 dramatic that Pentheus, who proceeds so violently against all 
 the other Maenads, should leave this chorus to sing its dithy- 
 rambs in peace, but ordinary probabilities must often be vio- 
 lated for such a personage as the chorus of a Greek tragedy. 
 
 The general tenor of the play, which may contain the 
 maturest reflections of the poet on human life, is that of acqui- 
 escence in the received faith, and of warning against sceptical 
 doubts and questionings. And yet it is remarkable that the 
 struggle is about a new and strange faith, and that the old men in 
 the play, Cadmus and Teiresias, are the only Thebans ready to 
 embrace the novel and violent worship, which ill suits their de- 
 crepitude. We may imagine that among the half-educated Mace- 
 donian youth, with whom literature was coming into fashion, the 
 poet met a good deal of that insolent secondhand scepticism, 
 which is so offensive to a deep and serious thinker, and he may 
 have desired to show that he was not, as they doubtless hailed 
 him, an apostle of this random arrogance. It is also remark- 
 able how nearly this play, at the very end of the development 
 of Greek tragedy, approaches those lyrical cantatas with which 
 .^Eschylus began. The chorus is here reinstated in its full 
 dignity. The subject of Bacchic worship naturally occupied a 
 prominent place in the theatre consecrated to that very worship, 
 and it seems that every Greek dramatist, from Thespis and 
 Phrynichus down to the ignoble herd of later tragedians known
 
 CH. xvil. THE RHESUS. 151 
 
 to us through Suidas, wrote plays upon the subject Sophocles 
 alone may be an exception. 
 
 But the play of Euripides always stood prominent among all 
 its rivals. It was being recited at the Parthian court when the 
 head of Crassus was brought in, and carried by the Agave on 
 the stage. It was imitated by Theocritus in Doric hexameters, 1 
 apparently as part of a hymn to Dionysus. It was produced 
 upon the Roman stage by Attius. It is quoted by every rheto- 
 rician, by every Latin poet of note. 2 It has even suggested, 
 with its incarnate god, his persecution, and his vengeance, a 
 Christian imitation. But in modern days, its fate was different. 
 The marvels and miracles with which it abounds, and the promi- 
 nent vindictiveness of its deity, made it unfit for the modern stage. 
 In the last century A. W. Schlegel and Goethe alone, so far as 
 I know, appreciated it. In our own time, the play has again 
 taken the high place it held in classical days, and is reckoned 
 one of the best of its author. There are special recensions by 
 Elmsley and G. Hermann, and commentaries by Schone, Weil, 
 Tyrrell, Sandys, and Wecklein, besides school editions, and 
 special tracts in Germany. The text of one of the two remain- 
 ing MSS., the Florentine C, breaks off at v. 752, so that for the 
 rest we depend altogether on the Palatine (287) in the Vaticaa 
 There are blank pages left in the codex C by the scribe, who 
 went on to other plays and never finished the transcription. 
 
 219. I have kept for the last of the tragedies the Rhesus, 
 which, were it accepted as Euripides', should have come first, 
 as all those, since Crates, who defend it as genuine make it an 
 early work of the youthful poet, and place its date about the 
 time when the ambitious designs of Athens were directed to- 
 wards Thrace, and resulted in the founding of Amphipolis. This 
 would place the drama about 440 B.C. But though so great a 
 critic as Lachmann thought it even the work of an earlier con- 
 temporary of ^Eschylus, and though some of the Alexandrian 
 critics recognised in it the traces of Sophocles' hand, the 
 weight of modern opinion, since Valckenaer's discussion, leans 
 to its being a later production, written at the close of the 
 Attic period, and about the time of Menander. For there is 
 ' Idyll xxvi. 2 Cf. for a list, Patin, iv. 239.
 
 152 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvn. 
 
 undoubtedly a waste and ineptness of economy the intro- 
 duction of two almost idle characters, ^Eneas and Paris, the 
 appearance of Athena ex machina in the middle of the play, 
 and the still stranger threnos of the mother of Rhesus, also 
 ex machina there are also scholasticisms of various kinds, 
 both in thought and diction, which seem to indicate the work 
 of a weaker poet copying better models. On the other hand, 
 the Alexandrian critics received it as genuine, and have left us 
 very full and valuable comments on the earlier part, as well as 
 extracts (in one of their prefaces) of two prologues, one of 
 which was ascribed to the actors, but neither of which appears 
 in our text. It is moreover, certain that Euripides wrote a 
 Rhesus, but if, as one of the prefaces tells us, it was called 
 yyj/ffioc, this must have been meant to distinguish it from 
 another as vodot; (as in the case of the Airvdlat yviiaun, and 
 i oOai, in the catalogue of ^Eschylus' remains) ; and it is more 
 than probable that the play we possess is the spurious one, and 
 not from the hand of Euripides. For, besides the faults above 
 mentioned, and the many peculiarities of a diction which seems 
 rather eclectic than original, it wants the two most prominent 
 features of his extant plays, pathos and sententious wisdom. 
 
 Nevertheless, its merits have been by many unduly depre- 
 ciated. It is a bold and striking picture of war and camp life, 
 producing an impression not unlike Schiller's Wallenstein's 
 Lager. Choral odes are dispensed with as inappropriate to 
 a night-watch, and there is at least one exquisite epic passage 
 on the approach of Dawn. 1 The bragging of both Hector 
 
 1 w. 527-36: 
 
 rivos a (pvXaKa, ; ris a,ui'/3ei 
 rav ffj.dv ; irpta-ra. 
 Svfrat ffTjfifla Kal fTrrdiropoi 
 
 riAeieiSes aiOfptai fj.f<ra 8' alerbs ovpavov rorarai. 
 fypfffBf, ri f^.f\\ere ; Koirav 
 eyperf trp'bs <pv\aKai>. 
 oil \evfffffre /j.rivdSos aXyKav ; 
 aois 8?; ireXas aa>r 
 
 yiyvrrou, Kal TIS irf>oSp6/j.(ev 88e / ia-rlv aari'ip. 
 V. 546- 55 ' K< d MV tt?a>, 2iyu.6eiruj 
 f,^Va KUITO.S
 
 CH. xvir. THE CYCLOPS. 
 
 '53 
 
 and Rhesus estranges the reader's sympathy, so that the 
 death of the latter excites but little pity ; the whole interest 
 lies in the changing scenes and fortunes of an anxious night 
 amid ' excursions and alarums.' The scholia to this play were 
 first fully published in the Glasgow edition of 1821 (with the 
 Troades), and then with critical and explanatory notes in the 
 edition of Vater (1837). There are numerous monographs 
 upon its age, style, and authorship, in which the large diver- 
 gence of opinion on the same facts affords an admirable 
 specimen of the complete subjectivity of most of the so-called 
 higher criticism. 
 
 220. There remains, however, another genuine play of 
 Euripides the Cyclops which must be separated from the 
 tragedies, as being the only extant specimen of a satyric drama. 
 I have above (page 8) discussed the general features of this sort 
 of play, which is carefully distinguished by the critics from all 
 species of comedy, even from parody, of which I think there 
 are distinct traces in the Cyclops. As Plato saw clearly, 1 
 the talents for the pathetic and for the humorous are closely 
 allied, and we should wonder how it was that no tragic poet 
 among the Greeks ever wrote comedy, did we not find that 
 scope for comic powers was provided in this ' sportive tragedy.' 
 It is indeed strange how the sombre and staid genius of 
 Euripides condescends to gross license in this field ; and no 
 doubt if we had a specimen from ^Eschylus or Pratinas 
 the acknowledged masters of it we should find that here, 
 as elsewhere, the Greeks preserved their supremacy in litera- 
 ture. There is great grace and even beauty in the extant play, 
 though we can hardly imagine Euripides' taste as lying in 
 that direction. Silenus (who speaks the prologue) and his 
 
 tpoivias vfive"i Tr 
 
 yhpv'i ira(5oA.Tcop fj.f\oiroibv ewjSovJs fj.tpifj.vav ' 
 
 ijSrj 8e vefiovfft KO.T' "iSav 
 
 ffvpiyyos lav KOTOKOVW 
 6f\yti 5' ofj.fj.aros tSpav 
 vtrvos ' aSiffros yap a P\f<ptipois vpbs aovt. 
 
 1 Symposium, sub fin.
 
 154 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XVH. 
 
 satyrs are in search for Dionysus, who (according to the 
 Homeric hymn) has been carried into the western seas by 
 pirates. But they are thrown on the coast of Sicily, and made 
 slaves by Polyphemus, who for dramatic reasons cannot devour 
 them as he does other visitors. The opening chorus is very 
 graceful and pastoral, reminding us strongly of scenes in Theo- 
 critus. As it is little read I shall quote it. 1 Odysseus then 
 
 1 vv 41-81 : ira Sfi noi yfvva.(<av f*.ev irartptat, 
 yevvaicav 8' e/c TOKdScov, 
 ira STJ fj.oi viffffei ffKOirf\ovs ; 
 ov r55' vir-fivtfjLos aijpa 
 Kal irojTjpo jSoTapa, 
 Sivaev ff vStap irorau-iav. 
 ti> TriffTpais KOTCU ire'Aos &v- 
 rpcav, ov <roi j8A.ax<zl TKf<av. 
 fyi>TT\ oil Tci5' oiiv ov ra5e veyti^r, 
 oi>8' av K\ITVV Spoffepdv ; 
 orf), ptyia irerpov rd^a <rov, 
 vTray' Ji vT-ay' & Kfpdcrra 
 fj.r)\o$6ra ffraffiaipov 
 KvK\ceiros aypo/36ra. 
 cnrapyuvrds fioi TOVS /jLatrrovs 
 $fai 6r]\aiffi o-iropds, 
 &s \fiireis apvav 6a\d(iois. 
 
 TTOduSffi ff' a/J.p6KOlTOl 
 
 f3\axal fffJiiKpwv reKtcev. 
 els av\dv TTOT', a(n<pi6o.\ets 
 iroiripovs \nrovffa vofj-di, 
 Alrvaicav ftati ffKoirf\<av ; 
 ov roSe BprfyUios, ov rdSf 
 Ba/cxot re Qvpffo<f>6poi, 
 ov TVfjLirdvtav a\a\ayfiol 
 KpT)vaiffi Trap' vtipoxvTOis 
 OVK olvov x\iapal ffray6i> 
 ov Nvo-a fiera Nv/jiQav. 
 
 fi.e\ir(a irpbs rav ' 
 
 ta> f)i]ptv<av 
 
 Bafcxois ffvv \fVK6iroarui. 
 
 & <pi\o$ 8: <pi\ 
 
 vail oloiro\fls 
 
 lavBav x a ' trav
 
 CH. xvii. THE CYCLOPS. 155 
 
 appears, and his adventure with the Cyclops occupies the rest 
 of the plot, in which the Odyssey is followed as closely as 
 was possible, consistently with the addition of a chorus of 
 satyrs, and the necessity for Odysseus' free egress from the 
 cave to narrate the cannibal feast of the Cyclops. The satyrs 
 are represented as a most sympathetic but cowardly chorus, 
 desirous to help Odysseus and escape with him, but far more 
 desirous to drink his wine than to incur any danger in aid- 
 ing him to blind the Cyclops. The scene in which Silenus 
 acts as cupbearer to Polyphemus, and keeps helping himself, is 
 really comic, and the frank cynicism of Polyphemus' brutal 
 philosophy l is expressed in an admirable speech. Odysseus' 
 impassioned exclamation, when he hears it, is in the highest 
 tragic vein, nor does the hero anywhere condescend to respond 
 to the wicked jokes of the satyrs. The whole work is a light 
 and pleasant afterpiece, but seems to me to have required much 
 more acting than the tragedies ; and I suppose the costume 
 worn by Odysseus to have been far less pompous, and his figure 
 less stuffed out than in tragedy ; so that this would be possible. 
 With this condition, it must have been an effective piece, and 
 was possibly preserved as being better than the seven others 
 known from the same author. There are few editions, and no 
 imitations of this play. A recension by Hermann, a German 
 version by Scholl, and a few good monographs, such as the 
 chapter in Patin's Etudes, are all that can be cited as of special 
 import. Shelley has fortunately left us a translation (with a 
 few omissions), which is invaluable for such English readers as 
 cannot compass the somewhat difficult original. The play takes 
 its place, of course, in the complete editions and translations, 
 with the tragedies. 
 
 221. Afu.l review of the 1,100 extant Fragments would be 
 
 fyia 8' 6 <rbs np6ffiro\os 
 
 TV. 316, sq. 
 
 Sov\os aXaivtav ffvv roS 
 rpdyov x\aivq fif\fc^
 
 156 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvn. 
 
 here impossible. Some of them are sufficient to give us an idea 
 of the plot of famous plays now lost, but most of them are only 
 selected for philosophic depth or beauty of expression. I have 
 referred above (p. 89) to the analysis of the Philoctetes given by 
 Dion Chrysostom. There are also a good many titles cited by 
 the Aristophanic scholiasts in explanation of the parodies of 
 Euripides with which the comedies abounded. It may safely be 
 asserted, that had we no other evidence of the poet's work than 
 these fragments, we should probably have reversed the judgment 
 of the old critics, and placed him first among the tragedians. 
 For in grace of style and aptness of proverbial philosophy he 
 has no rival but Menander, with whom indeed, as with the 
 new comedy generally, his points of contact are many. But in 
 simplicity and purity of diction he far exceeds ^Eschylus and 
 Sophocles. Thus there is hardly a single curious or out-of- 
 the-way word quoted by the lexicographers from his poetry ; 
 but rather innumerable moral sayings and pathetic reflections 
 on human life (in Stobaeus), many deep physical speculations 
 by the Christian Apologists J and their adversaries ; many 
 striking points by the rhetoricians. Apart from the spurious 
 Danae, of which the opening is preserved in the Palatine MS., 
 there is a large fragment of the Phaethon, from which one of 
 the choruses is very beautiful. 2 Goethe attempted a restora- 
 tion of the play. A fragment of Euripides has since been 
 published by H. Weil for the Societe pour F encouragement des 
 etudes grecques, and is an interesting speech of forty-four lines, 
 possibly from the Temenida. There are lesser fragments in 
 ^Eschylean style on the same papyrus. Blass also prints 
 (Rhein. Mus. xxxv. p. 291) a new fragment of forty-five lines 
 from the Melanippe ('/ (W/zwrie). But both these interesting 
 discoveries are eclipsed by the fragments which Mr. Petrie 
 brought home among his papyri from the Fayoum, and which 
 I identified as passages from the conclusion of the famous 
 Antiope. They illustrate the plot, as given us by Hyginus 
 (cf. Nauck, Fragg, Trag., 2nd ed., p. 411), and add other 
 valuable information concerning the play. The MS. is cer- 
 
 > Cf. frags. 596, 639, 836, 935. 
 2 w. 25-36.
 
 CH. xvii. THE ANTIOPE. I57 
 
 tainly not younger than 230 B.C., and probably much older, so 
 that it is of unique value palaeographically, as well as classi- 
 cally. I have given the full text in Hermathena No. XVII. A 
 facsimile will be published by the Royal Irish Academy. Mean- 
 while I give the reader the speech of Hermes (the dens ex 
 machina) and the reply of the conquered Lykos. 
 
 Hermes.} oTAN AE 0AHTHI2 AAoXoN EI2 DTP AN TI0EI2 
 2APK&N A0PQI2A2 TH2 TAAAIFinPoT *T2IN 
 oSTEA riTPfl2A2 APE02 EI2 KPHNHN BAAEIN 
 n2 AN To A1PKH2 oNoM EFIflNTMoN AABHI 
 KPHNH2 [Ano]ppoT2 o2 AIEI2IN A2TEJ12 
 nEAIA T[A 0HB]H2 YAA21N EEAPAflN AEI. 
 TMEI2 A[EIIEI]AAN o2Io2 HI KAAMoT DOAI2 
 XnPEITE [ ]2 A2TT AE I2MHNOT I7APA 
 EnTA2[ToM]oN nYAAI2I[N] EEAPTTETE 
 2T MEN[ ]TorNETM . . FIoAEMinN AABflN 
 IH0 H2[nPIN EXE]noNoN, 2T[. .]N A AM*loNA 
 ATPAN K[EAET]fl A[IA] XEPHN rHIAI2MENoN 
 MEADEIN 0EoT[2 ni]AAI2IN ENKoNTAI AE 2ol 
 IIETPAI TE[PE]MNAI MoT2IKHI KHAoTMENAI 
 AEM . . . .]MHTPo2 EI[. . .]oT2A EAflAIA 
 
 . . TE[ ]N TEKTQNflN 0H2EI XEPI 
 
 IEY2 THNAE TIMHN 2TN A EH1 AIACMI 2ol 
 
 OTDEP TOA EYPHM E2XE2 AM*mN ANAE 
 
 AETKH AE nnAn TO AIo2 KEKAHMENoI 
 TIMA2 MEH2TA2 EEET EF KAAMoT HoAEI. 
 KAI AEKTPA o MEN 0HBAIA [AJW]ETAI TAMHN 
 OA EK *PTmN KAAAI2TON [ET]NA2THPIoN 
 THN TANTAAoT DAIA AAA [o2]oN TAXI2TA XPH 
 2FIETAEIN 0EoT nEM^ANTo2 oIA BoTAETAI. 
 Lyk.] fl noAA AEAHTA ZET2 TI0EI2 KA0 HMEPAN 
 EAEIS[EN EI2 *H2] TA2A ABoTAIA2 EMA2 
 E2 2*n[IIATPO2] AOROTNTA2 oTK EINAI AIo2 
 DAPE2TE KAI IHT HTPE MHNTTH2 XPoNo2 
 VETAEI2 MEN HMA2 2*QIN AE MHTEP ETTTXEIN. 
 ITE NTN KPATTNET ANT EMoT TH2AE X0oNo2 
 AABoNTE KAAMoT 2KHHTPA THF TAP AEIAN 
 2*niN HP02TI0H2IN ZET2 EH1 TE 2TN All 
 EPMH[I AE IIEI0nN APE]o2 EI2 KPHNHN [BJAAH 
 
 FTNAIKA 0A^A2 TH2[A I]N oT2A FH2 
 
 NA2MQI2I TEPFHI FIEAIA 0HBAIA2 X0oNo2 
 AIPKH HPo2 AN[AP]flN T2TEPHN KEKAHMENH, 
 ATfl AE NEIKH KAI TA FIPIN nEHPAFMENA.
 
 158 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XVIL 
 
 The Erechtheus is now remarkable for having given Mr. 
 Swinburne not only the plot of his like-named tragedy, but one 
 of the finest of the speeches that of Praxithea to which he 
 has acknowledged his obligations. It seems that this play 
 brought out prominently, not the self-sacrifice of the daughter, 
 but the patriotic devotion of the mother. The daughter is not 
 even specially named in our fragments. Mr. Swinburne has 
 made her a second heroine in his version, but somewhat cold 
 and statuesque, neither acting on her own responsibility, and 
 as the eldest of the house, like Macaria, nor, on the other hand, 
 showing the simple innocence and instinctive horror of death 
 which we find in Iphigenia. His choruses are, moreover, far 
 too long and exuberant for a really Greek play, however 
 splendid they may be in themselves. I note these points not 
 by way of criticism, which I should not venture, but to indi- 
 cate to any English reader, that he must look to actual trans- 
 lations to obtain an accurate notion of the course of a Greek 
 play. There are, besides the great speech of Praxithea, two 
 important fragments from Euripides' play one the farewell 
 advice of a father to his son, very similar to that of Polonius 
 to Laertes in Hamlet ; the other an ode which longs for peace, 
 and which is paralleled by the famous strophe from the Cres- 
 phontes, which has been so well rendered by Mr. Browning 
 (Aristophanes' Apology, p. 179). It is to be noticed that most 
 of the philosophical fragments are quoted as the poet's own 
 sentiments, and this is specially mentioned by rhetoricians 
 and scholiasts, 1 some of whom even call his choruses para- 
 bases, or open addresses to the audience, and others, such as 
 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, insist that the person of the pcet 
 and that of his characters are throughout blended and con- 
 fused. 2 The letters attributed to Euripides, and first published 
 by Aldus in his collection (ed. 1499), were apparently com- 
 posed by some Roman sophist, and have no value, even in 
 preserving facts then current about the poet's life, which might 
 since have been lost. They have been critically sifted by 
 Bentley. 
 
 1 Cf. the frags, of the Danae. 
 
 2 Cf. the passage cited on the Melauippe (^ <ro<J>^) in Dindorf's frags.
 
 CH. xvii. E U RIP IDES ' IN NO VA TIONS. \ 59 
 
 222. The external changes introduced into tragedy by 
 Euripides were not very great. He seems to have adhered to 
 Sophocles' example in contending with separate plays, though 
 he represented tetralogies together that is to say, we have no 
 clear evidence that there was any connection in subject between 
 the plays which were produced together, as, for example, the 
 Bacchcz and Iphigenia in Aulis. But he adopted a distinct 
 method, which Sophocles imitated in his Ajax and Philoctetes 
 of curtailing the opening and close of his plays, in order to 
 expand more fully the affecting or striking scenes in the body of 
 the play. This was attained, first by the prologue, often spoken 
 by a god, or other personage not prominent in the real play, 
 who set forth the general scope and plot of the piece, and told 
 the audience what they might expect a matter of great necessity 
 in such a play as the Helena, or Iphigenia in Tauris, where 
 either the legend, or the handling of the legend, was strange, 
 and not familiar to the public. Secondly, the deus ex machina, 
 who appeared at the end, cut the knot, or reconciled the 
 conflict of the actors. There is evidence that the prologues 
 were much tampered with by the actors, and some are even 
 altogether spurious. In written copies of the plays these pro- 
 logues may have originally served as arguments, but for stage 
 purposes, their recital by some indifferent actor was (I fancy) 
 intended to fill up the time while the Athenian audience 
 were bustling in and taking their seats. The appearance of 
 a god at the end was likewise a sign that the play was over, 
 for it was always plain what he would say, and the last words 
 of the chorus were even the same in several of the plays, being 
 evidently not heard in the noise of the general rising of the 
 crowd. 
 
 It was the fashion of the scholiasts to follow Aristophanes 
 in censuring the poet for introducing certain novelties in music 
 and in metres. But we cannot now appreciate even the points 
 urged as to the latter, nor do I think that the modern critics 
 who follow the same line of censure have at all proved their 
 case by argument. I would rather point to at least one very 
 interesting metrical novelty whereby the poet admirably ex- 
 pressed the contrast of calmness and excitement in a dialogue.
 
 160 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XVH. 
 
 This was the interchange of iambics with resolved dochmiacs, 
 which we find in several fine scenes, such as that of Adrnetus 
 with his wife (Ale. 243, sq.), of Phaedra, with the chorus (Hipp. 
 571, sq.), and of Amphitryon with Theseus (Here. Fur. 1178, 
 sq.). The modern reader can here easily feel the appropriate- 
 ness of a remarkable innovation. 
 
 223. As to the general complexion of his plays, the 
 critics note that the chorus declines in importance, that it 
 does not interfere in the action of the play, except as a con- 
 fidant or accomplice, and that its odes are often irrelevant, 
 or personal expressions of the poet's feelings. These state- 
 ments are to be qualified in two directions : in the first 
 place, we find the decay of importance and occasional irrele- 
 vance of the chorus manifestly in Sophocles, so that he must 
 either have begun, or countenanced by his practice, the change. 
 Secondly, it is false that Euripides did not introduce an active 
 chorus, and one of great importance, in his plays, for we 
 have before us the Supplices, the Troades, and the Bacchce, 
 rightly called after the most important role. It is further- 
 more asserted that he invented the tragedies of intrigue or of 
 plot, where curiosity as regards the result replaces strong 
 emotions as regards the characters and sentiments expressed. 
 This again is only true with limitations. For there are three 
 different interests which may predominate in a tragedy, and ac- 
 cordingly we may classify them as tragedies of character, like 
 the Medea, as tragedies of plot, like the Ion, and as tragedies 
 of situation, like the Troades, in which there is a mere series of 
 affecting tableaux, or episodes. But evidently all elements 
 must co-exist, and the fact that Euripides does complicate 
 his plot, and excite an intellectual interest in the solving of it, 
 does not prevent these very plays from being most thoroughly 
 plays of character also. There is no finer character-drawing 
 than that of Ion and the Tauric Iphigenia, and yet these cha- 
 racters take part in subtle and interesting plots. It is there- 
 fore distinctly to be understood that the prominence of plot in 
 some of Euripides' plays does not exclude either character- 
 drawing, or the dwelling upon affecting situations this latter a 
 very usual feature in the poet, and one in which he may be
 
 CH. xvn. CHARACTERS IN EURIPIDES. 161 
 
 said to have reverted to the simple successions of scenes in 
 the earliest tragedy. 
 
 2 24. But there is this important point in Euripides' charac- 
 ter-drawing, that except in the Medea, he does not concentrate 
 the whole interest on a single person, but divides it, so that 
 many of his strongest and most beautiful creations appear only 
 during part of a play. Thus Hippolytus and Phaedra are each 
 splendidly drawn, but of equal importance in their play ; so are 
 Alcestis and Heracles, Ion and Creusa, Iphigenia, Agamem- 
 non and Achilles. This subdivision of interest makes his 
 plays far more attractive and various, but it naturally fails in im- 
 pressing upon the world great single figures, such as Ajax, 
 Antigone, or, in our present poet, Medea. Again, it is very 
 remarkable that Euripides seems to have disliked, or to have 
 been unable, to draw strong or splendid male characters. 
 Almost all his kings and heroes are either colourless, or weak 
 and vacillating, or positively mean and wicked. This may be the 
 misfortune of our extant selection of plays, for the Odysseus of 
 his Philoctetes seems to have been an ideal Periclean Athenian. 
 But in the plays we have, the most attractive men are Ion and 
 Hippolytus, in both of whom the characteristics of virgin 
 youth, freshness, and purity are the leading features a type 
 not elsewhere met in extant tragedies, but very prominent in 
 the dialogues of Plato. On the other hand, no other poet has 
 treated female passion, and female self-sacrifice, with such re- 
 markable power and variety. ' We have remaining two types of 
 passion in Phaedra and in Medea one of the passion of Love, 
 the other of the passion of Revenge, and we know that in other 
 
 1 Mr. Hutton, in his delightful Life of Scott, contrasts (p. 107) the genius 
 of Scott, who failed in drawing heroines, with that of Goethe, who was un- 
 successful with his men, but unmatched in his drawing of female character. 
 Some such natural contrast seems to have existed between Sophocles and 
 Euripides, and is indeed implied in the scandalous anecdotes about them, 
 which intimate that Sophocles was too purely an Athenian to share Euri- 
 pides' love of women. Sophocles had an opportunity of drawing the 
 purity and freshness of youth, which was so interesting to the Greeks, in 
 his Neoptolemus (Philoctetes). Yet this character appears to me very 
 inferior to either Ion or Hippolytus. 
 VOL. I. 2 M
 
 162 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvn, 
 
 plays he made erring women his leading characters. But when 
 these characters are assumed mischievously by Aristophanes, 
 stupidly by the old scholiasts, servilely by modern critics, to 
 afford evidence that the poet hated women, and loved to traduce 
 them upon his stage, we wonder how all his splendid heroines 
 have been forgotten, and his declarations of the blessings of 
 home, of the comforts of a good wife, of the surpassing love of 
 a mother, passed by in silence. His fragments abound with 
 these things, just as they do with railings against women, both 
 doubtless spoken in character. But it is indeed strange criti- 
 cism to adopt the one as evidence of the poet's mind, and to 
 reject the other. 
 
 There are, moreover, in the extant plays, four heroines who 
 face death with splendid calmness and courage Alcestis, 
 Macaria, Iphigenia, Polyxena and all with subtle differences 
 of situation, which show how deeply he studied this phase 
 of human greatness. Alcestis is a happy wife and mother, 
 in the heyday of prosperity, and she gives up her life from a 
 sense of duty for an amiable but worthless husband. Macaria, 
 in exile and in affliction, seizes the offer to resign her life, and 
 scorns even the chance of the lot, to secure for her helpless 
 brothers and sisters the happiness which she has been denied. 
 And so the rest, but I pass them by rather than treat them 
 with unjust brevity. 1 Enough has been here said to show that, 
 instead of being a bitter libeller of the sex, he was rather a 
 philosophic promoter of the rights of woman, a painter of her 
 power both for good and evil, and that he strove along with 
 Socrates, and probably the advanced party at Athens, to raise 
 both the importance and the social condition of the despised 
 sex. 
 
 225. He seems to have similarly advocated the virtues 
 and the merit of slaves, who act important parts in his plays, 
 and speak not only with dignity, but at times with philosophic 
 depth. Yet while he thus endeavoured to raise the neglected 
 elements of society, he may fairly be accused of having lowered 
 the gods and heroes, both in character and diction, to the level 
 
 1 I must refer the reader to the chapter of ray monograph on Euripides 
 for a fuller discussion of this interesting question.
 
 CH. XVII. JLSS CHARACTERS. 163 
 
 of ordinary men. He evidently did not believe in the tradi- 
 tional splendour of these people ; he ascribed to them the 
 weakness and the meanness of ordinary human nature ; he even 
 made them speak with the litigious rhetoric of Attic society. 
 When in grief and misery, they fill the theatre with long 
 monodies of wail and lamentation, not louder or more intense 
 than those of the Philoctetes of Sophocles, but without the 
 man's iron resolve. Again, in calmer moments he makes them 
 reflect with the weariness of world-sickness, often in the tone of 
 advanced scepticism, sometimes in that of resignation ; he also 
 makes his chorus turn aside from the immediate subject to 
 speculate on the system of the world, and the hopes and dis- 
 appointments of mankind. When we note these large and 
 deep features in his tragedies, when we see the physical philo- 
 sophy of Anaxagoras, the metaphysic of Heracleitus, the 
 scepticism of Protagoras produced upon his stage, when we 
 see him abandoning strictness of plot, and even propriety of 
 character, to insist upon these meditations of the study, we 
 fancy him a philosopher like Plato, who desired to teach the 
 current views, and the current conflicts of thought, under the 
 guise of dramatic dialogue, and who accordingly fears not to 
 preach all the inconsistencies of human opinion in the mouths 
 of opposing characters. A picture of every sort of speculation, 
 of every sort of generalization from experience, can be gathered 
 from his plays, and we obtain from them a wonderful image 
 of that great seething chaos of hope and despair, of faith and 
 doubt, of duty and passion, of impatience and of resignation, 
 which is the philosophy of every active and thoughtful society. 
 We can imagine the silent and solitary recluse despising his 
 public, writing not for the many of his own day, but for the 
 many of future generations, and careless- how often the critics 
 might censure him for violating dramatic dignity, and the 
 judges postpone him to inferior rivals. And he may well have 
 smiled at his five victories as the reward for his great and 
 earnest work. 
 
 226. But this natural estimate is contradicted by the per- 
 petual notes of the scholiasts, who assert that Euripides was 
 altogether a stage poet, and sacrificed everything to momentary
 
 164 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvn. 
 
 effect. They speak of his plays as immoral, as ill-constructed, 
 but as of great dramatic brilliancy. I confess I am slow to 
 attach any weight to the critics who censure the tears of Medea 
 and Iphigenia as blunders in character-drawing. 1 But there 
 are independent signs that what they say has a real foundation, 
 and that Euripides was too thoroughly the child of his age to 
 soar above the opinions of a public which he may often, and in 
 deeper moments, have despised. Thus we hear of his re-cast- 
 ing his Hippolytus, so as to meet objections ; we find him in- 
 dulging in long monodies which can hardly have been intended 
 for more than an immediate musical effect ; above all, we find 
 him writing patriotic plays, with extreme travesties of the enemy 
 of the day, and with fulsome praises of Athens, which are far 
 below the level of the ' philosopher of the stage.' We find him 
 also adopting a combination of two successive plots, so as to 
 gather into one the pathetic scenes of separate stories, at the 
 expense of dramatic unity. These things show that if he really 
 adopted the stage as a means of conveying the newer light, it 
 became to him an end, which he strove to perfect in his own 
 way, and without surrendering his philosophy. 
 
 He felt himself, as Aristophanes tells us, in direct oppo- 
 sition to ^Eschylus, whom he criticises more than once. 
 There are not wanting cases where he seeks to correct 
 Sophocles also, but nothing is more remarkable than the 
 small number of allusions or collisions between rivals on the 
 same stage, and often in the same subjects. Yet they could 
 not but profit by the conflict. It seems to me, however, that 
 as Euripides was the poet of the youngei generation, and of 
 the changing state, he acted more strongly on Sophocles than 
 Sophocles did in return, and though we may see in the Bacchce. 
 much of the religious resignation of Sophocles, we see in the 
 Philoctetes a great deal of the economy and of the stage practice 
 of Euripides. 
 
 The next generation, while leaving the older poet all his 
 glories, declared decidedly for Euripides; the poets of society em- 
 braced him as their forerunner and their model ; philosophers, 
 
 1 Cf. the argument to the Medea, and Aristotle's Poetic, cap. xv.
 
 CH. xvii. FORTUNES OF HIS WORKS. 165 
 
 orators, moralists all united in extolling him to the skies. 
 Thus the poet who was charged with writing for the vulgar, 
 with pandering to the lowest tastes of the day, with abandoning 
 the ideal and the eternal for the passions and interests of the 
 moment this is the very man who became essentially the 
 poet, not of his own, but of later ages. He was doubtless, as 
 I have already said, an inferior artist to Sophocles ; he was 
 certainly a greater genius, and a far more suggestive thinker. 1 
 
 227. The old critics paid much attention to this author, but 
 are unfortunately not often cited. Dicaearchus is the earliest 
 mentioned, especially in the Arguments, then Aristophanes of 
 Byzantium, and his pupil Callistratus, as well as other Alexan- 
 drians, and Crates, but Aristarchus is only mentioned once in 
 a note on the Rhesus. Didymus is the most important, and 
 most cited, and a commentary by Dionysius, added to his notes. 
 The present collection of scholia, though it must have then 
 existed, was unknown to Suidas. They were first edited on 
 the seven popular plays, by Arsenius (Venice, 1534), and often 
 since. Those on the Rhesus and Troades were first given from 
 the Vatican MS. (909), in the Glasgow edition of 1821. This 
 copy also supplies fuller notes on other plays, all of which have 
 been carefully edited by W. Dindorf in his Scholia Graca in 
 Eurip. (Oxon. 1863), with a good preface. There are only 
 full notes on nine plays, viz. Hecuba, Orestes, Ph&nissce, Medea, 
 Hippolytus, Alcestis, Andromache, Troades, and Rhesus. On the 
 rest there is hardly anything, about a dozen notes each on the 
 Ion, Helena, Hercules Furens and Electra ; on the others even 
 less. The history of the influence of his plays on the Roman 
 and modern drama is very curious, but I must refer the reader 
 for this and other details to my larger monograph on the poet. 2 
 
 228. Bibliographical. I proceed to notice the principal 
 MSS. and editions. The extant MSS. have been carefully 
 classified by Elmsley (Pref. to Medea and Bacch^), by Dindorf, 
 
 1 An immense number of monographs on special points in the poet's 
 diction, economy, style, and temper are enumerated by Bernhardy and by 
 Nicolai, LG. I. i. pp. 201-2. 
 
 2 Euripides, in Mr. Green's series of classical writers (Macmillan, 
 1379).
 
 166 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvn. 
 
 and by KirchhofF in the preface to his Medea. None of them 
 contains all the plays. The older selection contains the nine 
 plays of the Vatican MS. just mentioned, but of these the first 
 five are in a Venice MS., which is the oldest and best, and 
 six in a Paris MS. (A, 2712). We accordingly have these plays 
 -better preserved, and with scholia. The rest are extant in 
 two fourteenth century MSS., the Laurentian C (plut. 32, 2, at 
 Florence), which contains all the plays but the Troades and a 
 portion of the Baccha, and the Palatine (287), in the Vatican 
 Library, which contains seven of the latter section, except the 
 end of HeracleidcB. Thus there are three plays, the Hercules 
 Furens, the Helena, and the Electra, which depend upon the 
 Florentine C alone, which has only been of late collated once 
 (by de Furia) for the edition of Matthias. An examination of 
 this codex on the Helena and Hercules Furens proved to me 
 that a good deal of help might still be derived from another 
 and more careful collation. The same result appears from the 
 recent collation of the Electro, by Heyse. 1 More recent copies 
 need not here be mentioned. Most critics are now agreed that 
 all these texts are full of interpolations, arising from repeti- 
 tions, school reading, and from additions to. the choral odes by 
 grammarians. As to editions, four plays (Medea, Hippolytus, 
 Alcestis, Andromache] were first edited by J. Lascaris, in capitals, 
 at Florence, about 1496 a rare and undated book. The 
 proper princeps edition is that of Aldus (1503), containing 
 eighteen plays, the Electra not appearing till 1545 (Victorius, 
 Rome). This edition is based upon good MSS., and its value 
 is much greater than those which succeeded it, which I therefore 
 pass over till we come to the studies of Valckenaer, whose 
 Diatribe on the fragments marks an epoch. I have already 
 noted all the good special editions of each play under its head- 
 ing. Of late critical editions we may mention that of Matthias 
 (1829-39), f Fix, in Didot's series (1843), of A. Kirchhoff 
 (1868), of Nauck (Teubner), of H. Weil (Sept Tragedies, Paris, 
 and edit., 1880), and of Mr. Paley, who has given us a text and 
 commentary in three volumes (1860). Besides the versions 
 
 1 Cf. Hermes^ vii. 252, sq.
 
 CH. xvii. TRANSLATIONS. 167 
 
 of single plays already mentioned, there are translations of the 
 whole works into German by Bothe, Donner, Hartung, Fritze, 
 and Kock, into French by Prevost and Brumoy, into Italian by 
 Carmelli (Padua, 1 743), into English by Potter (reproduced in 
 Valpy's classics, 1821), and by Woodhull (1782, four volumes). 
 Carmelli and Woodhull not only give all the plays, with many 
 good notes, but all the fragments then collected by Barnes and 
 Musgrave, with an index of names and even of moral senti- 
 ments. There is also an edition of four select tragedies pro- 
 duced anonymously in 1780. There are unfinished lexicons 
 to Euripides by Faehse and Matthise, and a full index in 
 Beck's ed. The fragments known up to 1891 are now best 
 studied in Nauck's fine collection, Fragg. Tragg. Grac^ 2nd 
 edit., Teubner, 1890.
 
 j 68 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvni. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE LESSER AND THE LATER TRAGIC POETS. 
 
 229. NOTHING is more remarkable than the deep shade 
 thrown over all the other Greek tragic poets by the splendour 
 of the great Triad which has so long occupied us. It may 
 perhaps not excite wonder that their contemporaries should be 
 forgotten, but we are surprised that of their successors none 
 should have stood the test of time, or reached us even through 
 the medium of criticism. Nevertheless, of the vast herd of 
 latter tragedians two only, and two of the earliest Ion and 
 Agathon can be called livirg figures in a history of Greek 
 literature. And these, as it happens, encountered the living 
 splendour of Sophocles and Euripides. Moreover, our scanty 
 information seems to have omitted some of the most popular 
 of the later playwrights, for of the 700 tragedies which are 
 attributed to them in the notes of Suidas and elsewhere, we can 
 only find fifteen victorious pieces. Who then won the prizes ? 
 or was the taste of the Athenian ochlocracy so conservative, 
 that they persisted in reserving all the honours for reproductions 
 of the old masterpieces? If this were so, how comes it that 
 the writing of new and unsuccessful tragedies became so 
 dominant a fashion? And yet even the Poetic of Aristotle, 
 which treats mainly of the laws of tragic poetry, hardly men- 
 tions any of them, and then almost always by way of censure. 
 This much is therefore certain, that while comedy was making 
 new developments, and affording a field for real genius and 
 for real art, tragedy, though for a time maintaining its import- 
 ance and even its popularity, had attained its zenith, and its 
 later annals are but a history of decay. Of the older poets, 
 who were contemporary with Sophocles and Euripides, we
 
 CH. xvur. ION OF CHIOS. 
 
 169 
 
 hear in Suidas of Aristarchus of Tegea, the author of 100 plays, 
 and only twice a victor, from whom Ennius seems to have 
 borrowed his Achilles; also of Achaus of Eretria, who con- 
 tended with Euripides in Ol. 83, who only won once, though 
 the author of forty-four. The scholia to the Medea of Euripides 
 cite Neophron or Neophon as the author of the poet's model, 
 and quote from him two good fragments, which, when supple- 
 mented by the soliloquy of his Priam from Stobseus, seem to 
 indicate some talent. But these scanty hints, and the notice 
 of Suidas that he first brought on the stage tutor-slaves and 
 the torturing of domestics whatever that may mean are all 
 that remains to us of his 120 dramas. 
 
 230. But we hear a great deal more of Ion of Chios, who 
 was in many respects a remarkable figure. As he told of his 
 having when a youth met Kimon in society at Athens, his 
 birth must fall about Ol. 74 ; his death is alluded to by 
 Aristophanes * as recent, I suppose, and therefore shortly 
 before Ol. 89, 3. Though in character as well as in birth 
 a pure Ionian, he seems to have lived much at Athens, and 
 from a drinking song quoted in Athenseus appears also well 
 acquainted with Spartan traditions and cults. But these could 
 have been learned from Kimon's aristocratical society at 
 Athens, as they always affected Spartan style, in the same man- 
 ner that foreign nobles of sundry nations mimic Englishmen. 
 Ion seems to have met ^Eschylus, and possibly Sophocles, at 
 the opening of his career, and to have been a much-travelled 
 and social person, of large experience, agreeable manners, and 
 ample fortune. Perhaps he is the earliest example of a literary 
 dilettante, who employed his leisure in essays of various sorts 
 of writing. He composed elegies, 2 melic poems, both dithyrambs 
 and hymns, especially a hymn to Opportunity (u/iroc Katpow), epi- 
 grams, tragedies, and prose works in Ionic dialect the latter 
 either on the antiquities of Chios, or in the form of memoirs 
 (called also fVi^^mt and awfKlrip.riTiKoi). These latter, which 
 must have been a novel form in literature, are often cited by 
 
 1 Pax, 835, with a good scholion. 
 Cf. above, Part I., p. 213.
 
 1 70 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvnr. 
 
 Plutarch and Athenaeus as valuable historical sources, and were 
 discussed in a special work on Ion by Baton of Sinope. 
 
 We are here, however, concerned with his tragedies, of 
 which the number is variously stated from twelve to forty. 
 Perhaps the lesser number refers to trilogies. He first con- 
 tended in Ol. 82, was unsuccessful against Euripides in 87, 4, 
 but when afterwards victorious, sent the Athenians a present 
 of Chian wine. We have ten titles, some of them very curious, 
 e.g. the Great Drama (Me'ya fya/ua). His satyrical play, the 
 Qmphale, was very popular. None of the fragments are 
 sufficient to give an idea of the plot, but their style is good, 
 and the expression easy and elegant. 
 
 Achceus of Eretria flourished between Ol. 74 and 83, but 
 only gained a single prize out of forty-four dramas. He is 
 once praised as second only to ^schylus in satyrical drama. 
 Athenaeus speaks of him as smooth in style, but at times dark 
 and enigmatical. His scanty fragments afford us no means of 
 correcting this judgment. 
 
 231. We may pass next to a poet whose figure comes 
 before us with peculiar clearness in the pictures of Plato and 
 Aristophanes. Whether their portraits are faithful is not easy 
 to say, but it is not likely that they were far from the truth, 
 especially as they are not inconsistent, though very dissimilar 
 in many respects. 
 
 In the opening of the Thesmophoriazusce AGATHON (son of 
 Tisamenus) is appealed to as an effeminate and luxurious man 
 whose soft and sensuous poetry was the natural outcome of his 
 nature. A specimen of course a parody is given of an alter- 
 nate hymn between the poet and his chorus, which is not with- 
 out grace and beauty. But this satirical picture is much 
 modified by the hearty friendliness of the allusion in the Frogs, 
 where Dionysus, in reply to Heracles, who asks about Agathon 
 next after Sophocles, says ' he is gone and has left me, a good 
 poet and a deep regret to his friends. H. Whither has the 
 poor fellow gone ? D. To the feast of the blessed.' The hos- 
 pitable and social side of the man is not less prominent in 
 Plato's Symposium, the scene of which is laid in his house, where 
 he acts the part of a most gentlemanly and aristocratic host,
 
 CH. xvin. AGATHON. 171 
 
 and makes a remarkable" speech on the nature of Love, which 
 may possibly be drawn from his writings, but of this no evidence 
 remains to us. There is indeed a corrupt passage in Dionysius, 
 which makes him, with Likymnius, a pupil of Gorgias, and this 
 hint has prompted Blass l to analyse with care his speech in 
 the Symposium, and his language in the parody of Aristophanes, 
 to detect Gorgian features. There seems to be strong evidence 
 in the speech, which is evidently a dramatic imitation of a 
 peculiar style, that Agathon did borrow its complexion from 
 his friend Gorgias. There is the same attention to a fixed and 
 obvious scheme, the same love of playing upon words, and 
 seeking alliterations. As these features recur in the odes 
 ascribed to him by Aristophanes, it is probable that his style 
 was really formed from the oratory of the great Sicilian. 
 
 Though he is proved by these and many other allusions and 
 anecdotes to have been a prominent figure in Attic society, we 
 have very few facts transmitted about his life. Born about Ol. 
 83, he first gained a prize in Ol. 90, 4, and is mentioned as 
 having praised Antiphon's great defence of himself to the 
 orator, who felt consoled in his condemnation by the approval 
 of one competent judge among the ignorant public. He left 
 Athens before the end of the 93rd Ol. for the Macedonian 
 court, where the good living and absence of sharp criticism 
 probably suited his easy-going and perhaps indolent genius ; 
 and there he died in the prime of life, before 405 B.C. 2 There 
 remain to us the titles of only six of his tragedies, Tehphus, 
 a play on Achilles in which alone, says the Poetic of Aris- 
 totle, he failed Alcnuzon, Aerope, the Mystans, and lastly the 
 Flower (avflos), so strange a title that some critics consider it a 
 false reading for some proper name Bergk says avOevs. But 
 as we are told 3 that both the character and the plot were in 
 this play invented, the curious title is not improbable ; and we 
 have here an original attempt at a tragedy departing from the 
 received myths, consequently from all religious basis, and a 
 notable change in the history of the drama. We learn from 
 
 ' Attische Beredtsamkeit, 5. 76. 
 
 2 Cf. Rock's and Fritsche's Comm. on Frogs ; perhaps not till 400 
 
 * Poet. 9. Cf. Nauck, FTC. and ed. pp. 763-9.
 
 172 HISTORY OF CREEK LITERATURE. CH. xvm. 
 
 the Poetic also, to me a suspicious source, that he was the ori- 
 ginator of the habit of composing choral odes loosely or not at 
 all connected with a plot an innovation commonly attributed 
 to Euripides. The few extant fragments, as well as the speech 
 in Plato, point to great neatness of style, and an epigrammatic 
 turn, which the Attic writers called Ko/u-,//orje or rhetorical 
 finish. This quality makes him a favourite source of quotation 
 with Aristotle. We find, therefore, in Agathon an independent 
 and talented artist, working on the same lines, and in the same 
 direction, as Euripides, but without his industry or philosophic 
 seriousness. 
 
 232. The case of CRITIAS is more difficult to decide. 
 One play, the Sisyphus, often ascribed to Euripides, seems 
 to have been composed by Critias, but the frank atheism 
 expressed in the extant fragment makes us think he did not 
 mean it for public performance. Another, the Pririthous, is 
 doubtfully ascribed to him by Athenaeus, but elsewhere called 
 Euripidean. Thus the tragedy of Critias seems to have been 
 distinctly intended to convey sceptical views in theology and 
 in natural philosophy, outdoing the more artistic and reticent 
 character of Euripides's teaching. 1 
 
 During the same period the families of the great tragic 
 poets were either reproducing, or composing, with some success. 
 Two sons of ^Eschylus were tragic poets, one of whom, Eu- 
 phorion, succeeded four times with unpublished plays of his 
 father, and defeated Euripides in Ol. 87, 4. He also composed 
 original plays. lophon, son of Sophocles, is spoken of as 
 gaining victories, and also as a bad poet. But the grandson, 
 the younger Sophocles, who produced the CEdipus Coloneus, 
 was of more repute, and often declared victor. The younger 
 Euripides, nephew of the great poet, is not prominent. There 
 appear also among the descendants of ^Eschylus his nephew 
 Philocles, an ugly and mean-looking man, who defeated 
 Sophocles' CEdipus Rex ; and then a series of grandsons and 
 nephews Morsimus, Melanthius, Astydamas, and a younger 
 Philocles. These men are chiefly known by the ridicule of the 
 comic poets, which has immortalised a host of obscurities. 
 His prose works are noticed in Vol. II. 385.
 
 CH. xvin. OBSCURE TRAGIC POETS. 173 
 
 The famous passage in the Frogs ' gives us Aristophanes' judg- 
 ment on this herd of tragic poetasters, whose names are not 
 worth enumeration here. I will only observe that the German 
 critics have adopted far too literally the scorn and ridicule of 
 Aristophanes, who was often an unfair critic, and probably 
 gave rein to private spite and party feeling in many of his judg- 
 ments. If we had only his ridicule of Agathon in the Thesmopho- 
 riazusa preserved, and had lost the Frogs and Plato's Sympo- 
 sium, I have no doubt Agathon would occupy a very different 
 place in the judgment of learned philologists. Of the lesser 
 poets Meletus has gained notoriety by his attack on Socrates ; 
 Critias by his political activity, and his elegies, of which no 
 mean fragments have been preserved ; there was also Diony- 
 sius of Syracuse, whose vanity and anxiety to succeed in 
 literature were of old much ridiculed. His poems were recited 
 with great pomp at Olympia (98, i), and received with jeering 
 and laughter. He really studied, and had his works revised 
 and criticised by Philoxenus and the tragic poet Antiphon ; 
 it is probably an Attic joke that he died of joy at a victory 
 gained in the Athenian Lensea (Ol- 103, i). 
 
 vv. 89, sq. : HP. oijKOvv trtp <TT' tvravQa 
 
 rpayifSias iroiovvra ir\fiv ^ /avpius, 
 EfyuTriSou irAetj' ?) ffraSiy \a\itrrfpa ; 
 
 AI. tiri(pv\\i5fs ravr' fffrl Kal arai/tvA/uaTa, 
 Xe\i56v<av pava-fta, Xai^ral -rexvris, 
 a (ppovSa QO.TTOV, T)V povov xopbv Aa/8j;, 
 OTTO| irpotroyp^croi'To rrj TpaytfSia, 
 y6vip.ov Sf TTOiTjrrjj' &y oi>x evpois en 
 fjjTwv &v, 5o"ris py/Mi yfvvdtov \OLKOI. 
 
 HP. Trias y6vifj.ov ; 
 
 AI. &5i yoi>i/j,oi>, Sffns <t)dfyeTtti, 
 
 rotovrovi rt irapaKfKH'SvvfVfj.tvov, 
 aldfpa Albs Su/nd-rioy, t) XP^ VOV ^80, 
 ^ <t>pera fj.tv OVK ede\ov(rcu> ofj.6<rai Kaff lepuv, 
 yXSiTTav 8' eViop/c^traeroj' ISia Trjs <pptv6s. 
 
 HP. fff Se TO.VT' apffficei ; AI. yuaAXd itXtiv ^ /xai 
 
 H?. ?i n$]v Ko0a\d y fffriv, &s Kal ffol SoKft. 
 
 AI. fi^i rbv 4/j.bv otxti vow x tj 7P olniav. 
 
 HP. Kal fj.r]v aTfxvws ye irajUTrorTjpo <paive-r<u. 
 
 A!. 8tnrveii> fjLf St'Sacr/ce.
 
 174 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XVIII. 
 
 The later notices of tragedy are not clear enough for any 
 short survey. I must refer the reader to the careful discussion 
 in Welcker's third volume, and the long summary in Bernhardy. 
 The school of Isocrates produced one man, Theodectes, rather 
 a rhetorician than a tragic poet, who was honoured with the 
 friendship of Alexander and Aristotle. Then follows the head 
 of the dvayfuannoL, Chseremon, who wrote for a reading public, 
 and altogether in that rhetorical style which infected all later 
 tragedy in Greece, in Rome, and in the French renaissance. 
 The Alexandrian tragedians, the best seven of whom were called 
 the Pleias, and who were thought in their day very wonderful 
 people, do not concern us in a survey of Greek classical 
 literature. 
 
 We have now, after thirty years, a new and excellent edition 
 of all the Fragg. Tragicorum Graecorum by the veteran critic 
 Nauck (Teubner, 1890).
 
 CH. XIX. 175 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF COMEDY THE DORIC SCHOOL, EPICHARMUS, 
 SOPHRON THEOCRITUS AND HIS SCHOOL. 
 
 233. ' COMEDY did not attract attention from the begin- 
 ning, because it was not a serious pursuit. Thus thearchon did 
 not assign a chorus to the comic poets till late, for they were 
 (at first) volunteers (etttXojrai, apparently a technical term). 
 But it was not until it had attained some fixity of form that its 
 poets are recorded as such. It is forgotten who fixed its cha- 
 racters (masks) or style, or number of actors, or such other 
 details.' This is the statement in Aristotle's Poetic, from which 
 all historians of ancient comedy now start. While tragedy, 
 being distinctly associated with religion, soon came under state 
 protection, comedy, which was indeed a part of the Dionysiac 
 feast, but a mere relaxation of revelry, was allowed to take care 
 of itself, and to develop as best it could. But in most cases it 
 was found that the political and social license of democracy 
 ivas favourable to its claims, and its political capabilities raised 
 it to great glory in the old Attic school of Aristophanes. This 
 side of comedy gave rise to part of the claim justly made by 
 the Dorians, that they had originated both tragedy and comedy 
 a claim the more reasonable, as it is clear that the Dorians 
 were the originators, and the lonians the perfecters, of many 
 forms of literature. 'Wherefore (says Aristotle) the Dorians 
 lay claim to both tragedy and comedy, to comedy the people 
 of Megara, both those of this (Nisaean) Megara because of 
 their democracy, and those of Sicily (on account of Epichar- 
 mus). And they cite the terms used as evidence. For the 
 outlying villages which the Athenians call $npt they call 
 as comedians were so called not from joining in the
 
 176 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xix. 
 
 (procession of revellers), but on account of their wandering 
 through the villages, because they were held in no repute 
 in the city.' This derivation of icw/zwcu'a is probably the 
 right one, and does not conflict with the term rpvyycia, the 
 song of the lees, or of the vintage feast, at which time such 
 diversions have been common with all southern nations. 
 Another passage in the Poetic which speaks of comedy being 
 originally impromptu, and being derived from the phallic pro- 
 cessions, still common in most Greek towns, is not so accu- 
 rate, and only means that these phallic precessions were carried 
 on both at the season, and in the frame of mind which suited 
 the old rude comedy. The phallic feasts of the Egyptians, 
 described by Herodotus, 1 show this combination of the 
 worship of nature, and of satirical and comic personalities. 
 But there is no evidence that these precessions, even when 
 they gave rise to special hymns, of which we have traces, ever 
 advanced to any dramatic form. Of course this account of the 
 origin of comedy, which is evidently historical, disposes of the 
 remark in the Poetic, that what is called Homer's Margites was 
 the first model of comedy, as the Iliad was of tragedy. This 
 poem was probably the earliest attempt at drawing a genuine 
 character from a ridiculous point of view ; but I am not sure 
 that the Thersites of the Iliad could not have served the 
 purpose just as well. 
 
 It results from the obscure origin of comedy among village 
 people, that it should develop itself variously, according as 
 the same seed fell upon various ground, both as to circum- 
 stances and as to the special genius of the men who raised it 
 into literature. But there is one great division which we may 
 separate at once, and relegate to after discussion I mean the 
 Attic comedy, which, though apparently imported from Megara, 
 and long dormant, in due time developed into a great and 
 fruitful branch of Greek poetry, with a definite progress and a 
 well-determined history. The other branch, to which we now 
 turn, is rightly called the Doric, because we find it among no 
 other Greeks than Dorians, and almost everywhere among 
 them, but differing so widely in form, tone and temper, accord- 
 
 1 ii. 58.
 
 CH. xix. SPARTAN COMEDY. 
 
 177 
 
 ing to its age and home, that there is perhaps no name of 
 wider and more various acceptation. But, in the first instance, 
 the reader should be warned against taking the Spartans of 
 history as representatives of the Dorian type. Whatever they 
 may have been before the Ephors reduced them to a camp of 
 ignorant and narrow-minded soldiers, under what is called the 
 Lycurgean discipline this much is certain, that all other 
 Dorians Megarians, Argives, Italiots, Sikeliots, Rhodians 
 differed widely from the Spartan type. We might as well take 
 the Roman type as representative of those lively volatile Italic 
 people, out of which they rose by a peculiar history, and 
 peculiar social and political conditions. 
 
 234. (a) The Spartans had a sort of comedy, in which 
 players, who were called etk-7?Aik-rat, acted in pantomime certain 
 comic parts, apparently of both special adventures (such as 
 those of a thief) and of characters (such as that of a foreign 
 physician). Am-jjXov is said to be synonymous with /uijujj/m. 
 Apparently those who represented women were called j3pva\- 
 XtKTal. These actors were, as might be expected, held in 
 contempt by the Spartans, and were always either periceci or 
 helots. Thus a reply of Agesilaus, given by Plutarch, ex- 
 presses the contempt which grave persons of the Periclean 
 type would feel for a ' play-actor.' (b) The efforts of the 
 Megarians are more important, 1 though hardly less obscure, 
 inasmuch as through Susarion they led the way to Attic, 
 and through their Sicilian colony to the highest Sicilian, 
 comedy. The violent political conflicts in which the citizens 
 were engaged seem to have excited their natural taste for 
 lampoon and libel, and in the democratic period which 
 followed the expulsion of Theagenes (about 600 B.C.) they 
 developed a rude and abusive comedy, which is only known 
 to us through the contemptuous allusions of the old Attic 
 comedians. It was probably never written down, so that 
 on'y stray verses survived. 2 Susarion wandered into Attica 
 
 1 The phallic pomps celebrated at Sikyon and the neighbouring Doric 
 towns of Achaia can hardly be identified with even the widest acceptation 
 of Doric comedy. 
 
 * Strangely enough, the extravagance of their stage appliances (purple 
 
 VOL. I. 2 N
 
 1 78 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XIX. 
 
 about 01. 50, and was said to have performed in Attic villages. 
 The lines against women cited as his are not genuine. Tolynus 
 is called the inventor of the metrical forms, but is probably, 
 as Meineke has suggested, 1 confused with the celebrated Tellen, 
 an early flute-player, whose epitaph in the Anthology says 
 he was irpiarov yvovra ytXoto/utXely. Of Myltus we know 
 only the proverb ' Myllus hears everything,' which seems as if 
 he had represented the daily failings of his townsmen upon the 
 stage. Mason was the most celebrated, but was perhaps a 
 Sicilian Megarian, and was popular at the court ot the Peisistra- 
 tidae. Character masks were called Masons, and on one of 
 the Hermse at Athens was inscribed his saying, CUT' ivtpyiainQ 
 \\ycifjil nvova Irjirav 'A^atoi. 
 
 2 35- ( c ) We pass to the more important Sicilian branch 
 of Doric comedy. The earliest of whom we hear anything 
 is Aristoxenus of Selinus, placed by Eusebius about Ol. 29, 
 who is spoken of as 'the originator of those who recited 
 iambics according to the ancient fashion.' 2 The word m/u- 
 fiifciv was early used (like yttyvpifctv) for lampooning, and 
 we may be certain that among the rich and prosperous 
 Sicilians there was ample time and occasion to encourage this 
 sort of amusement. Cicero and Quintilian speak of the Sici- 
 lians as particularly quick and lively people, always ready with 
 a witty answer even in untoward circumstances, much as the 
 Irish would be described by an English stranger now-a-days. 
 But I think the Germans are wrong in inferring that this Roman 
 description applies to the Sicilians as compared with other 
 Greeks, and not merely to the contrast Cicero felt to the stupid 
 Roman boors, who, like the English rustic, combined political 
 sense with social ignorance and dullness. But the Sicilian 
 smartness at repartee, and their love of gossip and amusement, 
 arose not merely from the lively Greek temperament, but from 
 this combined with material wealth and political education. 
 
 hangings) is cited by Aristotle (IVic. Eth. iv. 2, 20) as an example of 
 wastefulness. But this was in the fourth century B.C. 
 
 1 Hist. Com. p. 38. 
 
 2 Hephsestion adds a specimen of his anapaests, which has been already 
 quoted above ( 117).
 
 CH. xix. PHORMOS AND DEINOLOCHOS. 179 
 
 The splendour of the Syracusan court under Gelon and Hieron 
 developed, among other literary forms, that of a distinct and 
 real comedy, in which three masters distinguished themselves 
 all in the earlier part of the fifth century B.C. These were 
 Epicharmus, Phormos and Deinolochos. Concerning the pre- 
 parations for this comedy, the obscure forerunners of these 
 men, and concerning the details of their performances, we are 
 totally in the dark. 
 
 Of the latter two we only know that Phormos (perhaps 
 a local form for Phormis ' ) was contemporary with Epichar- 
 mus, and came from the district of Msenalon in Arcadia ; that 
 he was intimate in Gelon's palace and the instructor of his 
 children; that he was, moreover, so renowned in war under 
 Gelon and Hieron as to justify his dedicating certain offerings 
 at Olympia, which Pausanias describes ; and that he was the 
 author of six comedies on mythological subjects Admettis, 
 Alkinoos, the Fall of Ilion, Perseus, &c., of which not a single 
 fragment has survived. He also improved the stage dresses 
 and hangings. 
 
 Deinolochos, who is placed in the seventy-third Ol. and called 
 a pupil or rival of Epicharmus, composed fourteen dramas in 
 the Doric dialect, which are only cited about a dozen times 
 by grammarians for peculiar forms. The titles known are the 
 Amazons, Telephus, Medea, Althea, and the Comic Tragedy. 
 So far as we can see, these two men developed that peculiar 
 form of comedy for which Epicharmus also was famous, that of 
 the travesty of gods and heroes. This mythological farce of 
 the Sicilians is thought by the Germans to have differed from the 
 satyrical dramas of the Attic tragedians in that the gods and 
 heroes were here themselves ridiculed, whereas in our extant 
 satyrical drama, the Cyclops, the hero Odysseus retains his dig- 
 nity, but is brought into the society of Silenus and his lazy and 
 wanton followers. It seems to me, however, that there is evi- 
 
 1 This is Lobeck's notion. But the curious variation in the name and 
 the single mention of Phormis, the general or warrior, by Pausanias, have 
 led Lorenz, I think justly, to doubt the identity of the warrior with the 
 comedian, and assume the latter to have been Phormos. Cf. his 
 charmos, p. 85, note. 
 
 N 2
 
 i8o HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xix. 
 
 dence of a close relation between the two branches, as will 
 presently appear. 
 
 236. EPICHARMUS was a much greater man, and accord- 
 ingly somewhat more of his work and influence has survived. 
 On his life we have only a short and dry article by Diogenes 
 Laertius, who classes him among the philosophers, without 
 mentioning his comedies, and a jumbled notice in Suidas, 
 which seems altogether untrustworthy when it contradicts the 
 statements of Diogenes. According to this latter, Epichar- 
 mus was the son of Elithales of Kos, and came, when three 
 months old, with his father to the Sicilian Megara. If he was 
 a follower of Pythagoras during his life, he must have visited 
 Magna Graecia. But he afterwards removed to Syracuse, which 
 claims the chief honour in being the scene of his works. Dio- 
 genes' account of his writings is very curious and unsatis- 
 factory. ' He left memoirs (i>7ro^r?j/zara), in which he tyvoioXoye', 
 yrw/ioXoytl, tarpoXoyet discusses nature, utters moral gnomes, 
 and gives medical receipts.' This implies that the com- 
 piler had access only to a selection of notable passages from 
 his works, and did not know his comedies. He adds that 
 he marked them as his own by anagrams, which looks as if 
 the writings were spurious, and we know that false Epichar- 
 mian writings were extant ; also that he died aged ninety years. 
 Yet the main substance of this notice seems to be true. The 
 poet was born about Ol. 60, and must have visited Magna Graecia 
 before the break-up of the Pythagoreans in Ol. 68. Whether 
 he really entered the Pythagorean order we do not know. On 
 his return to Sicilian Megara, he set himself to giving a more 
 literary form to the rude farces which already existed among the 
 Megarians. About Ol. 73 he appears of great fame at the court 
 of Gelon, and more especially of Hieron in Syracuse, where 
 he met the greatest literary men of the day, and died at a great 
 age. 
 
 237. The notice that he added letters to the alphabet arises 
 either from some later letters being first adopted in his works, 
 or from his intimacy with Simonides at Syracuse. It is not 
 impossible, as Simonides did adopt some additions, that he 
 persuaded Epicharmus to spread their use in copies of his very
 
 CH. xix. EPICHARMUS. 
 
 181 
 
 popular plays. There are two or three anecdotes preserved of 
 his intercourse with Hieron. The best epigram upon him is not 
 that quoted by Diogenes, but one remaining to us among the 
 poems of Theocritus, which seems genuine. We must imagine 
 the court of Hieron, notwithstanding his occasional cruelty and 
 suspicion, as the most brilliant and cultivated centre in the 
 Hellenic world. It is likely that Epbharmus here met not 
 only Simonides, but also Bacchylides, Pindar, and ^Eschylus. 1 
 We must add to this list an acquaintance with Theognis, who 
 resided at the Sicilian Megara during the poet's earlier years 
 Being thus in contact with the greatest literary men of the age, 
 he was not less familiar with early Greek philosophy. Pythagoras 
 we have already mentioned. There are remaining distinct allu- 
 sions, perhaps polemical, to the opinions of both Xenophanes and 
 Heracleitus. Nay more, so profound were the speculative allu- 
 sions in his comedies, that they seem to have been gathered, and 
 to have obtained great importance at an early date, so much so 
 that his latest biographer holds him to have composed a didactic 
 poem Trepi ^txrtwc, on nature. This notion is, however, in itself 
 improbable. The obscure notices of his medical, and even 
 veterinary, treatises rest on equally untrustworthy grounds. But 
 his comedies were very widely known and quoted ; and in them 
 he was said to put forth his views in dramatic form, perhaps 
 for safety's sake, as may have been the case with Euripides. 
 Plato knew them well, and cites them as Heraclitic in tone, 
 and the work of the chief of comic writers. 2 The younger 
 Dionysius wrote about them. The most important work upon 
 him was the critical essay of Apollodorus, in ten books. Ennius 
 compiled a poem called Epicharmus from his philosophical 
 utterances, of which a few lines on physical speculations survive, 
 which were perhaps put into the poet's mouth. 3 
 
 1 lie is even said to have ridiculed the latter (Schol. ^Esch. Eumcn. 
 626) for his constant use of the word ri/j.a\(j>ovtifi>os. 
 
 7 Thecet. 152 D. 
 
 * The statement of Horace, (Dicitur) Plautus ad exemplar Siculi pro- 
 perare Epicharmi (Efp. ii. I, 58), has given rise to great discussion. He 
 mentions this as only the theory of the critics who liked old Latin poetry, 
 and compared it with great Greek models. But ' properare ' is a curious 
 word, and seems only to apply to the easy flow of the dialogue. There
 
 i82 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE CH. xix. 
 
 238. We have still the names and some fragments of the 
 thirty-five comedies acknowledged as genuine. 1 Our fragments 
 do not tell us much about the plots of these plays ; but it is more 
 than probable that there was not much plot, as is the case even 
 with the old Attic comedy, and that the whole interest lay in a 
 clever dialogue, and the working out of single comic scenes, in 
 which either celebrated myths were travestied, or philosophical 
 notions aired and parodied. There is also reason to think 
 that rhetorical subtleties, such as antitheses, and other devices 
 which led to the system of Korax and Tisias, were also ridi- 
 culed, and that accordingly the first beginnings of Greek elo- 
 quence are here to be detected. 2 Lorenz, in his monograph, 
 compares with a good deal of point the simpler pieces of 
 Moliere, such as the Mariage force. The love of eating and 
 drinking, so prominent in Sicily, suggested to him his travesty 
 called the Marriage of Hebe (with Heracles), in which the feast 
 seems to have occupied most of the play, and in which the 
 gluttony of the gods was portrayed. 3 On account of the 
 numerous dishes cited, we have it quoted, some forty times, by 
 Athenaeus, in its two editions. Athenseus has also preserved to 
 
 is no evidence of any plot of Plautus being borrowed from Epicharmus. 
 The prologue of the Menccchmi only asserts Sicilian scenery and manners 
 in the play, and is, moreover, probably spurious. The Romans copied the 
 new Attic comedy in these plays, their Atellanse or farces were taken from 
 Italic or Sikelic sources. 
 
 1 They may be divided into three classes mythological travesties, 
 such as the "Ayiui/cos, Bovvipis, "Afias yo.ft.os, brought out afterwards in a new 
 edition as Movcrat, 'OStxrcretis avr6fjt.o\os, 'O5vff<rfvs vavay6s, &c. ; character 
 plays, such as 'EA.TTIS ^ ir\ovros, Qeapoi, 'EiriviKtos ; and lastly, dialectical 
 plays, based on the love of dispute and argument among Sicilians, which 
 seems to have been quite as remarkable as it was at Athens. This class is 
 represented by his Ta KOI 6d\curffa, the contest of sea and land (as to advan- 
 tage), and the A6yos KO! \oyiva. 2 Cf. Blass, Att. Ber. i. p. 17. 
 
 3 A fragment of ten lines from the 'O5u<r<r. avr. has been restored by 
 Gomperz from the Rainer papyri ; cf. Revue des Et. grecques, ii. p. 210. I 
 have found another in the Petrie papyri, which I here append, as it is as 
 yet unpublished. It is headed Eirixapnov. 
 
 ] ris SvffTvxiov fiiuv T' (x <av 
 
 3 Tt (pdtTw fj.aKd.piof 
 
 Mov xp r l ffov ' T
 
 CH. xix. EPICHARMUS. 183 
 
 us his picture of the parasite, a character first invented for the 
 stage by him, from the 'E\7r/e, a character comedy. 1 A great 
 many of the other fragments are likewise upon dishes and 
 eating. 
 
 By far the most important philosophical passages remain- 
 ing to us are, however, preserved from another curious and 
 accidental source. Diogenes, who says nothing ofEpicharmus' 
 comedies in his short official notice of the poet, quotes in his 
 life of Plato a Sicilian rhetor, Alkimos, who wrote a book to 
 show that all Plato's doctrines were borrowed from Epichar- 
 mus. In support of this theory, which owes its existence to 
 the Pythagorean and Eleatic elements in Plato's teaching, 
 which the Sicilian poet brought on his stage, several dialec- 
 tical, metaphysical, and rhetorical arguments are quoted. 2 
 The discussion of their deeper import, however, belongs rather 
 to the history of philosophy than of literature. The narra- 
 tive form, which seems predominant in his plays, has misled 
 Lorenz and others to ascribe these passages to a poem Trtpl 
 
 239. As there never was but one Greek theatre at Syracuse 
 that of which the magnificent remains still strike the traveller 
 of to-day we must conceive these comedies performed in it, 
 probably with a chorus like that of modern plays, and not a 
 
 2,vv$enrve<t> T< \>vn, KaAeVat 8? fj.6vov, 
 Kal r<f ya jtnjSe \oivn KtevSev 5eT KaAeiV. 
 rrjvel Se xapiets T' flfn.1 Kal iroieta ico\vv 
 ye\ura Kal rbv iffricaur' eiraiveta. 
 
 KaC KO. TLS aVriOV Tl \TJ ri\Vtf \fJflV, 
 
 r-fivcf Kv5do/j.ai re KOTT' 3>v T/x^M aj/ - 
 KiJTretTa iro\\a KaTa<payci>f, iroAA.' ffiirifav, 
 &7retyUi. Kvxyov 5' ovx & irais /uoj <rv/j.<f>fper 
 epiroa 8' 6\tff6pd<ai> re Kal Kara ffKoros 
 4pri/j.os' OKKU 5' evri>x<>> rails Trepnr6\ois, 
 rov6' diov ayaBbv eiri\ey<a rois deals, Sri 
 oil \(avri ir\f?ov a\\a fj.affriy<uv ri (if. 
 firfl Se x' flxta oiKaSis Kara(p6apeis, 
 affrpmros eu5a> Kal ra fj.ev irptar' ov KOOJ, 
 Ss KO ft 1 &Kparos olvos au.<j>eirri (pptvds. 
 
 3 Diog. L. iii. 12, 9. sq.
 
 1 84 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xix. 
 
 constant element as in tragedy. The dialect of the fragments 
 is a refined and literary Doric; 1 the metres, of which the 
 trochaic tetrameter was called the Epicharmian metre from 
 his frequent use of it, are simple and correct. We still have 
 anapaests and iambics combined with the trochees. There were 
 many lines so celebrated as to be quoted all through Greek 
 literature. 2 
 
 If we consider the great celebrity of Epicharmus' plays 
 which were brought out at the most brilliant centre of Greek 
 literature, at the town which took up the literary splendour 
 ruined at Miletus, and only dawning at Athens, we need not 
 be surprised that he exercised a strong influence on the Attic 
 drama. But this is not felt in Attic comedy so much as in 
 the Attic satyric drama, where the titles of the plays constantly 
 suggest Epicharmian models, and even in the later tragedy, 
 where we find many heroes endowed with low qualities, and 
 perpetually appearing on the stage in a sorry garb and still 
 sorrier character. Thus the serio-comic features in the Heracles 
 of Euripides' Alcestis, and especially his voracity ; the mean- 
 ness of Menelaus, and knavery of Odysseus in many other plays, 
 appear to me to have been suggested by the great popularity of 
 the travesties of the Sicilian comedian. It is not impossible 
 that the introduction ot philosophy upon the stage may also 
 have been borrowed from him by Euripides, who seems to me 
 to have more points of contact with Epicharmus than have yet 
 been observed. 3 
 
 240. We pass to the Syracusan SOPHRON, son of Aga- 
 thocles and Damnasyllis. who lived about the middle of the 
 
 1 Yet both Epicharmus and Sophron are cited by the scholiasts as 
 writing in the old and harsh Doric <5ialect, in contrast to Theocritus, who 
 writes the softer and more elegant new Doric. 
 
 2 As, for example : 
 
 ti6os 6prj /col v6os aitofai r&\\a Kuxf/a al rv<p\d, 
 and 
 
 Na<f> Kal yuejui/aer' airiffreiv ' &pdpa ravra rav <ppevuv. 
 
 8 The best monographs on Epicharmus are by Grysar (de Dor. Comced. 
 sub fin.), Welcker (Kl. Schrift. i.), Bernhardy (in grsch und Gruber't 
 Encyclop.}, Holm, Gesch. Sic. i. 231, sq., and lastly, A. O. F. Lorenz's ./*' 
 charmos, which has a complete collection of the fragments in the appendix.
 
 CH. xix. SOPHROWS MIMES. 185 
 
 fifth cenl.ury B.C., and composed Mimes, or mimic dialogues, 
 probably in rythmical prose, both with male and female cha- 
 racters. His son Xenarchus followed his example in the time 
 of the elder Dionysius, who employed him to lampoon the 
 people of Rhegium. The dialect was a somewhat broader 
 and more vernacular Doric than Epicharmus', but the dramatic 
 force and truth of Sophron's writing made him justly celebrated. 
 Not only did Plato study him carefully in order to give life to his 
 dialogues, but two of the best of Theocritus' poems, the second 
 and fifteenth idylls, are stated to have been directly copied 
 from the 'Airesr/wai and 'Irrfyu{aou<T<u the former clumsily 
 (mretpoKaXSte) copied, says the scholiast, in spite of its acknow- 
 ledged excellence. 1 Botzon argues that the title of the Isthmian 
 mime was Tat flayuei'cu ra"Iafyua, and, what is more important, 
 points out that, to judge from Theocritus' imitation, it was 
 probably an account of the ceremonies of the Lament for 
 Melicertes, which were closely analogous to the Adonis cult 
 and were a more natural scene for women's conversation than 
 the Isthmian games, to which married women were not ad- 
 mitted. As to the Akestrice., he prefers to translate it the 
 Stitchers, and imagines it to have been a dialogue among 
 girls, corresponding to the French grisettes, in which their 
 love affairs were discussed. From Theocritus' imitation, I 
 think this view wrong, and that it means the Curing Women, 
 those old half quacks half witches, who are common in every 
 superstitious society. But the scantiness of our fragments 
 leaves room for nothing but conjectures. 
 
 As to the controversy whether the mimes were in prose or 
 in verse, I fancy them like Walt Whitman's so-called poems, 2 
 which, if they survive, may yet give rise to a similar discus- 
 sion. The mimes of Sophron were evidently very coarse 
 also another parallel and were full of proverbs, and full of 
 humour, often using patois, which is very rare in Greek lite- 
 rature. But Sophron's neglect of form did not imply a revolu- 
 
 1 In his careful program (Lyck, 1856). 
 
 2 Botzon quotes a scholiast on a Hymn of Gregory Naz., which was 
 imitated, as to style, from Sophron : OVTOS ykp pAvos rSiv iroi^riav bv9u.olt 
 run Kal K(ti\ois ^XP^< raTO TOJJ;TO}J ava\oyias
 
 1 86 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xix. 
 
 tionary creed, it was rather a carefully concealed submission 
 to the laws of art. We have no hint whatever as to the per- 
 formance of these mimes, but their early date and style 
 seem foreign to a reading public, and we may imagine them 
 brought out in private society after the manner of the Syracusan 
 juggler's performance at the end of Xenophon's Symposium, 
 where the marriage of Dionysus and Ariadne was pantomimed 
 in a very suggestive way. Plutarch's mention of an attempt at 
 Rome to perform Plato's dialogues dramatically seems to point 
 in the same direction. We hear that the Latin satirist Persius 
 also copied Sophron, apparently with little success in elegance 
 or dramatic power. There can, however, be no doubt of the re- 
 markable genius of the man, who was only in part a successor 
 to Epicharmus in his proverbial features, and in the por- 
 traiture of ordinary life. But Epicharmus' philosophic earnest- 
 ness found no Syracusan successor. 
 
 The extant titles of these mimes suggest the life and pur- 
 suits of the lower classes ; viz. The Tunny Fishes, the Nv;u- 
 os or Bride- dresser, iraiStKa iroKpvkeic, 'l\iic rcti' (typoi- 
 , the Fisher and the Husbandman (in what relation the 
 loss of the verb leaves us in doubt) ; The Women who say 
 they draw down the Goddess (moon ?). Also a Prometheus 
 and a Nuntius are named. The few remaining fragments are 
 collected by Bloomfield, Classical Journal, vol. iv., and by 
 Botzon in a Program (separately printed as a tract, Marien- 
 burg, i867). 1 
 
 241. The comedy of the Italiots, which found its chief seat 
 in the luxurious and laughter-loving Tarentum, does not come 
 within the range of classical Greek literature : its chief representa- 
 tive, Rhinthon, belongs to the Ptolemaic age, and his work only 
 survives in the imitation of his Amphitryo, a comic tragedy, 
 or parody of tragedy, by Plautus. The whole subject of the 
 varied comic performances, which were of old popular in 
 Magna Graecia, and gave rise to various subdivisions, Hilarodia, 
 
 Botzon's collection comprises some 150 words and phrases, almost all 
 cited for their dialect by Athenaeus, or by grammarians and lexicographers. 
 They give us no idea of Sophron 's literary skill, but show his local colour, 
 and his strongly proverbial tone.
 
 CH. xix. RISE OF BUCOLIC POETRY. 187 
 
 a parody of tragedy, Magodia, a parody of comedy, Autalo^ia 
 and Kinadologia, moralising and indecent satires, Phlyako- 
 graphia, Htlarotragcedia, and the rest, together with lists of 
 names of authors and pieces all these belong to the curiosities 
 of Greek literature, and still more to the prolegomena of Roman 
 comedy and satire, and have accordingly been fully handled by 
 O. Jahn in the introduction to his Persius. It is said that 
 many painted vases of Magna Grsecia represent scenes from 
 their various farces. This whole class of indecent, scurrilous, 
 or merely amusing comic performances naturally came into 
 favour at the courts of Alexander and his successors, also among 
 the later tyrants, whose intellectual calibre may be estimated by 
 their recreations. The gastronomical turn of this and other 
 Greek comedy was developed by Hegemon of Thasos, who 
 was popular at Athens by his parody of epical grandeur well 
 delivered on this homely subject. This line was adopted by 
 Archestratus of Gela, whose jycWafoia Ennius translated. 
 Crates and Matron are mentioned later. But the most re- 
 markable and serious of all the parodists seems to have been 
 Timon of Phlius, a serious and bitter sceptic of the school of 
 Pyrrho, who lived about 280 B.C. Of his various works the 
 most celebrated were the S/XXot, in three books, one narrative, 
 the rest in dialogue, in which he introduced Xenophanes, and 
 ridiculed the dogmatists in epic fashion. This man's fragments 
 are given by Mullach (FPG. i. 82), and discussed in a Latin 
 monograph by Curt Wachsmuth. The indecencies of Sotades, 
 and other later parodists, were in the Ionic dialect, and there- 
 fore do not come under the head of Doric comedy ; they are, 
 in any case, not worth discussing. 
 
 242. But from another side, the mimic poetry of the Sici- 
 lians made a great mark in Greek literature. There can be no 
 doubt that the bucolic vein was early and strongly developed 
 among Sicilian shepherds. The use of the shepherd's pipe and 
 of responsive song was early developed in the country, and 
 from the oldest time in some peculiar relation to the shepherd 
 life in the mountains of Arcadia worshipping the same god, 
 Pan, honouring the same traditions, and pursuing the same 
 habits. It even appears to me that in the great days of Gelon
 
 188 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XIX. 
 
 and Hieron there was a considerable emigration from Arcadia 
 to Sicily the Alpheus flowing into Arethusa for we know 
 that their mercenary armies were recruited from Arcadia, and 
 doubtless the veterans were better rewarded with upland pas- 
 tures in rich Sicily than by returning to their harsh and wintry 
 home. But the Arcadian music found itself already at home 
 in a country where the legends of the shepherd Daphnis 
 were older than Stesichorus, and had been raised by him into 
 classical literature. According to various authorities, Daphnis 
 was the son of Hermes and a nymph, and brought up in a 
 grove of laurels. Being an accomplished singer, and taught by 
 Pan to play on the pipe, he became the companion of Artemis 
 in her hunting, and delighted her with his music. His tragic 
 end, which is connected with his love for a nymph, and his 
 faithlessness, was variously told, and these versions were the 
 favourite subject of pastoral lays, which were attached to the 
 worship of Artemis throughout Sicily, and celebrated in musical 
 contests at her feasts in Syracuse, where shepherds, called 
 {3oi/Ko\a<7rat, sang alternately in what was called Priapean 
 verse, of which the scholiasts have preserved a specimen. 1 
 Other shepherds, such as the Komatas and Menalkas of Theo- 
 critus, and the Diomus of Epicharmus, were also similarly 
 celebrated. Indeed, there are slight but distinct traces that the 
 pastoral element was not absent from the comedies of Epi- 
 
 ' Ae'|ai rav ayadav rv^a.v 
 
 Ae|ai rav vyietav 
 *Av (ptpofjifv irapa ras Ofov 
 *A.v fKaXfffffa.ro rfya.. 
 
 There are the most interesting modern parallels in Sicily quoted in 
 Holm's chapter (Gescfiic Ate Sid/ten's, vol. ii. pp. 306-7) on this subject. Con- 
 tests in improvisation, carried on in question and answer, or in statement and 
 counter statement, preserving the metre, are still common in Sicily, where 
 the competitors are obliged to lay aside their knives when they commence, 
 so great is their excitement. Both the satiric and the erotic tone in the old 
 bucolics survives, as we might expect ; but it is indeed surprising to learn 
 that the religious side of old the worship of Artemis, and the laments for 
 Daphnis, her favourite is still there, and trustworthy observers were pre- 
 sent in churches during the Feasts of St. John Baptist, the inventio crucis 
 (May 3), and of other saints, when the day was spent in alternate impro- 
 vising on the lives of the saints and on the sufferings of our Lord.
 
 CH. xix. THE PICTURESQUE IN GREEK POETRY. 189 
 
 charmus. 1 The satyric drama of Athens, as we know from 
 the only extant specimen, the Cyclops, was very pastoral in 
 its scenes, and there is nothing more Theocritean, as people 
 would say, than the first chorus of satyrs in that play. What is 
 even more important, the comic poet Eupolis, who may have 
 borrowed more than is suspected from Epicharmus, brought out 
 an Alyec, of which the scanty fragments indicate the same 
 pastoral tone. We may be certain that Sophron did not omit 
 this side of common life in his Mimes, though it can hardly 
 have been prominent, as the scholiasts do not cite examples in 
 the arguments to Theocritus' poems. 2 
 
 243. But it seems to me highly improbable that THEO- 
 CRITUS, a poet of so strictly imitative an age, and of so very 
 imitative a genius, should have developed a remarkable origi- 
 nality in this single direction, and I therefore do not hesi- 
 tate to class him as an imitator of the Sicilian mimic poetry. 
 Two direct imitations of Sophron (not strictly bucolic poems) 
 have just been noticed, and I have already spoken of Theo- 
 critus' epic and lyric efforts in connection with the Homeric 
 Hymns, the later epics, and the poems of Alcaeus and Sappho. 
 
 But his real fame rests upon his pastoral poems, in which 
 he introduced shepherds, herdsmen, and fishermen in familiar 
 discourse, and in the dialect of Sicily, but refined by the 
 highest literary skill. These bucolic poems have throughout 
 a mimic or dramatic character, as the scholiasts observe ; the 
 poet's person is concealed under those of his speakers, or he 
 is himself (as in the 7th Id.) merely one speaker among several. 
 They have also a common feature in the pastoral scenery in 
 which they are laid. It is well known that earlier Greek 
 poetry was a poetry of cities and of men, and very seldom ap- 
 proached what we call the picturesque. In the rare exceptions 
 
 1 He was figuratively called the son of Xi'/xapoy and 2i)Kis, and we even 
 have a fragment in which he says iroifj.ffiK6v TI p.f\os av\ei<rdat. Lorenz, 
 fragg. B 130. 
 
 - Unfortunately, our scholia on Theocritus are such poor stuff, in spite 
 of their fullness, that we cannot depend upon this argument, and Sophron 
 may have treated many of Theocritus' subjects without being mentioned 
 by these late authorities.
 
 igo HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XIX. 
 
 (such as the Homeric Hymn to Pan, and some of Euripides' 
 lyrics) we find the sounds of nature more prominent than 
 the sights, and this feature survives in all the pictures of Theo- 
 critus. But the growth of large cities on such sites as that of 
 Alexandria, and the consequent wear and weariness of modern 
 city life, gave a peculiar charm to the loca pastorum deserta, 
 atque otia dia. Hence the growth of a literary taste for the 
 pursuits and pleasures of the country. Thirdly, the great 
 majority of bucolic poems have an erotic vein. It seems 
 hard indeed to know what other subjects could engross the 
 mind of Sicilian shepherds, whose day was idled away in at- 
 tending on grazing herds and flocks. But a good deal of harm- 
 less banter, and some satirical touches, relieve the generally sad 
 tone of the Sicilian muse, which loves to dwell on the misfor- 
 tunes and griefs of love. 
 
 244. We know but little of Theocritus' life. He is called 
 the son of Praxagoras and Philinna, and also (owing to his 
 apparently calling himself Simicaidas) the son of Simichus, con- 
 cerning whom the learned have much puzzled themselves. 
 Whether his native land was Kos or Syracuse is uncertain. He 
 lived much in Sicily, but was also educated by Askle 
 piades of Samos and Philetas, apparently at Kos, and was 
 very intimate with the physician Nikias of Miletus, and the 
 poet Aratus of Soli. He spent, moreover, some time at Alex- 
 andria, and at the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus, where he 
 wrote his fourteenth, fifteenth, and seventeenth idylls, about 
 the year 259 B c. His poem in praise of Hieron II. seems 
 to date earlier, when he lived in Syracuse, about 265 B,c. 
 We may therefore consider the poet to have flourished about 
 270-50 B.C., and accordingly he belonged to that learned 
 epoch, when Alexandria led Greek literature, and when the 
 greatest men of the day spent their lives in imitating or in 
 criticising the older masters. Only two of the poets of that 
 age have attained to a permanent fame. Callimachus, Phi- 
 letas, and others highly prized in their day decayed with 
 Roman culture. Apollonius Rhodius and Theocritus have 
 survived, and are now the two Alexandrian poets of import- 
 ance. But Apollonius' models were so great that his talents
 
 CH. xix. THEOCRITUS' EPIC IDYLLS. 191 
 
 are necessarily eclipsed by them; Theocritus, among the various 
 styles he attempted, struck upon a fresh vein, which had not be- 
 fore attained to world-wide fame. His models being eithei 
 early lost or altogether obscure, he is to us of like importance 
 with those earlier masters, who enriched the worn-out ways of 
 literature by a new form, sought in the true source of all living 
 song the voice of the people. Hence it is to this part oi 
 his work, his bucolic and mimic poems, that he owes all his 
 reputation. His imitations of epic hymns and yolic love- 
 songs, though excellent in their way, are only, like the poem of 
 Apollonius, the copies of greater originals. 
 
 245. It is, I think, the most reasonable among the many 
 conflicting views as to the date of the various poems, to assume 
 that the epic attempts of Theocritus were his earliest, and were 
 written before he had found out the true bent of his genius. 
 The brilliant Alexandrian school of literature was only in its 
 infancy ; many poets were each contributing what they could 
 to give a new impulse to Greek literature ; and there can be 
 no doubt that the tendency of the day was towards reviving the 
 epic form. But epic poetry and epic hymns without faith in 
 the myths of the heroic age were not likely to prosper. Thus 
 in the elegant Hymn to the Dioscuri which Theocritus has left 
 us, the concluding adventure describes the Twins as engaged 
 in a most unjust dispute, and slaying Lynceus, who represents 
 the cause of fairness and honesty. Not even Pindar would 
 have done this, not to say the tragic poets, who had trained 
 the Greek public to a moral handling of the old legends. But 
 all such deeper views were foreign to Theocritus. He found 
 the facts of the myth before him, and he tells them with the 
 simplicity not of faith, but of moral indifference. After at- 
 tempting another epic piece on Heracles and the Nemean lion 
 in Ionic dialect, he adopted the Doric style more natural to 
 him, in which he composed the Infant Heracles, and the short 
 fragment on Pentheus, which properly belongs to a hymn to 
 Dionysus, and is modelled on Euripides' Bacchce. The i3th 
 Idyll on the rape of Hylas may be connected with the same 
 epoch of the poet's work, but shows very distinctly the erotic 
 vein prominent all through his later life. We may regard it,
 
 192 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xix. 
 
 therefore, a transition to such poems as the i2th Idyll, and 
 perhaps even to the igth and 3oth, though these latter may 
 belong to a later and maturer time. It is fairly conjectured 
 that while Theocritus was making these various essays in poetry, 
 many of which, such as the npoir/a, 'E\Trihs, 'Hpw/rai, "apfiot, 
 &r,, mentioned by Suidas, are now lost, he was hoping to 
 attain the favour of Ptolemy, but the competition was too great, 
 and he apparently returned to Syracuse, where he addressed 
 Hieron about the year 269 in a bold petition for the favour 
 and support he had elsewhere sought in vain. The tone 
 of this Idyll (16), as well as of the lyth, composed a few 
 years after, when he returned with new renown to Alexandria, 
 is somewhat low and servile. The bidding for royal favour, 
 which we can hardly excuse in Pindar and Simonides, is still 
 more unpleasant in a later and more conscious age. But there 
 is an impatient and self-asserting tone in the earlier poem 
 which makes way for downright adulation in the later. The 
 object of both was the same an introduction to favour at 
 court, but the former from an unsuccessful, the latter from an 
 accepted suitor. 
 
 We may fairly assume that he turned his attention at Syra- 
 cuse to the mimes of Sophron, and the bucolic poetry of the 
 people, and returned to Alexandria the discoverer of a new 
 style, which at once distinguished him from his rivals, and 
 brought him his well-deserved rewards. His bucolic poems 
 were composed in mature life, and probably at Alexandria, 
 where their pastoral tone was very delightful to the inhabitants 
 of a crowded capital situate in the midst of bleak and scorching 
 sandhills. One of these, the 7th, may be regarded as in some 
 sense introductory to the rest. It celebrates a pleasant day 
 spent with friends at a harvest feast, and a bucolic contest 
 carried on by the way. It is remarkable that, though the 
 scene is a real scene in Kos, which can still be indentified, 
 most of the names are fictitious shepherd names ; the poet him- 
 self being called Simichidas, his friend Asklepiades Lykidas, 
 another Sikelidas. These men, who were men of learning 
 and culture, are presented under the guise of shepherds, 
 living their life and attired in their garb. So completely arti-
 
 CH. xix. THEOCRITUS' IDYLLS. 193 
 
 ficial is this poem that we are tempted to believe in a club or 
 society of poets at Kos, like the Italian Arcadia of the seven- 
 teenth century, and that bucolic poetry had already found a 
 literary development when Theocritus in his youth sojourned at 
 Kos. The speakers make hardly any effort to conceal their 
 real character under the pastoral mask, and Theocritus men- 
 tions with reverence his masters Philetas and Sikelidas, though 
 he by and bye professes to have learnt from the Muses as he 
 fed his flocks upon the mountains. 
 
 The other bucolic poems are simpler in structure, and more 
 dramatic in form the poet concealing himself behind his 
 characters. They comprise amcebean strains, or contests cf 
 shepherds before an umpire, and monologues of unhappy lovers, 
 such as Polyphemus. The names Daphnis, Thyrsis, Komatas, 
 &c., are used as stock names, nor are the critics at all justified 
 in rejecting as spurious poems where the Daphnis does not agree 
 with previous types. The metre generally used is the bucolic 
 hexameter, which is a mere literary form of the Priapean verses 
 already quoted, thus : 
 
 a5ti fifv a. fj.6ffxos yapverai, aSi 8e ^a f$is 
 aSv Se x <rvpiy, XCD &OVKO\OS, aSv 5e Kriytav. 
 
 The csesura after the fourth foot, and the beginning again with 
 the same word immediately after it, show how closely Theo- 
 critus followed the popular taste. In the refrains, too, which 
 are constant and prominent in his poems, we find a feature 
 which, though as old as ^schylus and Euripides, was par- 
 ticularly frequent in the Sicilian folk songs. The poetic contest 
 of the eighth poem is (exceptionally) in elegiacs. 
 
 246. There are, properly speaking, but ten bucolic poems 
 in the collection, in which I include the Reaper's Dialogue and 
 the Lament of Polyphemus. These appear to have been edited by 
 Artemidorus shortly after the poet's death, before 200 B.C., and 
 contained the first eleven poems of our collection (omitting the 
 second), the ninth being placed last, as is evident from a sort 
 of postscript to that poem, appended by the editor of the col- 
 lection. The very striking mimic poems (ii. and xv.), which 
 were imitated from Sophron, and the erotic poems, were after- 
 wards added. Finally, his youthful efforts in the epic style, and 
 
 VOL. i. 2 o
 
 194 HISTORY OF CREEK LITERATURE. CH. xix. 
 
 several spurious pieces, 1 were appended to the collection as his 
 fame became assured. The fifteenth is a scene from common 
 life in Alexandria, which describes two women and their maids 
 going to the laying out of Adonis, in which their dialogue is oi 
 the greatest vivacity and dramatic power. Some flattery of 
 Ptolemy and his queen, however adroitly brought in, rather 
 jars upon us in so excellent a mimic piece. The second, 
 which represents a maiden preparing magic charms, and con- 
 fessing to the moon the story of her love and her desertion, 
 is a splendid painting of passion, which has attracted critics of 
 all ages. Racine thought he had found nothing greater in 
 Greek literature. 
 
 247. These and the bucolic poems, with their homeliness, 
 their picturesqueness, and their outspoken realism, are the 
 masterpieces of the collection. The shepherds of Theocritus are 
 not pure and innocent beings, living in a garden of Eden, or an 
 imaginary Arcadia, free from sin and care. They are men of 
 like passions as we are, gross and mean enough for ordinary 
 life. But though artificially painted by a literary townsman, 
 they are real shepherds, living in a real country, varying in 
 culture and refinement the Italiot characters are the ruder 
 but all speaking human sentiments without philosophy and 
 artifice. Nay, even the strong contrast of town and country 
 life, which must have been ever present to the poet, is never 
 
 1 The question of the genuineness of each individual poem in our col- 
 lection is exceedingly difficult, seeing that Theocritus certainly composed 
 in various styles, and that in an artificial and learned age any great unity 
 or harmony of thought is not to be assumed in the works of such an author. 
 I therefore incline to the side of the conservative critics, who reject only a 
 few of the later idylls, and some of the epigrams. But the decision in 
 almost all cases is one of subjective fancy, and therefore in no way conclu- 
 sive. Thus the Fishermen (xviii.) is commonly rejected because it con- 
 tains a moral lesson at the end, and because love plays no part in it (cf. 
 Fritzsche, in loc.), as if the brilliant I5th did not contradict such a notion. 
 For my part, seeing that Sophron wrote a Owvo9^pas, and another mime 
 concerning a fisherman and a cowherd, 1 accept it as one of the most cer- 
 tainly genuine of the collection. There is, so far as I know, no objection 
 to the language or to the allusions. The playing of the fish, which greatly 
 puzzles the Germans, is described with great truth, and shows the poet to 
 have had practical knowledge of the Sicilian tunny fishing.
 
 CH. XIX. THEOCRITUS 1 IDYLLS. 195 
 
 expressed in words, but with truly artistic feeling left to be 
 inferred by the educated reader. There is neither allegory nor 
 apologue intruded ; the political or moral eclogue of Vergil and 
 his school is a false imitation of these pictures, which from their 
 simplicity, their variety, and their novelty, soon came to be 
 designated by a special name little pictures, or idylls. The 
 term was probably unknown to Theocritus himself, and we are 
 not accurately informed of the circumstances of its choice. 
 But under it both erotic poems concerning beautiful youths 
 some of them in lyric metre occasional poems, such as the 
 Spindle and the Epithalamium of ! Helen, epic pieces, and 
 bucolic mimes, are now included. They are the latest original 
 production in Greek poetry, though, as I have already observed, 
 their originality may have been overrated, owing to the careless- 
 ness of older, and the ignorance of later critics. Still it were 
 unjust, upon these problematical grounds, to deny Theocritus 
 the noble position he deserves among the great and matchless 
 masters of Greek poetry, though to him the Muse came last, 
 'as to one born out of due season.' 2 
 
 1 This nuptial song is peculiarly interesting, as perhaps containing the 
 only direct allusion to Hebrew literature which is to be found in classical 
 Greek poetry. The comparison of Helen (v. 30) to a Thessalian horse in 
 a chariot, the mention of 4 times 60 maidens, whom she excels, and the 
 immediately following verses, in which she is compared to the Dawn, pos- 
 sibly to the moon (the text is corrupt, and variously restored), and to the 
 spring (vv. 23-8), have too striking a resemblance to the Song of Solomon 
 (i. 9 ; vi. 8-10) to escape the myriad commentators on Theocritus. It is 
 therefore suggested that he became acquainted with at least part of the 
 LXX version at Alexandria. The strained and Oriental features in these 
 comparisons are best explained by this hypothesis, which is fairly borne 
 out by the facts, and is of great interest in literary history. If adopted, 
 it should be made an argument against Meineke's emendation of the 
 passage, which gets rid of the night and the moon altogether. 
 
 2 For the benefit of younger students I here quote a characteristic 
 passage. Idyll xi. vv. 19-29 : 
 
 \fVKOTfpa TraKras TroriSrjv, airaXiarepa apvos, 
 \j.oa\(a yavpoTfpa, (ptapcarepa o/j.<paKos 00/j.as. 
 (poirrjs S' av9' auras, OKKO. y\i/Kvs virvos 
 'XV 5' evQvs lolaa, OKa y\vicvs virvos a.v 
 
 O 2
 
 196 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xix, 
 
 The critics in his own and the next generation paid little 
 attention to a new master, and not even a master of epic 
 learning, like Apollonius Rhodius. Hence we only hear of 
 vTropvi'ipuTo. by Asklepiades, Nikanor, Amaranthus, and Theon ; 
 later came Munatus and Eratosthenes. But none of them, as 
 Bernhardy remarks, seems to have been a formal commentator, 
 and this accounts for the poverty of our knowledge as to special 
 allusions, and as to the models used by the poet. In Byzantine 
 days Moschopoulos and Triclinius made the additional collation 
 of scholia which was not edited by Calliergi in his princeps of 
 the scholia (Rome, 1516), but by Warton and byAdert (Zurich, 
 1843). Then come the fuller editions of Gaisford (Ox. 1820, 
 Poetce Minores, &c.) and of Diibner (Paris, 1849). The best and 
 fullest is now acknowledged to be Ahrens', in the second volume 
 of his Bucolici Greed (Leipzig, 1859). They are very inferior to 
 most of our scholia, especially to those on Apollonius, though 
 Theocritus comes from the same age and of the same school. 
 
 248. Bibliographical. There is a perfect host of MSS., of 
 which the oldest and best are the Ambros. 222 at Milan, and the 
 Vatican 912, both of the thirteenth century. The earliest edition 
 is of the first eighteen idylls, probably at Milan, about 1481 ; 
 then comes that of twenty-four idylls (with Hesiod, Theognis 
 &c.) by Aldus (1495), of which there are corrected copies, 
 with some faulty sheets cancelled. The first complete edition 
 with scholia was Calliergi's. Since that time the poet (either 
 singly, or more often with the Bucolici Gr<zci) has been con- 
 stantly and ably edited. I mention as the most remarkable 
 editors Stephens (an Oxford edition in 1676), Heinsius (1604), 
 Reiske, Warton, Gaisford, Jacobs (1824), Wiistemann (1830), 
 Meineke (1856), an excellent critical edition ; Briggs (Camb. 
 1821), Wordsworth (iterum ed. 1877), Ameis (Didot, 1846), 
 Ahrens (1855-9), Ziegler (ed. iii. 1877), with an independent 
 collation of Italian MSS., and the two editions of Fritzsche 
 
 /j.V eycaya rfovs, K.6pa, aviKa irpnrov 
 ?iv6fs f/J-S, ffvv uarpi, 6e\oiff' vaKivQiva <J>v\\a 
 e upeos SptyaffBai e-yii 8' 65bv ayfu.6i'fvov. 
 irafoaffdai 8' e'eriS&j' TV Kal virrfpov ou5' en itia vvv 
 (K r'fji'ca Svvauai' riv 8' ov /j.t\(t, ov fj.a Af, oitSfv.
 
 CH. xix. TRANSLATIONS OF THEOCRITUS. 197 
 
 (with German notes, Leipzig, 1857, and more full and critical, 
 1865-9, in two vols., with a third on MSS. scholia, &c., pro- 
 mised, but not yet published). For English readers there is, in 
 addition to Bishop Wordsworth's Latin Commentary, a handy 
 but too brief edition by Mr. Paley, and Mr. Kynaston's. Young 
 scholars want help in the dialect, which is at first very puzzling, 
 and for this I recommend Fritzsche's earlier edition, which has 
 a good glossary of forms, and also excellent botanical notes on 
 the very prominent Flora of the bucolics neither of which is 
 repeated, but only referred to, in his larger edition. This latter 
 is, moreover, weighed down with ponderous learning, and on 
 many hard passages revokes the reading or rendering of his 
 former edition. Nevertheless, for the bibliography of Theo- 
 critus, and for summaries of various opinions, it is the most 
 recent and the fullest. I specially refer to it, as monographs, 
 or partial editions, are too numerous and special for mention 
 here. Rumpel's Lexicon Theocriteum (1879) is the newest 
 and best analysis of the vocabulary of the poet. There are 
 French translations by Didot, German by Voss (1808), Hart- 
 ung (with notes, 1858), and especially by the poet Riickert 
 (1867). In English we have first Trios. Creech (Oxon, 1684), 
 a rimed version in the style of that day ; then Banks' prose 
 version (Bohn, I853). 1 In our own day J. H. Chapman 
 (London, 1866) has produced a good and careful translation of 
 all Theocritus, with Bion and Moschus, with many good notes 
 on the imitations of early English poets. But this scholarly 
 work is not equal to C. S. Calverly's (Cambridge, 1869), which 
 is one of the best English versions of any Greek author. If 
 Mr. Calverly had not made his book a drawing-room volume, 
 it would doubtless have been a far closer version of the original. 
 The Eclogues of Vergil, and the pastorals of Sannazaro and his 
 school, of the German Gesner, and of the Spaniards, prove the 
 lasting effect of Theocritus on the literature of the world, nor is 
 there any classical poet to whom our Laureate owes so much. 
 
 249. A word may be here added concerning Bion and 
 Moschus, whose remains are preserved with the MSS. of Theo- 
 critus, and printed after his idylls in most of our editions. These 
 
 1 Mr. A. Lang's prose version is also excellent
 
 198 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XIX. 
 
 poets are somewhat later than Theocritus in age ; Bion was born 
 near Smyrna, but lived in Sicily, and died of poison before 
 Moschus, whose longest poem is an exaggerated lament over his 
 friend and perhaps master ; Moschus himself is set down in 
 Suidas as an acquaintance of Aristarchus. More we cannot de- 
 termine. We find the term flovKoXoc and j3ovKoXiaoSt]t> used by 
 Moschus technically for poets and poetry, in a sense far removed 
 from their original simplicity in Theocritus. The remains of 
 both poets are, perhaps, best in their epic vein, and concerning 
 this side I have spoken above. The Lament on Adonis of Bion, 
 and the Lament on Bion of Moschus, are both elaborate, and 
 with refrains in bucolic form, but artificial and exaggerated. 
 Their erotic fragments remind one of the false anacreontic 
 fragments, which Thos. Moore has made so familiar to us. 
 The urchin Eros with his rosy wings, his mischievous temper, 
 and his waywardness, is manifestly the Alexandrian, not the old 
 Greek god. Hermann and Ziegler have critically edited the frag- 
 mentary and corrupt remains of these poets, and there have not 
 been wanting modern imitations, such as the well-known 
 
 Suns that set, and moons that wane, 
 Rise and are restored again ; 
 Stars that orient day subdues, 
 Night at her return renews, &C. 1 
 
 The history of the rise in modern literature of an ideal 
 Arcadia the home of piping shepherds and coy shepherdesses, 
 where rustic simplicity and plenty satisfied the ambition of 
 untutored hearts, and where ambition and its crimes were 
 unknown is a very curious one, and has, I think, been first 
 traced in the chapter on Arcadia in my Rambles and Studies in 
 Greece. Neither Theocritus nor his early imitators laid the 
 scene of their poems in Arcadia ; this imaginary frame was 
 first adopted by Sannazaro. 
 
 1 Here is the original : 
 
 Aia? red yu.aA.oxoi juej/ eirav KOTO KO.TTOV o\iavra.i, 
 i]bf TO. xXapa fff\iva. rb r' fv8a\fs o$\ov &VTj8ov t 
 vffrepov a5 ^diovn Kal (is ITOS aAAo QVOVTI ' 
 &/j.fj.ts 8' ol iifyd\oi Kal Kaprfpoi, ol ffo<t>ol aVSpes, 
 6irTr6re irpara 6dvcafj.ts, dya/cooi iv ^6ovl KoiXa. 
 jj.aK.fdv arf'pju.o
 
 CH. XX. 199 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE OLD ATTIC COMEDY UP TO ARISTOPHANES. 
 
 250. WE have now disposed of the older Doric comedy, 
 with its later Siciliot and Italiot offshoots. It was certainly 
 more primitive than its Attic sister ; it was also spread over a 
 greater surface and a longer period of the Hellenic world, but 
 perhaps for this very reason was loose and varying in form, and 
 did not attain to any fixed type, or any splendid tradition. 
 The very opposite was the cass with Attic comedy. Starting 
 from an equally obscure origin, it attained in democratic Athens 
 such a strict and formal development, it answered such great 
 political and artistic purposes, that no remnant of Greek litera- 
 ture has attained a more lasting and universal fame. 
 
 All the old grammarians and writers about comedy associ- 
 ate it directly with the Athenian democracy, which alone, they 
 think, would tolerate its outspoken and personal character. 
 This, indeed, is so distinctive a feature, that it comes out in 
 the traditions of its first origin. We constantly find the story 
 repeated that the country people in Attica, when injured by 
 their town neighbours, used to come in at night, and sing per- 
 sonal lampoons at the doors of their aggressors, so as to bring 
 the crime home to them, and excite public censure against 
 them that this practice was found so useful that it was for- 
 mally legalised, and that the accusers disguised themselves with 
 wine lees for fear of consequences to themselves. These 
 accounts prove at least how indissolubly personal censure was 
 associated with old Attic comedy. It is a further confirmation 
 of this remark, that though Susarion was said to have intro- 
 duced comedy from Megara very early, it was not tolerated 
 under the personal government of the Pisistratidse, and only
 
 200 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xx. 
 
 revived when democracy had made its outspokenness its 
 v<tf) lt r)rjiu secure. Other obscure names, such as Euetes and 
 Euexenides, are alluded to as of the same date, and altogether 
 it seems likely that as the old Attic comedy faded out with tire 
 greatness of the Athenian democracy at the end of the fourth 
 century, so it originated with its origin just before the Persian 
 Wars. But until the climax under the direction of Pericles, 
 it seems barely to have existed, and as an obscure appendage 
 of the Dionysiac revelry. There were no written texts, no 
 fixed plots, no artistic finish. Licentious jokes and personal 
 jibes were its only features, so that the first great organiser 
 (Cratinus) is said to have abandoned its m/i/3ik-// idia, or like- 
 ness to the satire of Archilochus both in form and style, and 
 its extant master (Aristophanes) boasts that he has risen above 
 the vulgar obscenities of the old Megarian farce. Still both 
 elements are manifest enough in the comedies of Aristophanes, 
 though ennobled by political censure and social grace ; so that 
 we may fairly hold the whole type to be adequately represented 
 in the eleven extant plays. 
 
 But the numerous fragments give us no definite idea of either 
 plot or literary execution. This is, indeed, a most remarkable 
 feature in the old Attic comedy. Were we reduced to judge 
 Aristophanes from the fragments of his lost plays, we should 
 have no notion whatever of his greatness, and for this reason 
 critics are to be blamed, who have extolled him at the expense 
 of his rivals, who are known to us only in this utterly inadequate 
 way. It is nevertheless probable, from the evidence of the 
 ancients who had all the documents complete, that he was 
 indeed the greatest of Attic comedians. We will therefore 
 discuss the general scope and character of old Attic comedy in 
 connection with this typical genius, as soon as we have given a 
 rapid sketch of his lesser known predecessors and rivals. 
 
 251. We are told that at first the comedians were distinctly 
 licensed by the law to make personal attacks a statement re- 
 peated by Cicero l and Themistius, but which may have arisen 
 from the supposition that there must be a law to permit, as well 
 as a law to restrain, libel of individuals. For this latter law was 
 
 1 De Rep. iv. 10.
 
 CH. xx. EARLY COMIC WRITERS. 201 
 
 certainly enacted under the Archonship of Morychides (85, i), 
 and lasted three years, when it was repealed. A similar re- 
 straint seems to have been imposed again in Ol. 91, i, 1 and 
 there can be little doubt that the oligarchs of 411 B.C. silenced 
 political comedy, if not by law, at least by terror. It flashed 
 up again at the close of the Peloponnesian War, as we know 
 from Aristophanes' Frogs, to succumb finally to the thirty 
 tyrants, and the impoverished and timid times which followed, 
 when the Athenians had no wealth to adorn, or spirits to enjoy, 
 the comic chorus the real pith and backbone of the old poli- 
 tical comedy. Thus the period of its greatness is confined to 
 an ordinary human life, some sixty years, reaching from Ol. 80 
 to Ol. 96. Towards the close of this epoch constant attempts 
 were made, by such men as the dithyrambist Kinesias, and the 
 demagogue Agyrrhios, to curtail the public outlay upon comedy, 
 and hence impair its dignity. These facts as to the history of 
 the relation of the state to comedy are chiefly attested by the 
 excellent scholia on Aristophanes, from which they have been 
 gathered and illustrated with infinite learning by Meineke. 
 We may infer the relative expenses of bringing out a tragedy 
 and a comedy by the fact that in the year 410 B.C. a tragic 
 chorus cost 3,000 drachmae, whereas in 402 B.C. a comic chorus 
 cost only 1,600. This latter was, however, in the poorest days 
 of Athens, and after many attacks had been made on the outlay 
 for what had become a mere idle amusement ; so that these 
 facts (quoted by Klein from Boeckh) are not so conclusive as 
 might appear. 
 
 252. Passing by Myllus, who has been already mentioned 
 (p. 1 78), and who is probably not a member of the Attic branch, 
 we come to CHIONIDES (Xiwr/^e is the form preferred by Mei- 
 neke to Xtor/^c), whose date is placed too early in Suidas, and 
 who probably composed his plays about Ol. 80. Three titles, 
 the Heroes, the Persians or Assyrians, and the spurious Beggars 
 
 1 This second decree (of Syracosius) is justly inferred by Droysen to 
 have had special reference to those then charged with profanation of the mys- 
 teries, and to have restrained comic satire, as likely to prejudice the courts 
 against them. As the old comedy always treated the events of the day, such 
 a provision would deprive it of its main interest. Cf. Meineke, FCG. ii. 
 P- 949-
 
 202 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XX. 
 
 t), are named. Aristotle speaks of him, along with 
 Magnes, as much later than Epicharmus. We know nothing 
 of him save a very few fragments, which tell us only the 
 fact that he was acknowledged the earliest of the proper Attic 
 comedians. The name of MAGNES, which comes next in the 
 list, is more important, and he is mentioned in the celebrated 
 parabasis of Aristophanes' Knights l as having once been very 
 popular, but in his old age failing to please, and neglected 
 by a once friendly public. He was therefore dead, and had 
 died in old age, when this play was brought out, Ol. 88, 4. 
 We may consequently place his activity about Ol. 80. He 
 came from the Icarian deme, like Thespis, and won many 
 victories. The nine titles of his plays which survive are sus- 
 pected, and perhaps retouched or modified by other hands. 
 We hear of a Birds and a Frogs among them, and it appears 
 from Aristophanes' allusion that the chorus (as in Aristophanes 
 himself) imitated the sounds of both. There is also a FoXeo- 
 pvopaxia cited as his, which seems a strange title for an Attic 
 comedy, but not stranger than Cratinus' parody of the 
 Odyssey. 
 
 There is hardly so much known ot ECPHANTIDES, nick- 
 named Ka7rr/ac by his rivals, by way of comic contrast to his 
 real name. We hear that he had a definite chorus assigned to 
 him, and that he attacked a certain Androcles, also attacked by 
 Cratinus. These facts show us that his age was about that of 
 Magnes. We hear of only one title of his plays, the Satyrs, a 
 subject treated by other comic poets, but we have unfor- 
 tunately no data for a comparison with the standing scenery of 
 the properly satyric dramas, which seem so near and yet so 
 separate from comedy. 
 
 253. We now come to CRATINUS, the real originator 
 the ^Eschylus of political comedy. This was the opinion 
 of the sensible grammarian quoted in Meineke. 8 ' Those,' 
 he says, ' who first in Attica devised the general idea of 
 comedy (Susarion and his school) brought in their characters 
 without method (aracrwc), and placed no object before them 
 but to excite laughter. But when Cratinus took it up, he first 
 
 1 w. 520, sq. l L p. 540.
 
 CH. xx. CRATINUS. 
 
 203 
 
 established a limit of three in the characters of comedy, 
 thus correcting the irregularity ; and, moreover, he added a 
 serious moral object to the mere amusement in comedy, by 
 reviling evil doers, and chastising them with his comedy, 
 as it were with a public scourge. Nevertheless, even he 
 shows traces of earliness, and even slightly of want of 
 method.' This invaluable notice is supported both by the 
 fragments of Cratinus, and by the observations upon him 
 in various scholia. He is called the son of Callimedes, and 
 if he was really ' taxiarch of the tribe CEneis,' l must have 
 been a man of some means. This is corroborated by his 
 policy, which was distinctly conservative and aristocratic, and 
 opposed to that of Pericles. As he is said to have lived ninety- 
 seven years, and brought out his last play in Ol. 89, i, his 
 birth may be placed about 520 B.C. ; but there is some evi- 
 dence that his genius was late in development, for we do 
 not know that he won any victory earlier than his Archilochi 
 in Ol. 82, 4 (452 B.C.), if not later. Aristophanes says 2 he 
 died of grief at the "loss of a jar of wine, when the Lacedaemo- 
 dians invaded Attica. But both fact and date are invented, 
 for we know of no invasion which will harmonize with our 
 other information. When Aristophanes had ridiculed him 
 in the Knights 3 as u broken-down old man, who had once been 
 the popular poet, so that every society rang with songs from 
 his plays, the aged Cratinus is said to have given a practical 
 reply by composing his famous Wineflask (Ylvrivri), which gained 
 the victory over his detractor's Clouds, as well as over an 
 obscurer play of Ameipsias, the Connos, which took the second 
 prize. Shortly after this he died. He composed but little, 
 as only twenty-one plays are attributed to him, nine of which 
 won the first prize ; but the impetuous flow of his verse, and 
 the alleged looseness of his plots towards their close, rather 
 
 1 In an excellent note on the total absence of humour, or the appre- 
 ciation of it, in many German authors, Grote (viii. 456) observes that this 
 statement, preserved by Suidas (sub. -voc. 'Eireiov Sfi\6repos), is plainly a 
 joke a prof os of the poet's over-fondness for wine. Nevertheless he was 
 probably a taxiarch, or the joke was tame, as Dr. Kock suggests to me. 
 
 2 Pax, v. 700. 3 v. 528.
 
 204 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xx. 
 
 point to idleness and over- conviviality (as he admitted in the 
 Iluricjj) than to slowness of production, as the cause of so scanty 
 a record of his life's work. Furthermore, it has long since 
 been observed that the writers of the old comedy were far less 
 prolific than their tragic contemporaries, who doubtless wrote 
 a trilogy of their somewhat conventional plays on well-known 
 plots in less time than the comic poets took to elaborate their 
 more imaginative dramas. The titles of all Cratinus' plays 
 survive, and some 270 fragments are quoted from 17 of them, 
 besides 180 citations of uncertain place in his works. Yet it . 
 is melancholy how little all this material, on which Meineke 
 gives us 200 pages, tells us of his genius. The plot of only one, 
 the Uvrirr}, is even approximately known, in which the aged 
 poet represented himself as lawfully wedded to Comedy, but 
 given to neglecting her for her rival Inebriety, so that Comedy 
 brings an action for desertion against him, and discusses with his 
 friends her sad case. 
 
 The attacks on Pericles (in the Qpyrrai and X^Vwrfe), and 
 the praise of Kimon (in the 'A/JX'AX l )> are verv prominent, 
 and so are scurrilous attacks on various poets and rivals, 
 among whom he twits Aristophanes with over-subtlety and 
 pedantry. It is also to be noticed that he at times treated of 
 mythical subjects and of literary criticism, as in his 
 (birth of Helen), Zeptytot, and in his 'Apx'XX '> m 
 Homer and Hesiod, as well as later poets, were brought in ; 
 his 'OcWirjjfc was a travesty of the Odyssey, which is noted as not 
 having even a parabasis or choric songs, though fr. 15 shows his 
 chorus to have been of Ithacan sailors. Many of his fragments 
 also paint the happiness of a long past golden age, either mythi- 
 cally under Cronos, or ideally in the old Attic times a subject 
 on which Athenaeus has collected many interesting quotations. ' 
 
 The general impression produced by the rags and tatters of 
 this great poet is very similar to that which we form on fuller 
 grounds of Aristophanes. There is the same terse rigour, the 
 same unsparing virulence, the same Attic grace and purity, nor 
 need we at all wonder that he was held worthy by the Athe- 
 nians of a higher place than his great rival on more than one 
 1 vi. p. 267.
 
 CH. XX. CRATES AND PHERECRATES. 205 
 
 occasion. But we may reserve any remarks upon the moral and 
 political intent of his plays, until we come to discuss the deep 
 and serious aim attributed to the old comedy by grammarians 
 and modern critics. 
 
 254. CRATES was a younger contemporary of Cratinus, and 
 is said to have been at first his actor. He is noticed by Aristotle 
 (in the Poetic) as having adopted the style of Epicharmus 
 and Phormis, and abstained from personal satire, while con- 
 fining himself to the portraiture of types. He composed 
 between Ol. 82, 4 and 88, 4. Aristophanes notices his career 
 in the passage from the Knights, already so often quoted. 
 Fourteen titles of his plays are cited, of which only eight are 
 thought certain by Meineke. The fragments of the Qypia, in 
 which the golden age was painted with animated and docile 
 furniture instead of slaves, and without animal food (the 
 chorus of beasts protested against it), are interesting. The 
 stray lines quoted by Stobaeus have a curiously gentle and 
 moderate tone about them. 
 
 PHERECRATES comes next, and of his life we know nothing 
 but that he too had been an actor, and was victorious as a 
 comic poet in Ol. 85, 3. Of the plays ascribed to him, 
 thirteen titles seem genuine. He also, though his extant frag- 
 ments contain personal attacks on Alcibiades, Melanthius the 
 tragic poet, and others, is said by an anonymous author on 
 comedy to have imitated Crates in avoiding personal abuse, 
 and to have been remarkable for the invention of new plots ; 
 in fact, to have been of the Middle Comedy, as it is called. 
 More than 200 fragments remain, some of those quoted by 
 Athenaeus being very elegant, and showing the refined Atticism 
 of tne poet. He spoke much of social vices, of gluttony and 
 drunkenness, and of luxury, and named more than one play 
 after a hdcera. The Cheiron, if it be his, and other plays, 
 contained great complaints about innovations in music, on 
 which a remarkable fragment remains. The Wild-men (aypioi), 
 brought out in Ol. 89, 4, painted, according to Kock, the 
 desire of certain Athenians to escape from their city, like the 
 two men in the Birds, and settle among savage men. He also 
 originated the idea of a play with scenes in Hades (Kpu7rar\oi),
 
 206 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xx. 
 
 in which ^schylus appeared an idea so splendidly appro- 
 priated in Aristophanes' Frogs. His Kopiaww (on manners of 
 hetjerae), KpaTraraXot, and MeraXAjje afford us many character- 
 istic and humorous fragments. 
 
 TELECLEIDES and HERMIPPUS are both cited by Plutarch for 
 their attacks on Periclts, the former (Jr. incert. 4) complains of 
 the absolute favour shown him by the Athenians ; the latter 
 charges him with lust and cowardice. They painted, like all their 
 compeers, pictures of the golden age, but chiefly from a gour- 
 mand point of view, the lines from Teleclides' Amphictyom 
 being particularly good. He praises Nikias, and mentions Mnesi- 
 lochus and Socrates as helping Euripides in his plays ; Her- 
 mippus alludes to Cleon, so that both poets must have lived 
 to see the so-called ochlocracy. The iambics of Hermip- 
 pus have been noticed (Part I., p. 217). Even in him there 
 are traces of mythological plays, and in his <I>op/io(popoi re- 
 markable hexameter passages which smack of parody one of 
 them on the various produce of the Mediterranean coasts 
 (fr. i), the other on the comparative merit of various wines 
 (fr. 2). 
 
 255. There are many other contemporaries of Aristophanes, 
 who were even at times successful against him, but who need not 
 be here fully enumerated. Philonides, who undertook the per- 
 formances of Aristophanes' Daitakis and Frogs, was himself the 
 author of a play called Koflopvoi, the buskins, in which he lam- 
 pooned Theramenes. Aineipsias defeated Aristophanes' Clouds 
 and Birds with his Connos and Revellers. Nine of his come- 
 dies are named. Archippus was the author of an '\\tivs or 
 Fishmarket comedy, and of an Amphitryo, which Plautus may 
 have imitated. Phrynichus, the son of Eunomides, is often con- 
 founded with the son of Polyphradmon, the tragic writer, also 
 with a certain military man, and perhaps with a dancer the 
 name being apparently very common. This comic poet en- 
 joyed a high reputation. Of the ten comedies attributed to him 
 the Revellers contained allusions to the affair of the Hermse, 
 his Monotropos (Ol. 91, 2) was on a misanthrope, of the type 
 of Timon ; his Muses stood second to Aristophanes' Frogs 
 (01. 93, 2) and contained a celebrated eulogium on Sophocles.
 
 CH. XX. EUPOLIS. 
 
 207 
 
 I will here add Plato, the latest poet who seems to be truly of the 
 old comedy, though often classed with the middle on account 
 of his date, 1 for he flourished from Ol. 88 to Ol. 97 at least, 
 when the political aspects of comedy had disappeared. Never- 
 theless no poet is more prominent in his attacks upon all the 
 demagogues, beginning with Cleon, and writing distinct plays 
 upon Cleophon and Hyperbolus. He is said to have attacked 
 even Peisander and Antiphon, the leaders of the aristocratic 
 reaction in 411 B.C., but this seems to me more than doubtful. 
 He was, for a comic writer, rather prolific, twenty-eight plays 
 being ascribed to him. The reader who desires to know all that 
 can be said about them may wade through the laborious 
 volumes of Meineke, and there are doubtless many hints con- 
 cerning the politics, the literature and the social life of the 
 period to be drawn from the scanty remnants left to us. But 
 as literature, these scraps are only valuable in showing us the 
 development of that pure Attic diction, which reached its per- 
 fection about this time. 
 
 256. But before we proceed to discuss the general points 
 concerning the position of comedy, as Aristophanes found it, 
 we must expand this dry enumeration by adding yet one 
 name, but a name of greater importance than any which we 
 have yet mentioned in this field I mean that of Aristo- 
 phanes' fellow poet and rival, EUPOLIS. This man, the son of 
 Sosipolis, was born at Athens Ol. 83, 3 (449 B.C.), and wrote 
 his first play at the age of seventeen, a most unusual precocious- 
 ness, of which Antiphanes and Menander are also examples. 
 A scholiast on Aristophanes 2 says there was a law against 
 any poet bcinging out a comedy before the age of thirty, but 
 this I suppose means that the state would not undergo the 
 expense of a chorus for a young and untried candidate, and 
 hence the comic poets generally brought out their early plays 
 under other people's names, and also began as actors for 
 elder poets. Eupolis is said to have been drowned in one 
 
 1 The fact that some of his plays, like the Fhaon, had the character of 
 the middle comedy, is an argument of no value, as there is hardly a single 
 poet of the old comedy of whom such a statement would not be true. 
 
 * Nub. 526.
 
 208 HISTORY OF CREEK LITERATURE. CH. xx. 
 
 of the battles in the Hellespont, 1 probably Kynossema (410 
 B.C.), and with the connivance or assistance of Alcibiades, 
 who hated him for his political satire. This fact has even been 
 expanded into a story that Alcibiades when sailing to Sicily had 
 him drowned, 2 with a joke retorting the term (/Scnrrcu) under 
 which the poet had ridiculed some profligate young aristocrats 
 of his set. Of his life we know nothing more except some anec- 
 dotes about his faithful dog, and his faithless slave, Ephialtes, 
 who was charged with stealing his comedies. The attempts of 
 Platonius and others to characterise Eupolis as a poet are 
 hopelessly vague, either from the confusion of the writers or the 
 corruption of the texts. They compare and contrast him with 
 Cratinus and Aristophanes, but not in accordance with either 
 the extant fragments or any intelligible theory. That he was 
 brilliant in his wit, and refined in his style, is plain from the fact 
 that he co-operated with Aristophanes in his Knights, of which 
 the last parabasis, beginning from v. 1290, is recorded by the 
 scholiast to have been his composition. He afterwards may 
 have quarrelled with Aristophanes, for they satirised one an- 
 other freely. In style and in genius he stood nearest to his 
 great rival, and his comedies seem to have possessed most, if 
 not all, of the features which make the Aristophanic comedy 
 so peculiar in literature. He was witty, coarse, unsparing, in- 
 ventive both in diction and in scenic effects, and appears to 
 have pursued the same relentless opposition policy against the 
 democratic party and their aristocratic leaders. 
 
 At least fourteen of the titles ascribed to him appear to be 
 genuine. His Goats had a chorus of goats, and does not seem 
 to have been so political as his other plays. The fragments have 
 a rustic and bucolic complexion. The Autolycus was a satire on 
 a youth of great beauty and accomplishments, the favourite of 
 the rich Callias, and also known to us from Xenophon's 
 Symposium. This play came out in Ol. 89, 4, under the 
 management of Demostratus. Callias himself and his Sophist 
 friends were treated in the Flatterers (Ol. 89, 3), in which he 
 
 1 It is said that in consequence the Athenians made a law that pcets 
 should be exempt from military service. 
 
 2 Cf. Cicero Ad Att. vi. i in refutation of the story.
 
 CH. XX. . EUPOLIS" PLAYS. 209 
 
 figured like the Timon of Shakspeare, at the opening of the play. 
 The BctTrrat ridiculed the worship of Cotytto for its ribaldry and 
 obscenity, probably inOl. 91, i, before the Sicilian expedition. 
 There is no clear evidence that Alcibiades was lampooned in 
 this play, as is usually asserted. We must deeply regret the loss 
 of the ATJ^UOI (about Ol. 91, 4), in which Nikias and Myronides 
 were represented as questioning the great old politicians, who 
 had come back from the dead, and lamenting the condition of 
 the state. Solon, Miltiades, Aristeides, Kimon, and others 
 appeared, and so did Pericles, 1 who asked many questions con- 
 cerning his son and the prospects of Athens. The youth and 
 inexperience of the newer generals were especially censured. 
 A parallel play was the IldXete, in which the personified tribu- 
 tary cities formed the chorus. His Mapiicae (Ol. 89, 4) attacked 
 Hyperbolus, and the play was charged by Aristophanes 2 with 
 plagiarism from his Knights. The npo(nrn\Tioi seems to have 
 attacked the litigiousness of the people of that deme. In the 
 Taxiarchs the celebrated admiral Phormio played a leading 
 part, and seems to have undertaken the military training of 
 Dionysus, who objects greatly to any hardships. In the Golden 
 Age he exhibited, and may have ridiculed, pictures of a return 
 to a primitive state of innocence and peace. 3 
 
 1 The description of Pericles' eloquence is happily preserved to us. 
 
 a. K.paTio~TOS euros eytver' avBpiaircev \fyfiv, 
 oirtire irapf\6ot 6, Sxrirtp ayaOol Spourjs 
 e'/c 8e'/ca iroStev rjpei \eywv rovs p-firopas. 
 
 /5. Tax"'' \fyfis f-fv, irpbs 8e y' avrov rtf rc^ei 
 Treidw Tts eirfKaBi^fv firl TOIS xfi\e<riv' 
 OVTWS 4ic-fi\(i, Kal p-uvos ruv pi}T6ptav 
 TO Kffrpov fyica,Tf\fnrf TOIS atepoca/Afvou 
 
 2 Nub. vv. 553-5. 
 
 3 The other titles are 'Ao-TpdreuTOi, Novpriviai, &l\oi. I add a remark- 
 able fragment : 
 
 'AAA' O/COVST", 2> Btaral, iroXXck Kal fyvltrf 
 PTI/J.O.T (i>9v y&p irpbs vpas irpSnov airoKoyJicronai, 
 '6 rt fjiaQovTfS TOUS fvovs /J.fv \eytre ITOJIJTOS (ro<S>oi>s t 
 ty Se TIS TU>I> ivBdfi' avrov jU7}Se ev \elpov <ppuva>v, 
 iiriTtOfiTai TTI iroi4io~(t, iravv fioKfi KO.KWS <ppoveiv, 
 fiaiverai re Kal trapappfi TUV (ppfvcav rep ffy hoycp, 
 'AAA.' fyol TTfiBfffOe iravrtas u.(Ta./3a\6vTes TOVS rp6irovs 
 u^j <b8ovti&\ Srav ns TJ/J.SIV novainf, x a ' l py vttav. 
 VOL. I. 2 P
 
 210 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XX. 
 
 257. A few words of summary may here be useful on the 
 general condition to which comedy had attained when Aristo- 
 phanes arose. The long, or rather crowded, series of poets up 
 to Eupolis had brought it out of the rude and extemporaneous 
 amusement of amateurs on a holiday into the stricter form of a 
 drama imitated in its general outline from the externals of tra- 
 gedy. There was the same sort of application to the archon 
 for a chorus, which was carefully trained, and had indeed a 
 more arduous task than the tragic chorus. For its larger 
 number (twenty-four) enabled the poet to use sections of it for 
 different purposes, so that some of them took part in the play 
 itself, while the rest remained more or less interested spec- 
 tators, as in tragedy. The plots, if such they can be called, 
 were also far looser and admitted of all manner of changes, 
 according to the exuberance of the poet's fancy. Nevertheless 
 the actors seem to have been limited to three (as in tragedy), 
 and the licenses, as in all true art, were controlled by imper- 
 ceptible yet strict laws. The dialect was gradually determined 
 between the stilted grandeur of the tragic stage and the com- 
 mon language of Attic society, so as to become, in the hands 
 of Aristophanes and his contemporaries, the most perfect 
 diction in all Greek literature. For there is no Greek which 
 can compare for vigour, for grace, and for fullness with the 
 language of the old Attic comedy. 
 
 It will be seen in the foregoing list that the comic writers 
 were not at all so prolific as their tragic brethren, and Anti- 
 phanes, in an extant fragment, shows us ample reasons for it. 
 In tragedy the plots were given beforehand by the myths, and 
 allowed a very moderate amount of originality in the poet, 
 whose whole attention was directed to the sentiments and dic- 
 tion of given characters. The title and the prologue told the 
 whole plot. 
 
 But in comedy that is to say, in the purely old Attic 
 comedy everything was due to the invention of the poet. 
 
 Indeed, as we have already seen, even in the Sicilian plays 
 of Epicharmus, mythological travesty and parody were jocular 
 variations upon a given theme. 
 
 It is, however, a great mistake to think that the non-poli-
 
 CH. XX. PERMANENT TYPE OF COMEDY. 211 
 
 tical forms did not exist in the fourth century at Athens. All the 
 notable comic playwrights composed plays in this style, so much 
 so that I believe the origin of the Epicharmian and the Attic 
 comedy not to have been very different, and that what is called 
 the Old Comedy was really an accidental and temporary 1 outburst 
 of political writing in the feverish climax of the Athenian de- 
 mocracy. As soon as these special conditions passed away or 
 even halted for a moment, comedy returned to its older and 
 tamer function of criticising general types in society, literary 
 work, and crude superstitions. Thus the Middle Comedy was 
 no new development, but a survival of the older and more 
 general type, which came again into the foreground when no 
 longer obscured by a brilliant innovation. The so-called Old 
 Comedy was then really nothing but the political period of 
 Attic comedy, which was indicated not only in the plots, which 
 were political burlesques, but in the famous interludes (para- 
 bases), in which the chorus turned and came forward to address 
 the house in the person of the poet ; with personal advice, com- 
 plaint, sarcasm, or solemn warning It is not unusual for one 
 of the characters to lay aside his part, and assume the poet's 
 voice, thus occupying the place of the parabasis. This was 
 said to have been a fashion in Euripides' plays also, in which, 
 for example, Melanippe was supposed to be a mouthpiece of his 
 views. The nearest approach we have to a parabasis nowadays 
 is the topical song in our pantomimes, which is always com- 
 posed on current events, and has verses added from week to 
 week, according as new points of public interest crop up. 
 
 This so-called parabasis, and the choral songs, are the really 
 distinctive feature of the earlier Attic plays, and whenever one 
 was composed without it, or on a mythological instead of a po- 
 litical subject, we are told by the critics that it approaches the 
 character of the Middle Comedy in reality it merely conforms 
 to the general type. By most modern authorities the parabasis 
 is held to be the original nucleus from which the Attic comedy 
 developed. If the above remarks be well grounded, this view 
 is incorrect, and the older, now abandoned, theory is true, that 
 
 1 Even this is doubtful. The New Comedy often made political attacks 
 on living statesmen ; cf. below, p. 258, and 249 on the Middle Comedy. 
 
 P 2
 
 212 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xx. 
 
 originally the volunteer actors assembled for the perform- 
 ance of some rude masque or farce, and that they gradually 
 came to abuse this disguise for the purpose of making personal 
 attacks with impunity. The very title parabasis seems to me a 
 strong argument for this account of the matter. The analogy 
 of tragedy has been pushed too far by modern critics. There 
 the chorus was indeed the nucleus, and the actors, at first one, 
 then two, then three, were added slowly and sparingly. The 
 origin of comedy was different. Apparently any member of the 
 twenty-four persons performing might come forward as an actor; 
 they did so irregularly, and what Cratinus did was not to in- 
 crease, but to limit the number to three, and give them the 
 acting parts all through, reserving his chorus for the parabasis 
 and choral odes. The separate odes require little notice here, 
 as they were not frequent ; they generally consist of hymns to 
 the gods or hymenaeal songs based upon the tragic models as 
 to metre and diction. But the parabasis, which interrupted 
 the course of the play with a most interesting intermezzo, was 
 far more characteristic. In its complete form, as we find it in 
 Aristophanes' Birds, it opens with an introductory fco/j/umor, 
 then the proper parabasis or address to the audience by the 
 coryphaeus, generally in anapaestic tetrameters, and called ava- 
 iraiffTot ; and then the irv'tyoQ, or paicpov, from its demands upon 
 the voice. Then comes a short lyrical hymn (in the Birds, six- 
 teen lines), followed by an appendix to the parabasis called epir- 
 rhema, with an antistrophe and an antepirrhema. But in most 
 plays this elaborate form is not observed, and there are addresses 
 from the actors, and scattered odes which supply its place. 1 
 
 258. There are some other facts disclosed by the notices 
 on earlier playwrights, as well as on Aristophanes, which are of 
 the highest interest, as showing the natural analogies between 
 the growth of the drama in this and in other ages and nations. 
 We hear in numerous cases that the authors began as players 
 
 1 I note here the divisions in the parabasis of the Birds : K0fj.na.nov, 
 vv. 677-84 ; parabasis, 685-736 ; melic ode, 737-52 ; epirrhema, 753-68 ; 
 antistrophe of ode, 769-84 ; antepirrhema, 785-800. There are besides 
 three short personal songs of satirical character for the chorus viz. noi, 
 sq., 1470, sq., and 1553, sq. The Wasps has also a complete parabasis.
 
 CH. xx. CASES OF DIVIDED AUTHORSHIP. 213 
 
 for older poets, and gradually advanced to independent efforts. 
 Tnere is a passage in Aristophanes (Knights, 541, sq.) which 
 possibly points to a similar progress in his case. The parallels 
 of Moliere and of Shakspeare will at once occur to the reader. 
 It was on the stage itself that these writers learned what suited 
 their public, and what effects were practically attainable. So 
 also the early Attic acting-authors, whose great object was to 
 provide the public every year with an entertainment bearing on 
 the events of the day, must have worked very fast, and one 
 of them speaks of it as something extraordinary, that he had 
 spent two years at one of his plays. We find that Aristophanes, 
 when he started in his career, produced a play every year, and 
 we know from the number assigned to him, and from the didas- 
 calise, that he must sometimes have composed even faster. It 
 was probably owing to this pressure that we hear so often of 
 comic poets bringing out altered editions not only of their 
 own, but of other poets' plays a practice common in Shak- 
 speare's day. 1 We also hear constantly of two poets pro- 
 ducing a play together, and this is especially attested in the 
 case of Aristophanes' Knights, of which Eupolis wrote a part. 
 This joint authorship often led to mutual recriminations, and 
 after-charges of plagiarism, and doubtless often to disputed 
 authorship. The latter difficulty was increased by another 
 Elizabethan habit that of consigning a play (doubtless for 
 some pecuniary consideration) to another person, who applied 
 in his own name for the chorus, discharged the duties of the 
 performance, and was proclaimed the victor, if the play was 
 successful. There must necessarily have been some money 
 value for this substitution, as it was adopted not only by young 
 and timid, but by experienced authors, who nevertheless, in 
 the very play thus disowned, referred to their own acknow- 
 ledged works in such a way as to disclose their present 
 secret. Accordingly the nominal author must merely (I fancy) 
 have been paid, in such cases, for the labour of training the 
 chorus and actors. Of course in many other cases real help 
 
 1 Cf. Prof. Dowden's excellent Primer on Shakspere, pp. 10-13, for a 
 summary of points to which I am here giving the old Greek parallels.
 
 214 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xx. 
 
 was given privately by one poet to another, and to this we also 
 have allusions. 1 
 
 259. It remains for us to say a word on the political and 
 moral aspects of comedy at this epoch. The Alexandrian mon- 
 archists, followed by the mediaeval and modern antidemocrats, 
 have been loud in the praises of the Attic comedy as a censor ol 
 morals, as a scourge of political dishonesty, as in fact fulfilling 
 an office similar to that of the public press of our day in pam- 
 phlets and leading articles. The comic poets themselves boast 
 their serious intention amid laughter and buffoonery; they claim 
 to be public advisers and benefactors. But their evidence is 
 surely no better than that of a daily journal which professes to 
 attack on purely moral grounds, and for the public good, whereas 
 all its complaints are strictly limited to the opposite party in 
 politics. It is very remarkable, and shows some closer bond 
 among the comic poets than has been suspected by the moderns 
 (in spite of its frequent assertion in the Greek tracts on these 
 writers), that not a single comedy, so far as we know, took the 
 radical side, and ridiculed old-fashioned ignorance, or stupid 
 toryism. On the contrary, the whole body of the comic writers 
 knew no higher ideal than to return to the golden age of Milti- 
 ades, if not of Saturn. They knew no higher happiness in this 
 age than the absence of new ideas and the presence of material 
 comforts. They revile every radical leader, especially if of low 
 birth, and do not spare the aristocrats, like Alcibiades and 
 Callias, who adopted either radical opinions or courted novelties 
 in education and in philosophy. I will not say that there were 
 not ribald jokes about Kimon, when he was long dead, or occa- 
 sional praise of Pericles, in comparison with low orators of his 
 party. But the main fact is certain ; the whole political aim of 
 the old Attic comedy was to support conservatism against 
 radicalism, and not even the transcendent genius and noble 
 personality of Pericles could save him from the most ribald 
 
 1 e.g. the parabasisofthe Knights, where Aristophanes speaks of himself 
 as fvinovpiav Kp\>,3$r)v trtpois irotrjrais, cannot refer to Philonides andCallis- 
 tratus, but to this sort of partial and really secret assistance given to 
 well-known dramatists, perhaps on account of the sudden and hurried re- 
 quirements of political comedy.
 
 CH. xx. REAL OBJECTS OF COMEDY. 215 
 
 attacks, and the grossest libels, at the hands of these so-called 
 guardians of morals and censors of vice. It was so with all 
 the noblest advocates of reform in all directions with Prota- 
 goras, with Socrates, with Euripides. They were all equally 
 the butt of comic scorn and the victims of comic falsehoods. 
 Probably the comic poets were persuaded of the mischievous- 
 ness of these men and their ideas ; but they were persuaded 
 as party men, not as calm judges of right and wrong ; and I 
 have no doubt they were as easily persuaded of the innocence 
 of the greatest miscreants in their own party. If these things 
 be so, there will obviously be great caution required in using 
 them as historical evidence. They are, in fact, never to be 
 believed without independent corroboration. 
 
 But though their political merits have been greatly over- 
 rated, they stand pre-eminent in another, and that the original 
 object of comedy. The volunteer chorus had originally met for 
 the purpose of amusement, for the interchange of wit and the 
 promotion of laughter, and in this the perfected Attic comedy 
 seems still unapproachable. We have indeed only stray flashes 
 from the lost poets, but it is evident from the attribution of 
 Aristophanes' plays to Archippus, from the frequent success of 
 other poets over him, from his anxious and jealous rivalry, that 
 we have in him a playwright not ' primus longo intervallo,' but 
 ' primus inter pares,' and that the lost comedies sparkled all over 
 with gems of wit like his inimitable farces. So necessary an 
 element was this moving of laughter, that none of them were 
 ashamed to make use of obscenity, provided it was ridiculous, 
 and we must suppose that this element was as much looked 
 furward to and relished by the audience as the inuendos of the 
 modern French drama. Literary satire and parody were only 
 beginning to be popular, because the busy Athenian public 
 were only now beginning to be a reading public all their time 
 having been hitherto spent in active politics or commerce. 
 But the spread of books was beginning ; literary discussion 
 was made popular by the sophists, and the field of literary tra- 
 vesty lay open whenever politics became too serious to tolerate 
 the satire of public men, or became too trivial to keep up the 
 interest in such censure.
 
 216 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XX. 
 
 Such seems to have been the general condition of Attic 
 comedy when Aristophanes arose. 1 
 
 The reader will find the various documents on which our knowledge 
 of the history depends extracts from Flatonius, from various anonymous 
 scholiasts from Tzetzes in the appendices to vols. i. and ii. of Meineke's 
 Fragmenta Comicorum, and summaries of the modern tracts on the subject 
 in Bernhardy's and Nicolai's histories. I still quote from Meineke through- 
 out the following chapters, but Th. Kock's newer and better collection is 
 now complete. Here and there I have made corrections according to his 
 excellent suggestions, and to some criticisms which he has kindly com- 
 municated to me.
 
 CH. XXI. 217 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 ARISTOPHANES. 
 
 260. THE dates neither of the birth nor the death of Aristo- 
 phanes are accurately known, but as he was a young man when 
 his first play came out, we may conjecture him to have been 
 born 450-46 B.C. He is explicitly called rov Srjfjov KvdadTjvateve 
 Haritov&ot (j)v\rjc, but his father, Philippus, had property in 
 ^Egina, to which the poet alludes when he speaks (in the Achar- 
 nians) of this island being claimed in order to secure him ; 
 and the fact that he was persecuted by Cleon on a -ypa^i] Ztviag, 
 for being a foreigner assuming civic rights, has thrown some 
 doubt even on the origin of his father, who is said by some to 
 have been a Rhodian or a Greek of Naucratis in Egypt. We 
 know nothing of the poet's private life or education. If Plato's 
 fancy picture in the Symposium could be trusted, he was a man 
 of aristocratic breeding and culture, living in the best society 
 at Athens. But the fact that Agathon his host, and Socrates 
 the chief speaker on the occasion, were the constant butt of 
 the poet's severest satire makes one doubt that this wonderful 
 Symposium has even historical verisimilitude. We know 
 from an allusion of Eupolis that he was bald before his time, 
 and that he had once been a joint worker with that poet. 
 He also speaks himself of secretly helping other poets, and 
 of his reluctance to demand a chorus in his own name. We 
 know that the last play he composed was the Plutus, in 388 
 B.C., and the biographers tell us he died soon after, leaving 
 three sons, Philip, Nicostratus, and Araros, the last of whom 
 he commended to the public by letting him bring out this 
 play. Araros came out as an original poet about 375 B.C., but 
 this affords no certain evidence that his father was then dead.
 
 2i8 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XXI. 
 
 Our authorities on the life of Aristophanes are two Greek Lives 
 one by Thomas Magister, the other fuller one anonymous. 
 and besides the notice by Suidas. These are supplemented by 
 the poet's own confessions in the parabases of the Acharnians, 
 Knights, and Wasps. We have the titles of forty-three plays, 
 and thirty are said to have been read by John Chrysostom, but 
 Suidas only knows the eleven we have now remaining. Aristo- 
 phanes' life is so closely bound up with his works, that it will 
 be necessary to enter at once upon his remains, and treat (hem 
 as far as possible chronologically. 
 
 261. His first play, the Epulones (AcuraXi/c), came out in 
 Ol. 88, i (427 B.C.), and was not only well received, but obtained 
 lasting reputation. He seems in this play to have opened his 
 career by a politico-social criticism, by contrasting the old 
 simple conservative education with that of the sophist teachers, 
 which was then becoming fashionable. In the following year 
 appeared his Babylonians, in which he turned his satire against 
 the magistracies, both those elected by ballot and by vote, as 
 well as also against Cleon and this at the great Dionysia, 
 when crowds of embassies which had come with tribute from 
 the subject cities were in the theatre. For this he was accused 
 and prosecuted by Cleon, and he alludes to it in his next 
 year's play, the Acharnians, 1 the first of those now extant, which 
 was produced (Ol. 88, 3) at the Lenaa, or at the country 
 Dionysia, where no strangers were present. 
 
 262. The play attained the first prize, but was brought 
 out under the name of Callistratus, who had been the producer 
 of both the earlier plays. In the Acharnians the poet already 
 stands before us in his full strength, his graceful and refined 
 diction, his coarse and pungent wit, his contempt of plots, his 
 mastery of character and of dialogue. It is a bold attempt 
 to support the aristocratical peace party against the intrigues 
 and intimidations of the democratic war party, who according 
 to the poet concealed selfish ends and personal aggrandise- 
 ment under the cloak of patriotism. The leading character, 
 Dicseopolis, around whom all the scenes are grouped, is the 
 honest country farmer, who is weary of serving in discomfort on 
 
 1 vv. 377, 502, 630, sq.
 
 CH. XXL THE ACHARNIANS. 219 
 
 garrison duty, and paying high for the fare afforded him with- 
 out stint by his farm. He comes to the agora determined to 
 howl down anyone who proposes any subject for debate save 
 that of peace. The idleness and delays of the assembly, the 
 humbug of embassies to the great king, and of strange ambas- 
 sadors, are paraded on the stage, and at last Dicseopolis in disgust 
 determines to make a private peace with the Lacedaemonians. 
 The solemn and yet licentious celebration of peace with his 
 family is then performed. But the chorus of Acharnians, the 
 violent war party, whose lands have been laid waste, and who 
 will not hear of peace, attacks him, and it is only by securing 
 one of their coal-baskets as hostage that he escapes their rage. 
 He then proposes to defend his cause, and the cause of his 
 peace, with his head upon the block, and for this purpose goes 
 to beseech Euripides to lend him a miserable and suppliant 
 garb from some of his tragedies, wherewith to move the pity of 
 his audience. The scene in which he appeals to the student 
 poet, and gradually reviews all the heroes of misery in his 
 tragedies, is one of great power, full of wit and parody, and in- 
 tended as a vigorous satire of the new school rhetoric, with 
 which the plays abound. When he has succeeded in partly 
 persuading his judges, the malcontent section go off for La- 
 machus. the swashbuckler-general, who lives by wars and ex- 
 peditions, and there is a good deal of hard hitting in exposing 
 the intrigues of place-hunters and the neglect of honest citi- 
 zens. Then follow the proceedings at Dicaeopolis' free market, 
 in his country-seat, whither a starving Megarian brings his 
 daughters for sale a scene of no little pathos, mingled with 
 some obscenity. There comes a Boeotian with various luxuries, 
 which Dicseopolis receives in exchange for a troublesome syco- 
 phant, who turns up to protest against any market with enemies. 
 The play concludes with a humorous responsive dialogue 
 between Lamachus, who laments the hardships of campaigning, 
 and is presently led in wounded, and Dicaeopolis, who cele- 
 brates the pleasures and plenty of peace, and is led in mellow 
 with wine, and exuberant with license. 
 
 This famous piece, which is an excellent specimen of the 
 poet's work, and even touches on the principal subjects which
 
 220 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERA TURB. CH. xxi. 
 
 occupy all his life, is in no sense a comedy with a plot, or 
 an attempt to portray nature or society. It is rather an ex- 
 travagant political farce, in which the poet gives rein to his 
 imagination, strings together loosely connected scenes, and 
 introduces the impossible and the imaginary wherever it suits 
 his purpose. Nevertheless, there is always a political or social 
 object kept in view, nor are the faults and failings of any 
 class spared. We are not surprised that it was placed first 
 even against the competition of Cratinus and Eupolis. The 
 text is pure and not difficult, and the Greek scholia are par- 
 ticularly good. It has been specially edited, among others, by 
 Elmsley, Mitchell, Blaydes, W. C. Green, and W. Ribbeck 
 (Leipzig, 1864). I will speak of translations separately. 
 
 263. The Knights ('ITTTTJ/C) appeared the very next year 
 (424). We know in fact seven plays produced by the poet in 
 seven successive years, the last four of which are extant, and 
 each of them may fairly be called a masterpiece. But this 
 extraordinary rate of production, which in a poorer epoch would 
 have been well-nigh impossible, was not by any means a very 
 rapid rate of composing for an Attic poet, who seems to have 
 thrown off piece after piece with the same rapidity that Moliere 
 produced his immortal plays. Nor were the comic poets at 
 all so prolific as their tragic brethren, who could produce four 
 plays every year. Possibly the assistance of Callistratus in 
 working up the stage representation aided the poet materially, 
 by leaving him free for composition. The Knights were pro- 
 duced in the poet's own name, but he was assisted by Eupolis, 
 to whom the scholiasts attribute part of the second parabasis. 1 
 The play is more serious and bitter than the Acharnians, and 
 critical scholars think they perceive in it greater finish of style 
 and richness of diction. Nevertheless, even the greater strict- 
 ness of plot, which must be admitted, does not atone for the 
 monotony of the dialogue in which Cleon is out-Cleoned by 
 his rival the sausage-seller. The play personifies the Athenian 
 demos as an easy-going, dull-witted old man, with Nikias, 
 Demosthenes, and Cleon among his slaves, among whom the 
 latter has attained a tyrannical ascendancy by alternately bully- 
 1 vv. 1290 sq. ; cf. above, p. 208.
 
 CH. XXL THE KNIGHTS. 221 
 
 ing his fellows and flattering his master. By the advice of 
 oracles, which play a great part all through the play, and which 
 imply an earnest faith in religion among the Athenian people of 
 that day, the former two persuade an old sausage- seller (Agora- 
 critus) to undertake the task of supplanting Cleon. He is 
 assisted by the chorus of Knights, who are determined enemies 
 of Cleon, and who come in to defend their friends, and attack 
 the demagogue, in their famous parabasis. The greater part 
 of the remainder is occupied with the brazen attempts of both 
 demagogues to out-bully one another, and to devise bribes and 
 promises to gain Demos' favour. At last Agoracritus prevails 
 and retires with Demos, whom he presently reproduces, appa- 
 rently by eccyclema, sitting crowned, and in his right mind, 
 heartily ashamed of his former follies. Agoracritus, who in 
 this scene appears as changed in character as his master, advises 
 him most sincerely concerning his politics and his duties to 
 the subjects. The ideal of Aristophanes is the usual one of 
 bigoted conservatives a return to the good old days at Athens, 
 to those of Marathon, and to the policy of Aristeides. Such 
 dreams are hardly less foolish than those of socialists and com- 
 munists as to the future of human society. The parabasis of 
 the Knights is the most precious document we have on the 
 history of the comic drama, and I therefore quote it without 
 apology. 1 
 
 1 w. 507-550: 
 
 e fjitv Tts av^ip TUV apxaicav Kw/j.cp$o$t1>dffKa\os rjfj.as 
 T\vayKaev \fovras firr) irpbs -rb dearpov irapa&rivai, 
 OVK kv <pav\us frv\ev TOVTOV vvv S" &t6s 4<rff 6 TTOIIJT^* 
 Sri revs avrovs rifjuv fj.iffi, ro\fj.a re \tyfiv TO. Siicaia, 
 Kal yevvaitas irpbs rbv Tv<p> x^P 6 ' Ka ^ T ^*' fpiwAijv. 
 & Se 6avfi.d^ii> vfj.uiv (p-ncrus iro\\oi>s avrf irpoffiAvras, 
 Kal fZaffavi^fiv, us ov)(l iro\at xppbv alro'ii) Kaff tavr6v, 
 fyuas vfjiiv fKe\eve <ppdffai irtpl rovrov. Qricrl yhp iudjp 
 ovx WIT' avoids rovro irtirovQliis Starpi^eiv, a\\a vouifuv 
 Kta/j.ipSoSiSa.ffKahiaj' flvai x a ^- f/7rc '>' rcl ' r01 ' fpyov airdvTwv 
 iro\\(av yap 5)) irtipa.ffa.vrtav avryv 6\tyois x a P^ a ' aff ^ at ' 
 vfj.as re trd\ai Siaytyvufficcav firfrdovs T^V <pv(riv ovras, 
 Kal TOVS irpoTfpovs Tiav iroiijTtav a/aa Ttf yfipa, irpoSiS6fTas' 
 rovro fifv flSws airadf Wldyvrjs o/uo ratj iro\ia'ts Kanovffair, 
 tis T^eicrTa xP J - v r< ^ v ^" T "roAa>j' vintis tffTTjcrt rpoirala. '
 
 222 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xxi. 
 
 The newest special editions are by Velsen (1869) ; Born, with 
 a German version ; W. Ribbeck (1867) ; Th. Kock (in Hauptand 
 Sauppe's series) ; and by Mr. Green in the Cambridge Catena. 
 
 264. In the very next year (Ol. 89, i, or 423 B.C.) Philonides 
 brought out for the now famous poet his Clouds an arrange- 
 ment, as I have already suggested, merely intended to save 
 him the labour of the stage practising. The play is certainly 
 iar superior to the Knights, yet nevertheless was defeated 
 not only by the brilliant Wine-tf,ask of old Cratinus, but by the 
 Connus of Ameipsias, a little known poet. The extant play is 
 a second edition, modified, we know not how much, from the 
 unsuccessful original. One of the Greek arguments (No. vi.) 
 mentions as altered the parabasis, in which the poet lectures 
 
 ifdffas 8' vfuv cftwvas ids Kal fyd\\a>v Kal irrepvyifav 
 Kal \v8ifav Kal ty-riviiav Kal fiairronevos fiarpaxf'iois 
 OVK ffciipKefffv, a\\a Tf\tvra>t> tirl yfipws, ov yap e<J>' ?}j87jy, 
 ^{fjSA.^07? irpefffivrris &v, Sri rov ffKtiirretv oir6Aei<J>0ij. 
 elra Kparivov p.ep.vi]p-fvos, os iro\\<f pevffas iror' firaiv<p 
 Sta T>V a<pf\aiv TreSfwv fppei, Kal rrjs ardffeois irapaffvpuiv 
 4<f>6pei ras Spvs Kal ras irXardvovs Kal rovs tx^povs irpoOe\v(i.vovs ' 
 aarat 8' OVK -fiv ev v/j.iro<rl(i> irAi)^ AwpoT <rvKoirt$t\e, 
 Kal, TfKrovfs fv-ira\d/j.tav vfj.vtav ' ovrcas Jjvdijfffv (KSWOS. 
 vvvl 8' u/xe?s avrbv optavrfs irapa\r)povvT* OVK e\et"trf, 
 fK-imrTovfftav rv ri\fKrpo>v, Kal rov r6vov OVK er' fj>6rros, 
 ruv <? apfj.ovtoSv SLaxaffKOvffav ' a\\a ytpcav &>> ireptfppej, 
 Siffirep Kovvas, ffTf(pavov fjitv %xo>v avov, Styy 8" airo\a>\d!> s, 
 1>v Xprjv Sia ras irportpas VIKO.S irivfiv Iv rif trpvravfi(p 
 Kal fj.^1 Xriptlv, a\\a BeaffBai \nrapbv irapa r<? Atovvffip. 
 o?ccs Se Kpdrrjs opyas vu.Siv rivevxero Kal ffrv<pe\iyfLovs ' 
 f>s avb fffjLiKpas Sairdvris v/4as apiffrifav aire'ire/tirei', 
 oirb Kpapfiordrov ffr6/J.aros fj.a.rrtav atrrftordras firtvoias 
 XOVTOS /J.evroi fj.6vos avr'fipKfi, rare /j.fv iriirrtuv, rare 5' ovxl. 
 raOr' bppoi'SSiv Sierpi&ev ati, Kal trpbs ruvroiffiv e^aer/cev 
 tperijv %P : n vat irp&ra yevfffOai, irplv ir7j8aA.iois tirix el p*Wt 
 Kr' fvrtvQev irpcfparevvat Kal rovs avt^ovs 5ia0/>7)<roi, 
 Kara Kvfifpvav avrbv tavrtf. rovrcav ovv ouxe/ca irdvroov, 
 irt ffcaQpoviKias KOVK OICOTJTWS (<rirr]$rio-as e<p\udpfi., 
 avrf TTO\V rb f>66toy t tcapaTrffj^ar f<p' evStt 
 
 %v 6 iroiyrfys airly 
 Kara vovv irpd^as,
 
 CH. xxi. THE CLOUDS. 223 
 
 the audience on their want of taste in refusing him the prize, the 
 dialogue of the two \6-yot, and the conclusion of the piece. But 
 the work, as we have it, seems imperfectly recast, and was not 
 again brought on the stage by the poet. If so, it is a curious 
 evidence for the existence of a reading public apart from the 
 theatrical audience at Athens. 
 
 The play opens with a night-scene, in which the principal 
 actor, Strepsiades (Turn-coat), tells of his miseries, his expen- 
 sive Alcmaeonid wife, and his spendthrift son Pheidippides, whose 
 very name is a compromise between country saving and city 
 luxury. Even the slaves have become insolent in these war 
 times, and the old gentleman cannot sleep with thinking of his 
 debts and his son's extravagant habits. The only safety he can 
 devise is to send his son to the Phrontistery (Thinking-shop) 
 of Socrates, who assumes the character in this play of the 
 vulgar sophist, and will train any young man to win his cause, 
 however unjust, by subtle rhetoric. But when the fashionable 
 horsy young man refuses, the old gentleman presents himself 
 instead at the door of the Phrontistery, and finds the sage 
 swinging in a basket aloft observing the sun and aether. A 
 solemn disciple informs the astonished Strepsiades of various 
 wonders in the school, and groups of pale students are seen 
 wrapped in mysterious meditations. Socrates, who poses as a 
 physical philosopher and a freethinker, promises to transform 
 Strepsiades into an accomplished sophist. He calls down his 
 new divinities, the Clouds^ who rule the^ world under Vortex 
 (AI^oc, Mr. Browning's Whirligig), the supplanter of Zeus. 
 The choral odes of these Clouds are extremely beautiful, and 
 reveal a lyric power in Aristophanes which is not found in 
 the earlier plays. But with the license of comedy they not 
 only pass into the poet's person in the parabasis, they even at 
 the end assume the character of the ' lying spirits ' in the Old 
 Testament, and declare that they are meant to mislead into 
 condign punishment such as profanely disbelieve in the national 
 faith. 
 
 Accordingly on their entrance they join Socrates in emanci- 
 pating Strepsiades from the religion of his fathers. But in 
 other respects he is found an inept and stupid pupil. The
 
 224 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XXI. 
 
 parabasis is again of the utmost independent value, owing to 
 its personal character, and the sketch which Aristophanes gives 
 of his aims in writing comedy. 1 It is delivered while Socrates 
 and his pupil are within at their lessons. \Vhen they return to 
 the stage, Strepsiades is put through a long exercise in gram- 
 matical points, but breaks down through want of memory and 
 quickness, and is advised by the Clouds to bring his son to 
 the Phrontistery instead. The son objects, but is ultimately 
 persuaded, though reluctantly, to enter the school. Here a 
 choral ode is missing, after which follows the famous dialogue 
 of the Just and Unjust arguments, in which the poet paints 
 with enthusiasm the old education, and the splendour of old 
 Attic life in purity and in beauty. 2 But the unjust advocate of 
 the new, immoral, intellectual education wins the battle, and 
 obtains the control of the pupil in consequence. Strepsiades 
 at once assumes airs of great impertinence to his creditors, 
 trusting to his son's future subtleties ; but the first result is a 
 quarrel between father and son as to an after-dinner song, when 
 the son beats his father and threatens his mother with his newly 
 acquired sophistry. This suddenly opens the old Turncoat's 
 eyes ; he deplores his folly, and is severely reprimanded by the 
 now serious and orthodox Clouds for his blindness and immo- 
 rality. He ends the play by taking vengeance on Socrates, and 
 setting the Phrontistery on fire. Such is the general outline of 
 this remarkable piece. But it is also full of minor traits of 
 great interest, and tjiese are the special features which make 
 both the dialogue and the odes as interesting as anything now 
 extant of Greek comedy. 
 
 265. Some of the questions raised about the Clouds are 
 not easily answered. But I think the scholiasts, as well as their 
 modern followers, have expressed far too much surprise at its 
 failure. We do not know how far the original piece was in- 
 ferior to the extant recension, and must merely note this possi- 
 bility as an element in the problem. But if we consider that 
 Aristophanes had been declared victor for at least two pre- 
 ceding years, we can in the first place imagine a widespread 
 jealousy of the new favourite, and an idea that Attic comedy 
 1 Cf. especially w. 518-62. * Cf. vv. 961, sq., 1000, sq., &c.
 
 CH. XXI. FAILURE OF THE CLOUDS. 225 
 
 would suffer if all the first prizes were adjudged to one poet, 
 (\dded to this feeling, and to the love of variety common 
 to every public, and very prominent in the Athenians, there 
 was this remarkable coincidence, that old Cratinus, the greatest 
 master of his day, who had retired into private life, suddenly 
 flashed out in his old vigour this year with the famous Wine- 
 flask, a play not only of great general excellence, but full of 
 personal confessions, and perhaps regrets, which must have 
 keenly excited the sympathy of a somewhat capricious, but 
 easily repentant public. It is likely that the enthusiasm ex- 
 cited by the Hvrirr) would have given it the victory over any 
 play opposed to it. It is more difficult to say why the Connus 
 of Ameipsias was also preferred, as we know very little of 
 either the poet or the piece ; but one fact is very significant. 
 Socrates and a chorus of Thinkers (^joovrtorat) appeared in it, 
 and there is a fragment extant which describes the sage as 
 dressed in poor and ragged dress, but nevertheless above con- 
 descending to meanness and flattery. 1 If, then, Socrates was 
 a leading character in the play, which was called after a cele- 
 brated Citharxdus, who was his master, Aristophanes was de- 
 feated on his own subject by Ameipsias. This makes it less 
 likely that any injustice was done by the judges. For while 
 granting all the formal excellence of the play, there can be no 
 doubt that the drawing of Socrates in the Clouds is completely 
 unhistorical. The caricature is, indeed, so broad that we must 
 acquit the poet of any hostile intention, and assume that he 
 merely chose this well-known name to hang upon it all the 
 eccentricities and immoralities which he desired to reprehend 
 in the new school of rhetoric and of education. Plato's Sym- 
 posium, which introduces the philosopher and the poet as boon 
 companions, corroborates this view. The physical speculations 
 of Socrates were an early and unimportant part of his thinking; 
 he was no mountebank, no swindler, no rhetorician in the sense 
 of the other sophists. Yet all these qualities are ascribed to 
 him in the Clouds. It is, indeed, true that the poet saw with 
 deeper insight than his public that the Socratic teaching was 
 in real substance negative and sceptical, and might easily be 
 
 1 Meineke, ii. p. 703. 
 VOL. I. 2 Q
 
 226 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XXI. 
 
 distorted into vicious word-splitting and idle chicanery. But 
 the Athenian public, on the other hand, felt rightly that the 
 personality of the man was honest and noble, and it is not im- 
 possible that his bravery at the battle of Delium, not a year 
 earlier, helped to disgust them with the caricature, and reject 
 the clever but deeply unjust caricature of Aristophanes. It is 
 also likely that a very large part of the audience took no interest 
 in the physical speculations of Anaxagoras and Euripides, and 
 were somewhat bored by the prominence given to barren 
 subtleties. To such people the ridicule of Cleon and his dis- 
 honesty would come home at once, for every Athenian was 
 more or less a politician; accordingly the Knights would com- 
 mand far more public interest than the Clouds at Athens, as the 
 Happy Land, which ridiculed Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet, would 
 command it in England, far more than any unjust caricature 
 of Mr. Darwin and his philosophy. There are many special 
 editions and translations of this play. I may specify those of 
 F. A. Wolf (1811), Welcker (1810), Teuffel (ed. 3, Leipzig, 
 1868), Bothe, and Green. The best is that of Th. Kock (2nd 
 ed., in Haupt and Sauppe's series). It is discussed in all the 
 histories of Greek Sophistic, in connection with Socrates. 
 
 266. We pass to the comedy of the following year, the 
 Wasps (Hornets ?). There is some confusion in the Greek argu- 
 ment of the play, which states that it was brought out by 
 Philonides, and obtained second prize, but that the first prize 
 was obtained by the Rehearsal (vpoti-yiav), also brought out by 
 Philonides, and also written by Aristophanes. 1 This producing 
 
 1 Mr. Rogers, in his careful and shrewd preface to his edition, proposes 
 to emend the corrupt scholium differently, and reads it to this effect : that the 
 play came out in the second year of the Sgth OL, under Aristophanes' own 
 name, and was first. The irpoayuv (which ridiculed Euripides) was brought 
 out by Philonides, and was second, Leucon with the Ambassadors third. 
 This correction seems to me more probable than the others proposed. Mr. 
 Rogers' refutation of the usual view of the play, as a satire upon the Athe- 
 nian jury system, is also perfectly sound. He shows some inconsistencies 
 in the plot, which point to haste or change of mind in the composition. 
 Thus the chorus on entering speak of their comrade as suddenly and un- 
 expectedly absent, whereas the opening scene represents him as long con- 
 fined and prohibited from attending the courts
 
 CH. XXI. THE WASPS. 227 
 
 of two plays by the same author in the same year seems very 
 strange, in the face of the competition of many poets to obtain 
 a chorus, and it is likely that the passage has been so corrupted 
 that the real sense is lost. The play is not so brilliant as the 
 Clouds, and is intended to ridicule the simplicity of the body of 
 poorer Athenian citizens, who spent their life sitting in judgment 
 upon all the affairs of the empire, and receiving their three obols 
 daily by way of support. They imagined themselves the rulers 
 of the empire, whereas they were really the tools of dema- 
 gogues and of rhetoricians who pocketed the real profits. 
 Though the principal characters are called Philo-cleon and 
 Bdely-cleon, no living personage is introduced, and the play is 
 remarkable as the earliest we have which deals wholly in 
 imaginary characters. The old dicast, who has gone mad 
 with love of sitting on juries, is confined by his sensible son 
 with the aid of slaves ; and here we find, perhaps, the only case 
 in which Aristophanes represents the younger generation as 
 having more sense than the old. But he probably merely 
 intends to intimate a very general Greek feeling, that old age, 
 instead of being venerable and excessively wise, is really feeble 
 and prejudiced. The Homeric attempt of the old man to 
 escape, like Odysseus from the cave, is very comic. His 
 friends, the chorus of Wasps, come to his aid, but are driven off 
 by Bdelycleon, and compelled to listen passively to an argu- 
 ment between father and son, in which the former boasts all the 
 nominal grandeur of the sovereign Athenian people sitting in 
 judgment, while the latter shows the hollowness and vanity of 
 their pretensions. Ultimately the old man is appeased by a 
 mock trial of a dog for stealing cheese, which is got up for him 
 at home. The attempt at humanising the old dicast, and bring- 
 ing him back into the ways of society, is, however, too sudden. 
 Though he shows much quickness of political repartee in the 
 skolia which his son proposes, he is rude and unmannerly, and 
 his behaviour to his associates shows the license of a sudden 
 emancipation from the trammels of self-imposed political duties. 
 The latter part of the play gives us much insight into the 
 nature of social intercourse at Athens. The subject was imi- 
 tated by Racine in his solitary comedy, Les Plaideurs, which is 
 
 Q2
 
 228 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xxi, 
 
 a melancholy contrast to its original as to freshness and humour. 
 There are excellent editions by Mitchell, Hirschig (with special 
 collations first by Bekker, then Cobet, Leiden, 1847), Julius 
 Richter, with Latin notes (Berlin, 1858), and by Mr. Rogers, 
 with a metrical translation. Many of the political allusions 
 have been fully discussed by Miiller-Striibing in his Aristophanes 
 und die historisclie Kritik. 
 
 267. In the following year (Ol. 89, 3) Aristophanes 
 brought out the first edition of the Peace, when Eupolis gained 
 the first prize with his Flatterers, and Leucon the third with his 
 Clansmen. The Peace seems to have been rehandled by the 
 poet, but there are not in our text (though there are in the 
 scholia) signs of a recension. The object of the play is to 
 recommend the then expected peace of Nikias, as both Brasidas 
 and Cleon had lately been killed, and thus the war party at 
 both Athens and Sparta was sensibly weakened. It was acted at 
 the great spring festival, when the deputies of the allies with 
 their tribute were present, as appears from many allusions. 
 The scene is partly laid in heaven, evidently on the upper story 
 above the stage, whither Trygaeos (the Vintager), an elderly 
 citizen, flies up on a dung-beetle to bring down the goddess 
 Peace, who has been immured by War, while the gods in 
 disgust have gone away, leaving War to do as he chose. 
 Hermes, an insolent but servile doorkeeper, is the only god 
 who appears. Two slaves who are fattening Trygaeos' beetle 
 open the piece with a dialogue which passes into the prologue, 
 as was often the case in Aristophanes' plays. When Peace is 
 brought down again to earth, and upon the stage, the prepara- 
 tions for her marriage with Trygaeos occupy the rest of the 
 play, of which the action halts after the first 800 lines, but the 
 dialogue is all through very witty and full of clever parodies. 
 On the whole the play is more brilliant and imaginative than the 
 Wasps, but too much flavoured with that obscenity, which, 
 however comical, disfigures several of the poet's later works, 
 and which he himself deprecates in earlier plays. Some pat 
 sages in the Parabasis and elsewhere are copied from older 
 productions, and yet we cannot but wonder at the fertility of 
 the poet's treatment of the same subject which he had handled
 
 JH. xxi. THE BIRDS. 229 
 
 in the Acharnians, with such completely different scenery and 
 arrangement. It seems as if the phantastic element had become 
 much more prominent in him about this period of his life. 
 The best special editions of this, as of the last play, are by 
 Julius Richter (Berlin, 1860) and Mr. Rogers. 
 
 268. There is now, in our extant remains, a gap of seven 
 years before the date of the next play, the Birds. This accident 
 suggests to critics a distinction between the poet's earlier and 
 later style, which is hardly warranted by the plays themselves. 
 The Peace seems to me to possess all his later characteristics in 
 full development, and is nevertheless brought out in close con- 
 nection with his older, more serious, and more political plays. 
 The temperate allusion to Cleon shortly after his death ' is a 
 curious contrast to the attack on Euripides in the frogs under 
 the same circumstances. Here there is a sort of de-mortuis- 
 nil-nisi-bonum feeling implied. The Birds came out in the 
 spring of 414 B.C., in the year following the sending out of the 
 Sicilian expedition, the panic about the Hermse, and the recall 
 and banishment of Alcibiades. The law of Syracosius limiting 
 the freedom of lampooning in comedy was doubtless connected 
 with the public excitement of the time, -when the jibe of a 
 comedian might bring upon any man suspicion, prosecution, 
 and exile. It is probably to these circumstances that we may 
 ascribe the political vagueness of this piece, which is a general 
 satire upon the vain hopes and wild expectations of young 
 Athens, and ridicules their ideal empire in the western Medi- 
 terranean, which contrasted so strongly with the poet's conser- 
 vative notions about old Attic purity, dignity, and simplicity. 
 We may now declare that this retrograde ideal of the old party 
 was not less impossible than the Cloudcuckootown of the ad- 
 vanced thinkers, and even in the Middle Comedy there were not 
 wanting parodies of the ancient heroic simplicity analogous to 
 this in the Birds. Nevertheless, to us the comedy is profoundly 
 interesting as a piece of brilliant imagination, with less political 
 rancour, and less obscenity than most of the author's work, and 
 justly accounted one of the best, if not the best, of his extant 
 plays. 
 
 1 w. 646, sq.
 
 230 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XXL 
 
 The play was brought out by Callistratus, and obtained 
 second prize, Ameipsias being first with his Revellers, Phryni- 
 cush third with his Monotropos. It opens with a dialogue between 
 two Athenian typical characters, Persuader (nafoYcupoe) and 
 Hopeful (EvE\7ru>r;c), who are disgusted with litigious Athens, 
 and are wandering, conducted by a crow and jackdaw, and 
 attended by two slaves, in search of the avified Tereus, now a 
 hoopoe, who will show them a quiet city where they may live 
 without law. This is told us, as usual, by one of the characters 
 in the first dialogue. It is remarkable that these, like almost 
 all Aristophanes' leading characters, are not young, but elderly 
 men. They find the hoopoe, who calls out his wife, the 
 nightingale, 1 and these summon all the birds to council. No 
 sooner has Persuader asked a few questions about the life 
 of the birds, than he conceives and propounds a scheme to 
 the hoopoe of settling all the birds into a great polity, and 
 shutting off by means of it the ways from earth to heaven, so 
 that the gods, being starved out by want of offerings, shall 
 come to terms, and resign the sovereignty of the world to the 
 birds. This scheme is accordingly carried out, the city is 
 established and there are very comic scenes, when all sorts of 
 worthless sycophants, mountebank priests, and windy poeta 
 
 1 The beautiful invocation to the nightingale is worth quoting (w. 
 
 209-24) : 
 
 frye ffvvvope fiot, xo.vcra.i pfV vnvou, 
 \vffov Se v6[jiovs ifpcav v/j.vcav, 
 otis Sicfc deiov ffT6/j,a.TOs Bp-rjvf'ts 
 rbv ffibv Kal ffbv iro\v8a,Kpuv "Irvv 
 
 ytvvos |ot07}s' 
 
 Ka.8a.pa x^P^ Sicb (t>v\\OK6fj.ov 
 ju.iA.ctKo? Jix&> Tpbs Atbs eSpas, 
 1v 6 xP vffOK 6/J-&s *oi)3or O.KOVUV 
 -rots (To"is e\eyois ca> 
 
 Icrrrjffi xpvs ' 
 
 Sib. 8' adavdruv ffrondretv X 
 
 =la fJ.a.Ka.p<ov o
 
 CH xxi. THE LYSISTRATA. 231 
 
 come to Persuader to get wings and live among the birds. 
 Iris is caught flying through the city on an errand from Zeus 
 to order men to sacrifice, as the gods are starving. She is 
 sent back, and meanwhile a herald comes up from the earth to 
 say that the mortals have consented to submit to the Birds' 
 sovereignty. Presently Poseidon, Heracles, and Triballus a 
 barbarian god, who does not know how to put on his cloak 
 come as an embassy from the gods. But Heracles, who is very 
 gluttonous, and moreover hungry, is ready to accept any terms, 
 when he finds Persuader cooking a rich meal to which he 
 hopes to be invited. Triballus is unintelligible, but sides with 
 Heracles, and so Poseidon is forced to comply with the dis- 
 graceful terms of submitting to the Birds, and allowing Basileia 
 (Sovereignty) to be brought down and married to Persuader. 
 The play ends, as the Peace does, with the Hymeneal song. 
 
 It is full of the richest imagination and the brightest wit, but 
 it is idle to discuss the endeavours of modern critics to pierce 
 the disguise under which the poet may have ridiculed definite 
 persons. As a general satire on young Athens it is full of 
 point, and a real work of genius. I have already explained 
 (above, p. 212) the careful and complete structure of the para- 
 basis. It is surprising how few special editions of this play have 
 been published in recent times. The earlier part has been re- 
 produced for the stage, with sundry modifications, by Goethe in 
 1780, and the whole play has been translated by the poefc 
 Riickert. There is a handy school edition by Th. Kock 
 (Haupt and Sauppe's series). 
 
 269. The Lysistrata appeared in 411 B.C., after the Sici- 
 lian disaster, when ten Probouloi had been appointed to manage 
 the city, and when its democracy was just being overthrown 
 by the oligarchs under Peisander and Antiphon. We may 
 take for granted that comic license was forbidden. The Pei- 
 sander mentioned in the play was probably therefore not the 
 politician, and there is no allusion to Antiphon. Nevertheless, 
 under the mask of obscene ribaldry there is no play of Aristo- 
 phanes more seriously in earnest about the affairs of the state. 
 His usual policy is enforced by representing the women of 
 all Greece determined to refuse conjugal rights to their hus-
 
 232 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xxi. 
 
 bands until peace is proclaimed, and at the same time seizing 
 the Acropolis in order to secure the treasure of the Parthenon 
 from being applied to war purposes. A chorus of old men who 
 come to attack the Propylaea with fire, and a chorus of the 
 elder women who defend it with water, replace with their re- 
 sponsive odes and comic abuse the usual single chorus. There 
 is no parabasis. The Spartan woman, Lampito, who is remark- 
 able not only for her splendid physique, but for her character 
 and self-control, speaks throughout in her own dialect, as do 
 the Spartan ambassadors at the close of the play, and they thus 
 afford us an excellent specimen of that remarkable Doric which 
 is hardly represented in any extant branch of Greek literature. 
 The political advice comes not from the chorus, but from the 
 leading character, whose typical name, Lysistrata, indicates hei 
 policy. She recommends forgetfulness of past offences, in fact 
 amnesty and a coalition of interests with the allies, who had 
 been hitherto treated as mere subjects. There is no vain pic- 
 turing of past happiness or future glory, but rather a homel}^ 
 anxious review of the situation, with a determination to do the 
 best in a frightful crisis. 1 The spectacle of an Athenian public 
 
 1 I call particular attention to the following passage, as the most dis- 
 tinctly pathetic which we have in Aristophanes. 
 vv. 588, sq. : 
 
 riPO. OVKOVV Sftvbv ravrl ravras f>a&8teu' ical ro\virfvetv t 
 
 aTs ovSf perr)V irdvv TOW iro\4fnov ; 
 
 AT. al /J.4i>>, 8> irayKardpaTf, 
 
 ir\f7v r)e 8nr\ovv avrbv <f>po/Ji.ev. irpiaTiffrov fj.fv ye 
 
 TKOVffCU 
 
 KaKTrefJ.\l/acrai iraiSas 6ir\iras. 
 
 riPO. criya, fj.)j nvTjffiicaicfiffris. 
 
 AT. tiff rtv'iK fXP^ v evtypa.vQriva.1 Kal TTJS rifiris d-TroA.at/ffcu, 
 (lovoKonovfjiev 8m TOS ffrparids. Kal 6r)fj.trfpov utv 
 
 tare, 
 jrfpl roov 5e Kop&v tv rots 6u\d/j.oi5 ytjpaffKovffiav 
 
 ian&fuu, 
 
 ITPO. oijicovv x&v$pfs yripdffKovinv ; 
 
 AT. fJ.a AP, a\A.' OVK fiiras ouoioi: 
 
 6 fifv Tjfiwv yap, K&V y iro\i6s, TO.XII iraiSa 
 
 TTJS 5e yvvaixbs ff/j,tKpi>s 6 na.ip6s, K&C TOVTOV 
 
 'iri\dl3riTai, 
 oiiSfls eOf\ei yrj/jicu Tat'-rr/v, OTTevoudfrj 8e KaBrir
 
 CH. xxi. THE THESMOPHORIAZUS&. 233 
 
 coming together in their direst misfortune, to hear a play of 
 which the very argument could not be explicitly stated in 
 modern society, and of which the details fully develop the 
 main idea, shows us a great gulf between Attic and modern 
 culture. I will only observe in explanation of so painful a 
 phenomenon that many ceremonies of the Greek religion 
 nay even the spiritual mysteries of Demeter admitted obscene 
 emblems and obscene jokes as a necessary part of the festival, 
 and this element was as prominent in the feasts of women as 
 in those where men only were engaged. Thus the naturalism 
 of Greek polytheism, as contrasted with the asceticism of 
 Christianity, engendered a state of feeling, even in the most 
 refined, which would be accounted among us shocking gross- 
 ness. The indulgence, therefore, of Athenians in such amuse- 
 ments as the Lysistraia, though under all circumstances ob- 
 jectionable, is not by any means to be regarded as parallel 
 to a similar performance in modern times. 
 
 The scene being laid at the Propylsea of the Acropolis is full 
 of local allusions to the surrounding features, which have been 
 missed by most commentators owing to their want of familiarity 
 with the place. Of course the play from its very nature has 
 been little commented on in special editions. There is a text 
 with scholia and full commentary by Mr. Blaydes (Halle, 1880). 
 Mr. Rogers has done all that can be done to bring it within 
 the range of modern readers in his excellent version, and his 
 commentary on selections from the text. 
 
 270. From the following year (Ol. 92, 2) we have the 
 Thesmophoriazusa, or celebrators of the Thesmophoria, in 
 which the poet again makes the female sex prominent, but is 
 less in earnest about politics, which had in the meantime 
 taken a definite turn, and permitted no interference. This play 
 is perhaps the most comical which we have, and might be 
 called a ' screaming farce/ but for the determined attack on the 
 morality of the Athenian women, which is laid by Aristophanes 
 wittily, and by the commentators stupidly, on the shoulders of 
 Euripides. This poet appears with his father-in-law Mnesilo- 
 chus in seaich of Agathon, whose effeminate appearance and 
 style will enable him to attend the Thesmophoria, and defend
 
 234 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xxi. 
 
 Euripides from the conspiracy made by the women against 
 him, on account of his misoguny and his pictures of female 
 passion. Agathon is cleverly parodied, with coarse asides from 
 Mnesilochus, who is the stock Athenian of the poet. But 
 Agathon refuses the dangerous mission among the women, and 
 Euripides persuades Mnesilochus, with the aid of shaving and 
 of Agathon's borrowed dress, to make the attempt. At a very 
 comic assembly speeches are made against Euripides, but 
 Mnesilochus ruins his case by arguing that Euripides had far 
 understated the vices of women. This leads to altercation, 
 and then the news brought by the effeminate Cleisthenes, that 
 a man had entered the women's exclusive gathering, leads to 
 the discovery and apprehension of Mnesilochus. By a device 
 akin to that of Dicseopolis in the Acharnians, he threatens in 
 his peril to slay a child, which turns out to be a wine skin, and 
 he is at last put under the charge of a Scythian policeman. 
 The devices of Euripides, who approaches under the guise of 
 various characters from his plays, especially from the recent 
 Helena and the Andromeda, and is answered by Mnesilochus, 
 afford scope for much brilliant parody. At length, under the 
 garb and by the devices of a procuress, Euripides entices away 
 the Scythian, and extricates his friend. 
 
 The chorus, though prominent, sings no proper parabasis, 
 nor is there any serious address to the audience. All the play 
 is full of fun, and parody, and ribaldry. The attack on women 
 is a fiercer one than all the plays of Euripides condensed could 
 furnish. As to the travesties of Agathon and of Euripides, they 
 are all comic, and show, I think, no personal hatred, though 
 many hard hits are dealt Plato makes Aristophanes a personal 
 friend of Agathon, and the allusion to him, after his death, 
 in the Frogs corroborates this. But the Frogs are far more 
 severe on Euripides than this play, for here his cleverness only 
 is ridiculed, and his plays quoted as the most popular, while his 
 attacks on the weaker sex are more than justified. The in- 
 cinuations of effeminacy against Agathon are quite as foul as 
 those in the end of the play against Euripides for deal- 
 ing in immorality. There are editions by Thiersch, F. V. 
 Fritzsche, and Enge.r. Some fragments remain of a second
 
 CH. xxr. THE FROGS. 235 
 
 ThesmophoriazustB, which continued the plot of this play, and 
 inveighed chiefly, according to our fragments, against female 
 luxury. Mr. Blaydes' full edition has since appeared (Halle, 
 1880), and Velsen's recension (1880). 
 
 271. Passing by the Plutits, as our version of it was pro- 
 duced later (it was first played in Ol. 92, 4), we come to the 
 Frogs, certainly the most interesting, if not the best constructed 
 of all Aristophanes' extant plays. It came out in 405 B.C., just 
 before the battle of yEgospotami, when Athens was approach- 
 ing the crisis of her history. Phrynichus and Theramenes are 
 still the leading men of the state ; people are longing for Alci- 
 biades, but afraid to recall him. It is at such a moment that 
 this wonderful play occupied the public with its buffoonery, and 
 its profound literary criticism. It obtained first prize under 
 Philonides' direction, and defeated (the comic) Phrynichus' 
 Muses and Plato's Cleophon. Its repetition is said to have been 
 ordered owing to the prudent and moderate parabasis, which 
 recommends amnesty for past offences, especially in the affair of 
 the Four Hundred, and unity among all the citizens to avert the 
 ruin of the state. ' This political advice is very similar in tone 
 to that in the Lysistrata. The plot is separated into two parts : 
 first, the adventures of Dionysus on his journey to Hades in 
 search of a good poet, Sophocles and Euripides being lately dead ; 
 and secondly, the poetical contest of yEschylus and Euripides, 
 and the inal victory of /Eschylus. These subjects are logi- 
 cally though loosely connected together, but remind us strongly 
 of the dramatic economy of the very poet whom Aristophanes 
 is here attacking so vehemently. No analysis can reproduce 
 the real brilliancy of the piece, which consists in all manner of 
 comic situations, repartees, parodies, and unexpected blunders. 
 
 The attack on Euripides, and parallel defence of yEschylus, 
 carried on by the poets themselves, is of course profoundly 
 interesting as a piece of contemporary literary criticism by so 
 great a poet ; but great poets are not always good critics. 
 Moreover, whether from dramatic propriety, or from serious 
 conviction, the points urged on both sides are all shallow and 
 unimportant, and only of weight before an idiotic judge, such 
 as Dionysus. How this character can have been intended to 
 
 ' vv. 352, sq.
 
 236 HISTORY OF CREEK LITERATURE. CH. XXI. 
 
 represent the Athenian public without insulting them is hard 
 to understand. For if this be the poet's meaning, the sesthetic 
 judgment of the Athenian public, and their art criticism, is 
 ridiculed far more bitterly than the fashionable tragedian. 
 The attacks of the poets on one another are partly gram- 
 matical, partly rythrnical, partly ethical, but hardly at all 
 sesthetic, if we except the objection to the peculiar stage 
 effect which ^schylus so often used, of introducing his lead- 
 ing character upon the stage in silence, and keeping the 
 audience in long suspense before he spoke. The grammatical 
 points are minute and trifling, and as to the rythmical argu- 
 ment against Euripides' prologues, 1 most good iambic trimeters 
 can be concluded withX?j/0toi' cnrwXfo-Ev, so that there is no 
 point in it at all. The melic ramblings of Euripides may be 
 open to the charge of disconnection and of effeminate softness, 
 but assuredly the obscurity of ^Eschylus is an equally important 
 defect in poetry addressed to a listening public. 
 
 By far the most important part of the controversy is that 
 concerning the moral effects of tragedy, for it is assumed as an 
 axiom by all parties, 2 that the poets (whether dramatic or not) 
 are moral teachers in fact, the established clergy of the age 
 and perform the same office for men which schoolmasters do 
 for children. Assuming this standpoint, Euripides can only 
 defend himself by urging that the legends he represented were 
 as he found them, and that he encouraged practical good sense 
 and homely shrewdness among the citizens in fact, educated 
 them in good sense. 3 
 
 The reply which we should make to ^Eschylus would 
 rather insist that he himself was not a great poet because he 
 had a moral object, but because in prosecuting that object he 
 stated great world problems, great conflicts of Destiny and 
 Freedom, of Law and of Feeling, and set them forth with 
 extraordinary power and beauty. Euripides may have made 
 the mere changes of human character, and the scourge of 
 passion, his conscious objects, but in portraying these things 
 well he was no less a great teacher of humanity, and a lofty 
 moralist in his own way. It is as if we should contrast Sir 
 
 1 vv. 1200, sq. 2 vv. 1056, sq. 8 vv. 948, sq.
 
 en. xxr. THE ECCLEZIAZUS&. 237 
 
 W. Scott's romances, their chivalry, their ideality, and their 
 obvious rewarding of vice and virtue, with the subtler and 
 deeper teaching of George Eliot, who makes the tangled web 
 of human life her object, and does not accommodate her cata- 
 strophes to traditional morality. Sir W. Scott wrote great novels, 
 not because he wrote with an earnest moral purpose, but 
 because he drew periods of history, and varieties of human cha- 
 racter, with boldness and with poetic truth. These are the 
 eternal features of dramatic art, but they are often most deeply 
 felt by great artists who cannot consciously express them. 
 
 As to special editions, we have those of Welcker (1812) ; 
 Pernice, with notes and version (1856), and Fritzsche (1863); 
 also Th. Kock's (in Haupt and Sauppe's series), a good school 
 book, and Blaydes'. 
 
 272. There is a great descent in literary merit to the 
 Eccleziazusa, or parliament of women, which came out about 
 393 B.C., when Athens was striving along with Thebes and 
 Argos to check the power and encroachments of Sparta. If 
 the success at Knidos and the recovery of the maritime supre- 
 macy had taken place, still more if the long walls were being 
 rebuilt, it is indeed strange that such a poet as Aristophanes 
 should have made no allusion to these great successes and the 
 hopes they inspired. But the political allusions of the play 
 contain no solemn warning, no hearty advice ; they are merely 
 a bitter satire on the faults and weaknesses of the revived 
 democracy, its unstableness and vacillation, the selfishness and 
 greed of both poor and rich, the postponing of all public interests 
 to private advantage. All the faults reproved by Demosthenes 
 and Phocion are already prominent; we have before us no 
 longer the Periclean, but the Demosthenic Athenian. The 
 poet of a greater and better time has no heart to advise, but 
 only to ridicule such people. 1 His main interest turns from 
 
 1 It is chiefly from this evidence that the Germans draw their pictures 
 of the debased ochlocracy, and no doubt they draw it according to the 
 notions of Aristophanes and his aristocratic friends. But whether Athens 
 was really thus debased is quite another question, and those who have 
 studied Grote's history, and the affairs of the restored democracy, will 
 come to a very different conclusion. There was no doubt a great 
 decadence in energy, but not in social and intellectual qualities.
 
 238 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xxi. 
 
 political to social questions, from practical to theoretical reforms, 
 and he occupies himself with the schemes of socialism and com- 
 munism which were floating in the air of the schools, and which 
 may even then have had some countenance in Plato's oral lec- 
 tures. These theories he satirises by making the women meet 
 in the assembly, dressed in their husbands' clothes, and decide 
 that they must in future assume the management of the state, 
 with full community of goods, of husbands in fact, of every- 
 thing. There is of course a great deal of humour in all the 
 discussions, especially in the home conversation between 
 Praxagora, the leading character (like the Lysistrata of a 
 former play), and her husband, in which he is fully persuaded 
 by gross material prospects to acquiesce in the scheme. The 
 dialogue between the honest citizen, who in obedience to the 
 decree brings out all his goods into the street for the common 
 fund, and the dishonest neighbour, who keeps back what he 
 has, and waits to see how things will turn out, is the best 
 in the play, and is an epitome of the conduct of Athens from 
 that day onward, when patriotism was required of her. The 
 scenes which follow are apparently written for obscenity's sake, 
 and are too absurd to be a genuine satire upon Athenian 
 women. These features, and the concluding appeal ot the 
 coryphaeus (w. 1155, sq.), to remember the jokes, and not to 
 deny the author his prize because his play came first in the com- 
 petition, indicate how much both poet and audience had fallen. 
 The chorus assumes a leading part in the play, but sings no para- 
 basis, unless indeed a choral ode which is lost may have replaced 
 it. But the whole complexion of the piece resembles what 
 is called the Middle Comedy, in which the chorus disappears. 
 
 The play is difficult, and has not been sufficiently com- 
 mented upon, doubtless on account of the features which 
 it has in common with the far superior and more earnest Ly- 
 sistrata. The commentators on Plato's Republic have much 
 occupied themselves with the question, what system or theory 
 of socialism the poet had before him, as Plato's immortal dia- 
 logue was not published till many years later. We can find no 
 more specific answer than to say that such a work had probably 
 many predecessors, and that such speculations must have been
 
 CH. xxi. THE PLUTUS. 239 
 
 long in the air before they assumed the definite form in which 
 Plato has transmitted them to us. For the history of Socialism 
 and of the theory of woman's rights the play is an early and 
 valuable document. 
 
 273. Last in our list comes the Ptiitus, which, as we have 
 it, was produced OL 97, 4 or 388 B.C., in the poet's old age. 
 But we are informed that this was the second edition, and 
 that it was first played in 408 B.C., before the frogs. To this 
 latter play it is remarkably inferior in every respect, but chiefly 
 perhaps because it is of the tamer type known as that of 
 the Middle Comedy. The characters are all general, and 
 there is no chorus beyond a collection of neighbours, who do 
 not interfere in the action, and sing no lyrical odes, or para- 
 basis. The prominence of the slave is another feature which 
 allies it to both Middle and New Comedy. Politics disappear 
 altogether, and the whole object of the work is a dramatic satire 
 upon the irregularities and injustices of society, and upon the 
 apparently false distribution of wealth by the gods. The worthy 
 Chremylus, having by the help of the oracle discovered Plutus, 
 whom as an old blind man he does not recognise, but who 
 at length reveals himself, undertakes to have the god's sight 
 restored, and so to enable him to choose his residence amongst 
 honest men. Poverty, a gaunt female figure, protests against this 
 proceeding, and explains the advantages which she bestows on 
 men. There are several indications of a chorus at the conclu- 
 sion of each act, or pause in the plot, but these were either 
 never written, or omitted in the revised edition. The farcical 
 dialogue between the slave and the Chorus, vv. 291, sq., is 
 lyrical, and clearly meant to replace a proper chorus, as in 
 the Lysistrata. The slave in a long messenger's speech, only 
 interrupted by exclamations from Chremylus' wife, recounts 
 the cure of Plutus in the temple of ysculapius a very in- 
 teresting comic picture of the religious quackery of the age. 
 The rest of the play is occupied with the appearance of a syco- 
 phant priest and other characters who come to visit Chremylus 
 on hearing of his good fortune. The general structure of the 
 play seems imitated from the earlier Peace. The god of riches 
 corresponds to the goddess of peace. The opposing figures of
 
 240 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xxi. 
 
 War and Poverty are closely analogous. The good Hermes in 
 both plays acts the mean part of a sort of understrapper, and 
 not a faithful one, among the gods. Both plays end their plot 
 early, and fill up the remainder with dialogues arising out of the 
 successful conclusion of the enterprise. But the Peace is far 
 livelier and more spirited than the Plutus. The tame and 
 sober character, and the absence of special political allusions 
 in this work, have made it an easy and suitable play for younger 
 students, and there have accordingly been a good many scholia 
 upon it, and a good many editions in Byzantine days. The 
 best editions are Velsen's (critical, 1881), and since then 
 Blaydes (Halle, 1885). 
 
 274. The Fragments of Aristophanes (about 750) are 
 neither long nor interesting. Were our knowledge of the poet 
 confined to them, we should be perfectly incapable of forming 
 any notion of his true character and transcendent merits, and 
 this fact should make critics more cautious than they have been 
 in estimating other comic poets, only known by the light of 
 this delusive evidence and thus compared with the extant 
 master. The Amphiaraus seems to have ridiculed superstitious 
 treatment of diseases, like the scene of the Plutus just men- 
 tioned, and may therefore have been of that type. So was the 
 sEolosikon, a parody on Euripides' ^Eolus, a play which was 
 written without chorus, later than the Plutus, and committed to 
 the care of the poet's son Araros. The Kokalos, also committed 
 to Araros, was even considered a forerunner, in its love intrigue 
 and recognition, of the New Comedy of Menander ; so that 
 this type too was probably inherent in Greek comedy, and only 
 rose to greater prominence owing to social causes. All that 
 can be known about the plots of the lost plays, and many con- 
 jectures besides, maybe found in the collection of the fragments 
 at the end of Meineke's second volume. There is an equally 
 good collection in Dindorfs Poetcz Scenici, and many mono- 
 graphs about them are cited by Nicolai. 1 
 
 275. If we take a general view of the dramatic resources 
 
 shown by this great poet, we shall be somewhat surprised at 
 
 the poorness of his plots and the fixed lines of his invention. 
 
 As is well known, old Attic comedy cared little about plots ; 
 
 1 LG. i. p. 231.
 
 CH. xxi. UNIFORM FEATURES IN THE COMEDIES. 241 
 
 any extravagant adventure was sufficient to give it scope for 
 the development of character, and for comic dialogue which 
 sparkled by means of witty repartee and satirical allusion. Like 
 the plays of Euripides, which pause in the middle, and then 
 start with a new interest, it is common for the Aristopha- 
 nic plays to work out at once the project of the principal 
 actor, and then occupy the rest of the play in comic situations 
 produced by the introduction of any stray visitor. Examples 
 of this design will be found in the Acharnians, Peace, Plutus, 
 Wasps, and girds. The Frogs is a more artistic instance, as 
 ihe poetical conflict which ensues upon Dionysus' visit to 
 Hades is strictly to the point. But here too the adventures of 
 Dionysus in search of a tragic poet are a separate play (so to 
 speak) from the scenes in Hades after his reception by Pluto- 
 The Knights and Clouds have more plot than the rest, though 
 the action in the Knigfits is too much delayed by the coarse 
 Billingsgate of the rival demagogues. 
 
 A good deal of sameness may further be observed in this, 
 that the economy of the opening scenes preserves a certain 
 uniformity. Either the principal character begins with a 
 soliloquy, which explains the whole plot, as in the Acharnians 
 and Clouds, or the first scene is a dialogue, in which one of the 
 speakers presently turns to the audience, and explains the 
 situation by what may be called a delayed prologue. These 
 speakers are either two slaves under orders ( Wasps, Knights, 
 Peace}, or the leading character with his slave or confidant 
 (Frogs, Plutus, Birds, Thesmophoriazusce). The Lysistrata 
 and Ecclesiazuscz open with a combination of both devices. 
 The leading character comes on, but in expectation of others, 
 as in the Acharnians, and the plot is presently expounded in a 
 conversation with the new characters. These considerations 
 show that, with all the wildness and license of the poet's ima- 
 gination, he kept not only his diction, which was a model of 
 the strictest Attic, but even his plots, under close regulations. 1 
 
 Turning to his characters, we find the same regularity in 
 their conception. They are almost all elderly, both men and 
 
 1 Westphal (Proleg. zu sEschyl. pp. 30, sq,) has shown that Aris- 
 tophanes' form of play resembled ^schylus, and not later tragedy. 
 VOL. I. 2 R
 
 242 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XXI. 
 
 women, and even when father and son are brought on the 
 stage together, as in the Wasps, the son impresses us as already 
 mature in age and good sense. This arises from the aristo- 
 cratic temper of the poet, who only satirised and ridiculed the 
 middle and lower classes, among whom the young are seldom 
 prominent, especially in war times, when they were employed 
 in field and garrison duty. The Athenian democracy is always 
 imaged by the poet under the guise of an elderly man, and all 
 the leading characters which are intended to be representative 
 are very uniform in type shrewd, somewhat coarse, and not 
 very educated. This is likely to have been specially true of 
 the Attic countryman, whom he contrasts sharply with the city 
 folk. Pheidippides in the Clouds is the only portrait he ven- 
 tures to draw of a young aristocrat, and he is very slightly 
 sketched, until he appears transformed into a Socratic sophist. 
 The chorus of Knights is purely political and impersonal, and 
 reveals to us no social or individual features. Were we there- 
 fore reduced for our knowledge of the Athenian aristocracy to 
 the comedies of Aristophanes, we must be content with a single 
 passage in the opening of the Clouds, and we should be com- 
 pletely ignorant of any of their failings but that of an over- 
 fondness for horses. Yet surely the young aristocrats were 
 fully as open to satire and comic travesty on the stage as the 
 old dicasts. 
 
 These remarks show the error of the assertion usual in 
 Aristophanes' German critics, that he lashed all the vices and 
 defects of Athenian society in his day. They ignore that the 
 poet was an aristocrat, who ridiculed radicalism and the ad- 
 vanced democracy, but spared the vices of his associates and 
 his party. What a subject Alcibiades would have afforded ! 
 Yet in spite of his democratic leanings, his high birth and con- 
 nections saved him from any but stray shafts on the stage. 1 
 It is in the orators that we find him painted in his dark 
 
 1 According to various late authorities, of whom a scholiast on Juvenal 
 is the best, the Edirrat of Eupolis were expressly directed against Alcibiades. 
 But it must have been indirectly, and without naming him personally, 
 for the twenty-two extant fragments do not contain a single mention or 
 even allusion to Alcibiades.
 
 CH. xxi. ARISTOPHANES AND EURIPIDES. 243 
 
 colours. I have already noticed the constant retrospects, and 
 longing for the good old times, which characterised all the comic 
 poets of this period. I will only add that in his late plays 
 Aristophanes seems to have laid aside these aspirations as 
 hopeless, and applied himself to the practical teaching of 
 union and forgiveness among the rival parties in the agony of 
 the last years of the war. 
 
 As to his position in matters of religion, he is a great defender 
 of orthodoxy against the new physical school, and is never 
 weary of attacking Socrates and Euripides for their breaking 
 up of the old faith. But all this seems rather from policy than 
 from real devoutness, for he does not hesitate to travesty the 
 gods after the manner of Epicharmus, and to present the reli- 
 gion of the people under a ridiculous form. Though he per- 
 mits himself to indulge in orthodox profanity and ridicule 
 about the gods, he feels a profound difference in the serious 
 attacks of the sceptical school upon the received faith. In 
 this he was doubtless quite correct, but it throws a doubtful 
 light upon his seriousness as a religious thinker. 
 
 276. His parody of the tragedies is to us more interest- 
 ing. Though commonly aimed at Euripides, there is frequent 
 parodying of both Sophocles and ^Eschylus, and of the less 
 known tragic poets, probably much oftener than even the scholi- 
 asts detected. Of course his ridicule of Euripides was most un- 
 sparing, and most unjust, but the latter was no mere innovator 
 in tragedy, he was also an opponent on social and political ques- 
 tions. There is no greater proof of the real greatness of Euripi- 
 des, than that his popularity combated and overcame the most 
 splendid comic genius set in array against it during the period 
 of its development The loose and irrelevant choral odes of his 
 later plays are doubtless open to the parody of the Frogs, but the 
 very same change of taste as to the importance of the choral 
 interludes made Aristophanes himself diminish and abandon 
 his choruses, and even replace them with a musical or orches- 
 tic performance. For this seems the meaning of the word 
 Xopov inserted in the pauses of the later plays, especially the 
 Plutits. Hence in this, as in most other points, the same ten- 
 dencies which modified Euripides' tragedies had their effect
 
 244 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, en. XXI. 
 
 upon the plays of his censor. Among the features of detail, 
 nothing is more cleverly ridiculed than those repetitions of the 
 same word which occur in the pathetic lyrical passages of 
 Euripides. Yet this has been felt by great hearts of various 
 ages, and by the still greater heart of popular song, to be a 
 natural and poetical enhancement to the expression of deep 
 feeling. The modern poet who best understands Euripides 
 has followed his example in this point. 1 The German lyrist 
 von Platen, in his beautiful and artistic imitations of folk-song, 
 has reproduced the same effect an effect still more clearly and 
 universally exemplified in music, where the repetition of even a 
 single note often conveys intense feeling. 
 
 277. Turning from points of detail to the general scope of 
 Aristophanes' plays, we come upon a controversy as to the 
 true aim of comedy, and as to the conception which the poet 
 formed of his art. The passage on the nature of comedy in 
 the Poetic of Aristotle is unfortunately lost, but if we can trust 
 stray hints on the subject, his definition of comedy (which 
 applied mainly to Menander) ran parallel to that of tragedy, 
 and described the art as a purification of certain affections of 
 our nature, not by terror and pity, but by laughter and ridicule. 
 This deep moral object has been strongly advocated by Klein, 
 who exalts Aristophanes to a pinnacle attained by no other 
 Greek poet. On the other hand, Hegel, who without any 
 special knowledge has theorised on the matter in his ^Zsthettc, 
 speaks of comedy as the outlet of a great uncontrolled sub- 
 jectivity, whic'h feels that it is so superior to all ordinary human 
 affairs, that it can afford to laugh them down and treat them 
 
 Dances, dances, and banqueting 
 
 To Thebes, the sacred city through, 
 
 Are a care ! for, change and change 
 
 Of tears and laughter, old to new, 
 
 Our lays, glad birth, they bring, they bring ! 
 
 Arisfoph. Apol., p. 266. There are many more instances in this version 
 of the Hercules Furens. This allusion to Mr. Browning suggests the remark 
 that he has treated the controversy between Euripides and Aristophanes 
 with more learning and ability than all other critics, in his Aristophanes' 
 Apology, which is, by the way, an EuripuUf Apology also, if such be 
 required in the present day.
 
 CH. XXI. THE LYRICS OF ARISTOPHANES. 245 
 
 with ridicule. Probably both theories have their truth as regards 
 Aristophanes. His early plays seem written with high political 
 aspirations, and with a strong conviction that he was the 
 adviser of the people for good, and could lead them from 
 sophistry and chicanery to a sounder and nobler condition. 
 This feeling transpires in his personal addresses to the audience, 
 in his professed contempt for obscenity and buffoonery, and in 
 the serious tone of his political advices. As the war went on, 
 and the people became gradually impoverished and degraded, 
 when the oligarchs broke down in their attempt to abolish the 
 democracy, and the power of Athens was ruined by Lysander, 
 we see the poet, not without stray touches of sadness, adopt a 
 lower tone, abandon serious subjects, and turn almost wholly 
 to obscenity, buffoonery, and mere literary and social satire. 
 At this stage he may have been indulging his ' infinite subjec- 
 tivity,' as Hegel chooses to call it, and may have felt that serious 
 advice, and efforts at political and social reform, were mere 
 idle dreams, and not worth treating except as stuff for travesty. 
 This is indeed a melancholy contrast to the life of the extant 
 tragic poets, all of whom seem to have risen and ripened with 
 age, and to have left us in their latest pieces the noblest and 
 most perfect monuments of their genius. 
 
 278. A word in conclusion should be said concerning the 
 lyric side of Aristophanes, which the old scholiasts so neglected, 
 that they note his graceful ode to the nightingale (in the Birds] 
 as a parody on Euripides. Modern writers, on the contrary, 
 have advanced to the absurd statement, that his real greatness 
 was not dramatic, but lyric. There can, indeed, be no doubt 
 that the lyrical pieces in the comedies are of the highest merit ; 
 nevertheless, it would be as absurd to say that the real genius 
 of Sophocles was lyric because he wrote beautiful lyric odes. 
 Lyric poetry and the drama were so combined in Periclean 
 days, that although a lyric poet might be no dramatist, every 
 dramatist must be a lyric poet. And we have reason to think 
 that the occasional lyric pieces of the great dramatists in that 
 day were far finer than the works of professed lyric poets after 
 the age of Simonides. Nevertheless, the true greatness of 
 Aristophanes ever has been, and will be, dramatic greatness.
 
 246 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xxi. 
 
 But it is rather in extraordinary fertility and brilliancy of dia- 
 logue, than in ingenuity of plot, that he excels. 
 
 We cannot tell whether the statement of Plato at the end 
 of the Symposium was seriously meant, that the composer of 
 comedy must have the same sort of genius as the composer of 
 tragedy, and that the same poet should compose both. If it 
 was, we can hardly avoid the inference that it was meant to 
 apply to Aristophanes, who plays a leading part in the dialogue, 
 and whom Plato evidently esteemed at his real worth. The 
 combination of which he speaks was not attempted in classical 
 days, though there are not wanting signs that Aristophanes could 
 have composed with pathos and seriousness, and might perhaps 
 have been more dangerous to Euripides as a rival than as a 
 professed opponent. 
 
 279. The later Greeks, who became accustomed to the 
 strict form and the social polish of the New Comedy, could not 
 bear the wildness and license of the great political comedian. 
 Aristotle completely ignores him, and the Old Comedy gene- 
 rally, in his dramatic theories, and evidently regards him as 
 nothing compared with his successors in later days and in the 
 tamer style. Plutarch, in a special comparison of Old and New 
 Comedy, is both severe and depreciating in his remarks upon 
 him. 1 These tamer and more orderly people look upon the 
 wayward exuberance of the Old Comedy with much the same 
 temper as the French school of tragedy look upon the license 
 and irregularity of Shakspeare. Fortunately, the Alexandrian 
 critics did not share these prejudices, and seem to have 
 directed more attention to this poet than to any other except 
 Homer. 2 Callimachus collected the literary and chronological 
 notices ; Eratosthenes, Aristophanes, Aristarchus and Crates 
 
 1 His little tract on Aristophanes and Menander is still worth reading, 
 in order to show how completely formal excellence and polish of style out- 
 weighed the greater merits of old comic poetry in the opinion of his age. 
 Aristophanes is blamed for violations of the later rhetorical artifices, for 
 excessive assonances, and for such matters as he would have scorned to 
 observe, in his writing ; moreover, for allowing inconsistency in characters, 
 which were with him only a vehicle for political satire. 
 
 2 The following information on the Alexandrian studies is compressed 
 from the fuller account of Bernhardy, LG. ii. 670.
 
 CH. xxi. MSS. OF ARISTOPHANES. 247 
 
 followed (with others) in explaining and commenting upon 
 hard passages. There seem to have been collections of these 
 commentaries, first by Didymus, and finally by Symmachus, 
 who added Heliodorus' theatrical studies. These form the 
 older basis of the Scholia, enlarged and diluted by later Byzan- 
 tine work, but, on the whole, the best Greek commentary we 
 have on any Greek author, and of inestimable value in under- 
 standing the difficult allusions of the text. The text of these ' 
 scholia was first printed (with nine plays) by Aldus in 1498. 
 There are excellent monographs of J. Schneider, Ritschl and 
 Keil upon them, and they have been lately critically edited by 
 Dindorf. and by Diibner (Paris, 1868). 
 
 280. Bibliographical. Far the best MS. of both text and 
 scholia is the Ravennas of the eleventh century, a large vellum 
 quarto of 192 pages, of which the margin is here and there 
 badly stained with damp, so that the scholia are often almost 
 illegible. This is one of the best and most trustworthy of our 
 Greek MSS. It contains the extant plays, not in their chro- 
 nological order, but according to their popularity, the first 
 three being much more read and commented than the rest, 
 viz. Plutus, Clouds, frogs, Birds, Knights, Peace, Lysistrata, 
 Acharnians, Wasps, Thesmophoriazusce, Ecdesiazusiz. 
 
 Owing to the difficulty of reaching Ravenna formerly, few 
 scholars have seen or collated this MS., which is preserved in 
 the public library, and now readily shown to visitors. 1 There 
 is a later MS. at Milan in the Ambrosian Library which seems 
 to correspond with it very closely, but which is not mentioned 
 by the principal critics. 2 There is besides the Venetus 471, the 
 6 of the Laurentian at Florence, and a Parisinus A, which 
 are valued by the editors. Of the three popular plays there 
 are endless later copies. 
 
 As to editions there is the princeps of nine plays by Aldus 
 (1498), a handsome folio, followed by the Juntine in 1515, 
 which added the two missing plays ( Thesmophoriazusa and Lysis- 
 trata} as an appendix in 1516. Bentley, Dobree, Dawes, and 
 
 1 There is an interesting article on its history by W. G. Clark, in the 
 third volume of the Cambridge Journal of Philology. 
 
 2 This was shown to me by M. Ceriani, the learned librarian at Milan.
 
 248 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xxi. 
 
 Person, all worked at this poet, and wrote critical notes upon 
 the text, and in this direction Cobet (in the Leiden Mnemosyne] 
 has contributed more than anyone else to the purifying of this 
 purest of Attic writers. The best complete editions in modern 
 days are Bekker's, Diibner's (Didot), Bergk's (Teubner), 
 Dindorf s and Meineke's. The veteran Mr. Blaydes has now 
 completed his edition of the plays. Mr. Holden has also 
 published a critical text (Cambridge, 1868), with the fragments 
 and an index to them, but unfortunately expurgated and there- 
 fore not useful for scholars. In addition to the Greek scholia 
 (of which a critical edition is expected from Mr. G. Rutherford) 
 there is a general commentary of moderate merit by Bothe, an 
 index by Caravella, edited at Oxford (1822), and a poor Lexicon 
 by Sanxay (Oxford, 1811). We have now Dunbar's Concord- 
 ance (Oxon. 1883), a more complete work, but still wanting in 
 the enumeration of particles and pronouns, and in the use of 
 good MSS. A much better index is promised by O. Bachmann ; 
 cf. Phil. Wochenschr. No. 26 (1884). There is a charming 
 study on Aristophanes and his art by A. Couat (Paris, 1889). 
 The principal plays must be studied in the separate editions I 
 have noticed under each, and the complete editions are chiefly 
 valuable for embracing the pieces which have not tempted 
 special editors. There are German translations by Voss, 
 Droysen, Donner, and others ; French by Brumoy and by 
 Poinsinet de Sivry (Acharnians and Knights) ; and English, a 
 good modern prose version, by Mitchell, in addition to the 
 splendid version of five plays by J. H. Frere, 1 and the Wasps, 
 Peace, and Lysistrata of J. B. Rogers; the Acharnians, by 
 R. Y. Tyrrell. There are good school editions of some of the 
 plays in the Cambridge Catena Classicorum. Julius Richter 
 has even composed a Greek comedy in our own day on the 
 model of Aristophanes, in which he handles contemporary 
 questions. We may soon expect a critical edition of the scholia 
 from Mr. G. Rutherford. 
 
 1 Frere's version, like Mitchell's Sophocles, was at first privately pub- 
 lished and inaccessible ; it is now to be found in his collected works. The 
 proper preface to it is his critique of Mitchell (Works, ii. p. 178, sq.).
 
 CH. XXII. 249 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF COMEDY FROM ARISTOPHANES TO 
 MENANDER. 
 
 281. THERE is no branch of Greek literature which seems 
 to have been more prolific than comedy ; and yet, of the many 
 hundreds of pieces cited, there is not a single complete specimen 
 surviving. We saw above how Aristophanes, towards the close 
 of his life, produced works of a complexion approaching what 
 is called by the grammarians the Middle 1 and New Comedy 
 the former produced from about the period of the Restoration 
 to that of the battle of Chagronea (390-38 B.C). Then came 
 the New Comedy. 
 
 But, as I have already remarked (p. 211), critics have drawn 
 their lines of distinction too sharply. They assert that the 
 Middle Comedy was rather a character-comedy than a personal 
 and political critique ort passing events. Hence there appear 
 in the very titles the names of courtesans, of parasites, of 
 philosophers, and of literary men the latter generally of past 
 generations. We find that parody of old mythology was fre- 
 quent, and there are many plays devoted to the birth of gods, 
 
 1 It is argued by Frelitz (De Att. Com. bipart. Bonn, 1866) that there 
 should be only two divisions of Attic Comedy, Old and New, as Plutarch 
 assumes, and this view is adopted by Th. Kock in his great edition of the 
 Fragments. He shows that the term Middle is an invention of the age of 
 Hadrian, ignored by all previous writers. Thus he carries out my tentative 
 arguments to their legitimate consequence. In Hermes, xxiv. 57, Kaibel 
 argues against Kock's view. He thinks Plutarch was only comparing 
 styles, and hence chose the extremes. Here, then, the ntcrrj had no place, 
 and its omission proves nothing. Bergk also (LG. iv. 122) maintains the 
 distinction, and thinks that Plautus' Amphitruo and his Pseudolus were 
 derived from comedies of this epoch. His main distinction, however, 
 between Middle and New Comedy is that the former had no vitality and 
 was quickly forgotten !
 
 2So HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xxir. 
 
 such as Aios yorat, which ridiculed mimetic dithyrambs, and 
 other scenic representations of these events. In this parody of 
 mythology, and this ridicule of general types of character, we 
 know that Epicharmus in Sicily, and Crates, Hermippus, and 
 Cratinus in the Old Comedy, had shown the way ; and we have 
 from Hermippus the title of a play ('A^vas yovat ), which, from 
 his known antagonism to Pericles and his friends, I take 
 to have been somehow connected with Pheidias' famous pedi- 
 ment on the Parthenon, representing the birth of the goddess. 
 So also in the constant ridicule of Plato and his school we 
 find Alexis and his fellows only following in the track of Ari- 
 stophanes' attack upon Socrates. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is their general tendency to draw general 
 pictures of life, and to abstain from the subjects of the moment, 
 which makes Aristotle include. them under comedy, which is 
 general ; while he appears to have classed the more violent and 
 personal Old Comedy under the head of personal satire (iapfio- 
 Troita). The days for political satire had indeed passed 
 away. We hear of no' attempts after the Restoration to bridle 
 the license of personal libels on the stage, until the days when 
 adulation of great men replaced nobler feelings. But the 
 desire of economy made both the state and individuals unwil- 
 ling to submit to the expense of a chorus, and the poets in- 
 dicated the close of their acts by the mere word Chorus and 
 a gap, which was afterwards filled up by a musical intermezzo. 
 
 Another leading feature in Middle Comedy was said to 
 be the fancy for discussing riddles (yp7<^o<) on the stage, and 
 many such appear in the fragments. But, as Meineke notes, 
 here too Cratinus had showed the way in his Cleobulince. I do 
 not suppose that any of their frequent literary criticisms on 
 poets Athenaeus quotes a special work on the subject 
 equalled in force and pungency Aristophanes' Frogs. But in- 
 stead of ridiculing sophists and rhetoricians, we find that Pla- 
 tonists and Pythagoreans, the luxurious and the mendicant 
 philosophies, were their constant topics. There is, however, clear 
 evidence in the fragments that only the outside of these philo- 
 sophies, the dress and manners of the school, were criticised. 
 There was no attempt at any metaphysical argument, or any 
 serious discussion of moral tendencies. The same shallow
 
 CH. xxii. THE MIDDLE COMEDY. 251 
 
 ethics, or want of ethics, is shown in their far severer and more 
 earnest satirising of courtesans. They never attack the real 
 vices of society, but warn against the folly of carrying them on 
 imprudently. 
 
 282. Thus I have shown that in every leading feature 
 ascribed to the Middle Comedy, we have parallels in the older 
 masters. What had they then peculiar to themselves ? Nothing 
 I fancy in subjects except the neglect of present politics, the 
 decay of moral earnestness, and the increased prominence of a 
 particular kind of street and market scenes I mean those re- 
 lating to feasts and good cheer. There was also an increased 
 prominence of courtesan life. In fact, Antiphanes, the greatest 
 master of this comedy, is said to have told Alexander the Great, 
 who took no interest in such things, that he must have been 
 used to drinking with these people, and brawling about them, 
 to appreciate comedy. Verily a noble education ! 
 
 If in subject there were only these negative or ignoble 
 peculiarities, there was an equal decay both in the power of 
 their diction, and the variety and richness of their metres.' Of 
 course this decay was gradual. The chorus with its expensive 
 training went out of fashion, and was gradually disused. The 
 aspiration of the poets was not to guide and ennoble their 
 public. Hence they studied clearness and simplicity without 
 any rigid adherence to purity of dialect or poetic choice of 
 words. Moreover, the enormous number of dramas they pro- 
 duced must have made careful composition impossible. Athe- 
 nseus asserts that he had read and copied from more than eight 
 hundred plays of the Middle Comedy, but though we hear of 
 fifty-seven poets, many of them only left a couple of plays. On 
 the contrary, the pieces of the acknowledged masters, Anti- 
 phanes and Alexis, were counted by hundreds. No doubt they 
 were not all intended for stage representation, but were a sort of 
 substitute for our modern novels and magazine articles, circu- 
 
 1 It is observed that the shortening of vowels before #A and >X, which is 
 never allowed in Aristophanes, occurs in the Middle Comedy ; so also the 
 shortening of the accusative of nouns in eus. As to metres, they often 
 used dactylic hexameters ; once in Antiphanes an elegiac distich occurs 
 (Meineke, iii. 82, frag, of the Milanion). Glyconics were rare, but we often 
 find combinations of dactyls and trochees, at least one specimen of Eupo- 
 lidean verse, and one lyric system (cf. Meineke, i. 300-2).
 
 252 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xxn. 
 
 lated among the reading public of Athens. It is, however, 
 possible that the great increase of theatres throughout Greece 
 may have created a large demand for new pieces. 
 
 283. It would lead us far beyond our limits to attempt 
 any enumeration of these poets (thirty-nine of whom are still 
 known by name), nor have their remains much literary interest. 
 In no case are the fragments sufficient to reconstruct the plots 
 of their plays ; and, most unfortunately, the great majority of 
 the extant quotations are those made by Athenseus, with special 
 reference to marketing, cooking, and the pleasures of the table. 
 This gives a tedious uniformity to the laborious volume in 
 which Meineke has collected their remains, 1 an uniformity not 
 agreeably relieved by notes of impure diction from the Anti- 
 atticista. Here and there comes a moral reflection from the 
 collection of Stobaeus, and it is only such passages which show 
 us the neatness of point and smartness of expression which 
 made them so popular in their day. In this respect they re- 
 garded Euripides as their great model. His secret, which 
 Aristotle notices, of saying things elegantly in common words, 
 was the perpetual riddle which all the comic poets, down to 
 Menander, tried to solve. But this last and greatest of the 
 Epigoni in Comedy was the only successful stylist. 
 
 A few words on some of the most celebrated of these poets 
 will suffice for such readers as do not wish to make their frag- 
 ments a special study. 2 
 
 284. First and probably greatest among them was Anti- 
 phanes, who is commonly regarded as the head of the Middle 
 Comedy. Of course the boundary line, as I have already 
 explained, is very vague, and a glance into Meineke's account 
 of the later poets of the Old Comedy, such as Plato, will show 
 how difficult it is to sever the Middle from the Old. In fact, 
 we are obliged generally to acquiesce in the decision of Suidas 
 on the subject. Antiphanes was probably the son of Stephanus, 
 
 1 FCG. vol. iii. ; the general history in vol. i. pp. 271-435. 
 
 z To specialists Meineke's and Kock's works afford all the materials ; 
 the social side of their plays has been illustrated in my Social Greece, in G. 
 Guizot's Menandre et la Comtdie grecque, and In Klein's History of the 
 Drama,\o\. ii. There is a good chapter also in Bergk'sZC". iv. pp. 121-70.
 
 CH. xxn. ANTIPHANES. 
 
 253 
 
 and, according to the sensible Anon, scholiast on Comedy, born 
 at Athens, though Suidas records various other opinions. He 
 lived from Ol. 93 to Ol. 112, and died at the age of seventy- four 
 in Chios. His son Stephanus brought out some of his plays. 
 He began to write at the age of twenty, and is credited with the 
 enormous number of 260 comedies, of which about 230 titles 
 are still known. Though Meineke l has collected a good many 
 examples of debased diction in his fragments, he was celebrated 
 as a clear and elegant writer. Among various criticisms on 
 tragic language, we have a good fragment from his Poetry on 
 the contrasts of tragedy and comedy, which I quote below. 2 
 The Proverbs (riapoipai) were cited by the Tsocratic opponents 
 of Aristotle as the comic counterpart of his collection of pro- 
 verbs. It may even have been a satire on the philosopher. 
 The titles of Antiphanes' plays are very various, including 
 many mythological names, many historical personages and 
 courtesans, as well as names of trades or professions, and of 
 provinces and cities. But probably owing to the ostentation 
 
 1 iii. 309. 
 
 2 Meineke, iii. 105 : 
 
 . . . tn.aKA.piov fffTiv ^ rpaytfitila 
 jroir]fj.a Kara irdvT\ el -ye irptartiv ol \6yoi 
 inrb T(ov OfaTWV flfftv fyvcapur/J.ft'oi, 
 irplv Kai TIV'' flitfiv, 8xr9' inrofivTJffai fi.6vov 
 5e? rbv ironjT^i/. OlSiirovir yap av ye <pSi, 
 Kai T&AAa irdvr' laaaiv ' It irarr/p Aai'os, 
 M^TTJ/J 'Io/co<rT7), 6vyaTfpts, iroiSej riffs, 
 ri ireifffO' ovros, ri ireiroi.T]Kev ; &v ira\iv 
 flirt) TIS 'AA/tyiaicoya, xal ra iraiSia 
 iravr' fvdvs f1ptjx\ ' rt f-avfls aireKTOVfv 
 TTJI/ firirtp', ayavaKTcav 3' "ASpaff-ros evOecat 
 ij|i, ira\iv T' atrfiai .... 
 tirfi6\ '6-rav ^iTjSeV (75) Svvcavr' elirttv fTi, 
 K0/j.i5ri 5' airfipr)Kcaffiv tv rots $pa/j.affiv, 
 atpovffiv, Sxrirfp SO.KTV\OV, TTJV /UTj^o'^J', 
 KO! ro7s Oecef^efOifftv o.Tro")^ptavT<es X I - 
 'Hfuv Sf ravr' OVK effriv, oAA' airavra 6I 
 fvpftv, 6v6fJ.ara Kawd, ra SiCjiKrjf^fva 
 wp6rfpoi>, TO, vvv irapovra, r^v KaraffTpd^r/y, 
 T^V tla&o\T]V kv 4V ri rovrcav irapa\'nrp, 
 
 \pffJ.T)S TIS, ^ QfiStoV TIS, SKffVpiTTfTal 
 
 UijAei 54 raDr' ffffTt Kal Tfvxpcf -roiflv
 
 254 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xxn 
 
 of Athenaeus, who desired to quote as many various plays as 
 possible, we seldom have more than one fragment, and never 
 more than three, from any single piece, among the 900 lines 
 which remain. Thus all possibility of judging his dramatic 
 power is precluded. 
 
 285. Three sons of Aristophanes are mentioned, Araros, 
 Philippus, and JVicostratos, the first of whom contended in 
 Ol. 101 with a play of his own, having already brought out his 
 father's Kokalos and jEolosikon in earlier years (circ. Ol. 98). 
 About the parentage of the others, scholars seem doubtful ; the 
 fragments of Nicostratos, which are confused strangely with those 
 attributed to Philetserus, are the best. Passing by Ephippus and 
 Epigenes, we come to Eubulos, the author of 104 pieces, and 
 regarded as occupying a transition place between the Old and 
 Middle Comedy, about the earlier half of the fourth century 
 B.C. His subjects were chiefly satires of mythic fables and of 
 tragic poets. His diction is very pure, and his verses seem to 
 have been often plagiarised by other comic poets. 
 
 Anaxandrides of Camirus produced plays from Ol. 101, 
 onward (Suidas' favourite epoch for these poets). He was re- 
 puted a man of rich and splendid life, as well as of a con- 
 temptuous and haughty temper, who destroyed his works when 
 they were not successful. He was the author of sixty-five 
 pieces. Aristotle frequently quotes him, and he is said to have 
 first introduced the -n-apOevuv <f>0opai, so common in New 
 Comedy. This invention is, however, also ascribed to Aristo- 
 phanes. Anaxandrides is also said to have composed dithy- 
 rambs. 
 
 286. Alexis was born at Thurii just before its destruction 
 by the Lucanians, circ. B.C. 390, and came probably witn his 
 parents to Athens, where he was made a citizen. He was said 
 to have lived 106 years, and to have been productive up to his 
 death. In a fragment he mentions the marriage of Ptolemy Phi- 
 ladelphus (288 B.C.), and thus confirms this tradition. Though 
 writing in the style of the Middle Comedy, he lived far into 
 the period of the new, and is said to have been the uncle and 
 master of Menander. We have no clearer picture of his mind 
 and work than we have of Antiphanes, though fragments 
 amounting to 1,000 lines of his 245 plays remain. He is
 
 CH. xxn. EPICRATES. 255 
 
 called by some the inventor of the stage parasite, owing to the 
 importance of this character in his plays; but the picture of one 
 has been above quoted from a fragment of Epicharmus, and 
 seems to have been again drawn in the Old Comedy of Eupolis. 
 The name may be due to Alexis, for Araros' play, in which it 
 occurred, may be posterior to Alexis' early works. Attacks on 
 the school of Plato are frequent in his fragments, 1 but we have 
 more remarkable passages on the hetaerse.' 8 
 
 None of them are so clever as the fragments of Epi- 
 , rates on Plato's school, and his picture of Lais in advanc- 
 ing years. 3 This poet was an Ambrakiot, and lived early in 
 
 1 Meineke, iii. 421. 
 
 2 Cf. frag, of the Isostasion, Meineke, iii. 422; also pp. 382, 45i,455 ( 
 468. 
 
 * Ibid, p. 365 : 
 
 Tas p.\v &\\as ea-nv av\o6ffas ISf'tv 
 aii^TpiSas irdcras 'A.ir6\\iavos v6ft.ov, 
 
 Aibs v6/j.ov ' 
 aurai Se /j.6vov av\ov<nv 'lepaKos vdyuov. 
 
 AUTTJ Se Aofs apyJs fff-ri Kal ir6rtt, 
 rb Kad' fifiepav bpwffa iriveiv naffOieur 
 l&Avov ' ireirovOfvai Se ravrd fioi SuKet 
 rots ae-ro'ts ' OVTOI y&p OTO.V Siaiv veoi, 
 fK rG>v opuv irprfySar' fffdtovffi Kal \a'yi's j 
 fjifTfap' avapird^ovrfs uirj> TT)J Iff^os ' 
 'Artiv 8e yripda-Kaxriv tfSr] TOTS . . . 
 ffl TOVS vfias 'i^ovffi irfivwvres KaKcas' 
 K&TTfira TOVT' elyai vofii^frai Tfpas. 
 Kal Aai's 6pds yovv j/o/xf^bir' Uv repas ' 
 OUTT; yap dirSr' ^v p.ev ifeorrbs Kal vta, 
 inrb TUP ffrar'rtpcav ?iv a.irriypicafifv'r), 
 tiSes S' &j/ avrr/s $apvd/3aor OO.TTOV &t>. 
 firfl Se S6\ixov rots ereffiv $Si) Tpe'x, 
 raj apfiovlas rf 5ta\a\a TOV ffcafiaros, 
 iSew ft.\v aiir^v p<i6v e<m Kal irrvaai ' 
 f^fpXerai re irai/raxJir' ^877 vioft.evi\, 
 Sex eral 8 Kal trraTTJpa Kal Tptia/3o\oi>, 
 trpoffit rat Se Kal yepovra Kal Vfov ' 
 ovrw $ ridaffbs yeyovev, SHTT\ S> (pi\Tarai 
 rapyvptov fK rys x fl P^ s 
 
 p. 370 : A. Ti n\drtav 
 
 Kal Su'eufftjriroj iccl MfveSt/^i 
 wpbs rifft vvvl SiarpifiovffU' ;
 
 256 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CK. XXH. 
 
 the period before us. It were tedious to repeat the same 
 remarks on Anaxilas, and Aristophon, and Cratinus junior, and 
 Amphis : all these are but names. Perhaps Timodes, the 
 satirist of Demosthenes, deserves mention, as apparently the 
 purest Attic writer, and the most pungent in style, of all the list. 
 He is the only one of them whose scanty remains excite a 
 strong regret that time has not spared us more of his poetry. 
 
 iroia. Qpovris, iroibs Se \6yos 
 
 Sifptwarai irapa. -rolffiv ; 
 
 TdSf fj.01 irivvTcas, ft TJ KaretSias 
 
 TJKCJS, Aefor, vpbs yas ' ' ' 
 
 B. oAA' oT5a \f-yiv irepl TtavSe ffatpws 
 
 Tlavadrivalois ykp ISi/w o.y4\i]v 
 
 (v yvp.va.ffloi.s 'AKaftritilas 
 fjtcovffa \6ya>v a<pdr(av farinctav ' 
 wfpl ycip tyvffttas cuf>opt6/j.evoi 
 Sifxcbpi^ov fyftav T fiioi/ 
 SffSpcav re <pvffiv Xa'x&vuv re yevi). 
 K^T' (V TO&TOIS T^]V KO\OK\IVTI\V 
 f^Ta^ov rives tcrrl ytvovs. 
 
 A. Ko.1 rl TOT' Up' a>pt<rctVTO Kal -rivos ytvovt 
 flvai TO <f>vrAv ; f>i\\<i)ffov* el Karoiffdd rt. 
 
 B. irptariffTa, fifi> ovv iravTey avavSt'is 
 TdV' ^irtirrriffav, KO! Kii^/avres 
 Xp6vov oiiK o\iyov 5ietf>p6vTtov. 
 K^T' tat<pvris trt Kvirr&vT<av 
 
 Kal TTITOUI>T(I>V TUV fitipaKieav 
 \dxav6v TIS (f)7j ffrpoyyvKov elccti, 
 irolav 8' &\\os, StvSpov 5' ertpos. 
 TO.VTO. 8' aKOvtov iarpSs TIS 
 2iKeA.o5 dirb yas KaireirapS' avruf 
 
 A. 
 
 TO ykp tv AeVx<s Tor<r8e TotouTf 
 iroifiv airpeires. 
 
 B. ou8' l/jit\rjffev rots /j.eipaxiois ' 
 6 Tl\drtav 5e Trapwv Kal /.id\a Tpd 
 ovSfv opivOeis, fTrera^' auTO?j 
 
 rlvos iffrl yivovs ' 
 
 oi Of Siypovv.
 
 CH. xxn. THE NEW COMEDY. 
 
 257 
 
 His picture of Autocleides sitting like Orestes at the altar, sur- 
 rounded by notorious courtesans, because he had despised 
 their charms, suggests a brilliant and effective parody. 1 
 
 As I said before, the enormous fertility of these poets 
 compared with the small number of their victories even Anti- 
 phanes and Alexis each won only about fifteen times makes 
 it probable that they intended their plays to be read, and ful- 
 filled the office of the critical press in our days. This very 
 condition would explain the slight permanent effect they pro- 
 duced in Greek literature. Like our newspapers, these playc 
 were only intended for momentary purposes, and in the next 
 generation their importance had passed away for all except 
 historians and antiquaries. This, too, would account for their 
 want of seriousness. They had retired from the agora of 
 politics : they had not yet unclosed the secrets of domestic life, 
 with which their successors charmed and impressed society. 
 So they wandered in the streets and markets without certain 
 aim, and drew from the outside mean and trivial phases of 
 human character. 
 
 287. We pass to the New Comedy, to which the gramma 
 rians assign the period from the extinction of Greek liberty by 
 Philip to the rise of the Alexandrian school. 2 Indeed, the 
 latest poets of this epoch composed their plays at Alexandria, 
 as, for example, Machon, who is said to have instructed the 
 grammarian Aristophanes in the history and nature of comedy. 3 
 Sixty-four of these writers were known, and many hundred 
 plays, but we now possess only a volume of fragments, 4 which 
 give us no better information than that afforded concerning the 
 Middle Comedy. From the considerable body of Menander's 
 fragments no vestige of a plot could be recovered, had not 
 later critics given us some slight sketches, and had not the 
 Roman comedians honestly told us how they had borrowed 
 from him both plot and language. But even here the unfortu- 
 
 1 Meineke, i. 432. * Circ. 340-270 B.C. 
 
 3 This Machon was also the author of a collection of anecdotes in ele- 
 gant trimeter iambics, called xP e "*< an d often cited by Athenceus. 
 
 4 Meineke, vol. iv. 
 
 VOL. I. 2 S
 
 258 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xxn. 
 
 nate habit of filling up the incidents of the plot with scenes 
 from a second Greek original has obscured our best source. 
 
 As in the case of the Middle Comedy, I shall not attempt 
 an enumeration of the extant titles and fragments a dry and 
 fruitless task, and one in which the dull uniformity of moral 
 platitudes, commonplace complaints of human troubles, and 
 details of cookery, weary the modern student. But this uni- 
 formity is not altogether to be regarded as the vice of the 
 New Comedy, but rather as the consequence of our fragments 
 being either derived from Athenaeus, who searched all this 
 literature for the archaeology of cooks and cookery, or from 
 Stobseus', and other collections of moral .sayings a most un- 
 fortunate and worthless kind of citation, which never repro- 
 duced the dramatic or really characteristic points of a play, but 
 selected those generalities which were suitable for random 
 quotation. 
 
 288. The general features of the New Comedy as compared 
 with its forerunners, have been carefully described by many 
 critics. The collection of facts will be found in Meineke, who is 
 always instructive, even when his inferences are wrong. He 
 rightly, however, points out the mistake of believing that these 
 poets confined themselves to domestic life in their plots. 
 Athenaeus' quotations show that in Diphilus, for example, the 
 cook and parasite leading features in the Middle Comedy 
 were still prominent figures. The philosophers of the day, 
 Epicurus, Zeno, and the rest, were still the constant butt of the 
 dramatists. Mythological parody, and ridicule of the tragic 
 poets, were not extinct ; and, what is still stranger and very much 
 overlooked, political attacks on living personages, not excepting 
 Alexander the Great, were freely and boldly made, as can be 
 shown from the extant fragments. 1 Thus all the permanent 
 features of the Old Comedy were inherited through the Middle 
 by the New ; indeed, I am not sure that the political boldness 
 of Philippides, who flourished about Ol. 120, in the days of 
 Demetrius, can be paralleled anywhere save in the Old Comedy. 
 289. Yet these things are forgotten on account of the in- 
 creased importance of a certain kind of play, which had obtained 
 1 This is specially noticed by Polybius, xiii. 13, as regards Archedicus.
 
 CH. xxil. METHOD OF THE NEW COMEDY. 259 
 
 little prominence in older days the drama of domestic life, in 
 which, as in the modern novel, love affairs were the almost 
 universal subject. The Attic family, as may well be imagined, 
 afforded little scope for variety of incidents, or for that large 
 psychological study which makes the modern novel so im- 
 portant a branch of literature. We are told that Aristophanes, 
 in one of his latest dramas, the Kokalos, had anticipated the 
 staple device of his successors the mishap of a respectable 
 maiden, and her rehabilitation by marriage at the end of the 
 piece. As seduction was well-nigh impossible, owing to the 
 secluded habits of Greek maidens, 1 the poets had recourse to 
 violence done in consequence of intoxication, and thus they 
 made room for the recognition which would otherwise have been 
 absurd. But we may well ask whether this sort of violence 
 was at all more probable, and whether the basis of these plots 
 was not only an offensive, but an impossible occurrence in 
 ordinary Attic life. In the complications which follow we have 
 certain general types repeated without much variety, and repre- 
 sented by fixed marks. There were two kinds of old men, the 
 harsh, and the indulgent, father ; two kinds of sons, the scape- 
 grace and the sedate ; two kinds of women, the injured maiden, 
 who seldom appears, and the, designing courtesan. The brag- 
 gart captain, the time-serving parasite, and the knowing slave, 
 who serves his young master or mistress, and outwits the 
 elders these make up the remainder of the characters. 2 
 
 This is the sort of play which is known to us as a New 
 Comedy, and which has made its impress on the world through 
 the imitation of the Romans. When we hear it repeated that 
 all these poets went back to Euripides as a model, and that he 
 was the real founder of this drama of intrigue, and thus of genteel 
 comedy such a piece of criticism conveys to me no meaning. 
 
 1 The seduction of a married woman is also unheard of in the New 
 Comedy, and this should be insisted on, as some German historians have 
 spoken of Verfuhrer as occurring (Nicolai, i. 235). Thus the Attic public 
 would not tolerate what the courtiers of Charles II. enjoyed and modern 
 Frenchmen witness without revulsion. 
 
 2 Apuleius mentions the Roman technical names : leno perjurus, amator 
 fervidus, servulus callidus, arnica illudens, sodalis opitulator, miles pra- 
 liator (gloriosus), parasitus edax, meretrix procax. 
 
 S 2
 
 260 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xxn. 
 
 The style of Euripides, in which Aristotle praises the peculiar 
 secret of saying things clearly and elegantly with the plainest 
 and commonest words, was certainly the model of the New 
 Comedy. Hence Diphilus said that he would willingly hang 
 himself if he could be certain of meeting Euripides. For to 
 poets with little variety of plot, excellence of style was of the 
 last importance, and made the difference of success or failure. 
 But, so far as I can see, Euripides was no more a model for 
 Menander than he was for Antiphanes or Alexis. ! In style he 
 was acknowledged a model not only to them, but to Aristo- 
 phanes, their master. 
 
 290. I will notice a few of the more important names 
 among the sixty-four poets of this period, reserving Menander 
 for the last. 
 
 Philemon of Soli or Syracuse appeared as a writer about 
 Ol. no, 2 and died at a very advanced age, in Ol. 129, 3. 
 Fragments of fifty-six from his ninety plays are extant. He is 
 not easily distinguishable from his son, the younger Philemon, 
 to whom fifty-four were attributed. His 'Y7ro/3oAi/Aaio9 was said 
 to be directly suggested by, and to have criticised, Aristophanes' 
 Kokalos. The majority of Philemon's fragments, being pre- 
 served by Stobaeus, are elegant, but not profound, reflections 
 on the 'changes and chances of this mortal life.' In his 
 Philosophus he ridiculed the Stoic sect, 3 which was not at 
 all to the taste of the play-going Attic public. His plays 
 
 1 The importance of the prologue in comedy can hardly be ascribed 
 to his example, seeing that it was the natural resource for expounding the 
 opening situation, and as such had been used by ^Eschylus. Moreover, in 
 the absence of a parabasis, the poet could find no other means of com- 
 municating directly with his audience, as we see in Terence. The long 
 debates between plaintiff and defendant, which Euripides loves, were dis- 
 tasteful to the latter comic poets. 
 
 2 This has been recently proved by the discovery of a choragic inscrip- 
 tion at Athens, recording a victory in 333 B.C., in which Philemon appears 
 as the comic poet, and already an Athenian citizen of the deme Diomeia ; 
 cf. Bull, de Corr. heltinique, ii. 395. 
 
 3 Cf. Meineke, iv. 29 : 
 
 <J>iXo<ro(J)!ai' Katvrjv yap ovros <iAo<ro0et, 
 irtii/Tjv SiSncrKei Kal ,ua07)Tas Aa/xjSai'ei. 
 els aprcs, iifyov tcr^aS) firtvitiv C5ap.
 
 CH. xxii. DIPHILUS, APOLLODORUS. 261 
 
 were used as models by Plautus. 1 He was constantly pitted 
 against his younger contemporary Menander, and often de- 
 feated him, so that there was much jealousy between them, as 
 sundry anecdotes testify. Diphilus of Sinope was a contempo- 
 rary of Menande-r, and younger than Philemon. His intimacy 
 with celebrated courtesans, and his frequent representation 
 of them on the stage, remind us of Antiphanes and Alexis. 
 As most of the extant fragments come from Athenseus, they 
 are full of cookery, and these, together with the occurrence of 
 some mythological titles, make his fragments appear quite 
 similar in character to those of the Middle Comedy. Though 
 the Antiattidsta complains of sundry late words used by him, 
 his style is pure and bright. His KXrjpovpevoi was the model of 
 Plautus' Casina, as we learn from the prologue. So also the 
 lost Commorientes of Plautus was copied from the like play of 
 Diphilus, and then by Terence in his Adelphi. The Rudens 
 of Plautus was likewise due to a play of Diphilus. Our longest 
 fragment (forty-one lines) is from the Painter, and describes a 
 cook telling what sort of banquets he prepares for his various 
 clients. 
 
 From Hipparchus, Lynceus, and Archedicus we have similar 
 notes on cookery. 
 
 291. More important was Apollodorus of Carystos (there 
 were other poets of the name), from whom we have a long frag- 
 ment on the philosophy of pleasure, which Epicurus was then 
 advocating at Athens. 2 He is remarkable as having afforded 
 Terence the models of two plays, the Hecyra and Phormio? 
 We may perhaps venture to offer a judgment on Apollodorus 
 from the evidence afforded by these two plays. The Phormio 
 is a very ingeniously constructed comedy with a double in- 
 trigue, which seems not due to any contaminatio by Terence. 
 It is full of interesting passages of great merit as stage 
 
 1 Particularly his <di)<rwp6s for the Trinummus and his "Epiropos for the 
 Mercator. 
 
 2 Cf. the similar long extract from the o-vvrpotyoi of Damoxenus (seventy 
 lines) in Meineke, iv. 530, and another more dramatic scene between an 
 angry father and a slave in Baton's 'Swe^airaTtav, ibid. p. 502. 
 
 3 The Greek title of the latter was 'EiriSi/mfoueVrj, according to Donatus' 
 correction of Terence's Prologue. Cf. Meineke, i. p. 464.
 
 262 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xxn 
 
 scenes, though we perceive no regard whatever towards morals, 
 and it is only the success or failure of knavery which deter- 
 mines approval or censure. The Hecyra, which found great 
 difficulty in obtaining a hearing, is very inferior in power, 
 the soupirant being a tearful and colourless youth, and his 
 slave confidant stupid and tiresome. The really curious fea- 
 ture in the play is the honest courtesan, who sets herself to 
 restore peace and harmony in the disturbed family, and recon- 
 cile her former lover with his new wife. This Bacchis is the 
 Dame aux Camelias of ancient comedy, without the tragic 
 points, She is appealed to by her lover's father to help him. 
 She thinks more of the young man's future than of her own 
 selfish ends. It marks, I think, a real novelty in the New, as 
 compared to the Middle, Comedy, that a harlot should be thus 
 glorified. For all through the Middle Comedy, and generally 
 in the New, they were brought upon the stage with a full 
 display of their moral ugliness. 
 
 Of Philippidcs' forty-four plays fifteen titles remain. There 
 is nothing to add to what I have observed concerning him 
 already, except that a psephism honouring his patriotism was 
 found in the theatre at Athens in the excavations of 1862. 
 Our principal interest in Posidippus, who came immediately 
 after Menander, is the splendid sitting portrait statue of him, 
 now in the Vatican at Rome, which represents him as a care- 
 worn, thoughtful philosopher, not without traces of humour 
 between the lines. 1 Demophilus is only known by the record 
 of Plautus, v/ho took his Wild Ass for a model in his Asinaria. 
 
 292. I will now close this barren enumeration, merely re- 
 marking that, owing to the likeness of subject and treatment, 
 the same titles were as frequently used by different comic poets 
 as we formerly noted common titles used in tragedy. We 
 have Adelphi, Epidicazomeni, and Synephebi, and Philadelphia 
 
 1 There is an interesting protest against the tyranny of the Attic purists 
 in his /;. incert. 2 : 
 
 'EAA.as fj.fi> fffri /uia, ir^\is 8e ir\eiovfs 
 (Tv fjiff OTTiKifeis, TJV'LK' &v <^cav^v Xe'yjjj 
 avrov T'IV', ol 8' "EAA.rji'ss f\\T)viofjifv 
 rl irpo<rSiaTpif)<av ffu\\a0ais Kal ypafifiaffti/ 
 rty euTpaireA.icu' eis aijSiai' &7is j
 
 CH. xxii. MENANDER. 263 
 
 and Anargyri, and a host of other such names. The same rule 
 applied to characters in the plays. It is one of the remarkable 
 negligences of the New Comedy, that it did not seek to fix a 
 peculiar and successful picture of character by giving it a fixed 
 name, and so handing it down, as it were, with its trade-mark 
 to posterity. The names of characters, Simo, Chremes, Pam- 
 philus, Davus, Syrus, Sostrata. &c. were so indifferently applied, 
 that the Roman imitators changed them without any care. They 
 were like the ordinary names set to the figures in the social 
 comedies which Mr. Du Maurier draws in Punch. These little 
 sketches have indeed a great deal in common with the New 
 Comedy. In both it is not the character, but the situation, not 
 the person who speaks, but the thing said, which is the matter of 
 importance. Hence, though the ordinary characters of society 
 constantly reappear, and so produce uniformity of colour, they 
 are not distinct individuals belonging to each class, and there- 
 fore not worth being noted by a special and exclusive name. ! 
 
 293. We may fitly close our chapter on Comedy with a 
 notice of MENANDER, the acknowledged master and representa- 
 tive of the period. He was an Athenian by birth, the child of 
 Hegesistrata and of Diopeithes, the general whom Demosthenes 
 defended in his speech On the Chersonese. In the very year of 
 this speech, 342 B.C., Menander was born. He was fortunate 
 in obtaining the friendship of Epicurus, and probably of Theo- 
 phrastus, in whose school psychological studies of charac- 
 ter were prosecuted with much care. Critics who accept the 
 extant Characters as Theophrastus' work, have compared its 
 appearance in the days of Menander with the like association 
 between the Camctires of La Bruyere and the comedies of 
 Moliere. The philosophic intercourse of his friends alternated, 
 in Menander's case, with indulgence in all the pleasures of 
 sense. He was exceedingly luxurious and devoted to women, 
 so much so that his connection with Glycera is not less 
 renowned than his intimacy with Epicurus. It is indeed the 
 
 ' This is the case even in Menander's famous play of the Superstitious 
 Man (A.fi<Ti5aifj.ai>). We happen to know that the leading character was 
 called Pheidias; nevertheless, in none of the references to this play, and to 
 its excellence as a psychological drawing, do we hear of 'the Pheidias oi 
 Menander. '
 
 264 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xxil. 
 
 weakest point in Epicurus' system, that during his life, and 
 while he was there to correct it, the lowest and most sensual 
 interpretation was given to his doctrine of Utility. He called 
 it Pleasure (/;&'/), and his contemporaries took him at his 
 word. 
 
 Menander brought out his first comedy the year of Demos- 
 thenes' and Hypereides' death (322 B.C.), and so a new genius 
 in poetry arose to survive the last great masters in prose. But 
 it was no new kind of poetry ; it was only a perfection of the 
 already fashionable form. Doubtless the friend of Theophrastus 
 studied the tracts of Aristotle on poetry, and we know that Men- 
 ander's drama was the very kind of play which corresponded to 
 Aristotle's theory. The poet won his first prize in 321 B.C. 
 with the 'Opyjj, and from that time brought out in rapid suc- 
 cession 1 08 plays. He enjoyed the favour, and suffered from 
 the suspicion, of the autocrats who then ruled Athens, but 
 doubtless found means to conciliate those in power, as he was 
 essentially a courtier, and fond of the splendour of high society. 
 He was drowned while bathing in the Peiraeus at the age of 
 fifty-two. The Athenians erected him a tomb near the ceno- 
 taph of Euripides, the older poet whom he most loved and 
 imitated. 
 
 Our information on the plots of Menander is scanty, but 
 sufficient for a general estimate. I am not aware that Plautus 
 ever distinctly mentions him as his model, and perhaps to the 
 older and ruder Roman master the plays of Philemon offered 
 greater facilities for transference to a foreign stage. 1 On the 
 other hand, Terence, living in a more polished circle, was 
 evidently anxious to produce the acknowledged master of style, 
 Menander, in Roman dress, but found the amount of incident 
 so insufficient, that he ordinarily worked up two plots, or scenes 
 from two plays of Menander, in each of his comedies. We 
 know this to be the case even in the Eunuchus? and in the Self- 
 
 1 The Stichus and Bacchides are, however, said to be derived from the 
 Pkiladelphi and Double Deceiver (Sis eairaTu>v) of Menander. 
 
 2 Cf. the Prologue, v. 30, on his obligations to the K<$Aa|. We learn 
 from an old note on Persius, Sat. v. 161, sq., where a passage is adapted 
 from Menander's Eunuchus, that Terence also changed all the names ol 
 the characters.
 
 01. xxn. MERITS OF MENANDER. 265 
 
 Tormentor (lavTov Ti^povpevoQ), which are professedly based 
 on the like-named plays of Menander. The grammarian .-Elius 
 Donatus, however (in his notes on Terence), and Aulus Gellius 1 
 have saved for us sketches (with extracts) of three arguments : 
 the Treasure, the Apparition? and the TrXo/cto^. 3 The last 
 story was treated by other dramatists, and much resembles that 
 of the Hecyra. 
 
 These plots, such as we have them, offer so few distinctive 
 features, they are so homogeneous with the plots borrowed 
 from Philemon, Diphilus, and Apollodorus, that we may safely 
 assert Menander's superiority did not consist in ingenuity of 
 invention. The secret of his success was in his more elegant 
 handling of the materials and devices common to other poets. 
 He must have stood to them in the same sort of relation that 
 Terence did to other Roman dramatists. A critic tells us that 
 Philemon worked up his dialogue with such care as to be 
 superior for reading purposes, and that on the stage only could 
 Menander be fully appreciated. This remark does not agree 
 with the fact that Menander was in after days chosen for the 
 reading lessons of growing boys and girls. But there is so 
 much of a calm gentlemanly morality about his fragments ; 
 he is so excellent a teacher of the ordinary world-wisdom 
 resignation, good temper, moderation, friendliness that we can 
 well understand this popularity. He reflected, if not the best, 
 at least the most polite and refined life of the age ; and he 
 reflected it so accurately as to draw from an admirer the 
 exclamation, ' O life, O Menander, which of you has imitated 
 the other?' 
 
 We have no means of judging more closely the poet's 
 economy. We know that he reproduced the prologue of 
 Euripides so accurately, that he even used the various per- 
 sonagesfrom protagonists to allegorical figures to which the 
 
 1 Noct. Att. ii. 23. 
 
 * The 4>d<r/j.a of Menander had been produced at Rome by Luscius 
 Lavinius, to which Terence alludes in the prologue of his Eunuchus. In 
 a note Donatus gives a brief sketch of the story. 
 
 3 Whether a proper name, or the necklace by which tbe maiden 
 Pamphila is recognised, remains uncertain.
 
 266 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CIL XXIT. 
 
 tragic prologues had been entrusted. The very numerous frag- 
 ments which are still incompletely collected, even by Meineke, 
 are partly from Stobaeus and Athenjeus, partly from scholiasts 
 or other Greek authors, partly from the notes of Donatus on 
 Terence. Thus the notes on the prologue of the Latin Andria 
 tell us of the openings of that play and the Perinthia, from which 
 Terence patched together his comedy, and in some dozen other 
 passages Donatus gives the Greek original for a Latin phrase. 
 The Ffwp-yof, the <I>u<7^ua, the G^o-awpot 1 , the Miaou/ie^oc, the Ilf- 
 piKftpo/jiivTi, the Mt<roywi'ijc are all noted as celebrated plays. So 
 vas the Superstitious Man (dctm&at/jur), from which Plutarch is 
 supposed to have borrowed in his tract of the subject. 1 To 
 this the Priestess afforded the female parallel. Perhaps the 
 most brilliant was the Thais, in which the manners and cha- 
 racter of that personage were painted with thorough experience 
 as well as genius. The opening words of the prologue are 
 preserved. 2 There is a good specimen of his gentle pessimism 
 in the Thesphorumena? I quote below a few more fragments. 4 
 
 1 Meineke, iv. p. 100. 
 
 'E/tol fjifv olv &ei$e TOiavTijc, flea, 
 Bpafffiav, &patav re /col iridavrjv &fj.a, 
 a.SiKOvffcu', a.iroK\fiovffav, alrovaav iru/cfcf, 
 ovSevbs fpcaffaVf irpoffiroiovfjifv'ni' 8' &ei. 
 1 Mein. p. 134. 
 4 Ibid. vol. iv. p. 149 : 
 
 flifiriv ey&> TOVS Tr\ovfflovs, S> Qavia, 
 cits /ufy rb Savfi^fffdai irpAfftimv, ov trrtvtut 
 TOS VVKTO.S, ov$e (?Tpf(f>o(j.tvovs &vw Karca 
 o1/J.oi \eyeiv, TiSuv 5e nal irpa.6v nva 
 virvov KaBevSfiv, a\\a rSiv irTa>-%iJi)V nva. 
 vvvl Sf Kal rovs /naxapiovs Ka\ov/j,tvavs 
 V/MIS 6pu> irovovvras Tjfiuv ejjupfpfj. 
 ap' fffrl ffvyyti/fs n Xvirri Kal fiios ; 
 rpvipepy fticf ffvveffriv, 
 irdpeffriv, air6pcj! ffvyK 
 Ibid. p. 211 : 
 
 TOVTOV fi/Tvxf 
 
 6etap-f)ffas a\inrcas, Tlap/j.ei'iai' 
 TO. ffffiva, TOUT' airfi\dfv, S8ev $\0e 
 rbv 9i\tov rbv K0iv6v, &ffTp', vScap, 
 Kvp TauTO K&J/ (Karbv trr\ &i<ps a
 
 CH. xxii. STUDIES ON MENANDER. 267 
 
 Attacks on marriage, assertions of the supremacy of For- 
 tune, advices on good manners these, expressed with the great- 
 est neatness and clearness, and in the new Attic dialect of 
 the better classes of his day, made Menander the delight of 
 succeeding generations. The purists indeed attacked him for 
 deviations from the strict laws of Attic speech ; but more 
 sympathetic critics extolled his style as far superior even to 
 that of Demosthenes. The contrast to the latter was indeed 
 remarkable, and brings out one leading feature in the diction 
 of the New Comedy its utter avoidance of rhetoric To ears 
 wearied with the periods of Isocrates, Demosthenes, and all the 
 herd of their inferior followers, the ease and natural grace of 
 Menander must have been truly fascinating. Even Aristotle's 
 uncouthness must have been a pleasant relief. 
 
 294. Accordingly Menander was widely studied. Aristo- 
 phanes of Byzantium commented specially upon him, echoed by 
 Didymus. The rhetor Alciphron, in the second century A.D., 
 composed an elegant correspondence between the poet and his 
 mistress Glycera, in which he utilised the plays. Plutarch drew 
 out a comparison of Aristophanes and Menander, in which he 
 depreciates the wild exuberance of the older poet and extols the 
 elegance, the terseness, and the literary finish of his later rival. 
 Moral gnomes, expressed in single verses, are still extant in 
 collections amounting to 750 lines, many of them no doubt 
 spurious. These, and the first score of the fragments of uncer- 
 tain plays (in Meineke's collection), are the most characteristic 
 of Menander's philosophy. 
 
 We are told that his plays were known in Byzantine days, 
 
 fyei Trapovra, K&V eviavrovs ff<f>68p' oXiyovs, 
 
 (T(fJ.v6Tfpa TOVTOIV f-repa 8' OVK fyfi irore. 
 
 Havfiyvpiv v6fj.iff6v TIV' elvat rbv xpdvov, 
 
 ov <J>7?/., TOVTOV $) 'iriSri/j.iav, ev 5 
 
 ox^os, ayopd, K\eirrai, Kvfif^ai, 8ia,Tpi/3ai 
 
 &)/ irp&Tor cnrips Ka.Ta\v<rfis, /3e\Tiova 
 
 f<p65t' f\< av aTfTJAfles x<Jp5s ovSfvl 
 
 6 irpo<r5ia.Tpi@<av S' tKoiriacrfi> diroAeffas, 
 
 KO.KUS re yrjpiav fvSfrjs rov yiyverai, 
 
 avx fuBavdrcas airr)\dev e\6iiiv eis
 
 268 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XXIL 
 
 and they were certainly used by Eustathius when composing 
 his commentary on Homer (circ. 1160 A.D.). Leone Allacci 
 even speaks of twenty-four comedies being extant at Constan- 
 tinople in the seventeenth century. And this is not incon- 
 sistent with the account of Demetrios Chalkondylas, who says 
 that the MSS. of Menander and Philemon, together with the 
 erotic poems of the old lyric poets, were destroyed by Byzantine 
 emperors at the instigation of zealot monks, who desired to 
 replace them with the effusions of Gregory Nazianzen. A stray 
 copy might easily survive such a persecution. But as yet all 
 search for the plays of Menander in Greek convents has been 
 unavailing. l 
 
 I confess to greater regret for the splendid old lyrists, 
 Alcaeus, Sappho, Mimnermus, than for this later model of 
 exquisite style. His plays would have been excellent for school 
 reading ; they would have inspired endless imitations among 
 the moderns ; they would have shown us what was the best and 
 purest literature which the Attic decadence was able to pro- 
 duce. But no modern critic would have ventured to endorse 
 the judgment of Plutarch, and rank him anywhere on a par 
 with, not to say above, Aristophanes. Both poets were primi 
 inter pares, standing out among contemporaries not recognised 
 as inferior till the verdict of posterity was added to the doubt- 
 ful judgment of their own age. But the men of Aristophanes' 
 day were indeed giants ; those of Menander only showed how 
 strong and thorough was the culture which in art and literature 
 outlived the decadence of the nation. 
 
 294. With Menander closes the classical age of poetry in 
 Greece. Shortly after his death, the national centre of gravity, as 
 regards learning, shifted to Alexandria, and there the latest poets 
 
 1 A fragment copied years ago by Tischendorf from a very old MS. in 
 the East, has been lately published by Cobet in the Mnemosyne, and is dis- 
 cussed in the eleventh volume of Hermes by Gomperz, and by Wilamowitz- 
 Mollendorf. It turns out to be an additional scrap of the Ati<riSaiiJ.ii>i>, 
 and Wilamowitz endeavours to patch it up with the remaining fragments 
 into a scene. But this combination is doubtful, and we still have no rem- 
 nant of Menander's dramatic art, though we know so much about his 
 style and about his philosophy.
 
 CH. xxii. CLOSE OF THE CLASSICAL EPOCH. 269 
 
 of the New Comedy brought out their plays. Nor do we heai 
 of any regrets at the transference. The poetry of the Alex- 
 andrian age was not without flashes of genius, but on the. 
 whole it has not maintained the standard of Attic culture. 
 Whenever a particular poet, such as Apollonius or Theocritus, 
 seemed worthy to be ranked among the mightier dead, I have 
 exceeded my plan, and have spoken of him briefly in con- 
 nection with the corresponding form of classical poetry. The 
 criticism of Alexandrian grammarians has constantly occupied 
 us in connection with Homer and the other poets whom they 
 emended and expounded. But to write a history of Alexan- 
 drian literature is a task of a different kind from that which I 
 have undertaken, and I therefore remand it to some future 
 day, or to some abler hand than mine. The social life of the 
 Greeks under Alexander and the Diadochi yet remains to be 
 written, and for that purpose the voluminous remains of the 
 epoch afford the most interesting materials ; but this too is a 
 huge subject which deters the serious student by its vastness 
 and its intricacy. 
 
 But in a companion volume I have traced the history cf 
 Greek prose literature within the same classical limits.
 
 INDEX TO PART II. 
 
 ABB 
 
 A BBOTT, Mr. Evelyn, on the 
 -Ti_ Antigone, 61 
 Achseus of Eretria, 169, 170 
 Acharnians of Aristophanes, 218 sq. 
 Achilles, 146 
 
 Adert, ed. Schol. in Theocrit. 196 
 Admetus, 102 
 
 ^Egisthus (in ^Eschylus) 41, (in 
 Euripides) 135, (in Sophocles) 66 
 /Eolic school of poetry, i 
 /Eschylus, 5, 7 (satyric dramas), 10, 
 24 sq., 60, 65, 67, 70 (titles of his 
 plays), 81, 82, 85, 87 (Philoctetes), 
 91 (relation to Sophocles), 99 (his 
 humour), 102, in, 112 (Eleu- 
 sinians), 119 (Electra), 134, 135, 
 I 37, I 5O, 151 (opposed to Euri- 
 pides), 164, 169, 172, 181, 206, 235 
 (parody of), 243 ; cited, 32-33, 47 
 ^Esculapius, 239 
 (Ethra, 118 
 Agamemnon, 144, 145 
 Agamemnon of yEschylus, 40 sq. ; 
 
 cited, 41, 42 
 
 Agatharchus (painter), 19 
 Agathon, in, 168, 170 sq., 217, 234 
 Agave, 149-51 
 Agesilaus, 177 
 Agoracritus, 221 
 Agyrrhios, 201 
 Ahrens (ed. Theocrit.), 196 
 Ajax of Sophocles, 82 sq. 
 Alcasus (of Lesbos), 189 
 Alcestis of Euripides, 101 sq. 
 Alcibiades, 205, 208, 214, 242 
 Alciphron, 267 
 Alcman, 2 
 Aldus, 158, 247 
 
 Alexander the Great, 115, 187, 258, 
 269 
 
 ARC 
 
 Alexandria, in literature, 190 
 Alexis (comicus), 250, 251, 254 sq. 
 
 257 
 
 Alfieri, 43, 54, 64, 69, 104, 142 
 Alkimos, 183 
 Allacci, Leone, 268 
 Amaranthus, 196 
 Ambrosian MSS. (Aristoph.), 247 
 Ameinias, 29 
 
 Ameipsias, 203, 206, 225, 230 
 Ameis (ed. Odyssey and Theocritus), 
 
 196 
 
 Amphiaraus, 33 
 Amphis, 256 
 Amphitryon, 122-4 
 
 Avayj oxTTiKOi, 174 
 
 Anaxagoras, 19, 97, 163 
 Anaxandrides, 254 
 Anaxilas (comicus), 256 
 Andromache of Euripides, 113 sq. 
 Antigone of Sophocles, 33, 59 sq. 
 
 cited, 62, 77; in the Phanissa, 140 
 Antiope of Euripides, 156-7 
 Antiphanes, 104, 207, 251, 252, 253 
 
 (fragment cited) 
 
 Antiphon (the orator), 171, 207, 231 
 Antiphon (tragedian), 89, 173 
 Apollodorus (comicus), 261, 265 
 Apollodorus (critic), 181 
 
 Apollodorus (<JX.oypa<os), 19 
 
 Apollonius (Rhodius), 190, 196 
 Apology, Aristophanes' , of Browning, 
 
 124, 244 
 Apuleius, 259 
 Araros, 217, 240, 254 
 Aratus, 190 
 
 Arcadian poetry, 187-8, 198 
 Archelaus, 149 
 Archestratus of Gela, 187 
 Archilochi of Cratinus, 203, 204
 
 272 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ARC 
 
 Archilochus, 200 
 
 Archippus, 206, 215 
 
 Areopagus, the, and /Eschylus, 48 ; 
 and Orestes, 131 
 
 Argos, 67-68, 117 
 
 Arion, i, 3 
 
 Aristarchus (the critic), 95, 165, 246 
 
 Aristarchus of Tegea (tragicus), 169 
 
 Aristeides (the statesman), 33, 221 
 
 Aristias (son of Choerilus), 7 
 
 Aristophanes (of Byzantium), 22, 95, 
 165, 246, 267 
 
 Aristophanes (comicus), 10 (quoted 
 on Phrynichus), 34, 50, 57, 88, 94 
 (on Sophocles), 97, 99, 101, 106, 
 129, 141, 143, 144, 159, 162, 164, 
 169, 170, -173 (Frogs quoted), 201- 
 209 (on earlier comic writers), 212, 
 213, 214, 216, 217 sq. (method of 
 his plays), 241, 246, 259, 267 
 
 Aristophon, 256 
 
 Aristotle, his Poetic cited, 3, 4 (see 
 Poetic), 73, 85, 92, 105, 107 (on the 
 Medea), 164, 175, 178 (on comedy), 
 205, 244, 254, 264 
 
 Aristoxenus of Selinus, 178 
 
 Arsenius, 165 
 
 Asia Minor, home of Greek poetry, i 
 
 Asklepiades of Samos, 190, 196 
 
 Astydamas, 172 
 
 Atalanta in Calydon, 54 
 
 Athenseus, 182, 205,250, 251, 254, 258 
 
 Athene, in the Ajax, 83 
 
 Atossa, 30 
 
 Attic dialect, in Aristophanes, 241 ; 
 in Middle Comedy, 252 
 
 Attius, 85, 104, 141, 151 
 
 Augustus, Emperor, 85 
 
 Aulis, 144-5 
 
 Autalogia, 187 
 
 Authorship, divided or deputed in 
 Greek Comedy, 213 
 
 IQACCHJE of Euripides, 149 sq. 
 1) Bacchylides, 181 
 Bacon, Lord, 37 
 Badham, C., 127, 130 
 Bai'f, L. , 69, 121 
 Ballanche, 65 
 Baton of Sinope, 170, 261 
 Bekker, 248 
 
 Bellini, G. (the Norma of), 109 
 Bentley, 247 
 Bergk, Theodor (Hist. Greek Lit.), 
 
 94, 114, 248 ; on chronology of 
 
 drama, 22 
 
 CHO 
 
 Bernhardy (Hist. Greek Lit.), 38. 96, 
 loo, 165, 174, 184, 216, 246 
 
 Bion, 197 sq. 
 
 Birds of Aristophanes, 229 sq. 
 
 Blackie, Prof. J. S., 54 
 
 Blass, Dr. F., 171, 182 
 
 Blaydes, 95, 220 
 
 Bloomfield, 186 
 
 Boeckh, 95 
 
 Born (trans. Knights), 222 
 
 Bothe, 167, 226, 248 
 
 Botzon (on Sophron), 185, i85 
 
 Boyer (Oreste of), 133 
 
 Briggs, 196 
 
 Browning, Robert, 44, 51, 54, 105, 
 in, 124, 129, 137, 158, 223, 244 
 
 Browning, Mrs. (trans. Prometheus), 
 40, 54 
 
 Brumoy, 167, 248 
 
 Brunck, 94 
 
 Brutus, 108 
 
 Buchanan, 104, 108 
 
 Bucolic poetry, 187 sq. 
 
 f ALCRAFT, J. W., 148 
 
 V Calderon, 37, 39 
 
 Calliergi, 196 
 
 Callimachus, 190, 246 
 
 Callistratus, 165, 214, 218, 230 
 
 Calverley, Mr. C. S., 197 
 
 Calzabigi, 104 
 
 Campbell, Prof. L., 94, 96 
 
 Caravella, 248 
 
 Carmelli (trans. Euripides), 167 
 
 Cassandra, 41 sq. ; of Eurip. , 127 
 
 Cephissus, the, 55 
 
 Ceriani, the Abbate, 247 
 
 Chasremon, 176 
 
 Chalkondylas, 268 
 
 Chapman, J. H., 197 
 
 Character-ghost (in Persce), 30 
 
 Character plays, 60, 88, 107 
 
 Chateaubriand, 89 
 
 Chateaubrun, 121 
 
 Che'nier, 82 
 
 Chersonese, the Tauric, 131 
 
 Cherubini, 109 
 
 Chionides, 201 sq. 
 
 Choephori, of /Eschylus, 44 sq. 
 
 Choerile, 98 
 
 Choerilus (satyricus), 6-7 
 
 Choragic monuments, 22 
 
 Choral odes, Euripidean plan of, ico 
 
 Chorus, Greek, real character of, 5, 
 
 34, 160 ; in the BacclKE, 150 ; the 
 
 comic. 210
 
 INDEX. 
 
 273 
 
 CHR 
 
 Christus Fattens, 150 
 Chrysostom, Dion, 89, 156 
 Chrysostom, John, 218 
 Cicero, 69, 73, 79, 85, 89, 100, 108 
 
 (on the Medea), 121, 124, 133, 178, 
 
 200 
 
 Clark, W. G.. 247 
 Cleon, 206, 207, 218, 220, 221, 228, 
 
 229 
 
 Cleophon, 138, 207 
 Clitus, 115 
 
 Cloud-cuckoo town, 229 
 Clouds of Aristophanes, 222 sq. 
 Clytemnestra, of ^E^chylus, 41 ; of 
 
 Sophocles, 68 ; of Euripides, 136, 
 
 146 
 
 Cobet, 143, 228, 248, 268 
 Colonus, 55 
 Comedy : old Doric, 175 sq. ; old 
 
 Attic, 199 sq. ; Middle, 249 sq. ; 
 
 New, 257 sq. ; its aspirations, 214 
 Comic elements in tragedy, 40, 61, 84 
 Commerce, port of, 131 
 Commos, 33, 62 
 Competitions, dramatic, 21 
 Conington, Professor, 44 
 Cannes of Ameipsias, 203 
 Conservative character of comedy, 
 
 214 
 
 Coras (Iphigenia), 147 
 Corneille, 78, 108 
 Crates (comicus), 187, 205, 250 
 Crates (grammaticus). 151, 165, 246 
 Cratinus, 98, 202 sq. , 212, 220, 222, 
 
 225, 250 
 
 Cratinus (junior), 256 
 Crebillon, 69 
 Creech, Thos., 197 
 Creon, 61-4, 74, 80, 142 
 Creusa, 125-7 
 Critias, 172 (his tragedies) 
 Cyclops (of Euripides), 8 ; quoted, 
 
 154 sq. 
 
 DALE, 95 
 Damoxenus, 261 
 Danae of Euripides, 156 
 Daphnis, feasts of, 188 
 Darius, 30-1 
 Darwin, 226 
 Davies, Mr., 53, 54 
 Dawes (on text of Aristophanes), 247 
 
 AetKr)AiKTai, 177 
 
 Deinolochos, 179 
 
 AeKTiSatyiui' (of Menander), 263, 266 
 
 Dejanira, in Sophocles, 70-2 
 
 ENG 
 
 Democracy, at Athens, its effects on 
 poetry, 2 ; on Euripides, 136, 138 ; 
 on comedy, 199; in Aristophanes, 
 242 
 
 Arjfioi of Eupolis, 2OQ 
 
 Demophilus, 262 
 
 Demosthenes, 237, 264, 267 
 
 Desmaretz, 38 
 
 Destiny, in the (Ed. Rex, 78 ; in 
 
 ^Eschylus, 236 
 Deus ex machina, 126 
 Dexion, 56 
 Dicasarchus, 107, 165 
 Dicaeopolis, 219 
 Diderot, 133 
 Didot, 197 
 Didymus (critic), 165, 247 
 Dindorf (G. ), 94, 95, 105, 114, 140, 
 
 240, 247, 248 
 
 Dindorf (W.), zoo, 144, 165 
 Diodorus Siculus, 37 
 Diogenes (Laertius), 180, 183 
 Dion Chrysostom, 89 
 Dionysius(of Halicarnassus), 155, 165 
 Dionysius (elder), of Syracuse, 173 
 Dionysus, worship of, 3 sq. 
 Diphilus, 258, 261 
 Dithyramb, 3 sq. 
 Division of chorus, 34 
 Dobree, 247 
 
 Dolce, 108, 121, 142, 147 
 Donatus, 261, 265 
 Donner, 95, 167, 248 
 Dorians, their poetry, 175 ; dialect, 
 
 232 
 
 Dorpfeld, Dr., 15 
 Dowden, Prof. ,213 
 Droysen, 201, 248 
 Dryden, 78 
 Diibner, 196, 247, 248 
 Ducis (CEdipe), 8r 
 Dulorestes, the, of Pacuv'us, 133 
 Dumas, Alexandra, 70, 131 
 Du Maurier, Mr., his comic sketches, 
 
 263 
 
 TJCCLESIAZUSJE of Aristo- 
 Jd phanes, 237 sq. 
 Ecphantides, 202 
 
 Electro, ( of Soph.), 46 ; quoted. 66 
 Electra (of Euripides), 46, 134 sq. 
 E'egiac bucolic poetry, 193 
 Eliot, George, 237 
 Ellendt, 95 
 
 Elmsley, 95, 119, 149, 151, 165, 223 
 Enger, 234
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ENN 
 
 Ennius, 85. 107, 108, 115, 121, 133 
 169, 181, 187 
 
 Ephippus (comicus), 254 
 
 Epicharmus, 88, 179. 180 sq., 188, 
 202, 205, 250, 255 
 
 Kpicrates (Ambrakiot), 255 (fragments 
 cited ) 
 
 Epicurus, 263 
 
 Epigenes (comicus), 254 
 
 Epigrams, 98 
 
 Erasmus, 121, 147 
 
 Eratosthenes, 196, 246 
 
 Erechtheus of Euripides, 158 
 
 Eros, Sophocles on, 57, 62 
 
 Eteocles, in /Eschylus, 31-3 ; in Euri- 
 pides, 141 
 
 Eubulus (comicus), 254 
 
 Euetes (comicus), 200 
 
 Eumenides of ^ischylus, 47 (cited) 
 
 Euphorion, 105, 172 
 
 Eupolis, 189, 207 sq,, 213, 217, 220, 
 (Bavrii of) 242 
 
 Euripides, 33, 63, 67, 82, 84, 88, 89, 
 91, 92, 93, 97 sq., (his philoso- 
 phy) 163-4, 172, 184, 206, 211, 215, 
 219, 226, 234, 235, 241, 243, 244, 
 259, 260 
 
 Euripides (the younger), 98 
 
 Euscbius, 178 
 
 Eustathius, 268 
 
 Euxenides, 200 
 
 F^HSE. 167 
 Falsehood, an expedient in 
 
 tragedy, 131 
 Faucit, Miss Helen, 148 
 Female characte s, in .'Eschylus, 41 ; 
 
 in Sophocles, 61, 65 ; in Euripides, 
 
 161-3 
 
 Petition, 73 
 Fick, 6 
 Firdusi, 141 
 
 Fishermen, the, of Theocritus, 194 
 Fitzgerald, Mr., 44, 113 
 Fix, 166 
 
 Mora, the, of Theocritus, 197 
 Florentine MSS. , 128 (of Euripides) ; 
 
 of ^Eschylus and Sophocles, 52, 94 
 Flower, the, of Agathon, 171 
 Fontenelle, 38 
 Frere, J. H., 248 
 Fntzche, 194, 196, 234 
 Fritze, 167 
 l-rogs, of Aristophanes, 235 sq. ; cited, 
 
 173 
 
 HER 
 
 /~*ADSBY, Henry, 105 
 
 VJT Gaisford, 196 
 
 Gamier, 112, 128, 142 
 
 Gascoigne, Geo., 141 
 
 Geel, 143 
 
 Gellius, Aulus, 265 
 
 Gelon (of Syracuse), 179, 187 
 
 Tf>vpiu.t', 178 
 
 Gesner, 197 
 
 Gilbert (translation of Hippolytus}, 
 
 112 
 
 Giotto, 125 
 
 Gladstone, Mr. W. E. , 226 
 
 rAwira'ai, 90 
 
 Glover, 108 
 
 Gluck, 104, 133, 148 
 
 Goat choruses, 3 
 
 Gods on the stage, 83 
 
 Goebel (on Euripides), 100 
 
 Goethe, 39, (his Iphigenia} 133, 139, 
 
 151, 156, 161, 231 
 Golden Age of Eupolis, 209 
 Gomperz, 268 
 Gorgias, 171 
 
 Green, W. C. , 220, 222, 226 
 Grillparzer, 108 
 Grimm, 133 
 Grote, 203 
 Grysar, 184 
 Guignaut, M. , 37 
 
 H^MON, 61-2, 142 
 Haigh, Mr., on Attic tragedy, 
 12, 15 
 
 Halevy, 143 
 Hamlet and the Perscs, 30 ; and 
 
 Choephorae, 46 
 Hartung, 40, 100, 167, 197 
 Haupt, 100 
 Hebrew liberature, affects Theocritus, 
 
 195: 
 
 Hecuba of Euripides, 119 sq. 
 Hegel, 244 
 
 Hegemon of Thasos, 187 
 Heinsius, D. , 196 
 Helena of Euripides, 128 sq. 
 Hennig, 149 
 Henry, Dr. James, 92 
 Hephaestion, 178 
 Heracleida of Euripides, 115 sq. 
 Heracleides Ponticus, 9 
 Heracleitus, 50, 163, 181 
 Heracles, in the Alcestis, 103 ; in the 
 
 Peace, 231 
 Heracles, the Raging, of Euripides, 
 
 122 sq.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 275 
 
 HER 
 
 Heralds, in Greek tragedy, 116 
 Hermann, G., 34, 94, 105, 119, 121, 
 
 130, 139, 143, 149, 151, 155 
 Hermathena, 68 
 Hermes, 240 
 
 Hermippus (comedian), 206, 250 
 Herodotus, u, 29, 56-7, 129, 176 
 Heroines in Euripides, 162 
 Hesiod, 204 
 Hesychius, 59 
 Hetserse, 251, 255, 262 
 Heyse, 166 
 
 Hiero I. of Syracuse, 24, 179, 180, 188 
 Hiero II. of Syracuse, 190, 192 
 Hilarodia, 186 
 Hilarotragcedia, 187 
 Hippolytus of Euripides, 109 sq. 
 Hirschig, 228 
 History, excluded from tragedy, 4 ; 
 
 reintroduced, 29 
 Hoffmann, 109 
 Holden, 248 
 Holm, 184, 188 
 
 Homer, 51, 88, 116, 128, 141, 148, 204 
 Horace, his Ars Poet, criticised, 5, 9, 
 
 85, 108, 121, 181 
 Hutton, Mr. R. H. (Life of Scott], 
 
 161 
 
 Hyllus, 71 
 Hymeneal song, 231 
 Hyperbolus, 207 
 Hypereides, 264 
 Hyporcheme, in the Ajax, 84 
 
 T AMBIZEIN, 178 
 I 
 
 Idyllic features in tragedy, 136 
 Indices ; vid. Concordances 
 Interpolations, 95 
 locasta, 75-7. 141 
 lole, 71-2 
 lolaos, 116-7 
 
 Ion (of Chios), 25, 57, 109, 169 sq. 
 Ion of Euripides, 124 sq. 
 lophon, 58, 64, 109, 172 
 Jphigeneia in Atilis, of Euripides, 
 
 143 sq. ; in Racine, 148 
 Ipliigeneia among the Tauri, 130 sq. 
 Irresolution, a tragic feature in Euri- 
 
 pides, 107, 135 
 Ismene, 33 
 
 I socrates, 129, 174, 267 
 Italiot poetry, 186 
 
 JACOBS, F., 40, 196 
 J Jahn, O., 187 
 
 LOB 
 
 Jebb, Professor, 95 
 fudges, of dramas, 21, 
 Juvenal, 69 
 
 \7 EATS, 39 
 
 IV Keil, 247 
 
 Kilissa, 45, 61 
 
 Kimon, 169, 204, 209 
 
 Kinadologia, 187 
 
 Kinesias, 201 
 
 Kinwelmersh, 141 
 
 Kirchhoff, 100, 116, 166 
 
 Klein (Hist, of the Dram;), 96, 102, 
 
 201, 244 
 Kleito, 97 
 K linger, 109 
 Knights of Aristophanes, 220 sq. ; 
 
 cited, 221 
 Kock, 167, 216, 222, 226, 231, 237, 
 
 249 
 
 Kopreus, 116 
 Korax, 182 
 Kos, 192 
 
 LA BRUYERE, 263 
 Lachmann, 151 
 Lagrange- Chancel, 133 
 La Harpe, 89, 112 
 Lalaire, M. Lodin de, 39 
 Lampito, 232 
 Lampros, 56 
 Laprade, M. V. de, 39 
 Lascaris, Janus, 166 
 Lasus of Hermione. 6, 9 
 La Touche, Guimond de, 133 
 Le Clerc, 133, 147 
 Legouve', E. , 108, 143 
 Lemercier, 39, 43 
 Lemnos, 86 
 Lemoine, 113 
 Lenaea, 22 
 Lesches, 84 
 Levey, R. M. (music to Iphigenia), 
 
 148 
 Lexica, /Eschylean, 53 ; Sophoclean, 
 
 95 ; Euripidean, 166 ; Theocritean, 
 
 197 ; Aristophanic, 247 
 Liberty, struggles of, 64 
 Lichas, 71 
 Likymnius, 171 
 Linwood, 53, 95 
 Lion's whelp, in ^schylus, 42 
 Lloyd, Mr. Watkiss, 37-8 
 Lobeck, 179
 
 2 7 6 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 LON 
 
 Longepierre, 69, 108 
 
 Lorenz, A. O. F. (ed. Epicharmus), 
 
 179, 182, 184, 189 
 Liibker, 100 
 Lucas, 108 
 
 Luscius Lavinius, 265 
 LXX, the, 195 
 Lycophron (poet), 112 
 Lycurgus (orator), 12, 20, 57, 99 
 Lycus in Eur. Heracles Furens, 122 ; 
 
 in Antiope, 157 
 
 Lyric poetry in Aristophanes, 245 
 Lysistrata of Aristophanes, 231 
 Lytta, 123 
 Lytton, Lord, 37, 39, 54 
 
 MACARIA, 116 
 Machon, 257 
 Maenads, 150 
 Masson, 178 
 Magister, Thomas, 218 
 Magnes, 202 
 Magodia, 187 
 Mahabharata, 104 
 Maistre, Jos. de, 37 
 Maleiieux, 95 
 Maquin, Ch. , 37 
 Margites, 176 
 Markland, 119, 149 
 Marmontel, 65, 117 
 Martello, 133 
 Matron, 187 
 Matthias, 166, 167 
 Medea of Euripides, 105 sq. 
 Megarian poetry, 177, 180 
 Meineke, 98, 140, 178, 195, 196 (on 
 
 Theocritus), 201, 202, 204, 205, 207, 
 
 216, 240, 248, 251-267, passim 
 Melanippe of Euripides, 156 
 Melanthius, 172, 205 
 Meletus, 173 
 Menander, 151, 156, 207, 244, 252, 
 
 257, 260, 263 sq. 
 Mendelssohn, F. , 65, 105, 148 
 Menelaus, in the Andromache, 114; 
 
 in the Helena, 129 ; in the Orestes, 
 
 J 3S. 138-9; i n the Iph. in Aul., 
 
 145 
 
 Merkel, 53 
 
 .Metres, variety of, in Euripides, 159 
 Milman, 44 
 Miltiades, 209 
 Milton, 39, 54, 81, 103, 105 
 Mimes, 185 
 Mitchell (editor of Aristophanes), 220, 
 
 228, 248 
 
 ORI 
 
 Mnesarchus (Mnesarchides?), 97 
 
 Mnesilochus, 98, 206, 233 
 
 Moliere, 182, 213, 263 
 
 Monk, 105, 113, 149 
 
 Moore, Thomas, 198 
 
 Morality and poetry, 236 
 
 Morris, Mr. W. , 105, 109 
 
 Morsimus, 172 
 
 Morychides (Archon), 201 
 
 Moschion, 29 
 
 Moschopulos (Manuel), 196 
 
 Moschus, 197 sq. 
 
 Miiller, A., 12 
 
 M tiller- Striibing, 228 
 
 Munatus (gramm.), 196 
 
 Murray, F., 105 
 
 Musgrave, 113, 167 
 
 Mycenae, 44, 67-8 
 
 Myllus, 178, 261 
 
 Myrmidons, the, 49 
 
 N^EVIUS, 147 
 Nauck, 94, 156, 166, 167, 174 
 Nazianzen, Gregory, 150, 185, 268 
 Neophron, 105, 107, 113, 169 
 Neoptolemus, 86-7 
 Niccolini, 82, 108 
 Nicolai, 165, 216, 240 
 Nightingale, 230 
 Nikanor, 196 
 
 Nikias (of Miletus), a physician, 190 
 Nikias, Athenian general, 206, 209, 
 
 220 
 
 Nomic, opposed to strophic form, 52 
 Novelties, metrical, in Euripides, 159- 
 
 60 
 
 Novius, 141 
 Nurse, the, in ^Eschylus, 45 
 
 OATH, the, of Hippolytus, in 
 Obscurity, of jEschylus, 51 
 
 Ochlocracy, Athenian, 136, 206, 237 
 
 Odysseus' character in the Philoctetes, 
 85-7 ; in Cyclops, 155 ; in Epichar- 
 mus, 182 
 
 Odyssey, 204 
 
 CEchalia, 71 
 
 (Edipus Tyrannus (of Sophocles), 
 73 sq. 
 
 (Edipus at Co/onus, 79 sq. , 117 
 
 'Oii<t>a.\6s, of a poem, 52 
 
 Opportunity, Hymn to, 169 
 
 Orchestra, 13, 15 
 
 Oriental features in Theocritus, 195
 
 INDEX. 
 
 277 
 
 ORE 
 
 Orestes, in ^Eschylus, 44 sq. , in Iph. 
 
 Taur., 131-3 
 
 Orestes, of Euripides, 137 sq. 
 Orthodoxy in Aristophanes, 243 
 Ovid, 73, 85, 89, 108, 112, 121 
 
 , 85, 89, 133 
 
 .L Pcean, 75 
 
 HaiSayuyo's, in tragedy, 140 
 
 Palamedes, 56 
 
 Paley, Mr. F. A., 53, 58, 166, 197 
 
 Pan, 126 
 
 Pantomimes, cf. to satyric dramas, 7 
 
 Parabasis, 211 ; analysed, 212 
 
 Parasite (of Epicharmus), 183 
 
 Parodos, of Antigone, 61 ; of Eurip. 
 Supplices, 118 
 
 Parody, in Aristophanes, 243 
 
 Parrhasius, 85 
 
 Pathos, in Sophocles, 66 ; in Aristo- 
 phanes, 232 
 
 Patin, M. (Tragiques grecs), 16, 29, 
 30, 34, 37, 40, 69, 72, 81, 83, 85, 
 102, 103, 106, 108, 115, 119, 121, 
 
 123, 127, 131, 133, 134, 141, 151, 
 
 155 
 
 Pausanias, n, 25, 68, 124, 179 
 
 Peace, Ode to, 158 
 
 Peace of Aristophanes, 228 
 
 Peasant, a, in tragedy, 136 
 
 Peisander, 207, 231 
 
 Peisistratus, 9 
 
 Pentheus, 149-50 
 
 Pericles, 22, 56, 74, 200, 204, 206, 
 
 209 
 
 Pernice, 237 
 PeYouse, 108 
 
 Persce of ^Eschylus, 29 sq. ; cited, 31 
 Persius, 186-7, 264 
 Phasdrus, 108 
 Phallic processions, 176 
 Pheidias, 250 
 Pheidon of Argos, 68 
 Pherecrates, 205 sq. 
 Philemon (poet), 260, 264, 268 
 Philetas, 190, 193 
 Philippides, 258, 262 
 Pbiliscus, 29 
 
 Philocles (tragicus), 78, 89, 172 
 Philoc teles of Soph. , 85 sq. 
 Philonides, 206, 214, 222, 226, 235 
 Philoxenus, 173 
 Phlyakographia, 187 
 Phocion, 237 
 Phoenissce of Phrynichus, 29 ; of 
 
 Euripides, 139 sq. 
 
 PUT 
 
 Phormio (Admiral), 209 
 
 Phormis (or Phormos), 179, 205 
 
 Phormophori, 206 
 
 Phrontistery, 224 
 
 Phrygian slave, in the Orestes, 139 
 
 Phrynichus (comicus), 206, 230, 235 
 
 Phrynichus (tragicus), 10 sq. , 50, 57, 
 
 ISO 
 
 Pindar, 2, 9, 49, 88, 181, 191, 192 
 Platen, Aug. von, 130, 244 
 Plato (philosopher), 5, 37, 102, 125, 
 
 153, 163, 181, 183, 185, 186, 217, 
 
 225, 238, 246, 250, 255 
 Plato (comicus), 207, 235 
 Platonius, 216 
 
 Plautus, 181, 186, 206, 261, 264 
 Pleias, 174 
 
 nAdKiov (of Menander), 265 
 Plot, tragedies of, 45 ; in comedy, 210 
 Plumptre, Mr., 65, 96 
 Plutarch, 33, 100, 124, 134, 177, 186, 
 
 246 (on Aristophanes), 267 
 Plutus of Aristophanes, 239 sq. 
 Poetic, the, of Aristotle, 3, 4, 56, 73, 
 
 92, 106, 168, 175-6, 244 
 Political character of all Greek 
 
 comedy, 211 
 Polybus, 77 
 Polydorus, 120-1 
 Polygnotus, 19 
 Polyidos, 132 
 Polynices, 33, 80, 82, 140 
 Polyphradmon, 10 
 Polyxena, 120-1 
 Pompignan, Lefranc de, 39 
 Person, 121, 139, 143, 248 
 Posidippus (comicus), 262 
 Potter, 95, 105, 148, 167 
 Pradon, 112, 113, 121 
 Pratinas, 6, 7, 12, 153 ; fragment 
 
 cited, 6 
 
 Praxagora, 238 
 Praxithea, 158 
 PreVost, 167 
 Probulus, 55, 57, 231 
 Prodicus, 97 
 Prologue, the, in Euripides, 159 ; in 
 
 comedy, 260 
 Prometheus Vinctus of ^Eschylus, 
 
 34 sq. ; theories on, 37-8 
 Protagoras, 97, 163 
 Proteus, the, 48 
 Providence, in ^Eschylus, 50 ; in 
 
 Euripides, no 
 Ptolemy Philadelphus, 190, 192, 194, 
 
 254 ; court of, 190 
 nim'n) of Cratinus, 203, 225
 
 2 7 8 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 PYL 
 
 Py lades, 132, i3~-8 
 Pyrrho, 187 
 Pythagorean Order, 180 
 
 QUACKERY, 239 
 Quinet, Edgar, 37, 39 
 Quintilian, 108, 178 
 Quintus Calaber, 89 
 
 RACINE, 29, 54, 104, 112, 113, 
 115, 125, 133, 147, 148, 194, 227 
 Raffaelle, 67 
 Rameau, 113 
 
 Ravenna MS. of Aristoph. , 247 
 Reiske, 196 
 
 Repetitions, poetic, in Euripides, 129 { 
 Rhesus, the, 151 sq. 
 Rhinthon, 186 
 Ribbeck, 75, 220, 222 
 Richter, Julius, 228, 229, 248 
 Ristori, Mde., 109 
 Ritschl, 247 
 
 Rogers, Mr. 226, 228, 229, 233, 248 j 
 Romeo and "Juliet, 63 
 Rotrou, 64, 142, 147 
 Ruccellai, 133 
 Riickert, 197, 231 
 Rumpel, 197 
 
 SACCHINI, 82 
 Sallebray, 128 
 
 Samson Agonistes of Milton, 54, 8 1 
 Sannazaro, 197, 198 
 Sappho, 189 
 
 Satyric drama, 6-8, 153 sq., 184 
 Scene-painting, 19 
 Scenery, Greek stage, 18 
 Scepticism in Macedonia, 150 
 Schiller, 34, 140, 143, 148, 149, 152 
 Schlegel, Aug., 50, 53, 112, 127, 134, 
 
 J5 1 
 
 Schliemann, Dr., 44, 68 
 Schneider, J. , 247 
 Schneidewin, 94 
 Schb'll, 95, 102, 155 
 Schone, 151 
 
 Scott, Sir W., 141, 161, 237 
 Seduction, unknown in Greek comedy, 
 
 259 
 Seneca, 64, 73, 78, 108, 109, 112, 121, 
 
 124, 128, 141 
 Senneville, M., 39 
 
 Septem v. Theb.,yi, 141 ; cited, 32 sq. 
 Shakespeare, 5, 46, (and Sophocles) 
 
 TAS 
 
 63, 80, loi, 121, 124, 139, 142, 209 
 
 213 
 
 Shelley, 39, 54, 155 
 Sibillet, 147 
 Sicilian Pastoral, 187 
 Sicilians, the, 178 
 improvisation among, 188 
 Silenus, as satyric character, 8, 
 
 153 sq. 
 Silli, 187 
 
 Simonides (of Keos), 24, 49, 180, 192 
 Simultaneous speaking of members of 
 
 chorus, 43 
 
 Situation, tragedies of, 160 
 Sivry, Poinsinet de, 248 
 Smith, Edmund, 113 
 Socrates, 137, 139, 162, 206, 223-5 
 Solon, on Thespis, 9; 141, 209 
 Sophillus, 55 
 Sophocles, 7, 45, 51, 55 sq. , (portrait 
 
 statue) 57, (and Euripides) 93, 98, 
 
 99, 101, 102, 105, 107, in, 117, 
 
 121, 123, 132, 133, 135, 141, 144, 
 
 145, 151, 156, 159, 163, 165, 206 
 
 243. 245 
 
 Sophocles, the younger, 58, 172 
 
 Sophron, 184 sq. , 189 
 
 Sotades, 187 
 
 Spartan State, poetry, 177 ; dialect, 
 232 
 
 Statius, 64, 141 
 
 Statues, of Sophocles, 57 ; of Euri- 
 pides, 99 ; of Posidippus, 262 
 
 Stephanus (editor), 196 
 
 Stesichorus, i, 65, 129 
 
 Stichomuthia, dramatic character of, 
 119 
 
 Stobaeus, 90, 107, 156, 169, 205, 266 
 
 Strabo, 67 
 
 Strattis, 141 
 
 Strepsiades, 223 
 
 Suetonius, 69 
 
 Suidas, 97, 151, 165, 168, 169, 192, 
 201, 203, 218 
 
 Supplicesoi ^Eschylus, citations from, 
 27 sq. ; of Euripides, 117 sq. 
 
 Susarion, 177, 199 
 
 Swanwick, Miss (trans. Agamemnon), 
 
 44 
 
 Swinburne, Mr., 54, 158 
 Symmachus, 247 
 Syracuse, theatre at, 183 
 
 'yACITUS, 108 
 
 J. Talfourd's Ion, 127 
 Tasso, 141
 
 INDEX. 
 
 279 
 
 TEC 
 
 ZIN 
 
 Tecmessa, 82-4 
 
 Teiresias, 63, 75 
 
 Telecleides (comicus), 206 
 
 Tellen, 178 
 
 Tennyson, Lord, 80 
 
 Terence, 260, 261, 264, 26^,266 
 
 Tetralogies, tragic, 21 
 
 Teuffel, 226 
 
 Theagenes (of Megara), 177 
 
 Theatre, plan of, &c., 12 sq. 
 
 Themistius, 200 
 
 Themistocles, n 
 
 Theocritus, 136, 151, 154, 181, 184, 
 
 185. 189 sq. 
 Theodectes, 85, 89, 174 
 Theon, 196 
 Theophrastus 263 
 Sripia, of Crates, 205 
 Theoris, 57-8 
 Theseus, 118-9 
 Thesmophoriazusce of Aristophanes, 
 
 233 sq. 
 
 Thespis, 8, 150 
 Thiersch, 234 
 Thoas, 132 
 Thrasyllus, 119 
 Thucydtdes, 51, 92, 98 
 Timanthes, 85 
 Timocles (comicus), 256 
 Timon the Sillosjraph, 187 
 Tischendorf, 268 
 Tisias (rhetor), 182 
 Titans, chorus of, 34 
 Tolynus, 178 
 
 TrachinicB of Sophocles, 70 sq. 
 Tragedy, rise of, i sq. ; definition of, 4 
 Travesties, 182 
 Triclinicis, 196 
 Trilogies, tragic, 40 
 Troades of Euripides, 127 sq. 
 Trygaeus, 228 
 Tynnichus, 24 
 Tyro of Sophocles, 92 
 Tyrrell, M-. R. Y. (ed. Eurip. 
 
 Bacch.), 151 
 Tzetzes, 216 
 
 T T HLAND, 130 
 
 VALCKENAER, 113, 143, 151, 
 1 66 
 Varro (Reatinus), 39, 85 
 
 Vater, 149, 153 
 
 Vergil, 64, 69, 92, 106, 112, 115, 121, 
 
 128, 195, 197 
 
 VeTall, Mr. A. W., 32, 127 
 Villemain, 39, 44, 81, 95 
 Vitz (on Iph. Aul.), 149 
 Vocabulary of Sophocles, 59, 90 ; of 
 
 Euripides, 156 
 Voltaire, 38, 39, 69, 78, 103, 108, 112, 
 
 133 
 Voss, 197, 248 
 
 WACHSMUTH, C, 187 
 Warton, 196 
 
 Wasps of Aristophanes, 226 sq. 
 Watchmen, 40, 61 
 Weber, C. M. (composer), 67 
 Weil, H., 53, 149, 151, 156, 166 
 Welcker, 37, 90, 96, 174, 184, 226, 
 
 237 
 
 Wellauer, 53 
 West, Richard, 121, 148 
 Westphal, on ^Eschylus' choruses, 
 
 51-2 
 
 Whitehead, W., 127 
 Whitelaw (trans, of Sophocles), 96 
 Whitman, Walt, 185 
 Wieland, 126, 129 
 Wilamowitz, U. von M. , cited, 2 sq. ; 
 
 66, 101, 124, 135, 268 
 Wolf, F. A., 226 
 Woodhull (trans. Eurip.), 167 
 Wordsworth, Bishop, 197 
 Wrangling, in Sophocles plays, 66, 
 
 84 
 
 Wunder (ed. Sophocles), 94 
 Wustemann (ed. Theocritus), 196 
 
 VENARCHUS, 185 
 
 ./V Xenokles, 127 
 
 Xenophanes, 181, 187 
 
 Xe 'Ophon, cited, 2 ; 186, 208 
 
 Xerxes, 2030 
 
 Xuthus, 125-6 
 
 >, as a tyrant, 38 ; his Provi- 
 /-^ dence, 74 
 Ziegler, 196, 198 
 Zingarelli, 65 
 
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