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LIBRARY OF USEFUL KNOWLEDGE.
HISTORY
OF TIIE
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE,
TO THE
PERIOD OF ISOCRATES.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN MS. OF
K/ 0. MULLER,
PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GOTTINGEN,
By GEORGE CORNWALL LEWIS, Esq.
NEW EDITION, CORRECTED.
PUBLISHED UNDER THE SUPERINTENDENCE OF
THE SOCIETY FOR THE DIFFUSION OF USEFUL KNOWLEDGE.
LONDON:— ROBERT BALDWIN,
47, PATERNOSTER ROW.
1847.
3057
A/I
LONDON :
GEORGE WOODFALL AND SON,
ANGEL COUKT, SKINNER STREET.
THE TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
The following History of Greek Literature has been com-
posed by Professor K. O. Miiller of Gottingen, at the suggestion
of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and for its
exclusive use. The work has been written in German, and has
been translated under the superintendence of the Society , but the
German text has never been published, so that the present trans-
x lation appears as an original work.
Before the publication of the present work, no history of
Greek Literature had been published in the English language.
The Society thought that, since the Greek Literature is the
source from which the literature of the civilized world almost
exclusively derives its origin ; and since it still contains the
finest productions of the human mind in poetry, history, oratory,
and philosophy ; a history of Greek Literature would be properly
introduced into the series of works published under their super-
intendence. The present work is intended to be within the
compass of the general reader ; but at the same time to be useful
to scholars, and particularly to persons commencing or pursuing
the study of the Greek authors. Agreeably with this view, the
iv THE TRANSLATOR S PREFACE.
chief original authorities for the statements in the text are men-
tioned in the notes : but few references have been given to the
works of modern critics, either foreign or native.
The translation has been executed in correspondence with the
author, who has read and approved of the larger part of it.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Introduction — Subject and Purposes of the Work ••••«••• 1
FIRST PERIOD OF GREEK LITERATURE.
CHAPTER I.
THE RACES AND LANGUAGE OF THE GREEKS.
§ ] . General account of the languages of the Indo-Teutonic family ... 3
§ 2. Origin and formation of the Indo-Teutonic languages — multiplicity of
their grammatical forms 4
§ 3. Characteristics of the Greek language, as compared with the other lan-
guages of the Indo-Teutonic family 6
§ 4. Variety of forms, inflexions, and dialects in the Greek language ... 7
§ 5. The tribes of Greece, and their several dialects — characteristics of each
dialect 8
CHAPTER II.
"V THE RELIGION OP THE GREEKS.
§ 1 . The earliest form of the Greek religion not portrayed in the Homeric
<^ poems U
§ 2. The Olympic deities, as described by Homer 12
§ 3. Earlier form of worship in Greece directed to the outward objects of
Nature ib.
§ 4, Character and attributes of the several Greek deities, as personifications
of the powers and objects of Nature 13
§ 5. Subsequent modification of these ideas, as displayed in the Homeric
description of the same deities 15
CHAPTER III.
EARLIEST POPULAR SONGS.
§ 1. First efforts of Greek poetry. Plaintive songs of husbandmen ... 16
§ 2. Description of several of these songs, viz. the Linus 17
§ 3. The Ialemus, the Scephrus, the Lityerses, the Bormus, the Maneros, and
the laments for Hylas and Adonis 18
§ 4. The Paean, its origin and character 19
VI CONTENTS.
PAGE
§ 5. The Threnos, or lament for the dead, and the Hymenaos, or bridal song . 20
§ 6. Origin and character of the chorus 22
§ 7. Ancient poets who composed sacred hymns, divided into three classes, viz.
those connected, i. With the worship of Apollo ; ii. With the worship of
Demeter and Dionysus ; and iii. With the Phrygian worship of the
mother of the Gods, of the Corybantes, &c 24
§ 8. Explanation of the Thracian origin of several of the early Greek poets . 25
§ 9. Influence of the early Thracian or Pierian poets on the epic poetry of
Homer 28
CHAPTER IV.
ORIGIN OF THE EPIC POETRY.
§ 1. Social position of the minstrels or poets in the heroic age .... 29
§ 2. Epic poems sung at the feasts of princes and nobles, and at public
festivals * ... 30
§ 3. Manner of reciting epic poems, explanation of rhapsodists and rhapso-
dising 32
§ 4. Metrical form, and poetical character of the epic poetry ..... 35
§ 5. Perpetuation of the early epic poems by memory and not by writing . 37
§ 6. Subjects and extent of the ante-Homeric epic poetry 39
CHAPTER V.
HOMER.
§ 1. Opinions on the birth-place and country of Homer 41
§ 2. Homer probably a Smyrnaean : early history of Smyrna 42
§ 3. Union of ^Eolian and Ionian characteristics in Homer 44
§ 4. Novelty of Homer's choice of subjects for his two poems 47
§ 5. Subject of the Iliad : the anger of Achilles 48
§ 6. Enlargement of the subject by introducing the events of the entire war . 50
§ 7. And by dwelling on the exploits of the Grecian heroes 52
§ 8. Change of tone in the Iliad in its progress 53
§ 9. The Catalogue of Ships . . . 54
§ 10. The later books, and the conclusion of the Iliad 56
§ 11. Subject of the Odyssey : the return of Ulysses 57
§ 12. Interpolations in the Odyssey 60
§ 13. The Odyssey posterior to the Iliad ; but both poems composed by the
same person ib.
§ 14. Preservation of the Homeric poems by rhapsodists, and manner of their
recitation 62
CHAPTER VI.
THE CYCLIC POETS.
§ 1. General character of the Cyclic poems 64
§ 2. The Destruction of Troy and ^Sthiopis of Arctinus of Miletus ... 65
CONTENTS. vu
I'AQE
§ 3. The little Iliad of Lesches 66
§ 4. The Cypria of Stasinus 68
§ 5. The Nostoi of Agiasof Troezen 69
§ 6. The Telegonia of Eugammon of Cyrene 70
§ 7. Poems on the War against Thebes ib.
CHAPTER VII.
THE HOMERIC HYMNS.
§ 1. General character of the Homeric Hymns, or Procemia 72
§ 2. Occasions on which they were sung: Poets by whom, and times at which,
they were composed 73
§ 3. Hymn to the Delian Apollo 74
§ 4. Hymn to the Pythian Apollo 75
§ 5. Hymn to Hermes ib.
§ 6. Hymn to Aphrodite • 76
§ 7. Hymn to Demeter ib.
CHAPTER VIII.
* HESIOD.
§ 1. Circumstances of Hesiod's Life, and general character of his Poetry . . 77
§ 2. The Works and Days, the Poem on Divination, and the Lessons of Chiron 82
§ 3. The Theogony 87
§ 4. The Great Eoiae, the Catalogues of Women, the Melampodia, the JEgi-
mius 95
§ 5. The Marriage of Ceyx, the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, the
Descent of Theseus and Pirithous into Hell, the Shield of Hercules. . 98
CHAPTER IX.
OTHER EPIC POETS.
§ I. General character of other Epic Poets 100
§ 2. Cinaethon of Lacedaemon, Eumelus of Corinth, Asius of Samos, Chereias
of Orchumenus «« ib.
§ 3. Epic Poems on Hercules ; the Taking of CSchalia; the Heraclea of Pei
sander of Rhodes 102
CHAPTER X.
THE ELEGY AND THE EPIGRAM.
§ 1. Exclusive prevalence of Epic Poetry, in connexion with the monarchical
period ; influence of the change in the forms of Government upon
Poetry . . 104
Vju CONTENTS.
PAGE
§ 2. Elegeion, its meaning ; origiD of Elegos ; plaintive songs of Asia Minor,
accompanied by the flute ; mode of Recitation of the Elegy . . .105
§ 3. Metre of the Elegy 106
§ 4. Political and military tendency of the Elegy as composed by Callinus ;
the circumstances of his time ib.
§ 5. Tyrtaeus, his Life ; occasion and subject of his Elegy of Eunomia . .110
§ 6. Character and mode of recitation of the Elegies of Tyrtaeus . . . .112
§ 7. Elegies of Archilochus, their reference to Banquets ; mixture of convivial
jollity (Asius) ib.
§ 8. Plaintive Elegies of Archilochus 114
§ 9. Mimnermus; his Elegies; the expression of the impaired strength of the
Ionic nation . . ib.
§10. Luxury, a consolation in this state ; the Nanno of Mimnermus . . .116
§ 11. Solon's character ; his Elegy of Salamis 117
§ 12. Elegies before and after Solon's Legislation; the expression of his poli-
tical feeling ; mixture of Gnomic Passages (Phocylides) . . . .118
§ 13. Elegies of Theognis ; their original character . ....... 120
§ 14. Their origin in the political Revolutions of Megara ib.
§ 15. Their personal reference to the Friends of Theognis 122
§ 16. Elegies of Xenophanes ; their philosophical tendency 124
§ 17. Elegies of Simonides on the Victories of the Persian War; tender and
pathetic spirit of his Poetry ; general yiew of the course of Elegiac
Poetry 125
§ 18. Epigrams in elegiac form ; their Object and Character; Simonides, as a
Composer of Epigrams 126
CHAPTER XL
IAMBIC POETRY.
§ 1. Striking contrast of the Iambic and other contemporaneous Poetry . . 128
§ 2. Poetry in reference to the bad and the vulgar 129
§ 3. Different treatment of it in Homer and Hesiod 130
§ 4. Homeric Comic Poems, Margites, &c 131
§ 5. Scurrilous songs at meals, at the worship of Demeter ; the Festival of
Demeter of Paros, the cradle of the Iambic poetry of Archilochus . 132
§ 6. Date and Public Life of Archilochus 133
§ 7. His Private Life ; subject of his Iambics e 134
§ 8. Metrical form of his iambic and trochaic verses, and different application
of the two asynartetes ; epodes. 135
§ 9. Inventions and innovations in the musical recitation 138
§ 10. Innovations in Language 139
§ 11. Simonides of Amorgus ; his Satirical Poem against Women .... 140
§ 12. Solon's iambics and trochaics ib.
§ 13. Iambic Poems of Hipponax; invention of choliambics ; Ananias . . 141
§ 14. The Fable ; its application among the Greeks, especially in Iambic
poetry 143
§ 15. Kinds of the Fable, named after different races and cities .... 144
$ 16. y^sop, his Life, and the Character of his Fables 145
CONTENTS IX
PAOB
§ 17. Parody, burlesques in an epic form, by Hipponax 146
§ 18. Batrachomyomachia 147
CHAPTER XII.
PROGRESS OF THE GREEK MUSIC.
§ 1. Transition from the Epos, through the Elegy and Iambus, to Lyric
Poetry; connexion of Lyric Poetry with Music 148
§ 2. Founders of Greek Music ; Terpander, his descent and date .... 149
§ 3. Terpander's invention of the seven-stringed Cithara 151
§ 4. Musical scales and styles 152
§ 5. Nomes of Terpander for singing to the Cithara; their rhythmical form. 154
§ 6. Olympus, descended from an ancient Phrygian family of flute-players . 156
§ 7. His influence upon the development of the music of the flute and rhythm
among the Greeks ib.
§ 8. His influence confined to music 158
§ 9. Thaletas, his age 159
§ 10. His connexion with ancient Cretan worships. Psans and hyporchemes
of Thaletas 160
§ 11. Musicians of the succeeding period — Clonas, Hierax, Xenodamus, Xeno-
critus, Polymnestus, Sacadas 161
§ 12. State of Greek Music at this period . .. 163
CHAPTER XIII.
THE iEOLIC SCHOOL OF LYRIC POETRY.
§ 1. Difference between the Lyric Poetry of the vEolians, and the Choral
Lyric Poetry of the Dorians 164
§ 2. Life and Political Acts of Alcseus 166
§ 3. Their connexion with his Poetry 167
§ 4. The other subjects of his Poems 168
§ 5. Their metrical form 170
§ 6. Life and moral character of Sappho 172
§ 7. Her Erotic Poetry to Phaon 174
§ 8. Poems of Sappho to women 176
§ 9. Hymenseals of Sappho 178
§10. Followers of Sappho, D.imophila, Erinna 179
§ 11. Life of Anacreon 180
§ 12. His Poems to the youths at the Court of Polycrates 182
§ 13. His Love-songs to Hetaerse .- 183
§ 14. Character of his versification 185
§ 15. Comparison of the later Anacreontics 186
§ 16. Scolia ; occasions on which they were sung, and their subjects . . . 187
§ 17. Scolia of Hybrias and Callistratus 189
CHAPTER XIV.
CHORAL LYRIC POETRY.
$ I. Connexion of lyric poetry with choral songs gradual rise of rpgular forms
from this connexion . . 1 go
X CONTENTS.
PAGE
First stage. — § 2. Alcman ; his origin and date ; mode of recitation and form
of his choral songs 193
§ 3. Their poetical character ....196
§ 4. Stesichorus; hereditary transmission of his poetical taste; his reforma-
tion of the chorus 197
S 5. Subjects and character of his poetry 199
§ 6. Erotic and bucolic poetry of Stesichorus 202
§ 7. Arion. The dithyramb raised to a regular choral song 203
Second stage. — § 8. Life of Ibycus ; his imitation of Stesichorus .... 205
§ 9. Erotic tendency of his poetry 206
§ 10. Life of Simonides 207
§11. Variety and ingenuity of his poetical powers. Comparison of his Epi-
nikia with those of Pindar 209
§ 12. Characteristics of his style 212
§ 13. Lyric poetry of Bacchylides, imitated from that of Simonides . . . 213
§ 14. Parties among the lyric poets ; rivalry of Lasus, Timocreon, and Pindar
with Simonides 214
CHAPTER XV.
PINDAR.
§ 1. Pindar's descent; his early training in poetry and music . . , . .216
§ 2. Exercise of his art; his independent position with respect to the Greek
princes and republics 218
§ 3. Kinds of poetry cultivated by him 220
§ 4. His Epinikia ; their origin and objects 222
§ 5. Their two main elements ; general remarks, and mythical narrations . 224
§ 6. Connexion of these two elements; peculiarities of the structure of Pindar's
odes 226
§ 7. Variety of tone in his odes, according to the different musical styles . 227
CHAPTER XVI.
THEOLOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL POETRY.
§ 1 . Moral improvement of Greek poetry after Homer especially evident in
the notions as to the state of man after death. ; 229
§ 2. Influence of the mysteries and of the Orphic doctrines on these notions . 230
§ 3. First traces of Orphic ideas in Hesiod and other epic poets .... 232
§ 4. Sacerdotal enthusiasts in the age of the Seven Sages; Epimenides,
Abaris, Aristeas, and Pherecydes 233
§ 5. An Orphic literature arises after the destruction of the Pythagorean
league 235
§ 6. Subjects of the Orphic poetry ; at first cosmogonic 235
§ 7. afterwards prophetic, in reference to Dionysus 237
CHAPTER XVII.
THE EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHERS.
§ 1. Opposition of philosophy and poetry among the Greeks; causes of the
introduction of prose writings 238
CONTENTS. XI
PAGE
§ 2. The Ionians give the main impulse ; tendency of philosophical speculation
among the Ionians 240
§ 3. Retrospect of the theological speculations of Pherecydes ih.
§ 4. Thales ; he combines practical talents with bold ideas concerning the
nature of things 241
& 5. Anaximander, a writer and inquirer on the nature of things ...» 242
§ 6 Anaximenes pursues the physical inquiries of his predecessors . • . 243
§ 7. Heraclitus; profound character of his natural philosophy 244
§ 8. Changes introduced by Anaxagoras ; new direction of the physical specu-
lations of the Ionians 246
§ 9. Diogenes continues the early doctrine. Archelaus, an Anaxagorean,
carries the Ionic philosophy to Athens 248
§ 10. Doctrines of the Eleatics, founded by Xenophanes; their enthusiastic
character is expressed in a poetic form 249
§ 11. Parmenides gives a logical form to the doctrines of Xenophanes ; plan of
his poem 251
§ 12. Further development of the Eleatic doctrine by Melissus and Zeno . . 252
§ 13. Empedocles, akin to Anaxagoras and the Eleatics, but conceives lofty
ideas of his own 253
§ 14. Italic school ; receives its impulse from an Ionian, which is modified by
the Doric character of the inhabitants. Coincidence of its practical
tendency with its philosophical principle • 255
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE EARLY GREEK HISTORIANS.
§ 1. High antiquity of history in Asia; causes of its comparative lateness
among the Greeks 258
§ 2. Origin of history among the Greeks. The Ionians, particularly the Mile-
sians, took the lead 260
§ 3. Mythological historians ; Cadmus, Acusilaus 261
§ 4. Extensive geographical knowledge of Hecata?us ; his freer treatment of
native traditions. . ib.
§ 5. Pherecydes ; his genealogical arrangement of traditions and history . 263
§ 6. Charon ; his chronicles of general and special history ib.
§ 7. Hellanicus; a learned inquirer into mythical and true history. Beginning
of chronological researches 264
§ 8. Xanthus, an acute observer. Dionysius of Miletus, the historian of the
Persian wars ib.
§ 9. General remarks on the composition and style of the logographers . . 265
CHAPTER XIX
HERODOTUS.
§ 1 . Events of the life of Herodotus 266
§ 2. His travels 267
§ 3. Gradual formation of his work 268
6 4. Its plan 269
XII CONTENTS.
PAGE
§ 5. Its leading ideas 271
§ 6. Defects and excellencies of his historical researches 272
§ 7. Style of his narrative ; character of his language 273
SECOND PERIOD OF GREEK LITERATURE.
CHAPTER XX.
LITERARY PREDOMINANCE OF ATHENS.
§ 1. Early formation of a national literature in Greece 275
§ 2. Athens subsequently takes the lead in literature and art. Her fitness for
this purpose ib.
§ 3. Concurrence of the political circumstances of Athens to the same end.
Solon. The Pisistratids 277
§ 4. Great increase in the power of Athens after the Persian war . . . .279
§ 5. Administration and policy of Pericles, particularly with respect to art and
literature 280
§ 6. Seeds of degeneracy in the Athenian Commonwealth at its most flourish-
ing period 282
§ 7. Causes and modes of the degeneracy 283
§ 8. Literature and art were not affected by the causes of moral degeneracy . 285
CHAPTER XXI.
ORIGIN OF THE GREEK DRAMA.
§ 1. Causes of dramatic poetry in Greece 285
§ 2. The invention of dramatic poetry peculiar to Greece 287
§ 3. Origin of the Greek drama from the worship of Bacchus ib.
§ 4. Earliest, or Doric form of tragedy, a choral or dithyrambic song in the
worship of Bacchus 289
§ 5. Connexion of the early tragedy with a chorus of satyrs ..... 290
§ 6. Improvement of tragedy at Athens by Thespis . - . - 292
§ 7. ByPhrynichus 293
§ 8. And by Choerilus. Cultivation of the satyric drama by the latter . . . 294
§ 9. The satyric drama completely separated from tragedy by Pratinas . . 295
CHAPTER XXII.
FORM AND CHARACTER OF THE GREEK TRAGEDY.
§ 1. Ideal character of the Greek tragedy ; splendid costume of the actors . 296
§ 2. Cothurnus; masks 297
§ 3. Structure of the theatre . 298
§ 4. Arrangement of the orchestra in connexion with the form and position of
the chorus , 299
§ 5. -Form of the stage, and its meaning in tragedy ......... 300
§ 6. Meaning of the entrances of the stage 302
§ 7. The actors ; limitation of their number 303
CONTENTS. Mil
PAGE
§ 8. Meaning of the protagonist, deuteragonist, tritagonist, 305
§ 9. The changes of the scene inconsiderable ; ancient tragedy not being a
picture of outward acts 307
§ 10 Eccyclema 309
§ 11. Composition of the drama from various parts ; songs of the entire chorus 310
§ 12. Division of a tragedy by the choral songs 312
§ 13. Songs of single persons, of the chorus, and of the actors ib.
§ 14. Parts of the drama intermediate between song and speech .... 315
§ 15. Speech of the actors; arrangement of the dialogue and its metrical
form . .........316
CHAPTER XXIII.
MSCBYLVS.
§ 1. Life of ^schylus 317
§ 2. Number of his tragedies, and their distribution into trilogies. . . . 319
§ 3. Outline of his tragedies; the Persians 320
§ 4. The Phineus and the Glaucus Pontius 321
§ 5. The Minsean women 322
§ 6. The Seven against Thebes 323
§ 7. The Eleusiniaus 324
§ 8. The Suppliants ; the Egyptians 325
§ 9. The Prometheus bound 327
§ 10. The Prometheus unbound 329
§11. The Agamemnon 331
§ 12. The Choephoroe 332
§ 13. The Eumenides, and the Proteus 333
§ 14. General characteristics of the poetry of ./Eschylus 335
§ 15. His latter years and death • . . . . 336
CHAPTER XXIV.
SOPHOCLES.
§ 1. Condition in which tragic poetry came into the hands of Sophocles. His
first appearance 337
§ 2. Subsequent events of his life ; his devotion to the drama 338
§ 3. Epochs in the poetry of Sophocles 340
§ 4. Thorough change in the form of tragedy 341
§ 5. Outline of his plays ; the Antigone 342
§ 6. The Electra 344
§ 7. The Trachinian Women 346
§ 8. King CEdipus ib.
§ 9. The Ajax 348
§ 10. The Philoctetes 350
§ 11,12. The (Edipus at Colonus, in connexion with the character and conduct
of Sophocles in his latter years 351
§ 13. The style of Sophocles 355
XIV CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXV.
EURIPIDES.
PAOK
§ 1 . Difference between Sophocles and Euripides. The latter essentially spe-
culative. Tragedy, a subject ill-suited for his genius 357
6 2. Intrusion of tragedy into the interests of the private 359
§ 3. And public life of the time 360
§ 4. Alterations in the plan of tragedy introduced by Euripides. Prologue . 362
§ 5. And Deus ex machina 363
§ 6. Comparative insignificance of the chorus. Prevalence of monodies . . 364
§ 7. Style of Euripides 366
§ 8. Outline of his plays : the Alcestis ib.
\ 9. The Medea 367
§ 10. The Hippolytus 368
§ 11. The Hecuba 369
\ 12. Epochs in the mode of treating his subject : the Heracleidse. . . . 370
§ 13. The Suppliants 371
§ 14. The Ion ib.
§ 15. The raging Heracles 372
§ 16. The Andromache 373
§ 17. The Trojan Women ib.
\ 18. The Electra 374
\ 19. The Helena 375
§ 20. The Iphigenia at Tauri 376
§ 21. The Orestes 377
§ 22. The Phoenician Women ib.
\ 23. The Bacchanalians 378
§ 24. The Iphigenia at Aulis 379
§ 25. Lost pieces : the Cyclops 380
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE OTHER TRAGIC POETS.
§ 1. Inferiority of the other tragic poets 381
§ 2. Contemporaries of Sophocles and Euripides : Neophron, Ion, Aristarchus,
Achaeus, Carcinus, Xenocles 382
& 3. Tragedians somewhat more recent : Agathon ; the anonymous son of
Cleomachus. Tragedy grows effeminate 383
J 4. Men of education employ tragedy as a vehicle of their opinions on the
social relations of the age 384
§ 5. The families of the great tragedians : the JSschyleans, Sophocleans, and
the younger Euripides 385
§ 6. Influence of other branches of literature ; tragedy is treated by Chaeremon
in the spirit of lax and effeminate lyric poetry 386
§ 7. Tragedy is subordinated to rhetoric in the dramas of Theodectes. . • 387
CHAPTER XXVII.
§ 1. The comic element in Greek poetry due to the worship of Bacchus . .391
§ 2. Also connected with the Comus at the lesser Dionysia : Phallic Songs . 393
§ 3. Beginnings of dramatic comedy at Megara, Susarion, Chionides, &c. . 395
CONTENTS. XV
PAGK
§ 4. The perfectors of the old Attic comedy 397
§ 5. The structure of comedy. What it has in common with tragedy . . . 398
§ 6. Peculiar arrangement of the chorus ; Parabasis 400
§ 7. Dances, metres, and style 402
CHAPTER XXVIII.
§ 1. Events of the life of Aristophanes ; the mode of his first appearance . . 405
§ 2. His dramas ; the Dcetaleis ; the Babylonians 406
§ 3. The Acharnians analyzed 408
I 4. The Knights 412
§ 5. The Clouds 415
§ 6. The Wasps 419
§ 7. The Peace 420
$ 8. The Birds 420
§ 9. The Lysistrata, Thesmophoriazuscn 423
§ 10. The Frogs 425
§11. The Ecclesiazusa ; the second Plutus. Transition to the middle comedy • 426
CHAPTER XXIX.
§ 1. Characteristics of Cratinus 428
§ 2. Eupolis 430
§ 3. Peculiar tendencies of Crates; his connexion with Sicilian comedy . . 431
§ 4. Sicilian comedy originates in the Doric farces of Megara .... 432
§ 5. Events in the life of Epicharmus ; general tendency and nature of his
comedy 433
§ 6. The middle Attic comedy : poets of this class akin to those of the Sicilian
comedy in many of their pieces 436
§ 7. Poets of the new comedy the immediate successors of those of the middle
comedy. How the new comedy becomes naturalized at Rome . . 438
§ 8. Public morality at Athens at the time of the new comedy .... 440
§ 9. Character of the new comedy in connexion therewith 443
CHAPTER XXX.
§ 1. The Dithyramb becomes the chief form of Athenian lyric poetry. Lasus
of Hermione 446
§ 2. New style of the Dithyramb introduced by Melanippides, Philoxenus,
Cinesias, Phrynis, Timotheus, Polyeidus . 447
§ 3. Mode of producing the new Dithyramb : its contents and character. . 450
§ 4. Reflective lyric poetry 452
§ 5. Social and political elegies. The Lyde of Antimachus essentially different
from these 452
§ 6. Epic poetry, Panyasis, Chcerilus, Antimachus ........ 454
CHAPTER XXXI.
§ 1 . Importance of prose at this period 456
§ 2. Oratory at Athens rendered necessary by the democratical form of govern-
ment 456
§ 3. Themistocles ; Pericles: power of their oratory 458
§ 4. Characteristics of their oratory in relation to their opinions and modes of
thought 459
§ 5. Form and style of their speeches 460
XVI CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXXII.
PAGE
§ 1 . Profession of the Sophists ; essential elements of their doctrines. The
principle of Protagoras 462
§ 2. Opinions of Gorgias. Pernicious effects of his doctrines, especially as they
were carried out by his disciples 463
§ 3. Important services of the Sophists in forming a prose style : different ten-
dencies of the Sicilian and other Sophists in this respect .... 465
§ 4. The rhetoric of Gorgias 466
§ 5. His forms of expression 467
CHAPTER XXXIII.
§ 1. Antiphon's career and employments 469
§ 2. His school exercises, the Tetralogies 471
§ 3. His speeches before the courts ; character of his oratory 472
§ 4, 5. More particular examination of his style 474
§ 6. Andocides ; his life and character . 477
CHAPTER XXXIV.
§ 1. The life of Thucydides,: his training that of the age of Pericles . . . 479
§ 2. His new method of teaching history 481
§ 3. The consequent distribution and arrangement of his materials, as well in
his whole work as . 482
§ 4. In the Introduction 483
§ 5. His mode of treating these materials ; his research and criticism . . 485
§ 6. Accuracy and, 486
§ 7. Intellectual character of his history 487
§ 8, 9. The speeches considered as the soul of his history 488
§ 10,11. His mode of expression and the structure of his sentences . . .491
CHAPTER XXXV.
§ 1. Events which followed the Peloponnesian War. The adventures of
Lysias. Leading epochs of his life 495
§ 2. The earliest sophistical rhetoric of Lysias 497
§ 3. The style of this rhetoric preserved in his later panegyrical speeches . 499
§ 4. Change in the oratory of Lysias produced hy his own impulses and by
his employment as a writer of speeches for private individuals . . . 500
§ 5. Analysis of his speech against Agoratas 501
§ 6. General view of his extant orations 503
CHAPTER XXXVI.
§ 1. Early training of I socrates ; but slightly influenced by Socrates . . . 504
§ 2. School of Isocrates ; its great repute ; his attempts to influence the poli-
tics of the day without thoroughly understanding them 503
§ 3. The form of a speech the principal matter in his judgment .... 507
§ 4. New development which he gave to prose composition 508
§ 5. His structure of periods 509
§ 6. Smoothness and evenness of his style 511
§ 7. He prefers the panegyrical oratory to the forensic 512
HISTORY
OF THE
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE.
INTRODUCTION.
In undertaking to write a history of Grecian literature, it is not our
intention to enumerate the names of those many hundred authors whose
works, accumulated in the Alexandrine Library, are reported, after
passing through many other perils, to have finally been burnt by the
Khalif Omar — an event from which the cause of civilisation has not,
perhaps, suffered so much as many have thought; inasmuch as the
inheritance of so vast a collection of writings from antiquity would, by
engrossing all the leisure and attention of the moderns, have diminished
tljeir zeal and their opportunities for original productions. Nor will it
be necessary to carry our younger readers (for whose use this work is
chiefly designed) into the controversies of the philosophical schools, the
theories of grammarians and critics, or the successive hypotheses of
natural philosophy among the Greeks — in short, into those departments
of literature which are the province of the learned by profession, and
whose influence is confined to them alone. Our object is to consider
Grecian literature as a main constituent of the character of the Grecian
people, and to show how those illustrious compositions, which we still
justly admire as the classical writings of the Greeks, naturally sprung
from the taste and genius of the Greek races, and the constitution of
civil and domestic society as established among them. For this pur-
pose our inquiries may be divided into three principal heads: — 1. The
development of* Grecian poetry and prose before the rise of the Athenian
literature; 2. 'I he flourishing era of poetry and eloquence at Athens;
and, 3. The history of Greek literature in the long period after Alex-
ander; which last, although it produced a much larger number cf
writings than the former periods, need not, consistently with the object
of the present work, be treated at great length, as literature had in this
age fallen into the hands of the learned few, and had lost its living
influence on the general mass of the community.
In attempting to trace the gradual development of the literature of
B
2 HISTORY OF THE
ancient Greece from its earliest origin, it would be easy to make a
beginning, by treating of the extant works of Grecian writers in their
chronological order. We might then commence at once with Homer
and Hesiod: but if we were to adopt this course, we should, like an epic
poet, place our beginning in the middle of the history ; for, like the
Pallas of Grecian poetry, who sprang full-armed from the head of
Jupiter, the literature of Greece wears the perfection of beauty in those
works which Herodotus and Aristotle, and all critical and trust-worthy
inquirers among the Greeks, recognised as being the most ancient that
had descended to their times. Although both in the Iliad and Odyssey
we can clearly discern traces of the infancy of the nation to which they
belong, and although a spirit of simplicity pervades them, peculiar to
the childhood of the human race, yet the class of poetry under which
they fall, appears in them at its full maturity ; all the laws which
reflection and experience can suggest for the epic form are observed
with the most refined taste ; all the means are employed by which
the general effect can be heightened ; no where does the poetry bear
the character of a first essay or an unsuccessful attempt at some higher
poetical flight ; indeed, as no subsequent poem, either of ancient or
modern times, has so completely caught the genuine epic tone, there
seems good reason to doubt whether any future poet will again be able
to strike the same chord. It seems, however, manifest, that there
must have been many attempts and experiments before epic poetry
could reach this elevation ; and it was, doubtless, the perfection of the
Iliad and Odyssey, to which these prior essays bad led, that buried
the productions of former bards in oblivion. Hence the first dawn
of Grecian literature is without any perfect memorial ; but we must be
content to remain in ignorance of the connexion of literature with
the character of the Greek races at the outset of their national existence,
if we renounced all attempt at forming a conception of the times anterior
to the Homeric poems. In order, therefore, to throw some light on this
obscure period, we shall first consider those creations of the human
intellect which in general are prior to poetry, and which naturally
precede poetical composition, as poetry in its turn is followed by regular
composition in prose. These are language and religion. When these
two important subjects have been examined, we shall proceed, by means
of allusions in the Homeric poems themselves, and the most credible
testimonies of later times, to inquire into the progress and character of
the Greek poetry before the time of Homer.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE.
CHAPTER I.
§ 1 . General account of the languages of the Indo-Teutonic family. — § 2. Origin
and formation of the Indo-Teutonic languages — multiplicity of their grammatical
forms § 3. Characteristics of the Greek language, as compared with the other
languages of the Indo-Teutonic family. — § 4. Variety of forms, inflexions, and
dialects in the Greek language. — § 5. The tribes of Greece, and their several
dialects — characteristics of each dialect.
§ 1. Language, the earliest product of the human mind, and the
origin of all other intellectual energies, is at the same time the clearest
evidence of the descent of a nation and of its affinity with other races.
Hence the comparison of languages enables us to judge of the history
of nations at periods to which no other kind of memorial, no tradition
or record, can ascend. In modern times, this subject has been studied
with more comprehensive views and more systematic methods than
formerly : and from these researches it appears that a large part of the
nations of the ancient world formed a family, whose languages
(besides a large number of radical words, to which we need not here
particularly advert) had on the whole the same grammatical structure
and the same forms of derivation and inflexion. The nations between
which this affinity subsisted are — the Indians, whose language, m its
earliest and purest form, is preserved in the Sanscrit ; the Persians,
whose primitive language, the Zend, is closely allied with the Sanscrit;
the Armenians and Phrygians, kindred races, of whose language the
modern Armenian is a very mutilated remnant, though a few ancient
features preserved in it still show its original resemblance ; the Greek
nation, of which the Latin people is a branch; the Sclavonian races.
who, notwithstanding their intellectual inferiority, appear from their
language to be nearly allied with the Persians and other cognate
nations; the Lettic tribes, among which the Lithuanian has preserved
the fundamental forms of this class of languages with remarkable
fidelity ; the Teutonic, and, lastly, the Celtic races, whose language (so
far as we can judge from the very degenerate remains of it nowe\tant),
though deviating widely in some respects from the general character
perceptible in the other languages, yet unquestionably belongs to the
same family. It is remarkable that this family of languages, which,
possess the highest perfection of grammatical structure, also includes a
larger number of nations, and has spread over a wider extent of surface,
than any other: the Semitic family (to which the Hebrew, Syrian,
Phoenician, Arabian, and other languages belong), though in many
respects it can compete with the Indo-Gerinanic, is inferior to it in the
perfection of its structure and its capacity for literary development; in
respect of its diffusion likewise it approaches the Indian class of lan-
guages, without being equal to it; while, again, the rude and meagre
languages of the American aborigines are often confined to a very
b 2
4 HISTORY CF THE
narrow district, and appear to have no affinity with those of the other
tribes in the immediate vicinity*. Hence, perhaps, it may be inferred,
that the higher capacity for the formation and development of language
was at this early period combined with a greater physical and mental
energy — in short, with all those qualities on which the ulterior improve-
ment and increase of the nations by which it was spoken depended.
While the Semitic branch occupies the south-west of Asia, the Indo-
Germanic languages run in a straight line from south-east to north-
west, through Asia and Europe : a slight interruption, which occurs in
the country between the Euphrates and Asia Minor, appears to have
been occasioned by the pressure of Semitic or Syrian races from the
south ; for it seems probable that originally the members of this
national family succeeded one another in a continuous line, although
we are not now able to trace the source from which this mighty stream
originally flowed. Equally uncertain is it whether these languages were
spoken by the earliest inhabitants of the countries to which they be-
longed, or were introduced by subsequent immigrations ; in which latter
case the rude aborigines would have adopted the principal features of
the language spoken by the more highly endowed race, retaining at the
same time much of their original dialect — an hypothesis which appears
highly probable as regards those languages which show a general
affinity with the others, but nevertheless differ from them widely in their
grammatical structure and the number of their radical forms.
§ 2. On the other hand, this comparison of languages leads to many
results, with respect to the intellectual state of the Greek people, which
throw an unexpected light into quarters where the eye of the historian
has hitherto been able to discover nothing but darkness. We reject as
utterly untenable the notion that the savages of Greece, from the inar-
ticulate cries by which they expressed their animal wants, and from the
sounds by which they sought to imitate the impressions of outward
objects, gradually arrived at the harmonious and magnificent language
which we admire in the poems of Homer. So far is this hypothesis
from the truth, that language evidently is connected with the power of
abstracting or of forming general notions, and is inconsistent with the
absence of this faculty. It is plain that the most abstract parts of
speech, those least likely to arise from the imitation of any outward
impression, were the first which obtained a permanent form ; and
hence those parts of speech appear most clearly in all the languages of
the Indo-Teutonic family. Among these are the verb " to be," the
forms of which seem to alternate in the Sanscrit, the Lithuanian, and
the Greek ; the pronouns, which denote the most general relations
of persons and things to the speaker; the numerals, also abstract
* Some of the American languages are rather cumbersome than meagre in their
grammmatical forms ; and some are much more widely spread than others. — Note bit
Editor. 3 * y
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 5
terms, altogether independent of impressions from single objects; and,
lastly, the grammatical forms, by which the actions expressed by verbs
are referred to the speaker, and the objects expressed by nouns are
placed in the most various relations to one another. The luxuriance of
grammatical forms which we perceive in the Greek cannot have been
of late introduction, but must be referred to the earliest period of the
language; for we find traces of nearly all of them in the cognate
tonirues, which could not have been the case unless the languages before
they diverged had possessed these forms in common : thus the distinc-
tion between aorist tenses, which represent an action as a moment,
as a single point, and others, which represent it as continuous, like a
prolonged line, occurs in Sanscrit as well as in Greek.
In general it may be observed, that in the lapse of ages, from the
time that the progress of language can be observed, grammatical forms,
such as the signs of cases, moods, and tenses, have never been increased
in number, but have been constantly diminishing. The history of the
Romance, as well as of the Germanic, languages, shows in the clearest
manner how a grammar, once powerful and copious, has been gradually
weakened and impoverished, until at last it preserves only a few frag
merits of its ancient inflections. The ancient languages, especially
the Greek, fortunately still retained the chief part of their gram-
matical forms at the time of their literary development; thus, for
example, little was lost in the progress of the Greek language from
Homer to the Athenian orators. Now there is no doubt that this lux-
uriance of grammatical forms is not an essential part of a language,
considered merely as a vehicle of thought. It is well known that the
Chinese language, which is merely a collection of radical words destitute
of grammatical forms, can express even philosophical ideas with tolerable
precision ; and the English, which, from the mode of its formation by
a mixture of different tongues, has been stripped of its grammatical
inflections more completely than any other European language, seems
nevertheless, even to a foreigner, to be distinguished by its energetic
eloquence. All this must be admitted by every unprejudiced inquirer;
but yet it cannot be overlooked, that this copiousness of grammatical
forms, and the fine shades of meaning which they express, evince a
nicety of observation and a faculty of distinguishing, which unques-
tionably prove that the race of mankind among whom these languages
arose was characterized by a remarkable correctness and subtlety of
thought. Nor can any modern European, who forms in his mind a
lively image of the classical languages in their ancient grammatical
luxuriance, and compares them with his mother tongue, conceal from
himself that in the ancient languages the words, with their inflections,
clothed as it were with muscles and sinews, come forward like living
bodies, full of expression and character; while in the modern tongues
the words seem shrunk up into mere skeletons. Another advantage
which belongs to the fulness of grammatical forms is, that words of
ft HISTORY OF THE
similar signification make likewise a similar impression on the ear;
whence each sentence obtains a certain symmetry and, even where the
collocation of the words is involved, a clearness and regularity, which may
be compared with the effect produced on the eye by the parts of a well-
proportioned building ; whereas, in the languages which have lost their
grammatical forms, either the lively expression of the feeling is hin-
dered by an unvarying and monotonous collocation of the words, or
the hearer is compelled to strain his attention, in order to comprehend
the mutual relation of the several parts of the sentence. Modern lan-
guages seem to attempt to win their way at once to the understanding
without dwelling in the ear ; while the classical languages of antiquity
seek at the same time to produce a corresponding effect on the outward
sense, and to assist the mind by previously filling the ear, as it were,
with an imperfect consciousness of the meaning sought to be conveyed
by the words.
§ 3. These remarks apply generally to the languages of the Indo-
Germanic family, so far as they have been preserved in a state of inte-
grity by literary works and have been cultivated by poets and orators.
We shall now limit our regards to the Greek language alone, and shall
attempt to exhibit its more prominent and characteristic features as
compared with those of its sister tongues. In the sounds which were
formed by the various articulation of the voice, the Greek language hits
that happy medium which characterises all the mental productions of
this people, in being equally removed, on the one hand, from the super-
abundant fulness, and, on the other, from the meagreness and tenuity of
sound, by which other languages are variously deformed. If we com-
pare the Greek with that language which comes next to it in fitness
for a lofty and flowing style of poetry, viz., the Sanscrit, this latter
certainly has some clashes of consonants not to be found in the Greek,
the sounds of which it is almost impossible for an European mouth to
imitate and distinguish : on the other hand, the Greek is much richer
in short vowels than the Sanscrit, whose most harmonious poetry would
weary our ears by the monotonous repetition of the A sound ; and it
possesses an astonishing abundance of diphthongs, and tones produced
by the contraction of vowels, which a Greek mouth could alone distin-
guish with the requisite nicety, and which, therefore, are necessarily
confounded by the modern European pronunciation. We may likewise
perceive in the Greek the influence of the laws of harmony, which, in
different nations, have caused the rejection of different combinations of
vowels and consonants, and which have increased the softness and
beauty of languages, though sometimes at the expense of their ter-
minations and characteristic features. By the operation of the lattei
cause, the Greek has, in many places, lost its resemblance to the
original type, which, although not now preserved in any one of the
extant languages, maybe restored by conjecture from all of them ; even
here, however, it cannot be denied that the correct taste and feeling;
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 7
of the Greeks led them to a happy mixture of the consonant and vowel
sounds, by which strength has been reconciled with softness, and har-
mony with strongly marked peculiarities ; while the language has, at
the same time, in its multifarious dialects, preserved a variety of sound
and character, which fit it for the most discordant kinds of poetical and
prose composition.
§ 4. We must not pass over one important characteristic of the Greek
language, which is closely connected with the early condition of the
Greek nation, and which may be considered as, in some degree, pre-
figuring the subsequent character of its civilisation. In order to con-
vey an adequate idea of our meaning, we will ask any person who is
acquainted with Greek, to recal to his mind the toils and fatigue which
he underwent in mastering the forms of the language, and the difficulty
which he found to impress them on his memory ; when his mind, vainly
attempting to discover a reason for such anomalies, was almost in despair
at finding that so large a number of verbs derive their tenses from the
most various roots ; that one verb uses only the first, another only the
second, aorist, and that even the individual persons of the aorist are
sometimes compounded of the forms of the first and second aorists respec-
tively ; and that many verbs and substantives have retained only single
or a few forms, which have been left standing by themselves, like the
remains of a past age. The convulsions and catastrophes of which we see
so many traces around us in the frame-work of the world have not been
confined to external nature alone. The structure of languages also has
evidently, in ages prior to the existence of any literature, suffered some
violent shocks, which may, perhaps, have received their impulse from
migrations or internal discord ; and the elements of the language, having
been thrown in confusion together, were afterwards re-arranged, and
combined into a new whole. Above all is this true of the Greek lan-
guage, which bears strong marks of having originally formed part of a
great and regular plan, and of having been reconstructed on a new
system from the fragments of the former edifice. The same is doubtless
also the cause of the great variety of dialects which existed both anions
the Greeks and the neighbouring nations ; — a variety, of which mention
is made at so early a date as the Homeric poems*. As the country
inhabited by the Greeks is intersected to a remarkable degree by moun-
tains and sea, and thus was unfitted by Nature to serve as the habitation
of a uniform population, collected in large states, like the plains of the
Euphrates and Ganges; and as, for this reason, the Greek people was
divided into a number of separate tribes, some of which attract our
attention in the early fabulous age, others in the later historical period;
so likewise the Greek language was divided, to an unexampled extent,
into various dialects, which differed from each other according to the
* In Iliad, ii. 804, and iv. 437, there is mention of the variety of dialects among the
allies of the Trojans ; and in Odyssey, xix. 175, among the Greek hi! es in Crete.
» HISTortY OF THE
several tribes and territories. In what relation the dialects of the
Pelasgians, Dryopes, Abantes, Leleges, Epeans, and other races widely
diffused in the earliest periods of Grecian history, may have stood to one
another, is indeed a question which it would be vain to attempt to answer;
but thus much is evident, that the number of these tribes, and their
frequent migrations, by mixing and confounding the different races,
contributed powerfully to produce that irregularity of structure which
characterises the Greek language in its very earliest monuments.
§ 5. The primitive tribes just mentioned, which were the earliest
occupants of Greece known to tradition, and of which the Pelasgians,
and after them the Leleges, were the most extended, unquestionably
did much for the first cultivation of the soil, the foundation of insti-
tutions for divine worship, and the first establishment of a regular order
of society. The Pelasgians, widely scattered over Greece, and having
their settlements in the most fertile regions (as the vale of the Peneus
in Thessaly, the lower districts of Boeotia, and the plains of Argos
and Sicyon), appear, before the time when they wandered through
Greece in isolated bodies, as a nation attached to their own dwelling-
places, fond of building towns, which they fortified with walls of a
colossal size, and zealously worshipping the powers of heaven and
earth, which made their fields fruitful and their cattle prosperous. The
mythical genealogies of Argos competed as it were with those of
Sicyon ; and both these cities, by a long chain of patriarchal princes
(most of whom are merely personifications of the country, its mountains
and rivers), were able to place their origin at a period of the remotest
antiquity. The Leleges also (with whom were connected the Locrians
in Northern Greece and the Epeans in Peloponnesus), although they
had fewer fixed settlements, and appear to have led a rougher and
more warlike life — such as still prevailed in the mountainous districts of
Northern Greece at the time of the historian Thucydides — yet cele-
brated their national heroes, especially Deucalion and his descendants,
as founders of cities and temples. But there is no trace of any peculiar
creation of the intellect having developed itself among these races, or of
any poems in which they displayed any peculiar character; and whe
ther it may be possible to discover any characteristic and distinct features
in the legends of the gods and heroes who belong to the territories
occupied by these different tribes is a question which must be deferred
until we come to treat of the origin of the Grecian mythology. It is
however much to be lamented that, with our sources of information, it
seems impossible to form a well-grounded opinion on the dialects of
these ancient tribes of Greece, by which they were doubtless precisely
distinguished from one another; and any such attempt appears the
more hopeless, as even of the dialects which were spoken in the several
territories of Greece within the historical period we have only a scanty
knowledge, by means of a few inscriptions and the statements of gram-
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 9
marians, wherever they had not obtained a literary cultivation and
celebrity by the labours of poets and prose writers.
Of more influence, however, on the development of the intellectual
faculties of the Greeks was the distinction of the tribes and their
dialects, established at a period which, from the domination of war-
like and conquering races and the consequent prevalence of a bold
spirit of enterprise, was called the heroic age. It is at this time, before
the migration of the Dorians into Peloponnesus and the settlements
in Asia Minor, that the seeds must have been sown of an opposition
between the races and dialects of Greece, which exercised the most
important influence on the state of civil society, and thus on the direction
of the mental energies of the people, of their poetry, art, and literature.
If we consider the dialects of the Greek language, with which we are ac-
quainted by means of its literary monuments, they appear to fall into two
great classes, which are distinguished from each other by characteristic
marks. The one class is formed by the JEolic dialect ; a name, indeed,
under which the Greek grammarians included dialects very different
from one another, as in later times everything was comprehended under
the term iEolic, which was not Ionic, Attic, or Doric. According to
this acceptation of the term about three-fourths of the Greek nation
consisted of iEolians, and dialects were classed together as iEolic which
(;is is evident from the more ancient inscriptions) differed more from
one another than from the Doric ; as, for example, the Thessalian and
/Etolian, the Boeotian and Elean dialects. The yEolians, however, pro-
perly so called (who occur in mythology under this appellation), lived
at this early period in the plain of Thessaly, south of the Peneus, which
was afterwards called Thessaliotis, and from thence as far as the Paga-
setic Bay. We also find in the same mythical age a branch of the
iitilian race, in southern iEtolia, in possession of Calydon ; this frag-
ment of the iEolians, however, afterwards disappears from history, while
the iEolians of Thessaly, who also bore the name of Boeotians, two
generations after the Trojan war, migrated into the country which was
called after them Boeotia, and from thence, soon afterwards, mixed with
other races, to the maritime districts and islands of Asia Minor, which
from that time forward received the name of ./Eolis in Asia Minor*.
It is in this latter iEolis that we become acquainted with the /Eolian
dialect, through the lyric poets of the Lesbian school, the origin and
character of which will be explained in a subsequent chapter. On the
* We here only reckon those jEolians who were in fact considered as belonging
to the /Eoliau race, and not all the tribes which were ruled by heroes, whom Hesiod,
in the fragment of the hiicu, calls sons of Mollis ; although this genealogy justifies
us in assuming a close affinity between those races, which is also confirmed by other
testimonies. In this sense the Minyans of Orchomenus and Iolcus, ruled by the
yKolids Athanias and Cretheus, were of /F.olian origin; a nation which, by the
stability of its jxjlitical institutions, its spirit of enterprise, even fur maritime expe-
ditions, and its colossal buildings, holds a pre-eminent rank among the tribes of tho
mythical age of Greece. (See Hesiod, Fragm. 28, ed. Gaisford.
10 HISTORY OF THE
whole it may be said of this dialect, as of the Boeotian in its earlier
form, that it bears an archaic character, and approaches nearest to the
source of the Greek language ; hence the Latin, as being connected
with the most ancient form of the Greek, has a close affinity with it, and
in general the agreement with the other languages of the Indo-Ger-
manic family is always most perceptible in the iEolic. A mere variety
of the iEolic was the dialect of the Doric race, which originally was
confined to a narrow district in Northern Greece, but was afterwards
spread over the Peloponnesus and other regions by that important move-
ment of population which was called the Return of the Heracleids. It
is characterized by strength and breadth, as shown in its fondness for
simple open vowel sounds, and its aversion for sibilants. Much more
different from the original type is the other leading dialect of the Greek
language, the Ionic, which took its origin in the mother-country, and
was by the Ionic colonies, which sailed from Athens, carried over to
Asia Minor, where it underwent still further changes. Its character-
istics are softness and liquidness of sound, arising chiefly from the
concurrence of vowels, among whieh, not the broad a and o, but the
thinner sounds of e and ?/, were most prevalent ; among the consonants
the tendency to the use of s is most discernible. It may be observed,
that wherever the Ionic dialect differs either in vowels or consonants
from the /Eolic, it also differs from the original type, as may be
discovered by a comparison of the cognate languages ; it must there-
fore be considered as a peculiar form of the Greek, which was deve-
loped within the limits of the Grecian territory. It is probable that
this dialect was spoken not only by the Ionians, but also, at least one
very similar, by the ancient Achsear-s ; since the Achaeans in the
genealogical legends concerning the descendants of Hellen are repre-
sented as the brothers of the Ionians : this hypothesis would also explain
how the ancient epic poems, in which the Ionians are scarcely men-
tioned, but the Achaean race plays the principal part, were written in a
dialect which, though differing in many respects from the genuine Ionic,
has yet the closest resemblance to it.
Even from these first outlines of the history of the Greek dialects we
might be led to expect that those features would be developed in the
institutions and literature of the several races which we find in their
actual history. In the JEolic and Doric tribes we should be prepared
to find the order of society regulated by those ancient customs and
principles which had been early established among the Greeks ; their
dialects at least show a strong disposition to retain the archaic forms,
without much tendency to refinement. Among the Dorians, however,
every thing is more strongly expressed, and comes forward in a more
prominent light than among the iEolians ; and as their dialect every-
where prefers the broad, strong, and rough tones, and introduces them
throughout with unbending regularity, so we might naturally look among
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 11
them for a disposition to carry a spirit of austerity and of reverence for
ancient custom through the entire frame of civil and private society.
The Ionkt/ns, on the other hand, show even in their dialect a strong
tendency to modify ancient forms according to their taste and humour,
together with a constant endeavour to polish and refine, which was
doubtless the cause why this dialect, although of later date and of
secondary origin, was first employed in finished poetical compositions.
CHAPTER II*.
§ 1. The earliest form of the Greek religion not portrayed in the Homeric poems. —
§ 2. The Olympic deities, as described by Homer. — § 3. Earlier form of worship
in Greece directed to the outward objects of Nature. — § 4. Character and attri-
butes of the several Greek deities, as personifications of the powers and objects of
Nature. — § 5. Subsecpient modification of these ideas, as displayed in the Ho-
meric description of the same deities.
§ 1. Next to the formation of language, religion is the earliest object
of attention to mankind, and therefore exercises a most important
influence on all the productions of the human intellect. Although
poetry has arisen at a very early date among many nations, and ages
which were as yet quite unskilled in the other fine arts have been dis-
tinguished for their poetical enthusiasm, yet the development of religious
notions and usages is always prior, in point of time, to poetry. No
nation has ever been found entirely destitute of notions of a superior
race of beings exercising an influence on mankind; but tribes have
existed without songs, or compositions of any kind which could be
considered as poetry. Providence has evidently first given mankind
that knowledge of which they are most in need ; and has, from the
beginning, scattered among the nations of the entire world a glimmerino-
of that light which was, at a later period, to be manifested in brighter
effulgence.
This consideration must make it evident that, although the Homeric
poems belong to the first age of the Greek poetry, they nevertheless
cannot be viewed as monuments of the first period of the development
of the Greek religion . indeed, it is plain that the notions concerning
the gods must have undergone many changes before (partly, indeed, by
means of the poets themselves) they assumed that form under which
* We have thought it absolutely essential, for the sake of accuracy, in treating
of the deities of the ancient Greek religion, to use the names by which the}' were
known to the Greeks. As these, however, may sound strange to persons not ac-
quainted with the Greek language, we subjoin a list of the gods of the Romans with
which they were in later times severally identified, and by whose naxni s they are
commonly Known : — Zeus, Jupiter; Hera, Juno; Athena, Minerva; Ares, Mars;
Artemis, Diana ; Hermes, Mercury; Demeter, Ceres; Cu7-a, Proserpine; Hephaestus,
Vulcan; Poseidon. Neptune; Aphrodite, Venus J Dionysus, Bacchus.
12 HISTORY OF THE
they appear in the Homeric poems. The description given by Homer
of the life of the gods in the palace of Zeus on Olympus is doubtless as
different from the feeling and the conception with which the ancient
Pelasgian lifted up his hands and voice to the Zeus of Dodona, whose
dwelling was in the oak of the forest, as the palace of a Priam or Aga-
memnon from the hut which one of the original settlers constructed of un-
hewn trunks in a solitary pasture, in the midst of his flocks and herds.
§ 2. The conceptions of the gods, as manifested in the Homeric
poems, are perfectly suited to a time when the most distinguished and
prominent part of the people devoted their lives to the occupation of
arms and to the transaction of public business in common ; which time
was the period in which the heroic spirit was developed. On Olympus,
lying near the northern boundary of Greece, the highest mountain of
this country, whose summit seems to touch the heavens, there rules
an assembly or family of gods; the chief of which, Zeus, summons at
his pleasure the other gods to council, as Agamemnon summons the
other princes. He is acquainted with the decrees of fate, and is able to
guide them ; and, as being himself king among the gods, he gives the
kings of the earth their power and dignity. By his side is a wife, whose
station entitles her to a large share of his rank and dominion ; and a
daughter of a masculine complexion, a leader of battles, and a protec-
tress of citadels, who by her wise counsels deserves the confidence which
her father bestows on her ; besides these a number of gods, with various
degrees of kindred, who have each their proper place and allotted duty
in the divine palace. On the whole, however, the attention of this
divine council is chiefly turned to the fortunes of nations and cities, and
especially to the adventures and enterprises of the heroes, who, being
themselves for the most part sprung from the blood of the gods, form
the connecting link between them and the ordinary herd of mankind.
§ 3. Doubtless such a notion of the gods as we have just described
was entirely satisfactory to the princes of Ithaca, or any other Greek
territory, who assembled in the hall of the chief king at the common
meal, and to whom some bard sung the newest song of the bold adven-
tures of heroes. But how could this religion satisfy the mere country-
man, who wished to believe that in seed-time and in harvest, in winter
and in summer, the divine protection was thrown over him ; who
anxiously sought to offer his thanks to the gods for all kinds of rural
prosperity, for the warding off of all danger from the seed and from the
cattle ? As the heroic age of the Greek nation was preceded by another,
in which the cultivation of the land, and the nature of the different
districts, occupied the chief attention of the inhabitants (which may
be called the Pelasgian period), so likewise there are sufficient traces
and remnants of a state of the Grecian religion, in which the gods were
considered as exhibiting their power chiefly in the operations of outward
nature, in the changes of the seasons, and the phenomena of the year.
LITERATURE 01' ANCIENT GREECE. 13
Imagination— whose operations are most active, and whose expressions
are most simple and natural in the childhood both of nations and indi-
viduals — led these early inhabitants to discover, not only in the general
phenomena of vegetation, the unfolding and death of the leaf and
flower, and in the moist and dry seasons of the year, but also in the
peculiar physical character of certain districts, a sign of the alternately
hostile or peaceful, happy or ill-omened coincidence of certain deities.
There are still preserved in the Greek mythology many legends of a
charming, and at the same time touching simplicity, which had their
origin at this period, when the Greek religion bore the character of a
worship of the powers of Nature. It sometimes also occurs that those
parts of mythology which refer to the origin of civil society, to the
alliances of princes, and to military expeditions, are closely interwoven
with mythical narratives, which when minutely examined are found to
contain nothing definite on the acts of particular heroes, but only describe
physical phenomena, and other circumstances of a general character,
and which have been combined with the heroic fables only through a
forgetfulness of their original form ; a confusion which naturally arose,
when in later times the original connexion of the gods with the agencies
of Nature was more and more forgotten, and those of their attributes and
acts which had reference to the conduct of human life, the government
of states, or moral principles, were perpetually brought into more pro-
minent notice. It often happens that the original meaning of narratives
of this kind may be deciphered when it had been completely hidden
from the most learned mythologists of antiquity. But though this
process of investigation is often laborious, and may, after all, lead only to
uncertain results, yet it is to be remembered that the mutilation and
obscuring of the ancient mythological legends by the poets of later times
affords the strongest proof of their high antiquity ; as the most ancient
buildings are most discoloured and impaired by time.
§ 4. An inquiry, of which the object should be to select and unite all
the parts of the Greek mythology which have reference to natural
phenomena and the changes of the seasons, although it has never been
regularly undertaken, would doubtless show that the earliest religion of
the Greeks was founded on the same notions as the chief part of the
religions of the East, particularly of that part of the East which was
nearest to Greece, Asia Minor. The Greek mind, however, even in
this the earliest of its productions, appears richer and more various in its
forms, and at the same time to take a loftier and a wider range, than is
the case in the religion of the oriental neighbours of the Greeks, the
Phrygians, Lydians, and Syrians. In the religion of these nations, the
combination and contrast of two beings (Baal and Astarte), the one male,
representing the productive, and the other female, representing the
passive and nutritive powers of Nature, and the alternation of two
states, viz., the strength and vigour, and the weakness and death of
14 1UST0KY OF THE
the male personification of Nature, of which the first was celebrated
with vehement joy, the latter with excessive lamentation, recur in a
perpetual cycle, which must in the end have wearied and stupified the
mind. The Grecian worship of Nature, on the other hand, in all the
various forms which it assumed in different places, places one deity, as
the highest of all, at the head of the entire system, the God of heaven
and light ; for that this is the meaning of the name Zeus is shown hy
the occurrence of the same root (Bin) with the same signification, even
in the Sanscrit*, and by the preservation of several of its derivatives
which remained in common use both in Greek and Latin, all containing
the notion of heaven and day. With this god of the heavens, who
dwells in the pure expanse of ether, is associated, though not as a being
of the same rank, the goddess of the Earth, who in different temples
(which may be considered as the mother-churches of the Grecian
religion) was worshipped under different names, Hera, Demeter, Dione,
and some others. of less celebrity. The marriage of Zeus with this god-
dess (which signified the union of heaven and earth in the fertilizing
rains) was a sacred solemnity in the worship of these deities. Besides
this goddess, other beings are associated on one side with the Supreme
God, who are personifications of certain of his energies ; powerful deities
who carry the influence of light over the earth, and destroy the opposing
powers of darkness and confusion : as Athena, born from the head of
her father, in the height of the heavens ; and Apollo, the pure and
shining god of a worship belonging to other races, but who even in
his original form was a god of light. On the other side are deities,
allied with the earth and dwelling in her dark recesses; and as all
life appears not only to spring from the earth, but to return to that
whence it sprung, these deities are for the most part also connected with
death : as Hermes, who brings up the treasures of fruitfulness from the
depth of the earth, and the child, now lost and now recovered by her
mother Demeter, Cora, the goddess both cf flourishing and of decaying
Nature. It was natural to expect that the element of water (Poseidon)
should also be introduced into this assemblage of the personified powers
of Nature, and should be peculiarly combined with the goddess of the
Earth : and that fire (Hepheestus) should be represented as a powerful
principle derived from heaven and having dominion on the earth, and
be closely allied with the goddess who sprang from the head of the god
of the heavens. Other deities are less important and necessary parts of
this system, as Aphrodite, whose worship was evidently for the most part
propagated over Greece from Cyprus and Cythera'j- by the influence of
* The root DIU is most clearly seen in the oblique cases of Zeus, AiFog AiFl, in which
the U has passed into the consonant form F : whereas in Zib;, as in other Greek
words, the sound DI has passed into Z, and the vowel has been lengthened. In the
Latin Iovis (Iuve in Unitarian) the D has been lost before I, which, however, is pre-
served in many other derivatives of the same root, as dies, dium.
f See Herod, i. 105 ; and Hist, of Home, pp. 121, 122.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 15
Syrophrenician tribes. As a singular being, however, in the assembly of
the Greek deities, stands the changeable god of flourishing, decaying, and
renovated Nature, Dionysus; whose alternate joys and sufferings, and mar-
vellous adventures, show a strong resemblance to the form which religious
notions assumed in Asia Minor. Introduced by the Thracians (a tribe
which spread from the north of Greece into the interior of the country),
and not, like the gods of Olympus, recognized by all the races of the
Greeks, Dionysus always remained to a certain degree estranged from the
rest of the gods, although his attributes had evidently most affinity with
those of Demeter and Cora. But in this isolated position, Dionysus
exercises an important influence on the spirit of the Greek nation, and
both in sculpture and poetry gives rise to a class of feelings which agree
in displaying more powerful emotions of the mind, a bolder flight of thy
imagination, and more acute sensations of pain and pleasure, than were
exhibited on occasions where this influence did not operate.
§ 5. In like manner the Homeric poems (which instruct us not
merely by their direct statements, but also by their indirect allusions, not
only by what they say, but also by what they do vol say), when atten-
tively considered, clearly show how this ancient religion of nature sank
into the shade as compared with the salient and conspicuous forms of
the deities of the heroic age. The gods who dwell on Olympus scarcely
appear at all in connexion with natural phenomena. Zeus chiefly
exercises his powers as a ruler and a king ; although he is still designated
(by epithets doubtless of high antiquity) as the god of the ether and
the storms*; as in much later times the old picturesque expression was
used, " What is Zeus doing?" for " What kind of weather is it?'' In
the Homeric conception of Hera, Athena, and Apollo, there is no tr;:ce
of any reference of these deities to the fertility of the earth, the clearness
of the atmosphere, the arrival of the serene spring, and the like ; which,
however, can be discovered in other mythical legends concerning them,
and still more in the ceremonies practised at their festivals, which
generally contain the most ancient ideas. Hephaestus has passed from
the powerful god of fire in heaven and in earth into a laborious smith
and worker of metuls, who performs his duty by making armour and
arms for the other gods and their favourite heroes. As to Hermes, there
are some stories in which he is represented as giving fruitfulness to cattle,
in his capacity of the rural god of Arcadia; from which, by means of
various metamorphoses, he is transmuted into the messenger of Zeus,
and the servant of the gods.
Those deities, however, which stood at a greater distance from the
relations of human life, and especially from the military and political
actions of the princes, and could not easily be brought into connexion
with them, are for that reason rarely mentioned by Homer, and never
take any part in the events described by him ; in general they keep aloof
16 HISTORY OF THE
from the circle of the Olympic gods. Demeter is never mentioned as
assisting any hero, or rescuing- him from danger, or stimulating him to
the battle ; but if any one were thence to infer that this goddess was not
known as early as Homer's time, he would be refuted by the incidental
allusions to her which frequently occur in connexion with agriculture
and corn. Doubtless Demeter (whose name denotes the earth as
the mother and author of life*) was in the ancient Pelasgic time
honoured with a general and public worship beyond any other deity ; but
the notions and feelings excited by the worship of this goddess and
her daughter (whom she beheld, with deep lamentation, torn from her
every autumn, and recovered with excessive joy every spring) constantly
became more and more unlike those which were connected with the other
o-ods of Olympus. Hence her worship gradually obtained a peculiar
form, and chiefly from this cause assumed the character of mysteries:
that is, religious solemnities, in which no one could participate without
having undergone a previous ceremony of admission and initiation. In
this manner Homer was, by a just and correct taste, led to perceive that
Demeter, together with the other divine beings belonging to her, had
nothing in common with the gods whom the epic muse assembled about
the throne of Zeus ; and it was the same feeling which also prevented him
from mixing up Dionysus, the other leading deity of the mystic worship
of the Greeks, with the subject of his poem, although this god is
mentioned by him as a divine being, of a marvellous nature, stimu-
lating the mind to joy and enthusiasm.
CHAPTER III.
§ 1. First efforts of Greek poetry. Plaintive songs of husbandmen. — § 2. Descrip-
tion of several of these songs, viz. the Linus. — § 3. The Ialemus, the Scephrus,
the Lityerses, the Bormus, the Maneros, and the laments for Hylas and Adonis.
— $ 4. The Paean, its origin and character. — § 5. The Threnos, or lament for the
dead, and the Hymenceos, or bridal song. — § 6. Origin and character of the chorus.
— § 7. Ancient poets who composed sacred hymns, divided into three classes, viz.
those connected, i. With the worship of Apollo; ii. With the worship of Demeter
and Dionysus ; and iii. With the Phrygian worship of the mother of the Gods, of
the Corybantes, &c. — § 8. Explanation of the Thracian origin of several of the
early Greek poets. — § 9. Influence of the earlv Thracian or Pierian poets on the
epic poetry of Homer.
§ 1. Many centuries must have elapsed before the poetical language of
the Greeks could have attained the splendour, the copiousness, and the
fluency which so strongly excite our admiration in the poems of Homer.
The service of the gods, to which all the highest energies of the mind
were first directed, and from which the first beginnings of sculpture,
* Aij primp, that is, yri fiqrtip,
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 17
architecture, music, and poetry proceeded, must for a long- time have
consisted chiefly in mute motions of the body, in symbolical gestures, in
prayers muttered in a low tone, and, lastly, in loud broken ejaculations
(oAoXuy/xde), such as were in later times uttered at the death of the
victim, in token of an inward feeling ; before the winged word issued
clearly from the mouth, and raised the feelings of the multitude to
religious enthusiasm — in short, before the first hymn was heard.
The first outpourings of poetical enthusiasm were doubtless songs
describing', in few and simple verses, events which powerfully affected
the feelings of the hearers. From what has been said in the last chapter
it is probable that the earliest date may be assigned to the songs which
referred to the seasons and their phenomena, and expressed with sim-
plicity the notions and feelings to which these events gave birth : as
they were sung by peasants at the corn and wine harvest, they had their
origin in times of ancient rural simplicity. It is remarkable that songs
of this kind often had a plaintive and melancholy character; which cir-
cumstance is however explained when we remember that the ancient
worship of outward nature (which was preserved in the rites of Demeter
and Cora, and also of Dionysus) contained festivals of wailing and
lamentation as well as of rejoicing and mirth. 1 1 is not, however, to
be supposed that this was the only cause of the mournful ditties in
question, for the human heart has a natural disposition to break out
from time to time into lamentation, and to seek an occasion for grief
even where it does not present itself — as Lucretius says, that " in the
pathless woods, among the lonely dwellings of the shepherds, the sweet
laments were sounded on the pipe*."
§ 2. To the number of these plaintive ditties belongs the song Limw,
mentioned by Homer t, the melancholy character of which is shown by
its fuller names, A'iXivoq and OItvXlvoq (literally, " Alas, Linus !" and
" Death of Linus"). It was frequently sung in Greece, according to
Homer, at the grape-picking. According to a fragment of Hesiodf,
all singers and players.on the cithara lament at feasts and dances Linns,
the beloved son of Urania, and call on Linus at the beginning and the
end ; which probably means that the song of lamentation began and
ended with the exclamation At Aire. Linus was originally the subject
of the song, the person whose fate was bewailed in it ; and there were
many districts in Greece (for example, Thebes, Chalcis, and Argos) in
v\hich tombs of Linus were shown. This Linus evidently belongs to
a class of deities or demigods, of which many instances occur in the
* Inde minutatim dulceu di dice re querelas,
Tibia quas fundit digitis pulsata caiu'iitum.
Avia per nemora ac sylvas saltusque reperta,
Per loca pastorum deserta atque otia dia. — Lucretius, v. 1383 — 1386.
f Iliad, xviii. 569.
\ Cited in Eustathius, p. Ii63 (fragm. l,ed. Gaisi'ord).
C
18 HISTORY OK THE
religions of Greece and Asia Minor ; boys of extraordinary beauty, and
in the flower of youth, who are supposed to have been drowned, or de-
voured by raging dogs, or destroyed by wild beasts, and whose death is
lamented in the harvest or other periods of the hot season. It is obvious
that these cannot have been real persons, whose death excited so general
a sympathy, although the fables which were offered in explanation of
these customs often speak of youths of royal blood, who were carried off
in the prime of their life. The real object of lamentation was the tender
beauty of spring destroyed by the summer heat, and other phenomena
of the same kind, which the imagination of these early times invested
with a personal form, and represented as gods or beings of a divine
nature. According to the very remarkable and explicit tradition of the
Argives, Linus was a youth, who, having sprung from a divine origin,
grew up with the shepherds among the lambs, and was torn in pieces by
wild dogs ; whence arose the " festival of the lambs," at which many
dogs were slain. Doubtless this festival was celebrated during the
greatest heat, at the time of the constellation Sirius ; the emblem of
which, among the Greeks, was, from the earliest times, a raging dog.
It was a natural confusion of the tradition that Linus should afterwards
become a minstrel, one of the earliest bards of Greece, who begins a
contest with Apollo himself, and overcomes Hercules in playing on the
cithara ; even, however, in this character Linus meets his death, and
we must probably assume that his fate was mentioned in the ancient
song. In Homer the Linus is represented as sung by a boy, who plays
at the same time on the harp, an accompaniment usually mentioned with
this song ; the young men and women who bear the grapes from the
vineyard follow him, moving onward with a measured step, and uttering
a shrill cry*, in which probably the chief stress was laid on the excla-
mation at \ive. That this shrill cry (called by Homer Ivyfiog) was not
necessarily a joyful strain will be admitted by any one who has heard
the Ivynac of the Swiss peasants, with its sad and plaintive notes,
resounding from hill to hill.
§ 3. Plaintive songs of this kind, in which not the misfortunes of a
single individual, but an universal and perpetually recurring cause of
grief was expressed, abounded in ancient Greece, and especially in Asia
Minor, the inhabitants of which country had a peculiar fondness for
mournful tunes. The lalemas seems to have been nearly identical with
the Linus, as, to a certain extent, the same mythological narrations are
applied to both. At Tegea, in Arcadia, there was a plaintive song,
called Sccphrus, which appears, from the fabulous relation in Pausaniasf,
* TOitrtv o tv fiifftrowi irai; (p'o^iyyi Xiyi'r/i,
iftt^eii/ xituetl^i. Alvtjv o iro ku.Xov audi
Xe*TT«Xs*j (ptuvr' to) o\ lr l ffo'ovTi^ uuxgrn
/Aokrrri r wyu.w rt. rroo-) ffxa't^ovris iwovto. — Iliad, xviii. 569—572,
on the meaning of po\<rn in this passage, see below, § 6.
t viii. 53, 2.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 1 9
to have been sung at the time of the summer heat. In Phrygia, a
melancholy song, called Lityerses, was sung at the cutting of the corn.
At the same season of the year, the Mariandynians, on the. shores of
the Black Sea, played the mournful ditty Bormus on the native flute.
The subject of their lamentation may be easity conjectured from the
story that Bormus was a beautiful boy, who, having gone' to fetch water
for the reapers in the heat of the day, was, while drawing it, borne down
by the nymphs of the stream. Of similar meaning are the cries for the
youth Hylas, swallowed up by the waters of the fountain, which, in the
neighbouring country of the Bithynians, re-echoed from mountain to
mountain. In the southern parts of Asia Minor we find, in connexion
with the Syrian worship, a similar lament for Adonis*, whose untimely
death was celebrated by Sappho, together with Linus ; and the Mancrox,
a song current in Egypt, especially at Pelusium, in which likewise a
youth, the only son of a king, who died in early youth, was bewailed ; a
resemblance sufficiently strong to induce Herodotus -ft w'ho is always
ready to find a connexion between Greece and Egypt, to consider the
M micros and the Linus as the same song |.
§ 4. A very different class of feelings is expressed in another kind of
songs, which originally were dedicated only to Apollo, and were closely
connected with the ideas relating to the attributes and actions of this
god, viz. the p<zam (jraujoveq in Homer). The paeans were songs, of
which the tune and words expressed courage and confidence. " All
sounds of lamentation" (aiXiva), says Callimachus, " cease when the
Ie Paean, Ie Paean, is heard §." As with the Linus the interjection
at, so with the Paean the cry of h) was connected; exclamations, un-
meaning in themselves, but made expressive by the tone with which
they were uttered, and which, as has been already mentioned, dated
back from the earliest periods of the Greek worship; they were different
for different deities, and formed as it were the first rudiments of the
hymns which began and ended with them. Paeans were sung, not
only when there was a hope of being able, by the help of the gods, to
overcome a great and imminent danger, but when the danger was
happily past; they were songs of hope and confidence as well as of
* Beautifully described in the well-known verses of Milton: —
" Thammuz came next behind,
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate
In amorous ditties, all a summer's day,
While smooth Adonis from his native rock
Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood
Of Thammuz yearly wounded.'' — Paradise Lost, i. 44G.
t ii. 79.
X On the subject of these plaintive songs generally see Holler's Dorians, book ii.
ch. 8, § 12 (vol. i. p. 366, English translation), and Thirlwall in the Philolo»
Museum, vol. i. p. 110.
§ ovS'. SiTif 'A^tXriO. x.iviolTcr.1 a'lXiva f*.nrr)(>,
ottit' <i Wnnii, uKoiffn. v ; x. — Hymn. Apoll. 20.
i 2
20 HISTORY OF THE
thanksgiving for victory and safety. The custom, at the termination of
the winter, when the year again assumes a mild and serene aspect, and
every heart is filled with hope and confidence, of singing venial paeans
(elapivol 7raia»'£c), recommended by the Delphic oracle to the cities of
Lower Italy, is probably of very high antiquity. Among the Pythago-
reans likewise the solemn purification (KaQapaig), which they performed
in spring, consisted in singing paeans and other hymns sacred to Apollo.
In Homer*, the Achaeans, who have restored Chryseis to the priest her
father, are represented as singing, at the end of the sacrificial feast, over
their cups, a paean in honour of the far-darting god, whose wrath they
thus endeavour completely to appease. And in the same poet, Achilles,
after the slaughter of Hector, calls on his companions to return to the
ships, singing a paean, the spirit and tone of which he expresses in the
following words : " We have gained great glory ; we have slain the
divine Hector, to whom the Trojans in the city prayed as to a god f.''
From these passages it is evident that the paean was sung by several
persons, one of whom probably led the others (JLZ,apywv), and that the
singers of the paean either sat together at table (which was still custo-
mary at Athens in Plato's time), or moved onwards in a body. Of the
latter mode of singing a paean the hymn to the Pythian Apollo fur-
nishes an example, where the Cretans, who have been called by the
god as priests of his sanctuary at Pytho, and have happily performed a
miraculous voyage from their own island after the sacrificial feast which
they celebrate on the shores of Crissa, afterwards ascend to Pytho, in
the narrow valley of Parnassus. " Apollo leads them, holding his harp
((p6pjj,iy£) in his hand, playing beautifully, with a noble and lofty
step. The Cretans follow him in a measured pace, and sing, after the
Cretin fashion, an Iepaean, which sweet song the muse had placed in
their breasts J." From this paean, which was sung by a moving body
of persons, arose the use of the paean (Trauovl^etv) in war, before the
attack on the enemy, which seems to have prevailed chiefly among the
Doric nations, and does not occur in Homer.
If it was our purpose to seek merely probable conclusions, or if
the nature of the present work admitted a detailed investigation, in
which we might collect and combine a variety of minute particles of
evidence, we could perhaps show that many of the later descriptions
of hymns belonging to the separate worships of Artemis, Demeter,
Dionysus, and other gods, originated in the earliest period of Greek
literature. As, however, it seems advisable in this work to avoid
merely conjectural inquiries, we will proceed to follow up the traces
which occur in the Homeric poems, and to postpone the other matters
until we come to the history of lyric poetry.
§ 5. Not only the common and public worship of the Gods, but also
* Iliad, i. 473. f Iliad-, xxii. 391. * Horn. Hymn. Apoll. 514.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 21
those events of private life which strongly excited the feelings, cdled
forth the gift of poetry. The lamentation for the dead, which was
chiefly sung by women with vehement expressions of grief, had, at the
time described by Homer, already been so far systematised, that singers
by profession stood near the bed where the body was laid out, and began
the lament ; and while they sang it, the women accompanied them with
cries and groans*. These singers of the threnos were at the burial of
Achilles represented by the Muses themselves, who sang the lament,
while the sisters of Thetis, the Nereids, uttered the same cries of
grieff.
Opposed to the threnos is the Hyvu ineo*, the joyful and merry bridal
song, of which there are descriptions by Homer J in the account of the
designs on the shield of Achilles, and by Hesiod in that of the shield of
Hercules §. Homer speaks of a city, represented as the seat of bridal
rejoicing, in which the bride is led from the virgin's apartment through
the streets by the light of torches. A loud hymenaeos arises : young
men dance around ; while flutes and harps (cpupfjiiyyae.) resound. The
passage of Hesiod gives a more finished and indeed a well-grouped
picture, if the parts of it are properly distinguished, which does not
appear to have been hitherto done with sufficient exactness. According
to this passage, the scene is laid in a fortified city, in which men can
abandon themselves without fear to pleasure and rejoicing: " Some bear
the bride to the husband on the well-formed chariot; while a loud
hymenaeos arises. Burning torches, carried by boys, cast from afar their
light: the damsels (viz., those who raise the hymenaeos) move forwards
beaming with beauty. Both (i. e. both the youths who accompawy the car
and the damsels) are followed by joyful choruses. The one chorus, con-
sisting of youths (who accompanied the car), sings to the clear sound of the
pipe (o-vpiys) with tender mouths, and causes the echoes to resound: the
other, composed of damsels (forming the hymenaeos, properly so called),
dance to the notes of the harp (0o t n/«y£)." In this passage of Hesiod we
have also the first description of a comos, by which word the Greeks de-
signate the last part of a feast or any other banquet which is enlivened
and prolonged with music, singing, and other amusements, until the
order of the table is completely deranged, and the half-intoxicated guests
go in irregular bodies through the town, often to the doors of beloved
damsels : " On another side again comes, accompanied by flutes, a joy-
ous band (kajyuoc) of youths, some amusing themselves with the song and
the dance, others with laughter. Each of these youths moves onwards,
attended by a player on the flute (precisely as may be seen so often re-
presented on vases of a much later age, belonging to southern Italy).
* a.01%0) fywuv i'iaQX"'- — Iliad, xxiv. 720 — 722.
f Odyssey, xxiv. 59—61. J Iliad, xviii. 492 — 4!»5.
S,-.t. 274—280.
'22 HISTORY OF THE
The whole city is filled with joy, and dancing, and festivity *." The
circumstances connected with the comos afforded (as we shall hereafter
point out) many opportunities for the productions of the lyric muse,
both of a lofty and serious and of a comic and erotic description.
§ 6. Although in the above description, and in other passages of
the ancient epic poets, choruses are frequently mentioned, yet we are
not to suppose that the choruses of this early period were like those
which sang the odes of Pindar and the choral songs of the tragedians,
and accompanied them with dancing and appropriate action. Originally
the chorus had chiefly to do with dancing : the most ancient sense of the
word chorus is a place for dancing : hence in the Iliad and Odyssey ex-
pressions occur, such as levelling the chorus (Xeialyeiy yppov), that is,
making the place ready for dancing ; going to the chorus (yopovlt
tpXtvdai), &c. : hence the choruses and dwellings of the gods are
mentioned together ; and cities which had spacious squares are said to
have wide choruses (£vpv-%opoi). To these choruses young persons of
both sexes, the daughters as well as the sons of the princes and nobles,
are represented in Homer as going : at these the Trojan and Phseacian
princes are described as being present in newly-washed garments and
in well-made armour. There were also, at least in Crete, choruses in
which young men and women danced together in rows, holding one
another by the hands f: a custom which was in later times unknown
among the lonians and Athenians, but which was retained among the
Dorians of Crete and Sparta, as well as in Arcadia. The arrangement
of a chorus of this description is as follows : a citharist sits in the midst
of the dancers, who surround him in a circle, and plays on the phorminx,
a kind of cithara : in the place of which (according to the Homeric hymn
to Hermes) another stringed instrument, the lyre, which differed in some
respects, was sometimes used ; whereas the flute, a foreign, originally
Phrygian, instrument, never in these early times was used at the chorus,
but only at the comos, with whose boisterous and unrestrained character its
tones were more in harmony. This citharist also accompanies the sound
of his instrument with songs, which appear to have scarcely differed from
such as were sung by individual minstrels, without the presence of a
chorus ; as, for example, Demodocus, in the palace of the Phaeacian
king, sings the loves of Ares and Aphrodite during the dances of the
youths \. Hence he is said to begin the song and the dance §. The
other persons, who form the chorus, take no part in this song ; except
so far as they allow their movements to be guided by it : an accompa-
niment of the voice by the dancers, such as has been already remarked
with respect to the singers of the paean, does not occur among the
chorus-dancers of these early times : and Ulysses, in looking at the
Plueacian youths who form the chorus to the song of Demodocus,
* Scut. 281—285. f Iliad, xviii. 593. % Odyssey, viii. 266.
§ hyovy-ms op^fioio. — Od. xxiii. 131, compare 1 11.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 23
admires not the sweetness of their voices, or the excellence of their
singing, but the rap : d motions of their feet*. At the same time,
the reader must guard against a misapprehension of the terms fxoXin'i and
fttXTreadai, which, although they are sometimes applied to persons
dancing, as to the chorus of Artemis t, and to Artemis herself J, neverthe-
less are not always connected with singing, hut express any measured and
graceful movement of the body, as for instance even a game at ball §.
When, however, the Muses are described as singing in a chorus \\,
they are to be considered only as standing in a circle, with Apollo in
the centre as citharist, but not as also dancing : in the procemium to the
Theogony of Hesiod, they are described as first dancing in chorus on
the top of Helicon, and afterwards as moving through the dark, and
singing the race of the immortal gods.
In the dances of the choruses there appears, from the descriptions
of the earliest poets, to have been much variety and art, as in the
choral dance which Vulcan represented on the shield of Achilles % : —
" At one time the youths and maidens dance around nimbly, with
measured steps, as when a potter tries his wheel whether it will run ; at
another, they dance in rows opposite to one another (a dance in a ring
alternately with one in rows). Within this chorus sits a singer with the
phorminx, and two tumblers (Kv(3i<TTrjrripe, the name being derived from
the violent motions of the body practised by them) turn about in the
middle, in accordance with the song." In a chorus celebrated by the
gods, as described in one of the Homeric hymns**, this latter part is
performed by Ares and Hermes, who gesticulate (nul^ovai) in the
middle of a chorus formed by ten goddesses as dancers, while Apollo
plays on the cithara, and the Muses stand around and sing. It cannot
be doubted that these Kv/3i<JTJ|riJp£C, or tumblers (who occurred chiefly in
Crete, where a lively, and even wild and enthusiastic style of dancing
had prevailed from early times), in some measure regulated their ges-
tures and motions according to the subject of the song to which they
danced, and that a choral dance of this kind was, in fact, a variety of
hyporcheme (yir6pyj>ll- ia )-> as a species of choral dances and songs was
called, in which the action described by the song was at the same time
represented with mimic gestures by certain individuals who came forward
* p.ag/x,Kgwyu) <robojv. — Oilyssey, vi'ii. 265.
f Iliad, xvi. 182. J Hymn. Pyth. Apoll. 19.
§ aurap \xii ffi'-ou rdp<phv df/.ua.t rt xod awry),
fftpuipn rai r ag i?ra.tZ,ov uiro xpr$ifji,\ia. fiuXovirui.
rn<ri ti ttuu/rixua XivxwXivo; yipw 70 f*o\&%s. — Odyssey, vi. 101.
Compare Iliad, xviii. 604: "hole* 3c xvfii<Trr,rr^i xar aureus
(toXwri; i'^tip^ovTis ihtviuov xa.ro. jjuitranui.
|| Hesiod. Scut. 201— 205.
% Iliad, xviii. 591 — 606. Compare Odyssey, iv. 17 — 19. It is doubtful whether
the latter part of the description in the Iliad has not been improperly introduced
into the text from the passage in the Odyssey. — Editor.
** Hymn, Horn, ad Appll. Pyth. 10 —26.
24 HISTORY OF THE
from the chorus. This description of choral dances always, in later
times, occurs in connexion with the worship of Apollo, which prevailed
to a great extent in Crete ; in Delos likewise, the birth-place of Apollo,
there were several dances of this description, one of which represented
the wanderings of Latona before the birth of that god. This circum-
stance appears to be referred to in a passage of the ancient Homeric
hymn to the Delian Apollo*, where the Delian damsels in the service
of Apollo are described as first celebrating the gods and heroes, and
afterwards singing a peculiar kind of hymn, which pleases the assembled
multitude, and which consists in the imitation of the voices and lan-
guages of various nations, and in the production of certain sounds by
some instruments like the Spanish castanets (Kpcju/3a\ia<7rve), accord-
ing to the manner of the different nations, so that every one might
imagine that he heard his own voice — for what is more natural than
to suppose that this was a mimic and orchestic representation of the
wandering Latona, and all the islands and countries, in which she
attempted in vain to find a refuge, until she at length reached the
hospitable Delos?
§ 7. Having now in this manner derived from the earliest records a
distinct notion of the kinds of poetry, and its various accompaniments,
which existed in Greece before the Homeric time, with the exception of
epic poetry, it will be easier for us to select from the confused mass of
statements respecting the early composers of hymns which are contained
in later writers, that which is most consonant to the character of remote
antiquity. The best accounts of these early bards were those which had
been preserved at the temples, at the places where hymns were sung
under their names : hence it appears that most of these names are in
constant connexion with the worship of peculiar deities ; and it will thus
be easy to distribute them into certain classes, formed by the resemblance
of their character and their reference to the same worship.
i. Singers, who belong to the worship of Apollo in Delphi, Delos, and
Crete. Among these is Olen, according to the legend, a Lycian or
Hyperborean, that is to say, sprung from a country where Apollo loved
to dwell. Many ancient hymns, attributed to him, were preserved at
Delos, which are mentioned by Herodotus f, and which contained
remarkable mythological traditions and significant appellatives of the
gods ; also nomes, that is, simple and antique songs, combined with
certain fixed tunes, and fitted to be sung for the circular dance of a
chorus. The Delphian poetess Boeo called him the first prophet of
Phoebus, and the first who, in early times, founded the style of singing
in epic metre (tVtW aoida) J. Another of these bards is Philammon,
whose name was celebrated at Parnassus, in the territory of Delphi. To
him was referred the formation of Delphian choruses of virgins, which
sung the birth of Latona and of her children. It is plain, from what
* v. 161—164. t iv. 35. J Pausan. x. 5, 8.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 2.1
has been already observed, that so far as these songs really originated in
the ancient mythical period, they were intended to be sung, not by a
dancing chorus, but by an individual to the choral dance. Lastly, Chry-
sothemis, a Cretan, who is said to have sung the first chorus to the
Pythian Apollo, clothed in the solemn dress of ceremony, which the
citharodi in later times wore at the Pythian games.
ii. Singers in connexion with the cognate worships of Demeter and
Dionysus. Among these were the Eumolpids in Eleusis of Attica — a
race which, from early times, took part in the worship of Demeter, and
in the historical age exercised the chief sacerdotal function connected
with it, the office of Hierophant. These Eumolpids evidently derived
their name of "beautiful singers" from their character (from ev fi£X-
7T£(Tdai), and their original employment was the singing of sacred
hymns ; it will be afterwards shown that this function agrees well with
the fact, that their progenitor, the original Eumolpus, is called a Thracian.
Also another Attic house, the Lycomids (which likewise had in later
times a part in the Eleusinian worship of Demeter), were in the habit
of singing hymns, and, moreover, hymns ascribed to Orpheus, Musaeus,
and Pamphus. Of the songs which were attributed to Pamphus we
may form a general idea, by remembering that he is said to have first
sung the strain of lamentation at the tomb of Linus. The name of
Musaeus (which in fact only signified a singer inspired by the Muses) is
in Attica generally connected with songs for the initiations of Demeter.
Among the numerous works ascribed to him, a hymn to Demeter is
alone considered by Pausanias as genuine*; but however obscure may
be the circumstances belonging to this name, thus much at least is
clear, that music and poetry were combined at an early period with
this worship. Musaeus is in tradition commonly called a Thracian ; he
is also reckoned as one of the race of Eumolpids, and stated to be
the disciple of Orpheus. The Thracian singer, Orpheus, is unquestion-
ably the darkest point in the entire history of the early Grecian poetry,
on account of the scantiness of the accounts respecting him, which have
been preserved in the more ancient writers — the lyric poets, Ibycus f
and Pindar J, the historians Hellanicus § and Pherecydes ||, and the
Athenian tragedians, containing the first express testimonies of his
name. This deficiency is ill supplied by the multitude of marvellous
stories concerning him, which occur in later writers, and by the poems
and poetical fragments which are extant under the name of Orpheus.
* 1.22,7. Compare iv. 1, 5.
t Ibycus in Priscian, vi. 18, 92, torn. i.-p. 283, ed. Krehl. (Fragm. 22, ed. Schnei-
dewin), who calls him ovopuxXvros 'O^ns. Ibycus flourished 560 — 40, b. c.
I Pyth. iv. 315.
§ Hellanicus in Proclus on Hesiod's Works and Days, 631 (Fragm. 75, ed.Sturz),
and in Proclus sr^i 'Oftfyou in Gaisford's Hephaestion, p. 466 (Fragm. 145, ed.
Sturz).
II Pherecydes in Schol. Apollon. i. 23 (Fragm. 18, ed. Sturz).
26 HISTORY OF THE
These spurious productions of later times will be treated in that part of
our history to which they may with the greatest probability be referred :
here we will only state our opinion that the name of Orpheus, and the
legends respecting him, are intimately connected with the idea and the
worship of a Dionysus dwelling in the infernal regions (Zaypevg), and
that the foundation of this worship (which was connected with the
Eleusinian mysteries), together with the composition of hymns and
songs for its initiations (reXsTai), was the earliest function ascribed to him.
Nevertheless, under the influence of various causes, the fame of Orpheus
grew so much, that he was considered as the first minstrel of the heroic
age, was made the companion of the Argonauts*, and the marvels
which music and poetry wrought on a rude and simple generation were
chiefly described under his name.
iii. Singers and musicians, who belonged to the Phrygian worship
of the great mother of the gods, of the Corybantes, and other similar
beings. The Phrygians, allied indeed to the Greeks, yet a separate and
distinct nation, differed from their neighbours in their strong disposition
to an orgiastic worship — that is, a worship which was connected with
a tumult and excitement produced by loud music and violent bodily
movements, such as occurred in Greece at the Bacchanalian rejoicings ;
where, however, it never, as in Phrygia, gave its character to every
variety of divine worship. With this worship was connected the deve-
lopment of a peculiar kind of music, especially on the flute, which in-
strument was always considered in Greece to possess a stimulating and
passion-stirring force. This, in the Phrygian tradition, was ascribed to
the demi-god Marsyas, who is known as the inventor of the flute, and
the unsuccessful opponent of Apollo, to his disciple Olympus, and,
lastly, to Hyagnis, to whom also the composition of nomes to the Phry-
gian gods in a native melody was attributed. A branch of this worship,
and of the style of music and dancing belonging to it, spread at an early
date to Crete, the earliest inhabitants of which island appear to have
been allied to the Phrygians.
§ 8. By far the most remarkable circumstance in these accounts of the
earliest minstrels of Greece is, that several of them (especially from the
second of the three classes just described) are called Thracians. It is
utterly inconceivable that, in the later historic times, when the Thracians
were contemned as a barbarian race f, a notion should have sprung up,
that the first civilisation of Greece was due to them ; consequently we
cannot doubt that this was a tradition handed down from a very early
period. Now, if we are to understand it to mean that Eumolpus,
Orpheus, Musaeus, and Thamyris, were the fellow-countrymen of those
Edonians, Odrysians, and Odomantians, who in the historical age
occupied the Thracian territory, and who spoke a barbarian language,
* Pindar, Pyth. iv. 315. f See, for example, Thucyd. vii. 29.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE, 27
that is, one unintelligible to the Greeks, we must despair of being- able
to comprehend these accounts of the ancient Thracian minstrels, and of
assigning them a place in the history of Grecian civilisation; since it is
manifest that at this early period, when there was scarcely any inter-
course between different nations, or knowledge of foreign tongues, poets
who sang in an unintelligible language could not have had more influence
on the mental development of the people than the twittering of birds.
Nothing but the dumb language of mimicry and dancing, and musical
strains independent of articulate speech, can at such a period pass from
nation to nation, as, for example, the Phrygian music passed over to
Greece; whereas the Thracian minstrels are constantly represented as
the fathers of poetry, which of course is necessarily combined with
language. When we come to trace more precisely the country of these
Thracian bards, we find that the traditions refer to Pieria, the district
to the east of the Olympus range, to the north of Thessaly and the south
of Emathia or Macedonia ; in Pieria likewise was Leibethra, where the
Muses are said to have sung the lament over the tomb of Orpheus : the
ancient poets, moreover, always make Pieria, not Thrace, the native place
of the Muses, which last Homer clearly distinguishes from Pieria*. It
was not until the Pierians were pressed in their own territory by the early
Macedonian princes that some of them crossed the Strymon into Thrace
Proper, where Herodotus mentions the castles of the Pierians at the
expedition of Xerxes f- It is, however, quite conceivable, that in early
times, either on account of their close vicinity, or because all the north
was comprehended under one name, the Pierians might, in Southern
Greece, have been called Thracians. These Pierians, from the intel-
lectual relations which they maintained with the Greeks, appear to be a
Grecian race ; which supposition is also confirmed by the Greek names
of their places, rivers, fountains, &c, although it is probable that, situated
on the limits of the Greek nation, they may have borrowed largely from
neighbouring tribes \. A branch of the Phrygian nation, so devoted to
an enthusiastic worship, once dwelt close to Pieria, at the foot of Mount
Bermius, where King Midas was said to have taken the drunken Silenus
in his rose-gardens. In the whole of this region a wild and enthusiastic
worship of Bacchus was diffused among both men and women. It may
be easily conceived that the excitement which the mind thus received
contributed to prepare it for poetical enthusiasm. These same Thracians
or Pierians lived, up to the time of the Doric and ./Eolic migrations, in
certain districts of Boeotia and Phocis. That they had dwelt about the
Boeotian mountain of Helicon, in the district of Thespiae and Ascra, was
evident to the ancient historians, as well from the traditions of the cities
as from the agreement of many names of places in the country near
Olympus (Leibethrian, Pimpleis, Helicon, &c). At the foot of Parnas-
* Iliad, xiv. 226. f vii. 112.
J See Miiller'a Douans, vol. i. p. 472, 483, 501.
2S HISTORY OF THE
sus, however, in Phocis, was said to have been situated the city of Daulis,
the seat of the Thracian king Tereus, who is known by his connexion
with the Athenian king Pandion, and by the fable of the metamor-
phosis of his wife Procne into a nightingale. This story (which occurs
under other forms in several parts of Greece) is one of those simple
fables which, among the early inhabitants of Greece easily grew from a
contemplation of the phenomena of Nature and the still life of animals :
the nightingale, with her sad nocturnal song, seemed to them to lament
a lost child, whose name Itys, or Itylus, they imagined that they could
hear in her notes ; the reason why the nightingale, when a human being,
was supposed to have dwelt in this district was, that it had the fame of
being the native country of the art of singing, where the Muses would be
most likely to impart their gifts to animals ; as in other parts of Greece
it was said that the nightingales sang sweetly over the grave of the
ancient minstrel, Orpheus. From what has been said, it appears suffi-
ciently clear that these Pierians or Thracians, dwelling about Helicon
and Parnassus in the vicinity of Attica, are chiefly signified when a
Thracian origin is ascribed to the mythical bards of Attica.
§ 9. It is an obvious remark, that with these movements of the
Pierians was also connected the extension of the temples of the Muses
in Greece, who alone among the gods are represented by the ancient
poets as presiding over poetry, since Apollo, in strictness, is only con-
cerned with the music of the cithara. Homer calls the Muses the Olym-
pian ; in Hesiod, at the beginning of the Theogony, they are called the
Heliconian, although, according to the notion of the Bceotian poet, they
were born on Olympus, and dwelt at a short distance from the highest
pinnacle of this mountain, where Zeus was enthroned ; whence they
only go at times to Helicon, bathe in Hippocrene, and celebrate their
choral dances around the altar of Zeus on the top of the mountain. Now,
when it is borne in mind that the same mountain on which the worship
of the Muses originally flourished was also represented in the earliest
Greek poetry as the common abode of the Gods ; in which, whatever
country they might singly prefer, they jointly assembled about the throne
of the chief god, it seems highly probable that it was the poets of this
region, the ancient Pierian minstrels, whose imagination had created this
council of the gods and had distributed and arranged its parts. Those
things which the epic poetry of Homer must have derived from earlier
compositions (such as the first notions concerning the structure of the
world, the dominions of the Olympian gods and the Titans, the established
epithets which are applied to the gods, without reference to the peculiar
circumstances under which they appear, and which often disagree with
the rest of the epic mythology) probably must, in great measure, be
referred to these Pierian bards. Moreover, their poetry was doubtless
not concerned merely with the gods, but contained the first germs of the
* Apollodorus, i. 3. 3.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 29
epic or heroic style ; more especially should Thamyris, who in Homer is
called a Thracian, and in other writers a son of Philammon* (by
which the neighbourhood of Daulis is designated as his abode), be con-
sidered as an epic poet, although some hymns were ascribed to him :
for in the account of Homer, that Thamyris, while going from one
prince to another, and having just returned from Eurytus of Oechalia,
was deprived both of his eyesight and of his power of singing and play-
ing on the cithara by the Muses, with whom he had undertaken to
contend*, it is much more natural to understand a poet, such as Phemius
and Demodocus, who entertained kings and nobles at meals by the
narration of heroic adventures, than a singer devoted to the pious service
of the gods and the celebration of their praises in hymns.
These remarks naturally lead us to the consideration of the epic style
of poetry, of which we shall at once proceed to treat.
CHAPTER IV.
§ 1. Social position of the minstrels or poets in the heroic age.— § 2. Epic poems
sung at the feasts of princes and nobles, and at public festivals. — § 3. Manner
of reciting epic poems ; explanation of rlutpsodists and rhapsodising. — §4. Metrical
form, and poetical character of the epic poetry. — § 5. Perpetuation of the early
epic poems by memory and not by writing. — § 6. Subjects and extent of the ante-
Ilomeric epic poetry.
It is our intention in this chapter to trace the Greek Poetry, as far as
we have the means of following its steps, on its migration from the
lonely valleys of Olympus and Helicon to all the nations which ruled
over Greece in the heroic age, and from the sacred groves of the gods
to the banquets of the numerous princes who then reigned in the dif-
ferent states of Greece. At the same time we propose, as far as the
nature of our information permits, to investigate the gradual develop-
ment of the heroic or epic style of poetry, until it reached the high
station which it occupies in the poems of Homer.
In this inquiry the Homeric poems themselves will form the chief
sources of information ; since to them we are especially indebted for a
clear, and, in the main, doubtless, a correct picture of the age which we
term the heroic. The most important feature in this picture is, that
among the three classes of nobles f, common freemen \, and serfs §, the
first alone enjoyed consideration both in war and peace ; they alone
performed exploits in battle, whilst the people appear to be there only
that these exploits may be performed upon them. In the assembly of
* Iliad, ii. 594—600.
f Called aj/s-TOj, tyurrm, il.va.xris, (ia/nXms, fainns, and many other names.
J SqccM (both as a collective and a singular name), lipou avSjs,-.
30 HISTORY OF THE
the people, as in the courts of justice, the nobles alone speak, advise,
and decide, whilst the people merely listen to their ordinances and
decisions, in order to regulate their own conduct accordingly ; being
suffered, indeed, to follow the natural, impulse of evincing, to a certain
extent, their approbation or disapprobation of their superiors, but still
without any legal means of giving validity to their opinion.
Yet amidst this nobility, distinguished by its warlike prowess, its
great landed possessions and numerous slaves, various persons and
classes found the means of attaining respect and station by means of
intellectual influence, knowledge, and acquirements, viz., priests, who
were honoured by the people as gods*; seers, who announced the
destinies of nations and men, sometimes in accordance with superstitious
notions, but not unfrequently with a deep foresight of an eternal and
superintending Providence ; heralds, who by their manifold knowledge
and readiness of address were the mediators in all intercourse between
persons of different states ; artisans, who were invited from one country
to another, so much were their rare qualifications in request t; and,
lastly, minstrels, or bards ; who, although possessing less influence and
authority than the priests, and placed on a level with the travelling
artisans, still, as servants of the Muses J, dedicated to the pure and inno-
cent worship of these deities, thought themselves entitled to a peculiar
degree of estimation, as well as a friendly and considerate treatment.
Thus Ulysses, at the massacre of the suitors, respects Phemius their
bard§; and we find the same class enjoying a dignified position in
royal families; as, for instance, the faithful minstrel to whose protection
Agamemnon entrusted his wife during his expedition against Troy ||.
§ 2. Above all, we find the bards in the heroic age described by
Homer as always holding an important post in every festal banquet ; as
the Muses in the Olympian palace of Zeus himself, who sing to Apollo's
accompaniment on the cithara ; amongst the Phaeacians, Demodocus,
who is represented as possessing a numerous choice of songs, both of a
serious and lively cast ; Phemius, in the house of Ulysses, whom the
twelve suitors of Penelope had brought with them from their palaces in
Ithaca ^f. The song and dance are the chief ornaments of the banquet**,
and by the men of that age, were reckoned as the highest pleasure tt.
This connexion of epic poetry with the banquets of princes had, per-
J ris ya.g on fs~v«v y.aXii aXXofov a.u<ro; \ri\$aii
aXXov y , tt fin rcuv o" dnu'io'-pyoi tuffiv ;
fiuvriv '/i r/iTn»a xax.uv n tzxtovx oovgcov,
*] KCii htTTIV UC100V, XIV Tl 7T YlIT IV UlUuV '.
V V ' / n i? , , ,
ovrei y«o xXnroi yi p^oruv ssr uwnpova yaiccv.
Odyssey, xvii. 383 el sec.
J ~MoVffdcJV fcnti?rov-Tls.
§ 0<ly.ss. xxii. 344 ; sue particularly viii. 479. || Orfyss. iii. 267.
«[ Od. xvi. 252. ** <W^ aTa W<5 f . ff Od. xvii. 518.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 31
haps, been of considerable duration in Greece. Even the fust sketch of
the Iliad and Odyssey may have been intended to be sung on these
occasions, as Demodocus sang the celebrated poem on the contest
between Achilles and Ulysses*, or the taking of Troy by means of the
wooden horse f. It is clear also that the Homeric poems were intended
for the especial gratification of princes, not of republican communities,
for whom the adage " The government of many is not good ; let there
be one lord, one king \," could not possibly have been composed : and
although Homer flourished some centuries later than the heroic age,
which appeared to him like some distant and marvellous world, from
which the race of man had degenerated both in bodily strength and
courage ; yet the constitutions of the different states had not undergone
any essential alteration, and the royal families, which are celebrated in
the Iliad and Odyssey, still ruled in Greece and the colonies of Asia
Minor§. To these the minstrels naturally turned for the purpose of
making them acquainted with the renown of their forefathers, and whilst
the pride of these descendants of heroes was flattered, and the highest
enjoyment secured to them, poetry became the instrument of the most
various instruction, and was adapted exclusively for the nobles of that
age ; so that Hesiod rightly esteems the power of deciding law-suits with
justice, and influencing a popular assembly, as a gift of the Muses, and
especially of Calliope, to kings ||.
But even before Homer's time heroic poetry was not only employed
to give an additional zest to the banquets of princes, but for other pur-
poses to which, in the later republican age, it was almost exclusively
applied, viz., the contests of poets at public festivals and games. A con-
test of this nature is alluded to in the Homeric description of the Thracian
* Od. viii. 74. Od. viii. 500. | Iliad, ii. 204
§ The supposed descendants of Hercules ruled in Sparta, and for a long time also
in Messenia and Argos (Midler's Dorians, book iii. chap. 6, §. 10) as Bacchiads in
Corinth, as Aleuads in Thessaly. The Pe/opids were kings of Achaia until Oxylus,
probably for several centuries, and ruled as Penthilids in Lesbos as well as in Cyme.
The Neiids governed Athens as archons for life until the seventh Olympiad, and the
cities of the Ionians as kings for several generations (at Miletus, for example, the
succession was N ileus, Phobius, Phrygius). Besides these the descendants of the
Lycian hero Glaucus ruled in Ionia : Herod, i. 147 — a circumstance which doubtless
influenced the poet in assigning so important a part to the Lycians in the Trojan
war, and in celebrating Glaucus (Iliad, vi.). The JEucids ruled over the Molossians,
the JEneads over the remnant of the Teucrians, which maintained itself at Gergis, in
the range of Ida and in the neighbourhood. (Classical Journal, vol. xxvi. p. 308, »eq.)
In Arcadia kings of the race oiJBpytta (Iliad, ii. G04) reigned till about Olympiad 30.
Pausan. viii. 5. Bneotia was, in Hesiod's time, governed by kings with extensive
powers; and Amphulamas of Chalets, at whose funeral games the Asciaean bard was
victorious ("F^yu, v. 652). was probably a king in Euboca (see Proclus, Viva; 'Htri^nv,
and the 'Aydv) ; although Plutarch (Conviv. sept. sap. c. 10) only calls him an
avrio Te\ifintis ■ The Homeric epigram, 13, in the Life of Homer, c. 31, calls the
ytpugoi (iutriXxi; nuivoi th ayooy, the ornament t.f the market-place ; the later recension
of the same epigram in 'llciobou xu) 'Opr^ov a-yav mentions instead the Xao; th u.yoo~,st
xaMp.i*o:, in a republican sense, the people having taken the p'ace of kings.
|| Theogony, v. 84.
32 HISTORY OF THE
bard Thamyris, who, on his road from Eurytus, the powerful ruler of
(Echalia, was struck blind at Dorium by the Muses, and deprived of his
entire art, because he had boasted of his ability to contend even with the
Muses*. The Boeotian minstrel of the " Works and Days " gives an
account of his own voyage to the games at Chalcis, which the sons of
Amphidamas had celebrated at the funeral of their father ; and says,
that among the prizes which were there held out, he carried off a tripod,
and consecrated it to the Muses on Mount Helicon f. Later authors
converted this into a contest between Hesiod and Homer. Finally, the
author of the Delian Hymn to Apollo, which stands the first amongst
those attributed to Homer, entreats the Delian virgins (who were them-
selves well versed in the song, and probably obeyed him with pleasure),
that when a stranger should inquire what bard had pleased them most,
they would answer the blind man of Chios, whose poetry every where
held the first rank. It is beyond doubt that at the festivals, with which
the Ionians celebrated the birth of Apollo at Delos, contests of rhapso-
dists were also introduced, just as we find them spread throughout Greece,
at a time when Grecian history assumes a more connected form J; and,
as may be inferred with respect to the earlier period, from numerous
allusions in the Homeric hymns.
§ 3. The mention of rhapsodists leads us to consider the circum-
stance from whence that name is derived, and from which alone we can
collect a clear and lively idea of epic poetry, viz., the manner in which
these compositions were delivered. Homer everywhere applies the term
aoihr) to the delivery of poems, whilst tirr) merely denotes the every-day
conversation of common life ; on the other hand, later authors, from
Pindar downwards, use the term tVj/ frequently to designate poetry, and
especially epic, in contradistinction to lyric. Indeed, in that primitive
and simple age, a great deal passed under the name of 'Aoiciij, or song,
which in later times would not have been considered as such ; for in-
stance, any high-pitched sonorous recitation, with certain simple modu-
lations of the voice.
The Homeric minstrel makes use of a stringed instrument, which is
* Iliad, ii. 594, seq. f v. 654, seq , compare above p. 31, note §.
I Contests of rhapsodists at Sicyon, in the time of the tyrant Clisthenes, Herod,
v. 77 ; at the same time at the Panatheneea, according to well known accounts ; in
Syracuse, about Olymp. 69, Schol. Pind. Nem. ii. 1 ; at the Asclepiea in Epidaurus,
Plato, Ion, p. 530 ; in Attica also, at the festival of the Brauronian Artemis, Hesych.
in B^av/ianoi; ; at the festival of the Charites in Orchomenos ; that of the Muses at
Thespice, and that of Apollo Ptous at Acrcephia, Boeckh. Corp. Inscript. Gr., Nos.
1583 — ,1587,'vol. i. p. 762 — 770 ; in Chios, in later times, but doubtless from ancient
custom, Corp. Inscript. Gr. No. 2214, vol. ii. p. 201; in Teos, under the name
uirofloXr,; kvru.-xol>Utus, according to Boeckh. Prooem. Lect. Berol. aestiv. 1834. Poems
were likewise sometimes rhapsodised in O'ympia, Diog. Laert. viii. 6, 63 ; Diod.
xiv. 109. Contests of rhapsodists also suited the festivals of Dionysus, Athenaeus,
vii. p. 275 ; and those of all gods, which it is right to remark for the proper compre-
hension of the Homeric hymns.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 33
called ncithara, or, more precisely, phorminx*, an instrument by which
dances were also accompanied. When the phorminx was used to lead
a dancing-chorus, its music was of course continued as long as the
dancing lasted f ; whilst, at the recitation of* epic poetry, it was only em-
ployed in the introduction (ava/3o\//), and merely served to give the
voice the necessary pitch J. A simple accompaniment of this description
is very well adapted to the delivery of epic poetry ; and in the present
day the heroic lays of the Servians, which have most faithfully retained
their original character, are delivered in an elevated tone of voice by
wandering minstrels, after a few introductory notes, for which the gurla,
a stringed instrument of the simplest construction, is employed. That
a musical instrument of this nature was not necessary for the recital
of epic poetry is proved by the fact, that Hesiod did not make use of
the cithara, and on that account is said to have been excluded from the
musical contests at Delphi, where this instrument was held in the highest
estimation, as the favourite of Apollo himself. On the other hand, the
poets of this Boeotian school merely carried a laurel stafF§, as a token
of the dignity bestowed by Apollo and the Muses, as the sceptre was
the badge of judges and heralds.
In later times, as music was more highly cultivated, the delivery of
the two species of poetry became more clearly defined. The rhap-
sodists, or chaunters of ep"c poetry, are distinguished from the citharodi,
or singers to the cithara ||. The expression pa\pioc6g, pa\po)Ce7i', signifies
nothing more than the peculiar method of epic recitation ; and it is an
error which has been the occasion of much perplexity in researches re-
specting Homer, and which has moreover found its way into ordinary
language, to endeavour to found upon this word conclusions with respect
to the composition and connexion of the epic lays, and to infer
from it that they consisted of scattered fragments subsequently joined to-
* That the phorminx and cithara were nearly ihe same instrument appears not
only from the expression Qoopiyyi KiSatffyn, which often occurs, hut from the con
verse expression, xifupu Qaepiguv, which is used in the Odyssey: —
x.r\pv\ V h X'i '^ xUoi^n Tt^ixaWlu. Qnxiv
•tv/Aiui, a; p' who's vrccpu. /tvr,<rrvo<riv avdyxr,.
nroi o Qogfti£an> uiifiuXXiro Ka?Jv ailhiv. — Od. i. 153 — 5.
f See, for example, Od. iv. 17: —
//.Ira 2s fftpm ipiXfira 6l7o; aoio'os
<pap/jii£at' S«/4i o\ xv/iitrrvTiisi kcct avrov;
ft.oXrriii ti'*-pX ovrii ^/vsi/ov kccto, [tAaaovs.
\ Hence the expression, ipo^'^ut <£vs/3oA.Xst auhiv, Od. i. 1 55 ; viii. 2G6 ; xvii. 2G2 ;
Hymn to Hermes, v. 426.
tu-x, 11, *"* Xiyius xiPupi&v
Vtipuir' ccftfiaXdo'w, \fcnn oi ol \<r-xiro Qwvri.
On upfloXu, in the sense* of prelude, see Pindar, Pyth. i. 7 ; compare Aristoph. Pac.
830 ; Theocrit. vi. 20. I pass over the testimonies of the grammarians.
§ pu.Sh'oo;, aiffaKo;, also called o-xSjtfTjov. See Hesiod, Theogon. 30 ; Pindar, Isthra
iii. 55 ; where, according to Dissen. pd.fco'o;, as the symbolical sign of the poetical
office, is also ascribed to Homer, Pausan. ix. 30 ; x. 7 ; Gbttling ad Hesiod, p. 13.
|| See, for example, Plato, Leg. ii. p. 058, and the inscriptions quoted above, p. 32,
note I
D
34 HISTORY OF THE
gether. The term rhapsodising applies equally well to the bard who
recites his own poem (as to Homer, as the poet of the Iliad and
Odyssey *), and to the declaimer who recites anew the song that has
been heard a thousand times before. Every poem can be rhapsodised
which is composed in an epic tone, and in which the verses are of equal
length, without being distributed into corresponding parts of a larger
whole, strophes, or similar systems. Thus we find this term applied to
philosophical songs of purification by Empedocles (KaOap/ioi), and to
iambics by Archilochus and Simonides, which were strung together in
the manner of hexameters f; it was, indeed, only lyric poetry, like
Pindar's odes, which could not be rhapsodised. Rhapsodists were also
not improperly called arix$>3oi \, because all the poems which they re-
cited were composed in single lines independent of each other (oti'xoi).
This also is evidently the meaning of the name rhapsadist, which, ac-
cording to the laws of the language, as well as the best authorities §,
ought to be derived from pdirreiv aoili]v, and denotes the coupling to-
gether of verses without any considerable divisions or pauses — in other
words, the even, unbroken, and continuous flow of the epic poem. As
the ancients in general show great steadiness and consistency, both in
art and literature, and adhered, without any feeling of satiety or craving
after novelty, to those models and styles of composition, which had been
once recognised as the most perfect ; so epic poems, amongst the Greeks,
continued to be rhapsodised for upwards of a thousand years. It is
true, indeed, that at a later period the Homeric poems, like those of
Hesiod, were connected with a musical accompaniment ||, and it is said
that even Terpander the Lesbian adapted the hexameters of Homer, as
well as his own, to tunes made according to certain fixed nomes or styles
of music, and to have thus sung them at the contests % and that Ste-
sander the Samian appeared at the Pythian games as the first who sung
the Homeric poems to the cithara**. This assimilation between the
delivery of epic and lyric poetry was however very far from being gene-
rally adopted throughout Greece, as the epic recitation or rhapsodia is
always clearly distinguished from the poems sung to the cithara at the
musical contests ; and how great an effect an exhibition of this kind,
* Homer, pa-fyuhu rtiguuv, the Iliad and Odyssey, according to Plato, Rep. x.
p. COO D. Concerning Hesiod as a rhapsodist, Nicocles ap. Schol. Pindar., Nem. ii. 1 .
t See Athenaeus, xiv. p. 6'20 C. Compare Plato, Ion. p. 531.
X Menaechmus in Schol. Pind., Nem. ii. I.
§ The Homerids are called by Pindar, Nem. ii. 2, ptt^rZii Wwt uodoi, that is, car-
jninum pei-pelua oratione reatatorum, Dissen. ed. min. p. 371. In the scholia to this
i ussage a verse is cited under the name of Hesiod, in which he ascribes the pd-r-
<rtiv uoihh to himself and Homer, and, moreover, in reference to a hymn, not an
epic poem consisting of several parts.
|| Athenaeus, xiv. p. 620 B, after Chamaeleon. But the argument of Athenaeus,
ih. p. 632 D. "Oftvign fi-.f. iXetrcitixitKt vruirxv luurou rhv vroin<w rests on erroneous
hypotheses.
% Plutarch dcMusica, 3. ** Athen. xiv. p. 633 A.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 35
delivered in a dress of solemn ceremony*, with suitable tones and expres-
sion f, produced upon the listeners, and how much it excited their sym-
pathy, is most plainly described by Ion, the Ephesian rhapsodist, whom
Plato, in one of his lesser Dialogues, has brought forward as a butt for
the irony of Socrates.
§ 4. The form which epic poetry preserved for more than a thousand
years among the Greeks agrees remarkably well with this composed and
even style of chaunting recitation which we have just described. In-
deed, the ancient minstrels of the Homeric and ante-Homeric age had
probably no choice, since for a long period the hexameter verse was the
only regular and cultivated form of poetry, and even in the time of Ter-
pander (about Olymp. 30) was still almost exclusively used for lyric
poetry ; although we are not on that account to suppose, that all popular
songs, hymeneals, dirges, and ditties (such as those which Homer repre-
sents Calypso and Circe as singing at the loom), were composed in
the same rhythm. But the circumstance of the dactylic verse, the hexa-
meter, having been the first and, for a long time, the only metre which
was regularly cultivated in Greece, is an important evidence with respect
to the tone and character of the ancient Grecian poetry, the Ho-
meric and ante- Homeric epic. The character of the different rhythms,
which, among the Greeks, was always in exact accordance with that of
the poetry, consists in the first place in the relation of the arsis and
thesis, of the strong or weak cadence — in other words, of the greater
or less exertion of the voice. Now in the dactyl these two elements
are evenly halanced|, which therefore belongs to the class of equal
rhythms §; and hence a regular equipoise, with its natural accompani-
ment, an even and steady tone, is the character of the dactylic measure.
This tone is constantly preserved in the epic hexameter ; but there were
other dactylic metres, which, by the shortening of the long element, or
the arsis, acquired a different character, which will be more closely
oxamined when we come to treat of the iEolian lyric poetry Accord-
ing to Aristotle ||, the epic verse was the most dignified and composed
of all measures ; its entire form and composition appears indeed pecu-
liarly fitted to produce this effect. The length of the verse, which con-
sists of six feet^[, the break which is obtained by a pause at the end**,
the close connexion of the parts into an entire whole, which results
* Plato, Ion. p. 530. The sumptuous dress of the rhapsodist Magnes of Smyrna,
in the time of Gyges, is described by Nicolaus Damasc. Fragm. p. 268, ed. Tauch-
nitz. In later times, when the Homeric poetry was delivered in a more dramaiic
style {binx.olnro l£upaTix.urioov),i\\u Iliad was sung by the rhapsodisis in a red, the
Odyssey in a violet, dress, Eustath. ad Iliad, A. p. ti, \>, ed. Rom.
f Plato, Ion. p. 535. From this, in later days, a regular dramatic style of acting
(icroy.^iiris) for the rhapsodists or Ilomerists was developed. See Aristot. Poet. 26
Rhetor, iii. I, 8; Achill. Tat. li. I.
I For in Ivu, I is equal to two times, as well as vu. § yUcs "<rov,
|| Poet. 24, to bouixov o-rciffifAkirarov xai oyxuinrTCcrov tuv fitrpuv itrriv.
^[ Hence versus longi among the Romans. ** y.aruXrfos.
36 HISTORY OF THE
from the dovetailing of the feet into one another, the alternation of dac-
tyls with the heavy spondees, all contribute to give repose and majesty
and a lofty solemn tone to the metre, and render it equally adapted to
the pythoness who announces the decrees of the deity*, and to the rhap-
sodist who recites the battles and adventures of heroes.
Not only the metre, but the poetical tone and style of the ancient
epic, was fixed and settled in a manner which occurs in no other kind of
poetry in Greece. This uniformity in style is the first thing that strikes us
in comparing the Homeric poems with other remains of the more ancient
epic poetry — the differences between them being apparent only to the
careful and critical observer. It is scarcely possible to account satisfac-
torily for this uniformity — this invariableness of character — except upon
the supposition of a certain tradition handed down from generation to
generation in families of minstrels, of an hereditary poetical school. We
recognise in the Homeric poems many traces of a style of poetry which,
sprung originally from the muse-inspired enthusiasm of the Pierians of
Olympus or Helicon, was received and improved by the bards of the
heroic ages, and some centuries later arrived at the matured excellence
which is still the object of our admiration, though without losing all
connexion with its first source. We shall not indeed undertake to
defend the genealogies constructed by Pherecydes, Damastes, and other
collectors of legends from all the various names of primitive poets and
minstrels extant in their time — genealogies, in which Homer and
Hesiod are derived from Orpheus, Musams, and other Pierian bards f ;
but the fundamental notion of these derivations, viz., the connexion of
the epic poets with the early minstrels, receives much confirmation from
the form of the epic poetry itself.
In no other species of poetry besides the epic do we find generally
prevalent certain traditional forms, and an invariable type, to which
every poet, however original and inventive his genius, submits ; and it
is evident that the getting by heart of these poems, as well as their extem-
poraneous effusion on particular occasions and at the inspiration of the
moment, must have been by these means greatly facilitated. To the
same cause, or to the style which had been consecrated by its origin and
tradition, we attribute the numerous and fixed epithets of the gods and
heroes which are added to their names without any reference to their
actions or the circumstances of the persons who may be described. The
great attention paid to external dignity in the appellations which the
heroes bestow on each other, and which, from the elevation of their
tone, are in strange contrast with the reproaches with which they at the
same time load each other — the frequently-recurring expressions, par-
ticularly in the description of the ordinary events of heroic life, their
"■ ; Hence called Pyihium metmm, and stated to be an invention of the priestess
Phemonoe, Dorians, ii. ch. 8, § 13.
t These genealogies have been most accurately compared and examined with cri-
tical acuteness by Lobeck, in his learned work, Aglaophamus, vol. i. p. 322, seg.
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 37
assemblies, sacrifices, banquets, &c. — the proverbial expressions and
sentences derived from an earlier age, to which class may be referred
most of the verses which belong in common to Homer and Hesiod — and,
finally, the uniform construction of the sentences, and their connexion
with each other, are also attributable to the same origin.
This, too, is another proof of the happy tact and natural genius of the
Greeks of that period ; since no style can be conceived which would be
better suited than this to epic narrative and description. In general,
short phrases, consisting of two or three hexameters, and usually termi-
nating with the end of a verse ; periods of greater length, occurring
chiefly in impassioned speeches and elaborate similes ; the phrases care-
fully joined and strung together with conjunctions ; the collocation
simple and uniform, without any of the words being torn from their
connexion, and placed in a prominent position by a rhetorical artifice ;
all this appears the natural language of a mind which contemplates the
actions of heroic life with an energetic but tranquil feeling, and passey
them successively in review with conscious delight and complacency.
§ 5. The tone and style of epic poetry is also evidently connected
with the manner in which these poems were perpetuated. After the
researches of various scholars, especially of Wood and Wolf, no one can
doubt that it was universally preserved by the memory alone, and handed
down from one rhapsodist to another by oral tradition. The Greeks
(who, in poetry, laid an astonishing stress on the manner of delivery,
the observance of the rhythm, and the proper intonation and inflection
of the voice) always, even in later times, considered it necessary that per-
sons, who were publicly to deliver poetical compositions, should previ-
ously practise and rehearse their part. The oral instruction of the chorus
was the chief employment of the lyric and tragic poets, who were hence
called chorodidascali. Amongst the rhapsodists also, to whom the cor-
rectness and grace of delivery was of much importance, this method of
tradition was the most natural, and at the same time the only one pos-
sible, at a time in which the art of writing was either not known at all
to the Greeks or used only by a few, and by them to a very slight extent.
The correctness of this supposition is proved, in the first place, by the
silence of Homer, which has great weight in matters which he had so
frequently occasion to describe; but particularly by the "fatal tokens"
(at'ifiara Xvyoa), commanding the destruction of Bellerophon, which
Proetus sends to lobates : these being clearly a species of symbolical
figures, which must have speedily disappeared from use when alpha-
betical writing was once generally introduced.
Besides this we have no credible account of written memorials of that
period ; and it is distinctly stated that the laws of Zaleucus (about Olymp.
30) were the first committed to writing: those of Lycurgus, of earlier
date, having been at first preserved only by oral tradition. Additional
confirmation is afforded by the rarity and icorlhlessncss of any historical
3S HISTORY OF THE
data founded upon written documents, of the period before the com-
mencement of the Olympiads. The same circumstance also explains
the late introduction of prose composition among the (J reeks, viz., during
the time of the seven wise men. The frequent employment of writing
for detailed records would of itself have introduced the use of prose.
Another proof is afforded by the existing inscriptions, very few of which
are of earlier date than the time of Solon ; also by the coins which were
struck in Greece from the reign of Phidon, king of Argos (about
Olymp. 8), and which continued for some time without any inscription,
and only gradually obtained a few letters. Again, the very shape of the
letters may be adduced in evidence, as in all monuments until about
the time of the Persian war, they exhibit a great uncouthness in their
form, and a great variety of character in different districts ; so much so,
that we can almost trace their gradual development from the Phoenician
character (which the Greeks adopted as the foundation of their alphabet)
until they obtained at last a true Hellenic stamp. Even in the time of
Herodotus, the term " Phoenician characters"* was still used for writing.
If now we return to Homer, it will be found that the form of the text
itself, particularly as it appears in the citations of ancient authors, dis-
proves the idea of its having been originally committed to writing, since
we find a great variety of different readings and discrepancies, which
are much more reconcilable with oral than written tradition. Finally,
the language of the Homeric poems (as it still appears after the nume-
rous revisions of the text), if considered closely and without prejudice, is
of itself a proof that they were not committed to writing till many cen-
turies after their composition. We allude more particularly to the omis-
sion of the van, or (as it is termed) the iEolic digamma, a sound which
was pronounced even by Homer strongly or faintly according to cir-
cumstances, but was never admitted by the Ionians into written com-
position, they having entirely got rid of this sound before the introduc-
tion of writing: and hence it was not received in the most ancient copies
of Homer, which were, without doubt, made by the Ionians. The
licence as to the use of the digamma is, however, only one instance of the
freedom which so strongly characterizes the language of Homer ; but it
could never have attained that softness and flexibility which render it so
well adapted for versification — that variety of longer and shorter forms
which existed together — that freedom in contracting and resolving vowels,
and of forming the contractions into two syllables — if the practice of
writing had at that time exercised the power, which it necessarily pos-
sesses, of fixing the forms of a language. Lastly, to return to the point,
for the sake of which we have entered into this explanation, the
■poetical style of the ancient epic poems shows the great use it made of
those aids of which poetry, preserved and transmitted by means of
* fmhiMia in Herod, v. 58. Likewise in the inscription known 1)}' the name of
Dura: Tri-irum.
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 39
memoiy alone, will always gladly avail itself. The Greek epic, like
heroic poems of other nations which were preserved by oral tradition,
as well as our own popular songs, furnishes us with many instances,
where, by the mere repetition of former passages or a few customary
flowing phrases, the mind is allowed an interval of repose, which it
gladly makes use of in order to recal the verses which immediately follow.
These epic expletives have the same convenience as the constantly-
recurring burdens of the stanzas in the popular poetry of other nations,
and contribute essentially towards rendering comprehensible the marvel
(which, however, could only be accounted as such in times when the
powers of memory have been weakened by the use of writing) involved
in the composition and preservation of such poems by the means of
memorv alone*.
§ 6. In this chapter our inquiries have hitherto been directed to the
delivery, form, and character of the ancient epic, as we must suppose it
to have existed before the age of Homer. With regard, however, to any
particular production of this ante- Homeric poetry, no historical testimony
of any is extant, much less any fragment or account of the subject of the
poem. And yet it is in general quite certain that at the period when
Homer and Hesiod arose, a large number of songs must have existed
respecting the actions both of gods and heroes. The compositions of
these poets, if taken by themselves, do not bear the character of a com-
plete and all-suflicient body, but rest on a broad foundation of other
poems, by means of which their entire scope and application was deve-
loped to a contemporary audience. In the Theogony, Hesiod only aims
at bringing the families of gods and heroes into an unbroken genealo-
gical connexion ; the gods and heroes themselves he always supposes
to be well known. Homer speaks of Achilles, Nestor, Diomed, even
the first time their names are introduced, as persons with whose race,
family, preceding history, and actions, every person was acquainted, and
which require to be only occasionally touched upon so far as may be
connected with the actual subject. Besides this, we find a crowd of
secondary personages, who, as if well known from particular traditions,
are very slightly alluded to ; persons whose existence was doubtless a
matter of notoriety to the poet, and who were interesting from a variety
of circumstances, but who are altogether unknown to us, as they were to
the Greeks of later days. That the Olympian council of the gods, as
represented in Homer, must have been previously arranged by earlier
poets, has been already remarked ; and poetry of a similar nature to one
part of Hesiod's Theogony, though in some respects essentially different,
* The author has here given a summary of all the arguments which contratlict
the opinion that the ancient epics of the Greeks were originally reduced to writing ;
principally because, in the course of the critical examination to which Wolfs in-
quiries have been recently submitted in Germany, this point has been differently
handled by several persons, and it has been again maintained that these poems were
preserved in writing from the beginning.
40 HISTORY OV THE
must have been composed upon Cronus and Japetus, the expelled deities
languishing in Tartarus*.
In the heroic age, however, every thing great and distinguished must
have been celebrated in song, since, according to Homer's notions, glo-
rious actions or destinies naturally became the subjects of poetry f-
Penelope by her virtues, and Clytsemnestra by her crimes, became respec-
tively a tender and a dismal strain for posterity \; the enduring opinion
of mankind being identical with the poetry. The existence of epic
poems descriptive of the deeds of Hercules, is in particular established
by the peculiarity of the circumstances mentioned in Homer with
respect to this hero, which seem to have been taken singly from some
full and detailed account of his adventures § ; nor would the ship Argo
have been distinguished in the Odyssey by the epithet of " interesting
to all," had it not been generally well known through the medium of
poetry ||. Many events, moreover, of the Trojan war were known to
Homer as the subjects of epic poems, especially those which occurred at
a late period of the siege, as the contest between Achilles and Ulysses,
evidently a real poem, which was not perhaps without influence upon
the Iliad % and the poem of the Wooden Horse **. Poems are also men-
tioned concerning the return of the Achseans ft, and the revenge of
Orestes j \. And since the newest song, even at that time, always pleased
the audience most§§, we must picture to ourselves a flowing stream of
various strains, and a revival of the olden time in song, such as never
occurred at any other period. All the Homeric allusions, however, leave
the impression that these songs, originally intended to enliven a few
hours of a prince's banquet, were confined to the narration of a single
event of small compass, or (to borrow an expression from the German
epopees) to a single adventure, for the connexion of which they
entirely relied upon the general notoriety of the story and on other
existing poems.
Such was the state of poetry in Greece when the genius of Homer
arose.
* That is to say, it does not, from the intimations given in Homer, seem probable
that he reckoned the deities of the water, as Oceanus and Tethys, and those of the
light, as Hyperion and Theia, among the Titans, as Hesiod does.
t See Iliad, vi.358; Od. iii. 204. J Od. xxiv. 197, 200.
§ See Midler's Dorians, Append, v. § 14, vol. i. p. 543.
|| Od. xn. 70 : ' ' Af^yu ■xuffift.iXtivira.
^[ The words are very remarkable : —
M«:V ao aoib'ov air,xiv cciti'ifilvai xXicc avogaiv,
c'iuv., rn; tot apa. y.Xio; oioanov il^vv ucecvw,
Yitxo; 'O1v<rcrr t o; x.a\ TJnXii^ia'A^iXr,i}S. — Od, Villi 73, Set}.
** Od. viii. 492. ft Od. i. 326. ++ Od. iii. 204. §§ Od. i. 351
LJTEIUTUKE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 41
CHAPTER V.
§ 1. Opinions on the birthplace and country of Homer. — $ 2. Homer probably a
Smyrnaean : early history of Smyrna. — § 3. Union ofy55olian and Ionian cha-
racteristics in Homer. — § 4. Novelty of Homer's choice of subjects for his two
poems. — § 5. Subject of the Iliad : the anger of Achilles. — § 6. Enlargement of
the subject by introducing the events of the entire war. — § 7. and by dwelling on
the exploits of the Grecian heroes. — § 8. Change of tone in the Iliad in its pro-
gress. — § 9. The Catalogue of Ships. — § 10. The later books, and the conclusion of
the Iliad. — § 11. Subject of the Odyssey: the return of Ulysses. — § 12. Inter-
polations in the Odyssey. — § 13. The Odyssey posterior to the Iliad; but both
poems composed by the same person. — § 14. Preservation of the Homeric poems
by rhapsodists, and manner of their recitation.
§ 1. The only accounts which have been preserved respecting' the life of
Homer are a few popular traditions, together with conjectures of the
grammarians founded on inferences from different passages of his poems ;
yet even these, if examined with patience and candour, furnish some mate-
rials for arriving at probable results. With regard to the native country ot
Homer, the traditions do not differ so much as might at first sight appear
to be the case. Although seven cities contended for the honour of having:
given birth to the great poet, the claims of many of them were only
indirect. Thus the Athenians only laid claim to Homer, as having
been the founders of Smyrna*, and the opinion of Aristarchus, the
Alexandrine critic, which admitted their claim, was probably qualified
with the same explanation +. Even Chios cannot establish its right to
be considered as the original source of the Homeric poetry, although the
claims of this Ionic island are supported by the high authority of the
lyric poet Simonides J. It is true that in Chios lived the race of the
Homerids§ ; who, from the analogy of other yevrj, are to be considered
not as a family, but as a society of persons, who followed the same art,
and therefore worshipped the same gods, and placed at their head a
* This is clearly expressed in the epigram on Pisistratus, in Bekker's Anecdota,
vol. ii. p. 708.
T£i; pi Tv^ayy/itrtxyra. <ro<ru.v7a.xt; V£,ib"iu'z > iv
Oi.wi; ' A^nvaluv, Ka) rot; irrtiyeiyiTo,
Toy /Aiyav \y GauXjj Hutritrrpcirov, o; rev' Ojj.no/iv
rjgoicra., trTo/ioiotiv <ro •r^iv aiihopiyoy.
npcirieo; ycco xuvos o xgittrio; v\v ToXirirn;,
uori^ ' A6-/ivcc7ot 2ftvgva.v aTuxiva/Aiv.
t The opinion of Aristarchus is briefly stated by Pseudo-Plutarch Vita Homeri
ii. 2. lis foundation may be seen by comparing, for example, the Schol. Venet. on Iliad
xiii. 197, e cod. A, which, according to recent investigations, contain extracts from
Aristarchus.
{ Simonides in Pseudo-Plutarch, ii. 2, and others. Compare Theocritus, vii. 17.
§ Concerning this yivos, see the statements in Harpocration in 'O^/'Sa;, and Bek-
ker's Anecdota, p. 28s!, which in part are derived from the logographers. Another
and different use of the word 'Oftngftcu occurs in Plato, Isocrates, and otlicr writers,
according to which it means the admirers of Homer.
42 HISTORY OF THE
hero, from whom they derived their name*. A memher of this house
of Homerids was, prohably, " the blind poet," who, in the Homeric
hymn to Apollo, relates of himself, that he dwelt on the rocky Chios,
whence he crossed to Delos for the festival of the Ionians and the con-
tests of the poets, and whom Thucydides-f took for Homer himself; a
supposition, which at least shows that this great historian considered
Chios as the dwelling-place of Homer. A later Homerid of Chios was
the well-known Cinsethus, who, as we know from his victory at Syracuse,
flourished about the 69th Olympiad. At what time the Homerid Par-
thenius of Chios lived is unknown \. But notwithstanding the ascer-
tained existence of this clan of Homerids at Chios, nay, if we even, with
Thucydides, take the blind man of the hymn for Homer himself, it
would not follow that Chios was the birthplace of Homer : indeed, the
ancient writers have reconciled these accounts by representing Homer
as having, in his wanderings, touched at Chios, and afterwards fixed his
residence there. A notion of this kind is evidently implied in Pindar's
statements, who in one place called Homer a Smyrnsean by origin, in
another, a Chian and Smyrnsean §. The same idea is also indicated in
the passage of an orator, incidentally cited by Aristotle ; which says that
" the Chians greatly honoured Homer, although he was not a citizen ||."
With the Chian race of Homerids may be aptly compared the Samian
family; although this is not joined immediately to the name of Homer,
but to that of Creophylus, who is described as the contemporary and
host of Homer. This house also flourished for several centuries ; since, in
the first place, a descendant of Creophylus is said to have given the
Homeric poems to Lycurgus the Spartan «[ (which statement maybe so
far true, that Hie Lacedaemonians derived their knowledge of these poems
from rhapsodists of the race of Creophylus) ; and, secondly, a later
Creophylid, named Hermodamas, is said to have been heard by Py-
thagoras**.
§ 2. On the other hand, the opinion that Homer was a Smyrnsean not
only appears to have been the prevalent belief in the flourishing times of
Greece tt, but is supported by the two following considerations : — first,
the important fact, that it appears in the form of a popular legend, a
mythus, the divine poet being called a son of a nymph, Critheis, and the
* Niebuhr, Hist, of Rome, vol. i. nnte 747 (801). Compare the Preface to
Muller's Dorians, p. xii. seq. English Translation.
| Thucyd. iii. 104.
J Suidas in lice^ivms. It may be conjectured that this viis &lirro^s, avbyovos
Op-npov, is connected with the ancient epic poet, Thestorides of Phocsea and Chios
mentioned in Pseudo-Herodot. Vit. Horn.
§ See Boeckh. Pindar. Fragm. inc. 86.
|| Aristot. Rhet. ii. 23. Comp. Pseudo-Herod. Vit. Horn., near the end.
*[ See particularly Heraclid. Pont. ■roXiruav, Fragm. 2.
** Suidas in nvfayooxg 1-a.y.ioi, p. 231, ed. Kuster.
t -3 I - • A.
ft Besides the testimony of Pindar, the incidental statement of Scylax is
jmarkable. ^vqvx iv %"Opvgo; nv, p. 35, ed. Is. Voss.
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 43
Smyrnaean river Meles*; secondly, that by assuming Smyrna as the
central point of Homer's life and celebrity, the claims of all the other
cities which rest on good authority (as of the Athenians, already men-
tioned, of the CumaGans, attested by Ephorus, himself a Cumseanf, of
the Colophonians, supported by Antimachus of Colophon J), may be ex-
plained and reconciled in a simple and natural manner. With this view,
the history of Smyrna is of great importance in connexion with Homer,
but from the conflicting interests of different tribes and the partial
accounts of native authorities, is doubtful and obscure : the followino-
account is, at least, the result of careful investigation. There were two
traditions and opinions with respect to the foundation or first occupa-
tion of Smyrna by a Greek people : the one was the Io?iic ; according
to which it was founded from Ephesus, or from an Ephesian village
called Smyrna, which really existed under that name § ; this colony was
also called an Athenian one, the lonians having settled Ephesus under
the command of Androclus, the son of Codrus||. According to the
other, the JEolian account, the iEolians of Cyme, eighteen years after
their own city was founded, took possession of Smyrna 6 ^, and, in con-
nexion with this event, accounts of the leaders of the colony are given,
which agree well with other mythical statements**. As the Ionic
settlement was fixed by the Alexandrine chronologists at the year 140
after the destruction of Troy, and the foundation of Cyme is placed at
the year 150 after the same epoch (which is in perfect harmony with
the succession of the /Eolic colonies), the two races met at about the
same time in Smyrna, although, perhaps, it may be allowed that the
lonians had somewhat the precedence in point of time, as the name of
the town was derived from them. It is credible, although it is not
distinctly stated, that for a long time the two populations occupied
Smyrna jointly. The .-Eolians, however, appear to have predominated,
Smyrna, according to Herodotus, being one of the twelve cities of the
* Mentioned in all the different lives of Homer. The name or epithet of Homer,
AJe/esigenes, can hardly be of late date, but must have descended from the early epic
poets.
f See Pseudo-Plutarch, ii. 2. Ephorus was likewise, evidently, the chief autho-
rity followed by the author of the life of Homer, which goes by the name of Hero-
dotus.
J Pseudo-Plutarch, ii. 2. The connexion between the Smyrnaean and Colophonian
origin of Homer is intimated in the epigram, Ibid. i. 4, which calls Homer the son
of Meles, and at the same time makes Colophon his native country.
'Til 'MtX>i'ro;,"Ofi-/!^s, <rh yag xXio; 'EXAad* Kuan
Kai KoXoipaJvi <7rd.7i>n Qnxa.; iv aidiov.
§ See Strabo's detailed explanation, xiv. p. G33 — A.
|| Strabo, xiv. p. 632 — 3. Doubtless, likewise the Smyrnaean worship of Nemesis
was derived from Rhamnus in Attica. The rhetorician Aristides gives many fabu-
lous accounts of the Athenian colony at Smyrna in several places.
% Pseudo-Herodot. Vit. Horn. c. 2, 38.
** The o\x.iTTr,; was, according to Pseudo-Herod, c. 2, a certain Theseus, the o.e-
Bcendant of Eumelus of Phera? ; according to Parthenius, 5, the same family of
Admetus the Phersean founded Magnesia on the Meander j and Cyme, the mother-
city of Smyrna, had also received inhabitants from Magnesia. Pseudo-Herod, c. 2.
44 HISTORY OF THE
jEolians, while the Ionic league includes twelve cities, exclusive of
Smyrna*; for the same reason Herodotus is entirely ignorant of the
Ephesian settlement in Smyrna. Hence it came to pass, that the
Ionians — we know not exactly at what time — were expelled by the
iEolians; upon which they withdrew to Colophon, and were mixed with
the other Colophonians, always, however, retaining the wish of reco-
vering Smyrna to the Ionic race. In later times the Colophonians, in
fact, succeeded in conquering Smyrna, and in expelling the iEolians
from it*f-; from which time Smyrna remained a purely Ionian city.
Concerning the time when this change took place, no express testimony
has been preserved ; all that we know for certain is, that it happened
before the time of Gyges, king of Lydia, that is, before about the 20th
Olympiad, or 700 B. C, since Gyges made war on Smyrna, together
with Miletus and Colophon J, which proves the connexion of these
cities. We also know of an Olympic victor, in Olymp. 23 (688 B. C),
who was an Ionian of Smyrna §. Mimnermus, the elegiac poet, who
flourished about Olymp. 37 (630 B. C), was descended from these
Colophonians who had settled at Smyrna ||.
It cannot be doubted that the meeting of these different tribes in this
corner of the coast of Asia Minor contributed by the various elements
which it put in motion to produce the active and stirring spirit which
would give birth to such works as the Homeric poems. On the one side
there were the Ionians from Athens, with their notions of their noble-
minded, wise, and prudent goddess Athena, and of their brave and philan-
thropic heroes, among whom Nestor, as the ancestor of the Ephesian
and Milesian kings, is also to be reckoned. On the other side were the
Achceans, the chief race among the iEolians of Cyme, with the princes
of Agamemnon's family at their head^f, with all the claims which were
bound up with the name of the king of men, and a large body of
legends which referred to the exploits of the Pelopids, particularly the
taking of Troy. United with them were various warlike bands from
Locris, Thessaly, and Euboea ; but, especially colonists from Bceotia, with
their Heliconian worship of the Muses and their hereditary love for
poetry**.
§ 3. If this conflux and intermixture of different races contributed pow-
The Homeric epigram 4, in Pseudo-Herod, c. 14, mentions Xaot fylxwcs as the
founders of Smyrna; therrby meaning the Locrian tribe, which, deriving its origin
from Phricion, near Thermopylae, fo mded Cyme Phriconis, and also Larissa Phri-
conis.
* i. 149. f Herod, i. 150. comp. i. 16. Pausan. vii. 5, 1.
I Herod, i. 14; Patisanias, iv. 21, 3, also states distinctly that the Smyrnaeans
were at that time Ionians. Nor would Mimnermus have sung the exploits of the
Smyrnaeans in this war it' they had not been Ionians.
§ Pausan. v. 8, 3. || Mimnermus in Strabo, xiv. p. 634.
^f Strabo, xiii. p. 582. An Agamemnon, king of C^me, is mentioned by Pollux,
ix. 83.
** On the connexion of Cyme with Bceotia, see below, ch. 8. £ 1.
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 45
erfully to stimulate the mental energies of the people, and to develop the
traditionary accounts of former times, as well as to create and modify
the epic dialect ; yet it would be satisfactory if we could advance a step
farther, and determine to which race Homer himself belonged. There
does not appear to be sufficient reason, either in the name or the accounts
of Homer, to dissolve him into a mere fabulous and ideal being- : we see
Hesiod, with all his minutest family relations, standing before our eyes ;
and if Homer was by an admiring posterity represented as the son of
a nymph, on the other hand, Hesiod relates how he was visited by the
Muses. Now, the tradition which called Homer a Smyrnaean, evidently
(against the opinion of Antimachus) placed him in the yEolic time ; and
the Homeric epigram*, in which Smyrna is called the JEolian, although
considerably later than Homer himself, in whose mouth it is placed, is
yet of much importance, as being the testimony of a Homerid who lived
before the conquest of Smyrna by the Colophonians. Another argu-
ment to the same effect is, that Melauopus, an ancient Cymsean com-
poser of hymns, who, among the early bards, has the best claim to his-
torical reality, the supposed author of a hymn referring to tne Uelian
worship f, in various genealogies collected by the logographers and other
mythologists is called the grandfather of Homer J; whence it appears,
that when these genealogies were fabricated, the Smyrnaean p et was
connected with the Cymaean colony. The critics of antiquity have
also remarked some traits of manners and usages described in Homer,
which were borrowed from the iEolians : the most remarkable is that
Bubrostis^, mentioned by Homer as a personification of unap-
peased hunger, had a temple in Smyrna which was referred to the iEolian
time || .
Notwithstanding these indications, every one who carefully notes in
the Homeric poems all the svmptoms of national feelings and recollec-
tions of home, will find himself drawn to the other side, and will, with
Aristarchus, recognize the beat of an Ionic heart in the breast of Homer.
One proof of this is the reverence which the poet shows for the chief gods
of the Ionians, and, moreover, in their character of Ionic deities. For
Fallas Atheiraa is described by him as the Athenian goddess, who loves
to dwell in the temple on the Acropolis of Athens, and also hastens from
the land of the Plueacians to Marathon and Athens ^[ : Poseidon likewise
is known to Homer as peculiarly the Heliconian god, that is the deity of
the Ionian league, to whom the Ionians celebrated national festivals both
* ^P'o 1, Homer, 4. in Pseiido-IIorod. 14.
t Pausan. v. 7, 4, according to Bekker's edition. From this it appears that Pau-
sanias makes i\Klinopiis later than Olen, ami earlier than AristeaS.
J See H'-llanicus and others in Proclus Vita Homeri, and Pseudo-Herod, c. 1.
§ II. xxiv. 532 ; and compare the Venetian Scholia.
|| According to the Innica of Metrodoms in Plutarch Quaest. Symp. vi. 8. 1.
Eustathius, on the other hand, ascrihes the worship to the Ionians.
% Od. vii. 80. Compare II. xi. 547.
46 HISTORY OF THE
in Peloponnesus and in Asia Minor*: in describing Nestor's sacrifice
to Poseidon, moreover, the poet doubtless was mindful of those which
his successors, the Nelids, were wont to solemnize, as kings of the
Ionians. Among the heroes, Ajax, the son of Telamon, is not repre-
sented by Homer, as he was by the Dorians of iEgina and most of the
Greeks, as being an iEacid and the kinsman of Achilles (otherwise some
mention of this relationship must have occurred), but he is considered
merely as a hero of Salamis, and is placed in conjunction with Menes-
theus the Athenian : hence it must be supposed that he, as well as the
Attic logographer Pherecydes t, considered Ajax as being by origin an
Attic Salaminian hero. The detailed statement of- the Hellenic descent
of the Lycian hero Glaucus in his famous encounter with Diomed,
gains a fresh interest, when we bear in mind the Ionic kings of the race
of Glaucus mentioned above J. Moreover, with respect to political insti-
tutions and political phraseology, there are many symptoms of Ionian
usage in Homer: thus the Pkratrias, mentioned in the Iliad, occur else-
where only in Ionic states ; the Thetes, as labourers for hire, without
land, are the same in Homer as in Solon's time at Athens ; Demon, also,
in the sense both of "flat country" and of "common people," appears
to be an Ionic expression. A Spartan remarks in Plato §, that Homer
represents an Ionic more than a Lacedaemonian mode of life ; and, in
truth, many customs and usages may be mentioned, which were spread
among the Greeks by the Dorians, and of which no trace appears in
Homer. Lastly, besides the proper localities of the two poems, the
local knowledge of the poet appears peculiarly accurate and distinct in
northern Ionia and the neighbouring Mssonia, where the Asian mea-
dow and the river Cayster with its swans, the Gyga?an lake, and Mount
Tmolus||, where Sipylon with its Achelous ^[, appear to be known to
him, as it were, from youthful recollections.
If one may venture, in this dawn of tradition, to follow the faint light
of these memorials, and to bring their probable result into connexion
with the history of Smyrna, the following may be considered as the sum
of the above inquiries. Homer was an Ionian belonging to one of the
families which went from Ephesus to Smyrna, at a time when iEolians
and A chseans composed the chief part of the population of the city, and
when, moreover, their hereditary traditions respecting the expedition of
the Greeks against Troy excited the greatest interest ; whence he recon-
ciles in his poetical capacity the conflict of the contending races, inas-
* Iliad, viii. 203 ; xx.404 ; with the Scholia. Epigr. Hom.vi. in Pseudo-Herod. 17.
f Apollod. iii. 12, 6.
J Above, p. 31, note §. No use has here been made of the suspicious passages,
which might have been interpolated in the age of Pisistratus. Concerning Homer's
Attic tendency in mythical points, see also Pseudo-Herod, c. 28.
§ Leg. iii. p. 680. || Iliad, ii. 8G3 ; xx. 392.
^[ Iliad, xxiv. 615. It is evident from the Scholia that the Homeric Achelous is
the brook Achelous which runs from Sipylon to Smyrna,
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 47
much as he treats an Achrean subject with the elegance and geniality of
an Ionian. But when Smyrna drove out the lonians, it deprived itself
of this poetical renown ; and the settlement of the Homerids in Chios
was, in all probability, a consequence of the expulsion of the lonians
from Smyrna.
It may, moreover, be observed that according to this account, founded
on the history of the colonies of Asia Minor, the time of Homer would
fall a few generations after the Ionic migration to Asia: and with this
determination the best testimonies of antiquity agree. Such are the
computation of Herodotus, who places Homer with Hesiod 4U0 years
before his time*, and that of the Alexandrine chronologists, who place
him 100 years after the Ionic migration, 60 years before the legislation
of Lycurgusf: although the variety of opinions on this subject which
prevailed among the learned writers of antiquity cannot be reduced
within these limits.
§ 4. This Homer, then (of the circumstances of whose life we at leas
know the little just stated), was the person who gave epic poetry its first
great impulse; into the causes of which we shall now proceed to inquire.
Before Homer, as we have already seen, in general only single actions
and adventures were celebrated in short lays. The heroic mythology
had prepared the way for the poets by grouping the deeds of the prin-
cipal heroes into large masses, so that they had a natural connexion with
each other, and referred to some common fundamental notion. Now,
as the general features of the more considerable legendary collections
were known, the poet had the advantage of being able to narrate any
one action of Hercules, or of one of the Argive champions against
Thebes, or of the AcliEcans against Troy; and at the same time of being
certain that the scope and purport of the action (viz. the elevation of
Hercules to the gods, and the fated destruction of Thebes and Troy)
would be present to the minds of his hearers, and that the individual
adventure would thus be viewed in its proper connexion Thus doubtless
for a long time the bards were satisfied with illustrating single points of
the heroic mythology with brief epic lays ; such as in later times were
produced by several poets of the school of Hesiod. It was also possible,
if it was desired, to form from them longer series of adventures of the
same hero; but they always remained a collection of independent
poems on the same subject, and never attained to that unity of character
and composition which constitutes one poem. It was an entirely new
phenomenon, which could not fail to make the greatest impression,
when a poet selected a subject of the heroic tradition, which (besides its
connexion with the other parts of the same legendary cycle) had in itself
the means of awakening a lively interest, and of satisfying the mind ,
and at the same time admitted of such a development that the principal
personages could be represented as acting each with a peculiar and iudi-
* Herod, ii. 53. t Apollod. Fiagm, i. p. 410, ed. Heyiie.
48 HISTORY OP THE
vidual character, without obscuring the chief hero and the main action
of the poem.
One legendary subject, of this extent and interest, Homer found in
the anger of Achilles ; and another in the return of Ulysses.
§ 5. The first is an event which did not long precede the final
destruction of Troy ; inasmuch as it produced the death of Hector, who
was the defender of the city. It was doubtless the ancient tradition,
established long before Homer's time, that Hector had been slain by
Achilles, in revenge for the slaughter of his friend Patroclus : whose fall
in battle, unprotected by the son of Thetis, was explained by the tradi-
tion to have arisen from the anger of Achilles against the other Greeks
for an affront offered to him, and his consequent retirement from the
contest. Now the poet seizes, as the most critical and momentous period
of the action, the conversion of Achilles from the foe of the Greeks into
that of the Trojans ; for as, on the one hand, the sudden revolution in the
fortunes of war, thus occasioned, places the prowess of Achilles in the
strongest light, so, on the other hand, the change of his firm and reso-
lute mind must have been the more touching to the feelings of the
hearers. From this centre of interest there springs a long preparation
and gradual development, since not only the cause of the anger of
Achilles, but also the defeats of the Greeks occasioned by that anger,
were to be narrated ; and the display of the insufficiency of all the other
heroes at the same time offered the best opportunity for exhibiting their
several excellencies. It is in the arrangement of this preparatory part
and its connexion with the catastrophe that the poet displays his perfect
acquaintance with all the mysteries of poetical composition ; and in his
continued postponement of the crisis of the action, and his scanty reve-
lations with respect to the plan of the entire work, he shows a maturity of
knowledge, which is astonishing for so early an age. To all appearance
the poet, after certain obstacles have been first overcome, tends only to
one point, viz. to increase perpetually the disasters of the Greeks, which
they have drawn on themselves by the injury offered to Achilles : and
Zeus himself,at the beginning, is made to pronounce, as coming from him-
self, the vengeance and consequent exaltation of the son of Thetis. At
the same time, however, the poet plainly shows his wish to excite in the
feelings of an attentive hearer an anxious and perpetually increasing
desire, not only to see the Greeks saved from destruction, but also that
the unbearable and more than human haughtiness and pride of Achilles
should be broken. Both these ends are attained through the fulfil-
ment of the secret counsel of Zeus, which he did not communicate to
Thetis, and through her to Achilles (who, if he had known it, would
have given up all enmity against the Achaeans), but only to Hera, and
to her not till the middle of the poem* ; and Achilles, through the loss
* Thetis hail said nothing to Achilles of the loss of Patroclus (II. xvii. 411), for
she herself did not know of it. II. xviii. 63. Zeus also long conceals his planq
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 49
of his dearest friend, whoir he had sent to battle, not to save the
Greeks, but for his own glory*, suddenly changes his hostile attitude
towards the Greeks, and is overpowered by entirely opposite feelings.
In this manner the exaltation of the son of Thetis is united to that
almost imperceptible operation of destiny, which the Greeks were re-
quired to observe in all human afiairs.
It is evident that the Iliad does not so much aim at the individual
exaltation of Achilles, as at that of the hero before whom all the other
Grecian heroes humble themselves, and through whom alone the Tro-
jans were to be subdued. The Grecian poetry has never shown itself
favourable to the absolute elevation of a single individual, not even if
he was reckoned the greatest of their heroes; and hence a character
like that of Achilles could not excite the entire sympathy of the poet.
It is clear that the poet conceives his hero as striving after something
super-human and inhuman. Hence he falls from one excess of passion
into another, as we see in his insatiable hatred to the Greeks, his despe-
rate grief for Patroclus, and his vehement anger against Hector ; but still
it is impossible to deny that Achilles is the first, greatest, and most ele-
vated character of the Iliad ; we find in him, quite distinct from his
heroic strength, which far eclipses that of all the others, a god-like lofti-
ness of soul. Compared with the melancholy which Hector, however
determined, carries with him to the field of battle, anticipating the dark
destiny that awaits him, how lofty is the feeling of Achilles, who
sees his early death before his eyes, and, knowing how close it must
follow upon the slaughter of Hector f, yet, in spite of this, shows the
most determined resolution before, and the most dignified calmness after
the deed. Achilles appears greatest at the funeral games and at the inter-
view with Priam, — a scene to be compared with no other in ancient poe-
try ; in which, both with the heroes of the event and with the hearers
national hatred and personal ambition, and all the hostile and most
opposite feelings, dissolve themselves into the gentlest and most humane,
just as the human countenance beams with some new expression after
long-concealed and passionate grief; and thus the purifying and ele-
vating process which the character of Achilles undergoes, and by which
the divine part of his nature is freed from all obscurities, is one continued
idea running through the whole of the poem ; and the manner in which
this process is at the same time communicated to the mind of a hearer,
fiom Hera and the other gods, notwithstanding their anger on account of the suf-
ferings of the Achaeans: lie does nut reveal them to Hera till alter his sleep upon
Ida. II. xv. 65. The spuriousness of the verses (II. viii. -173 — 0) was recognized by the
ancients, although the principal objection to them is not mentioned. See Schol.
Ven. A.
* Homer does not wish that the going forth of Patroclus should he considered as
a sign that Achilles' wrath is appeased : Achilles, on this very occasion, expresses a
wish that no Greek may escape death, hut that they two alone, Achilles and Patro-
clus, may mount the walls of llion. 11. xvi. 97.
f Iliad, xviii. 95 ; xix. 117.
50 HISTORY OP THE
absorbed with the subject, makes it tne most beautiful and powerful charm
of the Iliad.
§ 6. To remove from this collection of various actions, conditions, and
feelings any substantial part, as not necessarily belonging to it, would in
fact be to dismember a living whole, the parts of which would neces-
sarily lose their vitality. As in an organic body life does not dwell in one
single point, but requires a union of certain systems and members, so
the internal connexion of the Iliad rests on the union of certain parts ;
and neither the interesting introduction describing the defeat of the
Greeks up to the burning of the ship of Protesilaus, nor the turn of
affairs brought about by the death of Patroclus, nor the final pacifi-
cation of the anger of Achilles, could be spared from the Iliad,
when the fruitful seed of such a poem had once been sown in the
soul of Homer, and had begun to develop its growth. But the plan of
the Iliad is certainly very much extended beyond what was actually
necessary ; and, in particular, the preparatory part consisting of the
attempts of the other heroes to compensate the Greeks for the absence
of Achilles, has, it must be said, been drawn out to a disproportionate
length ; so that the suspicion that there were later insertions of import-
ant passages, on the whole applies with far more probability to the first
than to the last books, in which, however, modern critics have found most
traces of interpolation. For this extension there were two principal
motives, which (if we may carry our conjectures so far) exercised an
influence even on the mind of Homer himself, but had still more pow-
erful effects upon his successors, the later Homerids. In the first place,
it is clear that a design manifested itself at an early period to make this
poem complete in itself, so that all the subjects, descriptions, and actions,
which could alone give an interest to a poem on the entire war, might
find a place within the limits of this composition. For this purpose it
is not improbable that many lays of earlier bards, who had sung single
adventures of the Trojan war, were laid under contribution, and that the
finest parts of them were adopted into the new poem; it being the natu-
ral course of popular poetry propagated by oral tradition, to treat the
best thoughts of previous poets as common property, and to give them
a new life by working them up in a different context.
If in this manner much extraneous matter has been introduced into
the poem, which, in common probability, does not agree with the defi-
nite event which forms the subject of it, but would more pro-
perly find its place at an earlier stage of the Trojan war ; and if, by this
means, from a poem on the Anger of Achilles, it grew into an Iliad, as
it is significantly called, yet the poet had his justification, in the manner
in which he conceived the situation of the contending nations, and their
mode of warfare, until the separation of Achilles from the rest of the
army, in which he, doubtless, mainly followed the prevalent legends of
his time. According to the accounts of the cyclic and later poets (in
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 51
whose time, although the heroic traditions may have become more
meagre and scanty than they had been in that of Homer, yet the chief
occurrences must have been still preserved in memory), the Trojans,
after the Battle at the Landing, where Hector killed Protesilaus, but
was soon put to flight by Achilles, made no attempt to drive the Greeks
from their country, up to the time of the separation of Achilles from the
rest of the army, and the Greeks had had time (for the wall of Troy still
resisted them) to lay waste, under the conduct of Achilles, the surround-
ing cities and islands ; of which Homer mentions particularly Pedasus,
the city of the Leleges ; the Cilician Thebe, at the foot of Mount Placus ;
the neighbouring city of Lyrnessus ; and also the islands of Lesbos and
Tenedos*. The poet, in various places, shows plainly his notion of the
state of the war at this time, \iz., that the Trojans, so long as Achilles
took part in the war, did not venture beyond the gates; and if Hector
was, perchance, willing to venture a sally, the general fear of Achilles
and the anxiety of the Trojan elders held him back f. By this view of
the contest, the poet is sufficiently justified in bringing within the com-
pass of the Iliad events which would otherwise have been more fitted
for the bejrinnina - of the war. The Greeks now arrange themselves for
the first time, by the advice of , Nestor, into tribes and phratrias, which
affords an occasion for the enumeration of the several nations, or the
Catalogue of Ships (as it is called), in the second book; and when this
has made us acquainted with the general arrangement of the army, then the
view of Helen and Priam from the walls, in the third book, and Agamem-
non's mustering of the troops, in the fourth, are intended to give a more
distinct notion of the individual character of the chief heroes. Further
on, the Greeks and Trojans are, for the first time, struck by an idea
which might have occurred in the previous nine years, if the Greeks,
when assisted by Achilles, had not, from their confidence of their supe-
rior strength, considered every compromise as unworthy of them ; namely,
to decide the war by a single combat between the authors of it ; which
plan is frustrated by the cowardly flight of Paris and the treachery of
Pandarus. Nor is it until they are taught by the experience of the first
day's fighting that the Trojans can resist them in open battle, that they
build the walls round their ships, in which the omission of the proper
sacrifices to the gods is given as a new reason for not fulfilling their
intentions. This appeared to Thucydides so little conformable to histo-
rical probability, that, without regarding the authority of Homer, he
* The question why the Trojans did not attack the Greeks when Achilles was
engaged in these maritime expeditions must be answered by history, not by the
mythical tradition. It is also remarkable that Homer knows of no Achaean hero
who had fallen in battle with the Trojans after Protesilaus, and be/ore the time of
the Iliad. See particularly Od. iii. I0b,aeg. Nor is any Trojan mentioned who
had fallen in battle. ./Eneas and Lycaon were surprised when engaged in peaceable
occupations, and a similar supposition must bo made with regard to Mestor and
Troilus. II. xxiv. 257.
t II. V. 783; ix, 352; xv, 721.
e2
52 HISTORY OF THE
placed the building of these walls immediately after the landing*.
This endeavour to comprehend every thing in one poem also shows itself
in another circumstance, — that some of the events of the war lying
within this poem are copied from others not included in it. Thus the
wounding of Diomed by Paris, in the heel t, is taken from the story of
the death of Achilles, and the same event furnishes the general outlines
of the death of Patroclus; as in both, a god and a man together bring
about the accomplishment of the will of fate J.
§ 7. The other motive for the great extension of the preparatory part
of the catastrophe may, it appears, be traced to a certain conflict between
the plan of the poet and his own patriotic feelings. An attentive reader
cannot fail to observe that while Homer intends that the Greeks should
be made to suffer severely from the anger of Achilles, he is yet, as it
were, retarded in his progress towards that end by a natural endeavour
to avenge the death of each Greek by that of a yet more illustrious
Trojan, and thus to increase the glory of the numerous Achaean heroes;
so that, even on the days in which the Greeks are defeated, more Trojans
than Greeks are described as being slain-. Admitting that the poet,
living among the descendants of these Achaean heroes, found more
legends about them than about the Trojans in circulation, still the intro-
duction of them into a poem, in which these very Achaeans were de-
scribed as one of the parties in a war, could not fail to impart to it a
national character. Row short is the narration of the second day's
battle in the eighth book, where the incidents follow their direct course,
under the superintendence of Zeus, and the poet is forced to allow the
Greeks to be driven back to their camp (yet even then not without
severe loss to the Trojans), in comparison with the narrative of the first
day's battle, which, besides many others, celebrates the exploits of
Diomed, and extends from the second to the seventh book ; in which Zeus
appears, as it were, to have forgotten his resolution and his promise to
Thetis. The exploits of Diomed § are indeed closely connected with
the violation of the treaty, inasmuch as the death of Pandarus, which
became necessary in order that his treachery might be avenged, is the
work of Tydides || ; but they have been greatly extended, particularly by
the battles with the gods, which form the characteristic feature of the
legend of Diomed ^[ : hence in this part of the Iliad oarticularly, slight
* Thuc. i. 1 1 . The attempt of the scholiast to remove the difficult}', by supposing
a smaller and a larger bulwark, is absurd,
t II. xi. 377.
{ II. xix. 417 ; xxii. 339. It was the fate of Achilles, faf n xa.) avUi 7fi luftweu.
§ AioyAoovi aoiffri'ia.
|] II. v. 290. Homer does not make on this occasion the reflection which one
expects; but it is his practice rather to leave the requisite moral iinpression to be
made by the simple combination of the events, without adding any comment of his
own.
fl[ Diomed, in the Argive mythology, which referred to Pallas, was a being closely
connected with this goddess, her shield-bearer and defender of the Palladium,
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 53
inconsistencies of different passages and interruptions in the connexion
have arisen. We may mention especially the contradictory expressions of
Diomed and his counsellor Athena, as to whether a contest with the gods
was advisable or not*. Another inconsistency is that remarked by the
ancients with respect to the breastplate of Diomed f ; this, however, is re-
moved, if we consider the scene between Diomed and Glaucus as an inter-
polation added by an Homerid of Chios; perhaps, with the vievV of doing-
honour to some king of the race of Glaucus \. With regard to the
ni«ht-scenes, which take up the tenth book §, a remarkable statement
has been preserved, that they were originally a separate book, and were
first inserted in the Iliad by Pisistratus ||. This account is so far sup-
ported, that not the slightest reference is made, either before or after,
to the contents of this book, especially to the arrival of Rhesus in the
Trojan camp, and of his horses taken by Diomed and Ulysses; and the
whole book may be omitted without leaving any perceptible chasm.
But it is evident that this book was written for the particular place in
which we find it, in order to fill up the remainder of the night, and to
add another to the achievements of the Grecian heroes ; for it could
neither stand by itself nor form a part of any other poem.
§ 8. That the first part of the Iliad, up to the Battle at the Ships, has,
as compared with the remaining part, a more cheerful, sometimes even a
jocose character, while the latter has a grave and tragic cast, which
extends its influence even over the choice of expressions, naturally
arises from the nature of the subject itself. The ill-treatment of Ther-
sites, the cowardly flight of Paris into the arms of Helen, the credulous
folly of Pandarus, the bellowing of Mars, and the feminine tears ot
Aphrodite when wounded by Diomed, are so many amusing and even
sportive passages from the first books of the Iliad, such as cannot be
found in any of the latter books. The countenance of the ancient bard,
which in the beginning assumed a serene character, and is sometimes
brightened with an ironical smile, obtains by degrees an excited tragic
expression. Although there are good grounds in the plan of the Iliad
for this difference, yet there is reason to doubt whether the beginning of
Hence he is, in Homer, placed in a closer relation with the Olympic gods than any
other hero: Pallas driving his chaiiut, and giving him courage to encounter Ares,
Aphrodite, and even Apollo, in battle. It is particularly observable that Diomed
never fights with Hector, but with Ares, who enables Hector to conquer.
•II. v. 130,434,827; vi. 128.
f II. vi. 230 ; and viii. 194. The inconsistency with regard to P) lamienes is also
removed, if we sacrifice v. 579, and retain xiii. 658. Of less impoitance, as it seems
to me, is the oblivion of the message to Achilles, which is laid to the charge of
Patmclus. II. xi. 839; xv. 390. M..y not Patioclus have sent a messenger to
inform Achilles of what he wished to know ? 'the nun-observance by Pulydamas of
the advice which he himself gives to Hector (II. xii. 75 ; xv. 354, 447 ; xvi. 3t>7) it
easily excused by the natural weakness of humanity.
J Above, p. 31, note §.
^ Nvxriyioirta. and AoAwvs/a.
ji Schol. Ven. ad II. x. 1 ; Eustafh. p. 785, 41, ed. Rom.
54 HISTORY OF THE
the second book, in which this humorous tone is most apparent, was
written by the ancient Homer or by one of the later Homerids. Zeus
undertakes to deceive Agamemnon, for, by means of a dream, he gives
him great courage for the battle. Agamemnon himself adopts a second
deceit against the Achaeans, for he, though full of the hopes of victory,
yet persuades the Achseans that he has determined on the return home ;
in this, however, his expectations are again deceived in a ludicrous man-
ner by the Greeks, whom he had only wished to try, in order to stimu-
late them to the battle, but who now are determined to fly in the ut-
most haste, and, contrary to the decree of fate, to leave Troy uninjured, if
Ulysses, at the suggestion of the gods, had not held them back. Here
is matter for an entire mythical comedy, full of fine irony, and with an
amusing plot, in which the deceiving and deceived Agamemnon is the
chief character ; who, with the words, " Zeus has played me a pretty
trick*," at the same time that he means to invent an ingenious false-
hood, unconsciously utters an unpleasant truth. But this Homeric
comedy, which is extended through the greater part of the second book,
cannot possibly belong to the original plan of the Iliad ; for Agamem-
non, two days later, complaining to the Greeks of being deceived by
former signs of victory which Zeus had shown him, uses in earnest the
same words which he had here used in joke f. But it is not conceivable
that Agamemnon (if the laws of probability were respected) should be
represented as able seriously to repeat the complaint which he had before
feigned, without, at the same time, dwelling on the inconsistency be-
tween his present and his former opinion. Tt is, moreover, evident,
that the graver and shorter passage did not grow out of the more comic
and longer one ; but that the latter is a copious parody of the former,
composed by a later Homerid, and inserted in the room of an original
shorter account of the arming of the Greeks.
§ 9. But of all the parts of the Iliad, there is none of which the dis-
crepancies with the rest of the poem are so manifest as the Cata-
logue of the Ships, already alluded to. Even the ancients had critical
doubts on some passages ; as, for instance, the manifestly intentional
association of the ships of Ajax with those of the Athenians, which
appears to have been made solely for the interest of the Athenian
houses (the Eurysacids and Philaids), which deduced their origin from
Ajax ; and the mention of the Pavhellenians, whom (contrary to Homer's
invariable usage) the Locrian Ajax surpasses in the use of the spear.
But still more important are the mythico-historical discrepancies between
the Catalogue and the Iliad itself. Meges, the son of Phyleus, is in
the Catalogue King of Dulichium ; in the Iliad J, King of the Epeans,
dwelling in Elis. The Catalogue here follows the tradition, which was
" II. 11. 114, vtJv Vi kclxyiv a,-jtArw (>>ov\tii<ra.To.
f II. ii. Hi— 18 and 139—41 correspond to II. ix. 18—23.
% II. xiii. 69.2; xv. 519.
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 55
also known in later times*, that Phyleus, the father of Meges, quarrelled
with his father Augeas, and left his home on this account. Medon, a
natural son of Oileus, is described in the Catalogue as commanding the
troops of Philoctetes, which come from Methone ; but in the Iliad as lead-
ing the Phthianst, inhabiting Phylace, who, in the Catalogue, form quite
a different kingdom, and are led by Podarces instead of Protesilaus. With
such manifest contradictions as these one may venture to attach some
weight to the less obvious marks of a fundamental difference of views of
a more general kind. Agamemnon, according to the Iliad, governs from
Mycenae the whole of Argos (that is, the neighbouring part of Peloponne-
sus), and many islands}: ; according to the Catalogue, he governs no islands
whatever ; but, on the other hand, his kingdom comprises iEgialeia,
which did not become Achaean till after the expulsion of the Ionians§.
With respect to the Boeotians, the poets of the Catalogue have entirely
forgotten that they dwelt in Thessaly at the time of the Trojan war ; for
they describe the ichole nation as already settled in the country after-
wards called Bceotia||. That heroes and troops of men joined the
Achaean army from the eastern side of the /Egean Sea and the islands
on the coast of Asia Minor, is a notion of which the Iliad offers no
trace ; it knows nothing of the heroes of Cos, Phidippus and Antiphus,
nor anything of the beautiful Nireus from Syme ; and as it is not said of
Tlepolemus that he came from Rhodes, but only that he was a son of
Hercules, it is most natural to understand that the poet of the Iliad
conceived him as a Tirynthian hero. The mention in the Catalogue of
a whole line of islands on the coast of Asia Minor destroys the beauty
and unity of the picture of the belligerent nations contained in the Iliad,
which makes the allies of the Trojans come only from the east and north
of the iEgean Sea, and Achaean warriors come only from the west^[.
The poets of the Catalogue have also made the Arcadians under Aga-
penor, as well as the Perrhaebians and the Magnetes, fight before Troy.
The purer tradition of the Iliad does not mix up these Pelasgic tribes
(for, among all the Greeks, the Arcadians and Perrhaebians remained
most Pelasgic) in the ranks of the Achaean army.
If the enumeration of the Achaean bands is too detailed, and goes
beyond the intention of the original poet of the Iliad, on the other hand,
the Catalogue of the Trojans and their allies is much below the notion
* Callimachus ap. Schol. 11. ii. 629. Comp. Theocrit. xxi.
f II. xiii. 693 ; xv. 334. t D. ii. 108.
§ Here, in particular, the verse (II. ii. 572), in which Adrastus is named as first
king of Sicyon, compared with Herod, v. 67 — 8, clearly shows the objects of the
Arrive rhap^odist.
|| There is, likewise, in the Iliad a passage ("not, indeed, of much importance) which
speaks of Boeotians in Bceotia. II. v. 709. For this reason Thucydides assumed that
an aTtdarpls of the Boeotians had at this time settled in Bceotia; which, however,
is not sufficient for the Catalogue.
^[ The account of the Rhodwm in the Catalogue also, by its great length, betrays
the intention of a rhapsodist to celebrate this island.
56 HISTORY OF THE
which the Iliad itself gives of the forces of the Trojans: this altogether omits
the important allies, the Caucones and the Leleges, both of whom often
occur in the Iliad, and the latter inhabited the celebrated city of Pedasus,
on the Satnioeis *. Among the princes unmentioned in this Catalogue,
Asteropaeus, the leader and hero of the Pseonians, is particularly ob-
servable, who arrived eleven days before the battle with Achilles, and,
therefore, before the review in the second book f, and at least deserved
to be named as well as Pyraechmes }. On the other hand, this Catalogue
has some names, which are wanting in the parts of the Iliad, where they
would naturally recur §. But we have another more decided proof that
the Catalogue of the Trojans is of comparatively recent date, and was
composed after that of the Achaeans. The Cyprian poem, which was
intended solely to serve as an introduction to the Iliad ||, gave at its con-
clusion (that is, immediately before the beginning of the action of the
Iliad) a list of the Trojan allies-^"; which certainly would not have been
the case if, in the second book of the Iliad, as it then existed, not the
Achaeans alone but also the Trojans had been enumerated. Perhaps
our present Catalogue in the Iliad is only an abridgment of that in the
Cyprian poem ; at least, then, the omission of Asteropaeus could be ex-
plained, for if he came eleven days before the battle just mentioned,
he would not (according to Homer's chronology) have arrived till after
the beginning of the action of the Iliad, that is, the sending of the
plague.
But from the observations on these two Catalogues may be drawn
other inferences, besides that they are not of genuine Homeric origin :
first, that the rhapsodists, who composed these parts, had not the Iliad
before them in writing, so as to be able to refer to it at pleasure ; other-
wise, how should they not have discovered that Medon lived at Phy-
lace, and such like particulars ; 2dly, that these later poets did not
retain the entire Iliad in their memory, but that in this attempt to °;ive
an ethnographical survey of the forces on each side, they allowed them-
selves to be guided by the parts which they themselves knew by heart
and could recite, and by less distinct reminiscences of the rest of the
poem.
§ 10. A far less valid suspicion than that which has been raised
* For the Caucones, see II. x. 429 j xx. 329. For the Leleges, II. x. 429 j xx. 96 ;
xxi. 86. Comp. vi. 35.
f See II. xxi. 155 ; also xii. 102 ; xviii. 351.
^ J II. ii. 848. The author of this Catalogue must have thought only of II. xvi. 287
The scholiast, on II. ii. 844, is also quite correct in mis-ing Iphidamas; who, indeed,
was a Trojan, the son of Autenor and Theano, hut was furnished by his maternal
grandfather, a Thracian prince, with a fleet of twelve ships. 11. xi. 221.
§ For example, the soothsayer Eunomus, who, according to the Catalogue (11. ii.
861), was slain by Achilles in the river, of which there is no mention in the Iliad.
So likewise Amphimachus. 11. ii. 871.
|| See below, chap. vi. § 4.
<|f kx) xxTu.\oyt$ twv rc~n Tean fvy.y.ix^ufavrcdv, Proclus in Gaisford's Hephaestion.
p. 476.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 57
against the first part of the Iliad, principally against the second, and
also against the fifth, sixth, and tenth books, rests on the later ones,
and on those which follow the death of Hector. A tragedy, which
treated its subject dramatically, might indeed have closed with the
death of Hector, but no epic poem could have been so concluded ; as in
that it is necessary that the feeling which has been excited should be
allowed to subside into calm. This effect is, in the first place, brought
about by means of the games ; by which the greatest honour is conferred
on Patroclus, and also a complete satisfaction is made to Achilles. But
neither would the Iliad at any time have been complete without the
cession of the body of Hector to his father, and the honourable burial
of the Trojan hero. The poet, who everywhere else shows so gentle
and humane a disposition, and such an endeavour to distribute even-
handed justice throughout his poem, could not allow the threats of
Achilles* to be fulfilled on the body of Hector; but even if this had
been the poet's intention, the subject must have been mentioned ; for,
according to the notions of the Greeks of that age, the fate of the dead
body was almost of more importance than that of the living; and in-
stead of our twenty-fourth book, a description must have followed of the
manner in which Achilles ill-treated the corpse of Hector, and then cast
it for food to the dogs. Who could conceive such an end to the Iliad
possible? It is plain that Homer, from the first, arranged the plan of
the Iliad with a full consciousness that the anger of Achilles against
Hector stood in need of some mitigation — of some kind of atonement —
and that a gentle, humane disposition, awaiting futurity with calm feel-
ings, was requisite both to the hero and the poet at the end of the poem.
§ II. The Odyssey is indisputably, as well as the Iliad, a poem pos-
sessing an unity of subject ; nor can any one of its chief parts be re-
moved without leaving a chasm in the development of the leading idea;
but it diflers from the Iliad in being composed on a more artificial and
more complicated plan. This is the case partly, because in the first and
greater half, up to the sixteenth book, two main actions are carried on
side by side ; partly because the action, which passes within the compass
of the poem, and as it were beneath our eyes, is greatly extended by
means of an episodical narration, by which the chief action itself is
made distinct and complete, and the most marvellous and strangest part
of the story is transferred from the mouth of the poet to that of the
inventive hero himself 'j*.
The subject of the Odyssey is the return of Ulysses from a land
lying beyond the range of human intercourse or knowledge, to a home
invaded by bands of insolent intruders, who seek to rob him of his wife,
and kill his son. Hence, the Odyssey begins exactly at that point
* II. xxii. 35 ; xxiii. 183.
f It .appears, however, from his soliloquy, Od. xx. 18 — 21, that the poet did not
intend his adventures to be considered as imaginary.
58 HISTORY OP THE
where the hero is considered to be farthest from his home, in the island
of Ogygia*, at the navel, that is, the central point of the sea ; where
the nymph Calypso f has kept him hidden from all mankind for seven
years ; thence having, by the help of the gods, who pity his misfortunes,
passed through the dangers prepared for him by his implacable enemy,
Poseidon, he gains the land of the Phseacians, a careless, peaceable, and
effeminate nation on the confines of the earth, to whom war is only
known by means of poetry ; borne by a marvellous Phseacian vessel, he
reaches Ithaca sleeping ; here he is entertained by the honest swine-
herd Eumseus, and having been introduced into his own house as a beg-
gar, he is there made to surfer the harshest treatment from the suitors, in
order that he may afterwards appear with the stronger right as a terri-
ble avenger. With this simple story a poet might have been satisfied ;
and we should even in this form, notwithstanding its smailer extent,
have placed the poem almost on an equality with the Iliad. But the
poet, to whom we are indebted for the Odyssey in its complete form, has
interwoven a second story, by which the poem is rendered much richer
and more complete ; although, indeed, from the union of two actions,
some roughnesses have been produced, which perhaps with a plan of
this kind could scarcely be avoided J.
For while the poet represents the son of Ulysses, stimulated by
Athena, coming forward in Ithaca with newly excited courage, and
calling the suitors to account before the people; and then afterwards
describes him as travelling to Pylos and Sparta to obtain intelligence of
his lost father ; he gives us a picture of Ithaca and its anarchical con-
dition, and of the rest of Greece in its state of peace after the return of
the princes, which produces the finest contrast; and, at the same
time, prepares Telemachus for playing an energetic part in the work of
vengeance, which by this means becomes more probable.
Although these remarks show that the anangement of the Odyssey
is essentially different from that of the Iliad, and bears marks of a more
artificial and more fully developed state of the epos, yet there is much
that is common to the two poems in this respect; particularly that pro-
found comprehension of the means of straining the curiosity, and of
keeping up the interest by new and unexpected turns of the narrative.
The decree of Zeus is as much delayed in its execution in the Odyssey
as it is in the Iliad : as, in the latter poem, it is not till after the building
of the walls that Zeus, at the request of Thetis, takes an active part
* 'Clyvyia. from 'Slyvym, who was originally a deity of the watery expanse which
covers all things.
\ KaXv^&i, the Concealer.
I There would be nothing abrupt in the transition from Menelaus to the suitors
in Od. iv. 624, if it fell at the beginning of a new book ; and, yet this division into
books is a mere contrivance of the Alexandrine grammarians. The four verses 620-4,
which are unquestionably spurious, are a mere useless interpolation ; as they contri-
bute nothing to the junction of the parts.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 59
against the Greeks ; so, in the Odyssey, he appears at the very begin-
ning; willing to acquiesce in the proposal of Athena for the return of
Ulysses, but does not in reality despatch Hermes to Calypso till several
days later, in the fifth book. It is evident that the poet is impressed
with a conception familiar to the Greeks, of a divine destiny, slow in
its preparations, and apparently delaying, but on that very account
marching with the greater certainty to its end. We also perceive in the
Odyssey the same artifice as that pointed out in the Iliad, of turning the
expectation of the reader into a different direction from that which the
narrative is afterwards to take; but, from the nature of the subject, chiefly
in single scattered passages. The poet plays in the most agreeable
manner with us, by holding out other means by which the necessary
work of vengeance on the suitors maybe accomplished; and also after we
have arrived somewhat nearer the true aim, he still has in store another
beautiful invention with which to surprise us. Thus the exhortation twice
addressed to Telemachus in the same words, in the early books of the
Odyssey, to imitate the example of Orestes* (which strikes deep root in
his heart), produces an undefined expectation that he himself may attempt
something against the suitors ; nor is the true meaning of it perceived,
until Telemachus places himself so undauntedly at his father's side. After-
wards, when the father and son have arranged their plan for taking
vengeance, they think of assaulting the suitors, hand to hand, with lance
and sword, in a combat of very doubtful issue f- The bow of Eurytus,
from which Ulysses derives such great advantage, is a new and unex-
pected idea. Athena suggests to Penelope the notion of proposing it to
the suitors as a prize J, and although the ancient legend doubtless repre-
sented Ulysses overcoming the suitors with this bow, yet the manner in
which it is brought into his hands is a very ingenious contrivance of the
poet§. As in the Iliad the deepest interest prevails between the Battle
at the Ships and the Death of Hector, so in the Odyssey the narrative
begins, with the fetching of the bow (at the outset of the twenty-first
book), to assume a lofty tone, which is mingled with an almost painful
expectation ; and the poet makes use of every thing which the legend
offered, as the gloomy forebodings of Theoclymenus (who is only intro-
duced in order to prepare for this scene of horror ||) and the contcmpo-
*Od. i. 302; iii. 200.
f Od. xvi. 295. The kii-rwn of Zenodotus, as usual, rests on insufficient grounds,
and would deprive the story of an important point of its progress.
\ Od. xxi. 4.
§ That this part of the poem is founded on ancient tradition appears from the
fact that the j^Etolian tribe of the Euii/tamaus.-who derived their origin from Eurytus
(prohahly the MtoYvm CEchalia also belonged to this nation, Strabo, x. p. 448), pos-
sessed an oracle of U/gsses. Lvcophron, v. 799 ; and the Scholia from Aristotle.
|| Among these the disappearance of the sun (Od. xx. 356) is to lie observed, which
is connected with tbe return of Ulysses during the new moon (Od. xiv. 162; xix.
307), whtn an eclipse of the sun could take plate. This also appeaisto be a trace
of ancient tradition.
60 HISTORY OF THE
raneous festival of Apollo (who fully grants the prayer of Ulysses to
secure him glory in the battle with the bow *), in order to heighten the
marvellous and inspiriting parts of the scene.
§ 12. It is plain that the plan of the Odyssey, as well as of the Iliad,
offered many opportunities for enlargement, by the insertion of new
passages; and many irregularities in the course of the narration and its
occasional diffuseness may be explained in this manner. The latter, for
example, is observable in the amusements offered to Ulysses when en-
tertained by the Phaeaeians ; and even some of the ancients questioned
the genuineness of the passage about the dance of the Phaeaeians and
the song of Demodocus on the loves of Ares and Aphrodite, although
this part of the Odyssey appears to have been at least extant in the 50th
Olympiad, when the chorus of the Phaeaeians was represented on the
throne of the Amyclsean Apollo -f*. So likewise Ulysses' account of his
adventures contains many interpolations, particularly in the nekyia, or
invocation of the dead, where the ancients had already attributed an
important passage (which, in fact, destroys the unity and connexion of
the narrative) to the diaskeuastce, or interpolators, among others, to the
Orphic Onomacritus, who, in the time of the Pisistratids, was employed
in collecting the poems of Homer J. Moreover, the Alexandrine critics,
Aristophanes and Aristarchus, considered the whole of the last part
from the recognition of Penelope, as added at a later period §. Nor can
it be denied that it has great defects ; in particular, the description of the
arrival of the suitors in the infernal regions is only a second and feebler
nekyia, which does not precisely accord with the first, and is introduced
in this place without sufficient reason. At the same time, the Odyssey
could never have been considered as concluded, until Ulysses had
embraced his father Laertes, who is so often mentioned in the course of
the poem, and until a peaceful state of things had been restored, or
began to be restored, in Ithaca. It is not therefore likely that the original
Odyssey altogether wanted some passage of this kind ; but it was pro-
bably much altered by the Homerids, until it assumed the form in which
we now possess it.
§ 13. That the Odyssey was written after the Iliad, and that many
differences are apparent in the character and manners both of men and
gods, as well as in the management of the language, is quite clear ; but
* The festival of Apollo (the nopiwi) is alluded to. Od. xx. 156, 250, 278; xxi.
25S. Comp. xxi. 267 ; xxii. 7.
\ Pausan. iii. 18, 7.
I See Schol. Od. xi. 104. The entire passage, from xi. 508-626, was rejected hy
the ancients, and with good reason. For whereas Ulysses elsewhere is represented
as merely, by means of his libation of blood, enticing the shades from their dark
abodes to llie asphodel-meadow, where he is standing, as it were, at the gate of
Hades ; in this passage he appears m the midst of the dead, who are firmly bound to
certain spots in the infernal regions. The same more recent conception prevails in
Od. xxiv. 13, where the dead dwell on the asphodel-meadow.
§ From Od. xxiii. 296, to the end.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 61
it is difficult and hazardous to raise upon this foundation any definite
conclusions as to the person and age of the poet. With the exception of
the anger of Poseidon, who always works unseen in the obscure distance;
the gods appear in a milder form ; they act in unison, without dissension
or contest, for the relief of mankind, not, as is so often the case in the
Iliad, for their destruction. It is, however, true, that the subject afforded
far less occasion for describing the violent and angry passions and vehe-
ment combats of the gods. At the same time the gods all appear a step
higher above the human race ; they are not represented as descending
in a bodily form from their dwellings on Mount Olympus, and mixing
in the tumult of the battle, but they go about in human forms, only dis-
cernible by their superior wisdom and prudence, in the company of the
adventurous Ulysses and the intelligent Telemachus. But the chief
cause of this difference is to be sought in the nature of the story, and, we
may add, in the fine tact of the poet, who knew how to preserve unity
of subject and harmony of tone in his picture, and to exclude every
thing of which the character did not agree. The attempt of many
learned writers to discover a different religion and mythology for the
Iliad and the Odyssey leads to the most arbitrary dissection of the two
poems*; above all, it ought to have been made clear how the fable of
the Iliad could have been treated by a professor of this supposed religion
of the Odyssey, without introducing quarrels, battles, and vehement
excitement among the gods; in which there would have been no diffi-
culty, if the difference of character in the gods of the two poems were
introduced by the poet, and did not grow out of the subject. On the
other hand, the human race appears in the houses of Nestor, Menelaus,
and especially of Alcinous, in a far more agreeable state, and one of far
greater comfort t and luxury than in the Iliad. But where could the
enjoyments, to which the Atridae, in their native palace, and the peace-
able Phaiacians could securely abandon themselves, find a place in the
rough camp? Granting, however, that a different taste and feeling is
shown in the choice of the subject, and in the whole arrangement of the
poem, yet there is not a greater difference than is often found in the
inclinations of the same man in the prime of life and in old age ; and, to
speak candidly, we know no other argument adduced by the Chorizordes^
both of ancient and modern times, for attributing the wonderful genius
of Homer to two different individuals. It is certain that the Odyssey,
in respect of its plan and the conception of its chief characters, of Ulysses
* Benjamin Constant, in particular, in his celebrated work, De la Religion, torn. iii.
has been forced to go this length, as he distinguishes Irois espices de mythologie in the
Homeric poems, and determines from them the age of the different parts.
f The Greek word for this is ««,«<?»' ; which, in the Iliad, is only used for the care
of horses, but in the Odyssey signifies human conveniences and luxuries, among
which hot baths may be particularly mentioned. See Od. \ iii . 4')0.
\ Those Greek grammarians who attributed the Iliad and Odyssey to different
authors were called ti %ao%<»ri}, " The Separaters."
G2 HISTORY OF THE
himself, of Nestor and Menelaiis, stands in the closest affinity with the
Iliad ; that it always presupposes the existence of the earlier poem, and
silently refers to it; which also serves to explain the remarkable fact,
that the Odyssey mentions many occurrences in the life of Ulysses,
which lie out of the compass of the action, but not one which is celebrated
in the Iliad*. If the completion of the Iliad and the Odyssey seems
too vast a work for the lifetime of one man, we may, perhaps, have
recourse to the supposition, that Homer, after having sung the iliad in
the vigour of his youthful years, in his old age communicated to some
devoted disciple the plan of the Odyssey, which had long been working
in his mind, and left it to him for completion.
§ 14. It is certain that we are perpetually met with difficulties in en-
deavouring to form a notion of the manner in which these great epic
poems were composed, at a time anterior to the use of writing. But
these difficulties arise much more from our ignorance of the period, and
our incapability of conceiving a creation of the mind without those appli-
ances of which the use has become to us a second nature, than in the
general laws of the human intellect. Who can determine how many
thousand verses a person, thoroughly impregnated with his subject, and
absorbed in the contemplation of it, might produce in a year, and con-
fide to the faithful memory of disciples, devoted to their master and his
art ? Wherever a creative genius has appeared it has met with persons
of congenial taste, and has found assistants, by whose means it has
completed astonishing works in a comparatively short time. Thus the
old bard may have been followed by a number of younger minstrels, to
whom it was both a pleasure and a duty to collect and diffuse the honey
which flowed from his lips. But it is, at least, certain, that it would be
unintelligible how these great epics were composed, unless there had
been occasions, on which they actually appeared in their integrity, and
could charm an attentive hearer with the full force and effect of a com-
plete poem. Without a connected and continuous recitation they were
not finished works ; they were mere disjointed fragments, which might
by possibility form a whole. But where were there meals or festivals
long enough for such recitations? What attention, it has been asked,
could be sufficiently sustained, in order to follow so many thousand
verses? If, however, the Athenians could at one festival hear in suc-
cession about nine tragedies, three satyric dramas, and as many comedies,
* We find Ulysses, in his youth, with Autolycus (Otl. xix. 394 ; xxiv. 331 ) during
the expedition against Troy in Delos, Od. vi. 162 ; in Lesbos, iv. 341 ; in a contest
with Achilles, viii. 75; near the corpse and at the burial of Achilles, v. 308; xxiv.
39; contending for the arms of Achilles, xi. 544; contending with Philoctetts in
shooting with the how, viii. 219; secretly in Troy, iv. 242 ; in the Trojan horse,
iv. 270 (comp. viii. 492; xi. 522); at the beginning of the return, iii. 130; and,
lastly, going to the men who know not the use of salt, xi. 120. But nothing is said
of Ulysses' acts in the Iliad: his punishment of Thersites; the horses of Rhesus;
the battle over the body of Patroclus, &c. In like manner the Odyssey intentionally
records different exploits and adventures of Agamemnon, Achilles, Menelaus, and
Nestor, from those celebrated in the Iliad.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 63
without ever thinking that it might be better to distribute this enjoyment
over the whole year, why should not the Greeks of earlier times have
been able to listen to the Iliad and Odyssey, and, perhaps, other poems,
at the same festival ? At a later date, indeed, when the rhapsodist was
rivalled by the player on the lyre, the dithyrambic minstrel, and by
many other kinds of poetry and music, these latter necessarily abridged
the time allowed to the epic reciter ; but in early times, when the epic
style reigned without a competitor, it would have obtained an undivided
attention. Let us beware of measuring, by our loose and desultory
reading, the intension of mind with which a people enthusiastically
devoted to such enjoyments*, hung with delight on the flowing strains
of the minstrel. In short, there was a time (and the Iliad and Odyssey
are the records of it) when the Greek people, not indeed at meals, but
at festivals, and under the patronage of their hereditary princes, heard
and enjoyed these and other less excellent poems, as they were intended
to be heard and enjoyed, viz. as complete wholes. "Whether they were,
at this early period, ever recited for a prize, and in competition with
others, is doubtful, though there is nothing improbable in the suppo-
sition. But when the conflux of rhapsodists to the contests became per-
petually greater ; when, at the same time, more weight was laid on the
art of the reciter than on the beauty of the well-known poem which he
recited ; and when, lastly, in addition to the rhapsodizing, a number of
other musical and poetical performances claimed a place, then the rhap-
sodists were permitted to repeat separate parts of poems, in which they
hoped to excel ; and the Iliad and Odyssey (as they had not yet been
reduced to writing) existed for a time only as scattered and unconnected
fragments -f. And we are still indebted to the regulator of the contest
of rhapsodists at the Panathenaea (whether it was Solon or Pisistratus),
for having compelled the rhapsodists to follow one another, according to
the order of the poem j, and for having thus restored these great works,
which were filling into fragments, to their pristine integrity. It is
indeed true that some arbitrary additions may have been made to them
at this period ; which, however, we can only hope to be able to distin-
guish from the rest of the poem, by first coming to some general agree-
ment as to the original form and subsequent destiny of the Homeric
compositions.
* Above, p. 30, note f f .
T diurvairftivx, hr^v/uivu, <rTo^aS>jv uYcpitu.. See the sure testimonies on this point in
Wolf's Prolegomena, p. cxliii.
\ i£ vToXri^iu; (or in Diog. Laert. 1£ vTo&*\r,s) pa-^tJiut.
64 HISTORY OF THE
CHAPTER VI.
§ 1. Genera* character of the Cyclic poems. — § 2. The Destruction of Troy and j*Ethi-
opis of Arctinus of Miletus. — § 3. The little Iliad of Lesches. — § 4. The Cypria
of Stasinus. — § 5. The Nostoi of Agias of Troezen. — § 6. The Telegonia of Eu«
gammon of Cyrene. — § 7. Poems on the War against Thebes.
§ 1. Homer's poems, as they became the foundation of all Grecian
literature, are likewise the central point of the epic poetry of Greece.
All that was most excellent in this line originated from them, and was
connected with them in the way of completion or continuation ; so that
by closely considering* this relation, we arrive not only at a proper
understanding of the subjects of these later epics, but even are able,
in return, to throw some light upon the Homeric poems themselves, —
the Iliad and Odyssey. This class of epic poets is called the Cyclic,
from their constant endeavour to connect their poems with those of Ho-
mer, so that the whole should form a great cycle. Hence also originated
the custom of comprehending their poems almost collectively under the
name of Homer*, their connexion with the Iliad and Odyssey being
taken as a proof that the whole was one vast conception. More accurate
accounts, however, assign almost all these poems to particular authors,
who lived after the commencement of the Olympiads, and therefore con-
siderably later than Homer. Indeed, these poems, both in their cha-
racter and their conception of the mythical events, are very different
from the Iliad and Odyssey. These authors cannot even have been
called Homerids, since a race of this name existed only in Chios, and
not one of them is called a Chian. Nevertheless it is credible that
they were Homeric rhapsodists by profession, to whom the constant
recitation of the ancient Homeric poems would naturally suggest the
notion of continuing them by essays of their own in a similar tone.
Hence, too, it would be more likely to occur that these poems, when they
were sung by the same rhapsodists, would gradually themselves
acquire the name of Homeric epics. From a close comparison of the
extracts and fragments of these poems, which we still possess, it is evi-
dent that their authors had before them copies of the Iliad and Odyssey
in their complete form, or, to speak more accurately, comprehending the
same series of events as those current among the later Greeks and our-
selves, and that they merely connected the action of their own poems
with the beginning and end of these two epopees. But notwithstanding
the close connexion which they made between their own productions and
the Homeric poems, notwithstanding that they often built upon particular
allusions in Homer, and formed from them long passages of their own
* 0/ f/ivroi u^ctloi Kit) tom Kvx'/.ov uvufipouiriv lis avrov ("O^sjaav). Proclus, Vita Homed,
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 05
poems (a fact winch is particularly evident in the excerpt of the Cypria) ;
still their manner of treating and viewing mythical subjects differs so
widely from that of Homer, as of itself to be a sufficient proof that the
Homeric poems were no longer in progress of development at the time
of the Cyclic poets, but had, on the whole, attained a settled form, to
which no addition of importance was afterwards made*. Otherwise, we
could not fail to recognise the traces of a later age in the interpolated
passages of the Homeric poems.
§ 2. We commence with the poems which continued the. Iliad.
Arctinus of Miletus was confessedly a very ancient poet, nay, he is
even termed a disciple of Homer ; the chronological accounts place him
immediately after the commencement of the Olympiads. His poem,
consisting of 9,100 versesf (about one-third less than the Iliad), opened
with the arrival of the Amazons at Troy, which followed immediately
after the death of Hector. There existed in antiquity one recension of
the Iliad, which concluded as follows : — "Thus they pei formed the funeral
rites of Hector ; then came the Amazon, the daughter of the valorous
man-destroying Aresj." This, without doubt, was the cyclic edition of
the Homeric poems, more than once mentioned by the ancient critics :
in which they appear to have been connected with the rest of the cyclus,
so as to form an unbroken series. The same order of events also appears
in several works of ancient sculpture, in which on one side Andromache
is represented as weeping over Hector's ashes, while, on the other, the
female warriors are welcomed by the venerable Priam. The action of the
epic of Arctinus was connected with the following principal events. Achilles
kills Penthesilea, and then in a fit of anger puts to death Thersites,
who had ridiculed him for his love for her. Upon this Memnon, the
son of Eos, appears with his Ethiopians, and is slain by the son of
Thetis after he himself has killed in battle Antilochus, the Patroclus of
Arctinus. Achilles himself falls by the hand of Paris while pursuing
the Trojans into the town. His mother rescues his body from the
funeral pile, and carries him restored to life to Leuce, an island in the
Black Sea, where the mariners believed that they saw his mighty form
flitting in the dusk of evening. Ajax and Ulysses contend for his arms;
the defeat of Ajax causes his suicide §. Arctinus further related the his-
* In these remaiks we of course except the Catalogue of the Ships. See
chap. v. § 9.
f According to the inscription of the tablet in the Museo Borgia (see Heeren
r>il)liuthek der alten Literatur und Kunst, part iv p. CI) where it is said * * * *
'A£xt/vo]» tov MiXyviov xiyoviriv Itvv ovtu fy. The plural ovra refers to the two poems,
according to the explanation in the text.
"A{»o; iuyi.rn^ /uiyakrirofo; ivlg/Xfovoio. — Schol. Veil, ad II. xxiv. lilt. V.
§ See Schol. Find. Isthm. iii. 58, who quotes for this event the ^thiopis, and
Schol. II. xi. 515, who quotes for it the 'IXmu mgw of Arctinus. I particularly men-
tion this point; since, from the account in the Chrestomathia of Proclus, it might
be thought that Arctinus had omitted this circumstance.
F
66 HISTORY OF THE
tory of the wooden horse, the careless security of the Trojans, and the de-
struction of Laocoon, which induces iEneas to flee for safety to Ida before
the impending destruction of the town*. The sack of Troy by the
Greeks returning from Tenedos, and issuing from the Trojan horse, was
described so as to display in a conspicuous manner the arrogance and
mercilessness of the Greeks, and to occasion the resolution of Athene,
already known from the Odyssey, to punish them in various ways on
their return home. This last part, when divided from the preceding,
was called the Destruction of Troy ('IX/ow irepan) ; the former, com-
prising the events up to the death of Achilles, the Aethiopis of Arc-
tinus.
§ 3. Lesches, or Lescheus, from Mytilene, or Pyrrha, in the island
of Lesbos, was considerably later than Arctinus; the best authorities
concur in placing him in the time of Archilochus, or about Olymp.
xviii. Hence the account which we find in ancient authors of a contest
between Arctinus and Lesches can only mean that the later competed
with the earlier poet in treating the same subjects. His poem, which
was attributed by many to Homer, and, besides, to very different
authors, was called the Little Iliad, and was clearly intended as a sup-
plement to the great Iliad. We learn from Aristotle t that it comprised
the events before the fall of Troy, the fate of Ajax, the exploits of Phi-
loctetes, Neoptolemus, and Ulysses, which led to the taking of the town,
as well as the account of the destruction of Troy itself: which statement
is confirmed by numerous fragments. The last part of this (like the
first part of the poem of Arctinus) was called the Destruction of Troy ;
from which Pausanias makes several quotations, with reference to the
sacking of Troy, and the partition and carrying away of the prisoners.
It is evident from his citations that Lesches, in many important events
(e. g-., the death of Priam, the end of the little Astyanax, and the fate of
jEneas, whom he represents Neoptolemus as taking to Pharsalus), fol-
lowed quite different traditions from Arctinus. The connexion of the
several events was necessarily loose and superficial, and without any
unity of subject. Hence, according to Aristotle, whilst the Iliad and
Odyssey only furnished materials for one tragedy each, more than eight
might be formed out of the Little Iliad \. Hence, also, the opening of
* Quite differently from Virgil, who in other respects has in the second book of
the vEneid chiefly followed Arctinus.
t Poet. c. 23, ad fin. ed. Bekker. (c. 38, ed. Tyrwhitt.)
\ Ten are mentioned by Aristotle, viz., "OxXav Kg'ari;, $i\oxrnrn;, tHioirroXipo;,
'EupuwXt>$, Ilru^uot. (see Od. iv. 244), hu.x.a.mx.1, 'IA/su viptris, ' AvotXov;, Itteov, T/iuiabi;.
Among these tragedies the subject of the Adxaivxi is not apparent. The name of
course means " Lacedaemonian women ;" who, as the attendants of Helen, formed the
chorus. Helen played a chief part in the adventures of Ulysses as a spy in Tro) :
the subject of the Tlra^tia above mentioned. Or perhaps Helen was represented
as the accomplice of the heroes in the wooden horse. See Od. iv. 271. Compare
JEneid. vi. 517. Of Sophocles' tragedy of this name only a few fragments are
extant : Nos. 336—9, ed. Dindorf.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREFCF. (37
the poem, which promises so much, and has been censured as airogant,
"I sing of Ilion, and Dardania famous for its horses, on whose account
the Greeks, the servants of Mars, suffered many evils*."
Before proceeding any further I feel myself hound to justify the
above account of the relation between Arctinus and Lesches, since
Proclus, the well-known philosopher and grammarian, to whose Chres-
tomathia we are indebted for the fullest account of the epic eyelet,
represents it in a totally different point of view. Proclus gives us, as an
abritlgment of the Cyclic poets, a continuous narrative of the events
of the Trojan war, in which one poet always precisely takes up
another, often in the midst of a closely connected subject. Thus, ac-
cording to Proclus, Arctinus continued the Homeric Iliad up to the
contest for the arms of Achilles; then Lesches relates the result of this
contest, and the subsequent enterprises of the heroes against Troy until
the introduction of the wooden horse within the walls ; at this point
Arctinus resumes the thread of the narrative, and describes the issuing
forth of the heroes inclosed in the wooden horse ; but he too breaks off
in the midst of the history of the return of the Greeks at the point
where Minerva devises a plan for their punishment : the fulfilment of
this plan being related by Agias, in the poem called the Nostoi. In
order to make such an interlacing of the different poems comprehensible,
we must suppose the existence of an academy of poets, dividing their
materials amongst each other upon a distinct understanding, and with
the most minute precision. It is, however, altogether inconceivable
that Arctinus should have twice suddenly broken off in the midst of
actions, which the curiosity of his hearers could never have permitted
him to leave unfinished, in order that, almost a century after, Lesches,
and probably at a still later date Agias, might fill up the gaps and com-
plete the narrative. Moreover, as the extant fragments of Arctinus and
Lesches afford sufficient proof that they both sang of the events which,
according to the abstract of Proclus, formed an hiatus in their poems,
it is easy to perceive that his account was not drawn up from these
poems according to their original forms, but from a selection made by
some grammarian, who had put together a connected poetical descrip-
tion of these events from the works of several Cyclic poets, in which no
occurrence was repeated, but nothing of importance was omitted : and
this indeed the expressions of Proclus himself appear to indicate}.
In fact, the Cyclus in this sense included not only the epoch of the
Trojan war (where the poems were mutually connected by means of
* ' lXit>\> aiiiu kx) Aafiaviw iifuXov,
H; cT£o) troXXa iraQov Aavao), fapccvrovris ' Apyio;.
| This part of the Chrestomathia was first published in the Gottingon Bibliothek
fur alte LittiTatur und Kunsr, Part i, inedita, afterwards in Gaisford's Hephsestiun,
p. 378, seq., 472, seq., and elsewhere.
if K«j •ri^a.roura.i o Itiko; xvxXos Ik Itatyo^wt 'Tainvuv ruu.TXngnvp.tiiii; /*(%/>> rrif avrt-
(ixiriw; ' Oiutrc'iui rvj; uc 'Mkhv. — Proclus, ubi Slip.
f a
68 HISTORY OF THE
their common reference to Homer), but the whole mythology, from the
marriage of Heaven and Earth to the last adventures of Ulysses ; for
which purpose use must have been made of poems totally distinct from
each other, and of whose original connexion, either in their execution or
design, no trace whatever is discoverable*.
§ 4. The poem which in the Cyclus preceded the Iliad, and was
clearly intended by its author himself for that purpose, was the Cypria,
consisting of eleven books, which may be most safely ascribed to Sta-
sinus of the island of Cyprus, who, however, according to the tradition,
received it from Homer himself (transformed on that account into a
Salaminian from Cyprus), as a portion on the marriage of his daughter.
And yet the fundamental ideas of the Cypria are so un-Homeric,
and contain so much of a rude attempt at philosophising on mytho-
logy, which was altogether foreign to Homer, that Stasinus certainly
cannot be considered as of an earlier date than Arctinus. The Cypria
began with the prayer of the Earth to Zeus, to lessen the burdens of the
race of man, already become too heavy ; and then related how Zeus,
with the view of humbling the pride of mankind, begot Helen upon
the goddess Nemesis, and gave her to be educated by Leda. The promise
by Venus of the woman whose beauty was to cause the destruction of
heroes to the shepherd Paris, as a reward for the decision respecting the
apple of discord, her abduction from Sparta during the absence of her
husband Menelaus in Crete, and while her brothers, the Dioscuri, are
slain in battle by the son-s of Aphareus, were all related in conformity with
the usual traditions, and the expedition of the heroes of Greece against
Troy was derived from these events. The Greeks, however, according to
the Cypria, twice set out from Aulis against Troy, having the first time
been carried to Teuthrania in Mysia, a district ruled by Telephus, and
in sailing away having been driven back by a storm ; at their second
departure from Aulis the sacrifice of Iphigenia was related. The nine
years' contest before Troy, and in its vicinity, did not occupy near so
much space in the Cypria as the preparations for the war; the full
stream of tradition, as it gushes forth from a thousand springs in the
Homeric poems, has even at this period dwindled down to narrow
dimensions : the chief part was connected with the incidental mentions
of earlier events in Homer ; as the attack of Achilles upon iEneas near
the herds of cattle f, the killing of Troilus J, the selling of Lycaon to
Lemnos§; Palamedes — the nobler counterpart of Ulysses — was the only
* As an additional proof of a point which indeed is almost self-evident, it may
be also mentioned that, according to Proclus, there were Jive, and afterwards two
books of Arctinus in the epic cyclus : according to the Tabula Borgiana, however, the
poems of Arctinus included 9,100 verses, which, according to the standard of the
books in Homer, would at least give twelve books.
f II. xx. 90, seq.
I II. xxiv. 257. The more recent poetry combines the death of Troilus with the
last events of Troy. § II. xxi. 35.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECF. G9
hero either unknown to or accidentally never mentioned by Homer.
Achilles was throughout represented as the chief hero, created for the
purpose of destroying the race of man by manly strength, as Helen by
female beauty; hence also these two beings, who otherwise could not
have become personally known to each other, were brought together in
a marvellous manner by Thetis and Amphitrite. As, however, the war,
conducted in the manner above described, did not destroy a sufficient
number of men, Zeus at last resolves, for the purpose of effectually
granting the prayer of the Earth, to stir up the strife between Achilles
and Agamemnon, and thus to bring about all the great battles of the
Iliad. Thus the Cypria referred altogether to the Iliad for the com-
pletion of its own subject; and at the same time added to the motive
supposed in the latter poem, the prayer of Thetis, a more general one,
the prayer of the Earth, of which the Iliad knows nothing. In the
Cypria a gloomy destiny hovers over the whole heroic world ; as in
Hesiod* the Theban and Trojan war is conceived as a general war
of extermination between the heroes. The main origin of this fatality
is, moreover, the beauty of the woman, as in Hesiod's mythus of Pan-
dora, The unwarlike Aphrodite, who in Homer is so little fitted for
mingling in the combats of heroes, is here the conductor of the whole ;
on this point the Cyprian poet may have been influenced by the im-
pressions of his native island, where Aphrodite was honoured before all
other deities.
§ 5. Between the poems of Arctinus and Lesches and the Odyssey
came the epic of AciAsf the Troezenian, divided into five books, the
Nostui. A poem of this kind would naturally be called forth by the
Odyssey, as the author in the very commencement supposes that all the
other heroes, except Ulysses, had returned home from Troy. Even in
Homer's time there existed songs on the subject of the homeward
voyages of the heroes; but these scattered lays naturally fell into ob-
livion upon the appearance of Agias's poem, which was composed with
almost Homeric skill, and all the intimations to be found in Homer were
carefully made use of, and adopted as the outlines of the action £. Agias
began his poem with describing how Athene executed her plan of ven-
geance, by exciting a quarrel between the Atridae themselves, which pre-
vented the joint return of the two princes. The adventures of the Atridaj
furnished the main subject of the poem§. In the first place the wan-
derings of Menelaus, who first left the Trojan coast, were narrated
almost up to his late arrival at home ; then Agamemnon, who did not
sail till afterwards, was conducted by a direct course to his native land :
* Hesiod. Op. et I). 160,*??.
f 'Ayias is the correct form of his name, in Ionic 'lly'ias -, Auyias is a corruption.
I See particularly Od. lii. 135.
§ Hence, probably, the same poem is more than once in Athenauis called h toj«
'.\~££l5a>V X.£.(tO0f.
70 HISTORY OF THE
and his murder and the other fortunes of his family were described up
to the period when Menelaus arrives after the vengeance of Orestes had
been consummated*; with which event the poem properly concluded.
Artfully interwoven with the above narrative were the voyages and
wanderings of the other heroes, Diomed, Nestor, Calchas, Leonteus
and Polypoetes, Neoptolemus, and the death of the Locrian Ajax on
the Capherian rocks, so that the whole formed a connected picture of
the Achaean heroes at variance with each other, hastening homewards by
different routes, but almost universally contending with misfortunes and
difficulties. Ulysses alone was left for the Odysseyf.
§ 6. The continuation of the Odyssey was the Telegonia, of which poem
only two books were introduced into the collection used by Proclus j.
Eugammon of Cyrene, who did not live before the 53d Olympiad,
is named as the author. The Telegonia opened with the burial of the
suitors by their kinsmen. The want of this part renders the Odyssey
incomplete as a narrative ; although, for the internal unity, it is un-
necessary, since the suitors are no longer a subject of interest after
Ulysses had rid his house of them. The poem then related a voyage
of Ulysses to Polyxenus at Elis, the motives for which are not suf-
ficiently known to us ; and afterwards the completion of the sacrifices
offered by Tiresias ; upon which Ulysses (in all probability in compliance
with the prophecy of Tiresias, in order to reach the country where the
inhabitants were neither acquainted with the sea nor with salt, the pro-
duct of the sea) goes to Thesprotia, and there rules victoriously and
happily, till he returns a second time to Ithaca, where, not being re-
cognised, he is slain by Telegonus, his son by Circe, who had come to
seek his father.
§ 7. With the exception of the events of the Trojan war, and the return
of the Greeks, nothing was so closely connected with the Iliad and
Odyssey as the War of the Argives against Thebes ; since many of the
principal heroes of Greece, particularly Diomed and Sthenelus, were
* See Od. iii. 31 1 ; iv. 547.
f In what part of the Nostoi the Nekyia, or description of the infernal regions,
which belonged to it, was introduced, we are not indeed informed ; but there can
scarcely be any doubt that it was connected with the funeral of Tiresias, which
Calchas, in the Nostoi, celebrated ai Colophon. Tiresias, in the Odyssey, is the
only shade in the infernal regions who is endowed with memory and understanding,
for whose sake Ulysses ventures as far as the entrance of Hades: would not then
the poet, whose object it was to make his work an introduction to the Odyssey, have
seized this opportunity to introduce the spirit of the seer into the realm of shades,
and by his reception by Hades and Persephone to explain the privileges which,
according to the Odyssey, he there enjoys ? The questioning of Tiresias invites to
a preparatory explanation more perhaps than any other part of the Odyssey, since,
taken by itself, it has something enigmatical.
% These two books were evidently only an epitome of the poem ; for even all that
Proclus states from them has scarcely sufficient space : to say nothing of the poem
on the Thesprotians in a mystic tone, which Clemens of Alexandria (Strom, vi. 277)
attributes to Eugammon, and which was manifestly in its original form a part of the
Telegonia.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 71
themselves amongst the conquerors of Thebes, and their fathers before
them, a bolder and wilder race, had fought on the same spot, in a con-
test which, although unattended with victory, was still far from inglorious.
Hence also reputed Homeric poems on the subject of this war were
extant, which perhaps really bore a great affinity to the Homeric time
and school. For we do not find, as in the other poems of the cycle,
the names of one or several later poets placed in connexion with these
compositions, but they are either attributed to Homer, as the earlier
Greeks in general appear to have done*, or, if the authorship of Homer
is doubted, they are usually attributed to no author at all. The Thebais,
which consisted of seven books, or 5,600 verses, originated from Argos,
winch was also considered by Homer as the centre of the Grecian power :
it commenced "Sing, O Muse, the thirsty Argos, where the princes
. . . .f" Here dwelt Adiastus, to whom Polynices, the banished son of
GSdipus, fled, and found with him a reception. The poet then took occa-
sion to enter upon the cause of the banishment of Polynices, and related
the fate of (Edipus and his curse twice pronounced against his sons.
Amphiraus was represented as a wise counsellor to Adrastus, and in
opposition to Polynices and Tydeus, the heroes eager for battle.
Eriphyle was the Helen of this war ; the seductive woman who induced
her otherwise prudent husband to rush, conscious of his doom, to meet
his unhappy fate J. The insolence of the Argive chiefs was probably
represented as the principal cause of their destruction ; Homer in the
Iliad described it as the crime and curse of these heroes§, and iEschylus
portrays it in characteristic emblems and words. Adrastus is only saved
by his horse Areion, a supernatural being ; and a prophecy respecting
the Epigoni concluded the whole.
The Epigoni was so far a second part of the Thebais that it was some-
times comprehended under the same name||, though it might also be
considered as distinct. It began with an allusion to the first heroic
expedition, " Now, O Muses, let us commence the exploits of the later
men^[ ;" and related the much less notorious actions of the sons of the
heroes, according to all probability under the auspices of the same
Adrastus ** who was destined to conquer Thebes, if his army should be
* In Pausan. ix. 9, 3. KaAXmj is certainly the light reading. This ancient
elegiac poet therefore, about the 20th Olympiad, quoted the Thebaid as Homeric.
The Epigoni was still commonly ascribed to Homer in the time of Herodotus, iv. 32.
+ "Agyos tiiHi ha waXtS/i^/av, 'ivQa, uvuktis-
\ Hence the entire poem is in Pseudo-Herod. Vit. Horn. c. 9, called 'Afifid^iu
\^,tXtt<rln U ©»)/Saj, in Suidas ' Apificcgclov i%iXit/tris.
§ II. v. 408.
|| Thus the scholiast on Apoll. Rhod. i. 308, in the account of Mauto, cites the
Thebaid for the Epigoni.
^[ Nuv aZff oyXoripuiv avSj&iv ag%vf£i$ct, Movtrai.
** See Pindar, Pyth. viii. 48. It can be shown that Pindar, in his mentions ol
this fable, always keeps near to the Thebaid.
72 HISTORV OF THE
freer from guilt, and thereby become more worthy of glory. Diomed
and Sthenelus, the sons of the wild Tydeus and the reckless Capaneus,
equalled their fathers in power, while they surpassed them in modera-
tion and respect for the gods.
Even these few, but authentic accounts exhibit glorious materials for
genuine poetry ; and they were treated in a style which had not de-
generated from Homer; the only difference being that an exalted
heroic life was not, as in the Iliad and Odyssey, exhibited in one great
action, and as accomplishing its appointed purpose : but a longer series
of events was developed before the listeners, externally connected by
their reference to one enterprise, and internally by means of certain
general moral reflections and mythico-philosophical ideas.
CHAPTER VII.
§ 1. General character of the Homeric Hymns, or Procemia. — § 2. Occasions on
which they were sung: Poets by whom, and times at which, they were composed.
— §3. Hymn to the Delian Apollo. — § 4. Hymn to the Pythian Apollo. — § 5.
Hymn to Hermes. — § 6. Hymn to Aphrodite — § 7. Hymn to Demeter.
§ 1. One essential part of the epic style of poetry consisted of hymns.
Those hymns which were recited by the epic poets, and which we com-
prehend under the name of Homeric, were called by the ancients
proosmia, that is preludes, or overtures. They evidently in part owed
this name to their having served the rhapsodists as introductory strains
for their recitations : a purpose to which the final verses often clearly
refer; as, "Beginning with thee I will now sing the race of the demi-
gods, or the exploits of the heroes, which the poets are wont to cele-
brate*." But the longer hymns of this class could hardly have served
such a purpose ; as they sometimes are equal in extent to the rhapsodies
into which the grammarians divided the Iliad and Odyssey, and they
even contain very detailed narratives of particular legends, which are
sufficient to excite an independent interest. These must be considered
as preludes to a whole series of epic recitations, in other words, as intro-
ductions to an entire contest of rhapsodists ; making, as it were, the
transition from the preceding festival of the gods, with its sacrifices,
prayers, and sacred chaunts, to the subsequent competition of the
singers of heroic poetry. The manner in which it was necessary to
shorten one of these long hymns, in order to make it serve as a
procemium of a single poem, or part of a poem, may be seen from the
* See, for example, Hymn xxxi. 18. \x aio S' ao%a.fiiv6s x.Xnliriu /ago'-rav yUos
ttilpuv bpi&av, and XXXll. 18. olo o ag%o/nivo; x.\ia, tparav affo/acei hfi'6itd\i uv xXllovir'
hy/tar amlc'i. A prayer for victory also sometimes occurs: x^i iXixofrxitpugi, yXu-
xvuilXiYi, 3<;s d' i" uy*vt nixriv t£os (QioiaQcii, Hymn vi, 19.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 73
18th of the Homeric hymns, the short one to Hermes, which has been
abridged from the long one for this purpose.
With the actual ceremonies of the divine worship these hymns had
evidently no immediate connexion. Unlike the lyric and choral songs,
they were sung neither on the procession to the temple (rrofiTrii), nor at
the sacrifice (Qvaia), nor at the libation ((nrovh)), with which the
public prayers for the people were usually connected ; they had only a
general reference to the god as patron of a festival, to which a contest
of rhapsodists or poets had been appended. One hymn alone, the
eighth to Ares, is not a procemium, but a prayer to the god : in this,
however, the entire tone, the numerous invocations and epithets, are so
different from the Homeric, that this hymn has been with reason re-
ferred to a much later period, and has been classed with the Orphic
compositions*.
§ 2. But although these prooemia were not immediately connected
with the service of the gods, and although a poet might have prefixed
an invocation of this kind to an epic composition recited by him alone,
without a rival, in any meeting of idle persons f, yet we may perceive
from them how many and different sacred festivals in Greece were at-
tended by rhapsodists. Thus it is quite clear that the two hymns to
Apollo were sung, the one at the festival of the nativity of the god in
the island of Delos, the other at that of the slaying of the dragon at Pytho ;
that the hymn to Demeter was recited at theEleusinia, where musical con-
tests were also customary ; and that contests of rhapsodists were connected
with the festivals of Aphrodite J, particularly at Salamis in Cyprus§, from
which island we have also seen a considerable epic poem proceed.
The short hymn to Artemis, which describes her wanderings from the
river Meles at Smyrna to the island of Claros (where her brother Apollo
awaits her) ||, appears also to have been recited at a musical contest,
which was connected with the festival of these two deities in the re-
nowned sanctuary of Claros, near Colophon. Festivals in honour of the
Magna Mater of Phrygia may have likewise been celebrated in the
towns of Asia Minor, also accompanied with contests of rhapsodists.
That these prooemia were composed by rhapsodists of Asia Minor,
nearly the same as those who were concerned in the Homeric cycle,
and not by minstrels of the school of Hesiod, is proved by the fact that
we find among them no hymn to the Muses, with whom the poet of
* Ares is in this hymn, viii. 7, 10, also considered as the planet of the same
name : the hymn, therefore, belongs to a time when Chaldocan astrology had been
diffused in Greece. The contest for which the aid of Ares is implored is a purely
mental one, with the passions, and the hymn is in fact philosophical rather than
Orphic.
\ For example, in a x'i<r%*i, a house of public resort, where strangers found an
abode. Homer, according to Pseudo-Herodotus, sang many poetical pieces in
places of this description.
J Hymn vi. 19. Hymn -. J. Comp. ch. 6. § I. |] Hymn i%. 3, seq.
74 HISTORY OP THE
the Theogony as he himself says, began and ended his strains*. One
short hymn however, formed of verses borrowed from the Theogony, has
found its way into this miscellaneous collection-}-. By a similar argu-
ment we may refute the opinion that these hymns were exclusively the
work of the Homerids, that is, the house of Chios : these, as we know
from the testimony of Pindar, were accustomed to commence with an
invocation to Zeus ; while our collection only contains one very small
and unimportant procemium to this god J.
Whether any of the preludes which Terpander, the Lesbian poet and
musician, employed in his musical recitation of Homer § have been
preserved in the present collection, must remain a doubtful question :
it seems however probable that those hymns, composed for an accom-
paniment of the cithara, must have had a different tone and character.
Moreover, these hymns exhibit such a diversity of language and
poetical tone, that in all probability they contain fragments from every
century between the time of Homer and the Persian war. Several, as
for instance that to the Dioscuri, show the transition to the Orphic
poetry, and several refer to local worships, which are entirely un-
known to us, as the one to Selene, which celebrates her daughter by
Zeus, the goddess Pandia, shining forth amongst the immortals ; of
whom we can now only conjecture that the Athenian festival of Pandia
was dedicated to her.
§ 3. We will now endeavour to illustrate these general remarks by
some special explanations of the five longer hymns. The hymn to the
Delian Apollo is (as has been already stated) || ascribed by Thucydides
to Homer himself ; and is, doubtless, the production of a Homerid of
Chios, who, at the end of the poem, calls himself the blind poet who
lived on the rocky Chios. But the notion that this poet was Cinaethus,
who did not live till the 69th Olympiad^], appears only to have
originated from the circumstance that he was the most celebrated of
the Homerids. If any one of these hymns comes near to the age of
Homer, it is this one ; and it is much to be lamented that a large
portion of it has been lost**, which contained the beginning of the
narration, the true ground of the wanderings of Latona. We can only
conjecture that this was the announcement, probably made by Here,
that Latona would produce a terrible and mighty son : of which
a contradiction is meant to be implied in Apollo's first words, where he
calls the cithara his favourite instrument, as well as the bow, and
* Theogon. 48. Endings of this kind, called by the grammarians iQuftvia, are
also mentioned in the Homeric hymns, xxi. 4, and xxxiv. 18, and the short song,
Hymn xxi. is probably one of them. Comp. Theognis, v. i. (925), Apollon. Rhod,
Arg. iv. 1774.
f See Hymn xxv. and Theog. 94 — 7. J Hymn xxiii.
§ Plutarch de Musica, c. 4, 6 ; and above, chap. iv. § 3 (p. 34).
|| Above, chap. v. § 1 (p. 42).
«U Schol Find. Nem. ii. 1. ** Hymn i. 30.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 75
declares his chief office to be the promulgation of the councils of Zeus*.
The entire fable of the birth of Apollo is treated so as to give great honour
to the island of Delos, which alone takes pity on Latona, and dares to
offer her an asylum ; the fittest subject of a hymn for the joyful spring
festival, to which the Ionians flocked together from far and wide on
their pilgrimage to the holy island.
§ 4. The hymn to the Pythian Apollo is a most interesting record
of the ancient mythus of Apollo in the district of Pytho. It belongs
to a time when the Pythian sanctuary was still in the territory of Crissa :
of the hostility between the Pythian priests and the Crissaeans, which
afterwards led to the war of the Amphictyons against the city of
Crissa (in Olymp. 47.), there is no trace ; a passage of the hymn also
shows that horse-races t had not as yet been introduced at the Pythian
games, which began immediately after the Crisssean war : the ancient
Pythian contests had been confined to music. The following is the
connexion of this hymn. Apollo descends from Olympus in order to
found a temple for himself; and while he is seeking a site for it in
Boeotia, he is recommended by a water-goddess, Tilphussa or Delphussa,
to place it in the territory of Crissa in the ravine of Parnassus : her ad-
vice being prompted by the malicious hope that a dangerous serpent,
which abode there, would destroy the youthful god. Apollo accepts
her counsel, but frustrates her intent : he founds his temple in this
solitary glen, slays the dragon, and then punishes Tilphussa by stopping
up her fountain J. Apollo then procures priests for the new sanctuary,
Cretan men, whom he, in the form of a dolphin, brings to Crissa, and
consecrates as the sacrificers and guardians of his sanctuary.
§ 5. The hymn to Hermes has a character very different from the
others; which is the reason why modern critics have taken greater
liberties with it in the rejection of verses supposed to be spurious. With
that lively simplicity which gives an air of credibility to the most
marvellous incidents, it relates how Hermes, begotten by Zeus in
secret, is able, when only a new-born child, to leave the cradle in
which his mother believed him to be safely concealed, in order to steal
Apollo's cattle from the pastures of the gods in Pieria. The miraculous
child succeeds in driving them away, using various contrivances for con-
cealing his traces, to a grotto near Pylos, and slays them there, with all
the skill of the most experienced slaughterer of victims. At the same time
he had made the first lyre out of a tortoise which had fallen in his way on
his first going out ; and with this he pacifies Apollo, who had at length,
* s'/»j fioi x,'i6a.(As ts ifikn kcc) xa.fi.'XvXa. ro^a,
Xfh<">> S' tt.vQpa'xoHn A/oj v7if*ie<riu flovXriv. — Hymn. Del. Ap. 131 — 2.
t Hymn ii. 81, 199, where the noise of horses and chariots is given as a reason
why the place is not fitted for a temple of Apollo.
I It is not necessary to the right comprehension of this hymn to explain the
obscurer connexion of this mythus with the worship of a Demeter Tilphosssea, or
Eriunys, hostile to Apollo.
76 HISTORY OF THE
by means of his power of divination, succeeded in discovering the thief;
so that the two sons of Zeus form at the end the closest intimacy, after an
interchange of their respective gifts. This story is narrated in a light and
pointed style, the poet seems to aim at rapid transitions, and especially at
the beginning he indicates the marvellous exploits of Hermes in an enig-
matic manner ; thus he says that " Hermes, by finding a tortoise, had
gained unspeakable wealth : he had in truth known how to make the
tortoise musical.*" This style is evidently far removed from the genuine
Homeric tone ; although some instances of this arch simplicity occur
both in the Iliad and Odyssey, and the story of the loves of Ares and
Aphrodite, in the Odyssey, appears to belong to nearly the same class of
compositions as this hymn. But a considerably later age is indicated
by the circumstance that the lyre or the cithara — for the poet treats
these two instruments as identical, though distinguished in more precise
language — is described as having been at the very first provided with
seven strings f; yet the words of Terpander are still extant in which
he boasts of having introduced the seven-stringed cithara in the
place of the four-stringed \. Hence it is plain that this poem could not
have been composed till some time after the 30th Olympiad, perhaps
even by a poet of the Lesbian school, winch had at that time spread to
Peloponnesus§.
§ 6. The hymn to Aphrodite relates how this goddess (who sub-
jects all the gods to her power, three only excepted) is, according to
the will of Zeus himself, vanquished by love for Anchises of Troy, and
meets him in the form of a Phrygian princess by the herds on Mount
Ida. At her departure she appears to him in divine majesty, and an-
nounces to him the birth of a son, named iEneas, who will come to
reign himself, and after him his family, over the Trojans ||. It is an
obvious conjecture that this hymn (the tone and expression of which
have much of the genuine Homer) was sung in honour of princes of
the family of .Eneas, in some town of the range of Ida, where the same
line continued to reign even until the Peloponnesian war.
§ 7. The hymn to Demeteh is chiefly intended to celebrate the
sojourning of this goddess among the Eleusinians. Demeter is seeking
for her daughter, who has been carried away by Hades, until she learns
from the god of the sun that the god of the infernal regions is the
ravisher. She then dwells among the Eleusinians, who have hospitably
received her, as the old attendant of Demophoon, until her divinity
becomes evident ; upon which the Eleusinians build her a temple. In
this she conceals herself as a wrathful deity, and withholds her gifts from
* Hymn iii. v. 24, 25, &c. f v. 51.
| Euclides Introduct. Harmon, in Meibomius, Script. Mus. p. 19.
§ We know that the Lesbian lyric poet Alcseus treated the mythus of the birth of
Hermes and the robbery of the cattle in a very similar manner, but of course in a
lyric form. — See below, Chap. xiii. § 25.
j| Hymn iv. 196, seq. Compare Iliad., xx. 307.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 77
mankind, until Zeus brings about an agreement that Cora shall be
restored to her for two-thirds of the year, and shall only remain one
third of the year with Hades*. United again with her daughter, she
instructs her hosts, the Eleusinians, in return for their hospitality, in her
sacred orgies.
Even if this hymn did not directly invite persons to the celebration of
the Eleusinia, and to a participation in its initiatory rites, by calling
those blessed who had seen them, and announcing an unhappy lot in
the infernal regions to those who had taken no part in them ; yet we
could not fail to recognise the hand of an Attic bard, well versed in the
festival and its ceremonies, even in many expressions which have an
Attic and local colour. The ancient sacred legend of the Eleusinians
lies here before us in its pure and unadulterated form ; so far as it can
be clothed with an epic garb in a manner agreeable to a refined taste.
We may hence infer the value of this hymn (which was not discovered
till the last century, and of which a part is lost) for the history of the
Creek religion.
CHAPTER VIII.
§ 1. Circumstances of Hesiod's Life, and general character of his Pot-try. — § 2.
The Works and Days, the Poem on Divination, and the Lessons of Chiron. —
§ 3. The Theogony — § 4. The Great Koiae, the Catalogues of Women, the Me-
lampodia, the ^Egimius.— § 5. The Marriage of Ceyx, the Epithalamium of
Peleiis and Thetis, the Descent of Theseus and Piiithous into Hell, the Shield of
Hercules.
§ 1. While the fairest growth of the Grecian heroic poetry was
nourishing under favourable circumstances upon the coast of Asia,
Minor in the JEoYic and Ionic colonies, the mother -country of Greece,
and especially Bceotia, to which we are now to direct our attention, were
not so happily situated. In that country, already thickly peopled with
Greek tribes, and divided into numerous small states, the migrations
with which the heroic age of Greece terminated necessarily produced a
state of lasting confusion and strife, sometimes even reaching into the
interior of single families. It was only on the coast of Asia Minor that
the conquerors could find a wide and open field for their enterprises ;
this country was still for the most part virgin soil to the Greek settlers,
and its native inhabitants of barbarous descent offered no very obstinate
resistance to the colonists. Hence likewise it came to pass that of the
TEolic Boeotians, who after the Trojan war emigrated from Thessaliotis,
and obtained the sovereignty of Bceotia, a considerable number imme-
* This depends on the Athenian festival cycle. At the Thesmophoria, the
festival of sowing. Cora is supposed to descend beneath the earth ; on the Authes-
teria, the festival of the first bloom of spring, exactly four months afterwards, she
is supposed to reascend from the infernal regions.
78
HISTORY OF THE
diately quitted this narrow territory, and joined the Achaeans, who, just
at this time, having been driven from Peloponnesus, were sailing to
Lesbos, Tenedos, and the opposite shores of Asia Minor, there to found
the colonies in which the name of iEolians subsequently preponderated
over that of Achaeans, and became the collective denomination. As
new cities and states rose up and flourished in these regions of Asia
Minor, which were moreover founded and governed by descendants of
the most renowned princes of the heroic age, a free scope was given
to the genius of poetry, and a bright and poetical view of man's destiny
was naturally produced. But in Boeotia a comparison of the present
with the past gave rise to a different feeling. In the place of the races
celebrated in numerous legends, the Cadmeans and Minyans, who were
the early occupants of Thebes and Orchomenos, had succeeded the
Mo\ic Boeotians, whose native mythology appears meagre and scanty
as compared with that of the other tribes. It is true that the Homeric
bards allowed themselves to be so far influenced by the impressions of
the present as to introduce the heroes of these Boeotians, and not the
Cadmeans, as taking a part in the expedition against Troy. But how
little of real individual character and of poetic truth is there in Peneleus
and Leitus, when compared with the leaders of the Achaean bands from
Peloponnesus and Thessaly ! The events of Greek history have, though
not always, yet in most cases, verified the promises of their early le-
gends ; and thus we find the Boeotians always remaining a vigorous,
hardy race, whose mind can never soar far above the range of bodily
existence, and whose cares are for the most part limited to the supply of
their immediate wants — equally removed from the proud aspirings of
the Doric spirit, which subjected all things within its reach to the influ-
ence of certain deeply implanted notions, and from the liveliness and
fine susceptibility of the Ionic character, which received all impressions
with a fond and impassioned interest. But, even in this torpid and ob
scure condition of Boeotian existence, some stars of the first magnitude
appear, as brilliant in politics as in art — Pindar, Epaminondas, and
before them Hesiod, with the other distinguished poets who wrote under
his name.
But Hesiod, although a poet of very considerable power, was yet
a true child of his nation and his times. His poetry is a faithful
transcript of the whole condition of Boeotian life; and we may, on the
other hand, complete our notions of Boeotian life from his poetry. If,
before we proceed to examine each separate poem in detail, we first
state our general impression of the whole, and compare it with that
which we receive from the Homeric poems, we shall find throughout the
writings of Hesiod (as well in the complete ones as in those which we
can only judge by fragments) that we miss the powerful sway of a
youthful fancy, which in every part of the poems of Homer sheds an
expression of bright and inexhaustible enjoyment, which lights up the
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 79
sublime images of a heroic age, and moulds them into forms of sur-
passing beauty. That abandonment of the thoughts, with heartfelt
joy and satisfaction, to a flow of poetical images, such as came crowding
on the mind of Homer — how different is this from the manner of Hesiod !
His poetry appears to struggle to emerge out of the narrow bounds of
common life, which he strives to ennoble and to render more endurable.
Regarding with a melancholy feeling the destiny of the human race,
and the corruption of a social condition which has destroyed all serene
enjoyment, the poet seeks either to disseminate knowledge by which
life may be improved, or to diffuse certain religious notions as to the
influence of a superior destiny, which may tend to produce a patient
resignation to its inevitable evils. Atone time he gives us lessons of civil
and domestic wisdom, whereby order may be restored to a disturbed com-
monwealth or an ill regulated household; at another, he seeks to reduce
the bewildering and endless variety of stories about the gods to a
connected system, in which each deity has his appointed place. Then
again the poet of this school seeks to distribute the heroic legends
into large masses ; and, by finding certain links which bind them all
together, to make them more clear and comprehensible. Nowhere does
the poetry appear as the sole aim of the poet's mind, to which he de-
votes himself without reserve, and to which all his thoughts are directed.
Practical interests are, in a certain sense, everywhere intermixed. It
cannot be denied that the poetry, as such, must thus lose much of
its peculiar merit ; but this loss is, to a certain extent, compensated by
the beneficent and useful tendency of the composition.
This view of the poetry of Hesiod agrees entirely with the description
which he has given of the manner of his first being called to the office
of a poet. The account of this in the introduction to the Theogony
(v. 1 — 35) must be a very ancient tradition, as it is also alluded to in
the Works and Days (v. 659). The Muses, whose dwelling, according
to the commonly received belief of the Greeks, was Olympus in Pieria,
are yet accustomed (so says the Boeotian poet) to visit Helicon, which
was also sacred to them. Then, having bathed in one of their holy
springs, and having led their dances upon the top of Helicon, they go at
night through the adjacent country, singing the great gods of Olympus, as
well as the primitive deities of the universe. In one of these excursions
they encountered Hesiod, who was watching his flocks by night in a
valley at the foot of Helicon. Here they bestowed upon him the gift of
poetry, having first addressed him in these words : " Ye country shep-
herds, worthless wretches, mere slaves of the belly ! although we often
tell falsehoods and pretend that they are true, yet we can tell truth when
it pleases us."
After these words, the Muses immediately consecrated Hesiod to their
service by offering him. a laurel branch, which the Boeotian minstrels
always carried in their hand during the recitation of poetry. There is
80 HISTOIIY OF THE
something very remarkable in this address of the Muses. In the first
place, it represents poetical genius as a free gift of the Muses, imparted to
a rough, unlettered man, and awakening him from his brutish condition
to a better life. Secondly, this gift of the Muses is to be dedicated to
the diffusion of truth ; by which the poet means to indicate the serious
object and character of his theogonic and ethical poetry ; not without an
implied censure of other poems which admitted of an easier and freer
play of fancy.
But, beautiful and significant as this story is, it is clear that the poetry
of Hesiod can in nowise be regarded as the product of an inspiration
which comes like a divine gift from above; it must have been connected
both with earlier and with contemporary forms of epic composition. We
have seen that the worship of the Muses was of old standing in these
districts, whither it had been brought by the Pierian tribes from the
neighbourhood of Olympus ; and with this v/orship the practice of music
and poetry was most closely connected*. This poetry consisted chiefly
of songs and hymns to the gods, for which Boeotia, so rich in ancient
lemples, symbolical rites of worship, and festival ceremonies, offered
frequent opportunities.
Ascra itself, according to epic poems quoted by Pausanias, was
founded by the Aloids, who were Pierian heroes, and first sacrificed to
the Muses upon mount Helicon. That Hesiod dwelt at Ascra rests upon
his own testimony in the Works and Days (v. 640) ; and this statement
is confirmed in a remarkable manner by other historical accounts, for
which we are indebted to the Boeotian writer, Plutarch. Ascra had, at
an early period, been destroyed by the neighbouring and powerful race
of Thespians, and the Orchomenians had received the fugitive Ascrseans
into their city : the oracle then commanded that the bones of Hesiod
should be transferred to Orchomenus, and, when what were held to be
the remains of the poet were discovered, a monument was erected to
him at Orchomenus, upon which was written an inscription, composed by
the Boeotian epic poet Chersias, describing him as the wisest of all poets.
On the other hand, the intercourse which subsisted between the
Boeotians and their kinsmen on the jEolic coast of Asia Minor, and the
flight which poetry had taken in those countries, probably contributed
to stimulate the Boeotian poets to new productions. There is no reason
to doubt the testimony of the author of the Works and Days (v. 636),
that his father came from Cyme in JEoWs to Ascra : the motive which
brought him thither was doubtless the recollection of the ancient affinity
between the ./Eolic settlers and this race of the mother- country ; a recol-
lection which was still alive at the time of the Peloponnesian war «f\
The father of the poet is not stated to be a Cymaean bard ; but is de-
scribed as a mariner, who, after repeated voyages from Cyme, had at
length taken up his abode at Ascra ; yet it must have been by settlers
* Above, chap. lii. § 8, 9. r See Thucyd. iii. 2 ; vii. 57; viii. 100.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 81
such as this that the fame of the heroic poetry, which at that time was
flourishing in the colonies, must have been spread over the mother country.
The ancients have eagerly seized upon this point of union in the two
schools of poetry, in order to prove that a near relationship existed
between Homer and Hesiod. The logographers (or historians before
Herodotus) — as Hellanicus, Pherecydes, and Damastes — have combined
various names handed down by tradition into comprehensive genealogies,
in which it appears that the two poets were descended from a common
ancestor: for example, that ApelJis (also called Apelles, or Apellasus)
had two sons — Mreon, the supposed father of Homer, and Dius, who,
according to an ancient but justly rejected interpretation of a verse in
the Works and Days, was made the father of Hesiod*.
But it is not our intention to support the opinion that the poetry of
Hesiod was merely an ofFset from the Homeric stock transplanted to
Bceotia, or that it is indebted to the Homeric poems either for its dialect,
versification, or character of style. On the contrary, the most generally re-
ceived opinion of antiquity assigns Hesiod and Homer to the same period ;
thus Herodotus makes them both about four centuries earlier than his own
time + : in such cases, too, Hesiod is commonly named before Homer, as,
for instance, in this passage of Herodotus. As far as we know, it was firs-t
maintained by Xenophanes of Colophon \ that Hesiod was later thau
Homer; on the other hand, Ephorus, the historian of Cyme, and many
others, have endeavoured to prove the higher antiquity of Hesiod. At
any rate, therefore, the Greeks of those times did not consider that
Homer had formed the epic language in Ionia, and that Hesiod had
borrowed it, and only transferred it to other subjects. They must
have entertained the opinion (which has been confirmed by the re-
searches of our own time), that this epic dialect had already become the
language of refinement and poetry in the mother-country before the
colonies of Asia Minor were founded. Moreover, this dialect is only
identical in the two schools of poetry so far as its general features are
concerned. Many differences occur in particular points: and it can be
proved that this ancient poetical language among the Boeotian tribe
adopted many features of the native dialect, which was an yEolism
approaching nearly to the Doric §. Neither does it appear that the
phrases, epithets, and proverbial expressions common to both poets were
* V. 299. 'Epyufyu, Tli^ffn, A~ov yivo;. \ ii. 53
X In Geliius, Noct. Att. iii. 17. Xenophanes, the founder of the Eleatic school of
philosophy, who flourished about the 70th Olympiad, was also an epic poet, and
may perhaps, in his xrif/s Ko\o<pZvos, have found many opportunities of speaking of
Homer, whom the Colophonians claimed as a countryman. See above, p. 43
(chap. v. § 2).
§ Thus Hesiod often shortens the ending «s in the accusative pluial of the firi.t
dte'ension, like Alcm.m, Stesichorus, and Epicharmus; it has indeed been observed
that it only occurs long where the syllable is in the aisis, or where it is lengthened
by position. On the whole, there is in Hesiod a greater tendency to shorter, often
to contracted forms ; while Homer's ear appears to have found peculiar delight in
the multiplication of trowel syllables.
G
82 HISTORY OF THE
supposed by the ancient Greeks to have been borrowed by one from
the other : in general, too, they have the appearance of being separately
derived from the common source of an earlier poetry ; and in Hesiod
especially, if we may judge from statements of the ancients, and from the
tone of his language, sayings and idioms of the highest antiquity are
preserved in all their original purity and simplicity*.
The opinion that Hesiod received the form of his poetry from Homer
cannot, moreover, well be reconciled with the wide difference which ap-
pears in the spirit and character of the two styles of epic poetry. Besides
what we have already remarked upon this subject, we will notice one
point which shows distinctly how little Hesiod allowed himself to be
governed by rules derived from Homer The Homeric poems, among
all the forms in which poetry can appear, possess in the greatest degree
what in modern times is called objectivity; that is, a complete aban-
donment of the mind to the object, without any intervening conscious-
ness of the situation or circumstances of the subject, or the individual
himself. Homer's mind moves in a world of lofty thoughts and ener-
getic actions, far removed from the wants and necessities of the present.
There can be no doubt that this is the noblest and most perfect style of
composition, and the best adapted to epic poetry. Hesiod, however,
never soars to this height. He prefers to show us his own domestic
life, and to make us feel its wants and privations. It would doubtless
be an erroneous transfer of the manners of later poets to this primi-
tive age, if we regarded Hesiod's accounts of his own life as mere
fictions used as a vehicle for his poetic conceptions. Moreover,
the tone in which he addresses his brother Perses has all the frank-
ness and naivete of reality ; and, indeed, the whole arrangement of
the poem of the Works and Days is unintelligible, unless we conceive
it as founded on a real event, such as the poet describes.
§ 2. This poem (which alone, according to Pausanias, the Boeotians
hold to be a genuine work of Hesiod, and with which, therefore, we
may properly begin the examination of the several works of this school)
is so entirely occupied with the events of common life, that the author
would not seem to have been a poet by profession, as Homer was de-
* Thus the verse of the Works and Days, fwrio; %' av\) <p!\t» sigq/tives a^xio; un
(v. 370), was attributed to Pittheus of Troezen, a sage and prince of the early
fabulous times. (See Aristotle in Plutarch. Theseus, c. 3.) The meaning, according
to Buttmann, is, " Let the reward be surely agreed on with a friend/' Homer has
the shorter expression : piirdo; Vi oi k^kio; 'itrrai. (See Buttmann's Lexilogus, in a^xio;,
p. 1G4, Engl, transl.) So likewise the phrase of Hesiod, uwi. r'm y.oi Taura. mgi Wv
*i VBgi ■jrir^nM (Theog. 35), is doubtless derived from the highest antiquity ; it is
connected with the Homeric, Ob fiiv iru; vuv tVni avo <W«j ««§' «cro ir'troris rS laoiZt-
p.iva.1, and Ou yap ccxo %gv'o$ itriri vraXaiipariiv ovS atfo rrir^ns- The oak and the rock
here represent the simple country life of the Greek autochthons, who thought that
they had sprung from their mountains and woods, and whose thoughts dwelt
only upon these ideas, in primitive innocence and familiarity. These words,
with which Hesiod breaks off his description of the scene of the shepherds
sleeping with their flocks, sound just like a saying of the ancient Pierian bards
among the Pelasgians. (Above, p. 27 — 8.)
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 83
scribed by the ancients, but some Boeotian husbandman, whose mind
had been so forcibly moved by peculiar circumstances as to give a
poetical tone to the whole course of his thoughts and feelings. The
father of Hesiod, as was before mentioned, had settled at Ascra as a
farmer ; and although he found the situation disadvantageous, from
its great heat in summer and its storminess in winter, yet he had
left a considerable property to his two sons, Hesiod and a younger
brother, Perses. The brothers divided the inheritance ; and Perses, by
means of bribes to the kings (who at this time alone exercised the office
of judge), contrived to defraud his elder brother. But Perses showed a
disposition which in later times became more and more common among
the Greeks ; he chose rather to listen to lawsuits in the market-place,
and to contrive legal quibbles by which he might defraud others of their
property, than to follow the plough. Hence it came to pass that his
inheritance, probably with the help of a foolish wife, was soon dissipated ;
and he threatened to commence a new suit against his elder brother, in
order to dispute the possession of that small portion ot their tather s
land which had been allotted to him. The peculiar situation in which
Hesiod was thus placed called forth the following expression of his
thoughts. We give only the principal heads, in order to point out their
reference to the circumstances of the poet*.
"There are two kinds of contention" (the poet begins by saying),
" the one blameable and hateful, the strife of war and litigation ; the
other beneficial and praiseworthy, the competition of mechanics and
artists. Avoid the first, O Perses ; and strive not again through the
injustice of the judges to wrest from me my own ; keep rather to the
works of honest industry. For the gods sent toil and misery among
men, when they punished Prometheus for stealing fire from heaven by
sending Pandora to Epimetheus, from whose box all evils were spread
among mankind. We are now in the fifth age of the world, the age of
iron, in which man must perpetually contend with want and trouble.
I will now relate to the judges the fable of the hawk which killed
the nightingale heedless of her song. The city where justice is
practised will alone flourish under the protection of the gods. But to
the city where wicked deeds are done, Zeus sends famine and plague.
Know, ye judges, that ye are watched by myriads of Jove's immortal
spirits, and his own all-seeing eye is upon you. To the brutes have the
gods given the law of force — to men the law of justice. Excellence is
not to be acquired, O Perses, except by the sweat of thy brow. Labour
is pleasinp; to the gods, and brings no shame : honest industry alone
gives lasting satisfaction. Beware of wrongful acts ; honour the gods ;
hold fast good friends and good neighbours ; be not misled by an im-
* I pass over the short proocmium to Zens, as it was rejected by most of the
ancient critics, and probably was only one id' the introductory strains which the
Hesiodean rhapsodists could prefix to the Works and Pays.
84 HISTORY OP THE
provident wife ; and provide yourself with a plentiful, but not too nume-
rous an offspring, and you will be blessed with prosperity."
With these and similar rules of economy (of which many are, perhaps,
rather adapted to the wants of daily life than noble and elevated) the first
part of the poem concludes ; its object being to improve the character and
habits of Perses, to deter him from seeking riches by litigation, and to
incite him to a life of labour as the only source of permanent prosperity.
Mythical narratives, fables, descriptions, and moral apophthegms, partly
of a proverbial kind, are ingeniously chosen and combined so as to
illustrate and enforce the principal idea.
In the second part, Hesiod shows Perses the succession in which his
labours must follow if he determines to lead a life of industry. Observing
the natural order of the seasons, he begins with the time of ploughing
and sowing, and treats of the implements used in these processes, the
plough and the beasts which draw it. He then proceeds to show how
a prudent husbandman may employ the winter at home, when the
labours of the field are at a stand ; adding a description of the storms
and cold of a Boeotian winter, which several modern critics have
(though probably without sufficient ground) considered as exaggerated,
and have therefore doubted its genuineness. With the first appearanae
of spring follows the dressing and cutting of the vines, and, at the rising
of the Pleiades (in the first half of our May), the reaping of the grain.
The poet then tells us how the hottest season should be employed, when
the corn is threshed. The vintage, which immediately precedes the
ploughing, concludes the circle of these rural occupations.
But as the poet's object was not to describe the charms of a country
life, but to teach all the means of honest gain which were then open to
the Ascraean countryman, he next proceeds, after having completed the
subject of husbandry, to treat with equal detail that of navigation.
Here we perceive how, in the time of Hesiod, the Boeotian farmer
himself shipped the overplus of his corn and wine, and transported it
to countries where these products were less abundant. If the poet had
had any other kind of trade in view, he would have been more explicit
upon the subject of the goods to be exported, and would have stated how a
husbandman like Perses was to procure them. Hesiod recommends for
a voyage of this kind the late part of the summer, on the 50th day after
the summer solstice, when there was no work to be done in the field,
and when the weather in the Greek seas is the most certain.
All these precepts relating to the works of industry interrupt, some-
what suddenly, the succession of economical rules for the management
of a family*. The poet now speaks of the time of life when a man
* It would be a great improvement if the verses relating to marriage (697 — 705,
ed. Gdttling) could be placed before ^Uuvoyivhi 2s ora/; i"n (376). Then all the pru-
dential maxims relating to neighbours, friends, wife, and children, would be
explained before the labours of agriculture, and the subsequent rules of domestic
economy would all refer to the maxim, tS I' ottiv aQu.vd.Tcav a««^y ■z-t$v\u,yfiivo$ tlvai.
LITERA1UKE OF ANCIKNT GltEECE. 85
should take u wife, and how he should look out for her. He then
especially recommends to all to bear in mind that the immortal gods
watch over the actions of men ; in all intercourse with others to keep
the tongue from idle and provoking words ; and to preserve a certain
purity and care in the commonest occurrences of every-day life. At
the same time he gives many curious precepts, which resemble
sacerdotal rules, with respect to the decorum to be observed in acts of
worship, and, moreover, have much in common with the symbolic rules
of the Pythagoreans, which ascribed a deep and spiritual import to
many unimportant acts of common life.
Of a very similar nature is the last part of this poem, which treats of
the days on which it is expedient or inexpedient to do this or that busi-
ness. These precepts, which do not relate to particular seasons of the
year, but to the course of each lunar month, are exclusively of a super-
stitious character, and are in great part connected with the different
worships which were celebrated upon these days : but our knowledge is far
too insufficient to explain them all*.
If we regard the connexion of this poem, as indicated by the heads
which we have mentioned, it must be confessed that the whole is
perfectly adapted to the circumstances of the case ; and conformable to
the poet's view of turning his brother Perses from his scheme of enrich-
ing himself by unjust lawsuits, and of stimulating him to a life of la-
borious husbandry. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the
poet has failed in producing so perfect an agreement of the several
members of his work, that by their combination they form, as it were,
one body. Indeed, the separate parts have often very little connexion
with each other, and are only introduced by announcements such
as these, " Now, if thou wilt, I will tell another story;" or, " Now I will
relate a fable to the kings," &c. This plainly shows much less art in
composition than is displayed in the Homeric poems ; the reason of
which was the far greater difficulty which must have been felt at that
time of forming general reflections upon life into a connected whole,
than of relating a great heroic event.
Yet in the general tone of the poem, and in the sentiments which it
displays, a sufficient uniformity is not wanting. We feel, as we read it,
that we are transported back to an age of primitive simplicity, in which
even the wealthy man does not disdain to increase his means by the
labour of his own hands ; and an attention to economical cares was not
considered ignoble, as it was among the later Greeks, who from hus-
bandmen became mere politicians. A coarse vein of homely good
* On the seventh day the poet himself remarks the connexion with Apollo. The
t£-j«s of the beginning and ending of the month is a day on which evils are to be
feared: it was considered as the birthday of the toil-worn Hercules. On the 17th
the com is lo be brought to the threshing floor : the 17th of Boedromion was the
sacrificial day of Demeter and Cora at Athens (Boeckh. Corp. Inscript. Gr. No. 523 v ,
and a great day of !he Eleusinia.
86 HISTORY OF THE
sense, nay, even a dash of interested calculating shrewdness, which
were deeply rooted in the Greek character, are comhined with
honourable principles of justice, expressed in nervous apophthegms
and striking images. When we consider that the poet was hrought
up in these hereditary maxims of wisdom, and moreover that he was
deeply convinced of the necessity of a life of laborious exertion, we
shall easily comprehend how strongly an event such as that in which
he was concerned with his brother Perses was calculated to strike
his mind; and from the contrast which it offered to his convictions,
to induce him to make a connected exposition of them in a poem.
This brings us to the true source of the Didactic Epos, which never
can proceed from a mere desire to instruct ; a desire which has no
connexion with poetry. Genuine didactic poetry always proceeds
from some great and powerful idea, which has something so absorbing
and attractive that the mind strives to give expression to it. In the Works
and Days this fundamental idea is distinctly perceptible ; the decrees
and institutions of the gods protect justice among men, they have made
labour the only road to prosperity, and have so ordered the year that
every work has its appointed season, the sign of which is discernible by
man. In announcing these immutable ordinances and eternal laws,
the poet himself is impressed with a lofty and solemn feeling, which
manifests itself in a sort of oracular tone, and in the sacerdotal style
with which many exhortations and precepts are delivered*. We have
remarked this priestly character in the concluding part of the poem,
and it was not unnatural that many in antiquity should annex to the
last verse, " Observing the omens of birds, and avoiding transgressions,"
another didactic epic poem of the same school of poetry upon divination f.
It is stated that this poem treated chiefly of the flight and cries of
birds; and it agrees with this statement, that Hesiod, according to
Pausanias, learned divination among the Acarnanians : the Acarnanian
families of diviners deriving their descent from Melampus, whose ears,
when a boy, were licked by serpents, whereupon he immediately under-
stood the language of the birds.
A greater loss than this supplement on divination is another poem
of the same school, called the Lessons of Chiron (Xapwvoc virodrjKai),
as this was in some measure a companion or counterpart to the Works
and Days. For while the extant poem keeps wholly within the circle
of the yearly occupations of a Boeotian husbandman, the lost one repre-
sented the wise Centaur, in his grotto upon Mount Pelion, instructing the
young Achilles in all the knowledge befitting a young prince and hero.
* We allude particularly to the fiiyx vnvu Tligan of Hesiod, and the {Aya. tWn
KgoTfft of the Pythia : and to the truly oracular expressions of. the Works and Days,
as, the "branch of five," vruro&t, for the "hand;" the "day-sleeper," ri/u,i^oxoiTos
avng, for the thief, &c. : on which see Gottling's Hesiod, Preef. p. xv.
f 'Youroi; \xa,y,ou<r'i thus rhv ogvifof&avTiiav, anvu ' AtfoXXavias o 'Polios ah~t7. — Pl'oclus
on the Works and Days, at the end, v. 824.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GUEFCE. 87
We might not improperly apply to this poem the name of a German
poem of the middle ages, and call it a Greek Ritterspiegel.
§ 3. We now follow this school of poetry to the great attempt of
forming from the Greek legends respecting the gods a connected and
regular picture of their origin and powers, and in general of the entire
polytheism of the Greeks. The Thcogony of Hesiod is not, indeed, to
be despised as a poem ; besides many singular legends, it contains
thoughts and descriptions of a lofty and imposing character ; but for the
history of the religious faith of Greece it is a production of the highest
importance. The notions concerning the gods, their rank, and their affini-
ties, which had arisen in so much greater variety in the different dis-
tricts of Greece than in any other country of the ancient world, found
in the Theogony a test of their general acceptance. Every legend
which could not be brought into agreement with this poem sank into
the obscurity of mere local tradition, and lived only in the limited
sphere of the inhabitants of some Arcadian district, or the ministers
of some temple, under the form of a strange and marvellous tale,
which was cherished with the greater fondness because its uncon-
formity with the received theogony gave it the charm of mystery*. It
was through Hesiod that Greece first obtained a kind of religious code,
which, although without external sanctions or priestly guardians and
interpreters (such as the Vedas had in the Brahmans, and the Zenda-
vesta in the Magians), must have produced the greatest influence on
the religious condition of the Greeks ; inasmuch as it impressed upon
them the necessity of agreement, and as the notions prevalent among
the most powerful races, and at the most renowned temples, were em-
bodied by the poet with great skill. Hence Herodotus was justified
in saying that Hesiod and Homer had made the theogony of the
Greeks, had assigned the names, offices, and occupations of the gods,
and had determined their forms.
According to the religious notions of the Greeks, the deity, who
governs the world with omnipotence, and guides the destinies of man
with omniscience, is yet without one attribute, which is the most
essential to our idea of the godhead — eternity. The gods of the
Greeks were too closely bound up with the existence of the world
to be exempt from the law by which large, shapeless masses are de-
veloped into more and more perfect forms. To the G reeks the gods
of Olympus were rather the summit and crowning point of organized
and animate life, than the origin of the universe. Thus Zens, who
must be considered as the peculiar deity of the Greeks, was doubtless,
long before the time of Homer or Hesiod, called Cronion, or Cronides,
* Numbers of these fables, which cannot be reconciled with the Theogony. were,
as we know from Pausauias, in currency, especially in Arcadia; but how little should
vrt know of them from writers who addressed themselves to the entire nation. The
Attic tragedians likewise, in their accounts of the affinities of the gods, follow the
Hesiodear. Theogony far Tiiore than the local worships and legends of Attica.
ft8 HISTORY OF THE
which, according to the most probable interpretation, means the " Son
of the Ancient of Days*;'' and, as the ruler of the clear heaven, he was
derived from Uranus, or heaven itself. In like manner all the other
gods were, according to their peculiar attributes and character, con-
nected with beings and appearances which seemed the most ancient.
The relation of the 'primitive and the originating to the recent and
the derived was always conceived under the form of generation and
birth — the universe being considered to have a life, like that of animals;
and hence even heaven and earth were imagined to have an animal
organization. The idea of creation, of so high antiquity in the east,
and so early known to the Indians, Persians, and Hebrews, which sup-
posed the Deity to have formed the world with design, as an earthly
artificer executes his work, was foreign to the ancient Greeks, and could
only arise in religions which ascribed a personal existence and an eter-
nal duration to the godhead. Hence it is clear that theogonies, in the
widest sense of the word — that is, accounts of the descent of the gods —
are as old as the Greek religion itself; and, doubtless, the most ancient
bards would have been induced to adopt and expand such legends in their
poems. One result of their attempts to classify the theogonic beings,
is the race of Titans, who were known both to Homer and Hesiod, and
formed a link between the general personifications of parts of the
universe and the human forms of the Olympic gods, by whose might
they were supposed to be hurled into the depths of Tartarus.
Surrounded as he was by traditions and ancient poems of this kind, it
would have been impossible for Hesiod (as many moderns have con-
ceived) to form his entire Theogony upon abstract philosophical prin-
ciples of his own concerning the powers of matter and mind : if his sys-
tem had been invented by himself, it would not have met with such
ready acceptance from succeeding generations. But, on the other hand,
Hesiod cannot be considered as a mere collector of scattered traditions
or fragments of earlier poems, which he repeated almost at random,
without being aware of their hidden connexion : the choice which he
made among different versions of the same fable, and his skilful arrange-
ment of the several parts, are of themselves a sufficient proof that he
was guided by certain fundamental ideas, and that he proceeded upon a
connected view of the formation of outward nature.
To make this position more clear, it will perhaps be most advisable
to illustrate the nature of the primitive beings which, according to the
Theogony, preceded the race of the Titans ; with the view of showing
the consistency and connexion of Hesiod's notions : for the rest, a more
general survey will suffice.
* Whatever doubts may exist with regard to the etymology of xZ°'" >i (whether
the name comes fiom xga'mw, or is allied with xgovog*), yet everything stated of him
agrees with this conception, his dominion during the golden age, the representation
of a simple patriarchal life at the festival of the K^m. Cronus as the ruler of the
departed heroes, &c.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 89
" First of all (the Theogony, strictly so called, begins) was Chaos'* ;
that is, the abyss, in which all peculiar shape and figure is lost, and of
which we arrive at the conception by excluding all idea of definite form.
It is evident, however, that, as Hesiod represents other beings as spring-
ing out of Chaos, he must have meant by this word not mere empty
space, but a confused mixture of material atoms, instinct with the prin-
ciple of life. " Afterwards arose (that is from Chaos) the wide-bosomed
Earth, the firm resting-place of all things; and gloomy Tartara in the
depth of the Earth; and Eros, the fairest of the immortal godsf."
The Earth, the mother of all living things, according to the notion of
the Greeks and many oriental countries, is conceived to arise out of the
dark abyss ; her foundations are in the depth of night, and her surface
is the soil upon which light and life exist. Tartara is, as it were, only
the dark side of the Earth ; by which it still remains connected with
Chaos. As the Earth and Tartara represent the brute matter of Chaos
in a more perfect form, so in Eros the living spirit appears as the
principle of all increase and development. It is a lofty conception of
the poet of the Theogony, to represent the God of Love as proceed-
ing out of Chaos at the beginning of all things ; though probably
this thought did not originate with him, and had already been expressed
in ancient hymns to Eros, sung at Thespia?. Doubtless it is not an
accidental coincidence that this city, which was 40 stadia from Ascra,
should have possessed the most renowned temple of Eros in all Greece ;
and that in its immediate neighbourhood Hesiod should have given to
this deity a dignity and importance of which the Homeric poems con-
tain no trace. But it appears that the poet was satisfied with borrowing
this thought from the Thespian hymns without applying it in the
subsequent part of his poem. For although it is doubtless implied that
all the following marriages and births of the gods spring from the in-
fluence of Eros, the poet nevertheless omits expressly to mention its
operation. " Out of Chaos came Erebus," the darkness in the depths
of the Earth, " and black Night" the darkness which passes over the.
surface of the Etrth. " From the union of Night and Erebus pro-
ceeded JEthcr and Day" It may perhaps appear strange that these
dark children of Chaos bring forth the ever-shining /Ether of the
highest heavens, and the bright daylight of the earth ; this, however,
is only a consequence of the general law of development observed in the
Theogony, that the dim and shapeless is the prior in point of time ;
and that the world is perpetually advancing from obscurity to bright-
* xuo; , literally synonymous with ;£«*/*«, chasm.
t Plato and Aristotle in their quotations of this passage omit Tartara (also called
Tartarus) ; but probably only because it has not so much importance among the
prinripia mundi as the others. Tartara could also be considered as included un.ler
the Earth, as it is also called Ta^ra^a yam. But the poet of the Theogony must
have stated his origin in this place ; as lower down he describes Typhosus as the
*onof the Earth and Tartarus.
90 HISTORY OF THE
ness. Light bursting from the bosom of darkness is a beautiful image,
which recurs in the cosmogonies of other ancient nations. " The Earth
then first produced the starry heaven, of equal extent with herself, that
it might cover her all round, so as to be for ever a firm resting-place for
the gods ; and also the far-ranging mountains, the lovely abodes of the
nymphs." As the hills are elevations of the Earth, so the Heaven is con-
ceived as a firmament spread over the Earth •, which, according to the
general notion above stated, would have proceeded, and, as it were,
grown out of it. At the same time, on account of the various fertilizing
and animating influences which the Earth receives from the Heaven, the
Greeks were led to conceive Earth and Heaven as a married pair*, whose
descendants form in the Theogony a second great generation of deities.
But another offspring of the Earth is first mentioned. " The Earth
also bore the roaring swelling sea, the Pontus, without the joys of mar
riage.'' By expressly remarking of Pontus that the Earth produced
him alone without love, although the other beings just enumerated
spaing from the Earth singly, the poet meant to indicate his rough
and unkindly nature. It is the wild, waste salt sea, separated at
its very origin from the streams and springs of fresh water, which
supply nourishment to vegetation and to animal life. These are all
made to descend from Ocean, who is called the eldest of the Titans.
These, together with the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires, were produced
by the union of Earth and Heaven ; and it is sufficient here to remark
of them that the Titans, according to the notions of Hesiod, represent a
system of things in which elementary beings, natural powers, and notions
of order and regularity are united into a whole. The Cyclopes de-
note the transient disturbances of this order by storms, and the Heca-
toncheires, or the hundred-handed giants, signify the fearful power of
tlie greater revolutions of nature.
The subsequent arrangement of the poem depends on its mixed
genealogical and narrative character. As soon as a new generation of
gods is produced, the events are related through which it overcame
the earlier race and obtained the supremacy. Thus, after the Titans
and their brethren, the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires, are enumerated, it
is related how Cronus deprives his father of the power, by producing
new beings, of supplanting those already in existence ; whereupon follow
the races of the other primitive beings, Night and Pontus. Then suc-
ceed the descendants of the Titans. In speaking of Cronus, the poet
relates how Zeus was preserved from being devoured by his father, and
of Iapetus, how his son Prometheus incensed Zeus by coming for-
ward as the patron of the human race, though not for their benefit.
Then follows a detailed account of the battle which Zeus and his
kindred, assisted by the Hecatoncheires, waged against the Titans ; with
* The same notion had prevailed, though in a less distinct form, in the early
religion of outward nature among the Greeks. See ahove ch. ii. § 4. (p. 14).
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 91
the description of the dreadful abode of Tartara, in which the Titans
were imprisoned. This part, it must be confessed, appears to be over-
loaded by additions of rhapsodists. An afterpiece to the battle of the
Titans is the rebellion of Typhceus (born of the Earth and Tartara)
against Zeus. The descendants of Zeus and the Olympian gods, united
with him, formed the last part of the original Theogony.
Notwithstanding the great simplicity of this plan, we may yet remark
a number of refinements which show a maturely considered design on
the part of the poet. For instance, Hesiod might have connected the
descendants of Night (born without marriage)* with the children
which she bore to Erebus, namely iEther and Dayf\ But he relates
first the battle of Cronus against Uranus, and the mutilation of the
latter ; whereby the first interruption of the peaceable order of the
world is caused, and anger and curses, personified by the Furies, are
introduced into the world. The mutilation, however, of Uranus caused
the production of the Meliae, or Nymphs of the Ash Trees, that is, the
mightiest productions of vegetation ; the Giants, or most powerful beings
of human form ; and the Goddess of Love herself. It is not till after
this disturbance of the tranquillity of the world that Night produces
from her dark bosom those beings, such as Death, and Strife, and Woe,
and Blame, which are connected with the sufferings of mankind. Like-
wise the race of Pontus, so rich in monsters, with which the heroes were
to fight their fiercest battles, are properly introduced after the first deed
of violence upon Uranus. It is also evidently by design that the two
Titans, Cronus and lapetus, also named together by Homer, are, in the
genealogy of their descendants J, arranged in a different order than at
the first mention of the Titans §. In the latter passage Cronus is
the youngest of all, just as Zeus is in Hesiod the youngest among his
brothers; whilst in Homer he reigns by the right of primogeniture.
But Hesiod supposes the world to be in a state of perpetual develop-
ment ; and as the sons overcome the fathers, so also the youngest sons
are the most powerful, as standing at the head of a new order of things.
On the other hand, the race of lapetus, which refers exclusively to
the attributes and destinies of mankind||, is placed after the de-
scendants of Cronus, from whom the Olympic gods proceed ; because the
actions and destinies of those human Titans are entirely determined by
* v.211, seq. f v. 124. * v. 453, 507. § v. 132, seq.
|| In the genealogy of lapetus in the Theogony are preserved remains of an
ancient poem on the lot of mankind. lapetus himself is the " fallen man - ' (from
(«*T(y, root I All), the human race deprived of their former happiness. Of his sons,
Atlas and Menoetius represent the 0uf*.t>s of the human soul : Atlas (from rXtjvai,
TAA), the enduring and obstinate spirit, to whom the gods allot the heaviest bur-
dens ; and Menoetius (fj-ivos and olro; ), the unconquerable and confident spirit, whom
Zeus hurls into Erebus. Prometheus and Epimelheus, on the other hand, personify
voi/f ; the former prudent foresight, the latter the worthless knowledge which comes
after the deed. And the gods contrive it so that whatever benefits are gained for the
human race Ly the former arel ost to it again through his brother.
92 HISTORY OF THE
their relation to the Olympians, who have reserved to themselves alone a
constantly equal measure of prosperity, and act jointly in repelling with
equal severity the bold attempts of the Iapetids.
Although therefore this poem is not merely an accumulation of raw
materials, but contains many connected thoughts, and is formed on a
well-djgested plan, yet it cannot be denied that neither in the Theogony
nor in the Works and Days can that perfect art of composition be found
which is so conspicuous in the Homeric poems. Hesiod has not only
faithfully preserved the ancient tradition, and introduced without altera-
tion into his poetry many time-honoured sayings, and many a verse of
earlier songs, but he also seems to have borrowed long passages, and even
entire hymns, when they happened to suit the plan of his poem ; and with-
out greatly changing their form. Thus it is remarkable that the battle
of the Titans does not begin (as it would be natural to expect) with the
resolution of Zeus and the other Olympians to wage war against the
Titans, but with the chaining of Briareus and the other Hecatoncheires
by Uranus ; nor is it until the poet has related how Zeus set free these
Hecatoncheires, by the advice of the Earth, that we are introduced to
the battle with the Titans, which has already been some time going on.
And this part of the Theogony concludes with the Hecatoncheires being
set by the gods to watch over the imprisoned Titans, and Briareus, by
his marriage with Cymopoleia, becoming the son-in-law of Poseidon.
This Briareus, who in Homer is also called iEgaeon, and represents the
violent commotions and heavings of the sea, was a being who in many
places seems to have been connected with the worship of Poseidon*,
and it is not improbable that in the temples of this god hymns were
sung celebrating him as the vanquisher of the Titans, one of which
Hesiod may have taken as the foundation of his narrative of the batt'e
of the Titans.
It seems likewise evident that the Theogony has been in many places
interpolated by rhapsodists, as was naturally to be expected in a poem
handed down by oral tradition. Enumerations of names always offered
facilities for this insertion of new verses; as, for examp'e, the list of
streams in the Theogony, which are called sons of the Ocean-f.
Among these we miss exactly those rivers which we should expect most
to find, the Boeotian Asopus and Cephisus ; and we find several which
at any rate lie beyond the sphere of the Homeric geography, such as the
Ister, the Eridanus, and the Nile, no longer the rfver of Egypt, as in
Homer, but under its more modern name. The most remarkable cir-
cumstance, however, is that in this brief list of rivers, the passage of
Homer \ which names eight petty streams flowing from the mountains
of Ida to the coast, has been so closely followed, that seven of them
* Poseidon, from uTyis, which signifies waves in a state of agitation, was also
Cdlled AiyaTos and Aiyaiuv.
+ v. 338, seq. X Iliad, xii. 26.
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 93
are named in Hesiod. This seems to prove incontes'ably that the
Theogony has heen interpolated by rhapsodists who were familiar with
the Homeric poems as well as with those of Hesiod.
It has heen already stated that the Theogony originally terminated
with the races of the Olympian gods, that is, at v. 962 ; the part which
follows being only added in order to make a transition to another and
longer poem, which the rhapsodists appended as a kind of continuation
to the Theogony. For it seems manifest that a composer of genealogical
legends of this kind would not be likely to celebrate the goddesses who,
"joined in love with mortal men, had borne godlike children" (which is
the subject of the last part in the extant version), if he had not also
intended to sing of the gods who with mortal women had begotten
mighty heroes (a far more frequent event in Greek mythology). The
god Dionysus, and Hercules, received among the gods (both of whom
sprang from an alliance of this kind), are indeed mentioned in a former
part of the poem*. But there remain many other heroes, whose
genealogy is not traced, of far greater importance than Medeius, Phocus,
./Eneas, and many other sons of goddesses. Moreover, the extant
concluding verses of the Theogony furnish a complete proof that a
poem of this description was annexed to it ; inasmuch as the women
whom the Muses are in these last verses called on to celebrate f can be
no other than the mortal beauties to whom the gods came down from
heaven. As to the nature of this lost poem of Hesiod something will
be said hereafter.
Hitherto we have said nothing upon that part of the Theogony which
has furnished so intricate a problem to the higher department of criti-
cism, viz., the procemium, as it is oidy after having taken a general
view of the whole poem that we can hope to succeed in ascertaining the
original form of this part. It can scarcely be questioned that this
prooemium, with its disproportionate length (v. 1 — 115), its intolerable
repetition of the same or very similar thoughts, and the undeniable in-
coherences of several passages, could not be the original introduction to
the Theogony ; it appears, indeed, to be a collection of all that the
Boeotian bards had produced in praise of the Muses. It is not, how-
ever, necessary, in order to explain how this confused mass was formed,
to have recourse to complicated hypotheses ; or to suppose that this long
prooemium was designedly formed of several shorter ones. It appears,
indeed, that a much simpler explanation may be found,, if we proceed
upon some statements preserved in ancient authors!. The genuine
* V. 940, seq,
\ Nov Ti yuvatKuv (fi/Xov ul'iffaTi ii^ui'TUai Nov/rui, &C.
I Especially the statement in Plutarch (torn. ii. p. 743, C. ed. Franoof.) that the
account of the hirth of the Muses from HeskxFs poems (viz., v. 36 — 67 in our
proem) w.is sung as a separate hymn ; and the statement of Aristophanes, the Alex-
andrine grammarian (in the scholia to v. 68), that the ascent of the Muses to
Olympus followed their dances on Helicon.
94 HISTORY OF THE
procemium contained the beautiful story above mentioned of the visit
of the Muses to Helicon, and of the consecration of Hesiod to the office
of a poet by the gift of a laurel branch. Next after this must have fol-
lowed the passage which describes the return of the Muses to Olympus,
where they celebrate their father Zeus in his palace as the vanquisher
of Cronus, and as the reigning governor of the world ; which might be
succeeded by the address of the poet to the Muses to reveal to him the
descent and genealogies of the gods. Accordingly the verses 1 — 35,
68 — 74, 104 — 115, would form the original procemium, in the con-
nexion of which there is nothing objectionable, except that the last in-
vocation of the Muses is somewhat overloaded by the repetition of the
same thought with little alteration. Of the intervening parts one, viz.,
v. 36 — 67, is an independent hymn, which celebrates the Muses as
Olympian poetesses produced by Zeus in Pieria in the neighbourhood
of Olympus, and has no particular reference to the Theogony. For the
enumeration contained in it of the subjects sung by the Muses in
Olympus, namely, first, songs to all the gods, ancient and recent,
then hymns to Zeus in particular, and, lastly, songs upon the heroic
races and the battle of the Giants, comprehends the entire range of the
Boeotian epic poetry ; nay, even the poems on divination of the school
of Hesiod are incidentally mentioned*. This hymn to the Muses
was therefore peculiarly well fitted to serve not only as a separate
epic song, but, like the longer Homeric hymns, to open the contest of
Boeotian minstrels at any festival.
But the Muses were, according to the statement of tins procemiumt,
celebrated at the end as well as at the beginning ; consequently there
must have been songs of the Boeotian epic poets, in which they returned
to the Muses from the peculiar subject of their composition. For a
concluding address of this kind nothing could be more appropriate
than that the poet should address himself to the princes, who were pre-
eminent among the listening crowd, that he should show them how
much they stood in need of the Muses both in the judgment-hall and
in the assemblies of the people, and (which was a main point with
Hesiod) should impress upon their hearts respect for the deities of
poetry and their servants. Precisely of this kind is the other passage
inserted in the original procemium, v. 75 — 103, which would have pro-
duced a good effect at the close of the Theogony ; by bringing back the
poetry, which had so long treated exclusively of the genealogies of the
gods, to the realities of human life; whereas, in the introduction, the whole
passage is entirely out of place. But this passage could not remain in
the place to which it belongs, viz., after v. 962, because the part relating
to the goddesses who were joined in love with mortal men was inserted
here, in order that the mortal women who had been loved by gods might
follow, and thus the Theogony be infinitely prolonged. Hence, in
* v 38. v/A,viZft/.i rd r Iovtk t« r 'urpofttva too r Voti-a,, •}• v. 34.
LITERATURE UF ANCIENT GREECE. 95
making an edition of the Theogony, in which the pieces belonging to
it were introduced into the series of the poem, nothing remained
but to insert the hymn to the Muses as well as the epilogue in the
procemium ; an adaptation which, however, could only have been made
in an age when the true feeling for the ancient epic poetry had nearly
passed away*.
Lastly, with regard to the relation between the Theogony and the
Works and Days, it cannot be doubted that there is a great resemblance
in the style and character of the two poems ; but who shall pretend to
decide that this resemblance is so great as to warrant an opinion that
these poems were composed by an individual, and not by a succession
of minstrels? It is, however, certain that the author of the Theogony
and the author of the Works and Days wish to be considered as the
same person; viz., as the native of Helicon who had been trained to a
country life, and had been endowed by the Muses with the gift of poetry.
Nor can it be doubted that the original Hesiod, the ancestor of this
family of poets, really rose to poetry from the occupations of common
life ; although his successors may have pursued it as a regular pro-
fession. It is remarkable how the domestic and economical spirit of
the poet of the Works appears in the Theogony, wherever the wide dif-
ference of the subjects permits it ; as in the legend of Prometheus and
Epimetheus. It is true that this takes a somewhat different turn in
the Theogony and in the Work?; as in the latter it is the casket
brought by Pandora from which proceed all human ills, while in the
former this charming and divinely endowed maiden brings woe into the
world by being the progenitress of the female sex. Yet the ancient
bard views the evil produced by women not in a moral but in an econo-
mical light. He does not complain of the seductions and passions of
which they are the cause, but laments that women, like the drones in a
hive, consume the fruits of others' industry instead of adding to the sum.
§ 4. It is remarkable that the same school of poetry which was
accustomed to treat the weaker sex in this satiric spirit should have
produced epics of the heroic mythology which pre-eminently sang the
praises of the women of antiquity, and connected a large part of the
heroic legends with renowned names of heroines. Yet the school
of Hesiod might probably find a motive in existing relations and
political institutions for such laudatory catalogues of the women of
early times. The neighbours of the Boeotians, the Locrians, possessed
a nobility consisting of a hundred families, all of which (according to
Polybiust) founded their title to nobility upon their descent from heroines.
* That there was another and wholly different version of the Theogony, which
contained at the end a passage deriving the origin of Hephaestus and Athene from
a contest of Zeus and Here, appears from the testimony of Chrysippus, in Galen de
Hippocratis et Platonis dogm. iii. 8, p. 349, seq.
f xii. 5.
96 HISTORY OP THE
Pindar, also, in the ninth Olympian ode, celebrates Protogeneia as the
ancestress of the kings of Opus. That the poetry of this school was con-
nected with the country of the Locrians also appears from the tradition
mentioned by Thucydides* that Hesiod died and was buried in
the temple of Zeus Nemeius, near Oeneon. The district of Oeneon
was bordered by that of Naupactus, which originally belonged to the
Locrians ; and it cannot be doubted that the grave of Hesiod, mentioned
in the territory of Naupactusf, is the same burying place as that near
Oeneon. Hence it is the more remarkable that Naupactus was also
the birth-place of an epic poem, which took from it the name of Nau-
pactia, and in which women of the heroic age were celebrated! .
From all this it would follow that it was a Locrian branch of the
Hesiodean school of poets whence proceeded the bard by whom
the Eoiae were composed. This large poem, called the Eoiee, or
the Great Eoice (fieyaXat 'HoTcu), took its name from the circum-
stance that the several parts of it all began with the words ?) o'lrj,
aut qualis. Five beginnings of this kind have been preserved
which have this in common, that those words refer to some heroine
who, beloved by a god, gave birth to a renowned hero§. Thence
it appears that the whole series began with some such introduc-
tion as the following : " Such women never will be seen again as
were those of former times, whose beauty and charms induced
even the gods to descend from Olympus." Each separate part then
referred to this exordium, being connected with it by the constant
lepetition of the words j) o'ir] in the initial verses. The most con-
siderable fragment from which the arrangement of the individual parts
can be best learnt is the 56 verses which are prefixed as an introduction
to the poem on the shield of Hercules, and which, as is seen from the
first verse, belong to the Eoiae. They treat of Alcmene, but without
relating her origin and early life. The narrative begins from the
flight of Amphitryon (to whom Alcmene was married) from his home,
and her residence in Thebes, where the father of gods and men de-
scended nightly from Olympus to visit her, and begot Hercules,
the greatest of heroes. Although no complete history of Alcmene
is given, the praise of her beauty and grace, her understanding, and her
conjugal love is a main point with the poet ; and we may also perceive
* iii. 95. + Paiisan. ix. 38. 3.
J Pausanias, x. 38, 6, uses of it the expression sV?j TsvoiYifi'va I; yvva.7x.st;, and else-
where the Hesiodean poem is called re Is ywxTxa.; aoifitvu. From single quotations
it appears that, in the Naupactia, the daughters of Minyas, as well as Medea, were
particularly celebrated, and that frequent mention was made of the expedition of the
Argonauts.
§ The extant verses (which can be seen in the collection of fragments in Gais-
ford's Poetae Minores, and other editions) refer to Coronis, the mother of Asclepius
by Apollo, to Anliope, the mother oi' Zethus and Amphion by Zeus, to Mecionice,
the mother of Euphemus by Poseidon, and to Cyrene, the mother of Aristams by
Apollo. The longer fragment relating to Alcmene is explained in the text.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. ^»7
from extant fragments of the continuation of this section of the Eoifc,
that in the relation of the exploits of Hercules, the poet frequently re-
curred to Alcmene ; and her relations with her son, her admiration of
his heroic valour, and her grief at the labours imposed upon him, were
depicted with great tenderness *. From this specimen we may form a
judgment of the general plan which was followed throughout the poem
of the Eoiae.
The inquiry into the character and extent of the Eoiae is however
rendered more difficult by the obscurity which, notwithstanding much
examination, rests upon the relation of this poem to the Karakoyoc
ywaiKwv, the Catalogues of Women. For this latter poem is some-
times stated to be the same as the Eoiae ; and for example, the
fragment on Alcmene, which, from its beginning, manifestly belongs to
the Eoiae, is in the Scholia to Hesiod placed in the fourth book of the
Catalogue : sometimes, again, the two poems are distinguished, and the
statements of the Eoiae and of the Catalogue are opposed to each otherf.
The Catalogues are described as an historical-genealogical poem, a cha-
racter quite different from that of the Eoiae, in which only such women
could be mentioned as were beloved by the gods : on the other hand,
the Catalogues resembled the Eoiae, when in the first book it was related
that Pandora, the first woman according to the Legend of the Theo-
gony, bore Deucalion to Prometheus, from whom the progenitors of the
Hellenic nation were then derived. We are therefore compelled to sup-
pose that originally the Eoiae and the Catalogues were different in plan
and subject, only, that both were especially dedicated to the celebration
of women of the heroic age, and that this then caused the compilation
of a version in which both poems were moulded together into one
whole. It is also easy to comprehend how much such poems, by their
unconnected form, would admit of constant additions, supposing only that
they were strung together by genealogies or other links ; and it need
not therefore seem surprising that the Eoiae, the foundation of which had
doubtless been laid at an early period, still received additions about the
40th Olympiad. The part which referred to Cyrene, a Thessalian
maid, who was carried off by Apollo into Libya, and there bore Aris-
taeus, was certainly not written before the founding of the city of
Cyrene in Libya (Olymp. 37). The entire Mythus could only have
* A beautiful passage, which relates to this point, is the address of Alcmene to
her son, u rixvav, « f&dXa S*i <rl Trovn^oraroyi kou uoitrrov Z»wj \<rixvii><ri ww?r,g.
On the fragments of this part of the Eoiae, see Dorians, vol. i. p. 540, En^i
Transl.
f For example, in the scholia to Apoll. Rhod. II. 181. Moreover, the part of the Eoia
in which Coronis was celebrated as the mother of Asclepius, was in contradiction with
the Ka.riit.eyos AsvKiwri'biuv/m which Arsinoe, the daughter of Leucippus, according
to the Messenian tradition, was the mother of Asclepius, as appears from Schol
Theogon. 142.
n
98 HISTORY OF THE
originated with the settlement of the Greeks of Thera, among whom
were noble families of Thessalian origin.
Of the remaining poems which in antiquity went by the name of
Hesiod, it is still less possible to give a complete notion. The Melam-
poclia is as it were the heroic representation of that divinatory spirit of
the Hesiodean poetry, the didactic forms of which have been already
mentioned. It treated of the renowned prince, priest, and prophet of
the Argives, Melampus ; and as the greater part of the prophets who
were celebrated in mythology were derived from this Melampus, the
Hesiodean poet, with his predilection for genealogical connexion, pro-
bably did not fail to embrace the entire race of the Melampodias.
§ 5. The JEgimius of Hesiod shows by its name that it treated of the
mythical Prince of the Dorians, who, according to the legend, was the
friend and ally of Hercules, whose son Hyllus he is supposed to have
adopted and brought up with his own two sons Pamphylus and Dyman,
a legend which referred to the distribution of the Dorians into three
Phyla? or tribes, the Hylleis, Pamphylians, and Dymanes. The fig-
ments of this poem also show that it comprehended the genealogical
traditions of the Dorians, and the part of the mythology of Hercules
closely allied to it ; however difficult it may be to form a well-grounded
idea of the plan of this Epos.
An interesting kind of composition attributed to Hesiod are the
smaller epics, in which not a whole series of legends or a complicated
story was described, but some separate event of the Heroic Mythology,
which usually consisted more in bright and cheerful descriptions than
in actions of a more elevated cast. Of this kind was the marriage of
Ceyx, the well-known Prince of Trachin, who was also allied in close
amity with Hercules; and a kindred subject, The Epithalamium of
Peleus and Thetis. We might also mention here the Descent of The-
seus and Pirithous into the Infernal Regions, if this adventure of the
two heroes was not merely introductory, and a description of Hades in
a religious spirit the principal object of the poem. We shall best illus-
trate this kind of small epic poems by describing the one which has been
preserved, viz., the Shield of Hercules. This poem contains merely owe
adventure of Hercules, his combat with the son of Ares, Cycnu&, in the
Temple of Apollo at Pagasae. It is clear to every reader of the poem
that the first 56 verses are taken out of the Eoiae, and only inserted be-
cause the poem itself had been handed down without an introduction.
There is no further connexion between these two parts, than that the
first relates the origin of the hero, of whom the short epic then
relates a separate adventure. It would have been as well, and perhaps
better, to have prefixed a brief hymn to Hercules. The description of
the Shield of Hercules is however far the most detailed part of the poem
and that for which the whole appears to have been composed ; a descrip-
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GIIEECE. 9U
tion which was manifestly occasioned by that of the shield of Achilles in
the Iliad, but nevertheless quite peculiar, and executed in the genuine
spirit of the Hesiodean school. For while the reliefs upon the shield of
Achilles are entirely drawn from imagination, and pure poetical imagi-
nation, objects are represented upon the shield of Hercules which were
in fact the first subjects of the Greek artists who worked reliefs in
bronze and other decorative sculptures*. We cannot, therefore, sup-
pose the shield of Hesiod to be anterior to the period of the Olympiads,
because before that time nothing was known of similar works of art
among the Greeks. But on the other hand, it cannot be posterior to
the 40th Olympiad, as Hercules appears in it armed and equipped like
any other hero ; whereas about this d^te the poets began to represent
him in a different costume, with the club and lion's skin f- The entire
class of these short epics appears to be a remnant of the style of the
primitive bards, that of choosing separate points of heroic history, in
order to enliven an hour of the banquet, before longer compositions had
been formed from them \. On the other hand, these short Hesiodean
epics are connected with lyric poetry, particularly that of Stesichorus, who
sometimes composed long choral odes on the same or similar subjects (as
for example, Cycnus), and not without reference to Hesiod. This close
approximation of the Hesiodean epic poetry and the lyric poetry of Ste-
sichorus doubtless gave occasion to the legend that the latter was the
son of Hesiod, although he lived much later than the real founder of
the Hesiodean school of poetry.
Of the other names of Hesiodean Poems, which are mentioned by
* The shield of Achilles contains, on the prominence in the middle, a representation
of earth, heaven, and sea : then in the next circular band two cities, the one engaged
in peaceable occupations, the other beleagured by foes : afterwards, in six depart-
ments (which must be considered as lying around concentrically in a third row), rural
and joyous scenes — sowing, harvest, vine-picking, a cattle pasture, a flock of sheep, a
choral dance : lastly, in the external circle, the ocean. The poet takes a delight in
adorning this implement of bloody war with the most pleasing scenes of peace, and
pays no regard to what the sculptors of his time were able to execute. The Hesiod-
ean poet, on the other hand, places in the middle of the shield of Hercules a terrible
dragon (fyaxovro; tp'ofhov), surrounded by twelve twisted snakes, exactly as the gorgo-
neum or head of Medusa is represented : on Tyrrhenian shields of Taiquinii other
monstrous heads are similarly introduced in the middle. A battle of wild boars
and lions makes a border, as is often the case in early Greek sculptures and vases.
It must be conceived as a narrow band or ring round the middle. The first consi-
derable row, which surrounds the centre piece in a circle, consists of four depart-
ments, of which two contain warlike and two peaceable subjects. So that the entire
shield contains, as it were, a sanguinary and a tranquil side. In these are repre-
sented the battle of the Centaurs, a choral dance in Olympus, a harbour and
fishermen, Perseus and the Gorgons. Of these the first and last subjects are among
those which are known to have earliest exercised the Greek artists. An external row
(i-rlp abriuv,\. 237) is occupied by a. city at war and a city at peace, which the poet
borrows from Homer, but describes with greater minuteness, and indeed overloads
with too many details. The rim, as in the other shield, is surrounded by the oceau.
t See the remarks on Peisander below, ch. ix.§ 3.
£ See above, p. 40, (ch. iv. § 6).
h2
100 HISTORY OF THE
grammarians, some are doubtful, as they do not occur in ancient au-
thors, and others do not by their title give any idea of their plan and
subject ; so that we can make no use of them in our endeavour to con-
vey a notion of the tone and character of the Hesiodean poetry.
CHAPTER IX.
j 1. General character of other Epic Poets. — § 2. Cinsethon of Lacedaemon, Eumelus
of Corinth, Asius of Samos, Chersias of Orchomenus. — § 3. Epic Poems on Her-
cules; the Taking of (Echalia ; the Heraclea of Peisander of Rhodes.
§ 1. Great as was the number of poems which in ancient times passed
under the name of Homer, and were connected in the way of supple-
ment or continuation with the Iliad and Odyssey, and also of those
which were included under the all-comprehensive name of Hesiod, yet
these formed only about a half of the entire epic literature of the early
Greeks. The hexameter was, for several centuries, the only perfectly
developed form of poetry, as narratives of events of early times were the
general amusement of the people. The heroic mythology was an inex-
haustible mine of subjects, if they were followed up into the legends of
the different races and cities ; it was therefore natural, that in the
most various districts of Greece poets should arise, who, for the gratifi-
cation of their countrymen, worked up these legends into an epic form,
either attempting to rise to an imitation of the Homeric style, or con-
tenting themselves with the easier task of adopting that of the school
of Ilesiod. Most of these poems evidently had little interest except in
their subjects, and even this was lost when the logographers collected
into shorter works the legends of which they were composed. Hence
it happened only occasionally that some learned inquirer into tradi-
tionary story took the trouble to look into these epic poems. Even
now it is of great importance, for mythological researches, carefully to
collect all the fragments of these ancient poems ; such, for example, as
the Phoronis and Danuis (the works of unknown authors), which con-
tained the legends of the earliest times of Argos ; but, for a history of
literature, the principal object of which is to give a vivid notion of the
character of writings, these are empty and unmeaning names. There
are, however, a few epic poets of whom enough is known to enable us
to form a general idea of the course which they followed.
§ 2. Of these poets several appear to have made use of the links of
gejiealogy, in order, like the poet of the Hesiodean catalogues, to string
together fables which were not connected by any main action, but which
often extended over many generations. According to Pausanias, the
works of Cinaethon the Lacedaemonian, who flourished about the 5th
Olympiad, had a genealogical foundation ; and from the great pleasure
which the Spartans took in the legends of the heroic age, it is probable
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. lU 1
that he treated of certain mythical subjects to which a patriotic interest
was attached. His Heraclea, which is very rarely mentioned, may
have referred to the descent of the Doric Princes from Hercules ; and
also his CEdipodia may have been occasioned by the first kings of
Sparta, Procles and Eurysthenes, being, through their mother, descended
from the Cadmean kings of Thebes. It is remarkable that the Little
Iliad, one of the Cyclic poems, which immediately followed Homer, was
by many* attributed to this Cineethon ; and another Peloponnesian bard,
Eumelus the Corinthian, was named as the author of a second Cyclic Epos,
the Nostoi. Both statements are probably erroneous ; ai least the authors
of these poems must, as members of that school who imitated and extended
the Homeric Epopees, have adopted an entirely different style of com-
position from that required for the genealogical collections of Pelopon-
nesian legends. Eumelus was a Corinthian of the noble and governing-
house of the Bacchaids, and he lived about the time of the founding of
Syracuse (11th Olympiad, according to the commonly received date).
There were poems extant under his name, of the genealogical and his-
torical kind; by which, however, is not to be understood the later style
of converting the marvels of the mythical period into common history,
bat only a narrative of the legends of some town or race, arranged in
order of time. Of this character (as appears also from fragments) were
the Corinthiaca of Eumelus, and also, probably, the Europia, in which
perhaps a number of ancient legends were joined to the genealogy of
Europa. Nevertheless the notion among the ancients of the style of
Eumelus was not so fixed and clear as to furnish any certain criterion;
for there was extant a 'i itanomachia, as to which Athenaeus doubts whe-
ther it should be ascribed to Eumelus, the Corinthian, or Aretinus, the
Milesian. That there should exist any doubt between these two claimants,
'.he Cyclic poet who had composed the .Lthiopis, and the author of
genealogical epics, only convinces us how uncertain all literary decisions
in this period are, and how dangerous a region this is for the inquiries of
the higher criticism. Pausanias will not allow anything of Eumelus to
be genuine except a prosodion, or strain, which he had composed for
the Messenians for a sacred mission to the Temple of Delos ; and it
is certain that this epic hymn, in the Doric dialect, really belonged to
those times when Messenia was still independent and flourishing, before
the first war with the Lacedaemonians, which began in the 9th Olym-
piadf. Pausanias also ascribes to Eumelus the epic versen in the Doric
* See ScboL Vatic, ad Eurip. Troad. 822. Eumelus (^corrupted into Eumolpus)
is called the author of the vo'rroi in Schol. Pind. Olymp. xiii. 31.
f The passage quoted from it by Pausan. iv. 33. 3.
TS yag ' lBu/aaTce, xaTa.6vfn.iii stXito Moiffa }
A xa.0a.gcc xai iXivhga aa-ftar' (?) i%ovira,
appears to say that the muse of Eumelus, which had composed the Prosodion,
had aUo pleased Zeus Ithomatas ; that is. had gained a prize at the musical con-
tests among lhe [thomseans in Messenia.
102 HISTORY OF THE
dialect, which were added to illustrate the reliefs on the chest of Cyp-
selus, the renowned work of ancient art. But it is plain that those
verses were contemporaneous with the reliefs themselves, which were not
made till a century later, under the Government of the Cypselids at
Corinth*. Asms of Samos, often mentioned by Pausanias, was a third
genealogical epic poet. His poems referred chiefly to his native coun-
try, the Ionian island of Samos ; and he appears to have taken occasion
to descend to his own time ; as in the glowing and vivid description of
the luxurious costume of the Samians at a festival procession to the
temple of their guardian goddess, Here. Chersias, the epic poet of Orcho-
menus, collected Boeotian legends and genealogies : he was, according
to Plutarch, a contemporary of the Seven Wise Men, and appears, from
the monumental inscription above mentioned, to have been a great
admirer and follower of Hesiod.
§ 3. While by efforts of this kind nearly all the heroes (whose remem-
brance had been preserved in popular legends) obtained a place in
this endlessly extensive epic l^erature, it is remarkable that the hero
on whose name half the heroic mythology of the Greeks depends, to
whose mighty deeds (in a degree far exceeding those of all the Achaian
heroes before Troy) every race of the Greeks seem to have contributed
its share, that Hercules should have been celebrated by no epic poem
corresponding to his greatness. Even the two Homeric epopees furnish
some measure of the extent of these legends, and at the same time make
it probable that it was usual to compose short ep'c poems from single
adventures of the wandering hero ; and of this kind, probably, was the
" Taking of CEchalia," which Homer, according to a well-known tra-
dition, is supposed to have left as a present to a person joined to him by
ties of hospitality, Creophylus of Samos, who appears to have been the
head of a Samian family of rhapsodists. The poem narrated how Her-
cules, in order to avenge an affront early received by him from Eurytus
and his sons, takes CEchalia, the city of this prince, slays him and his
sons, and carries off his daughter Iole, as the spoil of war. This fable
is so far connected with the Odyssey that the bow which Ulysses uses
against the suitors is derived from this Eurytus, the best archer of his
* Pausanias proceeds on the supposition that this chest was the very one in which
the little Cypselus was concealed from the designs of the Bacchiads by his mother
Labda, which was afterwards, in memory of this event, dedicated by the Cypse-
lids at Olympia. But not to say that this whole story is not an historial fact, but
probably arose merely from the etymology of the word Ki-^iXo;, (from xu^iXn, a
chest.) it is quite incredible that a box so costly and so richly adorned with sculp-
tures should have been used hy Labda as an ordinary piece of furniture. It is far
more probable that the Cypselids, at the time of their power and wealth (after
Olymp. 30), had this chest made among other costly offerings, in order to be dedi-
cated at Olympia, meaning, at the same time, by the name of the chest {kv-^'iXv)
— quite in the manner of the emblcmes parlanson Greek coins — to allude to themselves
as donors. Another argument is, that Hercules was distinguished on it by a pecu-
liar costume ((r^jj^a) ; and therefore was not, as in Hesiud's shield, repre-ented in
the common heroic accoutrements.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 103
lime. This may have been the reason that very earl) Homerids
formed of this subject a separate epos, the execution of which does
not appear to have been unworthy o: the name of Homer.
Other portions of the legends of Hercules had found a place in the
larger poems of Hesiod, the Eoise, the Catalogues, and the short epics ; and
C inaithon the Lacedaemonian may have brought forward many legends
little known before his time. Yet this whole series of legends wanted
that main feature which every one would now collect from poets and
works of art. This conception of Hercules could not arise before his
contests with animals were combined from the local tales separately
related of him in Peloponnesus, and were embellished with all the
ornaments of poetry. Hence, too, he assumed a figure different from
that of all other heroes, as he no longer seemed to want the brazen
helmet, breast-plate, and shield, or to require the weapons of heroic
warfare, but trusting solely to the immense strength of his limbs, and
simply armed with a club, and covered with the skin of a lion which he
had slain, he exercises a kind of gymnastic skill in slaying the various
monsters which he encounters, sometimes exhibiting rapidity in running
and leaping, sometimes the highest bodily strength in wrestling and
striking. The poet who first represented Hercules in this manner, and
thus broke through the monotony of the ordinary heroic combats, was
Peisander, a Rhodian, from the town of Cameirus, who is placed at the
33d Olympiad, though he probably flourished somewhat later. Nearly
all the allusions in his Heraclea may be referred to those combats, which
were considered as the tasks imposed on the hero by Eurystheus, and
which were properly called 'llpaKkiovg ad\oi. It is, indeed, very pro-
bable that Peisander was the first who fixed the number of these labours
at twelve, a number constantly observed by later writers, though they
do not always name the same exploits, and which had moreover esta-
blished itself in art at least as early as the time of Phidias (on the tem-
ple of Olympia). If the first of these twelve combats have a somewhat
rural and Idyllian character, the later ones afforded scope for bold ima-
ginations and marvellous tales, which Peisander doubtless knew how to
turn to account ; as, for example, the story that Hercules, in his expedi-
tion against Geryon, was carried over the ocean in the goblet of the Sun,
is first cited from the poem of Peisander. Perhaps he was led to this
invention by symbols of the worship of the Sun, which existed from early
times in Rhodes. It was most likely the originality, which prevailed
with equal power through the whole of this not very long poem, that
induced the Alexandrian grammarians to receive Peisander, together
with Homer and Hesiod, into the epic canon, an honour which they
did not extend to any other of the poets hitherto mentioned.
Thus the Greek Epos, which seemed, from its genealogical tendency,
to have acquired a dry and steril character, now appeared once more
animated with new life, and striking out new paths. Nevertheless it
li) 1 HISTORY OF THE
may be questioned whether the epic poets would have acquired this
spirit if they had never moved out of the beaten track of their ancient
heroic song, and if other kinds of poetry had not arisen and re-
vealed to the Greeks the latent poetical character of many other feelings
and impressions besides those which prevailed in the epos. We now
turn to those kinds of poetry which first appear as the rivals of the epic
strains*.
CHAPTER X.
6 1. Exclusive prevalence of Epic Poetry, in connexion with the monarchical period;
influence of the change in the forms of Government upon Poetry. — § 2. Elegeion,
its meaning ; origin of Elegos ; plaintive songs of Asia Minor, accompanied by
the flute ; mode of Recitation of the Elegy. — § 3. Metre of the Elegy. — § 4. Po-
litical and military tendency of the Elegy as composed by Callinus ; the circum-
stances of his time. — § 5. Tyrtaeus, his Life ; occasion and subject of his Elegy
of Eunomia. — § 6. Character and mode of recitation of the Elegies of Tyrtaeus.
§ 7. Elegies of Archilochus, their reference to Banquets ; mixture of convivial jollity
(Asius). — § 8. Plaintive Elegies of Archilochus. — § 9.Mimnermus ; his Elegies ;
the expression of the impaired strength of the Ionic nation. — 6 10. Luxury a
consolation in this state; the Nanno of Mimnermus. — § 11. Solon's character; his
Elegy of Salamis. — § 12. Elegies before and after Solon's Legislation; the ex-
pression of his political feeling; mixture of Gnomic Passages (Phocylides). —
§ 13. Elegies of Theognis; their original character. — § 14. Their origin in the
political Revolutions of Megara. — § 15. Their personal reference to the Friends
of Theognis. — § 16. Elegies of Xenophanes ; their philosophical tendency.—
§ 17. Elegies of Simonides on the Victories of the Persian War; tender and
pathetic spirit of his Poetry ; general View of the course of Elegiac Poetry. .
§ 18. Epigrams in elegiac form ; their Object and Character; Simonides, as a
Composer of Epigrams.
§ 1. Until the beginning of the seventh century before our era, or
the 20th Olympiad, the epic was the only kind of poetry in Greece, and
the hexameter the only metre which had been, cultivated by the poets
with art and diligence. Doubtless there were, especially in connexion
with different worships, strains of other kinds and measures of a lighter
movement, according to which dances of a sprightly character could be
executed ; but these as yet did not form a finished style of poetry, and
were only rude essays and undeveloped germs of other varieties, which
hitherto had only a local interest, confined to the rites and customs of
particular districts. In all musical and poetical contests the solemn and
majestic tone of the epopee and the epic hymn alone prevailed ; and the
soothing placidity which these lays imparted to the mind was the only
feeling which had found its satisfactory poetical expression. As yet the
heart, agitated by joy and grief, by love and anger, could not give utter-
* Some epic poems of the early period, as the Minyis, Alemaotiis, and Thesprotia,
will be noticed in the chapter on the poetry connected with the Mysteries.
LITERATURE OK ANCIENT GREECE. 105
ance to its lament for the lost, its longing after the absent, its care for
the present, in appropriate forms of poetical composition. These feel-
ings were still without the elevation which the beauty of art can alone
confer. The epopee kept the mind fixed in the contemplation of a
former generation of heroes, which it could view with sympathy and in-
terest, but not with passionate emotion. And although in the econo-
mical poem of Hesiod the cares and sufferings of the present time fur-
nished the occasion for an epic work, yet this was only a partial descent
from the lofty career of epic poetry ; for it immediately rose again from
this lowly region, and taking a survey of things affecting not only the
entire Greek nation but the whole of mankind, celebrated in solemn
strains the order of the universe and of social life, as approved by the
Gods.
This exclusive prevalence of epic poetry was also doubtless connected
with the political state of Greece at this time. It has been already re-
marked* how acceptable the ordinary subjects of the epic poems must
have been to the princes who derived their race from the heroes of the
mythical age, as was the case with all the royal families of early times.
This rule of hereditary princes was the prevailing form of government
in Greece, at least up to the beginning of the Olympiads, and from this
period it gradually disappeared ; at an earlier date and by more vio-
lent revolutions among the Ionians, than among the nations of Pelopon-
nesus. The republican movements, by which the princely families were
deprived of their privileges, could not be otherwise than favourable to a
free expression of the feelings, and in general to a stronger development
of each man's individuality. Hence the poet, who, in the most perfect
form of the epos, was completely lost in his subject, and was only the
mirror in which the grand and brilliant images of the past were reflected,
now comes before the people as a man with thoughts and objects of his
own ; and gives a free vent to the struggling emotions of his soul in
elegiac and iambic strains. As the elegy and the iambus, those two
contemporary and cognate species of poetry, originated with Ionic poets,
and (as far as we are aware) with citizens of free states; so, again, the
remains and accounts of these styles of poetry furnish the best image of
the internal condition of the Ionic states of Asia Minor and the Islands
in the first period of their republican constitution.
§ 2. The word clegeioti, as used by the best writers, like the word
epos, refers not to the subject of a poem, but simply to its form. In
general the Greeks, in dividing their poetry into classes, looked almost
exclusively to its metrical shape ; but in considering the essence of the
Greek poetry we shall not be compelled to depart from these divisions,
as the Greek poets always chose their verse with the nicest attention to
the feelings to be conveyed by the poem. The perfect harmony, the
accurate correspondence of expression between these multifarious me-
* Chap.iv. § 1, 2.
106 HISTORY OF THE
trical forms and the various states of mind required by the poem, is one
of the remarkable features of the Grecian poetry, and to which we shall
frequently have occasion lo advert. The word tXeyetov, therefore, in its
strict sense, means nothing more than the combination of an hexameter
and a pentameter, making together a distich ; and an elegeia (tXeyda)
is a poem made of such verses. The word elegeion is, however, itself
only a derivative from a simpler word, the use of which brings us nearer
to the first origin of this kind of poetry. Elegos (k'Xtyoc) means pro-
perly a strain of lament, without any determinate reference to a metri-
cal form ; thus, for example, in Aristophanes, the nightingale sings an
elegos for her lost Itys ; and in Euripides, the halcyon, or kingfisher,
sings an elegos for her husband Ceyx* ; in both which passages the
word has this general sense. The origin of the word can hardly be
Grecian, since all the etymologies of it which have been attempted seem
very improbable^ ; on the other hand, if it is borne in mind, how cele-
brated among the Greeks the Carians and Lydians were for laments
over the dead, and generally for songs of a melancholy cast}, it will
seem likely that the Ionians, together with ditties and tunes of this kind,
also received the word elegos from their neighbours of Asia Minor.
However great the interval may have been between these Asiatic
dirges and the elegy as embellished and ennobled by Grecian taste,
yet it cannot be doubted that they were in fact connected. Those
laments of Asia Minor were always accompanied by the flute, which was
of great antiquity in Phrygia and the neighbouring parts, but which
was unknown to the Greeks in Homer's time, and in Hesiod only occurs
as used in the boisterous strain of revellers, called Comos§. The elegy,
on the other hand, is the first regularly cultivated branch of Greek
poetry, in the recitation of which the flute alone, and neither the cithara
nor lyre, was employed. The elegiac poet Mimnermus (about Olympiad
40, 620 b. a), according to the testimony of Hipponax||, nearly as an-
cient as himself, played on the flute the KpaSirjg vofiog ; that is, literally,
" the fig-branch strain," a peculiar tune, which was played at the Ionic
festival of Thargelia, when the men appointed to make atonement for
the sins of the city were driven out with fig branches. Nanno, the
beloved of Mimnermus, was a flute player, and he, according to the
* Aristoph. Av. 218. Eurip. Iph. Taur. 1061.
t The most favourite is the derivation from t s xiyuv ; but Xiyetv is here an im-
proper form, and ought in this connexion to be x'oyo;. The entire composition is,
moreover, very strange.
J Garian and Lydian laments are often mentioned in antiquity (Franch Callinus,
p. 123, seq.); and the antispastic rhythm ", in which there is something dis-
pleasing and harsh, was called xxgixos ; which refers to its use in laments of this
kind. It is also very probable that the word vm/a. came from Asia Minor (Pollux
iv. 79), and was brought by the Tyrrhenians from Lydia to Etruria, and thence to
Home.
§ Above, chap. iii. § 5.
|| In Plutarch de Musica, c. be. comp. Hesych. in x^lns v'cp.oz.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GUEECE. 107
expression of a later elegiac poet, himself played on the lotus-wood flute,
and wore the mouthpiece (the <popfieih) used hy the ancient flute
players when, together with his mistress, he led a comos*. And in en-
tire agreement with this the elegiac poet Theogn is says, that his beloved
and much praised Cyrnus, carried by him on the wings of poetry over
the whole earth, would be present at all banquets, as young men would
sing of him eloquently to the clear tone of little flutesf-
Nevertheless, we are not to suppose that elegies were from the begin-
ning intended to be sung, and to be recited like lyric poems in the
narrower sense of the word. Elegies, that is distichs, were doubtless
accompanied by the flute before varied musical forms were invented for
them. This did not take place till some time after Terpander the Les-
bian, who set hexameters to music, to be sung to the cithara, that is, pro-
bably, not before the 40th Olympiad}.
When the Amphictyons, after the conquest of Crissa, celebrated the
Pythian games (Olymp. 47, 3 b.c. 590), Echembrotus the Arcadian
came forward with elegies, which were intended to be sung to the flute :
these were of a gloomy plaintive character, which appeared to the as-
sembled Greeks so little in harmony with the feeling of the festival, that
this kind of musical representations was immediately abandoned^.
Hence it may be inferred that in early times the elegy was recited rather
in the style of the Homeric poems, in a lively tone, though probably
with this difference, that where the Homerid used the cithara, the flute
was employed, for the purpose of making a short prelude and occasional
interludes j|. The flute, as thus applied, does not appear alien to the
warlike elegy of Callinus : among the ancients in general the varied
tones of the flute^ were not considered as necessarily having a peaceful
character. Not only did the Lydian armies march to battle, as Hero-
dotus states, to the sound of flutes, masculine and feminine ; but the
Sp.irtans formed their military music of a large number of flutes, in-
stead of the cithara, which had previously been used. From this how-
ever we are not to suppose that the elegy was ever sung by an army on
its march, or advance to the fight, for which purpose neither the rhythm
nor the style of the poetry is at all suited. On the contrary, we shall
* This, according to the most probable reading, is the moaning of the passage of
Hermesianax in Athen. xiii., p. 598 A. Kaitrt> ph Nawous, ToXrf V law -rokXaxt
Xuru xnftcofa'i; (according to an emendation in the Classical Journal, vii. p. 238);
xufiov; (rr%7x;t vun^aviuv (the hitter words according to Schweighaeuser's reading),
f Theognis, v. 237, seq. X Plutarch, fie Musica, iii.4,8.
§ Pausan. x. 7, 3. From the statement of Chameleon in Athen. xiv. p. C20, that,
the poems of Mimnermus as well as those of Homer were set to music (uiXalvfaai)
it may be inferred that they were not so from the beginning.
|| Archilochus says fiuv vvf «.l\»Tri£os, probably in reference to an elegy (Schol.
Anstoph. Av. 1428) ; and Solon is stated to have recited his elegy of Salamis abuv :
but in these passages «Swv, as in the case of Homer, probably expresses a measured
style of recitation like that of a rhapsodist : above, ch. iv. § 3 (p. 32). Comp. a'so
Philochorus ap. Athen. xiv. t)3().
^1 fTdftQcovoi aiiXcU Pindar.
1'OS HISTORY UF MIE
find in Tyrfcaeus, Archilochus, Xenophanes, Anacreon, and especially in
Theognis, so many instances of the reference of elegiac poetry to ban-
quets, that we may safely consider the convivial meeting - , and especially
the latter part of it, called Comos, as the appropriate occasion for the
Greek elegy*.
§ 3. That the elegy was not originally intended to make a completely
different impression from the epic poem, is proved by the slight devia-
tion of the elegiac metre from the epic hexameter. It seems as if the
spirit of art, impatient of its narrow limits, made with this metre its first
timid step out of the hallowed precinct. It does not venture to invent
new metrical forms, or even to give a new turn to the solemn hexame-
ter, by annexing to it a metre of a different character : it is contented
simply to remove the third and the last thesis from every second hexa-
meter t ; and it is thus able, without destroying the rhythm, to vary the
form of the metre in a highly agreeable manner. The even and regular
march of the hexameter is thus accompanied by the feebler and hesi-
tating gait of the pentameter. At the same time, this alternation pro-
duces a close union of two verses, which the hexametrical form of the
epos, with its uninterrupted flow of versification, did not admit ; and
thus gives rise to a kind of small strophes. The influence of this metri-
cal character upon the structure of the sentences, and the entire tone of
the language, must evidently have been very great.
§ 4. Info the fair form of this metre the Ionic poets breathed a soul,
which was vividly impressed with the passing events, and was driven to
and fro by the alternate swelling and flowing of a flood of emotions. It
is by no means necessary that lamentations should form the subject of
the elegy, still less that it should be the lamentation of love ; but emo-
tion is always essential to it. Excited by events or circumstances
of the present time and place, the poet in the circle of his friends
and countrymen pours forth his heart in a copious description of hit;
experience, in the unreserved expression of his fears and hopes, in cen-
sure, and advice. And as the commonwealth was in early times the
first thought of every Greek, his feelings naturally gave rise to the poli-
tical and warlike character of the elegy, which we first meet with in the
poems of Callinus.
The age of Callinus of Ephesus is chiefly fixed by the allusions
to the expeditions of the Cimmerians and Treres, which occurred in his
poems. The history of these incursions is, according to the best ancient
authorities, as follows : — The nation of the Cimmerians, driven out by
* The flute is described as used at the Comus in the passage of Hesiod cited
above, p. 21 (ch. iii. § 5).
t Thus, in the first lines of the Iliad and the Odyssey, by omitting the thesis of
the third and sixth feet, a perfect elegiac pentameter is obtained.
AvS^a f/.oi 'inim Moulira wo\Xur^ovov o; fia.\cc t«X|A«.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 109
the Scythians, appeared at the time of Gyges in Asia Minor ; in the
reign of Ardys (Olymp. 25, 3—37, 4 ; or 678—29 r.c.) they took
Sardis, the capital of the Lydian kings, with the exception of the
citadel, and then, under the command of Lygdamis, moved against
Ionia; where in particular the temple of the Ephesian Artemis was
threatened by them. Lygdamis perished in Cilicia. The tribe of the
Treres, who appear to have followed the Cimmerians on their expedi-
tion, captured Sardis for the second time in union with the Lycians, and
destroyed Magnesia on the Maeander, which had hitherto been a
flourishing city, and, with occasional reverses, had on the whole come
off superior in its wars with the Ephesians. These Treres, however
under their chieftain Cobus, were (according to Strabo) soon driven
back by the Cimmerians under the guidance of Madys. Halyattes, the
second successor of Ardys, at last succeeded in driving the Cimmerians
out of the country, after they had so long occupied it. (Olymp. 40, 4 —
55, 1 ; 617 — 560 u.c.) Now the lifetime of Callinus stands in relation
to these events thus : he mentioned the advance of the formidable Cim-
merians and the destruction of Sardis by them, but described Magnesia
as still flourishing and as victorious against Ephesus, although he also
knew of the approach of the Treres*. In such perilous times, when
the Ephesians were not only threatened with subjugation by their coun-
trymen in Magnesia, but with a still worse fate from the Cimmerians
and Treres, there was doubtless no lack of unwonted inducements for
the exertion of every nerve. But the Ionians were already so softened
by their long intercourse with the Lydians, a people accustomed to all
the luxury of Asia, and by the delights of their beautiful country, that
even on sucn an occasion as this they would not break through the in-
dolence of their usual life of enjoyment. It is easy to see how deep
and painful the emotion must have been with which Callinus thus
addresses his countrymen: " How long will you lie in sloth? when will
you, youths, show a courageous heart? are you not ashamed that the
neighbouring nations should see you sunk in this lethargy ? You think
indeed that you are living in peace ; but war overspreads the whole
eartht"
The fragment which begins with the expressions just cited, the only
* Two fragments of Callinus prove this —
and
Everything else stated in the text is taken from the precise accounts of Herodotus
and Strabo. Pliny's story of the picture of Bularchus " Magnetum excidiurc
being bought for an equal weight of gold by Candaules, the predecessor of Gyges,
must be erroneous. Probably some other Lydian named Candaules is confounded
with the old king.
f Gaisford Poetae Minores, vol. i. p. 426-
1 10 HISTORY OP THE
considerable remnant of Callinus, and even that an imperfect one*, is
highly interesting - as the first specimen of a kind of poetry in which so
much was afterwards composed both by Greeks and Romans. In
general the character of the elegy may be recognized, as it was deter-
mined by the metre, and as it remained throughout the entire literature
of antiquity. The elegy is honest and straightforward in its expression ;
it marks all the parts of its picture with strong touches, and is fond of
heightening the effect of its images by contrast. Thus in the verses just
quoted Callinus opposes the renown of the brave to the obscurity of cow-
ards. The pentameter itself, being a subordinate part of the metre,
naturally leads to an expansion of the original thought by supplemen-
tary or explanatory clauses. This ditfuseness of expression, combined
with the excited tone of the sentiment, always gives the elegy a certain
degree of feebleness which is perceptible even in the martial songs of
Callinus and Tyrtaeus. On the other hand, it is to be observed that the
elegy of Callinus still retains much of the fuller tone of the epic style ;
it does not, like the shorter breath of later elegies, confine itself within
the narrow limits of a distich, and require a pause at the end of every
pentameter ; but Callinus in many cases comprehends several hexame-
ters and pentameters in one period, without caring for the limits of the
verses ; in which respect the earlier elegiac poets of Greece generally
imitated him.
§ 5. With Callinus we will connect his contemporary Tyrtjeus, pro-
bably a few years younger than himself. The age of Tyrtaeus is deter-
mined by the second Messenian war, in which he bore a part. If with
Pausanias this war is placed between Olymp. 23. 4, and 28. 1 (685 and
668 b. c), Tyrtaeus would fall at the same time as, or even earlier than,
the circumstances of the Cimmerian invasion mentioned by Callinus;
and we should then expect to find that Tyrtaeus, and not Callinus, was
considered by the ancients as the originator of the elegy. As the
reverse is the fact, this reason may be added to others for thinking that
the second Messenian war did not take place till after the 30th Olym-
piad (660 B.C.), which must be considered as the period at which Callinus
flourished.
We certainly do not give implicit credit to the story of later writers
that Tyrtaeus was a lame schoolmaster at Athens, sent out of insolence
by the Athenians to the Spartans, who at the command of an oracle had
applied to them for a leader in the Messenian war. * So much of this
account may, however, be received as true, that Tyrtaeus came from
Attica to the Lacedaemonians ; the place of his abode being, according
to a precise statement, Aphidnee, an Athenian town, which is placed by
the legends about the Dioscuri in very early connexion with Laconia.
* It is even doubtful whether the part of this elegiac fragment in Stobseus which
follows the hiatus, in fact belongs to Callinus, or whether the name of Tyrtaeus has
not fallen out.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. Ill
If TyrtEeus came from Attica, it is easy to understand how the elegiac
metre which had its origin in Ionia should have heen used by him, and
that in the very style of Callinus. Athens was so closely connected
with her Ionic colonies, that this new kind of poetry must have been
soon known in the mother city. This circumstance would be far
more inexplicable if Tyrtseus had been a Lacedaemonian by birth, as
was stated vaguely by some ancient authors. For although Sparta was
not at this period a stranger to the efforts of the other Greeks in poetry
and music, yet the Spartans with their peulkr modes of thinking would
not have been very ready to appropriate the new invention of the
Ionians.
Tyrteeus came to the Lacedemonians at a time when they were not
only brought into great straits from without by the boldness of Aristo-
menes, and the desperate courage of the Messenians, but the state was
also rent with internal discord. The dissensions were caused by those
Spartans who had owned lands in the conquered Messenia : now that the
Messenians had risen against their conquerors, these lands were either in
the hands of the enemy, or were left untilled from fear that the enemy
would reap their produce ; and hence the proprietors of them demanded
with vehemence a new division of lands — the most dangerous and
dreadful of all measures in the ancient republics. In this condition of
the Spartan commonwealth Tyrtaeus composed the most celebrated of his
elegies, which, from its subject, was called Eunomia, that is, " Justice,"
or " Good Government," (also Politeia, or " The Constitution"). It
is not difficult, on considering attentively the character of the early
Greek elegy, to form an idea of the manner in which Tyrtifius probably
handled this subject. He doubtless began with remarking the anarchi-
cal movement among the Spartan citizens, and by expressing the con-
cern with which he viewed it. But as in general the elegy seeks to
pass from an excited state of the mind through sentiments and images
of a miscellaneous description to a state of calmness and tranquillity, it
may be conjectured that the poet in the Eunomia made this transition
by drawing a picture of the well-regulated constitution of Sparta, and
the legal existence of its citizens, which, founded with the divine assist-
ance, ought not to be destroyed by the threatened innovations ; and that
at the same time he reminded the Spartans, who had been deprived of
their lands by the Messenian war, that on their courage would depend
the recovery of their possessions and the restoration of the former pros-
perity of the state. This view is entirely confirmed by the fragments
of Tyrtyeus, some of which are distinctly stated to belong to the Euno-
mia. In these the constitution of Sparta is extolled, as being founded
by the power of the Gods ; Zeus himself having given the country to
the Ileracleids, and the power having been distributed in the justest
manner, according to the oracles of the Pythian Apollo, among the
kings, the gerons in the council, and the men of the commonalty in the
popular assembly.
112 HISTORY OF THE
§ 6. But the Eunomia was neither the only nor yet the first elegy in
which Tyrtuous stimulated the Lacedaemonians to a bold defence against
the Messenians. Exhortation to bravery was the theme which this poet
took for many elegies*, and wrote on it with unceasing spirit and ever-
new invention. Never was the duty and the honour of bravery im-
pressed on the youth of a nation with so much beauty and force of
language, by such natural and touching motives. In this we perceive
the talent of the Greeks for giving to an idea the outward and visible
form most befitting it. In the poems of Tyrtaeus we see before us
the determined hoplite firmly fixed to the earth, with feet apart,
pressing his lips with his teeth, holding his large shield against the
darts of the distant enemy, and stretching out his spear with a strong
hand against the nearer combatant. That the young, and even the old,
rise up and yield their places to the brave ; that it beseems the youthful
warrior to fall in the thick of the fight, as his form is beautiful even in
death, while the aged man who is slain in the first ranks is a disgrace to
his younger companion from the unseemly appearance of his body :
these and similar topics are incentives to valour which could not fail to
make a profound impression on a people of fresh feeling and simple
character, such as the Spartans then were.
That these poems (although the author of them was a foreigner)
breathed a truly Spartan spirit, and that the Spartans knew how to value
them, is proved by the constant use made of them in the military expe-
ditions. When the Spartans were on a campaign, it was their custom,
after the evening meal, when the paean had been sung in honour of the
Gods, to recite these elegies. On these occasions the whole mess did not
join in the chant, but individuals vied with each other in repeat-
ing the verses in a manner worthy of their subject. The successful
competitor then received from the polemarch or commander a larger
portion of meat than the others, a distinction suitable to the simple taste
of the Spartans. This kind of recitation was so well adapted to the
elegy, that it is highly probable that Tyrteeus himself first published his
elegies in this manner. The moderation and chastised enjoyment of a
Spartan banquet were indeed requisite, in order to enable the guests to
take pleasure in so serious and masculine a style of poetry : among
guests of other races the elegy placed in analogous circumstances natu-
rally assumed a very different tone. The elegies of Tyrtaeus were, how-
ever, never sung on the march of the army and in the battle itself; for
these a strain of another kind was composed by the same poet, viz., the
anapaestic marches, to which we shall incidentally revert hereafter.
§ 7. After these two ancient masters of the warlike elegy, we shall pass
to two other nearly contemporary poets, who have this characteristic in
common, that they distinguished themselves still more in iambic lhan in
* Called 'Yrrofcx-ai V IXiyiUt (Suidas) i. e. Lessons and exhortations in elegiac
verse.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 113
elegiac poetry. Henceforward this union often appears : the same poet
who employs the elegy to express his joyous and melancholy emotions,
has recourse to the iambus where his cool sense prompts him to censure
the follies of mankind. This relation of the two metres in question is
perceptible in the two earliest iambic poets, Archilociius and Simo-
NiDtfS of Amorgus. The elegies of Archilociius (of which considerable
fragments are extant, while of Simonides we only know that he com-
posed elegies) had nothing of that bitter spirit of which his iambics were
full, but they contain the frank expression of a mind powerfully affected
by outward circumstances. Probably these circumstances were in great
part connected with the migration of Archilochus from Paros to Thasos,
which by no means fulfilled his expectations, as his iambics show. Nor
are his elegies quite wanting in the warlike spirit of Callinus. Archi-
lochus calls himself the servant of the God of War and the disciple of
the Muses*; and praises the mode of fighting of the brave Abantes in
Eubcea, who engaged man to man with spear and sword, and not from
afar with arrows and slings ; perhaps, from its contrast with the prac-
tice of their Thracian neighbours who, perhaps, greatly annoyed the colo-
nists in Thasos by their wild and tumultuary mode of warfaref. But
on the other hand, Archilochus avows, without much sense of shame,
and with an indifference which first throws a light on this part of the
Ionic character, that one of the Saians (a Thracian tribe, with whom the
Thasians were often at war) may pride himself in his shield, which he
had left behind him in some bushes; he has saved his life, and will get
a shield quite as good some other timej. Iu other fragments, Archilo-
chus seeks to banish the recollections of his misfortunes by an appeal to
steady patience, and by the conviction that all men are equal sufferers ;
and praises wine as the best antidote to care§. It was evidently very
natural that from the custom already noticed among the Spartans, of
singing elegies after drinking parties (avpTroana), there should arise a
connexion between the subject of the poem and the occasion on which it
was sung ; and thus wine and the pleasures of the feast became the sub-
ject of the elegy. Symposiac elegies of this kind were, at least in later
times, after the Persian war, also sung at Sparta, in which, with all
respect for the gods and heroes, the guests were invited to drinking and
merriment, to the dance and the song; and, in the genuine Spartan
feeling, the man was congratulated who had a fair wife at home. || A mong
* Ei/ti 5' \yoi h/ia-ruv fiiv'Evva.Xioiti civaxros
Ktt) Movffiav ipccTOi ocvgov ivrwrufttvos.
f Gaisford, Poet.Gr. Mm. frag. 4. J 11). frag. 3. § Frag. 1, v. 5; and frag. 7.
|| It is clear that the eleiiy of Ion of Chios, the contemporary of Pericles, of
which Athen xi. p. 403, has preserved five distichs, was sung in Spaita or in the
Spartan camp : and moreover, at the royal table (called by Xenoj hon the lapoiria).
Tor Spai+ans alone could have been exhorted to make libations to Hercules, to Aic-
mene, to Procles. and to the Perseids. The reason why Procles alone is mentioned,
■without Furysthenes, (the other ancestor of the kings of Sparta.) can only be thattho
king saluted in the poem (^«/ji7a fifivigts fattrtXilif irarrg te tuty./) ti) was a Proclid,
—that is, from the date, probably, Archilamus.
I
114 HISTORY OF TIIK
the Ionians the elegy naturally took this turn at a much earlier period,
and all the various feelings excited by the use of wine, in sadness or in
mirth, were doubtless first expressed in an elegiac form. It is natural
to expect that the praise of wine was not dissociated from the other orna-
ment of Ionic symposia, the Hetaerae (who, according to Greek manners,
were chiefly distinguished from virgins or matrons by their participation
in the banquets of men) ; and there is extant a distich of a symposiac
elegy of Archilochus, in which " the hospitable Pasiphile, who kindly
receives all strangers, as a wild fig tree feeds many crows," is ironically
praised ; in relation to which an anecdote is preserved by Athenseus*.
This convivial elegy was allowed to collect all the images fitted to drive
away the cares of life, and to pour a serene hilarity over the mind.
Hence it is probable that some beautiful verses of the Ionic poet Asius,
of Samos, (already mentioned among the epic poets,) belonged to a
poem of this kind ; in which a parasite, forcing himself upon a marriage
feast, is described with Homeric solemnity and ironical seriousness, as
the maimed, scarred, and gray-haired adorer of the fvagrancy of the kit-
chen, who comes unbidden, and suddenly appears among the guests a
hero rising from the mudf.
§ 8. This joyous tone of the elegy, which sounded in the verses of
Archilochus, did not however hinder this poet from also employing the
same metre for strains of lamentation. This application of the elegy
is so closely connected with its origin from the Asiatic elegies, that it
probably occurred in the verses of Callinus ; it must have come from
the Ionic coast to the islands, not from the islands to the Ionic coast.
An elegy of this kind, however, was not a threnos, or lament for the
dead, sung by the persons who accompanied the corpse to its burial
place : more probably it was chanted at the meal (called TrepldeiTn'ov)
given to the kinsmen after the funeral, in the same manner as elegies
at other banquets. In Sparta also an elegy was recited at the solemni-
ties in honour of warriors who had fallen for their country. A distich
from a poem of this kind, preserved by Plutarch, speaks of those whose
only happiness either in life or death consisted in fulfilling the duties of
both. Archilochus was induced by the death of his sister's husband,
who had perished at sea, to compose an elegy of this description, in
which he expressed the sentiment that he would feel less sorrow at the
event if Hephaestus had performed his office upon the head and the
fair limbs of the dead man, wrapt up in white linen ; that is to say, if
he had died on land, and had been burnt on a funeral pilej.
§ 9. Even in the ruins in which the Greek elegy lies before us, it is
still the best picture of the race among which it chiefly flourished, viz.,
* Fragm. 44.
f Athen. iii. 125. The earliest certain example of parody, to which we will return
in the next chapter. On Asius, see above, ch. ix.
I Fragm 6.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 1 1 :i 3
the Ionian. In proportion as this race of the (j reeks became more un-
warlike and effeminate, the elegy was diverted from subjects relating to
public affairs and to struggles for national independence. The elegies
of Mimnermus were indeed in great part political ; full of allusions to
the origin and early history of his native city, and not devoid of the ex-
pression of noble feelings of military honour ; but these patriotic and
martial sentiments were mingled with vain regrets and melancholy,
caused by the subjection of a large part of Ionia, and especially of the
native city of Mimnermus, to the Lydian yoke. Mimnermus flourished
from about the 37th Olympiad (634 b. c.) until the age of the Seven
Wise Men, about Olymp. 45 (600 b. c.) : as it cannot be doubted that
Solon, in an extant fragment of his poems, addresses Mimnermus,
as living — " But if you will, even now, take my advice, erase this ; nor
bear me any ill-will for having thought on this subject better than you ;
alter the words, Ligyastades, and sing — May the fate of death reach me
in my sixtieth year" (and not as Mimnermus wished, in his eightieth'*).
Consequently the lifetime of Mimnermus, compared with the reigns of
the Lydian kings, falls in the short reign of Sadyattes and the first part
of the long reign of Hal yattes, which begins in Olymp. 40, 4, b. c. 617.
The native city of Mimnermus was Smyrna, which had at that time long
been a colony of the Ionic city Colophont- Mimnermus, in an extant
fragment of his elegy Nanno, calls himself one of the colonists of
Smyrna, who came from Colophon, and whose ancestors at a still earlier
period came from the Nelean Pylos. Now Herodotus, in his accounts
of the enterprises of the Lydian kings, states that Gyges made war upon
Smyrna, but did not succeed in taking it, as he did with Colophon.
Halyattes, however, at length overcame Smyrna in the early part of
his reign J. Smyrna, therefore, together with a considerable part of
Ionia, lost its independence during the lifetime of Mimnermus, and lost
it for ever, unless we consider the title of allies, which Athens gave to
its subjects, or the nominal libertas with which Rome honoured many
cities in this region, as marks of independent sovereignty. It is im-
portant to form a clear conception of this time, when a people of a noble
nature, capable of great resolutions and endued with a lively and sus-
* 'AXX li /uoi Kal vuv in ^■titria.i, i%t\i touto, f/.w>\ ftiyccig', on triu Xuiot iQgard/utiv,
not) (iiravoino-ov, Aiyvu<rru.%ri, uoi o audi, &C. The emendation of Atyvourru.'&ri foj
ayutaa-rcchi is due to a young German philologist. It. is rendered highly probable
by the comparison of Suidas in MlftviMw This familiar address completes the
proof that Mimnermus was then still living.
f On the relations of Colophon and Smyrna ; see above, ch. v. § 2.
\ This appears first, because Herodotus, 1. 10, mentions this conquest imme-
diately after the battle with Cyaxares (who died 594 u. c.) and the expulsion of the
Cimmerians; secondly, because, according to Strabo, xiv. p. 646, Smyrna, having
been divided into separate villages by the Lydians, remained in that state for 400
years, until the time of Antigonus. From this it seems that Smyrna fell into the
b.ojidsofthe Lydians before 600 b. c. ; even in that case the period cannot have
amounted to more thau 300 years.
I 2
1 16 HISTORY OF THE
ceptible temperament, but wanting in the power of steady resistance and
resolute union, bids a half melancholy, half indifferent, farewell to liberty ;
it is important, I repeat, to form a clear conception of this time and
this people, in order to gain a correct understanding of the poetical
character of Mimnermus. He too could take joy in valorous deeds, and
wrote an elegy in honour of the early battle of the Smyrnaeans against
Gyges and the Lydians, whose attack was then (as we have already
stated) successfully repulsed. Pausanias, who had himself read this
elegy*, evidently quotes from it^ a particular event of this war in question,
viz., that the Lydians had, on this occasion, actually made an entrance
into the town, but th-it they were driven out of it by the bravery of the
Smyrnaeans. To this elegy also doubtless belongs the fragment (pre-
served by Stobaeus), in which an Ionian warrior is praised, who drove
before him the light squadrons of the mounted Lydians on the plain of
the Hermus (that is in the neighbourhood of Smyrna), and in whose
firm valour Pallas Athene herself could find nothing to blame when he
broke through the first ranks on the bloody battle-field. As in these
lines the poet refers to what he had heard from his predecessors, who
had themselves witnessed the hero's exploits, it is probable that this
brave Smyrnaean lived about two generations before the period at which
Mimnermus flourished — that is precisely in the time of Gyges. As the
poet, at the outset of this fragment, says — "Not such, as I heir, was
the courage and spirit of that warrior," &c.j, we may conjecture that
the bravery of this ancient Smyrnaean was contrasted with the effemi-
nacy and softness of the actual generation. It seems, however, that
Mimnermus sought rather to work upon his countrymen by a melan-
choly retrospect of this kind, than to stimulate them to energetic deeds
oi valour by inspiriting appeals after the manner of Callinus and
Tyrtaeus: nothing of this kind is cited from his poems.
§ 10. On the other hand, both the statements of the ancients and the
extant fragments, show that Mimnermus recommended, as the only
consolation in all these calamities and reverses, the enjoyment of the
best part of life, and particularly love, which the gods had given as the
only compensation for human ills. These sentiments were expressed in
his celebrated elegy of Nanno, the most ancient erotic elegy of antiquity,
which took its name from a beautiful and much-loved flute player. Yet
even this elegy had contained allusions to political events : thus it
lamented how Smyrna had always been an apple of discord to the neio-h-
bouring nations, and then proceeded with the verses already cited on the
taking of the city by the Colophonians§ : the founder of Colophon, An-
dreemon of Pylos, was also mentioned in it. But all these reflections
on the past and present fortunes of the city were evidently intended only
to recommend the enjoyment of the passing hour, as life was onlv worth
* ix. 2«J. f iv. 21. J Fragm. 11. ad Gaisford. § Fragm. 9.
LITEHATUUE OF ANC1UNT GKEiiCE. 117
having while it could be devoted to love, before unseemly and anxious
old age comes on*. These ideas, which have since been so often re-
peated, are expressed by Mimnermus with almost irresistible grace. The
beauty of youth and love appears with the greater charm when accom-
panied with the impression of its caducity, and the images of joy stand
out in the more vivid light as contrasted with the shadows of deep-seated
melancholy!-
§ 11. With this soft Ionian, who even compassionates the God of the
Sun for the toils which he must endure in order to illuminate the earthj,
Solon the Athenian forms an interesting contrast. Solon was a man
of the genuine Athenian stamp, and lor that reason fitted to produce by
his laws a permanent influence on the public and private life of his coun-
trymen. In his character were combined the freedom and susceptibility
of the Asiatic Ionian, with the energy and firmness of purpose which
marked the Athenian. By the former amiable and liberal tendencies
he was led to favour a system of " live and let live," which so strongly
distinguishes his legislation from the severe discipline of the Spartati
constitutions : by the latter he was enahled to pursue his proposed ends
with unremitting constancy. Hence, too, the elegy of Solon was dedi-
cated to the service of Mars as well as of the Muses; and under the
combined influence of a patriotic disposition like that of Callinus, and
of a more enlarged view of human nature, there arose poems of which
the loss cannot be sufficiently lamented. But even the extant fragments
of them enable us to follow this great and noble-minded man through
all the chief epochs of his life.
The elegy of Salamis, which Solon composed about Olymp. 44 (G04
n. c.) had evidently more of the fire of youth in it than any other of his
poems. The remarkable circumstances under which it was written are
related by the ancients, from Demosthenes downwards, with tolerable
agreement, in the following manner. The Athenians had from an
early period contested the possession of Salamis with the Megarians, and
the great power of Athens was then so completely in its infancy, that
they were not able to wrest this island from their Doric neighbours,
small as was the Megarian territory. The Athenians had suffered so
many losses in the attempt, that they not only gave up all propositions in
the popular assembly for the reconquest of Salamis, but even made it
penal to bring forward such a motion. Under these circumstances,
J-"olon one day suddenly appeared in the costume of a herald, with the
proper cap (Vt\tW) upon his head, having previously spread a report
th it he was mad; sprang in the place of the popular assembly upon the
* Th.it the subject of the elegy should not be contest and war, but the gifts of
the Musts and Aphrodite for the embellishment of the banquet, is a sentiment also
expressed by an Ionian later by two generations (Auacreon of Teos), who himself
also composed elegies : Ov <pt)Aw ci no^rln^i TK^k rrXitu oUo-roru^ojv, Nji*s« xa< WXe/<»»
iaitpulnvrx Xiyn. (Atheu. xi. p. 463.)
f Fragg. 1—5. } Fivgm. S.
118
HISTORY OF THE
stone where the heralds were wont to stand, and sang in an impass.oned
tone an elegy, which began with these words : — " I myself come as a
herald from the lovely island of Salamis, using song, the ornament of
words, and not simple speech, to the people." It is manifest that the
poet feigned himself to be a herald sent from Salamis, and returned
from his mission ; by which fiction he was enabled to paint in far live-
lier colours than he could otherwise have done the hated dominion of the
Megarians over the island, and the reproaches which many Salaminian
partizans of Athens vented in secret against the Athenians. He described
the disgrace which would fall upon the Athenians, if they did not re-
conquer the island, as intolerable. " In that case (he said) I would
rather be an inhabitant of the meanest island than of Athens ; for wher-
ever I might live, the saying would quickly circulate — ' This is one of
the Athenians who have abandoned Salamis in so cowardly a man-
ner*.'" And when Solon concluded with the words "Let us go to
Salamis, to conquer the lovely island, and to wipe out our shame,'' the
youths of Athens are said to have been seized with so eager a desire of
fighting, that an expedition against the Megarians of Salamis was un-
dertaken on the spot, which put the Athenians into possession of the
island, though they did not retain it without interruption.
§ 12. A character in many respects similar belongs to the elegy of
which Demosthenes cites a long passage in his contest with ^Eschines
on the embassy. This, too, is composed in the form of an exhortation
to the people. " My feelings prompt me (says the poet) to declare to
the Athenians how much mischief injustice brings over the city, and
that justice everywhere restores a perfect and harmonious order of
things." In this elegy Solon laments with bitter regret the evils in the
political state of the commonwealth, the insolence and rapacity of the
leaders of the people, i. e. of the popular party, and the misery of the
poor, many of whom were sold into slavery by the rich, and carried to
foreign countries. Hence it is clear that this elegy is anterior to Solon's
legislation, which, as is well known, abolished slavery for debt, and
made it impossible to deprive an insolvent debtor of his liberty.
These verses give us a livelier picture of this unhappy period of Athens
than any historical description. " The misery of the people (says
Solon) forces itself into every man's house : the doors of the court- yard
are no longer able to keep it out ; it springs over the lofty wall, and
finds out the wretch, even if he has fled into the most secret part of
his dwelling."
But in other of Solon's elegies there is the expression of a subdued and
tranquil joy at the ameliorations brought about in Athens by his legisla-
tive measures (Olyinp. 46,3. 594 B.C.), by which the holders of property
and the commonaltj had each received their due share of consideration and
* Fragm. ib
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 119
power, anil both were protected by a firm shield*. But this feeling of
culm satisfaction was not of long continuance, as Solon observed and
soon expressed his opinion in elegies, '' that the people, in its ignorance,
was bringing itself under the yoke of a monarch (Pisistratus), and that
it was not the gods, but the thoughtlessness with which the people put
the means of obtaining the sovereign power into the hands of Pisistra-
tus, which had destroyed the liberties of Athens f."
Solon's elegies were therefore the pure expression of his political feel-
ings; a mirror of his patriotic sympathies with the weal and woe of his
country. They moreover exhibit an excited tone of sentiment in the
poet, called forth by the warm interest which he takes in the allairs of
the community, and by the dangers which threaten its welfare. The
prevailing sentiment is a wide and comprehensive humanity. When
Solon had occasion to express feelings of a different cast — when he
placed himself in a hostile attitude towards his countrymen and contem-
poraries, and used sarcasm and rebuke, he employed not elegiac, but
iambic and trochaic metres. The elegies of Solon are not indeed quite
free from complaints and reproaches ; but these flow from the regard
for the public interests, which animated his poetry. The repose which
always follows an excited state of the mind, and of which Solon's elegies
would naturally present the reflection, was found in the expression of
hopes for the future, of a calm reliance on the gods who had taken
Athens into their protection, and a serious contemplation of the conse-
quences of good or evil acts. From his habits of reflection, and of reli-
ance on his understanding, rather than his feelings, his elegies contained
more general remarks on human affairs than those of any of his prede-
cessors. Some considerable passages of this kind have been preserved ;
one in which he divides human life into periods of seven years, and
assigns to each its proper physical and mental occupations J; another in
which the multifarious pursuits of men are described, and their inability
to command success ; for fate brings good and ill to mortals, and man
cannot escape from the destiny allotted to him by the gods§. Many
maxims of a worldly wisdom from Solon's elegies are likewise pre-
served, in which wealth, and comfort, and sensual enjoyment are
recommended, but only so far as was, according to Greek notions, con-
sistent with justice and fear of the gods. On account of these general
maxims, which are called yj'ojhzcu, sayings or apophthegms, Solon has
been reckoned among the gnomic poets, and his poems have been
denominated gnomic elegies. This appellation is so far correct, that the
gnomic character predominates in Solon's poetry ; nevertheless it is to
be borne in mind that this calm contemplation of mankind cannot
* Fr,igm. 20.
t Fragg. 18, 19. The fragnj. 18 has received an additional distich from Diod
Exc. I. vii.- x. in Mai Script, vit. Nov. ( oil. vol. ii. p. 21.
! Fragm. I !. ^ Fragm. .'>.
120 HISTORY OF THE
alone constitute an elegy. For the unimpassioned enunciation of moral
sentences, the hexameter remained the most suitable form : hence the
sayings of Phocylides of Miletus (about Olymp. 60. B.C. 540), with
the perpetually recurring introduction " This, too, is a saying of Phocy-
lides," appear, from the genuine remnants of them, to have consisted
only of hexameters*.
§ 13. The remains of Theognts, on the other hand, belong both in
matter and form to the elegy properly so called, although in all that
respects their connexion and their character as works of art, they have
come down to us in so unintelligible a shape, that at first sight the most
copious remains of any Greek elegiac poet that we possess — for more
than 1400 verses are preserved under the name of Theognis — would
seem to throw less light on the character of the Greek elegy than the
much scantier fragments of Solon and Tyrtceus. It appears that from
the time of Xenophon, Theognis was considered chiefly as a teacher of
wisdom and virtue, and that those parts of his writings which had a
general application were far more prized than those which referred to
some particular occasion. When, therefore, in later times it became
the fashion to extract the general remarks and apophthegms from the
poets, everything was rejected from Theognis, by which his elegies
were limited to particular situations, or obtained an individual colour-
ing ; and the gnomology or collection of apophthegms was formed,
which, after various revisions and the interpolation of some fragments
of other elegiac poets, is still extant. We know, however, that Theog-
nis composed complete elegies, especially one to the Sicilian Megari-
ans, who escaped with their lives at the siege of Megara by Gelon
(Olymp. 74, 2. 483 B.C.); and the gnomic fragments themselves
exhibit in numerous places the traces of poems which were composed for
particular objects, and which on the whole could not have been very
different from the elegies of Tyrtseus, Archilochus, and Solon. As in
these poems of Theognis there is a perpetual reference to political sub-
jects, it will be necessary first to cast a glance at the condition o,
Megara in his time.
§ 14. Megara, the Doric neighbour of Athens, had, after its separation
from Corinth, remained for a long time under the undisturbed domi-
nion of a Doric nobility, which founded its claim to the exercise of the
sovereign power both on its descent, and its possession of large landed
estates. But before the legislation of Solon, Theagenes had raised him-
self to absolute power over the Megarians by pretending to espouse
* Two distichs cited under the name of Phocylides, in which in the first person
he expresses warmth and fidelity to friends, are probably the fragment of an elegy.
On the other hand, there is a distich which has the appearance of a jocular appendix
to the yviofiui, almost of a self-parody : —
K«( TOOl &ukuXioiv' AiPlOl XCCX0I' 0V% i |WEV, Oj 2' ofi'
Havre, w>.r,v TlgoxXiovs, xa.) W^tx^ira Aipiog.
(Gaisford, fragm. 5.;
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 121
the popular cause. After he had been overthrown, the aristocracy was
restored, but only for a short period, as the commons rose with vio-
lence against the nobles, and founded a democracy, which however led
to such a state of anarchy, that the expelled nobles found the means of
regaining their lost power. Now the poetry of Theognis, so far as its
political character extends, evidently falls in the beginning of this
democracy, probably nearer to the 70th (500 B.C.) than the 60th
Olympiad (540 B.C.) : for Theognis, although according to the ancient
accounts he was born before the 60th Olympiad, yet from his own verses
appears to have lived to the Persian war (Olymp. 75. 480 B. a). Re-
volutions of this kind were in the ancient Greek states usually accom-
panied with divisions of the large landed estates among the commons;
and by a fresh partition of the Megarian territory, made by the
democratic parly, Theognis, who happened to be absent on a voyage,
was deprived of the rich heritage of his ancestors. Hence he longs for
vengeance on the men who had spoiled him of his property, while he
himself had only escaped with his life ; like a dog who throws every thing
away in order to cross a torrent*, and the cry of the crane, which gives
warning of the season of tillage, reminds him of his fertile fields now in
other men's hands f. These fragments are therefore full of allusions to
the violent political measures which in Greece usually accompanied the
accession of the democratic party to power. One of the principal
changes on such occasions was commonly the adoption into the sove-
reign community of Periceci, that is, cultivators who were before excluded
from all share in the government. Of this Theognis says J, " Cyrnus,
this city is still the city, but a different people are in it, who formerly
knew nothing of courts of justice and laws, but wore their country dress
of goat skins at their work, and like timid deer dwelt at a distance from
the town. And now they are the better class ; and those who were
formerly noble are now the mean : who can endure to see these
things?" The expressions good and bad men (ayadoi, kaOXol and
kcikoI, deiXol), which in later times bore a purely moral signification, are
evidently used by Theognis in a political sense for nobles and commons ;
or rather his use of these words rests in fact upon the supposition that a
brave spirit and honourable conduct can be expected only of men de-
scended from a family long tried in peace and war. Hence his chief
complaint is, that the good man, that is, the noble, is now of no account
as compared with the rich man ; and that wealth is the only object of
all. " They honour riches, and thus the good marries the daughter ol
the bad, and the bad marries the daughter of the good : wealth cor-
rupts the blood §. Hence, son of Polypas, do not wonder if the race of
the citizens loses its brightness, for good and bad are confounded tog^e
* v. 3 15. isnj. fd Kekker. \ v. 1297, seq. X 53, * e 1-
122 HISTORY OF THE
ther *." Theognis doubtless made this complaint on the debasement of
the Megarian nobility with the stronger feeling of bitterness, as he him-
self had been rejected by the parents of a young woman, whom he had
desired to marry, and a far worse man, that is, a man of plebeian blood,
had been preferred to him f. Yet the girl herself was captivated with
the noble descent of Theognis : she hated her ignoble husband, and
came disguised to the poet, " with the lightness of a little bird," as he
says X .
With regard to the union of these fragments into entire elegies, it is
important to remark that all the complaints, warnings, and lessons
having a political reference, appear to be addressed to a single young
friend of the poet, Cyrnus, the son of Polypac §. Wherever other
names occur, either the subject is quite different, or it is at least treated
in a different manner. Thus there is a considerable fragment of an
elegy addressed by Theognis to a friend named Simonides, at the time
of the revolution, which in the poems addressed to Cyrnus is described
as passed by. In this passage the insurrection is described under the
favourite image of a ship tossed about by winds and waves, while the
crew have deposed the skilful steersman, and entrusted the guidance ot
the helm to the common working sailor. " Let this (the poet adds) be
revealed to the good in enigmatic language ; yet a bad man may under-
stand it, if he has sense ||." It is manifest that this poem was composed
during a reign of terror, which checked the freedom of speech; on the
other hand, in the poems addressed to Cyrnus, Theognis openly dis-
plays all his opinions and feelings. So far is he from concealing his
hatred of the popular party, that he wishes that he could drink the
blood of those who had deprived him of his property %.
§ 15. On attempting to ascertain more precisely the relation of Cyrnus
to Theognis, it appears that the son of Polypas was a youth of noble
family, to whom Theognis bore a tender, but at the same time paternal,
regard, and whom he desires to see a " good " c'tizen, in his sense of
the word. The interest felt by the poet in Cyrnus probably appeared
much more clearly in the complete elegies than in the gnomic extracts
now preserved, in which the address to Cyrnus might appear a mere
superfluity. Several passages have, however, been preserved, in which
the true state of his relation to Theognis is apparent. " Cyrnus (says
the poet) when evil befals you, we all weep ; but grief for others is with
* v. 189, seq. f v - '- 61 > se 1' I v - 1091 -
§ Klmsley has remarked that WoXvxuthn is to be read as a patronymic. The
remark is certain, as 17 o>.vral^yi never occurs before a consonant, but nine times be-
fore a vowel, and moreover in passages where the verse requires a dactyl. The
exhortations with the addresses Ku^vt and UoXwutin are also .closely connected.
To?.uTa; (with the long a) has the same meaning as otXi/tk^v, a rich proprietor.
|| In v. GG7 — 82 there is a manifest allusion to the y~/n ava luirpof in the verses
Aaafio; OovKirlrro; ylyvirai 'a to fi'trov.
f v. 349.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 123
you only a transient feeling*." " I have given you wings, with which
you will fly over sea and land, and will be present at all banquets, as
young men will sing of you to the flute. Even in future times your
name will be dear to all the lovers of song, so long as the earth and sun
endure. But to me you shew but little respect, deceiving me with
words like a little boy f." It is plain that Cyrnus did not place in
Theognis that entire confidence which the poet desired. It cannot,
however, be doubted that these affectionate appeals and tender re-
proaches are to be taken in the sense of the earlier and pure Doric cus-
tom, and that no connexion of a criminal nature is to be understood,
with which it would be inconsistent that the poet recommends a married
life to the youth J. Cyrnus also is sufficiently old to be sent as a sacred
envoy (deiopog) to Delphi, in order to bring back an oracle to the city.
The poet exhorts him to preserve it faithfully, and not to add or to omit
a word §.
The poems of Theognis, even in the form in which they are extant,
place us in the middle of a circle of friends, who formed a kind of eat-
ing society, like the philitia of Sparta, and like the ancient public tables
of Megara itself. The Spartan public tables are described to us as a
kind of aristocratic clubs ; and these societies in Megara might serve to
awaken and keep alive an aristocratic disposition. Theognis himself
thinks that those who, according to the original constitution of Megara,
possessed the chief power, were the only persons with whom any one
ought to eat and drink, and to sit, and whom he should strive to please ||.
It is therefore manifest that all the friends whom Theognis names, not
only Cyrnus and Simonides, but also Onomacritus, Clearistus, Denio-
cles, Demonax, and Timagoras, belonged to the class of the "good,"
although the political maxims are only addressed to Cyrnus. Various
events in the lives of these friends, or the qualities which each shewed
at their convivial meetings, furnished occasions for separate, but probably
short elegies. In one the poet laments that Clearistus should have made
an unfortunate' voyage, and promises him the assistance which is due to
one connected with his family by ancient ties of hospitality^ : in ano-
ther he wishes a happy voyage to the same or another friend **. To
Simonides, as being the chief of the society, he addresses a farewell
elegy, exhorting him to leave to every yuest his liberty, not to detain any
one desirous to depart, or to waken the sleeping, &C.ft; and to Onoma-
critus the poet laments over the consequences of inordinate drinking Jj,
Few of the persons whom he addresses appear to have been without
this circle of friends, although his fame had even in his lifetime spread
* v. 65J, seq. f v. 237, seq. \ v. 1225.
§ v. 805. seq. || v. 36, seq. ^ v.511, seq. ** v. 6?j .,,,/.
v. 409, seq. \\ v. 305, seq
124
HISTORY OF THE
far beyond Megara, by means of his travels as well as of his poetry ;
and his elegies were sung in many symposia*.
The poetry of Theognis is full of allusions to symposia : so that from
it a clear conception of the outward accompaniments of the elegy may
be formed. When the guests were satisfied with eating, the cups were
filled for the solemn libation : and at this ceremony a prayer was offered
to the gods, especially to Apollo, which in many districts of Greece was
expanded into a poean. Here began the more joyous and noisy part of
the banquet, which Theognis (as well as Pindar) calls in general
Kuifioc, although this word in a narrower sense also signified the tumul-
tuous throng of the guests departing from the feast t. Now the Comos
was usually accompanied with the flute \ : hence Theognis speaks in so
many places of the accompaniment of the flute-player to the poems sung
in the intervals of drinking § ; while the lyre and cithara (or phorminx)
are rarely mentioned, and then chiefly in reference to the song at the
libation ||. And this was the appropriate occasion for the elegy, which
was sung by one of the guests to the sound of a flute, being either
addressed to the company at large, or (as is always the case in Theognis)
to a single guest.
§ 16. We have next to speak of the poems of a man different in his
character from any of the elegiac poets hitherto treated of; a philoso-
pher, whose metaphysical speculations will be considered in a future
chapter. Xenophanes of Colophon, who about the 68th Olympiad
(508 B.C.) founded the celebrated school of Elea, at an earlier period,
while he was still living at Colophon, gave vent to his thoughts and
feelings on the circumstances surrounding him, in the form of elegies^.
These elegies, like those of Archilochus, Solon, Theognis, &c. were
symposiac: there is preserved in Athenaeus a considerable fragment, in
which the beginning of a symposion is described with much distinctness
and elegance, and the guests are exhorted, after the libation and song
of praise to the gods, to celebrate over their cups brave deeds and the
exploits of youths (i. e. in elegiac strains) ; and not to sing the fictions
* Theognis himself mentions that he had been in Sicily, Eubcea, and Sparta, v.
387, seq. In Sicily be composed the elegy lor his countrymen, which has been men-
tioned in the text, the colonists from Megara of Megara HyUaea. The verses 891—4
must have been written in Euboea. Many allusions to Sparta occur, and the pas-
sage v. 880 — 4 is probably from an elegy written by Theognis for a Spartan friend,
who had a vineyard on Tay^etus. The most difficult of explanation are v. 1 200 and
1211, seq., which can scarcely be reconciled with the circumstances of the life of
Theognis.
f See Theogn. v. 829,940, 1046, 1065, 1207.
I See above § 2.
§ v. 241, 761, 825, 941, 975, 1041, 1056, 1065.
|| v.534. 761, 791.
«T There are, however, in Diogenes Laertius elegiac verses of Xenophanes, in
which he states himself to he ninety-two years old, and speaks of his wanderings
'ii Greece.
LITERATURE OK ANCIENT GREECE. 125
of ancient poets on the battles of Titans, or giants, or centaurs, and such
like stories. From this it is evident that Xenophanes took no pleasure in
the ordinary amusements at the banquets of his countrymen; and from
other fragments of the same writer, it also appears that he viewed the
life of the Greeks with the eye of a philosopher. Not only does he blame
the luxury of the Colophonians, which they had learnt from the
Lydians*, but also the folly of the Greeks in valuing an athlete who had
been victorious at Olympia in running or wrestling, higher than the
wise man ; a judgment which, however reasonable in our eyes, must
have seemed exceedingly perverse to the Greeks of his days.
§ 17. As we intend in this chapter to bring down the history of the
elegy to the Persian war, we must also mention Simonides of Ceos, the
renowned lyric poet, the early contemporary of Pindar and iEschylus,
and so distinguished in elegy that he must be included among the great
masters of the elegiac song. Simonides is stated to have been vic-
torious at Athens over jEschylus himself, in an elegy in honour of those
who fell at Marathon (Olymp. 72, 3 ; 490 b. a), the Athenians having
instituted a contest of the chief poets. The ancient biographer of JEs-
chylus, who gives this account, adds in explanation, that the elegy re-
quires a tenderness of feeling which was foreign to the character of
iEschylus. To what a degree Simonides possessed this quality, and in
general how great a master he was of the pathetic is proved by his cele-
brated lyric piece containing the lament of Danae, and by other remains
of his poetry. Probably, also, in the elegies upon those who died at
Marathon and at Plataea, he did not omit to bewail the death of so many
brave men, and to introduce the sorrows of the widows and orphans,
which was quite consistent with a lofty patriotic tone, particularly at the
end of the poem. Simonides likewise, like Archilochus and others,
used the elegy as a plaintive song for the deaths of individuals ; at least
the Greek Anthology contains several pieces of Simonides, which appear
not to be entire epigrams, but fragments of longer elegies lamenting
with heartfelt pathos the death of persons dear to the poet. Among
these are the verses concerning Gorgo, who d\ ing, utters these words to
her mother: — "Remain here with my father, and become with a happier
fate the mother of another daughter, who may tend you in your old
age."
From this example we again see how the elegy in the hands of
different masters sometimes obtained a softer and more pathetic, and
sometimes a more manly and robust tone. Nevertheless there is no
reason for dividing the elegy into different kinds, such as the military,
political, symposiac, erotic, threnetic, and gnomic; inasmuch as some of
* The thousand persons cloathed in purple, who, before the time of the Tyrants,
were, according to Xenophanes (in Athen. xii. p. 526), together in the market-place,
formed an aristocratic body among the citizens (ro -roXiTivfta) ; such as, at this time
of transition from the ancient hereditary aristocracies to dt itineracy, also existed in
Rhegium, Locri, Croton, Agrigentum and Cjme in v^olis.
126 HISTORY OF THE
these cnaracters are at times combined in the same poem. Thus the
elegy was usually, as we have seen, sung at the symposion ; and, in most
cases, its main subject is political ; after which it assumes either an
amatory, a plaintive, or a sententious tone. At the same time the elegy
always retains its appropriate character, from which it never departs.
The feelings of the poet, excited by outward circumstances, seek a vent
at the symposion, either amidst his friends or sometimes in a larger
assembly, and assume a poetical form. A free and full expression of the
poet's sentiments is of the essence of the Greek elegy. This giving a
vent to the feelings is in itself tranquillizing; and as the mind disbur-
dens itself of its alarms and anxieties a more composed state naturally
ensued, with which the poem closed. When the Greek nation arrived at
the period at which men began to express in a proverbial form general
maxims of conduct, — a period beginning with the age*of the Seven Wise
Men, these maxims, or y vwpai, were the means by which the elegiac poets
subsided from emotion into calmness. So far the elegy of Solon, Theog-
nis, and Xenophanes, may be considered as gnomic, although it did not
therefore assume an essentially new character. That in the Alexandrine
period of literature the elegy assumed a different tone, which was, in
part, borrowed by the Roman poets, will be shown in a future chapter.
§ 18. This place is the most convenient for mentioning a subordinate
kind of poetry, the epigram, as the elegiac form was the best suited to
it ; although there are also epigrams composed in hexameters and other
metres. The epigram was originally (as its name purports) an inscrip-
tion on a tombstone, on a votive offering in a temple, or on any other
object which required explanation. Afterwards, from the analogy of
these real epigrams, thoughts, excited by the view of any object, and
which might have served as an inscription, were called epigrams, and
expressed in the same form. That this form was the elegiac may have
arisen from the circumstance that epitaphs appeared closely allied with
laments for the dead, which (as has been already shown) were at an
early period composed in this metre. However, as this elegy compre-
hended all the events of life which caused a strong emotion, so the
epigram might be equally in place on a monument of war, and on the
sepulchral pillar of a beloved kinsman or friend. It is true that the
mere statement of the purpose and meaning of the object, — for exam-
ple, in a sacred offering, the person who gave it, the god to whom it was
dedicated, and the subject which it represented — was much prized, if
made with conciseness and elegance ; and epigrams of this kind were
often ascribed to renowned poets, in which there is no excellence
besides the brevity and completeness of these statements, and the per-
fect adaptation of the metrical form to the thought. Nevertheless, in
general, the object of the Greek epigram is to ennoble a subject by
elevation of thought and beauty of language. The unexpected turn of
the thought and the pointedness of expression, which the moderns con
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 127
aider as the essence of this species of composition, were not required in
the ancient Greek epigram ; in which nothing more is requisite than that
the entire thought should be conveyed within the limits of a few dis-i
tichs: and thus in the hands of the early poets the epigram was
remarkable for the conciseness and expressiveness of its language ;
differing in this respect from the elegy, in which a full vent was given
to the feelings of the poet.
Epigrams were probably composed in an elegiac form, shortly after
the time when the elegy first arose ; and the Anthology contains some
under the celebrated names of Archilochus, Sappho, and Anacreon.
No peculiar character, however, is to be observed in the genuine epi-
grams of this early period. It was Simonides, with whom we have
closed the series of elegiac poets, who first gave to the epigram the
perfection of which, consistently with its purpose, it was capable. In
this respect Simonides was favoured by the circumstances of his time;
for on account of the high consideration which he enjoyed both in
Athens and Peloponnesus, he was frequently employed by the states
which fought against the Persians to adorn with inscriptions the tombs
of their fallen warriors. The best and most celebrated of these epi-
taphs is the inimitable inscription on the Spartans who died at Ther-
mopylae, which actually existed on the spot : " Foreigner, tell the
Lacedaemonians that we are lying here in obedience to their laws*."
Never was heroic courage expressed with such calm and unadorned
grandeur. In all these epigrams of Simonides the characteristic peculia-
rity of the battle in which the warriors fell is seized. Thus in the
epigram on the Athenians who died at Marathon — " Fighting in the
van of the Greeks, the Athenians at Marathon destroyed the power of
the glittering Medians!. " There are besides not a few epigrams of
Simonides wliich were intended for the tombstones of individuals:
among these we will only mention one which differs from the others in
being a sarcasm in the form of an epitaph. Tt is that on the Rhodian
lyric poet and athlete Timocreon, an opponent of Simonides in his art:
" Having eaten much, and drunk much, and said much evil of other
men, here I lie, Timocreon the Rhodian J." With the epitaphs are
naturally connected the inscriptions on sacred offerings, especially where
both refer to the Persian war ; the former being the discharge of a debt
to the dead, the latter a thanksgiving of the survivors to the gods.
Among these one of the best refers to the battle of Marathon, which,
from the neatness and elegance of the expression, loses its chief beauty
in a prose translation §. It was inscribed on the statue of Pan, which
* Simonides, fr 27. ed. Gaisford.
t In Lycurgus and Aristides. I Fr. 58.
§ The words are these (fr. 2~i —
T«v T^ay'oTovv Ifti Tlavot, tov ' ApKxox, tov Ka.ru. MtgS&v,
"Yovfi.iT ' A0r,vciiikiv <rrr,<rxro NiXridont
128 HISTORY OF THE
the Athenians had set up in a grotto under their acropolis, because the
Arcadian °-od had, according to the popular belief, assisted them at
Marathon. " Miltiades set up me, the cloven-footed Pan, the Arca-
dian who took part against the Medians, and with the Athenians."
But Simonides sometimes condescended to express sentiments which he
could not have shared, as in the inscription on the tripod consecrated at
Delphi, which the Greeks afterwards caused to be erased : " Pausanias,
the commander of the Greeks, having destroyed the army of the Medes,
dedicated this monument to Phoebus*." These verses express the arro-
gance of the Spartan general, which the good sense and moderation of
the poet would never have approved. The form of nearly all these epi-
grams of Simonides is the elegiac. Simonides usually adhered to it
except when a name (on account of a short between two long syllables)
could not be adapted to the dactylic metref ; in which cases he employed
trochaic measures. The character of the language, and especially the
dialect, also remained on the whole true to the elegiac type, except that
in inscriptions for monuments designed for Doric tribes, traces of the
Doric dialect sometimes occur.
CHAPTER XL
§ 1. Striking contrast of the Iambic and other contemporaneous Poetry. — § 2.
Poetry in reference to the bad and the vulgar. — § 3. Different treatment of it in
Homer and Hesiod. — § 4. Homeric Comic Poems, Margites, &c. — § 5. Scuni-
lous songs at meals, at the worship of Demeter ; the Festival of Demeier o aros
the cradle of the Iambic poetry of Archilochus. — § 6. Date and Public Life of
Archilochus. — § 7. His Private Life ; subject of his Iambics. — § S. Metrical form
of his iambic and trochaic verses, and different application of the two asynartetes;
epodes. — § 9. Inventions and innovations in the musical recitation. — § 10. In-
novations in Language. — § 11. Simonides of Amorgus ; his Satirical Poem against
Women. — § 12. Solon's iambics and trochaics. — § 13. Iambic Poems of Hipjio-
nax; invention of eholiambics ; Ananias. — § 14. The Fable; its application
among the Greeks, especially in Iambic poetry. — § 15. Kinds of the Fable, named
after different races and cities. — § 16. ^Esop, his Life, and the Character of his
Fables. — § 17. Parody, burlesques in an epic form, by Hipponax. — § 18. Batta-
chomyomachia.
§ 1. The kind of poetry distinguished among the ancients by the name
Iambic, was created by the Parian poet Archilochus, at the same time
as the elegy. In entering on the consideration of this sort of poetry,
and in endeavouring by the same process as we have heretofore em-
ployed to trace its origin to the character of the Grecian people, and to
estimate its poetical and moral value, we are met at the first glance by
facts more difficult, and apparently more impossible of comprehension,
than any we have hitherto encountered. At a time when the Greeks
r r. 40. f As 'Ap%ivauTtit, 'Ikwovixiij.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 129
accustomed only to the calm unimpassioned tone of the Epos, had hut
just found a temperate expression of livelier emotions in the elegy,
this kind of poetry, which has nothing in common with the Epos,
either in form or in matter, arose. It was a light tripping- measure,
sometimes loosely constructed or purposely halting and broken, and
well adapted to vituperation, unrestrained by any regard to morality or
decency*.
The ancients drew a lively image of this bitter and unscrupulous
spirit of slanderous attack in the well-known story of the daughters of
Lycambes, who hanged themselves from shame and vexation. Yet
this sarcastic Archilochus, this venomous libeller, was esteemed by
antiquity not only an unrivalled master in his peculiar line, but, gene-
rally, the first poet after Homerf. Where, we are compelled to ask,
is the soaring flight of the soul which distinguishes the true poet?
Where that beauty of delineation which confers grace and dignity even
on the most ordinary details ?
§ 2. But Poetry has not only lent herself, in every age, to the descrip-
tions of a beautiful and magnificent world, in which the natural powers
revealed to us by our own experience are invested with a might and a
perfection surpassing truth: she has also turned back her glance upon
the reality by which she was surrounded, with all its wants and its
weaknesses ; and the more she was filled with the beauty and the
majestic grace of her own ideal world, the more deeply did she feel,
the more vividly express, the evils and the deficiencies attendant on
man's condition. The modes in which Poetry has accomplished this
have been various ; as various as the tempers and the characters of
those whom she has inspired.
A man of a serene and cheerful cast of mind, satisfied with the order
of the universe, regarding the great and the beautiful in nature and
in human things with love and admiration, though he distinctly per-
ceives the defective and the bad, does not suffer his perception of
them to disturb his enjoyment of the whole : he contemplates it as the
shade in a picture, which serves but to bring out, not to obscure, the
brilliancy of the principal parts. A light jest drops from the poet's
tongue, a pitying smile plays on his lip ; but they do not darken or
deform the lofty beauty of his creations.
The thoughts, the occupations, of another are more intimately
blended with the incidents and the conditions of social and civil life ; and
as a more painful experience of all the errors and perversities of man
is thus forced upon him, his voice, even in poetry, will assume a more
angry and vehement tone. And yet even this voice of harsh rebuke
* AutriruvTs; "afifioi, raging iambics, says the Emperor Hadrian. (Brunck, Anal. ii.
p. 286.)
"In celeres iambos misit furentem." Horace.
f Maximus poeta aut certesummo pvoxhnus; as he is called in Valerius Maximus.
K
130 HISTORY OF THE
may be poetical, when it is accompanied by a pure and noble conception
of things as they ought to be.
Yet more, the poet may himself suffer from the assaults of human
passions. He may himself be stained with the vices and the weak-
nesses of human nature, and his voice may be poured forth from amidst
the whirl and the conflict of the passions, and may be troubled, not only
by disgust at the sight of interruptions to the moral order of the world,
but by personal resentments and hatreds. The ancients in their
day, and we in ours, have bestowed admiring sympathy on such a poet,
if the expressions of his scorn and his hate did but betray an unusual
vehemence of feeling and vigour of thought ; and if, through all the
passionate confusion of his spirit, gleams of a nature susceptible of
noble sentiments were apparent ; for the impotent rage of a vulgar
mind will never rise to the dignity of poetry, even though it be adorned
with all the graces of language.
§ 3. Here, as in many other places, it will be useful to recur
to the two epic poets of antiquity, the authors of all the principles
of Greek literature. Homer, spite of the solemnity and loftiness
of epic poetry, is full of archness and humour; but it is of that
cheerful and good-natured character which tends rather to increase
than to disturb enjoyment. Thersites is treated with unqualified
severity ; and we perceive the peculiar disgust of the monarchi-
cally disposed poet at such inciters of the people, who slander every-
thing distinguished and exalted, merely because they are below
it. But it must be remarked that Thersites is a very subordinate
figure in the group of heroes, and serves only as a foil to those
who, like Ulysses, predominate over the people as guides and
rulers. When, however, persons of a nobler sort are exhibited in
a comic light, as, for instance, Agamemnon, blinded by Zeus and
confident in his delusion and in his supposed wisdom *, it is done
with such a delicacy of handling that the hero hardly loses any of his
dignity in our eyes. In this way the comedy of Homer (if we may
use the expression) dared even to touch the gods, and in the lottiest
regions found subjects for humorous descriptions: for, as the gods
presided over the moral order of the universe only as a body, and no
individual god could exercise his special functions without regard to the
prerogatives of others, Ares, Aphrodite, and Hermes might serve as
types of the perfection of quarrelsome violence, of female weakness, and
of finished cunning, without ceasing; to have their due share of the
honours paid to divinity.
Of a totally different kind is the wit of Hesiod; especially as it is
employed in the Theogony against the daughters of Pandora, the female
sex. This has its source in a strong feeling of disgust and indignation,
* See ch. v. § 8.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 131
which leads the poet, in the bitterness of his mood, to overstep the bounds
of justice, and to deny all virtue to women.
In the Works and Days, too, which afford him frequent opportunities
for censure, Hesiod is not deficient in a kind of wit which exhibits the
bad and the contemptible with striking vigour ; but his wit is never
that gay humour which characterises the Homeric poetry, of which
it is the singular property to reconcile the frail and the faulty with the
grand and the elevated, and to blend both in one harmonious idea.
§ 4. Before, however, we come to the consideration of the third stage
of the poetical representation of the bad and the despicable, the exist-
ence of which we have hinted at in our mention of Archilochus, we must
remark that even the early epic poetry contained not only scattered
traits of pleasantry and satire, but also entire pictures in the same tone,
which formed small epics. On this head we have great reason to
lament the loss of the Margites, which Aristotle, in his Poetics, ascribes,
according to the opinion current among the Greeks, to Homer himself,
and regards as the ground-work of comedy, in like manner as he regards
the Iliad and the Odyssey as the precursors of tragedy. He likewise
places the Margites in the same class with poems written in the iambic
metre ; but he seems to mean that the iambus was not employed
for this class of poetry till subsequently to this poem. "Hence it
is extremely probable that the iambic veises which, according to
the ancient grammarians, were introduced irregularly into the Mar-
gites, were interpolated in a later version, perhaps by Pigres the Hali-
carnassian, the brother of Artemisia, who is also called the author
of this poem*.
From the few fragments and notices relative to the Homeric Margites
which have come down to us, we can gather that it was a representa-
tion of a stupid man, who had a high opinion of his own cleverness, for
he was said "to know many works, but know all badly t;" and we
discover from a story preserved by Eustathius that it was necessary to
hold out to him very subtle reasons to induce him to do things which
required but a very small portion of intellect J.
There were several other facetious small epics which bore the name of
Homer ; such as the poem of the Cercopes, those malicious, and yet merry
elves whom Hercules takes prisoners after they have played him many
mischievous tricks, and drags them about till they escape from him by
* Thus the beginning of the Margites was as follows : —
r H\('i <ri; us KoXoipHJva y'igav xa) h~os aoibo:,
Movffaav (ipatfuv xai S.x.-nfi'o'Kov AtoWcovo;,
Concerning Figres, see below, § 18. He also interpolated the Iliad with penta-
meters.
f TloXk' riTitrra,<rt> t^ya, xaxu; S' nnlffraro rravra.
% Eustath. ad Od. x. 552, p. 1669, ed. Rom.
K2
132 HISTORY OF THE
fresh stratagems ; the Batrachomyomachia, which we shall have occa-
sion to mention hereafter as an example of parody ; the Seven
times shorn Goat (aU tTrrcnreKTog), and the Song of the Fieldfares
(iiriKi)(\i$£G)t which Homer is said to have sung- to the hoys for field-
fares. Some few such pleasantries have come down to us, particularly the
poem of the Pot-kiln (Kafuvos v Ktpa/xic), which applies the imagina-
tion and mythological machinery of the epic style to the business of
pottery.
§ 5. These humorous poems are too innocuous and too free from
personal attacks to have much resemblance to the caustic iambics of
Archilochus. More akin to them undoubtedly were the satirical songs
which, according to the Homeric hymn to Hermes, the young men sang
extemporaneously in a sort of wanton mutual defiance*. At the public
tables of Sparta, also, keen and pointed raillery was permitted, and con-
versation seasoned with Spartan salt was not held to afford any reasonable
ground of offence to those who took part in it. But an occasion for yet
more audacious and unsparing jest was afforded to the Greeks by some
of the most venerable and sacred of their religious rites — the per-
mission, or rather encouragement to wanton and unrestrained jokes
on everything affording matter for such ebullitions of mirth, con-
nected with certain festivals of Demeter, and the deities allied to her.
It was a law at these festivals that the persons engaged in their cele-
bration should, on certain days, banter all who came in their way, and
assail them with keen and licentious raillery t. This was the case at the
mystic festival of Demeter at Eleusis, among others. Hence, also, Ari-
stophanes in the Frogs introduces a chorus of the initiated, who lead
a blissful life in the infernal regions, and makes them pray to Demeter
that she would grant them to sport and dance securely the livelong
day, and have much jocose and much serious talk ; and, if the festival
had been worthily honoured by jest and merriment, that they might be
crowned as victors. The chorus also, after inviting the jolly god
Iacchus to take part in its dances, immediately proceeds to exercise
its wit in satirical verses on various Athenian demagogues and cowards.
* V. 55 seq.) \\ ahroff^ii'm; .... riirt kcZ/ioi
M/3»r«) 6u.\'ir,tri •xa.^a.'ipoXa xigrofciouo'iv.
f Concerning the legality of this religious license there is an important passage
in Aristotle, Pol. vii. 15. We will set down the entire passage as we understand it :
" As we banish from the state the speaking of indecent things, it is cli -r that we
also prohibit indecent pictures and representations. The magistrate must therefore
provide that no statue or picture of this kind exist, except for certain deities, of the
class to which the law allows scurrilous jesting (eTj koc) rov rwtatrfiov a-TroViivait o
v'npos). At temples of this kind the law also permits all persons of a mature age to
pray to the gods for themselves, their children and wives. But younger persons
ought to be prohibited from being present at the recitation of iambic verses, or at
comedies, until they have reached the age at which they may sit at table and drink
to intoxication."
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 133
This raillery was so ancient and inveterate a custom that it had given
rise to a peculiar word, which originally denoted nothing but the jests
and banter used at the festivals of Demeter, namely, Iambus*. This
was soon converted into a mythological person, the maid Iambe, who by
some jest first drew a smile from Demeter bewailing her lost daughter,
and induced her to take the barley drink of the cyceon ; a legend
native to Eleusis, which the Homerid who composed the hymn to
Demeter has worked up into an epic form. If Ave consider that
according to the testimony of the same hymn, the island of Paros, the
birth-place of Archilochus, was regarded as, next to Eleusis, the peculiar
seat of Demeter and Cora ; that the Parian colony Thasos, in the settle-
ment of which Archilochus himself had a share, embraced the mystic
rites of Demeter as the most important worship* ; that Archilochus him-
self obtained the prize of victory over many competitors for a hymn to
Demeter, and that one whole division of his songs, called the Io-bacchi,
were consecrated to the service of Demeter and the allied worship of
Bacchus J; we shall entertain no doubt that these festal customs af-
forded Archilochus an occasion of producing his unbridled iambics,
for which the manners of the Greeks furnished no other time or place ;
and that with his wit and talent he created a new kind of poetry out
of the raillery which had hitherto been uttered extempore. All the
wanton extravagance which was elsewhere repressed and held in
check by law and custom, here, under the protection of religion, burst
forth with boundless license ; and these scurrilous effusions were at
length reduced by Archilochus into the systematic form of iambic
metre.
§ 6. The time at which this took place was the same with that in
which the elegy arose, or but little later. Archilochss was a son
of Telesicles, who, in obedience to a Delphic oracle, led a colony from
Paros to Thasos. The establishment of this colony is fixed by the
ancients at the 15th or 18th Olympiad (720 or 708 b.c.) ; with which
it perfectly agrees, that the date at which Archilochus flourished is,
according to the chronologists of antiquity, the 23rd Olympiad
(688 n. c.) ; though it is often placed lower. According to this calcula-
tion, Archilochus began his poetical career in the latter years of the
* It is vain to seek an etymology for the word iambus: the most probable suppo-
sition is, that it originated in exclamations, o\o\uypo), expressive of joy. Similar in
form are tyV/Say, the Bacchic festival procession ; S/^'ga^/3oy, a Bacchic hymn, and
"tvpfios, also a kind of Bacchic song.
f The great painter Polygnotus, a native of Thasos, contemporary with Cimon,
in the painting of the infernal regions, which he executed at Delphi, repre-
sented in the boat of Charon the Parian priestess Cleobcea, who had brought this
mystic worship to Thusos.
t Axpnrpos uyvr,s kcc) Koor,s t>;v rrxvriyv^iy <rs/3<i>v,
is a verse from these poems preserved by Hephaestion, fragm. 68, Gaisford,
134 HISTORY OP TUB
Lydian king Gyges, whose wealth he mentions in a verse still extant* ;
but is mainly to be regarded as the contemporary of Ardys (from Olymp.
25, 3 to 37, 4. b. c. 678 — 29). In another versef he mentions the cala-
mities of Magnesia, which befel that city through the Treres, and,
as we have seen, not in the earliest part of Ardys' reign}. Archilochus
draws a comparison between the misery of Magnesia and the melancholy
condition of Thasos, whither he was led by his family, and was dis-
appointed in his hopes of finding the mountains of gold they had
expected. The Thasians seem, indeed, never to have been contented
with their island, though its fertility and its mines might have yielded a
considerable revenue, and to have tried to get possession of the opposite
coast of Thrace, abounding in gold and in wine ; an attempt which
involved them in wars not only with the natives of that country — for
example the Saians § — but also with the early Greek colonists. We
find in fragments of Archilochus that they had, even in his time,
extended their incursions so far eastward as to come into conflict
with the inhabitants of Maronea for the possession of Stryme ||, which
at a later period, during the Persian war, was regarded as a city of
the Thasians. Dissatisfied with the posture of affairs, which the poet
often represents as desperate, (in such expressions as, that the cala-
mities of all Hellas were found combined in Thasos, that the stone of
Tantalus was hanging over their heads, &c.,)^[ Archilochus must have
quitted Thasos and returned to Paros, since we are informed by credible
writers that he lost his life in a war between the Parians and the inha-
bitants of the neighbouring island of Naxos.
§ 7. From these facts it appears, that the public life of Archi-
lochus was agitated and unsettled ; but his private life was still more
exposed to the conflict of contending passions. He had courted a
Parian girl, Neobule, the daughter of Lycambes, and his trochaic
poems expressed the violent passion with which she had inspired
him**. Lycambes had actually promised him his daughterft, and
we are ignorant what induced him to withdraw his consent. The ra°-e
with which Archilochus assailed the family, now knew no bounds ;
and he not only accused Lycambes of perjury, but Neobule and her
sisters of the most abandoned lives. It is unintelligible how the
Parians could suffer the exasperated poet to heap such virulent
abuse on persons with whom he had shortly before so earnestly desired
to connect himself, had not these iambics first appeared at a fes-
tival whose solemnization gave impunity to every license ; and had it
not been regarded as a privilege of this kind of poetry to exag-
gerate at will the evil reports for which any ground existed, and
* Fragm. 10. f Fragm. 71. The reading ea<r/av in this fragment is conjectural.
t Comp. ch. x. § 4. § Ch. x. § 7.
|| See Harpocration in iV^jj. ^[ Fragm. 21,43. ' ** Fragm. 25, 26.
tf This is evident from fr. 83, "O^xov §' ho<ripl<rhs ftiyuv, a.Xx; n xal ^tkvi&L
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE, 135
in the delineation of offences which deserved some reproof to give
the reins to the fancy. The ostensible object of Archilochus's iambics,
like that of the later comedy, was to give reality to caricatures, every
hideous feature of which was made more striking by being mag-
nified. But that these pictures, like caricatures from the hand of a
master, had a striking truth, maybe inferred from the impression which
Archilochus's iambics produced, both upon contemporaries and posterity.
Mere calumnies could never have driven the daughters of Lycambes
to hang themselves, if, indeed, this story is to be believed, and is
not a gross exaggeration. But we have no need of it ; the uni
versal admiration which was awarded to Archilochus's iambics, proves
the existence of a foundation of truth ; for when had a satire which
was not based on truth universal reputation for excellence ? When
Plato produced his first dialogues against the sophists, Gorgias is said
to have exclaimed, "Athens has given birth to a new Archilochus."
This comparison, made by a man not unacquainted with art, shows
at all events that Archilochus must have possessed somewhat of the keen
and delicate satire which in Plato is most severe where a dull listener
would be least sensible of it.
§ 8. Unluckily, however, we can form but an imperfect idea of the
general character and tone of Archilochus's poetry ; and we can
only lament a loss such as has perhaps hardly been sustained in the
works of any other Greek poet. Horace's epodes are, as he himself
says, formed on the model of Archilochus, as to form and spirit*, but
not as to subject; and we can but rarely detect or divine a direct imi-
tation of the Parian poetf.
All that we can now hope to obtain is the knowledge of the external
form, especially the metrical structure of Archilochus's poems ; and if
we look to this alone, we must regard Archilochus as one of those
creative minds which discover the aptest expression for new directions
of human thought. While the metrical form of the epos was founded
upon the dactyl, which, from the equality of the arsis and thesis, has a
character of repose and steadiness, Archilochus constructed his metres
out of that sort of rhythm which the ancient writers called the double
(ytVoc cnrXamor), because the arsis has twice the length of the thesis.
Hence arose, according as the thesis is at the beginning or the end, the
iambus or the trochee, which have the common character of lightness
* Parios ego primus iambos
Ostendi Latio, numeros animosque secutus
Archilochi, non res et agentia verba Lycamben.
(Horat. Ep. i. 19, 23.)
f The complaint about perjury (Epod. xv.) agrees well with the relations of
Aiehilochus to the family of Lycambes. The proposal to go to the islands of the
blessed, in order to escape all misery, in Epod. xvi.. would be more natural in the
mouth of Archilochus, directed to the Thasian colony, than in that of Horace. The
Neobule of Horace is Canidia, but with great alterations.
136 HISTOllY OF THE
and rapidity. At the same time there is this difference, that the iambus,
by proceeding from the short to the long syllable, acquires a tone
of strength, and appears peculiarly adapted to impetuous diction and
bold invective, while the trochee, which falls from the long to the
short, has a feebler character. Its light tripping movement appeared
peculiarly suited to dancing songs ; and hence, besides the name of
trochueus, the runner, it also obtained the name of choreius, the dancer* :
occasionally, however, its march was languid and feeble. Archilochus
formed long verses of both kinds of feet, and in so doing, with the pur-
pose of giving more strength and body to these short and weak rhythms,
he united iambic and trochaic feet in pairs. In every such pair of feet
(called dipodia), he left the extreme thesis of the dipodia doubtful
(that is, in the iambic dipodia the first, in the trochaic the last thesis) ;
So that these short syllables might be replaced by long ones. Archi-
lochus, however, in order not to deprive the metre of its proper rapidity,
did not introduce these long syllables so often as iEschylus, for
example, who sought, by means of them, to give more solemnity and
dignity to his verses. Moreover, Archilochus did not admit resolutions
of the long syllables, like the comic poets, who thus made the course of
the metre more rapid and various. He then united three iambic
dipodias (by making the same words common to more than one pair
of feet) into a compact whole, the iambic trimeter : and four trochaic
dipodias, two of which, however, were divided from the other two
by a fixed pause (called ditBresis), into the trochaic tetrameter.
Without going more minutely into the structure of the verses, it is suf-
ficiently evident from what has been said, that these metres were in
their way as elaborate productions of Greek taste and genius as the
Parthenon or the statue of the Olympic Jupiter- Nor can there
be any stronger proof of their perfection than that metres, said to
have been invented by Archilochusf, retained their currency through
all ages of the Greek poetry; and that although their application was
varied in many ways, no material improvement was made in their
structure.
The distinction observed by Archilochus in the use of them was, that
he employed the iambic for the expression of his wrath and bitterness,
(whence nearly all the iambic fragments of Archilochus have a hostile
bearing,) and that he employed the trochaic as a medium between the
iambic and the elegiac, of which latter style Archilochus was, as we
have already seen, one of the earliest cultivators. As compared with
the elegy, the trochaic metre has less rapidity and elevation of sentiment,
* According to Aristot. Poet. 4, the trochaic tetrameter is suited to an h^r.niKti
•ffolnci;, but the iambic verse is most Xiktiho;.
t Set> Plutarch de Musica, c. 28, the chief passage on the numerous inventions
of Archilochus in rhythm and music.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 137
and approaches more to the tone of common life ; as in the passage* in
which the poet declares that " he is not fond of a tall general walking
with his legs apart, with his hair carefully arranged, and his chin well
shorn ; hut he prefers a short man, with his legs bent in, treading
firmly on his feet, and full of spirit and resource." A personal descrip-
tion of this kind, with a serious intent, but verging on the comic in its
tone, would not have suited the elegy; and although reflections on
the misfortunes of life occur in trochaic as well as in elegiac verses, yet
an attentive reader can distinguish between the languid tone of the
latter and the lively tone of the former, which would naturally be accom-
panied in the delivery with appropriate gesticulation. Trochaics were
also recited by Archilochus at the banquet ; but while the elegy was an
outpouring of feelings in which the guests were called on to parti-
cipate, Archilochus selects the trochaic tetrameter in order to re-
prove a friend for having shamelessly obtruded himself upon a feast
prepared at the common expense of the guests, without contributing his
share, and without having been invited t.
Other forms of the poetry of Archilochus may be pointed out, with a
view of showing the connexion between their metrical and poetical
characters. Among these are the verses called by the metrical writers
asyiiartetes, or unconnected, and by them said to have been invented by
Archilochus : they are considered by Plutarch as forming the transi-
tion to another class of rhythms. Of these difficult metres we will only
say, that they consist of two metrical clauses or members of different
kinds ; for example, dactylic or anapaestic, and trochaic, which are
loosely joined into one verse, the last syllable of the first member
retaining the license of the final syllable of a verse J. This kind of
metre, which passed from the ancient iambic to the comic poets, has a
feeble and languid expression, though capable at times of a careless
grace ; nor was it ever employed for any grave or dignified subject. This
character especially appears in the member consisting of three pure
trochees, with which the asyiiartetes often close ; which was named Ithy-
phallicus, because the verses sung at the Phallagogia of Dionysus, the
scene of the wildest revelry in the worship of this god, were chiefly com-
posed in this metre §. It seems as if the intention had been that after
* Fragm. 9.
■)• Fragm. 88. The person reproved is the same Perich s who, in the elegies, is
addressed as an intimate friend. (See fragm. 1. and 131.)
I Archilochus, as well as his imitator Horace, did not allow these two clauses to
mn into one another; hut as the comic poets used this liberty (Hephajstion, p. 84.
(iaisf.) it is certain that in Archilochus, 'Egao-ftsv'tltj XugiXas, \ XQ*fii& T <" y&<H**t tor
example, is to be considered as one verse.
§ A remarkable example of this class of songs is the poem in which the
Athenians saluted Demetrius, the son of Antigonus, as a new Bacchus, and which
is called by Athenseus Uv$u>.\<>s. It begins as follows (vi. p. 253 ) : —
'fig oi ftiyitrToi to~>i hut kxi Qi\Ta.Toi
nrn To\a vraputriv.
This poem, by its relaxed and creeping but at the same time elegant and graceful
tone, characterizes the Athens of that time far better than many declamations of
rhetorical historians.
138 HISTORY OF THE
the effort required in the anapaestic or dactylic member, the voice should
find repose in the trochaic clause, and that the verse should thus proceed
with agreeable slowness. Hence the soft plaintive tone, which may
easily be recognised in .the fragments of the asynartetes of Archilochus,
as well as in the corresponding imitations of Horace*.
Another metrical invention of Archilochus was a prelude to the
formation of strophes, such as we find them in the remains of theiEolic
lyric poets. This was the epodes, which, however, are here to be consi-
dered not as separate strophes, but only as verses ; that is, as shorter
verses subjoined to longer ones. Thus an iambic dimeter forms an
epode to a trimeter, an iambic dimeter or trimeter to a dactylic hexa-
meter, a short dactylic verse to an iambic trimeter, an iambic verse to
an asynartete ; the object often being to give force and energy to the
languid fall of the rhythm. In general, however, the purposes of these
epodic combinations are as numerous as their kinds ; and if it appears
at first sight that Archilochus was guided by no principle in the forma-
tion of them, yet on close examination it will be found that each has
its appropriate excellence f.
§ 9. As to the manner in which these metres were recited, so im-
portant a constituent in their effect, we know thus much, — that the
uniformity of the rhapsodists' method of recitation was broken, and that
a freer and bolder style was introduced, which sometimes passed into
the grotesque and whimsical ; although, in general, iambic verses (as we
have already seen \) were in strictness not sung but rhapsodised. There,
was, however, a mode of reciting iambics introduced by Archilochus, by
which some poems were repeated to the time of a musical instru-
ment, and others were sung§. The paracataloge, which consisted
in the interpolation of a passage recited without strict rhythm and
fixed melody, into a piece composed according to certain rules,
was also ascribed to Archilochus. Lastly, many entertained the opi-
nion (which, however, seems doubtful,) that Archilochus introduced
the separation of instrumental music from singing, to this extent, — that
* See especially fragm. 24, where Archilochus describes, in asynartetes with
iambic epodes, the violent love which has consumed his heart, darkened his sight,
and deprived him of reason; probably in reference to his former love for Neobule,
which he had then given up. Horace's eleventh epode is similar in many respects.
f When one epode follows two verses there is a small strophe, as fragm. 38 : —
ATvoj TIS uvfyeZvaiv ooi,
uii up' aXwrtv^ kxito;
\viuviv\i \ft,t\at.
If the two last verses are here united into one, aprobde is formed, which is the
reverse of the epode ; it often occurs in Horace. Another example of a kind of
strophe is the short strain of victory which Archilochus is said to have composed
for the Olympic festival to Hercules and Iolaus (fragm. 60) ; two trimeters with
the ephymnion TfotXXec kuXxUiki.
% Chap. iv. § 3.
§<ra; ph laftfZi'a xiynrtui vruok <r?iv xgoZtriv, rk V alard/xi, Plutarch ubi sup. Probably
this was connected with the epodic composition ; though, according to Plutarch, it
also occurred in the tragedians.
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 139
the instrument left the voice, and did not fall in with it till the end ,
while the early musicians accompanied it, syllable for syllable, with
the same notes on the instrument*. A peculiar kind of three-cornered
stringed instrument, called iambyce, was also used to accompany iambics,
and probably dated from the time of Archilochusf.
§ 10. It was necessary to lay these dry details before the reader in
order to give an idea of the inventive genius which places Archilochus
next, in point of originality, to Homer, among the Greek poets. There
is, however, another remarkable part of the poetical character of Archi-
lochus, viz., his language. If we can imagine ourselves living at a
time when only the epic style, with its unchanging solemnity, its abun-
dance of graphic epithets, and its diffuse and vivid descriptions, was
cultivated by poets, with no other exception than the recent and slight
deviation of the elegy, we shall perceive the boldness of introducing
into poetry a language which, surrendering all these advantages, attempt-
ed to express ideas as they were conceived by a sober and clear under-
standing. In this diction there are no ornamental epithets, intended only
to fill out the image ; but every adjective denotes the quality appropriate
to the subject, as conceived in the given placej. There are no anti-
quated words or forms deriving dignity from their antiquity, but it is
the plain language of common life ; and if it seem to contain still many
rare and difficult words, it is because the Ionic dialect retained words
which afterwards fell into disuse. We likewise find in it the article§,
unknown to the epic language ; and many particles used in a manner
having a far closer affinity with a prose than with an epic style. In
short, the whole diction is often such as might occur in an Attic comic
poet, and, without the metre, even in a prose writer: nothing but the
liveliness and energy with which all ideas are conceived and expressed,
and the pleasing and graceful arrangement of the thoughts, distinguishes
this language from that of common life |.
* In Plutarch the latter is called n^otrxofia hpoviiv, the former % vto <rr,v aSjjv
xpoviris, which Archilochus is said to have invented. The meaning is made clear by
a comparison of Aristot. Problem, xix. 39, and Plato Leg. vii. p. 812. Kpouuv
denotes the playing on any musical instrument, the flute as well as the cithara.
f See Athen. xiv. p. 646. Ilesychius and Photius in ictft/ivxti. The instrument
xXi-^iafifioi, mentioned by Athenseus, appears to have been specially destined for the
V<!C0 T*JV <j!2»jv xpovtri;,
\ Of this kind are such adjectives as (fragm. 27)
Ovx, if of/.u; §a.\\u; uttcxXov X£° a > xd^irai yaf> %on y
where the skin is not c.dled tender generally, but in reference to the former bloom of
the person addressed ; and as (fragm. 55)
where the rock is not called dark generally, but in reference to the difficulty of
avoiding a rock beneath the surface of the water. Such epic epithets as irarS' " Amio
pinQovov (fragm. 116) are very rare.
§ E. g. fragm. 58 : ra/avSs V Z cr/^xs, t*iv #vyw tx'-'St where the article separates
roidvls from -rvyw : " such are the posteriors which you have."
J| We may cite, as instances of the simple language of Archilochus, two fragments
evidently belonging to a poem which had some resemblance to Horace's 6th epode.
la the beginning was fragment 122, tt'oXX" «TS' nkuvrnl, «XX' l^wj h piyu.; 'Mho
1 10 HISTORY OF THE
As we have laboured to place the great merit of Archilochus in its
true lio-ht, we may give a shorter account of the works of his followers
in iambic poetry. His writings will also furnish a standard of com-
parison for the others.
§ 11. Simonides of Amorgus follows Archilochus so closely that they
may be considered as contemporaries. He is said to have flou-
rished in the period following 01. 29 (664 b. a). The principal events
of his life, as of that of Archilochus, are connected with the foundation
of a colony : he is said to have led the Samians to the neighbour-
ing island of Amorgus, and to have there founded three cities. One
of these was Minoa, where he settled. Like Archilochus, Simonides
composed iambics and trochaic tetrameters; and in the former metre
he also attacked individuals with the lash of his invective and ridicule.
What the family of Lycambes were to Archilochus, a certain Orodcecides
was to Simonides. More remarkable, however, is the peculiar appli-
cation which Simonides made of the iambic metre : that is to say, he
took not individuals, but whole classes of persons, as the object of his
satire. The iambics of Simonides thus acquire a certain resemblance to
the satire interwoven into Hesiod's epic poems ; and the more so, as it
is on women that he vents his displeasure in the largest of his extant
pieces. For this purpose he makes use of a contrivance which, at a
later time, also occurs in the gnomes of Phocylides ; that is, he derives
the various, though generally bad, qualities of women from the variety
of their origin ; by which fiction he gives a much livelier image of
female characters than he could have done by a mere enumeration
of their qualities. The uncleanly woman is formed from the swine,
the cunning woman, equally versed in good and evil, from the fox,
the talkative woman from the dog, the lazy woman from the earth, the
unequal and changeable from the sea, the woman who takes pleasure
only in eating and sensual delights from the ass, the perverse woman
from the weasel, the woman fond of dress from the horse, the ugly
and malicious woman from the ape. There is only one race created for
the benefit of men, the woman sprung from the bee, who is fond of her
work and keeps faithful watch over her house.
§ 12. From the coarse and somewhat rude manner of Simonides, we
turn with satisfaction to the contemplation of Solon's iambic style. Even
in his hands the iambic retains a character of passion and warmth, but
it is only used for self-defence in a just cause. After Solon had
introduced his new constitution, he soon found that although he had
attempted to satisfy the claims of all parties, or rather to give to each
fox uses many arts, but the hedgehop; has one great one," viz. to roll himself up and
resist his enemy. And towards the end (fragm. 118) c'y V i*itrraftxi ^ ftiyu, Ton
xa.Kas n \Znra, laws avTcipufrieia, xxx.o7f, by which words the poet applied to him-
self the image of the hedgehog: he had the art of retaliating on those who ill-
treated him. Consequently the first fragment would be an incomplete trochaic
tetrameter.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GKEECE. 141
party and order its due share of power, he had not succeeded in
satisfying any. In order to shame his opponents, he wrote some
iambics, in which he calls on his censors to consider of how many citizens
the state would have been bereaved, if he had listened to the demands of
the contending factions. As a witness of the goodness of his plans, Solon
calls the great goddess Earth, the mother of Cronus, whose surface had
before his time been covered with numerous boundary stones, in sign of
the ground being mortgaged : these he had succeeded in removing, and
in restoring the land in full property to the mortgagers. This frag-
ment is well worth reading*, since it gives as clear an idea of the poli-
tical situation of Athens at that time, as it does of Solon's iambic style.
It shows a truly Attic energy and address in defending a favourite
cause, while it contains the first germs of that power of speecht,
which afterwards came to maturity in the dialogue of the Athenian
stage, and in the oratory of the popular assembly and of the courts of
justice. In the dialect and expressions, the poetry of Solon retains
more of the Ionic cast.
In like manner the few remnants of Solon's trochaics enable us to
form some judgment of his mode of handling this metre. Solon wrote
his trochaics at nearly the same time as his iambics ; when, notwith-
standing his legislation, the struggle of parties again broke out between
their ambitious leaders, and some thoughtless citizens reproached
Solon, because he, the true patriot, the friend of the whole community,
had not seized the reins with a firm hand, and made himself monarch :
" Solon was not a man of deep sense or prudent counsel ; for when
the god offered him blessings, he refused to take them : but when he
had caught the prey, he was struck with awe, and drew not up the great
net, failing at once in courage and sense: for else he would have been
willing, having: named dominion and obtained unstinted wealth, and
having been tyrant of Athens only for a single day, afterwards to be flayed,
and his skin made a leathern bottle, and that his race should become
extinct t- ? ' The other fragments of Solon's trochaics agree with the
same subject ; so that Solon probably only composed one poem in this
metre.
§ 13. Far more nearly akin to the primitive spirit of the iambic
verse was the style of Hipponax, who flourished about the 60th
Olympiad (540 B.C.). He was born at Ephesus, and was compelled by
the tyrants Athenagoras and Comas to quit his home, and to establish
himself in another Ionian city, Clazomena?. This political persecution
(which affords a presumption of his vehement love of liberty) probably
laid the foundation for some of the bitterness and disgust with which
he regarded mankind. Precisely the same fierce and indignant scorn
* Solon, No. 28, Gainfurd. ffanerr,;. J Fragment 2'y, G..isfonl.
142 HISTORY OF THE
which found an utterance in the iambics or Archilochus, is ascribed to
Hipponax. What the family of Lycambes was to Archilochus, Bupalus
and Athenis (two sculptors of a family of Chios, which had produced
several generations of artists) were to Hipponax. They had made his
small, meagre, and ugly person the subject of a caricature ; an insult
Hipponax avenged in the bitterest and most pungent iambics, of which
some remains are extant. In this instance, also, the satirist is said to
have caused his enemy to hang himself. The satire of Hipponax,
however, was not concentrated so entirely on certain individuals ; from
existing fragments it appears rather to have been founded on a general
view of life, taken, however, on its ridiculous and grotesque side. The
luxury of the Greeks of Lesser Asia, which had already risen to a high
pitch, is a favourite object of his sarcasms. In one of the longest frag-
ments he says*, " For one of you had very quietly swallowed a continued
stream of thunny with dainty sauces, like a Lampsacenian eunuch, and
had devoured the inheritance of his father ; therefore he must now
break rocks with a mattock, and gnaw a few figs and a little black
barley bread, the food of slaves."
His language is filled with words taken from common life, such as
the names of articles of food and clothing, and of ordinary utensils,
current among the working people. He evidently strives to make his
iambics local pictures full of freshness, nature, and homely truth. For
this purpose, the change which Hipponax devised in the iambic
metre was as felicitous as it was bold ; he crippled the rapid agile
gait of the iambic by transforming the last foot from a pure iambus
into a spondee, contrary to the fundamental principle of the whole
mode of versification. The metre thus maimed and stripped of its
beauty and regularityt, was a perfectly appropriate rhythmical form
for the delineation of such pictures of intellectual deformity as Hip-
ponax delighted in. Iambics of this kind (called choliambics or
trimeter scazons) are still more cumbrous and halting when the fifth
foot is also a spondee ; which, indeed, according io the original struc-
ture, is not forbidden. These were called broken-backed iambics (ischior-
rhogics), and a grammarian % settles the dispute (which, according to
ancient testimony, was so hard to decide), how far the invention of this
kind of verse ought to be ascribed to Hipponax, and how far to another
iambographer, Ananius, by pronouncing that Ananius invented the
ischiorrhogic variety, Hipponax the common scazon. It appears, how-
ever, from the fragments attributed to him, that Hipponax sometimes
used the spondee in the fifth foot. In the same manner and with the
same effect these poets also changed the trochaic tetrameter by regu-
* Ap. Athen. vii. p. 304. B. f ro clppvfaov.
£ la Tyrv.hitt, Disscrt.de Babrio, p. 17.
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 143
larly lengthening the penultimate short syllable. Some remains of this
kind are extant. Hipponax likewise composed pure trimeters in tie
style of Archilochus ; but there is no conclusive evidence that he mixed
them with scazons.
Ananius has hardly any individual character in literary history dis-
tinct from that of Hipponax. In Alexandria their poems seem to have
been re"-arded as forming one collection ; and thus the criterion by
which to determine whether a particular passage belonged to the
one or to the other, was often lost or never existed. Hence in the
uncertainty which is the true author, the same verse is occasionally
ascribed to both*. The few fragments which are attributed with cer-
tainty to Ananius are so completely in the tone of Hipponax, that it
would be a vain labour to attempt to point out any characteristic dif-
ference t-
§ 14. Akin to the iambic are two sorts of poetry, which, though
differing widely from each other, have both their source in the turn for
the delineation of the ludicrous, and both stand in a close historical
relation to the iambic : — the Fable (originally called olvoq, and after-
wards, less precisely, [.wSoq and \6yoc), and the Parody.
With regard to the fable, it is not improbable that in other countries,
particularly in the north of Europe, it may have arisen from a child-
like playful view of the character and habits of animals, which
frequently surest a comparison with the nature and incidents of human
life. In Greece, however, it originated in an intentional travestie of
human affairs. The alvog is, as its name denotes, an admonition^,
or rather a reproof, veiled, either from fear of an excess of frankness
or from love of fun and jest, beneath the fiction of an occurrence
happening among beasts. Such is the character of the ainos, at
its very first appearance in Hesiod §. " Now I will tell the kings
a fable which they will understand of themselves. Thus spake the
hawk to the nightingale, whom he was carrying in his talons aloft
in the air, while she, torn by his sharp claws, bitterly lamented —
Foolish creature, why dost thou cry out? One much stronger than
thou has seized thee ; thou must go whithersoever I carry thee, though
thou art a songstress ; I can tear thee in pieces or I can let thee go at
my pleasure."
Archilochus employed the ainos in a similar manner in his iambics
against Lycambes ||. He tells how the fox and the eagle had con-
tracted an alliance, but (as the fable, according to other sources, goes
* As in Athen. xiv. p. 625 C.
I There is no sufficient ground for supposing that Herondas, who is sometimes
mentioned as a choliambic poet, lived in this age. The minnambic poetry ascribed
to him will be treated of in connexion with the Mimes of Sophron.
% wut*'in<rn. See Philological Museum, vol. i. p. 281.
§ Op. et D. v. 202, seq. \\ Fr, 38, ed. Gaisford ; see note on fr. 3'J.
144 HISTORY OP THE
on to tell) * the eagle was so regardless of her engagement, that she
ate the fox's cubs. The fox could only call down the vengeance of the
gods, and this shortly overtook her ; for the eagle stole the flesh from
an altar, and did not observe that she bore with it sparks which set
fire to her nest, and consumed both that and her young ones.
It is clear that Archilochus meant to intimate to Lycambes, that
though he was too powerless to call him to account for the breach of his
engagement, he could bring down upon him the chastisement of the
gods.
Another of Archilochus's fables was pointed at absurd pride of rankf.
In like manner Stesichorus cautioned his countrymen, the Hime-
reeans, against Phalaris, by the fable of the horse, who, to revenge him-
self on the stag, took the man on his back, and thus became his slave {.
And wherever we have any ancient and authentic account of the origin
of the JEsopian fable, we find it to he the same. It is always some
action, some project, and commonly some absurd one, of the Samians,
or Delphians, or Athenians, whose nature and consequences iEsop
describes in a fable, and thus often exhibits the posture of affairs in a
more lucid, just, and striking manner than could have been done by
elaborate argument. But from the very circumstance, that in the Greek
fable the actions and business of men are the real and prominent object,
while beasts are merely introduced as a veil or disguise, it has nothing
in common with popular legendary stories of beasts, nor has it any con-
nexion with mythological stories of the metamorphoses of animals. It
is exclusively the invention of those who detected in the social habits of
the lower animals points of resemblance with those of man ; and while
they retained the real character in some respects, found means, by the
introduction of reason and speech, to place them in the light required
for their purpose.
§ 15. It is probable that the taste for fables of beasts and nume-
rous similar inventions, found their way into Greece from the East;
since this sort of symbolical and veiled narrative is more in harmony with
the Oriental than with the Greek character. Thus, for example, the Old
Testament contains a fable completely in the style of /Esop (Judges,
ix. S). But not to deviate into regions foreign to our purpose, we may
confine ourselves to the avowal of the Greeks themselves, contained in
the very names given by them to the fable. One kind of fable was
called the Libyan, which we may, therefore, infer was of African origin,
and was introduced into Greece through Cyrene. To this class belongs,
* Coraes, Jliifei aI/tuxum ffuva.yuyn,z. i. Aristoph. Av. 651, ascribes the fable
j^Esop.
f See Gaisford, fr. 39.
X Arist. Rhet. ii. 20. The fable of Menenius Agrippa is similarly applied ; but
it is difficult to believe that the ainos, so applied, was known in Latium at that time
and it 3eems probable that the story was transferred from Greece to Rome.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE 145
according to /Eschylus*, the beautiful fable of the wounded eagle, who,
looking- at the feathering of the arrow with which he was pierced,
exclaimed, " I perish by feathers drawn from my own wing." From
this example we see that the Libyan fable belonged to the class of fables
of animals. So also did the sorts to which later teachers of rhetoric t give
the names of the Cyprian and the Cilician ; these writers also men-
tion the names of some fabulists among the barbarians, as Cybissus the
Libyan and Connis the Cilician. The contest between the olive and
the laurel on mount Tmolus, is cited as a fable of the ancient
Lydians \.
The Carian stories or fables, however, were taken from human life,
as, for instance, that quoted by the Greek lyric poets, Timocreon and
Simonides. A Carian fisherman, in the winter, sees a sea polypus, and
he says to himself, " If I dive to catch it, I shall be frozen to death ; if
I don't catch it, my children must starve §." The Sybaritic fables men-
tioned by Aristophanes have a similar character. Some pointed
»aying of a man or woman of Sybaris, with the particular circumstances
which called it forth, is related ||. The large population of the wealthy
Ionian Sybaris appears to have been much given to such repartees,
and to have caught them up and preserved them with great eager-
ness. Doubtless, therefore, the Sicilian poet Epicharmus means, by
Sybaritic apophthegms^", what others call Sybaritic fables. The
Sybaritic fables, nevertheless, occasionally invested not only the lower
animals, but even inanimate objects, with life and speech, as in the
one quoted by Aristophanes. A woman in Sybaris broke an earthen
pot ; the pot screamed out, and called witnesses to see how ill she had
been treated. Then the woman said, " By Cora, if you were to leave
off calling out for witnesses, and were to make haste and buy a copper
ring to bind yourself together, you would show more wisdom." This
fable is used by a saucy merry old man, in ridicule of one whom he has
ill treated, and who threatens to lay a complaint against him. Both
the Sybaritic and iEsopian fables are represented by Aristophanes as
jests, or ludicrous stories (ysXota).
§ 16. To return to yEsop : Bentley has shown that he was very far from
being regarded by the Greeks as one of their poets, and still less as
a writer. They considered him merely as an ingenious fabulist, under
whose name a number of fables, often applicable to human affairs,
were current, and to whom, at a later period, nearly all that were either
* Fragment of the Myrmidons,
t Theon. and in part also Aphthonius. A fragment of a Cyprian fable, about the
doves of Aphrodite, is published in the excerpts from the Codex Angelicus in Walz
Rhetor. Grec. vol. ii. p. 12.
J Callim. fr. 93. Bentl.
§ From the Codex Angelicus in Walz Rhet. Gr. vol. ii. p. 11., and the Proverbs of
Macarius in Walz Arsemi Violetum, p. 318.
|| Aristoph. Vesp. 1259, 1427, 1437. % Suidas in v.
L
146 HISTORY OF THE
invented or derived from any other source, were attributed. His
history has been dressed out by the later Greeks, with all manner of
droll and whimsical incidents. What can be collected from the ancient
writers down to Aristotle is, however, confined to the following.
jEsop was a slave of the Samian Iadmon, the son of Hephaestopolis,
who lived in the time of the Egyptian king- Amasis. (The reign of
Amasis begins Olymp. 52, 3, 570 b. c.) According to the state-
ment of Eugeon, an old Samian historian, * he was a native of the
Thracian city Mesembria, which existed long before it was peopled by
a colony of Byzantines in the reign of Darius f. According to a less
authentic account he was from Cotyaeon in Phrygia. It seems that his
wit and pleasantry procured him his freedom ; for though he remained
in Iadmon 's family, it must have been as a freedman, or he could not, as
Aristotle relates, have appeared publicly as the defender of a dema-
gogue, on which occasion he told a fable in support of his client. It is
generally received as certain that iEsop perished in Delphi ; the Del-
phians, exasperated by his sarcastic fables, having put him to death on a
charge of robbing the temple. Aristophanes alludes to a fable which
yEsop told to the Delphians, of the beetle wbo found means to revenge
himself on the eagle J.
The character of the iEsopian fable is precisely that of the genuine
beast-fable, such as we find it among the Greeks. The condition and
habits of the lower animals are turned to account in the same manner,
and, by means of the poetical introduction of reason and speech, are
placed in such a light as to produce a striking resemblance to the inci-
dents and relations of human life.
Attempts were probably early made to give a poetical form to the
/Esopian fable. Socrates is said to have beguiled his imprisonment
thus. The iambic would of course suggest itself as the most appro-
priate form (as at a later period it did to Phsedrus), or the scazon, which
was adopted by Callimachus and Babrius§. But no metrical versions
of these fables are known to have existed in early times. The aenus was
generally regarded as a mode of other sorts of poetry, particularly
the iambic, and not as a distinct class.
§ 17. The other kind of poetry whose origin we are now about
to trace, is the Parody. This was understood by the ancients, as
well as by ourselves, to mean an adoption of the form of some cele-
brated poem, with such changes in the matter as to produce a totally
different effect; and, generally, to substitute mean and ridiculous for
elevated and poetical sentiments. The contrast between the grand and
* Euyiuv, or Eliyuav, falsely written Evyi'ir&iv, in Suidas in v. A'/o-wz-o;.
f Mesembria, Pattymbria, and Selymbria, are Thracian names, and mean the
cities oi'Meses, Pattys, and Selys.
+ Aristoph. Vesp. 1448. cf. Pac. 129. Coraes, ^sop. c. 2.
§ A distich of an .^Esopian fable is, however, attributed by Diogenes Laartius to
Socrates. Fragments of fables in hexameters also occur.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 147
sublime images suggested to the memory, and the comic ones introduced
in their stead, renders parody peculiarly fitted to place any subject in a
ludicrous, grotesque, and trivial light. The purpose of it, however, was
not in o-eneral to detract from the reverence due to the ancient poet
(who, in most cases was Homer), by this travestie, but only to add fresh
zest and pungency to satire. Perhaps, too, some persons sporting with
the austere and stately forms of the epos, (like playful children dressing
themselves in gorgeous and flowing robes of state,) might have fallen
upon the device of parody.
We have already alluded to a fragment of Asius* in elegiac measure,
which is not indeed a genuine parody, but which approaches to it. It
is a comic description of a beggarly parasite, rendered more ludicrous by
a tone of epic solemnity. But, according to the learned Polemon t, the
real author of parody was the iambographer Hipponax, of whose pro-
ductions in this kind a hexametrical fragment is still extant.
§ 18. The Batrachomyomachia, or Battle of the Frogs and the Mice
(which has come down to us among the lesser Homeric poems), is
totally devoid of sarcastic tendency. All attempts to discover a satirical
meaning in this little comic epos have been abortive. It is nothing
more than the story of a war between the frogs and the mice, which,
from the high-sounding names of the combatants, the detailed genealo-
gies of the principal persons, the declamatory speeches, the interference
of the "-ods of Olympus, and all the pomp and circumstance of the epos,
has completely the external character of an epic heroic poem ; a cha-
racter ludicrously in contrast with the subject. Notwithstanding many
ingenious conceits, it is not, on the whole, remarkable for vigour of
poetical conception, and the introduction falls far short of the genuine
tone of the Homeric epos, so that everything tends to show that the
Batrachomyomachia is a production of the close of this era. This sup-
position is confirmed by the tradition that Pigres, the brother of the
Halicamassian tyrant Artemisia, and consequently a contemporary of the
Persian war, was the author of this poem {, although at a later period of
antiquity, in the time of the Romans, the Batrachomyomachia was
ascrihed without hesitation to Homer himself.
* Ch. x. § 7. f Ap. Athen. xv. p. 698, B.
+ The passage of Plutarch de Malign. Herod, c. 43. ought to be written as fol-
lows: TlXo; li KO.6nfjt.Uov; IV XWa.nru.iu.~iS ayvorjirui fti%pi riXovs tov uyuiu. tov;' EXXjjvoj,
u<r*io /SaTgo^ua^a^i'as ympkiw (»!v W'tyor,; i * Apt/Mf i*S iv 1*l*i *tt.'X,m ku) QXvufi*
Kypu^lv) r> gtuir" l)iayc.jnfftt,<r$a.t o-1/vhjU.ivav.nu. Xuloitn rob; ci-XXovs.
Concerning Pigies Bee Said as, who, however, confounds the later with the earlier
Artemisia.
1.2
J IS HISTORY OF THE
CHAPTER XT!.
$ i. Transition from the Epos, through the Elegy and Iambus, to Lytic Poetry;
connexion of Lyric Poetry with Music. — § 2. Founders of Greek Music ; Ter.
pander, his descent and date. — § 3. Terpander's invention of the seven-stringed
Cithara. — § 4. Musical scales and styles. — § 5. Nomes of Terpander for sing-
ing to the Cithara; their rhythmical form. — §6. Olympus, descended from an
ancient Phrygian family of flute-players. — § 7. His influence upon the develop-
ment of the music of the flute and rhythm among the Greeks. — § 8. His influence
confined to music. — § 9. Thaletas, his age. — § 10. His connexion with ancient
Cretan worships. Paeans and hyporchemes of Thaletas. — § 11. Musicians of the
succeeding period — Clonas, Hierax, Xenodamus, Xenocritus, Polymnestus, Saca-
das. — § 12. State of Greek Music at this period.
$ 1. When the epic, elegiac, and iambic styles had been perfected in
Greece, the forms of poetry seemed to have become so various, as scarcely
to admit of further increase. The epic style, raised above the ordinary
range of human hfe, had, by the exclusive sway which it exercised for
centuries, and the high place which it occupied in general opinion, laid a
broad foundation for all future Greek poetry, and had so far influenced its
progress that, even in those later styles which differed the most widely from
it, we may, to a certain extent, trace an epic and Homeric tone. Thus
the lyric and dramatic poets developed the characters of the heroes
celebrated in the ancient epic poetry ; so that their descriptions appeared
rather to be the portraits of real persons than the conceptions of the
individual pcet. It w s not till the minds of the Greeks had been ele-
vated by the productions of the epic muse, that the genius of original
poets broke loose from the dominion of the epic style, and invented
new forms for expressing the emotions of a mind profoundly agitated
by passing events , with fewer innovations in the elegy, but with
greater boldness and novelty in the iambic metre. In these two styles
Df poetry, — the former suited to the expression of grief, the latter to
the expression of anger, hatred, and contempt — Greek poetry entered the
domain of real life.
Yet a great variety of new forms of poetry was reserved for the
invention of future poets. The elegy and the iambus contained the
germs of the lyric style, though they do not themselves come under
that head. The principal characteristic of lyric poetry is its connexion
with music, vocal as well as instrumental. This connexion, indeed,
existed, to a certain extent, in epic, and still more in elegiac and
iambic poetry ; but singing was not essential in those styles. Such
a recitation by a rhapsodist, as was usual for epic poetry, also served,
at least in the beginning, for elegiac, and in great part for iambic
verses. Singing and a continued instrumental accompaniment are appro
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 149
priate, where the expression of feeling or passion is inconsistent with
a more measured and equable mode of recitation. In the attempt to
express these impulses, the alternation of high and low tones would
naturally give rise to singing. Hence, with the fine sense of harmony
possessed by the Greeks, there was produced a rising and falling in the
rhythm, which led to a greater variety and a more skilful arrangement
of metrical forms. Moreover, as the expression of strong feeling
required more pauses and resting-places, the verses in lyric poetry
naturally fell into strophes, of greater or less length ; each of which
comprised several varieties of metre, and admitted of an appropriate
termination. This arrangement of the strophes was, at the same time,
connected with dancing; which was naturally, though not necessa-
rily, associated with lyric poetry. The more lively the expression, the
more animated will be the gestures of the reciter ; and animated and
expiessive movements, which follow the rhythm of a poem, and corre-
spond to its metrical structure, are, in fact, dancing.
The Greek lyric poetry, therefore, was characterized by the expres-
sion of deeper and more impassioned feeling, and a more swelling and
impetuous tone, than the elegy or iambus ; and, at the same time, the
effect was heightened by appropriate vocal and instrumental music,
and often by the movements and figures of the dance. In this union
of the sister arts, poetry was indeed predominant; and music and dancing
were only employed to enforce and elevate the conceptions of the higher
art. Yet music, in its turn, exercised a reciprocal influence on poetry;
so that, as it became more cultivated, the choice of the musical measure
decided the tone of the whole poem. In order, therefore, that the cha-
racter of the Greek lyric poetry may he fully understood, we will prefix
an account of the scientific cultivation of music. Consistently with
this purpose we should limit our attention to the general character
of the music of the ancient Greeks, even if the technical details of the
art, notwithstanding many able attempts to explain them, were not still
enveloped in great obscurity.
§ 2. The mythical traditions of Orpheus, Philammon, Chrysothemis,
and other minstrels of the early times being set aside, the history of
Greek music begins with Terpander the Lesbian. Terpander appears
to have been properly the founder of Greek music. He first reduced to
rule the different modes of singing which prevailed in different coun-
tries, and formed, out of these rude strains, a connected system, from
which the Greek music never departed throughout all the improve-
ments and refinements of later ages. Though endowed with an inven-
tive mind, and the commencer of a new era of music, he attempted
no more than to systematize the musical styles which existed in the tunes
of Greece and Asia Minor. It is probable that Terpander himself
belonged to a family who derived their practice of music from the ancient
Pierian bards of Boeotia ; such an inheritance of musical skill is quite
150 HISTORY OF THE
conformable to the manners and institutions of the early Greeks*. The
jEoliansof Lesbos had their origin in Bceotiaf, the country to which
the worship of the Muses and the Ihracian hymns belonged \\ and
they probably brought with them the first rudiments of poetry. This
migration of the art of the Muses is ingeniously expressed by the legend
that, after the murder of Orpheus by the Thracian Maenads, his head
and lyre were thrown into the sea, and borne upon its waves to the
island of Lesbos ; whence singing and the music of the cithara flourished
in this, the most musical of islands §. The grave supposed to contain
the head of Orpheus was shown in Antissa, a small town of Lesbos ;
and it was thought that in that spot the nightingales sang most
sweetly || . In Antissa also, according to the testimony of several ancient
writers, Terpander was born. In this way, the domestic impressions
and the occupations of his youth may have prepared Terpander for the
great undertaking which he afterwards performed.
The date of Terpander is determined by his appearance in the mother
country of Greece : of his early life in Lesbos nothing is known. The
first account of him describes him in Peloponnesus, which at that time
surpassed the rest of Greece in political power, in well-ordered govern-
ments, and probably also in mental cultivation. It is one of the most
certain dates of ancient chronology, that in the 26th Olympiad (b. g.
676) musical contests were first introduced at the feast of Apollo Car-
neius, and at their first celebration Terpander was crowned victor.
Terpander was also victor four successive times in the musical contests
at the Pythian temple of Delphi, which were celebrated there long before
the establishment of the gymnastic games and chariot races (Ol. 47),
but which then recurred every eight, and not every four years^f. These
Pythian victories ought probably to be placed in the period from the
27th to the 33rd Olympiad. For the 4th year of the 33rd Olympiad
645 B. c.) is the time at which Terpander introduced among the Lace-
daemonians his nomes for singing to the cithara, and generally reduced
music to a system**. At this time, therefore, he had acquired the
greatest renown in his art by his most important inventions. In Lace-
* There were in several of the Greek states, houses or gentes, yivn, in which the
performance of musical exhibitions, especially at festivals, descended as an heredi-
tary privilege. Thus, at Athens, the playing of the cithara at processions belonged
to the Eunids. The Eumolpids of Eleusis were originally, as the name proves, a yens
of singers of hymns (see above, p. 25, ch. iii. § 7). The flute-players of Sparta con-
tinued their art and their rights in families. Stesichorus and Simonides also be
longed to musical families, as we will show below.
t Ch.i. §5 (p. 9). \ Chap.ii. § 8.
§ rritn'iuv S* Io-tJv aDilorccTti, says Phanocles,, the elegiac poet, who gives the most
elegant version of this legend (Stob. tit. lxii. p. 399).
|| Myrsilus of Lesbos, in Antigon. Caryst. Hist. Mirab. c. 5. In the account in
Nicomachus Geraes. Enchir. Harm. ii. p. 29. ed. Meibom. Antissa is mentioned on
the same occasion.
^[ Miillers Dorians, b. iv. ch. vi. §2.
** Marmor Parium, ep. xxxiv. 1. 49, compared with Plutarch de Musica, c. 9.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 151
daemon, whose citizens had from the earliest times been distinguished
for their love of music and dancing, the first scientific cultivation of
music was ascribed to Terpander * ; and a record of the precise time
had been preserved, probably in the registers of the public games.
Hence it appears that Terpander was a younger contemporary of Calli-
nus and Archilochus; so that the dispute among the ancients,
whether Terpander or Archilochus were the elder, must probably be
decided by supposing them to have lived about the same time.
§ 3. At the head of all the inventions of Terpander stands the seven -
stringed cithara. The only accompaniment for the voice used by the
early Greeks was a four-stringed cithara, the tetrachord; and this
instrument had been so generally used, and held in such repute, that
the whole system of music was always founded upon the tetrachord.
Terpander was the first who added three strings to this instrument;
as he himself testifies in two extant verses f. " Disdaining the
four-stringed song, we shall sound new hymns on the seven-stringed
phorminx." The tetrachord was strung so that the two extreme strings
stood to one another in the relation called by the ancients diatcssaron,
and by the moderns a, fourth; that is to say, the lower one made three
vibrations in the time that the upper one made four. Between these two
s'rings, which formed the principal harmony of this simple instrument,
there were two others; and in the most ancient arrangement of the
gamut, called the diatonic, these two were strung so that the three
intervals between these four strings produced twice a whole tone, and
in the third place a semitone. Terpander enlarged this instrument by
adding one tetrachord to another : he did not however make the highest
tone of the lower tetrachord the lowest of the upper, but he left an
interval of one tone between the two tetrachords. By this arrangement
the cithara would have had eight strings, if Terpander had not left out
the third string, which must have appeared to him to be of less import-
ance. The heptachord of Terpander thus acquired the compass of an
octave, or, according to the Greek expression, a diapason ; because the
highest tone of the upper and the lowest of the lower tetrachord stood in
this relation, which is the simplest of all, as it rests upon the ratio of
1 to 2 ; and which was soon acknowledged by the Greeks as the funda-
mental concord. At the same time the highest tone of the upper tetra-
chord stands to the highest of the lower in the relation of the fifth, the
arithmetical expression of which is 2 to 3 ; and in general the tones
were doubtless so arranged that the simplest consonances after the
* h TpaTv KaTatrracri; tuv tip) Th« /aoutrixr,*, says Plutarch de Musica, c. 9.
+ In Euclid, Introd. Harm. p. 19. Partly also in Strabo, xiii. p. 618; Clemens
Alex. Strom, vi. p. 814, Potter. The verses are —
'HfAi7; roi •nrpaywvv a.K<xr<ri$ct>ni; aoii/,v
'Ettoctovm tp'op/jiiyyi vlous xO.abwofniv vfivouf .
Ib2 HISTORY OF THE
octave — that is to say, the fourth and fifth — governed the whole*.
Hence the heptachord of Terpander long remained in high repute, and
was employed by Pindar ; although in his time the deficient string of
the lower tetrachord had been supplied, and an octachord produced f-
§ 4. It will be convenient in this place to explain the difference
between the scales (ytV^), and the styles or harmonies (rjoo7rot,
apfioi'iai) of Greek music, since it is probable that they were regulated
by Terpander. The musical scales are determined by the intervals
between the four tones of the tetrachord. The Greek musicians describe
three musical scales, viz., the diatonic, the chromatic, and the enhar-
monic. In the diatonic, the intervals were two tones and a semi-
tone ; and hence the diatonic was considered the simplest and most
natural, and was the most extensively used. In the chromatic scale
the interval is a tone and a semitone, combined with two other semi-
tones J. This arrangement of the tetrachord was also very ancient,
but it was much less used, because a feeble and languid, though
pleasing character, was ascribed to it. The third scale, the en-
harmonic, was produced by a tetrachord, which, besides an interval
of two tones, had also two minor ones of quarter-tones. This
was the latest of all, and was invented by Olympus, who must
have flourished a short time after Terpander §. The ancients greatly
preferred the enharmonic scale, especially on account of its liveliness
and force. But from the small intervals of quarter tones, the execution
of it required great skill and practice in singing and playing. These
musical scales were further determined by the styles or harmonies,
because on them depended, first, the position or succession of the inter-
vals belonging to the several scales |[, and, secondly, the height and
depth of the who'e gamut. Three styles were known in very early
times, — the Doric, which was the lowest, the Phrygian, the middle one,
and the Lydian, the highest. Of these, the Doric alone is named from
a Greek race; the two others are called after nations of Asia Minor,
whose love for music, and particularly the flute, is well known. It is
probable that national tunes were current among these tribes, whose
* The strings of the heptachord of Terpander were called, beginning from the
highest, Njitjj, ■xa.fiu.vriTr), wa^afiicrn, ftitry, Xi%a.vo;, irxgwrarn, vvurn. The intervals
were 1, 1, 1^-, 1, 1,£, if the heptachord was strung, according to the diatonic scale,
in the Doric style.
f In proof of the account of the heptachord given in the text, see Boeckh de
Metris Pindari. iii. 7, p. 205, sqq.
} Of these short intervals, however, the one is greater than the other, the former
being more, the latter less, than a semitone. The first is called apotome, the other
leimma.
§ See Plutarch de Musica, 7, 11, 20, 29, 33; a treatise full of valuable notices,
but written with so little care that the author often contradicts himself.
\\ For example, whether the intervals of the diatonon are J, 1,1, as in the Doric
style, or 1, $, 1, as in the Phrygian, or 1, 1 J, as in the Lydian.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 153
peculiar character was the origin of these styles. Yet their fixed
and systematic relation to the Doric style must have been the work
of a Greek musician, probably of Terpander himself, who, in his native
island of Lesbos, had frequent opportunities of becoming acquainted
with the different musical styles of his neighbours of Asia Minor. Thus
a fragment of Pindar relates, that Terpander, at the Lydian feasts, had
heard the tone of the pectis, (a Lydian instrument, with a compass of
two octaves,) and had formed from it the kind of lyre which was called
Barbiton*. The Lesbians likewise used a particular sort of cithara,
called the Asiatic ('Ao-tae) ; and this was by many held to be the inven-
tion of Terpander, by others to be the work of his disciple Cepion f.
It is manifest that the Lesbian musicians, with Terpander at their head,
were the means of uniting the music of Asia Minor with that of the
ancient Greeks (which was best preserved among the Dorians in Pelopon-
nesus), and that they founded on it a system, in which each style had its
appropriate character. To the establishment of this character the.
nomes (vofioi) contributed, musical compositions of great simplicity and
severity, something resembling the most ancient melodies of our church
music. The Doric style appears from the statements of all the wit-
nesses to have had a character of great seriousness and gravity, pecu-
liarly calculated to produce a calm, firm, collected frame of mind. "With
regard to the Doric style (says Aristotle), all are agreed that it is the
most sedate, and has the most manly character." The Phrygian style
was evidently derived from the loud vehement styles of music employed
by the Phrygians in the worship of the Great Mother of the gods and
the Corybantes J. In Greece, too, it was used in orgiastic worships,
especially in that of Dionysus. It was peculiarly adapted to the
expression of enthusiasm. The Lydian had the highest notes of any
of the three ancient styles, and therefore approached nearer to the
female voice ; its character was thus softer and feebler than either of
the others. Yet it admitted of considerable variety of expression, as
the melodies of the Lydian style had sometimes a painful and me-
lancholy, sometimes a calm and pleasing character. Aristotle (who, in
his Politics, has given some judicious precepts on the use of music in
education) considers the Lydian style peculiarly adapted to the musical
cultivation of early youth.
In order to complete our view of this subject, we will here give
an account of the other styles of Greek music, although they were
* In Athenseus. xvi. p. G35. There are great difficulties as to the sense of this
much contested passage. Pindar's meaning probably is, that Terpander formed
the deep-resounding barbiton, by taking the lower octave from the pectis (ormagadis).
Among the Greek poets, Sappho is said to have first used the pectis or magadis,
then Anacreon.
f Plutarch de Mus. 6. Anecd. Bekker, vol. i. p. 452. Compare Aristoph.Thesm.
120. with the Scholia.
J See ch.iii. §8.
154 HISTORY OF THE
invented after the time of Terpander. Between the Doric and Phry-
gian styles — with respect to the height and lowness of the tones, —
the Ionic was interpolated ; and between the Phrygian and Lydian,
the iEolic. The former is said to have had a languid and soft, but
pathetic tone ; it was particularly adapted to laments. The latter was
fitted for the expression of lively, and even impassioned feelings ; it is
best known from its use in the remains of the Lesbian poets and
of Pindar. To these five styles were then added an equal number
with higher and lower tones, which were annexed, at their respective
extremes, to the original system. The former were called Hyperdorian,
Hyperiastian, Hyperphrygian, &c. ; the others Hypolydian, Hypoaeolian,
Hypophrygian, &c. Of these styles none belong to this period except
those which approximate closely to the first five, viz., the Hyperlydian,
and the Hyperdorian, which was also called Mixolydian, as bordering
upon the Lydian. The invention of the former is ascribed to Polym-
nestus *, that of the latter to the poetess Sappho ; this latter was pecu-
liarly used for laments of a pathetic and tender cast. But the entire
system of the fifteen styles was only brought gradually to perfection
by the musicians who lived after the times of Pindar.
§ 5. Another proof that Terpander reduced to a regular system the
styles used in his time is, that he was the first who marked the dif-
ferent tones in music. It is stated, that Terpander first added musical
notes to poems t- Of his mode of notation, indeed, we know nothing ;
that subsequently used by the Greeks was introduced in the time of Py-
thagoras. Hence, in later times, there existed written tunes by Terpander,
of the kind called nomes J, whereas the nomes of the ancient bards, Olen,
Philammon, &c, were only preserved by tradition, and must there-
fore have undergone many changes. These nomes of Terpander
were arranged for singing and playing upon the cithara. It cannot,
indeed, be doubted that Terpander made use of the flute, an instrument
generally known among the Greeks in his time ; Archilochus, the con-
temporary of Terpander, even speaks of Lesbian paeans being sung to
the flute§ ; although the cithara was the most usual accompaniment for
songs of this kind. But it appears, on the whole, from the accounts of the
ancients, that the cithara was the principal instrument in the Lesbian
music. The Lesbian school of singers to the cithara maintained its
pre-eminence in the contests, especially at the Carnean festival at Sparta,
up to Pericleitus, the last Lesbian who was victorious on the cithara,
* See§ 11.
t MsXoj <rguro; vrigiiDnxz <ro7s iroijfiuffi, says Clemens Alex. Strom, i. p, 364, B.
Tov Trgvrccvogov xiHagcolitx&iv woinr'/iv ovra vo/a/uv xaia. vcftov 'ixaSTOi to7; 'Irtitri to7s
iaurov kcci ro7; 'opigou t^iXn vripihi/TU. ahav h to'i's clyairiv. Plutarch de Mus. 3, after
Heraclides.
X Above, ch. iii. § 7.
§ Autos t^«px uv *& alxiv Atefiiw iratnova., Archilochus in Athen. v. p. 180, E. fr. 58.
Gaisford. It may also be conjectured from the mutilated passage of the Parian
marble, Ep. 35, that Terpander practised flute-playing.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 155
and who lived before Hipponax (Olym. 60)*. Probably some of these
nomes of Terpander were improvements on ancient tunes used in
religious rites ; and this appears to be the meaning of the statement
that some of the nomes noted down by Terpander were invented by the
ancient Delphic bard Philammon. Others seem to have grown out of
popular songs, to which the names of iEolic and Boeotian nomes allude f.
The greater number were probably invented by Terpander himself.
These nomes of Terpander were finished compositions, in which a cer-
tain musical idea was systematically worked out ; as is proved by the
different parts which belonged to one of them J.
The rhythmical form of Terpander's compositions was very simple.
He is said to have added musical notes to hexameters §. In particular
he arranged passages of the Homeric poems (which hitherto had only
been recited by rhapsodists) to a musical accompaniment on the cithara ;
he also composed hymns in the same metre, which probably resembled
the Homeric hymns, though with somewhat of the lyric character ||.
But the nomes of Terpander can scarcely all have had the simple uni-
form rhythm of the heroic hexameter. That they had not, is proved
by the names of two of Terpander's nomes, the Orthian and the
Trochaic; so called (according to the testimony of Pollux and other
grammarians) from the rhythms. The latter was, therefore, composed
in trochaic metre ; the former in those orthian rhythms, the peculiarity
of which consists in a great extension of certain feet. There is like-
wise a fragment of Terpander, consisting entirely of long s)llables, in
which the thought is as weighty and elevated as the metre is solemn
and dignified. "Zeus, first cause of all, leader of all; Zeus, to thee
I send this beginning of hymns <fl\" Metres composed exclusively of
Ion"- syllables were employed for religious ceremonies of the greatest
solemnity. The name of the spondaic foot, which consisted of two long
syllables, was derived from the libation (cnrovd))), at which a sacred
silence was observed**. Hymns of this kind were often sung to Zeus
in his ancient sanctuary of Dodona, on the borders of Thesprotia and
Molossia ; and hence is explained the name of the Molossian foot, con-
* Hence in Sappho, fr. 52, Blomf. (GO, Neue), the Lesbian singer is called vlppo%/>s
a.XXooa.<7roli(riv.
t Plutarch de Mus. 4. Pollux iv. 9. 65.
{ These, according to Pollux, iv.9, 6t>, were 'iva^u.. piraexa, xarurgo-ra, ih.itu.ku.tu.-
r^o'ra, bft<pu.\os, trtpguys, iTTiXoyos.
§ See, particularly, Plutarch de Mus. 3; cf. 4. C. ; Proclus in Photius, Biblioth.
p. 523.
| It i«, however, possible that some of the smaller Homeric hymns may have
been proems of this kind by Terpander. For example, that to Athene (xxviii.)
appears to be peculiarly fitted for s:nging to the cithara.
•[f 7,iu, rruvrciiv u.^x a i vavruv a-ynrag,
'/.iv. iroi v'iu.vw ravrav bf&vwv ugfcdv.
In Clemens Alex. Strom, vi. p. 784. who also states that this hymn to Zeus was
set in the Doric style.
* ibtpr./jLiu..
156 HISTORY OP THE
sisting of three long syllables, by which the fragment of Terpander
ought probably to be measured.
§ 6. The accounts of Terpander's inventions, and the extant remains
of his nomes, however meagre and scanty, give some notion of his
merits as the father of Grecian music. Another ancient master, how-
ever, the Phrygian musician Olympus, so much enlarged the system
of the Greek music, that Plutarch considers him, and not Terpander,
as the founder of it.
The date, and indeed the whole history of this Olympus, are involved
in obscurity, by a confusion between him (who is certainly as historical
as Terpander) and a mythological Olympus, who is connected with
the first founders of the Phrygian religion and worship. Even Plu-
tarch, who in his learned treatise upon music has marked the distinc-
tion between the earlier and the later Olympus, has still attributed
inventions to the fabulous Olympus which properly belong to the his-
torical one. The ancient Olympus is quite lost in the dawn of mythical
legends ; he is the favourite and disciple of the Phrygian Silenus, Mar-
syas, who invented the flute, and used it in his unfortunate contest with
the cithara of the Hellenic god Apollo. The invention of nomes could
only be ascribed to this fabulous Olympus, and to the still more ancient
Hyagnis, as certain nomes were attributed by the Greeks to Olen and
Philammon ; that is to say, certain tunes were sung at festivals, which
tradition assigned to these nomes. There was also in Phrygia a family
said to be descended from the mythical Olympus, the members of which,
probably, played sacred tunes on the flute at the festivals of the Magna
Mater: to this family, according to Plutarch, the later Olympus
belonged.
§ 7. This later Olympus stands midway between his native country
Phrygia and the Greek nation. Phrygia, which had in general little
connexion with the Greek religion, and was remarkable only for its
enthusiastic rites and its boisterous music, obtained, by means of
Olympus, an important influence upon the music, and thus upon the
poetry, of Greece. But Olympus would not have been able to exercise
this influence, if he had not, by a long residence in Greece, become
acquainted with the Greek civilization. It is stated that he produced
new tunes in the Greek sanctuary of Pytho; and that he had disciples
who were Greeks, such as Crates and Hierax the Argive*. It was by
means of Olympus that the flute attained an equal place in Greek music
with the cithara ; by which change music gained a much greater com-
pass than before. It was much easier to multiply the tones of the flute
than those of the cithara ; especially as the ancient flute-players were
accustomed to play upon two flutes at once. Hence the severe censors
* The former is mentioned by Plutarch de Mus. 7 ; the latter by the same
writer, c. 2G, and Pollux iv. 10. 79. Accordingly it is not probable that this second
Olympus was a. mythical personage, or a collective appellation of the Phrygian
nius'c in its improved state.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 157
of music in antiquity disapproved of the flute on moral grounds, since
they considered the variety of its tones as calculated to seduce the
player into an unchaste and florid style of music. Olympus also in-
vented and cultivated the third musical scale, the enharmonic ; the
powerful effects of which, as well as its difficulties, have been already
mentioned. His nomes were accordingly auletic, that is, intended for
the flute, and belonged to the enharmonic scale.
Among the different names which have been preserved, that of the
Harmateios Nomos may be particularly mentioned, as we are able to
form a tolerably correct idea of its nature. In the Orestes of Euripides,
a Phrygian Eirnuch in the service of Helen, who has just escaped the
murderous hands of Orestes and Pylades, describes his dangers
in a monody, in which the liveliest expression of pain and terror is
blended with a character of Asiatic softness. This song, of which
the musical accompaniment was doubtless composed with as much
art as the rhythmical structure, was set to the harmatian nome, as
Euripides makes his Phrygian say. This mournful and passionate
music appears to have been particularly adapted to the talent and taste
of Olympus. At Delphi, where the solemnities of the Pythian games
turned principally upon the fight of Apollo with the Python, Olympus
is said to have played a dirge in honour of the slain Python upon the
flute and in the Lydian style *. A nome of Olympus played upon
several flutes (Z,vvav\ia) was well known at Athens. Aristophanes, ir.
the beo-innins; of his Knights, describes the two slaves of Demus as
giving utterance to their griefs in this tune. But from the esteem in
which Olympus was held by the ancients, it seems improbable that all
his compositions were of this gloomy character; and we may therefore
fairly attribute a greater variety to his genius. His nome to Athene
probably had the energetic and serene tone which suited the worship of
this goddess. Olympus also shows great richness of invention in his
rhythmical forms, and particularly in such as seemed to the Greeks
expressive of enthusiasm and emotion. It appears probable from
a statement in Plutarch, that he introduced the rhythm of the songs
to the Magna Mater, or Galliambi f. The Atys of Catullus shows what
an impression of melancholy, beauty and tenderness this metre was capa-
ble of producing, when handled by a skilful artist.
A more important fact, however, is, that Olympus introduced not
only the third scale of music, but also a third class of rhythms. All
* With this is connected the account that Olympus the Mysian cultivated the
Lydian style, i^Xots^vwsv. Clem. Alex. Strom. i.p.363. Potter.
t The passage of Plutarch de Musica, c. xxix., *«/ -rot x ^' * (pi/tytov), $ ToXkv
x'sxpwrai in rolf M»t*»'<»j, probably refers to the 'Iwvixo; avaxXufiivof, which, on account
of the prevalence of trochees in it might probably be considered as belonging to the
i 58 HISTORY OF THE
(he early rhythmical forms are of two kinds*, the equal (iffor), in which
the arsis is equal to the thesis; and the double (InrXaaiov), in which
the arsis is twice as long as the thesis. The former is the hasis of the
hexameter, the latter of the chief part of the poetry of Archilochus.
The equal rhythm is most appropriate, when a calm composed state of
mind is to be expressed, as there is a perfect balance of the arsis and
thesis. The double rhythm has a rapid and easy march, and is
therefore adapted to the expression of passion, but not of great or
elevated sentiments, the double arsis requiring no great energy to
carry forward the light thesis. Now, besides these, there is a third
kind of rhythm, called, from the relation of the arsis to the thesis,
one and a half (J^iokiov) ; in which an arsis of two times answers to
a thesis of three. The Cretan foot (_/_u — ), and the multifarious class
of paeons belong to this head (looo,uuul, &c), to which last the
theoretical writers of antiquity ascribe much life and energy, and at
the same time, loftiness of expression. That the poets and musicians
considered it in the same light may be inferred from the use which they
made of it. Olympus was the first who cultivated this rhythm, as we
learn from Plutarch, and it is almost needless to remark that this exten-
sion of the rhythms agrees with the other inventions of Olympus \.
§ 8. It appears, therefore, that Olympus exercised an important
influence in developing the rhythms, the instrumental music, and the
musical scales of the Greeks, as well as in the composition of numerous
nomes. Yet if we inquire to what words his compositions were arranged,
we can find no trace of a verse written by him. Olympus is never, like
Terpander, mentioned as a poet ; he is simply a musician \. His
nomes, indeed, seem to have been originally executed on the flute alone,
without singing ; and he himself, in the tradition of the Greeks, was
celebrated as a flute-player. It was a universal custom at this time to
select the flute-players for the musical performances in Greek cities
from among the Phrygians : of this nation, according to the testimony
of Athenaeus, were Iambus, Adon and Telos, mentioned by the Lacedae-
monian lyric poet Alcman, and Cion, Codalus, and Babys, mentioned
by Hipponax. Hence, for example, Plutarch says, that Thaletas took
the Cretan rhythm from the flute-playing of Olympus §, and thus
acquired the fame of a good poet. Since Olympus did not properly
belong to the Greek literature, and did not enter the lists with the poets
* Above, chap. xi. §8.
f According to Plutarch de Mus. c. 29. Some also ascribe to Olympus the
B«*£s7«j puPpos (u—'-), which belongs to the same family, though its form makes
a less pleasing impression.
\ Suidas attributes to him pixy and IXiytTxi, which may be a confusion between
compositions in the lyric and elegiac style and poetical texts.
§ IktHs 'oxi/i-rou abxiertus, Plutarch de Mus.c. 10 ; cf. c. 15. Hence also, inc. 7, au-
letic nomes are ascribed to Olympus; but in c. 3 the first aulodic nomes are ascribed
to Clonas.
LITERATURE OF ANCIKN1 GREECE. 159
of Greece, it is natural that his precise date should not have been
recorded. His date, however, is sufficiently marked by the advances of
the Greek music and rhythm due to his efforts; and the generation to
which he belonged can thus be determined. For, as it appears both
from the nature of his inventions and from express testimony that
music had made some progress in his time, he must be later than Ter-
pander; on the other hand, he must be prior to Thaletas, according to
the statement just mentioned ; so that he must be placed between the
30th and 40th Olympiads (b. c. 060—20) *.
§ 9. Thaletas makes the third epoch in the history of Greek music.
A native of Crete, he found means to express in a musical form the
spirit which pervaded the religious institutions of his country, by which
he produced a strong impression upon the other Greeks. He seems
to have been partly a priest and partly an artist; and from this circum-
stance his history is veiled in obscurity. He is called a Gortynian, but
is also said to have been born at Elyrus; the latter tradition may per-
haps allude to the belief that the mythical expiatory priest Carmanor
(who was supposed to have purified Apollo himself from the slaughter of
the Python, and to have been the father of the bard Chrysothemis)
lived at Tarrha, near Elyrus, in the mountains on the west of Crete.
It is at any rate certain that Thaletas was connected with this ancient
seat of religious poetry and music, the object of which was to appease
passion and emotion. Thaletas was in the height of his fame invited
to Sparta, that he might restore peace and order to the city, at that
time torn by intestine commotions. In this attempt he is supposed to
have completely succeeded ; and his political influence on this occasion
gave rise to the report that Lycurgus had been instructed by him f.
In fact, however, Thaletas lived several centuries later than Ly-
curgus, having been one of the musicians who assisted in perfecting
Terpander's musical system at Sparta, and giving it a new and fixed
form. The musicians named by Plutarch, as the arrangers of - this
second system, are Thaletas of Gortyna, Xenodamus of Cythera, Xeno-
critus the Locrian, Polymnestus of Colophon, Sacadas of Argos.
Among these, however, the last named are later than the former ; as
Polymnestus composed for the Lacedaemonians a poem in honour of
Thaletas, which is mentioned by Pausanias. If, therefore, Sacadas was
a victor in the Pythian games in Olymp. 47, 3 (b. c. 590), and if
this may be taken as the time when the most recent of these musi-
cians flourished, the first of them, Thaletas, may be fixed not later
* Accordiiiiito Suidas, Olympus was contemporary with a king Midas, the son of
Gordius ; but this is no argument against the assumed date, as the Phrygian kings,
down to the time of Croesus, were alternately named Midas and Gordius.
•f Nevertheless Straho, x. p. 481, justly calls Thaletas a legislative man. Like the
Cretan training in general (^Elian V. H. ii. 39,) he doubtless combined poetry and
music with a measured and well-ordered conduct.
1G0 HISTORY OF THE
than the 40th Olympiad (b. c. 620); which places him in the right rela-
tion to Terpander and Olympus*.
§ 10. We now return to the musical and poetical productions of
Thaletas, which were connected with the ancient religious rites of his
country. In Crete, at the time of Thaletas, the predominating worship was
that of Apollo; the character of which was a solemn elevation of mind,
a firm reliance in the power of the god, and a calm acquiescence in the
order of things proclaimed by him. But it cannot be doubted that the
ancient Cretan worship of Zeus was also practised, with the wild war
dances of the Curetes, like the Phrygian worship of the Magna Mater t.,
The musical and poetical works of Thaletas fall under two heads — fceans
and fiyporchemes. In many respects these two resembled each other;
inasmuch as the paean originally belonged exclusively to the worship of
Apollo, and the hyporcheme was also performed at an early date in
temples of Apollo, as at Delos J. Hence paeans and hyporchemes were
sometimes confounded. Their main features, however, were quite dif-
ferent. The psean displayed the calm and serious feeling which pre-
vailed in the worship of Apollo, without excluding the expression of an
earnest desire for his protection, or of gratitude for aid already vouch-
safed. The hyporcheme, on the other hand, was a dance of a mimic
character, which sometimes passed into the playful and the comic.
Accordingly the hyporchematic dance is considered as a peculiar species
of the lyric dances, and, among dramatic styles of dancing, it is com-
pared with the cordax of comedy, on account of its merry and sportive
tone§. The rhythms of the hyporcheme, if we may judge from the
fragments of Pindar, were peculiarly light, and had an imitative and
graphic character.
These musical and poetical styles were improved by Thaletas, who
employed both the orchestic productions of his native country, and the
impassioned music and rhythms of Olympus. It has already been re-
marked that he borrowed the Cretan rhythm from Olympus, which doubt-
less acquired this name from its having been made known by Thaletas
of Crete. The entire class of feet to which the Cretan foot belongs,
were called Pceons, from being used in paeans (or paeons). Thaletas
doubtless gave a more rapid march to the paean by this animated and
vigorous rhythm j|. But the hyporchematic productions of Thaletas
must have been still gayer and more energetic. And Sparta was the
* Clinton, who, in Fast. Hellen. vol. 1. p. 199, sq., places Thaletas before Ter-
pander, rejects the most authentic testimony, that concerning the xara.<T<ra<ris of
music at Sparta ; and moreover, does not allow sufficient weight to the far more
artificial character of the music and rhythms of Thaletas.
f K«i/f tJTis Ti. hot (piXotfx'i'yf&oHs fyxwrngis. Hesiod, fr. 94. Goettling.
I Above, ch. iii, § 6. § Athen. xiv. p. 630, E.
II Fragments of a paean in pseons are preserved in Aristotle, Rhet. iii. 8, viz. —
AaXoyin;, ilri Auuictv, and XevmoKOfta. "Euan, no.! At'os •
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 161
country which at this time was best suited to the music of dancing.
The Gymnopaedia, the festival of " naked youths," one of the chief
solemnities of the Spartans, was well calculated to encourage the love of
gymnastic exercises and dances among the youth. The boys in these
dances first imitated the movements of wrestling and the pancration;
and then passed into the wild gestures of the worship of Bacchus *.
There was also much jesting and merriment in these dances-f ; a fact
which points to mimic representations in the style of the hyporcheme,
especially as the establishment of dances and musical entertainments at
the gymnopaedia is ascribed by Plutarch to the musicians, at the head
of whom was Thaletas J. The Pyrrhic, or war-dance, was also formed
by the musicians of this school, particularly by Thaletas. It was a
favourite spectacle of the Cretans and Lacedaemonians ; and both these
nations derived it from their ancestors, the former from the Curetes,
the latter from the Dioscuri. It was accompanied by the flute, which
could only have been the case after the music of the flute had been
scientifically cultivated by the Greeks; although there was a legend that
Athene herself played the war-dance upon the flute to the Dioscuri §.
It was a natural transition from the simple war-dance to imitations of
different modes of fighting, offensive and defensive, and to the regular
representation of mock fights with several Pyrrhichists. According to
Plato, the Pyrrhic dance was thus practised in Crete ; and Thaietas, in
improving the national music of Crete, composed hyporchemes for the
Pyrrhic dance. The rhythms which were chosen for the expression of
the hurried and vehement movements of the combat were of course
quick and changeable, as was usually the case in the hyporchematic
poems; the names of some of the metrical feet have been derived from
the rhythms employed in the Pyrrhic dance |.
§ 11. Terpander, Olympus, and Thaletas are distinguished by the
salient peculiarities which belong to inventive genius. But it is difficult
to find any individual characteristics in the numerous masters who
followed them between the 40th and 50th Olympiads. It may, however,
be useful to mention some of their names, in order to give an idea of
the zeal with which the Greek music was cultivated, after it had passed
out of the hands of its first founders and improvers.
The first name we will mention is Clonas, of Thebes, or Tegea, not
* These gymnopaedic dances, described by Athenaeus, xiv. p. 631, xv. p. G78,
were evidently different from the yuftvovruihiKh og%wn, which, according to the same
Athenaeus, was the most solemn kind of lyric dance, and corresponded to the em-
melt-ia among the dramatic dances.
f Pollux iv. 14, 104.
I Plutarch de Mus. 0. The ancient chronologists place the first introduction of
the gymnopaedia somewhat earlier, viz. Olymp. 28. 4. (u. c. CG3.)
§ See Muller's Dorians, book iv.ch. 6. § 6 and 7.
|| Not only the Pyrrhic (oo), but also the proceleusmatic, or challenging, foot
(OJ'jy), refers to the Pyrrhic dance. The latter ought probably to be considered
ft resolved anapaest ; and so the |v«srt.»f fvifto; is removed to the anapaestic measure,
M
162 HISTORY OF THE
much later than Terpander, celebrated as a composer of aulodic nomes,
one of which was called Elegos, on account of its plaintive tone. The
poetry, which was set to his compositions and sung to the flute, chiefly
consisted of hexameters and elegiac distichs, without any artificial rhyth-
mical construction. Secondly, Hierax, of Argos, a scholar of Olympus,
was a master of flute -playing ; he invented the music to which the Argive
maidens performed the ceremony of the Flower-carrying (cu'fao^oota),
in the temple of Here ; and another in which the youths represented
the graceful exercises of the Pentathlon. We will next enumerate the
masters who, after Thalelas, contributed the most towards the new
arrangement of music in Sparta. These were Xenodamus, a Lacedae-
monian ofCythera, a poet and composer of pseans and hyporchemes,
like Thaletas ; Xenocritus, from Locri Epizephyrii in Italy, a town
noted for its taste in music, and poetry. To this Xenocritus is attributed
a peculiar Locrian, or Italian measure, which was a modification of the
iEolic*; as the Locrian love-songs f approached closely to the iEolic
poetry of Sappho and Erinna. Erotic poems, however, are not attributed
to Xenocritus, but dithyrambs, the subjects of which were taken from
the heroic mythology ; a peculiar kind of poetry, the origin and style
of which we will endeavour to describe hereafter. Lastly, there are to
be mentioned Polymnestus, of Colophon J, and Sacadas, of Argos ;
the former was an early contemporary of Alcman, who improved upon
the aulodia of Clonas, and exceeded the limits of the five styles §.
He appears, in general, to have enlarged the art of music, and was
particularly distinguished in the loud and spirited Orthian nome.
Sacadas was celebrated as having been victorious in flute-playing, at
the first three Pythian games, at which the Amphictyons presided
(Olymp. 47. 3; 49.3; 50. 3; b. c. 590, 582, 578). He first
played the flute in the Pythian style, but without singing. He left this
branch of the art to Echembrotus, an Arcadian musician, who, in the
first Pythiad, gained the prize for accompanying the voice with the
flute. But, according to Pausanias, this connexion of flute-playing
and singing seemed, from its mournful and gloomy expression, so
unsuited to the Pythian festival — a joyful celebration of victory, — that
the Amphictyons abolished this contest after the first time. With
regard to Sacadas, and the state of music in his time, he is stated to have
been the inventor of the tripartite nome {rpi^epiie *'o//oe), in which one
strophe was set in the Doric, the second in the Phrygian, the third in
the Lydian style; the entire character of the music and poetry being,
doubtless, changed with the change of the style.
* Boeckh do Metris Pind. p. 212, 225, 241, 279.
■}■ AoKfiiKa aiTf/.a,ra.
I The son of Meles, a name derived from Smyrna, which seems to have bet-n
often adopted in families of musicians and poets. (See above, ch. 5, § 2.)
§ By the vxo\6ln>s <rovo;, Plutarch de Mus. c. 29, although c.8 does not agree with
this statement. (See above, § 4.)
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 163
§ 12. By the efforts of these masters, music appears to have been
brought to the degree of excellence at which we find it in Pindar's
time ; it was then perfectly adapted to express the general course of any
feeling-, to which the poet could give a more definite character and
meaning. For however imperfect the management of instrumental
music and the harmonious combination of different voices and instru-
ments may have been among the ancient Greeks, nevertheless the Greek
musicians of this time had solved the great problem of their art, viz.,
that of giving an appropriate expression to the different shades of feel-
ing. It was in Greece the constant endeavour of the great poets, the
best thinkers, and even of statesmen who interested themselves in the
education of youth, to give a good direction to music ; they all dreaded
the increasing prevalence of a luxuriant style of instrumental music, and
an unrestricted flight in the boundless realms of harmony. But these
efforts could only for a while resist the inclinations and turbulent de-
mands of the theatrical audiences* ; and the new style of music was
established about the end of the Peloponnesian war. It will be here-
after shown how strong an influence it exercised upon the poetry of
Greece at that time. At the courts of the Macedonian kings, from
Alexander downwards, symphonies were performed by hundreds of in-
struments ; and from the statements of the ancients it would seem that
instrumental music, particularly as regards wind instruments, was at
that time scarcely inferior in force or number to our own. Yet amidst
all these grand and brilliant productions, the best judges were forced to
confess that the ancient melodies of Olympus, which were arranged for
the simplest instruments, possessed a beauty to which the modern art,
with all its appliances, could never attain f.
We now turn to lyric poetry, which, assisted by the musical improve •
ments of Terpander, Olympus, and Thaletas, began in the 40th Olym-
piad (620 b. c.) a course, which, in a century and a half, brought it to
the highest perfection.
* The hocTQDK^aria of Plato. f Plutarch de Mus. c. 18.
M2
164 HISTORY OF THE
CHAPTER XIII.
§ 1. Difference between the Lyric Poetry of the /Eolians, and the Choral Lyric
Poetry of the Dorians. — § 2. Life and political Acts of Alcseus. — § 3. Their con-
nexion with his Poetry. — § 4. The other subjects of his Poems. — § 5. Their me-
trical form. — § 6. Life and moral character of Sappho. — § 7. Her Erotic Poetry
to Phaon. — § 8. Poems of Sappho to women. — § 9. Hymenaeals of Sappho. —
§ 10. Followers of Sappho, Damophila, Erinna. — § 11. Life of Anacreon. — § 12.
His Poems to the youths at the Court of Polycrates § 13. His Love-songs to
Hetserae. — § 14. Character of his versification § 15. Comparison of the later
Anacreontics. — § 16. Scolia; occasions on which they were sung, and their sub-
jects. — § 17. Scolia of Hybrias and Callistratus.
§ 1. The lyric poetry of the Greeks is of two kinds, which were culti-
vated by different schools of poets ; the name which is commonly given
to poets living in the same country, and following the same rules of com-
position. Of these two schools, one is called the Molic, as it flourished
among the iEolians of Asia Minor, and particularly in the island of
Lesbos ; the other the Doric, because, although it was diffused over the
whole of Greece, yet it was first and principally cultivated by the Do-
rians in Peloponnesus and Sicily. The difference of origin appears also
in the dialect of these two schools. The Lesbian school wrote in the
/Eolic dialect, as it is still to be found upon inscriptions in that island,
while the Doric employed almost indifferently either a mitigated Do-
rism, or the epic dialect, the dignity and solemnity of which was
heightened by a limited use of Doric forms. These two schools differ
essentially in every respect, as much in the subject, as in the form and
style of their poems; and as in the Greek poetry generally, so here in
particular, we may perceive that between the subject, form, and style }
there is the closest connexion. To begin with the mode of recitation, the
Doric lyric poetry was intended to be executed by choruses, and to be
sung to choral dances, whence it is sometimes called choral poetry : on
the other hand, the iEolic is never called choral, because it was meant
to be recited by a single person, who accompanied his recitation with a
stringed instrument, generally the lyre, and with suitable gestures.
The structure of the Doric lyric strophe is comprehensive, and often
very artificial ; inasmuch as the ear, which might perhaps be unable to
detect the recurring rhythms, was assisted by the eye, which could fol-
low the different movements of the chorus, and thus the spectator was
able to understand the intricate and artificial plan of the composition.
The JEolic lyric poetry, on the other hand, was much more limited, and
either consisted of verses joined together (to mito. ari-^ov), or it formed
of a few short verses, strophes in which the same verse is frequently re-
peated, and the conclusion is effected by a change in the versification,
or by the addition of a short final verse. The strophes of the Doric
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 165
lyric poetry were also often combined by annexing - to two strophes
corresponding with one another, a third and different one called an
epoch. The origin of this, according to the ancients, is, that the chorus,
having performed one movement during the strophe, return to their
former position during the antistrophe ; and they then remain motion-
less for a time, during which the epode is sung. The short strophes of
the iEolic lyric poetry, on the other hand, follow each other in ecpial
measure, and without being interrupted by epodes. The rhythmical
structure of the choral strophes of the Doric lyric poetry is likewise
capable of much variety, assuming sometimes a more elevated, some-
times a more cheerful character ; whilst in the iEolic, light and lively
metres, peculiarly adapted to express the passionate emotion of an ex-
citable mind, are frequently repeated.
Choral poetry required an object of public and general interest, as
the choruses were combined with religious festivals ; and if they were
celebrated in private, they always needed a solemn occasion and cele-
bration. Thoughts and feelings peculiar to an individual could not,
with propriety, be sung by a numerous chorus. Hence the choral lyric
poetry was closely connected with the interests of the Greek states,
either by celebrating their gods and heroes, and imparting a charm and
dignity to the festal recreations of the people, or by extolling citizens
who had acquired high renown in the eyes of their countrymen. It
was also sometimes used at marriages or funerals ; — occasions in
which the events of private life are brought into public notice. On the
other hand, the iEolic lyric poetry frequently expresses thoughts and
feelings in which only one mind can sympathize, and expresses them
with such tenderness as to display the inmost workings of the heart.
How would such impressions be destroyed by the singing of a chorus
of many voices ! Even when political events and other matters of public
interest were touched upon in the JEoWc lyric poetry, they were not
mentioned in such a manner as to invite general sympathy. Instead of
seeking, by wise admonitions, to settle the disorders of the state, the
poet gives expression to his own party feelings. Nevertheless, it is pro-
bable that the iEolic poets sometimes composed poems for choral ex-
hibition, for choruses were undoubtedly performed in Lesbos, as well as
in other parts of Greece ; and although some ancient festival songs
might have existed, yet there would naturally be a wish to obtain new
poetry, for which purpose the labour of the poets in the island would
be put in requisition. Several of the Lesbian lyric poems, of which
we have fragments and accounts, appear to have been composed for
choral recitation *. But the characteristic excellence of this lyric poetry
* Especially the hymenseus of Sappho, from which the poem of Catullus, C>2, is
imitated; it was recited by choruses of \ounif men and women; see below § 'J.
Choral dances had been usual, in connexion with the hyinennuis, from tbe earliest
times ; see above ch. 2, 5 Bi So likewise the fragment of Sappho, Kfitraai w vof ub',
&c, No. 83, ed. BlomhVld, No. 4(>, ed. None, alludes to some imitation of a Cretan
1G5 HISTORY OF THE
was the expression of individual ideas and sentiments, with warmth and
frankness. These sentiments found a natural expression in the native
dialect of these poets, the ancient JEolic, which has a character of sim-
plicity and fondness ; the epic dialect, the general language of Greek
poetry, was only used sparingly, in order to soften and elevate this po-
pular dialect. Unhappily the works of these poets were allowed to
perish at a time when they had become unintelligible from the singu-
larity of their dialect, and the condensation of their thoughts. To this
cause, and not to the warmth of their descriptions of the passion of love,
is to be attributed the oblivion to which they were consigned. For if lite-
rary works had been condemned on moral grounds of this kind, the
writings of Martial and Petronius, and many poems of the Anthology,
would not exist ; while Alceeus and Sappho would probably be extant.
As, however, the productions of these two poets have not been preserved,
we must attempt to form as perfect an idea of them as can be obtained
from the sources of information which are open to us.
§ 2. The circumstances of the life of Alceeus are closely connected
with the political circumstances of his native city Mytilene, in the island
of Lesbos. Alca3us belonged to a noble family, and a great part of his
public life was employed in asserting the privileges of his order. These
were then endangered by democratic factions, which appear to have
placed ambitious men at their head, and to have given them powerful
support, as happened about the same time in Peloponnesus. In many
cases the demagogues obtained absolute, or (as the Greeks called it)
tyrannical power. A tyrant of this kind in Mytilene was Melanchrus,
who was opposed by the brothers of Alceeus, Antimenidas and Cicis, in
conjunction with Pittacns, the wisest statesman of the time in Lesbos,
and was slain by them in the 42d Olympiad, 612 b. c. At this time
the Mytileneans were at war with foreign enemies, the Athenians, who,
under Phrynon, had conquered and retained possession of Sigeum, a
maritime town of Troas. The Mytileneans, among whom was Alcams,
were defeated in this war ; but Pittacus slew Phrynon in single combat,
Olymp. 43. 3. 606 b. c. Mytilene henceforth was divided into parties,
from the heads of which new tyrants arose, such as (according to
Strabo) Myrsilus, Megalagyrus, and the Cleanactids. The aristocratic
party, to which Alcaeus and Antimenidas belonged, was driven out of
Mytilene, and the two brothers then wandered about the world. Alceeus,
being exiled, made long sea voyages, which led him to Egypt ; and
Antimenidas served in the Babylonian army, probably in the war which
Nebuchadnezzar waged in Upper Asia with the Egyptian Pharaoh
Necho, and the states of Syria, Phoenicia, and Judaea, in the years from
dance round the altar; and dances of this kind were, perhaps, often combined, with
the hymns of the «3Misns ; see Anthol. Palat. 1, 189. Anacrton's poems were also
tu-.isr by female choruses at nocturnal festivals, according to Crilias ap. Athen. xiii,
p. 600 D.
LITERATURE OV ANCIENT GREECE. 16?
b. c. 606 (01. 43. 3) to 584 (01. 49. 1), and longer* Some time
after this we again find the brothers in the neighbourhood of their native
city, at the head of the exiled nobles, and trying to effect their return
by force. Pittacus was then unanimously elected dictator by the people,
to defend the constitution, (cucn;/^j'//r>jc'). The administration of Pit-
tacus lasted, according to the accounts of ancient chronologers, from
Olymp. 47. 3. (b. c. 590), to 50. 1. (b. c. 580). He was so fortunate
as to overcome the exiled party, and to gain them over by his clemency
and moderation, lie also (according to a well authenticated statement)
was reconciled with Alceeus ; and it is probable that the poet, after
many wanderings, passed his latter days in the quiet enjoyment of his
home.
§ 3. In the midst of these troubles and perils, Alcams struck the
lyre, not, like Solon, with a spirit of calm and impartial patriotism, to
bewail the evils of the state, and to show the way to improvement, but to
give utterance to the passionate emotions of his mind. When Myrsilus
was about to establish a tyrannical government in Mytilene, Alcaeus
composed the beautiful ode, in which he compares the state to a ship
tossed about by the waves, while the sea has washed into the hold, ana
the sail is torn by the wind. A considerable fragment of this ode has
been preserved t ; and we may also form some idea of its contents from
the fine imitation of it by Horace, which, however, probably falls short
of the original \. When Myrsilus dies, the joy of the poet knows no
bounds. " Now is the time for carousing, now is the time for chal-
lenging the guests to drink, for Myrsilus is dead §." 'Horace has also
taken the beginning of this ode for one of his finest poems ||. After
the death of Myrsilus, we find Alcreus aiming the shafts of his poetry
at Megalagyrus and the Cleanactids, on account of their attempts
to obtain illegal power ; although, according to Strabo, Alcseus himself
was not entirely guiltless of attempts against the constitution of Myti-
lene. Even when Pittacus was chosen dictator by the people, the dis-
content of the poet with the political state of his country did not cease ;
on the contrary, Pittacus (who was esteemed by all a wise, moderate,
and patriotic statesman, and who had clearly shown his republican
virtue by resigning his power after a ten years' administration) now be-
came the prime object of the vehement attacks of Alcseus. He reproaches
the people for having unanimously chosen the ignoble ^[ Pittacus to be
tyrant over the ill-fated city ; and he assails the dictator with vitupera-
* The battle of Carchemish, or Circesium, appears from Bcrosus to fall in G04 u. o.,
the year of Nabopolassafs death; but 606 d. c, the date of the biblical chronology.,
is probably right.
| Fragm. 2. Blomf. 2. Matth. cf. 3.
I ('arm. 1, 14. uavis referent —
§ Fragm. 4. Blomf. 4. Matth.
|| ('arm. 1. 37. Nunc est bihendum —
'"' r«y xaxivurgda UirTstxcv, Frsigm.23. Blomf. 5. Matth.
^58 HISTORY OP THE
live epithets which appear fitter for iambic than for lyric poetry. Thus
he taunts him in words of the boldest formation, sometimes with his
mean appearance, sometimes with his low and vulgar mode of life *.
As compared with Pittacus, it seems that the poet now deemed the
former tyrant Melanchrus, " worthy of the respect of the city f."
In this class of his poems (called by the ancients his party poems,
Zi X o<7ra(naaTiK&), Meatus gave a lively picture of the political state of
Mytilene, as it appeared to his partial view. His war-songs express a
stirring martial spirit, though they do not breathe the strict principles of
military honour which prevailed among the Dorians, particularly in
Sparta." He describes with joy his armoury, the walls of which glit-
tered with helmets, coats of mail, and other pieces of armour, " which
must now be thought upon, as the work of war is begun J." He
speaks of war with courage and confidence to his companions in arms;
there is no need of walls (he says), " men are the best rampart of the
city § ;" nor does he fear the shining weapons of the enemy. " Em-
blems on shields make no wounds ||." He celebrates the battles of his
adventurous brother, who had, in the service of the Babylonians, slain a
gigantic champion %; and speaks of the ivory sword-handle which this
brother had brought from the extremity of the earth, probably the pre-
sent of some oriental prince **. Yet the pleasure he seems to have felt
in deeds of arms did not prevent him from relating in one of his poems,
how in a battle with the Athenians he had escaped indeed with his life,
but the victors had hung up his castaway arms as trophies, in the
temple of Pallas at Sigeum f f .
§ 4. A noble nature, accompanied with strong passions, a variety of
character frequent among the iEolians, appears in all the poetry of
Alcseus, especially in the numerous poems which sing the praises of
love and wine. The frequent mention of wine in the fragments of
Alcgeus shows how highly he prized the gift of Bacchus, and how in •
genious he was in the invention of inducements to drinking. Now it is
the cold storms of winter which drive him to drink by the flame of the
* In Diog. Laert. 1. 81. Fragm. 6. Matth. Thus he calls Pittacus ^obo^r'iba:, that
is, who sups in the dark, and not in a room lighted with lamps and torches.
f Fragm. 7. Blomf. 7. Matth.
+ Fragm. 24. Blomf. 1. Matth. comp. below § 5.
§ Fragm. 9. Blomf. 11,12. Matth.
|| Fragm. 13. Matth.
% The fragment in Straho xiii. p. 6 1 7, (8G. Blomf. 8. Matth.) has been thus emended
by the author in Niebuhr's Rheinisches Museum, vol. i. p. 287. — K«i tov ahxtpov
Ayrifity'i^av, o» f'/iiriv 'AXzaTo; BctjZuXuv'iois /rv/^/ta^ovvra nXs/rui fayav u(Xov, xai tx. rrovwi
avTah; pvtratrlSai xr'rjxvru Kvdpa f/.tx%arav, ci$ tpwri, (hutriXriiav, tfuXowrruv wroXtiwovTU. ftovov
fi'iav tfuxtav ano -ri^-ruy, (Mo\. for vrivri) : that is, tliis royal champion only wanted
a palm of five Greek cubits.
** Fragm. 32. Blomf. 67. Matth.
ft Fragm. 56. Blomf. 9. Matth.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 169
hearth, as in a beautiful poem imitated by Horace * ; now the heat of
the dog star, which parches all nature, and invites to moisten the
tongue with wine f. Another time it is the cares and sorrows of life for
which wine is the best medicine \ ; and then again, it is joy for the
death of the tyrant which must be celebrated by a drinking bout. Al-
cams however does not consider wine-drinking as a mere sensual excite-
ment. Thus he calls wine the drowner of cares § ; and, as opening the
heart, it is a mirror for mankind (|. Still it may be doubted whether
Alca?us composed a separate class of drinking songs, (^pron/cd.) From
the fragments which remain, and the imitations by Horace, it is more
probable that Alcreus connected every exhortation to drink with some
reflection, either upon the particular circumstances of the time or upon
man's destiny in general.
It is much to be regretted that so little of the erotic poetry of Alcaeus
has reached our time. What could be more interesting than the re-
lations between Alcseus and Sappho? of the poet with the poetess?
whilst on the part of Alcseus love and respect for the noble and renowned
maiden were in conflict. He salutes her in a poem, " Violet crowned,
pure, sweetly smiling Sappho ;" and confesses to her in another that he
wishes to express more, but shame prevents him. Sappho understands
his meaning, and answers with maiden indignation, " If thy wishes
were fair and noble, and thy tongue designed not to utter what is base,
shame would not cloud thy eyes, but thou wouldst freely speak thy just
desires ^[," That his poems to beautiful youths breathed feelings of the
tenderest love may be conjectured from the well-known anecdote that
he attributed a peculiar beauty to a small blemish in his beloved * *.
The amatory poems, like the passages in praise of wine, are free from a
tone of Sybaritic effeminacy, or merely sensual passion. Throughout
his poems, we see the active restless man; and the tumult of war, the
strife of politics, the sufferings of exile, and of distant wanderings, serve
by contrast to heighten the effect of scenes of tranquil enjoyment. " The
Lesbian citizen sang of war amidst the din of arms ; or, when he had
bound the storm-tossed ship to the shore, he sang of Bacchus and the
Muses, of Venus and her son, and Lycus, beautiful from his black hair
and black eyes ft-" It is evident that poetry was not a mere pastime, or
exercise of skill to Alcanis, but a means of pouring out the inmost feel-
ings of his soul. How superior are these poems to the odes of Horace !
which, admirable as they are for the refinement of the ideas and the
* Fragm. 1. Blomf. 27. Matth. Horat. Carm. I. 9. Vides ut alta.
f Fragm. 18. Blomf. 23. Matth. J Fragm. 3. Blomf. 29. Matth.
§^a«A*mS« s , Fragm. 20. Blomf. 31. Matth.
|| Fr. 16. Blomf. 36, 37. Matth.
«j[ Fragm. 38. Blomf. and Sappho, Fragm. 30. In Matthia-. Fragm. 4 1 , 12.
** Cicero de Nat. D. 1.28, The cod. Gl/uirau. has in Paivtc piiero'.
ft Horat. Carm. I. 32, 5. s'77. Cf. Schol.Pmd. 01ynii>. x. I \
170 HISTORY OF THE
beauty of the execution, yet are wanting in that which characterized the
^Eolic lyric poetry, ihe expression of vehement passion.
There is little characteristic in the religious poetry of Alceeus,
which consisted of hymns to different deities. These poems (judging
from a few specimens of them) had so much of the epic style, and con-
tained so much diffuse and graphic narrative, that their whole structure
must have been different from that of the poems designed for the ex-
pression of opinions and feelings. In a hymn to Apollo, Alcaeus related
the beautiful Delphic legend, that the youthful god, adorned by Zeus
with a golden fillet, and holding the lyre, is carried in a car drawn by
swans to the pious Hyperboreans, and remains with them for a year ;
when, it being the time for the Delphic tripods to sound, the god about
the middle of summer goes in his car to Delphi, while choruses of youths
invoke him with poems, and nightingales and cicadae salute him with
their songs*. Another hymn, that to Hermes, had manifestly a close
resemblance to the epic hymn of the Homeric poet t : both relate the
birth of Hermes, and his driving away the oxen of Apollo, as also the
wrath of the god against the thief, which however is changed into
laughter, when he finds that, in the midst of his threats, Hermes has
contrived to steal the quiver from his shoulder J. In another hymn the
birth, of Hephaestus was related. Tt appears from a few extant fragments
that Alceeus used the same metres and the same kind of strophes in the
composition of these hymns, as for his other poems. The flow of the
narrative must, however, have been checked by these short verses and
strophes. Still Alciciis (as Horace also does sometimes) was able to
carry the same ideas and the same sentence through several strophes.
It is moreover probable, from the extraordinary taste displayed by the
ancient poets, and by Alcaeus in particular, in the choice and manage-
ment of metrical forms, that he would in his hymns have brought the
verse and the subject into perfect harmony.
§ 5. The metrical forms used by Alcaeus are mostly light and lively ;
sometimes with a softer, sometimes with a more vehement character.
They consist principally of iEolic dactyls, which, though apparently
resembling the dactyls of epic poetry, yet are essentially unlike. Instead
of depending upon the perfect balance of the Arsis and Thesis §, they
admit the shortening of the former; whence arises an irregularity which
was distinguished by the ancient writers on metre by the name of
disproportioned dactyls (aXoyoi ciiktvKol). These dactyls begin with
the undetermined foot of two syllables, which is called basis, and
they flow on lightly and swiftly, without alternating with heavy spondees.
* Fragm. 17. Matth. f Above ch. 7. § 5.
\ Fragm. 21. Matlh. Horace, Carm. I. 10. 9, has borrowed the last incident from
Alcaeus : but the hymn of Alceeus, which related at length the story of the theft,
was on the whole different from the ode of Horace, which touches on many adven-
tures of Hermes, without dwelling on any.
§ Above ch. 4. $ 4.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 171
The choriambics of the JEolic lyric poets are composed on the same
plan, as they have also the preceding basis ; yet this metre always re-
tains something of the stately tone which belongs to it. Hence Alcseus,
and also Horace, whose metres are for the most part borrowed from
him, composed poems of choriambic verses by simple repetition, without
dividing them into strophes ; these poems have a somewhat loftier and
more solemn tone than the rest. The Logaoedic metre also belongs
peculiarly to the iEolic lyric poets ; it is produced by the immediate
junction of dactylic and trochaic feet, so that a rapid movement passes
into a feebler one. This lengthened and various kind of metre was pe-
culiarly adapted to express the softer emotions, such as tenderness,
melancholy, and longing. Hence this metre was frequently used by the
jEolians, and their strophes were principally formed by connecting
logaoedic rhythms with trochees, iambi, and iEolic dactyls. Of this
kind is the Sapphic strophe, the softest and sweetest metre in the Greek
lyric poetry, and which Alcseus seems to have sometimes employed, as
in his hymn to Hermes*. But the firmer and more vigorous tone of
the metre, called after him the Alcaic, was better suited to the temper
of his mind. The logaoedic elements t of this metre have but little of
their characteristic softness, and they receive an impulse from the iambic
dipodies which precede them. Hence the Alcaic strophe is generally
employed by these poets in political and warlike poems, and in all in
which manly passions predominate. Alcseus likewise formed longer
verses of logaoedic feet, and joined them in an unbroken series, after the
manner of choriambic and many dactylic verses. In this way he ob-
tained a beautiful measure for the description of his armoury |. Among
the various metres used by Alcseus, the last which we shall mention
* That is to say, if the verse in fragm. 37. Blomf. 22. Matth. was the beginning
of this hymn. According to Apollonius de pronom. p. 90. ed Bekker, it runs thus :
£«?££, KuXXavas o p£Sus (as participle, with the yEolic accent, for fiih-W), n yag /xoi.
f In these remarks it is assumed that the second part of the alcaic verse is not
choriambic, or dactylic, but logaoedic ; and that the whole ought thus to be arranged :
o_/o_o | j^cjo — O —
Thus it appears that the third verse of the strophe is a prolongation of the first
half of the two first verses ; and that the fourth verse is a similar prolongation of
the second half. The entire strophe is therefore formed of a combination of the two
elements, the iambic and the logaoedic.
\ Fragm. 24. Blomf. 1. Matth. The metre ought probably to be arranged as
fol'ows (the basis being marked X _) :
Verses 3 and 4 ought to be read thus : %u.Xx.iui Ss wu.ffiru.Xots xoiirroiffiv wieiHiifJuvc:
Xufn.'x^ui xvapio*;, i. e. " and brazen shining grieves conceal the pegs, to winch they
are suspended." *aff<raXois is the ./Eolic accusative ; the dative in this dialect is al-
ways Tttt.ffaU.XDHt),
172 HISTORY OF THE
is the Ionic metre (Ionici a minori), which he used to express the emo-
tions of his passionate nature *.
§ 6. We come now to the other leader of the Lesbian school of
poetry, Sappho, the object of the admiration of all antiquity. There is
no doubt that she belonged to the island of Lesbos ; and the question
whether she was born in Eresos or Mytilene is best resolved by supposing
that she went from the lesser city to the greater, at the time of her
greatest celebrity. She was nearly contemporaneous with her country-
man Alcfceus, although she must have been younger, as she was still
alive in 01. 53. 568 b. c. About Ol. 46. 596 b. c, she sailed from
Mytilene in order to take refuge in Sicily f, but the cause of her flight
is unknown ; she must at that time have been in the bloom of her life.
At a much later period she produced the ode mentioned by Herodotus,
in which she reproached her brother Charaxus for having purchased
Rhodopis \ the courtesan from her master, and for having been induced
by his love to emancipate her. This Rhodopis dwelt at Naucratis, and
the event fails at a time when a frequent intercourse with Egypt had
already been established by the Greeks. Now the government of
Amasis (who permitted the Greeks in Egypt to dwell in Naucratis)
began in Olymp. 52. 4. 569 b. c, and the return of Charaxus from the
journey to Mytilene, where his sister received him with this reproachful
and satirical ode, must have happened some years later.
The severity with which Sappho censured her brother for his love for a
courtesan enables us to form some judgment of the principles by which
she guided her own conduct. For although at the time when she wrote this
ode to Charaxus, the fire of youthful passion had been quenched in her
breast. ; yet she never could have reproached her brother with his love
for a courtesan, if she had herself been a courtesan in her youth ; and
Charaxus might have retaliated upon her with additional strength.
Besides we may plainly discern the feeling of unimpeached honour due
to a freeborn and well educated maiden, in the verses already quoted,
which refer to the relation of Alcaeus and Sappho. Alceeus testifies
that the attractions and loveliness of Sappho did not derogate from her
moral worth when he calls her " violet-crowned, pure, sweetly smiling
Sappho §.'' These genuine testimonies are indeed opposed to the ac-
counts of many later writers, who represent Sappho as a courtesan.
To refute this opinion, we will not resort to the expedient employed by
* Fragm. 36. Blomf. 69. Matth.
Every ten of these Ionic feet formed a system, as Bentley has arranged Horat.
Carm. III. 12. Horace, however, has not in this ode succeeded in catching the
genuine tone of the metre. See ahove ch. II. § 7.
f Marrii. Par. ep. 36. comp. Ovid Her. xv. 51. The date of the Parian marble is
lost; hut it must have been between Olymp. 4-4. 1. and 47.2.
I II. 135, and see Athen. xiii. p. 5f)fi. Rhodopis or Doricha was the fellow slave
of ^sop, who flourished at the same time (Olymp. 52).
§ 'lb7rXo%', ocyva, ftsiXi%cf/.i3i i'«T<p«r. See above § 4.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 173
some ancient writers, who have attempted to distinguish a courtesan of
Eresos named Sappho from the poetess. A more probable cause of this
false imputation seems to be, that later generations, and especially the re-
fined Athenians, were incapable of conceiving- and appreciating the frank
simplicity with which Sappho pours forth her feelings, and therefore
confounded them with the unblushing immodesty of a courtesan. In
Sappho's time, there still existed among the Greeks much of that pri-
mitive simplicity which appears in the wish of Nausicaa in Homer that
she had such a husband as Ulysses. That complete separation between
sensual and sentimental love had not yet taken place which we find in
the writings of later times, especially in those of the Attic comic poets.
Moreover the life of women in Lesbos was doubtless very different from
the life of women at Athens and among the Ionians. In the Ionian
States the female sex lived in the greatest retirement, and were exclu-
sively employed in household concerns. Hence, while the men of Athens
were distinguished by their perfection in every branch of art, none of
their women emerged from the obscurity of domestic life. The secluded
and depressed condition of the female sex among the Ionians of Asia
Minor, originating in circumstances connected with the history of their
race, had also become universal in Athens, where the principle on
which the education of women rested was that just so much mental
culture was expedient for women as would enable them to manage the
household, provide for the bodily wants of the children, and overlook the
female slaves ; for the rest, says Pericles in Thucydides *, " that woman
is the best of whom the least is said among men, whether for evil or for
good." But the ^Eolians had in some degree preserved the ancient
Greek manners, such as we find them depicted in their epic poetry
and mythology, where the women are represented as taking an active
share not only in social domestic life, but in public amusements; and
they thus enjoyed a distinct individual existence and moral character.
There can be no doubt that they, as well as the women of the Dorian
states of Peloponnesus and Magna Grecia, shared in the advantages
of the general high state of civilization, which not only fostered poetical
talents of a high order among women, but, as'in the time of the Pytha-
gorean league, even produced in them a turn for philosophical reflec-
tions on human life. But as such a state of the education and intellect
of women was utterly inconsistent with Athenian manners, it is natural
that women should be the objects of scurrilous jests and slanderous
imputations. We cannot therefore wonder that women who had in
any degree overstepped the bounds prescribed to their sex by the
manners of Athens, should be represented by the licentious pen of the
Athenian comic writers, as lost to every sentiment of shame or decency f.
* II. 45.
f There were Attic comedies with the title of " Sappho," by Amphis, Antiphanes,
Ephippus, Timocles and Diphilus; and a comedy by Plato entitled "Phaon."
174 HISTORY OF THE
§ 7. It is certain that Sappho, in her odes, made frequent mention
of a youth, to whom she gave her whole heart, while he requited her
passion with cold indifference. But there is no trace whatever of her
having named the object of her passion, or sought to win his favour by
her beautiful verses. The pretended name of this youth, Phaon,
although frequently mentioned in the Attic comedies *, appears not to
have occurred in the poetry of Sappho. If Phaon had been named in
her poetry, the opinion could not have arisen that it was the courtesan
Sappho, and not the poetess, who was in love with Phaon f. Moreover,
the marvellous stories of the beauty of Phaon and the love of the goddess
Aphrodite for him, have manifestly been borrowed from the mythus
of Adonis \. Hesiod mentions Phaethon, a son of Eos and Cephalus,
who when a child was carried off by Aphrodite, and brought up as the
guardian of the sanctuary in her temples §. This is evidently founded on
the Cyprian legend of Adonis ; the Greeks, adopting this legend, appear
to have given the name of Phaethon or Phaon to the favourite of
Aphrodite ; and this Phaon, by various mistakes and misinterpretations,
at length became the beloved of Sappho. Perhaps also the poetess
may, in an ode to Adonis, have celebrated the beautiful Phaon in such
a manner that the verses may have been supposed to refer to a lover of
her own.
According to the ordinary account, Sappho, despised by Phaon, took
the leap from the Leucadiali rock, in the hope of finrling a cure for the
pains of unrequited love. But even this is rather a poetical image,
than a real event in the life of Sappho. The Leucadian leap was a re-
ligious rite, belonging to the expiatory festivals of Apollo, which was
celebrated in this as in other parts of Greece. At appointed times,
criminals, selected as expiatory victims, were thrown from the high
overhanging rock into the sea ; they were however sometimes caught
at. the bottom, and, if saved, they were sent away from Leucadia ||.
This custom was applied in various ways by the poets of the time to
the description of lovers. Stesichorus, in his poetical novel named
* As in the verses of Menander in Strabo x. p. 452.
rov vmgx.oivxov irt^utu, ton'
uvro r7i\tipu.])oZ;.
f In Athen. XIII. p. 596 E, and several ancient lexicographers.
% Cratinus, the comic poet, in an unknown play in Athen. II. p. 69. D. relates
that Aphrodite had concealed Phaon h foihuximif, among the lettuce. The same
legend is also related of Adonis by others, in Athengeus ; and it refers to the use of
the horti Adonidis. Concerning Phaon- Adonis, see also jElian ,V. H. xii. 18. Lu-
cian Dial. Mort. 9. Plin. N. H. xxii. 8. Servius ad Virg. JEn. III. 279. not to
mention inferior authorities for this legend.
§ Hesiod. Theog. 986. so, wotoXm f*v%iev, according to the reading of Aris-
tarchus.
|| Concerningthe connexion of this custom with the worship of Apollo, see M'uller's
Dorians. B. 11. ch. 11. § 10.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 175
Calyce, spoke of the love of a virtuous maiden for a youth who despised
her passion; and in despair she threw herself from the Lencadian rock.
The effect of the leap in the story of Sappho (viz. the curing her of
her intolerable passion) must therefore have been unknown to Stesi-
chorus. Some years later, Anacreon says in an ode, " again casting
myself from the Leucadian rock, I plunge into the grey sea, drunk with
love *." The poet can scarcely by these words be supposed to say that
he cures himself of a vehement passion, but rather means to describe the
delirious intoxication of violent love. The story of Sappho's leap pro-
bably originated in some poetical images and relations of this kind ; a
similar story is told of Aphrodite in reg'ard to her lament for Adonis t-
Nevertheless it is not unlikely that the leap from the Leucadian rock
may really have been made, in ancient times, by desperate and frantic
men. Another proof of the fictitious character of the story is that it
leaves the principal point in uncertainty, namely, whether Sappho sur-
vived the leap or perished in it.
From what has been said, it follows that a true conception of the
erotic poetry of Sappho, and of the feelings expressed in it, can only be
drawn from fragments of her odes, which, though numerous, are for the
most part very short. The most considerable and the best known of
Sappho's remains is the complete ode J, in which she implores Aphro-
dite not to allow the torments and agitations of love to destroy her
mind, but to come to her assistance, as she had formerly descended
from heaven in her golden car drawn by sparrows, and with radiant
smiles on her divine face had asked her what had befallen her, and
what her unquiet heart desired, and who was the author of her pain.
She promised that if he fled her now, he soon would follow her ; if he
did not now accept her presents, he would soon offer presents to her ;
if he did not love her now, he would soon love her, even were she coy
and reluctant. Sappho then implores Aphrodite to come to her again
and assist her. Although, in this ode, Sappho describes her love in
glowing language, and even speaks of her own frantic heart §, yet
the indelicacy of such an avowal of passionate love is much diminished
by the manner in which it is made. The poetess does not impor-
tune her lover with her complaints, nor address her poem to him,
but confides her passion to the goddess and pours out to her all the
tumult and the anguish of her heart. There is great delicacy in her
not venturing to give utterance in her own person to the expec-
tation that the coy and indifferent object of her affection would be
transformed into an impatient lover; an expectation little likely to find
a place in a heart so stricken and oppressed as that of the poetess ; she
* In Hephaestion, p. 130.
f See Ptolem. Hephaestion (in Phot, Bibliotliec.) /3i/U/ov £.
I Fragm. 1. Blomf, 1. Neuc.
176 HISTORY OF THE
only recalls to her mind, that the goddess had in former and similar
situations vouchsafed her support and consolation. In other fragments
Sappho's passionate excitable temper is expressed with frankness quite
foreign to our manners, but which possesses a simple grace. Thus
she says, " I request that the charming Menon be invited, if the
feast is to bring enjoyment to me*;" and she addresses a dis-
tinguished youth in these words: " Come opposite to me, oh friend,
and let the sweetness which dwells in thine eyes beam upon me f."
Yet we can no where find grounds for reproaching her with havino-
tried to please men or met their advances when past the season of
youth. On the contrary, she says, " Thou art my friend, I therefore
advise thee to seek a younger wife, I cannot bring myself to share thy
house as an elder J."
§ 8. It is far more difficult to discover and to judge the nature of
Sappho's intimacies with women. It is, however, certain that the
life and education of the female sex in Lesbos was not, as in Athens,
confined within the house ; and that girls were not entrusted ex-
clusively to the care of mothers and nurses. There were women
distinguished by their attainments, who assisted in instructing a circle
of young girls, in the same manner as Socrates afterwards did at Athens
young men of promising talents. There were also among the Dorians
of Sparta noble and cultivated women, who assembled young girls about
them, to whom they devoted themselves with great zeal and affection;
and these girls formed associations which, in all probability, were under
the direction of the elder women §. Such associations as these existed
in Lesbos in the time of Sappho; but they were completely voluntary,
and were formed by girls who were studying to attain that proficiency
in music or other elegant arts, that refinement and grace of manners,
which distinguished the women around whom they congregated.
Music and poetry no doubt formed the basis of these societies, and
instruction and exercise in these arts were their immediate object.
Though poetry was a part of Sappho's inmost nature, a genuine ex-
pression of the feelings by which she was really agitated, it is probable
that with her, as with the ancient poet3, it was the business and study
of life ; and as technical perfection in it could be taught, it might,
by persevering instructions, be imparted to the young ||. Not only
Sappho, but many other women in Lesbos, devoted themselves to this
mode of life. In the songs of this poetess, frequent mention was made
* Fragm. 33. Neue, from Hepheest. p. 41 ; it is not, however, quite certain, that
the verses belong to Sappho. Compare fragm. 10. Blomf. 5. Neue (Ixfi, Kua-gi).
f Fragm. 13. Blomf. 62. Neue. Compare fragment 24. Blomf. 32. Neue. (yXuxua
pang, ou-oi — ), and 28. Blomf. 55. Neue, (S«Su*s ph a trtXuva — ).
I Fragm. 12. Blomf. 20. Neue (according to the reading of the latter).
§ Muller's Dorians, B. iv. chap. 4. § 8. ch. 5. § 2.
|) Hence Sappho calls her house, "the house of the servant of the Muses,"
uovtroToXv eiKiav, from which mourning must be excluded : Fragm. 71. Bloinf. 2P.
Neue.
LITEIUTUUE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 177
of Gorgo and Andromeda as her rivals *. A great number of her young
friends were from distant countries t, as Anactoria of Miletus, Gongyla
of Colophon, Eunica of Salamis, Gyrinna, Atthis, Mnasidica. A
great number of the poems of Sappho related to these female friendships,
and reveal the familiar intercourse of the woman's chamber, the
Gynseconitis ; where the tender refined sensibility of the female mind
was cultivated and impressed with every attractive form. Among
these accomplishments, music and a graceful demeanor were the most
valued. The poetess says to a rich but uncultivated woman, " Where
thou diest, there wilt thou lie, and no one will remember thy name in
times to come, because thou hast no share in the roses of Pieria. In-
glorious wilt thou wander about in the abode of Hades, and flit among
its dark shades J." She derides one of her rivals, Andromeda, for her
manner of dressing, from which it is well known the Greeks were wont
to infer much more of the native disposition and character than we
do. " What woman," says she to a young female friend, " ever charmed
thy mind who wore a vulgar and graceless dress, or did not know how
to draw her garments close around her ankles § ?" She reproaches one
of her friends, Mnasidica, because, though her form was beautiful as
that of the young Gyrinna, yet her temper was gloomy ||. To another,
Atthis, to whom she had shown particular marks of affection, and who
had grieved her by preferring her rival Andromeda, she says, " Again
does the strength-dissolving Eros, that bitter-sweet, resistless monster
agitate me ; but to thee, O Atthis, the thought of me is importunate ;
thou fliest to Andromeda ^f." It is obvious that this attachment bears
less the character of maternal interest than of passionate love ; as
among the Dorians in Sparta and Crete, analogous connexions between
men and youths, in which the latter were trained to noble and manly
deeds, were carried on in a language of high wrought and pas-
sionate feeling which had all the character of an attachment between
persons of different sexes. This mixture of feelings, which among
nations of a calmer temperament have always been perfectly distinct, is
an essential feature of the Greek character.
* From the passage on the relations of Sappho in Maxim. Tyrius, Dissert, xxiv.
f In Suiilas in 2«Tf<y the ircuoai and fAaQtirgiat of Sappho are distinguished: hut
the iru.'ipai were, at least originally, fixfargicci. Thus Maximus Tyrius mentions
Anactoria as being loved by Sappho; but it is probable that 'Avayo^a M/Xw/a, men-
tioned by Suidas among her f&al>7irgiai, is the same person, and that tbe name ought
to be written 'Avaxm/ia MiXntrla. This emendation is confirmed by the fact, that
the ancient name of Miletus was Anactoria; Stephen. Byzant. in voc. Mit.nros,
Eustath. ad II. II. 8, p. 21, ed. Rom. ; Schol. Apull. Rhod. I. 187.
X Fragm. 11. Blomf. 19. Neue.
§ Fragm. 35. Blomf. 23. Neue. This passage is illustrated>by ancient works of
sculpture, on which women are represented as walking with the upper garment drawn
close to the leg above the ankle. See, for example, the relief in Mus, Capitol. T. IV.
tab. 43.
|| Fragm. 2G, 27. Blomf. 42. Neue. The reading, however, is not quite certain.
^| Fragm. 31. Blomf. 37. Neue. cf. 32. Blomf. 14. Neue. *Hg<fyt«v /*h iya <rsV;>,
'Arfi, vruXxt <x'otu.,
N
178 HISTORY OF THE
The most remarkable exemple of this impassioned strain of Sappho
in relation to a female friend is that considerable fragment preserved by
Longinus, which has often been incorrectly interpreted, because the
beginning of it led to the erroneous idea that the object of the passion
expressed in it was a man. But the poem says, " That man seems to
me equal to the gods v/ho sits opposite to thee, and watches thy sweet
speech and charming smile. My heart loses its force : for when I look at
thee, my tongue ceases to utter ; my voice is broken, a subtle fire glides
through my veins, my eyes grow dim, and a rushing sound fills my
ears." In these, and even stronger terms, the poetess expresses nothing
more than a friendly attachment to a young girl, but which, from the
extreme excitability of feeling, assumes all the tone of the most ardent
passion *.
§ 9. From the class of Sapphic odes which we have just described,
we- must distinguish the Epithalamia or Hymeneals, which were pecu-
liarly adapted to the genius of the poetess from the exquisite perception
she seems to have had of whatever was attractive in either sex. These
poems appear, from the numerous fragments which remain, to have had
great beauty, and much of that mode of expression which the simple,
natural manners of those times allowed, and the warm and sensitive
heart of the poetess suggested. The Epithalamium of Catullus, not
that playful one on the marriage of Manlius Torquatus, but the charm-
ing, tender poem, " Vesper adest, juvenes, consurgite," is an evident
imitation of a Sapphic Epithalamium, which was composed in the same
hexameter verse. It appears that in this, as in Catullus, the trains of
youths and of maidens advanced to meet; these reproached, those
praised the evening star, because he led the bride to the youth. Then
comes the verse of Sappho which has been preserved, " Hesperus, who
bringest together all that the rosy morning's light has scattered
abroad f." The beautiful images of the gathered flowers and of the
vine twining about the elm, by which Catullus altei-nately dissuades
and recommends the marriage of the maiden, have quite the character
of Sapphic similes. These mostly turn upon flowers and plants, which
the poetess seem to have regarded with fond delight and sympathy J. In
a fragment lately discovered, which bears a strong impression of the
simple language of Sappho, she compares the freshness of youth and
the unsullied beauty of a maiden's face to an apple of some peculiar
kind, which, when all the rest of the fruit is gathered from the tree,
remains alone at an unattainable height, and drinks in the whole vigour
of vegetation ; or rather (to give the simple words of the poetess in
* Catullus, who imitates this poem in Carm. 51, gives it an ironical termination,
(Otium, Catulle, tibi molestum est, &c.,) which is certainly not borrowed from
Sappho.
t Fragm. 45. Blomf. 68. Neue.
; Concerning the love of Sappho for the rose, see Philostrat. Epist, 73, comp.
Neue fragm. 132.
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 179
which the thought is placed before us and gradually heightened with
great beauty and nature) " like the sweet apple which ripens at the top
of the bough, on the topmost point of the bough, forgotten by the
gatherers — no, not quite forgotten, but beyond their reach *." A frag-
ment written in a similar tone, speaks of a hyacinth, which growing
among the mountains is trodden underfoot by the shepherds, and its
purple flower is pressed to the ground t ; thus obviously comparing the
maiden who has no husband to protect her, with the flower which grows
in the field, as contrasted with that which blooms in the shelter of a
garden. In another hymeneal, Sappho compares the bridegroom to a
young and slender sapling \. But she does not dwell upon such
images as these alone ; she also compares him to Ares §, and his deeds
to those of Achilles || ; and here her lyre may have assumed a loftier
tone than that which usually characterised it. But there was another
kind of hymeneal among the songs of Sappho, which furnished occasion
to a sort of petulant pleasantry. In this the maidens try to snatch
away the bride as she is led to the bridegroom, and vent their mockery
on his friend who stands before the door, and is thence called the
Porterf.
Sappho also composed hymns to the gods, in which she invoked them
to come from their favourite abodes in different countries ; but there is
little information extant respecting their contents.
§ 10. The poems of Sappho are little susceptible of division into distinct
classes. Hence the ancient critics divided them into books, merely
according to the metre, the first containing the odes in the Sapphic
metre, and so on. The hymeneals were thus placed in different books.
The rhythmical construction of her odes was essentially the same as
that of Alcreus, yet with many variations, in harmony with the softer
character of her poetry, and easily perceptible upon a careful compa-
rison of the several metres.
How great was Sappho's fame among the Greeks, and how rapidly
it spread throughout Greece, may be seen in the history of Solon**, who
was a contemporary of the Lesbian poetess. Hearing his nephew recite
* OTov to yXuzupccXov tozvfarai clx/ioj i;r' oo^y,
"Oitom lor o.k^otu.'Tu, \i\uQovro }>\ ftaXoh/itivr,!;.
Ov fihv IxXiXaQovr' ) aXX' ohx Vfrvvavr' Ix'ixiitQczi.
The fragment is in Walz, Rhetores Grseci, vol. viii. p. 883, Ilimerius, Orat. I.
4. § 1G. cites something similar from a hymenaeus of Sappho.
jf 0'ia.v tu.v vdxivtfov iv ou^itri i'o'i/ji.ivis av^^t;
•xoasl xctTaUTUpavst' %up.a) 2s T£ vogfugav «^e;.
Demetrius de elocut. c. 106, quotes these verses without a name; but it can
scarcely be doubted that they are Sappho's. In Catullus, the young women use the
same image as the young men in Sappho.
J Fragm. 42. Blomf. 34. Neue.
§ Fragm. 39. Blomf. 73. Neue.
|| Ilimerius, Orat. 1.4. 5 16.
% Fragm. 43. Blomf. 38. Neue. It Is worthy of remark, that Demetrius de
elocut. c. 167, expressly mentions the chorus in relation to this fragment.
** In Stobseus, Serm. xxix. 28
N2
ISO HISTORY OF THE
one of her poems, he is said to have exclaimed, that he would not wil-
lingly die till he had learned it hy heart. Indeed the whole voice of
antiquity has declared that the poetry of Sappho was unrivalled in grace,
and sweetness.
And doubtless from that circle of accomplished women, of whom she
formed the brilliant centre, a flood of poetic warmth and light was
poured forth on every side. A friend of hers, Damophila the Pamphy-
lian, composed a hymn on the worship of the Pergsean Artemis (which
was solemnized in her native land after the Asiatic fashion) ; in this the
yEolic style was blended with the peculiarities of the Pamphylian man-
ner*. Another poetess of far higher renown was Erinna, who died in
early youth, when chained by her mother to the spinning-wheel ; she
had as yet known the charm of existence in imagination alone. Her
poem, called " The Spindle" ('H/War?/), containing only 300 hex-
ameter verses, in which she probably expressed the restless and aspiring
thoughts which crowded on her youthful mind, as she pursued her
monotonous work, has been deemed by many of the ancients of such
high poetic merit as to entitle it to a place beside the epics of
Homer t-
§ 11. We now come to Anacreon, whose poetry may be considered
as akin to that of AlcEeus and Sappho, although he was an Ionian from
Teos, and his genius had an entirely different tone and bent. In
respect also of the external circumstances in which he was placed, he
belonged to a different period ; inasmuch as the splendour and luxury
of living had, in his time, much increased among the Greeks, and even
poetry had contributed to adorn the court of a tyrant. The spirit
of the Ionic race was, in Callinus, united with manly daring and a high
feeling of honour, and in Mimnermus with a tender melancholy, seeking
relief from care in sensual enjoyment ; but in Anacreon it is bereft of
of all these deeper and more serious feelings; and he seems to consider
life as valuable only in so far as it can be spent in love, music, wine, and
social enjoyments. And even these feelings are not animated with the
glow of the iEolic poets ; Anacreon, with his Ionic disposition, cares
only for the enjoyment of the passing moment, and no feeling takes
such deep hold of his heart that it is not always ready to give way to
fresh impressions.
Anacreon had already arrived at manhood, when his native city Teos
was, after some resistance, taken by Harpagus, the general of Cyrus.
In consequence of this capture, the inhabitants all took ship, and sailed
for Thrace, where they founded Abdera, or rather they took possession
of a Greek colony already existing on the spot, and enlarged the town.
This event happened about the 60th Olymp. 540 b. c. Anacreon was
among these Teian exiles; and, according to ancient testimony, he
* Philostrat. Vit. Apolton. i. 30., p. 37. ed. Olear.
f The chief authority is Anthol. Palat. ix. 190.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 181
himself called Abdera, " The fair settlement of the Teians *". About
this time, or at least not long- after, Polycrates became tyrant of Samos ;
for Thucydides places the height of his power under Cambyses, who
began to reign in Olymp. 62. 4. b. c. 529. Polycrates was, according
to the testimony of Herodotus, the most enterprising and magnificent of
all the Grecian tyrants. His wide dominion over the islands of the
JEgsean Sea, and his intercourse with the rulers of foreign countries (as
with Amasis, king of Egypt), supplied him with the means of adorning
his island of Samos, and his immediate retinue, with all that art and
riches could at that time effect. He embellished Samos with exten-
sive buildings, kept a court like an oriental prince, and was surrounded
by beautiful boys for various menial services ; and he appears to have
considered the productions of such poets as Ibycus, and especially
Anacreon, as the highest ornament of a life of luxurious enjoyment.
Anacreon, according to a well known story of Herodotus, was still at the
court of Polycrates, when death was impending over him ; and he had
probably just left Samos, when his host and patron was murdered by the
treacherous and sanguinary Oroetes (Olympiad 64. 3. b. c. 522). At
this time Hippias, the son of Pisistratus, ruled in Athens ; and his
brother Hipparchus shared the government with him. The latter had
more taste tor poetry than any of his family, and he is particularly
named in connexion with institutions relating to the cultivation of
poetry among the Athenians. Hipparchus, according to a Platonic
dialogue which bears his name, sent out a ship with fifty oars, to bring
Anacreon to Athens ; and here Anacreon found several other poets, who
had then come to Athens in order to adorn the festivals of the city, and,
in particular, of the royal family. Meanwhile Anacreon devoted his
muse to other distinguished families in Athens ; among others he is
supposed to have loved the young Critias, the son of Dropides, and to
have extolled this house distinguished in the annals of Athens t. At
this time the fame of Anacreon appears to have reached its highest
* In Strabo xiv. p. 644. A fragment in Schol. Odyss. viii. 293. (fragment 132.
cd. Bergk,) also refers to the Sintians in Thrace, as likewise does an epigram of
Anacreon (Anthol. Palat. viii. 226) to a brave warrior, who had fallen in the defence
of his native city Abdera.
f Plato, Charmid. p. 157 E. Schol. yEschyl.Prom. 128. This Critias was at that
time (Olymp. 64) about sixteen years old; for he was born in Olymp. 60 ; and this
agrees with the fact, that his grandson Critias, the statesman, one of the thirty
tyrants of Athens, was, according to Plato Tim. p. 216, eighty years younger than
his grandfather. Consequently, the birth of the younger Critias falls in Olymp.
80, which agrees perfectly with the recorded events of his life. The Critias born in
Olymp. 60, is however called a son of the Dropides, who is stated to have been a
friend of Solon, and to have succeeded him in the office of Archon in Olymp. 46. 4.
ii. c. 593. It seems impossible to escape from these chronological difficulties, ex-
cept Ly distinguishing this Dropides, and his son Critias, to whom Solon's verses
refer (E/Vt^svai Kpirln Tvw'orQiX' wargof kitovuv, &c), trom the Dropides and Critias
in Anacreon's time. Upon this supposition the dates of the persons of this family
would stand thus : Dropides, born about Olymp. 36 ; Critias ■xv^bfyit Olymp. 44 ;
Dropides. the grandson, Olymp. 52 ; Ciitias, the grandson, Olymp. GO ; Calla'schrus,
Olymp. 70 ; Critias the tyrant, Oiymp. 80.
182 HISTORY OP THE
point ; he must also have been advanced in years, as his name was,
among the ancients, always connected with the idea of an old man,
whose grey hairs did not interfere with his gaiety and pursuit of plea-
sure. It is, indeed, stated, that Anacreon was still alive at the revolt of
the Ionians, caused by Histiaeus, and that being driven from Teos, he
took refuse in Abdera *. But as this event happened in Olympiad 71.3.
B. c. 494, about 35 years after Anacreon's residence with Polycrates,
the statement must be incorrect ; and it appears to have arisen from a
confusion between the subjugation of the Ionians by Cyrus, and the
suppression of their revolt under Darius. From an inscription for the
tomb of Anacreon in Teos, attributed to Simonidest, it is inferred that he
returned in his old age to Teos, which had been again peopled under
the Persian government. But the monuments which were erected to
celebrated men in their own country were often merely cenotaphs; and
this epitaph may perhaps, like many others bearing the name of Simo-
nides, have been composed centuries after the time of that poet J. It is
probable that Anacreon, when he had once become known as the
welcome guest of the richest and most powerful men of Greece, and
when his social qualities had acquired general fame, was courted and
invited by princes in other parts of Greece. It is intimated in an epigram
that he was intimately connected with the Aleuads, the ruling family in
Thessaly, who at that time added great zeal for art and literature to the
hospitable and convivial qualities of their nation. This epigram refers
to a votive offering of the Thessalian prince Echecratides, doubtless the
person whose son Orestes, in Olympiad 81. 2. b. c. 454, applied to the
Athenians to reinstate him in the government which had belonged to his
father §.
§ 12. Anacreon seems to have laid the foundation of his poetical
fame in his native town of Teos ; but the most productive period of his
poetry was during his residence in Samos. The whole of Anacreon's
poetry (says the geographer Strabo, in speaking of the history of
Samos) is filled with allusions to Polycrates. His poems, therefore,
are not to be considered as the careless outpourings of a mind in the
stillness of retirement, but as the work of a person living in the midst of
the splendour of the Samian tyrant. Accordingly, his notions of a life of
enjoyment are not formed on the Greek model, but on the luxurious man-
ners of the Lydians|i, introduced by Polycrates into his court. The
beautiful youths, who play a principal part in the genuine poems of
Anacreon, are not individuals distinguished from the mass of their con-
temporaries by the poet, but young men chosen for their beauty, whom
* In Suidas in v. 'Avuxgiuv, Ts<wj.
f Anthol. Pal. vii. 25. f'ragm. 52. ed. Gaisford.
+ The fragment AiW^J T«<rg<T Ifo^o/tut (Schol. Hail. Od. M. 313, fragm. 33.
Bergk.) appears to refer to a journey to this country.
§ Compare Anthol. Pal. vi. 142, with Thucyd. I. 111.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 183
Polycrates kept about his person, and of whom some had been procured
from a distance; as, for example, Smerdies, from the country of the
Thracian Ciconians. Some of these youths enlivened the meals of Po-
lycrates by music ; as Bathyllus, whose flute-playing and Ionic singing
are extolled by a later rhetorician, and of whom a bronze statue was
shown in the Temple of Juno at Samos, in the dress and attitude of a
player on the cithara ; but which, according to the description of Apu-
leius, appears to have been only an Apollo Citharcedus, in the ancient
style. Other youths were perhaps more distinguished as dancers.
Anacreon offers his homage to all these youths, and divides his affection
and admiration between Smerdies with the flowing locks, Cleobulus
with the beautiful eyes, the bright and playful Lycaspis, the charming
Megistes, Bathyllus, Simalus, and doubtless many others whose names
have not been preserved. He wishes them to sport with him in drunken
merriment * ; and if the youth will take no part in his joy, he threatens
to fly upon light wings up to Olympus, there to make his complaints,
and to induce Eros to chastise him for his scorn f. Or he implores Diony-
sus, the god with whom Eros, and the dark-eyed nymphs, and the purple
Aphrodite, play, — to turn Cleobulus, by the aid of wine, to the love of
Anacreon J. Or he laments, in verses full of careless grace, that the
fair Bathyllus favours him so little §. He knows that his head and temples
are grey ; but he hopes to obtain the affection of the youths by his
pleasing song and speech ||. In short, he pays his homage to these
youths, in language combining passion and playfulness.
§ 13. Anacreon, however, did not on this account withhold his admi-
ration from female beauty. " Again (he says, in an extant fragment)
golden-haired Eros strikes me with a purple ball, and challenges me to
sport and play with a maiden with many-coloured sandals. But she, a
native of the well-built Lesbos %, despises my grey hairs, and prefers an-
other man." His amatory poetry chiefly consists of complaints of the
indifference of women to his love; which, however, are expressed in so
light and playful a manner, that they do not seem to proceed from ge-
nuine regret. Thus, in the beautiful ode, imitated in many places by
Horace** : "Thracian filly, why do you look at me askance, and avoid
me without pity, and will not allow me any skill in my art? Know, then,
that I could soon find means of curbing your spirit, and, holding the
* Anacreon has a peculiar term to express this idea, viz. »/&» or auvrfiav. One of
the amusements of this kind of life is gambling, of which the fragment in Schol.
Horn. II. xxiii. 88, fragment 44. Bergk. speaks : " Dice are the vehement passio*
and the conflict of Eros."
t Fragm. in Hepha;st. p. 52. (22. Bergk.), explained by Julian Epist. IS
p. 386. B.
I Fragm. in Dio Chrysost. Or. II. p. 31, fir. 2. Bergk.
§ Horat. Ep. xiv. 9. sq.
|| Fragm. in Maxim. Tyr. viii. p. 96, fr. 42. Bergk.
^[ In Athen. xiii. p. 599. C. fr. 15. Bergk. That it does not refer to Sappho is
proved by the dates of her lifetime, and of that of Anacreon.
** In Heracliil, Allegor. Horn. p. 16, ed, Schow. fr, 79, Bergk,
184 HISTORY OF THE
reins, could guide you in the course round the goal. Still you wander
about the pastures, and bound lightly round them, for there has been
no dexterous hand to tame you." But such loves as these are far dif-
ferent from the deep seriousness with which Sappho confesses her pas-
sion, and they can only be judged by those relations between the sexes
which were universally established among the Ionians at that time. In
the Ionic states of Asia Minor, as at Athens, a freeborn maiden was
brought up within the strict limits of the family circle, and was never
allowed to enter the society of men. Thence it happened that a separate
class of women devoted themselves to all those arts which qualified
them to enhance the charm of social life — the Hetserse, most of them
foreigners or freed women, without the civic rights which belonged to
the daughter of a citizen, but often highly distinguished by the elegance
of their demeanor and by their accomplishments. Whenever, there-
fore, women are mentioned by Ionic and Attic writers, as taking part
in the feasts and symposia of the men, and as receiving at their dwell-
ing the salutations of the joyous band of revellers, — the Comus, —
there can be no doubt that they were Hetrerse. Even at the time of the
orators *, an Athenian woman of genuine free blood would have lost
the privileges of her birth, if she had so demeaned herself. Hence it
follows, that the women with whom Anacreon offers to dance and sing,
and to whom, after a plenteous repast, he addresses a song on the
Pectis f , are Hetserse, like all those beauties whose charms are cele-
brated by Horace. Anacreon 's most serious love appears to have been
for the " fair Eurypyle ;" since jealousy of her moved him to write a
satirical poem, in which Artemon, the favourite of Eurypyle, who was
then passing an effeminate and luxurious life, is described in the mean
and necessitous condition in which he had formerly lived +. Anacreon
here shows a strength and bitterness of satirical expression resembling
the tone of Archilochus; a style which he has successfully imitated in
other poems. But Anacreon is content with describing the mere sur-
face, that is, the outward marks of disgrace, the slavish attire, the low-
bred demeanor, the degrading treatment to which Artemon had been
exposed ; without (as it appears) touching upon the intrinsic merit or
demerit of the person attacked. Thus, if we compare Anacreon with
the iEolic lyric poets, he appears less reflective, and more occupied with
external objects. For instance, wine, the effects of which are described
by Alcceus with much depth of feeling, is only extolled by Anacreon as
a means of social hilarity. Yet he recommends moderation in the use
of it, and disapproves of the excessive carousings of the Scythians,
which led to riot and brawling §. The ancients, indeed (probably with
* Demosth. Nerar. p. 1352,Reiske, and elsewhere ; Isseus de Pyrrhi Hered.p. 30.
§ 14.
f In Hephsest. p. 59. fr. 16. Bergk.
+ In Athen. xii. p. 533. E. fr. 19. Bergk.
§ In Athen. x. p. 427. A. fr. 02. Bergk. Similarly Horace I. 27. 1. sq.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 185
justice), considered the drunkenness of Anacreon as rather poetical
than real. In Anacreon we see plainly how the spirit of the Ionic race,
notwithstanding the elegance and refinement of Ionian manners, had
lost its energy, its warmth of moral feeling, and its power of serious re-
flexion, and was reduced to a light play of pleasing thoughts and senti-
ments. So far as we are able to judge of the poetry of Anacreon, it
seems to have had the same character as that attributed by Aristotle to
the later Ionic school of painting of Zeuxis, that " it had elegance of
design and brilliancy of colouring, but was wanting in moral character
(ro 7,0o € .y
§ 1 4. The Ionic softness, and departure from strict rule, which cha-
racterizes the poetry of Anacreon, may also be perceived in his versifi-
cation. His language approached much nearer to the style of common
conversation than that of the iEolic lyric poets, so as frequently to seem
like prose embellished with ornamental epithets ; and his rhythm is also
softer and less bounding than that of the iEolians, and has an easy and
graceful negligence, which Horace has endeavoured to imitate. Some-
times he makes use of logacedic metres, as in the Glyconean verses, which
he combines into strophes, by subjoining a Pherecratean verse to a
number of Glyconeans. In this metre he shows his love for variety and
novelty, by mixing strophes of different lengths with several Glyconean
verses, yet so as to preserve a certain symmetry in the whole *. Anacreon
also, like the iEolic lyric poets, sometimes used long choriambic verses,
particularly when he intended to express energy of feeling, as in the
poem against Artemon, already mentioned. This metre also exhibits a
peculiarity in the rhythm of the Ionic poets, viz., an alternation of dif-
ferent metres, producing a freer and more varied, but also a more care-
less, flow of the rhythm. In the present poem this peculiarity consists
in the alternation of choriambics with iambic dipodies f. The same cha-
racter is still more strongly shown in the Ionic metre (Ionici a minori)
which was much used by Anacreon. At the same time he changed its
expression (probably after the example of the musician Olympus) {, by
* So in the long fragment in Schol. Hepheest. p. 125. fr. 1. Bergk.
diffTTOlV "ApTtfti Sn^uv.
This is followed by a second strophe, with four glyconeans and a pherecratean ;
and both strophes together form a larger whole. This hymn of Anacreon, the only
composition of its kind which is known, is evidently intended for the inhabitants of
Magnesia, on the Majander and Lethanis. rebuilt after its destruction (ch. 9. § 4.),
where Artemis was worshipped under the title of Leucophryne.
t So that the metre is
/ o o _ I / o o _
o /
■XoWk fih lv 1ov(H niiij uvxiva., <rt>XXu V Iv t^X^i
rroXXu. Vi mcotov trxurivri ftdanyi Siaf^i^fus, xofLr,:' —
Two such verses as these are then followed by an iambic dimeter, as an epode:
•xwymu. T iy.ri r riX[4.i\ioi<
% Seech. 12. §7.
186 HISTORY OF THE
combining two Ionic feet, so that the last long syllable of the first foot was
shortened and the first short syllable of the second foot was lengthened ;
by which change the second foot became a trochaic dipody *. By this
process, called by the ancients a.bendi7ig, or refraction (avckXao-ig), the
metre obtained a less uniform, and at the same time a softer, expression ;
and thus, when distributed into short verses, it became peculiarly suited
to erotic poetry. The only traces of this metre, before Anacreon's time,
occur in two fragments of Sappho. Anacreon, however, formed upon
this plan a great variety of metres, particularly the short Anacreontic
verse (a dimeter lonicus), which occurs so frequently, both in his
"■enuine fragments and in the later odes imitated from his style. Ana-
creon used the trochaic and iambic verses in the same manner as Arehi-
lochus, with whom he has as much in common, in the technical part of
his poetry, as with the iEolic lyric poets. The composition of verses in
strophes is less frequent with Anacreon than with the Lesbian poets ;
and when he forms strophes, it often happens that their conclusion is
not marked by a verse different from those that precede ; but the divi-
sion is only made by the juxtaposition of a definite number of short
verses (for example, four Ionic dimeters), relating to a common
subject.
§ 15. It is scarcely possible to treat of the genuine remains of the
poetry of Anacreon, without adverting to the collection of odes, preserved
under his name. Indeed, these graceful little poems have so much
influenced the notion formed of Anacreon, that even now the admiration
bestowed upon him is almost entirely founded upon these productions
of poets much later than him in date, and-very different from him in
poetical character. It has long since been proved that these Anacre-
ontics are not the work of Anacreon ; and no further evidence of their
spuriousness is needed than the fact, that out of about 150 citations of
passages and expressions of Anacreon, which occur in the ancient
writers, only one (and that of recent date) refers to a poem in this
collection. But their subject and form furnish even stronger evi-
dence. The peculiar circumstances under which Anacreon wrote his
poetry never appear in these odes. The persons named in them (as,
for example, Bathyllus) lose their individual reality; the truth and
vigour of life give place to a shadowy and ideal existence. Many of the
common places of poetry, as an old age of pleasure, the praise of
love and wine, the power and subtlety of love, &c, are unquestion-
ably treated in them with an easy grace and a charming simplicity.
But generalities of this kind, without any reference to particular events
or persons, do not consist with the character of Anacreon's poetry, which
was drawn fresh from the life. Moreover, the principal topics in these
poems have an epigrammatic and antithetical turn : the strength of the
weaker sex, the power of little Eros, the happiness of dreams, the
* So that oo./_ j o o .£ _ is changed into u o / u | / o '. ,
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 187
freshness of age, are subjects for epigrams ; and for epigrams like those
composed in the first century before Christ (especially by Meleager), and
not like those of Simonides. Throughout these odes love is represented
as a little boy, who carries on a sort of mischievous sport with mankind ;
a conception unknown to ancient art, and closely akin to the epigram-
matic sports which belonged to the literature of a later period, and to the
analogous representations of Cupid in works of art, especially on gems,
where he appears, in various compositions, as a froward mischievous
child. None of these works are more ancient than the time of Lysippus
or Alexander. The Eros of the genuine Anacreon, who " strikes at
the poet with a great hatchet, like a smith, and then bathes in the
wintry torrent *," is evidently a being different both in body and mind.
The language of these odes is also prosaic and mean, and the versifica-
tion monotonous, inartificial, and sometimes faulty f.
These objections apply to the entire collection ; nevertheless, there is
a great difference between the several odes, some of which are excellent
in their way, and highly pleasing from their simplicity \ ; while others
are feeble in their conception and barbarous in their language and
versification. The former may, perhaps, belong to the Alexandrian
period; in which (notwithstanding its refined civilization) some poets
attempted to express the simplicity of childish dispositions, as appears
from the Idylls of Theocritus. Those of inferior stamp may be ascribed
to the later period of declining paganism, and to uncultivated writers,
who imitated a hackneyed style of poetical composition. However, many
even of the better Anacreontics may have been written at as late a period
as that of the national migrations. There can be no doubt that the
century which produced the epic poetry of Nonnus, and so many inge-
nious and well-expressed epigrams, possessed sufficient talent and know-
ledge for Anacreontics of this kind.
§ 16. With Anacreon ceased the species of lyric poetry, in which he
excelled : indeed he stands alone in it, and the tender softness of his
song was drowned by the louder tones of the choral poetry. The poem
(or melos) destined to be sung by a single person, never, among the
Greeks, acquired so much extent as it has since attained in the modern
English and German poetry. By modern poets it has been used as
the vehicle for expressing almost every variety of thought and feeling.
The ancients, however, drew a more precise distinction between the
* Fragm. in Hephaest. p. 68. Gais. fr. 45. Bergk.
f The prevailing metre in these Anacreontics o_o_cj_o (a dimeter
iambic catalectic) does not occur in the fragments, except in Hephcest. p. 30, Schol.
Aristoph. Plut. 302. (fr. 92. Bergk.) The verses there quoted are imitated in
one of the Anacreontics, od. 38. Hephaestion calls this metre, the " so called
'AvCtXglOVTllM.''
I One of the best, viz. Anacreon's advice to the toreutes, who is to make him a
cup, (No. 17 in the collection.) is cited by Gellius N. A. xix. '.), as a work of Ana-
creon hiir.self; but it has completely the tone and character of the common Ana-
creontics.
188 HISTORY OP THE
different feelings to be expressed in different forms of poetry ; and re-
served the JEoYic melos for lively emotions of the mind in joy or sorrow,
or for impassioned overflowings of an oppressed heart. Anacreon's
poetry contains rather the play of a graceful imagination than deep
emotion ; and among the other Greeks there is no instance of the em-
ployment of lyric poetry for the expression of strong feeling : so that
this kind of poetry was confined to a short period of time, and to a small
portion of the Greek territory. One kind of lyric poems nearly re-
sembling the iEolic, was, however, cultivated in the whole of Greece,
and especially at Athens, viz., the Scolion.
Scolia were songs, which were sung at social meals during drinking,
when the spirit was raised by wine and conversation to a lyrical pitch.
But this term was not applied to all drinking songs. The scolion
was a particular kind of drinking song, and is distinguished from
other parcenia. It was only sung by particular guests, who were
skilled in music and poetry ; and it is stated that the lyre, or a sprig
of myrtle, was handed round the table, and presented to any one who
possessed the power of amusing the company with a beautiful song, or
even a good sentence in the lyric form. This custom really existed * ;
although the notion that the name of the song arose from its irregular
course round the table ((tkoXiuv, crooked) is not probable. It is
much more likely (according to the opinion of other ancient writers),
that in the melody, to which the scolia were sung, certain liberties
and irregularities were permitted, by which the extempore execution
of the song was facilitated ; and that on this account the song was
said to be bent. The rhythms of the extant scolia are very various,
though, on the whole, they resemble those of the iEolic lyric poetry ;
only that the course of the strophes is broken by an accelerated
rhythm, and is in general more animated f. The Lesbians were
the principal composers of Scolia. Terpander, who (according to
Pindar) invented this kind of song, was followed by Alcaeus and
Sappho, and afterwards by Anacreon and Praxilla of Sicyon J ; besides
many others celebrated for choral poetry, as Simonides and Pindar.
* See particularly the scene described in Aristoph. Vesp. 1219. sq. where the
Scolion is caught up from one by the other.
-j- This is particularly true of the apt and elegant metre, which occurs in eight
Scolia (one of them the Harmodius), and of which there is a comic imitation in
Aristoph. Eccl. 938.
CJ _£ U CJ CJ _ CJ — CJ
_ cj ^CJCJ — CJ — CJ — CJ
o o _/ CJ _
/ CJ CJ—CJ —
/_ CJ CJ _
/ CJCJ_CJ_
Here the hendecasyllables begin with a composed and feeble tone ; but a more
rapid rhythm is introduced liy the anapaestic beginning of the third verse; and the
two expressions are recunciled by the logacedic members in the last verse.
% Praxilla (who, according to Eusebius, flourished in Olymp. 81. 2. u. c. 451,
and is mentioned as a composer of odes of an erotic character) is stated to be the
author of the Scolion 'Tiro aravr) \i6a>, which was in the ■j-ugoivia TlgaZiXXvs. (Schol.
Eav. in Aristoph. Thesra. 528), and of the Scolion, Ovx igrn ctXuxtxiZfiiv, (Schol.
Vesp. 1279. [1232.])
L1TERATTJKE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 189
We will not include in this number the seven wise men : for although
Diogenes Laertius, the historian of ancient philosophy, cites popular
verses of Thales, Solon, Chilon, Pittacus, and Bias, which are some-
what in the style of scolia * ; yet the genuineness of these sententious
songs is very questionable. With respect to language and metre, they
all appear formed upon the same model ; so that we must suppose the
seven wise men to have agreed to write in an uniform style, and more-
over in a kind of rhythm which did not become common until the time
of the tragedians j. Nevertheless they appear, in substance, to be as
early as the age to which they are assigned, as their tone has a great
resemblance to that of the scolia in the iEolic maimer. For example,
one of the latter contains these thoughts : " Would that we could open
the heart of every man, and ascertain his true character ; then close it
again, and live with him sincerely as a friend; "the scolion, in Doric
rhythms, ascribed to Chilon, has a similar tone : " Gold is rubbed on the
touchstone, and thus tried; but the minds of men are tried by gold,
whether they are good or bad." Hence it is probable that these scolia
were framed at Athens, in the time of the tragedians, from traditional
sayings of the ancient philosophers.
§ 17. Although scolia were mostly composed of moral maxims or of
short invocations to the gods, or panegyrics upon heroes, there exist
two, of greater length and interest, the authors of which are not other-
wise known as poets. The one beginning, "My great wealth is my
spear and sword," and written by Ilybrias, a Cretan, in the Doric
measure, expresses all the pride of the dominant Dorian, whose right
rested upon his arms; inasmuch as through them he maintained his
sway over bondmen, who were forced to plough and gather in the
harvest, and press out the grapes for him J. The other beginning, " In.
the myrtle-bough will I bear my sword," is the work of an Athenian,
named CaUistratus, and was written probably not long after the Persian
war, as it was a favourite song in the time of Aristophanes. 1 1 celebrates
* Diogenes generally introduces them with some such expression as this : ray V
uoof/.iv<d\i uvTou [/.uXiirru. luooKifiiiinv imive.
I They are all in Doric rhythms (which consist of dactylic members and trochaic
dipodies ), but with an ithyphallic (— o - u _ o) at the close. This composite kind
of rhythm never occurs in Pindar, occurs only once in Simonides, but occurs regu-
larly in the Doric choruses of Euripides. The following scolion of Solon may serve
as an example :
TlifuXayfiiva; rlv&oa, 'lx.u.ffrov oocc,
Mi) houttov 'iyx<>> '^X av *2«5/si (fiUiho'id <rrootrivvix;ii <xooi!<uiTM)
YXuxrffa Ss el '&t%ifiU$o; ix f/.i?.al-
va,$ (paivog y'.yuvr,.
Also the following one of Pittacus :
"E^svra S;? t'o\u. xu.) ]aa"ox.ev <pzvi-{>r,v trT-!%<iv tot-) ^urte. y.axov.
Il/y-ov yae oiiiv yXutHTU. oia ht'o^.o.to; XctXu, di^f-uSov 'i%eutrx
In that of Thales (Diog. Laert. I. i. 35,) the ithyphallic is before the last verse,
J See Muller's Dorians, B, I J I. ch. 4. § 1.
190 HISTORY OP THE
the liberators of the Athenian people, Harmodius and Aristogiton, for
having 1 , at the festival of Athene, slain the tyrant Hipparchus, and re-
stored equal rights to the Athenians ; for this they lived for ever in the
islands of the hlest, in community with the most exalted heroes, and on
earth their fame was immortal *. This patriotic scolion does not indeed
rest on an historical foundation ; for it is known from Herodotus and
Thucydides, that, though Hipparchus, the younger brother of the tyrant,
was slain by Harmodius and Aristogiton, this act only served to make
the government of Hippias, the elder brother, more cruel and suspicious;
and it was Cleomenes the Spartan, who, three years later, really drove
the Pisistratids from Athens. But the patriotic delusion in which the
scolion was composed was universal at Athens. Even before the
Persian war, statues of Harmodius and Aristogiton had been erected,
as of heroes ; which statues, when carried away by Xerxes, were after-
wards replaced by others. Supposing the mind of the Athenian poet
possessed with this belief, we cannot but sympathize in the enthusiasm
with which he celebrates his national heroes, and desires to imitate
their costume at the Panathenaic festival, when they concealed their
swords in boughs of myrtle. The simplicity of the thoughts, and the
frequent repetition of the same burden, " for they slew the tyrant," is
quite in conformity with the frank and open tone of the scolion ; and we
may perhaps conjecture that this poem was a real impromptu, the pro-
duct of a rapid and transient inspiration of its author.
CHAPTER XIV.
§ 1. Connection of lyric poetry with choral songs : gradual rise of regular forms
from this connection. First stage. — $ 2. Alcman ; his origin and date ; mode of
recitation and form of his choral songs. — § 3. Their poetical character. — § 4.
Stesichorus ; hereditary transmission of his poetical taste ; his reformation of
the chorus. — §5. Subjects and character of his poetry. — §6. Erotic and bucolic
poetry of Stesichorus. — § 7. Arion. The dithyramb raised to a regular choral
song. Second stogie. — § 8. Life of Ibycus ; his imitation of Stesichorus. — § 9.
Erotic tendency of his poetry. — § 10. Life of Simonides. — § 11. Variety and
ingenuity of his poetical powers. Comparison of his Epinikia with those of
Pindar. — § 12. Characteristics of his style. — § 13. Lyric poetry of Bacchylides,
imitated from that of Simonides. — §14. Parties among the lyric poets; rivalry
of La sirs, Timocreon, and Pindar with Simonides.
§ 1. The characteristic features of the Doric lyric poetry have been
already described, for the purpose of distinguishing it from the MoWc.
These were ; recitation by choruses, the artificial structure of long
strophes, the Doric dialect, and its reference to public affairs, especially
* These, and most of the other scolia, are in Athenseus, xv. p. 694. sq.
L LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 191
to the celebration of divine worship. The origin of this kind of lyric
poetry can be traced to the earliest times of Greece : for (as has been
already shown) choruses were generally used in Greece before the time
of Homer; although the dancers in the ancient choruses did not also
sing, and therefore an exact correspondence of all their motions with the
words of the song was not requisite. At that period, however, the joint
singing of several persons was practised, who either sat, stood or
moved onwards; as in pseans and hymenseals ; sometimes the mimic
movements of the dancer were explained by the singing, which was
executed by other persons, as in the hyporchemes. And thus nearly
every variety of the choral poetry, which was afterwards so elaborately
and so brilliantly developed, existed, even at that remote period, though
in a rude and unfinished state. The production of those polished forms
in which the style of singing and the movements of the dance were
brought into perfect harmony, coincides with the last advance in musical
art ; the improvements in which, made by Terpander, Olympus, and
Thaletas, have formed the subject of a particular notice.
Thaletas is remarkable for having cultivated the art of dancing as
much as that of music; while his rhythms seem to have been nearly as
various as those afterwards employed in choral poetry. The union of song
and dance, which was transferred from the lyric to the dramatic choruses *,
must also have been introduced at that time ; since the complicated
structure of the strophes and antistrophes is founded, not on singing-
alone, but on the union of that art with dancing. In the first century
subsequent to the epoch of these musicians, choral poetry does not,
however, appear in its full perfection and individuality ; but approaches
either to the Lesbian lyric poetry, or to the epos ; thus the line which
separated these two kinds (between which the choral songs occupy a
middle place) gradually became more distinct. Among the lyric poets
whom the Alexandrians placed in their canon, Alcman and Stesichorus
belong to this period of progress ; while finished lyric poetry is repre-
sented by Ibycus, Simonides with his disciple Bacchylides, and Pindar.
We shall now proceed to take a view of these poets separately ; class-
in" - among the former the dithyrambic poet Arion, and among the latter
Pindar's instructor Lasus, and a few others who have sufficient indivi-
duality of character to distinguish them from the crowd.
We must first, however, notice the erroneous opinion that choral
poetry existed among the Greeks in the works of these great poets
only ; they are, on the contrary, to be regarded merely as the eminent
points arising out of a widely extended mass; as the most perfect re
presentatives of that poetical fervour which, at the religious festivals,
inspired all classes. Choral dances were so frequent among the Greeks
* TlciXai fjtXv yuo el aire) xa) fiov x«) u^euvra, says Lucian de Saltat. 30, comparing
the modern pantomimic style of dancing with the ancient lyric and dramatic style.
192 hISTORY OF THE
at this period, among the Dorians in particular, and were performed by
the whole people, especially in Crete and Sparta, with such ardour and
enthusiasm, that the demand for songs to be sung as an accompani-
ment to them must have been very great. It is true that, in many
places, even at the great festivals, people contented themselves with the
old traditionary songs, consisting of a few simple verses in which the
principal thoughts and fundamental tone of feeling were rather touched
than worked out. Thus, at the festival of Dionysus, the women of
Elis sang, instead of an elaborate dithyramb, the simple ditty, full
of antique symbolic language : " Come, hero Dionysus, to thy holy sea-
temple, accompanied by the Graces, and rushing on, oxen-hoofed ; holy
ox ! holy ox* !"
At Olympia too, long before the existence of Pindar's skilfully com-
posed Epinikia, the little song ascribed to Archilochus t was sung in
honour of the victors at the games. This consisted of two iambic verses ;
" Hail, Hercules, victorious prince, all hail !
Thyself and Iolaus, warriors bold,"
with the burden " Tenella ! victorious!" to which a third verse, in
praise of the victor of the moment, was probably added extempore. So
also the three Spartan choruses, composed of old men, adults and boys,
sang at the festivals the three iambic trimeters:
" Once we were young, and strong as other youths.
We are so still ; if you list, try our strength.
We shall be stronger far than all of you £."
But from the time that the Greeks had learned the charm of perfect
lyric poetry, in which not merely a single chord of feeling was struck by
the passing hand of the bard, but an entire melody of thoughts and
sentiments was executed, their choruses did not persist in the mere
repetition of verses like these ; songs were universally demanded, dis-
tinguished for a more artificial metre, and for an ingenious combina-
tion of ideas. Hence every considerable town, particularly in the
Doric Peloponnesus, had its poet who devoted his whole life to the
training and execution of choruses — in short to the business, so im-
portant to the whole history of Greek poetry, of the Chorodidascalus.
How many such choral poets there were, whose fame did not extend
beyond their native place, may be gathered from the fact that Pindar,
while celebrating a pugilist of /Egina, incidentally mentions two lyric
poets of the same family, the Theandrids, Timocritus and Euphanes.
Sparta also possessed seven lyric poets besides Alcman, in these early
times §. There too, as in other Doric states, women, even in the time
* Plutarch, Qusest. Grose. 36. + See above, p. 138. note f.
J Plutarch, Lycurg. 21. These triple choruses are called r^^oota. in Pollux IV.
107, where the establishment of them is attributed to Tyitaeus.
§ Their names are Spendon, Dionysyodotus, Xenodamus, (see Chap. xii. § 11.)
Gitiadas, Artius, Eurytus, and Zarex.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 193
of Alcman, contributed to the cultivation of poetry; as, for example,
the maiden whom Alcman himself celebrates in these words*, " This
gift of the sweet Muses hath the fair-haired Megalostrata, favoured
among virgins, displayed among us." From this we see how widely
diffused, and how deeply rooted, were the feeling and the talent for such
poetical productions in Sparta; and that Alcman, with his beautiful
choral songs, introduced nothing new into that country, and only em-
ployed, combined and perfected elements already existing. But neither
Alcman, nor the somewhat earlier Terpander, were the first who
awakened this spirit among the Spartans. Even the latter found the
love for arts of this description already in existence, where, according
to an extant verse of his, " The spear of the young men, and the
clear-sounding muse, and justice in the wide market-place, flourish."
§ 2. According to a well known and sufficiently accredited account,
Alcman was a Lydian of Sardis, who grew up as a slave in the house
of Agesidas, a Spartan ; but was emancipated, and obtained rights
of citizenship, though of a subordinate kind f- A learned poet of
the Alexandrian age, Alexander the iEtolian, says of Alcman, (or
rather makes him say of himself,) " Sardis, ancient home of my
fathers, had I been reared within thy walls, I were now a cymbal-
bearer J, or a eunuch-dancer in the service of the Great Mother, decked
with "-old, and whirling the beautiful tambourine in my hands. But
now I am called Alcman, and belong to Sparta, the city rich in sacred
tripods; and I have become acquainted with the Heliconian Muses,
who have made me greater than the despots Daskyles and Gyges."
Alcman however, in his own poems, does not speak so contemptuously
of the home of his forefathers, but puts into the mouth of a chorus of
virgins, words wherein he himself is celebrated as being " no man of
rude unpolished manners, no Thessalian or iEtolian, but sprung from
the lofty Sardis §." This Lydian extraction had doubtless an influence
on Alcman's style and taste in music. The date at which he lived is
usually placed at so remote a period as to render it unintelligible how
lyric poetry could have already attained to such variety as is to be
found in his works. It may indeed be true that he lived in the reign
of the Lydian king Ardys ; but it does not thence follow that he lived
at the beo-innin<r of it ; on the contrary, his childhood was contemporary
with the close of that reign. (Ol. 37. 4. b. c. 629.) Alcman, in one
of his poems, mentioned the musician Polymnastus, who, in his turn,
* Fragm. 27. ed.Welcker.
t According to Suidas he was &*o Maria?, and Mesoa was one of the phylae of
Sparta, which were founded on divisions of the city. Perhaps, however, this state
ment only means that Alcman dwelt in Mesoa, where the family of his former
master and Subsequent patron may have resided.
I Ki^vai is equivalent to *£gva(p«j«; , the hearer of the dish, k'iovos, used in the wor
ship of Cybele. See the epigram in Anthol. Pal. VII. 709.
& Fiiirm. ll.ed. Welcker, according to Welcker's explanation.
o
194 HISTORY OF THE
composed a poem to Thaletas *. According to this, he must have
flourished about Ol. 42. (b. c. 612), which is the date assigned to him
by ancient chronologists. His mention of the island Pityussef near the
Balearic islands, points to this age; since, according to Herodotus,
the western parts of the Mediterranean were first known to the Greeks
by the voyages of the Phocaeans, from the 35th Olympiad downwards ;
and then became a subject of geographical knowledge, not, as hereto-
fore, of fabulous legends. Alcman had thus before him music in that
maturity which it had attained, not only by the labours of Terpander,
but also by those of Thaletas ; he lived at a time when the Spartans,
after the termination of the Messenian wars, had full leisure to devote
themselves to the arts and pleasures of life ; for their ambition was not
as yet directed to distinguishing themselves from the other Greeks
by rude unpolished manners. Alcman devoted himself entirely to the
cultivation of art; and we find in him one of the earliest examples of a
poet who consciously and purposely strove to embellish his works with
new artistical forms. In the ode which is regarded by the ancients as
the first, he says., " Come, Muse, clear-voiced Muse, sing to the maidens
a melodious song in a new fashion J ;" and he elsewhere frequently
mentions the originality and the ingenuity of his poetical forms. He
ought always to be imagined as at the head of a chorus, by means of
which, and together with which, be seeks to please.
" Arise, Muse," exclaims he, " Calliope, daughter of Jove, sing us
pleasant songs, give charm to the hymn, and grace to the chorus §."
And again, " May my chorus please the house of Zeus, and thee,
oh lord || !" Alcman is regarded by some as the true inventor of
choral poetry, although others assign this reputation to his predecessor
Terpander, or to his successor Stesichorus. He composed more espe-
cially for choruses of virgins, as several of the fragments quoted above
show ; as well as the title of a considerable portion of his songs, Par-
thenia. The word Parthenia is, indeed, not always employed in the
same sense ; but in its proper technical signification it denotes choral
songs sung by virgins, not erotic poems addressed to them. On the
contrary, the music and the rhythm of these songs are of a solemn and
lofty character; many of those of Alcman and the succeeding lyric
poets were in the Doric harmony. The subjects were very various :
according to Proclus, gods and men were celebrated in them, and the
passage of Alcman, in which the virgins, with Homeric simplicity, ex-
* See Ch. xii. §9. f Steph. Byz. in Utruovtrai.
I This is the meaning of fragm. 1., which probably ought to be written and dis-
tributed (with a slight alteration) as follows :
Mar ay!, Muira Xiyaix, •xoXv/i.iXis f/.iXo;
The first verse is logaoedic, the second iambic.
§ Fragm 4. |] Fragm. 68.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 19")
claim, " Oh father Zeus, were he but my husband* !" was doubtless in
a Parthenion. If we inquire more minutely into the relation of the
poet to his chorus, we shall not find, at least not invariably, that it as
yet possessed that character to which Pindar strictly adhered. The
chorus was not the mere organ of the poet, and all the thoughts and
feelings to which it gave utterance, those of the poet f. In Alcman,
the virgins more frequently speak in their own persons ; and many
Parthenia contain a dialogue between the chorus and the poet, who
was at the same time the instructor and the leader of the chorus. We
find sometimes addresses of the chorus of virgins to the poet, such as
has just been mentioned; sometimes of the poet to the virgins asso-
ciated with him ; as in that beautiful fragment in hexameters, " No
more, ye honeyvoiced, holy-singing virgins, no more do my limbs
suffice to bear me; oh that I were a Cerylus, which with the halcyons
skims the foam of the waves with fearless heart, the sea-blue bird of
spring I !"
But, doubtless, Alcman composed and directed other choruses,
since the Parthenia were only a part of his poetical works, besides
which Hymns to the Gods, Paeans, Prosodia§, Hymeneals, and love-
songs, are attributed to him. These poems were generally recited or
represented by choruses of youths. The love-songs were probably
sung by a single performer to the cithara. The clepsiambic poems,
consisting partly of singing, partly of common discourse, and for which
a peculiar instrument, bearing the same name, was used, also occurred
among the works of Alcman, who appears to have borrowed them, as
well as many other things, from Archilochus||. Alcman blends the
sentiments and the style of Archilochus, Terpander, and Thaletas, and,
perhaps, even those of the yEolian lyric poets : hence his works ex-
hibit a great variety of metre, of dialect, and of general poetical tone.
Stately hexameters are followed by the iambic and trochaic verse of
Archilochus, by the ionics and cretics of Olympus and Thaletas, and by
various sorts of logacedic rhythms. His strophes consisted partly of
verses of different kinds, partly of repetitions of the same, as in the ode
which opened with the invocation to Calliope above mentioned %. The
connexion of two corresponding strophes with a third of a different
* Schol. Horn. Od. VI. 244.
f There are only a few passages in Pindar, in which it has heen thought that
there was a separation of the person of the chorus and the poet; viz. Pyth. v. 68.
(96.) ix. 98. (174.) Nem. i. 19. (-29.) vii. 85. (125.); and these have, by an accu-
rate interpretation, been reduced to the abovementioned rule.
I Fragin. 12. See Miiller's Dorians, b. iv. ch. 7. § 1 1.
§ rLwoSia, songs to be sung during a procession to a temple, before the sacrifice.
|| Above, p. 139, note f, with Aristoxenus ap. Hesych. in v. KXs^V/3«f.
«V MSS &y%, KaXXiiflw, tCyane Aw. Dactylic tetrameters of this kind were com-
bined into strophes, without hiatus and syllaba anceps, that is, alter the manner ot
systems. 2
196
HISTORY OF THE
kind, called an epode, did not occur in Alcman. He made strophes of
the same measure succeed each other in an indefinite number, like the
iEolic lyric poets : there were, however, odes of his, consisting of
fourteen strophes, with an alteration (peraj3o\{]) in the metre after
the seventh * ; which was of course accompanied with a marked change
in the ideas and in the whole tone of the poem.
It ought also to be mentioned that the Laconic metre, a kind of
anapaestic verse, used as a march (afijiariipioy), which the Spartan
troops sang as they advanced to attack the enemy, is attributed to
Alcman t ; whence it may be conjectured that Alcman imitated Tyr-
taeus, and composed war-songs similar to his, cons'sting not of strophes,
but of a repetition of the same sort of verse. The authority for such
a supposition is, however, slight. There is not a trace extant of any
marches composed by Alcman, nor is there any similarity between their
form and character and any of his poetry with which we are acquainted.
It is true that Alcman frequently employed the anapaestic metre, but
not in the same way as Tyrtaeus j, and never unconnected with other
rhythms. Thus Tyrtasus, who was Alcman's predecessor by one gene-
ration, and whom we have already described as an elegiac poet, appears
to have been the only notable composer of Embateria. These were
sung to the flute in the Castorean measure by the whole army ; and, as
is proved by a few extant verses, contained simple, but vigorous and
manly exhortations to bravery. The measure in which they were
written was also called the Messenian, because the second Messenian
war had given occasion to the composition of war-songs of peculiar
force and fervour.
§ 3. Alcman is generally regarded as the poet who successfully over-
came the difficulties presented by the rough and intractable dialect of
Sparta, and invested it with a certain grace. And, doubtlers, inde-
pendent of their general Doric form, many Spartan idioms are found
in his poems §, though by no means all the peculiarities of that dialect ||.
Alcman's language, therefore, agrees with the other poetical dialects of
Greece, in not representing a popular dialect in its genuine state, but
in elevating and refining it by an admixture with the language of epic
poetry, which may be regarded as the mother and nurse of every variety
of poetry among the Greeks.
We may also observe that this tinge of popular Laconian idioms is
by no means equally strong in all the varieties of Alcman's poetry ; they
* Hephaest. p. 134. ed. Gaisford.
f The metrical scholia to Eurip. Hec. 59.
I According to the La'in metrical writers, Servius and Marins Victorinu*, the
dimeter hypercatalectos, the trimeter catalecticus, and the tetrameter, hrachycata-
lectos were called Alcmanica metra. The embateria were partly in the dimeter
catalecticus, partly in the tetrameter catalecticus.
§ As a- for 6 (<r«XXsv for OaXXiv, &c.) , th3 rough termination « in ^axa^j, risg/jjgj.
| For example, not 'iAZa, Tip'oko^, axzog (for urxo;). Sec.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 197
are most abundant in certain fragments of a hearty, simple character*,
in which Alcman depicts his own way of life, his eating and drinking,
of which, without being absolutely a glutton, he was a great lover f-
But even here we may trace the admixture with the MoWc character {,
which ancient grammarians attribute to Alcman. It is explained by
the fact that Peloponnesus was indebted for the first perfect specimen
of lyric poetry to an iEolian of Lesbos, Terpander, In other frag-
ments the dialect approximates more nearly to the epic, and has re-
tained only a faint tinge of Dorism; especially in all the poems in
hexameters, and, indeed, wherever the poetry assumes a dignified,
majestic character §.
Alcman is one of the poets whose image is most effaced by time, and
of whom we can the least hope to obtain any accurate knowledge. The
admiration awarded to him by antiquity is scarcely justified by the
extant remains of his poetry ; but, doubtless, this is because they are
extremely short, or are cited only in illustration of trifles. A true and
lively conception of nature pervades the whole, elevated by that power
of quickening the inanimate which descended from remote antiquity :
thus, for instance, the poet calls the dew, Hersa, a daughter of Zeus
and Selene, of the God of the Heavens and the Moon ||.
He is also remarkable for simple and cheerful views of human life,
connected with an intense enthusiasm for the beautiful in whatsoever
age or sex, especially for the grace of virgins, the objects of Alcman's
most ardent homage. The only evidence that his erotic poetry is
somewhat voluptuous^ is to be found in the innocence and simplicity
with which, in the true Spartan fashion, he regarded the relation
between the sexes. A corrupt, refined sensuality neither belongs to
the age in which he lived, nor to the character of his poetry ; and
although, perhaps, he is chiefly conversant with sensual existence, yet
indications are not wanting of a quick and profound conception of the
spiritual **.
§ 4. The second great choral poet, Stesichorus, has so little in
common with Alcman, that he can in no respect be regarded as suc-
* Fragm. 24. 28.
I Especially in the sound OI5 for an original ON2, as in <p'sgoi<ra. It appears,
however, that the pine Doric form M^a-a ought to he introduced everywhere for
INIaJVa. In, the third person plural, Alcman probably had, like Pindar, either
aUiovTi (lr. 73), or i'uloiiriv. The o-S in rgavirla, xiHagitrdiv, is also ./Folic : the pure
Doric form was xJcc^Hhv, &c.
§ As in the beautiful fragment, No. 10, in YYelcker"s collection, which contains
a description of the repose of night.
|| Fr. 47.
^[ aKoKaarot, Archytas (« a^oviKos) in Athen. xiii. p. COO. F.
** Alcman called the memory, the ^v/i^n, by the name fga.tr't'Stioxtn, " that which
, in the mind:"' as should be written in Ktytn. Gud. p. 3'J5. 5'2. for faa) ligxov.
■I'^airi is a well-known Doric form for Qgitri.
198 HISTORY OF THE
cessor to the Laconiati poet, in his endeavours to bring' that branch
of poetry to perfection. We must consider him as starting- from the
same point, but led by the originality of his genius into a totally
different path. Stesichorus is of rather a later date than Alcman.
He was born, indeed, just at the period when the first steps towards
the development of lyric poetry were made by Terpander (Olympiad
33. 4. 643 b. c. ; according to others, Olympiad 37. b. c. 632),
but his life was protracted above eighty years (to Olympiad 55. 1.
560 b. c. ; according to others 56. b. c. 556) ; so that he might be a
contemporary of the Agrigentine tyrant Phalaris, against whose ambi-
tious projects he is said by Aristotle to have warned his fellow-citizens
in an ingenious fable *. According; to common tradition, Stesichorus
was a native of Himera, a city containing a mixed population, half
Ionic, half Doric, the Himeraeans having come partly from the Chalci-
dian colony Zancle, partly from Syracuse. But at the time Stesichorus
was born, Himera was but just founded, and his family could have
been settled there but a few years. His ancestors, however, were nei-
ther Zanclaeans nor Syracusans, but dwelt at Mataurus, or Metaurus, a
city on the south of Italy, founded by the Locrians f. This circum-
stance throws a very welcome light on the otherwise strange tradition,
which Aristotle \ thought worthy of recording, that Stesichorus was a
son of Hesiod, by a virgin named Ctimene, of O3neon, a place in the
country of the Ozolian Locrians. If we abstract from this what belongs
to the ancient mode of expression, which generally clothes in the simplest
forms all relationships of blood, the following will result from the first
mentioned facts. There was, as we saw above §, a line of epic bards in
the style of Hesiod, who inhabited QCneon, and the neighbouring Nau-
pactus, in the country of the Locrians. A family in which a similar
practice of the poetical art was hereditary came through the colony
of Locri in Italy, in which the Ozolian Locrians took peculiar interest,
to these parts, and settled in Mataurus. From this family sprang Stesi-
chorus.
Stesichorus lived at a time when the serene tone of the epos and an
exclusive devotion to a mythical subject no longer sufficed ; the predo-
minant tendency of the Greek mind was towards lyric poetry. He
himself was powerfully affected by this taste, and consecrated his life to
the transplantation of all the rich materials, and the mighty and imposing
shapes, which had hitherto been the exclusive property of the epos, to
the choral poem. His special business was the training and direction
of choruses, and he assumed the name of Stesichorus, or leader of
choruses, his original name being Tisias. This occupation must have
* Above, ch. xi. § 14.
f Steph. Byz. in Mera^f, SrW^ajaj, Maraotfyos yivos. See Klein, Fragments
Stesichori, p. 9.
J In Proclus and ^tetzes, Prolog, to Hesiod. $ Ch. 8. § 4.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 199
remained hereditary in his family in Himera ; a younger Stesichorus of
Himera came, in Olympiad 73. 1. B.C. 4S5, to Greece as a poet*; a
third Stesichorus of Himera was victor at Athens, doubtless as chorus-
leader, in Olympiad 102. 3. b. c. 370 f. The eldest of them, Stesi-
chorus Tisias, made a great change in the artistical form of the chorus.
He it was who first broke the monotonous alternation of the strophe
and antistrophe through a whole poem, by the introduction of the epode,
differing in measure, and by this means made the chorus stand still J.
During the strophe, the chorus moved in a certain evolution, which
again during the antistrophe was made back to its original station,
where it remained while the epode was sung. The chorus of Stesi-
chorus seems to have consisted of a combination of several rows or
members of eight dancers ; the number eight appears indeed from various
traditions to have been, as it were, consecrated by him §. The mu-
sical accompaniment was the cithara. The strophes of Stesichorus were
of great extent, and composed of different verses, like those of Pindar,
though of a simpler character. In many poems they consisted of dac-
tylic series, which were sometimes broken shorter, sometimes extended
longer, as it were variations of the hexameter. With these Stesichorus
combined trochaic dipodies ||, by which the gravity of the dactyls was
somewhat tempered ; the metres used by Pindar, and generally for
all odes in the Dorian style of music, thus arose Although Stesichorus
also mainly employed this grave and solemn harmony, yet he himself
mentions on one occasion the use of the Phrygian, which is characte-
rized by a deeper pathos, and a more passionate expression ^f. It appears
from this fragment that the poet chose, as its metrical form, dactylic sys-
tems (l. e. combinations of similar series without any close or break), to
which ponderous trochees were attached **. Elsewhere, Stesichorus used
also anapaests and choriambics, which correspond in their character to
the dactylic verses just mentioned. Occasionally, however, he used the
lighter and rather pleasing than solemn logaoedic measure.
§ 5. As the metres of Stesichorus approach much more nearly to the
epos than those of Alcman, as his dialect also is founded on the epic, to
* Marm. Par. ep. f>0. f Ibid. ep. 73.
\ See several grammarians and compilers in rglix. 2.r-/nri%igov, or OiSt t^'io, Irmix'^ou
yiyvutrxas-
§ Several grammarians at the explanation of xaiTu. «w.
|l ^o_o. Several verses of greater or less length, formed of dipodies of this
kind, aie called by the grammarians Stesichorean verses.
f Fragm. 12. Mus. Crit. Cantab. Fasc. VI. Fragm. 39. ed. Klein:
(IC-JfAUTU. Ktt.X\lKO/J,UV V(A-
viiv $gvytov ftiXo; \\iu-
povra.;,
Stesichorns, also, according to Plutarch, used the igpocno; veftos, which had been
• it by Olympus in the Phrygian ap^avla : above, ch. 12. § 7.
** rpiYaiai fvuxvroi.
200 HISTORY OF THE
which he gave a different tone only by the most frequent and most cur-
rent Dorisms, so also with regard to the matter and contents of his
poems, Stesichorus makes, of all lyric poets, the nearest approach to the
epic. " Stesichorus," says Quintilian elegantly, " sustained the weight of
epic poetry with the lyre." We know the epic subjects which he treated
in this manner ; they have a great resemblance to the subjects of the
shorter epic poems of the Hesiodean school, of which we have spoken
above. Many of them were borrowed from the great mythic cycle of
Hercules (whom he, like Pisander, invariably represented with the
lion's skin, club, and bow); such as his expedition against the triple
giant of the west, Geryon (Trjpvovig') ; Scylla (S/cuXXa), whom, in
the same expedition, Hercules subdued; the combat with Cycnus
(Kvkvoq) *, the son of Ares, and the dragging of Cerberus (Kepftapog)
from the infernal regions. Others related to the mythic cycle of Troy;
such as the destruct'on of Ilium ('IX/ou -rripaig), the returns of the
heroes (Noorot), and the story of Orestes COpeorwa). Other my-
thical subjects were, the prizes which Acastus, King of Iolcus, distri-
buted at the funeral games of his father Pelias (j.ir\ IleXiq. JSAa) \
Eriphyle, who seduced her husband Amphiaraus to join in the expedi-
tion against Thebes ('Ept^vXa) ; the hunters of the Calydonian boar
((rvoQijpai, according to the most probable interpretation) ; lastly, a
poem called Europeia (a title abo borne by the epos of Eumelus),
which, from the little we know of it, seems to have treated of the tradi-
tional stories of Cadmus, with which that of Europa was interwoven.
A question here arises, how these epic subjects could be treated in a
lyric form. It is manifest that these poems could not have had the per-
fect repose, the vivid and diffuse descriptions, in short all the characte-
ristics of the epos. To connect with these qualities the accompaniment
of many voices and instruments, a varied rhythmical structure, and
choral dancing, would have seemed to the Greeks, with their fine sense
of harmony and congruity, a monstrous misjoinder. There must, there-
fore, have been something which induced Stesichorus, or his fellow
citizens, to take an interest in these heroes and their exploits. Thus in
Pindar all the mythological narratives have reference to some recent
event t. In Stesichorus, however, the mythical subject must have been
treated at greater length, and have occupied nearly the entire poem ;
otherwise the names of these poems would not have been like those of
epic compositions. One of them, the Oresteia, was so long, that it was
divided into two books ; and it contained so much mythical matter, that
in the Iliac table, a well known ancient bas-relief, the destruction of
Troy is represented in a number of scenes from this poem. The most
probable supposition, therefore, is that these poems were intended to be
represented at the mortuary sacrifices and festivals, which were fre-
* Ch. 8. (p. 98-9.^ t Below, ch. 15. § 1.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 201
quently celebrated in Magna Grsecia to the Greek heroes, especially to
those of the Trojan cycle *.
The entire tone in which Stesichorus treated these mythic narratives
was also quite different from the epic. It is evident from the fragments
that he dwelt upon a few brilliant adventures, in which the force and
the glory of the heroes was, as it were, concentrated ; and that he gave
the reins to his fancy. Tlius, in an extant fragment, Hercules is de-
scribed as returning to the god of the sun (Helios), on the goblet on
which he had swum to the island of Geryoneus ; " Helios, the Hype-
rionid, stepped into the golden goblet, in order to go, over the ocean, to
the sacred depths of the dark night to his mother, and wife, and dear
children ; while the son of Zeus (Hercules) entered into the laurel
grove f." In another, the dream of Clytaemnestra, in the night before
she was killed, is described: "A serpent seemed to approach her, its
crest covered with blood ; but, of a sudden, the king of Pleisthenes race
(Agamemnon) came out of it J." In general, a lyric poet like Stesi-
chorus was more inclined than an epic poet to alter the current legend ;
since his object was not so much mere narration, as the praise of indi-
vidual heroes, and the mythus was always introduced with a view to its
application. As a proof of this assertion, it is sufficient to refer to the
story, celebrated in antiquity, of Stesichorus having, in a poem (pro-
bably the destruction of Troy), attributed all the sufferings of the Trojan
war to Helen § ; but the deified heroine having, as it was supposed,
deprived him of his sight, as a punishment for this insult, he composed
his famous Palinodia, in which he said that the Helen who had been
seen in Troy, and for whom the Greeks and Trojans fought during
so many years, was a mere shadow (<f>a(Tfia, eicwXoi') ; while the true
Helen had never embarked from Greece. Even this, however, is not to
be considered as pure invention ; there were in Laconia popular legends
of Helen's having appeared as a shade long after her death ||, like her
brothers Castor and Pollux ; and it is possible that Stesichorus may
have met with some similar story. Stesichorus simply conceived Helen
to have remained in Greece; he did not suppose her to have gone to
Egypt %.
* Thus in Tarentum huyitrpo) were offered to the Atrids, Tydids, Alcids.
Laertiads (Pseud-Aristot. Mirab. Ausc. 114); in Metapontum to the Nelids
(Strabo VI. p. 263,) &c.
f Fragm. 3. (10. ed. Klein).
I Fragm. inc. 1. (43. Klein). This fragment too is in a lyric metre, and ought
not to be forced into an elegiac distich.
§ Hence in the Iliac table, Menelaus is represented as attempting to stab Helen
whom he has just recovered ; while she flies lor protection to the temple of
Aphrodite.
|| Herod. VI. 61.
^[ Others sir, po-ed that Proteus, the marine demigod skilled in metamorphoses,
went to the island of Pharos, and there formed a false Helen with which he
deceived Paris; a version of the story which even the ancient Scholiasts have con-
202 HISTORY OF THE
The language of Stesichorus likewise accorded with the tone of his
poetry. Quiutilian, and other ancient critics, state that it corresponded
with the dignity of the persons described by him ; and that he might
have stood next to Homer, if he had restrained the copiousness of his
diction. It is possible that, in expressing this opinion, Quintilian did
not sufficiently advert to the distinction between the epic and lyric
styles.
§ G. We have subjoined these remarks to the longer lyric poems of
Stesichorus, which were nearest to the epos, as it was in these that the
peculiar character of his poetry was most clearly displayed. Stesi-
chorus, however, also composed poems in praise of the gods, especially
paeans and hymns ; not in an epic, but in a lyric form. There were
also erotic poems of Stesichorus, differing as much as his other produc-
tions from the amatory lyric poems of the Lesbians. They consisted of
love-stories; as the Calyce, which described the pure but unhappy love
of a maiden of that name ; and the Rhadina, which related the
melancholy adventures of a Samian brother and sister, whom a Corin-
thian tyrant put to death out of love for the sister, and jealousy of the
brother *. These are the earliest instances in Greek literature of love-
stories forming the basis of romantic poetry ; the stories themselves
probably having been derived from the tales with which the inmates of
the Greek gyneecea amused themselves. These stories (which were
afterwards collected by Parthenius, Plutarch, and others) usually be-
longed, not to the purely mythical period, but either to historical times,
or to the transition period between fable and history. In this manner
the story involved the ordinary circumstances of life, while extraordi-
nary situations could be introduced, serving to show the fidelity of the
lovers. Of a similar character was the bucolic poem, which Stesichorus
first raised from a rude strain of merely local interest, to a classical
branch of Greek poetry. Tiie first bucolic poem is said to have been
sung by Diomus, a cowherd in Sicily, a country abounding in cattlet-
The hero of this pastoral poetry was the shepherd Daphnis (celebrated
in Theocritus), who had been beloved by a nymph, and deprived by
her, out of jealousy, of his sight; and with whose laments all nature
founded with that of Stesichorus. As this Proteus was converted by the Egyptian
interpreters (\gpwus) into a king of Egypt, this king was said to have taken Helen
from Paris, and to have kept her for Menelaus. This was the story which Hero-
dotus heard in Egypt, II. 112. Euripi<ies, in his Helen, gives quite a new turn to
the tale. In this play, the gods form a false Helen, whom Paris takes to Troy ;
the true Helen is carried by Hermes to the Egyptian king Proteus. In this
manner, Proteus completely loses the character which he bears in the ancient
Greek mythus ; but the events tend to situations which suited the pathetic tragedy
of Euripides.
* Compare Strab. VIII. p. 347. D. with Pausan. VII. 5. 6. The chief authority
for these love-stories is the long excursus in Athenaeus on the popular songs of the
Greeks, XIV. p. G18. sqq.
f houxoXiaa-fios, Epicharmus ap. Athen. XIV. p. 619. The song of Eriphanis,
Muxgai loxtii. u tAyaXau appears to have been of native Sicilian origin.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GKEECE. 203
sympathised. This legend was current in the native country of Stesi-
chorus, near the river Himeras, where Daphnis is said to have uttered
his laments ; and near Cephaloedium, where a stone resembling a man's
form was said to have once been Daphnis. Himera was the only one
among the ancient Greek colonies in Sicily, which lay on the northern
coast of the island; it was entirely surrounded by the aboriginal inha-
bitants, the Siculians ; and it is therefore probable that the hero Daphnis,
and the original form of the pastoral song, belonged to the Siculian
peasantry *.
From what precedes, it appears that the poetry of Stesichorus was
not employed in expressing his own feelings, or describing the events of
his own life, but that he preferred the past to the present. This cha-
racter seems to have been common to all the poems of Stesichorus.
Thus he did not, like Sappho, compose Epithalamia having an imme-
diate reference to the present, but he took some of his materials from
mythology. The beautiful Epithalamium of Theocritus f, supposed to
have been sung by the Laconian virgins before the chamber of Mene-
laus and Helen, is, in part, imitated from a poem of Stesichorus.
§ 7. Thus much for the peculiarities of this choral poet, not less re-
markable in himself, than as a precursor of the perfect lyric poetry of
Pindar. Our information respecting Arion is far less complete and
satisfactory; yet the little that we know of him proves the wide exten-
sion of lyric poetry in the time of Alcman and Stesichorus. Arion was
the contemporary of Stesichorus; he is called the disciple of Alcman,
and (according to the testimony of Herodotus) flourished during the
reign of Periander at Corinth, between Olymp. 3S. 1. and 48. 4. (628
and 585 b. c), probably nearer the end than the beginning of this
period. He was a native of Methymna in Lesbos; a district in which
the worship of Bacchus, introduced by the Boeotians, was celebrated
with orgiastic rites, and with music. Arion was chiefly known in
Greece as the perfecter of the dithyramb. The dithyramb, as a song
of Bacchanalian festivals, is doubtless of great antiquity ; its name is
too obscure to have arisen at a late period of the Greek language, and
probably originated in the earliest times of the worship of Bacchus J.
Its character was always, like that of the worship to which it belonged,
impassioned and enthusiastic; the extremes of feeling, rapturous plea-
sure, and wild lamentation, were both expressed in it. Concerning the
mode of its representation we are but imperfectly informed. Archilo-
chus says, that " he is able, when his mind is inflamed with wine, to
* It appears from /Elian V. H., X. 18. that the legend of Daphnis was given in
Stesichorus. not as it is expanded in Theocrit. Id. I., but as it is touched upon in Id.
VII. 73. The pastoral legend of the Goathead Comatas, who was inclosed in a box
by the king's command, and led by a swarm of bees, sent by the Muses (Theocrit
VII. 78. s'j.) has all the appearance of a story embellished by Stesichorus.
f Id. XVIII.
f Un the formation of ^Jja^/So;, see p. 133 note *.
204 HISTORY OF THE
sing the dithyramb, the beautiful strain of Dionysus*": from which
expressions it is probable that in the time of Archilochus, one of a
band of revellers sometimes sang the dithyramb, while the others
joined him with their voices. There is, however, no trace of a choral
performance of the dithyramb at this time. Choruses had been already
introduced in Greece, but in connexion with the worship of Apollo, and
they danced to the cithara ((poppi-yE,), the instrument used in this
worship. In the worship of Dionysus, on the other hand, an irregular
band of revellers, led by a flute-plajer, was the prominent feature t.
Arion, according to the concurrent testimonies of the historians and
grammarians of antiquity, was the first who practised a chorus in
the representation of a dithyramb, and therefore gave a regular and
dignified character to this song, which before had probably consisted of
irregular expressions of excited feeling, and of inarticulate ejacula-
tions. This improvement was made at Corinth, the rich and flourish-
ing city of Periander ; hence Pindar in bis eulogy of Corinth exclaims :
" Whence, but from Corinth, arose the pleasing festivals of Dionysus,
with the dithyramb, of which the prize is an ox J?" The choruses
which sang the dithyramb were circular choruses (kvkXioi x°P°0 '■> so
called, because they danced in a circle round the altar on which the
sacrifice was burning. Accordingly, in the time of Aristophanes, the
expressions " dithyrambic poet,'' and " teacher of cyclian choruses'
(KvicXiohdcMTKaXog) , were nearly synonymous §. With regard to the
subjects of the dithyrambs of Arion we know nothing, except that he
introduced the tragic style into them ||. This proves that he had dis-
tinguished a choral song of a gloomy character, which referred to the
dangers and sufferings of Dionysus, from the ordinary dithyramb of
the joyous kind ; as will be shown in a subsequent chapter^. With
regard to the musical accompaniment of the dithyrambs of Arion, it
may be remarked, that the cithara was the principal instrument used
in it, and not the flute, as in the boisterous comus. Arion was himself
the first cithara-player of his time : and the exclusive fame of the Les-
bian musicians from Terpander downwards was maintained by him
'Qs t^ioowanv avaxro; xaXcni V^dp^at fiiXos
Oiaa oiDvpaftfiov o'i'vcu trvympuvvaitlus (ppiv&S-
ap. Athen. xiv. p. G28.
f See ch. iii. § 5.
% Pind. 01. xiii. 18. (25.), where the recent editors give a full and accurate ex-
planation of the matter.
§ Hence Arion is said to have been the son of Cycleus.
| Tpayixo; rpo-iro; Suidas in 'Apiav. Concerning the satyrs whom Arion is said to
have used on this occasion, see below, chap. xxi.
^[ Chap. xxi. The finest specimen of a dithyramb of the joyful kind is the frag-
ment of a dithyramb by Pindar, in Dion. Hal. de Comp. Verb. 22. This dithy-
ramb was intended for the great Dionysia (ra piyaXa or to. uittu Atovvtria), which
are described in it as a great vernal festival, at the season " when the chamber of
the Hours opens, and the nectarian plants feel the approach of the fragrant spring."
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 205
Arion also, according to the well known fable *, played the orthian
nomefj when he was compelled to throw himself from a ship into the
sea, and was miraculously saved by a dolphin J. Arion is also stated,
as well as Terpander, to have composed prooemia, that is, hymns to the
gods, which served as an introduction to festivals §.
§ 8. In descending to the choral poets who lived nearer the time of
the Persian war, we meet with two poets of very peculiar characters;
the vehement Ibycus, and the tender and refined Simonides.
Ibycus was a native of Rhegium, the city near the southernmost point
of Italy, which was closely connected with Sicily, the country of Stesi-
chorus. Rhegium was peopled partly by Ionians from Chalcis, partly
by Dorians from Peloponnesus; the latter of whom were a superior
class. The peculiar dialect formed in Rhegium had some influence on
the poems of Ibycus ; although these were in general written in an epic
dialect with a Doric tinge, like the poems of Stesichorus ||. Ibycus was
a wandering poet, as is intimated in the story of his death having been
attested and revenged by cranes ; but his travels were not, like those of
Stesichorus, confined to Sicily. He passed a part of his time in Samos
with Polycrates ; whence the flourishing period of Ibycus may be
placed at Olymp. 63. (b. c. 528) %. We have already explained the
style of poetry which was admired at the court of Polycrates. Ibycus
could not here compose solemn hymns to the gods, but must accommo-
date his Doric cithara, as he was best able, to the strains of Anacreon.
Accordingly, it is probable that the poetry of Ibycus was first turned
mainly to erotic subjects during his residence in the court of Poly-
crates ; and that his glowing love-songs (especially to beautiful youths),
which formed his chief title to fame in antiquity, were composed at this
time.
But that the poetical style of Ibycus resembled that of Stesichorus is
proved by the fact that the ancient critics often doubted to which of the
two a particular idea or expression belonged**. It may indeed be
* Herod. I, 23. This fable probably arose from a sacred offering in a temple at
Tamarum, which represented Tarat sitting on a dolphin, as he appears on the coins
of Tarentum. Plutarch, Conv. Sept. Sap. c. 18. mentions the Pythian instead of the
orthian nome.
f The orthian nome was mentioned above, chap. xii. § 15, in connexion with Po.
lymnes'us.
I The nomos orthioa was sung to the cithara (Herod. 1. '24. Aristoph. Eq. 1276.
Ran 1308, et Schol.), but also to the Phrygian flute (Luciau4).
§ Suidas in v. The ode to Neptune which ^lian H. A., xii. 45, ascribes to
Arion, is copious in words, but poor in ideas, and is quite unworthy of such a poet
as Arion. It also presupposes the truth of the fable that Arion was saved by a
dolphin.
jj A peculiarity of the Rheginian dialect in Stesichorus was the formation of the
third persons of barytone verbs in »<r/ ; tpi^tri, Xiytiiri, &c.
% Above, ch. xiii. § 12.
** Citations of Stesichorus or Ibycus. or (for the same expression) of Stesichorus
and Ibycus, occur in Athen. iv. p. 172 D„ Schol. Ven. ad II. xxiv. 259. iii. 114. Ile-
isych. in fyuaXUrxi, vol. i. p. 774. ed. Alb., Schol. Aristoph. Av. 1302, Schol.
206 HISTORY OF THE
conjectured that this doubt arose from the works of these two poets being
united in the same collection, like those of Hipponax and Ananius, or
of Simonides and Bacchylides ; but their works would not have been so
united by the ancient editors if there had not been a close affinity
between them. The metres oflbycus also resemble those of Stesicho-
rus, being in general dactylic series, connected together into verses ot
different lengths, but sometimes so long, that they are rather to be
called systems than verses. Besides these, Ibycus frequently uses
logaoedic verses of a soft or languid character : and in general his
rhythms are less stately and dignified, and more suited to the expression
of passion, than those of Stesichorus. Hence the effeminate poet Aga-
thon is represented by Aristophanes as appealing to Ibycus with Ana-
creon and Alcseus, who had made music more sweet, and worn many-
coloured fillets (in the oriental fashion), and had led the wanton Ionic
dance *.
§ 9. The subjects of the poems of Ibycus appear also to have a
strong affinity with those of the poems of Stesichorus. For although
no poems with such names as Cycnus or the Orestea are attributed to
Ibycus ; yet so many peculiar accounts of mythological stories, espe-
cially relating to the heroic period, are cited from his poems, that it
seems as if he too had written long poems on the Trojan war, the ex-
pedition of the Argonauts, and other similar subjects. That, like
Stesichorus, he dwelt upon the marvellous in the heroic mythology, is
proved by a fragment in which Hercules is introduced as saying: " I
also slew the youths on white horses, the sons of Molione, the twins
with like heads and connected limbs, both born in the silver egg t."
The erotic poetry of Ibycus is however more celebrated. We know
that it consisted of odes to youths, and that these breathed a fervour of
passion far exceeding that expressed in any similar productions of
Greek literature. Doubtless the poet gave utterance to his own feel-
ings in these odes ; as indeed appears from the extant fragments.
Nevertheless the length of the strophes and the artificial structure of
the verses prove that these odes were performed by choruses. Birth-
days or other family festivals or distinctions in the gymnasia may have
afforded the poet an opportunity of coming with a chorus into the
court-yard of the house, and offering his congratulations in the most
imposing and brilliant manner. The occasions of these poetical con-
gratulations were doubtless the same as those which gave rise to the
painted vases in Magna Graecia, with the inscription " the boy is beau-
tiful" (jcakbg 6 7raTe), and scenes from gymnastic exercises and
social life. But that in the poems of Ibycus, as well as of Pindar, the
Vratislav. ad Pind. 01. ix. 128. (oi vifi "Ifiuxov y.x) 2tw/;&»£«v), Etymol. Gud. in
«Tsj««, p. 98. 31.
* Thesm. 161.
f Ap. Athen. p. 57 F. (Fr. 27. coll. Schneidewin).
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 207
chorus was the organ of the poet's thoughts and feelings, is sufficiently
proved (as has been already remarked) by the extant fragments. In
a very beautiful fragment, the versification of which expresses the course
of the feeling with peculiar art, Ibycussays*: "In the spring the
Cydonian apple-trees flourish, watered by rivulets from the brooks in
the untrodden garden of the virgins, and the grapes which grow under
the shady tendrils of the vine. But Eros gives me peace at no season ;
like a Thracian tempest, gleaming with fightning, he rushes from
Cypris, and, full of fury, he stirs up my heart from the bottom." In
some other extant verses he saysf : " Again Eros looks at me from
beneath his black eyelashes with melting glances, and drives me with
blandishments of all kinds into the endless nets of Cypris. I tremble
at his attack ; as a harnessed steed which contends for the prize in the
sacred games, when he approaches old age, unwillingly enters the race-
course with the rapid chariot."
These amatory odes of Ibycus did not however consist merely of
descriptions of his passion, which could scarcely have afforded sufficient
materials for choral representation. He likewise called in the assist-
ance of mythology in order to elevate, by a comparison with divine or
heroic natures, the beauty of the youth or his own passion. Thus in a
poem of this kind, addressed to Gorgias, Ibycus told the story of
Ganymedes and Tithonus, both Trojans and favourites of the gods ;
who were described as contemporary \, and were associated in the
narrative. Ganymedes is carried off by Zeus in the form of an eagle,
in order to become his favourite and cup-bearer in Olympus ; and, at
the same time, Eros incites the rising Aurora to bear away from Ida,
Tithonus, a Trojan shepherd and prince §. The perpetual youth of
Ganymedes, the short manhood and the melancholy old age of Tithonus,
probably gave the poet occasion to compare the different passions which
they excited, and to represent that of Zeus as the more noble, that of
Aurora the less praiseworthy.
§ 10. Leaving Ibycus in the obscurity which envelopes all the Greek
lyric poets anterior to Pindar, we come to a brighter point in Simonides.
This poet has been already described as one of the greatest masters of
the elegy and the epigram ; but. a full account of him has been reserved
for this place.
Simonides was born at Julis in the island of Ceos, which was in-
* Fragm. 1. coll. Schneidewin. The end of the fragment is very difficult; the
translation is made from the following alteration of the text: urip[!>n<ri Kgccraius
f Schol. Plat. Parm. p. 137. A. (Fragm. 2. coll. Schneidewin).
\ After the Little Iliad, in which Ganymedes is the son of Laomedon : Schol. Vat.
ad Eurip. Troad. 822. Elsewhere Tithonus is his son.
§ This account of the poem of Stesichorus is taken from Schol. Apolion. Rhod.
III. 158. compared with Nonnus Dionys. xv.278. ed. Graefe.
208 HISTORY OF THE
habited bylonians; according to his own testimony *, about Olymp
56. 1. b. c. 556. He lived, according to a precise account, 89 years,
and died in 78. 1. b. c. 468. He belonged to a family which sedu-
lously cultivated the musical arts ; his grandfather on the paternal side
had been a poetf; Bacchylides, the lyric poet, was his nephew; and
Simonides the younger, known by the name of " the genealogist," on
account of a work on genealogies (jrepl yeveaXoytiHr}, was his grand-
son. He himself exercised the functions of a chorus-teacher in the
town of Carthaea in Ceos ; and the house of the chorus (xoprjytiov)
near the temple of Apollo was his customary abode \. This occupa-
tion was to him, as to Stesichorus, the origin of his poetical efforts. The
small island of Ceos at this time contained many things which were
likely to give a good direction to a youthful mind. The lively genius
of the Ionic race was here restrained by severe principles of modera-
tion ((Twfooavvr]) ; the laws of Ceos are celebrated for their excel-
lence § ; and although Prodicus of Ceos is named among the sophists
attacked by Socrates, yet he was considered as a man of probity, and the
friend of a beneficent philosophy. Simonides, also, appears throughout
his whole life, to have been attached to philosophy ; and his poetical
genius is characterized rather by versatility and purity of taste than by
fervid enthusiasm. Many ingenious apophthegms and wise sayings are
attributed to him, nearly resembling those of the seven sages ; for ex-
ample, the evasive answer to the question, what is God ? is attributed
both to Simonides and Thales : in the one anecdote the questioner
is Hiero, in the other Crcesus. Simonides himself is sometimes reck-
oned among the philosophers, and the sophists considered him as a
predecessor in their art. The " moderation of Simonides" became
proverbial || ; a modest consciousness of human weakness, and a re-
cognition of a superior power, are everywhere traceable in his poetry.
It is likewise recorded that Simonides used, and perfected, the contri-
vances which are known by the name of the Mnemonic art.
It must be admitted, that, in depth and novelty of ideas, and in the
fervour of poetical feeling, Simonides was far inferior to his contem-
porary Pindar. But the practical tendency of his poetry, the worldly
wisdom, guided by a noble disposition, which appeared in it, and the
delicacy with which he treated all the relations of states and rulers,
made him the friend of the most powerful and distinguished men of his
* In the epigram in Planudes, Jacobs Anthol. Palat. Append. Epigr. 79. (203
Schneidewin).
f Marm. Par. ep. 49. according to Boeckh's explanation, Corp. Insciip. vol. ii.
p. 319.
* Chamaeleon ap. Ath. x. p. 456. E.
§ Midler's ^Eginetica, p. 132. note u.
|| 'H lipav'thov ffutp^ixrvv/i . Aristides vnfi rou va.oa<p6. III. p. 645 A. Canter. II.
p. 510. Dindorf. Simonidis reliquiae ed. Schneidewin, p. xxxiii.
LlTEit \TURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 209
age. Scarcely any poet of antiquity enjoyed so much consideration in
ins lifetime, or exercised so much influence upon political events, as
Simonides. He was one of the poets entertained by Hipparchus the
Pisistratid (Olymp. 63. 2. — 66. 3. b. c. 527—14.), and was highly
esteemed by him. He was much honoured by the families of the
Aleuads and Scopads, who at that time ruled in Thessaly, as powerful
and wealthy nobles, in their cities of Larissa and Crannon, and partly
as kings of the entire country. These families attempted, by their
hospitality and liberality to the poets and wise men whom they enter-
tained, either to soften the rough nature of the Thessalians, or, at least,
to cover it with a varnish of civilization. That, however, they were not
always equally liberal to Simonides, appears from the anecdote that
Scopas once refused to give him more than half the promised reward,
and referred him for the other half to the Dioscuri, whom he had also
praised in his ode ; and that, in consequence, the Dioscuri saved
Simonides when the house fell upon the impious Scopas *. Simonides
appears to have passed much of the latter part of his life in Sicily,
chiefly with the tyrant of Syracuse. That he was in high honour at
this court is proved by the well attested story, that when, after Gelo's
death, a discord arose between the allied and closely connected families
of the tyrants of Syracuse and Agrigentum, Hiero of Syracuse and
Theroof Agrigentum, with their armies, were standing opposite to each
other on the river Gelas, and would have decided their dispute with
arms, if Simonides (who, like Pindar, was the friend of both tyrants)
had not restored peace between them (Olymp. 76. 1. B. c. 476). But
the high reputation of Simonides among the Greeks is chiefly apparent
in the time of the Persian war. He was in fiiendly intercourse both
with Themistocles and the Spartan general Pausanias ; the Corin-
thians sought to obtain his testimony to their exploits in the Persian
war; and he, more than any other poet, partly at the wish of others,
and partly of his own accord, undertook the celebration of the great
deeds of that period. The poems which he wrote for this purpose were
for the most part epigrams ; but some were lyric compositions, as the
panegyric of those who had fallen at Thermopylae, and the odes on the
sea-fijrhts of Artemisium and Salamis. Others were elegiac, as the
elegy to those who fought at Marathon, already mentioned.
§ 11. The versatility of mind and variety of knowledge, which Simo-
nides appears from these accounts to have possessed, are connected with
his facility of poetical composition. Simonides was probably the most
prolific lyric poet whom Greece had seen, although all his productions
did not descend to posterity. He gained (according to the inscription
* That the ancients themselves had difficulties in ascertaining the true version of
this story, appears from Quintilian, Inst. xi. 2. 1 1 ; it is however certain that the
family of the Scopads at that time suffered some great misfortune which Simonides
lamented in a threne : Phavorin. ap. Stob. Semi. CV. 62.
P
210 HISTORY OF THE
of a votive tablet, written by himself*) 56 oxen and tripous in poetical
contests ; and yet prizes of this kind could only be gained at public
festivals, such as the festival of Bacchus at Athens. Simonides, ac-
cording to his own testimony, conquered at this latter festival in
Olymp. 75. 4. b. c. 476, with a cyclian chorus of 50 men. The muse ot
Simonides was, however, far oftener in the pay of private men ; he was
the first who sold his poems for money, according to the frequent re-
proach of the ancients. Thus Socrates in Plato f says that Simonides
was often forced to praise a tyrant or other powerful man, without
being convinced of the justice of his praises.
Among the poems which Simonides composed for public festivals,
were hymns and prayers (rareu^"*) to various gods, peeans to Apollo,
hyporchemes, dithyrambs, and parthenia. In the hyporchemes Simo-
nides seemed to have excelled himself; so great a master was he of the
art of painting, by apt rhythms and words, the acts which he wished to
describe ; he says of himself that he knows how to combine the plastic
movements' of the feet with the voice %. His dithyrambs were not, ac-
cording to their original purpose, dedicated to Dionysus, but admitted
subjects of the heroic mythology; thus a dithyramb of Simonides bore
the title of Memnon §. This transfer to heroes, of poems properly be-
longing to Dionysus will be considered more fully in connexion with
the subject of tragedy. Moreover the odes just mentioned, which cele-
brated those who fell at Thermopylae and in the sea-fights against the
Persians, were doubtless intended to be performed at public festivals in
honour of victories.
Among the poems which Simonides composed for private persons,
the Epinikia and Threnes are worthy of especial notice. At this period
the Epinikia — songs which were performed at a feast in honour of a
victor in public and sacred games, either on the scene of the conflict,
or at his return home — first received the polish of art from the hands
of the choral poets. At an earlier age, a few verses, like those of Ar-
chilochus, had answered the same purpose. The Epinikia of Simonides
and Pindar are nearly contemporaneous with the erection of statues in
honour of victorious combatants, which first became common about
Olymp. 60, and, especially in the time of the Persian war, employed
the most eminent artists of the schools of iEgina and Sicyon. A ge-
neral idea of the structure of the epinikia of Simonides may be formed
from those of Pindar (of which a copious analysis will be found in the
next chapter). In these odes, too, the celebration of mythical heroes
(as of the Dioscuri in the epinikion of Scopas) was closely connected
with the praise of the victor. General reflections and apophthegms
were also applied to his peculiar circumstances. Thus in the same ode,
the general maxim was stated, that the gods alone could be always
* Anthol. Palat. vi. 213. f Protag. p. 346. B.
J Plutarch, Sympos. ix. 1 5. 2. $ Strabo xv. p. 728. B.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 211
good : that no man could be invariably good or bad, but could only act
virtuously by the grace of the gods, and upon this principle the saying
of Pittacus, " it is difficult to be good," was censured as requiring too
much, and probably was applied for the purpose of extenuating some
faults in the life of the victorious prince*.
We should be guilty of injustice to Simonides were we to conclude
that he did violence to his own convictions, and offered mercenary and
bespoken homage; we rather discover a trace of the mild and humane,
though somewhat lax and commodious, opinions on morals, prevalent
among the Ionians. Among the Dorians, and in part also among the
JEolians, law and custom were more rigorous in their demands upon
the constancy and the virtue of mankind.
The epinikia of Simonides appear to have been distinguished from
those of Pindar mainly in this; that the former dwelt more upon the
particular victory which gave occasion to his song, and described all
its details with greater minuteness; while Pindar, as we shall see,
passes lightly over the incident, and immediately soars into higher
regions. In an epinikion which Simonides composed for Leophron
the son of the tyrant Anaxilas and his vicegerent in Rhegiiim f,
and in which he had to celebrate a victory obtained with a chariot
drawn by mules (airfivri), the poet congratulated the victorious ani-
mals, dexterously passing in silence over the meaner, and directing
attention to the nobler, side of their parentage: " Hail, ye daughters
of storm-footed steeds !" Simonides, too, in these songs of victory more
frequently indulged in pleasantry than befitted a poem destined to be
recited at a sacred feast; as, for example, in the epinikion composed in
honour of an Athenian who had conquered Crios of TEgina in wrestling
at Olympia ; where he plays upon the name of the defeated combatant:
" Not ill has the ram (c Kp'wg) got himself shorn by venturing into the
magnificent grove, the sanctuary of Zeus J".
But the merits of Simonides were still more remarkable (as we have
already seen in treating of the elegy) in dirges (Spijvoi). His style, as
* See this long fragment from the odes of Simonides in Plato Protag. p. .339. sq.
f As the historical relations are difficult of comprehension, I remark briefly, that
Anaxilas was tyrant of Rhegium, and, from about 01. 71. 3. (b. c. 494), of Messene ;
and that he dwelt in the lattrr city, leaving Leophron to administer the government
of Rhegium. On the death of Anaxilas in Olymp. 76. 1. (b. c. 476), Leophron. as
his eldest son, succeeded him in the city of Messene: and the freedman Micythus
was to administer Rhegium for the younger sons, but be was soon compelled to
abandon his office. Fortbese facts, see Herod, vii. 170. Diod. xi. 48. 66. Heiaclid.
Pont. pol. '15. Dicnys. Hal. Exc. p. 539. Vales. Dionys. Hal. xi-x. 4. Mai. Ashen.
i. p. 3. Pausan. v. 26. 3. Schol. Pmd. Pyth. II. 34. Justin, iv. 2. xxi. 3. Macrob.
Sat. I. 11. The Olympic victory of Leopbron (by some writers ascribed to Anaxi-
las) must have taken place before Olymp. 76. 1. b. c.476.
J That the words 'Etrijatf' i Kg7o; ovx. aiixt'iw; &c. are to be understood as is indi-
cated in the text, is proved by the manner in which Aristoph. Nub. 1355. gives the
substance of the song, which was sung at Athens at meals, from a patriotic interest,
like a scolion. The content must be placed about Olymp. 70. b. c. 500
P2
212 HISTORY OF THE
an ancient critic observes, was not as lofty as that of Pindar ; but what
he lost in sublimity he gained in pathos *. While Pindar's soaring
flights extolled the happiness of the dead who had finished their earthly
course with honour, and enjoyed the glories allotted to them in another
existence, Simonides gave himself up to the genuine feelings of
human nature ; he expressed grief for the life that was extinguished ;
the fond regret of the survivors ; and sought consolation rather after
the manner of the Ionian elegiac poets, in the perishableness and weari-
ness of human life. The dirges of Simonides on the hapless Scopad,
and the Aleuad Antiochns, son of Echecratides t, were remarkable ex-
amples of this style ; and doubtless the celebrated lament of Danae
was part of a threne. Enclosed with her infant Perseus in a chest, and
exposed to the raging of the storm, she extols the happiness of the un-
conscious sleeping babe, in expressions full of the charm of maternal
tenderness and devotion J.
§ 12. Simonides did not, like Pindar, in the overflowing riches of
his genius, touch briefly on thoughts and feelings; he wrought out
every thing in detail with care and finish § ; his verses are like a
diamond which throws a sparkling light from each of its many polished
faces. If we analyze a passage, like the fragment from the eulogy on
the heroes of Thermopylae, we are struck with the skill and grace with
which the hand of the master plays with a single thought ; the glory of
a great action before which all sorrow disappears ; and the various
lights under which he presents it.
''Those who fell at Thermopylae have an illustrious fate, a noble des-
tiny : their tomb is an altar, their dirge a song of triumph. And
neither eating rust, nor all-subduing time, shall obliterate this epitaph
of the brave. Their subterranean chamber has received the glory of
Hellas as its inhabitant. Of this, Leonidas, the king of Sparta, bears
witness, by the fair and undying renown of virtue which he left behind
him ||." Some idea may be formed of this same kind of description
naturally leading to a light and agreeable tissue of thoughts ; of this
easy graceful style of Simonides, so extremely dissimilar to that of
Pindar, from a feeble prosaic translation of another fragment taken
from an ode to a conqueror in the Pentathlon, which treats of Orpheus :
" Countless birds flew around his head ; fishes sprang out of the
dark waters at his beautiful song. Not a breath of wind arose to rustle
the leaves of the trees, or to interrupt the honied voice which was
* To oiKTi^itrPai fit) [A,iyu.\oT6iTu>: u; Til!vla.oo;, aX>.a Tufartxui;. Dion. Hal. Cens. Vet.
Script, ii. 6. p. 420. Reiske.
I The sou of the Echecratides, who was mentioned in ch. xiii. § 11. in connexion
with Anacreon, and the elder brother of Orestes.
J Diouys. Hal. da Verb. Comp. 26. Fr. 7. Gaisford. 50. Schneidewin.
§ Simonides said that poetry was vocal painting. Plutarch, de Glor. Ath. 3.
M Diod. xi II Fr. 16. Gaisf. 9. Schneid.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 213
wafted to the ears of mortals. As when, in the wintry moon, Zeus ap-
points fourteen days as the sacred brooding time of the gay-plumed
halcyons, which the earth-dwellers call the sleep of the winds*." \Y ith
this smooth and highly polished style of composition every thing in the
poetry of Simonides is in the most perfect harmony; the choice of
words vvhich seeks, indeed, the noble and the graceful, yet departs
less widely from the language of ordinary life than that of Pindar ;
and the treatment of the rhythms which is distinguished from that
of the Theban poet by a stronger preference for light and flowing
measures (more especially the logaoedic) and by less rigorous rules of
metre.
§ 13. Bacciiylides, the nephew of Simonides, adhered closely to the
system and the example of his uncle. He flourished towards the close
of the life of Simonides, with whom he lived at the court of Hiero in
Syracuse; little more of his history is known. That his poetry was
but an imitation of one branch of that of Simonides, cultivated with
great delicacy and finish, is proved by the opinions of ancient critics;
among whom Dionysius adduces perfect correctness and uniform ele-
gance as the characteristics of Bacchylides. His genius and art were
chiefly devoted to the pleasures of private life, love and wine ; and,
when compared with those of Simonides, appear marked by greater
sensual grace and less moral elevation. Among the kinds of choral
poetry which he employed, besides those of which he had examples in
Simonides and Pindar, we find erotic songs: such, for example, as that
in which a beautiful maiden is represented, in the game of the Cottabus,
as raising her white arm and pouring out the wine for the youths -j- ; a
description which could apply only to a Hekera partaking of the ban-
quets of men.
In other odes, which were probably sung to cheer the feast, and
which were transformed into choral odes from scolia, the praise of wine
is celebrated as follows | : "A sweet compulsion flows from the wine
cups and subdues the spirit, while the wishes of love, vvhich are
mingled with the gifts of Dionysus, agitate the heart. The thoughts
of men take a lofty flight; they overthrow the embattled walls of
cities, and believe themselves monarchs of the world. The houses
* Fr. 1»3. Sehneidewin.
t Athen.xi. p. 782. xvi. p. f>G7. Fr. 23. ed. Neue.
I Athen. ii. p. .'39. Fr. 26. Neue. The ode consists of short strophes in the Doric
measure, which are to be reduced to the following metre.
_/ o o _ o o _£<-> — y.
/uo_ou __£ u _ o
This arrangement necessitates no other alterations than those which have been
for other reasons : except that avroh, • straightways.' should be written tor airii
\\\ v. Ii.
214 HISTORY OF THE
glitter with gold and ivory; corn-bearing ships bring hither from
Egypt, across the glancing deep, the abundance of wealth. To such
heights soars the spirit of the drinker.'' Here too we remark that ela-
borate and brilliant execution which is peculiar to the school of Simo-
nides ; and the same is shown in all the longer fragments of Bacchy-
lides, among which we shall only quote the praise of peace :
" To mortals belong lofty peace, riches, and the blossoms of honey-
voiced song. On altars of fair workmanship burn thighs of oxen and
thick-fleeced sheep in golden flames to the gods. The cares of the
youths are, gymnastic exercises, flute-playing, and joyous revelry (avXol
ical Kuifj.01). But the black spiders ply their looms in the iron-bound
edges of the shields, and the rust corrodes the barbed spear-head, and
the two-edged sword. No more is heard the clang of brazen trumpets \
and beneficent sleep, the nurse and soother of our souls, is no longer
scared from our eyelids. The streets are thronged with joyous guests,
and songs of praise to beautiful youths resound*."
We recognise here a mind which dwells lovingly on the description
of these gay and pleasing scenes, and paints itself in every feature, but
without penetrating deeper than the ordinary observation of men reaches.
Bacehylides, like Simonides, transfers the diffuseness of the elegy to
the choral lyric poem ; although he himself composed no elegies, and
followed the traces of his uncle only as an epigrammatist. The reflec-
tions scattered through his lyrics, on the toils of human life, the insta-
bility of fortune, on resignation to inevitable evils, and the rejection of
vain cares, have much of the tone of the Ionic elegy. The structure of
Bacehylides' verse is generally very simple ; nine tenths of his odes, to
judge from the fragments, consisted of dactylic series and trochaic dipo-
dias, as we find in those odes of Pindar which were written in the Doric
mode. Bacehylides, however, gave a lighter character to this measure ;
inasmuch as in the places where the syllable might be either long or
short, he often preferred the latter.
We find, in his poems, trochaic verses of great elegance ; as, for ex-
ample, a fragment, preserved by Athenseus, of a religious poem in
which the Dioscuri are invited to a feast f. But its character is feeble
and languid ; and how different from the hymn of Pindar, the third
among the Olympian odes, in celebration of a similar feast of the
Dioscuri, held by Theron in Agrigentum !
§ 14. The universal esteem in which Simonides and Bacehylides were
held in Greece, and their acknowledged excellence in their art, did not
prevent some of their contemporaries from striking into various other
paths, and adopting other styles of treating lyric poetry. Lasos op
Hermione was a rival of Simonides during his residence in Athens, and
• Stobaeus, Serm. LI II. p. 209. Grot. Fr. 12. Neue.
f Athen. xi. p. 500 B. Fr. 27. Netie.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GRGECE. 215
likewise enjoyed high favour at the court of Hipparchtis*. It is how-
ever difficult to ascertain, from the very scanty accounts we possess of
this poet, wherein consisted the point of contrast between him and his
competitor. He was more peculiarly a dithyrambic poet, and was the
first who introduced contests in dithyrambs at Athens t, probably in
Olymp. 68. 1. b. c. 508 J- This style predominated so much in
his works, that he gave to the general rhythms of his odes a dithy-
rambic turn, and a free movement, in which he was aided by the variety
and flexibility of tone of the flute, his favourite instrument §. He was
also a theorist in his art, and investigated the laws of music (i. e.
the relation of musical intervals to rapidity of movement), of which
later musicians retained much. He was the instructor of Pindar in
lyric poetry. It is also very possible that these studies led him to
attach excessive value to art; for he was guilty of over-refinement in
the rhythm and the sound of words, as, for example, in his odes written
without the letter <r (a<rty^ot wlai), the hissing sound of which is en-
tirely avoided as dissonant.
Timocreon the Rhodian was a genius of an entirely peculiar cha-
racter. Powerful both as an athlete and a poet, he transferred the
pugnacity of the Palaestra to poetry. To the hate which he bore in political
life to Themistocles, and, on the field of poetry, to Simonides, he owes
his chief celebrity among the ancients. In an extant fragment || he bit-
terly reproaches the Athenian statesman for the arbitrary manner in which
he settled the affairs of the island, recalling exiles, and banishing others,
of which Timocreon himself was one of the victims. He attacks his
enemy with the heavy pompous measure of the Dorian mode, as with the
shock of a catapulta, though on other occasions he composed in elegiac
distichs and measures of the iEolic kind ; and it cannot be denied that his
vituperation receives singular force from the stateliness of the expression,
and the grandeur of the form. Timocreon seems to have ridiculed and
parodied Simonides on account of some tricks of his art, as where
Simonides expresses the same thought in the same words only trans-
posed, first in an hexameter, then in a trochaic tetrameter ^[.
The opposition in which we find Pindar with Simonides and Bac-
chylides is of a much nobler character. For though the desire to
* Aristoph. Vesp. 1410. comp. Herod, viii. 6.
t Schol. Aristoph. ubi sup.
\ The statement of the Parian marble, ep. 46. appears to refer to the cyclic
choruses.
§ Plutarch <le Mus. 39. The fragment of a hymn by Lasus to Demeter, ic
Athen. xiv. p. 624 E., agrees very well with this account.
|| Plutarch. Themist. 21.
% Authol. Pal. xiii. 30. Concerning this enmity, see also Diog. Laert. ii. 46, and
Suidas in Ti/uoxgiwv. The citation from Simonides and Timocreon in Walz. Khet.
Graec. vol. ii. p. 10. is probably connected with their quarrel.
21G HISTORY OF THE
stand highest in the favour of the Syracusan tyrant, Hiero, and Thero
of Agrigentum stimulated the jealousy between these two poets, yet the
real cause lies deeper ; it is to be found in the spirit and temper of the
men ; and the contest which necessarily arose out of this diversity, does
no dishonour to either party.
The ancient commentators on Pindar refer a considerable number of
passages to this hostility * : and in general these are in praise of genuine
wisdom as a gift of nature, a deep rooted power of the mind, and in
depreciation of acquired knowledge in the comparison ; or the poel
represents genial invention as the highest of qualities, and demands
novelties even in mythic narratives. On the contrary, Simonides and
Bacchylides thought themselves bound to adhere faithfully to tradition,
and reproved any attempt to give a new form to the stories of antiquity t.
CHAPTER XV.
§ 1. Pindar's descent; his early training in poetry and music. § 2. Exercise of his
art ; his independent position with respect to the Greek princes and republics.
§ 3. Kinds of poetry cultivated by him. § 4. His Epinikia ; their origin and objects.
§ 5. Their two main elements, general remarks, and mythical narrations. § 6.
Connexion of these two elements ; peculiarities of the structure of Pindar's odes.
§ 7. Variety of tone in his odes, according to the different musical styles.
§ 1. Pindar was born in the spring of 522 b. c. (Olymp. 64. 3) ;
and, according to a probable statement, he died at the age of eighty J.
He was therefore nearly in the prime of his life at the time when
Xerxes invaded Greece, and the battles of Thermopylae and Salamis
were fought. He thus belongs to that period of the Greek nation,
when its great qualities were first distinctly unfolded; and when it ex-
hibited an energy of action, and a spirit of enterprise, never afterwards
surpassed, together with a love of poetry, art, and philosophy, which
produced much, and promised to produce more. The modes of
thought, and style of art, which arose in Athens after the Persian war,
must have been unknown to him. He was indeed the contemporary
of iEschylus, and he admired the rapid rise of Athens in the Persian
* OUI. 86. (154). IX. 48 (74).Pyth. II. 52. (97.) and passim Nem. III. 80.(143).
IV. 37. (60). Iuthm. II. 6.(10).
f See Plutarch, Num. 4. Fr. 37. Neue, and Clem. Strom, v. p. 687. Pott. Fr. 13.
Neue.
X For Pindar's life, see Boeckh's Pindar, torn. iii. p. 12. To the authorities there
mentioned, may be added the Introduction of Eustathius to his Commentary on
Pindar in Eustathii Opuscula, p. 32. ed. Tafel. 1832. (Eustath. Procem. Comment.
Pindar, ed. Sehneidewin. 1837.)
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 217
war ; calling it " The Pillar of Greece, brilliant Athens, the worthy
theme of poets." But the causes which determined his poetical cha-
racter are to besought in an earlier period, and in the Doric and iEolic
parts of Greece ; and hence we shall divide Pindar from his contempo-
rary iEschylus, by placing the former at the close of the early period,
the latter at the head of the new period of literature.
Pindar's native place was Cynocephaloe, a village in the territory of
Thebes, the most considerable city of Bceotia. Although in his time
the voices of Pierian bards, and of epic poets of the Hesiodeau school
had long been mute in Bceotia, yet there was still much love for music
and poetry, which had taken the prevailing form of lyric and choral
compositions. That these arts were widely cultivated in Bceotia is
proved by the fact that two women, Myrtis and Corinna, had attained
great celebrity in them during the youth of Pindar. Both were com-
petitors with Pindar in poetry. Myrtis strove with him for a prize at
public games : and although Corinna said, " It is not meet that the
clear toned Myrtis, a woman born, should enter the lists with Pindar * :"
yet she is said (perhaps from jealousy of his growing fame) to have
often contended against him in the agones, and to have gained the
victory over him five times f. Pausanias, in his travels, saw at Tanagra,
the native city of Corinna, a picture in which she was represented as
binding her head with a fillet of victory which she had gained in a con-
test with Pindar. He supposes that she was less indebted for this
victory to the excellence of her poetry than to her Boeotian dialect,
which was more familiar to the ears of the judges at the games, and to
her extraordinary beauty. Corinna also assisted the young poet with
her advice ; it is related of her that she recommended him to ornament
his poems with mythical narrations, but that when he had composed a
hymn, in the first six verses of which (still extant) almost the whole of the
Theban mythology was introduced, she smiled and said, " We should
sow with the hand, not with the whole sack." Too little of the poetry
of Corinna has been preserved to allow of our forming a safe judgment
of her style of composition. The extant fragments refer mostly to my-
thological subjects, particularly to heroines of the Boeotian legends ;
this, and her rivalry with Pindar, show that she must be classed not
in the Lesbian school of lyric poets, but among the masters of choral
poetry.
The family of Pindar seems to have been skilled in music ; we learn
from the ancient biographies of him that his father, or his uncle, was a
flute-player. Flute-playing (as we have more than once remark ed
* The following is the passage in Comma's dialect :
o'ti /3«v« !p<w<r ' ifia Hivhdnois tot' sow.
Apollon. de Pronom. j>. 924. B.
f /Elian, V. II. xiii.'.M.
2 IS HISTORY OF THE
was brought from Asia Minor into Greece; its Phrygian origin may
perhaps be indicated by the fact that Pindar had in his house at Thebes
a small temple of the Mother of the gods and Pan, the Phrygian
deities, to whom the first hymns to the flute were supposed to have beeu
suno-*. The music of the flute had moreover been introduced into
Bceotia at a very early period ; the Copaic lake produced excellent
reeds for flutes, and the worship of Dionysus, which was supposed to
have originated at Thebes, required the varied and loud music of the
flute. Accordingly the Boeotians were early celebrated for their skill
in flute-playing ; whilst at Athens the music of the flute did not become
common till after the Persian war, when the desire for novelty in art
had greatly increased f.
§ 2. But Pindar very early in his life soared far beyond the sphere
of a flute-player at festivals, or even a lyric poet of merely local cele-
brity. He placed himself under the tuition of Lasus of Hermione, a
distinguished poet, already mentioned, but probably better versed in the
theory than the practice of poetry and music. Since Pindar made
these arts the whole business of his life J, and was nothing but a poet
and a musician, he soon extended the boundaries of his art to the
whole Greek nation, and composed poems of the choral lyric kind for
persons in all parts of Greece. At the age of twenty he composed a
song of victory in honour of a Thessulian youth belonging to the gens
of the Aleuads §. We find him employed soon afterwards for the Sici-
lian rulers, Hiero of Syracuse, and Thero of Agrigentum ; for Arcesi-
laus, king of Cyrene, and Amyntas, king of Macedonia, as well as for
the free cities of Greece. He made no distinction according to the race
of the persons whom he celebrated : he was honoured and loved by the
Ionian states, for himself as well as for his art; the Athenians made
him their public guest (jrpohvoc) ; and the inhabitants of Ceos em-
ployed him to compose a processional song (npotroliov), although they
had their own poets, Simonides and Bacchylides. Pindar, however,
was not a common mercenary poet, always ready to sing the praises of
him whose bread he ate. He received indeed money and presents for
his poems, according to the general usage previously introduced by
Simonides; yet his poems are the genuine expression of his thoughts
and feelings. In his praises of virtue and good fortune, the colours
which he employs are not too vivid ; nor does he avoid the darker
shades of his subject ; he often suggests topics of consolation for past
and present evil, and sometimes warns and exhorts to avoid future ca-
lamity. Thus he ventures to speak freely to the powerful Hiero, whose
many great and noble qualities were alloyed by insatiable cupidity and
* Maim. Par. cp. 10. f Aristot.Polit. viii. 7.
\ Like Sappho, he is called ftoL'ffovoii's.
§ Pyth. X. composed in Olymp. 69. 3. k. c. 502.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 219
ambition, which his courtiers well knew how to turn to a bad account.
Pindar exhorts him to tranquillity and contentedness of mind, to calm
cheerfulness, and to clemency, saying to him*: " Be as thou knowest
how to be; the ape in the boy's story is indeed fair, very fair; but
Rhadamanthus was happy because he plucked the genuine fruits of
the mind, and did not take delight in the delusions which follow the
arts of the whisperer. The venom of calumny is an evil hard to be
avoided, whether by him who hears or by him who is the object of it ;
for the ways of calumniators are like those of foxes." Pindar speaks in
the same free and manly tone to Arcesilaus IV., king of Cyrene, who
afterwards brought on the ruin of his dynasty by his tyrannical severity,
and who at that time kept Damophilus, one of the noblest of the Cyre-
neans, in unjust banishment. " Now understand the enigmatic wisdom
of (Edipus. If any one lops with a sharp axe the branches of a large
oak, and spoils her stately form, she loses indeed her verdure, but she
gives proof of her strength, when she is consumed in the winter fire,
or when, torn from her place in the forest, she performs the melancholy
office of a pillar in the palace of a foreign prince f. Thy office is to be
the physician of the country : Paean honours thee ; therefore thou must
treat with a gentle hand its festering wounds. It is easy for a fool to
shake the stability of a city ; but it is hard to place it again on its
foundations, unless a god direct the rulers. Gratitude for these good
deeds is already in store for thee. Deign therefore to bestow all thy
care upon the wealthy Cyrene J."
Thus lofty and dignified was the position which Pindar assumed
with regard to these princes ; and he remained true to the principle
which he so frequently proclaims, that frankness and sincerity are
always laudable. But his intercourse with the princes of his time appears
to have been limited to poetry. We do not find him, like Simonides,
the daily associate, counsellor, and friend of kings and statesmen ; he
plays no part in the public events of his time, either as a politician or
a courtier. Neither was his name, like that of Simonides, distinguished
in the Persian war ; partly because his fellow-citizens, the Thebans,
were, together with half of the Grecian nation, on the Persian side,
whilst the spirit of independence and victory were with the other half.
Nevertheless the lofty character of Pindar's muse rises superior to
these unfavourable circumstances. He did not indeed make the vain
attempt of gaining over the Thebans to the cause of Greece ; but he
sou»ht to appease the internal dissensions which threatened to destroy
* Pyth. II. 72. (131.) This ode was compused by Pindar at Thebes, but doubt-
less not till after he had contracted a personal acquaintance with Hiero.
■)• In this allegory, the oak is the state of Cyrene ; the branches are the banished
nobles ; the winter tire is insurrection ; the foreign palace is a foreign conquering
power, especially Persia.
♦ Pv+h. IV.
220
HISTORY OF THE
Thebes during- the war, by admonishing his fellow citizens to union and
concord*: and after the war was ended, he openly proclaims, in odes
intended for the iEginetans and Athenians, his admiration of the
heroism of the victors. In an ode, composed a few months after the
surrender of Thebes to the allied army of the Greeks t (the seventh
Isthmian), his feelings appear to be deeply moved by the misfortunes
of his native city ; but he returns to the cultivation of poetry as the
Greeks were now delivered from their great peril, and a god had re-
moved the stone of Tantalus from their heads. He expresses a hope
that freedom will repair all misfortunes: and he turns with a friendly
confidence to the city of iEgina, which, according to ancient legends,
was closely allied with Thebes, and whose good offices with the Pelo-
ponnesians might perhaps raise once more the humbled head of Bceotia.
§ 3. Having mentioned nearly all that is known of the events of
Pindar's life, and his relations to his contemporaries, we proceed to
consider him more closely as a poet, and to examine the character
and form of his poetical productions.
The only class of poems which enable us to judge of Pindar's general
style are the epinikia or triumphal odes. Pindar, indeed, excelled in
all the known varieties of choral poetry ; viz. hymns to the gods, paeans
and dithyrambs appropriate to the worship of particular divinities, odes
for processions (Trpoaocia), songs of maidens (jrapQiveici), mimic dancing
songs (i/7ro(0^;j/^iara), drinking songs (<nco\ta), dirges (Qpijvoi), and en-
comiastic odes to princes (cyjcw/xta), which last approached most nearly
to the epinikia. The poems of Pindar in these various styles were
nearly as renowned among the ancients as the triumphal odes ; which
is proved by the numerous quotations of them. Horace too, in enu-
merating the different styles of Pindar's poetry, puts the dithyrambs
first, then the hymns, and afterwards the epinikia and the threnes.
Nevertheless, there must have been some decided superiority in the
epinikia, which caused them to be more frequently transcribed in the
later period of antiquity, and thus rescued them from perishing with
the rest of the Greek lyric poetry. At any rate, these odes, from the
vast variety of their subjects and style, and their refined and elaborate
structure, — some approaching to hymns and pagans, others to scolia
and hyporchemes, — serve to indemnify us for the loss of the other sorts
of lyric poetry.
We will now explain, as precisely as possible, the occasion of an epi-
nikian ode, and the mode of its execution. A victory has been gained
in a contest at a festival, particularly at one of the four great games
most prized by the Greek people J, either by the speed of horses, the
* Polyb. iv. 31. o. Fr. incert. 125. ed. Boeckh.
f In the winter of Olymp. 75. 2. b-. c. 479.
I Olympia, Pythia, Nemea, Isthniia. Some of the epinikia, however, belong to
other games. For example; the second Pythian is not a Pythian ode. but probably
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 221
strength and dexterity of the human body, or by skill in music *. Such
a victory as this, which shed a lustre not only on the victor himself,
but on his family, and even on his native city, demanded a solemn ce-
lebration. This celebration might be performed by the victor's friends
upon the spot where the victory was gained ; as, for example, at Olym-
pia, when in the evening after the termination of the contests, by the
light of the moon, the whole sanctuary resounded with joyful songs
alter the manner of encomia t. Or it might be deferred till after the
victor's solemn return to his native city, where it was sometimes repeated,
in following years, in commemoration of his success J. A celebration
of this kind always had a religious character; it often began with a
procession to an altar or temple, in the place of the games or in the
native city ; a sacrifice, followed by a banquet, was then offered at the
temple, or in the house of the victor; and the whole solemnity con-
cluded with the merry and boisterous revel called by the Greeks kw/uoq.
At this sacred, and at the same time joyous, solemnity, (a mingled cha-
racter frequent among the Greeks,) appeared the chorus, trained by the
poet, or some other skilled person §, for the purpose of reciting the
triumphal hymn, which was considered the fairest ornament of the fes-
tival. It was during either the procession or the banquet that the
hymn was recited ; as it was not properly a religious hymn, which could
be combined with the sacrifice. The form of the poem must, to a cer-
tain extent, have been determined by the occasion on which it was to be
recited. From expressions which occur in several epinikian odes, it is
probable that all odes consisting of strophes without epodes || were sung
during a procession to a temple or to the house of the victor; although
there are others which contain expressions denoting movement, and
which yet have epodes ^f. It is possible that the epodes in the latter
odes may have been sung at certain intervals when the procession was
belongs to games of Iolaus at Thebes. The ninth Nemean celebrates a victory in
the Pythia at Sicyon, (not at Delphi ;) the tenth Nemean celebrates a victory in the
Hecatombsea at Argos ; the eleventh Nemean is not an epiuikion, but was sung at
the installation of a prytanis at Tenedos. Probably the Nemean odes were placed
at the end of the collection, after the Isthmian ; so that a miscellaneous supplement
could be appended to them.
* For example, Pyth. XII., which celebrates the victory of Midas, a flute-player
of Agrigenmm.
■\ Pindar's words in Olymp. XI. 76. (93), where this usage is transferred to the
mythical establishment of the Olympia by Hercules. The 4th and 8th Olympian,
the 6th, and probably also the 7th Pythian, were sung at the place of the games.
I The 9th Olympian, the 3d Nemean, and the 2nd Isthmian, were produced at a
memorial celebration of this kind.
§ Such as ^Eneas the Stymphalian in Olymp. VI. 88. (l'>0), whom Pindar calls
"a just messenger, a scytala of the fair-bairei Muses, a sweet goblet of loud-sounding
songs,"' because he was to receive the ode from Pindar in person, to carry it to Stym-
ph. ilus, and there to instruct a chorus in the dancing, music, and text.
|| 01. XIV. Pyth. VI. XII. Nem. II. IV. IX. Isthm.VII.
^j 01. VIII. XIII. The expression rovhi Kwp.011 Vi^cu doubtless means, " Receive this
band of persons who have combined for a sacrificial ineal and feast.*' Hence too it
appears that the band went into the temple.
X/iZ HISTORY OF THE
not advancing ; for an epode, according to the statements of the an-
cients, always required that the chorus should be at rest. But by far
the greater number of the odes of Pindar were sung at the Comus, at
the jovial termination of the feast : and hence Pindar himself more fre-
quently names his odes from the Comus than from the victory *.
§ 4. The occasion of an epinikian ode, — a victory in the sacred
games, — and its end, — the ennobling of a solemnity connected with the
worship of the gods, — required that it should be composed in a lofty and
dignified style. But, on the other hand, the boisterous mirth of the
feast did not admit the severity of the antique poetical style, like that
of the hymns and nomes ; it demanded a free and lively expression of
feeling, in harmony with the occasion of the festival, and suggesting the
noblest ideas connected with the victor. Pindar, however, gives no
detailed description of the victory, as this would have been only a re-
petition of the spectacle which had already been beheld with enthusi-
asm by the assembled Greeks at Olympia or Pytho ; nay, he often
bestows only a few words on the victory, recording its place and the sort
of contest in which it was won f. Nevertheless he does not (as many
writers have supposed) treat the victory as a merely secondary object ;
which he despatches quickly, in order to pass on to subjects of greater
interest. The victory, in truth, is always the point upon which the
whole of the ode turns ; only he regards it, not simply as an incident,
but as connected with the whole life of the victor. Pindar establishes
this connexion by forming a high conception of the fortunes and cha-
racter of the victor, and by representing the victory as the result ot
them. And as the Greeks were less accustomed to consider a man in
his individual capacity, than as a member of his state, and his family;
so Pinclar considers the renown of the victor in connexion with the past
and present condition of the race and state to which he belongs. Now
there are two different points from which the poet might view the life
of the victor ; viz. destiny or merit \ ; in other words, he might celebrate
his good fortune or his skill. In the victory with horses, external ad-
vantages were the chief consideration ; inasmuch as it required excellent
horses and an excellent driver, both of which were attainable only by
the rich. The skill of the victor was more conspicuous in gymnastic
feats, although even in these, good luck and the favour of the gode
might be considered as the main causes of success ; especially as it was
a favourite opinion of Pindar's, that all excellence is a gift of nature §.
* l-rix.ufi.ios vfivos, lyxdiftiov fjifiXo;. The grammarians, however, distinguish the
encomia, as being laudatory poems strictly so called, from the epinikia.
f On the other hand, we often find a precise enumeration of all the victories, not
only of the actual victor, but of his entire family : this must evidently have been re-
quired of the poet.
\ ckfZos and u^irn.
§ to Vi <pva K^ario-mv «tosv, 01. IX. 100 (151), which ode is a development of this
general idea. Compare above, ch. xv. near the end.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 223
«
The irood fortune or skill of the victor could not however be treated
abstractedly ; but must be individualized by a description of his peculiar
lot. This individual colouring might be given by representing the good
fortune of the victor as a compensation for past ill fortune ; or, gene-
rally, by describing the alternations of fortune in his lot and in that of his
family*. Another theme for anode might be, that success in gymnas-
tic contests was obtained by a family in alternate generations ; that is,
by the grandfathers and grandsons, but not by the intermediate gene-
ration f- If» however, the good fortune of the victor had been inva-
riable, congratulation at such rare happiness was accompanied with
moral reflections, especially on the right manner of estimating or en-
during good fortune, or on the best mode of turning it to account. Ac-
cording to the notions of the Greeks, an extraordinary share of the gifts
of fortune suggested a dread of the Nemesis which delighted in humbling
the pride of man ; and hence the warning to be prudent, and not to
strive after further victories \. The admonitions which Pindar addresses
to Hiero are to cultivate a calm serenity of mind, after the cares and
toils by which he had founded and extended his empire, and to purify
and ennoble by poetry a spirit which had been ruffled by unworthy pas-
sions. Even when the skill of the victor is put in the foreground, Pindar
in general does not content himself with celebrating this bodily prowess
alone, but he usually adds some moral virtue which the victor has shown,
or which he recommends and extols. This virtue is sometimes modera-
tion, sometimes wisdom, sometimes filial love, sometimes piety to the gods.
The latter is frequently represented as the main cause of the victory :
the victor having thereby obtained the protection of the deities who
preside over gymnastic contests ; as Hermes, or the Dioscuri. It is
evident that, with Pindar, this mode of accounting for success in the
games was not the mere fiction of a poet ; he sincerely thought that he
had found the true cause, when he had traced the victory to the favour
of a god who took an especial interest in the family of the victor, and at
the same time presided over the games §. Generally, indeed, in extoll-
ing both the skill and fortune of the victor, Pindar appears to adhere to
the truth as faithfully as he declares himself to do; nor is he ever be-
trayed into a high flown style of panegyric. A republican dread of in-
curring the censure of his fellow citizens, as well as an awe of the divine
Nemesis, induced him to moderate his praises, and to keep in view the
instability of human fortune and the narrow limits of human strength.
Thus far the poet seems to wear the character of a sage who ex-
pounds to the victor his destiny, by showing him the dependence of his
* 01. II. Also Isthm. III. f Nem. VI.
J fitl-ClTI TOLTTttiVt TOO/TIM.
§ As, e.g. 01. VI. 77. (130). sqq. In the above remarks I have chiefly followed
Disstns Dissertation De Ratione poetica Carminum Pindaricoruin, in his edition of
Pindar, sect. i. p. xi.
224 HISTORY OF THE
exploit upon a higher order of things. Nevertheless, it is not to be
supposed that the poet placed himself on an eminence remote from
ordinary life, and that he spoke like a priest to the people, unmoved by
personal feelings. The Epinikia of Pindar, although they were de-
livered by a chorus, were, nevertheless, the expression of his individual
feelings and opinions *, and are full of allusions to his personal relations
to the victor. Sometimes, indeed, when his relations of this kind were
peculiarly interesting to him, he made them the main subject of the ode ;
several of his odes, and some among the most, difficult, are to be explained
in this manner. In one of his odes t, Pindar justifies the sincerity of
his poetry against the charges which had been brought against it; and
represents his muse as a just and impartial dispenser of fame, as well
among the victors at the games, as among the heroes of antiquity. In
another J, he reminds the victor that he had predicted the victory to him
in the public games, and had encouraged him to become a competitor
for it § ; and he extols him for having employed his wealth for so noble
an object. In another, he excuses himself for having delayed the com-
position of an ode which he had promised to a wrestler among the
youths, until the victor had attained his manhood; and, as if to incite
himself to the fulfilment of his promise, he points out the hallowed
antiquity of these triumphal hymns, connecting their origin with the
first establishment of the Olympic games ||.
§ 5. Whatever might be the theme of one of Pindar's epinikian odes,
it would naturally not be developed with the systematic completeness of
a philosophical treatise. Pindar, however, has undoubtedly much of
that sententious wisdom which be^an to show itself among the Greeks
at the time of the Seven Wise Men, and which formed an important
element of elegiac and choral lyric poetry before the time of Pindar.
The apophthegms of Pindar sometimes assume the form of general
maxims, sometimes of direct admonitions to the victor. At other times,
when he wishes to impress some principle of morals or prudence upon
the victor, he gives it in the form of an opinion entertained by himself:
" I like not to keep much riches hoarded in an inner room ; but I like
to live well by my possessions, and to procure myself a good name by
making large gifts to my friends ^f."
The other element of Pindar's poetry, his mythical narratives, occu-
pies, however, far more space in most of his odes. That these are not
mere digressions for the sake of ornament has been completely proved
by modern commentators. At the same time, he would sometimes
* See above, ch. xiv. § 2. f Nem. VII.
X Nem. I.
§ I refer to this the sentiment in v. 27 (40) ; " The mind showed itself in the
counsels of those persons to whom nature has given the power of foreseeing the
future;" and also the account of the prophecy of Tiresias, when the serpents were
killed by the young Hercules.
|| 01. XI. % Nem. I. 31 ^45).
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 225
seem to wish it to be believed that he had been carried away by his
poetical fervour, when he returns to his theme from a long mythical nar-
ration, or when he annexes a mythical story to a proverbial saying ; as,
for example, when he subjoins to the figurative expression, " Neither
by sea nor by land canst thou find the way to the Hyperboreans," the his-
tory of Perseus' visit to that fabulous people*. But even in such cases
as these, it will be found, on close examination, that the fable belongs
to the subject. Indeed, it may be observed generally of those Greek
writers who aimed at the production of works of art, whether in prose
or in poetry, that they often conceal their real purpose ; and affect to
leave in vague uncertainty that which had been composed studiously
and on a preconceived plan. Thus Plato often seems to allow the
dialogue to deviate into a wrong course, when this very course was
required by the plan of the investigation. In other passages, Pindar
himself remarks that intelligence and reflection are required to discover
the hidden meaning of his mythical episodes. Thus, after a description
of the Islands of the Blessed, and the heroes who dwell there, he says,
" I have many swift arrows in my quiver, which speak to the wise, but
need an interpreter for the multitude-}-." Again, after the story of Ixion,
which he relates in an ode to Hiero, he continues — " I must, however,
have a care lest I fall into the biting violence of the evil speakers ; for,
though distant in time, I have seen that the slanderous Archilochus, who
fed upon loud-tongued wrath, passed the greater part of his life in
difficulties and distress"):." It is not easy to understand in this passage
what moves the poet to express so much anxiety; until we advert to
the lessons which the history of Ixion contains for the rapacious .Hiero.
The reference of these mythical narratives to the main theme of the
ode may be either historical or ideal. In the first case, (he mythical
personages alluded to are the heroes at the head of the family or state
to which the victor belongs, or the founders of the games in which he
has conquered. Among the many odes of Pindar to victors from
TEgina, there is none in which he does not extol the heroic race of the
iEacids. " It is," he says, " to me an invariable law, when I turn
towards this island, to scatter praise upon you, O jEacids, masters of
golden chariots §." In the second case, events of the heroic age are
described, which resemble the events of the victor's life, or which con-
tain lessons and admonitions for him to reflect upon. Thus two
mythical personages may be introduced, of whom one may typify
the victor in his praiseworthy, the other in his blameable acls ; so that
the one example may serve to deter, the other to encourage||. In
general, Pindar contrives to unite both these modes of allusion, by repie-
senting the national or family heroes as allied in character and spirit to
* Pyth. X. 29.(46.) f 01. II. 83. (150.)
I Pyth. II. 54. (99.) § Isthm. V. [VI.] 19. '27.)
| As Pelops and Tantalus, 01. I.
226 HISTORY OP THE
the victor. Their extraordinary strength and felicity are continued in
their descendants ; the same mixture of good and evil destiny*, and
even the same faultsf, recur in their posterity. It is to be observed
that, in Pindar's time, the faith of the Greeks in the connexion of the
heroes of antiquity with passing events was unshaken. The origin of
historical events was sought in a remote age ; conquests and settlements
in barbarian countries were justified by corresponding enterprises of
heroes ; the Persian war was looked upon as an act of the same great
drama, of which the expedition of the Argonauts and the Trojan war
formed the earlier parts. At the same time, the mythical past was
considered as invested with a splendour and sublimity of which even a
faint reflection was sufficient to embellish the present. This is the
cause of the historical and political allusions of the Greek tragedy, par-
ticularly in iEschylus. Even the history of Herodotus rests on the
same foundation ; but it is seen most distinctly in the copious mytho-
logy which Pindar has pressed into the service of his lyric poetry. The
manner in which mythical subjects were treated by the lyric poets was
of course different from that in which they had been treated by the epic
poets. In epic poetry, the mythical narrative is interesting in itself,
and all parts of it are developed with equal fulness. In lyric poetry, it
serves to exemplify some particular idea, which is usually stated in the
middle or at the end of the ode ; and those points only of the story are
brought into relief, which serve to illustrate this idea. Accordingly,
the longest mythical narrative in Pindar (viz., the description of the
voyage of the Argonauts, in the Pythian ode to Arcesilaus, king of
Cyrene, which is continued through twenty-five strophes) falls far
short of the sustained diffuseness of the epos. Consistently with the
purpose of the ode, it is intended to set forth the descent of the kings of
Cyrene from the Argonauts, and the poet only dwells on the relation of
Jason with Pelias — of the noble exile with the jealous tyrant— because
it contains a serious admonition to Arcesilaus in his above-mentioned
relation with Damophilus.
§ 6. The mixture of apophthegmatic maxims and typical narratives
would alone render it difficult to follow the thread of Pindar's meaning;
but, in addition to this cause of obscurity, the entire plan of his poetry
is so intricate, that a modern reader often fails to understand the con-
nexion of the parts, even where he thinks he has found a clue. Pindar
begins an ode full of the lofty conception which he has formed of the
glorious destiny of the victor; and he seems, as it were, carried away
by the flood of images which this conception pours forth. He does
not attempt to express directly the general idea, but follows the train of
thought which it suggests into its details, though without losing sight
of their reference to the main object. Accordingly, when he has pur-
* As the fate of the ancient Cadmeans in Theron, 01. II.
f As the errors (apvXxitlxi) of the Rhodian heroes in Diagoras, 01. VII,
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 227
sued a train of thought, either in an apophthegmatic or mythical form,
up to a certain point, he breaks off, before he has gone far enough to
make the application to the victor sufficiently clear; he then takes up
another thread, which is perhaps soon dropped for a fresh one ; and at
the end of the ode he gathers up all these different threads, and weaves
them together into one web, in which the general idea predominates.
By reserving the explanation of his allusions until the end, Pindar con-
trives that his odes should consist of parts which are not complete or
intelligible in themselves ; and thus the curiosity of the reader is kept
on the stretch throughout the entire ode. Thus, for example, the ode
upon the Pythian victory, which was gained by Hiero, as a citizen of
iEtna, a city founded by himself*, proceeds upon a general idea of the
repose and serenity of mind which Hiero at last enjoys, after a labo-
rious public life, and to which Pindar strives to contribute by the
influence of music and poetry. Full of this idea, Pindar begins by
describing the effects of music upon the gods in Olympus, how it
delights, inspires, and soothes them, although it increases the anguish
of Typhos, the enemy of the gods, who lies bound under YEtna, Thence,
by a sudden transition, he passes to the new town of iEtna, under the
mountain of the name ; extols the happy auspices under which it was
founded ; and lauds Hiero for his great deeds in war, and for the wise
constitution he has given to the new state ; to which Pindar wishes
exemption from foreign enemies and internal discord. Thus far it does
not appear how the praises of music are connected with the exploits of
Hiero as a warrior and a statesman. But the connexion becomes
evident when Pindar addresses to Hiero a series of moral sentences, the
object of which is to advise him to subdue all unworthy passions, to
refresh his mind with the contemplation of art, and thus to obtain from
the poets a good name, which will descend to posterity.
§ 7. The characteristics of Pindar's poetry, which have been just
explained, may be discerned in all his epinikian odes. Their agree-
ment, however, in this respect is quite consistent with the extraordinary
variety of style and expression which has been already stated to belong
to this class of poems. Every epinikian ode of Pindar has its peculiar
tone, depending upon the course of the ideas and the consequent choice
of the expressions. The principal differences are connected with the
choice of the rhythms, which again is regulated by the musical style.
According to the last distinction, the epinikia of Pindar are of three
sorts, Doric, TEolic, and Lydian ; which can be easily distinguished,
although each admits of innumerable varieties. In respect of metre,
every ode of Pindar has an individual character; no two odes having
the same metrical structure. In the Doric ode the same metrical forms
occur as those which prevailed in the choral lyric poetry of Stesichorus,
* Pyth. I.
Q2
228 HISTORY OP THE
viz., systems of dactyls and trochaic dipodies*, which most nearly
approach the stateliness of the hexameter. Accordingly, a serene dig-
nity pervades these odes ; the mythical narrations are developed with
greater fulness, and the ideas are limited to the subject, and are free
from personal feeling; in short, their general character is that of calm-
ness and elevation. The language is epic, with a slight Doric tinge,
which adds to its brilliancy and dignity. The rhythms of the iEolic
odes resemble those of the Lesbian poetry, in which light dactylic, tro-
chaic, or logacedic metres prevailed; these rhythms, however, when
applied to choral lyric poetry, were rendered far more various, and thus
often acquired a character of greater volubility and liveliness. The
poet's mind also moves with greater rapidity; and sometimes he stops
himself in the midst of narrations which seem to him impious or arro-
gant t. A larger scope is likewise given to his personal feelings; and in
the addresses to the victor there is a gayer tone, which at times even
takes a jocular turn+. The poet introduces his relations to the victor,
and to his poetical rivals; he extols his own style, and decries that of
others §. The JEolic odes, from the rapidity and variety of their move-
ment, have a less uniform character than the Doric odes ; for example,
the first Olympic, with its joyous and glowing images, is very different
from the second, in which a lofty melancholy is expressed, and from the
ninth, which has an expression of proud and complacent self-reliance.
The language of the Molic epinikia is also bolder, more difficult in its
syntax, and marked by rarer dialectical forms. Lastly, there are the
Lydian odes, the number of which is inconsiderable ; their metre is
mostly trochaic, and of a particularly soft character, agreeing with the
tone of the poetry. Pindar appears to have preferred the Lydian
rhythms for odes which were destined to be sung during a procession to
a temple or at the altar, and in which the favour of the deity was im-
plored in a humble spirit.
* The ancient writers on music explain how those trochaic dipodiea were reduced
to an uniform rhythm with the dactylic series. These writers state that the trochaic
dipody was considered as a rhythmical foot, having the entire first trochee as its
arsis, the second as its thesis ; so that, if the syllables were measured shortly it
might be taken as equivalent to a dactyl. '
f 01. I. 52. (82.) IX. 35.
* 01. IV. 26. (40.) Pyth. II. 72. (131.)
§ 01. II. 86. (155.) IX. 100.(151.) Pyth. II. 79. (145.)
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 229
CHAPTER XVI.
§ 1. Moral improvement of Greek poetry after Homer especially evident in the
notions as to the state of man after death. § 2. Influence of the mysteries and
of the Orphic doctrines on these notions. § 3. First traces of Orphic ideas in
Hesiod and other epic poets. § 4. Sacerdotal enthusiasts in the age of the Seven
Sages; Epimenides, Abaris, Aristeas, and Pherecydes. §5. An Orphic litera-
ture arises after the destruction cf the Pythagorean league. § 6. Subjects of
the Orphic poetry ; at first cosmogonic, § 7, afterwards prophetic, in reference to
Dionysus.
§ 1. We have now traced the progress of Greek poetry from Homer to
Pindar, and observed it through its different stages, from the simple
epic song to the artificial and elaborate form of the choral ode. Fortu-
nately the works of Homer and Pindar, the two extreme points of this
long series, have been preserved nearly entire. Of the intermediate
stages we can only form an imperfect judgment from isolated frag-
ments and the statements of later writers.
The interval between Homer and Pindar is an important period in
the history of Greek civilization. Its advance was so great in this
time that the latter poet may seem to belong to a different state of the
human race from the former. In Homer we perceive that infancy of
the mind which lives entirely In seeing and imagining, whose chief
enjoyment consists in vivid conceptions of external acts and ohjecls,
without caring much for causes and effects, and whose moral judgments
are determined rather hy impulses of feeling than by distinctly-con-
ceived rules of conduct. In Pindar the Greek mind appears far more
serious and mature. Fondly as he may contemplate the images of
beauty and splendour which he raises up, and glorious as are the forms
of ancient heroes and modern athletes which he exhibits, yet the chief
effort of his genius is to discover a standard of moral government; and
when he has distinctly conceived it, he applies it to the fair and living
forms which the fancy of former times had created. There is too much
truth in Pindar's poetry, it is too much the expression of his genuine
feelings, for him to attempt to conceal its difference from the ancient
style, as the later poets did. He says* that the fame of Ulysses has
become greater through the sweet songs of Homer than from his real
adventures, because there is something ennobling in the illusions and
soaring flights of Homer's fancy; and he frequently rejects the narra-
tives of former poets, particularly when they do not accord with his own
purer conceptions of the power and moral excellence of the godsf.
Hut there is nothing in which Pindar differs so widely from Homer
as in his notions respecting the state of vian after death. According
* Nem. vii. 20 (29).
t See, for example, 01. i. 52 (82) ; ix. 35 (54).
230 HISTORY OP THE
to the description in the Odyssey, all the dead, even the most renowned
heroes, lead a shadowy existence in the infernal regions (Aides), where,
like phantoms, they continue the same pursuits as on earth, though
without will or understanding. On the other hand, Pindar, in his
sublime ode of consolation to Theron*, says that all misdeeds of this
world are severely judged in the infernal regions, hut that a happy
life in eternal sunshine, without care for subsistence, is the portion
of the good ; " while those who, through a threefold existence in the
upper and lower worlds, have kept their souls pure from all sin,
ascend the path of Zeus to the citadel of Cronust, where the Islands
of the Blessed are refreshed by the breezes of Ocean, and golden flowers
glitter." In this passage the Islands of the Blessed are described as a
reward for the highest virtue, whilst in Homer only a few favourites of
the gods (Menelaus, for example, because his wife was a daughter of
Zeus) reach the Elysian Field on the border of the ocean. In his
threnes, or laments for the dead, Pindar more distinctly developed his
ideas about immortality, and spoke of the tranquil life of the blessed,
in perpetual sunshine, among fragrant groves, at festal games and
sacrifices ; and of the torments of the wretched in eternal night. In
these, too, he explained himself more fully as to the existence alter-
nating between the upper and lower world, by which lofty spirits rise
to a still higher state. He saysj — " Those from whom Persephone
receives an atonement for their former guilt, their souls she sends, in
the ninth year, to the sun of heaven. From them spring great kings
and men mighty in power and renowned for wisdom, whom posterity
cal's sacred heroes among men§."
§ 2. It is manifest that between the periods of Homer and Pindar
a great change of opinions took place, which could not have been ef-
fected at once, but must have been produced by the efforts of many
sa»es and poets. All the Greek religious poetry treating of death and
the world beyond the grave refers to the deities whose influence was
supposed to be exercised in the dark region at the centre of the earth,
and who were thought to have little connexion with the political and
social relations of human life. These deities formed a class apart from
the gods of Olympus, and were comprehended under the name of the
Chthonian cjods\. The mysteries of the Greeks were connected with
the worship of these gods alone. That the love of immortality first
* 01. ii. 57 (105).
f That is, the way which Zeus himself takes when he visits his dethroned father
Cronus (now reconciled with him. and become the ruler of the departed spirits in
bliss), in order to advise with him on the destiny of mankind.
% Thren. fr. 4, ed. Boeckh.
§ In order to understand this passage it is to be observed that, according to the
ancient law, a person who had committed homicide must expiate his offence by an
exile or even servitude of eight years before his guilt was removed.
|| Concerning this distinction, the most important in the Greek religious system,
see ch. ii. § 5.
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 231
found a support in a belief in these deities appears from the fable of
Persephone, the daughter of Demeter. Every year, at the time of
harvest, Persephone was supposed to be carried from the world above
to the dark dominions of the invisible King 1 of Shadows ('Ato^e), but to
return every spring, in youthful beauty, to the arms of her mother. It
was thus that the ancient Greeks described the disappearance and
return of vegetable life in the alternations of the seasons. The changes
of nature, however, must have been considered as typifying the changes
in the lot of man ; otherwise Persephone would have been merely a
symbol of the seed committed to the ground, and would not have be-
come the queen of the dead. But when the goddess of inanimate
nature had become the queen of the dead, it was a natural analogy,
which must have early suggested itself, that the return of Persephone
to the world of light also denoted a renovation of life and a new birth
to men. Hence the Mysteries of Demeter, and especially those cele-
brated at Eleusis (which at an early period acquired great renown
among all the Greeks), inspired the most elevating and animating
hopes with regard to the condition of the soul after death. " Happy"
(says Pindar of these mysteries)* " is he who has beheld them, and de-
scends beneath the hollow earth; he knows the end, he knows the
divine origin of life;" and this praise is repeated by all the most dis-
tinguished writers of antiquity who mention the Eleusinian mysteries.
But neither the Eleusinian nor any other of the established mysteries
of Greece obtained any influence upon the literature of the nation, since
the hymns sung and the prayers recited at them were only intended
for particular parts of the imposing ceremony, and were not imparted
to the public. On the other hand, there was a society of persons who
performed the rites of a mystical worship, but were not exclusively
attached to a particular temple and festival, and who did not confine
their notions to the initiated, but published them to others, and com-
mitted them to literary works. These were the followers of Orpheus
(ot 'Op<pitcoi) ; that is to say, associations of persons, who, under the
"■uidance of the ancient mystical poet Orpheus, dedicated themselves
to the worship of Bacchus, in which they hoped to find satisfaction for
an ardent longing after the soothing and elevating influences of reli-
gion. The Dionysus to whose worship these Orphic and Bacchic rites
were annexedt, was the Chthonian deity, Dionysus Zagreus, closely
connected with Demeter and Cora, who was the personified expression
not only of the most rapturous pleasure, but also of a deep sorrow for
the miseries of human life. The Orphic legends and poems related in
great part to this Dionysus, who was combined, as an infernal deity,
with Hades ; (a doctrine given by the philosopher Heraclitus as the
* Thren. fr. 8, ed. Boeckh.
f Ta 'O^ixa xaXtoftiva xcci Bax^iKcc. Herod, xi. 81.
232 HISTORY OP THE
opinion of a particular sect* ;) and upon whom the Orphic theologers
founded their hopes of the purification and ultimate immortality of the
soul. But their mode of celebrating 1 this worship was very different
from the popular rites of Bacchus. The Orphic worshippers of Bac-
chus did not indulge in unrestrained pleasure and frantic enthusiasm,
but rather aimed at an ascetic purity of life and mannersf. The fol-
lowers of Orpheus, when they had tasted the mystic sacrificial feast of
raw flesh torn from the ox of Dionysus (w^xo^aym), partook of no other
animal food. They wore white linen garments, like Oriental and Egyp-
tian priests, from whom, as Herodotus remarks, much may have been
borrowed in the ritual of the Orphic worship.
§ 3. It is difficult to determine the time when the Orphic association
was formed in Greece, and when hymns and other religious songs were
first composed in the Orphic spirit. But, if we content ourselves with
seeking to ascertain the beginning of higher and more hopeful views
of death than those presented by Homer, we find them in the poetry
of Hesiod. In Hesiod's Works and Days, at least, all the heroes are
described as collected by Zeus in the Islands of the Blessed near the
ocean ; according indeed to one verse (which, however, is not recog-
nised by all critics), they are subject to the dominion of CronusJ. In
this we may see the marks of a great change in opinion. It became re-
pugnant to men's feelings to conceive divine beings, like the gods of
Olympus and the Titans, in a state of eternal dissension ; the former
selfishly enjoying undisturbed felicity, and the latter abandoned to all
the horrors of Tartarus. A humaner spirit required a reign of peace
after the rupture of the divine dynasties. Hence^the belief, entertained
by Pindar, that Zeus had released the Titans from their chains§ ; and
that Cronus, the god of the golden age, reconciled with his son Zeus,
still continued to reign, in the islands of the ocean, over the blessed
of a former generation. In Orphic poems, Zeus calls on Cronus, re-
leased from his chains, to assist him in laying the foundation of the
world. There is also, in other epic poets after Homer, a similar ten-
dency to lofty and tranquillizing notions. Eugammon, the author of
the Telegonia||, is supposed to have borrowed the part of his poem
which treated of Thesprotia, from Musaeus, the poet of the mysteries.
Thesprotia was a country in which the worship of the gods of death
was peculiarly cultivated. In the AlcmceoniSy which celebrated Alc-
mseon, the son of Amphiaraus, Zagreus was invoked as the highest of
all the gods^]. The deity meant in this passage was the god of the in-
* Ap. Clem. Alex. Protr. p. 30, Potter.
f On this and other points mentioned in the text seeLobeck Ag^'topha!™!*, p. 2-14.
J According to v. 169 : t»Xou «<t' a^xvarav roTtriv K^ova; ip/iairiXiuii, (concerning
this reading see Goettling's edition ;) which verse is wanting in some manuscripts.
§ Ziv; 'iXvfft "Virata;.
|| See above, cb. vi. § 6.
*] XJirvix I'SJ, Zv.yoiv ti (iuv vawTiorari vdi/r&iv. Etym. Gud. in V. Zaypivs.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 233
femal regions, but in a much more elevated sense than that in which
Hades is usually employed. Another poem of this period, the Minyas^
gave an ample description of the infernal regions ; the spirit of which
may be inferred from the fact that this part (which was called by the
name of " The Descent to Hades") is attributed, among- other authors,
to Cecrops, an Orphic poet, or even to Orpheus himself*.
t) 4. At the time when the first philosophers appeared in Greece,
poems must have existed which diffused, in mythical forms, conceptions
of the origin of the world and the destiny of the soul, differing from
those in Homer. The endeavour to attain to a knowledge of divine
and human things was in Greece slowly and with difficulty evolved
from the religious notions of a sacerdotal fanaticism ; and it was for a
long period confined to the refining and rationalizing of the traditional
mythology, before it ventured to explore the paths of independent
inquiry. In the age of the seven sages several persons appeared,
who, (being mainly under the influence of the ideas and rites of the
worship of Apollo,) partly by a pure and holy mode of life, and partly
by a fanatical temper of mind, surrounded themselves with a sort of
supernatural halo, which makes it difficult for us to discern their true
character. Among these persons was Epimenides of Crete, an early
contemporary of Solon, who was sent for to Athens, in his character of
expiatory priest, to free it from the curse which had rested upon it
since the Cylonian m;is c acre (about Olymp. 42. B.C. 612). Epime-
nides was a man of a sacred and marvellous nature, who was brought
up by the nymphs, and whose soul quitted his body, as long and as
often as it pleased ; according to the opinion of Plato and other ancient^,
his mind had a prophetic and inspired sense of divine thingsf. An-
other and more extraordinary individual of this class was Abaris, who,
about a generation later, appeared in Greece as an expiatory priest,
with rites of purification and holy songs. In order to give more im-
portance to his mission, he called himself a Hyperborean ; that is, one
of the nation which Apollo most loved, and in which he manifested
himself in person ; and, as a proof of his origin, he carried with him an
arrow which Apollo had given him in the country of the HyperboreansJ.
Together with Abaris may be mentioned Aristeas of Proconnesus, on
the Propontis; who took the opposite direction, and, inspired by Apollo,
* h U AiSsi/ xaraSuffi;.
f Whether the oracles, expiatory verses, and poems (as the origin of the Curetcs
and Corybantes) attributed to him are his genuine productions cannot now be deter-
mined. Damascius. De Princip. p. 3S3, ascribes to him (after Kudemus) a cosmo-
gony, in which the mundane egg plays an important part, as in the Orphic cos-
mogonies.
t This is the ancient form of the story in Herod, iv. 3G, the orator Lycurgus. &c.
According to the later version, which is derived«from Heraclides Ponticus, Abaris
was himself carried by the marvellous arrow through the air round the world. Some
expiatory verses and oracles were likewise ascribed to Abaris ; also an epic poem,
called " the Arrival of Apollo among the Hyperboreans."
234 HISTORY OP THE
travelled to the far north, in search of the Hyperboreans. He de-
scribed this marvellous journey in a poem, called Arimaspea, which
was read by Herodotus, and Greeks of still later date. It consisted of
ethnographical accounts and stories about the northern nations, mixed
with notions belonging to the worship of Apollo. In this poem, how-
ever, Aristeas so far checked his imagination, that he only represented
himself to have penetrated northwards from the Scythians as far as the
Issedones ; and he gave as mere reports the marvellous tales of the one-
eyed Arimaspians, of the griffins which guarded the gold, and of the
happy Hyperboreans beyond the northern mountains. Aristeas be-
came quite a marvellous personage : he is said to have accompanied
Apollo, at the founding of Metapontum, in the form of a raven, and to
have appeared centuries afterwards, (viz. when he really lived, about
the time of Pythagoras,) in the same city of Magna Gra&cia.
Pherecydes, of the island of Syros, one of the heads of the Ionic
school, belongs to this class of the sacerdotal sages, inasmuch as he
gave a mythical form to his notions about the nature of things and their
internal principles. There are extant some fragments of a theogouy
composed by him, which bear a strange character, and have a much
closer resemblance to the Orphic poems than to those of Hesiod*.
They show that by this time the character of the theogonic poetry had
been changed, and that Orphic ideas were in vogue.
§ 5. No name of any literary production of an Orphic poet before
Pherecydes is known; probably because the hymns and religious songs
composed by the Orphic poets of that time were destined only for
their mystical assemblies, and were indissolubly connected with the
rites performed at them. An extensive Orphic literature first appeared
about the time of the Persian war, when the remains of the Pytha-
gorean order in Magna Graecia united themselves to the Orphic asso-
ciations. The philosophy of Pythagoras had in itself no analogy with
the spirit of the Orphic mysteries ; nor did the life, education, and
manners of the followers of Orpheus at all resemble those of the
Pythagorean league in lower Italy. Among the Orphic theologers,
the worship of Dionysus was the centre of all religious ideas, and the
starting point of all speculations upon the world and human nature.
The worship of Dionysus, however, appears not to have been held in
honour in the cities of the Pythagorean league ; these philosophers
preferred the worship of Apollo and the Muses, which best suited the
spirit of their social and political institutions. This junction was
evidently not formed till after the dissolution of the Pythagorean
league in Magna Grsecia, and the sanguinary persecution of its
* Sturz de Pherecyde p. 40. sqq. The mixture of divine beings (fctucgatria), the
god Ophioneus, the unity of Zeus and Eros, and several other things in the Theo-
gony of Pherecydes also occur in Orphic poems. The Cosmogony of Acusilans
(Damascius, p. 313, after Eudemus), in which TEther, Eros, and Metis, are made
the children of Erebos and Night, also has an Orphic colour. See below, § 6.
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 235
members, by the popular party (about Olymp. 69. 1. B.C. 504). It
was natural that many Pythagoreans, having contracted a fondness for
exclusive associations, should seek a refuge in these Orphic conven-
ticles, sanctified, as they were, by religion. Several persons, who are
called Pythagoreans, and who were known as the authors of Orphic
poems, belong to this period ; as Cercops, Brontinus, and Arignote.
To Cercops was attributed the great poem called the " Sacred Legends "
(lepol Xo'yoi), a complete system of Orphic theology, in twenty-four
rhapsodies ; probably the work of several persons, as a certain Diog-
netus was also called the author of it. Brontinus, likewise a Pytha-
gorean, was said to be the author of an Orphic poem upon nature
((j)V(TiKa), and of a poem called " The Mantle and the Net" (7rtV\oc
Kal Stirvov), Orphic expressions symbolical of the creation. Arignote,
who is called a pupil, and even a daughter, of Pythagoras, wrote a
poem called Bacchica. Other Orphic poets were Persinus of Miletus,
Timocles of Syracuse, Zopyrus of Heraclea, or Tarentum.
The Orphic poet of whom wc know the most is Onomacritus, who,
however, was not connected with the Pythagoreans, having lived with
Pisistratus and the Pisistratids, and been held in high estimation by
them, before the dissolution of the Pythagorean league. He collected
the oracles of Musaeus for the Pisistratids ; in which work, the poet
Lasus is said (according to Herodotus) to have detected him in a
forgery. He also composed songs for Bacchic initiations ; in which
he connected the Titans with the mythology of Dionysus, by de-
scribing them as the intended murderers of the young god* ; which
shows how far the Orphic mythology departed from the theogony of
Hesiod. In the time of Plato, a considerable number of poems, under
the names of Orpheus and Musaeus, had been composed by these per-
sons, and were recited by rhapsodists at the public games, like the
epics of Homer and Hesiod f. The Orpheotelests, likewise, an obscure
set of mystagogues derived from the Orphic associations, used to come
before the doors of the rich, and promise to release them from their
own sins, and those of their forefathers, by sacrifices and expiatory
songs ; and they produced at this ceremony a heap of books of Orpheus
and Musecus, upon which they founded theu; promises J.
§ 6. In treating of the subjects of this early Orphic poetry, we may
remark, first, that there is much difficulty in distinguishing it from
Orphic productions of the decline of paganism ; and, secondly, that a
detailed explanation of it would involve us in the mazes of ancient
mythology and religion. We will, therefore, only mention the prin-
cipal contents of these compositions ; which will suffice to give an idea
of their spirit and character. We shall take them chiefly from the
Orphic cosmogony, which later writers designate as the common one
* This is the meaning of the important passage of* Pausan. viii. 37. 3.
f Plato, Ion. p. 536 B. X Plato, Rep. ii. p. 364.
236 HISTORY OF THE
(// (Tvt'fidrjc), — for there were others still more wild and extravagant,—
and which probahly formed a part of the long poetical collection of
" Sacred Legends," which has been already mentioned.
We see, at the very outset of the Orphic theogony, an attempt to
refine upon the theogony of Hesiod, and to arrive at higher abstrac-
tions than his chaos. The Orphic theogony placed Chronos, Time, at
the head of all things, and conferred upon it life and creative power.
Chronos was then described as spontaneously producing chaos and
aether, and forming from chaos, within the aether, a mundane egg;, of
brilliant white. The mundane egg is a notion which the Orphic poets
had in common with many Oriental systems; traces of it also occur in
ancient Greek legends, as in that of the Dioscuri ; but the Orphic poets
first developed it among the Greeks. The whole essence of the world
was supposed to be contained in this egg - , and to grow from it, like the
life of a bird. The mundane egg, which included the matter of chaos,
was impregnated by the winds, that is, by the eether in motion; and
thence aio c e the golden-winged Eros*. Tne notion of Eros, as a
cosmogonic being, is carried much further by the Orphic poets than by
Hesiod. They also culled him Metis, the mind of the world. The
name of Phanes first became common in Orphic poetry of a later date.
The Orphic poets conceived this Eros-Phanes as a pantheistic being;
the parts of the world forming, as it were, the limbs of his body, and
being thus united into an organic whole. The heaven was his head,
the earth his foot, the sun and moon his eyes, the rising and setting
of the heavenly bodies his horns. An Orphic poet addresses Phanes
in the following poetical language : " Thy tears are the hapless race
of men ; by thy laugh thou hast raised up the sacred race of the
gods." Eros then gives birth to a long series of gods, similar to that
in Hesiod. By his daughter, Night, he produces Heaven and Earth;
these then bring forth the Titans, among whom Cronus and Rhea
become the parents of Zeus. The Orphic poets, as well as Hesiod,
made Zeus the supreme god at this period of the world. He was,
therefore, supposed to supplant Eros-Phanes, and to unite this being
with himself. Hence arose the fable of Zeus having swallowed
Phanes ; which is evidently taken from the story in Hesiod, that Zeus
swallowed Metis, the goddess of wisdom. Hesiod, however, merely
meant to imply that Zeus knows all things that concern our weal or
woe ; while the Orphic poets go further, and endow their Zeus with
the anima mundi. Accordingly, they represent Zeus as now being the
first and last; the beginning, middle, and end; man and woman;
and, in fine, everything. Nevertheless, the universe was conceived to
* This feature is al.-o in the burlesque Orphic cosmogony in Aristoph. Av. 694;
according to which the Orphic verse in Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iii. 26. should be thus
understood :
Avrap 'ioura £»«'vjj (not KoUii) no.) ■xvivpura. vuvrx (rn the nominative case)
Irixvatrt*.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 237
stand in different relations to Zeus and to Eros. The Orphic poets also
described Zens as uniting the jarring elements into one harmonious
structure ; and thus restoring 1 , by his wisdom, the unity which existed
in Phanes, but which had afterwards been destroyed, and replaced by
confusion and strife. Here we meet with the idea of a creation, which
was quite unknown to the most ancient Greek poets. While the
Greeks of the time of Homer and Hesiod considered the world as an
organic being, which was constantly growing into a state of greater
perfection ; the Orphic poets conceived the world as having been formed
by the Deity out of pre-existing matter, and upon a predetermined plan.
Hence, in describing creation, they usually employed the image of a
" crater," in which the different elements were supposed to be mixed
in certain proportions ; and also of a " peplos," or garment, in which
the different threads are united into one web. Hence " Crater," and
" Peplos," occur as the titles of Orphic poems.
§ 7. Another great difference between the notions of the Orphic
poets and those of the early Greeks concerning the order of the world
was, that the former did not limit their views to the -present state of
mankind ; still less did they acquiesce in Hesiod 's melancholy doctrine
of successive ages, each one worse than the preceding; but they looked
for a cessation of strife, a holy peace, a state of the highest happiness
and beatitude of souls at the end of all things. Their firm hopes of
this result were founded upon Dionysus, from the worship of whom
all their peculiar religious ideas were derived. According to them,
Dionysus-Zagreus was a son of Zeus, whom he had begotten, in the
form of a dragon, upon his daughter Cora-Persephone, before she was
carried off to the kingdom of shadows. The young god was supposed
to pass through great perils. This was always an essential part of the
mythology of Dionysus, especially as it was related in the neighbour-
hood of Delphi ; but it was converted by the Orphic poets, and espe-
cially by Onomacritus, into the marvellous legend which is preserved
by later writers. According to this legend, Zeus destined Dionysus
for king, set him upon the throne of heaven, and gave him Apollo and
the Curetes to protect him. But the Titans, instigated by the jealous
Here, attacked hi in by surprise, having disguised themselves under a
coating of plaster (a rite of the Bacchic festivals), while Dionysus,
whose attention was engaged with various playthings, particularly a
splendid mirror, did not perceive their approach. After a long and
fearful conflict the Titans overcame Dionysus, and tore him into seven
pieces*, one piece for each of themselves. Pallas, however, succeeded
in saving his palpitating heartf, which was swallowed by Zeus in a
drink. As the ancients considered the heart as the seat of life, Diony-
sus was again contained in Zeus, and again begotten by him. Zeus
* The Orphic poets added Phorcys and Dione to the Titans and Titaiiidos of Hesiod,
f KjaSi'nv T«x>.9/iiv?iv, an etymological fable.
238 HISTORY OF THE
at the same time avenges the slaughter of his son by striking and con-
suming the Titans with his thunderbolts. From their ashes, according
to this Orphic legend, proceeded the race of men. This Dionysus, torn
in pieces and born again, is destined to succeed Zeus in the government
of the world, and to restore the golden age. In the same system Dio-
nysus was also the god from whom the liberation of souls was expected;
for, according to an Orphic notion, more than once alluded to by Plato,
human souls are punished by being confined in the body, as in a prison.
The sufferings of the soul in its prison, the steps and transitions by
which it passes to a higher state of existence, and its gradual purifica-
tion and enlightenment, were all fully described in these poems ; and
Dionysus and Cora were represented as the deities who performed the
task of guiding and purifying the souls of men.
Thus, in the poetry of the first five centuries of Greek literature,
especially at the close of this period, we find, instead of the calm enjoy-
ment of outward nature which characterised the early epic poetry, a
profound sense of the misery of human life and an ardent longing for
a condition of greater happiness. This feeling, indeed, was not so
extended as to become common to the whole Greek nation ; but it took
deep root in individual minds, and was connected with more serious
and spiritual views of human nature.
We will now turn our attention to the progress made by the Greeks,
in the last century of this period, in prose composition.
CHAPTER XVII.
§ 1. Opposition of philosophy and poetry among the Greeks ; causes of the intro-
duction of prose writings. § 2. The Ionians give the main impulse ; tendency of
philosophical speculation among the Ionians. § 3. Retrospect of the theological
speculations of Pherecydes. § 4. Thales ; he combines practical talents with
bold ideas concerning the nature of things. § 5. Anaximander, a writer and
inquirer on the nature of things. § 6. Anaximenes pursues the physical in-
quiries of his predecessors. § 7. Heraclitus ; profound character of his natural
philosophy. § 8. Changes introduced by Anaxagoras ; new direction of the
physical speculations of the Ionians. § 9. Diogenes continues the early doctrine.
Archelaus, an Anaxagorean, carries the Ionic philosophy to Athens. § 10. Doc-
trines of the Eleatics, founded by Xenophanes ; their enthusiastic character is
expressed in a poetic form. § 11. Parmenides gives a logical form to the doc-
trines of Xenophanes ; plan of his poem. § 12. Further development of the
Eleatic doctrine by Melissus and Zeno. § 13. Empedocles, akin to Anaxagoras
and the Eleatics, but conceives lofty ideas of his own. § 14. Italic school; re-
ceives its impulse from an Ionian, which is modified by the Doric character of
the inhabitants. Coincidence of its practical tendency with its philosophical
principle.
§ 1. As the design of this work is to give a history, not of the philo-
sophy, but of the literature of Greece, we shall limit ourselves to such a
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 239
view of the early Greek philosophers as will illustrate the literary pro-
gress of the Greek nation. Philosophy occupies a peculiar province of
the human mind ; and it has its origin in habits of thought which are
confined to a few. It is necessary not only to possess these habits of
thought, but also to be singularly free from the shackles of any parti-
cular system, in order fully to comprehend the speculations of the an-
cient Greek philosophers, as preserved in the fragments and accounts
of their writings. Even if a history of physical and metaphysical spe-
culation among the early Greek philosophers were likely to interest the
reader, yet it would be foreign to the object of the present work, which
is intended to illustrate the intellectual progress and character of the
entire Greek nation. Philosophy, for some time after its origin in
Greece, was as far removed from the ordinary thoughts, occupations,
and amusements of the people, as poetry was intimately connected with
them. Poetry ennobles and elevates all that is most characteristic of a
nation; its religion, mythology, political and social institutions, and
manners. Philosophy, on the other hand, begins by detaching the
mind from the opinions and habits in which it has been bred up ; from
the national conceptions of the gods and the universe ; and from the
traditionary maxims of ethics and politics. The philosopher attempts
as far as possible to think for himself; and hence he is led to disparage
all that is handed down from antiquity. Hence, too, the Greek philo-
sophers from the beginning renounced the ornaments of verse; that is,
of the vehicle which had previously been used for the expression of
every elevated feeling. Philosophical writings were nearly the earliest
compositions in the unadorned language of common life. It is not
probable that they would have been composed in this form, if they had
been intended for recital to a multitude assembled at games and festi-
vals. It would have required great courage to break in upon the rhyth-
mical flow of the euphonious hexameter and lyric measures, with a
discourse uttered in the language of ordinary conversation. The most
ancient writings of Greek philosophers were however only brief records
of their principal doctrines, designed to be imparted to a few persons.
There was no reason why the form of common speech should not be
used for these, as it had been long before used for laws, treaties, and
the like. In fact, prose composition and writing are so intimately con-
nected, that we may venture to assert that, if writing had become com-
mon among the Greeks at an earlier period, poetry would not have so
long retained its ascendancy. We shall indeed find that philosophy, as
it advanced, sought the aid of poetry, in order to strike the mind more
forcibly. And if we had aimed at minute precision in the division of
our subject, we should have passed from theological to philosophical
poetry. But it is more convenient to observe, as far as possible, the
chronological order of the different branches of literature, and the de-
pendence of one upon another; and we shall therefore classify this phi-
240 HISTORY OF THE
losophical poetry with prose compositions, as being* a limited and pecu-
liar deviation from the usual practice with regard to philosophical
writings.
§ 2. However the Greek philosophers may have sought after origin-
ality and independence of thought, they could not avoid being influ-
enced in their speculations by the peculiar circumstances of their own
position. Hence the earliest philosophers may be classed according to
the races and countries to which they belonged ; the idea of a schoo*
(that is, of a transmission of doctrines through an unbroken series of
teachers and disciples) not being applicable to this period.
The earliest attempts at philosophical speculation were made by the
Ionians ; that race of the Greeks, which not only had, in common life,
shown the greatest desire for new and various kinds of knowledge, but
had also displayed the most decided taste for scientific researches into
the phenomena of external nature. From this direction of their in-
quiries, the Ionic philosophers were called by the ancients, " physical
philosophers," or " physiologers." With a boldness characteristic of
inexperience and ignorance, they began by directing their inquiries to
the most abstruse subjects ; and, unaided by any experiments which
were not within the reach of a common man, and unacquainted with
the first elements of mathematics, they endeavoured to determine the
origin and principle of the existence of all things. If we are tempted
to smile at the temerity with which these Ionians at once ventured upon
the solution of the highest problems, we are, on the other hand, asto-
nished at the sagacity with which many of them conjectured the con-
nexion of appearances, which they could not fully comprehend without
a much greater progress in the study of nature. The scope of these
Ionian speculations proves that they were not founded on a 'priori rea
sonings, independent of experience. The Greeks were always distin-
guished by their curiosity, and their powers of delicate observation.
Yet this gifted nation, even when it had accumulated a large stock of
knowledge concerning natural objects, seems never to have attempted
more than the observation of phenomena which presented themselves
unsought; and never to have made experiments devised by the investi-
gator.
§ 3. Before we pass from these general remarks to an account of the
individual philosophers of the Ionic school, (taking the term in its most
extended sense,) we must mention a man who is important as forming
an intermediate link between the sacerdotal enthusiasts, Epimenides,
Abaris, and others, noticed in the last chapter, and the Ionic physio-
logers. Pherecydes, a native of the island of Syros, one of the Cyc-
lades, is the earliest Greek of whose prose writings we possess any
remains*, and was certainly one of the first who, after the manner of the
* Sue chap. IS. o 3.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 241
Ionians (before they had obtained any papyrus from Egypt), wrote
down their unpolished wisdom upon sheep-skins.* But his prose is
only so far prose that it has cast off the fetters of verse, and not because
it expresses the ideas of the writer in a simple and perspicuous manner.
His book began thus : "Zeus and Time (Chronos), and Chthonia ex-
isted from eternity. Chthonia was called Earth (yjjf), since Zeus
endowed her with honour." Pherecydes next relates how Zeus trans-
formed himself into Eros, the god of love, wishing to form the world
from the original materials made by Chronos and Chthonia. "Zeus
makes (Pherecydes goes on to say) a large and beautiful garment ;
upon it he paints Earth and Ogenos (ocean), and the houses of Ogenos ;
and he spreads the garment over a winged oak."t It is manifest,
without attempting a complete explanation of these images, that the
ideas and language of Pherecydes closely resembled those of the Orphic
theologers, and that he ought rather to be classed with them than with
the Ionic philosophers.
§ 4. Pherecydes lived in the age of the Seven Sages ; one of
whom, Thales of Miletus, was the first in the series of the Ionic
physical philosophers. The Seven Sages, as we have already had
occasion to observe, were not solitary thinkers, whose renown for
wisdom was acquired by speculations unintelligible to the mass of the
people. Their fame, which extended over all Greece, was founded
solely on their acts as statesmen, counsellors of the people in public
affairs, and practical men. This is also true of Thales, whose sagacity
in affairs of state and public economy appears from many anecdotes.
In particular, Herodotus relates, that, at the time when the Ionians
were threatened by the great Persian power of Cyrus, after the fall of
Croesus, Thales, who was then very old, advised them to establish an
Ionian capital in the middle of their coast, somewhere near Teos,
where all the affairs of their race might be debated, and to which all
the other Ionic cities might stand in the same relation as the Attic
demi to Athens. At an earlier age, Thales is said to have foretold to
the Ionians the total eclipse of the sun, which (either in G10 or G03
B.C.) separated the Medes from the Lydians in the battle which was
fought by Cyaxares against Halyattes.J For this purpose, he doubt-
less employed astronomical formula?, which he had obtained, through
Asia Minor, from the Chaldeans, the fathers of Grecian, and indeed
* Herod. V. 58. The expression <Pt£<.xv'Sov S/0 *>%« probably gave rise to the fable
that Pherecydes was flayed as a punishment fur his atheism; a charge which was
made against most of the early philosophers.
•(• See Sturz Commentatio de Pherecyde utroque, in his Pherecydis Fragmenta,
ed. alt. 1814. The genuineness of the fragments is especially proved by the rave
ancient Ionic forms, cited from them by the learned grammarians, Apollonius and
Herodian.
I If Thales was (as is stated by Eusebius) bom in Olymp. 35. 2. u.c. G39, I12
was then either twenty-nine or thirty-six years old.
a
242 HISTORY OF THE
of all ancient astronomy ; for his own knowledge of mathematics
could not have reached as far as the Pythagorean theorem. He is said
to have been the first teacher of such problems as that of the equality
of the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle. In the main, the
tendency of Thales was practical ; and, where his own knowledge
was insufficient, he applied the discoveries of nations more advanced
than his own in natural science. Thus he was the first who advised
his countrymen, when at sea, not to steer by the Great Bear, which
forms a considerable circle round the Pole; but to follow the example
of the Phoenicians (from whom, according to Herodotus, the family
of Thales was descended), and to take the Lesser Bear for their Polar
star.*
Thales was not a poet, nor indeed the author of any written work,
and, consequently, the accounts of his doctrine rest only upon the
testimony of his contemporaries and immediate successors ; so that it
would be vain to attempt to construct from them a system of natural
philosophy according to his notions. It may, however, be collected
from these traditions that he considered all nature as endowed with
life: "Everything (he said) is full of gods;"f and he cited, as proofs
of this opinion, the magnet and amber, on account of their magnetic
and electric properties. It also appears that he considered water as a
general principle or cause ; J probably because it sometimes assumes a
vapoury, sometimes a liquid form ; and therefore affords a remarkable
example of a change of outward appearance. This is sufficient to show
that Thales broke through the common prejudices produced by the
impressions of the senses; and sought to discover the principle of
external forms in moving powers which lie beneath the surface of ap-
pearances.
§ 5. Anaximander, also a Milesian, is next after Thales. It seems
pretty certain that his little work "upon nature" (-rrep) (pvcrewg), — as
the books of the Ionic physiologers were mostly called, — was written
in Olymp. 58, 2, b.c. 547, when he was sixty-four years old.§ This
may be said to be the earliest philosophical work in the Greek language ;
for we can scarcely give that name to the mysterious revelations of
* This constellation was hence called $««/*». See Schol. Arat. Phoen. 39. Probably-
some traditions of this kind served as the basis, of the vavrixb ao-r^oXoy'ioc, which was
attributed to Thales by the ancients, but, according to a more precise account, was the
work of a later writer, Phocius of Samos.
-j- In the passage of Aristotle, de Anima, i. 5. the words ?t«vt« sj-Xjjjm hZ* Mat, alone
express the traditional account of the doctrine of Thales; the words s» o\<o rhv ^vvni
fAi/MxSat are the gloss of Aristotle.
J 'Agjcft, aiTicc. The expression u^x/i was first used by Anaximander.
§ From the statement of Apollodorus, that Anaximaiuler was sixty-four years old
in Olymp. 58. 2. (Diog. Laert. ii. 2), and of Pliny (N. H. ii. 8.), that the obliquity
of the ecliptic was discovered in Olymp. 58, it may be inferred that Anaximander
mentioned this year in his work. Who else could, at that time, have registered such
discoveries ?
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 243
Pherecydes. It was probably written in a style of extreme concise-
ness, and in language more befitting poetry than prose, as indeed
appears from the few extant fragments. The astronomical and
geographical explanations attributed to Anaximander were probably
contained in this work. Anaximander possessed a gnomon, or sun-
dial, which he had doubtless obtained from Babylon j* and, being at
Sparta (which was still the focus of Greek civilization), he made ob-
servations, by which he determined exactly the solstices and equinoxes,
and calculated the obliquity of the ecliptic. f According to Erato-
sthenes, he was the first who attempted to draw a map ; in which his
object probably was rather to make a mathematical division of the
whole earth, than to lay down the forms of the different countries com-
posing it. According to Aristotle, Anaximander thought that there
were innumerable worlds, which he called gods ; supposing these
worlds to be beings endowed with an independent power of motion.
He also thought that existing worlds were always perishing, and that
new worlds were always springing into being; so that motion was per-
petual. According to bis views, these worlds arose out of the eternal,
or rather indeterminable, substance, which he called to a-n-eipov; he
arrived at the idea of an original substance, out of which all things
arose, and to which all things return, by excluding all attributes and
limitations. " All existing things (he says in an extant fragment)
must, in justice, perish in that in which they had their origin. For
one thing is always punished by another for its injustice (i. e., its in-
justice in setting itself in the place of another), according to the order
of time." }
§ 6. Anaximenes, another Milesian, according to the general tradi-
tion of antiquity, followed Anaximander, and must, therefore, have
flourished not long before the Persian war. § With him the Ionic
philosophy began to approach closer to the language of argumentative
discussion; his work was composed in the plain simple dialect of the
Ionians. Anaximenes, in seeking to discover some sensible substance,
from which outward objects could have been formed, thought that air
best fulfilled the conditions of his problem ; and he showed much in-
genuity in collecting instances of the rarefaction and condensation of
bodies from air. This elementary principle of the Ionians was always
considered as having an independent power of motion ; and as endowed
* Herod. II. 109. Concerning Anaximander's gnomon, see Diog. Laert. II. 1,
and others.
t The obliquity of the ecliptic (that is, the distance of the sun's course from the
equator) must have been evident to any one who ohseived it with attention ; but
Anaximander found the means of measuring it, in a certain manner, with the
gnomon.
J Simplicius ad Aristot. Phys. fol. 6.
§ The more precise statements respecting his date are so confused, that it is dif-
ficult to unravel them. See Clinton in the Philological Museum, vol. i. p, 'J!.
r2
244 HISTORY OF Til II
with certain attributes of the divine essence. " As the soul in us (says
Anaximenes in an extant fragment),* which is air, holds us together,
so breath and air surround the whole world."
§ 7. A person of far greater importance in the history of Greek phi-
losophy, and especially of Greek prose, is Heraclitus of Ephesus.
The time when he flourished is ascertained to be about the 69th Olym-
piad, or B.C. 505. He is said to have dedicated his work, which was
entitled " Upon Nature" (though titles of this kind were usually not
added to books till later times), to the native goddess of Ephesus, the
great Artemis -as if such a destination were alone worthy of it, and
he did not consider it worth his while to give it to the public. The
concurrent tradition of antiquity describes Heraclitus as a proud and
reserved man, who disliked all interchange of ideas with others. He
thought that the profound cogitations on the nature of things which
he had made in solitude, were far more valuable than all the informa-
tion which he could gain from others. " Much learning (he said) does
not produce wisdom ; otherwise it would have made Hesiod wise, and
Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecatseus."t He dealt rather
in intimations of important truths than in popular expositions of them,
such as the other Ionians preferred. His language was prose only
inasmuch as it was free from metrical shackles; but its expressions
were bolder and its tone more animated than those of many poems.
The cardinal doctrine of his natural philosophy seems to have been,
that every thing is in perpetual motion, that nothing has any stable or
permanent existence, but that everything is assuming a new form or
perishing. " We step (he says, in his symbolical language) into the
same rivers and we do not step into them" (because in a moment the
water is changed). " We are and are not" (because no point in our
existence remains fixed). X Thus every sensible object appeared to
him, not as something individual, but only as another form of some-
thing else. " Fire (he says) lives the death of the earth ; air lives
the death of fire; water lives the death of air; and the earth that of
water ;"§ by which he meant that individual things were only different
forms of a universal substance, which mutually destroy each other. In
* Stobaeus, Eelog., p. 296.
f In Diog. Laert. x. 1: vroXvpaQln v'oov oh Itbusx'.t (better than Quit)- 'Ho-loiov yu/>
av id/S«5;£ xui YlvtSuyocvv, uiQ'i; n SivoQuvsci rl xui 'Exutuiov. All important passage
on the first appearance of learning among the Greeks.
* WoTu.fji.oi; to~; uvro~$ lf*liecivof/.iv n xui eux lfcliu.ivoju.iV) itjjt.iv ti xui obx ltu.il, Heracht,
Alleg. Horn. c. xxiv. p. 84. The image of a stream, into which a person cannot
step twice, as it is always different, was used by Heraclitus in several parts of his
work, in order to show that all existing things are in a constant state of flux.
§ Z>) wv{> tov yrti (dvurov, xui ario Zfi rov nrvpos Quvwrov, vbag Z,n rov dipt; Puvxrov, ytj
<rov iiluTo;. Maxim. Tyr. Diss. xxv. p. 260. The expression that one thing lives
the death of another is frequent in the {'ragmen's of Heraclitus, and generally be
appears often to use certain fixed phrases.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE, 245
like manner he said of men and gods, " Our life is their death ; their
life is our death ;"* that is, he thought that men were gods who hud
died, and that gods were men raised to life.
Seeking in natural phenomena for the principle of this perpetual
motion, Heraclitus supposed it to be jire, though he probably meant,
not the fire perceptible by the senses, but a higher and more universal
agent. For, as we have already seen, he conceived the sensible fire as
living and dying, like the other elements; but of the igneous principle
of life he speaks thus: " The unchanging order of all things was made
neither by a god nor a man, but it has always been, is, and will be, the
living fire, which is kindled and extinguished in regular succession. "f
Nevertheless, Heraclitus conceived this continual motion not to be the
mere work of chance, but to be directed by some power, which he called
EtuapuivT], or fate, and which guided " the way upwards a«d down-
wards" (his expression for production and destruction). " The sun
(he said) will not overstep its path ; if it did, the Erinnyes, the allies
of justice, would find it out.''t He recognised in motion an eternal
law, which was maintained by the supreme powers of the universe. In
this respect the followers of Heraclitus appear to have departed from
the wise example of their teacher ; for the exaggerated Heracliteans
(whom Plato in joke calls ol ptovrec, " the runners") aimed at proving
a perpetual change and motion in all things.
Heraclitus, like nearly all the other philosophers, despised the popular
religion. Their object was, by arguments derived from their immediate
experience, to emancipate themselves from all traditional opinions, which
included not only superstition and prejudices, but also some of the most
valuable truths. Heraclitus boldly rejected the whole ceremonial of
the Greek religion. " They worship images (he said of his country-
men) : just as if any one were to converse with houses."§ Neverthe-
less, the opinions of Heraclitus on the important question of the rela-
tion between mind and body agreed with the popular religion and with
the prevailing notions of the Greeks. The primitive beings of the
world were, in the popular creed, both spiritual powers and material
substances; and Heraclitus conceived the original matter of the world
to be the source of life. On the other hand, one of the most important
changes in the history of the human mind was produced by Anaxagoras
after the time of Heraclitus, inasmuch as he rejected all the popular
* Zufiiv rov \xiUoii (uvocrov, r'JrixUfiw Ss TOi tmiim /3/sv. Pliilo. Alleg. leg. p. CO.
Ileracl. Alleg. Horn. c. xxiv.
T Koir^tov tov olvtoI utuvtuv ollrl -ti; Qioiv our ctvfywjruv ixor/iiTi)i, aW r,v an xai i<rm
xai i/rrai -run au'Qwov uTrefuvov /tiroa. xai avotrfiivvvftivov (tirgu. Clemens Alex. Strom.
v. p. 590.
J "HXio; ohy^ vmp^r,<rira,i (tirea.- ll li fihi 'E^jWf pi'' &t>ir,; itrizovgoi i^iv^wovctv. Plu-
tarch, De Exil. c. xi. p. 604.
§ Ka! aydXuafft revrioitri tufcitrui, ixotov u <tt$ ooftoi} Xitr^r^ivairo. Clemens Alex,
Cohort, p. 33.
246 HISTORY OF THE
notions on religion and struck into a new path of speculation on sacred
things. Similar opinions had indeed been previously entertained in
the East, and, in particular, the Mosaic conceptions of the Deity and
the world belong to the same class of religious views. But among the
Greeks these views (which the Christian religion has made so familiar
in modern times) were first introduced by Anaxagoras, and were pre-
sented by him in a philosophical form ; and having been, from the
beginning, much more opposed than the doctrines of former philo-
sophers to the popular mythological religion, they tended powerfully,
by their rapid diffusion, to undermine the principles upon which the
entire worship of the ancient gods rested, and therefore prepared the
way for the subsequent triumph of Christianity.
§ 8. Anaxagoras, though he is called a disciple of Anaximenes, fol-
lowed him at some interval of time; he flourished at a period when not
only the opinions of the Ionic physical philosophers, but those of the
Pythagoreans and even of the Eleatics, had been diffused in Greece,
and had produced some influence upon speculation. But since it is
impossible to arrange together the contemporaneous advances of the
different schools or series of philosophers, and since Anaxagoras re-
sembled his Ionic predecessors both in the object of his researches and
his mode of expounding them, we will finish the series of the Ionic
philosophers before we proceed to the Eleatics and Pythagoreans,
The main events of the life of Anaxagoras are known with tolerable
certainty from concurrent chronological accounts. He was born at
ClazomenaB, in Ionia, in Olymp. 70, 1, B.C. 500, and came to Athens
in Olymp. 81, 1, b.c. 456.* There he lived for twenty-five years
(which is also called thirty in round numbers), till about the beginning
of the Pcloponnesian war. At this time there was a faction in the
Athenian state whose object it was to shake the power of the great
statesman Pericles, and to lower his credit with the people ; but before
they ventured to make a direct attack upon him, they began by attacking
his friends and familiars. Among these was Anaxagoras, at that time
far advanced in age ; and the freedom of his inquiries into Nature had
afTorded sufficient ground for accusing him of unbelief in the gods
adored by the people. The discrepancy of the testimony makes it dif-
ficult to ascertain the result of this accusation ; but thus much is cer-
tain, that in consequence of it Anaxagoras left Athens in Olymp. 87, 2,
B.C. 431. He died three years afterwards at Lampsacus, in Olymp.
88, 1, B.C. 428, at the age of seventy-two.
The treatise on Nature by Anaxagoras (which was written late in his
life, and therefore at Athens) f was in the Ionic dialect, and in prose,
* In tho archonship of Callias, who has heen confounded with Callias or Callia-
des, archon in Olymp. 75, I. This time, in the midst of the terrors of the Persian
war, was little favourable to the philosophical studies of Anaxagoras.
t After Empedocles was known as a philosopher, Aristot. Metaph. i. 3, where
'l^ya. expresses the entire philosophical performances.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 247
after the example of Anaximenes. The copious fragments extant*
exhibit short sentences connected by particles (as, and, but, for) with-
out long periods. But though his style was loose, his reasoning was
compact and well arranged. His demonstrations were synthetic, not
analytic; that is to say, he subjoined the proof to the proposiiion to be
proved, instead of arriving at his result by a process of inquiry. t
The philosophy of Anaxagoras began with his doctrine of atoms,
which, contrary to the opinion of all his predecessors, he considered as
limited in number. He was the first to exclude the idea of creation
from his explanation of nature. " The Greeks (he said) were mis-
taken in their doctrine of creation and destruction; for nothing is
either created or destroyed, but it is only produced from existing things
by mixture, or it is dissolved by separation. They should therefore
rather call creation a conjunction, and destruction a dissolution. "J It
is easy to imagine that Anaxagoras, with this opinion, must have arrived
at the doctrine of atoms which were unchangeable and imperishable,
and which were mixed and united in bodies in different ways. But
since, from the want of chemical knowledge, he was unable to deter-
mine the component parts of bodies, he supposed that each separate
body (as bone, flesh, wood, stone) consisted of corresponding particles,
which are the celebrated dfwtouspEtai of Anaxagoras. Nevertheless, to
explain the production of one thing from another he was obliged to
assume that all things contained a portion of all other things, and that
the particular form of each body depended upon the preponderating
ingredient. Now, as Anaxagoras maintained the doctrine that bodies
are mere matter, without any spontaneous power of change, he also
required a principle of life and motion beyond the material world. This
he called spirit (iovq), which, he says, is " the purest and most subtle
of all things, having the most knowledge and the greatest strength. "§
Spirit does not obey the universal law of the ofxoiofxspsiat, viz. that of
mixing with every thing; it exists in animate beings, but not so closely
combined with the material atoms as these are with each other. This
spirit gave to all those material atoms, which in the beginning of the
world lay in disorder, the impulse by which they took the forms of indi-
vidual tilings and beings. Anaxagoras considered this impulse as having
been given by the rove in a circular direction; according to his opinion,
not only the sun, moon, and stars, but even the air and the a?ther, are
* The longest is in Simplicius ad Aristot. Phys. p. 336. Anaxagovrc Fragmenta
Illustrata, ab E. Schaubach, Lipsi»j 1827 ; fragm. 8.
f Ilt'iice, for example, the p.issage concerning production quoted loner down was
not at the beginning, but followed the propositions about i/toioftsguxi, >«D;, and motion.
J Simplicius ad Phys. p. 34(i, fragm. 22, Schaubach. Concerning the position
see Panzerbieter de Fragm. Anaxag. Online, p. 9, 21.
& "EiTT/ yuo XsTroraro'v ts -ratruv %gr.f/.wrvv y.xi xafa^aiTavov, xui ywy.m yi xui rrccv-
rc; trcctrocv "<r%n, xc.) l<r%iu (ityltrrov. Simplicius, ubi sup. Fragm. 8, Schaub.
248 HISTORY OF THE
constantly moving in a circle.* He thought that the power of this
circular motion kept all these heavenly hodies (which he supposed to
he masses of stone) in their courses. No doctrine of Anaxagoras gave
so much offence, or was considered so clear a proof of his atheism, as
his opinion that the sun, the hountiful god Helios, who shines upon
both mortals and immortals, was a mass of red-hot iron.t How startling-
must these opinions have appeared at a time when the people were ac-
customed to consider nature as pervaded by a thousand divine powers !
And yet these new doctrines rapidly gained the ascendancy, in spite of
all the opposition of religion, poetry, and even the laws which were
intended to protect the ancient customs and opinions. A hundred
years later Anaxagoras, with his doctrine of vovq, appeared to Aristotle
a sober inquirer, as compared with the wild speculators who preceded
him ; £ although Aristotle was aware that his applications of his doc-
trines were unsatisfactory and defective. For as Anaxagoras endea-
voured to explain natural phenomena, and in this endeavour he, like
other natural philosophers, extended the influence of natural causes to
its utmost limits, he of course attempted to explain as much as possible
by his doctrine of circular motion, and to have recourse as rarely as
possible to the agency of rove. Indeed, it appears that he only intro-
duced the latter, like a dens ex machina, when all other means of ex-
planation failed.
§ 9. Although Diogenes of Apollonia (in Crete) is not equal in
importance, as a philosopher, to his contemporary Anaxagoras, he is
yet too considerable a writer upon physical subjects to be here passed
over in silence. Without being either the disciple or the teacher, he
was a contemporary, of Anaxagoras ; and in the direction of his studies
he closely followed Anaximenes, expanding the main doctrines of this
philosopher rather than establishing new principles of his own. He
began his treatise (which was written in the Ionic dialect) with the
laudable principle, " It appears to me that every one who begins a dis-
course ought to state the subject with distinctness, and to make the
style simple and dignified. *'§ He then laid down the principle main-
* The mathematical studies of Anaxagoras appear likewise to have referred
chief!}' to the circle. He attempted a solution of the problem of the epiadrature of
the circle, and, according to Vitruvius, he instituted some inquiries concerning the
optical arrangement of the stage and theatre, which also depended on properties of
the circle.
f fivhoc; Itawgo;. This opinion concerning the substance of the heavenly bodies
was in j^reat measure founded upon the great meteoric stone which fell at yEgos
Potami, on the Hellespont, in Olymp. 78, 1 ; Anaxagoras and Diogenes of Apol-
lonia both spoke of this phenomenon. Boeckh Corp. Inscript. Gr. vol. ii. p. 320.
J Aristot. Met. A. iii. p. 984, ed. Berol. : olov vr.Qav e£«v« vrxo i'mn xiyovrx; rohs
§ Aoyou tfUVTOS ao%o{Jibov oixiit //.oi %0iav iivai rhv up%nv dvaf&pijfinrnTov vrxpifcurdu,
tVi 1>\ igftnvtiitiv awXr.v na) eipvni. Diog. Laert. vi. 81, ix. 57. Diogen. Apolloniat.
Fragm., ed. F. Panzerbieter (Lipsisc, 1830), Fragm. i.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 249
taiiied by all the physical philosophers who preceded Anaxagoras, viz.
that all thing's are different forms of the same elementary substance;
which principle he proved by saying that otherwise one thing could
not proceed out of another and be nourished by it. Diogenes, like
Anaximenes, supposed this elementary substance to be air, and, as he
conceived it endowed with animation, he found proofs of his doctrine
not only in natural phenomena, but also in the human soul, which,
according to the popular notions of the ancient Greeks, was breath
(\Lvx7])i and therefore air. In his explanations of natural appearances
Diogenes went into great detail, especially with regard to the structure
of the human body ; and he exhibited not only acquirements which
are very respectable for his time, but also a spirit of inquiry and dis-
cussion, and a habit of analytical investigation, which are not to be
found even in Anaxagoras. The language of Diogenes also shows
an attempt at a closer connexion of ideas by means of periodic sen-
tences, although the difficulty of taking a general philosophical view
is very apparent in his style.*
Diogenes, like Anaxagoras, lived at Athens, and is said to have
been exposed to similar dangers. A third Ionic physical philosopher
of this time, Archelaus of Miletus, who followed the manner of Anaxa-
goras, is chiefly important from having established himself permanently
at Athens. It is evident that these men were not drawn to Athens by
any prospect of benefit to their philosophical pursuits; for the Athe-
nians at this time showed a disinclination to such studies, which they
ridiculed under the name of meteor osophy, and even made the subject
of persecution. It was undoubtedly the power which Athens had ac-
quired as the head of the confederates against Persia, and the oppres-
sion of the states of Asia Minor, which drove these philosophers from
ClazomenGe and Miletus to the independent, wealthy, and flourishing
Athens. And thus these political events contributed to transfer to
Athens the last efforts of Ionic philosophy, which the Athenians at first
rejected as foreign to their modes of thinking, but which they after-
wards understood and appreciated, and used as a foundation for more
extensive and accurate investigations of their own.
§ 10. But before Athens had reached this pre-eminence in philo-
sophy, the spirit of speculation was awakened in other parts of Greece,
and had struck into new paths of inquiry. The Eleatics afford a re-
markable instance of independent philosophical research at this period;
for, although Ionians by descent, they departed very widely from their
countrymen on the coast of Asia Minor. Elea, (alterwards Velia, ac-
cording to the i oman pronunciation,) was a colony founded in Italy
by the Phocseans, when, from a noble love of freedom, they had deli-
* Especially ia the fragment in Simplicius ad Aristot. Pins. p. 32. G ; Fragm. ii.
ed. Panzerbieter.
250 HISTORY OP THE
vered up their country in Asia Minor to the Persians, and had been
forced by the enmity of the Etruscans and Carthaginians to abandon
their first settlement in Corsica ; which happened about the 61st Olym-
piad, b. c. 536. It is probable that Xenophanes, a native of Colophon,
was concerned in the colonizing of Elea ; he wrote an epic poem of two
thousand verses upon this settlement, as he had sung the foundation of
Colophon ; he has been before mentioned as an elegiac poet.* It
appears that poetry was (he main employment of his earlier years, and
that he did not attach himself to philosophy until he had settled at
Elea: for there is no trace of the influence of his Ionic countrymen in
his philosophy ; and again his philosophy was established only in Elea,
and never gained a footing among the Ionians in Asia Minor. All the
chronological statements are consistent with the supposition that he
flourished in Elea as a philosopher between the 65th and 70th Olym-
piads, t But, even as a philosopher, Xenophanes retained the poetic
form of composition ; his work upon nature was written in epic language
and metre, and he himself recited it at public festivals after the manner
of a rhapsodist.J This deviation from the practice of the Ionic phy-
sical philosophers, (of whom, at least, Anaximander and Anaximenes
must have been known to him,) can hardly be explained by the fact that
he had, upon other subjects, accustomed himself to a poetical form.
Some other and weightier cause must have induced him to deliver his
thoughts upon the nature of things in a more dignified and pretending
manner than his predecessors. This cause, doubtless, was the elevation
and enthusiasm of mind, which were connected with the fundamental
principles of the Eleatic philosophy.
Xenophanes, from the first, adopted a different principle from that of
the Ionic physical philosophers ; for he proceeded upon an ideal system,
while their system was exclusively founded upon experience. Xeno-
phanes began with the idea of the godhead, and showed the necessity
of conceiving it as an eternal and unchanging existence. § The lofty
idea of an everlasting and immutable God, who is all spirit and mind,||
was described in his poem as the only true knowledge. " Wherever (he
says) I might direct my thoughts, they always returned to the one and
unchanging being; every thing, however I examined it, resolved itself
* Chap. X; § 16. The verse of Xenophanes, n»x/x«; r,o-P of S M>i$«j afixirn,
Athen. ii. p. 54. E., probably refers to the arrival of the army of Cyrus in Ionia.
•)■ Especially that he mentioned Pythagoras, and that Heraclitus and Epicharmus
mentioned him. Xenophanes lived at Zancle (Diog. Laert. ix. 18) ; evidently not
till after it had become Ionian, that is, after Olymp. 70. 4. b.c. 497. He is also
said to have been alive in the reign of Hiero, Olymp. 75. 3. B. c. 478. (See Clin-
ton F. H. ad a. 477.)
J aliro; ieeecypuin Ta \avrou.
§ See principally the treatise of Aristotle (or Theophrastus) de Xenophane, Ze«
none, et Gorgia.
|| This idea is expressed in the verse : olxo; o^a, 6u>.o; Vt toi7, ouXa Vi r ukovu. See
Xenophanis Colophonii carminum reliquiae, ed. S. Ksrsten. Brux. 1830.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 251
into the self-same nature."* How he reconciled these doctrines with
the evidence of the senses, we are not sufficiently informed ; but he
does not appear to have worked out the pantheistic doctrine of one God
comprehending all things with the logical consistency and definiteness
of ideas which we shall find in his successor. Probably, however, he
considered all experience and tradition as mere opinion and apparent
truth. Xenophanes did not hesitate to represent openly ihe anthropo-
morphic conceptions of the Greeks concerning their gods as mere pre-
judices. " If (said he) oxen and lions had hands wherewith to paint
and execute works as men do, they would paint gods with forms and
bodies like their own; horses like horses, oxen like oxen." t Homel-
and Hesiod, the poets who developed and established these anthropo-
morphic conceptions, were considered by Xer.ophanes as corruptors of
genuine religion. " These poets are not contented with ascribing
human qualities and virtues to the gods, but have attributed to them
everything- which is a shame and reproach among men, as thieving,
adultery, and deceit."! This is the first decided manifestation of that
discord which henceforth reigned between poets and philosophers, and,
as is well known, was still carried on with much vehemence in the time
of Plato.
§ 11. Xenophanes was followed by Parmenides of Elea, who, as we
know from Plato, was born about Olymp. 66. 2, and passed some time
at Athens, when he was about 65 years old.§ It is therefore possible
that in his youth he may have conversed with Xenophanes, although
Aristotle mentions with doubt the tradition that he was the disciple of
the latter philosopher. It is, however, certain that the philosophy of
Parmenides has much of the spirit of that of Xenophanes, and ditfers
from it chiefly in having reached a maturer state. The all-comprehen-
siveness of the Deity, which appeared to Xenophanes a refuge from
the difficulties of metaphysical speculation, was demonstrated by Par-
menides by arguments derived from the idea of existence. This mode
of deductive reasoning from certain simple fundamental principles
(analogous to mathematical reasoning) was first employed to a great
extent by Parmenides. His whole philosophy rests upon the idea of
existence, which, strictly understood, excludes the ideas of creation and
* This is tho meaning of the passage in Sext. Empir. Hypot. i. 224.'
ovrrt yko if&ov 1001 il^wroufii
llf <v ralr'o ri srajv ailXviro, trui 01 hi [ol ?] Bill
•Xavrti atlXKifj.li oi fj-iav us tyvtru ktto.6 0/j.oiu.i.
The first metaphor is taken from a journey, the second from the balance.
f Clem. Alex. Strom, v. p. 601. fragm, G. Karsten.
+ Sext. Empir. ad Mathem. ix. p. 193. fr. 7. Karsten.
§ Parmenides came, at the at;e of Go, with Zeno, who was at the nge of 40, to
great Pan aihenrca. (See Plato Parmen. p. 127.) Socrates (born, in Olymp. 77.
3 or 4; was then o-fifya via;, but jet old enough to take a part in philosophical dis-
cussions, and therefore probably about the age of 20. Accordingly this philoso-
phical meeting (unless it be a pure invention of Plato) cannot be placed before
Olymp. 82. 3 ; from which date the rest follows.
252 HISTORY OF THE
annihilation. For, as he says himself, in some sonorous verses,* " How
could that which exists, first will to exist ? how could it hecome what it
is not ? If it becomes what it is not, it no longer exists ; and the same,
if it begins to exist. Thus all idea of creation is extinguished; and
annihilation is incredible." Although in this and other passages the
expression of such abstract ideas in epic metre and language may excite
surprise, yet there is great harmony between the matter of Parmenides
and the form in which he has clothed it. His pantheistic doctrine of
existence, which he pursued into all its logical consequences, and to
which he sacrificed all the evidence of the senses, appeared to him a
great and holy revelation. His whole poem on nature was composed
in this spirit ; and he expressed (though in figurative language) his
genuine sentiments, when he related that " the coursers which carry
men as far as thought can reach, accompanied by the virgins of the
Sun, brought him to the gates of day and night; that here Justice, who
keeps the key of the gate, took him by the hand, addressed him in a
friendly manner, and announced to hitn that he was destined to know
everything, the fearless spirit of convincing truth, and the opinions of
mortals in which no sure trust is to be placed, &c."t And accordingly
his poem, in pursuance of the subject mentioned in these verses, began
with the doctrine of pure existence, and then proceeded to an explana-
tion of the phenomena of external nature. It was given in the form of
a revelation by the goddess Justice, who was described as passing from
the first to the second branch of the subject in the following manner :
" Here I conclude my sure discourse and thoughts upon truth ; hence-
forward hear human opinions, and listen to the deceitful ornaments of
my speech." Here however Parmenides evidently disparages his own
labours ; for, although in this second part he departed from his funda-
mental principle, still it is clear, from the fragments which exist, that he
never lost sight of his object of bringing the opinions founded on ex-
ternal perceptions, into closer accordance with the knowledge of pure
intellect.
§ 12. As compared with this great luminary of philosophical pan-
theism, his successors (whose youth, at least, falls in the time of which
we are treating) appear as lesser lights. It will be sufficient for our
purpose to explain the philosophical character of Melissus and Zeno.
The first was a native of Samos, and was distinguished as being the
general who resolutely defended his city against the Athenians, in the
war of Olyrnp. 85. 1. B.C. 440, and even defeated the Athenian fleet,
in the absence of Pericles. He followed close upon Parmenides, whose
doctrines he appears to have transferred into Ionic prose ; and thus
gave greater perspicuity and order to the arguments which the former
* Ap. Simplic. ad Aristot. Phys. f. 31. b. v. 80 sqq. in Brandis Commeutationes
Eleaticse.
f Sext. Empir. adv. Mathem. vii. 111. Comm, Eleat. v. 1 sqq.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 253
had veiled in poetic forms.* Tiie other, Zeno of Elea, a friend and
disciple of Parmenides, also developed the doctrines of Parmenides in a
prose work, in which his chief object was to justify the disjunction of
philosophical speculation from the ordinary modes of thought (co£a).
This he did, by showing the absurdities involved in the doctrines o*"
variety, of motion, and of creation, opposed to that of an all-compre-
hending' substance. Yet the sophisms seriously advanced by him show
how easily the mind is caught in its own snares, when it mistakes its
own abstractions for realities ;f and it only depended upon these
Eleatics to argue with the same subtlety against the doctrine of ex-
istence and unity, in order to make it appear equally absurd with those
which they strove to confute.
§13. Before we turn from the Eleatics to those other philosophers of
Italy, to whom the name of Italic has been appropriated, we must
notice a Sicilian, who is so peculiar both in his personal qualities and
his philosophical doctrines, that he cannot be classed with any sect,
although his opinions were influenced by those of the lonians, the
Eleatics, and the Pythagoreans. Empedocles of Agrigentum does
not belong to so early a period as might be inferred from the accounts
of his character and actions, which represent him as akin to Epimenides
or Abaris. It is known that this Empedocles, the son of Meton.J
ilourished about the eighty-fourth Olympiad, b. c. 444, when he was
concerned in the colony of Thurii, which was established by nearly all
the Hellenic races, with unanimous enthusiasm and great hopes of
success, upon the site of the ruined Sybaris. Aristotle considers him
as a contemporary of Anaxagoras, but as having preceded him in the
publication of his writings. Empedocles was held in high honour by
his countrymen of Agrigentum. and also apparently by the other Doric
:,tates of Sicily. He reformed the constitution of his native city, by
abolishing the oligarchical council of the Thousand ; which measure
gave such general satisfaction, that the people are said to have offered
him the regal authority. The fame of Empedocles was, however,
* In order to give an example of his manner, we translate a fragment of
Melissus LnSimplic. ad Phyg. f. 22 b. " If nothing exists, what can be predicated of
it as of something existing? But if something exists, it is either produced or
eternal. If it is produced, it is produced either from something which exists, or
from something which does not exist. But it is impossible that anything should
be produced from that which does not exist ; for, since nothing which exists is pro-
duced from that which does not exist, much less can abstract existence (to acrXas
sov) be so produced. In like manner, that which exists cannot be produced from
that which does not exist; for in that case it would exist without having been pro-
duced. That which exists cannot therefore change. It is, therefore, eternal."'
t Thus Zeno, in order to disprove the existence of space (which he sought lo
diprove. for the purpose of disproving the existence of motion), argui d as follows:
"If space exists, it must be in something ; there must, therefore, be a spare i ou-
tlining space." He did not consider that the idea of space is only conceived, in
order to answer the question, In what? not the question, What?
I There was an earlier Empedocles, the father of Meton, who gained the prize
with the race-horse in Olymp. 71.
254 HISTORY OF THE
principally acquired by improvements which he made in the physical
condition of large tracts of country. He destroyed the pestiferous ex-
halations of the marshes about Selinus, by carrying two small streams
through the swampy grounds, and thus draining off the water. This
act is recorded on some beautiful coins of Selinus, which are still ex-
tant.* In other places he blocked up some narrow valleys with large
constructions, and thus screened a town from the noxious winds which
blew into it ; by which he earned to himself the title of "wind averter"
(KoAvtravejjLug) ,-f It is probable that Empedocles did not conceal his
consciousness of possessing extraordinary intellectual powers, and of
rising above the limited capacities of the mass of mankind ; so that we
need not wonder at his having been considered by his countrymen in
Sicily as a person endowed with supernatural and prophetic gifts.
Among the sharpsighted and sceptical Ionians, who were always seeking
to penetrate into the natural causes of appearances, such an opinion
could scarcely have gained ground at this time. But the Dorians in
Sicily were as yet accustomed to connect all new events with their
ancient belief in the gods, and to conceive them in the spirit of their
religious traditions.
The poem of Empedocles upon nature also bears the mark of enthu-
siasm, both in its epic language and the nature of its contents. At the
beginning of it he said, that fate and the divine will had decreed that,
if one of the gods should be betrayed into defiling his hands with blood,
he should be condemned to wander about for thirty thousand years, far
removed from the immortals. He then described himself to have been
exiled from heaven, for having engaged in deadly conflict, and com-
mitted murder. X As, therefore, since the heroic times of Greece, a
fugitive murderer required an expiation and purification ; so a god
ejected from heaven, and condemned to appear in the likeness of a
man, required some purification that might enable him to resume his
original high estate. This purification was supposed to be in part
accomplished by the lofty contemplations of the poem, which was
hence — either wholly or in part — called a song of expiation (KaOap/ioi).
According to the idea of the transmigration of souls, Empedocles sup-
posed that, since his exile from heaven, he had been a shrub, a fish,
a bird, a boy, and a girl. For the present, " the powers which conduct
souls" had borne him to the dark cavern of the earth ;§ and from
hence the return to divine honours was open to him, as to seers and
* Concerning these coins, see Annali dell' Instituto di corrisp. archeologica, 1835.
p. 265.
-f Empedocles Agrigentinus, de vita et philosophia ejus exposuit, caiminum reli-
quias collegit Sturz. Lipsise. 1805, T. 1. p. 49.
J Fragment ap. Plutarch, de exillo. c. 17. (p- 607.) ap. Sturz. v. 3. sqq.
§ V. 362. and v. 9. in Sturz (from Diog. Laert. viii. 77. and Porphyr. de antro
nymph, c. 8.) ought evidently to be connected in the manner indicated in the
text.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 255
poets, and other benefactors of mankind. The great doctrine, that Love
is the power which formed the world, was probably announced to
him by the Muse whom he invoked, as the secret by the contemplation
of which he was to emancipate himself from all the baneful effects of
discord.*
The physical philosophy of Empedocles has much in common with
that of the Eleatics ; and hence Zeno is said to have commented on his
poem, that is, probably, he reduced it to the strict principles of the
Eleatic school. It has also much in common with the philosophy of
Anaxagoras; which would itself scarcely have arisen, if the Elealic
doctrine of eternal existence had not been already opposed to that of
Ileraclitns concerning' the flux of things. Empedocles also denied the
possibility of creation and destruction, and saw in the processes so
called nothing more than combination and separation of parts; like the
Eleatics, he held the doctrine of an eternal and imperishable existence.
But. he considered this existence as having different natures ; inasmuch
as he supposed that there are four elements of things. To these he
gave mythological names, calling fire the all-penetrating Zeus , air,
the life-giving Here; earth (as being the gloomy abode of exiled
spirits), Aidoneus ; and water, by a name of his own, Nestis. These
four elements he supposed to be governed by two principles, one posi-
tive and one negative, that is to say, connecting, creating love, and
dissolving, destroying discord. By the working of discord the world
was disturbed from its original condition, when all things were at rest
in the form of a globe, " the divine sphserus ;" and a series of changes
began, from which the existing world gradually arose. Empedocles
described and explained, with much ingenuity, the beautiful structure
of the universe, and treated of the nature of the earth's surface and its
productions. In these inquiries he appears to have anticipated some
of the discoveries of modern science. Thus, for example, his doctrine
that mountains and rocks had been raised by a subterranean href is
an anticipation of the theory of elevation established by recent geolo-
gists ; and his descriptions of the rude and grotesque forms of the
earliest animals seem almost to show that he was acquainted with the
fossil remains of extinct races. \
§ 14. We now turn to that class of ancient philosophers which in
* This is proved by the passage in Simplic. ad Phys. f. 34. v. 52. sq. Sturz.."
t>iv au t'o'M oipxiv, {/.rio o/u,ftcnri\i 7,90 TlQnvru;, &C.
In like manner the Muse says to the poet:
ffu ovv itii ut iAiatrtttiS)
Vivflcti' oh rrXuav yi fSgoriiyi (AWlf o^ugtv.
v. 331. from Sext. Empir. adv. math. vii. 122. sq. The invocation of the Muse is
in Sext. Empir. adv. Math. vii. 121. v. 341. sq.
f Plutarch de primo frig. c. 19. (p. 953.)
I 6ee /Elian Hist. An. xvi. 29. ap. Sturz. v 14 sq.
256 HISTORY OF THE
Greece itself was called the Italic ;* the most obscure region of the
Greek philosophy, as we have no accounts of individual writings, and
scarcely even of individual writers, belonging to it. Nevertheless, the
personal history of Pythagoras, the most conspicuous name among the
Italic philosophers, is not so obscure as to compel us to resort to the
hypothesis of an antehistorical Pythagoras, from whom a sort of Pytha-
gorean religion, together with the primitive constitution of the Italian
cities, was derived, and who had been celebrated in very early legends
as the instructor of Numa and the author of an ancient civilization and
philosophy in Italy.f The Greeks who first make mention of Pytha-
goras (viz. Heraclitus and Xenophanes) do not speak of him as a
fabulous person. Heraclitus, in particular, mentions him as a rival
whose method of seeking wisdom differed from his own. There are,
moreover, good grounds for believing the general tradition of antiquity,
that Pythagoras, the son of Mnesarchus, was not a native of the country
in which he acquired such extraordinary honour, but of the Ionic island
of Samos, and that he migrated to Italy when Samos fell under the
tyrannical dominion of Polycrates; which migration is placed, with
much probability, in Olymp. 62. 4. e. c. 529. { Considering the dif-
ferent characters and dispositions of the Hellenic races, it was natural
that philosophy, which seeks to give independence to the mind, and to
free it from prejudices and traditions, should always receive its first im-
pulse from Ionians. The notion of gaining wisdom by one's own
efforts was exclusively Ionic ; the Dorians laid greater stress on the tra-
ditions of their fathers, and their hereditary religion and morality, than
on their own speculations. It is probable that Pythagoras, before he
left the Ionic Samos, and came to Italy, was not very different from such
men as Thales and Anaximander. He had doubtless an inquiring
mind, and habits of careful observation ; and he probably combined
with mathematical studies (which made their first steps among the
Ionians) a knowledge of natural history and of other subjects, which
he increased by travelling^ Thus Heraclitus not only includes him
among persons of much knowledge, |j but says of him as follows : " Py-
thagoras, the son of Mnesarchus, has made more inquiries than any
other man ; he has acquired wisdom, knowledge, and mischievous re-
* This appellative is an instance of the limited sense of the name Italia, accord-
ing to which it only comprehends the later Bruttii and Calabria. Otherwise the
Eleatics could not be distinguished from the Italic school.
| Niebuhr's hypothesis. ' See his Hist, of Rome, vol. i. p. 165. 244. ed. 2. [p. 158.
233. Eng. transl. last ed.]
J That the ancient chronologists in Cicero de Re Publ. II. 15, fixed 01. 62. 4, as
the year of the arrival of Pythagoras in Italy, is proved by the context. 01. 62. 1,
is given as the first year of the reign of Polycrates. Comp. Ch. XIII. § 11.
§ That Pythagoras acquired his wisdom in Egypt cannot be safely inferred from
Isocrat. Busir. § 30 ; the Busiris being a mere rhetorical and sophistical exercise, in
which little regard would be paid to historical truth.
[| See above, § 7.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT OREECE. 257
finement*." But since this Ionic philosopher found himself, on his
arrival at Croton, among a mixed population of Dorians and Achaeans;
and since his adherents in the neighbouring Doric states were con-
stantly increasing' ; it is difficult to say whether the opinions and dispo-
sitions which he had brought with him from Samos, or the opinions
and dispositions of the citizens of Croton and the neighbouring cities,
who received his doctrines, exercised the greater influence upon him.
Thus much, however, is evident, that speculations upon nature, prompted
by the mere love of truth, could not be in question ; so that the prin-
cipal efforts of Pythagoras and his adherents were directed to practical
life, especially to the regulation of political institutions according to ge-
neral views of the order of human society. There is no doubt that
Croton, Caulonia, Metapontum, and other cities in Lower Italy, were
long governed, under the superintendence of Pythagorean societies,
upon aristocratic principles ; and that they enjoyed prosperity at home,
and were formidable, from their strength, to foreign states. And even
when, after the destruction of Sybaris by the Crotoniats (Olymp. 67. 3.
B.C. 510.), dissensions between the nobles and the people concerning
the division of the territory had led to a furious persecution of the Py-
thagoreans ; yet the times returned when Pythagoreans were again at the
head of Italian cities ; for instance, Archytas, the contemporary of Socrates
and Plato, administered the affairs of Tarentum with great renown -J-.
It appears that the individual influence of Pythagoras was exercised
by means of lectures, or of sayings uttered in a compressed and sym-
bolical form, which he communicated only to his friends, or by means
of the establishment and direction of the Pythagorean associations
and their peculiar mode of life. For there is no authentic account
of a single writing of Pythagoras, and no fragment which appears to be
genuine. The works which have been attributed to Pythagoras, such
as " the Sacred Discourse " (ttpoe \oyoc), are chiefly forgeries of those
Orphic theologers who imitated the Pythagorean manner, and whose
relation to the genuine Pythagoreans has been explained in a former
chapter \. The fundamental doctrines of the Pythagorean philosophy ;
viz. that the essence of all things rests upon a numerical relation ; that
the world subsists by the harmony, or conformity, of its different ele-
ments ; that numbers are the principle of all that exists; — all these
* Wviay'op-Ai Mvritra.e%ou larogiri'* j«Wii avfyuwuv jAitXiaru. frcaruv ntomca-To
iavToZ o-oQ mv, ■ffoXvp.afmv, KUKortxrinv. Diog. Laert. VIII. 6. lirro^in, according to the
Ionic meaning of the word, is an inquiry founded upon interrogation.
f It appears that there was a second expulsion of the Pythagoreans from Italy
after the time of Archytas. Lysis, the Pythagorean, seems to have gone, in conse-
quence of it, to Thebes, where he became the teacher of Epamioondas. The jukes
about the Pythagoreans and the Uumyo^i^ovr-s. with their strange and .singular mode
of life, are not earlier than the middle and new comedy, that is, than the lOOlh
Olympiad ; this sort of philosophers did not previously exist in Greece. Meineke
Qiiaest. Seen. I. p. 24. See Theociit. Id. XIV. i.
I Ch. 16. s > :'».
S
258 HISTORY OF THE
must have originated with the master of the school. But the scientific
development of these doctrines, in works composed in the Doric dia-
lect (as we find them in the extant fragments of Philolaus, who lived
ahout the 90th Olympiad, B. c. 420), belongs to a later period. The
doctrines so developed are, that the essence of things consists, not, ac-
cording to the ancient Ionians, in an animate substance, nor, according
to the more recent Ionians, in a union of mind and matter, but in a
form dependent upon fixed proportions ; and that the regularity of these
proportions is itself a principle of production. The doctrines in ques-
tion derived much support from mathematical studies, which were in-
troduced by Pythagoras into Italy, and, as is well known, were much
advanced by him, until they were there first made an important part of
education. The study of music also promoted the Pythagorean opi-
nions, in two ways ; theoretic ally, because the effects of the relations of
numbers were clearly seen in the power of the notes ; and practically,
because singing to the cithara, as used by the Pythagoreans, seemed
best fitted to produce that mental repose and harmony of soul which
the Pythagoreans considered the highest object of education.
CHAPTER XVIII.
§ 1. High antiquity of history in Asia; causes of its comparative lateness among
the Greeks. § 2. Origin of history among the Greeks. The Iouians, particularly
the Milesians, took the lead. § 3. Mythological historians ; Cadmus, Acusilaus.
§ 4. Extensive geographical knowledge of Hecatsus; his freer treatment of native
traditions. § 5. Pherecydes ; his genealogical arrangement of traditions and
history. § 6. Charon; his chronicles of general and special history. § 7. Hel-
lanicus ; a learned inquirer into mythical and true hi-tory. Beginning of chro-
nological researches. § 8. Xanthus, an acute observer. Dionysius of Miletus,
the historian of the Persian wars. § 9. General remarks on the composition and
style of the logographers.
§ 1. Tt is a remarkable fact, that a nation so intellectual and culti-
vated as the Greeks, should have been so long without feeling the want
of a correct record of its transactions in war and peace.
From the earliest times the East had its annals and chronicles.
That Egypt possessed a history ascending to a very remote antiquity,
not formed of mythological materials, but based upon accurate chrono-
logical records, is proved by the extant remains of the work of Mane-
tho*. The sculptures on buildings, with their explanatory inscriptions,
afforded a history of the priests and kings, authenticated by names and
numbers ; and we have still hopes that this will hereafter be completely
deciphered. The kingdom of Babylon also possessed a very ancient
* Manetho, high-priest at Heliopolis in Egypt, wrote under Ptolemy Philadel-
phus (284 b.c.) three books of y^gyptiaca.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 259
history of its princes; which Berosus imparted to the Greeks*, as
Manetho did the Egyptian history. Ahasuerus is described, in the
book of Esther, as causing the benefactors of his throne to be registered
in his chronicle f, which was read to him in nights when he could not
sleep. Similar registers were perhaps kept many centuries earlier
at the courts of Ecbatana and Babylon. The ancient sculptures of
central Asia have likewise the same historical character as those of
Egypt: they record military expeditions, treaties, pacifications of king-
doms, and the tributes of subject provinces. From the discoveries
which have been recently made, it may be expected that many more
sculptures of this description will be found in different parts of the
ancient kingdom of Assyria. The early concentration of vast masses
of men in enormous cities; the despotic form of the government; and
the a-reat influence exercised bv the events of the court upon the weal
and woe of the entire population, directed the attention of millions to
one point, and imparted a deep and extensive interest to the journal of
the monarch's life. Even, however, without these incentives, which
are peculiar to a despotic form of government, the people of Israel,
from the early union of its tribes around one sanctuary, and under one
law, (for the custody of which a numerous priesthood was appointed,)
recorded and preserved very ancient and venerable historical traditions.
The difference between these Oriental nations and the Greeks, with
respect to their care in recording their history, is very great. The
Greeks evinced a careless and almost infantine indifference about the
registering of passing events, almost to the time when they became one
of the great nations of the world, and waged mighty wars with the
ancient kingdoms of the East. The celebration of a by gone age,
which imagination had decked with all its charms, engrossed the atten-
tion of the Greeks, and prevented it from dwelling on more recent
events. The division of the nation into numerous small states, and the
republican form of the governments, prevented a concentration of interest
on particular events and persons ; the attention to domestic affairs was con-
fined within a narrow circle, the objects of which changed with every ge-
neration. No action, no event, before the great conflict between Greece
and Persia, could be compared in interest with those great exploits of
the mythical age, in which heroes from all parts of Greece were sup-
posed to have borne a part; certainly none made so pleasing an im-
pression upon all hearers. The Greeks required that a work read in
public, and designed for general instruction and entertainment, should
impart unmixed pleasure to the mind ; but, owing to the dissensions
between the Greek republics, their historical traditions could not but
offend some, if they flattered others. In short, it was not till a late pe-
* Blmosus of Chaldaea wrote under Antiochus Theos (262 b.c.) a wuik called
Babylonica or Chaldaica.
\ BcariXixai hpfi^r, from which CteBias derived information. Diod. II. 32.
s 2
2C0 HISTORY OF THE
riod that the Greeks outgrew their poetical mythology, and considered
contemporary events as worthy of being thought of and written about.
From this cause, the history of many transactions prior to the Persian
war has perished ; but, without its influence, Greek literature could
never have become what it was. Greek poetry, by its purely fictitious
character, and its freedom from the shackles of particular truth, ac-
quired that general probability, on account of which Aristotle considers
poetry as more philosophical than history*. Greek art, likewise, from
the lateness of the period at which it descended from the ideal repre-
sentation of gods and heroes to the portraits of real men, acquired a
nobleness and beauty of form which it could never have otherwise
attained. And, in fine, the intellectual culture of the Greeks in general
would not have taken its liberal and elevated turn, if it had not rested
on a poetical hasis.
§ 2. Writing was probably known in Greece some centuries before
the time of Cadmus of Miletus +, the earliest Greek historian; but it
had not been employed for the purpose of preserving any detailed his-
torical record. The lists of the Olympic victors, and of the kings of
Sparta and the prytanes of Corinth, which the Alexandrian critics con-
sidered sufficiently authentic to serve as the foundation of the early
Greek chronology ; ancient treaties and other contracts, which it was
important to perpetuate in precise terms; determinations of boundaries,
and other records of a like description, formed the first rudiments of a
documentary history. Yet this was still very remote from a detailed
chronicle of contemporary events. And even when, towards the end of
the age of the Seven Sages, some writers of historical narratives in
prose hegan to appear among the Ionians and the other Greeks, they
did not select domestic and recent events. Instead of this, they began
with accounts of distant times and countries, and gradually narrowed
their view to a history of the Greeks of recent times. So entirely did
the ancient Greeks believe that the daily discussion of common life
and oral tradition were sufficient records of the events of their own
time and country.
The Ionians, who throughout this period were the daring innovators
and indefatigable discoverers in the field of intellect, took the lead in
history. They were also the first, who, satiated with the childish amuse-
ment of mythology, began to turn their keen and restless eyes on all
sides, and to seek new matter for thought and composition. The
Ionians had a peculiar delight in varied and continuous narration.
Nor is it to he overlooked, that the first Ionian who is mentioned as a
historian, was a Milesian. Miletus, the birth-place of the earliest phi-
losophers; flourishing by its industry and commerce ; the centre of the
political movements produced by the spirit of Ionian independence ; and
the spot in which the native dialect was first formed into written Greek
* Aristot. Poet. 9. f See above, ch. 4. § 5.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 261
prose; was evidently fitted to be the cradle of historical composition in
Greece. If the Milesians had not, together with their neighbours of
Asia Minor, led a life of too luxurious enjoyment; if they had known
how to retain the severe manners and manly character of the ancient
Greeks, in the midst of the refinements and excitements of later times;
it is probable that Miletus, and not Athens, would have been the
teacher of the world.
§ 3. Cadmus of Miletus is mentioned as the earliest historian, and,
together with Phcrecydes of Syros, as the earliest writer of prose. His
date cannot be placed much before the 60th Olympiad, b. c. 540*; he
wrote a history of the foundation of Miletus (Kriaig MiXiyrcv), which
embraced the whole of Ionia, The subject of this history lay in the
dim period, from which only a few oral traditions of an historical kind,
but intimately connected with mythical notions, had been preserved.
The genuine work of Cadmus seems to have been early lost; the book
which bore his name in the time of Dionysius (that is, the Augustan
age) was considered a forgery f.
The next historian, in order of time, to Cadmus, was Acusilals
of Argos. Although by descent a Dorian, he wrote his history in
the Ionic dialect, because the Ionians were the founders of the his-
torical style: a practice universally followed in Greek literature. Acu-
silaus confined his attention to the mythical period. His object was
to collect into a short and connected narrative all the events from the
formation of chaos to the end of the Trojan war. It was said of him
that he translated Hesiod into prose J : an expression which serves to
characterise his work. He appears, however, to have related many
legends differently from Hesiod, and in the tone of the Orphic theo-
logers of his own time §. He seems to have written nothing which can
properly be called history.
§ 4. HecatjEus of Miletus, the Ionian, was of a very dilferent
character of mind. With regard to his date, we know that he was a
man of great consideration at the time when the Ionians wished to
attempt a revolt against the Persians under Darius (Olymp. 69. 2. b.c.
503). At that time he came forward in the council of Aristagoras,
and dissuaded the undertaking, enumerating the nations which were
subject to the Fersian king, and all his warlike forces. But if they
determined to revolt, he advised them to endeavour, above all things,
to maintain the sea by a large fleet, and for this purpose to take the
* See Clinton, F. H. Vol. II. p. 368, sqq.
+ Concerning Xantluis and all the following historians, see the paper " On certain
early Greek historians mentioned l>y Dionysius of Halicamassus," in the Museum
Criticum, Vol. I. p. 80. 216; Vol. II. p. 90.
J Clem. Alex. Strum, vi. p. (i'J!) A.
§ Ch. xvi. § -4, note. For the fragments of Acusilaus see Sturz's edition of Pho
recydes
262 HISTORY OF THE
treasures from the temple of Brancbidse*. This advice proves Hecataeus
to have been a prudent and sagacious man, who understood the true
situation of thing's. Hecataeus did not share the prevalent interest about
the primitive history of his nation, and still less had he the infantine
and undoubting faith which was exhibited by the Argive Acusilaus. He
says, in an extant fragment f — "Thus says Hecataeus the Milesian:
these things I write, as they seem to me to be true ; for the stories of
the Greeks are manifold and ludicrous, as it appears to me." He also
shows traces of that perverse system of interpretation which seeks to
transmute the marvels of fable into natural events; as, for example,
he explained Cerberus as a serpent which inhabited the promontory of
Tcenarum. But his attention was peculiarly directed to passing events
and the nature of the countries and kingdoms with which Greece began
to entertain intimate relations. He had travelled much, like Herodotus,
and had in particular collected much information about Egypt. Hero-
dotus often corrects his statements ; but by so doing he recognises
Hecataeus as the most important of his predecessors. Hecataeus per-
petuated the results of his geographical and ethnographical researches
in a work entitled " Travels round the Earth" (Hepioooc yrjo), by which
a description of the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and of southern
Asia as far as India was understood. The author began with Greece,
proceeding in a book, entitled " Europe'' to the west, and in another,
entitled "Asia," to the east J. Hecataeus also improved and com-
pleted the map of the earth sketched by Anaximander § ; it must have
been this map which Aristagoras of Miletus brought to Sparta before
the Ionian revolt, and upon which he showed the king of Sparta the
countries, rivers, and principal cities of the East. Besides this work,
another is ascribed to Hecataeus, which is sometimes called " His-
tories," sometimes "Genealogies;" and of which four books are cited.
Into this work, Hecataeus admitted many of the genealogical legends
of the Greeks ; and, notwithstanding his contempt for old fables, he
laid great stress upon genealogies ascending to the mythological pe-
riod ; thus he made a pedigree for himself, in which his sixteenth an-
cestor was a god ||. Genealogies would afford opportunities for intro-
ducing accounts of different periods; and Hecataeus certainly narrated
* Herod, v. 36, who calls him 'Ex.ara.7os o Xoyovoio;. The times of the birth and
death of Hecataeus are fixed with less certainty at Olymp. 57. and Olymp. 75. 4.
f See Demetr. de Elocut. § 12. Historicorum Grsec. Antiq. Fragmenta, coll. F.
Creuzer, p. 15.
\ Three hundred and thirty-one fragments of this work are collected in Hecataei
Milesii fragmenta ed. R. H. Klausen. Berolini, 1830. It appears in some cases to
have received additions since its first publication, as was commonly the case with
manuals of this kind. Thus Hecataeus Er. 27. mentions Capua, which name, ac-
cording to Livy, was given to Vultuvnum in A.U.C. 315 (b.c. 447).
§ This is certain from Agathemerus I. 1.
|| Herod. II. 143.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 263
many historical events in this work*, although he did not write a con-
nected history of the period comprised in it. Hecatseus wrote in the
pure Ionic dialect ; his style had great simplicity, and was sometimes
animated, from the vividness of his descriptions f.
§ 5. Pherecydes also wrote on genealogies and mythical history,
but did not extend his labours to geography and ethnography. He
was born at Leros, a small island near Miletus, and afterwards went to
Athens; whence he is sometimes called a Lerian, sometimes an Athe-
nian. He flourished about the time of the Persian war. His writings
comprehended a great portion of the mythical traditions ; and, in parti-
cular, he gave a copious account, in a separate work, of the ancient
times of Athens. He was much consulted by the later mythographers,
and his numerous fragments must still serve as the basis of many
mythological inquiries \. By following a genealogical line he was led
from Philseus, the son of Ajax, down to Miltiades, the founder of the
sovereignty in the Chersonesus ; he thus found an opportunity of de-
scribing the campaign of Darius against the Scythians; concerning
which we have a valuable fragment of his history.
§ 6. Charon, a native of Lampsacus, a Milesian colony, also belongs
to this generation §, although he mentioned some events which fell in the
beginning of the reign of Artaxerxes, Olymp. 78. 4. B.C. 465 ||. Cha-
ron continued the researches of Hecatseus into eastern ethnography.
He wrote (as was the custom of these ancient historians) separate
works upon Persia, Libya, Ethiopia, &c. He also subjoined the his-
tory of his own time, and he preceded Herodotus in narrating the
events of the Persian war, although Herodotus nowhere mentions
him. From the fragments of his writings which remain, it is manifest
that his relation to Herodotus was that of a dry chronicler to a histo-
rian, under whose hands everything acquires life and character ^[.
Charon wrote besides a chronicle ** of his own country, as several of the
early historians did, who were thence called horoyraphers. Probably
* As that in Herod. VI. 137.
f As in the fragment from Longinus de Sublim. 27. Creuzer. Hist. Ant. fr.
p. 54.
X Sturz Pherecydis fragments, ed. altera. Lips. 1824. Whether the ten books
cited by the ancients were published by Pherecydes himself in this order, or whether
they were not separate short treatises of Pherecydes which had been collected by
later editors and arranged as parts of one work, seems doubtful and difficult of in-
vestigation.
§ Dionysius Halic. de Thucyd. jud. 5. p. 818. Reiske places Charon with Acu-
silaus, Hecatseus, and others, among the early ; Hellanicus, Xanthus, and others,
among the more recent predecessors of Thueydides.
II Plutarch. The mist. 27.
^1 Charon's fragments are collected in Creuzer, ibid. p. S9, sq.
** r ileei. corresponding to the Latin annates- ought not to be confounded with 'ogoi,
termini, /unites. See Schweighseuser ad Athen. XL p. 475 B. XII. 520 D.
264 HISTORY OF THE
most of the ancient historians, whose names are enumerated by Diony-
sius of Halicarnassus, belonged to this class*.
§ 7. Hellanicus of Mytilene was almost a contemporary of He-
rodotus ; we know that at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war he
was 65 years old f, and still continued to write. The character of
Hellanicus as a mythographer and historian is essentially different
from that of the early chroniclers, such as Acusilaus and Phere-ydes;
he has far more the character of a learned compiler, whose object is,
not merely to note down events, but to arrange his materials and to
correct the errors of others. Besides a number of writings upon parti-
cular legends and local fables, he composed a work entitled " the
Priestesses of Here of Argos;" in which the women who had filled
this priesthood were enumerated up to a very remote period (on no
better authority than of certain obscure traditions), and various striking
events of the heroic time were arranged in chronological order, accord-
ing to this series. Hellanicus could hardly have been the first who
ventured to make a list of this kind, and to dress it up with chrono-
logical dates. Before his time the priests and temple-attendants at
Argos had perhaps employed their idle hours in compiling a series of
the priestesses of Here, and in explaining it by monuments supposed
to be of great antiquity +. The Carneonicce of Hellanicus would be of
more importance for our immediate purpose, as it contained a list of
the victors in the musical and poetical contests of the Carnea at Sparta
(from Olymp. 26. b. c. 676) §, and was therefore one of the first at-
tempts at literary history. The writings of Hellanicus contained a
vast mass of matter ; since, besides the works already mentioned, he
wrote accounts of Phoenicia, Persia, and Egypt, and also a description
of a journey to the renowned oracle of Zeus-Ammon in the desert of
Libya (the »enuineness of which last work was however doubted).
He also descended to the history of his own time, and described some
of the events between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, but briefly,
and without chronological accuracy, according to the reproach of Thu-
cydides.
§ 8. Among the contemporaries of Hellanicus was (according to the
statement of Dionysius) Xanthus, the son of Candaules of Sardis, a
Lydian, but one who had received a Greek education. His work
* Eugeon of Samos (above Ch. XI. § 16), Deiochus of Proconnesus, Eudemusof
Paros, De modes of Phigalia, Amelesagoras of Chalcedon (or Athens).
f The learned Pamphila in Gellius N. A. XV. 23.
\ Instances of similar catalogues of priests (in the concoction of which some
pious fraud must have been employed) are the genealogy of the Buta<ls, which was
painted up in the temple of Athene Polias (Pausan. I. 26. 6. Plutarch X. Orat. 7.),
and which doubtless ascended to the ancient hero Butes; and the line of the priests
of Poseid' n at Halicarnassus, which begins with a son of Poseidon himself, in
Boeckh. Corp. Inscript. Gr. No. 2l't')'r>
§ See Ch XII. § 2.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 265
upon Lydia, written in the Ionic dialect, bears, in the few fragments
which remain, the stamp of high excellence. Some valuable remarks
upon the nature of the earth's surface in Asia Minor, which pointed
partly to volcanic agency, and partly to the extension of the sea ; and
precise accounts of the distinctions between the Lydian races, are cited
from it by Strabo and Dionysius *. The passages quoted by these
writers bear unquestionable marks of genuineness; in later times,
however, some spurious works were attributed to Xanthus. In parti-
cular, a work upon magic, which passed current under his name, and
which treated of the religion and worship of Zoroaster, was indubi-
tably a recent forgery.
A still greater uncertainty prevails with respect to the writings of
Dionysius of Miletus, inasmuch as the ancient writer of this name
was confounded by the Greek critics themselves with a much later
writer on mythology. It is certain that the Dionysius, whom Diodorus
follows in his account of the Greek heroic age, belongs to the times of
learning and historical systems ; he turns the whole heroic mythology
into an historical romance, in which great princes, captains, sages, and
benefactors of mankind take the places of the ancient heroes t. Of the
works which appear to belong to the ancient Dionysius, viz. the Per-
sian histories and the events after Darius (probably a continuation of
the former), nothing precise is known.
§ 9. To the Greek historians before Herodotus modern scholars have
given the common name of logographers, which is applied by Thucydides
to his predecessors. This term, however, had not so limited a meaning
among the ancients ; as logos signified any discourse in prose. Accord-
ingly, the Athenians gave the same name to writers of speeches, i.e. per-
sons who composed speeches for others, to be used in courts of justice.
It is however convenient to comprehend these ancient Greek chro-
niclers under a common name, since they had in many respects a
common character. All were alike animated by a desire of recording,
for the instruction and entertainment of their contemporaries, the ac-
counts which they had heard or collected. But they did this, without
attempting, by ingenuity of arrangement or beauty of style, to produce
such an impression as had been made by works of poetry. The first
Greek to whom it occurred that fiction was not necessary for this pur-
pose, and that a narrative of true facts might be made intensely inte-
resting, was Herodotus, the Homer of history.
* The fragments in Creuzer ubi sup. p. 135, sq.
t Whether this Dionysius is the Dionysius of Samos cited by Athenscus, who
wrote concerning the cyclus, or Dionysius Scytobrachion of Mytilene, has nut been
completely determined.
266 HISTORY OF THE
CHAPTER XIX.
§ 1. Events of the life of Herodotus. § 2. His travels. § 3. Gradual formation of
his work. § 4. Its plan. $ 5. Its leading ideas. § 6. Defects and excellencies
of his historical researches. § 7. Style of his narrative ; character of his lan-
guage.
§ 1. Herodotus, the son of Lyxes, was, according to a statement of
good authority*, born in Olymp. 74. 1. B.C. 484, in the period be-
tween the first and second Persian wars. His family was one of the
most distinguished in the Doric colony of Halicarnassus, and thus be-
came involved in the civil commotions of the city. Halicarnassus was
at that time governed by the family of Artemisia, the princess who
fought so bravely for the Persians in the battle of Salamis, that Xerxes
declared that she was the only man among many women. Lygdamis,
the son of Pisindelis, and grandson of Artemisia, was hostile to the
family of Herodotus. He killed Panyasis, who was probably the ma-
ternal uncle of Herodotus, and who will be mentioned hereafter as one
of the restorers of epic poetry ; and he obliged Herodotus himself to
take refuge abroad. His flight must have taken place about the 82nd
Olympiad, B.C. 452.
Herodotus repaired to Samos, the Ionic island, where probably some
of his kinsmen resided f. Samos must be looked upon as the second
home of Herodotus ; in many passages of his work he shows a minute
acquaintance with this island and its inhabitants, and he seems to take
a pleasure in incidentally mentioning the part played by it in events of
importance. It must have been in Samos that Herodotus imbibed the
Ionic spirit which pervades his history. Herodotus likewise under-
took from Samos the liberation of his native city from the yoke of Lyg-
damis ; and he succeeded in the attempt ; but the contest between the
nobles and the commons having placed obstacles in the way of his
well-intentioned plans, he once more forsook his native city.
Herodotus passed the latter years of his life at Thurii, the great
Grecian settlement in Italy, to which so many distinguished men had
intrusted their fortunes. It does not however follow from this account
that Herodotus was among the first settlers of Thurii ; the numbers of
the original colonists doubtless received subsequent additions. It is
certain that Herodotus did not go to Thurii till after the beginning of
the Peloponnesian war; since at the beginning of it he must have been
at Athens. He describes a sacred offering, which was on the Acropolis
of Athens, by its position with regard to the Propylaea j ; now the Tro-
pylaea were not finished till the year in which the Peloponnesian war
began. Herodotus likewise evidently appears to adopt those views of
* Of Pamphila in Gellius N. A. XV. 23
f Panyasis too is called a Samian. J Herod. V. 77.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 267
the relations between the Greek states, which were diffused in Athens
by the statesmen of the party of Pericles; and he states his opinion
that Athens did not deserve, after her great exploits in the Persian
war, to be so envied and blamed by the rest of the Greeks ; which was
the case just at the beginning - of the Peloponnesian war*.
Herodotus settled quietly in Thurii, and devoted the leisure of his
latter years entirely to his work. Hence he is frequently called by the
ancients a Thurian, in reference to the composition of his history.
§ 2. In this short review of the life of Herodotus we have taken no
notice of his travels, which are intimately connected with his literary
labours. Herodotus did not visit different countries from the accidents
of commercial business or political missions; his travels were under-
taken from the pure spirit of inquiry, and for that age they were
very extensive and important. Herodotus visited Egypt as high up as
Elephantine, Libya, at least as far as the vicinity of Cyrene, Phoeni-
cia, Babylon, and probably also Persia; the Greek slates on the Cim-
merian Bosporus, the contiguous country of the Scythians, as well as
Colchis; besides which, he had resided in several states of Greece and
Lower Italy, and had visited many of the temples, even the remote one
ofDodona. The circumstance of his being, in his capacity of flali-
carnassian, a subject of the king of Persia, must have assisted him
materially in these travels ; an Athenian, or a Greek of any of the
states which were in open revolt against Persia, would have been
treated as an enemy, and sold as a slave. Hence it may be inferred
that the travels of Herodotus, at least those to Egypt and Asia, were
performed from Halicarnassus in his youth.
Herodotus, of course, made these inquiries with the view of impart-
ing their results to his countrymen. Bui it is uncertain whether he
had at that time formed the plan of connecting his information con-
cerning Asia and Greece with the history of the Persian war, and
of uniting the whole into one great work. When we consider that
an intricate and extensive plan of this sort had hitherto been un-
know in the historical writings of the Greeks, it can scarcely be
doubted that the idea occurred to him at an advanced stage of his
inquiries, and that in his earlier years he had not raised his mind
above the conception of such works as those of Heeataeus, Charon, and
others of his predecessors and contemporaries. Even at a later period
of his life, when he was composing his great work, he contemplated
writing a separate book upon Assyria (Aovri/ptoi \oyot) ; and it seems
that this book was in existence at the time of Aristotle*. In fact,
Herodotus might also have made separate books out of the accounts of
* Compare Herod. VII. 139. withThuc. II. 8.
+ Aristotle, Hist. An. VIII. 18. mentions the account of the siege of Nineveh in
Herodotus (for, although the manuscripts generally read Hesiod, Herodotus is evi-
dently the more, suitable name) ; thai is. undoubtedly, the sie<,'e which Herodotus 1
106. promises to describe in his separate work on Assyria (comp. I. 184).
268
HISTORY OF THE
Egypt, Persia, and Scythia given in his history; and he would, no
doubt, have done so, if he had been content to tread in the footsteps of
fhe logographers who preceded him.
§3. It is stated that Herodotus recited his history at different festi-
vals. This statement is, in itself, perfectly credible, as the Greeks of
this time, when they had finished a composition with care, and had
given it an attractive form, reckoned more upon oral delivery than upon
solitary reading. Thucydides, blaming the historians who preceded
him, describes them as courting the transient applause of an audi-
ence*. The ancient chronologists have also preserved the exact date
of a recitation, which took place at the great Panathenaea at Athens,
in Olymp. 83. 3. b. c. 446 (when Herodotus was 38 years old). The
collections of Athenian decrees contained a decree proposed by Anytus
(\pi'l<j>i(Tf.ia 'Avvtov), from which it appeared that Herodotus received a
reward of ten talents from the public treasury j. There is less autho-
rity for the story of a recitation at Olympia ; and least authority of all
for the well-known anecdote, that Thucydides was present at it as a
boy, and that he shed tears, drawn forth by his own intense desire for
knowledge, and his deep interest in the narrative. To say nothing of
the many intrinsic improbabilities of this story, so many anecdotes were
invented by the ancients in order to bring eminent men of the same
pursuits into connexion with each other, that it is impossible to give
any faith to it, without the testimony of more trustworthy witnesses.
The public readings of Herodotus (such as that at the Panathenaic
festival) must have been confined to detached portions of his subject,
which he afterwards introduced into his work ; for example, the history
and description of Egypt, or the accounts concerning Persia. His
great historical work could not have been composed till the time of the
Peloponnesian war. Indeed, hi» history, and particularly the four
last books, are so full of references and allusions to events which oc-
curred in the first period of the war J, that he appears to have been
diligently occupied with the composition or final revision of it at this
time. It is however very questionable whether Herodotus lived into
the second period of the Peloponnesian war§. At all events, he must
have been occupied with his work till his death, for it seems to be in
* Thucyd. I. 21.
f Plutarch de Malign. Herod. 26.
J As the expulsion of the ^Eginetans, the surprise of Platsea, the Archidamian
war, and other events. The passages of Herodotus which could not have been
written before this time are, III. 160. VI. 91. 98. VII. 137. 233. IX. 73.
§ The passage in IX. 73. which states that the Lacedaemonians, in their devas-
tations of Attica, always spared Decelea and kept at a distance from it (Ssxtxi-/n
a.-x'ix 1 "^"-')' cannot be reconciled with the siege of Decelea by A^is in Olymp. 91.3.
b.c. 413. The passages VI 98. and VII. 170. also contain marks of having been
written before this time. On the other hand, the passage I. 130. appears to refer
to the insurrection of the Medes in Olymp. 93. 1. b. c. 408. (Xen. Hell. I. 2. 1.9.) :
on this supposition, howi -ver, it is strange that Herodotus should have called Darius
Nothus by the simple name Darius without any distinctive adjunct.
UTERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 269
an unfinished state. There is no obvious reason why Herodotus should
have carried down the war between the Greeks and Persians to the taking
of Sestos, without mentioning any subsequent event of it*. Besides, in
one place he promises to give the particulars of an occurrence in a
future part of his workf ; a promise which is nowhere fulfilled.
§ 4. The plan of the work of Herodotus is formed upon a notion
which, though it cannot in strictness be called true, was very cur-
rent in his time, and had even been developed, after their fashion, by
the learned of Persia and Phoenicia, who were not unacquainted with
Greek mythology. The notion is that of an ancient enmity between
the Greeks and the nations of Asia. The learned of the East consi-
dered (he rapes of Jo, Medea, and Helen, and the wars which grew
out of those events, as single acts of this great conflict ; and their main
object was to determine which of the two parties had first used violence
against the other. Herodotus, however, soon drops these stories of
old times, and turns to a prince whom he knows to have been the ag-
gressor in his war against the Greeks. This is Croesus, king of Lydia.
He then proceeds to give a detailed account of the enterprises of Croe-
sus and the other events of his life ; into which are interwoven as epi-
sodes, not only the early history of the Lydian kings and of their
conflicts with the Greeks, but also some important passages in the
history of the Greek states, particularly Athens and Sparta. In this
manner Herodotus, in describing the first subjugation of the Greeks
by an Asiatic power, at the same time points out the origin and pro-
gress of those states by which the Greeks were one day to be liberated.
Meanwhile, the attack of Sardis by Cyrus brings the Persian power on
the stage in the place of the Lydian ; and the narrative proceeds to
explain the rise of the Persian from the Median kingdom, and to de-
scribe its increase by the subjugation of the nations of Asia Minor and
the Babylonians. Whenever the Persians come in contact with other
nations, an account, more or less detailed, is given of their history and
peculiar usages. Herodotus evidently, as indeed he himself confesses I,
strives to enlarge his plan by episodes; it is manifestly his object to
combine with the history of the conflict between the East and West a
vivid picture of the contending nations. Thus to the conquest of Egypt
by Cambyses (Book II.) he annexes a description of the country, the
people, and their history ; the copiousness of which was caused by his
fondness for Egypt, on account of its early civilization, and the sta-
* It may, however, be urged against this view, that- the secession of the Spartans
and their allies, the formation of the alliance under ihe supremacy of Athens, and
the change in the character of the war from defensive to offensive, made the taking
of Sestos a distinctly marked epoch. See Thucyd. I. 89.
f Herod. VII. 213.
+ Herod. IV. 30. Thus he speaks of the Libyans in the 4th hook, only because
he thinks that the expedition of the Satrap Aryandes against Barca was in fact di-
rected against all the nations of Libya. See IV. 107.
270 HISTORY OF THE
bility of its peculiar institutions and usages. The history of Cambyses,
of the false Smerdis, and of Darius, is continued in the same detailed
manner (Book III.) ; and an account is given of the power of Samos,
under Polycrates, and of his tragical end ; by which the Persian power
began to extend to the islands between Asia and Europe. The institu-
tions established by Darius at the beginning of his reign afford an op-
portunity of surveying the whole kingdom of Persia, with all its pro-
vinces, and their large revenues. With the expedition of Darius
against the Scythians (which Herodotus evidently considers as a reta-
liation for the former incursions of the Scythians into Asia) the Per-
sian power begins to spread over Europe (Bouk IV.). Herodotus
then gives a full account of the north of Europe, of which his know-
ledge was manifestly much more extensive than that of Hecatams ; and
he next relates the great expedition of the Persian army, which,
although it did not endanger the freedom of the Scythians, first opened
a passage into Europe to the Persians. The kingdom of Persia now
stretches on one side to Scythia, on the other over Egypt to Cyrenaica.
A Persian army is called in by Queen Pheretime against the Bar-
caeans ; which gives Herodotus an opportunity of relating the history
of Cyreue, and describing the Libyan nations, as an interesting compa-
nion to his description of the nations of northern Europe. While
(Book V.) a part of the Persian army, which had remained behind
after the Scythian expedition, reduces a portion of the Thracians and
the little kingdom of Macedonia under the power of the great king,
the great Ionian revolt arises from causes connected with the Scythian
expedition, which brings still closer the decisive struggle between
Greece and Persia. Aiistagoras, the tyrant of Miletus, seeks aid in
Sparta and Athens for the Ionians; whereupon the historian takes oc-
casion to continue the history of these and other Greek states, from the
point where he had left it (Book I.) ; and in particular to describe the
rapid rise of the Athenians, after they had thrown off the yoke of the
Pisistratids. The enterprising spirit of the young republic of Athens
is also shown in the interest taken by it in the Ionian revolt, which was
begun in a rash and inconsiderate manner, and, having been carried on
without sufficient vigour, terminated in a complete defeat (Book VI.).
Herodotus next pursues the constantly increasing causes of enmity
between Greece and Persia; among which is the flight of the Spartan
king Demaratus to Darius. To this event he annexes a detailed ex-
planation of the relations and enmities of the Greek states, in the period
just preceding the first Persian war. The expedition against Eretria
and Athens was the first blow struck by Persia at the mother country
of Greece, and the battle of Marathon was the first glorious signal that
this Asiatic power, hitherto unchecked in its encroachments, was there
at length to find a limit. From this point the narrative runs in a re-
gular channel, and pursues to the end the natural course of events ; the
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 271
preparations for war, the movements of the army, and the campaign
against Greece itself (Book VII.). Even here, however, the narrative
moves at a slow pace ; and thus keeps the expectation upon the stretch.
The march and mustering of the Persian army give full time and
opportunity for forming a distinct and complete notion of its enormous
force; and the negotiations of the Greek states afford an equally clear
conception of their jealousies and dissensions; facts which make the
ultimate issue of the contest appear the more astonishing. After the
preliminary and undecisive battles of Thermopylae and Artemisium
(Book VIII.), comes the decisive battle of Salamis, which is described
with the greatest vividness and animation. This is followed (in Book
IX.) by the battle of Platsea, drawn with the same distinctness, parti-
cularly as regards all its antecedents and circumstances; together with
the contemporaneous battle of Mycale and the other measures of the
Greeks for turning their victory to account. Although the work seems
unfinished, it concludes with a sentiment which cannot have been
placed casually at the end; viz. that (as the great Cyrus was supposed
to have said) " It is not always the richest and most fertile country
which produces the most valiant men."
§ 5. In this manner Herodotus gives a certain unity to his history;
and, notwithstanding the extent of his subject, which comprehends
nearly all the nations of the world at that time known, the narrative is
constantly advancing. The history of Herodotus has an epic character,
not only from the equable and uninterrupted flow of the narrative, but
also from certain pervading ideas, which give an uniform tone to the
whole. The principal of these is the idea of a fixed destiny, of a wise
arrangement of the world, which has prescribed to every being his
path ; and which allots ruin and destruction, not only to crime and vio-
lence, but to excessive power and riches, and the overweening pride
which is their companion. In this consists the envy of the gods ((j>6uvoq
tCov 0£wi')» ro °f ten mentioned by Herodotus ; by the other Greeks
usually called the divine Nemesis. He constantly adverts, in his nar-
rative, to the influence of this divine power, the Da>monion, as he also
calls it. Thus he shows how the deity visits the sins of the ancestors
upon their descendants ; how the human mind is blinded by arrogance
and recklessness ; how man rushes, as it were, wilfully upon his own
destruction ; and how oracles, which ought to be warning voices against
violence and insolence, mislead from their ambiguity, when interpreted
by blind passion. Besides the historical narrative itself, the scattered
speeches serve rather to enforce certain general ideas, particularly con-
cerning the envy of the gods and the danger of pride, than to charac-
terise the dispositions, views, and modes of thought of the persons re-
presented as speaking. In fact, these speeches are rather the lyric
than the dramatic part of the history of Herodotus ; and if we compare
it with the different parts of a Greek tragedy, they correspond, not to the
272 history of the
dialogue, but to the choral songs. Herodotus lastly shows his awe of
the divine Nemesis by his moderation and the firmness with which he
keeps down the ebullitions of national pride. For, if the eastern
princes by their own rashness bring destruction upon themselves, and
the Greeks remain the victors, yet he describes the East, with its early
civilization, as highly worthy of respect and admiration ; he even points
out traits of greatness of character in the hostile kings of Persia ;
shows his countrymen how they often owed their successes to divine
providence and external advantages, rather than to their own valour
and ability ; and, on the whole, is anything but a panegyrist of the
exploits of the Greeks. So little indeed has he this character, that
when the rhetorical historians of later times had introduced a more pre-
tending account of these events, the simple, faithful, and impartial
Herodotus was reproached with being actuated by a spirit of calumny,
and with seeking to detract from the heroic acts of his countrymen*.
§ 6. Since Herodotus saw the working of a divine agency in all hu-
man events, and considered the exhibition of it as the main object of
his history, his aim is entirely different from that of a historian who
regards the events of life merely with reference to man. Herodotus
is, in truth, a theologian and a poet as weli as an historian. The in-
dividual parts of his work are treated entirely in this spirit. His aim
is not merely to give the results of common experience in human life.
His mind is turned to the extraordinary and the marvellous. In this
respect his work bears an uniform colour. The great events which he
relates — the gigantic enterprises of princes, the unexpected turns of
fortune, and other marvellous occurrences — harmonise with the accounts
of the astonishing buildings and other works of the East, of the multi-
farious and often singular manners of the different nations, the sur-
prising phenomena of nature, and the rare productions and animals of
the remote regions of the world. Herodotus presented a picture of
strange and astonishing things to his mobile and curious countrymen.
It were vain to deny that Herodotus, when he does not describe things
which he had himself observed, was often deceived by the misrepresent-
ations of priests, interpreters, and guides; and, above all, by that
propensity to boasting and that love of the marvellous which are so
common in the East -f. Yet, without his singlehearted simplicity, his
disposition to listen to every remarkable account, and his admiration
(undisturbed by the national prejudices of a Greek) for the wonders of
the Eastern world, Herodotus would never have imparted to us many
valuable accounts, in which recent inquirers have discovered substantial
truth, though mixed with fable. How often have modern travellers,
* Plutarch's Treatise m%) rm 'H^oVomu xxxotihlas, concerning the malignity of
Herodotus.
f Aristotle, in his Treatise on the Generation of Animals, III. 5, calls him
HgoWoj o /u,v$t>\dyos, " Herodotus the story-teller."
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GRETCE. 273
naturalists, and geographers, had occasion to admire the truth and cor-
rectness of the observations and information which are contained in
the seemingly marvellous narratives of Herodotus ! It is fortunate
that he was guided by the maxim which he mentions in his account of
the circumnavigation of Africa in the reign of Necho. Having ex-
pressed his disbelief of the statement that the sailors had the sun on
their right hand, he adds : " I must say what has been told to me ; but
I need not therefore believe all, and this remark applies to my whole
work."
Herodotus must have completely familiarised himself with the man-
ners and modes of thought of the Oriental nations. The character of
his mind and his style of composition also resemble the Oriental type
more than those of any other Greek; and accordingly his thoughts and
expressions ofien remind us of the writings of the Old Testament. It
cannot indeed be denied that he has sometimes attributed to the eastern
princes ideas which were essentially Greek ; as, for example, when
he makes the seven grandees of the Persians deliberate upon the re-
spective advantages of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy*. But,
on the whole, Herodotus seizes the character of an Oriental monarch,
like Xerxes, with striking truth ; and transports us into the very midst
of the satellites of a Persian despot. It would be more just to reproach
Herodotus with a want of that political discernment, in judging the
affairs of the Greek states, which had already been awakened among
the Athenian statesmen of his time. Moreover, in the events arising
from the situation and interests of states, he lays too much stress on
the feelings and passions of particular individuals; and ascribes to
Greek statesmen (as, for instance, the two Cleisthenes ot Sicyon and
Athens, hi reference to their measures for the division of the people
into new tribes) motives entirely different from those by which they
appear, on a consideration of the case, to have been really actuated.
He likewise relates mere anecdotes and tales, by which the vulgar ex-
plained (and still continue to explain) political affairs ; where politi-
cians, such as Thucydides and Aristotle, exhibit the true character of
the transaction.
§ 7. But no dissertation upon the historical researches or the style
of Herodotus can convey an idea of the impression made by reading
his work. To those who have read it, all description is superfluous.
It is like hearing a person speak who has seen and lived through an
.nlinite variety of the most remarkable things; and whose greatest de-
light consists in recalling the images of the past, and perpetuating the
remembrance of them. He had eager and unwearied listeners, who
* Herod. III. 80. He afterwards (VI. 43) defends himself against the charge of
having represented a Persian as praising democracy, of which the Persians knew
nothing. This passage proves that a part at least of Book III. had I een published
before the entire work was completed.
274 HISTORY OF THE
were not impatient to arrive at the end ; and he could therefore com-
plete every separate portion of the history, as if it were an inde-
pendent narrative. He knew that he had in store other more attractive
and striking events; yet he did not hurry his course, as he dwelt with
equal pleasure on everything that he had seen or heard. In this man-
ner, the stream of his Ionic language flows on with a charming facility.
The character of his style (as is natural in mere narration) is to con-
nect the different sentences loosely together, with many phrases for the
purpose of introducing, recapitulating, or repeating a subject. These
phrases are characteiistic of oral discourse, which requires such contriv-
ances, in order to prevent the speaker, or the hearer, from losing the
thread of the story. In this, as in other respects, the language of
Herodotus closely approximates to oral narration ; of all varieties of
prose, it is the furthest removed from a written style. Long sentences,
formed of several clauses, are for the most part confined to speeches,
where reasons and objections are compared, conditions are stated, and
their consequences developed. But it must be confessed that where
the logical connexion of different propositions is to be expressed, Hero-
dotus mostly shows a want of skill, and produces no distinct conception
of the mutual relations of the several members of the argument. But,
with all these defects, his style mu^t be considered as the perfection of
the vnperiodic style (the Ae£ic etpofiii'rf), the only style employed by
his predecessors, the logographers*. To these is to be added the tone
of the Ionic dialect, — which Herodotus, although by birth a Dorian,
adopted from the historians who preceded himf, — with its uncontracted
terminations, its accumulated vowels, and its soft forms. These various
elements conspire to render the work of Herodotus a production as
harmonious and as perfect in its kind as any human work can be.
* Demetrius de Elucutione, § 12.
t Nevertheless, according to Herrnogenes. {>• 513, the Ionic dialect of Hecatapus
is alone quite pure; and the dialect oi Herodotus is mixed with other expressions.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 275
SECOND PERIOD OF GREEK LITERATURE.
CHAPTER XX.
§ 1. Early formation of a national literature in Greece, § 2. Athens subsequently
takes the lead in literature and art. Her fitness for this purpose. § 3. Concur-
rence of the political circumstances of Athens to the same end. Solon. Tlie
Pisistratids. § 4. Great increase in the power of Athens after the Persian war.
§5. Administration and policy of Pericles, particularly with respect to art and
literature. § G. Seids of degeneracy in the Athenian Commonwealth at its most
flourishing period. § 7. Causes and modes of the degeneracy. § 8. Literature
and art were not affected by the causes of moral degeneracy.
§ 1. Greek literature, so far as we have hitherto followed its pro-
gress, was a common property of the different races of the nation ; each
race cultivating that species of composition which was hest suited to its
dispositions and capacities, and impressing on it a corresponding- cha-
racter. In this manner the town of Miletus in Ionia, the iEolians in
the island of Lesbos, the colonies in Magna Graecia and Sicily, as well
as the Greeks of the mother country, created new forms of poetry and
eloquence. The various sorts of excellence thus produced, did not,
after the age of the Homeric poetry, remain the exclusive property of
the race among which they originated; as popular poems composed in
a peculiar dialect are known only to the tribe by whom the dialect is
spoken. Among the Greeks a national literature was early formed ;
every literary work in the Greek language, in whatever dialect it might
be composed, was enjoyed by the whole Greek nation. The songs of
the Lesbian Sappho aroused the feelings of Solon in his old age, not-
withstanding their foreign /Eolian dialect*; and the researches of the
philosophers of Elea in 03notria influenced the thoughts of Anaxagoras
when living at Miletus and Athensf : whence it may be inferred, that
the fame of remarkable writers soon spread through Greece at that
time. Even in an earlier age, the poets and sages used to visit certain
cities, which were considered almost as theatres, where they could bring
their powers and acquirements into public notice. Among these,
Sparta stood the highest, down to the time of the Persian war; for the
Lacedaemonians, though they produced little themselves, were con-
sidered as sagacious and sound judges of art and philosophy]:. Accord-
ingly, the principal poets, musicians, and philosophers of those times
are related to have passed a part of their lives at Sparta §.
§ 2. But the literature of Greece necessarily assumed a different
* Ch. 13. §10. f Ch. 17. § 8.
[ Aristot. Polit. VIII. !>. o'i Auxavi; . . . r,u ftavSavoMTt; opa; ^uvavrui ..
'ooQa>;, a; Qcttri, rrd %g>&ra, kua t« f/.n ■^^■wra. rati piXuv.
§ For example. Archilochus, Terpander, Thaletas, Theognis, Pherecydes, Anaxi-
m under.
T 3
276 HISTORY OF THE
form, when Athens, raised as well by her political power and other
external circumstances as by the mental qualities of her citizens,
acquired the rank of a capital of Greece, with respect to literature and
art. Not only was her copious native literature received with admi-
ration by all the Greeks, but her judgment and taste were predominant
in all things relating to language and the arts, and decided what
should be generally recognised as the classical literature of Greece, long
before the Alexandrine critics had prepared their canons. There is no
more important epoch in the history of the Greek intellect than the
time when Athens obtained this pre-eminence over her sister states.
The character of the Athenians peculiarly fitted them to take this
lead. The Athenians were Ionians ; and, when their brethren sepa-
rated from them in order to found the twelve cities on the coast of
Asia Minor, the foundations of the peculiar character of Ionic civiliza-
tion had already been laid. The dialect of the Ionians was distin-
guished from that of the Dorians and iEolians by clear and broad
marks: the worship of the gods, which had a peculiarly joyful and
serene cast among- the Ionians, had been moulded into fixed national
festivals* : and some steps towards the development of republican feel-
ing had already been taken, before this separation occurred. The
boundless resources and mobility of the Ionian spirit are shown by
the astonishing productions of the Ionians in Asia and the islands in
the two centuries previous to the Peisiau war; viz., the iambic and
elegiac poetry, and the germs of philosophic inquiry and historical
composition ; not to mention the epic poetry, which belongs to an
earlier and diffeieht period. The literary works produced during that
time by the Ionians who remained behind in Attica, seem poor and
meagre, as compared with the luxuriant outburst of literature hi
Asia Minor: nor did it appear, till a later period, that the progress of
the Athenian intellect was the more sound and lasting. The advance
of the literature of the Ionians in Asia Minor (which reminds us of
the premature growth of a plant taken from a cold climate and
barren soil, and carried to a warmer and more fertile region), as com-
pared with that of the Athenians, corresponds with the natural circum-
stances of the two countries. Ionia had, according to Herodotus, the
softest and mildest climate in Greece ; and, although he does
not assign it the first rank in fertility, yet the valleys of this region
(especially that of the Mseander) were of remarkable productiveness.
Attica, on the other hand, was rocky, and its soil was shallowf- ;
though not barren, it required more skill and care in cultivation than
most other parts of Greece : hence, according to the sagacious remark
* Hence the Thargelia and Pyanepsia of Apollo, the Anthesteria and Lenaea of
Dionysus, the Apatuiia and Eleusinia, and many other festhals and religious rites,
were common to the Ionians and Athenians.
j ro 'ki'XToyt.ajv*
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 277
of Thucydides, the warlike races turned by preference to the fertile
plains of Argos, Thebes, and Thessaly, and afforded an opportunity
for a more secure and peaceable development of social life and industry
in Attica. Yet Attica was not deficient in natural beauties. It had
(as Sophocles says in the splendid chorus in the (Edipus at Colonus)
" green valleys, in which the clear-voiced nightingale poured forth her
sweet laments, under the shade of the dark ivy, and the sacred foliage
of Bacchus, covering abundant fruit, impenetrable to the sun, and un-
shaken by the blasts of all storms*." Above all, the clear air, refreshed
and purified by constant breezes, is celebrated as one of the chief advan-
tages of the climate of Attica, and is described by Euripides as lendiun-
a charm to the productions of the Athenian intellect. '* Descendants
of Erechtheus (the poet says to the Athenians)f, happy from ancient
times, favourite children of the blessed gods, you pluck from your sacred
unconquered country renowned wisdom, as a fruit of the soil, and con-
stantly walk, with graceful step, through the glittering air of your
heaven, where the nine sacred Muses of Pieria are said to have once
brought up the fair-haired Harmony as their common child. It is also
said that the goddess Cypris draws water from the beautifully flowing
Cephisus, and breathes over the land mild and refreshing airs ; and
that, twining her hair with fragrant roses, she sends the gods of love
as companions of wisdom, and supporters of virtue."
§ 3. The political circumstances of Attica contributed, in a remark-
able manner, to produce the same effects as its physical condition.
When the Ionians settled on the coast of Asia Minor, they soon dis-
covered their superiority in energy and military skill to the native
Lydian, Carian, and other tribes. Having obtained possession of the
entire coast, they entered into a friendly relation with these tribes,
which, owing to the early connexion of Lydia with Babylonia and
Nineveh, brought them many luxuries and pleasures from the interior
of Asia. The result was, that when the Lydian monarchy was strength-
ened under the Mermnadae, and -began to aim at foreign conquest, the
Ionians were so enfeebled and corrupted, and were so deficient in po-
litical unity, that they fell an easy prey to the neighbouring kingdom ;
and passed, together with the other subjects of Crotsus, under the
power of the Persians. The Ionic inhabitants of Attica, on the other
hand, encompassed, and often pressed by the manly tribes of Greece,
the iEolians, Boeotians, and Dorians, were forced to keep the sword
constantly in their hands, and were placed in circumstances which re-
quired much courage and energy, in addition to the openness and
excitability of the Ionic character. Athens, indeed, did not immedi-
ately attain to the proud security which the Spartans derived from
their possession of half Peloponnesus, and their undisputed mastery
* Soph. (Ed. Col. v. 070. f Eurip. Med. \. 14
278 HISTORY OF THE
of the practice of war. Hence the Athenians were forced to be
constantly on the look-out, and to seek for opportunities of extending
their empire. At the same time, while the Athenians sought to im-
prove their political constitution, they strove to increase the liberty of
the people; and a man like Solon could not have arisen in an Ionian
state of Asia Minor, to become the peaceful regulator of the state with
the approbation of the community. Solon was able to reconcile the
hereditary rights of the aristocracy with the claims of the commonalty
grown up to manhood ; and to combine moral strictness and order
with freedom of action. Few statesmen shine in so bright a liaht as
Solon ; his humanity and warm sympathies with all classes of his
countrymen appear from the fragments of his elegies and iambics
which have been already cited*.
After Solon comes the dominion of the Pisistratids, which lasted,
with some interruptions, for fifty years (from 560 to 510 b.c). This
government was administered with ability and public spirit, so far as
was consistent with the interests of the ruling house. Pisistratus was
a politic and circumspect prince : he extended his possessions beyond
Attica, and established his power in the district of the gold mines on
the Strymoivj', to which the Athenians subsequently attached so much
importance. In the interior of the country, he did much to promote
agriculture and industry, and he is said to have particularly encouraged
the planting of olives, which suited the soil and climate in so remark-
able a manner. The Pisistratids also, like other tyrants, showed a
fondness for vast works of art; the temple of the Olympian Zeus,
built by them, always remained, though only half finished, the largest
building in Athens. In like manner, tyrants were fond of surrounding
themselves with all the splendour which poetry and other musical arts
could give to their house : and the Pisistratids certainly had the merit
of diffusing the taste for poetry among the Athenians, and of natu-
ralising among them the best literary productions which Greece then
possessed. The Pisistratids were unquestionably the first to introduce
the recital of the entire Iliad and Odyssey at the Pan athenaea J; and
the gentle and refined Hipparchus, the son of Pisistratus, was the
means of bringing to Athens the most distinguished lyric poets of the
time, as Anacreon§, Simonides||, and Lasus^f. Some of the collectors
and authors of the mystical poetry also found a welcome reception at the
court of the Pisistratids, as Onomacritus; whom they took with them,
at their expulsion from Athens, to the court of the King of Persia**.
But, notwithstanding their patronage of literature and art, Herodotus
is undoubtedly right in stating that it was not till after the fall of their
dynasty, that Athens shot up with the vigour which can only be de-
* Ch. 10. § 11. 12. ch. 11. o 12. f Herod. I. 04. J Ch. 5. § 14.
§ Ch 13. §11. |] Ch. 14. § 10. % Ch. 14. § 14.
*" Ch. V> ^ -,.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 279
rived from the consciousness of every citizen that he has a share in the
common weal*. This statement of Herodotus refers, indeed, princi-
pally to the warlike enterprises of Athens, but it is equally true of her
intellectual productions. It is, indeed, a remarkable fact that Athens
produced her most excellent works in literature and art in the midst of
the greatest political convulsions, and of her utmost efForts for self-
preservation or conquest. The long- dominion of the Pisistratids, not-
withstanding the concourse of foreign poets, produced nothing more
important than the first rudiments of the tragic drama ; fur the origin
of comedy at the country festivals of Bacchus falls in the time before
Pisistratus. On the other hand, the thirty years between the expul-
sion of Ilippias ami the battle of Salamis (b. c. 510 to 4S0) was a
period marked by great events both in politics and literature. During
this period, Athens contended with energy and success against her
neighbours in Beeotia and Eubeea, and soon dared to interfere in the
affairs of the Ionians in Asia, and to support them in their revolt against
Persia; after which, she received and warded off the first powerful
attack of the Persians upon Greece. During the same period at
Athens, the pathetic tragedies of Phrynichus, and the lofty tragedies of
yEschylus, appeared on the stage ; political eloquence was awakened
in Themistocles; historical researches were commenced by Pherecydes ;
and everything seemed to give a promise of the greatness to which
Athens afterwards attained. Even sculpture at Athens did not flourish
under the encouragement which it doubtless received from the enter-
prising spirit of the Pisistratids, but first arose under the influence of
political freedom. While, from b.c. 540, considerable masters and
whole families and schools of brass-founders, workers in gold and ivory,
&c, existed in Argos, Laceckemon, Sicyon, and elsewhere, the Athens
of the Pisistratids could not boast of a single sculptor ; nor is it till the
time of the battle of Marathon, that Antenor, Critias, and Hegias are
mentioned as eminent masters in brass-founding. But the work for
which both Antenor and Hegias were chiefly celebrated was the brazen
statues of Harmcdius and Aristogiton, the tyrannicides and liberators
of Athens from the yoke of the Pisistratids, according to the tradition
of the Athenian peoplet.
§ 4. The great peril of the Persian war thus came upon a race of
high spirited and enterprising men, and exercised upon it the hardening
and elevating influence, by which great dangers, successfully overcome,
become the highest benefit to a state. Such a period withdraws the
mind from petty, selfish cares, and fixes it on great and public objects.
At the moment when half Greece had quailed before the Persian army,
the Athenians, with a fearless spirit of independence, abandon their
* Herod. V. 78. t Ch. 13. § 17.
280 HISTORY OF THE
country to the ravages of the enemy : embarking in their ships, they
decide the sea-fights in favour of the Greeks, and again they are in the
land-war the steadiest supporters of the Spartans. The wise modera-
tion with which, for the sake of the general good, they submitted to the
supreme command of Sparta, combined with a bold and enterprising-
spirit, which Sparta did not possess, is soon rewarded to an extent
which must have exceeded the most sanguine hopes of the Athenian
statesmen. The attachment of the Ionians to their metropolis, Athens,
which had been awakened before the battle of Marathon, soon
led to a closer connexion between nearly all the Greeks of the Asiatic
coast and this state. Shortly afterwards, Sparta withdrew, with the
other Greeks of the mother country, from any further concern in the
contest ; and an Athenian alliance was formed for the termination of
the national war, which was changed, by gradual yet rapid transitions,
into a dominion of Athens over her allies ; so that she became the
sovereign of a large and flourishing empire, comprehending the
islands and coasts of the yEgean, and a part of the Euxine seas. In
this manner, Athens gained a wide basis for the lofty edifice of political
glory which was raised by her statesmen.
§ 5. The completion of this splendid structure was due to Pericles,
during his administration, which lasted from about b.c. 464, to his
death (b.c. 429). Pericles changed the allies of Athens into her
subjects, by declaring the common treasure to be the treasure of the
Athenian state ; and he resolutely maintained the supremacy of Athens,
by punishing with severity every attempt at defection. Through his
influence, Athens became a dominant community, whose chief business
it was to administer the affairs of an extensive empire, flourishino- in.
agriculture, mechanical industry, and commerce. Pericles, however,
did not make the acquisition of this power the highest object of his
exertions, nor did he wish the Athenians to consider it as their greatest
good. His aim was to realise in Athens the idea which he had con-
ceived of human greatness. He wished that great and noble thoughts
should pervade the whole mass of the ruling people; and this was in
fact the case, so long as his influence lasted, to a greater degree than
has occurred in any other period of history. Pericles stood among the
citizens of Athens, without any public office which gave him extensive
legal power*; and yet he exercised an influence over the multitude
which has been rarely possessed by an hereditary ruler. The
* Pericles was indeed treasurer of the administration ( h Ur) rn; %icix.wicai) at the
breaking out of the Peloponnesian war ; but, although this office required an ac-
curate knowledge of the finances of Athens, it did not confer any hgal power. It
is assumed that the times are excepted, in which Pericles was strategus, particnlaily
at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, when the strati gus had a very extensive
executive power, because Athens, being in a state of siege, was treated" like a for
tined camp.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GRFECE. 281
Athenians saw in him, when he spoke to the people from the bema, an
Olympian Zens, who had the thunder and lightning in his power.
It was not the volubility of his eloquence, but the irresistible force of
his arguments, and the majesty of his whole appearance, which gained
him this appellation: hence a comic poet said of him, that he
was the only one of the orators who left his sting in the minds of his
hearers*.
The objects to which Pericles directed the people, and for which he
accumulated so much power and wealth at Athens, may be best seen in
the still extant works of architecture and sculpture which originated
under his administration. The defence of the state being already pro-
vided for, through the instrumentality of Themistocles, Cimon, and
Pericles himself, by the fortifications of the city and harbour and the
long walls, Pericles induced the Athenian people to expend upon the
decoration of Athens, by works of architecture and sculpture, a larger
part of its ample revenues than was ever applied to this purpose in any
other state, either republican or monarchicalf. This outlay of public
money, which at any other period would have been excessive, was then
well-timed ; since the art of sculpture had just reached a pitch of high
excellence, after long and toilsome efforts, and persons endowed with
its magical powers, such as Phidias, were in close intimacy with
Pericles. Of the surpassing skill with which Pericles collected into one
focus the rays of aitistieal genius at Athens, no stronger proof can be
afforded, than the fact that no subsequent period, through the patronage
either of Macedonian or Roman princes, produced works of equal excel-
lence. Indeed, it may be said that the creations of the age of Pericles
are the only works of art which completely satisfy the most refined and
cultivated taste. But it cannot have been the intention of Pericles, or
of the Athenians who shared his views, to limit their countrymen to
those enjoyments of art which are derived from the eye. It is known
that Pericles was on terms of intimacy with Sophocles ; and it may be
presumed that Pericles thoroughly appreciated such works as the An-
tigone of Sophocles ; since (as we shall show hereafter) there was a
close analogy between the political principles of Pericles and the
poetical character of Sophocles. Pericles, however, lived on a still more
intimate footing with Anaxagoras, the first philosopher who proclaimed
* Ma'voj ruiv pr,rogeuv To xivrgov iyxarii.ui't ro7; ux/>o/vf/,ivoi;. Eupolis in the Demi.
f The animal revenue of Athens at the time of Pericles is estimated at 1000
talents (rather more than 200,000/.) ; of which sum GOO talents flowed from the tri-
butes of the allies. If we reckon that the Propylsea (with the buildings belonging
to it) cost '2012 talents, the expense of all the buildings of this time, — the Odeon,
the Parthenon, the Propylaea, the temple at Kletisis, and other contemporary
temples in the country, as at Khamnus and Sunium, together with the sculpture and
colouring, statues of e;old and ivory, as the I'allas in the Parthenon, carpets, &c., —
cannot have been less than 8000 talents. And yet all these woiks fell in the last
twenty years of the lVloponnesian war.
282 HISTORY OF THE
in Greece the doctrine of a regulating intelligence*. The house of
Pericles, particularly from the time when the beautiful and accom-
plished Milesian Aspasia presided over it with a greater freedom of in-
tercourse than Athenian usage allowed to wives, was a point of union
for all the men who had conceived the intellectual superiority of Athens.
The sentiment attributed by Thucydides to Pericles in the celebrated
funeral oration, that " Athens is the school of Greece," is doubtless, if
not in words, at least in substance, the genuine expression of Periclesf.
§ 6. It could not be expected that this brilliant exhibition of human
excellence should be without its dark side, or that the flourishing state
of Athenian civilization should be exempt from the elements of decay.
The political position of Athens soon led to a conflict between the patri-
otism and moderation of her citizens and their interests and passions.
From the earliest times, Athens had stood in an unfriendly relation to
the rest of Greece. Even the lonians, who dwelt in Asia Minor, sur-
rounded by Dorians and iEolians, did not, until their revolt from Persia,
receive from the Athenians the sympathy common among the Greeks
between members of the same race. Nor did the other states of the
mother country ever so far recognise the intellectual supremacy of
Athens, as to submit to her in political alliances; and therefore Athens
never exercised such an ascendency over the independent states of
Greece as was at various times conceded to Sparta. At the very
foundation of her political greatness, Athens could not avoid struggling
to free herself from the superintendence of the other Greeks ; and since
Attica was not an island, — which would have best suited the views of
the Athenian statesmen, — Athens was, by means of immense fortifica-
tions, as far as possible isolated from the land and withdrawn from the
influence of the dominant military powers. The eyes of her statesmen
were exclusively turned towards the sea. They thought that the national
character of the lonians of Attica, the situation of this peninsula, and
its internal resources, especially its silver mines, fitted Athens for mari-
time sovereignty. Moreover, the Persian war had given her a powerful
impulse in this direction ; and by her large navy she stood at the head
of the confederate islanders and Asiatics, who wished to continue the
war against Persia for their own liberation and security. These confe-
derates had before been the subjects of the King of Persia; and had
long been more accustomed to slavish obedience than to voluntary
exertion. It was their refusals and delays, which first induced Athens
to draw the reins tighter, and to assume a supremacy over them. The
* The author of the first Alcibiades (among the Platonic dialogues). p. 1 18, unites
the philosophical musicians, Pythocleides and Damon, with Anaxagoras, as friends
of Pericles. Pericles is also said to have been connected with Zeno the E'.eatic and
Protagoras the sophist.
f Thucyd, II. 41. ^mikkiv ti Xiyca thv ■zravu.v ■zokn T«5 'EXXci^o; zoc'thiuait utai.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 283
Athenians were not cruel and sanguinary by nature ; but a reckless
severity, when there was a question of maintaining principles which
they thought necessary to their existence, was implanted deeply in their
character ; and circumstances too often impelled them to employ it
against their allies. The Athenian policy of compelling so many cities
to contribute their wealth in order to make Athens the focus of art and
cultivation, was indeed accompanied with pride and selfish patriotism.
Yet the Athenians did not reduce millions to a state of abject servitude,
for the purpose of ministering to the wants of a few thousand persons.
The object of their statesmen, such as Pericles, doubtless was, to make
Athens the pride of the whole confederacy; that their allies should
enjoy in common with them the productions of Athenian art, and
especially should participate in the great festivals, the Panathenaea and
Dionysia, on the embellishment of which all the treasures of wealth and
art were lavished*.
§ 7. Energy in action and cleverness in the use of languagef were the
qualities which most distinguished the Athenians in comparison with the
other Greeks, and which are most clearly seen in their political conduct
and their literature. Both qualities are very liable to abuse. The energy
in action degenerated into a restless love of adventure, which was the
chief cause of the fall of the Athenian power in the Peloponnesian war,
after the conduct of it had ceased to be directed by the clear and com-
posed views of Pericles. The consciousness of dexterity in the use of
words, which the Athenians cultivated more than the other Greeks, in-
duced them to subject everything to discussion. Hence too arose a
copiousness of speech, very striking as compared with the brevity of
the early Greeks, which compressed the results of much reflection in a
few words. It is remarkable that, soon after the Persian war, the great
Chnon was distinguished from his countrymen by avoiding all Attic
eloquence and loquacity j. Stesimbrotus, of Thasos, a contemporary,
observed of him, that the frank and noble were prominent in his cha-
racter, and that he had the qualities of a Peloponnesian more than of
an Athenian§. Yet this fluency of the Athenians was long restrained
by the deeply-rooted maxims of traditional morality ; nor was it till the
beginning of the Peloponnesian war, when a foreign race of teachers,
* There are many grounds for thinking that these festivals were instituted ex-
pressly for the allies, who attended them in large numbers. Prayers were also pub-
licly offered at the Panathenaea for the Plateaus (Herod, vi. m.), and at all great
public festivals for the Chians (Theopomp. ap. Schol. Aristoph. Av. 880), who were
nearly the only faithful ally of the Athenians in the Peloponnesian war, after the
defection of the Mytilenaeans. Moreover, the colonies of Athens (i.e. probably, in
general, the cities of the confederacy) offered sacrifices at the Panathenaea.
to ipaffrriptov xct) to ohvoy. J oitvorns and e-u//.u\'ia.
§ In Plutarch, Cimon, c. 4, indeed, Stesimbrotus is not unjustly censured for his
credulity and his fondness for narrating the chronique scandaieuse of those times : but
statements, such .is thai in the text, founded upon personal observation of the
general slate of society, are always very valuable,
284 HISTORY OF THE
chiefly from the colonies in the east and west, established themselves at
Athens, that the Athenians learnt the dangerous art of subjecting the
traditional maxims of morality to a scrutinising examination. For al-
though this examination ultimately led to the establishing of morality
on a scientific basis, yet it at first gave a powerful impulse to immoral
motives and tendencies, and, at any rate, destroyed the habits founded
on unreasoning faith. These arts of the sophists — for such was the
name of the new teachers — were the more pernicious to the Athenians,
because the manliness of the Athenian character, which shone forth so
nobly during the Persian war and the succeeding period, had already
fallen off before the Peloponnesian war, under the administration of
Pericles. This degeneracy was owing to the same accidental causes,
which produced the noble qualities of the Athenians. Plato says that
Pericles made the Athenians lazy, cowardly, loquacious, and covetous*.
This severe judgment, suggested to Plato by his constant repugnance
to the practical statesmen of his time, cannot be considered as just; yet
it must be admitted that the principles of the policy of Pericles were
closely connected with the demoralization so bluntly described by
Plato. By founding the power of the Athenians on dominion of the
sea, he led them to abandon land-war and the military exercises requi-
site for it, which had hardened the old warriors of Marathon. In the
ships, the rowers played the chief part, who, except in times of great
danger, consisted not of citizens, but of mercenaries ; so that the Co-
rinthians in Thucydides about the beginning of the Peloponnesian war
justly describe the power of the Athenians as being rather purchased
with money than nativet. In the next place, Pericles made the Athe-
nians a dominant people, whose time was chiefly devoted to the business
of governing their widely extended empire. Hence it was necessary for
him to provide that the common citizens of Athens should be able to
gain a livelihood by their attention to public business; and accord-
ingly it was contrived that a considerable part of the large revenues of
Athens should be distributed among the citizens, in the form of wages
for attendance in the courts of justice, the public assembly, and the
council, and also on less valid grounds, for example, as money for the
theatre. Those payments to the citizens for their share in the public
business were quite new in Greece ; and many well disposed persons
considered the sitting and listening in the Pnyx and the courts of justice
as an idle life in comparison with the labour of the ploughman and
vinegrower in the country. Nevertheless, a considerable time elapsed
before the bad qualities developed by these circumstances so far pre-
vailed as to overcome the noble habits and tendencies of the Athenian
character. For a long time the industrious cultivators, the brave war-
* Plat. Gorg.p. 515. E.
f Thucyd. II. 121. Comp. Plutarch, Pericl. ?.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 285
riors, and the men of old-fashioned morality were opposed, among - the
citizens of Athens, to the loquacious, luxurious, and dissolute genera-
tion who passed their whole time in the market-place and courts of
justice. The contest between these two parties is the main subject of
the early Attic comedy ; and accordingly we shall recur to it in con-
nexion with Aristophanes.
§ 8. Literature and art, however, were not, during the Peloponnesian
war, affected by the corruption of morals. The works of this period, —
which the names of iEschylus, Sophocles, and Phidias are sufficient to
call to our minds — exhibit not only a perfection of form, but also an
elevation of soul and a grandeur of conception, which fill us almost
with as much admiration for those whose minds were sufficiently ma-
ture and strong to enjoy such works of art, as for those who produced
them. Pericles, whose whole administration was evidently intended to
diffuse a taste for genuine beauty among the people, could justly use
the words attributed to him by Thucydides : ''We are fond of beauty
without departing from simplicity, and we seek wisdom without becom-
ing effeminate*."' A step farther, and the love of genuine beauty gave
place to a desire for evil pleasures, and the love of wisdom degenerated
into a habit of idle logomachy.
We now turn to the drama, the species of poetry which peculiarly
belongs to the Athenians ; and we shall here see how the utmost beauty
and elegance were gradually developed out of rude, stiff", antique forms.
CHAPTER XXI.
§ 1. Causes of dramatic poetry in Greece. § 2. The invention of dramatic poetry
peculiar to Greece. $ 3. Origin of the Greek drama from the worship of Bac-
chus. § 4 Earliest, or Doric form of tragedy, a choral or dithyrambic song in the
worship of Bacchus. § 5. Connexion of the early tragedy wi h a chorus of satyrs.
§6. Improvement of tragedy at Athens by Thespis ; §7. by Phrynichus ;
6 8. and by Choerilus. Cultivation of the satyric drama by the latter. § 9. The
satyric drama completely separated from tragedy byPratinas.
§ 1. The spirit of an age is, in general, more completely and faithfully
represented by its poetry than by any branch of prose composition ;
and. accordingly, we may best trace the character of the three different
stages of civilization among the Greeks in the three grand divisions of
their poetry. The epic poetry belongs to a period when, during the
" Thucyd. II. 40. tpiXoxaXcufHv ya S fi.IT, ivriXuas, xa.) <p,Xo<n><poZ(*.<.v uviv vaXaxlcc;.
The wotd'ivriXi.cc is not to be understoi d as if the Athenians did not expend large
sums of public money upon works of art ; what Pericles means is, that the Athenians
adim ed the simple and severe beauty of art alone, without seeking alter glitter and
magnificence.
286 HISTORY OF THE
continuance of monarchical institutions, the minds of the people were
impregnated and swayed by legends handed down from antiquity.
Elegiac, iambic, and lyric poetry arose in the more stirring and agitated
times which accompanied the development of republican governments;
times in which each individual gave vent to his personal aims and wishes,
and all the depths of the human breast were unlocked by the inspirations
of poetry. And now when, at the summit of Greek civilization, in the
very prime of Athenian power and freedom, we see dramatic poetry
spring up, as the organ of the prevailing thoughts and feelings of the
time, and throwing all other varieties of poetry into the shade, we are
naturally led to ask, how it comes that this style of poetry agreed so
well with the spirit of the age, and so far outstripped its competitors
in the contest for public favour ?
Dramatic poetry, as the Greek name plainly declares, represents
actions ; which are not (as in the epos) merely narrated, but seem to
take place before the eyes of the spectator. Yet this external appear-
ance cannot constitute the essential difference between dramatic and
epic poetry : for, since the events thus represented do not really happen
at the moment, of their representation ; since the speech and actions of
the persons in the drama are only a fiction of the poet, and, when suc-
cessful, an illusion to the spectator; it would follow that the whole
difference turned upon a mere deception. The essence of this style of
poetry has a much deeper source ; viz., the state of the poet's mind,
when engaged in the contemplation of his subject. The epic poet
seems to regard the events which he relates, from afar, as objects of
cairn contemplation and admiration, and is always conscious of the
o-reat interval between him and them ; while the dramatist plunges,
with his entire soul, into the scenes of human life, and seems himself to
experience the events which he exhibits to our view. He experiences
them in a two-fold manner : first, because in the drama, actions (as they
arise out of the depths of the human heart) are represented as com-
pletely and as naturally as if they originated in our own breasts ; se-
condly, because the effect of the actions and fortunes of the personages
upon the sympathies of other persons in the drama itself is exhibited
with such force, that the listener feels himself constrained to like sym-
pathy, and powerfully attracted within the circle of the drama. This
second means, the strong sympathy in the action of the drama, was, at
the time when this style of poetry was developing itself, by far the most
important; and hence arose the necessity of the chorus, as a partici-
pator in the fortunes of the principal characters in the drama of this
period. Another similar fact is that the Greek drama did not originate
from the narrative, but from a branch of lyric poetry. The latter point,
however, we shall examine hereafter. At present, we merely consider
the fact that the drama comprehends and develops the events of human
life with a force and depth which no other style of poetry can reach;
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 287
and that these admit only of a dramatic treatment, while outward nature
is best described in epic and lyric poetry.
§ 2. If we carry ourselves in imagination back to a time when dra-
matic composition was unknown, we must acknowledge that its crea-
tion required great boldness of mind. Hitherto the bard had only
sung of gods and heroes, as elevated beings, from ancient traditions ; it
was, therefore, a great change for the poet himself to come forward all
at once in the character of the god or hero ; in a nation which, even
in its amusements, had always adhered closely to established usage. It
is true that there is much in human nature which impels it to dramatic
representations ; namely, the universal love of imitating' other persons,
and the childlike liveliness with which a narrator, strongly impressed
with his subject, delivers a speech which he has heard, or, perhaps, oidy
imagined. Yet there is a wide step from these disjointed elements to the
genuine drama; and it seems that no nation except the Greeks ever
made this step. The Old Testament contains narratives interwoven
with speeches and dialogues, as the Book of Job ; and lyric poems
placed in a dramatic connexion, as Solomon's Song ; but we nowhere
rind in this literature any mention of dramas properly so called. The
dramatic poetry of the Indians belongs to a time when there had
been much intercourse between Greece and India; and the mysteries
of the Middle Ages were grounded upon a tradition, though a very
obscure one, from antiquity. Even in ancient Greece and Italy, dra-
matic poetry, and especially tragedy, attained to perfection only in
Athens; and, even here, it was only exhibited at a few festivals of a
single god, Dionysus; while epic rhapsodies and lyric odes were recited
on various occasions. All this is incomprehensible, if we suppose dra-
matic poetry to have originated in causes independent of the peculiar
circumstances of the time and place. If a love of imitation, and a
delight in disguising the real person under a mask, were the basis
upon which this style of poetry was raised, the drama would have
been as natural and as universal among men as these qualities are
common to their nature.
§ 3. A more satisfactory explanation of the origin of the Greek
drama may be found in its connexion with the worship of the gods,
and particularly that of Bacchus. The Greek worship contains a great
number of dramatic elements. The gods were supposed to dwell in
their temples, and participate in their festivals; and it was not con-
sidered presumptuous or unbecoming to represent them as acting like
human beings. Thus, Apollo's combat with the dragon, and his con-
sequent flight and expiation, were represented by a noble youth of
Delphi; in Samos the marriage of Zeus and Here was exhibited at the
great festival of the goddess. The Eleusiuian mysteries were (as an
ancient writer expresses it*) " a mystical drama," in which the his-
* Clem. Alex. Protrept, p 12. Potter
288 HISTORY OF THE
tory of Demeter and Cora was anted, like a play, by priests ami
priestesses; though, probably, only with mimic action, illustrated by a
tew significant sentences of a symbolic nature, and by the singing of
hymns. There were also similar mimic representations in the worship
of Bacchus ; thus, at the Anthesteria at Athens, the wife of the second
Archon, who bore the title of Queen, was betrothed to Dionysus in a
secret solemnity, and in public processions even the god himself wa3
represented by a man*. At the Boeotian festival of the Agrionia,
Dionysus was supposed to have disappeared, and to be sought for
among the mountains; there was also a maiden (representing one of
the nymphs in the train of Dionysus), who was pursued by a priest,
carrying a hatchet, and personating a being hostile to the God. This
festival rite, which is frequently mentioned by Plutarch, is the origin
of the fable, which occurs in Homer, of the pursuit of Dionysus and his
nurses by the furious Lycurgns.
But the worship of Bacchus had one quality which was, more than
any other, calculated to give birth to the drama, and particularly to
tragedy ; namely, the enthusiasm which formed an essential part of it.
This enthusiasm (as we have already remarked!) proceeded from an
impassioned sympathy with the events of nature, in connexion with
the course of the seasons; especially with the struggle which Nature
seemed to make in winter, in order that she might break forth in
spring with renovated beauty : hence the festivals of Dionysus at
Athens and elsewhere were all solemnised in the months which were
nearest to the shortest dayj. The feeling which originally prevailed
at these festivals was, that the enthusiastic participators in them be-
lieved that they perceived the god to be really affected by the changes
of nature; killed or dying, flying and rescued, reanimated or returning,
victorious and dominant ; and all who shared in the festival felt these
joyful or mournful events, as if they were under the immediate influence
of them. Now the great changes which took place in the religion, as
well as in the general cultivation of the Greeks, banished from men's
minds the conviction that the happy or unhappy events, which they be-
wailed or rejoiced in, really occurred in nature before their eyes. Bac-
chus, accordingly, was conceived as an individual, anthropomorphic,
self-existing being ; but the enthusiastic sympathy with Dionysus and his
* A beautiful slave of Nicias represented Dionysus on an occasion of this kind :
Plutarch, Nic. 3. Compare the description of the great Bacchic procession under
Ptolemy Philadelphus in Athen. v. p. 196, sq.
+ Ch. 2. § 4.
% In Athens the months succeeded one another in the following order : — Posel-
deon, Gamelion (formerly Lenteon), Anthesterion, Elaphebolion ; these, according
to Boeckh's convincing demonstration, contained the Bacchic festivals of the lesse°r
or country Dionysia, Lenaea, Anthesteria, the greater or city Dionysia. In Delphi,
the three winter months were sacred to Dionysus (Plutarch de Ei ap. Delphos, c. 9.),
and the great festival of Trieteiica was celebrated on Parnassus at the time of the
shortest day.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 289
fortunes, as with real events, always remained. The swarm of subordi-
nate beings — Satyrs, Panes, and Nymphs — by whom Bacchus was sur-
rounded, and through whom life seemed to pass from the god of out-
ward nature into vegetation and the animal world, and branch off into a
variety of beautiful or grotesque forms, were ever present to the fancy
of the Greeks ; it was not necessary to depart very widely from the
ordinary course of ideas, to imagine that dances of fair nymphs and bold
satyrs, among the solitary woods and rocks, were visible to human eyes,
or even in fancy to take a part in them. The intense desire felt by every
worshipper ol Bacchus to fight, to conquer, to suffer, in common with
him, made them regard these subordinate beings as a convenient step by
which they could approach more nearly to the presence of their divinity.
The custom, so prevalent at the festivals of Bacchus, of taking the dis-
guise of satyrs, doubtless originated in this feeling, and not in the mere
desire of concealing excesses under the disguise of a mask ; otherwise,
so serious and pathetic a spectacle as tragedy could never have origi-
nated in the choruses of these satyrs. The desire of escaping from
self, into something new and strange, of living in an imaginary world,
breaks forth in a thousand instances in these festivals of Bacchus. It
is seen in the colouring the body with plaster, soot, vermilion, and
different sorts of green and red juices of plants, wearing goats and
deer skins round the loins, covering the face with large leaves of dif-
ferent plants ; and, lastly, in the wearing masks of wood, bark, and
other materials, and of a complete costume belonging to the character.
§ 4. These facts seem to us to explain how the drama might na-
turally originate from the enthusiasm of the worship of Bacchus, as a
part of his festival ceremonies. We now come to consider the direct
evidence respecting its origin. The learned writers of antiquity agree
in stating that tragedy, as well as comedy, was originally a choral
song.* It is a most important fact in the history of dramatic poetry,
that the lyric portion, the song of the chorus, was the original part of it.
The action, the adventure of the god, was pre-supposed, or only sym-
bolically indicated by the sacrifice : the chorus expressed their feelings
upon it. This choral song belonged to the class of dithyrambs ; Aris-
totle says that tragedy originated with the singers of the dithyramb.f
The dithyramb was, as we have already seen,]: an enthusiastic ode to
Bacchus, which had in early time been sung at convivial meetings by
the drunken revellers, but, after the time of Arion (about b. c. 620), was
regularly executed by a chorus. The dithyramb was capable of ex-
pressing every variety of feeling excited by the worship and mythology
* One passage will serve for many: Euanthius de tragcedia et comoedia, C. '2.
Comoedia fere vetus, ut ipsa quoque olim tragaedia, simplex fuit carmen, quod cho-
rus circa aras fumantes nunc spatiatus, nunc consistent, nunc revolvens gyros, cum
tibicine concinebat.
f Ajistot. Poet. 4. axo «r«» I'^a.p^dv'rav rov iifugap-tie*.
* Ch. XIV. § 7.
U
29!) HISTORY OF THE
of Bacchus. There were dithyrambs of a gay and joyous tone, cele-
brating 1 the commencement of spring ; but tragedy, with its solemn and
gloomy character, could not have proceeded from these. The dithy-
ramb, from which tragedy probably took its origin, turned upon the
sorrows of Dionysus. This appears from the remarkable account of
Herodotus, that in Sicyon, in the time of the tyrant Cleisthenes (about
600 B.C.), tragic choruses had been represented, which celebrated the
sorrows, not of Dionysus, but of the hero Adrastus ; and that Clei-
sthenes restored these choruses to the worship of Dionysus* This
shows, not only that there were at that time tragic choruses, but also
that the subject of them had been changed from Dionysus to other
heroes, especially those who were distinguished by their misfortunes and
sufferings. The reason why sometimes the dithyramb,! and afterwards
tragedy, was transferred from Dionysus to heroes, and not to other
gods of the Greek Olympus, was that the latter were elevated above
the chances of fortune, and the alternations of joy and grief, to which
both Dionysus and the heroes were subject. The date given by Hero-
dotus agrees well with the statement of the ancient grammarians,
that the celebrated dithyrambic poet, Arion (about 580 b. a), invented
the tragic style (rpaytcoc rpoiroq); evidently the same variety of dithyramb
as that usual in Sicyon in the time of Cleisthenes. This narrative also
gives some probability to the tradition of a tragic author of Sicyon,
named Epigenes, who lived before the time of the Athenian dramatists ;
from the perplexed and, in part, corrupt notices of him it is conjectured
that he was the first who transferred tragedy from Dionysus to other
persons.
§ 5. In attempting to form a more precise conception of the ancient
tragedy, when it still belonged exclusively to the worship of Bacchus,
we are led by the statement of Aristotle, " that tragedy originated with
the chief singers of the dithyramb," to suppose that the leaders of the
chorus came forward separately. It may be conjectured that these, either
as representatives of Dionysus himself, or as messengers from his train,
narrated the perils which threatened the god, and his final escape from
or triumph over them ; and that the chorus then expressed its feelings,
as at passing events. The chorus thus naturally assumed the character
of satellites of Dionysus; whence they easily fell into the parts of
satyrs, who were not only his companions in sportive adventures, but
also in combats and misfortunes ; and were as well adapted to express
terror or fear, as gaiety or pleasure. It is stated by Aristotle and many
grammarians, that the most ancient tragedy bore the character of a
* H rod. V. 67. to vahtt. uvtov T^ayizdi/rt y^o^olixi iy.^cti^ov, rov piy Aiovt/irov oh rifiiuv-
ts;, <rov 1\ " A^gTKrrov. KXetirfiv/is §£ %o/>ob( fi\v ru Aiovvtrw «ts?»xj. Whether «crs2&/»s i3
translated, " He gave them back," or " He gave them as something due," the result
is the same.
f There was a dithyramb, entitled Memnon, composed by Simonides, Slrabo, xv. p.
728 Above, chap, xiv., § 11.
LITEUATUR.E OF ANCIENT GREECE. 291
sport of satyrs; and the introduction of satyrs into this species of poetry
is ascribed to Arion, who is said to have invented the tragic dithyramb.
The name of tragedy, or goat's song, was even by the ancients derived
from the resemblance of the singers, in their character of satyrs, to
goats. Yet the slight resemblance in form between satyrs and goats
could hardly have given a name to this kind of poetry ; it is far more
probable that this species of dithyramb was originally performed at the
burnt sacrifice of a goat ; the connexion of which with the subject of
the earliest tragedy can only be explained by means of mythological
researches foreign to the present subject.*
Thus far had tragedy advanced among the Dorians, who therefore
considered themselves the inventors of it. All its further development
belono-s to the Athenians ; while among the Dorians it seems to have
been long preserved in its original lyric form. Doubtless tragic dithy-
rambs of the same kind as those in Sicyon and Corinth continued for
a long time to be sung in Athens; probably at the temple of Bacchus,
called Lenaeum, and the Leneean festival, with which all the genuine
traditions respecting the origin of tragedy were connected. Moreover,
the Lenrean festival was solemnized exactly at the time when, in other
parts of Greece, the sorrows of Dionysus were bewailed. Hence in
later times, when the dramatic spectacles were celebrated at the three
Dionysiac festivals of the year, tragedy preceded comedy at the Leneea,
and followed immediately after the festival procession; while both at
the greater and lesser Dionysia, comedy, which came after a great
carousal, was first, and was followed by tragedy. f At these festivals,
before the innovations of Thespis, when the chorus had assembled round
the altar of Dionysus, an individual from the midst of the chorus is said
to have answered the other members of the chorus from the sacrificial
table (eXeoc) near the altar; that is to say, he probably imparted to
them in song the subjects which excited and guided the feelings ex-
pressed by the chorus in its chants.
* We here reject the common account (adopted, among other writers, by Horace)
of the invention of comedy at the vintage, the faces smeared with lees of wine, the
waggon with which Thespis went round Attica, and so forth : since all these arise
from a contusion between the origin of comedy and tragedy. Comedy really ori-
ginated at the rural Dionysia. or the vintage festival (see ch. XXVII.). Aristophanes
calls the comic poets of his own time lee-singers {rgoyuhai), but he never gives this
name to the tragic poets and actors. The waggon suits not the dithyramb, which
was sung by a standing chorus, but a procession, which occurred in the earliest form
of comedy ; moreover, in many festivals, there was a custom of throwing out jests
and scurril ma abuse from a waggon (cy.uy.pa.Ta. 1% upa^m). It is only by completely
avoiding this error (which rests on a very natural confusion) that it is possible to
reconcile the earliest history of the drama with the best testimonies, especially that
of Aristotle. .
f According to the very important statements concerning the parts ot these ies-
tivals, which are in the documents cited in the speech of Demosthenes against
Midias. Of the Lenaea it is said, h lx) Anvaitu vofvrh kx) ol roaynlo) xai olx.up.uioi ;
of the greater Dionysia, rr>~; iv xo-th Aiovuo-loi; h Top.<rh xa\ ol vx7o*'.s xxl <* ::*</*■<>; >xi »*
KupM xx) ol r^ayuloi ; of the hsscr Dionysia in the Piraeus, h *oy.*h ™ Aiorvo-* i»
Wlipxtu xxi 01 KUfiuioi xx) ol rpxyuooi.
v 2
292 HISTORY OF THE
§ 6. The ancients, however, are agreed that Thespis first caused
tragedy to hecome a drama, though a very simple one. In the time of
Pisistratus (b. c. 536), Thespis made the great step of connecting with
the choral representation (which had hitherto at most admitted an in-
terchange of voices) a regular dialogue, which was only distinguished
from the language of common life hy its metrical form and by a more
elevated tone. For this purpose, he joined one person to the chorus,
who was the first actor* Now according to the ideas which we have
formed from the finished drama, one actor appears to be no better than
none at all. When however it is borne in mind, that, according to the
constant practice of the ancient drama, one actor played several parts in
the same piece (for which the linen masks, introduced by Thespis, must
have been of great use) ; and moreover, that the chorus was combined
with the actor, and could maintain a dialogue with him, it is easy to see
how a dramatic action might be introduced, continued and concluded
by the speeches inserted between the choral songs. Let us, for example,
from among the pieces whose titles have been preserved,t take the Pen-
theus. In this, the single actor might appear successively as Dionysus,
Pentheus, a Messenger, and Agave, the mother of Pentheus ; and, in
those several characters, might announce designs and intentions, or re-
late events which could not conveniently be represented, as the murder
of Pentheus by his unfortunate mother, or express triumphant joy at the
deed ; by which means he would represent, not without interesting
scenes, the substance of the fable, as it is given in the Bacchae of Euri-
pides. Messengers and heralds probably played an important part in
this early drama (which, indeed, they retained to a considerable extent
in the perfect form of Greek tragedy ;) and the speeches were probably
short, as compared with tie choral songs, which they served to explain.
In the drama of Thespis, the persons of the chorus frequently repre-
sented satyrs, as well as other parts ; for, before the satyric drama had
acquired a distinctive character, it must have been confounded with
tragedy.
The dances of the chorus were still a principal part of the perform-
ance; the ancient tragedians in general were teachers of dancing, (or,
as we should say, ballet-masters,) as well as poets and musicians.
In the time of Aristophanes, (when plays of Thespis could scarcely
be represented upon the stage,) the dances of Thespis were still per-
formed by admirers of the ancient style. \ Moreover, Aristotle remarks
that the earliest tragedians used the long trochaic verse (the trochaic
tetrameter) in the dialogue more than the iambic trimeter ; now the
former was peculiarly adapted to lively, dance-like gesticulations. §
* Called iivox^irhs, from vToxgiartai. because he answered the songs of the chorus,
f The funeral games of Pelias or Phorbas, the Priests, the Youths, Pentheus.
{ Ar stoph. Vesp. 1479.
tj This is als i confirmed by the passage of Aris oph. Pac. 322.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 293
These metres were not invented by the tragic poets, but were borrowed
by them from Archilochus, Solon, ami other poets of this class,* and
invested with the appropriate character and expression. Probably the
tragic poets adopted the lively and impassioned trochaic verse, while
the comic poets adopted the energetic and rapid iambic verse, formed
for jest and wrangling ; the latter seems to have only obtained gra-
dually, chiefly through yEschylus, the form in which it seemed a fitting
metre for the solemn and dignified language of heroes, f
§ 7. In Phrynichus likewise, the son of Polyphradmon, of Athens,
who was in great repute on the Athenian stage from Olymp. 67. 1.
(b. c. 512), the lyric predominated over the dramatic element. He,
like Thespis, had only one actor, at least until jEschylus had established
his innovations ; but he used this actor for different, and especially for
female parts. Phrynichus was the first who brought female parts upon
the stage (which, according to the manners of the ancients, could only
be acted by men) ; a fact which throws a light upon his poetical cha-
racter. The chief excellence of Phrynichus lay in dancing and lyric
compositions ; if his works were extant, he would probably seem to us
rather a lyric poet of the iEolian school than a dramatist. His tender,
sweet, and often plaintive songs were still much admired in the time
of the Peloponnesian war, especially by old-fashioned people. The
chorus, as may be naturally supposed, played the chief part in his
drama ; and the single actor was present in order to furnish subjects on
which the chorus should express its feelings and thoughts, instead of the
chorus being intended to illustrate the action represented upon the
stage. It appears even that the great dramatic chorus (which originally
corresponded to the dithyrambic) was distributed by Phrynichus into
subdivisions, with different parts, in order to produce alternation and
contrast in the long lyric compositions. Thus in the famous play of
Phrynichus, entitled the Phocnisscc (which he brought upon the stage in
Olymp. 75, 4, b. c. 476, and in which he celebrated the exploits of
Athens in the Persian war). \ the chorus consisted in part, as the name
of the drama shows, of Phoenician women from Sidon and other cities of
the neighbourhood, who had been sent to the Persian court ;§ but an-
* Ch. XI. §. 8.
| The fragments preserved under the name of Thespis are indeed iambic tiime-
ters ; hut they are evidently taken from the pieces composed by Heraeiides Pontieus
in his name. See Diog. Laert. V. 92.
\ It is related that Phrynichus composed apiece in Olymp. 75. 4. (b. c. 477) for
a tragic chorus which Theinistocles had furnished as choregus. Bentley has con-
jectured with much probability that this piece was the Phcenissae, i'n which Phry-
nichus dwelt on the merits of Themistocles. Among the titles of the plays of
Phrynichus in Suidas, i^v*Wo/. " the consultors or deliberators," probably desig-
nates the Phoenissae, which would otherwise be wanting.
6 The chorus of Phoenician women sang at its entrance: — 2/5Jw« cctrrv Xivrai -
*«i Sg««gcv "AjaSan, as may be seen from the Schol. An.-toph. Vesp. 220 and Hesych.
in yXvxipaJ ~toa/viy.
294 HISTORY C7 THE
other part of it was formed of noble Persians, who in the king's absence
consulted about the affairs of the kingdom. For we know that at the
beginning of this drama (which had a great resemblance to the Persians
of jEschylus) a royal eunuch and carpet-spreader* came forward, who
prepared the seats for this high council, and announced its meeting-.
The weighty cares of these aged men, and the passionate laments 01
the Phoenician damsels who had been deprived of their fathers or
brothers by the sea-fight, doubtless made a contrast, in which one of
the main charms of the drama consisted. It is remarkable that Phry-
nichus, in several instances, deviated from mythical subjects to subjects
taken from contemporary history. In a former drama, entitled the
Capture of Miletus, he represented the calamities which had befallen
Miletus, the colony and ally of Athens, at the Persian conquest, after
the Ionic revolt (b. c. 498). Herodotus relates that the whole theatre
was moved by it to tears ; notwithstanding which the people afterwards
sentenced him to a considerable fine " for representing to them their
own misfortunes;" a remarkable judgment of the Athenians concerning
a work of poetry, by which they manifestly expected to be raised into a
higher world, not to be reminded of the miseries of the present life.
§ 8. Contemporary with Phrynichus on the tragic stage was Chce-
rilus, a prolific and, for a long time, active poet ; since he came tor-
ward so early as the 64th Olympiad (b. c. 524), and maintained his
ground not only against iEschylus, but even for some years against
Sophocles. The most remarkable fact known with regard to this poet
is, that he excelled in the satyric drama,t which had therefore in his
time been separated from tragedy. For as tragedy constantly inclined
to heroic fables, in preference to subjects connected with Dionysus, and
as the rude style of the old Bacchic sport yielded to a more dignified
and serious mode of composition, the chorus of satyrs was no longer
an appropriate accompaniment. But it was the custom in Greece to
retain and cultivate all the earlier forms of poetry which had anything
peculiar and characteristic, together with the newer varieties formed
from them. Accordingly a separate Satyric Drama was developed, in
addition to tragedy; and, for the most part, :}: three tragedies and one
satyric drama at the conclusion, were represented together, forming a
connected whole. This satyric drama was not a comedy, but (as an
ancient author aptly describes it) a playful tragedy. § Its subjects
were taken from the same class of adventures of Bacchus and the
heroes, as tragedy; but they were so treated in connexion with rude
objects of outward nature, that the presence and participation of rustic,
f According to the verse : 'Hvixa fth {iafiXiv; r,v XoloiXo; iv trari^tii;.
{ For the most part, I say ; for we shall see, when we come to the Alcestis of
Euripides, that tetralogies occur, composed of tragedies alone.
§ n«/£ou<ra r^ccyuihtu., Demetrius de Elocut § 169. Comp. Hor. Art. P. 231.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 295
petulant satyrs seemed quite appropriate. Accordingly, all scenes from
free, untamed nature, adventures of a striking character, where stransre
monsters or savage tyrants of mythology are overcome by valour or
stratagem, belong to this class ; and in such scenes as these the satyrs
could express various feelings of terror and delight, disgust and desire,
with all the openness and unreserve which belong to their character.
All mythical subjects and characters were not therefore suited to the
satyric drama. The character best suited to this drama seems to have
been the powerful hero Hercules, an eater and drinker and boon com-
panion, who, when he is in good humour, allows himself to be amused
by the petulant sports of satyrs and other similar elves.
§ 9. The complete separation of the satyric drama from the other
dramatic varieties is attributed by ancient grammarians to Pratinas of
Phlius, and therefore a Dorian from Peloponnesus, although he came
forward in Athens as a rival of Choerilus and iEschylus about Olymp.
70 (b. c. 500), and probably still earlier. He also wrote lyric poems of
the hyporchematic kind,* which are closely connected with the satyric
drama; t and he moreover composed tragedies ; but he chiefly excelled
in the satyric drama, in the perfecting of which he probably followed
native masters: for Phlius was a neighbour of Corinth and Sicyon,
which produced the tragedy of Arion and Epigenes, represented by
satyrs. He bequeathed his art to his son Aristeas, who, like his father,
lived at Athens as a privileged alien, and obtained great fame on the
Athenian stage in competition with Sophocles. The satyric pieces of
these two Phliasians were considered, together with those of iEschylus,
as the best of their kind.
We are now come to the point where iEschylus appears on the tragic
stage. Tragedy, as he received it, was still an infant, though a vigorous
one ; when it passed from his hands it had reached a firm and goodly
youth. By adding the second actor, he first gave the dramatic element
its due development ; and at the same time he imparted to the whole
piece the dignity and elevation of which it was susceptible.
We should now proceed immediately to this first great master of the
tragic art, if it were not first necessary, for the purpose of forming a
correct conception of his tragedy, to obtain a distinct idea of the ex-
ternal appearance of this species of dramatic representation, and of the
established forms with which every tragic poet must comply. Much
may indeed be gathered from the history of the origin of the tragic
drama; but this is not sufficient to give a full and lively notion of the
manner in which a play of iEschylus was represented on the stage, and
of the relation which its several parts bore to each other.
* Seech. XII. § 10.
f Perhaps the hyporcheme in Athen. XIV. p. G17. occurred in a satyric drama
296 HISTORY OF THE
CHAPTER XXII.
§ I. Ideal character of the Greek tragedy ; splendid costume of the actors. § 2,
Cothurnus ; masks. § 3. Structure of the theatre. § 4. Arrangement of the
orchestra in connexion with the form and position of the chorus. § 5. Form of
the stage, and its meaning in tragedy. § 6. Meaning of the entrances of the
sta,ge. § 7. The actors ; limitation of their number. § 8. Meaning of the
protagonist, deuteragonist, tritagonist. § 9. The changes of the scene incon-
siderable ; ancient tragedy not being a picture of outward acts. § 10. Eccy-
clema. § 11. Composition of the drama from various parts; songs of the
entire chorus. § 12. Division of a tragedy by the choral songs. § 13. Songs
of single persons of the chorus and of the actors. ^ 14. Parts of the drama
intermediate between song and speech. § 15. Speech of the actors; arrange-
ment of the dialogue and its metrical form.
§ 1. We shall now endeavour to arrive at a distinct conception of the
peculiar character of ancient tragedy, as it appeared in those stable
forms which the origin and taste of the Greeks impressed upon it.
The tragedy of antiquity was perfectly different from that which, in
progress of time, arose among other nations; — a picture of human life
agitated by the passions, and corresponding, as accurately as possible,
to its original in all its features. Ancient tragedy departs entirely
from ordinary life ; its character is in the highest degree ideal.
We must observe, first, that as tragedy, and indeed dramatic exhibi-
tions generally, were seen only at the festivals of Bacchus,* the cha-
racter of these festivals exercised a great influence on the drama. It
retained a sort of Bacchic colouring; it appeared in the character of a
Bacchic solemnity and diversion; and the extraordinary excitement of
all minds at these festivals, by raising them above the tone of everyday
existence, gave both to the tragic and the comic muse unwonted energy
and fire.
The costume of the persons who represented tragedy was far removed
from that free and natural character which we find raised to the per-
fection of beauty by the Greeks in the arts of design. It was a Bacchic
festal costume. Almost all the actors in a tragedy wore long striped
garments, reaching to the ground, t over which were thrown upper
* In Athens new tragedies were acted at the Lensea and the great Dionysia; the
latter being a most brilliant festival, at which the allies of Athens and many
foreigners were also present. Old tragedies also were acted at the Lenaea ; and none
but old oues were acted at the lesser Dionysia. These facts appear, in great mea-
sure, from the dulascalice ; that is, registers of the victories of the lyric and dramatic
poets as teachers of the chorus (^o^oS/Sao-xaXw), from which, through the learned
writers of antiquity, much has passed into the commentaries on the remains of Greek
poetry, especially the arguments prefixed to them.
■j- %iruvi; •ffobni'iii) trroXal.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREFXE. 297
garments* of purple or some other brilliant colour, with all sorts of gay
trimmings and gold ornaments ; the ordinary dress at Bacchic festal
processions and choral dances. f Nor was the Hercules of the stage
represented as the sturdy athletic hero whose huge limbs were only
concealed by a lion's hide; he appeared in the rich and gaudy dress
we have described, to which his distinctive attributes, the club and the
bow, were merely added. The choruses, also, which were furnished by
wealthy citizens under the appellation of choregi, in the names of the
tribes of Athens, vied with each other in the splendour of their dress
and ornaments, as well as in the excellence of their singing and dancing.
§ 2. The chorus, which came from among the people at large, and
which always bore a subordinate part in the action of the tragedy, was
in no respect distinguished from the stature and appearance of ordinary
men. 4 On the other hand, the actor who represented the god or hero,
in whose fate the chorus was interested, needed to be raised, even to the
outward sense, above the usual dimensions of mortals. A tragic actor
was a very strange, and, according to the taste of the ancients themselves
at a later period, a very monstrous being.§ His person was lengthened
out considerably beyond the ordinary proportions of the human figure;
in the first place by the very high soles of the tragic shoe, the cothurnus,
and secondly by the length of the tragic mask, called onkos ; and the
chest and body, arms and legs, were stuffed and padded to a corre-
sponding size. It was impossible that the body should not lose much
of its natural flexibility, and that many of those slighter movements
which, though barely perceptible, are very significant to the attentive
observer, should not be suppressed. It followed that tragic gesticulation
(which was regarded by the ancients themselves as one of the most im-
portant parts of the art) necessarily consisted of stiff, angular move-
ments, in which little was left to the emotion or the inspiration of the
moment. The Greeks, prone to vehement and lively gesticulation, had
constructed a system of expressive gesture, founded on their tem-
perament and manners. On the tragic stage this seemed raised to its
highest pitch, corresponding always with the powerful emotions of the
actors.
Masks, also, which originated in the taste for mumming and dis-
guises of all sorts, prevalent at the Bacchic festivals, had become an
works of ancient ait, representing scenes of tragedies, especially the mosaic* in the
Vatican, edited by Millin. See Description d'une Mosaique antique du Mus6ePio-
* 'i/j,u.tiu and x,"ha.[/.vbi;.
f This is evident from the detailed accounts of Pollux IV. c. 18, as well as from
wi
Vi
Clementin a Rome, reprfeentant des scenes de tragedies, par A. L. Millin, Paris,
lsiy.
\ The opposition of the chorus and the scenic actors is generally that of the
Homeric \a.o) and cIvukt-.;.
§ 'ii; ijSt£#i v.at fofiiQM 0'tafice, is the remark of Lucian de Saltat. c. 27. upon a
tiagic actor.
298 HISTORY OF THE
indispensable accompaniment to tragedy. They not only concealed the
individual features of well-known actors, and enabled the spectators
entirely to forget the performer in his part, but gave to his whole aspect
that ideal character which the tragedy of antiquity demanded. The tragic
mask was not, indeed, intentionally ugly and caricatured, like the comic ;
but the half-open mouth, the large eye-sockets, the sharply-defined fea-
tures, in which every characteristic was presented in its utmost strength,
the bright and hard colouring, were calculated to make the impression
of a being agitated by the emotions and the passions of human nature
in a degree far above the standard of common life. The loss of the usual
gesticulation was not felt in ancient tragedy; since it would not have
been forcible enough to suit the conception of an ancient hero, nor
would it have been visible to the majority of the spectators in the vast
theatres of antiquity. The unnatural effect which a set and uniform
cast of features would produce in tragedy of varied passion and action,
like ours, was much less striking in ancient tragedy ; wherein the prin-
cipal persons, once forcibly possessed by certain objects and emotions,
appeared through the whole remaining piece in a state of mind which
was become the habitual and fundamental character of their existence.
It is possible to imagine the Orestes of iEschylus, the Ajax of Sopho-
cles, the Medea of Euripides, throughout the whole tragedy with the
same countenance, though this would be difficult in the case of Hamlet
or Tasso. The masks could, however, be changed between the acts,
so as to represent the necessary changes in the state or emotions of the
persons. Thus in the tragedy of Sophocles, after King CEdipus knows
the extent of his calamity and has executed the bloody punishment on
himself, he appeared in a different mask from that which he wore in the
confidence of virtue and of happiness.
We shall not enter into the question whether the masks of the ancients
were also framed with a view to increase the power of the voice. It is,
at least, certain that the voices of the tragic actors had a strength and
a metallic resonance, which must have been the result of practice, no
less than of natural organization. Various technical expressions of the
ancients denote this sort of tone, drawn from the depth of the chest,*
which filled the vast area of the theatre with a monotonous sort of
chant. This, even in the ordinary dialogue, had more resemblance to
singing than to the speech of common life; and in its unwearied uni-
formity and distinctly measured rhythmical cadence, must have seemed
like the voice of some more powerful and exalted being than earth could
then produce, resounding through the ample space.
§ 3. But before we examine further into the impressions which the
ear received from the tragedy of antiquity, we must endeavour to
complete the outline of those made upon the eye; and to give such an
* 'BoftfSuv, Xafivyyi'^uv, especially XrixvPifyiv, trigiahiv ra loc^iiu. in Lucian.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 299
account of the place of representation and the scenic arrangements as
properly belongs to a history of literature. The ancient theatres were
stone buildings of enormous size, calculated to accommodate the whole
free and adult population of a Greek city at the spectacles and festal
games; for example, the 16,000 Athenian citizens, with the educated
women and many foreigners. These theatres were not designed ex-
clusively for dramatic poetry ; choral dances, festal processions, and
revels, all sorts of representations of public life and popular assemblies,
were held in them. Hence we find theatres in every part of Greece,
though dramatic poetry was the peculiar growth of Athens. Much,
however, in theatrical architecture, such as it became in Athens, where
the forms were determined by fixed rules, can only be explained by the
adaptation of those forms to dramatic exhibitions.
The Athenians began to build their stone theatre in the temple of
Dionysus on the south side of the citadel,* in Olymp. TO. 1. B.C. 500 ;
the wooden scaffolding, from which the people had heretofore witnessed
the games, having fallen down in that year. It must very soon have
been so far completed as to render it possible for the master-pieces of
the three great tragedians to be represented in it; though perhaps the
architectural decorations of all the parts were finished later. As early
as the Peloponnesian war, singularly beautiful theatres were built in
Peloponnesus and Sicily.
§ 4. The whole structure of the theatre, as well as the drama itself,
may be traced to the chorus, whose station was the original centre of
the whole performance. Around this all the rest was grouped. The
orchestra (which occupied a circular level space in the centre, and, at the
same time, at the bottom of the whole building) grew out of the chorus,
or dancing place, of the Homeric times ;f a level smooth space, large
and wide enough for the unrestrained movements of a numerous band
of dancers. The altar of Dionysus, around which the dithyrambic
chorus danced in a circle, had given rise to a sort of raised platform
in the centre of the orchestra, the Thymele, which served as resting
place for the chorus when it took up a stationary positron. It was used
in various ways, according to purposes required by the particular tra-
gedy ; whether as a funereal monument, a terrace with altars, &c.{
* To h Aiovvirov (iccrpav or to Aiovjitou (iourfov.
t Above, ch. III. § C.
I It is sufficient here briefly to remark, that the form of the ancient Attic theatre
should not be confounded with that usual in the Macedonian period, in Alexandria,
Antiochia. and similar cities. In the latter, the original orchestra was divided into
halves, and the half which was nearest the stage, was, by means of a platform of
boards, converted into a spacious inferior stage, upon which the mimes or planipe-
dariij as well as musicians and dancers, played ; while the stage, strictly so called,
continued to be appropriated to the tragic and comic actors. This division of the
orchestra was then called Ihymele, or even orchestra, in the limited sense of the
word.
300 HISTORY OF THF
The chorus itself, in its transition from lyric to dramatic poetry, had
undergone a total change of form. As a dithyrambic chorus, it moved
in a ring around the altar which served as a centre, and had a com-
pletely independent character and action. As a dramatic chorus, it
was connected with the action of the stage, was interested in what was
passing there, and must therefore, of necessity, front the stage. Hence,
according to the old grammarians, the chorus of the drama was qua-
drangular, i. e., arranged so that the dancers, when standing in their
regular places in rows and groups (ariypi and £vya), formed right
angles In this form it passed through the wide side-entrances of the
orchestra (the TtapoZot) into the centre of it, where it arranged itself
between the thymele and the stage in straight lines. The number of
dancers in the tragic chorus was probably reduced from fifty, the
number of the choreutae in the dithyrambic chorus, in the following
manner. First, a quadrangular chorus, of forty-eight persons, was
formed ; and this was divided into four parts or sets which met toge-
ther. This hypothesis will explain many difficulties; for example, how
it is that, at the end of the Eumenides of iEschylus, two separate
choruses, the Furies and the festal train, come on the stage together.*
The chorus of /Eschylus accordingly consisted of twelve persons; at a
later period Sophocles increased them to fifteen, which was the regular
number in the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides, f
The places occupied by the choral dancers were all determined by
established usages, the main object of which was to afford the public
the most favourable view of the chorus, and to bring into the foreground
the handsomest and best dressed of the choreutae. The usual move-
ments of the tragic chorus were solemn and stately, as be-eemed the
dignified venerable persons, such as matrons and old men, who fre-
quently appeared in them. The tragic style of dancing, called Emme-
leia, is described as the most grave and solemn of the public dances.
§ 5. Although the chorus not only sang alone, when the actors had
quitted the stage, but sometimes sang alternately with the persons of
the drama, and sometimes entered into dialogue with them, yet it did
not, in general, stand on the same level with them, but on a raised
stage or platform, considerably higher than the orchestra. But as the
orchestra and the stage were not only contiguous, but joined, our in-
formation on this point is by no means so clear as might be wished.
To the eye of the spectator the relation in which the persons of the
drama stood to the chorus was determined by their appearance; the
* The same fact also throws a light on the number oi' the chorus of comedy,
twenty-four. This was half the tragic chorus, since comedies were not acted by
fours, but singly.
\ The accounts of the ancient grammarians respectingthe arrangements of the
chorus refer to the chorus of fifteen persons ; as their accounts resprcting the
arrangements of the stage refer to the three actors. The reason was, that the form
of the ./Esehyleaii tragedy had become obsolete.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 301
former, heroes of the mythical world, whose whole aspect hespoke some-
thing mightier and more sublime than ordinary humanity; the latter,
generally composed of men of the people, whose part it was to show the
impression made by the incidents of the drama on lower and feebler
minds ; and thus, as it were, interpret them to the audience, with
whom they owned a more kindred nature. The ancient stage was
remarkably long, but of little depth. It was but a small segment cut
from the circle of the orchestra; but it extended on either side so far
that its length was nearly double the diameter of the orchestra.* This
fonn of the stage is founded on the artistical taste of the ancients gene-
rally ; and again, influenced their dramatic representation in a remark-
able manner. As ancient sculpture delighted above all things in the
long lines of figures, which we see in the pediments and friezes, and
as even the painting of antiquity placed single figures in perfect outline
near each other, but clear and distinct, and rarely so closely grouped as
that one intercepted the view of another; so also the persons on the
stage, the heroes and their attendants (who were often numerous), stood
in long rows on this long and narrow stage. The persons who came
from a distance were never seen advancing from the back of the stage,
but from the side, whence they often had to walk a considerable dis-
tance before they reached the centre where the principal actors stood.
The oblong space which the stage formed was inclosed on three sides
by high walls, the hinder one of which alone was properly called the
Scene, the narrow walls on the right and left were styled Parascenia,
the stage itself was called in accurate language, not scene, but Pro-
scenium, because it was in front of the scene. Scene properly means
a tent or hut, and such was doubtless erected of wood by the earliest
beginners of dramatic performances, to mark the dwelling of the prin-
cipal person represented by the actor. Out of this he came forth into
the open spate, and into this he retired again.
And although this poor and small hut at length gave place to the
stately scene, enriched with architectural decorations, yet its purpose
and destination remained essentially the same. It was the dwelling of
the principal person or persons; the proscenium was the space in front
of it, and the continuation of this space was the orchestra. Thus the
scene might represent a camp with the tent of the hero, as in the Ajax
of Sophocles ; a wild region of wood and rock, with a cave for a
dwelling place, as in the Philoctetes; but its usual purport and deco-
• Those readers who wish for more precise information about architectural mea-
sures and proportions may consult the beautiful plan given by Donaldson, in the
supplemental volume to Stuart's Antiquities of Athens, London, 1830, p. 33. It
should, however, be observed, that the projecting sides of the proscenium, which
Donaldson has assumed with Hiit, are not supported by any ancient testimony, nor
can they be justified by any requirement of the dramatic representations of the
Greeks. The space required for these projections ought rather to be allotted to the
side entrances of the orchestra, the <xa.eoboi.
302 HISTORY OF THE
ration were the front of a chieftain's palace with its colonnades, roofs
and towers, together with all the accessory buildings which could be
erected on the stage, with more or less of finish and of adaptation to
the special exigencies of the tragedy. Sometimes also it exhibited a
temple, with the buildings and arrangements appertaining to a Grecian
sanctuary. But in every case it is the front alone of the palace or the
temple that is seen, not the interior.
In the life of antiquity, everything great and important, all the main
actions of family or political interest, passed in the open air and in the
view of men. Even social meetings took place rather in public halls,
in market-places and streets, than in rooms and chambers ; and the
habits and actions, which were confined to the interior of a house, were
never regarded as forming subjects for public observation. Accord-
ingly, it was necessary that the action of the drama should come
forth from the interior of the house ; and tragic poets were compelled
to comply strictly with this condition in the invention and plan of their
dramatic compositions. The heroic personages, when about to give
utterance to their thoughts and feelings, came forth into the court in
front of their houses. From the other side came the chorus out of the
city or district in which the principal persons dwelt ; they assembled,
as friends or neighbours might, to offer their counsel or their sym-
pathy to the principal actors on the stage, on some open space ; often
a market-place designed for popular meetings ; such as, in the monar-
chical times of Greece, was commonly attached to the prince's palace.
Far from shocking received notions, the performance of choral dances
in this place was quite in accordance with Greek usages. Anciently,
these market-places were specially designed for numerous popular
choruses ; they even themselves bore the name of chorus.* When the
stage and the whole theatre had been adapted for this kind of repre-
sentation, it was necessary that comedy also should conform to it ; even
in those productions which exclusively represented the incidents and
passions of private and domestic life. In the imitations of the later
Attic comedy which we owe to Plautus and Terence, the stage repre-
sents considerable portions of streets; the houses of the persons of the
drama are distinguishable, interspersed with public buildings and
temples; every thing is arranged by the poet with the utmost attention
to effect ; and generally to nature and probability, so that the actors, in
all their goings and comings, their entrances and exits, their meetings
in the streets and at their doors, may disclose just so much of their
sentiments and their projects as it is necessary or desirable for the
spectator to know.
§ 6. The massive and permanent walls of the stage had certain
openings which, although differently decorated for different pieces, were
* Ch. III. § G.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 303
never changed. Each of these entrances to the stage had its established
and permanent signification, and this enabled the spectator to apprehend
many things ai, the first glance, which he must have otherwise gradually
made out in the course of the piece ; since contrivances similar to our
play-bills were unknown to the ancients. On the other hand, the
audience came furnished with certain preliminary information concerning
what they were about to witness, by means of which the plot was far
more clear to them than it can now be by mere reading-. Of this kind
was the distinct meaning attached to the right and the left side. The
theatre at Athens was built on the south side of the Acropolis, in such
a manner that a person standing on the stage saw the greater part of
the city and the harbour on his left, and the country of Attica on his
right. Hence, a man who entered on the right by the parascenia, was
invariably understood to come from the country, or from afar; on the
left, from the city, or the neighbourhood. The two side-walls always
bore the same relation to each other in the arrangements, as to exterior
or interior. Of course, the lower side entrance which led into the
orchestra, stood in the same relation ; but of these, the right one was
little used, because the chorus generally consisted of inhabitants of the
place, or of the immediate neighbourhood. The main wall, however, or
the scene, properly so called, had three doors ; the middle, which was
called the royal door, represented the principal entrance to the palace,
the abode of the prince himself; that on the right was held to be a
passage leading without, especially to the apartments of the guests,
which in Greek houses were often in a detached building appropriated
to that purpose; that on the left, more towards the interior, leading to
a part of the house not obvious to the first approach ; such as a shrine,
a prison, the apartments of the women, &c.
§ 7. But the Greeks carried still further this association of certain
localities with certain incidents or appearances. The moment an actor
entered, they could decide upon his part and his relation to the whole
drama. And here we come to the point in which the Greek drama
seems the most fettered by inflexible rules, and forced into forms which
appear, to our feelings, stiff and unnatural. Grecian art, however, as
we have often had occasion to remark, in all its manifestations, loves
distinct and unvarying forms, which take possession of the mind with
all the force of habit, and immediately put it into a certain frame and
temper. If, on the one hand, these forms appear to cramp the
creative genius, to check the free course of the fancy; on the other,
works of art, which have a given measure, a prescribed form, to fill out,
acquire, when this form is animated by a corresponding spirit, a peculiar
stability which seems to raise them above the capricious and ephemeral
productions of the human mind, and to assimilate them to the eternal
304 HISTORY OF THE
works of nature, where the most rigorous conformity to laws is com-
bined with boundless variety and beauty.
In the dramatic poetry of Greece, indeed, the outward form to which
genius is forced to adapt itself, appears the more rigid, and, we may
say arbitrary, since, to the conditions imposed on the choice of thoughts,
expression and metre, are added rules, prescribed by the local and
personal character of the representation. With regard to the persons
of the drama, the ancients show that historical taste which consists in
a singular union of attachment to given forms, with aspiration after
further progress. The antique type is never unnecessarily rejected;
but is rendered susceptible of a greater display of creative power by
expansions which may be said to lie in its very nature.
We have seen how a single actor was detached from the chorus, and
how Thespis and Phrynichus contented themselves with this arrange-
ment, by causing him to represent in succession all the persons of the
drama, and either before, or with the chorus, to conduct the whole action
of the piece. iEschylus added the second actor, in order to obtain the
contrast of two acting persons on the stage, since the general character
of the chorus was that of a mere hearer or recipient ; and although ca-
pable of expressing its own wishes, hopes, and fears, it was not adapted
to independent action. According to this form, only two speaking
persons (mutes might be introduced in any number) could appear on
the stage at the same time : — they, however, might both enter again in
other characters, time only being allowed for change of dress. The
appearance of the same actor in different parts of the same play did not
strike the ancients as more extraordinary than his appearance in dif-
ferent parts in different plays ; since the persons of the actors were
effectually disguised by masks, and their skill enabled them to represent
various characters with perfect success. The dramatic art of those
times required extraordinary natural gifts; strength of body and of
voice, as well as a most careful education and training for the pro-
fession.
From the time of the great poets, and even later, in the age of
Philip and Alexander, when the interest and character of dramatic
performance rested entirely on the actors, the number of actors capable
of satisfying the taste and judgment of t!.e public was always very
small. Hence, it was an object to turn the talents of the few eminent
actors to the greatest possible account ; and to prevent that injury to
the general effect which the interposition of inferior actors, even in
subordinate parts, must ever produce ; and, in fact, so often nowadays
does produce. Even Sophocles did not venture beyond the introduction
of a third actor ; this appeared to accomplish all that was necessary to
the variety and mobility of action in tragedy, without sacrificing the
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 305
simplicity and clearness which, in the good ages of antiquity, were
always held to be the most essential qualities. ./Eschylus adopted this
third actor in the three connected plays, the Agamemnon, Choephorae,
and Eumenides ; which he seems to have brought out at Athens at the
end of his career. His other tragedies, which were performed earlier,
are all so constructed that they could be represented by two actors.*
All the plays of Sophocles and Euripides are adapted for three actors
only, excepting one, the CEdipus in Colonus, which could not be acted
without the introduction of a fourth. The rich and intricate composition
of this noble drama would have been impossible without this innovation. f
But even Sophocles himself does not appear to have dared to introduce
it on the stage. It is known that the CEdipus in Colonus was not acted
till after his death, when it w r as brought out by Sophocles the younger.
§ 8. But the ancients laid more stress upon the precise number and
the mutual relations of these three actors than might be inferred from
what has been said. They distinguished them by the technical names
of Protagonistes, Deuteragonistes, and Tritagonistes. These names are
used with different meanings. Sometimes the actors themselves are
designated by their parts ; as, for example, when Cleandrus is called the
protagonist ofiEschylus, anJ. Myniscus his deuteragonist; or when
Demosthenes, in his contest with /Eschines, says, that to represent
such a stern and cruel tyrant as Creon in the Antigone, is the peculiar
glory and privilege of the tritagonist; iEschines himself having
served under more distinguished actors as tritagonist. Sometimes the
persons entering the stage are distinguished by these three names : as
when Pollux the grammarian says, that the protagonist should always
enter from the middle door ; that the dwelling of the deuteragonist
should be on the right hand, and that of the third person of the drama
on the left. According to a passage in a modern Platonic philosopher,;}:
important to the history of the ancient drama, the poet does not create
the protagonist, deuteragonist, or tritagonist ; he only gives to each of
these actors his appropriate part.
This, and other expressions of the ancients have involved the subject
in many perplexing difficulties, which it would detain us too long to
examine in detail. Our purpose will be best accomplished by giving
such a summary explanation as will enable these distinctions to be
understood.
* The prologue of the Prometheus appears, indeed, to require three actors for
the parts of Prometheus, Ileprurstus, and Ciatos; but these might have been so
arranged, so as not to require a third actor.
f Unless we assume that the part of Theseus in this play was partly acted
by the person who represented Antigone, and partly by the person who represented
Ismene. It is, however, far more difficult for two actors to represent one part in
the same tone and spirit, than for one actor to represent several parts with the appro-
priate modifications.
+ Plotiu. Ennead. ii. L. ii. p. 26S. Basil, p. 484. Creuzer. Compare the note of
Creuzer, vol. iii. p. 153, ed. Oxon,
X
30G HISTORY OF THE
The tragedy of antiquity originated in the delineation of a suffering
or passion (wdSroc), and remained true to its first destination. Sometimes
it is outward suffering, danger, and injury ; sometimes, rather inward ;
a fierce struggle of the soul, a grievous burthen on the spirit; but it is
always one passion, in the largest sense of the word, which claims the
sympathy of the audience. The person, then, whose fate excites this
sympathy, whose outward or inward wars and conflicts are exhibited,
is the protagonist. In the four dramas which require only two actors,
the protagonist is easily distinguished : in the Prometheus, the chained
Titan himself; in the Persians, Atossa, torn with anxiety for the fate of
the army and the kingdom ; in the Seven against Thebes, Eteocles
driven by his father's curse to fratricide ; in the Suppliants, Danaus,
the fugitive, seeking a new home. The deuter agonist, in this form
of the drama, is not, in general, the author of the sufferings of the
protagonist. This is some external power, which, in these tragedies,
is not brought to view. His only function is to call forth the expres-
sions of the various emotions of the protagonist, sometimes by
friendly sympathy, sometimes by painful tidings: as for example, in
the Prometheus, Oceanus, lo, and Hermes, are all parts of the
deuteragoiiist. The protagonist may also appear in other parts ; but
the tragedian generally sought to concentrate all the force and ac-
tivity of the piece on one part. When a tritagonist is introduced, he
generally acts as instigator or cause of the sufferings of the protagonist ;
although himself the least pathetic or sympathetic person of the drama,
he is yet the occasion of situations by which pity and interest for the
principal person are powerfully excited. To the deuteragonist fall
the parts in which, though distinguished by a lofty ardour of feeling,
there is not the vehemence and depth appropriate to the protago-
nist ; feebler characters, with calmer blood and less daring aspiration
of mind, whom Sophocles is fond of attaching to his heroes as a sort of
foil, to bring out their full force. But even these sometimes display a
peculiar beauty and elevation of character. Thus the gradation of these
three kinds of parts depends on the degree in which the one part is
calculated to excite pity and anxiety, and to command, generally, the
sympathy of the audience. If we look over the titles of the plays of
the three great tragedians, we shall find that, when they are not
derived from the chorus, or the general subject of the piec-% they always
consist of the names of the persons to whom the chief interest attaches.
Antigone, Electra, (Edipus, the king and the exile, Ajax, Philoctetes,
Dejanira, Medea, Hecuba, Ion, Hippolytus, &c, are unquestionably all
protagonistJe parts*
* A more detailed illustration of this point, which would lead to investigations
into the structure of the several tragedies, is not consistent with the plan of the
piesent work. We will, however, state the distribution of the parts in several
tragedies,, which sejms to us the most probable. In the extant trilogy of j^schyhis,
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GItEECE. 307
It was the great endeavour of Greek art to exhibit the character and
rank of the individuals whom it grouped together, and to present to the
eye a symmetrical image, corresponding with the idea of the action which
was to he represented. The protagonist, as the person whose fate was
the centre around which all revolved, must therefore occupy the centre
of the stage; the deuteragonist and tritagonist approached him from
either side. Hence it was an invariable rule for the protagonist never
to leave the stage hy either of the side-doors. If, however, he came
from abroad, like Agamemnon and Orestes in iEschylus, he passed
through the middle door into the interior of the palace, which was his
habitation. With regard to the deuteragonist and tritagonist, many
difficulties must have arisen from the local meaning attached to the two
side doors ; hut, if space sufficed for such detailed explanations, we
might show, from numerous examples, how the tragic poets found
means to fulfil all these conditions.
§ 9. Changes of scene were very seldom necessary in ancient tragedy.
The Greek tragedies are so constructed that the speeches and actions,
of which they are mainly composed, might with perfect propriety pass
on one spot, and indeed ought generally to pass in the court in front
of the royal house. The actions to which no speech is attached, and
which do not serve to develope thoughts and feelings, (such as
Eteocles' combat with his brother; the murder of Agamemnon;
Antigone's performance of the obsequies of Polynices, &c), are
imagined to pass behind or without the scene, and are only related
on the stage. Hence the importance of the parts of messengers and
heralds in ancient tragedy. The poet was not influenced only by the
reason given by Horace,* viz., that bloody spectacles and incredible
events excite less horror and doubt when related, and ought therefore
not to be produced on the stage : there was also the far deeper general
reason, that it is never the outward act with which the interest of ancient
the problem must be to preserve the same part for the same actor through all the
three plays.
I Protag. Agamemnon, guard, herald.
I), liter ag. Cassandra, jEgisthus.
Trilag. Clytaemnestra.
{Protag. Orestes.
Deuterag. Electra, ^Egisthus, Exangelos.
Tritag. Clytaemnestra, female attendant.
j Protag. Orestes.
Eumenidea .< Deuterag. Apollo.
[Tritag. Pythias, Clytaeranestra, Athene.
For Sophocles, the Antigone and the CEdipus Tyranaus may serve as examples,
! Prolog. Antigone, l'i iurydicc, Exangelos.
Deuterag. Ismene, guard, Hcemon, messenger.
Tritag. Creon.
Protag. CEdipus.
Deuterag. Priest, Jocasla. servant. Exangelos.
Tntag. Cieou Tiresias, messenger.
* Art. Poet. 180. sq.
308 HISTORY OF THE
tragedy is most intimately bound up. The action which forms the basis
of every tragedy of those times is internal and spiritual; the reflections,
resolutions, feelings, the mental or moral phenomena, which can be
expressed in speech, are developed on the stage. For outward action,
which is generally mute, or, at all events, cannot be adequately repre-
sented by words, the epic form — narration — is the only appropriate
vehicle. Battles, single combats, murders, sacrifices, funerals, and the
like, whatever in mythology is accomplished by strength of hand, passes
behind the scenes; even when it might, without any considerable diffi-
culty, be performed in front of them. Exceptions, such as the chaining
of Prometheus, and the suicide of Ajax, are rather apparent than real,
and indeed serve to confirm the general rule ; since it is only on
account of the peculiar psychological state of Prometheus when bound,
and of Ajax at the time of his suicide, that the outward acts are brought
on the stage. Moreover, the costume of tragic actors was calculated
for impressive declamation, and not for action. The lengthened and
stuffed out figures of the tragic actors would have had an awkward, not
to say a ludicrous effect, in combat or other violent action.* Prom the
sublime to the ridiculous would here have been but one step, which
antique tragedy carefully avoided risking.
Thus it was leather from reasons inherent in its nature, than from
obedience to prescribed rules, that Greek tragedy observed, with few
exceptions, unity of plan ; and hence it required no arrangement for a
complete change of scenic decorations, which was first introduced in
the Roman theatre. f In Athens all the necessary changes were
effected by means of the Periactcc, erected in the corners of the stage.
These were machines of the form of a triangular prism, which turned
round rapidly and presented three different surfaces. On the side
which was supposed to represent foreign parts, it afforded at each
turn a different perspective view, while, on the home side, some single
near object alone was changed. For example, the transition from
the temple of Delphi to the temple of Pallas on the Acropolis of Athens,
in the Eumenides of yEschylus, was effected in this manner. No
greater change of scene than this takes place in any extant Greek
tragedy. Where different but neighbouring places are represented, the
great length of the stage sufficed to contain them all, especially as the
Greeks required no exact and elaborate imitation of reality: a slight
indication was sufficient to set in activity their quick and mobile ima-
ginations. In the Ajax of Sophocles, the half of the stage on the left
hand represents the Grecian camp; the tent of Ajax, which must be
in the centre, terminates the right wing of this camp ; on the right, is
* According to Lucian, Somnium sive Gallus, c. '26, it was ludicrous to see a
person fall with the cothurnus.
f The scena ductilis and versilis.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 309
seen a lonely forest with a distant view of the sea ; here Ajax enters
when he is about to destroy himself; so that he is visible to the au-
dience, but cannot for a long' time be seen by the Chorus, which is in
the side space of the orchestra.
§ 10. On the other hand, ancient tragedy was required to fulfil
another condition, which could only co-exist with such a conception of
the locality as has been just described. It is this : the proscenium
or stage represents a space in the open air: what passes here is in
public ; even in confidential discourse the presence of witnesses is always
to be feared. But it was occasionally necessary to place before the
spectator a scene which was confined to the interior of the house ; for
example, when the plan and the idea of the piece required what is
called a tragic situation, that is, a living picture, in which a whole
series of affecting images are crowded together. Scenes of this tre-
mendous power are: that in which Clyttemnestra with the bloody sword
stands over the bodies of Agamemnon and Cassandra, holding the gar-
ment in which she has entangled her unfortunate husband ; and, in
the succeeding tragedy of the same trilogy, that in which Orestes is seen
on precisely the same spot, where the same bathing robe now covers the
bodies of iEgisthus and Clytsemnestra. Or, in the tragedy of Sophocles,
Ajax, standing among the animals which he has slaughtered in his
frenzy, taking them for the princes of the Greek host, and now, sunk
in the deepest melancholy, contemplates the effects of his madness.
Jt is easy to perceive that it is not the acts themselves in the moment
of execution; but the circumstances, arising out of those acts when
accomplished, which occupied the reflections and the feelings of
the chorus and of the audience. To bring on the stage groups like
these, (in the choice and disposition of which we recognize the
plastic genius of the age that produced a Phidias,) and to bring to
view the interior of dwellings hidden behind the scenes, machines were
used, called Eccyclcma and Exostra (the one being rolled, the other
pushed forward). It were presumptuous to attempt to describe the
construction of these machines from the slight indications we could
gather from the grammarians ; but their working may be clearly per-
ceived in the tragedians themselves. The side doors of a palace or
tent are thrown open, and in the same moment an inner chamber with
its appropriate decorations is distinctly seen on the stage, where it
remains as a central point of the dramatic action, till the progress of
the drama requires its disappearance in the same manner. We may
fairly presume that these local representations were far from rude or
tasteless; that they were worthy of the feeling for beauty, and the fancy
of the age and nation which produced them; especially in the latter
years of iEschylus, and during the whole career of Sophocles, when
the mathematicians, Anaxagoras and Democritus, had begun to study
310 HISTORY OF THE
perspective with a view to the stage; while the scene-painting of
Agatharchus gave rise to a peculiar branch of that art,* which, by
means of light and shadow, produced more perfect imitations of real
bodies than had been heretofore known.
Machinery for raising figures from beneath the stage, or bearing
them through the air, for the imitation of thunder and lightning, &c.
arrived at sufficient perfection in the time of the three great tragedians
to accomplish its end. The tragedies of iEschylus, especially Prome-
theus, prove that he was not unjustly reproached with a great love for
fantastic appearances ; such as winged cars, and strange hippogryphs,
on which deities, like Oceanus and his daughters, were borne on the
stage.
§ 11. We believe that we have now brought before our readers the
principal features of Greek tragedy, such as it appeared to the spec-
tator when represented in the theatre. But it is equally necessary,
before we venture upon an estimate of the several tragedians, to offer
some remarks on the combination of the several parts or elements of a
Greek tragedy; since this also involves much that is not implied in
the general notion of a drama, and can only be elucidated by the
peculiar historical origin of the tragic art in Greece.
Ancient Grecian tragedy consists of a union of lyric poetry and
dramatic discourse, which may be analyzed in different ways. The
chorus may be distinguished from the actors, song from dialogue, the
lyrical element from the strictly dramatic. Rut the most convenient
distinction, in the first place, is that suggested by Aristotle, f between
the song of many voices and the song or speech of a single person. The
first belongs to the chorus only ; the second to the chorus or the actors.
The many-voiced songs of the chorus have a peculiar and determinate
signification for the whole tragedy. They were called stasimon when
they were sung by the chorus in its proper place, in the middle of the
orchestra, and parodos when sung by the chorus while advancing
through the side entrance of the orchestra, or otherwise moving towards
the place where it arranged itself in its usual order. The difference
between the parodos and the stasimon consists mainly in this, — that the
former more frequently begins with long series of anapaestic systems,
which were peculiarly adapted to a procession or march ; or a system
of this sort was introduced between the lyrical songs. As to the signi-
fication of these songs, the situation of the actors, and the action itself,
form the subjects of reflection, and the emotions which they excite in a
sympathizing and benevolent mind are expressed. The parodos chiefly
explains the entrance of the chorus and its sympathy in the business of
the drama, while the stasima develop this sympathy in the various forms
* Called ffxr,wy£xQla or trxixygeupi'oc. f Poet. 12.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 311
which the progress of the action causes it to assume. As the chorus,
generally, represented the ideal spectator, whose mode of viewing things
was to guide and control the impressions of the assembled people, so it
was the peculiar province of the stasimon, amidst the press and tumult of
the action, to maintain that composure of mind which the Greeks deemed
indispensable to the enjoyment of a work of art; and to divest the
action of the accidental and personal, in order to place in a clearer light
its inward signification and the thoughts which lay beneath the surface.
Stasima, therefore, are only introduced in pauses, when the action has
run a certain course ; the stage is often perfectly clear, or, if any persons
have remained on it, others come on who were not in connexion with
them before, in order that they may have time for the change of costume
and masks. In this manner these songs of the assembled chorus divide
the tragedy into certain parts, which may be compared to the acts of
modern plays, and from which the Greeks called the part before the
parodos the prologue, the parts between the parodos and the stasima,
episodta, the part after the last stasimon, exodus. The chorus appears
in this kind of songs in its appropriate character, and is true to its desti-
nation, viz., to express the sentiments of a pious, well-ordered mind in
beautiful and noble forms. Hence this part of ancient tragedy, both in
matter and form, has the greatest resemblance to the choral lyrics of
Stesichorus, Pindar, and Simonides. The metrical form consists of
strophes and antistrophes, which are connected in simple series, without
any artificial interweaving, as in the choral lyric poetry. Instead, how-
ever, of the same scheme of strophes and antistrophes being preserved
through a whole stasimon, it is changed with each pair. Nor are there
epodes after every pair of strophes ; but only at the close of the ode.*
This change of metre (which seems also to have been occasionally con-
nected with an alteration of the musical mode) was used to express a
change in the ideas and feelings ; and herein the dramatic lyric poetry
differs essentially from the Pindaric. For whereas the latter rests on
one fundamental thought and is essentially pervaded by one tone of
feeling, the dramatic lyric, containing allusions to past and to coming
events, and subject to the influence of various leanings to the several
interests which are opposed on the stage, undergoes changes which often
materially distinguish the beginning from the end. The rhythmical
treatment of the several parts, too, is generally less that artificial combi-
nation of various elements which we find in the works of the above-
mentioned masters of choral lyric poetry, than a working out of one
* The epodes, which are apparently in the middle of , in
./J^ch. A gam. 1-40 — o'J. Dindorf.) form the conclusion of the parodos. In the
instance just adverted to, this consists of nine anapaBstic systems, and a strophe,
ant .strophe, and epode in dactylic measures, and is immediately followed by the first
stasimon, which contains five strophes and antistrophes in trochaic and lo^arcdic
metres.
312 HISTORY OF THE
theme, often with few variations. It is as if we heard the passionate
song rushing in a mighty torrent right onwards, while the stream of
Pindar's verse winds its mazy way through all the deep and delicate
intricacies of thought. Without venturing upon the extensive and diffi-
cult subject of the difference between the rhythmical structure of lyric
and tragic choral verse, we may remark that, as the tragedians used not
only the Pindaric measures, but also those of the older Ionic and iEolic
lyric poets, they observe very different rules in the combination of series
and verses. To make this clear, it would be necessary to go into all
the niceties of the theory of the Greek metres.
§ 12. The pauses which the choral songs produced naturally divided
tragedy into the parts already mentioned, prologue, episodia, and
exodus. The number, length, and arrangement of these parts admit
of an astonishing variety. No numerical rule, like that prescribed by
Horace,* here confines the natural development of the dramatic plan.
The number of choral songs was determined by the number of stages
in the action calculated to call forth reflections on the human affections,
or the laws of fate which governed the events. These again depend on
the plot, and on the number of persons necessary to bring it about.
Sophocles composed some intricate tragedies, with many stages of the
action and many characters, like the Antigone, which is divided into
seven acts ; and some simple, in which the action passes through few
but carefully worked-out stages, like the Philoctetes, which contains
only one stasimon, and therefore consists of three acts, inclusive of the
prologue. Long portions of a tragedy may run on without any such
pause, and form an act. In the Agamemnon of .ZEschvlus, the choral
song which precedes the predictions of Cassandra is the last stasimon. f
These prophecies coincide so closely with their fulfilment by the death
of Agamemnon, and the emotions which they excite are so little tranquil-
lizing - , that there is no opportunity for another stasimon. In Sophocles'
CEdipus at Colonus, the first general choral song (that is to say, the
pavodos, in the meaning above given to it) occurs after the scene in
which Theseus promises to QEdipus shelter and protection in Attica. j
Hitherto the chorus, vacillating between horror of the accursed and
pity for his woes; first fearing much, then hoping greatly from him ;
is in a state of restless agitation, and can by no means attain to the
serenity and composure which are necessary to enable it to discern the
hand of an overruling power.
§ 13. As to the combination of the episodia or acts, the lyric may
* Art. Poet. 299.
Neve minor, neu sit quinto productior acta
Fabula, quae posci vult et spectata reponi.
| V. 975—1032. Dindorf.
t V. 668 — 719. Dindorf. This ode is called the ^anoho; of the CEdipus Coloneuu
in Plutarch An Seni sit ger. Resp. 3.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 313
here be far more intimately blended with the dramatic than in the
choral songs of which we have hitherto treated. Wherever the discourse
does not express subjects of the intellect, but feelings, or impulses of lively
emotion, it becomes lyrical, and finds utterance in song. Such songs,
which do not stand between the steps or pauses of the action, but enter
into the action itself (inasmuch as they determine the will of the actors),
may belong to the persons of the drama, to the chorus, or to both;
but in no case can they be given to a full chorus. The third kind of
these songs is, in its origin, the most remarkable and important, and
unques'ionably had place in the early lyrical tragedy. The name
of this song, common to the actors and the chorus, is commos, which
properly means plancius, " the wailing for the dead." The wail over
the dead is therefore the primary form from which this species of
odes took its rise. The liveliest sympathy with suffering constantly
remains the main ingredient of the commos; although the en-
deavour to incite to an action, or to bring a resolution to maturity, may
be connected with it. The commos often occupies a considerable pait
of a tragedy, especially those of iEschylus : as for instance, in the Per-
sians * and the Choephorai.t Such a picture of grief and suffering,
worked out in detail, was an essential part of the early tragedies. In a
commos, moreover, the long systems of artfully interwoven strophes and
antistrophes had an appropriate place; since in representation they
derived a distinctness and effect from the corresponding movements of
the persons of the drama and of the chorus, which is necessarily lost to
us in the mere perusal. We find a variety of the commos in scenes
where the one party appears in lyrical excitement, while the other
enounces its thoughts in ordinary language ; whence a contrast arises
which produces deeply affecting scenes even in iEschylus, as in the
Agamemnon j and the Seven against Thebes. § But the chorus itself,
when agitated by violent and conflicting emotions, may carry on a
lyrical dialogue; and hence arose a peculiar kind of choral poetry, in
which the various voices are easily recognized by the broken phrases
now repeating, now disputing, what has preceded. Lung lyric dialogues
of this sort, in which all or many voices of the chorus are distinguished,
are to be found in .Eschylus, and have been noticed by the ancient com-
mentators. || Succeeding tragedians appear to have employed these choral
* yEsch. Pers. 907 — 1076. The extire exodus is a cemmos.
f Mich, t'hoeph. 306 — 178.
+ yEsch. Auam. 1069 — 1177, where the lyrical excitement gradually pusses fn m
Cassandra to the chorus.
§ j^isch. Sept. cont. Theh. 369 — 70S, through nearly the whole episodion. Com p.
Suppl. 346—437.
|| See Schol. j^sch. Eum. 139, and Theb. 94. Instances are furnished by Eum.
140—77, 254—75, 777—92, 836-46. Theb. 77-181. Suppl. 1019—74. The
editions frequently denote tl.ese single voices by hemichoria; but the division of the
chorus into two equal parts, called iix°Z' a in Pollux, only occurred in certain rare-
circumstances, as in /Esch. Theb. 1066. Soph. Aj. 866.
314 HISTORY OF THE
songs exclusively in connexion with commi, and bring forward only a
few single voices out of the whole chorus* When the chorus enters
the orchestra, not with a song of many voices, sung in regular rows,
hut in broken ranks, with a song executed in different parts, the choral
ode consists of two portions ; first, one resembling a commos, which
accompanies this irregular entrance ; and, secondly, one like a stasimon,
which the chorus does not execute till it has fallen into its regular
order. Examples are to be found in the Eumenides of iEschylus and
the CEdipus Coloneus of Sophocles.t The tragedians have also inter-
spersed separate smaller choral songs, which the ancients expressly dis-
tinguish from the stasima,J and which are properly designated by the
word Hyporchemes ; § songs which depict an enthusiastic state of feel-
ing, and were united with expressive animated dances, of a kind very
different from the ordinary grave Emmeleia. They are frequently
used by Sophocles in suitable places, to mark a strong but transitory
sentiment.H On the other hand, lyrical parts were sometimes allotted
to the persons of the drama : these were in general called ano aKrjyiJQ,
and were either distributed into dialogues or delivered by single per-
formers. Long airs of this sort, called Monodies, in which one person,
generally the protagonist of the drama, abandons himself, without
restraint, to his emotions, form a principal feature in the tragedies
of Euripides. 1 ^ As the regular return of fixed musical modes and
rhythms was not reconcileable with the free utterance and almost uncon-
trollable current of such passionate outpourings, the antistrophe gra-
dually disappeared, and the almost infinitely irregular rhythmical struc-
tures (called cnroXeXvuh'a), in the style of the later dithyrambics, came
into use. The artificial system of regular forms, to which Greek art
(and more particularly that of the earlier periods) completely subjected
the expression of feeling and passion, was here completely swept away
by the torrent of human affections and desires, and a kind of natural
freedom was established.
As to what regards the detail of rhythmical forms, it is sufficient for
* As in Soph. (Ed. Col. 117, sqq. Eurip. Ion. 184, sqq.
■f In the Eumenides of iEschylus, the expression xooov a^cafii.iv,v. 307, denotes this
regular disposition of the chorus.
X Schol. Soph. Trach. 205. Similar odes in Aj. 693. Phil. 391. 827.
§ "Which occurs in Tzetzes, ss-sji r^uyturi; Kotiffiuis, in Cramer Anecd. Vol. iii.
p. 346.
|| The hyporchemes, however, can scarcely he distinguished from the songs resem-
bling the commos, since in the latter the entire chorus could hardly have joined in
the song and dance. In the commatic odes in the Seven against Thebes of
iEschylus, especially in the first, v. 78 — 181, a dancer named Tekstes (probably as
leader of the chorus) represented, by means of mimic dances, the scenes of war
described in the poetry, Atheu. 1. p. 22. A.
^[ Aristophanes says of him, that he unr^iQiv (thv rgoi.yo?b'ia.v) ^ovuhlais, V^n^mo^utToi.
piyw; ; Cephisophon being his chief actor. Ran. 944. cf. 874.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 315
our purpose to remark, that all the earlier lyrical measures might be
used for the songs of a single person of the chorus or the stage, as well
as for the stasima ; but that, generally, grave and solemn forms were
applicable only to the songs of the whole chorus; and that lighter
and more sprightly measures, more suited to the expression of
emotion and affection, prevailed in the monodies. Hence the
rhythms of the Doric mode, known from Pindar, are found only in the
stasima ; not in commi and songs airo (TKrjvfjc, which afford no place,
where this mode could sustain its peculiar character.* On the other
hand, dochmiaf are admirably fitted, by their rapid movement and
the apparent antipathy of their elements, to depict the most violent
excitement of the human mind ; while the great variety of form which
may be developed from them, lends itself equally to the expression of
stormy passion and of deep melancholy. Tragedy has no form more
peculiarly her own, nor more characteristic of her entire being and
essence. A fixed difference in the metrical forms of the commos and
the d-7ro owjvjjfc is not perceptible ; we only know from Aristotle, that
certain modes were peculiar to certain persons of the drama, in conse-
quence of the peculiar energy or pathos of the character, which ap-
peared suited to the acting or suffering heroes or heroines of the drama,
but not to the merely sympathizing chorus. J
§ 14. All the odes we have hitherto described are properly of a
musical nature, called mele by the ancients ; they were sung to an accom-
paniment of instruments, among which sometimes the cithara and lyre,
sometimes the flute predominated. Other pieces belong to that middle
kind, between song and speech, of which we have spoken in treating of
the rhapsodic recitation of the epos, the elegy, and the iambus. § The
anapaestic systems, which were chanted sometimes by the chorus, some-
times by the actors, but properly as an accompaniment to a marching
movement, either of entrance or exit, escort or salutation, recall the
Spartan marching songs. || We can hardly imagine them as set to
regular melodies, nor yet as delivered in common speech. In the early
tragedy they are allotted, in long systems, as a portion of the parodos,
to the chorus when entering in rank and file. Hexameters were some-
times recited by the actors in announcing important tidings, or uttering
serious reflections; where the peculiar dignity and gravity of this
* Plutarch de ivmsica 17. indeed, says that even r^uytxa) o'ixtoi, i. e. commoi, were
originally set in tl>e Doric mode ; but this must refer to the tragedians before
vKschylus.
+ The main form is o_^_/o_^ ; an antispastic composition, in which the arsis of
the iambic and that of the trochaic part coincided.
{ Aristot. Probl. xix. -1 .
§ Ch. 4. § 3. ch. 10. § 2.
|| Ch. 14. § 2.
316 HISTORY OF THE
majestic measure produced great effect.* The usual trochaic verses
which were allied to dialogue admitted of a higher-toned recitation,
and especially of a more lively gesticulation, like that used in dancing;
as we have already had occasion to remark.
§ 15. We now come to the Epeisodia, where the predominant cha-
racter is not, as in the parts we have hitherto considered, the feeling,
but the intellect, which, by directing the will, seeks to render external
things subject to itself, and the opinions of others conformable to its
own. This was originally the least important element. The variety
of forms of discourse which tragedy exhibits grew by degrees out
of mere narration. Here also the chorus forms no contrast to the
persons of the drama. It is itself, as it were, an actor. The dialogues
which it holds with the. persons on the stage are, however, necessarily
carried on, except in a few cases, f not by all its members, but by i!s
leader. Rare examples, and those only in .ZEschylus, are to be found,
in which the members of the chorus converse among themselves ; as in
the Agamemnon, where the twelve choreutse deliver their thoughts as
twelve actors might do;^ others, in which they express their opinions
individually, in the form of dialogue with a person on the stage. §
The arrangement of the dialogue is remarkable for that studious
attention to regularity and symmetry which distinguishes Greek art.
The opinions and desires which come into conflict are, as it were,
poised in a balance throughout the whole dialogue; till at length some
weightier reason or decision is thrown into one of the scales. Hence
the frequent scenes so artfully contrived in which verse answers to
verse, like stroke to stroke ; || and again, others in which two, and
sometimes more, verses are opposed to each other in the same manner.
Even whole scenes, consisting of dialogue and lyrical parts, are some-
times thus symmetrically contrasted, like strophes and antistrophes.^
The metre generally used in this portion of ancient tragedy was, as
we have already remarked, in early times the Trochaic tetrameter,
which, in the extant tragedies, is found only in dialogues full of lively
emotion, and in many does not occur at all. The Persians of JEs-
chylus, — probably the earliest tragedy we possess, — contains the greatest
number of trochaic passages. On the other hand, the Iambic trimeter,
which Archilochus had fashioned into a weapon of scorn and ridicule,
* See Soph. Phil. 839. Eurip.Phaethon, fragm. e cod. Paris, v. 65. (fragm. 2. ed.
Dindurf.)
f As ^Escll. Pers. 154. %ptcuv aurhv Truvra; y.iSoiiri 'X^oira.viior.t.
\ /Esch. Agam. 1346 — 71. The three preceding trochaic verses, by which the
consultation is introduced, are spoken by the three first persons of the chorus alone.
§ tEscIi. Agam. 1047—1113.
|| These single verses were called ffri%o/u,veitz.
*}[ As in the Electra of Sophocles, v. 1398 — 1421, and v. "422 — 41, correspond.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 317
was converted, by judicious alterations in the treatment, feaving its
fundamental character unchanged, into the best metrical form for a
vigorous, animated, and yet serious conversation. But in the works of
iEschylus it maintained a greater elevaiion above ordinary prose than
in those of his predecessors; not only from the stately sound of the
reiterated long syllables, but also from the regular accordance of the
pauses in the sense with the ends of verses, by which the several verses
stand out distinct. The later tragedians not only made the construc-
tion of the verses more varied, light, and voluble, but also divided and
connected them more frequently according to the endings and begin-
nings of sentences; whereby the dialogue acquired an expression of
freer and more natural movement.
After having thus investigated and analyzed in detail the forms in
which the tragic poet had to embody the creations of his genius, we
should naturally proceed to investigate the essence of a Greek tragedy,
following the track indicated by the celebrated definition of Aristotle,
" Tragedy is the imitation of some action that is serious, entire, and of
a proper magnitude; effecting through pity and terror the refinement
of these and similar affections of the soul.'*
But this cannot be done till we have examined more closely the plan
and contents of separate tragedies of TEschylus and Sophocles. We
shall therefore best accomplish our aim by proceeding to consider the
peculiar character of JEschylus as presented to us by his life and
works.
CHAPTER XXIII.
§ 1. Life of jEschylus. § 2 Number of his tragedies, and their distribution into
trilogies. § 3. Outline of his tragedies ; the Persians. § 4. The Phineus and
the Glaucus Pontius, y 5. Tin; j33tnaean women. § 6. The Seven against
Thebes. § 7. The Eleusinians. ^ 8. The Suppliants ; the Egyptians. § 9 The
Prometheus bound. § 10. The Prometheus unbound. § 11. The Agamemnon.
§ 12. The Choephoroe. § 13. The Eumenides. and the Proteus. § 1-4. General
characteristics of the poetry of yEschylus. § 15. His latter years and death.
§ 1. iEscuYLUS, the son of Euphorion, an Athenian, from the hamlet of
Eleusis, was, according to the most authentic record, born in Olymp.
C3. 4. B.C. 5:25. t He was therefore thirty-five years old at the time of
the battle of Marathon, and forty-five years old at the time of the
battle of Salamis. Accordingly, he was among the Greeks who were
contemporary, in the fullest sense of the word, with these great events,
* Aristot. Poet. G. f/.'ifj.r t ffi; -xou\%u; (rKovbu'iai xa) rtXsice;, piyifa; Ip^eirns .
5/' Ixiou xa.) <p'c(hi>u moa'iiovaa riiv tojv toioutuv vufafiuruv xaGa^iriv.
f The celebrated chronological inscription of the island of Paros states the year
of his death and his age, whence the year of his birth can be determined.
318 HISTORY OK THE
and who had felt them with all the emotions of a patriotic spirit. His
epitaph speaks only of his fame in the battle of Marathon, not of his
glories in poetic contests.* /Eschylus belonged completely to the race
of the warriors of Marathon, in the sense which this appellation bore in
the time of Aristophanes ; those patriotic and heroic Athenians, of the
ancient stamp, from whose manly and honourable character sprang- all
the glory and greatness which were so rapidly developed in Athens
after the Persian war.
JEschylus, like almost all the great masters of poetry in ancient
Greece, was a poet by profession ; he had chosen the exercise of the
tragic art as the business of his life. This exercise of art was
combined with the training of choruses for religious solemnities. The
tragic, like the comic, poets were essentially chorus teachers. When
^Eschylus desired to represent a tragic poem, he was obliged to repair,
at the proper time, to the Archon, who presided over the festivals of
Bacchus,! and obtain a chorus from him. If this public functionary
had the requisite confidence in the poet, he granted him the chorus;
that is to say, he assigned him one of the choruses which were raised,
maintained, and fitted out by the wealthy and ambitious citizens, as
choregi, in the name of the tribes or Phyla? of the people. The prin-
cipal business of /Eschylus then was to practise this chorus in all the
dances and songs which were to be performed in his tragedy ; and it
is stated that /Eschylus employed no assistant for this purpose, but
arranged and conducted the whole himself.
Thus far the tragic was upon the same footing as the lyric, especially
the dithyrambic, poet, since the latter received his dithyrambic chorus
in the same manner, and was likewise required to instruct it. The
tragic poet, however, also required actors, who were paid, not by the
choregus, but by the state, and who were assigned by lot to the poet, in
case he was not already provided. For some poets had actors, who
were attached to them, and who were peculiarly practised in their
pieces ; thus Cleandrus and Myniscus acted for iEschylus. The prac-
tising or rehearsal of the piece was always considered the most im-
portant, because the public and official part of the business. Whoever
thus brought out upon the stage a piece which had not been performed
before, obtained the rewards offered by the state for it, or the prize, if
the play was successful. The poet, who merely composed it in the
* Cynegeirus, the enthusiastic fighter of Marathon, is called the brother of
./Eschylus: it is certain that his father was named Euphorion, Herod. VI. 114.
with Valckenaer's note. On the other hand, Ameinias, who began the battle of
Salamis, cannot well have been a brother of /Eschylus, since he belonged to the
deme of Pallene, while Eschylus belonged to the deme of Eleusis.
t This was for the great Dionysia, the first Archon, i a^x,m nar s£«£'/'v ; for
the Lenea, the second, the basileus.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 319
solitude of his study, could lay no claim to the rewards due for its
public exhibition.
§ 2. These statements show that the exercise of the tragic art was
the sole occupation of a man's life, and (from the great fertility of the
ancient poets) absorbed every faculty of his mind. There were
extant in antiquity seventy dramas of yEschylus ; and among these the
satyric dramas do not appear to be included.* All these plays fall in
the period between Olymp. 70. 1. b. c. 500, and Olymp. 81. 1. b. c.
456. In the former of these years, iEschylus, then in his twenty-fifth
year, first strove with Pratinas for the prize of tragedy, (upon which
occasion the ancient scaffolding is said to have given way,) and in the
latter year the poet died in Sicily. Accordingly he produced seventy
tragedies in a period of forty-four years. That the excellence of these
works was generally recognized is proved by the fact of iEschylus
having obtained the prize for tragedy thirteen times, t For, since at
every contest he produced three tragedies, it follows that more than
half his works were preferred to those of his competitors, among whom
there were such eminent poets as Phrynichus, Chcerilus, Pratinas, and
Sophocles; J the latter of whom had, at his first representation, in
Olymp. 77. 4. B.C. 493, obtained the prize from iEschylus.
It has been already stated that iEschylus composed three tragedies
for every tragic contest in which he appeared as a competitor ; and to
these, as was also remarked, a satyric drama was annexed. In making
this combination, /Eschylus followed a custom which had probably
grown up before his time, and which was retained as long as tragedy
continued to flourish in Athens. Hut /Eschylus differed from his
successors in this, that his three tragedies formed a whole, connected
in subject and plan ; while Sophocles began to oppose three separate
tragedies to an equal number produced by his rivals. § We should be
at a loss to understand by what means the three pieces composing the
trilogy were formed into a connected series, without depriving each
piece of its individual character, if we were not so fortunate as to
* In the much contested passage at the end ofthe Vila Mschyli, should probably
be written: itra/We fya/Accra. ifiofAYiKovrcc xai Wl toutoi; au.rv^iy.u. Kf/.tp'ifiiiXa t<\,t'..
' He composed 70 dramas, and also satyric dramas ; five are ascribed to him on
doubtful authority.' The extant titles of dramas of yEschylus are, including the
satyric dramas, about 38.
-f- According to the life. First in Olymp. 73, 4. according to the Parian marble.
J The calculation is indeed rendered s mewhat uncertain by the fact that Eupho-
rion, the son of yEsehylus, gained the prize four times after his father's death, with
dramas which had been bequeathed to him by his father, and which had not been
before represented: Suidas in Kipo^uv. Accordingly. 12 ofthe 70 tragedies pro-
bably (all after Olymp. 81. 1. The four prizes ought not. however, to be deducted
from the 13 gained by /Eschylus. since Euphorion was publicly proclaimed victor,
although it was well known that the tragedies were composed by /Eschylus.
§ This is the meaning of the words, fyayM t^os \aftn aywl&ttui, a,XXh fib
rpi^oyiav. Suidas in 2<xpoxA.jjj.
32(i HISTORY OF THE
possess a trilogy of iEschylus, in bis Agamemnon, Choep horse, and
Eumenides. Tlie best illustration of the nature of a trilogy will there-
fore be a snort analysis of these dramas, and accordingly we proceed (o
give an account of his extant works.
§ 3. Of the early part of the career of /Esch)lus we do not possess a
single work. All his extant dramas are of a later date than the battle
of Salamis. Probably his early works contained little to attract the
taste of the later Greeks.
The earliest of the extant works of /Eschylus is probably the Per-
sians, which was performed in Olymp. 76. 4. b. c. 472 ; a piece unique
in its kind, which appears, at a first glance, more like a lament over
the misfortunes of the Persians than a tragic drama. But we are led
to modify this opinion, on considering the connexion of the parts of the
trilogy, which is apparent in the drama itself.
We will give an outline of the plan of the Persians of /Eschylus.
The chorus (consisting of the most distinguished men of the Persian
empire, into whose hands Xerxes, at his departure, had committed the
government of the country) proclaim in their opening song the
numbers and power of the Persian army; but, at the same time,
express a fear of its destruction ; fc>r " what mortal man may elude the
insidious deceit of the gods?" The first stasimon, which immediately
follows the opening choral song, describes, in a more agitated manner,
the grief of the country in case the army should not return. The
chorus is preparing for a deliberation, when Atossa appears, the mother
of Xerxes, and widow of Darius; she relates an ominous dream which
has filled her with anxious forebodings. The chorus advise her to
implore the gods to avert the impending evil, and especially to pro-
pitiate the spirit of Darius by libations, and to pray for blessing and
protection. To her questions concerning- Athens and Greece they
answer with characteristic descriptions of the distinctions of the dif-
ferent nations; when a messenger from Greece arrives, and, after the
first announcements of mishap and laments of the chorus, he pre-
sents a magnificent picture of the battle of Salamis, with its terrific
consequences for the Persian army. Atossa resolves, though every-
thing is lost, to follow the advice of the chorus, in case any benefit
may be obtained from it. In the second stasimon the chorus
dwell upon the desolation of Asia, to which is added a fear that
the subject nations will no longer endure their servitude. In the
second episodion the libations for the dead change into an evoca-
tion of the spirit of Darius. The chorus, during the libations of
Atossa, call upon Darius, in songs resembling a commos, full of
warmth and feeling, as the wise and happy ruler, the good father of
his people, who now alone can help them, to appear on the summit
of the tomb. Darius appears, and learns from Atossa (for fear and
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 321
respect tie the tongue of the chorus) the destruction of the king-
dom. He immediately recognizes in the event the " too speedy
fulfilment of oracles," which might have been long delayed, had not
the arrogance of Xerxes hastened their accomplishment. " But when
any man, of his own accord, hurries on to his ruin, the deity seconds
his efforts." He regards the crossing of the Hellespont as an enter-
prise contrary to the will of the gods, and as the main cause of their
wrath ; and, on the authority of oracles known to him, which are now
to be completely fulfilled, especially on account of the violation of the
Greek temples, he announces that the remains of the invading Persian
army will be destroyed at the battle of Plataea. The annihilation of
its power in Europe is a warning given by Zeus to the Persians, that
they should be satisfied with their possessions in Asia. The third
stasimon, which concludes this act, describes the power which Darius
had gained without himself invading Greece or crossing the Halys;
contrasted with the misfortunes sent by the gods upon Persia for
infringing these principles. In the third act Xerxes himself appears as
a fugitive, in torn and ragged kingly garments, and the whole concludes
with a long commos, or orchestic and musical representation of the
despair of Xerxes, in which the chorus takes a part.
§ 4. It appears from this outline, that the evocation and appearance
of Darius, and not the description of the victory, form the main subject
of this drama. The arrogance and folly of Xerxes have brought about
the accomplishment of the ancient oracles, and caused the fate which
was hanging over Asia and Greece to be fulfilled in the destruction of
the Persian power. The oracles alluded to in general terms by Darius
are known to us from Herodotus. They were predictions attributed
to Bacis, Museeus, and others, and they had been made known, though
in a garbled form, by Onomacritus, the companion of the Pisistratids
at the Persian court.* They contained allusions to the bridging of
the Hellespont, the destruction of the Grecian temples, and the invasion
of Greece by a barbarian army. They referred, indeed, in part, to
mythical events, but they were then (as has been often the case with
other predictions) applied to the events of the time.f Now we know
from a didascalia that the Persians was, at its representation, preceded
by a piece entitled the Phineus. It is sufficient to observe that Phineus,
according to the mycologists, received the Argonauts on their voyage
to Colchis, and, at the same time, foretold to them the adventures which
were yet to befal them.
We have shown in a former chapter* that the notion of an ancient
conflict between Asia and Europe, leading, by successive stages, to
* See ch. XVI. §5. t Herod. VI. 6. IX. -t'2, 43
J Ch. XIX. £ \.
V
3:22 history op the
events constantly increasing in magnitude, was one of the prevailing-
ideas of that time. It is probable that -ZEschylus took this idea as the
basis of the prophecies of Phineus, and that he represented the expe-
dition of the Argonauts as a type of the greater conflicts between Asia
and Europe which succeeded it. We will not follow out the mythical
combinations which the poet might have employed, inasmuch as what
we have said is sufficient to explain the connexion and subject of the
entire trilogy.
The same purpose is likewise perceptible in the third piece, the
Glaucus- Pontius* The extant fragments show that this marine
demigod (of whose wanderings and appearances on various coasts
strange tales were told in Greece) described in this tragedy a voyage
which he had made from Anthedon through the Euhcean and iEgean
seas to Italy and Sicily. In this narrative a prominent place was filled
by Himera, the city in which the power of the Sicilian Greeks had
crushed the attempts of the Carthaginian invaders, at the time of the
battle of Salamis. In this manner iEschylus had an opportunity of
bringing this event (which was considered as the second great exploit
by which Greece was saved from the yoke of the barbarians) into close
connexion with the battle of Platsea ; since the scene of the drama was
Anthedon in Bceotia, where Glaucus was supposed to have lived as a
fisherman. It may likewise be conjectured that in the tragedy oi
Phineus, the Phoenicians, as well as the Persians, may have been
introduced into the predictions respecting the conflicts between Asia
and Greece. +
§ 5. Accordingly, in this trilogy, .ZEschylus shows himself a friend
of the Sicilian Greeks, as well as of his countrymen at Athens. His
connexion with the princes and republics of Sicily must be here con-
sidered, since it exercised some influence upon his poetry. The later
grammarians (who have filled the history of literature with numerous
stories founded upon mere conjecture) have assigned the most various
* The argument of the Persians mentions the TXa.Z»o; Uorvuui. But as the two
plays of iEschylus, the Glaucus Pontius and Glaucus Potnieus are confounded in
other passages, we may safely adopt the conjecture of Welcker, that the Glaucus
Pontius is the play meant in the argument just cited.
f [The explanation given in § 4 of the trilogy referred to is exceedingly doubtful.
The main subject of the Persians is evidently the discomfiture of the invading Per-
sians by the Greeks. The evocation of Darius is merely a device to introduce the
battle of Plataea, which consummated their defeat, as well as the battle of Salamis.
The notion that the Phineus, Persians, and Glaucus formed a trilogy in which the
subjects of the three pieces were connected, is highly improbable ; and the con-
jecture that the third piece was the Glaucus Pontius, and not the Potnieus, as the
didascalia tells us, is gratuitous. It cannot be doubted that many of the plays of
./Eschylus were written in connected trilogies ; but it is impossible to prove that they
alt were, and that the introduction of disconnected pieces was an innovation of
Sophocles, as is asserted below, chap. XXIV. § 4. p. 341. The very trilogy in ques-
tion will be, to many persons, a sufficient proof of the contrary. — Editor.}
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 323
motives for the residence of TEschylus in Sicily, which was an ascer-
tained fact, by enumerating all the circumstances in his life at Athens,
which could have induced him to become a voluntary exile. Some
accounts of a different character have, however, been preserved, on
which we may safely rely.* iEschylus was in Sicily with Hiero, just
after this ruler of Syracuse had built the town of iEtna, at the foot of
the mountain, and in the place of the ancient Catana. At this time
he composed his tragedy of the " Women of iEtna," in which he
announced the prosperity of the new colony. The subject of it, as its
name, borrowed from the chorus, betokens, must have been taken
from the events of the day. At the same time he reproduced the
Persians at the court of Hiero; but whether with alterations, or as
it had been acted at Athens, was a matter of controversy among the
ancient scholars. Hence it appears that yEschylus, soon after the
appearance of the Persians, went to Sicily, about the year 471 B.C.,
four years after the time when iEtna was founded, and when it was
not quite finished. Hiero died four years afterwards, in 467 b. c.
(Olymp. 78. 2.) ; but iEschylus must have left Sicily before this event,
as in the beginning of the year 468 b. c. (Olymp. 77. 4.) we find him
again at Athens, and engaged in a poetical contest with Sophocles.
According to the ancients, his acquaintance with the Pythagorean
philosophy and his use of certain rare Doric expressions then used in
Sicily, may be traced to his residence in that island.
§ 6. The tragedy of the Seven against Thebes falls in the next time.
It is known to have been acted after the Persians, and before the death
of Aristides (which occurred about 462 b. c.)t In this drama the
ancients peculiarly admired the warlike spirit exhibited by the poet ;
and, in fact, a fire burns throughout it which could only have been
kindled in a brave and heroic breast. Eteocles appears as a wise
and resolute general and hero, as well in the manner in which he
recommends tranquillity to the women of the chorus, as in the answers
which he makes to the tidings of the messengers, and in his opposing
to each of the seven haughty leaders of the hostile army (who come like
giants to storm the walls of Thebes) a brave Theban hero; until at
length Polynices, his own brother, is named, when he declares his reso-
lution to go out himself to meet him. The determination of Polynices
to reserve himself for the combat with his brother creates an anxious
interest in an attentive hearer; and his announcement of this resolu-
tion is the pivot upon which the whole piece turns. Nothing can be
more striking than the gloomy resoluteness with which Eteocles recog-
* Eratosth. ap. Schol. Aristoph. Ran. 1055 (1060), and the VHa ASschy/i, with
the additam. e cud. Gue/ferbytano.
f See Clinton F. H. ad ann. 472. Aristophanes Ran. 1026. appears to consider
the Persian* as posterior to the' Seven against Thebes.
Y 2
324 HISTORY OF THE
nizes the operation of the curse pronounced by (Edipus against his two
sons, and yet proceeds to its fulfilment. The stasimon of the chorus
which follows plainly recognizes the wrath and curse of (Edipus as the
cause of all the calamities which threaten the Thebans. This dark side
of the destiny of Thebes had not been revealed in the previous part of
the drama, although Eteocles had once before declared his fear of the
woes which this curse might bring upon Thebes (v. 70). Soon after-
wards arrives the account of the preservation of the city, but with the
reciprocal slaughter of the brothers. The two sisters, Antigone and
Ismene, now appear upon the stage; and, with the chorus, sing a
lament for the dead ; which is very striking from the blunt ingenuity
and melancholy wit with which .Eschylus has contrived to paint in the
strongest colours the calamities and perversities of human life.* At
the conclusion, the two sisters separate from the chorus; inasmuch as
Antigone declares her intention to bury her brother Polynices, against
the command of the senate of Thebes, which had just been proclaimed.
§ 7. This concluding scene therefore points as distinctly as the end
of the Choephorce to the subject of a new piece, which was doubtless
" the Eleusinians.'' This drama appears to have turned upon the
burial of the Argive heroes slain before the gates of Thebes ; which
burial was carried into execution by Theseus with the Athenians, against
the will of the Thebans, and in the territory of Eleusis. It is manifest
that the fate of Antigone (who, following her own impulse, had buried
her brother, and either suffered or was to suffer death in consequence)
was closely connected with this subject. But neither the plan nor the
prevailing ideas of this last drama of the trilogy can be gathered from
the few fragments of it which remain.
The connexion of the Seve?i against Thebes with a preceding piece is
less evident, in the same way that the Choephorce points forward far
more distinctly to the Eumenides than it points backward to the Aga-
memnon. But since we perceive in the extant trilogy that iEschylus
was accustomed to develope completely all the essential parts of a
mythological series, it cannot be doubted that the Seven against Thebes
was preceded by some drama with which it was connected. The subject
of this drama should not, however, be sought, with some critics, in the
fables respecting the expedition of the Argive heroes; for they do not
form the centre about which this tragic composition revolves, but are
a vast foreign power breaking in upon the destinies of Thebes. It should
rather be sought in the earlier fortunes of the royal family of Thebes.
If we consider the great effect produced in " the Seven against Thebes'*
* As when the chorus says, " Their hate is ended : their lives have flowed together
on the gory earth ; now in truth are they blood-relations"' (o^ai/u.oi), v. 938-40, or where
it is said, that the evil genius of the race has placed the trophies of destruction at
the gate where they fell, and never rested till it had overcome both. V. 957-60.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 325
by the curse of CEdipus, we must conclude that this curse must have
been treated as the principal subject of the preceding play ; so as to be
kept in mind by the spectators during the speeches of Eteocles, and to
spread over the whole that feeling of anxious foreboding which is one
of the most striking effects of tragedy.* It may, therefore, be probably
inferred that it was the OEdipns, one of the lost plays of /Eschylus, with
which this trilogy commenced.
The poetry of yEschylus furnishes distinct and certain evidence of his
disposition and opinions, particularly with respect to those public oc-
currences which at that time occupied the mind of every patriotic Greek ;
and in speaking of the Seven against Thebes, our attention has been
called to his political principles, which appear still more clearly in the
Orestean trilogy. jEsehylus was one of those Athenians who strove to
moderate the restless struggles of their countrymen after democracy and
dominion over other Greeks; and who sought to maintain the ancient
severe principles of law and morality, together with the institutions by
which these were supported. The just, wise, and moderate Aristides
was the statesman approved of by JEsehylus, and not Themistocles, who
pursued the distant objects of his ambition, through straight and
crooked paths, with equal energy. The admiration of iEschylus for
Aristides is clearly seen in his description of the battle of Salamis.f Tn
the Seven against Thebes, the description of the upright Amphiaraus,
who wished, not to seem, but to be, the best; the wise general, from
whose mind, as from the deep furrows of a well-ploughed field, noble
counsels proceed ; was universally applied by the Athenian people to
Aristides, and was doubtless intended by yEschylus for him. Then the
complaint of Eteocles, that this just and temperate man, associated with
impetuous companions, must share their ruin, expresses the disapproba-
tion felt by iEschylus of the dispositions of other leaders of the Greeks
and Athenians; among the rest, of Themistocles, who at that time had
probably gone into exile on account of the part he had taken in the
treasonable designs of Pausanias.
§ 8. We come next to the trilogy which may be called the Danais,
and of which only the middle piece is preserved in the Suppliants. An
historical and political spirit pervades this trilogy. The extant piece
turns upon the reception in Pelasgic Argos of Danaus and his daughters,
who had fled from Egypt in order to escape the violence of their
suitors, the sons of iEgyptus. They sit as suppliants near a group of
* The account of this curse which was given by yEschyhi3 seems to have been
in several respects peculiar. CEdipus not only announced that the brothers would
not divide their heritage in amity (according to the Thebaid in Athen. XI. p. 4G6),
but he also declared that a stranger from Scythia (the steel of the sword) should
make the partition as an arbitrator (S«t«t«, according to the language of the
Attic law). If CEdipus had not used these words, the chorus, v. 71'.) and 924, and
the messenger, v. 817, could not express the same idea, in nearly the same terms.
+ Comp. vv. 447 — 471, with Herodot. viii. 93.
326 HISTORY OF THE
altars (coiw^wpa), in front of the city of Argos; and of the king the
Argives (who is fearful of involving his kingdom in distress and danger)
is induced, after many prayers and entreaties, to convene an assembly
of the people, in order to deliberate concerning their reception. The
assembly, partly from respect for the rights of suppliants, and partly
from compassion for the persecuted daughters of Danaus, decrees to re-
ceive them. The opportunity soon presents itself of fulfilling the promise
of protection and security : for the sons of jEgyptus land upon the
coast, and (during the absence of Danaus, who is gone to procure as-
sistance) the Egyptian herald attempts to carry off the deserted maidens,
as being the rightful property of his masters. Upon this, the king of
the Peiasgians appears in order to protect them, and dismisses the
herald, notwithstanding his threats of war. Nevertheless, the danger is
averted only for the moment ; and the play concludes with prayers to
the gods that these forced marriages may be prevented, with which are
intermingled doubts concerning the fate determined by the gods.
The want of dramatic interest in this drama partly proceeds from its
being the middle piece of a trilogy. The third piece, the Danaides,
doubtless contained the decision of the contest by the death of the
suitors, with the exception of Lynceus ; while a preceding drama, the
Egyptians, must have explained the cause and origin of the contest in
Egypt. There are other instances, in the middle pieces of the trilogies of
iEschylus, of the action standing nearly still, the attention being made
to dwell upon the sufferings caused by the elements which have been
set in motion. The idea of the timid, afflicted virgins flying from their
suitors' violence like doves before the vulture (which is worked out, in
lyric strains, with great warmth and intensity of feeling) is evidently
the main subject of the drama ; it seems, indeed, that the preservation
of the play has been due to the beauty of these choral odes. Yet the
reception of the Danaides must have been a much more appropriate and
important subject for a tragedy, according to the ideas of iEschylus,
than according to those of Sophocles and Euripides. What this action
wants in moral significance was compensated, in his opinion, by its
historical interest. iEschylus belongs to a period when the national
legends of Greece were considered, not as mere amusing fictions, but as
evidences of the divine power which ruled over Greece. An event like
the reception of the Danaides in Argos, on which depended the origin
of the families of the Perseids and Heracleids, appeared to him as a
great work of the counsels of Zeus ; and to record the operation of
these on human affairs seemed to him the highest calling of the tragic
poet. Contrary to the custom of epic and tragic poets, he ascribes the
greatest merit of the act to the Argive people, not to their king, and
accordingly, the chorus, in a beautiful song (v. 625 — 709), invokes
blessings upon them, the cause of which is evidently to be found in the
relations which then subsisted between Athens and Argos. jEschylus,
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 327
however, never makes forced allusions to contemporary events ; they arise
naturally out of his mode of considering history, which closely resembles
that of Pindar. According to this view, it was in the early mythical
ages that the Greek states received the lot of their future destinies and
were fixed in that position which they occupied in later times. Those
passages in the Suppliants which so plainly refer to the establishment
of a well regulated popular government in Argos and to treaties with
foreign states by which war might be avoided,* make it evident that
this piece was produced about the time when the alliance between
Athens and Argos was already in operation, perhaps towards the end
of 01. 79, B. c. 461.f Also, the threats of a war with Egypt, which are
implied in the plot of this tragedy, furnish the poet with a favourable
opportunity for introducing some striking and impressive sayings, which
necessarily held out great encouragement to the Athenians for the war
with Egypt, which began Olymp. 79. 3. b. c. 462; as when we find it
said that " The fruit of the papyrus" (which was the common food of
the Egyptians) " conquers not the wheat-stalk."J
§ 9. The Prometheus was in all probability one of the last efforts of
the genius of /Eschylus, for the third actor is to a certain extent em-
ployed in it (chap. XXII. § 7). It is, beyond all question, one of his
greatest works. Historical allusions are not to be expected in this
play, as the subject does not comprise the events of any particular state
or family, but refers to the condition and relations of the whole human
race. Prometheus, as we had occasion to remark when speaking of
Hesiod (chap. VIII. § 3, p. 91 note), represents the provident, aspiring
understanding of man, which ardently seeks to improve in all ways the
condition of our being. He was represented as a Titan, because the
Greeks, who considered the gods of Olympus as rulers only, not as
creators, of the human race, laid the foundation and beginning of man
in the time which preceded the kingdom of the Olympian gods. Thus,
according to the conception of ./Eschylus, he is the friend and mediator
of man — " the daemon most friendly to mankind," in that period of the
world when the kingdom of Zeus began. He does not, however,
spiritualize him into a mere allegory of foresight and prudence, for in
/Eschylus a veal, lively faith in the existence of mythical beings is har-
moniously combined with a consideration of their significance. By
teaching men the use of tire, Prometheus has made them acquainted
with all the arts which render human life more endurable; in general,
he has made them wiser and happier in every respect, especially by
taking from them the fear of death. But in this he does not respect
* Thus the chorus says, v. G98 — 703 : " May the people, who rule the city, main-
tain their rights — may they give foreigners their due. before they put weapons into
the hands of Ares."
t This alliance is more distinctly mentioned in the Kumenides (v. 765 seq<i-)
which was brought out a few years after.
J V. 761. Comp. v. f J.->4.
328 HISTORY OF THE
the limits which, according to the view of the ancients, the gods, who
are alone immortal, have prescribed to the human race ; he seeks to ac-
quire for mortals perfections which the gods had reserved for themselves
alone ; for a mind which is always striving after advancement, and
using all means to obtain it, cannot easily, from its very constitution,
confine itself within the narrow limits prescribed to it by custom and
law. These efforts of Prometheus, which we also learn occasionally
from the play that has come down to us, were in all probability depicted
with much greater perfection, and in connexion with his stealing the
fire, in the first portion of the trilogy, which was called Prometheus the
Fire-bringer (IIpo/.t?;0£uc irvp<p6poc)*
The extant play, the Promt theus Bound (Upofirjdevg cia^wTno), begins
at once with the fastening of the gigantic Titan to the rocks of Scjthia,
and the fettered prisoner is the centre of all the action of the piece. The
daughters of Oceanus, who constitute the chorus of the tragedy, come
to comfort and calm him ; he is then % isited by the aged Oceanus him-
self, and afterwards by Hermes, who endeavour, the one by mild argu-
ments, the other by insults and threats, to move him to compliance and
submission. Meanwhile Prometheus continues to defy the superior
power of Zeus, and stoutly declares that, unless his base fetters are re-
moved, he will not give out an oracle that he has learned from his
mother Themis, respecting the marriage, by means of which Zeus was
destined to lose his sovereign power. He would rather that Zeus
should bury his body in the rocks amid thunder and lightning. With
this the drama concludes, in order to allow him to come forth again
and suffer new torments. This grand and sublime defiance of Prome-
theus, by which the free will of man is perfectly maintained under over-
whelming difficulties from without, is generally considered the great
design of the poem; and in reading the remaining play of the trilogy,
there is no doubt on which side our sympathies should be enlisted : for
Prometheus appears as the just and suffering martyr; Zeus as the
mighty tyrant, jealous of his power. Nevertheless, if we view the sub-
ject from the higher ground of the old poetic associations, we cannot
rest content with such a solution as this. Tragedy could not, in con-
formity with those associations, consist entirely of the opposition and
conflict between the free will of an individual and omnipotent fate ; it
must appease contending powers and assign to each of them its proper
place. Contentions may rise higher and higher, the opposition may be
stretched to the utmost, yet the divine guidance which presides over the
whole finds means to restore order and harmony, and allots to each
conflicting power its own peculiar right.
* This Prometheus Pyrphoros must, as Welcker has shown, he distinguished from
the Prometheus Pyrkdeus, "the fire-kiudler," asatyric drama which was appended to
the tiilogy of the Persx, and probably bad reference to the festal customs of the
Promethea in the Cerameicus, which comprised a torch-race.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 3:29
The contest, with all its attendant miseries, appears even beneficial in
its results. This is the course of the tragedies of iEschylus, and indeed
of Greek tragedy in general, so far as it remains true to its object.
The tragedies of iEschylus uniformly require faith in a divine power,
which, with steady eye and firm hand, guides the course of events to the
best issue, though the paths through which it leads may be dark and
difficult, and fraught with distress and suffering. The poetry of JEs-
chylus is full of profound and enthusiastic glorifications of Zeus as this
power. How then could Zeus be depicted in this drama as a tyrant,
how could the governor of the world be represented as arbitrary and
unjust? It is true that the Greek divinities are always described as
beings who are not what they were, (above p. 88,) and hence it is diffi-
cult to separate from them the ideas of strife and contention. This also
accounts for the severity with which Zeus, at the time described by
/Eschylus, proceeds against every attempt to limit and circumscribe his
newly established sovereignty. But iEschylus, in his own mind, must
have felt how this severity, a necessary accompaniment of the transition
from the Titanian period to the government of the gods of Olympus, was
to be reconciled with the mild wisdom which he makes an attribute of
Zeus in the subsequent ages of the world. Consequently the deviation
from right, the anapria in the tragic action, which, according to Ari-
stotle, should not be considered as depravity, but as the error of a nobfe
nature* would all lie on the side of Prometheus ; and even the poet
has clearly shown this in the piece itself, when he makes the chorus of
Oceanides, who are friendly to Prometheus, and even to the sacrifice of
themselves, perpetually recur to the same thoughts. " Those only are
wise who humbly reverence Adrastea," (the inexorable goddess of
Fate).t
§ 10. In these remarks upon the Prometheus Bound we have passed
over one act of the play, which, however, is of the highest importance
for an understanding of the whole trilogy, namely, the appearance of
Io, who, having won the love of Zeus, has brought upon herself the
hatred of Hera. Persecuted by horrid phantoms, she comes in her wan-
derings to Prometheus, and learns from him the further miseries, all of
which she has still to endure. The misfortunes of Io very much re-
semble those of Prometheus, since Io also might be considered as a
victim to the selfish severity of Zeus, and she is so considered by Pro-
metheus. At the same time, however, as Prometheus does not con-
ceal from Io that the thirteenth in descent from her is to release him
from all his sufferings; the love of Zeus for her appears in a higher
light, and we obtain for the fate of Prometheus also that sort of assuag-
* That is to say. so far as it is the upaprliz of the protagonists, as of Ptomethi
Agamemnon, Antigone, GEdipus, and so forth ; for the l^a^riai of the tritagoni tr
are of a totally different kind.
f V. 936. O/ TgtHTKVUIVVTlf rrjv 'A2g«*«i«» aotoi.
330 HISTORY OF THE
ing tranquillity, which it was always the aim of the ancients to preserve,
even in their most impassioned scenes. But as Hermes announces
that Zeus will never succeed in overcoming the rebellious Titans
till an immortal shall freely lay down his life for him, the issue remains
dark and doubtful.
The Prometheus Unbound (llpo^dtvg Xvo/xevog), the loss of which we
kiment more almost than that of any other tragedy, although many
considerable fragments of it remain, began at a totally different period
of the world. Prometheus, however, still remains bound to the rock in
Scythia, and, as Hermes had prophetically threatened, he is daily torn
by the eagle of Zeus. The chorus, instead of the Oceanides, consists of
Titans escaped from durance in Tartarus. iEschylus, therefore, like
Pindar,* adopts the idea, originating with the Orphic poets, that Zeus, after
he had firmly fixed the government of the world, proclaimed a general
amnesty, and restored peace among the vanquished powers of heaven.
Meanwhile mankind had arrived at a much higher degree of dignity
than even Prometheus had designed for them, by means of the hero-race,
and man became, as it were, ennobled through heroes sprung from the
Olympic gods. Hercules, the son of Zeus by a distant descendant
of Io, was the greatest benefactor and friend of man among heroes, as
Prometheus was among Titans. He now appears, and, after hearing
from Prometheus the benefits he has conferred upon man, and receiv-
ing a proof of his good will in the way of prediction and adv'ce with
regard to his own future adventures, releases the sufferer from the tor-
ments of the eagle, and from his chains. He does this of his own free
will, but manifestly by the permission of Zeus. Zeus has already fixed
upon the immortal who is ready to resign his immortality. Che iron is,
without Hercules' intending it, wounded by one of the poisoned arrows
of the hero, and, in order to escape endless torments, is willing to de-
scend into the lower world. We must suppose that, at the end of the
piece, the power and majesty of Zeus and the profound wisdom of his
decrees are so gloriously manifested, that the pride of Prometheus is
entirely broken. f Prometheus now brings a wreath of Agnus Castus,
(\wyoe,) and probably a ring also, made from the iron of his fetters,
mysterious symbols of the dependence and subjection of the human
race ; and he now willingly proclaims his mother's ancient prophecy,
that a son more powerful than the father who begot him should be
born of the sea-goddess Thetis ; whereupon Zeus resolves to marry the
goddess to the mortal Peleus.
It is scarcely possible to conceive a more perfect katharsis of a tra-
gedy, according to the requisitions of Aristotle.
The passions of fear, pity, hatred, love, anger, and admiration, as
* Pindar Pyth. iv. 291 . Camp, above chap. XVI. § 1.
f Even after his liberation from fetters Prometheus had called Hercules " the
most dear son of a hated father." Fragm. 187. Dindorf.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 331
excited and stirred up by the actions and destiny of the individual cha-
racters in this middle piece, produce rather a distressing than a pleas-
ing 1 effect; but under the guidance of sublime and significant images
they take such a course of developement, that an elevated yet softened
tone is shed over them, and all is resolved into a feeling of awe and
devotion for the decrees of a higher power.
§ 11. The poetical career of iEschylus concludes for us, as for the
ancient Athenians, with the only complete trilogy that is extant, the
possession of which, after the Iliad and Odyssey, might be considered the
richest treasure of Greek poetry, if it had been better preserved, and had
come down to us without the gaps and interpolations by which it is
defaced. iEschylus brought this trilogy upon the stage at a moment
of great political excitement in his native city, Olymp. 80. 2. b. c. 458;
at the time when the democratic party, under the guidance of Pericles,
were endeavouring to overthrow the Areopagus, the last of those aris-
tocratic institutions which tended to restrain the innovating spirit of the
people in public and private life. He was impelled to make the legend
of Orestes the groundwork of a trilogic composition, of which, as we have
still the whole before us, we will give only the principal points.
Agamemnon comes on the stage in the tragedy which bears his name,
in one scene only, when he is received by his wife Clytaemnestra as a
conquering hero, and, after some hesitation, walks over the outspread
purple carpets into the interior of his palace. He is, however, the chief
person of the piece, for all through it the actors and chorus are almost
exclusively occupied with his character and destiny.
iEschylus represents him as a great and glorious monarch, but who,
by his enterprise against Troy, has sacrificed to his warlike ambition
the lives of many men,* and, above all, that of his own daughter Iphi-
genia ;t and he has thus involved in a gloomy destiny his house, which
is already suffering from wounds inflicted long before his time. Cly-
taemnestra, on the other hand, is a wife, who, while she pursues her
impulses and pleasures with unscrupulous resolution, has power and
cunning enough to carry her evil designs into full effect. Agamemnon
is completely enveloped in her subtle schemes, even before she throws
the traitorous garment over him like a net; and after the deed is done,
she has the skill, in her conversation with the chorus, to throw ovei it a
cloak of that sophistry of the passions, which iEschylus so well knew
how to paint, by enumerating all the reasons she might have had for it,
had the real ground not been sufficient.
* " For the gods,'' says the chorus, (v. 461.) " never lose sight of those who have
been the cause of death to many men" {ran toXuktoviuv yag ovk aaxovrot (*<«/.)
f The chorus does not hesitate to censure this sacrifice, (especially in v. '217,) and
considers it as actually completed, so does Clytsemnestra, v. 1555; though /Eschy-
lus does not mean hy this to set aside the story of Iphigenia's deliverance. Accord
nig to his view of the case the saerificers themselves must have been blinded by
Artemis.
332 HISTORY OF THE
The great tragic effect which this play cannot fail to produce on every
one who is capable of reading and understanding it, is the contrast be-
tween the external splendour of the house of the Atridee and its real
condition. The first scenes are very imposing; — the light of the
beacon, the news of the fall of Troy, and the entrance of Agamemnon ;
— but, amidst these signs of joy, a tone of mournful foreboding resounds
from the songs of the chorus, which grows more and more distinct
and impressive till the inimitable scene between the chorus and Cas-
sandra, when the whole misfortune of the house bursts forth into view.
From this time forth our feelings are wrought to the highest pitch — the
murder of Agamemnon follows immediately upon this announcement;
while the triumph of Clytaemnestra and iEgisthus — the remorseless
cold-bloodedness with which she exults in the deed, and the laments
and reproaches of the chorus — leave the mind, sympathizing as it does
with the fate of the house, in an agony of horror and excitement which
has not a minute of repose or consolation, except in a sort of feeling
that Agamemnon has fallen by means of a divine Nemesis.
§ 12. The Choephoros contains the mortal revenge of Orestes. The
natural steps of the action, the revenge planned and resolved upon by
Orestes with the chorus and Electra, the artful intrigues by which
Orestes at length arrives at the execution of the deed, the execution
itself, the contemplation of it after it is committed, all these points form
so many acts of the drama. The first is the longest and the most
finished, as the poet evidently makes it his great object to display dis-
tinctly the deep distress of Orestes at the necessity he feels of revenging
his father's death upon his mother. Thus the whole action takes place
at the tomb of Agamemnon, and the chorus consists of Trojan women
in the service of the family of the Atridae ; they are sent by Clytaem-
nestra, who has been terrified by horrid dreams, in order, for the first
time, to appease with offerings the spirit of her murdered husband, and,
by the advice of Electra, bring the offerings, but not for the purpose for
which they were sent. The spirit of Agamemnon is formally conjured
to appear from below the earth, and to take an active part in the work
of his own revenge, and the guidance of the whole work is repeatedly
ascribed to the subterranean gods, especially to Hermes, the leader of
the dead, who is also the god of all artful and hidden acts; and the
poet has contrived to shed a gloomy and shadowy light over this whole
proceeding. The act itself is represented throughout as a sore burthen
undertaken by Orestes upon the requisition of the subterranean gods,
and by the constraining influence of the Delphic oracle ; no mean
motive, no trifling indifference mingle with his resolves, and yet, or
rather the more on that very account, while Orestes stands beside the
corpse of his mother and her paramour upon the same spot where his
father was slain, and justifies his own act by proclaiming the heinous-
ness of their crime, even at that moment the furies appear before him,
LITEItATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 333
and, visible to the spectators, though unseen by the chorus, torture him
with their horrid forms till he rushes away and hastens to beg for
atonement and purification from Apollo, who has urged him to the
deed. We here perceive that, according to the views of iEschylus and
other Greeks, the furies do not properly betoken the degree of moral
guilt or the power of an evil conscience (in which case they must have
appeared in a more terrible shape to Clytaemnestra than to Orestes) ;
but they exhibit the fearful nature of the deed itself, of a mother's
murder as such; for this, from whatever motive it may be committed,
is a violation of the ordinances of nature which cannot fail to torture
and perplex the human mind.
§ 13. This character of the Erinnyes is more definitely developed in
the concluding play of the trilogy, in the chorus of which ./Eschylus,
combining the artist with the poet, gives an exhibition of these beings,
of whom the Greeks had hitherto but a glimmering idea. He bestows
upon them a form taken partly from their spiritual qualities and partly
from the analogy of the Gorgons. They avenge the matricidal act
as a crime in itself, without inquiring into motives or circumstances,
and it is therefore pursued with all the inflexibility of a law of nature,
and by all the horror and torments as well of the upper as of the
lower world. Even the expiation granted by Apollo to Orestes at Delphi
has no influence upon them ; for all that Apollo can accomplish is to throw
them for a short period into a deep sleep, from which they are awakened
by the appearance of the ghost of Clytaemnestra, condemned for her crime
to wander about the lower world; and this apparition must have pro-
duced the greatest effect upon the stage. After the scene in Delphi, we
are transported to the sanctuary of Pallas Athena, on the Acropolis,
whither Orestes has repaired by the advice of Apollo, and where, in a
very regular manner, and with many allusions to the actual usages of
the Athenian law, the court of the Areopagus is established by Pallas,
who recognizes the claims of both parties, but is unwilling to arrogate
to herself the power of arbitrarily deciding the questions between them.
Before this court of justice the dispute between Orestes and his advocate
Apollo on the one side, and the furies on the other, is formally dis-
cussed. In these discussions, it must be owned, there occur many
points which belong to the main question, and these are, as it were,
summed up ; for instance, the command of Apollo, the vengeance for
blood which is imposed as a duty upon the son by the ghost of his
father; the revolting manner in which Agamemnon was murdered;
nevertheless, the intrinsic difference between the act of Orestes and that
of Clytaemnestra is not marked as we should have expected it to be.
It is manifest that /Eschylus distinctly perceived this difference in feel-
ing, without quite working it out. Apollo concludes his apology with
rather a subtle argument, showing why the father is more worthy of
honour than the mother, by which he makes interest with Pallas, who
334 HISTORY OF THE
had no mother, but proceeded at once out of the head of her father,
Zeus. When the judges, of whom there are twelve,* come to the vote,
it is found that the votes on each side are equal ; upon this the goddess
gives the casting- vote — " the voting pebble of Athena," — the destina-
tion of which she has declared beforehand, and so decides in favour of
Orestes. The poet here means to imply that the duty of revenge and
the guilt of matricide are equally balanced, and that stern justice has no
alternative; but the gods of Olympus, being of the nature of man, and
acquainted and entrusted with the personal condition of individuals,
can find and supply a refuge for the unfortunate, who are so by no im-
mediate guilt of their own. Hence the repeated references to the over-
ruling name of Zeus, who always steps in between contending powers
as the saviour-god (Ztvc a-wrr]p),f and invariably turns the scale in
favour of virtue. After his acquittal, Orestes leaves the stage with
blessings and promises of friendly alliance with Athens, but somewhat
more hastily than we expected, after the intense interest which his fate
has inspired. But the cause of this is seen in the heart-felt love of
iEschylus for the Athenians. The goddess of wisdom, who has veiled
her power in the mildest and most persuasive form, succeeds in soothing
the rage of the furies, which threatens to bring destruction upon
Athens, by promising to ensure them for ever the honour and respect
of the Athenians ; and thus the whole concludes with a song of blessing
by the furies (wherein, on the supposition that their power is duiy ac-
knowledged, they assume the character of beneficent deities), and with
the establishment of the worship of the Eumenides, who are at once
conducted by torchlight to their sanctuary in the Areopagus with all the
pomp with which their sacrifices at Athens were attended. The
Athenians are here plainly admonished to treat with reverence the
Areopagus thus founded by the gods, and the judicial usages of which are
so closely connected with the worship of the Eumenides ; and not to
take from that body its cognizance of charges of murder, as was about
to be done, in order to transfer their functions to the great jury courts.
The stasima, too, in which the ideas of the piece appear still more
clearly than in the treatment of the mythus, utter no sentiment more
definitely than this ; that it is above all things necessary to recognize
without hesitation a power which bridles the unruly affections and sinful
thoughts of man. J
We may remark in few words, that the satyrical drama which was
appended to this trilogy, the Proteus, was in all probability connected
with the same mythical subject, and turned upon the adventure of
Menelaus and Helen with Proteus, the sea-daemon and keeper of the
* The number twelve is inferred from the arrangement of the short speeches
made by the parties while the voting is going on (v. 710 — 733. j
f Vv. 759, 797, 1045.
* Uuf4<pipll OUtQooliiv V9T0 (TTbVll, V. 520.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 335
sea-monsters, an adventure which is known to us from Homer. The
useless wanderings of Menelaus, who on his return home left his
brother behind, and thereby arrived too late not only to save, but
even to avenge him,* might give room for abundant mirth and en-
tertainment, without disturbing or effacing the impressions which had
been produced by the tragic fate of the house of the Atridae.
§ 14. These short accounts of those trilogies of ./Esehylus which
have been preserved, in whole or in part, will suffice, we conceive, to
give as much insight into the mind of that great poet as can be expected
in a work of this kind. It must be confessed, however, that there is a
wide difference between these cold abstracts of the dramas of ^Esehylus
and the tone and character of the works themselves, which, even in the
minutest details of execution, show all the power of a mind full of poetic
inspiration, and impressed with the truth and profoundness of its own
conceptions. As all the persons brought on the stage by iEschylus ex-
press their feelings and characters in strong and forcible terms, so also
the forms of speech they make use of have a proud and lofty tone ; the
diction of these plays is like a temple of Ictinus, constructed solely of
huge rectangular blocks of polished marble. In the individual expres-
sions, the poetical form predominates over the syntactical ; this is
brought about by the employment of metaphorical phrases and new
compounds :f and here the poet's great knowledge and true compre-
hension of nature and human life give to his expressions a vividness
and warmth which only differs from the naivete of the epic stjle by the
greater admixture of acute reflection which it displays, and by which he
has contrived to mark at once a feeling of connexion and a conscious-
ness of difference.! The forms of syntax are rather those which rest
upon a parallel connexion of sentences (consequently, copulative, ad-
versative, and disjunctive sentences) than those which result from the
subordination of one sentence to another (as in causal and conditional
periods, &c). The language has little of that oratorical flow which at
a later period sprung up in the courts and assemblies, and just as little
of a subtle developement of complicated connexions of thought. It is
throughout better calculated to display powerful impulses of the feelings
and desires, and the instinctive actions of prompt and decided character,
than the reflection of minds impelled by various motives. Hence in
each piece we find some leading thoughts frequently repeated, particu-
larly in the different forms of speech, dialogue, anapssts, lyric measures,
* Comp. above chap. VI. § 5. and Agam. 624, 839.
f We may also mention his employment of obsolete expressions, especially those
borrowed from epic poetry—™ y \co<r<rZiu r~, lS x'i%ius. /Esehylus is a few degrees
more epic in his language than Sophocles or Euripides.
% Hence arise the oxymora of which yEschylus is so fond : fur instance, when he
calls dust " the dumb messenger of the army."
336 HISTORY OF THE
&c. Yet the poet by no means wants the power of adapting his lan-
guage to the different characters, to say nothing of all those differences
which depend upon the metrical forms ; and, notwithstanding the
general elevation of his sty'e, persons of an inferior grade, such as the
watchman in the Agamemnon, and the nurse of Orestes in the Choe-
phoroe, are made to descend, as well in the words as in the turn of the
expressions, to the use of language more nearly approaching that of
common life, and manifest even in the collocation of their words a
weaker order of mind.
§ 15. To return once more to the Orestean trilogy of Orestes : the
judges of tragic merit adjudged the prize to it before all the rival pieces.
But this poetic victory seems to have been no compensation to
^Eschylus for the failure of the practical portion of his design, as the
Athenians at the same time deprived the Areopagus of all the honour
and power which the poet had striven to preserve for it. iEschylus re-
turned a second time to Sicily, and died in his favourite city of Gela,
three years after the performance of the Orestea.
The Athenians had a feeling that iEschylus would not be satisfied
with the course their public life and their taste for art and science took
in the next generation ; the shadow of the poet, as he is brought up by
Aristophanes from the other world in the " Frogs," manifests an angry
discontent with the public, who were so pleased with Euripides, although
the latter was no rival of iEschylus, for he did not appear upon the stage
till the year in which .ZEschylus died. Yet this did not prevent the
Athenians from recognizing most fully the beauty and sublimity of
his poetry. " With him his muse died not," said Aristophanes, allud-
ing to the fact that his tragedies were allowed to be performed after his
death, and might even be brought forward as new pieces. The poet,
who taught his chorus the plays of iEschylus, was remunerated by the
state, and the crown was dedicated to the poet who had been long
dead.* The family of iEschylus, which continued for a long time, pre-
served a school of poetry in his peculiar style, which we will hereafter
notice.
* This is the result of the passages in the Vita JEschyli ; Philosirai. Vita Apollon.
vi. 11. p. 245, Olear.; Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. 10. Ran. 892. The Vila Mschyh
says that the poet was crowned after his death ; and this view seems preferable to
Quinctilian's assertion {Inst. x. 1), that many other poets obtained the crown by re-
presenting the plays of /IEschylus. We must distinguish from this case the victories
of Euphorion (above, § 2 and note) obtained by producing plays of v-Eschylus that
had not been represented ; the law of Lycurgus, too, with regard to the representa-
tion of pieces by the three great tragedians, from copies officially verified, has
nothing to do with the custom alluded to in the text.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 337
CHAPTER XXIV.
§ 1. Condition in which tragic poetry came into the hands of Sophocles. His first
appearance. § 2. Subsequent events of his life ; his devotion to the drama. § 3.
Epochs in the poetry of Sophocles. § 4. Thorough change in the form of tra-
gedy. § 5. Outline of his plays; the Antigone. § 6. The Electra. § 7. The
Trachinian Women. § 8. King CEdipus. § 9. The Ajax. § 10. The Philoc-
tetes. § 11, 12. The CEdipus at Colonus, in connexion with the character and
conduct of Sophocles in his latter years. § 13. The style of Sophocles.
§ 1. The tragic trilogies of TEschylus had given a dramatic represen-
tation of the great cycle of Hellenic legends. In exhibiting the history
of whole families, tribes, and states, the poet had contrived to show the
influence of supreme wisdom and power shining amidst the greatest
difficulty and darkness. Every Greek, who witnessed such an exhibition
of the dispensations of Providence in the history of his race, must have
been filled with mingled emotions of wonder and joyful exultation.
A tragedy of this kind was at once political, patriotic, and religious.
How was it possible that, after these mighty creations of so great a
genius as iEschylus, a still fairer renown should be in reserve for
Sophocles? In what direction could such great advances be made
from the point to which iEschylus had brought the tragic art ?
We will not indulge ourselves in an d priori determination of the
way in which this advance might have been made, but will rather con-
sider, with history for our guide, how it really took place. It will be
seen that the change was retrograde as well as progressive ; that if
something was gained on the one side, it was because something was
also given up on the other ; and that it was due above all to that
moderation and sobriety of character, which was the noblest and most
amiable property of the Greek mind.
Before we can solve the great question proposed above, we must give
an account of so much of the poet's life as may be necessary for an un-
derstanding of his poetical career.
Sophocles, the son of Sophilus, was born at the Attic dermis, or
village of Colonus, in Olymp. 71. 2. B.C. 495* He was, therefore,
fifteen years old when the battle of Salumis was fought. He could
not, of course, share in the dangers of the fight, but he was the exar-
chus, or leader of the chorus which sang the paean of victory, and in
that capacity appeared naked, according to the rule in gymnastic solem-
* This is the statement in the Pita Sophoclis. The Pari in marble makes him
two years older, but this is opposed to the fact mentioned in the note to § 2.
z
338 HISTORY OF THE
nities, anointed with oil, and holding a lyre in his left hand. Tii^
managers of the feast had selected him for this purpose on account of
his youthful beauty* and the musical education which he had received.
Eleven or twelve years after this, in Olymp. 77. 4. B.c.f 468, Sopho-
cles came forward for the first time as a competitor in a dramatic con-
test, and, indeed, as a rival of the old hero iEschylus. This happened
at the great Dionysia, when the first Archon presided ; it was his duty
to nominate the judges of the contest. Cimon, who had just conquered
the pirates of Scyros, and brought back to Athens the bones of Theseus,
happened to come into the theatre along with his colleagues in order
to pay the suitable offerings to Bacchus, and Aphepsion the archon
thought it due to the importance of the contest to submit the decision
of the poetical victory to these glorious victors in real battle. Cimon,
a man of the old school, and of noble moderation of character, who
undoubtedly appreciated .ZEschylus, gave the prize to his young rival,
from which we may infer how completely his genius outshone all com-
petition, even at his first coming out. The play with which he gained
this victory is said to have been the Triptolemus,J a patriotic piece, in
which this Eleusinian hero was celebrated as promoting the cultivation
of corn, and humanizing the manners even of the wildest barbarians.
§ 2. The first piece of Sophocles which has been preserved is twenty-
eight years subsequent to this event ; it is remarkable as also marking*
a giorious period in the poet's life. Sophocles brought out the Anti-
gone in Olymp. 84. 4. B.C. 440. The goodness of the play, but above
all the shrewd reflexions and admirable sentiments on public matters
which are frequency expressed in it, induced the Athenians to elect
him to the office of general for the ensuing year. It must be re-
membered that the ten Strategi were not merely the commanders of the
troops, but also very much employed in the administration of affairs at
home, and in carrying on negociations with foreign states. Sophocles
was one of the generals, who, in conjunction with Pericles, carried on
the war with the aristocrats of Samos, who, after being expelled from
Samo^ by the Athenians, had returned from Anaea on the continent
with Persian aid, and stirred up the island to revolt against Athens. §
This war was carried on in Olymp. 85. 1. b.c. 440, 439.
* Athenseus I. p. 20. f.. in speaking of this occasion, says that Sophocles was
y.aXh rr,ii uoai, which applies best to the age assigned to him above.
T All new dramas at Athens were performed at the Lensea and the great Dio-
nysia, the former of which took place in the month Gamelion, the latter in Elaphe
bolion, and therefore in the second hnlf of the Attic or Olympian year, after the
wintir solstice ; consequently, in the history of the drama we. must always reckon
the year of the Olympiad equal to the year b.c. in which its second half falls.
I This appears from a combination of the narrative in the text with a chrono-
logical statement in Pliny TV. H. XVIII. 12.
§ On this account the Vita Sophoclis calls the war, in the management of which
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT OREECE. 33G
According to several old anecdotes, Sophocles preserved even in
the bustle of war his cheerfulness of temper, and that poetical disposi-
tion which delights in a clear and tranquil contemplation of human
affairs. It was also on this occasion that Sophocles became acquainted
with Herodotus, who about this time was living at Samos (chap.
XIX. § 1.), and composed a poem for him, no doubt a lyrical one.* It is
interesting- to think of the social intercourse of two such men with one
another. They both scrutinized the knowledge of human affairs with
calm and comprehensive vision ; but the Samian, with a more boyish
disposition, sought out the traditions of many nations and many lands,
while the Athenian had applied his riper and more searching intellect
to that which was immediately before him, — the secret workings of
power and passion in the breast of every man.
Tt is doubtful whether Sophocles took any further part in public
affairs at a later period. On the whole, he was, as his contemporary
Ion of Chios tells us,t neither very well acquainted with politics nor
particularly qualified for public business. In all this, he did not get
beyond the ordinary standard of individuals of the better sort. It is
clear that, in his case, as in that of iEschylus, poetry was the business
of his life. The study and exercise of the art of poetry occupied the
whole of his time, as appears at once from the number of his dramas.
There existed under his name 130 plays, of which, according to the
grammarian Aristophanes, seventeen were wrongly ascribed to him.
The remaining 113 seem to comprise tragedies and satyrical dramas.
In several of the tetralogies, however, the satyrical drama must have been
lost or perhaps never existed (as we find to be the case with other poets
also), because otherwise the number could not have been so uneven ;
at the utmost there could only have been twenty-three extant satyrical
dramas to ninety tragedies. All these pieces were brought out between
Olymp. 77. 4. B.C. 46S, when Sophocles first came forward, and Olymp.
93. 2. B.C. 406, when he died; consequently, in a period of sixty-two
years, the last of which, comprehending his extreme old age, cannot
have added much to the number. The years of the Peloponnesian
war must have been the most prolific ; for if we may depend upon the
Sophocles took a part, <rov t^o; '\vuiav toXi/jov. The list of generals in this war is
preserved to a certain extent complete in a fragment of Androtion, quoted by the
Scholiast on Aristides, p. '>'l-i C (p. 1S2, Kd. Frommel. )
* See Plutarch An sent, &c. 3., where this story is brought in by the head and
shoulders. It is from this poem, of course, that tie author of the Vita Sophoc/ix
derives his assertion with regard to the age of Sophocles at the time of the Samian
war ; otherwise, how did he come to make an assertion so unusual with gramma-
rians ? We must, therefore, emend the readings in the liln Sophac/is according to
the passage in Plutarch, where the text is more to be depended on. This will make
Sophocles 55 years old at this peri d.
t A the nanus XIII. p 603.
340 HISTORY OF THE
tradition* that the Antigone was the thirty-second play in a chrono-
logical arrangement of the dramas of Sophocles, there still remain
eighty-one dramas for the second half of his poetical career ; or, if we
leave out the satyrical dramas, we have about fifty-eight pieces remain-
ing. We arrive at the same result from a date relating to Euripides,
of whose pieces, said to be ninety-two in number, the Alcestis was the
sixteenth. f Now, according to the same authority, the Alcestis was
exhibited in Olymp. 85. 2. B.C. 438, the seventeenth year of the poetical
life of Euripides, which lasted for forty-nine, from Olymp. 81. 1. b.c.
455, to Olymp. 93. 2. B.C. 406. It may be seen from this, that at first
both poets brought out a tetralogy every three or four years, but after-
wards every two years at least. A consequence of this more rapid
production appears in that slight regard for, or rather the absolute
neglect of, the stricter models, which has been remarked in the lyrical
parts of tragedy after the 90th or 89th Olympiad.
§ 3. As far as one can judge from internal and external evidence, the
remaining tragedies are all subsequent to the Antigone : the following
is perhaps their chronological order • Antigone, Electra, Trachinian
Women, King Oedipus, Ajax, Philoctetes, Qjldipus at Colonus. The
only definite information we possess is that the Philoctetes was acted in
Olymp. 92. 3. B.C. 409, and the OSdipus at Colonus not till Olymp.
94. 3. b.c. 401, when it was brought out by the younger Sophocles, the
author being dead. Taken together, they exhibit the art of Sophocles
in its full maturity, in that mild grandeur which Sophocles was the first
to appropriate to himself, when, after having (to use a remarkable ex-
pression of his own which has been preserved) put away the pomp of
iEschylus along with his boyish things, and laid aside a harshness of
manner, which had sprung up from his own too great art and refine-
ment, he had at length attained to that style which he himself con-
sidered to be the best and the most suited to the representation of the
characters of men. % In the Antigone, the Trachinian Women, and the
Electra, we have still, perhaps, a little of that artificial style and studied
* See the hypothesis to the Antigone, hy Aristophanes of Byzantium. If the
number thirty-two included the satyrical dramas also, some of the trilogies must
have been without this appendage ; otherwise the thirty-second piece would have
been a satyrical drama.
f See the didascalia to the Alcestis e cod. Faticano published by Dindorf in the
Oxford edition 1836. The number /?' is, in accordance with this view, changed to
if, which suits the reckoning better than iZ,'. We have a third date of this kind in
the Birds of Aristophanes, which is the thirty-fifth of that poet's comedies.
\ The important passage, quoted by Plutarch, De Profectu Virtut. Sent. p. 79. B.,
should undoubtedly be written as follows: — b lotpoxXru 'i\vyi, tov Klo-^vXov 'hia.
iriitouy^as byxav, lira to tfixpov xai xarari^vov rns ccwrou xuravxivri;, lis rpirov no*n
to rris Xi^ioi; fiira/iiZxXuti titos, SVsj itrr'iv iihxojrarov xa) fiiXritrrov.
[The xarao-xiuh here opposed to the Xs2;/s means the language or words as op-
posed to the style or their arrangement. See Plutarch Comp. Aristoph. et Menandr.
p. 853 C. iv rn narcurxivy run bvof&dTwt.—J&Q .]
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 341
obscurity which Sophocles objected to in himself; the Ajax and Plii-
ioctetes, as well as the two CEdipuses, show, in a manner which cannot
be mistaken, an easier flow of language than his earlier plays, and do
not require so great an effort on the part of the reader. Nevertheless,
the tragic art of Sophocles is fully shown in all of them, and is like
nothing but itself; Sophocles must have hit upon the changes which
he introduced into the tragedy of iEschylus, long before he wrote any
one of those plays, and must have already made, in accordance with
his principles, a complete change in the whole constitution of tragedy.
§ 4. We have mentioned these alterations, as far as concerns the
details, in the two preceding chapters : we must here consider their
connexion with the change of the whole essence and organiza-
tion of tragedy effected by Sophocles. The foundation and corner-
stone of this new edifice, which was erected on the same area as the
old building, but according to a different plan, was always this, that,
though Sophocles still followed the old usages aud laws, and always, or
as a general rule, exhibited at one time three tragedies and a satyrical
drama, he nevertheless loosened the connexion of these pieces with one
another, and presented to the public not one great dramatic poem, but
four separate poetical works, which might just as well have been
brought forward at different festivals* The tragic poet, too, no longer
proposed to himself to exhibit a series of mythical actions, the develope-
mentof the complicated destinies of families and tribes, which was in-
consistent with the compass and unity of plan required by separate tra-
gedies ; he was obliged to limit himself to one leading fact, and, to
take the example of the Orestea, could only oppose to such a trilogy
fragments of itself, like the Electra of Sophocles or Euripides, inwltfch
everything is referred to the murder of Clyta?,mnestra. The tragedies
subsequent to Olymp. 80 had indeed become considerably longer,t
which is said to have originated with Aristarchus, a tragedian who
made his appearance in Olymp. 81. 2. B.C. 454. J The Agamemnon
of vEschylus, however, the first piece of his last trilogy, is considerably
longer than the others, and nearly of the same length as a play of
Sophocles. Still, this extension has not been effected by an increase in
the action, which even in Sophocles turns upon a single point, aud very
seldom, as in the Antigone, is divided into several important moments,
* As e. g. Euripides brought out in b.c. 431 the Medea, Philoctetes, Dictys, and
the satyrical drama " the Reapers" (e^itrrai) : in b.c. 414 Xenocles exhibited the
CEdipus, Lycaon, Bacchae, and the satyrical drama " the Athamas."
f E.g. the Persians, 1076; Suppliants, 1074; Seven against Thebes, 1078
Prometheus, 1093. On the other hand, the Agamemnon, 1G73; the Antigone,
1353 ; King (Edipus, 1530 ; CEdipus at Colonus, \7tii), according to the numbers in
Dindorf's edition.
[ Suidas V. , Apiorap%os....os ■xpuros us to vv» uItuv ft.YiX.ci to. o/JUfixra Kararrrnt
Etisebius gives us the year of his first appearance.
342 HISTORY OF THE
but is entirely subservient to the development of the events out of the
character and passions of actors, and belongs to the delineation of their
state of mind. The lyrical element, on the contrary, so far from gaining
anything by this extension, was considerably diminished, especially in
the part which fell to the chorus, since it is clear that Sophocles did not
feel himself so much called upon, asiEschylus did, to represent the im-
pression of the events and circumstances upon those who took no part
in them, and to lend his voice to express the feelings of right-minded
spectators, which was the chief business of the tragic chorus, but he
directed his efforts to express what was going on in the bosoms of the
persons whose actions were represented on the stage.
It is sufficiently obvious that the introduction of the third actor
(chap. XXII. § 7,) was necessary for this change. The dialogue
naturally gains much in variety by the addition of a third interlocutor ;
for this enables the characters to show themselves on different sides.
If it is the property of the tritagonist, to produce opposition on the part
of the first person by gainsaying him, the deuter agonist, on the other
hand, may, in friendly conversation, draw from his bosom its gentler
feelings and more secret thoughts. It was not till the separation of the
deuteragonist from the tritagonist that we could have persons like
Chrysothemis by the side of Electra, and Ismene by the side of Anti-
gone, who elevate the vigour of the chief character by the opposition and
contrast of a gentler womanhood.*
These outward changes in the stage business of tragedy enable us
at once to see the point to which Sophocles desired to bring tragic
poetry; he wished to make it a true mirror of the impulses, passions,
strivings, and struggles of the soul of man. While he laid aside those
great objects of national interest, which made the Greek look upon the
time gone by as a high and a holy thing, and to keep up the remem-
brance of which the art of ^schylus had been for the most part dedi-
cated, the mythical subjects gained in his hands a general, and there-
fore a lasting significance. The rules of Greek art obliged him to
depict strong and great characters, and the shocks to which they are
exposed are exceedingly violent; they are drawn, however, with such in-
trinsic truth that every man may recognise in them in some points a
likeness of himself; the corrections and limitations of the exercise of
man's will, and the requirements and laws of morality are expressed in
the most forcible manner. There has hardly been any poet whose
works can be compared with those of Sophocles for the universality and
durability of their moral significance.
§ 5. We cannot here attempt to submit the plan of the different
tragedies of Sophocles to a circumstantial analysis (to which the re-
marks in chap. XXII. furnish a sort of introduction) ; it will, however,
* Comp. Scliol. on (he Elecda, 328.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 343
be in accordance with the object of this work to take a nearer view of
the particular situations which form the turning points of the different
plays, and of the ethical ideas which are asserted in them.
The Antigone turns entirely on the contest between the interests
and requirements of the slate and the rights and duties of the family.
Thebes has successfully repulsed the attack of the Argive army ; but Poly-
neices, one of her citizens, and a member of the Theban royal family, lies
dead before the walls among the enemies who had threatened Thebes
with fire and sword. Creon, the king of Thebes, only follows a custom
of the Greeks, the object of which was to preserve a state from the
attacks of its own citizens, when he leaves the enemy of his native
land unburied as a prey to dogs and vultures; yet the manner in
which he keeps up this political principle, the excessive severity of the
punishment denounced against those who wished to bury the corpse,
the terrible threats addressed to those who watched it, and, still more,
the boastful and violent strain in which he sets forth and extols his own
principles — all this gives us a proof of that infatuation of a narrow
mind, unenlightened by gentler.ess of a higher nature, which appeared to
the Greeks to contain in itself a foreboding of approaching misfortune.
But what was to be done by the relations of the dead man, the females or
his family, on whom the care of the corpse was imposed as a religious
duty by the universal law of the Greeks ? That they should feel their
duty to the family in all its force, and not comprehend what they owed
to the state, is in accordance with the natural character of women ; but
while the one sister, Ismene, only sees the impossibility of performing
the former duty, the great soul of Antigone fires with the occasion,
and forms resolves of the greatest boldness. Defiance begets defiance :
Creon's harsh decree calls forth in her breast the most obstinate, in-
flexible self-will, which disregards all consequences, and despises all
gentler means. In this consists her guilt, which Sophocles does not
conceal ; on the contrary, he brings it prominently before us, and es-
pecially in the choruses;* but the very reason why Antigone is so
highly tragical a character is this, that, notwithstanding the crime she
has committed, she appears to us so great and so amiable. The sen-
tinel's description of her, how she came to the corpse in the burning
heat of the sun, while a scorching whirlwind (rvf^) was throwing all
nature into confusion, and how she raised a shrill cry of woe when she
saw that the earth she had scattered over it had been taken away, is a
picture of a being, who, possessed by an ethical idea as by an irresistible
law of nature, blindly follows her own noble impulses.
It must, however, be insisted on that it is not the tragical end of
this great and noble creature, but the disclosure of Creon's infatuation,
which forms the general object of the tragedj ; and that, although
* See particularly v. S.">J. Dindorf: -x^us W \irx**»* fyurovs-
344 HISTORY OF THE
Sophocles considers Antigone's act as going beyond what women should
dare, he lays much more stress on the truth; that there is something
holy without and above the state, to which the state should pay respect
and reverence : a doctrine which Antigone declares with such irresist-
ible truth and sublimity.* Every movement in the course of this
piece which could shake Creon in the midst of his madness, and open
his eyes to his own situation, turns upon this and is especially directed
to him : — the noble security with which Antigone relies on the holiness
of her deed ; the sisterly affection of Ismene, who would willingly share
the consequences of the act ; the loving zeal of Harmon, who is at first
prudent and then desperate ; the warnings of Teiresias ; — all are in vain,
till the latter breaks out into those prophetic threatenings of misfortune
which at last, when it is too late, penetrate Creon's hardened heart,
Hsemon slays himself on the body of Antigone, the death of the mother
follows that of her son, and Creon is compelled to acknowledge that
there are blessings in one's family for which no political wisdom is an
adequate substitute.
§ 6. The characteristics of the art of Sophocles are most prominently
shown in the Electra, because we have here an opportunity of making
a direct comparison with the Orestea of iEschylus, and in particular
with the Choephorce. Sophocles takes an entirely different view of this
mythological subject, as well by representing the punishment of Cly-
taemnestra without the connexion of a trilogy, as by making Electra the
chief character and protagonist. This was impracticable in the case of
iEschylus, for he was obliged to make Orestes, who was the chief per-
son in the legend, also the chief character in the drama. But for So-
phocles' finer delineation of character, and for his psychological views,
Electra was a much more suitable heroine. For while Orestes, a matri-
cide from duty and conscience, an avenger of blood from his birth,
and especially intrusted with this commission by the Delphic oracle,
appears to be urged to it by a superior power ; Electra, on the con-
trary, is sustained in her burning hatred against her mother and her
mother's paramour, by her own feelings, — which are totally different
from those of her sister Chrysothemis, — by her entire devotion to the
sublime image of her murdered father, which is ever present to her
mind, by disgust for her mother's pride and lust, in short by the
most secret impulses of a young maiden's heart : that ^Egisthus wears
the robes of Agamemnon, that Clytsemnestra held a feast on the day of
her husband's murder, these are continually recurring provocations.
Such is the character which Sophocles has made the central figure in his
tragedy, a character in which the warmest feelings are blended with the
peculiar shrewdness that distinguished the female character at the time
represented, and he has contrived to give such a direction to the plot,
V, 450. all yap ri f/.oi Zivs r,v —
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 345
that the interest is entirely centered in the actions and feelings of this
person. According- to iEschylus, Orestes had been driven from the
house by Clytannnestra, and sent to Strophius of Phocis ; he appears
in the paternal mansion as an expelled and illegally disinherited son.
According to Sophocles, Orestes, then a child, was to have been put to
death when Agamemnon was murdered, and it was only Electra who
rescued him and put him under the care of his father's friend, Stro-
phius,* by which she gains the credit of having preserved an avenger
of her father, and a deliverer of the whole family. t On the other hand,
Sophocles is obliged to omit the secret plot between Orestes and
Electra, and their conspiracy to effect the murder, which is the
leading incident in the play of TEschylus, because Sophocles did
not set so much importance on making Electra a participator in the
deed, as in exhibiting the mind of the high-souled maiden driven
about by a storm of contending emotions. This he effects by some
slight modifications of the story, in which he makes all possible use of
his predecessor's ideas, but follows them out and works them up with
such gentle and delicate touches that they fit exactly with his
new plan. JEschylus had already hit upon the contrivance by which
Orestes gets into the house of the Atridae ; he appeared as an ally and
vassal of the house with the pretended funeral urn of Orestes; X but
Electra had herself planned this device with him, and speaks in concert
with him; consequently, the completion of the scheme commences im-
mediately after the first leading division of the play. In Sophocles,
where there is no such concert between him and his sister, Electra is
herself deceived by the trick, and is cast down and grieved in the same
denree as Clylaemnestra, after a transient outbreak of maternal affection,
is gladdened and tranquillized by it.§ The funeral offerings of Orestes
at his father's grave, which in .Eschylus lead to the recognition, in
Sophocles only excite a hope in Chrysothemis, which is at once cast
down by Electra, who refuses to take comfort from it. Her desire for
revenge becomes only the more urgent when she believes herself de-
prived of all help from man ; her grief reaches its highest point when she
holds in her arms the sepulchral urn, which she supposes to contain her
* It is for this reason that Sophocles considers Strophius of Crisa as the friend of
Agamemnon and his children, and therefore he names Fhanoteus, the hero of a
state hostile to the Crisaeans, as the pers n who sends Clytsemnestra the message
about her .son, although Strophius had collected and sent the ashes of Orestes.
f Euripides, in his Electra, gives this incident up again, and supposes that
Electra and Orestes were separated from one another as children.
X Up to v. 548 of the Choephorce, Orestes wears the common dro-s of a traveller ;
it is nut before v. 652 that he aj pears in a different costume as ie^ites of the house.
§ It was a kindly trait in Sophocles, which would never have occurred to JEs'
chyhis, that Clytseninestra's first feeling, when she hears the news, is a natural emo-
tion of love for the child, which she had borne with pain and travail, v. 770.
346 HISTORY OF THE
only liope. As it is Orestes himself who gives it to her, the recognition
scene follows immediately, and this constitutes the revolution, or peri-
peteia, as the ancients called it. The death of Clytaeinnestra and
iEgisthus is treated by Sophocles more as a necessary consequence of
the rest, and less as the chief incident ; and while it is the aim of M&-
chylus to place this action itself in its proper light, Sophocles at once
relaxes his efforts as soon as Electra is relieved from her sorrow and
disquietude.
§ 7c The Trachinian Women of Sophocles has also entirely the plan
and object of a delineation of character, and the imperfections, with
which this play is not altogether unreasonably charged, arise from the
conflict between the legend on which the play is founded, and the in-
tentions of Sophocles. The tragical end of Hercules forms the subject
of the play ; Sophocles, however, has again made the heroine Deianeira,
and not Hercules, the chief person in the play. Sorrow arising from
love, this is the moving theme of the drama, and, treated as the poet
wished it to be, it is one possessing the greatest beauties. All Deia-
neira's thoughts and endeavours are directed towards regaining the love
of her husband, on whom her whole dependence is placed, and towards
assuring herself of his constant attachment to herself. By pursuing
this impulse without sufficient foresight, she brings upon him, as it ap-
pears to her, the most frightful misery and ruin. By this her fate is
decided ; but in the ancient tragedy, even when a person perishes, it is
possible, by a justification of his name and memory, to attain to that
tranquillizing effect, which was required by the feelings of Sophocles as
well as by those of iEschylus. It is this, not to speak of the conclusion
of the legend itself, which is the object of the best part of the Trachinian
Women, in which Hercules appears as the chief character, and, after
uttering the most violent imprecations against his wife, at last acknow-
ledges that Deianeira, influenced by love alone, hud only contributed to
bring about the end which fate had destined for him.* It is true that
Hercules does not, as we might expect, give way to compassionate la-
mentations for Deianeira, and earnest wishes that she were present to
receive his parting forgiveness. The feelings of a Greek would be satis-
fied by the hero's quitting the world without uttering any reproaches
against his unhappy wife, for this removes any real grounds for repre-
hension.
§ 8. We shall form the clearest idea of the meaning of King CEdipus,
if we consider what it does not mean. It does not contain a history of
the crime of (Edipus and its detection; but this crime, which fate had
brought upon him, without his knowledge or his will, forms a dark and
gloomy background on which the action of the drama itself is painted
* Ifyllus says of her. v. 1136 : uzuv <ro xfit* Si^ajrs, ^nfrit ftco/tUn.
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 347
with bold and strong colours. The action of the drama has reference
throughout to the discovery of these horrors, and the moral ideas which
are developed in it, must be brought out in this discovery, if they are
particularly contained in it. Let us consider, then, what changes take
place in CEdipus in the course of the tragedy. At the beginning, not
only is he praised by the Thebans in the most emphatic terms as the
best and wisest of men, but he also shows that he is himself fully con-
scious of his own worth, and well satisfied with the measures he
has set on foot, in the first instance, to investigate the cause of the de-
structive malady, and then to discover the murderer of Lai'us; and in
this he is not disturbed by any misgiving, not even by the faintest
shadow of a suspicion, that he himself may be this murderer. In this
self-reliance, and the confidence which springs from it, we have an
explanation of the violence and unjustifiable warmth with which
CEdipus repels the declaration of Teiresias, that he himself by his
presence has brought pollution on the land, which he ought to remove
by withdrawing as soon as possible. Here an occasion was presented
on which CEdipus should have felt how vain and perishable human
greatness is, how weak the virtue of man ; on which he ought to have
examined his heart, and to have questioned himself whether there was
no dark spot in his life to which this fearful crime might correspond.
Such, however, is his self-confidence, that where the truth comes so
near to him, he sees only falsehood and treason, and maintains his
fancied security, until, in a conversation with Iocasta, when she men-
tions that Lai'us was murdered at a place where three roads meet, he is
for the first time disturbed by a sudden suspicion,* and an entire re-
volution takes place in his mind. It is particularly worthy of remark
that the steps which Iocasta takes to tranquillize her husband, and to
banish all the terror occasioned by the prophesies of Teiresias, are just
those which lead to a discovery of all the horrors; she endeavours to
prove the nothingness of the prophetic art by means of that which
shortly afterwards confirms its authority. We may recognise in this,
as in many other features of this tragedy, distinct traces of that sublime
irony, which expresses the poet's sorrow for the limitation of human
existence by striking contrasts between the conceptions of the individual
and the real state of the case. It is expressed in many passages of the
tragedies of Sophocles, but is particularly developed in King (Edipus,
for the theme of the whole is the infatuation of mail in regard to his
own destiny, and in this play the idea is echoed even by the words and
turns of expression. f The same sort of peripeteia is further repeated
* Olov /ju a,Kouira.vT apr'iu; !£((> yuvcci,
\pu%ris ■xXo.vnu.a xa.va.x.ii/r,tn; (pptvuv-
f See Mr. Thirlwall's excellent essay "on tlie Irony of Sophocles," in the Philolo-
gical Museum, Vol. II. No VI. p. I*!.
348 HISTORY OF THE
when CEdipus has allowed himself to be calmed by his queen, and
believes that the news he has received of the death of his parents in
Corinth has freed him from all fear of having committed the horrible
crimes denounced by the oracle : it is, however, by the narrative of this
same messenger, with regard to his discovery on Cithseron, that he is
suddenly torn from this state of security, and from that moment, though
Jocasta sees at one glance the whole connexion of their horrible fate,
he cannot rest or be quiet until he has become fully convinced of his
parricidal act, and of his incestuous connexion with his mother. He
accordingly inflicts punishment on himself, which is the more terrible,
the more confident he was before that he was good and blameless in
the eyes of god and man. " O ye generations of mortals, how unworthy
of the name of life I must reckon your existence:" so begins the last
stasimon of the chorus, which in this tragedy, as in all those of So-
phocles, performs the duty which Aristotle prescribes as its proper voca-
tion ; it gives indication of a humane sympathy, which, although not
based upon such deep views as to solve all the knotty points in the
action, is guided by such a train of thought as to bring back the violent
emotions and the shocks of passion to a certain measure of tranquil con-
templation. The chorus of Sophocles, therefore, when in its songs it
meddles with the action of the piece, often appears weak, vacillating,
and even blinded to the truth : when, on the contrary, it collects its dif-
ferent feelings into a general contemplation of the laws of our being, it
peals forth the sublimest hymns, such as that beautiful stasimon, which,
after Jocasta's impious speeches, recommends a fear of the gods, and a
regard for those ordinances which had their birth in heaven, which the
mortal nature of man has not brought forth, and which will never be
plunged by oblivion into the sleep of death.*
§ 9. In the Ajax of Sophocles the extraordinary power of the poet
is shown in the production of a character, which, though entirely pecu-
liar, and like nothing but itself, is nevertheless a general picture of
humanity, applicable to every individual case. Sophocles' Ajax, like
Homer's, is from first to last a brave and noble character, always ready
to exert his unwearying heroism for the benefit of his people. He is a
man who relies on himself, and can depend upon his own firmness in
every case that occurs. But in the full consciousness of his indomi-
table courage, he has forgotten that there is a higher power on which
man is dependent, even for that which he considers most steadfast and
most his own, the practical part of his character. This is the more
deeply-rooted guilt of Ajax, which is shown at the very beginning of
the play; but it does not appear in its full compass till afterwards, in
the prophecies communicated to Teucer by Calchas, where Ajax's
* King GLdip. v. 863: il poi %mtin tpigovn.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 349
arrogant words — " Wilh (he assistance of the gods even the feeble
might conquer ; that he was confident he could perform his part even
without their help ; " are cited as proof of his mode of thinking.* Now,
by the vote of the Greeks, which has awarded the arms of Achilles to
Ulysses and not to him, Ajax has suffered that sort of humiliation,
which, to a character like his, is always most intolerable, and the gods
have chosen this moment for the punishment of his presumption. In
the night after the decision, when Ajax has set out in the most un-
governable passion to wreak his vengeance on the Atridse and Ulysses,
Athena distracts his mind so that he mistakes oxen and sheep for his
enemies, and gives vent to his wrath against them. In this unworthy
condition and performing these unworthy actions, Sophocles shows him
at the very beginning of his drama as " Ajax the whip-bearer'' (Aiac
uaaTiyotyopoc). When he returns to his senses, his whole soul is pos
sessed with the deepest sense of shame, and the more so as all his pride
is shaken to its foundation. The beautiful Eccyclema scene t is intro-
duced for the purpose of representing Ajax, ashamed and humbled, with
all the circumstances of his case. However deeply he feels his dis-
grace, and however clearly he recognizes the gods as the authors of it,
he is as far as possible from being a downcast penitent. His whole
character is far too consistent to allow him to live on in humble
resignation. He has convinced himself that he can no longer live with
honour. It is true that the poet, in the oracle ascribed to Calchas,
" {hat Athena is persecuting Ajax only for this day, and that he will
be delivered if he survives it," suggests the possibility of Ajax having
more modest views, of his recognizing the limits of his power. But
this, though possible, is never actually the case. Ajax remains as he
is. His death, in order to effect which he employs a sort of stratagem,
is the only atonement which he offers to the gods. J Sophocles, how-
ever, would look upon this as only one side of the complete develope-
ment of the action. Severely as the poet punishes what was worthy of
punishment in Ajax, he acknowledges with equal justice the greatness
of such a character as his. The opinions of antiquity, which regarded a
man's burial as an essential part of the destiny of his life, allowed a
continuation of the action after the death of the hero. Teucer, the
brother of Ajax, contends, as the champion of his honour, with the
Atridae, who seek to deprive him of the rites of burial; and Ulysses,
* See the speech of Calchas : —
T« yap iri^urau. xavovnra owpaTa
'iipatrx' o ftccvn;. v. 758, ff.
f V. 346— 595. comp. chap. XXXII. § 10.
t Compare the ambiguous words in the deceitful speech : — a.\\' dpi *^s n Xewrpa,
&c, v. 654, ff.
350 HISTORY OF THE
the very person whom Ajax had hated most bitterly, comes forward on
the side of Teucer, openly and distinctly acknowledging the excellences
of the deceased warrior.* And thus Ajax, the noble hero, whom the
Athenians too honoured as a hero of their race,f appears as a striking
example of the divine Nemesis, and the more so as his heroism was
altogether spotless in every other respect.
§ 10. In the Philoctetes, which was not represented till Olymp. 92. 3.
B. c. 439, when the poet was eighty-five years old, Sophocles had to
emulate not only iEschylus, but also Euripides, who had before this
time endeavoured to impart novelty to the legend by making great
alterations in it, and adding some very strange contrivances of his own. J
Sophocles needed no such means to give a peculiar interest to the
subject as treated by himself. He lays the chief stress on a skilful
outline and consistent filling up of the characters ; it is the object of his
drama to depict the results of these characters in the natural, and, to a
certain extent, necessary developement of their peculiarities. In this
piece, however, this psychological developement, starting from an hy-
pothesis selected in the first instance and proceeding in accordance
with it, leads to results entirely different from those contained in the
original legend. In order to avoid this contest between his art and the
old mythological story, Sophocles has been obliged for once to avail
himself of a resource which he elsewhere despises, though it is fre-
quently employed by Euripides, namely, the Deus ex machina, as it is
called, i. e. the intervention of some deity, whose sudden appearance
puts an end to the play of passions and projects among the persons
whose actions are represented, and, as it were, cuts the Gordian knot
with the sword.
Sophocles having assumed that Ulysses has associated with himself
the young hero Neoptolemus, in order to bring to Troy Philoctetes, or
his weapons, we have from the beginning of the piece an interesting con-
trast between the two heroes thus united for a common object. Ulysses
* It is not till this incident that we have the Peripeteia, which was always a
violent change in the direction of the piece (k iU to havriov ruv vrgarroftsvav
ftirafZoXri, Aristot. Poet. 11); the death of Ajax, on the other hand, lay quite in the
direction which the drama had taken from the very beginning.
+ It is worthy of remark that he speaks only of the sword of Eurysaces, and not
of Philaeus, from whom the family of Miltiades and Cimon derived their descent.
Sophocles manifestly avoids the appearance of paying intentional homage to dis-
tinguished families.
\ Euripides had feigned that the Trojans also sent an embassy to Philoctetes and
offered him the sovereignty in return for his aid, in order (as Dio Chrysostom
remarks. Oral. 52. p. 549) to give himself an opportunity of introducing the long
speeches, pro and con, of which he is so fond. Ulysses, disguised as a Greek whom
his countrymen before Troy had ill-used, endeavours to induce him to assist his
countrymen, rather than the enemy. The proper solution of the difficulties in this
piece is still very doubtful.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 351
relies altogether on (he ambition of Neoptolemus, who is destined by
fate to he the conqueror of Troy, if he car. obtain the aid of the weapons
of Philoctetes, and Neoptolemus does, in fact, suffer himself to be pre-
vailed upon to deceive Philoctetes by representing himself as an enemy
of the Greeks who are besieging Troy, and is just on the point of car-
rying him off to their camp, under the pretence of taking him home;
meanwhile Neoptolemus is deeply touched, in the first place, by the
unsophisticated eloquence of Philoctetes, and then by the sight of his
unspeakable sufferings ; * but it is long before the resolute temper of
the young hero can be drawn aside hy this from the path he has once
entered on. The first time he departs from it is after Philoctetes has
given him his bow to take care of, when he candidly admits the truth,
that he is obliged to take him to Troy, and cannot conduct him to his
home. Yet he still follows the plans of Ulysses, though much against
his own inclination, and this drives Philoctetes into a state of despair,
which almost transcends all his bodily sufferings, until Neoptolemus
suddenly reappears in violent dispute with Ulysses, as himself, as the
simple-minded, straightforward, noble young hero, who will not in any
case deceive the confidence of Philoctetes ; and as Philoctetes cannot
and will not overcome his hatred of the Achaeans, he throws aside all
his ambitious hopes and wishes, and is on the point of escorting the
sick hero to his native land, when Hercules, the Deus ex machina.
suddenly makes his appearance, and, by announcing the decrees of
fate, produces a complete revolution in the sentiments of Philoctetes
and Neoptolemus. This drama, then, is exceedingly simple, for the
foundation on which it is built is the relation between three characters,
and it consists of two acts only, separated hy the stasinon before the
scene, in which the change in Neoptolemus's views is brought about.
But if we consider the consistent and profound developement of the
characters, it is by far the most artificial and elaborate of all the works
of Sophocles. The appearance of Hercules only effects an outward
peripeteia, or that sort of revolution which bears upon the occurrences
in the piece ; the intrinsic revolution, the real peripeteia in the drama
of Sophocles, lies in the previous return of Neoptolemus to his genuine
and natural disposition, and this peripeteia is, quite in accordance with
the spirit of Sophocles, brought about by means of the characters and
the progress of the action itself.
§ 11. In all the pieces of which we have spoken hitherto, the pre-
vailing ideas are ethical, but necessarily based on a religions foundation,
since it is always by reference to the divinity that the proper bias is
* V. 96") : 'Efioi fih oixros tuvos lfATi<r<rax.i th rouV avSooj, ev vuv T^Z-w aXXa. tea)
miXai. The silence of Neoptolemus in the scene beginning with Oi Z xixurr
kvlpav <r'i\ti;, v. 974, and ending with the words axovtopcu p,\v, v. 1074, is just as
characteristic as any speech could have been.
352 HISTORY OP THE
given to human actions in every field. There is, however, one drama
in which the religious ideas of Sophocles are brought so prominently
forward that the whole piay may be considered as an exposition of the
Greek belief in the gods.
This drama, the CEdipus at Colonics, is always connected in the old
stories with the last days of the poet. Sophocles attained the age of
89, or thereabouts, for he did not die till Olymp. 93. 2. b.c. 406,* and
yet he did not himself bring out the CEdipus at Colonus; it was first
brought on the stage in Olymp. 94. 3. b. c. 401, by his grandson, the
younger Sophocles. This younger Sophocles was a son of Ariston, the
offspring of the great poet and Theoris of Sicyon. Sophocles had also
a son Iophon by a free-woman of Athens, and he alone, according to
the Attic law, could be considered as his legitimate son and right'ul
heir. Iophon and Sophocles both emulated their father and grand-
father; the former brought tragedies on the stage during his father's
lifetime, the latter after his grandfather's death : the whole family
seems, like that of iEschylus, to have dedicated itself to the tragic muse.
But the heai-t of the old man yearned towards the offspring of his be-
loved Theoris ; and it was said, that he was endeavouring to bestow
upon his grandson during his own lifetime a considerable part of his
means. Iophon, fearing lest his inheritance should be too much di-
minished by this, was urged to the undutiful conduct of proposing to
the members of the phratria (who had a sort of family jurisdiction)
that his father should no longer be permitted to have any control over
his property, which he was no longer capable of managing. The only
reply which Sophocles made to this charge was to read to his fellow-
tribesmen the parodos from the CEdipus at Colonus ;f which must,
therefore, have been just composed, if it were to furnish any proof for
the object he had in view ; and we think it does the greatest honour to
the Athenian judge, that, after such a proof of the poet's powers of
mind, they paid no attention to the proposal of Iophon, even though
he was right in a legal point of view. Iophon, it seems, became sensible
of his error, and Sophocles afterwards forgave him. The ancients found
* The old authorities give Olymp. 93. 3. as the year of Sophocles' death: this
was the year of the Archon Callias, in which Aristophanes' Frogs were brought out
at the Lensa, and the death of Sophocles is presupposed in this comedy as well as
that of Euripides. The Fit a Sophoc/is, however, following Istrus and Neanthes,
places the death of Sophocles at the Chots ; and as the Choes, which belonged to
the Anthesteria, were celebrated in the month Anthesterion, after the Lenaea, which
fell in the month Gamelion. the death of Sophocles must be referred to the year
before the archonship of Callias, consequently to Olymp 93. 2. If we suppose that
some confusion has taken place, and substitute for the Choes the lesser, or country
Dionysia, we should still be very far short of the necessary time for conceiving,
writing, and preparing for the stage such a comedy as the Frogs, even though we
should also suppose an intercalaiy month inserted between Poseideon and Gamelion.
f EiiVfl-ow, £ev£, rao-h xcopxs, v. 663 ff. Comp. chap. XXII. § \2.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 353
an allusion to this fact in a passage of the (Edipus at Colonus,* where
Antigone says, by way of apology for Polyneices, " Other people, too,
have had bad children, and a choleric temper, but have been induced
by the soothing speeches of their friends to give up their anger."
§ 12. It was then in the latter years of his life that Sophocles com-
posed this tragedy, which the ancients justly designate as a sweet and
charming poem jf so wonderfully is it pervaded by gentle and amiable
feelings, so deeply tinged with a tone mixed up of sorrow for the
miseries of human existence and of comforting and elevating hopes.
This drama impresses every susceptible reader with a warmth of sensi-
bility as if it treated of the weal of the poet himself; here, more than
in any other poem, one can recognize the immediate language of the
heart.J In this play the aged Sophocles has plunged into the recollec-
tions of his youth, during which the monuments and traditions of his
rustic home, the village of Colonus near Athens, had made a deep and
lasting impression on his mind : in the whole piece, and especially in
the charming parodos-song which celebrates the natural beauties and
ancient glory of Colonus, he expresses in the most amiable manner his
patriotism and his love for his home. At Colonus were hallowed spots
of every kind, consecrated by faith in the powers of darkness ; a grove
of the Erinnyes, who were designated as " the venerable goddesses"
(<7£/imi) ; " a brazen threshold/' as it was called, which was regarded
as the portal of the subterranean world ; and, among other things, also
an abode where (Edipus was said to dwell beneath the earth as a pro-
pitious deity, conferring upon the land peace and bliss, and destroying
its enemies, especially the Thebans. The touching thought that this
(Edipus, whom the Erinnyes had so cruelly persecuted in his life-time,
should find rest from his sorrows in their sanctuary, had been mythically
expressed in other places, and was connected with particular localities.
That such a sacrifice, however, to the avenging goddesses, one recon-
ciled to them, and even tranquillized by them, should also possess the
power of conferring blessings, depends upon the fundamental ideas of
the worship of the Chthonian deities among the Greeks, which directly
ascribe to the powers of the earth and the night a secret and mysterious
fulness of life. It was in reference to these,§ according to the views of
* aXX' ia aurov' tiff) ^ari^m; yova.) xaxai. V. 1 192 ff.
f Mollissimum ejus canren de OEdijiode. Cicero de Fin., v. i. 3.
X Not to touch upon the higher ideas, we may also refer to the complaints of the
chorus about the miseries of old age, v. 1211. There is a counterpoise to these
laments in the subsequent praises of an easy death, at peace with the gods.
§ Sophocles himself says, v. 62, of the temples and monuments of Colonus,
TDiavTa trot towt' icrrh, u %iy, oh >Jyci; rift&iftiv' «U« T>i \mov<r'ioi *-X:sv, i.e.. not cele-
brated by poets and orators, but only by local tradition. How far vEschylns was
from conceiving anything of the kind may be seen from several passages in the
Seven against Thebes ; according to which (Edipus must have been dead and
buried in Thebes before the war, and this was in accordance with the more ancient
2 A
3b4 HISTORY OP THE
Sophocles, that CEdipus, at the very commencement of his unhappy
career, before his rencontre with Laius, received an oracle from the
Delphic Apollo, stating that he would reach the end of his sorrowful
journey through life in that place, where he should obtain an hospitable
reception from the Erinnyes. He does not, however, perceive that he is
approaching the fulfilment of the oracle till the beginning of the drama,
when, wandering about as an exile, he unexpectedly learns that he is in
the sanctuary of these goddesses. It is, however, long before the
people of Colonus, who hasten to the spot, are willing to receive him :
they are shocked in the first place by the audacity of the stranger, who
has so boldly profaned the grove of the fearful goddesses, and in the
next place by the terrible curse which attaches to his destiny : and it is
the noble and humane disposition of Theseus, the prince of the country,
which first assures him of reception and protection in Attica. Mean-
while, a second oracle comes to light. It has been obtained by the
parties who are contending for the sovereignty of Thebes, and promises
conquest and prosperity to those who possess CEdipus or his grave. This
gives occasion for a number of scenes in which Creon and Polyneices,
both of whom have grievously offended CEdipus, strive with all their
might to gain his aid for their own purposes ; but they are at once
haughtily rejected by him, assured as he is by the protection of Athens
from all outward violence. The real object of these scenes, which fill
up the middle portion of the tragedy, obviously is to represent the blind
and aged CEdipus a miserable being, bowed down by a curse, disgraced,
and banished, yet raised to a state of honour and majesty by the inter-
position of the divinity in his favour; and in this state he is elevated
far above his enemies, who before ill-treated him in the insolence of
power. There is a sort of majesty even in the anger with which he
sends from him, loaded with a curse, his wicked son Polyneices, now so
deeply humbled ; although, according to our notions, the Greek Charis
may appear somewhat harsh and rude in this instance. After this ex-
altation upon earth, the thunder of Zeus is heard, calling CEdipus to the
other world ; and we learn, partly from what CEdipus said before, and
partly from the messenger who comes back to us, how CEdipus, adorned
for death in festal attire, and summoned by subterraneous thunders and
voices, has vanished in a mysterious manner from the surface of the
earth. Theseus puts a stop to the laments of the daughters with the
words, " One must not complain of the manner in which the Chthonian
powers display their favours : it were an offence to the gods to do so."*
traditions. See v. 976. 1004. It is true that Euripides has the same tradition in
his Phaenissae, v. 1707; but this tragedy belongs to a period (about 01} rap. ( J3)
when Sophocles' CEdipus at Colonus, though not yet brought out, might have been
known to the lovers of literature at Athens.
V. I7ii\. <7:u.{)ni 0gr,vuv, Taiiis' iv ol; yu,r> Xdi>i; h X0ovlx ^iv y aToxurai, -rivhiv ou
%t>-1' vifiitri; yti.Q,
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 355
It cannot have escaped any attentive reader how much in this mythus,
so treated, is applicable not merely to the old hero OEdipus, but also to
the destiny of man in general, and how a gentle longing for death, as a
deliverance from all worldly troubles and as a clearing up of our ex-
istence, runs through the whole; and certainly the political references
to the position of Athens at that time in regard to other states, even
though they are more prominent in this than in other pieces, are quite
subordinate in comparison with these leading ideas.*
§ 13. Thus the tragedies of Sophocles appear to us as pictures
of the mind, as poetical developements of the secrets of our souls and
of the laws to which their nature makes them amenable. Of all the
poets of antiquity, Sophocles has penetrated most deeply into the re-
cesses of the human heart. He bestows very little attention on facts ;
he regards them as little more than vehicles to give an outward mani-
festation to the workings of the mind. For the representation of this
world of thought, Sophocles has contrived a peculiar poetical language.
If the general distinction between the language of poetry and prose is
that the former gives the ideas with greater clearness and vividness,
and the feelings with greater strength and warmth ; the style of
Sophocles is not poetical in the same degree as that of iEschylus, because
it does not strive after the same vivid description of sensible impres-
sions, and because his art is based upon a delineation of the manifold
delicate shades of feeling, and not on an exhibition of the strong and
uncontrollable emotions. Accordingly, the style of Sophocles comes a
good deal nearer to prose than that, of iEschylus, and is distinguished
from it less by the choice, of words than by their use and connexion, and
by a sort of boldness and subtilty in the employment of ordinary ex-
pressions. Sophocles seeks to make his words imply something which
people in general would not expect in them : he employs them ac-
cording to their derivation rather than according to iheir actual use ;
and thus his expressions have a peculiar pregnancy and obscurityf
which easily degenerates into a sort of play with words and significa-
* It is true that the whole piece is full of references to the Peloponnesian war
and to the devastations to which Attica was subjected, though they spared the
country ahout Colunus and the Academy, and the lioly olive-trees. Difficulties, too.
are occasioned hy the tone of commendation in which Theseus sneaks of the character
of Thebes in general (v. 919), for Thebes was certainly at this period one of the foes
of Athens ; and it might be supposed that this passage was added by the younger
Sophocles alter Thrasybulus had liberated Athens with the aid of the Thebans. The
drama, however, is too much of one character to give any room for such a snrmi-e ;
and we must therefore conclude, that Sophocles knew there existed among the people
of Thebes a disposition favourable to Athens, whereas the aristocrats who had the
upper hand in the government were hostile to that city. After the termination of
the Peloponnesian war, the democratic parly at Thebes showed themselves more
and more in favour of Athens and opposed to Sparta.
f Especially also one, of which the speakers themselves are unconscious; so that,
without knowing it. they often describe the real sb>te of the case. This belongs es-
sentially to the tragical irony of Sophocles, of which we have spoken above ($ 8.)
2 a 2
356 HISTORY OF THE
tions. With regard to this, it must be remarked that, at the period
when he wrote, the spirit of the Greek nation was in a state of progres-
sive developement, in which it entered upon speculations beyond its
own impulses and their utterance by means of words and sentences,
and in which the reflecting powers were every day gaining more and
more the mastery over the powers of perception. In such a period
as this, an observation of and attention to words in themselves is
perfectly natural. Besides, at this time of vehement excitement, the
Athenians had an especial fondness for a certain difficulty of expression.*
An orator would please them less by telling them everything plainly
than by leaving them something to guess, and so giving them the satis-
faction of acquiring a sort of respect for their own sagacity and discern-
ment. Thus Sophocles often plays at hide and seek with the significa-
tions of words, in order that the mind, having exerted itself to find out
his meaning, may comprehend it more vividly and distinctly when it is
once arrived at. In the syntactical combinations, too, Sophocles is very
expressive, and to a certain extent artificial, while he strives with great
precision to mark all the subordinate relations of thought. Perspicuity
and fluency are incompatible with such a style as this; and, indeed,
these properties were not generally characteristic of the rhetoric of the
time. The style of Sophocles moves on with a judicious and accurate
observation of all incidental circumstances, and does not hurry forwards
with inconsiderate ha^te ; though in this very particular there is a dif-
ference between the older and the more recent tragedies of Sophocles,
for several speeches in the Ajax, the Philoctetes, and the GEdipus at
Colonus have the same oratorical flow which we find in Euripides.f In
the lyrical parts, this distinct exhibition and clear illustration of the
thoughts are combined with an extraordinary grace and sweetness :
several of the choral odes are, even taken by themselves, master-pieces
of a sort of lyric poetry, which rivals that of Sappho in beauty of de-
scription and grace of conception. Sophocles, too, has with singular
good taste cultivated the Glyconian metre, which is so admirably calcu-
lated for the expression of gentle and kindly emotions.
* uieon says (in Thucydides III. 38) that the Athenians may easily be deceived
by novelties of style ; that they despise what is common, admire what is strange,
and, i hough they speak not themselves, are nevertheless so far rivals of the speaker
that they follow close upon him with their thoughts, and even outrun him.
f See the speeches of Menelaus, Agamemnon, and Teucer, in the second part of
'Me Ajax, and CEdipua' defence in v. 960 of the OEdipus at Colonus.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GRtECE. 357
CHAPTER XXV.
§ I. Difference between Sophocles and Euripides. The latter essentially speculative.
Tragedy a subject ill-suited for his genius. § 2. Intrusion of tragedy into the
interests of the private and, § 3, public life of the time. § 4. Alterations in the
plan of tragedy introduced by Euripides. Prologue and, § 5, SX'us ex machma.
§ 6. Comparative insignificance of the chorus. Prevalence of monodies. $ 7.
Style of Euripides. § 8. Outline of his plays: the Alcestis; § 9. the Medea;
§ 10. the Hippolytus ; § 11. the Hecuba. § 12. Epochs in the mode of treating
his subject: the Heracleida?; § 13. the Suppliants; § 14. the Ion; § 15. the
raging Heracles; § 16. the Andromache; § 17. the Trojan Women; § 18. the
Electra ; § 19. the Helena; §20. the Iphigenia at Tauri ; §21. the Orestes;
§22. the Phoenician Women ; §23. the Bacchanalians; §24. the Iphigenia at
Aulis. § 25. Lost pieces: the Cyclops.
§ 1. The tragedies of Sophocles are a beautiful flower of Attic genius,
which could only have sprung- up on the boundary line between two
ages differing widely in their opinions and mode of thinking.* Sophocles
possessed in perfection that free Attic training which rests upon an
unprejudiced observation of human affairs ; his thoughts had entire
freedom, and the power of mastering outward impressions; yet with all
this, Sophocles admits a something which cannot be moved and must
not be touched, which is deeply rooted in our conscience, and which a
voice from within warns us not to bring into the whirlpool of specula-
tion. He is, of all the Greeks, at once the most pious and most en-
lightened. In treating of the positive objects of the popular religion of
his country, he has hit upon the right mean between a superstitious
adherence to outward forms and a sceptical opposition to the traditionary
belief. He has always the skill to call attention to that side of his re-
ligion, which must have produced devotional feelings even in a reflect*
ing and educated mind of that time.t
The position of Euripides, in reference to his own time, was totally
different. Although he was only eleven years younger than Sophocles,
and died about half a year before him, lie seems to belong to an entirely
different generation, in which the tendencies, still united in Sophocles
and presided over by the noblest perception of beauty, had become irre-
* Comp. chap. XX. § 7.
t The respect which Sophocles everywhere evinces fur the prophetic art is highly
worthy of remark, and to a modern reader must be part cularly bin prising. It does
not, however, appear in bis dramas as nil inexplicable guessing ai accidental occur-
rences, but as a thorough initiation into the great and |ust dispensations of provi-
dence. In the Ajax, the Philoctetes, the Trachinian Women, the Antigoue, the
two (Edipuses, the prophecies express profound ideas though enveloped occasionally
in a mystical phraseology. Euripides has no sympathy with this reverence tor the
prophetic art.
358 HISTORY OF THE
concileably opposed to one another. Euripides was naturally a serious
character, with a decided bias towards nice and speculative inquiries into
the nature of things human and divine. In comparison with the cheer-
ful Sophocles, whose spirit without any effort comprehended life in
all its significance, Euripides appeared to be morose and peevish.*
Although he had applied himself to the philosophy of the time and had
entered deeply into Anaxagoras' ideas with regard to matters relating
principally to physical science in general, while in regard to moral
studies he had manifestly allowed himself to be allured by some of the
views of the sophists ; nevertheless, the philosophy of Socrates, the op-
ponent and conqueror of the sophists, had, on the whole, gained the
upper hand in his estimation. We do not know what induced a person
with such tendencies to devote himself to tragic poetry, which he did,
as is well known, in the twenty-sixth year of his age, and in the very
same year in which iEschylus died (Olymp. SI. 1. b. c. 455. )f Suffice
it to say, that tragic poetry became the business of his life, and he had no
other means of giving to the world the results of his meditations. With
respect to the mythical traditions, however, which the tragic muse
had selected as her subjects, he stood upon an entirely different footing
from iEschylus, who recognized in them the sublime dispensations of
providence, and from Sophocles, who regarded them as containing a
profound solution of the problem of human existence. He found him-
self placed in a strange, distorted position with regard to the objects of
his poetry, which were fully as disagreeable as they were attractive to
him. He could not bring his philosophical convictions, with regard to
the nature of God and his relation to mankind, into harmony with the
contents of these legends, nor could he pass over in silence their incon-
gruities. Hence it is that he is driven to the strange necessity of
carrying on a sort of polemical discussion with the very materials and
subjects of which he had to treat. He does this in two ways : some-
times, he rejects as false those mythical narratives which are opposed to
purer conceptions about the Gods; at other times, he admits the
legends as true, but endeavours to give a base or contemptible appear-
ance to characters and actions which they have represented as great
and noble. Thus, the two favourite themes of Euripides are, to re-
present Helen, whom Homer has had the skill, notwithstanding her
failings, to clothe with dignity as well as loveliness, as a common
* He is caller] sr^ufyio; and pieoyiXus by Alexander iEtolus, in the verses quoted
by Gellius N. A. xv. 20. 8.
t Tbis is in accordance with the Vita Euripidis, which Elmsley published from a
MS. in the Ambrosian Library, and which, with several alterations and additions, is
also found in a Paris and Vienna MS. According to Eratosthenes, who gives the
age of 26 for his first appearance and of 75 for his death, he must have been born in
Olymp. 74 3. b. c. 482-1, although the Parian marble places his birth at Olymp.
73. 4. It is clearly only a legend that he was born on the day of the battle of
Salamis.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 359
prostitute, and Menelaus as a great simpleton, who, in order to get back
his worthless wife, has brought so many brave men into distress and
danger — and distinctly to blame and misrepresent the deed of Orestes
as a crime to which he had been urged by the Delphic oracle ; whereas
iEsehylus has striven to exhibit it as an unavoidable though a dreadful
deed.
§ 2. Although Euripides, as an enlightened philosopher, might have
found pleasure in showing the Athenians the folly of many of the tra-
ditions which they believed in and considered as holy, yet it is somewhat
strange that he all along kept close to these mythical subjects, and did
not attempt to substitute for them subjects of his own invention, as his
contemporary Agathon did, according to Aristotle, in his piece called
" the Flower" (avdoc). It is certain that Euripides regarded these
mythological traditions as merely the substratum, the canvas, on which
he paints his great moral pictures without the restraint of any rules.
He avails himself of the old stories in order to produce situations in
which he may exhibit the men of his ovm time influenced by mental
excitement and passionate emotion. There is great truth in the dis-
tinction which Sophocles, according to Aristotle, made between the
characters of his plays and those of Euripides, when he said that he re-
presented men as they ought to be, Euripides men as they are :* for,
while Sophocles' persons have all something noble and great in the"-
composition, and even the less noble are in a measure justified and
ennobled by the sentiments of which they are the vehicle, f Euripides, on
the other hand, strips his of the ideal greatness which they claimed as
heroes and heroines, and allows them to appear with all the petty pas-
sions and weaknesses of people of his own time} — properties which
often make a singular contrast to the grave and measured speeches and
the outward pomp which the tragic cothurnus carries with it. All the
characters of Euripides have that loquacity and dexterity in the use of
words§ Which distinguished the Athenians of his day, and that vehe-
mence of passion which, formerly restrained by the conventions of
morality, was now appearing with less desire for concealment every day.
They have all an extraordinary fondness for arguing, and consequently
* Arist. Poet. 25.
f Like the Atridae in the Ajax, Creon in the Antigone, Uhsses in the Philoctetes.
TYciv are no absolute villains in Sophocles ; but in Euripides, Polymestor in the
Hecuba, Menelaus in the Orestes, and the Achaean princes in the Troades, very
nearly deserve that appellation. In general, every person in ancient tragedy is, to
a tertiiia extent, right in his way of thinking : the absolutely insignificant and con-
tenipiible occupy by no means so much space in ancient tragedy as in our own.
+ Thus. Euripides repivsents heroes, like Bell- rophon and Ixion, as mere misers.
With similar caprice, lie turns the seven heroes warring against Thebe* into so
many characters from common life, interesting enough, it is true, but not elevated
above the ordinary standar.i.
§i irrcipuXia., %uv'o7n; . Coup chap. XX. 7.
360 HISTORY OF THE
are on the watch for every opportunity of reasoning on their views of
things human and divine. Along with this, objects of common life are
treated with the minutest attention to petty circumstances of daily oc-
currence,* as when Medea makes a detailed complaint of the unhappy
lot of women, who are obliged to bring a quantity of money as dowry
in order to purchase for themselves a lord and master ;t and as Her-
mione, in the Andromache, enlarges on the topic, that a prudent hus-
band will not allow his wife to be visited by strange women, because
they would corrupt her mind with all sorts of bad speeches. J Euripides
must have bestowed the greatest pains on his study of the female
character. Almost all his tragedies are full of vivid sketches and in-
genious remarks referring to the life and habits of women. The deeds
of passion, bold undertakings, fine-spun plans, as a general rule, always
originate with the female characters, and the men often play a very de-
pendent and subordinate part in their execution. One may easily con-
ceive what a shock would be given by thus bringing forward the women
from the domestic restraint and retirement in which they lived at
Athens. But it would be doing Euripides great injustice if we were,
like Aristophanes, to make this a ground for calling him a woman-
hater. The honour which his mode of treating the subject confers on
the female sex is quite equal to any reproaches which he puts upon
women. Euripides also brings children on the stage more frequently
than his predecessors ; perhaps he did this for the same reason that
made people, when brought before the criminal courts on charges in-
volving severe punishment, produce their children to the judges in order
to touch their hearts by the sight of their innocence and helplessness.
He brings them on in situations which must have moved the heart of
every affectionate father and mother among his audience,§ although
they were seldom introduced as speaking or singing, because this was
not possible without making some tedious arrangements.||
§ 3. Euripides also avails himself of every opportunity of touching
upon public events, in order to give weight to his opinions on political
subjects, whether favourable or unfavourable. He expresses himself
* olxiia tfgdyfAara, oig x/iupiff, oif l-uvsa/tsv, says Aristophanes, Frogs, 959.
f Euripides, Medea, 235.
X Eurip. Androm. 944.
§ As when Peleus holds up the little Molossus to untie the cords with which his
mother is bound {Androm, 724). Astyanax, in the Troades. is first embraced by his
mother in the midst of her bitter grief, and afterwards brought in dead upon a
shield. The infant Orestes must coax Agamemnon, so as to make him listen to the
prayers of Iphigenia.
|| As in the scenes in the Alcestis and the Andromache (for the children of
Medea are heard crying out from behind the scenes). One of the chorus then stood
behind the scenes and sang the part which the child acted, and which was called
TO»«y*)i««», also ■ragaxogyy/iftx, a name which comprehended all the chorus did
besides their proper part.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 361
against the dominion of the multitude, especially when it consisted
chiefly of the sea-faring people, who were so numerous among the
Athenians.* He inveighs severely against the demagogues who, hy
their unbridled audacity, were hurrying the people to destruction.! He
shows himself, however, no friend to the aristocrats of the time, but
represents their pride in their riches and high descent as utter folly.
When he declares his political creed more directly, J he makes the well-
being of the state and the preservation of good order depend on the
middle class. § Euripides has an especial affection for the agriculturists
who till the land with their own hands : he regards them as the real
patriots and the protectois of the state. || Thus we may select from the
works of Euripides sentences and sentiments for every situation of
human life ; for Euripides is fond of taking a general and abstract
view of all relations of things : and it is just because it is so easy to
extract sententious passages from his plays, and collect them in antho-
logies, that the later writers of antiquity, who were hetter able to appre-
ciate the part than the whole — the pretty and clever passages than the
general plan of the work — have so greatly liked and admired this poet.
Euripides takes such liberties with his dialogue, and allows himself
such an arbitrary extension of it, that he has a place in it even for in-
direct poetical criticisms, which he turns against his predecessors, espe-
cially iEschylus. There are distinct passages in the Electra and the
Phoenissae, which every one at Athens must have understood as object-
ino-, the former to the recognition scenes in the Choephorse, the latter to
the descriptions of the besieging warriors, before the decision of the
battle, as stiff and unnatural.^ Euripides never expresses himself
against Sophocles in this manner. Although the contemporary and
rival of Sophocles, he always appears, even in the Frogs of Aristo-
phanes, in hostile opposition to iEschylus, whose manner he despised as
rough and uncultivated, iEschylus being the favourite of the old honest
Athenians of the race of those who fought at Marathon, and Euripides
the hero of the more modern youth, brought up in sophistical opinions
and rhetorical studies. Sophocles stands superior to this clash of
* The yiavrmii aiao^'ia. is mentioned in the Hec. 611, and again in the Iphig. at
Aul. 919.
t The demagogue of Argos mentioned in the Orestes, 895, " an Argive and no
Argive," seems to be an allusion to Cleophon, who had great influence towards the
end of the Peloponnesian war, but was said to be a Thracian, and therefore not a
genuine citizen of Athens.
+ As in the remarkable passage of the Suppliants, 241 : T£t7 } yk^ -roX^u*
fit^lhs, &c.
6 Tpiuv Se //.otpav, ri'v jj.ttrw awC,ii ToXiv.
|| The aurav^yti: see Electra, 389, Otest. 911. He has a great antipathy to the
heralds, whom he attacks on every occasion.
^f Eurip. Electra, 523, Phceniss. 764. After the battle, however, Kuripides finds
this description quite appropriate.
362 HISTORY OF THE
parties, ^ir lie had actually found the means of reconciling and uniting
in himself the old deep-rooted morality and the more enlightened views
of the age. That the Athenians were conscious of this, and that in
his life-time Euripides had not so many partizans as we might have
supposed, may be 'seen in the fact that, although he wrote a great
number of plays (in all ninety-two),* he did not gain nearly so many
tragic victories as Sophocles. t
§ 4. We may connect with these remarks on the developement of
the thoughts in the tragedies of Euripides, some observations on their
form or outward arrangement, since it may easily be shown how nearly
this is connected with his mode of treating the subjects. There are
two elements in the outward form of tragedy which are almost entirely
due to Euripides — the prologue and the dens ex machina, as it is called.
In the prologue, some personage, a god or a hero, tells in a monologue
who he is, how the action is going on, what has happened up to the
present moment, to what point the business has come, nay more, if the
prologuer is a god, also to what point it is destined to be carried, j
Every unprejudiced judge must look upon these prologues as a retro-
grade step from a more perfect form to one comparatively defective. It
is doubtless much easier to show the state of affairs by a detached nar-
rative of this kind than by speeches and dialogues which proceed from
the action of the piece ; but the very fact that these narratives have
nothing to do with the context of the drama, but are only a make-shift
of the poet, is also a reason why the form of the drama should suffer
from them. That Euripides himself probably felt this appears from the
manner in which he has been at the pains of justifying, or at least ex-
cusing, this sort of prologue in the Medea, one of the oldest of his re-
maining plays. The nurse of Medea there says, after having recounted
the hard fate of her mistress and the resentment which it has excited in
her, that she has herself been so overcome with grief on Medea's ac-
count, that she is possessed with a longing to proclaim to earth and
heaven her mistress's unhappy lot.§ Euripides, however, with his peculiar
tendencies, could not well have dispensed with these prologues. As it
is his sole object to represent men under the influence of passion, he
found it necessary to lay before the spectator a concise statement of the
* Of which seventy-five are spoken of as extant ; and of these three were not con-
sidered genuine.
\ Euripides did not gain a victory till Olymp. 84. 3. b. c. 441. His victories
amounted on the whole to five ; according to some writers, to fifteen. Sophocles
gained eighteen, twenty, or twenty-four victories.
J For example, in the Ion, the Hippolytus, and the Bacchse ; in the Hecuba, too,
the shade of Polydorus appears with the divine power of foretelling the future. In
the Alcestis, however, the whole form of the prologue is different. In the Troades
the prologue, included in the dialogue between Poseidon arid Athena, goes a good
way beyond the action of the piece. Comp. § 16.
§ Eurip. Med. 56 foil.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 363
circumstances which had brought them to that point, in order that he
might be able, as soon as the piece actually began, to paint the parti-
cular passion in all its strength.* Besides, so complicated are the
situations into which he brings his characters, in order to have an op-
portunity of thoroughly developing a varied play of affections and pas-
sions, that it would be difficult to make them intelligible to the specta-
tors otherwise than by a circumstantial narration, especially when
Euripides, in his arbitrary treatment of the old stories, ventures to give
a different turn to the incidents from that with which the Athenians
were already familiar from their traditions and poetry. f
§ 5. With regard to the deus ex machina, it is much the same sort
of contrivance for the end of a play of Euripides that the monologues
we have mentioned are for the beginning. It is a symptom that dra-
matic action had already lost the principle of its natural developement,
and was no longer capahle of producing, in a satisfactory manner, from
its own resources, a connexion of beginning, middle, and end. When
the poet had by means of the prologue pointed out the situation, from
which resulted an effect on the passions of the chief character and a
contest with opposing exertions, he introduced all sorts of complica-
tions, which rendered the contest hotter and hotter, and the play of pas-
sions more and more involved, till at last he can hardly find any side on
which he may bring the impassioned actions of the characters to a
definite end, whether it be a decided victory of one of the parties, or
peace and a reconciliation of the contending interests. Upon this,
some divinity appears in the sky, supported by machinery, announces
the decrees of fate, and makes a just and peaceable arrangement of the
affair. Euripides, however, by degrees only, became bolder in em-
ploying this sort of denouement. He winds up his earliest plays
without any deus ex machina ; then follow pieces in which the action
is brought to its proper end by the persons themselves, the deity being
introduced only to remove any remaining doubt and to complete the
work of tranquillizing the minds of those who might be discontented ;
and it was not till the end of his career that Euripides ventured to lay
all the weight on the deus ex machina, so that it is left to this power
alone, not to undo, but to cut asunder the complicated knot of human
passions, which otherwise would be inextricable.} The poet attempted
to make up for any want of satisfaction which this might occasion to
the mind, by endeavouring to gratify the bodily eye : he often intro-
* As in the Medea, the Hippolytus, and other plays.
f Examples confirmatory of these views may be derived from the Orestes, the
Helena, and the Electra.
t This applies to the Orestes. Besides this, we find the Deus ex machina in the
Hippolytus, rhe Ion. the Iphigenia at Tauri, the Suppliants, the Andromache, the
Helena, the Electra, and the Bacclue.
364 HISTORY OF THE
duced the divinity in such a manner as to surprise, or even, in the first
instance, to terrify the spectator, by exhibiting him in all his greatness
and power, and surrounding him with a halo of light ; in some cases he
combined with this other startling appearances, which could not have
been brought forward without some acquaintance with the science of
optics.*
§ 6. The position of the chorus also was essentially perverted by the
changes which Euripides allowed himself to make in the outward form
of tragedy. The chorus fulfils its proper office when it comes forward
to mediate between, to advise, and to tranquillize opposing parties, who
are actuated by different views of the case, and who have, or at least for
the time appear to have, each of them the right on their own side. The
special object of the stasima is, by reference to higher ideas, to which
the contending powers ought to submit, to introduce a sort of equili-
brium into the irregularities of the action. The chorus fulfils this office
in very few of the plays of Euripides ;t it is generally but little suited
for so dignified a position. Euripides likes to make his chorus the
confidant and accomplice of the person whom he represents as under
the influence of passion ; the chorus receives his wicked proposals, and
even lets itself be bound by an oath not to betray them, so that, how-
ever much it may wish to hinder the bad consequences resulting from
them, it is no longer capable of doing so. J As a chorus so related to
the actors is seldom qualified to pronounce weighty and authoritative
opinions, by which a restraint may be placed on the unbridled passions
of the actors, it generally fills up the pauses, in which its songs take
place, with lyrical narrations of events which happened before, but have
some reference to the action of the piece. How many of the choral
songs of Euripides consist of descriptions of the Grecian hosts which
sailed for Troy and of the terrible destruction of that city ! In the
Phoenissae, the subject of which is the contest of the hostile brothers at
Thebes, the choral songs tell all the terrible and shocking stories con-
nected with the house of Cadmus. We might almost class these.
stasima with the species of choral songs mentioned by Aristotle, and
* In the Helena it is clear that, while the Dioscuri are speaking, we see Helen
escape from the shore (v. 1662); so also in the Iphig. Taur., v. 1446, we see the
ship with the fugitives out at sea. In the Orestes, v. 1631, Helen appears hovering
in the air. It is clear that these were images, which must have been prepared and
lighted up in some peculiar manner so as to produce the desired impression. For
this purpose, no doubt, they used the bfiixvxXiov, of whichPollux says (IV. § 131) that
distant objects were represented by means of it, such as heroes swimming in the sea
or carried up to heaven.
f Most of all perhaps in the Medea, where the stasima, altogether or in part com-
posed in the lively rhythms of the Doric mode, are sometimes designed to represent
the justice of Medea's wrath and hatred against Jason, at other times to mitigate
her revenge which is hurrying her to extremes.
I Thus in the Hippolytus, v. 904.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 365
called embolima, because they were arbitrarily inserted as a lyrical and
musical interlude between the acts, without any reference to the sub-
ject of the play; much in the same way as those pauses are now-a-days
filled up with instrumental music ad libitum. We are told that these
embolima were first introduced by Agathon, a friend and contemporary
of 'Euripides.*
The tragedy of Euripides did not, however, on this account lose its
lyrical element; it only came more and more into the hands of the
actors, in the same proportion as it was taken from the chorus. The
songs of persons on the stage form a considerable part of the tragedies
of Euripides, and especially the prolix airs or monodies, in which one of
the chief persons declares his emotions or his sorrows in passionate
outpourings.! These monodies were among the most brilliant parts of
the pieces of Euripides: his chief actor, Cephisophon, who was nearly
connected with the poet, showed all his power in them. A lively ex-
pression of the emotions, called forth by certain outward acts, was their
chief business; we must not expect here that elevation of soul which is
nurtured by great thoughts. With Euripides in particular, this species
of lyric poetry lost more and more in real, sterling value ; and these
descriptions of pain, sorrow, and despair degenerated into a trifling play
with words and melodies, to which the abrupt short sentences, tumbling
topsy-turvy, as it were, the questions and exclamations, the frequent
repetitions, the juxta-position of words of the same sound, and other
artifices, imparted a sort of outward charm, but could not make up for
the want of meaning in them. There is a feeble, childish, affected tone
in these parts of the later pieces of Euripides, which Aristophanes, who
never spares him, not only felt himself, but rendered obvious to others
by means of striking parodies. J
The laxity and shallowness of these lyrical pieces is also shown in
the metrical form, which is always growing looser and more irregular
in several ways, especially in the accumulation of short syllables.
In the Glyconic system, in particular, Euripides, after Olymp. 89.
(about b. c. 424.), allowed himself to take some liberties by virtue of
which the peculiar charms of this beautiful metre degenerated more
and more into voluptuous weakness. §
* A Latin critic of some weight, the tragedian and reviewer Accius, who in his
Didasca/iee imitated the similar labours of the Alexandrine grammarians, says in a
fragment quoted by Nonius, p. 178 ed. Mercer., Euripides, qui choros temerarius in
fabulis. — Former critics have supposed that a choral song in the Helena of Euripides
(v. 1301) has been interpolated from another tragedy; and indeed some things in it
would be more intelligible if the choral song had originally belonged to the
Protesilaus.
f See above Chap. XXII. § 13.
I See Aristophan. Frogs, v. 1330 foil.
§ G. Hermann has in several places called attention to the revolution which oc-
curred in Olymp. 90. in the mode of treating several metres.
366 HISTORY OF THE
§ 7. The style of Euripides in the dialogue cannot be distinguished
in any marked manner from the mode of speaking then common in the
public assemblies and law courts. The comedian calls him a poet of law-
speeches ; conversely, he psserts, it is necessary to speak "in a spruce
Euripidean style "* in the public exhibitions. The perspicuity, facility,
and energetic adroitness of this style made the greatest impression at the
time. Aristophanes, who was reproached with having learned much
from the poet to whom he was so constantly opposed, admits that he had
adopted his condensation of speech, but adds, sarcastically, that he takes
his thoughts less from the daily intercourse of the market-place. t
Aristotle remarks,! that Euripides was the first to produce a poetical
illusion by borrowing his expressions from ordinary language ; that
his audience needed not for illusion's sake to transport themselves into
a strange world, raised far above themselves, but remained at Athens in
the midst of the Athenian orators and philosophers. Euripides was
incontestably the first who proved on the stage the power which a fluent
style, drawing the listener along with it by means of its beautiful
periods and harmonious falls, must exert upon the public mind ; nay
more, he even produced a reaction on Sophocles by means of it. But
it cannot be denied that he gave himself up too much to this facility
also, and his characters sometimes display quite as much garrulity as
eloquence : the attentive reader often misses the stronger nourishment
of thoughts and feelings furnished by the style of Sophocles, which,
though more difficult, is at the same time more expressive. Euripides,
too, descends so low to common life in his choice of expressions
that he actually uses words of a nobler meaning in the sense which
they bore in the common colloquial language. § Finally, it must be
remarked, though the establishment of this position belongs to the
history of the Greek language, that we find traces in Euripides of an
impaired feeling for the laws of his own language. In the lyrical pas-
sages he uses forms of inflexion., and in the dialogue compound words,
which offend against the well-founded analogy of the Greek language ;
and he is perhaps the first of all the Greek authors who can be charged
with this.
§ 8. In these considerations of the poetry of Euripides in general we
have often referred to the distinction which subsists between the earlier
* y.ofi^iv^fVtxus : The Knights, v. 18.
•)■ ^ouu.a.1 yttp cei/rov tov o , rt>(*.u.'ros tZ iTT^oyyuXeo,
tovs vov; o ayopaiov; yittov ; i ' xilvos vr/iiu '.
— Fragment in the Scholia to Plato's Apology, p. 93, 8. Fragm. No. 397. Dindorf.
% Rhetor. III. 2. § 5.
§ Thus he used apvls in a bad sense, as signifying "proud," "arrogant;"
Medea, 219, see Elmsley; Hippolyt.93, 1056; vxXaiortis as signifying "simplicity,"
" foolishness ;" He/ena, '066.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 387
and later plays of this poet; in the following remarks en some of the
separate plays we shall endeavour to make this distinction still clearer
and more definite.
The first, in point of time, of the extant plays of Euripides is, as it
happens, not adapted to serve as a striking example of the style of his
tragedies at that time. The same authority* that has made known to
us the year in which the Alcestis was brought out (Olymp. S5. 2. b. c.
438), also informs us that this drama was the last of four pieces, conse-
quently, that it was added instead of a satyric drama to a trilogy of
tragedies. This one notice places us at once on the right footing with
regard to it, and sets us free from a number of difficulties which would
otherwise interfere with our forming a right judgment of the piece.
When we consider all the singularities of this play — its hero, Admetus,
allowing his wife to die for him, and reproaching his father with not
having made this sacrifice ; the toper Hercules making a most unmusical
uproar in the house of mourning as he feasts like a glutton and drinks
potations pottle-deep; and especially the farcical concluding scene, in
which Admetus, the sorrowing widower, strives long not to be obliged
to receive Alcestis, who has been won back from death and is intro-
duced to him as a stranger, because he is afraid for his continence —
we must admit that this piece deserves the name of a tragi-comedy
rather than that of a tragedy proper. We cannot get rid of the
comicality of these situations by an excuse derived from the rude naivete
of the ancient poetry. The shortness of the drama, in comparison with
the other plays of this poet, and the simplicity of the plan, which requires
only two actors,t all this convinces us that we must not include this
play in the list of the regular tragedies of Euripides. As it is, however,
it perfectly fulfils its destination of furnishing a cheerful conclusion to
a series of real tragedies, and thus relieving the mind from the stress of
tragic feeling which they had occasioned.
§ 9. The Medea, on the contrary, which was brought out Olymp.
87. 1. b. c. 431, is unquestionably a model of the tragedies of Euripides,
a great and impressive picture of human passion. In this piece Euri-
pides takes on himself the risk, and it was certainly no slight risk in
those days, of representing in all her fearfulness a divorced and slighted
wife : he has done this in the character of Medea with such vigour, that
all our feelings are enlisted on the side of the incensed wife, and we
follow with the most eager sympathy her crafty plan for obtaining, by
dissimulation, time and opportunity for the destruction of all that is dear
* A didascalia of the Alcestis, e cod. Vaticano, published by Diiidorf in the Oxford
Edition of 1834.
f For Alcestis, when she returns to the stage as delivered from the power of death,
is represented by a mute. The part of Eumelus is a parachoregemn, as it was called.
See above, § '2 note.
368 HISTORY OP THE
to the faithless Jason ; and, though we cannot regard this denouement
without horror, we even consider the murder of her children as a
deed necessary under the circumstances. The exasperation of Medea
against her husband and those who have deprived her of his love
certainly contains nothing grand : but the irresistible strength of this
feelin"-, and the resolution with which she casts aside all and every
of her own interests, and even rages against her own heart, produces a
really great and tragic effect. The scene, which paints the struggle in
Medea's breast between her plans of revenge and her love for her
children, will always be one of the most touching and impressive ever
represented on the stage. The judgment of Aristotle, that Euripides,
although he does not manage everything for the best, is neverthe-
less the most tragical of the poets,* is particularly true of this piece.
Euripides is said to have based his Medea on a play by Neophron, an
older or contemporary tragedian, in which Medea was also represented
as murdering her own children. t Others, on the contrary, maintain
that Euripides was the first who represented Medea as the murderess
of her children, whereas the Corinthian tradition attributed their death
to the Corinthians, — but certainly he did not make this change in the
story because the Corinthians had bribed him to take the imputation of
guilt from them, but because it was only in this way that the plot
would receive its full tragical significance.
§ 10. The Hippolytus Crowned,% brought out Olymp. 87. 4. b. c. 4:28,
is related to the Medea in several points, but is far behind it in unity
of plan and harmony of action. The unconquerable love of Phaedra for
her step-son, which, when scorned, is turned into a desire to make him
share her own ruin, is a passion of much the same kind as that of
Medea. These women, loving and terrible in their love, were new ap-
pearances on the Attic stage, and scandalized many a champion of the
old morality ; at any rate, Aristophanes often affects to believe that the
morals of the Athenian women were corrupted by such representations
on the stage. The passion of Phaedra, however, is not so completely
the main subject of the whole pluy as Medea's is : the chief character
from first to last is the young Hippolytus, the model of continence, the
companion and friend of the chaste Artemis, whom Euripides, in con-
sequence of his tendency to attribute to the past the customs of his own
age, has made an adherent of the ascetic doctrines of the Orphic school ;§
the destruction of this young man through the anger of Aphrodite,
whom he has despised, is the general subject of the play, the proper
* Poet. c. 13.
t According to the fragments of Neophron in the Scholia.
J As distinguished from an older play, the Veiled Hippolytus, which appeared in
an altered and improved form in the Hippolytus Crowned.
§ Comp. Chap. XVI. § 3.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 369
action of the piece ; and the love of Phaedra is, in reference to this
action, only a lever set in motion by the goddess hostile to Hippolytus.
It cannot be denied that this plot, as it turns upon the selfish and cruel
hatred of a deity, can give but little satisfaction, notwithstanding the
great beauties of the piece, especially the representation of Phaedra's
passion.
§ 11. The Hecuba also, although a little more recent,* belongs to
this class of tragedies, in which the emotion of passion, a pathos in the
Greek sense of the word, is set forth in all its might and energy. The
piece has been much censured, because it is deficient in unity of action,
which is certainly much more important to tragedy than the unity of
time or place. The censure, however, is unjust. It is only necessary
that the chief character, Hecuba, should be made the centre-figure
throughout the piece, and that all that happens should be referred to
her, in order to bring the seemingly inconsistent action to one harmo-
nious ending. Hecuba, the afflicted qi*een and mother, learns at the
very beginning of the piece a new sorrow; it is announced to her that
the Greeks demand the sacrifice of her daughter Polyxena at the
tomb of Achilles. The daughter is torn from her mother's arms,
and it is only in the willing resignation and noble resolution with
which the young maiden meets her fate that we have any alleviation of
the pain which we feel in common with Hecuba. Upon this, the female
servant, who was sent to fetch water to bathe the dead body of
Polyxena, finds on the sea-shore, washed up by the breakers, the
corpse of Polydorus, the only remaining hope of his mother's declining
age. The revolution, or peripeteia, of the piece consists in this, that
Hecuba, though now cast down into the lowest abyss of misery, no
longer gives way to fruitless wailings ; she complains now much less
than she did before of this last and worst of misfortunes ; but she, a
weak, aged woman, a captive, and deprived of all help, nevertheless finds
means in her own powerful and active mind (for the Hecuba of Euri-
pides is from first to last a woman of extraordinary boldness and free-
dom of mindf) to take fearful vengeance on her perfidious and cruel
enemy, the Thracian king, Polymestor. With all the craft of a woman,
and by sagaciously availing herself of the weak as well as of the good
side of Agamemnon's character, she is enabled not merely to entice the
* Aristophanes ridicules the play in the Clouds, consequently in Olymp. 89. 1.
b. c. 423. The passage v. 649 seems to refer to the misfortunes of the Spartans at
Pylos in b. c. 425.
T She is also a sort of free-thinker. She says (Hecuba, 794) "that law and
custom (vo/uo;) rule over the gods ; for it is in conformity with custom that we be-
lieve in the gods." And in the Troades (v. 893) she prays to Zeus, whoever he may
be in his inscrutable power whether he is the necessity of nature or the mind of men ;
upon which Menelaus justly remarks lhat she has " innovated"' the prayers to the
gods (iv%d; ixalvura;.)
370 HISTORY OF THE
barbarian to the deslruc.ion prepared for him, but also to make an
honourable defence of her deed before the leader of the Greek host.
§ 12. It seems as if Euripides had exhausted at rather an early
period the materials most suited to his style of poetry: no one of his
later pieces paints a passion of such energy as the jealousy of Medea
or the revengeful feelings of Hecuba. It is possible too that his
method generally may not have had such capabilities as the manner
in which Sophocles has been able to make the old legends applicable
to the developement of characters and moral tendencies. Euripides
endeavours to find a substitute for the interest, which he could no
longer excite by a representation of the effects of passion, in the intro-
duction of a greater number of incidents on the stage and in a greater
complication of the plot. He calls up the most surprising occurrences
in order to keep the attention on the stretch ; and the action is designed
to represent the proper developement of a great destiny, notwithstand-
ing the accidents which may thwart and oppose it. The pieces of this
period are also particularly rich in allusions to the events of the day
and the relative position of the parties which were formed in the Greek
states, and calculated in many ways to flatter the patriotic vanity
of the Athenians. But on this it must be remarked, that he does not,
like iEschylus, consider the mythical events in any real connexion with
the historical, and treat the legends as the foundation, type, and pro-
phecy of the destinies of the time being, but only seeks out and eagerly
lays hold of an opportunity of pleasing the Athenians by exalting their
national heroes and debasing the heroes of their enemies.
The Heracleidce can afford us no satisfaction unless we pay attention
to these political views. This play narrates with much circumstantial
detail and exactness, like a pragmatical history, how the Heracleidae,
as poor persecuted fugitives, find protection in Athens, and how by the
valour of their own and the Athenian heroes they gain the victory over
their oppressor, Eurystheus ; it does not, however, create much tragic
interest. The episode, in which Macaria with surprising fortitude
voluntarily offers herself as a sacrifice, is designed to put a little spirit
into the drama ; only it must be allowed that Euripides makes rather
too much use of the touching representation of a noble, amiable maiden
yielding herself up as a sacrifice, either of her own accord or at least
with singular resolution.* All the weight, however, in this piece is laid
upon the political allusions. The generosity of the Athenians to the
Heracleidae is celebrated in order to charge with ingratitude their
descendants, the Dorians of the Peloponnese, who were such bitter
enemies to Athens, and the oracle which Eurystheus makes known at
the end of the play, that his corpse should be a protection to the land
* Polyxena. Macaria, Iphigenia at Aulis.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 371
of Attica against the descendants of the Heracleidae when they should
invade Attica as enemies, was obviously designed to strengthen the
confidence of the less enlightened portion of the audience in regard to
the issue of this struggle. The drama was probably brought out at
the time when the Argives stood at the head of the Peloponnesian con-
federacy, and it was thought probable that they would join the Spartans
and Bceotians in their march against Athens, about Olymp. 89. 3.
b. c. 421.
§ 13. The Suppliants has a considerable affinity to the Heracleidae.
In this play also a great political action is represented with circum-
stantial detail and with an ostentatious display of patriotic speeches and
stories. The whole turns on the interment of the fallen Argive heroes,
which was refused by the Thebans, but brought about by Theseus. It
is highly probable that Euripides had in view the dispute between the
Athenians and Bceotians after the battle of Delium, on which occasion
the latter refused to give up the dead bodies for sepulture (Olymp.
89. 2. b. c. 424.) The alliance which Euripides makes the Argive
ruler contract with Athens on behalf of all his descendants, refers un-
questionably to the alliance which actually took place between Athens
and Argos about this time (Olymp. 89. 4. b. c. 421). The piece has,
however, besides this political bearing, some independent beauties,
especially in the songs of the chorus, which is composed of the mothers
of the seven heroes and their attendants; to which are added, later in
the piece, seven youths, the sous of the fallen warriors. The temple of
Demeter at Eleusis, where the scene is laid, forms an imposing back-
ground to the whole piece. The burning of the dead bodies, which is
seen on the stage, the urns with the bones of the dead which are
carried by the seven youths, are scenes which must have produced a
great outward effect ; and the frantic conduct of Evadne, who of her
own accord throws herself on the blazing funeral pi'e of her husband
Capaneus, must have created emotions of terror and surprise in the
minds of the spectators. It is clear that in this play Euripides sum-
moned to his aid all the resources which might contribute to make its
representation splendid and effective.
§ 14. The Ion of Euripides possesses great beauties, but is defective
in the very same points as those which we have just described. No
great character, no violent passion predominates in the poem ; the
only motive by which the characters are actuated is a consideration of
their own advantage ; all the interest lies in the ingenuity of the plot,
which is so involved that, while on the one hand it keeps our expecta-
tion on the stretch and agreeably surprises us, on the other hand the
result is highly flattering to the patriotic wishes of the Athenians.
Apollo is desirous of advancing Ion, his son by Creusa, the daughter
of Erechtheus, to the sovereignty of Athens, but without acknowledging
2 b 2
372 HISTORY OF THE
that he is his father. With this view he delivers an ambiguous oracle,
which induces Xuthus, the husband of Creusa, to believe that Ion is
his own son, begotten before his marriage with the Athenian princess.
The violence of Creusa, however, hinders the success of this plan. She
endeavours to poison him, whom slie considers as her husband's
bastard and as an intruder into the ancient royalty of the Erechtheida?,
and Ion, protected by the gods from her attempt upon his life, is about
to take a bloody revenge on the authoress of the murderous design.
Upon this, the woman who took care of Ion in his infancy appears with
the tokens which prove his origin, and Ion at once embraces as his
mother the enemy whom he was about to punish. The worthy
Xuthus, however, whom gods and men leave in his error, undoubtingly
receives the stranger youth into his house and kingdom as his son and
heir. It is clear that the general object of this play is to maintain
undimmed and undiminished the pride of the Athenians, their au-
tochthony, their pure descent from their old earth born patriarchs and
national kings. The common ancestor of the Ionians who ruled in
Attica must not be the son of a stranger settled in the country, an
Achaean chieftain, like Xuthus, but must belong to the pure old Attic
stock of the Erechtheidee.
§ 15. The Raging Hercules contains very definite indications that
the poet composed it at a time when he began to feel the inconvenience
of old age, which might easily be the case from Olymp. 89. 3. B.C. 422.*
This piece is also constructed so as to produce a great effect in the way
of surprise, and contains scenes — such as the appearance of the goddess
Lyssa (Madness), and the representation, by means of an eccyclema, of
Hercules, bound and recovering from his madness — which must have
produced a powerful effect on the stage. But it is altogether want-
ing in the real satisfaction which nothing but a unity of ideas per-
vading the drama could produce. It is hardly possible to conceive
that the poet should have combined in one piece two actions so totally
different as the deliverance of the children of Hercules from the
persecutions of the blood-thirsty Lycus, and their murder by the hands
of their frantic father, merely because he wished to surprise the
audience by a sudden and unexpected change to the precise contrary of
what had gone before. We believe that the afflictions of Hercules and
his family are over, when suddenly the goddess of madness appears to
bring about a new and greater sorrow, and to destroy the children by
the hands of the very person who had delivered them from death in
the first part of the play, and that too with no apparent ground, except
that Hera will give no rest to Hercules, although he has got over all the
labours hitherto imposed upon him.
* In the choral song, v. 639 foil, a vi'oto.; pot <(si}.t>v — especially in the words it <rii
ylgwv aodSoi xtXah? /^.vauaa-vvrcv. Compare with this Cresphontes, frag. 15, ed. MatthiS.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 373
§ 16. We have assigned the two last pieces to this epoch not from
any external grounds, but on the evidence of their contents. Other
pieces, the date of which may be definitely assigned, show still more
clearly the form which the tragedy of Euripides assumed from after
Olymp. 90. b. c. 420. It became more and more his object to repre-
sent the wayward and confused impulses of human passion, in which,
by sudden and surprising changes, now the. one side, now the other,
gains the mastery ; the plans of the wicked fa 1, but even the just
surfer adversity and affliction, without our being able to perceive any
solid foundation on which those varied destinies of the individual actors
are based.
This is particularly applicable to the Andromache, in which, at first,
the helpless wife of Hector, who is represented in the play as the slave
of Neoptolemus, is persecuted to the uttermost by his wife Hermione
and her father Menelaus; then, by the opportune intervention of
Peleus, Andromache is set free, Menelaus compelled to retire, and
Hermione plunged into the most desperate sorrow; upon this Orestes
appears, carries off Hermione, who was betrothed to him before, and
contrives plans for the destruction of her husband, Neoptolemus ; the
news soon arrives that Neoptolemus has been slain at Delphi in conse-
quence of the intrigues of Orestes; and Thetis, who comes forward as
the deus ex machina, brings consolation and tranquillity, not from the
past, but from the future, by promising to the descendants of Andro-
mache the sovereignty of the Molossi, and to Peleus immortality
among the deities of the sea. If we must seek in this play for a sub-
ject which goes all through the piece, it is the mischief which a bad
wife may, in many ways, direct and indirect, bring upon a family.
Hermione causes mischief in the family of Neoptolemus, as well by the
jealous cruelty which she exercises in the house as by faithlessly leaving
her husband for a stranger. The political references bear a very pro-
minent part in the piece. The bad characters are throughout Pelopon-
nesians, and especially Spartans ; and Euripides embraces, with a de-
light which cannot be mistaken, this opportunity of giving vent to all
the ill-will that he felt towards the cruel and crafty men and the disso-
lute women of Sparta. The want of honour and sincerity with which
he charges the Spartans* appears to refer particularly to the transac-
tions of the year 420, Olymp. 89. 4.f so that the play seems to have
been brought out in the course of the 90th Olympiad.
§ 17. The Troades, or Trojan Women, of which we know with
* See V. 445 full., especially the words \iyovri; aXXa /Av y\u<r<rri, (Pgovovvrts S'aXXa.
t When Alcibiades, by his intrigues, had got the Spartan ambassadors to say
before the people something different from what they had intended and wished to
speak — a deceit uhtcfi no one saw through at the tune. — 'lhucyd. v. 45.
374 HISTORY OF THE
certainty that it was brought out Olymp. 91. 1. b. c. 415,* is the
most irregular of all the extant pieces of Euripides. It is nothing
more than a picture of the horrors which befall a conquered city and of
the cruelties exercised by arrogant conquerors, though it is continually
hinted that the victors are in reality more unhappy than the vanquished.
The distribution of the Trojan women among the Achreans; the selec-
tion of the prophetic maiden, Cassandra, to be the mistress of Aga-
memnon, whose death she prophesies; the sacrifice of Polyxena at the
tomb of Achilles, Astyanax torn from his mother's arms in order that
he may be thrown from the battlements of the city walls ; then the
strange contest between Hecuba and Helen before Menelaus, in which
he pretends to desire to bring the authoress of all the calamities to a
severe account, but is clearly in his heart actuated by different motives,
and is willing to take his faithless wife home with him ; lastly, the
burning of the city, which forms the grand finale of the piece ; what
are all these but a series of significant pictures, unfolded one after the
other and submitted to the contemplation of the reflective spectator ?
The remarkable feature, however, in this play is, that the prologue goes
a good way beyond the drama itself, and contains the proper conclusion
of the whole; for in it the deities, Athena and Poseidon, determine
between themselves to raise a tempest as the Greeks are returning
home and so make them pay for all the sins they have committed at
Troy. In order to gain an end which will satisfy the intentions of the
poet, we must suppose that this compact is really fulfilled at the end of
the piece. We almost feel ourselves compelled to conjecture that we
have lost the epilogue, in which some deity, Poseidon or Athena, ap-
peared as the deus ex machina, and described the destruction of the
fleet as in the act of taking place ; there might also have been a per-
spective view, such as that which we have pointed out in several other
pieces (§ 5 note), representing the sea raging and the fleet foundering;
and thus there would be contrasted with the burning city another pic-
ture, necessary to give a suitable conclusion to the ideas developed in
the drama and to satisfy the moral requisitions suggested by it.
§ 18. We must next speak of the Electra t which must obviously be
assigned to the period of the Sicilian expedition.! In this piece Euri-
pides goes farther than in any other in his endeavour to reduce the old
* In conjunction with two other pieces, the Alexander and the Palamedes, which
likewise referred to the Trojan war. an<l followed in chronological order (for the
Alexander referred to the discovery of Paris before the Trojan war, and the Pala-
medes to the earlier part of the war irself ), without, however, constituting a trilogy
according to the views of ^■Eschylus.
f The passage (v. 1353) in which the Dioscuri propose to themselves to protect
the ships in the Sicilian sea, clearly refers t> the fleet which sailed from Athens to
Sicily ; and the following lines possibly refer to the charge of impiety under which
Alcibiades then laboured.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 375
mythical stories to the level of every-day life. He has invented an
incident, not altogether improbable — that yEgisthus married Electra to
a common countryman, in order that her children might never gain
power or influence enough to endanger his life — and this enables the
poet to put together a set of scenes representing domestic arrangements
of the most limited and trifling kind. The king's daughter spends her
time in labours of housewifery, not so much from need, as in a spirit of
defiance, in order to show how ill she is treated by her mother; she
represents an economical manager, who scolds her husband for
bringing into their poor cottage guests of too great expectations ; she
tells him he must go out and get something to eat from an old friend
of his, for it is impossible to obtain anything from her father's house.
Euripides considers the murder of iEgisthus and Clytemnestra as
proceeding from the vindictive spirit of the brother and sister; they
bitterly regret it as soon as done, and even the Dioscuri, who ap
pear as dii ex machina, censure it as the unwise act of the wise god
Apollo.
§ 19. In the concluding scene of the Electra,* Euripides hints at an
alteration in the story of Helen, which he worked out shortly after
(Olymp. 91. 4. B. c. 412) in a separate play, the Helena^ in which
this personage, so often abused by Euripides, is on a sudden repre-
sented as a most faithful wife, a pattern of female virtue, a most
noble and elevated character. This is effected by assuming and arbi-
trarily adapting to his own purpose an idea started by Stesichorus,J that
the Trojans and Achaeans fought for a mere shadow of Helen. Of
course it is not to be imagined that Euripides was in earnest when he
adopted this idea, and that he considered this form of the tradition as
the true and genuine one ; he uses it merely for this tragedy, and, as
we may see in the Orestes, soon returns to the easier and more con-
genial representation of Helen as a worthless runaway wife. The
Helena turns entirely on the escape of this heroine from Egypt, where
the young king wishes to compel her to marry him. Her deliverance
is effected entirely by her own cunning plans, and Menelaus is only a
subordinate instrument in carrying them into execution. The country
* V. 1290.
t The Helena was performed along with the Andromeda (Schol. Ravenn. on
Aristoph. Thesm. 1012); and the Andromeda came out in the eighth year before
♦ he Frogs of Aristophanes {Schol. on the Frogs, 53), which appeared in Olymp.
93. 3. b. c. 405 The Andromeda is parodied in the Thesmop/wriazuscs (Olymp.
92. 1. b. c. 4! 1), as a piece brought out the year before ; and in several passages of
the same play, Aristophanes also ridicules the Helena: consequently, the Helena
must have been brought out Olymp. 91. 4. B. c. 412. This applies very well to the
violent invectives agai, st the soothsayers (v. 744 folU, probably occasioned by the
recent failure of the Sicilian expedition, which (according to Thucydides and Aris-
tophanes) the soothsayers of Athens had especially urged the people to undertake.
I On this see Chap. XIV. § 5.
376 HISTORY OF THE
and people of Egypt, who are in most points represented under a Greek
type, form a very interesting,' back-ground to the drama. The king's
sister, Theonoe, a virgin priestess skilled in the future, but full of
sympathy for the troubles of mankind, and presiding like a protecting
goddess over the plans of Helen and her husband, is a grand and
beautiful conception of the poet.
§ 20. From the manner in which Euripides has treated the story of
Helen in the piece we have just spoken of, it bears a strong resem-
blance to the action in the Iphigenia at Tauri, except that the ancient
poet has made no use of the incentive of love in this latter play, for
Thoas is sufficiently constrained by religious motives to prevent the
escape of the priestess of the Tauric Artemis and of the strangers
destined to be sacrificed at her altar. From an argument, too, deriv-
able from the metrical form of the choral songs, we should feel obliged
to place the Tauric Iphigenia about this time (Olymp. 92). The
efforts of the poet in this piece are chiefly directed to construct an arti-
ficial plot, to introduce, in a surprising but at the same time natural
manner, the recognition of Orestes by his sister Iphigenia, and to form
a plan of flight, possible under the circumstances, and taking into the
account all the difficulties and dangers of the case. The drama, how-
ever, has other beauties — of a kind, too, rather uncommon in Euripides
— in the noble bearing and moral worth of the characters. Iphigenia
appears as a pure-minded young maiden, who has inspired even the
barbarians with reverence ; her love for her home, and the conviction
that she is doing the will of the gods, are her only incentives to flight,
and these are sufficient excuses, according to the views of the Greeks,
for the imposition which she practises upon the good Thoas. The
poet, too, has taken care not to spoil the pleasure with which we con-
template this noble picture, by representing Iphigenia as a priestess
who slays human victims on the altar. Her duty is only to consecrate
the victims by sprinkling them with water outside the temple ; others
take them into the temple and put them to death* Fate, too, has
contrived that hitherto no Greek has been driven to this coast. f When
she flies, however, a symbolical representation is substituted for the
rites of an actual sacrifice,:}: whereby the humanity of the Greeks
triumphs over the religious fanaticism of the barbarians. Still more
attractive and touching is the connexion of Orestes and Pylades, whose
friendship is exalted in this more than in any other play. The scene
in which the two friends strive which of them shall be sacrificed as a
victim and which shall return home, is very affecting, without any de-
sign on the part of the poet to call forth the tears of the spectators.
According to our ideas, it must be confessed, Pylades yields too soon to
• V. 625 foil. f V. 260 foil. 1 V. 1471 foil.
lite;(atu;ie of ancient greece. 377
the pressing entreaties of his friend, partly because the arguments of
Orestes actually convince him, partly because, as having more faith in
the Delphic Apollo, he still retains the hope that the oracle of the god
will in the end deliver them both ; whereas we desire, even in such
cases, an enthusiastic resignation of all thoughts to the one idea, in
which no thought can arise except the deliverance of our friend. The
feelings of the people of antiquity, however, were made of sterner stuff;
their hardihood and simplicity of character would not allow them to be
so easily thrown off their balance, and while they preserved the truth of
friendship, they could keep their eyes open for all the other duties and
advantages of life.
§ 21. We have a remarkable contrast to the Iphigenia at Tauri in
the Orestes, which was produced Olymp. 92. 4. b. c. 408, and conse-
quently was not far removed in point of time from the last-mentioned
drama. The old grammarians remark that the piece produced a great
effect on the stage, though all the characters in it are bad, with the ex-
ception of Pylades ;* and that the catastrophe inclines to the comic.
It seems to have been the design of Euripides to represent a wild chaos
of selfish passions, from which there is absolutely no means of escape.
Orestes is about to be put to death for matricide by virtue of the decree
of an Argive tribunal, while Menelaus, on whom he had placed his
dependence, deserts him out of pure cowardice and selfishness. En-
raged at this abandonment, he determines not to die till he has
taken vengeance on Helen, the cause of all the mischief, who has
hidden herself in the palace through fear of the Argives; and when
she, in a surprising manner, vanishes to heaven, he threatens to slay
her daughter Hermione, unless Menelaus will pardon and rescue him.
Upon this the Dioscuri appear, bid him take to wife the damsel at whose
throat he is holding the drawn sword, and promise him deliverance
from the curse of the matricidal act. In this manner the knot is out-
wardly untied, or rather cut asunder, without any attempt or hint at
unravelling the real intricacies, the moral questions to which the
tragedy leads, or purifying the passions by means of themselves, which
is the object of tragedy, in the proper sense of the word. So far from
attaining to this object, the only impression produced by such a drama
as the Orestes is a feeling of the comfortless confusion of human exer-
tions and relations.
§ 22. The Phosnissce, or Phoenician Women, was not much later than
the Orestes. We know on sure testimony that it was one of the last
* The old critics have also remarked upon the references to the state of affairs at
the time in the character of Menelaus, who may be considered as a representative of
the vacillating and uncertain policy of Sparta at that period. See Sehol. on v.
371.772, <J03.
378 HISTORY OF THE
pieces which Euripides brought out at Athens,* but it is certainly by
no means one of the least valuable of his works. In general, it would
be very difficult to discern in the last pieces of Euripides any marks of
the feebleness of age, which seems, on the whole, to have had little effect
on the poets of antiquity. There are great beauties in the Phcenissae,
such as the splendid scene at the beginning, — in which Antigone, at-
tended by an aged domestic, surveys the army of the seven heroes from
a tower of the palace, — and the entrance of Polyneices into the hostile
city ; we might add the episode about Menoeceus, were it not a mere
repetition of the scene about Macaria in the Heracleidse ; besides,
Euripides has made too much use of these voluntary self-sacrifices to
produce any striking effect by means of them. Notwithstanding, how-
ever, all the beauties of the details and all the abundance of the ma-
terials (for the piece contains, in addition to the fall of the hostile
brother, also the expulsion of CEdipus and Antigone's two heroic re-
solves to perform the funeral rites for her brother and to accompany her
banished fatherf), we miss in this play, too, that real unity and harmony
of action which can result only from an jdea springing from the depths
of the heart and ripened by the genial warmth of the feelings.
§ 23. Three pieces, of which two are still extant, were brought out
by the younger Euripides, a son, or more probably a nephew, of the
celebrated tragedian, and were performed, after the death of the author,
as new plays at the great Dionysia. These were the Iphigenia at
Aulis, the Alcmaeon, a lost play,J and the Bacchae. Of these three
plays the BacchcB was, as far as we can see, completed by the author
himself; not, however, immediately for Athens, but for representation
in Macedonia. Euripides spent the last years of his life, when Athens
was groaning under the weight of the Peloponnesian war, at the court
of the Macedonian king, Archelaus, who was not a man of exalted
moral character, but a politic ruler who had taken great pains in
civilizing his country, and for that object had collected around himself
a considerable circle of Greek poets and musicians. It is the common
tradition of antiquity that Euripides died here. The worship of Bac-
chus was very prevalent in Macedonia, especially in Pieria near Olympus,
where, at a later period, Olympias, the mother of Alexander, roamed
about with the Mimallones and Clodones ; Archelaus may have cele-
brated the feast of Bacchus here with dramatic spectacles,§ at which
* Schof. on Aristoph. Frogs, 53.
f One does not see, however, how Antigone could find it possible to carry both
her resolutions into effect at once.
J This was the 'AXe^i'si S;a Kofnv&ov, for the 'AXxfcaiuiy S/a 'Vatfi'bos was brought
out by Euripides along with the Alcestis.
§ As he also instituted dramatic contests at Dion in Pieria in honour of Zeus and
the Muses. Diodor. Sic xvii. 16. Wesseling on xvi. 56.
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 379
the Bacchae was performed for the first time. To this there is an
allusion in the words of the chorus* — " Happy Pieria, thee Bacchus
honours, and he will come in order to dance in thee with Bacchic
revelry ; he will conduct his Maenads over the swift flowing Axius and
the Lydias, whose streams pour forth blessings." Euripides would
hardly have celebrated these rivers in such a manner had not Pella, ihe
residence of the Macedonian kings, been situated between them, and
had not the court of the king - come to Pieria in order to bear a part in
the dramatic festival celebrated there.
The Bacchce, or Bacchanalians, developes the story of Pentheus,
who was so fearfully punished for his attempt to keep the Dionysian
rites from being- introduced into Thebes, and gives a lively and compre-
hensive picture of the impassioned and enthusiastic nature of this
worship; at the same time, this tragedy furnishes us with remarkable
conclusions in resrard to the religious opinions of Euripides at the close
of his life. In this play he appears, as it were, converted into a positive
believer, or, in other words, convinced that religion should not be ex-
posed to the subtilties of reasoning; that the understanding of man
cannot subvert ancestral traditions which are as old as time ; that the
philosophy which attacks religion is but a poor philosophy, and so
forth ;-f- doctrines which are sometimes set forth with peculiar impres-
siveness in the speeches of the old men, Cadmus and Teiresias, or, on
the other hand, form the foundation of the whole piece : although it
must be owned that Euripides, with the vacillation which he always dis-
plays in such matters, ventures, on the other hand, to explain the offen-
sive story about the second birth of Bacchus from the thigh of Zeus, by
a very frigid pun on a word which he assumes to have been misunder-
stood in the first instance.^
§ 24. The case is different with the Iphigenia at Aulis, which has
obviously not come down to us in so perfect a state from the hands of
the author. In its really genuine and original parts, this Iphigenia is
one of the most admirable of this poet's tragedies, and it is based upon
such a noble idea that we might put. it on the same footing with the
works of his better days, such as the Medea or the Hecuba. This idea
is, that a pure and elevated mind, like that of Iphigenia, can alone find
a way out of all the intricacies and entanglements caused by the pas-
sions and efforts of powerful, wise, and brave men, contending with
and running counter to one another. In this play Euripides has had
the skill to invest the subject with such intense interest by depicting the
fruitless efforts of Agamemnon to save his child, the too late compunc-
* V. f>66.
f See v. 200, euih tropigoptfffix ro7<ri laipocrtv, and the following verses ; v. 1257, un
; By an interchange of /x.r,^os and ofin^os, v. 292.
380 HISTORY OK THE
tion of Menelaus, the pride and courage with which Achilles offers him-
self for the rescue of his affianced bride and for her defence against the
whole army, that the willingness of Iphigenia to sacrifice herself ap-
pears as the solution of a very complicated knot, such as generally re-
quires a deus ex machina in Euripides, and shines with the brightest
lustre as an act of the highest sublimity. Unfortunately, however, this
admirable work is disfigured by the interpolation of a number of pas-
sages, poor and paltry both in matter and in form.* We know not if
we judge too harshly of the younger Euripides, when we regard these
as additions by which he sought to complete the piece for representa-
tion ; if so, we must conclude that the art of tragedy sunk altogether
soon after the death of the great poets. The question is the more dif-
ficult to answer from the fact that in ancient times there was a totally
different epilogue to the Iphigenia at Aulis.f It is possible, or rather
probable, that this was the ending added by the younger Euripides,
while in other copies tlie genuine parts alone were transcribed, and that
at a later period, after the decline of poetry, these copies were com-
pleted as we have them now
§ 25. The still extant dramas of Euripides are^so numerous and
varied that we have not found it necessary to our judgment of his
works to take into account his lost pieces, though, if we are to believe
the hostile criticisms in Aristophanes and the remarks of other ancient
writers, there were several of these pieces which presented even more
glaring specimens of the poet's faulty mannerism than those which we
still have ; for instance, he attempted in the beggar-hero Telephus to
produce a touching effect by the outward appearance, by ragged
clothes, and so forth; J the Andromeda abounded in showy fooleries
in the lyrical parts ; and the wise Melanippe was full of the enlightened
reasonings of the new philosophy. The Ckrysippus and the Peirithous
were especially rich in speculations about nature and the soul, the
Sisyphus in sophistical arguments about the origin of religions ; the two
last pieces, however, were more correctly ascribed to Critias, the pupil
of Socrates and the sophists, and well known as one of the Thirty
Tyrants. §
* The worst addition is the epilogue ; the parodos of the chorus is also liable to
strong suspicions. The prologue, together with the ananests, differs from the cus-
tomary style of Euripides ; but it has beauties of its own, and, moreover, this part
of the play has been imitated by Ennius.
t According to the well-known passage in jElian's Hist. Animal, vii. 39.
X Euripides subsequently introduced many alterations into this piece, but not
on account of the jokes in the Frogs of Aristophanes, as we might infer from
Eustath. on the Iliad, xvi. p. 1084 ; for it is well known that he was not living when
that comedy was produced. In general, Euripides frequently altered his plays to
suit the public taste, as we are told he did the Hippolytus. In the first edition of
this play, Phaedra was a much more importunate lover.
§ We have entirely passed over the Rhesus; for although there was a play of
Euripides with this name, which Attius seems to have imitated in the Nyctrgersis,
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 381
The predilection of antiquity for Euripides has also preserved us one
of his satyric dramas, the Cyclops (the only specimen we have of this
sort of play), though Euripides had not distinguished himself parti-
cularly in this branch of dramatic poetry. As a specimen of the
satyric drama, for which the story of Polyphemus is peculiarly
adapted, the play possesses some interest, but it wants that genial
originality which we should have been warranted in expecting in a
satyrical drama by iEschylus.
Euripides probably died in Olymp. 93. 2. b. c. 407, though the
ancients also assign the following year for his death.* Sophocles
mourned for him in common with the rest of Athens and brought his
actors uncrowned to the tragic contest. This must have happened at
the dramatic contests in the winter of b. c. 407 and 406 ; Sophocles
himself died soon after, about the spring of b. c. 406 (Olymp. 93. 2.),
if we may give credit to the old stories which place his death in con-
nexion with the feast of the Anthesteria.
CHAPTER XXVI.
§ 1. Inferiority of the other tragic poets. § 2. Contemporaries of Sophocles and
Euripides: Neophron, Ion, Aristarchus, Aehaeus, Carcinus, Xenocles. § 3.
Tragedians somewhat more recent : Agathon ; the anonymous son of Cleomachus.
Tragedy grows effeminate. § 4. Men of education employ tragedy as a vehicle
of their opinions on the social relations of the age. § 5. The families of the
great tragedians : the j^Eschyleans, Sophocleans, and the younger Euripides.
§ 6. Influence of other branches of literature ; tragedy is treated by Chaeremon
in the spirit of lax and effeminate lyric poetry. § 7. Tragedy is subordinated to
rhetoric in the dramas of Theodectes.
§ 1. We may consider ourselves fortunate in possessing, as speci-
mens of Greek tragedy, master-pieces by those poets, whom their
contemporaries and all antiquity unanimously regarded as the heroes
of the tragic stage. iEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides are the
names which continually recur whenever the ancients speak of the
height which tragic poetry attained at Athens ; the state itself dis-
tinguished them by founding institutions the object of which was to
preserve their works pure and unadulterated, and to protect them
the extant piece bears no mark of the pen of Euripides, and must rather be con-
sidered as an imitation of j^schylus or Sophocles. It probably belongs to the later
Athenian tragedy, perhaps to the school of Pkiiocles, for it is clear from v. 944 that
it comes from Athens. The scene in which Paris appears the instant that Diomedes
and Ulysses have left the s-tage, while Athena is still there, requires four actors;. and
this may also be used as an argument to prove that it was composed at a bitt-r period.
* See Chap. XXIV. 6 11 note.
3S2 HISTORY OF THE
from being interpolated at the caprice of the actors;* and soon
afterwards they were rather read in the closet than heard in the
theatre, and became identified with the existence of the later Greeks
and Romans.
Their contemporaries among the tragedians must be regarded as, for
the most part, far from insignificant poets, inasmuch as they main-
tained their place on the stage beside them, and not unfrequently
gained the tragic prize in competition with them. Yet, though their
separate productions may have been in part happy enough to merit
most fully the approbation of the public, the general character of these
poets must have been deficient in that depth and peculiar force of
genius by which the great tragedians were distinguished. If this had
not been the case, their works would assuredly have attracted greater
attention and have been read more frequently in later times.
§ 2. Neophron, of Sicyon, must have been one of the most ancient
of these poets, if the Medea of Euripides was really in part an imita-
tion of one of his plays :f in that case he must be distinguished from
a younger Neophron, who was a contemporary of Alexander the Great.
Ion, of Chios, lived at Athens in the time of iEschylus and Cimon,
and in the fragments of his writings speaks of the events of their day
as from personal knowledge. He was a very comprehensive writer,
and, what was very uncommon in ancient times, a prose author as well
as a poet. He wrote history in the dialect and after the manner of
Herodotus, except that he paid more attention to the private life of dis-
tinguished individuals : he also composed elegiesj and lyrical poems of
various sorts. He did not come forward as a tragedian till after the
death of iEschylus (Olymp. 82 ), whose place, it seems, he expected
to fill on the stage. The materials of his dramas were in a great
measure taken from Homer ; they may have been connected in
trilogies like those of -ZEschvlus ; the few remains,§ however, hardly
allow us to trace the connexion of these trilogical compositions.
Although correct and careful in the execution, his productions were de-
ficient in that higher energy which is remarkable in the more genial
poets. ||
* According to a law, proposed by the oralor Lycurgus, authentic copies of the
works of the three poets were kept in the archives of Athens, and it was the duty of
the public secretary (yguf*ftu.rsvs ry; ■rokias) to see that the actors delivered this text
only. See the life of Lycurgus in Plutarch's Vitae decern Oratorum, where the
words, ouk \\uvat ya.^ a.uTa.„ aXXui vfoxgivifftlai have been properly added.
j See the didascalia to the Medea of Euripides (where it would be best to change
y<vva,to<$i'ovus hatrxsvutra; into t>i» Nso^'uvos S.),and Diog. Laert.ii. 134. But a good deal
might be said against this account, and perhaps the relation between the two plays
was prec sely the converse.
X See Chap. X. § 7. p. 113. notes.
§ Iuiiis Chii fragmenta collegi.t Nieverding. Lipsiae, 1836.
j| According to the judgment, of the critic Longinus de Sublim. 33.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 383
Aristarchus, of Tegea, came forward in Olymp. Si. 2. b. c. 454,
and, as we have mentioned above,* was the first to produce tragedies
according to the standard of greater length, which was subsequently
observed by Sophocles and Euripides. Some of his tragedies, espe-
cially the Achilles, gained some reputation at a later period, from being
imitated by Ennius.
Ach^eus, of Eretria, brought out many dramas at Athens after
Olymp. S3, but only once obtained the prize. A sort of artificial man-
ner was peculiar to him ; the fragments of his dramasf contain much
strange mythology, and we learn that his expressions were often forced
and obscure. Nevertheless, with such peculiarities he may easily have
merited the favourable opinion of some ancient critics, who considered
him the best writer of satyric dramas next to /Eschylus. In construct-
ing such dramas he could hardly have avoided making some strange
combinations and indulging in some far-fetched witticisms.
Carcinus, with his sons, forms a family of tragedians, known to us
chiefly from the jokes and mockeries of Aristophanes. The father was
a tragedian, and the sons appeared as choral-dancers in his plays;
only one of them, Xenocles, also devoted himself to the profession of
poetry. As far as we can judge from a few hints, both father and son
were distinguished by a sort of antiquated harshness in their mode of
expression. Yet Xenocles, with his tragic trilogy, GUdipus, Lycaon,
Bacchce, and the satyrical drama Athamas, gained the prize over the
trilogy of Euripides to which the Troades belonged. From the
Athenian Carcinus we must distinguish a later tragedian of the same
name, who was of Agrigentum.
§ 3. Agathon was a very singular character. He came before the
public with his first tragedy in Olymp. 90. 4. b. c. 416, when he was
still a young man, and spent his riper years at the court of Archelaus,
King of Macedon, where he died about Olymp. 94. 4. b. c. 400. His
strange demeanour and habits have enabled Aristophanes (especially hi
the Thesmophoriazusee) and Plato (in the Symposium) lo give us some
sketches of him, which bring the man before our eyes in the most
vivid and striking manner. Naturally delicate and effeminate, as
well in body as in mind, he gave himself up entirely to this mood, and
coquetted with a sort of grace and charm with which he endeavoured
to invest everything that he took in hand. The lyrical part of his
tragedies was an amiable and insinuating display, of cheerful thoughts
and kindly images, but did not penetrate deeply into the feelings. In
accordance with these views, Agathon had devoted himself to the new arts,
by which the sophists of the time, and especially Gorgias, had produced
* Chap. XXI. § 4.
f Acha;i Eretriensis fragmenta cullogit Urlichs. Bonn. 1834.
384 HISTORY OF THE
such an effect on the Athenian public. He borrowed from Gorgias his
novel and ingenious combinations of thought, which deluded the hearer
into the idea that he had really gained an entirely new insight into the
subject, and also the figures of opposition and parallelism (Antitheia,
Parisa), which gratified the prevailing taste of the age by giving the
structure of the sentence an appearance of symmetry and regularity.*
We should, however, have prized very much the possession of such an
original work as Agathon's " Flower" (tivfloc) must have been.
Still more effeminate must have been the poetry of an author whom
Cratinus the comedian designates only as the son of CLeomachus.\ The
Archon, he tells us, gave this poetaster a chorus in preference to
Sophocles, although he was not worthy to provide songs for a chorus at
the wanton female festival of the Adonia. He compares the chorus-
of this poet, which expressed, in soft Lydian melodies, corresponding
thoughts and feelings, to licentious women from Lydia, who were
ready for all sorts of harlotry. It seems that the same poet, who was
probably named Cleomenes, composed erotic poems In a lyrical form,
and transferred their characteristics to his tragedies.
§ 4. About this time the tragic stage received a great influx of
poets, which, however, does not prove that a great advance had taken
place in the art of tragic poetry. Aristophanes speaks of thousands of
tragedy-making prattlers, more garrulous by a good deal than Euri-
pides : he calls their poems muses' groves for swallows, comparing
their trifling and insignificant attempts at polite literature with the
chirping of birds ;+ happily these dilettanti were generally satisfied
with presenting themselves once before the people as tragic poets.
There was such a taste for the composition of tragedies that we find
among those who wrote for the stage men of the most different
pursuits and dispositions, such as Critias, the head of the oligar-
chical party at Athens, and Dionysius the First, tyrant of Syracuse,
who often came forward as a competitor for the tragic prize, and had
the satisfaction of receiving the crown once before he died. Such men
were fond of availing themselves of tragedy, in the same way that
Euripides did, as a vehicle for bringing before the public in a less sus-
picious manner their speculations on the political and social interests of
* As in the example quoted by Aristotle Rhetor, ii. 24, 10 : " We might call that
probable, that many things not probable would occur among men."
f In the difficult passage quoted by Athenaeus xiv. p. 638, where, after i Kkio-
f^a-xou, we must write also <rZ KXiepaxoo ; at all events, the converse alteration is
less probable. Gnesippus can hardly he this son of Cleomachus, as Athenaeus ex-
pressly calls him a writer of jocular songs only. We must, at any rate, suppose
with Casaubon that something has fallen out before <rxuTrzi, and it is almost
probable that Cleomenes, who is mentioned in connexion with Gn. sipptis, is more
precisely referred to in the lost passage.
J Aristophanes' Frogs, v. 89. foil., ^tXilivav fttvtrt'x.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 3S5
their auditors. In the drama called Sisyphus (which is perhaps more
rightly ascribed to Critias than to Euripides*) there was a developement
of the pernicious doctrine of the sophists, that religion was an ancient
political institution, designed to sanction the restraints of law by super-
adding the fear of the gods; and we are told that Dionysius wrote a
drama against Plato's theory of the state, which was called a tragedy
but had rather the character of a comedy. It is well known, too, that
Plato also composed a tragic tetralogy in his younger days, which he
committed to the flames when he had convinced himself that dramatic
poetry was not his vocation. In the opposite party, among the ac-
cusers of Socrates, Meletus was not a philosopher, but a tragedian by
profession ; we are told, however, that his poetry was as frigid and
tedious as his character appears hateful to us from his persecution of
the illustrious sage.
§ 5. The families of the great poets contributed in a considerable
degree to continue the tragic art after their deaths. As the great poets
not only felt themselves called upon by their own taste to devote
themselves to dramatic poetry, and to bring out plays and teach the
chorus year after year, but really practised this art as an ostensible pro-
fession, we cannot wonder that this, like other employments and trades,
was transmitted by a regular descent to their sons and grandsons.
JE.schylus was followed by a succession of tragedians, who flourished
through several generations ;f his son Euphorion sometimes brought
out plays of his father's which had not been represented before, some-
times pieces of his own, and he gained the tragic prize in competition
with both Sophocles and Euripides ; similarly, iEschylus' nephew,
Philocles, gained the prize against the King (Edipus of Sophocles, a
piece which, in our opinion, is not to be surpassed. Philocles must
* See above, chap. XXV. § 25.
f To make this clearer, we subjoin the pedigree of the whole family, chiefly de-
rived from Boeckh. Tragced. Grcecce princtpes, p. 32. aad Clinton Fast. Htllen. II.
p. xxxiii. : —
Euphorion
, -A, ,
/Eschylus A sister — Philopeithcs
A . I
Euphorion Bion Philocles
Morsimus
Astydamas
Philocles II. Astydamas II.
According to Suidas, Bion was also a tragedian. Philocles must have flourished
even before the Peloponnesian war, for his son Morsimus is ridiculed as a tragic
poet in the Knights (Olymp. 88.4. b. c. 424.) and Peace (Olymp. 90. 1. B.C. 419.) of
Aristophanes ; and Astydamas came out as a tragedian in Olymp. 95. 2. b c. 398,
2 c
386 HISTORY OF THE
have had a good deal of his uncle's manner; his tetralogy, the Pan-
dionis, probably developed the destinies of Proene and Philomela in a
connected series of dramas quite according to the iEschylean model,
and the hardness and harshness* with which he is reproached may have
followed naturally from his imitation of the style of the old tragedy.
Morsimus, the son of Philocles, seems to have done but little honour to
the family ; but after the Peloponnesian war the vEschyleans gained
new lustre from Astydamas, who brought out 240 pieces and gained
fifteen victories. From these numbers we see that Astydamas in his
time supplied the Athenian public with new tetralogies almost every
year at the Lensea and great Dionysia, and that, on an average, he
gained the prize once every four contests. f
With regard to the family of Sophocles, Iophon was an active and
popular tragedian in his father's life-time, and Aristophanes considers
him as the only support of the tragic stage after the death of the two
great poets. We do not, however, know how a later age answered the
comedian's doubtful question, whether Iophon would be able to do as
much by himself now that he was deprived of the benefit of his father's
counsel and guidance. Some years later the younger Sophocles, the
grandson of the great poet, came forward, at first with the legacy of
unpublished dramas which his grandfather had left him, and soon after
with plays of his own. As he gained the prize twelve times, he must
have been one of the most prolific poets of the day; he was un-
doubtedly the most considerable rival of the .Eschylean Astydamas.
A younger Euripides also gained some reputation by the side of
these descendants of the two other tragedians. He stands on the same
footing in relation to his uncle as Euphorion to iEschylus, and the
younger Sophocles to his grandfather ; he first brought out plays by
his renowned kinsman, and then tried the success of his own productions.
§ G. By the side of these successors of the great tragedians others
from time to time made their appearance, and in them we may see
more distinct traces of those tendencies of the age, which were not
without their influence on the others. In them tragic poetry appears
no longer as independent and as following its own object and its own
* Uty.^'ta., Schol. Aristoph. Av. ; Suidas v. GiXoxXift. He gained from this the epi-
thets 'AXpluv and XoXv, " salt-pickle'' and " gall."
f He was the first of the family of /Eschylns who was honoured by the Athenians
With a statue of bronze Q Atr<rv'bcijUKVTtz toZtov ruiv cripi Aiit-^vXov iTif&wrav iixovi %a\Kx),
which is mentioned by Diog. Laert. 11. 5.4 >. as an instance of the unjust distribui ion
of distinctions. He is not quite right, however; for Astydamas lived at the time,
when the use of honorary statues fiist came into vogue. The statues of the older
poets, which were shown at Athens at a later period, were erected subsequently and
by way of supplement. The passage quoted above has been wrongly suspected and
needlessly altered.
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 387
laws, but as subordinated to the spirit which had developed itself in
other branches of literature. The lyric poetry and the rhetoric of the
time had an especial influence on the form of tragic poetry.
We shall endeavour to characterize the lyric poetry of this age in a
subsequent chapter (chap. XXX.) ; here we will only remark gene-
rally, that it was losing more and more every day the predominance of
ideas and feelings, and that the minor accessaries of composition,
which were formerly subjected to the ruling conceptions, were now, as
it were, gradually becoming independent of them. It hunts about
for stray charms to gratify the senses, and consequently loses sight
of its true object, to elevate the thoughts and ennoble the sensi-
bilities.
How much Ch;Eremon, who flourished about Olymp. 100. b. c. 380,
was possessed with the spirit of the lyrical poetry of his time, is clear
from all that is related of him. The contemporary dithyrambic
poets were continually making sudden transitions in their songs from
one species of tones and rhythms to another, and sacrificed the unity of
character to a striving after metrical variety of expression. But
nobody went farther in this than Chaeremon, who, according to
Aristotle, mixed up all kinds of metres in his Cenlavr, which seems to
have been a most extraordinary compound of epic, lyric, and dramatic
poetry.* His dramatic productions were rich in descriptions, which
did not, like all those of the old tragedians, belong to the pieces, and
contribute to place in a clearer light the condition, the relations, the
deeds of some person engaged in the action, but sprung altogether
from a fondness for delineating subjects which produce a pleasing im-
pression on the senses. No tragedian could be compared with Chaere-
mon in the number of his charming pictures of female beauty, in which
the serious muse of the great tragedians is exceedingly chaste and re-
tiring; the only counterpoise to this is his passion for the multifarious
perfumes and colours of flowers. With this mixture of foreign in-
gredients, tragedy ceases to be a drama, in the proper sense of the
word, in which everything depends on the causes and developements of
actions and on manifestations of the will of man. Accordingly, Aris-
totle calls this Chaeremon in. connexion with the dithyrambic poet
Licymnius, poets to be read,\ and says, of the former in particular, that
he is exact, i. e. careful and accurate in detail, like a professed writer,
whose sole object is the satisfaction of his readers.
§ 7. But this later tragedy was still more powerfully affected by the
* Aristotle {Poet. 1.) calls it a ^/ktw pu-^uiiu, so that the epic element must
have beep the foundation oi' the whole. Athenseus xiii. p. 608, calls it a Jja^et
f avaytuiTTiKoi. Aristotle Rhetor, iii 12.
2 c 2
38S HISTORY OF THE
rhetoric of the time, that is, the art of speaking- as taught in the school.
Dramatic poetry and oratory were so near one another from the begin-
ning, that they often seem to join hands over the gap which separates
poetry from prose. The ohject of oratory is to determine by means of
argument the convictions and the will of other men ; but dramatic
poetry leaves the actions of the persons represented to be determined by
the developement of their own views and the expression of the opinions
of others. The Athenians were so habituated to hear long public
speeches in their courts and assemblies, and had snch a passion for
them, that their tragedy, even in its better days, admitted a greater pro-
portion of speeches on opposite sides of a question than would have
been the case had their public life taken another direction. But, in
process of time, this element was continually gaining upon the others,
and soon transcended its proper limits, as we see even in Euripides,
and still more in his successors. The excess consists in this, that the
speeches, which in a drama should only serve as a means of explaining
the changes in the thoughts and frame of mind of the actors and of
influencing their convictions and resolves, became, on their own ac-
count, the chief business of the play, so that the situations and all the
labour of the poet were directed towards affording opportunities for
the display of rhetorical sparring. And as the practical object of
real life was, naturally enough, wanting to this stage-oratory, and as it
depended on the poet alone how he should put the point of dispute, it
is easy to conceive that this theatrical rhetoric would, in most cases,
make a display of the more artificial forms, which in practical life were
thrown aside as useless, and would approximate rather to the scholastic
oratory of the sophists than to the eloquence of a Demosthenes, which,
possessed by the great events of the time, raised itself far above the
trammels of a scholastic art.
Theodectes, of Phaselis, the chief specimen of this class of writers,
flourished about Olymp. 106. b. c. 356, in the time of Philip of Mace-
don. Rhetoric was his chief study, though he also applied himself to
philosophy ; he belongs to the scholars of Isocrates, another of whom,
a son of Aphareus, also left the rhetorical school for the tragic stage.
Theodectes never gave up his original pursuits, but came forward both
as orator and tragedian. At the splendid funeral feast, which the
Carian queen, Artemisia, instituted in honour of Mausolus, the husband
whom she mourned for so ostentatiously (Olymp. 106. 4. b. c. 353),
Theodectes, in competition with Theopompus and other orators, de-
livered a panegyric on the deceased, and at the same time produced a
tragedy, the Mausolus, the materials for which were probably borrowed
from the mythical traditions or early history of Caria ; but the
author certainly had also in view the exaltation of the prince of the
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 389
same name just dead.* Theodectes had so hit the taste of the age in
his tragedies that he obtained eight victories in thirteen contests. f
Aristotle, who was his friend, and, according to some, also his teacher,
made use of his tragedies, as furnishing him with examples of rhetoric.
Thus Theodectes, in his Orestes, makes the murderer of Clytaemnestra
rest the justification of his deed on two points ; first, that the wife who
has murdered her husband ought to be put to death ; and then, that it
is the duty of a son to avenge his father; but, with sophistical address,
he leaves out the third point to be proved, that the sou must murder
his mother. In his Lynceus, Danaus and Lynceus contend before an
Arrive tribunal. The former has discovered the secret marriage of his
daughters with the sons of /Egyptus, and brings the latter bound before
the tribunal in order to have him condemned and executed ; but
Lynceus unexpectedly gains the victory in the court, and Danaus is
condemned to death. Affecting speeches, based on skilful argumenta-
tion, recognition-scenes ingeniously introduced, and paradoxical asser-
tions cleverly maintained, formed the chief part of the tragedies of this
time, as we may see from the quotations in Aristotle's Rhetoric and
Poetic. The subjects were taken from a very circumscribed set of
fables, which furnished the sophistical ingenuity of the poet with an in-
exhaustible fund of materials. The style approximated more and more
to prose ;J for a high poetical tone, or an antique majesty of diction,
would have been altogether ill-suited to the subtle niceties of reasoning
with which the speeches were pervaded.
* The Archelaus of Euripides is similarly related to the Macedonian king, of the
name in whose honour it was composed. The name Mausolus was an old one in
Caria. See Herod, v. 118.
f According to the epigram quoted by Steph. Byzant. v. #a<r»A/j. According to
Suidas, he composed fifty dramas ; if this number is correct, lie contended eleven
times with tetralogies and twice with trilogies only.
I See particularly Aristot. Jihetur. iii. 1. ( J. ; and compare Poetic. C. The
Cleophcn, whom Aiistotle often mentions as having painted characters from every -day
life, people who are quite common-place in all their thoughts and words, probably
also belongs to the time of Theodectes.
391
SECOND PERIOD
OF
GREEK LITERATURE
(Continued.)
CHAPTER XXVII.
§ 1. The comic element in Greek poetry due to the worship of Bacchus. § 2, Also
connected with the Comus at the lesser Dionysia : Phallic songs. § 3. Begin-
nings of dramatic comedy at Megara : Susarion, Chionides, &c. § 4. The per-
fectors of the old Attic comedy. § 5. The structure of comedy. What it has in
common with tragedy. § 6. Peculiar arrangement of the chorus ; Parabasis.
§ 7. Dances, metres, and style.
§ I. Having followed one species of the drama, Tragedy, through its
rise, progress, and decay, up to the time when it almost ceases to he
poetry, we must return once more to its origin, in order to consider how
it came to pass that the other species, Comedy, though it sprang from
the same causes, and was matured hy the same vivifying influences,
nevertheless acquired so dissimilar a form.
The opposition between tragedy and comedy did not make its first
appearance along with these different species of the drama : it is as old
as poetry itself. By the side of the noble and the great, the common
and the base always appear in the guise of folly, and thus make the
opposed qualities more conspicuous. Nay more, in the same proportion
as the mind nurtured and cultivated within itself its conceptions of the
perfect order, beauty, and power, reigning in the universe and exhi-
biting themselves in the life of man, so much the more capable and
competent would it become to comprehend the weak and perverted in
their whole nature and manner, and to penetrate to their very heart and
centre. In themselves the base and the perverted are certainly no
proper subject for poetry : when, however, they are received among the
conceptions of a mind teeming with thoughts of the great and the
beautiful, they obtain a place in the world of the beautiful and become
poetic. In consequence of the conditional and limited existence of our
392 HISTORY OF THE
race, this tendency of the mind is always conversant about bare realities,
■while the opposite one has, with free creative energy, set up for itself a
peculiar domain of the imagination. Real life has always furnished
superabundant materials for comic poetry ; and if the poet in working
up these materials has often made use of figures which do not actually
exist, these are always intended to represent actual appearances, circum-
stances, men, and classes of men : the base and the perverted are not
invented ; the invention consists in bringing them to light in their true
form. A chief instrument of comic representation is Wit, which maybe
defined to be, — a startling detection and display of the perverted and
deformed, when the base and the ridiculous are suddenly illuminated by
the flash of genius. Wit cannot lay hold of that which is really sacred,
sublime, and beautiful : in a certain sense, it invariably degrades what
it handles ; but it cannot perform this office unless it takes up a higher
and safer ground from which to hurl its darts. Even the commonest
sort of wit, which is directed against the petty follies and mistakes of
social life, must have for its basis a consciousness of the possession of
that discreet reserve and elegant refinement which constitute good
manners. The more concealed the perversity, the more it assumes the
garb of the right and the excellent ; so much the more comic is it when
suddenly seen through and detected, just because it is thus brought most
abruptly into contrast with the true and the good.
We must now break off these general considerations, which do
not properly belong to the problem we have to solve, and are only
designed to call attention to the cognate and corresponding features of
tragic and comic poetry. If we return to history, we meet with the
comic element even in epic poetry, partly in connexion with the heroic
epos, where, as might be expected, it makes its appearance only in
certain passages,* and partly cultivated in a separate form, as in the Mar-
gites. Lyric poetry had produced in the iambics of Archilochus master-
pieces of passionate invective and derision, the form and matter of which
had the greatest influence on dramatic comedy. It was not, however,
till this dramatic comedy appeared, that wit and ridicule attained to that
greatness of form, that unconstrained freedom, and, if we may so say,
that inspired energy in the representation of the common and contempt-
ible which every friend of antiquity identifies with the name of Aris-
tophanes. At that happy epoch, when the full strength of the national
* As in the episode of Thersites and the comic scene with Agamemnon,
above, chap. V. § 8. The Odyssey has more elements of the satyric drama
(as in the story of Polyphemus) than of the comedy proper. Satyric poetry
brings rude, unintellectual, half-bestial humanity into contact with the tragical ; it
places by the lofty forms of the heroes not human perverseness, but the want of
real humanity, Avhereas comedy is conversant about the deterioration of civilized
humanity. With regard to Hesiod's comic vein, see above chap. XI. $ 3. ; and for
the Margites, the same chap. § 4.
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. o'93
ideas and the warmth of noble feelings were still united with the sa-
gacious, refined, and penetrating observation of human life, for which
the Athenians were invariably distinguished among the other Greeks,
Attic genius here found the form in which it could not merely point out
the depraved and the foolish as they appeared in individuals, but even
grasp and subdue them when gathered together in masses, and follow
them into the secret places where the perverted tendencies of the age
were fabricated.
It was the worship of Bacchus again which rendered the construction
of these great forms possible. It was by means of it that the imagina-
tion derived that bolder energy to which we have already ascribed the
origin of the drama in general. The nearer the Attic comedy stands to
its origin, the more it has of that peculiar inebriety of mind which the
Greeks showed in everything relating to Bacchus; in their dances, their
songs, their mimicry, and their sculpture. The unrestrained enjoyments
of the Bacchic festivals imparted to all the motions of comedy a sort of
grotesque boldness and mock dignity which raised to the region of
poetry even what was vulgar and common in the representation : at the
same time, this festal jollity of comedy at once broke through the
restraints of decent behaviour and morality which, on other occasions,
were strictly attended to in those days. " Let him stand out of the way
of our choruses," cries Aristophanes,* "who has not been initiated into
the Bacchic mysteries of the steer-eating Cratinus." The great come-
dian gives this epithet to his predecessor in order to compare him with
Bacchus himself. A later writer regards comedy as altogether a product
of the drunkenness, stupefaction, and wantonness of the nocturnal
Dionysia;f and though this does not take into account the bitter and
serious earnestness which so often forms a back-ground to its bold and
unbridled fun, it nevertheless explains how comedy could throw aside
the restraints usually imposed by the conventions of society. The
whole was regarded as the wild drollery of an ancient carnival. When
the period of universal inebriety and licensed frolic had passed away,
all recollection of what had been seen and done was dismissed, save
where the deeper earnestness of the comic poet had left a sting in the
hearts of the more intelligent among the audience. \
§2. The side of the multifarious worship of Bacchus to which comedy
attached itself, was naturally not the same as that to which the origin of
tragedy was due. Tragedy, as we have seen, proceeded from the
Lensea, the winter feast of Bacchus, which awakened and fostered an
* Fror/a, v. 356.
f Eunapius, Vita Sophist, p. 32, cd. Boissonade, -who explains from this the
representation of Socrates in the Clouds. During the comic contest the people
kept eating and tippling ; the choruses hud wine given to them as they went on nnd
came off the stage. Philochorus in Athenaeua, xi. p. 464 F.
\ The troQiii, -who are opposed to the yikavri;. Aristoph. Ecclcsiaz. 1155.
394 HISTORY OF THE
enthusiastic sympathy with the apparent sorrows of the god of nature.
But comedy was connected, according to universal tradition, with
the lesser or country Dionysia, (ra. /xiKpa, ra tear aypovg Aloviktio.,)
the concluding feast of the vintage, at which an exulting joy
over the inexhaustible exuberant riches of nature manifested itself
in wantonness and petulance of every kind. In such a feast the comus
or Bacchanalian procession was a principal ingredient: it was, of course,
much less orderly and ceremonious than the comus at which Pindar's
Epinician odes were sung, (chap. XV. § 3. p. 221,) but very lively and
tumultuous, a varied mixture of the wild carouse, the noisy song, and
the drunken dance. According to Athenian authorities, which connect
comedy at the country Dionysia immediately with the comus,* it is in-
dubitable that the meaning of the word comedy is " a comus song,"
although others, even in ancient times, describe it as " a village song,"f
not badly as far as the fact is concerned, but the etymology is manifestly
erroneous.
With the Bacchic comus, which turned a noisy festal banquet into a
boisterous procession of revellers, a custom was from the earliest times
connected, which was the first cause of the origin of comedy. The
symbol of the productive power of nature was carried about by this band
of revellers, and a wild, jovial song was recited in honour of the god in
whom dwells this power of nature, namely, Bacchus himself or one of
his companions. Such phallophoric or ithyphallic songs were customary
in various regions of Greece. The ancients give us many hints about
the variegated garments, the coverings for the face, such as masks or
thick chaplets of flowers, and the processions and songs of these comus
singers. \ Aristophanes, in his Acharnians, gives a most vivid picture
of the Attic usages in this respect : in that play, the worthy Dicseopolis,
while Avar is raging' around, alone peacefully celebrates the country
Dionysia on his own farm; he has sacrificed with his slaves, and now
prepares for the sacred procession ; his daughter carries the basket as
canephorus ; behind her the slave holds the phallus aloft ; and, while
his wife regards the procession from the roof of the house, he himself
begins the phallus song, " Phales, boon companion of Bacchus, thou
nightly reveller !" with that strange mixture of wantonness and serious
piety which was possible only in the elementary religions of the ancient
world.
* Sec the quotations chap. XXI. § 5. « xZpt>$ »cuei xupultii. The feast of the great
or city Dionysia is thus described, but it is obvious that the connexion proceeded
from the country Dionysia.
f From -A.uiA.rt. The Peloponnesians, according to Aristotle, Poet. c. 3, used this
etymology to support their claim to the invention of comedy, because they called
villages xZ/mu, but the Athenians tiif&ai.
JAthenaus, xiv. p. 621, 2, and the lexicographers Hesychius and Suidas, in
various articles relating to the subject. Phallophori, Ithyphalli, Autokabdali,
Iambistse, ai-e the different names of these merryandrews.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 395
It belonged especially to the ceremonies of this Bacchic feast that,
after singing the song in honour of the god who was the leader of the
frolic, the merry revellers found an object for their unrestrained petu-
lance in whatever came first in their way, and overwhelmed the innocent
spectators with a flood of witticisms, the boldness of which was justified
by the festival itself. When the phallophori at Sicyon had come into the
theatre with their motley garb, and had saluted Bacchus with a song,
they turned to the spectators and jeered and flouted whomsoever they
pleased. How intimately these jests were connected with the Bacchic
song, and how essentially they belonged to it, may be seen very clearly
from the chorus in the Frogs of Aristophanes. This chorus is supposed
to consist of persons initiated at Eleusis, who celebrate the mystic
Dionysus Iacchus as the author of festal delights and the guide to a life
of bliss in the other world. But this Iacchus is also, as Dionysus, the
god of comedy, and the jokes which were suitable to these initiated
persons, as an expression of their freedom from all the troubles of this
life, also belonged to the country Dionysia, and attained to their highest
and boldest exercise in comedy : this justifies the poet in treating the
chorus of the My st re as merely a mask for the comic chorus, and in
making it speak and sing much that was suitable to the comic chorus
alone, which it resembled in all the features of its appearance.* And
thus it is quite in the spirit of the old original comedy that the chorus,
after having in beautiful strains repeatedly celebrated Demeter and
Iacchus, the god who has vouchsafed to them to dance and joke with
impunity, directly after, and without any more immediate inducement,
attacks an individual arbitrarily selected : — " Will ye, that we join in
quizzing xlrchedemus ?" &c. t
§ 3. This old lyric comedy, which did not differ much either in origin
or form from the Iambics of Archilochus, may have been sung in various
districts of Greece, just as it maintained its ground in many pkces even
after the development of the dramatic comedy. % By what gradations,
* See below, chap. XXVIII. § 10.
f When Aristotle says {Poet. 4) that comedy originated kiro ran sgaa^oVrw./ rh
tpaXXixd, he alludes to these unpremeditated jokes, which the leader of the Phallus
song might have produced.
% The existence of a lyrical tragedy and comedy, by the side of the dramatic,
been lately established chiefly by the aid of Boeotian inscriptions, {Corpus Inscript.
Grrecar. No. 1584,) though it has been violently controverted by others. But,
though we should set aside the interpretation of these Boeotian monuments, it
appears even from Aristotle, Poet. 4, (ra qaXktxu. u tn xa) mv h ToXXat; rZv ■riktuv
liu/xivu voftityp'va,) that the songs, from which the dramatic comedy arose, still
maintained their ground, as the 10v$u\\oi also were danced in the orchestra at
Athens in the time of the orators, lljpcrides apud Harpoemt. v. 'UvQaKkoi. It
is clear that the comedies of Antheus the Lindian were also of this kind, according
to the expressions of Athenoeus, (x. p. 445 ; i " be composed comedies and many
other things in the form of poems, which he sang as leader to his fellow-revellers
who bore the phallus with him."
S96 HISTORY OF THE
however, dramatic comedy was developed, can only be inferred from
the form of this drama itself, which still retained much of its original
organization, and from the analogy of tragedy : for even the ancients
laboured under a great deficiency of special tradition and direct in-
formation with regard to the progress of this branch of the drama.
Aristotle says that comedy remained in obscurity at the first, because it
was not thought serious or important enough to merit much attention ;
that it was not till late that the comic poet received a chorus from the
archon as a public matter ; and that previously, the choral-dancers were
volunteers* The Icarians, the inhabitants of a hamlet which, accord-
ing to the tradition, was the first to receive Bacchus in that part of the
country, and doubtless celebrated the country Dionysia with particular
earnestness, claimed the honour of inventing comedy ; it was here that
Susarion was said, for the first time, to have contended with a chorus of
Icarians, who had smeared their faces with wine-lees, (whence their
name, rpvywSol, or "lee-singers,") in order to obtain the prize, a basket
of figs and a jar of wine. It is worth noticing, that Susarion is said
to have been properly not of Attica, but a Megarian of Tripodiscus.f
This statement is confirmed by various traditions and hints from the
ancients, from which we may infer that the Dorians of Megara were dis-
tinguished by a peculiar fondness for jest and ridicvde, which produced
farcical entertainments full of jovial merriment and rude jokes. If we
consider, in addition to this, that the celebrated Sicilian comedian Epi-
charmus dwelt at Megara in Sicily, (a colony of the Megarians who
lived near the borders of Attica,) before he went to Syracuse, and that
the Sicilian Megarians, according to Aristotle, laid claim to the inven-
tion of comedy, as well as the neighbours of the Athenians, we must
believe that some peculiar sparks of wit were contained in this little
Dorian tribe, which, having fallen on the susceptible temperaments of
the other Dorians, and also of the common people of Attica, brought the
talent for comedy to a speedy development.
Susarion, however, who is said to have flourished in Solon's time,
about 01. 50, somewhat earlier than Thespis,+ stands quite alone
in Attica ; a long time elapses before we hear of any further cultivation
of comedy by poets of eminence. This will not surprise us if we recol-
lect that this interval is filled up by the long tyranny of Peisistratus and
his sons, who would feel it due to their dignity and security not to allow
a comic chorus, even under the mask of Bacchic inebriety and merri-
ment, to utter ribald jests against them before the assembled people of
Athens ; as understood by the Athenians of those days, comedy could
not be brought to perfection save by republican freedom and equality. §
* Poet. 5. Comp. above, chap. XXIII. § 1.
t See Muller's Dorians, Book IV. ch. 7. § 1.
I Parian marble. Ep. 39. § See above, ch. XX. § 3,
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 397
This -was the reason why comedy continued so long an obscure
amusement of noisy rustics, which no archon superintended, and
which no particular poet was willing to avow : although, even in this
modest retirement, it made some sudden advances, and developed com-
pletely its dramatic form. Consequently, the first of the eminent poets
received it in a definite and tolerably complete form* This poet was
Chionides, whom Aristotle reckons the first of the Attic comedians,
(omitting Myllus and some other comedians, though they also left then-
works in writing,) and of whom we are credibly informed f that he began
to bring out plays eight years before the Persian war (01. 73, b.c. 488).
He was followed by Magnes, also born in the Bacchic village Icaria,
who for a long time delighted the Athenians with his cheerful and mul-
tifarious fictions. To the same age of comedy belongs Ecphantides,
who was so little removed from the style of the Megarian farce, that he
expressly remarked in one of his pieces, — " He was not bringing for-
ward a song of the Megarian comedy ; he had grown ashamed of making
his drama Megarian. "J
§ 4. The second period of comedy comprises poets who flourished
just before and during the Peloponnesian war. Craiinus died 01. 89,
2. b.c. 423, being then very old ; he seems to have been not much
younger than ^schylus, and occupies a corresponding place among the
eomic poets ; all accounts of his dramas, however, relate to the latter
years of his life ; and all we can say of him is, that he was not afraid to
attack Pericles in his comedies at a time when that statesman was in
the height of his reputation and power. § Crates raised himself, from
being an actor in the plays of Cratinus, to the rank of a distinguished
poet : a career common to him with several of the ancient comedians.
Telccleides and Hermippus also belong to the comic poets of the time
of Pericles. Eupolis did not begin to bring out comedies till after the
beginning of the Peloponnesian war (01. 87, 3. b.c. 429) ; his career
terminated with that war. Aristophanes made his first appearance
under another name in 01. 88, 1. b.c. 427, and under his own name,
01. 88, 4. b.c. 424 ; he went on writing till 01. 97, 4. b.c. 388. Among
the contemporaries of this great comic poet, we have also P/irynichus
(from 01. 87, 3. b.c. 429) ; Plato (from 01. 88, 1 . b.c. 427 to 01. 97,
* Aristot. Poet. 5. s$»j o; tr%r,f&ccTu. rivet abrns ix"^'^ °'' teyoy.ivoi ali-Ti; ^rnr,rai
fivnpimtvovTai.
f Suidas,v. Xiaviln; . Consequently, Aristotle, Poet. 3, (or, according to F. Ritter,
a later interpreter,) must be in error when he places Chionides a good deal iater
than Epicharmus.
+ M'.yaoixr,;
x.ufx.wYtas a<ry' tv oitip.'' w^t/vo/^v
to ioa/ta Mtyacixov rroiav.
According to the arrangement of this fragment, (quoted by Aspasius on Aristot.
Eth. Nic. iv. 2,) by Meineke, Ilistona Critica Comicorum Greecorum, p. 22, which
is undoubtedly the correct one.
j As appears from the fragments referring to the Odeion and the long Malls,
398 HISTORY OF THE
1. B.C. 391, or even longer); Pherccrates (who also flourished during
the Peloponnesian Avar) ; Ameipsias, who was sometimes a successful
rival of Aristophanes ; Leucon, who also frequently contended with
Aristophanes ; Diodes, Philyllius, Sannyrion, Stratiis, Theopompus,
who flourished towards the end of the Peloponnesian war and subse-
quently, form the transition to the middle comedy of the Athenians.*
We content ourselves for the present with this brief chronological
view of the comic poets of the time, hecause in some respects it is im-
possible to characterize these authors, and in others, this cannot be done
till we have become better acquainted with Aristophanes, and are able
to refer to the creations of this poet. Accordingly, we will take a com-
parative glance at some of the pieces of Cratinus, Eupolis, and some
others, after we have considered the comedy of Aristophanes : hut must
remark here beforehand that it is infinitely more difficult to form a con-
ception of a lost comedy from the title and some fragments, than it
would be to deal similariy-vPTtrTa lost tragedy. In the latter, we have
in the mythical foundation something on which we may depend, and by
the conformation of which the edifice to be restored must be regvdated ;
whereas comedy, with its greater originality, passes at once from one
distant object to another, and unites things Avhich seem to have no con-
nexion with one another, so that it is impossible to follow its rapid
movements merely by the help of some traces accidentally preserved.
§ 5. Before we turn to the works of Aristophanes, we must make
ourselves acquainted with comedy in the same way that Ave have already
done with tragedy, in order that the technical forms into which the poet
had to cast his ideas and fancies may stand clearly and definitely before
our eyes. These forms are partly the same as in the tragic drama, —
as the locality and its permanent apparatus Avere also common to both ;
in other respects they are peculiar to comedy, and are intimately con-
nected with its origin and development.
To begin with the locality, the stage and orchestra, and, on the whole,
their meaning, were common to tragedy and comedy. The stage
(Proscenion) is, in comedy also, not the inside of a house, but some
open space, in the background of which, on the wall of the scene, were
represented public and private buildings. Nay, it appeared to the
ancients so utterly impossible to regard the scene as a room of a house,
that even the new comedy, little as it had to do with actual public life,
nevertheless for the sake of representation, as Ave have remarked above,
(Chap. XXII. § 5,) made the scenes which it represents public : it endea-
* According to the researches of Meineke, Hist. Crit. Com. Gracorum. Callias,
Avho lived before Strattis, was likewise a comedian : his y^a.f^iMx.riK-/i roayuiila could
not have been a serious tragedy, but must have been a joke ; the object and occa-
sion of it, however, cannot easily be guessed at. The old grammarians must have
been joking when they asserted that Sophocles and Euripides imitated this
youfi^KriKn r£«.yu%'i«, in some piece or other.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE.
399
vours, with as little sacrifice of nature as it may, so to arrange all the
conversations and events that they may take place in the street and at
the house-doors. The generally political subjects of the old comedy
rendered this much less difficult ; and where it was absolutely necessary
to represent an inner chamber of a house, they availed themselves of t he
resource of the Eccyclema.
Another point, common to tragedy and comedy, was the limited number
of the actors, by whom all the parts were to be performed. According
to an authority,* (on which, however, we cannot place perfect reliance,)
Cratinus raised the number to three, and the scenes in most of the
comedies of Aristophanes, as also in the plays of Sophocles and Euri-
pides, can be performed by three actors only. The number of subor-
dinate persons in comedy has made the change of parts more frequent
and more varied. Thus, in the Acharnians, while the first player acted
the part of Dicseopolis, the second and third actors had to undertake
now the Herald and Amphitheus, then again the ambassador and
Pseudartabas ; subsequently the wife and daughter of Dicaeopolis,
Euripides, and Cephisophon; then the Megarian and the Sycophant,
and the Boeotian and Nicarchus.f In other pieces, however, Aris-
tophanes seems to have introduced a fourth actor (as Sophocles has
done in the (Edipus at Colonvs); the Wasps, for example, could hardly
have been performed without four actors 4
The use of masks and of a gay and striking costume was also common
to tragedy and comedy ; but the forms of the one and the other were
totally different. To conclude from the hints furnished by Aristophanes,
(for we have a great w T ant of special information on the subject,) his
comic actors must have been still more unlike the hisiriones of the new
comedy, of Plautus and Terence ; of whom we know, from some very
valuable and instructive paintings in ancient manuscripts, that they
adopted, on the whole, the costume of every day life, and that the form
and mode of their tunics and palliums were the same as those of the
actual personages whom they represented. The costume of Aris-
tophanes' players must, on the other hand, have resembled rather the
garb of the farcical actors whom we often see depicted on vases from
Magna Grpecia, namely, close-fitting jackets and trowsers striped with
divers colours, which remind us of the modern Harlequin ; to which
were added great bellies and other disfigurations and appendages pur-
posely extravagant and indecorous, the grotesque form being, at the most,
but partially covered by a little mantle : then there were masks, the
• * Anonym, da Comedia, p. xwii. Comp. Aristot. l'ori. 5.
+ The little daughters, who are sold as pigs, were perhaps puppets ; their ko'i, ko'i,
and the other sounds they utter, were probably spoken behind the scenes as a
garascenion.
I In the Wasps, Philoeleoii, Bdehelcon, and the two slavi s Xunlhias and Su-ias,
are frequently on the stage at the same time as speaking persons.
400 HISTORY OF THE
features of which were exaggerated even to caricature, yet so that par-
ticulai persons, when such were brought upon the stage, might at once
be recognized. It is well known that Aristophanes found great diffi-
culty in inducing the mask-makers (gkevottoioi) to provide him with a
likeness of the universally dreaded demagogue, Cleon, whom he intro-
duces in his Knights. The costume of the chorus in a comedy of Aris-
tophanes went farthest into the strange and fantastic. His choruses
of birds, wasps, clouds, &c, must not of course be regarded as having
consisted of birds, wasps, &c. actually represented, but, as is clear from
numerous hints from the poet himself, of a mixture of the human form
with various appendages borrowed from the creatures we have men-
tioned ;* and in this the poet allowed himself to give special promi-
nence to those parts of the mask which he was most concerned about,
and for which he had selected the mask : thus, for example, in the Wasps,
who are designed to represent the swarms of Athenian judges, the sting
was the chief attribute, as denoting the style with which the judges used
to mark down the number of their division in the wax-tablets ; these
waspish judges were introduced humming and buzzing up and down, now
thrusting out, and now drawing in an immense spit, which was attached
to them by way of a gigantic sting. Ancient poetry was suited, by its
vivid plastic representations, to create a comic effect by the first sight of
its comic chorus and its various motions on the stage ; as in a play of
Aristophanes (the ri/pac), some old men come on the stage, and casting
off their age in the form of a serpent's skin (which was also called
yi'ipac), immediately after conducted themselves in the most riotous and
intemperate manner.
§ 6. Comedy had much that was peculiarly its own in the arrange-
ment, the movements, and the songs of the chorus. The authorities
agree in stating the number of persons in the comic chorus at twenty-
four : it is obvious that the complete chorus of the tragic tetralogy, (con-
sisting of forty-eight persons,) was divided into two, and comedy kept
its moiety undivided. Consequently, comedy, though in other respects
placed a good deal below tragedy, had, nevertheless, the advantage of a
more numerous chorus by this, that comedies were always represented
separately, and never in tetralogies ; whence it happened also, that the
comic poets were much less prolific in plays than the tragic. t This
chorus, when it appeared in regular order, came on in rows of six per-
sons, and as it entered the stage sang the parodos, which, however, was
never so long or so artificially constructed as it was in many tragedies.
Still less considerable were the stasima, which the chorus sings at the
* Like the ATvm with beasts' heads (iEsop's fables) in the picture described by
Philostratus. Imagines, I. 3.
\ With all Aristophanes' long career, only 54 were attributed to him, of which
four were said to be spurious — consequently, he only wrote half as many plays as
Sophocles. Compare above, chap. XXIV. § 2.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 401
end of the scene while the characters are changing their dress : they
only serve to finish off the separate scenes, without attempting to awaken
that collected thought and tranquillity of mind which the tragic stasima
were designed to produce. Deficiencies of this kind in its choral songs,
comedy compensated in a very peculiar manner hy its jmrabasis.
The parabasis, which Avas an address of the chorus in the middle of
the comedy, obviously originated in those phallic traits, to which the
whole entertainment was due ; it was not originally a constituent part
of comedy, hut improved and worked out according to rules of art.
The chorus, which up to that point had kept its place between the
thymele and the stage, and had stood with its face to the stage, made an
evolution, and proceeded in files towards the theatre, in the narrower sense
of the word ; that is, towards the place of the spectators. This is the proper
parabasis, which usually consisted of anapaestic tetrameters, occasionally
mixed up with other long verses ; it began with a short opening song,
(in anapaestic or trochaic verse,) which was called kommalion, and ended
with a very long and protracted anapaestic system, which, from its trial
of the breath, was called -pnigos (also makrori). In this parabasis the
poet makes his chorus speak of his own poetical affairs, of the object
and end of his productions, of his services to the state, of his relation to
his rivals, and so forth. If the parabasis is complete, in the wider sense
of the word, this is followed by a second piece, which is properly the
main point, and to which the anapaests only serve as an introduction.
The chorus, namely, sings a lyrical poem, generally a song of praise in
honour of some god, and then recites, in trochaic verses, (of which there
should, regularly, be sixteen,) some joking complaint, some reproach
against the city, some witty sally against the people, with more or less
reference to the leading subject of the play: this is called the epirrhema,
or " -what is said in addition." Both pieces, the lyrical strophe and
the epirrhema, are repeated antistrophically. It is clear, that the lyrical
piece, with its antistrophe, arose from the phallic song ; and the epi f-
rhema, with its antepirrhema, from the gibes with which the chorus of
revellers assailed the first persons they met. It was natural, as the
parabasis came in the middle of the whole comedy, that, instead of
these jests directed against individuals, a conception more significant,
and more interesting to the public at large, should be substituted for
them ; while the gibes against individuals, suitable to the original nature
of comedy, though without any reference to the connexion of the piece,
might be put in the mouth of the chorus whenever occasion served.*
As the parabasis completely interrupts the action of the comic drama,
* Sucli parts are found in the Acharnians,v. 114:5-117-1, in the Wasps, 1265-1291,
in the Bird*, 1470-1493, 1553-1565, 1694-1705. We must not trouble ourselves
with seeking a connexion between th e verses and other parts. In fact, it needed but
the slightest suggestion of the memory to occasion such sallies as these.
2 D
402 HISTORY OF THE
it could only be introduced at some especial pause ; Ave find that Aris-
tophanes is fond of introducing it at the point where the action, after all
sorts of hindrances and delays, has got so far that the crisis must ensue,
and it must be determined whether the end desired will be attained or
not. Such, however, is the laxity with which comedy treats all these
forms, that the parabasis may even be divided into two parts, and the
anapsestical introduction be separated from the choral song;* there
may even be a second parabasis, (but without the anapsestic march,) in
order to mark a second transition in the action of the piece.f Finally,
the parabasis may be omitted altogether, as Aristophanes, in his Lysis-
trata, (in which a double chorus, one part consisting of women, the
other of old men, sing so many singularly clever odes,) has entirely dis-
pensed with this address to the public. |
§ 7. It is a sufficient definition of the comic style of dancing to men
tion that it was the Jcordax, i. e. a species of dance which no Athenian
could practise sober and unmasked without incurring a character for
the greatest shamelessness.§ Aristophanes takes great credit to himself
in his Clouds (whieh7-w4tlLalLits burlesque scenes, strives after a nobler
sort of comedy than his other pieces) for omitting the kordax in this
play, and for having laid aside some indecencies of costume. || Every
thing shows that comedy, in its outward appearance, had quite the
character of a farce, in which the sensual, or rather bestial, nature of
man was unreservedly brought forward, not by way of permission only,
but as a laiv and ride. So much the more astonishing, then, is the
high spirituality, the moral worth, with which the great comedians have
been able to inspire this wild pastime, without thereby subverting its
fundamental characteristics. Nay, if we compare with this old comedy
the later conformation of the middle and new comedy, with the latter of
which we are better acquainted, and which, with a more decent exterior,
nevertheless preaches a far laxer morality, and if we reflect on the cor-
responding productions of modern literature, we shall almost be in-
duced to believe that the old rude comedy, which concealed nothing,
and was, in the representation of vulgar life, itself vulgar and bestial,
was better suited to an age which meant well to morality and religion,
and was more truly based on piety, than the more refined comedy, as it
* Thus in the Peace, and in the Frogs, where the first half of the parabasis has
coalesced with the parodos and the Iacchus-song, (of which see above, § 2.) As
Iacchus has been already praised in this first part, the lyrical strophes of the second
part (v. 675 foil.) do not contain any invocation of gods, and such like, but are full
of sarcasms about the demagogues Cleophon and Cleigenes. "We find the same
deviation, and from the same reasons, in the second parabasis of the Knights.
f As in the Knights.
% The parabasis is wanting in the Ecclesiazusce and the Plutus, for reasons which
are stated in chap. XXVIII. § 11.
§ Theophras-t. Charact. 6. comp. Casaubon.
|| Aristophanes, Clouds, 537 foil.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 403
is called, which threw a veil over everything, and, though it made vice
ludicrous, failed to render it detestable*
To return, however, to the kordax, and to connect with it a remark
on the rhythmical structure of comedy ; we learn accidentally that the
trochaic metre was also called kordax, f doubtless because trochaic verses
were generally sung as an accompaniment to the kordax dances. The
trochaic metre, which was invented along with the iambic by the old
iambographers, had a sort of lightness and activity, but wanted the
serious and impressive character of the iambus. It was especially
appropriated to cheerful dances ; \ even the trochaic tetrameter, which
was not properly a lyrical metre, invited to motions like the dance. §
The rhythmical structure of comedy was obviously for the most part
built upon the foundation of the old iambic poetry, and was merely
extended and enlarged much in the same way as the iEolian and Doric
lyrical poetry was adapted to tragedy, namely, by lengthening the verses
to systems, as they are called, by a frequent repetition of the same
rhythm. The asynartetic verses, in particular, i. <>. loose combinations
of rhythms of different kinds, such as dactylic and trochaic, which may
be regarded as forming a verse and also as different verses, belong only
to the iambic and comic poetry ; and in this, comedy, though it added
several new inventions, was merely continuing the work of Archilochus. ||
That the prevalent form of the dialogue should be the same in
tragedy and comedy, namely, the iambic trimeter, was natural, notwith-
standing the opposite character of the two kinds of poetry; for this com-
mon organ of dramatic colloquy was capable of the most various treatment,
and was modified by the comic poets in a manner most suitable to their
object. The avoidance of spondees, the congregation of short syllables,
and the variety of the caesuras, impart to the verse of comedy an ex-
traordinary lightness and spirit, and the admixture of anapaests in
all feet but the last, opposed as this is to the fundamental form of
the trimeter, proves that the careless, voluble recitation of comedy
treated the long and short syllables with greater freedom than the tragic
art permitted. In order to distinguish the different styles and tunes,
comedy eio ployed," besides the trimeter, a great variety of metres, which
we must suppose were also distinguished by different sorts of gesticula-
* Plutarch, in his comparison of Aristophanes and Menandcr, (of which an
epitome has been preserved,) expresses an entirel) opposite opinion, but this is
only a proof how very often the liter writers of antiquity mistook the form for the
substance.
f Aristotle, quoted by Quintilian, ix. 4. Cicero Oral. i)7.
t Chap. XI. § 8, 22. '
§ Aristophan. Peace, 324 foil.
|| For the sake of breTity, we merelj refer to Hephtestion, cap. xv. p. 83 foil.
Gaisf. and Terentianus, v. 2243.
Aristophafiis ingens micat sollertia,
Qui s:i pe metris multiformibus novis
Archilochon arte est amulatus musira. Cctnp. above, chap. XI. t} 8.
2i)2
404 HISTORY OF THE
tion and delivery, such as the light trochaic tetrameter so well suited
to the dance, the lively iambic tetrameter, and the anapaestic te-
trameter, Haunting along in comic pathos, which had been used by
Aristoxenus of Selinus, an old Sicilian poet, who lived before Epi-
charmus.
In all these things comedy was just as inventive and refined as tra-
gedy. Aristophanes had the skill to convey by his rhythms sometimes
the tone of romping merriment, at others that of festal dignity ; and
often in jest he would give to his verses and his words such a pomp of
sound that we lament he is not in earnest. In reading his plays we are
always impressed with the finest concord between form and meaning,
between the tone of the speech and the character of the persons ; as, for
example, the old, hot-headed Acharnians admirably express their rude
vigour and boisterous impetuosity in the Cretic metres which prevail in
the choral songs of the piece.
But who could with a few words paint the peculiar instrument which
comedy had formed for itself from the language of the day? It was
based, on the whole, upon the common conversational language of the
Athenians, — the Attic dialect, as it was current in their colloquial inter-
course; comedy expresses this not only more purely than any other
kind of poetry, but even more so than the old Attic prose :* but this
every day colloquial language is an extraordinarily flexible and rich
instrument, which not only contains in itself a fulness of the most ener-
getic, vivid, pregnant and graceful forms of expression, but can even
accommodate itself to the different species of language and style, the
epic, the lyric, or the tragic; and, by this means, impart a special
colouring to itself. f But, most of all, it gained a peculiar comic charm
from its' parodies of tragedy ; here a word, a form slightly altered, or
pronounced with the peculiar tragical accent, often sufficed to recal the
recollection of a pathetic scene in some tragedy, and so to produce a
ludicrous contrast.
* We only remind the reader that the connexions of consonants which distin-
guish Attic Greek from its mother dialect the Tonic, tt for sit, and pp for e ; , occur
every where in Aristophanes, and even in the fragments of Cratinus, hut are not
found in Thueydides any more than in the tragedians ; although even Pericles is
said to have used these un-Ionic forms on the hema. Eustathius on the Iliad, x.
385, p. 813. In other respects, too, the prose of Thueydides has far more epic and
Ionic gravity and unction than the poetry of Aristophanes, — even in particular
forms and expressions.
f Plutarch very justly remarks, (Aristoph. ct Menandricomp. 1,) that the diction
of Aristophanes contains all styles, from the tragic and pathetic (oyxo;) to the vul-
garisms ot farce, {(rviofioKnyia ko.) <£Xvaoiu ;) hut he is wrong in maintaining that
Aristophanes assigned these modes of speaking to his characters arbitrarily and at
random.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 405
CHAPTER XXVIII.
§ 1. Events of the life of Aristophanes ; the mode of his first appearance. § 2. His
dramas: the Dcetaleis ; the Babylonians ; §3. the Achamians analyzed ; § 4. the
Knights; §5. the Clouds; § 6. the Wasps ; §7. the Peace; §8. the Birds;
§9. the Lysistrata ; Thcsmophoriazusa: ; § 10. the Frogs; 6 11. the Ecclcsia-
zusce ; the second Phitus. Transition to the middle comedy.
§ 1. Aristophanes, the son of Philippus, was born at Athens about
01. 82. b. c. 452.* We should know more about the events of his
life had the works of his rivals been preserved ; for it is natural to sup-
pose that he was satirized in them, much in the same way as he has
attacked Cratinus and Eupolis in his own comedies. As it is, Ave can
only assert that he passed over to. yEgina with his family, together with
other Attic citizens, as a Clervchus or colonist, when that island was
cleared of its old inhabitants, and that he became possessed Of some
landed property there. f
The life of Aristophanes was so early devoted to the comic stage, that
Ave cannot mistake a strong natural tendency on his part for this vocation.
He brought out his first comedies at so early an age that he Avas pre-
vented (if not by laAV, at all events by the conventions of society) from
alloAving them to appear under his own name. It is to be observed
that at Athens the state gave itself no trouble to inquire who was really
the author of a drama : this Avas no subject for an official examination ;
but the magistrate presiding over any Dionysian festival at Avhich the
people were to be entertained withnew dramas,}: gave any chorus-teacher
who offered to instruct the chorus and actors for a new drama the au-
thority for so doing, whenever he had the necessary confidence in him.
The comic poets, as Avell as the tragic, Avere professedly chorus-teachers,
(X"P°c tca'(T(caXot, or, as they specially called themselves, KtofiwcocicdaKaXoi;')
and in all official proceedings, such as assigning and bestoAving the
prize, the state only inquired who had taught the chorus, and thereby
* It is clearly an exaggeration when the Schol. on the Frogs, f)04, calls Aris-
tophanes it^eSov fx.npax.'iirKou »'■ c. about 18 years old, when he first came forward as a
dramatist. If such were the case, he would have been at his prime in his 20th
year, and would have ceased to compose at the age of 50. In the pieces of Aris-
tophanes we discern indications of advanced age, and Ave therefore assume that he
was at least 25 years old at the time of his first appearance as a comic poet,
(b.c. 427.)
f See Aristoph. Acharn. 652 ; Vita Aristoph. p. 14 ; Kiistcr, and Tbeagenes
quoted by the Schol. on Plat. Apol. p. 93, 8, (p. 331, Bekk.) The Achamians
was no doubt brought out 1>\ Callistratus ; but it is clear that the passage quoted
above referred the public to the poet himself, who Avas already well known to hi3
audience.
+ At the great Dionysia, the first archon ; (» cla^m as he Avas emphatically called;)
at the Lcnaea, the basileus, or king archon.
406 HISTORY OF THE
brought the new piece before the public. The comic poets likewise
retained for a longer period a custom, which Sophocles was the first
to discontinue on the tragic stage, that the poet and chorus-teacher
should also appear as the protagonist or chief actor in his own piece.
This will explain what Aristophanes says in the parabasis of the Clouds,
that his muse at first exposed her children, because, as a maiden, she
dared not acknowledge their birth, and that another damsel had taken
them up as her own ; while the public, which could not be long in
recognizing the real author, had nobly brought up and educated the
foundlings* Aristophanes handed over his earlier pieces, and some of
the later ones too, either to Philonides or to Callistratus, two chorus
teachers, with whom he was intimate, and who were at the same time
poets and actors ; and these persons produced them on the stage. The
ancient grammarians state that he transferred to Callistratus the political
dramas, and to Philonides those which related to private life.f It was
these persons who applied for the chorus from the archon, who pro-
duced the piece on the stage, and, if it was successful, received the prize,
of which we have several examples in the didascaliae ; in fact, every-
thing was done as if they had been the real authors, although the dis-
criminating public could not have failed to discover whether the real
author of the piece Avas the newly-risen genius of Aristophanes or the
well-known and hacknied Callistratus.
§ 2. The ancients themselves did not know whether Philonides or
Callistratus brought out the Dsetaleis, the first of his plays, which was
performed in 01. 88, 1. b. c. 427. % The Fcasters, who formed the
chorus in this piece, were conceived as a company of revellers who had
banqueted in a temple of Hercules, (in whose worship eating and drink-
ing bore a prominent part,§) and were engaged in witnessing a contest
between the old frugal and modest system of education and the frivolous
and talkative education of modern times, in the persons of two young
men, Temperate (<rwtf>pwi') and Profligate (VuO-a7ruywi'.) Brother
Profligate was represented, in a dialogue between him and his aged
father, as a despiser of Homer, as accurately acquainted with legal ex-
pressions, (in order, of course, to employ them in pettifogging quibbles,)
and as a zealous partizan of the sophist Thrasymachus, and of Alcibiades
the leader of the frivolous youth of the day. || In his riper years,
* Compare the Knights, 513, where he says that many considered he had too long
ahstained from £» ? «v al-nTf xaff 1 \avrov.. In the parabasis of the Wasps, he compares
himself to a ventriloquist who had before spoken through others.
t So the anonym, de comedia apud Kustcr. The Vita Avistop>hanis has the
contrary statement, but merely from an error, as is shown by various examples.
+ Sc'hol. on the Clouds, 531.
§ Midler's Dorians, II. 12. § 10.
|| In the important fragment preserved by Galen 'ifrvxgccrw; y\Z<nrai Proeenihtm ,
which has been recently freed from some corruptions which disfigured it. See
Dindorf Aristoph. Fraymenta. Da?t:J. I.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 407
Aristophanes completed in the Clouds what he had attempted in this
early play.
The second play of Aristophanes was the Babylonians, and was
brought out 01. 88, 2. b. c. 426, under the name of Callistratus.
This was the first piece in which Aristophanes adopted the bold step of
making the people themselves, in their public functions, and with their
measures for ensuring the public good, the subject of his comedy. He
takes credit to himself, in the parabasis of the Acharnians, for having
detected the tricks which the Athenians allowed foreigners, and especially
foreign ambassadors, to play upon them, by lending too willing an ear-
to their flatteries and misrepresentations. He also maintains that he
has shown how democratic constitutions fall into the power of dema-
gogues ; and that he has thereby gained a great name with the allies,
and, as he says, with humorous rhodomontade, at the court of the Great
King himself. The name of the piece is obviously connected with this.
AVe infer from the statements of the old grammarians,* that the Baby-
lonians, who formed the chorus, were represented as common labourers
in the mills, the lowest sort of slaves at Athens, who were branded and
were forced to work in the mills by way of punishment ; and that they
passcd themselves off as Babylonians, i.e. as ambassadors from Babylon.
By this it was presumed that Babylon had revolted against the great
king, who was constantly at war with Athens ; and Aristophanes thought
that the credulous Athenians might easily be gulled into the belief of
something of the kind. The play would therefore be nearly related to
that scene in the Acharnia?is, in which the supposed ambassadors of the
Persian monarch make their appearance, though the one cannot be con-
sidered as a mere repetition of the other. Of course, these fictitious
Babylonians were represented as a cheat practised on the Athenian
Dennis by the demagogues, who were then (after the death of Pericles)
at- the head of affairs ; and Aristophanes bad made Cleon the chief butt
for his witty attacks. This comedy was performed at the splendid
festival of the great Dionysia, in the presence of the allies and a number
of strangers A\ho were then at Athens; and we may see, from Glenn's
earnest endeavours to revenge himself on the poet, how severely the
powerful demagogue smarted under the attack made upon him. He
* Sec especially Hesyehius on the verse : lay/tuii o 17,/jt.o; a; ■roXuyouiu/u.tzri; :
" these are the words of one of the characters in Aristophanes," says Hesychius,
" when lie sees the Babylonians from tin null, being astonished at their appearance,
and not knowing what to make of it." The verse was clearlj spoken by some one,
who was looking at the chorus without knowing what they were intended to repre-
sent, and who mistook them for Samians hranded bj Pericles, so that ttoKoy^aftfutros
contains a direct allusion to the invention of letters by the Samians. Thai tl
Babylonians were intended to represent mill-slaves appears to stand in connexion
with the fact that Eucrates, a demagogue powerful at that very time, possessed
mills. (Aristoph. Knights, 254.) The piece, however, seems to have In i n directed
chieflv against Cleon.
408 HISTORY OF THE
dragged CaUistratus* before the council of the Five Hundred, (which, as
a supreme tribunal, had also the superintendence of the festival amuse-
ments,) and overwhelmed him with reproaches and threats. With re-
gard to Aristophanes himself, it is probable that Cleon made an indirect
attempt to bring him into danger by an indictment against him for as-
suming the rights of a citizen without being entitled to them, (yp«</n)
££j'/ct£.) There is no doubt that the poet successfully repelled the
charge, and victoriously asserted his civic rights. f
§ 3. In the following year, (01. 88, 3. b. c. 425,) at the Lensea,
Aristophanes brought out the Acharnians, the earliest of his extant
dramas. Compared with most of his plays, the Acharnians is a harm-
less piece : its chief object is to depict the earnest longing for a peacefid
country life on the part of those Athenians who took no pleasure in the
babbling of the market-place, and had been driven into the city against
their will by the military plans of Pericles. Along with this, a few
lashes are administered to the demagogues, who, like Cleon, had inflamed
the martial propensities of the people, and to the generals, who, like
Lamachus, had shown far too great a love for the war. We have also in
this play an early specimen of his literary criticism, directed against
Euripides, whose overwrought attempts to move the feelings, and the
vulgar shrewdness with which he had invested the old heroes, were
highly offensive to our poet. In this play we have at once all the pecu-
liar characteristics of the Aristophanic comedy ; — his bold and genial ori-
ginality, the lavish abundance of highly comic scenes with which he
has filled every part of his piece, the surprising and striking delineation
of character which expresses a great deal with a few master-touches,
the vivid and plastic power with which the scenes are arranged, the ease
with which he has disposed of all difficulties of space and time. In-
deed, the play possesses its author's peculiar characteristics in such
perfection and completeness, that it may be proper in this place to give
such an analysis of this, the oldest extant comedy, as may serve to illus-
trate not merely the general ideas, which we have already given, but
also the whole plot and technical arrangement of the drama.
The stage in this play represents sometimes town and sometimes
country, and was probably so arranged that both were shown upon it at
once. When the comedy begins, the stage gives us a glimpse of the
Pnyx, or place of public assembly ; that is to say, the spectator saw the
* We say CaUistratus, because, as ^o^«S(Sa<r»aXo; and protagonist in the Acharnians,
he acted the part of Dicjeopolis, and because the public could not fail to understand
the words alro; T if/.avTov vvo KXia/vo; a 'vccfov, Iwiirricfiai, V. 377 foil., as spoken of
the performer himself. In the iroinrh; of the parabasis in the Acharnians we do not
hesitate to recognize Aristophanes, whose talents could not have remained unknown
to the public for three years.
f Schol. Acharn. 377. It was on this occasion, according to the author of the
Vita Aristojihanis, that Aristophanes quoted that verse of Homer, (Odyss. I. 216,)
o!) ynp vu ti; my yoiov ciro; aviyitii.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 409
bona for the orator cut out of the rock, and around it some seats and
other objects calculated to recal the recollection of the well-known place.
Here sits the worthy Dicseopolis, a citizen of the old school, grumbling
about his fellow citizens, who do not come punctually to the Pnyx, but
lounge idly about the market-place, which is seen from thence ; for his
own part, although he has no love for a town-life, with its bustle and
gossip, he attends the assembly regularly in order to speak for
peace. On a sudden the Prytanes come out of the council-house ; the
people rush in ; a well-born Athenian, Amphitheus, who boasts of
having been destined by the gods to conclude a peace with Sparta, is
dismissed with the utmost contempt, in spite of the efforts of Dicrcopolis
on his behalf ; and then, to the great delight of the Avar party, ambas-
sadors are introduced, who have returned from Persia, and have brought
with them a Persian messenger, " the Great King's eye," with his
retinue : this forms a fantastic procession, which, as Aristophanes hints,
is all a trick and imposture, got up by the demagogues of the war party.
Other ambassadors bring a similar messenger from Sitalces, king of
Thrace, on whose assistance the Athenians of the day built a great deal,
and drag before the assembly a miserable rabble, under the name of
picked Odomantian troops, which the Athenians are to take into their
service for very high pay. Meanwhile Dicceopolis, seeing that he can-
not turn affairs into another channel, has sent Amphitheus to Sparta on
his own account ; the messenger returns in a few minutes with various
treaties, (some for a longer, others for a shorter time,) in the form of
wine-jars, like those which were used for pouring out libations on the
conclusion of a treaty of peace ; Dieicopolis selects a thirty years' truce
by sea and land, which does not smell of pitch and tar, like a short
armistice in which there is only just time to calk the ships. All these
delightful scenes are possible only in a comedy like that of the Athenians,
which has its outward form for the representation of every relation,
every function, and every character ; which is able to sketch everything
in bold colours by means of grotesque speaking figures, and does not
trouble itself with confining the activity of these figures to the laws of
reality and the probabilities of actual life.*
The first dramatic complication which Aristophanes introduces into
his plot, arises from the chorus, which consists of Acharnians, i. e., the
inhabitants of a large village of Attica, where the people gained a liveli-
hood chiefly by charcoal-burning, the materials for which were supplied
by the neighbouring mountain-forests : they are represented as rude,
* la all this, comedy docs but follow in its own way the spirit of ancient art in
general, which went far beyond modern art in finding an outward expression for
every thought and feeling of the mind, but fell short of our art in keeping up an
appearance of consistency in the employment of these forms, as the laws of actual
life would have required.
410 HISTORY OF THE
robust old fellows, hearts of oak, martial by their disposition, and espe-
cially incensed against the Pelopohnesians, who had destroyed all the
vineyards in their first invasion of Attica. These old Acharnians
at first appear in pursuit of Amphitheus, who, they hear, has gone to
Sparta to bring treaties of peace : in his stead, they fall in with Dicae-
opolis, who is engaged in celebrating the festival of the country
Dionysia, here represented as an abstract of every sort of rustic merri-
ment and jollity, from which the Athenians at that time Avere debarred.
The chorus no sooner learns from the phallus-song of Dicoeopolis, that
he is the person who has sent for the treaties, than they fall upon him
in the greatest rage, refuse to hear a word from him, and are going to
stone him to death without the least compunction, when Dicseopolis
seizes a charcoal-basket, and threatens to punish it as a hostage for all
that the Acharnians do to himself. The charcoal-basket, which the
Acharnians needed for their every-day occupations, is so dear to their
hearts that they are willing, for its sake, to listen to Dicreopolis ; espe-
cially as he has promised to speak with his head on a block, on condi-
tion that he shall be beheaded at once if he fails in his defence. All
this is amusing enough in itself, but becomes additionally ludicrous
when we remember that the whole of Dicreopolis's behaviour is an
imitation of one of the heroes of Euripides, the rhetorical and plaintive
Telephus, who snatched the infant Orestes from his cradle and threatened
to put him to death, unless Agamemnon would listen to him, and was
exposed to the same danger when he spoke before the Achseans as
Dicseopolis is when he argues with the Acharnians. Aristophanes
pursues this parody still farther, as it furnishes him with the means of
exaggerating the situation of Dicaeopolis in a very comic manner ;
Dica?opolis applies to Euripides himself, (who is shown to the spectators
by means of an eccyclema, in his garret, surrounded by masks and cos-
tumes, such as he was fond of employing for his tragic heroes,) and
begs of him the most piteous of his dresses, upon which he obtains the
most deplorable of them all, that of Telephus. We pass over other
mockeries of Euripides, in which Aristophanes indulges from pure
wantonness, and turn to the following scene, one of the chief scenes in
the piece, in which Dicfeopolis, in the character of a comic Telephus,
and with his head over the block, pleads for peace with the Spartans.
It is obvious, that however seriously Aristophanes embraced the cause
of the peace-party, he does not on this occasion speak one word in
serious earnest. He derives the whole Peloponnesian war from a bold
frolic on the part of some drunken young men, who had carried off a
harlot from Megara, in reprisal for which the Megarians had seized on
some of the attendants of Aspasia. As this explanation is not satisfac-
tory, and the chorus even summons to its assistance the warlike La-
machus, avIio rushes from his house in extravagant military cos-
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 411
tume,* Dicrcopolis is driven to have recourse to arrptmcnla ad hominem,
and he impresses on the old people who form the chorus, that they are
obliged to serve as common soldiers, while young braggadocios, like La-
machus, made a pretty livelihood by serving as generals or ambassadors,
and so wasted the fat of the land. This produces its effect, and the chorus
shows an inclination to do justice to Dicreopolis. This catastrophe of
the piece is followed by the parabasis, in the first part of which the
poet, with particular reference to his last play, takes credit to himself
for being an estimable friend to the people ; he says that he does not
indeed spare them, but that they need not fear, for that he will be just
in his satire, f The second part, however, keeps close to the thought
which Dicseopolis had awakened in the minds of the chorus ; they com-
plain bitterly of the assumption of their rights by the clever, witty, and
ready young men, from whom they could not defend themselves, espe-
cially in the law-courts.
The second part of the piece, after the catastrophe and parabasis, is
merely a description, overflowing with wit and humour, of the blessings
which peace has conferred on the sturdy Dicreopolis. At first he opens
his free market, which is visited in succession by a poor starving wretch
from Megara, (the neighbouring country to Attica, which, poorly gifted
by nature, had suffered in the most shocking manner from the Athenian
blockade and the yearly devastations of its territory,) and by a stout
Boeotian from the fertile land on the shore of the Copaic lake, which
was well known to the Athenians for its eels. For want of other
Avares, the Megarian has dressed up his little daughters like young pigs,
and the honest Dicacopolis is willing to buy them as such, though he
is strangely surprised by some of their peculiarities; — a purely ludicrous
scene, which was based, perhaps, on the popular jokes of the Athenians;
a Megarian would gladly sell his children as little pigs, if any one
would take them off his hands : — we could point out many jokes of this
kind in the popular life, as well of ancient as of modern times. During
this, the dealers are much troubled by sycophants, a race who lived
by indictments, and were especially active in hunting for violations
of the customs' laws ; \ they want to seize on the foreign goods as
contraband, but Dicrcopolis makes short work with them ; one of the
* Consequently, the house was also represented on the stage ; probably the town
house of Diesropolis -was in the middle, on the one side that of Euripides, on the
other that of Lamachus. On the left was the place which represented the Pnyx ;
on the right some indieation of a country house : this, however, occurs only in the
scene of the country Dionysia, nil the rest takes place in the city.
•f v. 655. «XX' vftiT; fin titi ^tiffrj' us xaf/.ui'&iirii to. ^Ixaia. A\ hen we find such
open professions as this, we may at least he certain that Aristophanes intended to
direct the sting of his comedy against that only which appeared to him to be
really had.
1 The sycophants, no doubt, derived their names from a sort of £««•<?, i. c. public
information against those who injured the state in any of its pecuniary interests.
412 HISTORY OF THE
sycophants he drives away from his market ; the other, the little Nicar-
chus, he hinds up in a bundle, and packs him on the hack of the
Boeotian, who shows a desire to take him away as a laughable little
monkey.
Now begins, on a sudden, the Athenian feast of the pitchers (theXosc).
Lamachus* in vain sends to Dicseopolis for some of his purchases, in
order that he may keep the feast merrily ; the good citizen keeps every
thing to himself, and the chorus, which is now quite converted, admires
the prudence of Dicpeopolis, and the happiness he has gained by it. In
the midst of his preparations for a sumptuous banquet, others beg for
some share of his peace ; he returns a gruff answer to a countryman
whose cattle have been harried by the Boeotians ; but he behaves a little
more civilly to a bride who wants to keep her husband at home. Mean-
while, various messages are brought ; to Lamachus, that he must march
against the Boeotians, who are going to make an inroad into Attica at
the time of the feast of the Glides ; to Dicseopolis, that he must go to the
priest of Bacchus, in order to assist him in celebrating the feast of the
Choes. Aristophanes works out this contrast in a very amusing manner,
by making Dicscopolis parody every word which Lamachus utters as he
is preparing for war, so as to transfer it to his own festivities; and when,
after a short time which the chorus fills up by a satirical song, Lamachus
is brought back from the war wounded, and supported by two servants,
Dicfcopolis meets him in a happy state of intoxication, and leaning on
two damsels of easy virtue, and so celebrates his triumph over the
wounded warrior in a very conspicuous manner.
To sa^ nothing of the pithy humour of the style, and the beautiful
rhythms and happy turns of the choral songs, it must be allowed that
this series of scenes has been devised with genial merriment from
beginning to end, and that they must have produced a highly comic
effect, especially if the scenery, costumes, dances, and music were
worthy of the conceptions and language of the poet. The piece, if
correctly understood, is nothing but a Bacchic revelry, full of farce
and wantonness ; for although the conception of it may rest upon a
moral foundation, yet the author is, throughout the piece, utterly
devoid of seriousness and sobriety, and in every representation, as
well of the victorious as of the defeated party, follows the impulses of
an unrestrained love of mirth. At most, Aristophanes expresses his
own sentiments in the parabasis : in the other parts of the play we
cannot safely recognize the opinions of the poet in the deceitful mirror
of his comedy.
§ 4.. The following year (01. 88, 4. b.c. 424) is distinguished in the
* That Lamachus is only a representative of the warlike spirits is clear from his
name, A«-^«^«; : otherwise, Phormio, Demosthenes, Paches, and other Athenian
heroes might just as well have been substituted for him.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 413
history of comedy by the appearance of the Knights of Aristophanes.
It was the first piece which Aristophanes brought out in his own name,
and he was induced by peculiar circumstances to appear in it as an
actor himself. This piece is entirely directed against Cleon ; not, like the
Babylonians, and at a later period the Wasps, against certain measures
of his policy, but against his entire proceedings and influence as a
demagogue. There is a certain degree of spirit in attacking, even
under the protection of Bacchic revelry, a popular leader who was
mighty by the very principle of his policy, viz. of advancing the
material interests and immediate advantage of the great mass of the
people at the sacrifice of every thing else ; and who had become still
more formidable by the system of terrorism with which he carried
out his views. This system consisted in throwing all the citizens
opposed to him under the suspicion of being concealed aristocrats ;
in the indictments which he brought against his enemies, and which
his influence with the law courts enabled him without difficulty to
turn to his own advantage : and in the terrible severity with which
he urged the Athenians in the public assembly and in the courts
to put down all movements hostile to the rule of the democracy, and of
which his proposal to massacre the Mitylenseans is the most striking
example. Besides, at the very time when Aristophanes composed the
Kniqhts, Cleon's reputation had attained its highest pitch, for fortune
in her sport had realized his inconsiderate boast, that it would be an
easy matter for him to capture the Spartans in Sphacteria ; the triumph
of having captured these formidable warriors, for which the best generals
had contended in vain, had fallen, like an over-ripe fruit, into the lap
of the unmilitary Cleon (in the summer of the year 425). That it
really was a bold measure to attack the powerful demagogue at this time,
may also be inferred from the statement that no one would make a
mask of Cleon for the poet, and still less appear in the character of
Cleon, so that Aristophanes was obliged to undertake the part himself.
The Knights is by far the most violent and angry production of the
Aristophanic Muse ; that which has most of the bitterness of Archi-
lochus, and least of the harmless humour and riotous merriment of the
Dionysia. In this instance comedy almost transgresses its proper
limits ; it is almost converted into an arena for political champions
fighting for life and death ; the most violent party animosity is combined
with some obvious traces of personal irritation, which is justified by the
judicial persecution of the author of the Babylonians. The piece, pre-
sents a remarkable contrast to the Acharnians ; just as if the poet wanted
to show that a checkered variety of burlesque scenes was not necessary to
his comedy, and that he could produce the most powerful effect by the
simplest means; and doubtless, to an audience perfectly familiar with
all the hints and allusions of the comedian, the Knights must have
414 HISTORY OF THE
possessed still greater interest than the Acharnians, though modern
readers, far removed from the times, have not been always ahle to
resist the feeling of tediousness produced by the prolix scenes of
the piece. The number of characters is small and unpretending;
the whole dramatis per so nee consist of an old master with three
slaves, (one of whom, a Paphlagonian, completely governs his master,)
and a sausage-seller. The old master, however, is the Dermis of
Athens, the slaves are the Athenian generals Nicias and Demosthenes,
and the Paphlagonian is Cleon : the sausage-seller alone is a fiction of
the poet's, — a rude, uneducated, impudent fellow, from the dregs of the
people, who is set up against Cleon in order that he may, by his auda-
city, bawl down Cleon's impudence, and so drive the formidable dema-
gogue out of the field in the only way that is possible. Even the chorus
has nothing imaginary about it, but consists of the Knights of the
State,* i.e. of citizens who, according to Solon's classification, which still
subsisted, paid taxes according to the rating of a knight's property, and
most of whom at the same time still served as cavalry in time of war :f
being the most numerous portion of the wealthier and better educated
class, they could not fail to have a decided antipathy to Cleon, who
had put himself at the head of the mechanics and poorer people.
We see that in this piece Aristophanes lays all the stress on the
political tendency, and considers the comic plot rather as a form and
dress than as the body and primary part of his play. The allegory,
which is obviously chosen only to cover the sharpness of the attack, is
cast over it only like a thin veil ; according to his own pleasure, the
poet speaks of the affairs of the Demus sometimes as matters of family
arrangement, sometimes as public transactions.
The whole piece has the form of a contest. The sausage-seller (in
whom an oracle, which has been stolen from the Paphlagonian while he
was sleeping, recognizes his victorious opponent) first measures his
strength against him in a display of impudence and rascality, by which
the poet assumes that of the qualities requisite to the demagogue these
are the most essential. The sausage-seller narrates that having, while
a boy, stolen a piece of meat and boldly denied the theft, a statesman
had predicted that the city would one day trust itself to his guidance.
After the parabasis, the contest begins afresh ; the rivals, who had in
the meantime endeavoured to recommend themselves to the council,
* Hardly of actual knights, so that in this case reality and the drama were one
and the same. That no phyle, but the state paid the expenses of this chorus, (if Ave
are so to explain %vpwla in the didascalia of the piece : see the examples in Bo'ckh's
Public Economy of Athens, book iii. § 22, at the end,) is no ground for the former
inference.
f That Aristophanes considers the knights as a class is pretty clear from their
known political tendency ; as part of the Athenian army, he often describes them
as sturdy young men, fond of horsemanship, and dressed in grand military costume.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 415
come before Demus himself, who takes his seat on the Pnyx, and sue
for the favour of the childish old man. Combined with serious re-
proaches directed against Cleon's whole system of policy, we have a
number of joking contrivances, as when the sausage-seller places a
cushion under the Demus, in order that he may not gall that which sat
by the oar at Salamis.* The contest at last turns upon the oracles, to
which Clcon used to appeal in his public speeches, (and we know from
Thucydides f how much the people were influenced throughout the Pelo-
ponnesian war by the oracles and predictions attributed to the ancient
prophets ;) in this department, too, the sausage-seller outbids his rival by
producing announcements of the greatest comfort to the Demus, and ruin
to his opponent. As a merry supplement to these long-spun transactions,
we have a scene which must have been highly entertaining to eye and ear
alike : the Paphlagonian and the sausage-seller sit down as eating-house
keepers (kcj7tjj\o0 at two tables, on which a number of hampers and eat-
ables are set out, and bring one article after the other to the Demus with
ludicrous recommendations of their excellences ;\ in this, too, the sausage-
seller of course pays his court to the Demus more successfully than his
rival. After a second parabasis we see the Demus — whom the sausage-
seller has restored to youth by boiling him in his kettle, as Medea did
./Eson — in youthful beauty, but attired in the old-fashioned splendid cos-
tume, shining with peace and contentment, and in his new state of mind
heartily ashamed of his former absurdities.
§ 5. In the following year we find Aristophanes (after a fresh suit §
in which Cleon had involved him) bringing out the Clouds, and so
entering upon an entirely new field of comedy. He had himself made
up his mind to take a new and peculiar flight with this piece. The
public and the judges, however, determined otherwise; it was not Aris-
tophanes but the aged Cratinus who obtained the first prize. The young
poet, who had believed himself secure against such a slight, uttered
some warm reproaches against the public in his next play ; he was in-
duced, however, by this decision to revise his piece, and it is tin's
rifarcimento (which deviates considerably from the original form) that
has come down to us.||
There, is hardly any work of antiquity which it is so difficult to
* "'la. (<w t/>//3*)$ <rh h ZccXapTvi. v. 785. f Jhucyd. ii. 54. viii. 1.
J The two eating houses are represented by an eceyclema, us is clear from the
conclusion of the scene.
$ See the Wasps, V. 1284. According to the Vita Aristoph. the poet had to
stand three suits from Clcon touching his rights as a citizen.
|| The first Clouds had) according to a definite tradition, a different parabasis ;
it wanted the contest of the VtK'uo; and uiir.o; xiyas, and the burning of the school at
the end. It is also probable, from Diog. Laert. ii. 18, (notwithstanding all 'he
confusions which he lias made.) that, in the iirst Clouds, Socrates was brought into
connexion with Euripides, and was declared to have had a share in the tragedies of
the latter.
416 history or the
estimate as the Clouds of Aristophanes. Was Socrates really, perhaps
only in the earlier part of his career, the fantastic dreamer and sceptical
sophist which this piece makes him ? And if it is certain that he was
not, is not Aristophanes a common slanderer, a buffoon, who, in the
vagaries of his humour, presumes to attack and revile even what is purest
and noblest ? Where remains his solemn promise never to make what
was right the object of his comic satire ?
If there be any way of justifying the character of Aristophanes, as
it appears to us in all his dramas, even in this hostile encounter with
the noblest of philosophers; we must not attempt, as some modern
writers have done, to convert Aristophanes into a profound philosopher,
opposed to Socrates ; but we must be content to recognize in him,
even on this occasion, the vigilant patriot, the well-meaning citizen of
Athens, whose object it is by all the means in his power to promote
the interests of his native country, so far as he is capable of under-
standing them.
As the piece in general is directed against the new system of education,
we must first of all explain its nature and tendency. Up to the
time of the Persian war, the school-education of the Greeks was limited
to a very few subjects. From his seventh year, the boy was sent to
schools in which he learned reading and writing, to play on the lute and
sing, and the usual routine of gymnastic exercises.* In these schools it
was customary to impress upon the youthful mind, in addition to these
acquirements, the works of the poets, especially Homer, as the foundation
of all Greek training, the religious and moral songs of the Ip-ic poets,
and a modest and decent behaviour. This instruction ceased when the
youth was approaching to manhood; then the only means of gaining
instruction was intercourse with older men, listening to what was said in
the market-place, where the Greeks spent a large portion of the day,
taking a part in public life, the poetic contests, which were connected
with the religious festivals, and made generally known so many works of
genius ; and, as far as bodily training was concerned, frequenting the
gymnasia kept up at the public expense. Such was the method of edu-
cation up to the Persian war ; and no effect was produced upon it by the
more ancient systems of philosophy, any more than by the historical
writings of the period, for no one ever thought of seeking the elements
of a regular education from Heraclitus or Pythagoras, but whoever
applied himself to them did so for his life. With the Persian war,
however, according to an important observation of Aristotle, f an entirely
new striving after knowledge and education developed itself among the
Greeks ; and subjects of instruction were established, which soon exer-
cised an important influence on the whole spirit and character of the
*
i; youfiuxTifrov, I; xibteifTov, I: iraihreifieu. f Alistot. Pcht. viii. 6.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT? GREECE. 417
nation. The art of speaking, which had hitherto afforded exercise
only to practical life and its avocations, now became a subject of
school-training, in connexion with various branches of knowledge, and
with ideas and views of various kinds, such as seemed suitable to the
design of guiding and ruling men by eloquence. All this taken together,
constituted the lessons of the Sophists, which we shall contemplate more
nearly hereafter; and which produced more important effects on the
education and morals of the Greeks than anything else at that time.
That the very principles of the sophists must have irritated an Athenian
with the views and feelings of Aristophanes, and have at once produced
a spirit of opposition, is sufficiently obvious : the new art of rhetoric,
always eager for advantages, and especially when transferred to the
dangerous ground of the Athenian democracy and the popular law-courts,
could not fail to be regarded by Aristophanes as a perilous instrument
in the hands of ambitious and selfish demagogues ; he saw with a glance
how the very foundations of the old morality, upon wnich the weal of
Athens appeared to him to rest, must be sapped and rooted up by a
stream of oratory which had the skill to turn everything to its own ad-
vantage. Accordingly, he makes repeated attacks on the whole race of
the artificial orators and sceptical reasoners, and it is with them that he
is principally concerned in the Clouds.
The real object of this piece is stated by the poet himself in the para-
basis to the Wasps, which was composed in the following year : he says
that he had attacked the fiend which, like a night-mare, plagued fathers
and grandfathers by night, besetting inexperienced and harmless people
with all sorts of pleadings and pettifogging tricks* It is obvious that it
is not the teachers of rhetoric who are alluded to here, but the young
men who abused the facility of speaking which they had acquired in the
schools by turning it to the ruin of their fellow citizens. The whole
plan of the drama depends on this : an old Athenian, who is sore pressed
by debts and duns, first labours to acquire a knowledge of the tricks and
stratagems of the new rhetoric, and finding that he is too stiff and awk-
ward for it, sends to this school his youthful son, who has hitherto spent
his life in the ordinary avocations of a well-born cavalier. The conse-
quence is, that his son, being initiated into the new scepticism, turns it
against his own father, and not only beats him, but proves that he has
done so justly. The error of Aristophanes in identifying the school of
Socrates with that of the new-fangled rhetoric must have arisen from
his putting Socrates on the same footing with sophists, like Protagoras
and Gorgias, and then preferring to make his fellow citizen the butt of
his witticisms, rather than his foreign colleagues, who paid only short
visits to Athens. It cannot be denied that Aristophanes was mistaken.
* Compare, by way of explanation, also Acharnians, 713. Birds, 1347. Frogs, 147.
2 E
418 HISTORY OF THE
It must indeed be allowed that Socrates, in the earlier part of his career,
had not advanced -with that security with which we see him invested in
the writings of Xenophon and Plato, that he still took more part in the
speculations of the Ionian philosophers with regard to the universe,*
than he did at a later period ; that certain wild elements were still mixed
up in his theory, and not yet purged out of it hy the Soeratic dialectic :
still it is quite inconceivable that Socrates should ever have kept a school
of rhetoric (and this is the real question), in which instruction was
given, as in those of the sophists, how to make the worse appear the
better reason. f But even this misrepresentation on the part of Aris-
tophanes may have been undesigned : we see from passages of his later
comedies,^ that he actually regarded Socrates as a rhetorician and
declaimer. He was probably deceived by appearances into the belief
that the dialectic of Socrates, the art of investigating the truth, was
the same as the sophistry which aped it, and which was but the art of
producing a deceitful resemblance of the truth. It is, no doubt, a serious
reproach to Aristophanes that he did not take the trouble to distinguish
more accurately between the two : but how often it happens that men,
with the best intentions, condemn arbitrarily and in the lump those ten-
dencies and exertions which they dislike or cannot appreciate.
The whole play of the Clouds is full of ingenious ideas, such as the
chorus of Clouds itself, which Socrates invokes, and which represents
appropriately the light, airy, and fleeting nature of the new philo-
sophy^ A number of popular jokes, such as generally attach them-
selves to the learned class, and banter the supposed subtilties and refine-
ments of philosophy, are here heaped on the school of Socrates, and
often delivered in a very comic manner. The worthy Strepsiades, whose
home-bred understanding and mother-wit are quite overwhelmed with
astonishment at the subtle tricks of the school-philosophers, until at
last his own experience teaches him to form a different judgment, is
from the beginning to the end of the piece a most amusing character.
Notwithstanding all this, however, the piece cannot overcome the defect
arising from the oblique views on which it is based, and the superficial
manner in which the philosophy of Socrates is treated, — at least not in
TO ftiTitUQCt.
f The "irruv or Hhxas, and the xpirrm or Vixa.nn Xoyo;. Aristophanes makes the
former manner of speaking the representative of the assuming and arrogant youth,
and the latter of the old respectable education, and personifies them both.
% See Aristoph. Frogs, 1491. Birds, 1555. Eupolis had given a more correct
picture of Socrates, at least in regard to his outward appearance. Bergk de rel.
com. Attica, p. 353.
§ That this chorus loses its special character towards the end of the piece, and
even preaches reverence of the gods, is a point of resemblance between it and the
choruses in the Acharnians and the Wasps, who at least act rather according to the
general character of the Greek chorus, which was on the whole the same for tragedy
and comedy, than according to \hc particular part which has been assigned to them.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 419
the eyes of any one who is unable to surrender himself to the delusion
under which Aristophanes appears to have laboured.
§ 6. The following year (01. 89, 2. b.c. 422) brought the Wasps of
Aristophanes on the stage. The Wasps is so connected with the Clouds,
that it is impossible to mistake a similarity of design in the development
of certain thoughts in each. The Clouds, especially in its original form,
was directed against the young Athenians, who, as wrangling tricksters,
vexed the simple inoffensive citizens of Athens by bringing them against
their will into the law-courts. The Wasps is aimed at the old Athe-
nians, who took their seats day after day in great masses as judges, and
being compensated for their loss of time by the judicial fees established
by Pericles, gave themselves up entirely to the decision of the causes,
which had become infinitely multiplied by the obligation on the allies to
try their suits at Athens, and by the party spirit in the state itself:
whereby these old people had acquired far too surly and snarling a
spirit, to the great damage of the accused. There are two persons
opposed to one another in this piece ; the old Phi/ocleon, who has given
up the management of his affairs to his son, and devoted himself entirely
to his office of judge (in consequence of which he pays the profoundest
respect to Cleon, the patron of the popular courts); and his son Bdelycleon,
who has a horror of Cleon and of the severity of the courts in general.
It is very remarkable how entirely the course of the action between these
two characters corresponds to that in the Clouds, so that we can hardly
mistake the intention of Aristophanes to make one piece the counterpart
of the other. The irony of fate, which the aged Strepsiades experiences,
when that which had been the greatest object of his wishes, namely, to
have his son thoroughly imbued with the rhetorical fluency of the
Sophists, soon turns out to be the greatest misfortune to him, — is precisely
the same with the irony of which the young Bdelycleon is the object in
the Wasps ; for, after having directed all his efforts towards curing his
father of his mania for the profession of judge, and having actually suc-
ceeded in doing so, (partly by establishing a private dicasterion at home,
and partly by recommending to him the charms of a fashionable luxurious
life, such, as the young Athenians of rank were attached to,) he soon
bitterly repents of the metamorphosis which he has effected, since the
old man, by a strange mixture of his old-fashioned rude manners with
the luxury of the day, allows his dissoluteness to carry him much farther
than Bdelycleon had either expected or desired.
The Wasps is undoubtedly one of the most perfect of the plays of
Aristophanes.* We have already remarked upon the happy invention
* AVc cannot by any means accept \. W. von Schlegel's judgment, that this play
is inferior to the other comedies of Aristophanes, and we entirely approve of the warm
apology by Mr. Mitchell, in his edition of the Wasps, 1835, the object of which
has unfortunately prevented the editor from giving the comedy in its full proportions.
2 e 2
420 HISTORY OP THE
of the masks of the chorus.* The same spirit of amusing novelty per-
vades the whole piece. The most farcical scene is the first between two
dogs, which Bdelycleon sets on foot for the gratification of his father,
and in which not only is the whole judicial system of the Athenians
parodied in a ludicrous manner, but also a particular law-suit between
the demagogue Cleon and the general Laches appears in a comic con-
trast, which must have forced a laugh from the gravest of the spectators.
§ 7. We have still a fifth comedy, the Peace, which is connected
with the hitherto unbroken series ; it is established by a didascalia,
which has been recently brought to light, that it was produced at
the great Dionysia in 01. 89, 3. b.c. 421. Accordingly, this play
made its appearance on the stage shortly before the peace of Nicias,
which concluded the first part of the Peloponnesian war, and, as was
then fully believed, was destined to put a final stop to this destructive
contest among the Greek states.
The subject of the Peace is essentially the same as that of the Achar-
nians, except that, in the latter, peace is represented as the wish of an
individual only, in the former as wished for by all. In the Acharnians,
the chorus is opposed to peace ; in the Peace, it is composed of country-
men of Attica, and all parts of Greece, who are full of a longing desire
for peace. It must, however, be allowed, that in dramatic interest the
Acharnians far excels the Peace, which is greatly wanting in the unity
of a strong comic action. It must, no doubt, have been highly amusing
to see how Trygeeus ascends to heaven on the back of an entirely new
sort of Pegasus, — a dung beetle, — and there, amidst all kinds of dangers,
in spite of the rage of the daemon of war, carries off the goddess Peace,
with her fair companion?, Harvesthome and Mayday : f but the sacrifice
on account of the peace, and the preparations for the marriage of Try-
gseus with Harvesthome, are split up into a number of separate scenes,
without any direct progress of the action, and without any great vigour
of comic imagination. It is also too obvious, that Aristophanes endea-
vours to diminish the tediousness of these scenes by some of those loose
jokes, which never failed to produce their effect on the common people
of Athens ; and it must be allowed, in general, that the poet often ex-
presses better rules in respect to his rivals than he has observed in his
own pieces. \
§ 8. There is now a gap of some years in the hitherto unbroken chain
of Aristophanic comedies ; but our loss is fully compensated by the
Birds, which was brought out in 01. 91, 2. b.c. 414. If the Achar~
* Chap. XXVII. § 5.
f So we venture to translate 'Osrs^a and Qiagia.
J It should he added, that according to the old grammarians Eratosthenes and
Crates, there were two plays hy Aristophanes with this title, though there is no
indication that the one which has come down to us is not that which appeared in
the vcar 421.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 421
nians is a specimen of the youthful vigour of Aristophanes, it appears
in the Birds displayed in all its splendour, and with a style, in which a
proud flight of imagination is united with the coarsest jocularity and
most genial humour.
The Birds belongs to a period when the power and dominion of
Athens had attained to an extent and splendour which can only be
compared to the time about 01. 81, 1. b. c. 456, before the military
power of Athens was overthrown in Egypt. Athens had, by the very
favourable peace of Nicias, strengthened her authority on the sea and
in the coasts of Asia Minor ; had shaken the policy of the Peloponnese
by skilful intrigues ; had brought her revenues to the highest point they
ever attained ; and finally had formed the plan of extending her authority
by sea and on the coasts, over the western part of the Mediterranean, by
the expedition to Sicily, which had commenced under the most favourable,
auspices. The disposition of the Athenians at this period is known to
us from Thucydides : they allowed their demagogues and soothsayers to
conjure up before them the most brilliant visionary prospects ; hence-
forth nothing appeared unattainable; people gave themselves up, in
general, to the intoxication of extravagant hopes. The hero of the day
was Alcibiades, with his frivolity, his presumption, and that union of
a calculating understanding with a bold, unfettered imagination, for
which he was so distinguished ; and even when he was lost to Athens
by the unfortunate prosecution of the Hermocopidfe, the disposition
which he had excited still survived for a considerable time.
It was at this time that Aristophanes composed his Birds. In order
■"to comprehend this comedy in its connexion with the events of the day,
and, on the other hand, not to attribute to it more than it really con-
tains, it is especially necessary to take a rigorous and exact view of the
action of the piece. Two Athenians, Peisthetarus and Euelfddes t
(whom we may call Agitator and Hope-good,) are sick and tired of the
restless life at Athens, and the number of law-suits there, and have
wandered out into the wide world in search of Hoopoo, an old mytho-
logical kinsman of the Athenians* They soon find him in a rocky desert,
where the whole host of birds assemble at the call of Hoopoo : for some
time they are disposed to treat the two strangers of human race as
national enemies ; but are at last induced, on the recommendation of
Hoopoo, to give them a hearing. Upon this, Agitator lays before them
his grand ideas about the primeval sovereignty of the birds, the important
rights and privileges they have lost, and how they ought to win them
all back again by founding a great city for the whole race of birds : and
this would remind the spectators of the plan of centralization, (irvvoi-
* It is said to have been, in fact, the Thracian king Tereus, who had married
Pandiou's daughter Procne, and was turned into a hoopoo, his wife being meta-
morphosed into a nightingale.
422 HISTORY OF THE
kktjlioc,) which the Athenian statesmen of the day often employed for the
establishment of democracy, even in the Peloponnese. While Agitator
undertakes all the solemnities which belonged to the foundation of a
Greek city, and drives away the crowd, which is soon collected, of priests,
writers of hymns, prophets, land-surveyors, inspectors-general, and legis-
lators,^— scenes full of satirical reflexion on the conduct of the Athenians
in their colonies and in allied states, — Hopegood superintends the build-
ing of this castle-in-the-air, this Clondctickootoivn, (N ecpeXoKOKtcvyia,') and
shortly after a messenger makes his appearance with a most amusing
description of the way in which the great fabric was constructed by the
labours of the different species of birds. Agitator treats this description
as a lie;* and the spectators are also sensible that Cloudcuckootown
exists only in imagination, since Iris, the messenger of the gods, flies
past without having perceived, on her way from heaven to earth, the
faintest trace of the great blockading fortress, f The affair creates all
the more sensation among men on this account, and a number of swag-
gerers come to get their share in the promised distribution of wings,
without Agitator being able to make any use of those new citizens for
his city. As, however, men leave off sacrificing to the gods, and pay
honour to the birds only, the gods themselves are obliged to enter into
the imposture, and bear a part in the absurdities which result from it.
An agreement is made in which Zeus himself gives up his sovereignty to
Agitator ; this is brought about by a contrivance of Agitator ; he has the
skill to win over Hercules, who has come as an ambassador from the
gods, with the savoury smell of certain birds, whom he has arrested as
aristocrats, and is roasting for his dinner. At the end of the comedy
Agitator appears with Sovereignty, (Batr/Atm,) splendidly attired as
his bride, brandishing the thunder-bolts of Zeus, and in a triumphal
hymeneal procession, accompanied by the whole tribe of birds.
In this short sketch we have purposely omitted all the subordinate
parts, amusing and brilliant as they are, in order to make sure of obtain-
ing a correct view of the whole piece. People have often overlooked
the general scope of the play, and have sought for a signification in
the details, which the plan of the whole would not allow. It is impos-
sible that Athens can have been intended under Cloudcuckootown, espe-
cially as this city of the birds is treated as a mere imagination :" moreover,
the birds are real birds throughout the play, and if Aristophanes had
intended to represent his countrymen under these masks, the. character-
istics of the Athenians would have been shown in them in a very different
* v. 1167. 'lea. y'xa uXrJa; <pcc! viral f&oi yp<vl)sir,v,
f Of course we see nothing of the new city on the stage, which throughout the
piece represents a rocky place with trees about it, and with the house of the Epops
in the centre, which at the end of the play is converted into the kitchen where the
birds are roasted.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 423
way.* Besides, it is very difficult to believe that Agitator and Hopegood
were intended to represent any Athenian statesmen in particular; the
chief rulers of the people at that time could not possibly have shown
themselves diametrically opposed, as Agitator does, to the judicial and
legislative system, and to the sycophancy of the Athenians. But accord-
ing to the poet's express declaration, they are Athenians, the genuine off-
spring of Athens, and it is clear, that in these two characters, he in-
tended to give two perfect specimens of the Athenians of the day; the
one is an intriguing projector, a restless, inventive genius, who knows
how to give a plausible appearance to the most irrational schemes; the
other is an honest, credulous fool, who enters into the follies of his
companion with the utmost simplicity. t Consequently, the whole piece
is a satire on Athenian frivolity and credulity, on that building of
castles in the air, and that dreaming expectation of a life of luxury and
ease to which the Athenian people gave themselves up in the mass :
but the satire is so general, there is so little of anger and bitterness, so
much of fantastic humour in it, that no comedy could make a more
agreeable and harmless impression. We must, in this, dissent entirely
from the opinion of the Athenian judges, who, though they crowned the
Knights, awarded only the second prize to the Birds ; it seems that they
were better able to appreciate the force of a violent personal attack than
the creative fulness of comic originality.
§ 9. We have two plays of Aristophanes which came out in 01. 92, 1.
b.c. 411, (if our chronological data are correct,) the Lysistrata and the
Thesmophoriazusa. A didasealia, which has come down to us, assigns
the Lysistrata to this year, in which, after the unfortunate issue of the
Sicilian expedition, the occupation of Deceleia by the Spartans, and their
subsidiary treaty with the king of Persia, the war began to press heavily
upon the Athenians. At the same time the constitution of Athens had
fallen into a fluctuating state, which ended in an oligarchy : a board of
commissioners, (vpofltmhoi,) consisting of men of the greatest rank and
consideration, superintended all the affairs of state; and, a few months
after the representation of the Thesmophoriazusse, began the rule of the
Four hundred. Aristophanes, who had all along been attached to the
peace-party, which consisted of the thriving landed proprietors, now
gave himself up entirely to his longing for peace, as if all civic rule and
harmony in the state must necessarily be restored by a cessation from
war. In the Lysistrata this longing for peace is exhibited in a farcical
form, which is almost without a parallel for extravagant indecency ; the
* That several points applicable to Athens occur in the Cloudcookootown (the
Acropolis, with the worship of Minerva Polias, the Pelasgian wall, &c.) provi a
nothing but this, that the Athenians, wlm plan the city, made use of names common
at home, as was always the custom in colonies.
f We may remark that Euelpides oalj remains on the stage till the plan of
Nephelococcygia is formed : after that, the poet has no further employment for him.
424
HISTORY OF THE
women are represented as compelling their husbands to come to terms,
by refusing them the exercise of their marital rights ; but the care with
which he abstains from any direct political satire shows how fluctuating
all relations were at that time, and how little Aristophanes could tell
whither to turn himself with the vigour of a man who has chosen his
party.
In the T/icsmophoriaznscP, nearly contemporary with the Lysistrata,*
Aristophanes keeps still further aloof from politics, and plunges into
literary criticism, (such as before Only served him for a collateral orna-
ment,) which he helps out with a complete apparatus of indecent jokes.
Euripides passed for a woman-hater at Athens : but without any
reason ; for, in his tragedies, the charming, susceptible mind of woman
is as often the motive of good as of bad actions. General opinion, how-
ever, had stamped him as a misogynist. Accordingly, the piece turns
on the fiction that the women had resolved at the feast of the Thesmo-
phoria, when they were quite alone, to take vengeance on Euripides, and
punish him with death ; and that Euripides was desirous of getting
some one whom he might pass off for a Avoman, and send as such into
this assembly. The first person who occurs to his mind, the delicate,
effeminate Agathon — an excellent opportunity for travestying Agathon's
manner — will not undertake the business, and only furnishes the costume,
in which the aged Mnesilochus, the father-in-law and friend of Euripides,
is dressed up as a woman. Mnesilochus conducts his friend's cause
with great vigour; but he is denounced, his sex is discovered, and, on
the complaint of the women, he is committed to the custody of a Scythian
police-slave, until Euripides, having in vain endeavoured, in the guise of
a tragic Menelaus and Perseus, to carry off this new Helen and Andro-
meda, entices the Scythian from his watch over Mnesilochus by an
artifice of a grosser and more material kind. The chief joke in the
whole piece is that Aristophanes, though he pretends to punish Eu-
ripides for his calumnies against women, is much more severe upon the
fair sex than Euripides had ever been.
* The date assigned to the Thcsmopkoriasusa, 01. 92, 1. b.c. 411, rests partly on
its relation to the Andromeda of Euripides, (see chap. XXV. § 17, note,) Avhich
was a year older, and which, from its relation to the Frogs, (Schol. Aristoph. Frogs,
53,) is placed in 01. 91, 4. b. c. 412. No doubt the expression lyl'oo? irti would
also allow us to place the Andromeda in 413 ; and therefore, the Thesmophoriazusa?
in 412 ; but this is opposed by the clear mention of the defeat of Charminus in a
sea-fight, (T/iesmoph. 804;) which falls, according to Thucyd. viii. 41, in the very
beginning of 411. "Without setting aside the Schol. Frogs, 53, and some other
corresponding notices in the Ravenna scholia on the Thesmophoriazusa;, we cannot
bring down this comedy to the year 410 : consequently, the passage in v. 808 about
the deposed councillors, cannot refer to the expulsion of the Five hundred by the
oligarchy of the Four hundred, (Thucyd. viii. 69,) which did not take place till
after the Dionysia of the year 411.; but to the circumstance that the (ZouXivm) of the
year 412, Ol. 91, 4, were obliged to give up a considerable part of their functions
to the board of ^sfiovXii, (Thucyd. viii. 1.)
LITERATURE OK ANCIENT GREECE. 425
§ 10. The literary criticism, which seems to have been the principal
employment of Aristophanes during the last gloomy years of the Pc-
loponnesian war, came out in its most perfect form in the Frogs, which
was acted 01. 93, 3. b. c. 405, and is one of the most masterly pro-
ductions which the muse of comedy has ever conceded to her favourites.
The idea, on which the whole is built, is beautiful and grand. Dionysus,
the god of the Attic stage, here represented as a young Athenian fop,
who gives himself out as a connoisseur of tragedies, is much distressed
at the great deficiency of tragic poets after the deaths of Euripides and
Sophocles, and is resolved to go and bring up a tragedian from the other
world, — if possible, Euripides.* He gets Charon to ferry him over the
pool which forms the boundary of the infernal regions, (where he is
obliged to pull himself to the merry croaking of the marsh frogs,)t and
arrives, after various dangers, at the place where the chorus of the happy
souls who have been initiated into the mysteries (*'. e. those who are
capable of enjoying properly the freedom and merriment of comedy)
perform their songs and dances : he and his servant Xanthias have,
however, still many amusing adventures to undergo at Pluto's gate
before they are admitted. It so happens that a strife has arisen in the
subterranean world between iEschylus, who had hitherto occupied the
tragic throne, and the newly arrived Euripides, who lays claim to it :
and Dionysus connects this with his own plan by promising to take with
him to the upper regions whichever of the two gains the victory in this
contest. The contest which ensues is a peculiar mixture of jest and
earnest : it extends over every department of tragic act, — the subject-matter
and moral effects, the style and execution, prologues, choral songs, and
monodies, and often, though in a very comic manner, hits the right
point. The comedian, however, does not hesitate to support, rather
by bold figures than by proofs, his opinion that iEschylus had uttered
profound observations, sterling truths, full of moral significance ; while
Euripides, with his subtle reasonings, rendered insecure the basis of
religious faith and moral principles on which the weal of the state
rested. Thus, at the end of the play, the two tragedians proceed to
weigh their verses ; and the powerful sayings of yEschylus make the
pointed thoughts of Euripides kick the beam. In his fundamental
opinion about the relative merits of these poets, Aristophanes is undoubt-
edly so far right, that the immediate feeling for and natural conscious-
ness of the right and the good which breathes in the works of ^Eschylus,
was far more conducive to the moral strength of mind and public virtue
* lie is chiefly desirous of seeing the Andromeda of Euripides, which was ex-
ceedingly popular with the people of Abdera also. Lucian. Quom. conscr. sit Hist. 1.
f The part of the Frogs was indeed performed by the chorus, but they were not
seen, (/. e. it was a parachoregema ;) probably the choreutaj were placed in the
hyposcenium, (a space under the stage,) and therefore on the same elevation as the
orchestra.
426 HISTORY OF THE
of his fellow citizens than a mode of reasoning like that in Euripides,
which brings all things before its tribunal, and, as it were, makes every-
thing dependent on the doubtful issue of a trial. But Aristophanes is
wrong in reproaching Euripides personally with a tendency which exer-
cised such an irresistible influence on his age in general. If it was the
aim of the comedian to bring back the Athenian public to that point of
literary taste when TEschylus was fully sufficient for them, it would have
been necessary for him to be able to lock the wheels of time, and to screw
back the machinery which propelled the mind in its forward progress.
We should not omit to mention the political references which occa-
sionally appear by the side of the literary contents of this comedy.
Aristophanes maintains his position of opponent to the violent demo-
crats : he attacks the demagogue Cleophon, then in the height of his
power : in the parabasis he recommends the people, covertly but sig-
nificantly enough, to make peace with and be reconciled to the persecuted
oligarchs, who had ruled over Athens during the time of the Four
hundred ; recognizing, however, the inability of the people to save them-
selves from the ruin which threatens them by their own power and pru-
dence, he hints that they should submit to the mighty genius of Alcibi-
ades, though he was certainly no old Athenian according to the ideal of
Aristophanes : this suggestion is contained in two remarkable verses,
which he puts into the mouth of ^Eschylus : —
" 'Twere best to rear no Hon in the state,
But when 'tis done, his will must not be thwarted ;" —
a piece of advice which would have been more in season had it been
delivered ten years earlier.
§ 11. Aristophanes is the only one of the great Athenian poets who
survived the Peloponnesian war, in the course of which Sophocles and
Euripides, Cratinus and Eupolis, had all died. We find him still
writing for the stage for a series of years after the close of the
war. His Ecclesiazuscv was probably brought out in 01. 96, 4. b. c,
392 : it is a piece of wild drollery, but based upon the same political
creed which Aristophanes had professed for thirty years. Democracy
had been restored in its worst features ; the public money was
again expended for private purposes ; the demagogue Agyrrhius
was catering for the people by furnishing them with pay for their at-
tendance in the public assembly ; and the populace were following to-
day one leader, and to-morrow another. In this state of affairs, ac-
cording to the fiction of Aristophanes, the women resolve to take upon
themselves the whole management of the city, and carry their point by
appearing in the assembly in men's clothes, principally "because this
was the only thing that had not yet been attempted at Athens ;"* and
* Ecclcsiaz. y. 456. T&I-au yko tovto /uovov h t7i -xixa
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 427
people hoped that, according to an old oracle, the wildest resolution
•which they made would turn out to their benefit. The women then
establish an excellent Utopia, in which property and wives are to be in
common, and the interests of the ugly of both sexes are specially pro-
vided for, a conception which is followed out into all its absurd conse-
quences with a liberal mixture of humour and indecency.
From this combination of a serious thought, by way of foundation,
with the boldest creations of a riotous imagination, the Ecclesiazusac
must be classed with the works which appeared during the vigour of
Attic comedy : but the technical arrangement shows, in a manner
which cannot be mistaken, the poverty and thriftiness of the state
at this time.* The chorus is obviously fitted out very parsimo-
niously ; its masks were easily made, as they represented only Athenian
women, who at first appear with beards and men's cloaks; besides, it re-
quired but little practice, as it had but little to sing. The whole parabasis
is omitted, and its place is supplied by a short address, in which the
chorus, before it leaves the stage, calls upon the judges to decide fairly
and impartially.
These outward deviations from the original plan of the old comedy
are in the Plutus combined with great alterations in the internal struc-
ture ; and thus furnish a plain transition to the middle comedy, as it is
called. The extant Plutus is not that which the poet produced in
01. 92, 4. b.c. 408, but that which came out twenty years later in
01. 97, 4. b. c. 388, and was the last piece which the aged poet brought
forward himself; for two plays which he composed subsequently, the
Cocalus and JEolosicon, were brought out by his son Araros. In the
extant Plutus, Aristophanes tears himself away altogether from the great
political interests of the state. His satire in this piece is, in part, uni-
versally applicable to all races and ages of men, for it is directed against
defects and perversities which attach themselves to our every-day
life ; and, in part, it is altogether personal, as it attacks individuals
selected from the mass at the caprice of the poet, in order that the jokes
may take a deeper and wider root. The conception on which it is based
is of lasting significance: the god of riches has, in his blindness, fallen
into the hands of the worst of men, and has himself suffered greatly
thereby : a worthy, respectable citizen, Chrcmylus, provides for the re-
covery of his sight, and so makes many good people prosperous, and
reduces many knaves to poverty. From tire more general nature of the
fable it follows that the persons also have the general character of their
condition and employments, in which the piece approximates to the
manner of the middle comedy, as it also does in the more decent, less
* The ehoregue were not discontinued, but people endeavoured to make them
less expensive letery year. See Boeckh, Public Economy of Athens, book iii. § T±.
428 HISTORY OF THE
offensive, but at the same time less genial nature of the language. The
alteration, however, does not run through the play so as to bring the
new species of comedy before us in its complete form ; here and there
we feci the breath of the old comedy around us, and we cannot avoid the
melancholy conviction that the genial comedian has survived the best
days of his art, and has therefore become insecure and unequal in his
application of it.
CHAPTER XXIX.
§ 1. Characteristics of Cratinus. § 2. Eupolis. § 3. Peculiar tendencies of Crates ;
his connexion with Sicilian comedy. <§ 4. Sicilian comedy originates in the
Doric farces of Megara. §5. Events in the life of Epicharmus ; general tendency
and nature of his comedy. § G. The middle Attic comedy; poets of this class
akin to those of the Sicilian comedy in many of their pieces. § 7. Poets of the
new comedy the immediate successors of those of the middle comedy. How the
new comedy becomes naturalized at Rome. § 8. Public morality at Athens
at the time of the new comedy. § 9. Character of the new comedy in connexion
therewith.
§ 1. Cratinus and Eupolis, Pherecrates and Hermippus, Telecleides
and Plato, and several of those who competed Avith them for the prize
of comedy, are known to us from the names of a number of their pieces
which have come down to our time, and also from the short quotations
from their plays by subsequent authors ; these furnish us with abundant
materials for an inquiry into the details of Athenian life, public and
private, but are of little use for a description like the present, which
is based on the contents of individual works and on the characteristics
of the different poets.
Of Cratinus, in particular, we learn more from the short but preg-
nant notices of him by Aristophanes, than from the very mutilated
fragments of his works. It is clear that he was well fitted by natui-c
for the wild and merry dances of the Bacchic Comus. The spirit of
comedy spoke out as clearly and as powerfully in him as that of tragedy
did in iEschylus. He gave himself up with all the might of his genius
to the fantastic humour of this amusement ; and the scattered sparks
of his wit proceeded from a soul imbued with the magnanimous honesty
of the older Athenians. His personal attacks were free from all fear
or regard to the consequences. As opposed to Cratinus, Aristophanes
appeared as a well educated man, skilled and apt in speech, and not
untinged with that very sophistic training of Euripides, against which
he so systematically inveighed ; and thus we find it asked in a fragment
LlTERATtfitE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 429
of Cratinus : — " Who art thou, thou hair-splitting orator ; thou hmiler
after sentences; thou petty Euripidaristophanes ?" *
Even the names of his choruses show, to a certain extent, on what
various and bold devices the poems of Cratinus were based. He not
only made up a chorus of mere Archilochuses and Cleobulines, i. e. of
abusive slanderers and gossiping women ; he also brought on a number
of Ulysseses and Chirons as a chorus, and even Panopteses, i. e. beings
like the Argos-Panoptes of mythology, who had heads turned both
ways with innumerable eyes,t by which, according to an ingenious
explanation, J he intended to represent the scholars of Hippo, a specu-
lative philosopher of the day, whose followers pretended that nothing
in heaven or earth remained concealed from them. Even the riches
(-rXowrot) and the laws (i>d/uot) of Athens formed choruses in the plays
of Cratinus, as, in general, Attic comedy took the liberty of personifying
whatever it pleased.
The play of Cratinus, with the plot of which we are best acquainted,
is the Pyline, or "bottle," which he wrote in the last year of his life.
In his later years Cratinus was undoubtedly much given to drinking,
and Aristophanes and the other comedians were already sneering at him
as a doting old man, whose poetry was fuddled with wine. Upon this
the old comedian suddenly roused himself, and with such vigour and
success that he won the prize, in 01. 89, 1. b.c. 423, from all his rivals,
including Aristophanes, who brought out the "Clouds" on the occasion.
The piece which Cratinus thus produced was the Pytinc. With mag-
nanimous candour the poet made himself the subject of his own comedy.
The comic muse was represented as the lawful wife of Cratinus, as the
faithful partner of his younger days, and she complained bitterly of the
neglect with which she was then treated in consequence of her husband
having become attached to another lady, the bottle. She goes to the
Archons, and brings a plaint of criminal neglect (kaKwcrig) against
him ; if her husband will not return to her she is to obtain a divorce
from him. The consequence is, that the poet returns to his senses, and
his old love is re-awakened in his bosom ; and at the end he raises
himself up in all the power and beauty of his poetical genius, and goes
so far in the drama that his friends try to stop his mouth, lest he should
carry away everything with the overflowing of his imagery and versifi-
cation. § In this piece, Cratinus did not merit the reproacli which has
been generally cast upon him, that he could not work out his own
excellent conceptions, but, as it were, destroyed them himself.
* T/f 2s cii \ (x.o[i.^i>i ri; iooith hary;i)
'tfoXiTroXoyoi, yvojfAiOiuTn;, li/giTidxfiitrroipxvi^av"
The answer of Aristophanes is mentioned above, Chap. XXV., § 7.
f Kptivia liaaa. tyooCiv, o$$&Xfio) V ovk uorfpardr
X Bcrgk de reliquiis Comedies Attica antiques, p. 162.
§ Cratini fragmenta coll. Runkel, p. 50. Meineke, Hist. Crit. Com. Grac, vol. I.
p. 54, vol. II. p. 110—132.
430 HISTORY OF THE
So early as the time when Cratinus was in his prime, (01. 85, 1.
«. c. 440,) a law was passed limiting the freedom of comic satire. It
is very probable that it was under the constraint of this law, (which,
however, was not long in force,) that the Ulysseses ('Ocutro-cTe) of Cratinus
was brought out ; a piece of which it was remarked by the old literary
critics,* that it came nearer to the character of the middle comedy : it
probably abstained from all personal, and especially from political
satire, and kept itself within the circle of the general relations of mankind,
in which it was easy for the poet to avail himself of the old mythical
story, — Ulysses in the cave of Polyphemus.
§ 2. A Roman poet, who was very careful in his choice of words,
and who is remarkable for a certain pregnancy of expression, t calls
Cratinus " the bold," and in the same passage opposes Eupolis to him,
as "the an°ry." Although Eupolis is stated to have been celebrated
for his elegance, and for the aptness of his witticisms, as well as for his
imaginative powers,! his style was probably marked by a strong
hatred of the prevailing" depravity, and by much bitterness of satire.
He himself claimed a share in the " Knights" of Aristophanes,
in which personal satire prevails more than in any other comedy
of that poet. On the other hand, Aristophanes maintains that
Eupolis, in his Maricas, had imitated the " Knights," and spoiled it
by injudicious additions. § Of the Maricas, which was produced 01.
89, 3. b.c. 421, we only know thus much, that under this slave's name
he exhibited the demagogue Hyperbolus, who succeeded to Cleon's
place in the favour of the people, and who was, like Cleon, represented
as a low-minded, ill-educated fellow ; the worthy Nicias was introduced
in the piece chiefly as the butt of his tricks. The most virulent, how-
ever, of the plays of Eupolis was probably the Baptce, which is often
mentioned by old writers, but in such terms that it is not easy to gather
a clear notion of this very singular drama. The view which appears
most probable to the author of these pages is, that the comedy of
Eupolis was directed against the club {tTaiplu) of Alcibiades, and espe-
cially against a sort of mixture of profligacy, which despised the con-
ventional morality of the day, and frivolity, and which set at nought the old
religion of Athens, and thus naturally assumed the garb of mystic and
foreign religions. In this piece Alcibiades and his comrades appeared
* Platonius de Comadia, p. viii. That the piece contained a caricature
Qiairv^iv tivo) of Homer's Odyssey is not to be understood as if Cratinus had
wished to ridicule Homer.
f Audaci quicunque adflate Cratino,
Iratum Eupolidem prwgrandi cum sene palles.
Persius, I. 124. The Vita Aristophanis agrees with this.
% -Pavrcttrlu, iv$avra<rr/>;. Platonius also speaks highly of the energy (i^nXot)
and grace (ivn'xugis) of Eupolis. He perhaps exaggerates the latter quality See
Meineke, Hist. Crit. Corn. Gr. vol. I. p. 107.
$' Aristophanes, Clouds 553 .
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 431
under the name of Baptce, (winch seems to have beim borrowed from a
mystic rite of baptism which they practised,) as worshippers of a bar-
barian deity Cotys or Cotytto, whose wild worship was celebrated with
the din of load music, and was made a cloak for all sorts of debauchery ;
and the picture given of these rites in the piece, if we may judge from
what Juvenal says,* must have been very powerful and impressive.
Eupolis composed two plays which obviously had some connexion
with one another, and which represented the political condition of Athens
at the time ; the one in its domestic, the other in its external relations.
In the former, which was called the Demi, the boroughs of Attica, of
which the whole people consisted, (ot ov/uot,) formed the persons of the
chorus ; and Myronides, a distinguished general and statesman of the
time of Pericles, who had survived the great men of his own day, and
now in extreme old age felt that he stood alone in the midst of a dege-
nerate race, was represented as descending to the other world to restore
to Athens one of her old leaders ; and he does in fact bring back Solon,
Miltiades, and Pericles. t The poet contrived, no doubt, to construct a
very agreeable plot by a portraiture of these men, in which respect for
the greatness of their characters was combined with many merry jests,
and by exhibiting, on the other side, in the most energetic manner, the
existing state of Athens, destitute as she then was of good statesmen and
generals. From some fragments it appears that the old heroes felt very
uncomfortable in this upper world of ours, and that the chorus had to
intreat them most earnestly not to give up the state-affairs and the army
of Athens to a set of effeminate and presumptuous young men : at the
conclusion of the piece, the chorus offers up to the spirits of the heroes,
with all proper ceremonies, the wool-bound olive boughs, (tl^ecnuii'ai,)
by which, according to the religious rites of the Greeks, it had supported
its supplications to them, and so honours them as gods. In the Poleis,
the chorus consisted of the allied or rather tributary cities ; the island of
Chios, which had always remained true to Athens, and was therefore
better treated than the others, stood advantageously prominent among
them, and Cyzicus in the Propontis brought up the rear. Beyond this
little is known about the connexion of the plot.
§ 3. Among the remaining comic poets of this time, Crates stands
most prominently forward, because he differs most from the others.
From being an actor in Cratinus' plays, Crates had risen to the rank of
•
* Juvenal, II. 91.
f That Myronides brings up Pericles is clear from a comparison of Plutarch,
Pericl. 21, with the passages of Aristides, Platonius, and others, (Raspe dc Eupolid.
Avpoi; et WoKiirii. Lips. 1832.) Pericles asks Myronides, " Why he brings him
back to life? are there no good people in Athens! if his son by Aspasia is not a
great statesman V and so forth. Prom this it is clear that it was Myronides who
had conveyed him from the other world.
432 HISTORY OF TH^
a comic poet ; he was, however, any thing but an imitator of his master.
On the contrary, lie entirely gave up the field which Cratinus and the
other comedians had chosen as their regular arena, namely, political
satire ; perhaps because in his inferior position he lacked the courage to
attack from the stage the most powerful demagogues, or because he
thought that department already exhausted of its best materials. His
skill lay in the more artificial design and developement of his plots,* and
the interest of his pieces depended 011 the connexion of the stories which
thev involved. Accordingly, Aristophanes says of him,f that he had
feasted the Athenians at a trifling expense, and had with great sobriety
given them the enjoyment of his most ingenious inventions. Crates is
said to have been the first who introduced the drunkard on the stage ;
and Pherecrates, who of the later Attic comedians most resembled
Crates,| painted the glutton with most colossal features.
§ 4. Aristotle connects Crates with the Sicilian comic poet Epichar-
mus, and no doubt he stood in a nearer relation to him than the other
comedians of Athens. This will be the right place to speak of this
celebrated poet, as it would have disturbed the historic developement
of the Attic drama had we turned our attention at an earlier period
to the comedy of Sicily. As we have already remarked, (chap.XXVII.
§ 3,) Sicilian comedy is connected with the old farces of Megara,
but took a different direction, and one quite peculiar to itself. The
Megarian farces themselves did not exhibit the political character
which was so early assumed by Attic comedy ; but they cultivated a
department of raillery which was unknown to the comedy of Aris-
tophanes, that is, a ludicrous imitation of certain classes and conditions
of common life. A lively and cheerful observation of the habits and
manners connected with certain offices and professions soon enabled
the comedian to observe something characteristic in them, and often
something narrow-minded and partial, something quite foreign to the
results of a liberal education, something which rendered the person
awkward and unfitted for other employments, and so opened a wide field
for satire and witticisms. In this way Mceson, an old Megarian comic
actor and poet,§ constantly employed the mask of a cook or a scullion;
consequently such persons were called MBesones (ficuvuyec) at Athens,
* Aristot. Poet. C. 5. Tuv Vi 'Aratwi K^drr,; <X$u-0i riol-v, d<piftlv/>; Tr,f IxfifiiKr,;
ilia.;, KufoXw x'oyou; * pvfau; xotetr i. e. " Of the Athenian comedians, Crates was
the first who "gave up personal satire, and began to make narratives or poems on
more general subjects."
f Knights, 535. Comp. Meineke, Hist. Crit. Com. Grac, p. 60.
J Anonym, de Comadia, p. xxix.
§ There can be no doubt that he lived at a time when there existed by the side
of the Attic comedy a Megarian drama of the same kind, of which Ecphantides, a
predecessor of Cratinus, and other poets of the old comedy, spoke as a rough
farcical entertainment. The Megarian comedian Solynus belongs to the same
period.
LITERATURE OV ANCIENT GREECE. 433
and their jokes Maesonian (jj.aiacoviica.')* A considerable clement in such
representations would consist of mimicry and absurd gestures, such as
the Dorians seem to have been gencrallly more fond of than the Athenians ;
the amusement furnished by the Spartan Deiceliclce (tao/Xt/w-ru) was
made up of the imitation of certain characters taken from common life;
for instance, the character of a foreign physician represented in a sort
of pantomime dance, and with the vulgar language of the lower orders.f
The more probable supposition is, that this sort of comedy passed over
to Sicily through the Doric colonies, as it is on the western
boundaries of the Grecian world that we find a general prevalence of
comic dramas in which the amusement consists in a recurrence of the
same character and the same species of masks. The Oscan pastime of
the Atcllance, which went from Campania to Rome, was also properly
designated by these standing characters ; and great as the distance was
from the Dorians of the Peloponnese to the Oscans of Atella, wc may
nevertheless discern in the character-masks of the latter some clear traces
of Greek influence. J
In Sicily, comedy made its first appearance at Sclinus, a Megarian
colony. Aristoxenus, who composed comedies in the Dorian dialect,
lived here before Epicharmus ; how long before him cannot be satisfactorily
ascertained. In fact we know very little about him; still it is remark-
able that among the few records of him which we possess there is a verse
which was the commencement of a somewhat long invective against
soothsayers ;§ whence it is clear that he, too, occupied himself with the
follies and absurdities of whole classes and conditions of men.
§ 5. The flourishing period of Sicilian comedy was that in which
Phormis, Epicha?vnus, and Deinolochus, (the son or scholar of the
latter,) wrote for the stage. Phormis is mentioned as the friend of
Gelo and the instructor of his children. According to credible autho-
rities, Epicharmus was a native of Cos, who went to Sicily with Cadmus,
the tyrant of Cos, when he resigned his power and emigrated to that
island, about 01. 73, b.c. 488. Epicharmus at first resided a short time
at the Sicilian Megara, where he probably first commenced his career as
a comedian. Megara was conquered by Gelo, (01. 74, 1. or 2. e.c. 484,
483,) and its inhabitants were removed to Syracuse, and Epicharmn
among them. The prime of his life, and the most flourishing period of
his art, are included in the reign of Hiero, (01. 75, 3. to 01. 78, 2. b.c.
* The grammarian Aristophanes of Byzantium, quoted by Athenanis, XIV.,
p. 659, and Festus, s. v. Mason.
f See Muller's Dorians, b. rv. eh. <>. § 9.
+ Among the standing masks of the Atellana was the Pappus, whose name is
obviously the Greek •xa.nros, ami reminds u> of the namreviiXwas, the old leader of
the satyrs, in the satyric drama ; the Maccus, whose name is explained by the
Greek '{iukxiZv ; also the Simus, I at least in later times: Sueton. Galba, 13,) which
was a peculiar epithet of the Satyrs from their flat noses.
§ la IleplueUion, Enchcir. p, 15,
2 F
434 HISTORY OF THE
478, 467.) These chronological data are sufficient to show that the
tendency of Epicharmus' comedy could not be political. The safety
and dignity of a ruler like Hiero would have been alike incompatible
with such a licence of the stage. It does not, however, follow from this,
that the plays of Epicharmus did not touch upon or perhaps give a com-
plete picture of the great events of the time and the circumstances of the
country ; and in fact Ave can clearly point out such references to the
events of the day in several of the fragments : but the comedies of Epi-
charmus did not, like those of Aristophanes, take a part in the contests
of political factions and tendencies, nor did they select some particular
political circumstance of Syracuse to be praised as fortunate, while they
represented what was opposed to it as miserable and ruinous. The
comedy of Epicharmus has a general relation to the affairs of mankind :
it ridicules the follies and perversities which certain forms of educa-
tion had introduced into the social life of man; and a considerable ele-
ment in it was a vivid representation of particular classes and persons
from common life ; a large number of Epicharmus' plays seem to have
been comedies of character, such as his " Peasant," ('AypwcrrTi'oe,) and
" the Ambassadors to the Festival," (Qeapoi ;) we are positively informed
that Epicharmus was the first to bring on the stage the Parasite and the
Drunkard, — characters which Crates worked up for Athenian comedy.
Epicharmus was also the first to use the name of the Parasite,* which
afterwards became so common in Greek and Roman plays, and it is
likely that the rude, merry features with which Plautus has drawn this
class of persons may, in their first outlines, be traceable to Epicharmus. f
The Syracusan poet no doubt showed in the invention of such characters
much of that shrewdness for which the Dorians were distinguished more
than the other Greek tribes ; careful and acute observations of mankind
are compressed into a few striking traits and nervous expressions, so that
we seem to see through the whole man though he has spoken only a few
words. But in Epicharmus this cmality was combined in a very peculiar
manner with a striving after philosophy. Epicharmus was a man of a
serious cast of mind, variously and profoundly educated. He belonged
originally to the school of physicians at Cos, who derived their art from
^Esculapius. He had been initiated by Arcesas, a scholar of Pythagoras,
into the peculiar system of the Pythagorean philosophy ; and his comedies
* In the Attic drama of Eupolis the parasites of the rich Callias appeared as
xoXax'.; ; but the fact that they constituted the chorus rendered it impossible that
they could be made a direct object of comic satire. Alexis, of the middle comedy,
was the first who brought the parasite (under this name) on the stage,
f Gelasime, salve. — Non id est nomen mihi. — ■
Certo mecastor id fuit nomen tibi. —
Fuit disertim ; verum id usu perdidi ;
Nunc Miccotrogus nomine ex vero vocor.
Plant. Stick, act 1. sc. 3.
The name Miccotrogus, by which the parasite in the preceding passage calls
himself, is not Attic but Doric, and therefore is perhaps derived from Epicharmus.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 435
abounded in philosophical aphorisms,* not mereiy, as one might at first
expect, on notions and principles of morality, but also on metaphysical
points — God and the World, body and soul, &c. ; where it is certainly
difficult to conceive how Epicharmus interwove these speculative dis-
courses into the texture of his comedies. Suffice it to say, we see
that Epicharmus found means to connect a representation of the
follies and absurdities of the world in which he lived, with pro-
found speculations on the nature of things; whence we may infer
how entirely different his manner was from that of the Athenian
comedy.
With this general ethical and philosophical tendency we may easily
reconcile the mythical form, which we find in most of the comedies
of Epicharmus. t Mythical personages have general and formal
features, free from all accidental peculiarities, and may therefore
be made the best possible basis of the principles and results, the
symptoms and criteria of good and bad characters. Did we but possess
the comedy of the Dorians, and those portions of the old and middle
comedy (especially the latter) which are so closely connected with it, we
should be able to discern clearly what we can now only guess from titles
and short fragments, that mythology thus treated was just as fruitful a
source of materials for comedy as for the ideal world of the tragic drama.
No doubt, the whole system of gods and heroes must have been reduced
to a lower sphere of action in order to suit them to the purposes of
comedy : the anthropomorphic treatment of the gods must necessarily
have arrived at its last stage ; the deities must have been reduced to the
level of common life with all its civic and domestic relations, and must
have exhibited the lowest and most vulgar inclinations and passions.
Thus the insatiable gluttony of Hercules was a subject which Epicharmus
painted in vivid colours; j in another place, § a marriage feast among the
gods was represented as extravagantly luxurious ; a third, " Hephaestus,
or the Revellcrs,"|| exhibited the quarrel of the fire-god with his mother
Hera as a mere family brawl, which is terminated very merrily by
Bacchus, who, when the incensed son has left Olympus, invites him to
a banquet, makes him Sufficiently drunk, and then conducts him hack in
triumph to Olympus, in the midst of a tumultuous band of revellers.
The most lively view which we still have of this mythological comedy is
* Epicharmus himself says in some beautiful verses quoted by Diogenes Laer?
tins, HI. j n, that one of his successors would one day surpass all other specu-
lators by adopting his sayings in another form, without metre. It is perhaps not
unlikely that the philosophical anthology which was in vogue under the name of
Epicharmus, andwhic 1- Ennius in his Epicharmus Imitated in trochaic tetrameters,
was an excerpt from trie comedies of Epicharmus, jisl as the Gnomology, which
we have under the name of Thei gnis, was a sel of extracts from his Elegies.
f Of 35 titles of his comedies) which have comedown to us, 17 are horrowed
from mythological personages. Grysar, tf< Doriensium Comcedia, p. '-'74.
i In his Busiris. $ In the Marriage of Hebe,
|| "Hifaitr-o; n Kufuccrrui.
2 f 2
4S6 HISTORY OF THE
furnished by the scenes in Aristophanes which seem to have, the same
tone and feeling : such as that in which Prometheus appears as the mal-
content and intriguer in Olympus, and points out the proper method of
depriving the gods of their sovereignty ; and then the embassy of the
three gods, when Hercules, on smelling the roasted birds, forgets the
interests of his own party, and the voice of the worst of the three ambas-
sadors constitutes the majority ; this shows us what striking pictures fur
situations of common life and common relations might be borrowed from
the supposed condition of the gods. At any rate, we may also see from
this how the comic treatment of mythology differed from that in the
satyric drama. In the latter, the gods and heroes were introduced
among a class of beings in whom a rude, uncultivated mode of life pre-
dominated : in the former they descended to social life, and were
subject to all the deficiencies and infirmities of human society.
§ G. The Sicilian comedy in its artistic developement preceded the
Attic by about a generation; yet the transition to the middle Attic
comedy, as it is called, is easier from Epicharmus than from Aristophanes,
who appears very unlike himself in the play which tends towards the
form of the middle comedy. This branch of comedy belongs to a time when
the democracy was still moving in unrestrained freedom, though the
people had no longer such pride and confidence in themselves as to ridi-
cule from the stage their rulers and the recognized principles of state
policy, and at the same time to prevent themselves from being led astray
by such ridicule. The unfortunate termination of the Peloponnesian war
had damped the first fresh vigour of the Athenian state ; freedom and
democracy had been restored to the Athenians, and even a sort of mari-
time supremacy ; but their former energy of public life had not been
restored along with these things ; there were too many weaknesses and
defects in all parts of their political condition, — in their finances, in the
war-department, in the law-courts. The Athenians, perhaps, were well
aware of this, but they were too indolent and fond of pleasure to set
about in earnest to free themselves from these, inconveniences. Under such
circumstances, satire and ridicule, such as Aristophanes indulged in,
would have been quite intolerable, for it would no longer have pointed
out certain shadows in a bright and glorious picture, but would have
exhibited one dark picture without a single redeeming ray of light, and
so would have lacked all the cheerfulness of comedy. Accordingly, the
comedians of this time took that general moral tendency which we have
pointed out in the Megarian comedy and in all that is connected with it ;
they represented the ludicrous absurdities of certain classes and condi-
tions in society,* and in their diction kept close to the language of common
* A bragging cook, a loading personage in miiMle comedy, was the chief character
in the JEolosicon of Aristophanes. We may infer what influence the Megarian
and Sicilian comedy had in the formation of regular standing characters, from the
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 437
life, which prevails much more uniformly in their plays than in those
of Aristophanes, with the exception of some few passages, where it is
interrupted by parodies of epic and tragic poetry.* These comedians
were not altogether without a basis of personal satire ; but this was no
longer directed against influential men, the rulers of the people ; f or, if
it touched them at all, it was not on account of their political
character, or of any principles approved by the bulk of the people.
On the contrary, the middle comedy cultivated a narrower field of its
own, — the department of literary rivalship. The poems of the middle
comedy were rich in ridicule of the Platonic Academy, of the newly
revived sect of the Pythagoreans, of the orators and rhetoricians of tiie
day, and of the tragic and epic poets : they sometimes even took a retro-
spective view, and subjected to their criticism anything which they
thought weak or imperfect in the poems of Homer. This criticism was
totally different from that directed by Aristophanes against Socrates,
which was founded exclusively upon moral and practical views ; the
judgments of the middle comedy considered everything in a literary
point of view, and, if we may reason from individual instances,
were directed solely against the character of the writings of the persons
criticized. In the transition from the old to the middle comedy we may
discern at once the great revolution which had taken place in the domestic
history of Athens, when the Athenians, from a people of politicians, be-
came a nation of literary men ; when, instead of pronouncing judgment
upon the general politics of Greece, and the law-suits of their allies,
they judged only of the genuineness of the Attic style and of good taste in
oratory ; when it was no longer the opposition of the political ideas of
Themistocles and Ciinon, but the contests of opposing schools of philo-
sophers and rhetoricians, which set all heads in motion. This great
change was not fully accomplished till the time of Alexander's successors ;
but the middle comedy stands as a guide-post, clearly pointing out the way
to this consummation. The frequency of mythical subjects in the comedies
of this class \ has the same grounds as in the Sicilian comedy; for the
object in both was to clothe general delineations of character in a mythical
form. Further than this, we must admit that our conceptions of the
middle comedy are somewhat vacillating and uncertain ; this arises from
the constitution of the middle comedy itself, which is rather a transition
fact that Pollux (Onum. IV., § 140, 14X, loO) names the Sicilian parasite and the
scullion Meeson among the masks of the new comedy, (according to the restoration
by Meineke, Hist. Vrit. Com. Grcec., p. 664, comp. above, § 4.)
* Hence we see why the Scholiast, in the Plutus, 51o, recognizes the character
of the middle comedy in the epic tone of the passage.
f On the contrary, these comedians considered ludicrous representations of
foreign rulers as quite allowable ; thus the Dionysius of Eubulus was directed
against the Sicilian tyrants, and the Dionysalexandrus of the younger Cratinus
against Alexander of Pherffi. Similarly, in later times, Menander satirized Dio-
nysius, tyrant of Heraclea, and Philemon king Magas of Cyrene.
| Meineke ( Hist. Grit, Com. Cfec, p. '^83, foil.) gives a long list of such
mythical comedies.
438 HISTORY OF THE
state than a distinct species. Consequently, we find, along with many
features resembling the old comedy, also some peculiarities of the new.
Aristotle indeed speaks only of an old and a new comedy, and does not
mention the middle comedy as distinct from the new.
The poets of the middle comedy are also very numerous ; they occupy
the interval between 01. 100. b.c. 380, and the reign of Alexander.
Among the earliest of them we find the sons of Aristophanes, Araros and
Philippics, and the prolific Enbulus, who flourished about 01. 101. b.c.
376 : then follows Anaxandrides, who is said to have been the first to
introduce into comedy the stories of love and seduction, which afterwards
formed so large an ingredient in it* — so that we have here another
reference to the new comedy, and the first step in its subsequent develope-
ment. Then we have Amphis and Anaxilaus, both of whom made
Plato the butt of their wit; the younger Cratinus ; Timocles, who ridi-
culed the orators Demosthenes and Hyperides ; still later, Alexis, one of
the most productive, and at the same time one of the most eminent of
these poets : his fragments, however, show a decided affinity to the new
comedy, and he was a contemporary of Menander and Philemon. t
Antiphanes began to exhibit as early as 383 b.c. ; his comedies, however,
were of much the same kind with those of Alexis : he was by far the
most prolific of the poets of the middle comedy, and was distinguished
by his redundant wit and inexhaustible invention. The number of his
pieces, which amounted to 300, and according to some authorities ex-
ceeded that number, proves that the comedians of this time no longer
contended, like Aristophanes, with single pieces, and only at the Lenaea
and great Dionysia, but either composed for the other festivals, or, what
seems to us the preferable opinion, produced several pieces at the same
festival. J
§ 7. These last poets of the middle comedy were contemporaries of the
writers of the new comedy, who rose up as their rivals, and were only
distinguished from them by following their new tendency more decidedly
and more exclusively. Menander was one of the first of these poets, (he
flourished at the time immediately succeeding the death of Alexander,§)
and he was also the most perfect of them, which will not surprise us if
we consider the middle comedy as a sort of preparation for the new.||
* The Cocalus of Aristophanes (Araros) contains, according to Platonius, a
scene of seduction and recognition of the same kind with those in the comedies of
Menander.
t It appears hy the fragment of the Hypobolimeeus, (Athen. XI. p. 502. u.
Meineke Hist. Crit, Com. Grcec. p. 315.)
% Concerning Antiphanes, see Clinton, Philol. Mus. I. p. 558 foil., and Meineke,
Hist. Crit. Com. Gr. p. 304 — 40. It appears from the remarks of Clinton, p. C07,
and Meineke, p. 305, that the passage attributed hy Atherueus IV. p. 156. c, to
Antiphanes, in which king- Seleucus is mentioned, is probably hy another comic poet.
§ Menander brought out his first piece when he was still a young man (jfvfZos),
in 01. 114, 3. B.C. 322, and died as early as 01. 122, 1. b.c. 291.
i| According to Anon, de comocdia, Menander was specially instructed in his act
by Alexis.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 439
Philemon came forward rather earlier than Menancler, and survived him
many years ; he was a great favourite with the Athenians, but was always
placed after Menander by those who knew them both.* These are fol-
lowed by Philippides, a contemporary of Philemon ;-j- by Diphilus of
Sinope, + who was somewhat later ; by Apolloclorus of Gela, a contem-
porary of Menander, Apollodorus of Carystus, who was in the following
generation, § and by a considerable number of poets, more or less worthy
to be classed with these.
Passing here from the middle comedy to the new, we come at once to
a clearer region ; here the Roman imitations, combined with the nume-
rous and sometimes considerable fragments, are sufficient to give us a
clear conception of a comedy of Menander in its general plan and in its
details : a person who possessed the peculiar talents requisite for such a
task, and had acquired by study the acquaintance with the Greek language
and the Attic subtlety of expression necessary for the execution of it, might
without much difficulty restore a piece of Menander's, so as to replace the
lost original. The comedy of the Romans must not be conceived as merely
a learned and literary imitation of the Greek : it formed a living union
with the Greek comedy, by a transfer to Rome of the whole Greek stage, not
by a mere transmission through books ; and in point of time too there is an
immediate and unbroken connexion between them. For although the
period at which the Greek new comedy flourished followed immedi-
ately upon the death of Alexander, yet the first generation was followed
by a second, as Philemon the son followed Philemon the father, and
comic writing of less merit and reputation most probably continued till a
late period to provide by new productions for the amusement of the
people ; so that when Livius Andronicus first appeared before the Roman
public with plays in imitation of the Greek (a.u.c. 514. b.c 240), the
only feat which he performed was, to attempt in the language of Rome
what many of his contemporaries were in the habit of doing in the Greek
language ; at any rate, the plays of Menander and Philemon were the
must usual gratification which an educated audience sought for in the
theatres of Greek states, as well in Asia as in Italy. By viewing the
case in this way, we assume at once the proper position for surveying the
Latin comedians in all their relations to the Greek, which are so peculiar
that they can only be developed under these limited historical conditions.
For to take the two cases, which seem at first sight the most obvious and
natural; namely, first, that translations of the plays of Menander,
: Menander said to him, when he had won the prize from him in a dramatic
contest, "Philemon, do you not blush to conquer me :'* Aul.Gell. N.A., XVII. 4.
t According to Buidas he came forward 01. Ill,, still earlier than Philemon.
} Sinope was at thai time the native city of three comedians, Diphilus, Diony-
sius, and Diodorus, and also of the cynic philosopher Diogenes. It must have
been the fashion at Binope to derive proper names from Zeus, the Zeus Chthonius
or Serapis of Sinope.
§ According to the inferences in Meineke's fiist, <'rit. Com. Gicec , p. 4.59, 4.62.
4 JO
HISTORY OF THE
Philemon, &c, were submitted to the educated classes at Rome; or
secondly, that people attempted by free imitations to transplant these
pieces into a Roman soil, and then to suit them to the tastes and under-
standings of the Roman people by romanizing them, not merely in all
the allusions to national customs and regulations, but also in their spirit
and character : neither of these two alternatives was adopted, but
the Roman comedians took a middle course, in consequence of -which
these plays became Roman and yet remained perfectly Greek. In
other words in the Greek comedy (or eomoedia pa/liala, as it was called)
of the Romans, the training of Greece in general, and of Athens in par-
ticular, has extended itself to Rome, and has compelled the Romans, so
far as they wished to participate in that, in which all the educated world
at that time participated, to acquiesce in the outward forms and conditions
of this drama ; — in its Greek costume and Athenian locality ; to adopt
Attic life as a model of social ease and familiarity; and (to speak plainly)
to consider themselves for an hour or two as mere barbarians, — and,
in fact, the Roman comedians occasionally speak of themselves and their
countrymen as barbari.*
It is necessary that we should premise these observations, (however
much they may seem chronologically misplaced,) in order to justify the
use which we purpose to make of Plautus and Terence. The Roman
comedians prepared the Greek dish for the Roman palate in a different
manner according to their own peculiar tastes ; for example, Plautus
seasoned it with coarse and powerful condiments, Terence on the other
hand with moderate and delicate seasoning ;t but it still remained the
Attic dish : the scene brought before the Roman public was Athens in
the time of those Macedonian rulers who are called the Diadochi and
Epigoni. X
§ 8. Consequently, the scene was Athens after the downfall of its
political freedom and power, effected by the battle of Chseronea, and still
more by the Lamian war : but it was Athens, still the city of cities, over-
flowing with population, flourishing with commerce, and strong in its
navy, prosperous both as a state and in the wealth of many of its indi-
vidual citizens. § This Athens, however, differed from that of Cimon
* See Plautus, Bacchid. I. 2. 15. Captivi. III. 1. 32. IV. 1. 104. Trinumm. Prul.
19. Festus v. barbari and vapula.
f Yet Plautus is more an imitator and frequently a translator of the Attic come-
dians than many persons have supposed. Not to speak of Terence, Caecilius Statius
has also followed very closely in the steps of Menander.
% So much so, that the most peculiar features of Attic law (as in all that related
to iw'ixXnam, or heiresses) and of the political relations of Athens (as the kXvqovxIu
in Lemnos) play an important part in the Roman comedies.
§ The finances of Athens were to all appearance as flourishing under Lycurgus
(i. e. B.C. 338 — 32G) as under Pericles. The well-known census under Demetrius
the Phalerian (b.c. 317) gives a proof of the number of citizens and slaves at
Athens. Even in the days of Demetrius Poliorcetes, Athens had still a great fleet.
In a word, Athens did not want means at this time to enable her to command the
respect even of kings ; she only lacked the necessary spirit.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 441
and Pericles much hi the same way as an old man weak in body, but
full of a love of life, good humoured and self-indulgent, differs from the
vigorous middle-aged man at the summit of his bodily strength and
mental energy. The qualities which were before singularly united in
the Athenian character, namely, resolute bravery and subtlety of inte'lect,
were now entirely disjoined and separated. The former had taken up its
abode with the homeless bands of mercenaries who practised war as a
handicraft, and it was only on impulses of rare occurrence that the people
of Athens gave way to a warlike enthusiasm which was speedily kindled
and as spccdilv quenched. But the excellent understanding and mother-
wit of the Athenians, so far as they did not ramble in the schools
of the philosophers and rhetoricians, found an object (now that there
was so little in politics which could interest or employ the mind) in the
occurrences of social life, and in the charm of dissolute enjoyments.
Dramatic poetry now for the first time centered in love* as it has
since done anions; all nations to whom Greek cultivation has descended ;
but certainly it was not love in those nobler forms to which it has since
elevated itself. The seclusion and Avant of all society in which un-
married women lived at Athens (such as we have before described it,
in speaking of the poetry of Sappho)t continued to prevail unaltered
in the families of the citizens of Athens ; according to these customs
then, an amour of any continuance with the daughter of a citizen of
Athens was out of the question, and never occurs in the fragments and
imitations of the comedy of Menander ; if the plot of the piece depends
on the seduction of an Athenian damsel, this has taken place suddenly
and without premeditation, in a fit of drunkenness and youthful lust,
generally at one of the pervigilia, which the religion of Athens had
sanctioned from the earliest times : or some supposed slave or hetcera,
with whom the hero is desperately in love, turns out to be a well-born
Athenian maiden, and marriage at last crowns a connexion entered upon
with very different intentions. J
The intercourse of the young men with the heteerce or courtesans, an
intercourse which had always been a reproach to them since the days of
Aristophanes,^ had at length become a regular custom with the young
people of the better class, whose fathers did not treat them too parsi-
moniously. These courtesans, who were generally foreigners or freed-
womcn,;j possessed more or less education and charms of manner, and in
* Fabula jueundi nulla est sin*' nmore Menandri. Ovid. Trist., II. 370.
f Chap. XIII. § 0,
+ This is the <p^« and the uvaywonri;, which formed the basis of so many of
Mcnander's comcdii -s.
§ See e. g. Clouds, 996.
|| This constitutes the essential distinction between the Irxiga and the -r'o^n,
the latter being a slave of the <rojv«/3e<r*»r (o, h, the leno or Una), although the T^tai
are often ransomed (>.uo*rai) by their lovers, and so rise into the other more honour-
able condition.
442 HISTORY OF THE
proportion to these attractions, bound the young people to them with more
or less of constancy and cxclusiveness ; their lovers found an entertain-
ment in their society which naturally rendered, them little anxious to
form a regular matrimonial alliance, especially as the legitimate daughters
of Athenian citizens were still brought up in a narrow and limited
manner, and with few accomplishments. The fathers either allowed
their suns a reasonable degree of liberty to follow their own inclinations
and sow their wild oats, or through parsimony or morose strictness en-
deavoured to withhold from them these indulgencieS; in the midst of all
which it often happened that the old man fell into the very same follies
which he so harshly reproved in his son. In these domestic intrigues
the slaves exercised an extraordinary influence : even in Xenophon's
time, favoured by the spirit of democracy, and as it seems almost stand-
ing on the same footing with the meaner citizens, they were still more
raised up by the growing degeneracy of manners, and the licence which
universally prevailed. In these comedies, therefore, it often happens
that a slave forms the whole plan of operations in an intrigue ; it is his
sagacity alone which relieves his young master from some disagreeable
embarrassment, and helps to put him in possession of the object of his
love : at the same time we are often introduced to rational slaves, who
try to induce their young masters to follow the suggestions of some
sudden better resolution, and free themselves at once from the exactions
of an unreasonable het&ra* No less important are the parasites, who,
not to speak of the comic situations in which they are placed by their
resolution to eat without labouring for it, are of great use to the comedian
in their capacity of a sort of dependents on the family : they are brought
into social relations of every kind, and are ready to perform any service
for the sake of a feast. Of the characters who make their appearance
less frequently, we will only speak here of the Bramarbas or miles glo-
riosus. He is no Athenian warrior, no citizen-soldier, like the heroes
of the olden time, but a homeless leader of mercenaries, who enlists men-
at-arms, now for king Seleucus, now for some other crowned general ;
who makes much booty with little trouble in the rich provinces of Asia,
* As in Menander's Eunvch, in the scene of which Persius gives a miniature
copy {Sat. V. 161). In this passage Persius has Menander immediately in his
eye, and not the imitation in Terence's Eunuch, act i. sc. 1, although Terence's
Phsedria, Parmeno, and Thais, correspond to the Cha?restratus, Daos, and Chrysis
of Menander. In Menander, however, the young man takes counsel with his
slave at a time when the helcera had shut him out, and on the supposition that she
would invite him to come to her again : in Terence the lover is already invited to
a reconciliation after a quarrel. This results from the adoption by Terence of a
practice common with the Latin comedians, and called conlaminatio ; he has here
combined in one piece two of Menander's comedies, the Eunuch and the Ko/cuc*
Accordingly he is obliged to take up the thread of the Eunuch somewhat later, in
order to gain more room for the develcpement of his double plot. In the same
manner the Adelphi of Terence is made up from the Viuoyl; of Menander and the
~2.vvuvohwr.<;vTi; of Diphilus.
LITERATURE OE ANCIENT GREECE. 443
and is willing to squander it away in lavish extravagance on the amiable
courtesans of Athens ; who is always talking of his services, and has
thereby habituated himself to continual boasting and bragging : conse-
quently he is a demi-barbarian, overreached by his parasite and cheated
at pleasure by some clever slave, and with many other traits of this kind
which may easily be derived from the Roman comedies, but can only be
viewed in their right light by placing the character about 100 years
earlier.*
§ 9. This was the world in which Menander lived, and which, accord-
ing to universal testimony, he painted so truly. Manifestly, the motives
here rested upon no mighty impulses, no grand ideas. The strength of
the old Athenian principles and the warmth of national feelings had
gradually grown fainter and weaker till they had melted down into a
sort of philosophy of life, the main ingredients of which were a
natural good temper and forbearance, and a sound mother-wit nurtured
by acute observation ; and its highest principle was that rule of " live
and let live," which had its root in the old spirit of Attic democracy,
and had been developed to the uttermost by the lax morality of subse-
quent times. t
It is highly worthy of observation, as a hint towards appreciating the
private life of this period, that Menander and Epicurus were born in
the same year at Athens, and spent their youth together as sharers in the
same exercises (awityiifioi) :\ and an intimate friendship united these
two men, whose characters had much in common. Though we should
wrong them both if we considered them as slaves to any vulgar sensu-
ality, yet it cannot be doubted that they were both of them deficient in
the inspiration of high moral ideas. The intention with which each
of them acted was the same : to make the most of life as it is, and to
make themselves as agreeable as they could. They were both too
refined and sensible to take any pleasure in vulgar enjoyments; Menan-
der knew so well by experience the deceitfulness vt' these gratifications,
and felt so great a weariness and disgust of their charms, that he had
* The «X«£uv of Theophrastus {Characl. 23) has some affinity with the Thraso
of comedy (as Theophrastus's characters in general arc related to those of Menan-
der), hut' he is an Athenian citizen who is proud of his connexion with Mao,
and not a mercenary soldier.
f The aristocratic constitutions at that time in Greece were connected with a
stricter superintendence of morals (censura morum); the leading principle of the
Athenian democracy, on the other hand, was to impose in. further restraint <>n the
private HIV of the citizen than the immediate interests of the state required. How-
ever, the writings of the new comedy were nut altogelhi r without personal invec-
tives, and there were still questions with regard to the freedom of the comic stage
(Plutarch Demetr. 12. Meinekc Hist. Crit, Cum, Grac, p. t3G.) The Latin come-
dians also occasionally introduced personal attacks, which were mosl hitler in the
comedies of Ntevius.
t Straho XIV. p. 526. .Meinekc, Maintain ri Philemoidsfragm., p. xxv>
444 HISTORY OF THE
arrived at a sort of passionless rest and moderation ; * though it is
possible that in actual life Menander placed his happiness less in the
painless tranquillity "which Epicurus sought, than in various kinds of
moderate gratification. It is known how much he gave himself up to
intercourse with the hetcerce, not merely with the accomplished Glycera,
but also with the wanton Thais ; and his effeminate costume, according
to a well-known story,t offended even Demetrius of Phalerus, the regent
of Athens under Cassander, who however led a sufficiently luxurious
life himself.
Such a philosophy of life as this, which places the summum bonum
in a well-based love of self, could very well dispense with the gods,
whom Epicurus transferred to the intermundane regions, because,
according to his natural philosophy, he could not absolutely annihilate
them. Agreeing entirely with his friend on this point, Menander
thought that the gods would have a life of trouble if they had to distri-
bute good and evil for evecy day. t It was on this account that the
philosopher attributed so much to the influence of chance in the creation
of the world and the destinies of mankind. Menander also exalts Ti>x 7 l
(Fortune) as the sovereign of the world ; § but this no longer implies the
saviour daughter of almighty Zeus, but merely the causeless, incalcu-
lable, accidental combinations of things in nature and in the life of man.
It was, however, precisely at such a time as this, when all relations
were dislocated or merged in licentiousness, that comedy possessed a
power, which, though widely different from the angry flashes of the
genius of Aristophanes, perhaps produced in its way more durable
effects : this power was the power of ridicule, which taught people to
dread as folly that which they no longer avoided as vice. This power
was the more effective as it confined its operations to the sphere of
the actual, and did not exhibit the follies which it represented under the
same gigantic and superhuman forms as the old comedy. The old
comedy, in its necessity for invention, created forms in which it could
pourtray with most prominent features the characteristics of whole
classes and species of men ; the new comedy look its forms, in all their
individual peculiarities, from real life, and did not attempt to signify by
them more than individuals of the particular class. || On this account
more importance was attached by the writers of the new comedy to the
invention of plots, and to their dramatic complication and solution,
* The reader will find characteristic expressions of this luxurious philosophy in
Mcineke, Menandri frciffm., p. 166.
f Phsedrus, fab., v. 1.
\ In a fragment which has recently come to light from the commentary of David
on Aristotle's Categories. See Meineke, Hist. Crit. Com. Grcec, p. 454.
^ Meineke, Menandri fraam., p. 168.
|| Hence the exclamation : Z V/aayhi xtc) pit.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 445
■which Menander made tlic leading object in Ins compositions: for,
while the old comedy set its forms in motion in a very free and un-
constrained manner, according as the developement of the fundamental
thought required, the new comedy was subject to the laws of probability
as established by the progress of ordinary life, and had to invent a
story in which all the views of the persons and all the circumstances
of their actions resulted from the characters, manners, and relations
of the age. The stretch of attention on the part of the spectator
which Aristophanes produced by the continued progression in the de-
velopement of the comic ideas of his play was effected in the new comedy
by the confusion and solution of outward difficulties in the circum-
stances represented, and by the personal interest felt for the particular
characters by the spectators, — an interest closely connected with the
illusion of reality.
In this the attentive reader of these observations will readily have
perceived how comedy, thus conducted by Menander and Philemon,
only completed what Euripides had begun on the tragic stage a hundred
years before their time. Euripides, too, deprived his characters of that
ideal grandeur which had been most conspicuous in the creations of
iEschylus, and gave them more of human weakness, and therefore of
apparent individuality. Euripides, too, abandoned the foundation of
national principles in ethics and religion on which the old popular
morality of the Greeks had been built up, and subjected all relations to
a dialectical, and sometimes sophistical mode of reasoning, which very
soon led to the lax morality and common sense doctrines which pre-
vailed in the new comedy. Euripides and Menander consecpiently agree
so well in their reasonings and sentences, that in their fragments it would
be easy to confuse one with the other; and thus tragedy and comedy, these
two forms of the drama which started from such different beginnings,
here meet as it were in one point.* The form of the diction also contri-
buted a great deal to this : for as Euripides lowered the poetic tone of
tragedy to the ordinary language of polished society, in the same way
corned}', and indeed even the middle,! but still more the new, re-
linquished, on the one hand, the high poetic tone which Aristophanes
had aimed at, especially in his choral songs, and, on the other hand,
the spirit of caricature and burlcscpie which is essentially connected
with the portraiture of his characters : the tone of polished conversa-
tion! predominates in all the pieces of the new comedy ; and in this
Menander gave a greater freedom and liveliness to the recitations of his
* Philemon was so warm an admirer of Euripides, that ho declared lie would at
once destroy himself, in order to see Euripides in the other world, provided he
could convince himself that departed spirits preserved their life and understanding.
See Meineke, Men. et Pinion, lie/., p. 410.
\ According to Anonymua de Comcedia, p. xxviii.
J This is particularly mentioned by Plutarch (Aristoph. ct Menandri compar., c. 2.)
44G HISTORY OF T1IK
actors by the looser structure of his sentences and the weaker connexion
of his periods , whereas Philemon's pieces, by their more connected and
periodic style, were better suited for the closet than for the stage.* The
Latin comedians, Plautus, for instance, gave a great deal more of bur-
lesque than they found in their models, availing themselves perhaps of
the Sicilian comedy of Epicharmus, as well as of the comedy of their
own country. The elevated poetic tone must have been lost with the
choruses, of which we have no sure traces even in the middle comedy ;f
the connexion of lyric and dramatic poetry was limited to the employ-
ment by the actors of lyric measures of different kinds, and they ex-
pressed their feelings at the moment by singing these lyrical pieces, and
accompanying them with lively gesticulations : in this the model was
rather the monodies of Euripides than the lyrical passages in Aris-
tophanes.
We have now brought down the history of the Attic drama from
Mschylus to Menandcr, and in naming these two extreme points of
the series through which dramatic poetry developed itself, we cannot
refrain from reminding our readers what a treasure of thought and life
is here unfolded to us ; what remarkable changes were here effected,
not only in the forms of poetry, but in the inmost recesses of the con-
stitution of the Greek mind ; aiid what a great and significant portion
of the history of our race is here laid before us in the most vivid
delineations.
CHAPTER XXX.
$ 1. The Dithyramb becomes the chief form of Athenian lyric poetry. Lasus of
Hermione. § 2. New style of the dithyramb introduced by Melanippides. Phi-
loxenus. Cinesias. Phrynis. Timotheus. Polyeidus. § 3. Mode of producing
the new dithyramb : its contents and character. § 4. Reflective lyric poetry.
§ 5. Social and political elegies. The Lyde of Antimachus essentially different
from these. § 6. Epic poetry. Panyasis, Chcerilus, Antimachus.
§ 1. The Drama was so well adapted to reflect the thoughts and
feelings of the people of Attica in the mirror of poetry, that other sorts
of metrical composition fell completely into the back-ground, and for
* According to a remark of the so named Demetrius P/ialer. de Elocnt., § 193.
-j According to Platonius, the middle comedy had no parabases, because thero
■was no chorus. The JEolosicon was quite without choral songs. The new come-
dians, in imitation of the older writers, wrote XOPOS at the end of the acts ; pro-
bably the pause was filled up by the performance of a flute-player. At any rate,
such was the custom at Rome. Evanthius (de Comced., p. lv. in "VYesterton's
Terence) seems to mean the" same.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 447
the public in general assumed the character rather of isolated and mo-
mentary gratifications than that of a poetic expression of prevailing
sentiments and principles.
However, Lyric poetry was improved in a very remarkable manner,
and struck out tones which seized with new power upon the spirit of the
age. This was principally effected by the new Dithyramb, the cradle
and home of which was Athens, before all the cities of Greece, even
though some of the poets who adopted this form were not born there.
As wc have remarked above,* Lasus of Hermione, the rival of Si-
monides, and the teacher of Pindar, in those early days exhibited his
dithyrambs chiefly at Athens, and even in his poems the dithyrambic
rhythm had gained the greater freedom by which it was from thence
forth characterized. Still the dithyrambs of Lasus were not generically
different from those of Pindar, of which we still possess a beautiful
fragment. This dithyramb was designed for the vernal Dionysia at
Athens, and it really seems to breathe the perfumes and smile with the
brightness of spring. t The rhythmical structure of the fragment is bold
and rich, and a lively and almost violent motion prevails in it ; I but this
motion is subjected to the constraint of fixed laws, and all the separate
parts are carefully incorporated in the artfully constructed whole. We
also see from this fragment that the strophes of the dithyrambic ode
were already made very long ; from principles, however, which will be
stated in the sequel, we must conclude that there were antistroplu s
corresponding to tliese strophes.
§ 2. The dithyramb assumed a new character in the hands of Me-
laniitides of Melos. He was maternal grandson of the older Melan-
ippides, who was born ahout 01. 65. B.C. 520, and was contemporary
with Pindar ;§ the younger and more celebrated Melanippides lived
for a long period with Perdiccas, king of Macedon, who reigned from
about 01. 81, 2. b.c. 454, to 01. 91, 2. b.c. 414 ; consequently, hefore
and during the greater part of the Peloponnesian war. The comic poet
Pherecrates (who, like Aristophanes, was in favour of maintaining the
old simple music as an essential part of the old-fashioned morality)
considers the corruption of the ancient musical modes as having com-
menced with him. Closely connected with this change is the increasing
importance of instrumental music ; in consequence of which the flute-
players, after the time of Melanippides, no longer received their hire
* Chap. XIV. § L4. t Sce above, Chap. XIV. § 7.
% The paonic Bpecies of rhythms, to which the ancients especially assign "the
splendid," (to ftsyaXovpivU,) is the prevailing one iii this fragment.
§ That the younger Melanippides is the person with whom, according to the
eelebrated verses of Pherecrates, (Plutarch de Musica, HO. Meineke /•>. Com. Gr.,
vol.11. p. 326,) tlu' corruption of music begins, is clear, partly from the direct
statement of Suidas, partly from his chronological relation to Cinesias and Phi-
loxenus. The celebrated Melanippides was also the contemporary of Thucydides,
(Marcellin. V. Thucyd. § 29,) and of Socrates, (Xenoph. Mem., 1. '• {> 3.)
448 HISTORY OF THE
as mere secondary persons and assistants, from the poets themselves, but
■were paid immediately by the managers of the festival.*
Melanippides was followed by Philoxemus of Cythera, first his slave
and afterwards his pupil, who is ridiculed by Aristophanes in his later
plays, and especially in the Plutus.-\ He lived, at a later period, at the
court of Dionysius the elder, and is said to have taken all sorts of liber-
ties with the tyrant, who sometimes indulged in poetry as an amateur;
but he had to pay for this distinction by confinement to the stone-quar-
ries at Syracuse, when the tyrant was in a bad humour. He died 01.
100, 1. b.c. 380. \ His Dithyrambs enjoyed the greatest reputation
all over Greece, and it is remarkable that while Aristophanes speaks of
him as a bold innovator, Antiphanes, the poet of the middle comedy,
praises his music as already the genuine style of music, and calls Phi-
loxenus himself, " a god among men;" whereas he calls the music and
lyric poetry of his own time a flowery style of composition, which adorns
itself with foreign melodies. §
In the series of the corrupters of music, Pherecrates, in the passage
already quoted, mentions, next to Melanippides, Cinesias, whom Aris-
tophanes also ridicules about the middle of the Peloponnesian war, || on
account of his pompous, and at the same time empty diction, and also
for his rhythmical innovations. " Our art," he there says, " has its
origin in the clouds : for the splendid passages of the dithyrambs must
be aereal, and obscure ; azure-radiant, and wing-wafted." Plato % de-
signedly brings forward Cinesias as a poet who obviously attached no
importance to making his hearers better, but only sought to please the
greater number : just as his father Males, who sang to the harp, had
wished only to please the common people, but, as Plato sarcastically adds,
had done just the reverse, and had only shocked the ears of his audience.
Next to Cinesias, Phrvnis is arraigned by the personification of Music,
who comes forward as the accuser in the lines of Pherecrates, of being
one of her worst tormentors, " who had quite annihilated her with his
twisting and turnings, since he had twelve modes on five strings." This
Phrynis was a later offshoot of the Lesbian school ; he was a singer to
the harp, who was born at Mitylene, and won his first victory at the
musical contests which Pericles had introduced at the Panathenoea ; **
he flourished before and during the Peloponnesian war. The alteration
in the old nomes of Terpander, which originally formed the con-
ventional basis of harp-music, is attributed to him. ft
* Plutarch, <le Mus. (> 30. f Aristoph. P/ut. 290 ; and see Schol.
% Fifty-five years old. Marm. Par. ep. G9. 6 Athen. XIY. p. G43, D.
|j Birds, 1372. Comp. Clouds, 332. Pence, S32." ^ Gorffias, p. 501, D.
** 'Ecri KaXxUv ugxavro;. Scho/. Clouds, i'"iG. But no Callias answers to the tims
when Pericles was agonothetes, and built the Odeium, (about 01. 84. Plutarch,
Peru/. 13,) and it is probable that ive should substitute the archon Callimachu9
(01, 83, 3.) for Callias. ft Plutarch, de Mus. G.
LITERATURE Ov ANCIENT GREECE. 449
Timotheus of Miletus* funned himself after the model of Phrvnis ;
at a later period he gained the victory over his master in the musical
contests, and raised himself to the highest rank among dithyrambic poets.
He is the last of the musical artists censured hy Pherecrates, and died in
extreme old age in 01. 105, 4. b.c. 357. t Although the Ephors at
Sparta are said to have taken from his harp four of its eleven strings,
Greece in general received his innovations in music with the most cordial
approbation ; he was one of the most popular musicians of his time.
The branches of poetry, which he worked out in the spirit of his own
age, were in general the same which Terpander cultivated 4(J0 years
before, namely, Nomes, % Proems, and Hymns. There were still some
antique forms which he too was obliged to observe ; for instance, the
hexameter verse was not quite given up by Timotheus in his nomes ;
but he recited them in the same manner as the Dithyramb, and mixed
up this metre with others. § The branch of poetry which he chiefly
cultivated, and which gave its colour to all the others, was undoubtedly
the Dithyramb.
Timotheus, too, was worsted, if not before the tribunal of impartial
judges, at least in the favour of the public, by Polyeidus, whose scholar
Philotas also won the prize from Timotheus in a musical contest. ||
Polyeidus was also regarded as one of those whose artificial innovations
were injurious to music, but he also gained a great reputation among the
Greeks. There was nothing which so much delighted the crowded
audiences which flocked to the theatres throughout Greece as the Dithy-
rambs of Timotheus and Polyeidus. ^[
Besides these poets and musicians there was still a long series of others,
among whom we may name Ion of Chios, who was also a favourite
dithyrambic poet;** Diagoras of Melos, the notorious sceptic ; ft the
highly-gifted Licymnius of Chios, (whose age is not accurately known ;)
Crexus, also accused of innovations ; and Telestes of Selinus, a poetic
* See, besides the better known passages, Aristot. Metaphys. A. ixttvrov, c. 1.
f Marin. Par. 7(3. Suictas perhaps places his death most correctly at the age
of 97.
X Steph. Byz. v. MiXfivas, attributes to bun IS books of /opti xifuevlizo), in 8,000
verses ; where the expression 'irn is not to be taken strictly to signify the hex-
ameter, although this metre was mixed up in them.
§ Plut. de Mus. 4. Timotheus's Nome, " the Persians," began ; Kahvov iXtuhtfas
rivxw piyav 'EWdh xoirftav, Pausan. VIII. 50, ^ 3.
1| Athenams, VIII. p. 352, B. Comp. Plutarch, de Mus. 21. It is clear that be
is not the same as the tragedian and sophist Polyeidus, mentioned in Aristotle's
Poetic. Aristotle would hardly have given the name l <ro$i<rrhs to a dithyrambic
poet whose pursuit was chiefly the study of music.
^ In a Cretan decree, (Corp. Insrr. Gr. N. 305,) one Menedes of Teos is
praised for having often played on the harp at Cnossus after the style of Timotheus,
Polyeidus, and the old Cretan poets (chap. XII. § 9).
** Comp. Chap. VI. § 2.
ft The most important fragments of his lyric poems are given by the Epicurean,
Phtedrus, in the papyri brought from Ilercukmcum (Uercu/anensia, ed. Drummond
et Walpolc, p. 164).
Jd G
450 HISTORY OF THE
opponent of Melanippides,* who gained a victory at Athens in 01. 94, 3.
b.c. 401.
§ 3. It is far more important, however, to obtain a clear conception
of the more recent Dithyramb in aJl its peculiarities. This we shall be
better able to do by first establishing some of the main points of the
question.
With regard to the mode of exhibition, the Dithyrambs at Athens,
during the Peloponnesian war, were still represented by choruses
furnished by the ten tribes for the Dionysian festivals; consequently,
the dithyrambic poets were also called Cyclic chorus-teachers : t but the
more liberty they gave to the metre, the more various their rhythmical
alterations, so much the more difficult was the exhibition by means of a
complete chorus ; and so much the more common it became to get the
Dithyramb performed by private amateurs. J The Dithyramb also en-
tirely gave up the antistrophic repetition of the same metres, and moved
on in rhythms which depended entirely on the humour and caprice of
the poet;§ it was particularly characterized by certain runs by way of
prelude, which were called am/3o/W, and which are much censured by
strict judges, || but doubtless were listened to with avidity by the public
in general. In this the poet had nothing to hinder him from passing
from one musical note to another, or from combining various rhythms in the
same poem ; so that at last all the constraints of metre seemed to vanish,
and poetry in its very highest flight seemed to meet the opposite extreme
of prose, as the old critics remark.
At the same time the Dithyramb assumed a descriptive, or, as Aristotle
says, a mimetic character.^ The natural phenomena which it described
were imitated by means of tunes and rhythms, and the pantomimic ges-
ticulations of the actors, (as in the antiquated Hyporcheme) ; and this was
very much aided by a powerful instrumental accompaniment, which
sought to represent with its loud full tones the raging elements, the voices
of wild beasts, and other sounds.**
With regard to the contents or subject of this dithyrambic poetry, in
this it was based upon the compositions of Xenocritus, Simonides, and
other old poets, who had taken subjects for the Dithyramb from the
* Athen. XIV. p. 616, E, relates, in very pretty verses, a contest between the
two poets, on the question whether Minerva had rejected the flute-accompaniment.
•J- Aristoph. Birds, 1403.
+ Aristotle speaks of this alteration, Problem. 19, 15. Comp. Rhetor. III. 9.
|| * uax^a. avafiokh tu Toiriffavri xaxlar'/i : an hexameter with a peculiar synizesis.
1! This is called fiira.p>o>.h. The fragments of the dithyrambic poets consequently
contain also many pieces in simple Doric rhythms.
* Plato (Resp. p. 396) alludes to this imitation of storms, roaring torrents, lowing
herds, &c, in the Dithyrambs. A parasite wittily observed of one of these storm-
cVthyrambs of Timotheus, that "he had seen greater storms, than those which
Timotheus made, in many a kettle of boiling water." Athen. "VIII. p. 338, A.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 451
ancient heroic mythology.* The Dithyrambs of Melanippides announce
this even by their titles, such as Mcwsyos, (in which, by a modification
of the legend, Athena invents the flute, and on her throwing it away it
is taken up by Marsyas,) Persephone, and the Danaidcs. The Cyclops
of Philoxenus was in great repute ; in this the poet, who was well known
in Sicily, introduced the beautiful Sicilian story of the love of the Cyclops
Polyphemus for the sea-nymph Galatea, who on account of the beautiful
Acis rejects his suit, till at last he takes deadly vengeance on his success-
ful rival. From the verses in Aristophanes in which Philoxenus is paro-
died, f we may pretty well see in what spirit this subject was treated.
The Cyclops was represented as a harmless monster, a good-natured
Caliban, who roams about the mountains followed by his bleating sheep
and goats as if they were his children, and collects wild herbs in his
wallet, and then half-drunk lays himself down to sleep in the midst of
his flocks. In his love he becomes even poetical, and comforts himself
for his rejection with songs which he thinks quite beautiful : even his
lambs sympathize, with his sorrows and bleat longingly for the fair Ga-
latea. \ In this whole poem (the subject of which Theocritus took up at
a later period and with better taste formed it into an Idyll §) the ancients
discerned covert allusions to the connexion of the poet with Dionysius,
the poetizing tyrant of Sicily, who is said to have deprived Philoxenus of
the object of his love. If we add to this the statement that Timotheus'
Dithyramb, " the travails of Semcle," || passed with the ancients for an
indecent and unimaginative representation of such ascene,*f[we shall have
the means of forming a satisfactory judgment of the general nature of this
new Dithyramb. There was no unity of thought ; no one tone pervading
the whole poem, so as to preserve in the minds of the hearers a consistent
train of feelings ; no subordination of the story to certain ethical ideas ;
no artificially constructed system of verses regulated by fixed laws; but
a loose and wanton play of lyrical sentiments, which were set in motion
by the accidental impulses of some mythical story, and took now one
direction, now another; preferring, however, to seize on such points as
gave room for an immediate imitation in tones, and admitting a mode of
description which luxuriated in sensual charms. Many monodies in the
later tragedies of Euripides, such as Aristophanes ridicules in the " Frogs,"
have this sensual colouring, and in this want of a firm basis to rest upon
* Chap. XIV. § 11. comp. XXI, § I.
t Pltttus, 290. 'The scrags of the sheep and goats, which the chorus was there to
bleat forth to please Carion, refer to the imitations of these animals in the Dithyramb.
$ Hermesianax Fragm. v. 7i.
♦ Theocrit. Id. \i., where the reader -^lould consult the scholia.
if Of this the witty Stratonicus said, " could she have cried out more piteously,
if she had been bringing forth not a God, but a common mechanic I" Athen, VIII.
p. 352. A. In a similar spirit Polyeidua made Atlas a shepherd in Libya. Tzetz.
on Lycophr. 879.
2g 2
452 HISTORY OF THE
have quite the character of the contemporary Dithyramb, of which they
perhaps furnish a most vivid picture.
§ 4. From these productions of Euripides which intrude on the domain
of lyric poetry, we may also observe that, in addition to this pictorial
delineation of sensible impressions, a species of reflexion which set about
analyzing and dissecting every thing, and a sort of transcendental reason-
ing had established themselves also in the lyric poetry of the time. The
Dithyramb furnished less room for this than the other more tranquil forms
of poetry. We call attention especially to the abstract subjects introduced
into the encomiastic poetry, which was exhibited under the form of
Pceans, such as Health, and others of the same kind, which were in
fashion at the time. We have several verses of a similar' poem by
Licymnius,* most of which are contained in a short paean on health, by
Aiupiiron, which has been preserved, and in which avc are told with
perfect truth, but at the same time in the most insipid manner, that neither
wealth, nor power, nor any other human bliss, can be properly enjoyed
without health.f The Psean or scolium on " Virtue " by the great
Aristotle is no doubt lyric in form, but quite as abstract as these in its
composition. Virtue, at the beginning of the ode, is ostentatiously repre-
sented with all the warmth of inspiration as a young beauty, to die for
whom is considered in Hellas as an enviable lot : and the series of mighty
heroes who had suffered and died for her is closed by a transition, which,
though abrupt, no doubt proceeded from the deepest feelings of Aristotle,
to the praise of his noble-minded friend Hermeias, the ruler of
Atarneus.
§ 5. The Eleqy still continued a favourite poetical amusement while
Attic literature flourished ; it remained true to its original destination, to
enliven the banquet and to shed the gentle light of a higher poetic feeling-
over the convivialities of the feast. Consequently, the fragments of elegies
of this time by Ion of Chios, Dionysius of Athens, Evenus the sophist
of Paros, and Critias of Athens, all speak much of wine, of the proper
mode of drinking, of dancing and singing at banquets, of the cottabus-
game, which young people were then so fond of, and of other things of
the same kind, and they took as their subject the joys of the banquet and
the right measure to be observed at it. This elegiac poetry proceeds on
the principle that we should enjoy ourselves in society, combining the
pleasures of the senses with intellectual gratifications, and not forgetting
our higher calling in the midst of such enjoyments. " To drink and
sport and be right-minded" — is the expression of Ion. J As however
the thoughts easily passed from the festal board to the general social
* Sextus Emphicus adv. Malhemalicos, p. 447 c.
■J- Athen. XV. p. 702, A. Boeekh. Corp. Inicrip/. I. p. 477, seqq. Schneidewin
Delectus poes. Gr. eley. iamb, me/wee, p. 450.
J nivitv xxi vra'ifyii) xxi tk }i'xaia tpoovilv.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 453
and political interests of the time, the elegy had political features also,
and statesmen often expressed in this form their opinions on the course
to be adopted for Greece in general and for the different republics in par-
ticular. This must have been the case with the elegies of Dionysius,
who was a considerable statesman of the time of Pericles, and led the
Athenians who settled at Thurii, in the great Hellenic migration to that
place. The Athenians by way of joke called him "the man of copper,"
because he had proposed the introduction of a copper coinage in addition
to the silver money which had been exclusively used before that time.
It is to be wished that we had the continuation of that elegy of Dionvsius
which ran thus : " Come here, and listen to good intelligence : adjust your
cup-battles, give all your attention to me, and listen."* The political
tendency appeared still more clearly in the elegies of Critias, the son of
Callacschrus, in which he said bluntly that he had recommended in the
public assembly that Alcibiades should be recalled and had drawn ujj
the decreet The predilection for Lacedaemon, which Critias had im-
bibed as one of the Eupatridae and as a friend of Socrates, declares itself
in his commendations of the old customs, which the Spartans kept up
at their banquets : I nevertheless we have no right to suppose in this
an early manifestation of the ill-affected and treasonable opinions with
regard to the democracy of Athens, which only gradually and through
the force of circumstances developed themselves in the character of
Critias with the fearful consetpiences which often convert a single false
step of the politician into a disastrous and criminal progress for the rest
of his life.
From this elegiac poetry, which was cultivated in the circle of Attic
training, we must carefully distinguish the elegies of Antimachus of
Colophon, which we may term a revival of the love-sorrows of Mimner-
mus. Antimachus, who flourished after 01. 94, b.c. 404, was in general
a reviver of ancient poetry, one who, keeping aloof from the stream of the
new-fashioned literature, applied himself exclusively to his own studies,
and on that very account found little sympathy among the people of his
own time, as indeed appears from the well-known story that, when he
was reciting his Thelitis, all his audience left the room with the single
exception of Plato. His elegiac poem was called Lydc, and was dedi-
cated to the remembrance of a Lydian maiden whom Antimachus had
loved and early lost. § The whole work, therefore, was a lamentation for
her loss, which doubtless gained life and warmth from the longing and
ever-recurring recollections of the poet. It is true that Antimachus, as
we are told, availed himself largely of mythical materials in the execution
of his poem, but if be had only adorned the general thought, that his
love had caused him sorrow, with examples of the similar destiny of
* Athen. XV. p. GC.9, B. f Plutarch, Alcib. 3:5.
X Athen. X. p. 432, D. § According to the passage in llcirnesianax,
454 HISTORY OF THE
others, his poem could not possibly have gained the reputation which it
enjoyed in ancient times.
§ 6. Here we must resume the thread of our history of Epic poetrij,
which we dropped with Pisander, (chapter IX.) Epic poetry, however,
did not slumber in the mean time, but found an utterance in Panyasis
of Halicarnassus, the uncle of Herodotus, (fl. 01. 78, b.c. 468,*) in
Chcerilus of Samos, a contemporary of Lysander, (about 01. 94, b.c.
404,) and in Antimacuus of Colophon, just mentioned, whose younger
days coincide with the old age of Chcerilus : t these poets, however, were
received by the public with an indifference fully equal to the general
attention and admiration which the Homeric poems had excited. The
Alexandrian school was the first to bring them into notice, and the critics
of this school placed Panyasis and Antimachus, together with Pisander,
in the first rank of epic poets. On this account also we have proportion-
ally few fragments of these poets ; most of the citations from them are made
onlv for the sake of learned illustrations; but little has come down to us,
which could give us a conception of their general style and art.
Pa iNYAsis comprised in his "Hercules" a great mass of mythical
legends, and was chiefly occupied with painting in romantic colours the
adventures of this hero in the most distant regions of the world. The
description of the mighty feats of this hero, of his athletic strength and
invincible courage, were no doubt relieved or softened down by pictures
of a very different kind ; such as those, in which Panyasis gave life to a
feast where Hercules was present by recounting the pleasant speeches
of the valiant bancpieters, or painted in warm colours the thraldom of
Hercules to Omphale which brought him to Lydia.
In a great epic poem caUed Ionica, Panyasis took for his subject the
early history of the Ionians in Asia Minor, and their wanderings and
settlements under the guidance of Neleus and others of the descendants
of Codrus.
Choxrilus of Samos formed the grand plan of exalting in epic poetry
the greatest or at least the most joyful event of Greek history, the
expedition of Xerxes, king of Persia, against Greece. We could not
blame this choice, even though we considered the historical epos, pro-
perly so called, an unnatural production. But the Persian war was in its
leading features an event of such simplicity and grandeur, — the despot
of the East leading against the free republics of Greece, countless hosts
of people who had no will of their own, — and besides this, the sub-
* This date is given by Suidas ; somewhat later, (about 01. 82,) Panyasis was
put to death by Lygdamis, the tyrant of Halicarnassus, whom Herodotus afterwards
expelled.
f "When Lysander was in Samos as the conqueror of Athens, Chcerilus was then
with him, and in the musical contests which Lysander established there, Anti-
machus, son of Niceratus, from Heraclea, then a young man, was one of the
defeated poets. Plutarch, Lysander, 18.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 4oo
ordinate details had been cast into sucli darkness and obscurity by the
infinite multiplication of stories among the Greeks, that it gave room for
an absolutely poetic treatment. If Aristotle is right in asserting that
poetry is more philosophical than history, because it contains more
general truth, it must be admitted that events like the Persian war place
themselves on the same footing with poetry, or with a history naturally
poetical. Whether Chcerilus, however, conceived this subject in all its
grandeur, and considered it with equal liveliness and vigour in its higher
and lower relations, cannot now be determined, as the few fragments
refer to particulars only, and generally to subordinate details* It is a
bad svmptom that Chcerilus should complain, in the first verses of his
poem, that the subjects of epic poetry were already exhausted : t this
could not have been his motive if he had undertaken to paint the greatest
deed of the Greeks. But, in general, a striving after novelty seems to
have produced marked effects upon his works, both in general and in
the details. Aristotle finds fault with his comparisons as far-fetched
and obscure ; \ and even the fragments have been sometimes justly
censured for their forced and artificial tone. §
The Thebais of Antimachus was formed on a wide and comprehen-
sive plan ; there was mythological lore in the execution of the details,
and careful study in the choice of expressions ; but the whole poem was
deficient, according to the judgment of the ancient critics, in that natural
connexion which arrests and detains the attention, and in that charm of
poetic feeling which no laborious industry or elaborate refinement can
produce. || Hadrian, therefore, remained true to his predilection for
everything showy, affected, and unnatural, when he placed Antimachus
before Homer, and attempted an epic imitatioc of the style of the
former, %
* It is clear that the Athenians did not pay Chcerilus a golden stater for every
verse, as has been inferred from Suidas : it is obvious that t is is a confusion with
the later Chcerilus, whom Alexander rewarded in so princely a manner. Herat.
Ep. II. 1, 233.
j - T A ft-oLKUf opti; 'ir,v kuvov y^^oiot "djii; utiduv
tlavrawv fcoccrruv, or u,Kr,pa.ros r,v irt Xii/iuv.
vvv o on TutTa ozouffrui, t^ov/ri oi Tii^ara Ti^vai,
i/<rTU.roi avTi fyof&ou xwrccXuirofiif' ovoi *>! arnv
•xtLvrri iranrTaivmra. vio^vyn uof&a <zO*a.<r<ra.i.
These verses are preserved in the Scholiast to Aristot. Rhet. III. 14, § 4, in Gais-
ford's Animadversiones (Oxon. 1S20). Compare- Naeke's Chcerilus, p. 101.
% Aristot. Topic. VIII. 1.
\ A. F. Naeke, Chcenli Samii qua super tuni. Lips. 1817.
]| AnUinnrhi Co/opho/iii re/iqmcc, eil. Schc/terihog, p. 3S, seq.
K Spartianus in the life of Hadrian, c. 15. The title of Hadrian's work is now
known to have been Catachanee; the poem probably had some resemblance tc tlie
Calonis Direc of Valerius.
45G history of the
CHAPTER XXXI.
§ 1. Imporf !»ncc of prose at this period. § 2. Oratory at Athens rendered neces-
sary by the democi'atical form of government. § 3. Themistocles ; Pericles :
power of their oratory. § 4. Characteristics of their oratory in relation to their
opinions and modes of thought. § 5. Form and style of their speeches.
§ 1. We have seen both tragedy and comedy in their latter days gradu-
ally sinking into prose ; and this has shown us that prose was the most
powerful instrument in the literature of the time, and has made us
the more curious to investigate its tendency, its progress, and its de-
velopemcnt.
The cultivation of prose belongs almost entirely to the period which
intervened between the Persian war and the time of Alexander the Great.
Before this time every attempt at prose composition was either so little
removed from the colloquial style of the day, as to forfeit all claim
to be considered as a written language, properly so called : or else owed
all its charms and splendour to an imitation of the diction and the forms
of words found in poetry, which attained to completeness and maturity
many hundred years before the rise of a prose literature.
In considering the history of Attic prose, we propose to give a view of the
general character of the works of the prose writers, and their relation to
the circumstances of the Athenian people, to their intellectual energy and
elasticity, and to the mixture of reason and passion which was so con-
spicuous among them. But it is obvious that it will not be possible to
do this without carefully examining the contents, the subjects, and the
practical and theoretical objects of these works.
We may distinguish three epochs in the general history of Attic prose,
from Pericles to Alexander the Great : the first that of Pericles himself,
Antiphon, and Thucydides ; the second, that of Lysias, Isocrates, and
Plato ; the third, that of Demosthenes, yEschines, and Demades. The
sequel will show why we have selected these names.
Two widely different causes co-operated in introducing the first epoch :
— Athenian politics and Sicilian sophistry. We must first take a view
of these two causes.
§ 2. Since the time of Solon, the most distinguished statesmen 'of
Athens had formed some general views with regard to the destination
of their native city, based upon a profound consideration of the external
relations and internal resources of Attica, and the peculiar capabilities
of the inhabitants. An extension of the democracy, industry, and trade,
and, above all, the sovereignty of the sea, were the primary objects
which those statesmen proposed to themselves. Some peculiar views
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT CREECH. 457
were transmitted through a series of statesmen,* from Solon to Themis-
tocles and Pericles, and were from time to time further developed and
extended; and though an opposite party in politics (that of Aristides and
Cimon) endeavoured to set bounds to this cjevelopemcnt, the point for
which they contended did not affect any one of the leading principles
which guided the other party ; they only wished to. moderate the sudden-
ness and violence of the movement.
This deep reflection on and clear perception of what was needful for
Athens, t imparted to the speeches of men like Themistocles and Pericles
a power and solidity which made a far deeper impression on the people
of Athens than any particular proposal or counsel could have done.
Public speaking had been common in Greece from the earliest times ;
long before popular assemblies had gained the sovereign power by the
establishment of democracy, the ancient kings had been in the habit
of addressing their people, sometimes with that natural eloquence which
Homer ascribes to Ulysses, at other times, like Menelaus, with concise
but persuasive diction : Nesiod assigns to kings a muse of their own, —
Calliope — by whose aid they were enabled to speak convincingly and
persuasively in the popular assembly and from the seat of judgment.
With the further developement of republican constitutions after the age
of Homer and Hesiod, public officers and demagogues without number
had spoken in the public meetings, or in the deliberative councils and
legislative committees of the numerous independent states, and no doubt
they often spoke eloquently and wisely ; but these speeches did not sur-
vive the particular occasion which called them forth : they were wasted
on the air without leaving behind them a more lasting effect than would
have been produced by a discourse of common life; and in this whole
period it seems never to have been imagined that oratory coidd produce,
effects more lasting than the particular occurrence which gave occasion
for a display of it, or that it was capable of exerting a ruling influence
over all the actions and inclinations of a people. Even the lively and
ingenious lonians were distinguished at the flourishing epoch of their
literature, for an amusing style, adapted to such narratives as might be
communicated in private society, rather than for the more powerful
eloquence of the public assembly : at least Herodotus, whose history may
be considered as belonging to Ionian literature, though he is fond of
introducing dialogues and short speeches, never incorporates with his
history the popular harangues which are so remarkable in Thucy-
* Soe Plutarch, Themis/. 2. Themistocles studied as a young man under Mnc-
siphilus, -who makes such a distinguished appearance in Herod; YIII. 57, and
who had devoted himself to the so called «^/«, which, according to Plutarch,
consisted in political capacity and practical understanding, and which had descended
from Solon.
f Tou ilairat, an expression which was very common at Athens in the time of
Pericles, and denoted whatever was expedient under tlie existing circumstances
of the state.
458
HISTORY OF THE
dides. It is unanimously agreed among the ancients that Athens was
the native soil of oratory,* and as the works of Athenian orators alone
have come down to us, so also we may safely conclude that the ruder
oratory, not designed for literary preservation, but from which oratory,
as a branch of literature, arose, was cultivated in a much higher degree
among the Athenians •than in all the rest of Greece.
§ 3. Themistocles, who with equal courage and genius had laid the
foundations of the greatness of Athens at the most dangerous and difficult
crisis of her history, was not distinguished for eloquence, so much as
for the wisdom of his plans, and the energy with which he carried them
out; nevertheless, it is universally agreed that he was in the highest
degree capable of unfolding his views, and of recommending them by
argument. f The oratory of Pericles occupies a much more prominent
position. The power and dominion of Athens, though continually assailed
by new enemies, seemed at last to have acquired some stability : it was
time to survey the advantages which had been gained, and to become
acquainted with the principles which had led to their acquisition and
might contribute to their increase : the question too arose, what use should
be made of this dominion over the Greeks of the islands and the [coasts,
which it had cost so much trouble to obtain, and of the revenues which
flowed into Athens in such abundant streams. It is manifest, from the
whole political career of Pericles, that on the one hand he presupposed
in his people a power of governing themselves, and on the other hand
that he wished to prevent the state from becoming a mere stake to
be played for by ambitious demagogues : for he favoured every institu-
tion which gave the poorer citizens a share in the government; he
encouraged everything which might contribute to extend education and
knowledge ; and by his astonishing expenditure on works of architec-
ture and sculpture, he gave the people a decided fondness for the grand
and beautiful. And thus the appearance of Pericles on the bema (which
he purposely reserved for great occasions^) was not intended merely
to aid the passing of some law, but was at the same time calculated
to infuse a noble spirit into the general politics of Athens, to guide
the views of the Athenians in regard to their external relations and all
the difficulties of their position ; and it was the wish of this true friend
of the people that all this might long survive himself. This is obviously
the opinion of Thucydides, whom we may consider as in many respects a
worthy disciple of the school of Pericles ; and this is the representation
which he has given us of the oratory of that statesman in the three
speeches (all of them delivered on important occasions) which he has
* Studium eloquenticB proprium Athena/rum, Cicero, Brutus, XIII.
f Not to mention other authorities, Lysias {Epitaph. XLII.) says that he was
'lxu.viaTtt.To; u-iruv x.a.i yvwvai kou vrga£,sti,
% Plutarch, Pericles VII
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 459
put into his mouth. This wonderful triad of speeches forms a beau-
tiful whole, which is perfect and complete in itself. The Jirst speech*
proves the necessity of a war with the Peloponnesians, and the proba-
bility that it will be successful : the second,^ delivered immediately after
the first successes obtained in the war, under the form of a funeral ora-
tion, confirms the Athenians in their mode of living and acting ; it is
half an apology for, half a panegyric upon Athens : it is full of a sense of
truth and of noble self-reliance, tempered with moderation ; the third, }
delivered after the calamities which had befallen Athens, rather through the
plague than through the war, and which had nevertheless made the people
vacillate in their resolutions, offers the consolation most worthy of a noble
heart, namely, that up to that time fortune, on which no man can count,
had deceived them, but they had not been misled by their own calcula-
tions and convictions ; and that these would never deceive them if they
did not allow themselves to be led astray by some unforeseen accidents. §
§ 4. No speech of Pericles has been preserved in writing. It may
seem surprising that no attempt was made to write down and preserve,
for the benefit of the present and future generations, works which every
one considered admirable, and which were regarded as, in some re-
spects, the most perfect specimens of oratory. || The only explanation
of this that can be offered is, that in those days a speech was not con-
sidered as possessing any value or interest, save in reference to the par-
ticular practical object for which it was designed : it had never occurred
to people that speeches and poems might be placed in one class, and
both preserved, without reference to their subjects, on account of the skill
with which the subjects were treated, and the general beauties of the
form and composition. ^f Only a few emphatic and nervous expressions of
Pericles were, kept in remembrance; but a general impression of the
grandeur and copiousness of his oratory long prevailed among the Greeks.
We are enabled, partly by this long prevalent impression, which is men-
tioned even by later writers, and partly by the connexion between Pericles
and the other old Attic orators, as also with Thucydides, to form a clear
conception of his style of speaking, without drawing much upon our
imagination.
* Thucyd. I., 140—144. f Thucyd. II. =55— 4G. + Thucyd. II. 60—64.
§ A speech of Pericles, in which he took a general survey of the military power
and resources of Athens, is given by Thucydides (II. 13,) indirectly and in outline,
because this was not an opportunity lor unfolding a train of leading ideas.
| Plato, though not ve/y partial to Pericles, nevertheless considers him as
TtXiwTXTo; ik rh* p»Te£ixr,v, and refers for the cause to his acquaintance with the
speculations of Anaxagoras, Phcedr. L'70. Cicero, in his Brutus XII., calls him
" oratorcm prope perfeetum," only to leave something to be said for the other
orators.
11 [All the speeches which have been preserved to us from antiquity have been
preserved by the orators themselves. Pericles appears to have made no record of
his speeches; and probably he would have considered it degrading, in his eminent
position, to place himself on the footing of a y.oyoyeufo;. — Editor.]
460 HISTORY OF TIIF.
The primary characteristic of the oratory of Pericles, and those who
most resembled him is, that their speeches are full of thoughts concisely
expressed. Unaccustomed to continued abstraction, and unwilling to
indulge in trivial reasonings, their powers of reflection seized on all the
circumstances of the world around them with fresh and unimpaired
vigour, and, assisted by abundant experience and acute observations,
brought the light of their clear general conceptions to bear upon every
subject which they took up. Cicero characterizes Pericles, Alcibiades, and
TJiucydides, (for he rightly reckons the two latter among the orators,) by the
epithets " subtle, acute, and concise,"' and distinguishes between them
and the somewhat younger generation of Critias, Theramenes, and Lysias,
who had also, he says, retained some of the sap and life-blood of Pericles,f
but had spun the thread of their discourse rather more liberally. J
With regard to the opinions of Pericles, we know that they were
remarkable for the comprehensive views of public affairs on which they
were based. The majesty for which Pericles was so distinguished, and
which gained for him the appellation of " the Olympian," consisted
mostly in the skill and ability with which he refen - ed all common occur-
rences to the general principles and bold ideas, which he had derived from
his noble and exalted view of the destiny of Athens. Accordingly, Plato
says of Pericles, that in addition to his natural abilities, he had acquired
an elevation of mind and a habit of striving after definite objects. § It
was on this account, too, that his opinions took such a firm hold of his
hearers ; according to the metaphor of Eupolis — they remained fixed in
the mind, like the sting of the bee.
§ 5. It was because the thoughts of Pericles were so striking, so
entirely to the purpose, and at the same time so grand, and we may
add it was on this account alone, that his speeches produced so deep
and lasting an impression. The sole object of the oratory of Pericles
was to produce conviction, to give a permanent bias to the mind of the
people. It was alien from his intentions to excite any sudden and tran-
sient burst of passion by working on the emotions of the heart. The
whole history of Attic oratory teaches us that there could not be in the
* He says subfiles, arnti, breves, se/itentiis magis quam verbis abundant es, by which lie
means, " skilful in the choice of words, and in the distinct expression of every
thought" (subfiles), " refined in their ideas" (acuti), " concise" (breves), " and
with more thoughts than words."
■f Reiinebaut ilium Periclis succum.
J l)e Orator. II. 22. In the Brutus, c. VII., he gives a rather different classifi-
cation of the old orators. In the latter work he classes Alcibiades along with
Critias and Theramenes, and says the style of their oratory may be gathered from
Tlvucydides ; he calls them gramles verbis, crebri sententiis, compressione rerum breves,
et ob earn causam subobscuri. Ciitias is described by Philostratus, Sophist. I. 16, and
still better by Hermogenes, v.t) lltoZi, (in Walz, Rhet. Grceci. L. III., p. 38S) : and
we may infer that he stood, in regard to style, between Antiphon and Lysias.
6 Plato, Plicrilrus, p. 270 : ro i/^nXovouv tvuto xal -ravTri TiXuriougyov. . . i U'.oixXn;
■raos to tbpuris titm ix.twu.to. The <nXio-tov>yh denotes, according to the context,
the striving after a great fixed object.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 46 1
speeches of Pericles the slightest employment of those means hy which
the orators of a later age used to set in motion the violent and unruly
impulses of the multitude. To judge from the descriptions which have
heen given of the manner of Pericles when he ascended the bema, it
was tranquil, with hardly any change of feature, with calm and dignified
gestures ; his garments were undisturbed by oratorical gesticulations of
any kind, and the tone and loudness of his voice were equable and sus-
tained.* We may conceive that the frame of mind which this delivery
expressed, and which it excited in the hearers, was in harmony and unison
with it. Pericles had no wish to gratify the people otherwise than by
ministering to their improvement and benefit. He never condescended
to flatter them. Great as was his idea of the resources and high des-
tinies of Athens, he never feared in particular cases to tell them even
the harshest truths. When Pericles declaimed against the people, this
was thought, according to Cicero, a proof of his affection towards them,
and produced a pleasing impression ;t even when his own safety was
threatened, he was content to wait till they had an opportunity of
becoming convinced of his innocence, and he never sought to produce this
conviction otherwise than by a clear and energetic representation of the
truth, studiously avoiding any appeal to transient emotions and feelings.
lie was just as little anxious to amuse or entertain the populace. Pericles
never indulged in a smile while speaking from the bema.J His dignity
never stooped to merriment. § All his public appearances were marked
by a sustained earnestness of manner.
Some traditional particulars and the character of the time enable us
also to form an opinion of the diction of the speeches of Pericles. lie
employed the language of common life, the vernacular idiom of Attica,
even more than Thucydides :|| but his accurat.: discrimination of mean-
ings gave his words a subtilty and pregnancy which was a main
ingredient in the nervous energy of his style. Although there was
more of reasoning than of imagination in his speeches, he had no diffi-
culty in giving a vivid and impressive colouring to his language by the
use of striking metaphors and comparisons, and as the prose of the day
was altogether unformed, by so doing, he could not help expressing him-
self poetically. A good many of these figurative expressions and apo-
phthegms in the speeches of Pericles have been preserved, and especially
by Aristotle : as when he said of the Samians, that " they were like little
children who cried when they took their food ;" or when at the funeral
of a number of young persons who had fallen in battle, he used the
beautiful figure, that " the year had lost its spring. "^f
* Plutarch, Pericl. V.
f Cicero.de Orat. II I. 34.
J Plutarch, Peru:/. 5 ; ■xootrarrov c-jtrrairi; Upturn; u; yiXurx.
§ Sunana auctoritas sine omni hilaritate, Cic. tie Offic. I. 30.
|| This appears from the fact mentioned near the end of Chap. XXVII.
II Aristotle, Rhetor. I. 7 ; III. 1, 10.
4G2 HIST011Y OF THK
CHAPTER XXXII.
§ 1. Profession of the Sophists : essential elements of their doctrines. The
principles of Protagoras. § 2. Opinions of Gorgias. Pernicious effects of his
doctrines, especially as they were carried out by his disciples. § 3. Important
services of the Sophists in forming a prose style : different tendencies of the
Sicilian and other Sophists in this respect. § 4. The rhetoric of Gorgias. § 5.
His forms of expression.
§ 1. The impulse to a further improvement of the prose style proceeded
immediately from the Sophists, who, in general, exercised a greater
influence on the culture of the Greek mind than any other class of men,
the ancient poets alone excepted.
The Sophists were, as their name indicates, persons who made know-
ledge their profession, and who undertook to impart it to every one who
was willing to place himself under their guidance. The philosophers
of the Socratic school reproached them with being the first to sell
knowledge for money ; and such was the case ; for they not only de-
manded admittance-money from those who came to hear their public
lectures (eTjrihi^ig),* but also undertook for a considerable sum, fixed
before-hand, to give young men a complete sophistical education, and
not -to dismiss them till they were thoroughly instructed in their art.
At that time a thirst for knowledge was so great in Greece,t that not
only in Athens, but also in the oligarchies of Thessaly, hearers and
pupils flocked to them in crowds ; the arrival in any city of one of the
greater sophists, Gorgias, Protagoras, or Hippias, was celebrated as a
festival; and these men acquired riches such as art and science had never
before earned among the Greeks.
Not only the outward profession, but also the peculiar doctrines of the
Sophists were, on the whole, one and the same, though they admitted of
certain modifications of greater or less importance. If we consider these
doctrines philosophically, they amounted to a denial or renunciation of
all true science. Philosophy had then just completed the. first stage of
her career : she had boldly undertaken to solve the abstrusest questions
of speculation, and the widely different answers which had been returned
to some of those questions, had all produced conviction and obtained
many staunch supporters. The difference between the results thus ob-
tained, although the grounds of this difference had not been investigated,
must of itself have awakened a doubt as to the possibility of any real
* There were wide differences in the amounts paid on these occasions. The
admission-fee for some lectures was a drachma, for others fifty drachma?
f Comp. the remark in Chap. XXVII.. $ 5.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 4(]3
knowledge regarding the hidden nature of things. Accordingly, nothing
was more likely than that every flight of speculation should he succeeded
by an epoch of scepticism, in which the universality of all science would
be doubted or denied. That all knowledge is subjective, that it is true
only for the individual, was the meaning of the celehrated saying * of
Protagoras ok Abhera, who made his appearance at Athens in the
time of Periclcs,t and for a long time enjoyed a great reputation there,
till at last a reaction was caused by the bold scepticism of his opinions,
and he was banished from Athens and his books were publicly burnt.];
Agreeing with Heraclitus in regard to the doctrine of a perpetual motion
and of a continual change in the impressions and perceptions of men, he
deduced from this that the individual could know nothing beyond these
ever varying perceptions ; consequently, that whatever appeared to
be, was so for the individual. According to this doctrine, opposite
opinions on the same subject might be equally true ; and if an opinion
were only supported by a momentary appearance of truth, this was suf-
ficient to make it true for the moment. Hence, it was one of the great
feats which Protagoras and the other Sophists professed to perform, fo be
able to speak with equal plausibility for and against the same position ;
not in order to discover the truth, but in order to show the nothingness
of truth. It was not, however, the intention of Protagoras to deprive
virtue, as well as truth, of its reality : but he reduced virtue to a mere
state or condition of the subject, — a set of impressions and feelings which
rendered the subject more capable of active usefulness. Of the gods, he
said at the very beginning of the book which caused his banishment
from Athens : " With regard to the gods, I cannot determine whether
they are or are not; for there are many obstacles in the way of this
inquiry — the uncertainty of the matter, and the shortness of human life."
§ 2. Gorgias, of Leontini, in Sicily, who visited Athens for the first
time in 01. 88, 2. b.c 427, as an ambassador from his native town,
belonged to an entirely different part of the Hellenic world, had differ-
ent teachers, and proceeded from an older philosophical school than
Protagoras, but yet there was a great correspondence between the pur-
suits of these two men ; and from this we may clearly see how strongly
the spirit of the age must have inclined to the form and mode of specu-
lation which was common to them both. Gorgias employed the dialec-
tical method of the Eleatic school, but arrived at an opposite result by
means of it : while the Eleatic philosophers directed all their efforts
towards establishing the perpetuity and unity of existence, Gorgias availed
Yla-vruv /jA.rpov ci.vtywz'/i:.
t About 01. 84. b.c. 444, according to the chronology of Apollodorus.
\ Protagoras was prosecuted for atheism and expelled from Athens, on the
accusation of Pythodorus, one of the council of the Four-hundred: this would be
in Ol. 92, 1. or 2. e z. 411, if the event happened during the time of the i'our-hun»
dred, but this is by no means established.'
4(34 History or the
himself of the methods and even of some of the conclusions, which Ztno
and Melissus had applied to such a widely different ohject, in order to
prove that nothing exists : that even if anything did exist, it would not be
cognizable, and even if it both existed and were cognizable, it could
not be conveyed and communicated by words. The result was, that
absolute knowledge was unattainable \ and that the proper end of instruc-
tion was to awaken in the pupil's mind such conceptions as are suit-
able to his own purposes and i terests. The chief distinction between
Gorgias and the other Sophists consisted in the frankness with which
he admitted, that he promised and professed nothing else than to make
his scholars apt rhetoricians; and the ridicule with which he treated
those of his colleagues who professed to teach virtue, a peculiarity which
Gur<nas shared with all the other Sophists of Sicily. The Sophists in
the mother country, on the other hand, endeavoured to awaken useful
thoughts, and to teach the principles of practical philosophy: thus
Hippias of Eli s endeavoured to season his lessons with a display of mul-
tifarious knowledge, and may be regarded as the first Polyhistor among
the Greeks:* and Puodicus of Ceos, perhaps the most respectable
among the Sophists, used to present lessons of morality under an agree-
able form : such a moral lesson was the well-known allegory of the choice
of Hercules.
In general, however, the labours of the Sophists were prejudicial alike
to the moral condition of Greece, and to the serious pursuit of knowledge.
The national morality which drew the line between right and wrong,
though not perhaps according to the highest standard, yet at any rate
with honest views, and what was of most importance, with a sort of
instinctive certainty, had received a shock from the boldness with which
philosophy had handled it ; and could not but be altogether undermined
by a doctrine which destroyed the distinction between truth and false-
hood. And though Protagoras and Gorgias shrank from declaring that
virtue and religion were nothing but empty illusions, their disciples and
followers did so most openly, when the liberty of speculation was com
pletelv emancipated from all the restraints of traditionary opinions. In
the course of the Peloponnesian war, a class of society was formed at
Athens, which was not without influence on the course of affairs, and
whose creed was, that justice and belief in the gods were but the inven-
tions of ancient rulers and legislators, who gave them currency in order
to strengthen their hold on the common herd, and assist them in the
business of government : they sometimes gave this opinion with this far
* Plato often speaks of his acquaintance with physics and astronomy : he also
inquired after genealogies, colonies, and "antiquities in general." Hippias Maj .
p. 285. Some" fragments of his treatises on political antiquities have been pre-
served: probably derived from his Imayuyn. Bockh, Prcef. ad Pindari Scholia,
p. xxi. His list of the Olympic victors was also a remarkable work.
LITERATURE Ol' ANCIENT GREECE. 4'io
more pernicious variation, that laws were made by the majority of weaker
men for their protection, whereas nature had sanctioned the right of the
strongest, so that the stronger party did but use his right when he com-
pelled the weaker to minister to his pleasure as far as he could. These
are the doctrines which Plato, in his Gorgias and in his Republic, attri-
butes to Callicles, a disciple of Gorgias, and to Thrasymachus of
Chalcedon, who flourished as a teacher of rhetoric during the Pelopon-
nesian war, and which were frequently uttered by Plato's own uncle, the
able and politic Critias who has been mentioned more than once in the
course of this history.*
§ 3. If, however, we turn from this influence of the Sophists on the
spirit of their age, and set ourselves to inquire what they did for the
improvement of written compositions, we are constrained to set a very
high value on their services. The formation of an artificial prose style
is due entirely to the Sophists, and although they did not at first proceed
according to a right method, they may be considered as having laid a
foundation for the polished diction of Plato and Demosthenes. The
Sophists of Greece proper, as well as those of Sicily, made language the
object of their study, but with this distinction, that the former aimed at
correctness, the latter at beauty of style.f Protagoras investigated the
principles of accurate composition (opOoineui), though practically he was
distinguished for a copious fluency, which Plato's Socrates vainly
attempts to bridle with his dialectic ; and Prodicus busied himself with
inquiries into the signification and correct use of words, and the discri-
mination of svnonvms: his own discourses were full of such distinctions,
as appears from the humorous imitation of his style in Plato's Pro-
tagoras.
The principal object which Gorgias proposed to himself was a
beautiful, ornamented, pleasing, and captivating style ; he was by pro-
fession a rhetorician, and had been prepared for his trade by a suit-
able education. The Sicilian Greeks, and especially the Syracusans,
whose lively disposition and natural quickness raised them, more than
any other Dorian people, to a level with the Athenians,]; had commenced,
even earlier than the people of Attica, the study of an artificial rhetoric
useful for the discussions of the law-courts. The situation of Syra-
cuse at the time of the Persian war had contributed a good deal to
awaken their natural inclination and capacity for such a study ; especially
by the impulse which the abolition of arbitrary government had given
* As a tragedian, but only with a view to the promulgation of these doctrine*,
lie is mentioned in Chap. XXVI. $ 4 ; as an Elegiae poet in Chap. XXX. $ 5 ;
and as an orator. Chap. XXXI. § 4. ■
t This distinction is pointed out by Leonhard ,<engel in his useful work,
~2.<jvu.yuiyn nx.vai<), sive artium scriptores, 1828, p. (53.
+ Cicero, Brutus XII., 46: Siculi arnl<i gens et controversy natura. I~<-mrt. I \ .,
43, 95: nunqvam tarn male eat Sicu/is. <i/ti/t aliquid facile et commode dicant,
2 n
466 HISTORY OF THE
to democratic sentiments (01. 78, 3. b.c. 466), and by the complicated
transactions which sprung up from the renewal of private claims long
suppressed by the tyrants.* At this time Cokax, who had been highly
esteemed by the tyrant Hiero, came forward in a conspicuous manner,
both as a public orator and as a pleader in the law r -courts ; t his great
practice led him to consider more accurately the principles of his art ;
and at last it occurred to him to -write a book on the subject;^ this book,
like the innumerable treatises which succeeded it, was called Tiyjn
prjTotnKri, " the art of rhetoric," or simply riyvr], " the art." Although
this work might have been very circumscribed in its plan, and not very
comprehensive in its treatment of the subject, it is nevertheless worthy
of notice as the first of its kind, not only among the Greeks, but
perhaps also in the whole world. For this rixvi] of Corax was not
merely the first attempt at a theory of rhetoric, but also the first thee-'
retieal book on any branch of art ; § and it is highly remarkable that
while ancient poetry was transmitted through so many generations by
nothing but practice and oral instruction, its younger sister began at once
with establishing itself in the form of a theory, and as such communicat-
ing itself to all who were desirous of learning its principles. All that we
know of this t£%v7) is that it laid down a regular form and regular
divisions for the oration ; above all, it was to begin with a distinct
prooemium, calculated to put the hearers in a favourable train, and to
conciliate their good will at the very opening of the speech. ||
§ 4. Tisias was first a pupil and afterwards a rival of Corax ; he
was also know 7 n not only as an orator, but also as the author of a "f'x'''/-
Gorgias, again, was the pupil of Tisias, and followed closely in his steps :
according to one account, 9 ^ Tisias was a colleague of Gorgias in the
embassy from Leontini mentioned above, though the pupil was at that
time infinitely more celebrated than his master. With Gorgias this
artificial rhetoric obtained more fame and glory than fell to the share
* Cic, Brut. XII., 40 (after Aristotle): cum sublatis in Sicilia tyrannis res privates
lomjn intervallo judieiis repeterenlur. Aristotle is also the authority for the statement
in the scholia on Hermogenes, in Reiske's Oratores Attici. T. Till. p. 196. Comp.
Montfaucon, Biblloth. Coislin., p. 592.
f Or as a composer of speeches for others, for it is doubtful whether there -was
an establishment of patroni and causidici at Syracuse, as at Rome; or whether every
one was compelled to plead his own cause, as at Athens, in which case he was
always able to get his speech made for him by some professed rhetorician.
% This is also mentioned by Aristotle, who wrote a history of rhetoric down to
his own time, which is now lost : besides the passages referred to above, he men-
tions the T^vij of Corax in his Rhetor. II., 24.
6 The old architectural treatises on particular buildings, such as that of Theo-
doras of Samos on the temple of Juno in that island, and those of Chersiphron and
Metagenes on the temple of Diana at Ephesus, were probably only tables of calcu-
lations and measurements.
|| These introductions were called xoXetxivrtxee xct) hgetfiurixa vrptoipw
if See Pausim. \ I., 17, 18. Diodorus, the principal authority, makes no men-
tion of Tisias, XL, 53.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 467
of any other branch of literature. The Athenians, to whom this
Sicilian rhetoric was still a novelty, though they were fully qualified
and predisposed to appreciate and enjoy its beauties,* were quite
enchanted with it, and it soon became fashionable to speak like Gorgias.
The impression produced by the oratory of Gorgias was greatly in-
creased by his stately appearance, his well-chosen and splendid costume,
and the self-possession and confidence of his demeanour. Besides, his
rhetoric rested on a basis of philosophy,! though, as has just been men-
tioned, rather of a negative kind ; and there is no trace of this in the
systems of Corax and Tisias. This philosophy taught, that the sule
aim of the orator is to turn the minds of his hearers into such a train
as may best consist with his own interests ; that, consequently, rhetoric is
the agent of persuasion, \ the art of all arts, because the rhetorician is
able to speak well and convincingly on every subject, even though he
has no accurate knowledge respecting it.
In accordance with this view of rhetoric, Gorgias took little pains with
the subject-matter of his speeches ; he only concerned himself about this
so far as to exercise himself in treating of general topics, which were
called loci commvnes, and the proper management and application of
which have always helped the rhetorician to conceal his ignorance. The
panegyrics and invectives which Gorgias wrote on every possible subject,
and which served him for practice, were also calculated to assist him in
combating or defending received opinions and convictions, by palliating
the bad, and misrepresenting the good. The same purpose was served
by his delusive and captious conclusions, which he had borrowed from
the Eleatic school, in order to pass with the common herd as a pro-
found thinker, and to confuse their notions of truth and falsehood. All
this belonged to the instrument, by virtue of which Gorgias pro-
mised, in the language of the day, to make the weaker argument^ i. e.
the worse cause, victorious over the stronger argument, i. e. the better
cause §
§ 5. But the chief study of Gorgias Avas directed to the form of ex-
pression ; and it is true that he was able, by the use. of high-sounding
words and artfully constructed sentences, to deceive not only the ears
but also the mind of the Greeks— alive as they were to the perception
of such beauties— to so great an extent that they overlooked foT a long-
time the emptiness and coldness of his declamations. Prose was at this
time commencing its career, and had nut yet manifested its resources,
and shown the beauty of which it was callable : it was natural, therefore,
* eWs; iiifuets Ka) pXoxiyn, says Diodorus. _ ( M
t This philosophy is contained in a treatise bj Gorgias, - ) Qvrta; 3 rtu pA **r*t,
of which the host account is yhoii bj Aristotle inbisessaj on Melissus, Xeno-
pbanes, and Gorgias.
1 UtlrtSs IwAivoyi;, 5 nrTM xcc) n^Trav Xoyi>$.
' * 2 ii 2
468 HISTORY OF THE
that it should take for its pattern the poetry which had preceded it by
so long an interval : the ears of the Greeks, accustomed to poetry, re-
quired of prose, if it professed to be more than a mere necessary com-
munication of thoughts, if it aimed at beauty, a great resemblance to
poetry. Gorgias complied with this requisition in two ways : in the
first place, he employed poetical words, especially rare words, and new
compounds, such as were favourites with the lyric and dithyrambic
poets.* As this poetical colouring did not demand any high flight of
ideas, or any great exertion of the imaginative powers, and as it re-
mained only an outward ornament, the style of Gorgias became turgid
and bombastic, and compositions characterized by this fault were said,
in the technical language of Greek rhetoric, to gorgiaze.^ In the second
place, the prevailing taste for prose at that time seemed to require some
substitute for the rhythmical proportions of poetry. Gorgias effected
this by giving a sort of symmetry to the structure of the sentences, so
that the impression conveyed was, that the different members of the
period were parallel and corresponding to one another, and this stamped
the whole with an appearance of artificial regularity. To this belonged
the art of making the sentences of equal length, of making them corre-
spond to one another in form, and of making them end in the same
way : + also the use of words of similar formation and of similar sound,
i. e. almost rhyming with one another : § also, the antithesis, in which,
besides the opposition of thought, there was a correspondence of all the
different parts and individual points; an artifice, which easily led the
orator to introduce forced and unnatural combinations, || and which, in
the case of the Sicilian rhetoricians, had already incurred the ridicule
of Epicharmus.^f If we add to this the witty turns, the playful style,
the various methods of winning the attention, which Gorgias skilfully
interwove with his expressions, we shall have no difficulty in under-
* See Aristotle, Rhetor. III., 1, 3, and 3, 1. Here the Wx£ Iviparx are parti-
cularly assigned to Gorgias and Lycophron. In the Poetic, 22, Aristotle says, that
the SivrXa WofjLara, i. e. extraordinary words and novel compounds, occurred most
frequently in the Dithyramb.
f yogyia.Zf.ii. J ItroxuXa, Kaotffu., oyjioriXturx.
§ Tla^cvo/jMiriai, Tapn^ritni;.
|| As in the forced but ingenious definition of tragic illusion, namely, that it is
an aTam, or deceit : —
nv * ri avarvtra; ^ixuiorigo; rou f/M a.ita.rwtt.vro;
xu.1 o uTwrtifai; troipuiripo; tov /J.h afarrjivros,
i. e. in which the deceiver does his duty better than the undeceiving, and where the
person deceived shows more feeling lor art than the person who will not yield to
the deception. All these figures occur in abundance in the very important and no
doubt genuine fragments of Gorgias' funeral oration, which are preserved in the
scholia on Hermogenes : see Foss, de Gorgia Leontlno, p. 69. Spengel, Zvvayuyri,
p. 78. Clinton, F. H., Vol. II., p. 404, ed. 3.
H In the verse : roxa fiiti t'v twoi; \yan riv, t'oxo. 5s rra^a. Tnvoi; \yui, which is an
opposition of wards rather of sense, such as naturally resulted from a forced anti-
thetical style : see especially Demetrius, de Ehmtione, § 24.
LITERATURE OF A.N'CIEWT GREECE. 469
standing how this artificial prose, which was neither poetry nor vet
the language of common life, was so successful on its first appear-
ance at Athens. That such a style was highly suitahle to the taste
of the age as it gradually unfolded itself, is also shown by its rapid
extension and further developement, especially in the school of
Gorgias. We have already spoken of Agathon's parallelisms and anti-
theses ;* but Polus of Agrigentum, the favourite scholar and devoted
partizan of Gorgias, went far beyond all others in his attention to
those ornaments of language, and carried this even into the slightest
minutiae of language : + similarly, Alcidamas, another scholar of
Gorgias, who is often mentioned by Aristotle, exceeded his master
in his showy, poetic diction, and in the affectation of his elegant anti-
thesis. I
CHAPTER XXXIII.
§ 1. Antiphon's career and employments. § 2. His school-exercises, the Tetra-
logies. § 3 ( His speeches before the courts; Character of his oratory. § 4, 5.
More particular examination of his style. § 6. Andocides; his life and character.
§ 1. The cultivation of the art of oratory among the Athenians is due to
a combination of the natural eloquence, displayed by the Athenian states-
men, and especially by Pericles, with the rhetorical studies of the Sophists.
The first person in whom the effects of this combination were fully
shown was ANTirnoN, the son of Sophilus of Rhamnus. Antiphon was
both a practical statesman and man of business, and also a rhetorician of
the. schools. With regard to the former part of his character, we are
told by Thucydides that, though the tyranny of the Four-hundred was
ostensibly established by Pisandcr, it was Antiphon who drew up the
plan for it, and who had the greatest share in carrying it into effect ; " he
was a man," says the historian, § " inferior to none of his contemporaries
in virtue, and distinguished above all others in forming plans and recom-
mending his views by oratory. lie made no public speeches, indeed,
nor did he ever of his own accord engage in the litigations of the court;
but being suspected by the people from his reputation for powerful
* Chap. XXVI., § 3.
t In the address : £ \Ztrri llwXt, Plato ridicules his fondness for the juxtaposition
of words of a similar sound.
+ The declamations which remain under the names of Gorgias, Alcidamas, and
Antisthenes (another scholar of Gorgias), have been justly regarded as imitations
of their style by later rhetoricians.
( VIII., 08.
470 HISTORY OF THE
speaking,* there was yet no one man in Athens who was better ahle to
assist, by his counsels, those who had any contest to undergo either in the
law-courts or in the popular assemblies. And in his own case, when,
after the downfal of the Four-hundred, he was tried for his life as having
been a party to the establishment of the oligarchy, it is acknowledged
that the speech which he made in his own defence was the best that had
ever been made up to that time."f But his admirable oratory was of
no avail at this crisis, when the effect of his speech was more than counter-
balanced by the feelings of the people : the devices of Theramenes
completed his ruin; he was executed in 01. 92, 2. b.c. 411, when
nearly seventy years old ; \ his property was confiscated, and even his
descendants were deprived of the rights of citizenship. §
We clearly see, from the testimony of Thucydides, what use Antiphon
made of his oratory. He did not come forward, like other speakers, to
express his sentiments in the Ecclesia, nor was he ever a public accuser
in the law-courts : he never spoke in public save on his own affairs and
when attacked : in other cases he laboured for others. With him the
business of speech-writing first rose into importance, a business which
for a long time was not considered so honourable as that of the public
speaker ; but although many Athenians spoke and thought contemptu-
ously of this profession, it was practised even by the great public orators
along with their other employments; and according to the Athenian
institutions was almost indispensable For in private suits the parties
themselves pleaded their cause in open court ; and in public indictments,
though any Athenian might conduct the prosecution, the accused person
was not allowed an advocate, though his defence might be supported by
some friends who spoke after him, and endeavoured to complete the
arguments in his favour. It is obvious from this, that when the need
of an advocate in the law-courts began to be more and. more felt, most
Athenians would be obliged to apply for professional assistance, and
would, with this view, either get assisted in the composition of their
own speeches, or commit to memory and deliver, word for word, a speech
composed for them by some practised orator. Thus the speech- writers,
or logographi, as they were called, || (Antiphon, Lysias, Isfeus, and
Demosthenes,) rendered services partly analogous to those performed by
the Roman pdironi and causidici, or to the legal advocates and Coun-
* hmo-Tv;, here used in its wider sense, as implying any power of persuasion.
f It is a great pity that this speech has not been preserved. Harpocration often
quotes it under the title h <rZ <si£ rife ^irairramus. The allusions to the time of
the Four-hundred are obvious enough.
% i. e. if the account is true which places his birth in 01. 75, 1. b.c. 480. , His
great age and winning eloquence seem to have gained him the name of Nestor, by
which lie was known among the Athenian people.
§ The decree according to which he was executed, and the decision of the court,
are preserved in the Vita decern oratorum (in Plutarch's works), Cap. I.
II They were called Xoyoypdp, by the common people at Athens.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 4»JI
sellors of modern states, although they did not stand nearly so high
in public estimation, unless at the same time they took an active part
in public affairs.* The. practice of writing speeches for others probably
led to a general habit of committing speeches to writing, and thus
placing them within the reach of others besides those to whom they were
delivered : at all events, it is certain that Antiphon was the first to do
this.t
Antiphon also established a school of rhetoric, in which the art of
oratory was systematically taught, and, according to a custom which had
been prevalent since the time of Corax, wrote a Techne, containing a
formal exposition of his principles. As a teacher of rhetoric, Antiphon
followed closely in the steps of the Sophists, with whose works he was
very well acquainted, although he was not actually a scholar of any one
among them : \ like Protagoras and Gorgias, he discussed general themes,
which were designed only for exercises, and had no practical object in
view. These may have been partly the most general subjects about
which an argument could be held, — the loci communes, as they are
called ; § partly, particular cases so ingeniously contrived that the con-
trary assertions respecting them might be maintained with equal facility,
and thus exercise would be afforded to the sophistic art of speaking
plausibly on both sides of the question.
§ 2. Of the fifteen remaining speeches of Antiphon, twelve belong to
the class of school exercises. They form three Tetralogies, so that every
four of the orations are occupied with the discussion of the same case,
and contain a speech and reply by both plaintiff and defendant. || The
following is the subject of the first Tetralogy :— A citizen, returning with
his slave from an evening banquet, is attacked by assassins, and killed on
the spot : the slave is mortally wounded, but survives till he has told the
relations of the murdered man that he recognized among the assassins a
particular person who was at enmity with his master, and who was about
to lose his cause in an important law-suit between him and the deceased.
Accordingly, this person is indicted by the family of the murdered man,
and the speeches all turn upon an attempt to exaggerate or diminish
the probabilities for and against the guilt of the person arraigned. For
instance, while the complainant lays the greatest stress on the animosity
* Thus Antiphon was attacked by Plato the comedian for writing speeches for
hire : Photius, Coder 259.
f Orationem primus omnium scripsit, says Quintilian.
X This is shown by the yives 'Avr^'ros : the chronology renders it almost im-
possible that Antiphon's father could have lx-.n a Sophist {Vita X. Orat., c. 1.
Phot., Coder 259).— [This is probably a confusion occasioned bj the name of
Antiphon's father Sopkilus. — En.]
§ That Antiphon had practised himself in such common places is shown by their
occurrence in different orations, in which he inserts them wherever he can. Comp.
tie cade Herod., § 14, 87. Chor., § 2, 3.
|| Xlyai ■st^oTi^oi Kai vtrri°oi.
472 HISTORY OF THE
existing between the accused and the deceased, the defendant maintains
that he could certainly have had no hand in the murder, when it was
obvious that the first suspicion would fall on himself. While the former
sets great value on the evidence of the slave as the only one available to*
his purpose, the latter maintains that slaves would not be tortured as they
were, according to the Greek custom, unless their simple testimony had
been considered insufficient. In answer to this the complainant urges,
in his second speech, that slaves were tortured on account of theft, for
the purpose of bringing to light some transgression which they concealed
to please their master ; but that, in cases like the one in question, they
were emancipated in order that they might be qualified to give evidence ;*
and, in regard to the argument that the accused must have foreseen that he
would be suspected, the fear of this suspicion would not have been suffi-
cient to counterbalance the danger resulting from the loss of his cause.
The accused, however, gives a turn to the argument from probability,
by remarking, among other things, that a freeman would be restrained
from giving a false testimony by a fear of endangering his reputation and
substance ; but that there was nothing to hinder the slave at the point
of death from gratifying the family of his master, by impeaching his
master's old enemy. And after having compared all the arguments
from probability, and drawn a balance in his own favour, he concludes
aptly enough, by saying that he can prove his innocence not merely by
probabilities t but by facts, and accordingly offers all his slaves, male, and
female, to be tortured according to the custom of Athens, in order to
prove that he never left his house on the night of the murder.
We have selected these few points from many other arguments equally
acute on both sides of the question, in order to give those readers who are
not yet acquainted with Antiphon's speeches, some, notion, however faint,
of the shrewdness and ingenuity with which the rhetoricians of that time
could twist and turn to their own purposes the facts and circumstances
which they were called upon to discuss. The sophistic art of strength-
ening the weaker cause was in Antiphon's school connected with forensic
oratory, \ the professor of which must necessarily be prepared to argue
in favour of either of the parties in a law-suit.
§ 3. Besides these rhetorical exercises, we have three of Antiphon's
speeches which were actually delivered in court— the accusation of a
step -mother charged with poisoning, the defence of the person charged
with the murder of Herodes, and another defence of a choregus, one
* Personal freedom was indispensable for evidence (//MgrvgtTv) properly *o called :
slaves were compelled to give evidence by the torture.
t In § 10, he says with great acuteness : " While they maintain on grounds of
probability thai I am guilty, they nevertheless maintain that I am not probably but
actually the murderer."
Z. to dixavixov yivo;-
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 473
of whose choreutae had been poisoned while under training. All these
speeches refer to charges of murder,* and for this reason have beeu
classed with the Tetralogies, the assumed subjects of which are of the
same kind : a distribution of the works of Greek orators according to the
nature of the different suits was very common among the learned gram-
marians,! and many ancient citations refer to this division ; for instance,
when speeches referring to the duties of guardians, to money-transactions,
or to debts, are quoted as belonging to different classes. In this manner
Antiphon's speeches on charges of murder have alone been preserved,
and the only orations of Isteus which have come down to us, are those
on the law of inheritance and wills. In these speeches of Antiphon we
see the same ingenuity and shrewdness, and the same legal acumen, as in
the Tetralogies, combined with far greater polish and elaboration of style,
since the Tetralogies were only designed to display skill in the discovery
and complication of arguments.
These more complete speeches may be reckoned among the most im-
portant materials that we possess for a history of oratory. In respect to
their style, they stand in close connexion with the history of Thucydides
and the speeches with which it is interspersed, and confirm the statement
of many grammarians, \ that Thucydides was instructed in the school of
Antiphon, — a statement which harmonizes very well with the circum-
stances of their liv.es. The ancients often couple Thucydides with Anti-
phon, § and mention these two as the chief masters of the old austere
oratory, || the nature of which we must here endeavour rightly to com-
prehend. It does not consist (as might be conjectured from the expres-
sions used in speaking of it,*! which are justified only by a comparison
with the smooth and polished oratory of later days) in any intentional
rudeness or harshness, but in the orator's confining himself to a clear
and definite expression of what he had clearly and definitely conceived.
Although it is no f . to be denied that the orators of that time were defi-
cient in the fluency which results from practice, they had on that account
all the more power and freshness of thought ; many reflections, which
afterwards became trivial from frequent repetition, and in this way came
to be used in a flippant and superficial manner, were then delivered with
all the energetic earnestness of real feeling; and, without taking into
* Qivixoci Yixai. t This occurs frequently in Dionysius of I lalicarnaBSUS.
I The most important authority is Cscilius of Calacte, a distinguished rheto-
rician of Cicero's time, many of whose striking judgments and important remarks
arc still extant. See the Vitw X. Orator., c. 1. Photius, Biblioth. Coder, 259
§ When rhetorical studies were still a novelty, Thucydides at the age of twentj
might easily have hecn the scholar of Antiphon, who was eight years his senior.
1| Dionvs. Hal., de verb, com})., p. 150, Iteiske. Tryphon, in "YYalz, Rhet., t. VIII.,
p. 7o0.
% ai/trrneos x a Z K *' rr '?-> «"**«{" aoij.ona, austerum dke/idi genus ; see Dioliys. Hal.,
de compos, verborvm, p. 117, seqq.
4*74 HISTORY OF THE
consideration the value and importance of their works as products of
human genius, we rind in writers like Antiphon and Tlmcydides a con-
tinual liveliness, an inexhaustible vigour of mind, which, not to go
farther, places them above even Plato and Demosthenes, notwithstanding
their better training and wider experience.
§ 4. We shall arrive at a clearer conception of the train of thought in
these writers by considering, first the words, and then the syntactical
combinations by which their style was distinguished. Great accuracy in
the use of expressions* is a characteristic as well of Antiphon as of
Tlmcydides. This is manifested, among other things, by an attempt to
make a marked distinction between synonyms and words of similar
sound : this originated with Prodicus, and both in this Sophist and in the
authors of whom we are speaking occasionally gave an air of extrava-
gance and affectation to their style. 1' Not to speak of individual words,
the luxuriance of grammatical forms in the Greek language and the
readiness with which it admitted new compounds, enabled these authors
to create whole classes of expressions indicating the most delicate shades
of meaning, such as the neuter participles. X In regard to the gram-
matical forms and the connecting particles, the old writers did not
strive after that regular continuity which gives an equable flow to the
discourse, and enables one to see the whole connexion from any part
of it : they considered it of more importance to express the finer modi-
fications of meaning by changes in the form of words, even though this
might produce abruptness and difficulty in the expressions. § With
respect to the connexion of the sentences with one another, the lan-
guage of Antiphon and Tlmcydides stands half-way between the con-
secutive but unconnected diction of Herodotus || and the periodic
style of the school of Isocrates. We shall consider in one of the
following chapters how the period, which conveys an idea of a style
finished and rounded off, was first cultivated in that later school : here
it will be sufficient to mention the total want of such a finished periodic
completeness in the writings of Antiphon and Thucydides. There
* KKoifroXriyia. It) <ro7; civifAcctrui, Marcellin., vita Thi/cyd., § 36.
t As when Antiphon says (c/e card. Herod., § 94, according to the probable read-
ing) : " You are now scrutineers (ywanrrai) of the evidence ; then you will be
judges Cbtxu.trrai) of the suit: you are now only guessers Q>o\a.irra.i), you will then
be deciders (xoiral) of the truth." See the similar examples in §§ 91, 92.
X As when Antiphon says (Tetral. I., y. § 3) : " The danger and the disgrace,
which had greater influence than the. quarrel, were sufficient to subdue the passion
that was boiling in his mind" (trutppoMtrai <ro (vyjoifjAvov rr,; yyuy^s). Thucydides,
who is as partial as Antiphon to this mode of expression, also uses the phrase,
to {■vujovw'vov ?n; yvumyi;, VIII. G8.
§ As an example, we may mention Antiphon's common practice of passing from
the copulative to the adversative. He often begins with xa), but substitutes a "Si
for the corresponding *«) which should follow. This represents the two members
as at first corresponding parts of a whole, and thus the opposition of the second to
the first is rendered more prominent and striking.,'
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 475
are, indeed, plenty of long sentences in these authors, in which they
show a power of bringing thoughts and observations into the right con-
nexion with each other. But these long sentences appear as a heaping
together of thoughts without any necessary rule or limit, such that if
the author had known any further circumstances likely to support his
argument, he might have added or incorporated those circumstances,*
and not as a whole of which all the subordinate particulars were neces-
sary integral parts. The only structure of sentences which was cultivated
to any great extent at this period was that in which the different mem-
bers are not related to one another as principal or subordinate but merely
as consecutive sentences, i. e. the copulative, adversative, and disjunctive
sentences ; t ail( l these were consistently and artfully carried out in all
their parts. It is indeed very worthy of remark, how skilfully an orator
like Antiphon arranged his thoughts so that they always produced those
binary combinations of corresponding or opposed members ; and how
laboriously he strove to exhibit on every side this symmetrical relation,
and, like an architect, carried the symmetry through all the details of
his work. To take an example, the orator has scarcely opened his mouth
to speak on the murder of Herodes when he falls into a system of paral-
lelisms such as we have just described : " Would that my oratorical skill
and knowledge of affairs, judges, were equal to my unhappy condition
and the misfortunes which I have suffered. As it is, however, I have
more of the latter than I ought to have ; whereas the former fails me
more than is expedient for me. For where I was in bodily peril on
account of an unjust accusation, there my knowledge of affairs was of no
avail ; and now that I have to save my life by a true statement of the
case, I am injured by my inability to speak ;" and so forth. It is clear
that this symmetrical structure of sentences \ must have had its origin in
a very peculiar bias of mind ; namely, in the habitual pronencss to com-
pare and discriminate, to place the different points of a subject in such
connexion that their likeness or dissimilitude might appear in the most
marked manner ; in a word, this mode of writing presumes that peculiar
combination of ingenuity and shrewdness for which the old Athenians
were so pre-eminently distinguished. At the same time it cannot be
denied that the habit of speaking in this way had something misleading
in it, and that this parallelism of the members of a sentence was often
carried much farther than the natural conditions of thought would have
prescribed ; especially as a mere formal play with sounds united itself
* This structure of sentences, which occurs principally in narrative, will lie
discussed more at length when we come to Thucydides.
f The sentences with tnei (<rs) — xx), with uai — Vi, with r> (vori^ov) — n. In
general, this constitutes the avnx&uAvr, :■
+ This is the Ua^ino; <ri^iff,^ of CiBcilius of CalftCte (Photiiu, Cod. '-'"'0), the
concinnitas of Cicero.
4^6 HISTORY OF THE
with thib striving after an opposition of ideas and a counterpoise of
thoughts, the object being to make this relation of the thoughts signifi-
cant to the ear also ; but this was pursued so eagerly that the real object
was often overlooked.
The figures of speech, which were mentioned while we were speaking
of Gorgias, — the Isocola, Homocoteleuta, Parisa, Paronomasia, and
Parecheseis, — were admirably suited to this symmetrical architecture
of the periods. The ornaments of diction are all found in Antiphon,
but not in such numbers as in Gorgias, and they are treated with Attic
taste and discernment. But Antiphon also makes his antitheses of equal
numbers of like-sounding words balanced against one another.* Anti-
phon, too, is fond of opposing words of similar sound in order to call
attention to their contrasted significations,! and his diction has some-
thing of that precision and constrained regularity which reminds us of
the stiff symmetry and parallelism of attitudes in the older works of
Greek sculpture.
§ 5. Though Antiphon by the use of these artifices, which the old
rhetoricians called " figures of diction," J was enabled to trick out his
style with a sort of antique ornaments, he did not, according to the
judicious remark of one of the best rhetoricians, § make any use of the
" figures of thought." || These turns of thought, which interrupt its
equable expression, proceed for the most part from passion and feeling,
and give language its pathos ; they consist of the sudden burst of indig-
nation, the ironical and sarcastic question, the emphatic and vehement
repetition of the same idea under different forms, ^f the gradation of
weight and energy,** and the sudden breaking off in the midst of a
sentence, as if that which was still to be said transcended all power of
expression, ft But there is often as much of artful design as of violent
emotion in these figures of thought : thus the orator will sometimes seek
about for an expression as if he could not find the right one, in order
that he may give the proper phrase with greater force after he has dis-
covered it:\\ sometimes he will correct what he has said, in order to
* As, e. g., in de coed. Herod., \ 73 : " There must be more in your powei to save
me justly, than in my enemies' wish to destroy me unjustly" — to vft'iTivov Skws/asvov
liJA oixctiws iTuZf.ii J) to Toil i^6^uv (hovXotJAvov aYiKa>; iyA a'XoWvva.i.
f We have an example of this Paronomasia in de cced. Herod., § 91 : " If some
error must be committed, it is more consonant to piety to acquit unjustly, than to
condemn contrary to justice" — £&!*&>} KTokuo-ai oo-mnoov «v el* tou fih hxa/iu;
u.wo\ttrai.
X o-^umto. t?,; \iZiu;.
§ Csecilius of Calacte (apud Phot., Cod. 259, p. 485 Bekker), who adds with great
judgment, " that he will not assert that the figures of thought never occur in Anti-
phon, but that when they occur, they are not designed (xxr 'frirvhuo-iv), and that
they are of rare occurrence."
i\ o"X/i^a.T«. Tris liavela;. IT Polyptotojl.
** Climacc. (-f- Aposiopesit* '\\ Aporia.
.ITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 477
convey an idea of his great scrupulousness and accuracy ; * lie will
suggest an answer in the mind of his adversary, as if it was obvious and
inevitable ;t or he will pervert the other party's words, so as to give
them an entirely different signification ; and so forth. All these forms
of speech are foreign to the old Attic oratory, for reasons which lie d eeper
than in the history of tbe rhetorical schools, viz. in the developcment and
progressive change of the Athenian character. These figures rest, as
has just been shown, partly on a violence of passion which lays aside all
claim to tranquillity and self-control ; partly in a sort of crafty dissimu-
lation which employs every artifice in order to make the appearances all
on its own side. J These two qualities — vehemence of passion and tricky
artifice — did not become the prominent features of the Athenian character
till a later period, and though they grew stronger and stronger after the
shock given to the morality of Greece by the speculations of the Sophists,
and at the same time by the party-spirit, which the Peloponnesian war
engendered, and which, according to Thucydides, § nurtured the prevail-
ing tendency to intrigue, yet it was some time before the art of speaking-
arrived at that stage of developement which necessitated or admitted
these peculiar figures of speech. In Antiphon, as well as in Thucydides,
the old equable and tranquil style is still prevalent : all the efforts of the
orator are directed to the. invention and opposition of the ideas which
his argument requires him to bring forward : all that is unreal or delu-
sive consists in the thoughts themselves, not in any obscurity produced
by the excitements of passion. On the few occasions when Antiphon
spoke, he must have spoken, like Pericles, with unmoved countenance,
and in a tone of the most tranquil self-command, although his con-
temporary Cleon, whose style of speaking was very far removed from
the artificial oratory of the day, used to run backwards and forwards on
the bema, throwing his mantle aside and smiting his thigh with violent
and excited gesticulations. ||
§ 6. Andocides, who stands next to Antiphon in point of time, and
some of whose speeches have come down to us, is a more interesting-
person in reference to the history of Athens at this period than in re-
gard to the cultivation of rhetoric. Sprung from a noble family which
furnished the heralds for the Eleusinian mysteries, ^f we find him
employed at an early age as general and ambassador, until he was
involved in the legal proceedings about the mutilation of the Hernue
and the profanation of the mysteries ; he escaped by denouncing the
* EpidiorthottSj also called Metanoea. f Anaclasis.
+ Uouicuoy'ia.. On this aCCOUDt the o- < rr,u,a.ra <r«; liuvoia; are Culled by Cuvilius
Tg4Tr,v \x Tov vravovsyou y.c/.i IvccXXaln.
§ Thueyd. III., SI.
|| This is mentioned by Plutarch ( Nic. YII1., Tib. Gracch. II.) as the first offence
ever committed against the decency (koc-ij,*;) of public speaking.
H ro ruv xnouKbiv t?i! tJWTnpicor'i&o; yivo;.
478 HISTORY OF THE
guilty, whether truly or falsely, but was obliged to leave Athens. From
this time he occupied himself with commercial transactions, which he
carried on chiefly in Cyprus, and with endeavours to get recalled from
banishment ; until, on the downfal of the thirty tyrants, he returned to
his native city under the protection of the genera) amnesty which the
opposing parties had sworn to observe. Though he was not without
molestation on account of the old charge, we find him still engaged in
public affairs, till at last, being sent as ambassador to Sparta in the
course of the Corinthian war, in order to negotiate a peace, he was again
banished by the Athenians because the result of his negotiations was
unsatisfactory.
We have three remaining speeches by Andocides : the first relating to
his return from exile, and delivered after the restoration of the democracy
by the overthrow of the Four hundred counsellors ; the second relating to
the mysteries, and delivered in 01. 95, 1. c.c. 400, in which Andocides
endeavours to confute the continually reviving charge with respect to the
profanation of the mysteries, by going back to the origin of the whole
matter ; the third on the peace with Lacedsemon, delivered in 01. 97, 1.
B.C. 392, in which the orator urges the Athenian assembly to conclude
peace with the Spartans. The genuineness of the last speech is doubted
even by the old grammarians : but the speech against Alcibiades, the
object of which is to get Alcibiades ostracized instead of the orator, is
undoubtedly spurious. If the speech were genuine it could not have
been written by Andocides consistently with the well-known circum-
stances relating to the ostracism of Alcibiades : in that case it must be
assigned to Phreax, who shared with Alcibiades in the danger of ostra-
cism ; and this is the opinion of a modern critic :* but the contents and
form of the speech prove beyond all power of confutation that it is an
imitation by some later rhetorician, t
Although Andocides has been included in the list of the ten celebrated
orators, he is very inferior to the others in talent and art. + He exhibits
neither any particular acuteness in treating the great events which are
referred to in his speeches, nor that precision in the connexion of his
thoughts which marks all the other writers of this time : yet we must
give him credit for his freedom from the mannerism into which the more
distinguished men of the age so easily fell, and also for a sort of natural
liveliness, which may together be considered as reliques of the austere
style, as it appears in Antiphon and Thucydides. §
* Taylor (Lediones Lysiaca, c. VI.), who has not been refuted by Ruhnken and
Yalckenaer.— [Sec Thirlwall, Hist, of Greece, III., p. 463.— Ed.]
\ According to Meier, de Andocidis quce vulgo feriur oratione in Alcibiadem, a
series of programmes of the University of Halle.
+ It is surprising that Critias was not rather enrolled among the Ten, but perhaps
his having been one of the Thirty stood in his way. Comp. Chap. XXXI. § 4.
§ The dvriKeiyAv>i \i%ts prevails in Andocides also, but without any striving after
symmetry of expression.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 479
CHAPTER XXXIV.
§ I, The life of Thucydides: his training that of the age of Pericles. § 2. His
new method of treating history. § 3. The consequent distribution and arrange-
ment of his materials, as well in his whole work as, §4, in the introduction.
§ 5. His mode of treating these materials ; his research and criticism. & 6. Ac-
curacy and, § 7, intellectual character of his history, $$ 8, 9. The speeches
considered as the soul of his history. $$ 10, 11. His mode of expression and
the structure of his sentences.
§ 1. Thucydides, an Athenian of the demus of Alimus, was born in
01. 77, 2. b.c. 471, nine years after the battle of Salamis* His father
Olorus, or Orolus, has a Thracian name, although Thucydides himself
was an Athenian born : his mother Hegesipyle bears the same name as
the Thracian wife of the great Miltiades, the conqueror at Marathon ;
and through her Thucydides was connected with the renowned family of
the Philaidse. This family from the time of the older Miltiades, who
left Athens during the tyranny of the Pisistratidae and founded a prin-
cipality of his own in the Thracian Chersonese, had formed alliances
with the people and princes of that district; the younger Miltiades, the
Marathonian victor, had married the daughter of a Thracian king nana .1
Orolus ; the children of this marriage were Cimon and the younger
Hegesipyle, the latter of whom married the younger Orolus, probably a
grandson of the first, who had obtained the rights of citizenship at Athens
through his connexions ; the son of this marriage was Thucydides. f
In this way Thucydides belonged to a distinguished and powerful
family, possessed of great riches, especially in Thrace. Thucydides
himself owned some gold-mines in that country, namely, at Scajpte-Hyle
* According to the well known statement of Pamphila (a learned woman of
Nero's time), cited by Oellius, N. A. XV., 23. This statement is not impugned
by what Thucydides says himself (V., 26), that he was of the right age to observe
the progress of the Peloponnesian war. He might well say this of the period
between the 40th and ('>7th years of his life ; for though the -/iXixla in reference to
military service was different, it seems that the ancients placed the age suitable to
literary labours at a more advanced point than we do.
f This is the best way of reconciling the statements of Marcellinus (vita Tlnicy-
didls) and Suidas with the well-known historical data. The following is the
whole genealogy : —
Cimon Stesagoraf. Olorus, Thracum regulus.
Attica uxor v— ' Miltiades Marathon, v^' Hegesipyle I. Filius.
Elpinice. '"'imon Hegesipyle II. ■^ Olorus II.
Thucydides.
480 HISTORY OF THE
(or Wald-rode, as it would have been called in the Harz), in the same
district from which Philip of Macedon afterwards derived those resources
by which he established his power in Greece. This property had great
influence on the destiny of Thucydides, especially in regard to his
banishment from Athens, the chief particulars of which we learn from
himself.* In the eighth year of the Peloponnesian war (01. 89, 1. b.c.
423) the Spartan general, Brasidas, was desirous of taking Amphipolis
on the Strymon. Thucydides, the son of Olorus, lay off Thasos with a
small fleet of seven ships, probably on his first command, which he had
merited by his services in some subordinate military capacity. Brasidas
feared even this small fleet, because he knew that the admiral possessed
gold-mines in the district and had great influence with the most powerful
inhabitants of the country, so that he would have no difficulty in getting
together a body of native troops to reinforce the garrison of Amphipolis.
Accordingly, Brasidas granted the Amphipolitans a better capitulation
than they expected, in order to gain possession of the place speedily, and
Thucydides, having come too late to raise the siege, was obliged to con-
tent himself with the defence of Eion, a fortified city near the coast. The
Athenians, who were in the habit of judging their generals and statesmen
according to the success of their plans, condemned him for neglect of
duty ; t an d he was compelled to go into exile, in which state he con-
tinued for twenty years, living principally at Scapte-Hyle. He was not
permitted to return after the peace between Sparta and Athens, but was
only recalled by a special decree when Thrasybulus had restored the
democracy. After this he must have lived some years at Athens, as his
history clearly evinces ; but not so long as nature would have permitted :
and there is much probability in the statement that he lost his life by
the hand of an assassin. % i
From this account of the career of Thucydides it appears that he spent
only the first part of his life, up to his forty-eighth year, in intercourse
with his countrymen of Athens. After this period he was indeed in
communication with all parts of Greece, and he tells us that his exile
had enabled him to mix wit'h Peloponnesians, and to gain accurate
information from them : § but he was out of the way of the intellectual
revolution which took place at Athens between the middle and end of
the Peloponnesian war : and when he returned home he found himself
in the midst of a new generation, with novel ideas and an essentially
altered taste, with which he could hardly have amalgamated so tho-
* Thucyd. IV., 104, seqq.
f The charge against him was probably a <ygu<ph *£i3o<rias.
+ We have passed over in silence unimportant and doubtful points, as well as
manifest errors, especially those introduced into the old biographies ot the historian
by the confusion between him and the more celebrated statesman, Thucydides, the
son of Melesias. § Thucyd. V., 26.
LITERATURE 6F ANCIENT GREECE, 481
roughly in his old age as to change his own notions in accordance with
them. Thucydides, therefore, is altogether an old Athenian of the school
of Pericles ; his education, both real and formal, is derived from that
grand and mighty period of Athenian history ; his political principles arc
those which Pericles inculcated ; and his style is, on the one hand, a repre-
sentative of the native fulness and vigour of Periclean oratory, and on
the other hand an offshoot of the antique, artificial rhetoric taught in the
school of Antiphon *
§ 2. As an historian, Thucydides is so far from belonging to the same
class as the Ionian logographi, of whom Herodotus was the chief, that he
may rather be considered as having commenced an entirely new class of
historical writing. He was acquainted with the works of several of these
Ionians (whether or not with that of Herodotus is doubtful f), but he men-
tions them only to throw them aside as uncritical, fabulous, and designed
for amusement rather than instruction. Thucydides directed his attention
to the public speeches delivered in the public assemblies and the law-
courts of Greece : this was the foundation of his history, in regard both
to its form and its materials. While the earlier historians aimed at
giving a vivid picture of all that fell under the cognizance of the senses
by describing the situation and products of different countries, the peculiar
customs of different nations, the works of art found in different places,
and the military expeditions which were undertaken at different periods ;
and, while they endeavoured to represent a superior power ruling with
infinite authority over the destinies of people and princes, the attention
of Thucydides was directed to human action as it is developed from the
character and situations of the individual, as it operates on the condition
of the world in general. In accordance with this object, there is a unity
of action in his work ; it is an historical drama, a great law-suit, the
parties to which are the belligerent republics, ana the object of which
is the Athenian domination over Greece. It is very remarkable that
Thucydides, who created this kind of history, should have conceived the
idea more clearly and vigorously than any of those who followed in his
steps. His work was destined to be only the history of the Peloponnesian
war, not the history of Greece during the Peloponnesian war : conse-
* The relation between Thucydides and Pericles is recognized by Wyttenbach,
who, in the preface to his Ecloya Historical, justly remarks: Thucydides it a se ad
Periclis imitationem composuisse videtur, ut, guum scriptum viri nullum exstet, ejus
eloquential formam effigiemque per totum historus opus expressam postcritati ser-
varet. On the teaching of Antiphon, sec Chap. XXXIII. $ 3.
t The supposed references to Herodotus in I, 20, II. 8. 'J7, are not quite clear ;
in the history of the murder of Hipparchus, which Thucydides refers to twice
(I 20., VI. 54 — 59), in order to correct the false opinions of his contemporaries,
Herodotus agrees almost entirely with him, and is true from those false opinions :
see Herodotus, V. 55, VI. 123. Thucydides would probably have written differ-
ently on several points had he been acquainted with the work of Herodotus,
especially the^passages, I." 74, II 8. Comp. above Chap. XIX. § 3.
2 i
482 HISTORY OF THE
quently, lie had excluded everything pertaining either to the forei-n
relations or the internal policy of the different states which did not bear
upon the great contest for the Hegemony, or chief power in Greece : but,
on the other hand, he has admitted everything, to whatever part of Hellas
it referred, which was connected with this strife of nations. From the
first, Thucydides had considered this war as a great event in the history
of the world, as one which could not be ended without deciding the
question, whether Athens was to become a great empire, or whether
she was to be reduced to the condition of an ordinary Greek republic,
surrounded by many others equally free and equally powerful : he could
not but see that the peace of Nicias, which was concluded after the first
ten years of the war, had not really put an end to it ; that it was but
interrupted by an equivocal and ill-observed armistice, and that it
broke out afresh during the Sicilian expedition: with the zeal of an
interested party, and with all the power of truth, he shows that all this
was one great contest, and that the peace was not a real one.*
§ 3. Thucydides has distributed and arranged his materials according
to this conception of his subjeet. The war itself is divided according to
the mode in which it was carried on, and which was regulated among
the Greeks, more than with us, by the seasons of the year : the campaigns
were limited to the summer; the winter was spent in preparing the
armaments and in negotiation. As the Greeks had no general sera, and
as the calendar of each country was arranged according to some peculiar
cycle, Thucydides takes his chronological dates from the sequence of
the seasons, and from the state of the corn-lands, which had a consi
derable influence on the military proceedings ; such expressions as,
"when the corn was in ear," or " when the corn was ripe,"t were suffi-
cient to mark the coherence of events with all needful accuracy. In his
history of the different campaigns, Thucydides endeavours to avoid
interruptions to the thread of his narrative : in describing any expedition,
whether by land or sea, he tries to keep the whole together, and prefers
to violate the order of time, either by going back or by anticipating
future events, in order to escape the confusion resulting from continually
breaking off and beginning again. That long and protracted affairs, like
the sieges of Potidoea and Platsea, must recur in different parts of the
history is unavoidable ; indeed it could not be otherwise, even if the
distribution into summers and winters could have been given up. \ For
transactions like the siege of Potidaea cannot be brought to an end in
a luminous and satisfactory manner without a complete view of the
position of the belligerent powers, which prevented the besieged from
* Thucyd. V. 26. j- zti^i infloXnv tr'trou, dx/^d^vre; rov' tr'irov, &C.
% This is in answer to the censures of Dionysius, de Thucydide judicium, r. IX.,
p, 826, Reiske.
ATERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 483
receiving succour. The careful reader of Thucydides will never be
disturbed by any violent break in the history : and the event which
considered as one, was the most momentous in the whole war, and
which the author has invested with the most lively interest, — namely,
the Athenian expedition to Sicily, with its happy commencement and
ruinous termination, — is told with but few (and those short) digressions.*
The whole work, if it had been completed, would resolve itself into three
nearly equal divisions : I. The war up to the peace of Nicias, which
from the forays of the Spartans under Archidanius is called the Archi-
damian war ; II. The restless movements among the Greek states after
the peace of Nicias, and the commencement of the Sicilian expedition •
III. The renewed war with the Peloponnesus, called by the ancients the
Decelean war, down to the fall of Athens. According to the division
into books, which, though not made by Thucydides, proceeded from an
arrangement by some intelligent grammarians, the first third is made up
of books II. III. IV. ; the second of books V. VI. VII. ; of the third,
Thucydides himself has completed only one book, the VHIth.
§ 4. In discussing the manner in which Thucydides distributed and
arranged his materials, we have still to speak of the 1st book ; indeed
this demands a more particular consideration, because its arrangement
depends less upon the subject itself than upon Thucydides' peculiar
reflections. The author begins with asserting that the Peloponr.csian
war was the greatest event that had happened within the memory of
man, and establishes this by a retrospective survey of the more ancient
history of Greece, including the Persian war. He goes through the
oldest period, the traditions of the Trojan war, the centuries immediately
following that event, and, finally, the Persian invasion, and shows that
all previous undertakings wanted the external resources which were
brought into play during the Peloponucsian war, because they were
deficient in two things, — money and a navy,f — which did not arise
among the Greeks till a late period, and developed themselves only by
slow^ degrees. In this way Thucydides applies historically the maxims
which Pericles had practically impressed upon the Athenians, that
money and ships, not territory and population, ought to be made the
basis of their power ; and the Peloponnesian war itself appeared to
him a great proof of this position, because the Peloponnesians, notwith-
standing their superiority in extent of country and in the number of their
free citizens, so long fought with Athens at a disadvantage till their
alliance with Persia had furnished them with abundant pecuniary re-
sources, and thus enabled them to collect and maintain a considerable
* How happily even these ciij is are interwoven with the narrative of the
Sicilian expedition; e. g., the calamities produced ut Athens by the occupation of
Decelea, and the horrible massacre at Alycalessus by the Thraci&n mercenaries
(Thucyd. Til. 27 — oO) f x^H-* 701 Ka ' w*™*
o T o
484 HISTORY OF THE
fleet.* Having shown by this comparison the importance of his subject,
and having given a short account of the manner in which he intended to
treat it, the historian proceeds to discuss the causes which led to the
war. He divides these into two classes ; — the immediate causes or those
which lay on the surface, and those which lay deeper and were not
alleged by the parties, f The first consisted of the negotiations between
Athens and Corinth on the subject of Corcyra and Potidaea, and the
consequent complaint of the Corinthians in Sparta, by which the Lace-
daemonians were induced to declare that Athens had broken the treaty.
The second lay in the fear which the growing power of Athens had
inspired, and by which the Lacedaemonians were compelled to make war
as the only pledge of security to the Peloponnese. This leads the his-
torian to point out the origin of this power, and to give a general view
of the military and political occurrences by which Athens, from being
the chosen leader of the insular and Asiatic Greeks against the Persians,
became the absolute sovereign of all the Archipelago and its coasts.
Connecting these remarks on the causes of the war with the preceding
discussion, we clearly see that Thucydides designed to give a concise
sketch of the history of Greece, at least of that part which seemed the
most important to him, namely, the developement of the power depending
on money and shipping ; in order that the causes of the great drama of
the Peloponnesian war, and the condition and circumstances of the
states which play the principal part in it, may be known to the reader.
But Thucydides directs all his efforts to a description of the war
itself, and in this aims at a true conception of its causes, not a
mere delineation of its effects ; accordingly, he arranges these ante-
cedent events according to general ideas, and to these he is willing to
sacrifice the chronological steps by which the more deeply rooted cause
of the war (i. e. the growth of the Athenian power) connected itself with
the account of the weakness of Greece in the olden time, given in the
first part of the book.
The third part of the first book contains the negotiations of the
Peloponnesian confederacy with its different members and with Athens,
in consequence of which it was decided to declare war ; but even in this
part we may discern the purpose of Thucydides, — though he has partially
concealed his object, — to give the reader a clear conception of the earlier
occurrences on which depended the existing condition of Greece, and
* Thucydides' reasoning is obviously a correct one in reference to the policy of
a state which, like Athens, was desirous of founding its power on the sovereignty
of the coasts of the Mediterranean : but states which, like Macedon and Rome,
strengthened themselves by a conquest of inland nations and great masses of the
continent before they proceeded to contest the sovereignty of the coasts of the
Mediterranean, had yjj xal trwfjLO.ru for the basis of their power, and the xt*/ J ' aT '*
xai vauriKcv afterwards accrued to them naturally.
j" u'itiui Qavioai. — uipxvsTj.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 485
especially the dominion of Athens. In these negotiations, among other
things, the Athenians call upon the Lacedaemonians to liberate themselves
from the pollution which they had incurred by putting Pausanias to death
in the temple of Pallas ; upon this the historian relates the treasonable
undertaking of Pausanias and his downfal : with which he connects, as a
mere episode, an account of the last days of Thcmistoclcs. The fact that
Themistocles wais involved in the ruin of Pausanias is not sufficient to
justify the insertion of this episode ; but the object of Thucydides is to
present the reader with the last and least known occurrences in the life
of this great man, who was the author of the naval power and peculiar
policy of Athens ; and in this to take an opportunity of paying the full
tribute of just appreciation to the greatness of his intellectual character.*
§ 5. Thus much may suffice for the general distribution and plan of
the work ; we now turn to the manner in which he has treated his
materials. The history of Thucydides is not a compilation from books,
but is drawn immediately from the life, from the author's own observa-
tion, and from oral communications ; it is the first written record of an
eye-witness, and bears the stamp of fresh and living truth, which can
only appear in a history of this kind. Thucydides, as he tells us himself,
foresaw what kind of a war it would be, and commenced his descriptions
with the war itself : f in its progress, he set down the different events as
they occurred, either from his own experience or from careful informa-
tion, which he derived, not without much trouble and expense, from
persons of both parties ; J and he laboured at his history partly in Athens
before his banishment, and partly in Scapte-Hyle during his exile. At
the latter place the plane-tree under which Thucydides used to write was
shown long after his death. All that he wrote in this way, during the
course of the war, was only a preliminary labour, of the nature of our
Memoirs ; § he did not commence the actual arrangement of his materials
till after the end of the war, when he was again residing in his native
country. This is shown partly by the frequent references to the duration,
the issue, and the general connexion of the war ; || but especially by the
fact that the history was left unfinished ; whence we may conclude, that
the memoirs which Thucydides had written during the war, and which
necessarily extended to the surrender of Athens, were not so complete as
to supply the defects of the work. There is much plausibility, too, in
the statement, that of the work, as it has come down to us, the last book
was left incomplete at the death of the author, and was expanded by the
copyist and first added to the others by a daughter of Thucydides, or by
* See Thucyd., I. 138. t I. 1. «*|«,ksv»s ibfv; KaBiffrxfttvou.
% See Thucyd., V. 26 ; VII. 44. Comp. Marcellinus, § 21.
§ These are called by the ancients, i-ro^fiara, or commentarii rerum gettarum,
|| See Thucyd., I. 13," 93 ; II. Go; V. 26. The tone of many passages, too, is
such that we may clearly see that the historian is writing in the time of the new
Spartan hegemony, this applies particularly to I. 77.
486 HISTORY OF THE
Xenophon : only we must not seek to raise any doubt as to the genuine-
ness of the Vlllth book ; all that we are entitled to do is to explain, on
this hypothesis, certain differences in the composition, and to infer from
this that the work wants the last touches of the master's hand.*
§ 6. We cannot form any opinion as to the manner in which Thucy-
dides collected, compared, examined, and put together his materials, for
the oral traditions of the time are lost : but, if perfect clearness in
the narrative ; if the consistency of every detail as well with other parts
of the history as with all we know from other sources of the state of
affairs at that time ; if the harmony of all that he tells with the laws of
nature and with the known characters of the persons of whom he writes ;
if all this furnishes a security for the truth and fidelity of an historian, we
have this guarantee in its most ample form in the work of Thucydides.
The ancients, who were very strict in estimating the characters of their
own historians, and who had questioned the veracity of most of them,
are unanimous in recognizing the accuracy and trustworthiness of Thucy-
dides, and the plan of his work, considered in the spirit of a rhetorician
of the time, fully justifies his principle of keeping to a statement of the
truth •: even the singular reproach that he has chosen too melancholy a
subject, and that he has not considered the glory of his countrymen in
this selection, becomes, when properly considered, an encomium on his
strict historical fidelity. The deviations of later historians, especially
Diodorus and Plutarch, upon close scrutiny, confirm the accuracy of
Thucydides ; t and, in all the points of contact between them, in charac-
terizing the statesmen of the day and in describing the position of Athens
at different times, Thucydides and Aristophanes have all the agreement
which we could expect between the bold caricatures of the comedian and
the accurate pictures of the historian. Indeed we will venture to say,
that there is no period of history which stands before us with the same
distinctness with which the first twenty-one years of the Peloponnesian
war are presented to us in the work of Thucydides, where we are led
through every circumstance in all its essential details, in its grounds and
occasion, in its progress and results, with the utmost confidence in the
guiding hand of the historian. The only thing similar to it in Roman
history is Sallust's account of the Jugurthan war and of the Catilinarian
conspiracy. The remains of Tacitus' contemporary history (the His-
tories), although equally complete in the details, are very inferior in
clear and definite narratives of fact. Tacitus hastens from one exciting
occurrence to another, without waiting to give an adequate account of
* On the speeches wanting in this book, see below, {» 11.
f Diodorus, in the history of the period between the Persian and Peloponnesian
wars, though he adopts the annalistic mode of reckoning, is far from being as exact
as Thucydides, who only gives a few notes of time. All that we can use in Diodorus
is his leading dates, successions of kings, years of the deaths of individuals, &c.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 487
the more common events connected with them.*" Thucydides him-
self designed his work for those who wish to learn the truth of what
has happened, and to know what is most for their interest in reference
to the similar cases, which, according to the course of human affairs,
must again occur ; for such persons Thucydides bequeaths his book
as a lasting study. t In this there is an early indication of the
tendency to -pragmatical history, in which the chief object was the train-
ing of generals and statesmen, — in a word, the practical application of
the work ; while the narration of events was regarded as merely a means
to an end : such a pragmatical history we shall find in the later ages of
ancient literature.
§ 7. Thucydides would never have been able to attain this truth and
clearness in his history had he contented himself with merely setting
down the simple testimonies of eye-witnesses, who described what they
saw and felt, and had only inserted here and there his own views and
reasonings. Its credibility rests mainly on the circumstance, that
Thucydides, as well by education as by his natural abilities, was
capable of inferring, from the conduct of the persons who figure in his
history, the motives which actuated them on every occasion. It is only
in particular cases, where he expressly mentions his doubts, that Thucy-
dides leaves us in the dark with regard to the motives of the persons
whose actions he describes ; and he gives us these motives, not as matter
of supposition and conjecture, but as matter of fact. As an honest
and conscientious man, he could not have done this unless he had
been convinced that these views and considerations, and these alone,
had guided the persons in question. Thucydides very seldom delivers
his own opinion, as such ; still more rarely does he pronounce sentence
on the morality or immorality of a given action. Every person who
appears in this history has a strongly marked character, and the more
significant his share in the main action, so much the more clearly is he
stamped with the mark of individuality ; and though we cannot but
admire the skill and power with which Thucydides is able to sum up in
a few words the characters of certain individuals, such &B Themistocles,
Pericles, Brasidas, Nicias, Alcibiades, yet we must admire Still more the
nicety with which he has kept up and carried out all the characters, in
every feature of their actions, and of the thoughts and opinions which
guided them 4
* For instance, it is extremely difficult to tret an entirely clear conception of the
war in Upper-Italy, between the partisans of Otho and Yitellius.
t This is the meaning of the celebrated *t«i*« U ail, I. 22 : it does not mean an
everlasting memorial or monument. Thucydides op] - work, which people
were to keep by them and read over and dyer againj to a composition which was
designed to gratify an audience on one occasion only.
+ Marccll'inus calls Thucydides hivos r,$oypa.Qr l tr«,i> as Sophocles, among the poets,
was also renowned for the rJ<mou7v.
48S HISTORY OF THE
§ 8. The most decided and the boldest proof which Thucydides has
given of his intention to set forth the events of the Avar in all their secret
workings, is manifested in that part of his history -which is most pecu-
liarly his own — the speeches. It is true that these speeches, given in
the words of the speakers, are much more natural to an ancient historian
than they would be to one at the present day. Speeches delivered in the
public assembly, in federal meetings, or before the army, were often, by
virtue of the consequences springing from them, important events, and
at the same time so public, that nothing but the infirmities of human
memory could prevent them from being preserved and communicated
to others. Hence it came to pass, that the Greeks, who in the greater
liveliness of their disposition were accustomed to look to the form as well
as to the substance of every public communication, in relating the circum-
stance were not content with giving an abstract of the subject of the
speech, or the opinions of the speaker in their own words, but introduced
the orator himself as speaking. As in such a case, the narrator supplied
a good deal from his own head, when his memory could not make good
the deficiency ; so Thucydides does not give us an exact report of the
speeches which he introduces, because he could not have recollected per-
fectly even those which he heard himself. He explains his own inten-
tion in this matter, by telling us that he endeavoured to keep as closely
as possible to the true report of what was actually said ; but, AYhen this
was unattainable, he had made the parties speak what was most to the
purpose in reference to the matter in hand* We must, however, go a
step further than Thucydides, and concede to him greater freedom from
literal tradition than he was perhaps conscious of himself. The speeches
in Thucydides contain a sum of the motives and causes which led to
the principal transactions ; namely, the opinions of individuals and of tho
different parties in a state, from which these transactions sprung.
Speeches are introduced whenever he thinks it necessary to introduce
such a developement of causes : when there is no such necessity, the
speeches are omitted ; though perhaps just as many were actually deli-
vered in the one case as in the other. Accordingly the speeches
which he has given contain, in a summary form, much that was
really spoken on various occasions ; as, for instance, in the second
debate in the Athenian assembly about the mode of treating the con-
quered Mitylenaeans, in which the decree that was really acted on was
passed by the people ; in this the opinions of the opposing parties — the
violently tyrannical, and the milder and more humane party — are pour-
trayed in the speeches of Cleon and Diodotus, though Cleon had, the
day before, carried the first inhuman decree against the Mitylenseans,t
and in so doing had doubtless said much in support of his motion which
* rk Yiivrcc p&Xurra, Thucyd. I. 22. t Thucyd. III. 3C.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 433
Thucydidcs has probably introduced into his speech in the second day's
debate.* In one passage, Thucydides gives us a dialogue instead of a
speech, because the circumstances scarcely admitted of any public
harangue : this occurs in the negotiations between the Athenians and the
council of Melos, before the Athenian attack upon this Dorian island,
after the peace of Nicias : but Thucydides takes this opportunity of
stating the point at which the Athenians had arrived in the grasping,
selfish, and tyrannical policy, which guided their dealings with the minor
states. f
§ 9. It is unnecessary to mention that we must not look for any
mimic representation in the speeches of Thucydides, any attempt to
depict the mode of speaking peculiar to different nations and individuals ;
if he had done this, his whole work would have lost its unity of tone and
its harmony of colouring^ Thucydides goes into the characteristics of
the persons whom he introduces as speaking, only so far as the general
law of his history permits. In setting forth the views of his speakers,
he has regard to their character, not only in the contents and subject
of the speeches which he assigns to them, but also in the mode in which
he developes and connects their thoughts. To take the first book alone,
we have admirable pictures of the Corcyrseans, who only maintain the
mutual advantages resulting from their alliance with Athens ; of the
Corinthians, who rely in some degree on moral grounds ; of the discre-
tion, mature wisdom, and noble simplicity of the excellent Archidamus ;
and of the haughty self-confidence of the Ephor Sthenelaidas, a Spartan
of the lower order : the tone of the composition agrees entirely with the
views and fundamental ideas of their speeches; as, for instance, the
searching copiousness of Archidamus and the cutting brevity of Sthene-
laidas. The chief concern of Thucydides in the composition of these
speeches was to exhibit the principles which guided the conduct of the
persons of whom he is writing, and to allow their opinions to exhibit,
confirm, and justify or exculpate themselves. This is done with such
intrinsic truth and consistency, the historian identifies himself so entirely
with the characters which he describes, and gives such support and
plausibility to their views and sentiments, that we may be sure that the
* The speeches often stand in a relation to one another which could not have
been justified by existing circumstances. Thus, the speech of the Corinthians
in I. 120 seqq., is a direct answer to the speech of Archidamus in the Spartan
assembly, and to that of Pericles at Athens, although the Corinthians did not hear
either of them. The reason of this relation is, that the speech of the Corinthians
expresses the hopes of victory entertained by one portion of the Peloponncsians,
while Archidamus and Pericles view the unfavourable position of the Pcloponnese
with equal clearness, but from different points of view. Compare also the remarks
on the speeches of Pericles in Chap. XXXI.
f Dionysius says (de Tkucyd. judic, p. 910), that the principles unfolded in this
dialogue are suited to barbarians and not to Athenians, and blames Thucydides
most violently for introducing them : but these were really the principles on which
the Athenians acted.
490
HISTORY OF THE
persons themselves could not have pleaded their own cause better under
the immediate influence of their interests and passions. It must indeed
be allowed, that this wonderful quality of the historian is partly due to
the sophistical exercises, which taught the art of speaking for both
parties, for the bad as well as the good ; but the application which
Thucydides made of this art was the best and most beneficial that could
be conceived : and it is obvious, that there can be no true history unless
we presume such a faculty of assuming the characters of the persons
described, and giving some kind of justification to the most opposite
opinions, for without this the force of opinions can never be adequately
represented. Thucydides developes the principles which guided the
Athenians in their dealings with their allies with such a consistent
train of reasoning, that we are almost compelled to assent to the truth
of the argument. In a series of speeches, occurring in very different
parts of the history, but so connected Avith one another that we cannot
fail to recognize in them a continuation of the same reasoning and a
progressive confirmation of those principles, the Athenians show that
they did not gain their power by violence, but were compelled by the
force of circumstances to give it the form of a protectorate ; that in the
existing state of things they could not relinquish this protectorate without
hazarding their own existence ; that as this protectorate had become a
tyranny, it must be maintained by vigour and severity ; that humanity
and equity could only be appealed to in dealings with an equal, who had
an opportunity of requiting benefits conferred upon him ;* till at last, in
the dialogue with the Melians, the Athenians assert the right of the
stronger as a law of nature, and rest their demand, that the Melians
should become subject to them, on this principle alone. " We desire
and do," say they, " only what is consistent with all that men conceive
of the gods and desire for themselves. For as we believe it of the gods,
so we clearly perceive in the case of men, that all who have the power
are constrained by a necessity of nature to govern and command. We
did not invent this law, nor were we the first to avail ourselves of it ;
but since we have received it as a law already established and in full
force, and since we shall leave it as a perpetual inheritance to those who
come after us, we intend, on the present occasion, to act in accordance
with it, because we know that you and all others would act in the same
manner if you possessed the same power." f These principles, according
to which no doubt Greeks and other men had acted before them, though
perhaps under some cloak or disguise of justice, are so coolly propounded
* Thucyd. III. 37. 40. This is said by Cleon, who, in the case in question,
was defeated by the more humane party of Diodotus ; hut this exception, made in
the case of the Mitylenseans, remained an exception in favour of humanity ; as a
general rule, the spirit of Cleon predominated in the foreign policy of Atnens.
f Thucyd. Y. 105, according to Dr. Arnold's correct interpretation.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 491
by the historian in this dialogue, he has delivered them so calmly and
dispassionately, so absolutely without any expression of his own opinion
to the contrary, that we are almost led to believe that Thucydides
recognized the right of the strongest as the only rule of politics.
But there is clearly a wide difference between the modes of thinking
and acting which Thucydides describes with such indifference as pre-
valent in Athens, and his own convictions as to what was for the
advantage of mankind in general and of his own countrymen in par-
ticular. How little Thucydides, as an honest man, approved of the
maxims of Athenian policy established in his own time, is clear from his
striking and instructive picture of the changes which took place in the
political conduct of the different states after the first years of the war, in
consequence chiefly of the domestic strife of factions — changes which
Thucydides never intended to represent as beneficial, for he says of them,
that " simplicity of character, which is the principal ingredient in a noble
nature, was in those days ridiculed and banished from the world." *
The panegyric on the Athenian democracy and on their mode of living,
which occurs chiefly in the funeral oration of Pericles, is modified consi-
derably by the assertion of Thucydides, that the government of the Five-
thousand was the best administered constitution which the Athenians had
enjoyed in his time ;t and also by the incidental remark that the Lace-
daemonians and Chians alone, so far as he knew, were the only people
who had been able to unite moderation and discretion with their good
fortune. \ And thus, in general, we must draw a distinction between the
sound and serious morality of Thucydides and the impartial love of truth,
which led him to paint the world as it was ; and we must not deny
him a deep religious feeling, because his plan was to describe human
affairs according to their relation of cause and effect ; and because, while
he took account of the belief of others as a motive of their actions, he
does not obtrude his own belief on the subject. Religion, mythology, and
poetry, are subjects which Thucydides, with a somewhat partial view of the
matter, § sets aside as foreign to the business of a historian ; and we may
justly regard him as the Anaxagoras of history, for he has detached the
workings of Providence from the chain of causes which influence the
life of man as distinctly and decidedly as the Ionian philosopher separat< d
the I'oDe from the powers which operate on the material world. ||
§ 10. The style and peculiar diction of Thucydides are so closely
* III. 83 : ro tyyjt;, oZ to yiwciiov tXChttm <mt£*££I, KarctytXairvi)/ ritparicrfa.
f Thucyd. VIII. 97. % Thucyd. VIII. 24.
§ It would bo easy to show that Thucydides sots too low a value on the old
civilization of Greece; and, in general, the first part of the first book, the introduc-
tion properly so called, as it is written to establish a general proposition for which
Thucydides pleads as an advocate, does not exhibit those unprejudiced views for
which the main part of the work is so peculiarly distinguished.
U See Vol. I., p. 247.
492 . HISTORY OF THE
connected with the character of his history, and are so remarkable in
themselves, that we cannot but make an attempt, notwithstanding the
necessary brevity of this sketch, to set them before the reader in their
main features.
We think we have already approximated to a right conception of this
peculiar style, in the remark, that in Thucydides the concise and preg-
nant oratory of Pericles was combined with the antique and vigorous but
artificial style of Antiphon's rhetoric.
In the use of words, Thucydides is distinct and precise, and every
word which he uses is significant and expressive. Even in him this
degenerates, in some passages, into an attempt to make distinctions, after
the manner of Prodicus, in the use of nearly synonymous words. *
This definiteness of expression is aided by great copiousness of
diction, and in this, Thucydides, like Antiphon, uses a great number
of antique, poetical words, not for the mere purpose of ornament, as is
the case with Gorgias, but because the language of the day sanctioned
the use of these pithy and expressive phrases, f In his dialect, Thucy-
dides kept closer to the old Attic forms than his contemporaries among
the comic poets. \
Similarly, the constructions in Thucydides are marked by a freedom,
which, on the whole, is more suitable to antique poetry than to prose ;
and this has enabled him to form connexions of ideas, without an admix-
ture of superfluous words, which disturb the connexion, and, conse-
quently, with greater distinctness than would be possible with more
limited and regular constructions. An instance of this is the liberty of
construing verbal-nouns in the same way as the verbs from which they
are derived. § These, and other things of the same kind, produce that
rapidity of description, as the ancients call it, || which hits the mark at
once.
In the order of the words, too, Thucydides takes a liberty which is
generally conceded to poets alone ; inasmuch as he sometimes arranges
the ideas rather according to their real connexion or contrast than
according to the grammatical construction. %
* I. G9; II. 62; III. 16.39.
f These expressions, which had become obsolete in the mean time, were called
in later times yXuaaai ; hence, Dionysius complains of the y\utnrnpa.rixov in the
btylc of Thucydides.
+ See Chap. XXVII. at the end.
§ This is the origin of such expressions as the following : h oh Kioirux^'Si " the
circumstance that a hostile city was not surrounded by walls of circumvallation ;"
to ahro vffo a^avrav Ilia lo&e-fjM, " the case in which every individual, each for
himself, entertains the same opinion ;" ii axivlvw; lovXn'a (not the same as ax.lvl'vio;),
" a state of slavery in which one can live comfortably and free from all appre-
hensions."
|| Tiip^o; <rr>; <ryi[A<ZB 'ice;,
II As in III. 39: pjra r«i voXtf/.turKToiv v/tag ffTay-t; lixQhl^ut, where the
first words are placed together for the sake of contrast.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 493
In the connection of his sentences there is sometimes an inequality and
harshness * very different from the smooth and polished style of later
times. Moreover he does not avoid using different grammatical forms
(cases and moods) in the corresponding memhers of the sentence, f or
allowing rapid changes in the grammatical structure, which are often not
expressly indicated hut tacitly introduced, an expression required hy the
sentence heing supplied from another similar one. J
§ 11. The structure of periods in Thucydides, like that of Antiphon,
stands half-way between the loose connexion of sentences in the Ionian
writers and the periodic style which subsequently developed itself at
Athens. The greater power and energy in the combination of thoughts
is manifested by the greater length of the sentences. In Thucydides
there are two species of periods, which are both of them equally charac-
teristic of his style. In one of them, which may be termed the descend-
ing period, the action, or result, is placed first, and is immediately
followed by the causes or motives expressed by causal-sentences, or
participles, which are again confirmed by similar forms of speech. §
The other form, the ascending period, begins with the primary cir-
cumstances, developing from them all sorts of consequences, or re-
flexions referring to them, and concludes, often after a long chain of
consequences, with the result, the determination, or the action itself. ||
Both descriptions of periods produce a feeling of difficulty, and require
to be read twice in order to be understood clearly and in all respects ;
it is possible to make them more immediately intelligible, more con-
venient and pleasant to read, by breaking them up into the smaller
clauses suggested by the pauses in the sentence ; but then we shall be
forced to confess that when the difficulty is once overcome, the form
chosen by Thucydides conveys the strongest impression of a unity of
thought and a combined working of every part to produce one result.
This mode of constructing the sentence is peculiar to the historical
style of Thucydides : but he resembles the other writers of the age in
* uvupaXicc, r^ay^urrti.
f e. g., when he connects by xa.) two different constructions of cases, as the
grounds of an action, or when, after the same final or conditional particle, he places
first the conjunctive, and then the optative, in which the distinction is obvious.—
[See Arnold's Thucydides, III. 22. — Ed.]
% The <rx>ifJM *& to ttiftuivifAtvov, also the uiro xwov, is very common in Thucy-
dides.
§ Examples, I. 1: Qovxvb'ilns %vviy^a.^l x.r.X. I. 25: Kogirfaoi St xttra, to %'ixu.iov —
vp^ovro voXi/Ait)/- and everywhere.
Examples, I. 2: rri; yao Ifuregiee; x.r.X. I. 58 : Uorilaiarai h Tift^avrt; x.r.X.
IV. 73, 74 : el ya^ Mtyajjff— Jfjx"" 7 *'- II is interesting to observe how Dionysius
(de Tkucyd. judic, p. 872) subjects these ascending periods to his criticism, and
resolves them into more intelligible and pleasing, but less vigorous forms, by
taking out of the middle a number of the subordinate clauses ami adding them, by
way of appendix, at the end. Antiphon resembles Thucydides in this particular
also; e. g. in the sentence (Tttral. I. a. 6 6) : ix ■xuXamZ yug x.r.X.
494
HISTORY OF THE
the symmetrical structure which prevails in his speeches, in separating
and contrasting the different ideas, in comparing and discriminating, in
looking backwards and forwards at the same time, and so producing a
sort of equilibrium both in the diction and in the thoughts. As we have
already said, in speaking of Antiphon, this antithetical style is not mere
mannerism ; it is a natural product of the acuteness of the people
of Attica ; but at the same time it is not to be denied, that under
the influence of the sophistical rhetoric it degenerated into a sort of
mannerism ; and Thucydides himself is full of artifices of such a nature
that we are sometimes at a loss whether we are to admire his refined dis-
crimination, or wonder at his antique and affected ornaments, — especially
when the outward graces of Isocola, Homceoteleuta, Parecheses, &c, are
superadded to the real contrasts of thoughts and ideas.*
On the other hand, Thucydides, even more than Antiphon, is free
from all those irregularities of diction which proceed from passion or
dissimulation ; he is conspicuous for a sort of equable tranquillity, which
cannot be better described than by comparing it to that sublime serenity
of soul which marks the features of all the gods and heroes sculptured
by Phidias and his school. It is not an imperfection of language, it is
rather a mark of dignity, which predominates in every expression, and
which, even in the most perilous straits which necessarily called into play
every passion and emotion — fear and anguish, indignation and hatred —
even in these cases, bids the speaker maintain a tone of moderation and re-
flexion, and, above all, constrains him to content himself with a plain and
impressive statement of the affair which he has in hand. What passionate
declamation a later rhetorician would have put into the mouths of the
Theban and Platsean orators, when the latter are pleading for life and
death against the former before the Spartans, and yet Thucydides intro-
duces only one burst of emotion : " Have you not done a dreadful
deed?"t "
It will readily be imagined, on the slightest comparison between these
speeches and those of Lysias, how strange this style and this eloquence
— with its fulness of thoughts, its terse and nervous diction, and its con-
nexions of sentences not to be understood without the closest attention —
must have appeared to the Athenians, even at the time when the work
* As when Thucydides says (IV. Gl) : «" t i-prix^yiroi ih<X£ifa>s &$ir.oi
Ix^vrts, tuXiyui uvguxrot iiriccnv i. £., "and thus those who with specious
pretexts came here on an unjust imitation, will he sent away on good grounds
without having effected their object." We have other examples in I. 77. 144 ;
III. 38. 57. 82; IV. 108. The old rhetoricians often speak of these (r^/Aara rris
Klhuis in Thucydides ; Dionysius thinks them ijaipukicuI-/!, puerilia. Compare Aulus
Gellius, N. A., XVIII. 8.
I" lias ol hiva il^yourh ; III. 66. There is a good deal more liveliness and cheer-
fulness (probably intended to characterize the speaker) in the oration of Athenav
goras, the leader of the democratic party at Syracuse. (Thucyd. VI. 38, 39.)
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 495
of Thucydides first began to attract notice. In reference to the speeches,
Cratippus — a continner of the history — was perhaps right when he as-
signed, as a reason for the omission of speeches in the VII Ith book, that
Thucydides found them no longer suited to the prevailing taste.* Even
at that time these speeches must have produced much the same effect
upon the Attic taste as that which Cicero, at a later period, endeavoured
to convey to the Romans, by comparing the style of Thucydides with
old, sour, and heavy Falernian.f Thucydides was scarcely easier to the
later Greeks and Romans than he is to the Greek scholars of the present
time ; nay, when Cicero declares that he finds the speeches in his history
almost unintelligible, modern philologers may well congratulate them-
selves that they have surmounted all these difficulties, and left scarcely
anything in them unexplained or misunderstood.
CHAPTER XXXV.
9 1. Events which followed the Peloponncsiaii war. The adventures of Lysias.
Leading epochs of his life. §2. The earlier sophistical rhetoric of Lysias. §3.
The style of this rhetoric preserved in his later panegyrical speeches. § 4. Change
in the oratory of Lysias produced by his own impulses and by his employment
as a writer of speeches for private individuals. § 5. Analysis of his speed i
against Agoratus. § G. General view of his extant orations.
§ 1. The Peluponnesian war, terminating, as it did, after enormous and
unexampled military efforts, in the downfall of the power of Athens,
was succeeded by a period of exhaustion and repose. Freedom and
democracy were indeed restored by Thrasybulus and his party, but
Athens had ceased to be the capital of a great empire, the sovereign of
the sea and of the coasts ; and it was only by the prudence of Conon that
she recovered even a part of her former supremacy. The fine arts which,
in the time of Pericles, had been carried to such perfection by Phidias
and his schoo., were checked in their further progress ; and did not
resume their former vigour till a generation later (01. 102. b.c. 372),
when they sprung up into new life in the later Attic, school of raxiteles.
Poetry, in the later tragedy and in the dithyramb, degenerated more anil
* Cratippus, cqntd Dionys. de Thucyd. Judic., c. XVI., p. 817: roTf «.x,ciivtrii
f Cicero, Brutus 83. § 288.
496 HISTORY OF THE
more into rhetorical casuistry or empty bombast. That higher energy,
which results from a consciousness of real greatness, seemed to have
vanished from the arts, as it did from the active life of man.
And yet it was at this very time that prose literature, freed from the
fetters which had bound it hitherto, began a new career, which led to
its fairest developement. Lysias and Isocrates (the two young men
whom Socrates opposes one to another in Plato's Phcedrus, bitterly
reproaching the former, and forming the most brilliant expectations with
regard to the latter) gave an entirely new form to oratory by the happy
alterations which they, in different ways, introduced into the old prose
style.
Lysias was descended from a family of distinction at Syracuse. His
father, Cephalus, was persuaded by Pericles to settle at Athens, where
he lived 30 years :* he is introduced in Plato's Republic, about the year
01. 92, 2. b.c. 411,t as a very old man, respected and loved by all
about him. When the great colony of Thurii was founded by an union
of nearly all Greece (01. 84, 1. b.c. 444), Lysias went thither, along
with his eldest brother Polemarchus, in order to take possession of the
lot assigned to his family • at that time he was only 15 years old. At
Thurii he devoted himself to rhetoric, as taught in the school of the
Sicilian Sophists ; his instructors were the well-known Tisias, and another
Syracusan, named Nicias. He did not return to Athens till 01. 92, 1.
b c. 412, and lived there some few years in the house of his father
Cephalus, till he set up for himself as a professed Sophist. \ Although
he did not enjoy the rights of citizenship at Athens, but was merely a
resident alien, § he and his whole family were warmly engaged in favour
of the democracy. On this account, the Thirty compelled his brother
Polemarchus to drink the cup of hemlock, and Lysias only escaped the
rage of the tyrants by flying to Megara. He was thus all the more ready
to aid Thrasybulus and the other champions of freedom at Phyle with the
remains of his property, and forwarded with all his might the restoration
of democracy at Athens
He was now once more settled at Athens as proprietor of a shield-
manufactory, also teaching rhetoric after the manner of the Sophists,
* See Lysias, in Eratosth., § 4.
t According to the date of the Republic, as fixed by Bockh in two Programmes
of the University of Berlin for the years 1838 and 1839.
X Avtrius o (roQurrhs is mentioned in the speech against Nerera (p. 1352 Reiske),
and there is no doubt that the orator is meant.
,. \ Mi «""*«' Thrasybulus wished to have made him a citizen, but circumstances
dad not favour his design, and the orator remained an ievnXis, one of a privileged
class among the fiAraiKci. As iWsXwj the family had, before the time of the Thirty,
served as choregi, like the citizens.
|| With an obvious manifestation of personal interest, Lysias (in his funeral
oration, § 66) commemorates the strangers, i. e. the resident aliens, who fell fighting
m the Peirseus by the side of the liberators of Athens.
LITERATURE 01 ANClbNt GREECE. 4^7
when a new career "was opened to him by an event which touched him
very nearly. Eratosthenes, one of the Thirty, wished to avail himself
of the advantage granted to the Thirty Tyrants under the general am-
nesty, namely, that it should extend to them also, if they would submit
to a public inquiry, and so clear themselves of all guilt. Eratosthenes
relied on having belonged to the more moderate party of Theramenes,
who, on account of his greater leniency, had fallen a victim to the more
energetic and violent Critias. And yet it was this very Eratosthenes
who had, in accordance with a decree of the Thirty, arrested Polemarchus
in the open street, carried him off to prison, and accomplished his
judicial murder. When his conduct was submitted to public investi-
gation,* Lysias came forward in person as his accuser, although, as he
says himself, he had never before been in court, either on his own busi-
ness or on that of any other person, t He attacks Eratosthenes, in the
first instance, on account of his participation in the death of Pole
marchus and the other misfortunes which he had brought upon his
family ; and then enters on the whole career and public life of Erato-
sthenes, who had also belonged to the Four-hundred, and was one of the
Five Ephori whom the Hctcerice, or secret associations, got elected after
the battle of yEgospotami : and in this he maintains, that Theramenes,
whose leniency and moderation had been so much extolled, had, by his
intrigues, been a principal cause of all the calamities that had befallen
the state. The whole speech is pervaded by a feeling of the strongest
conviction, and by that natural warmth which we should expect in the
case of a subject so immediately affecting the speaker. He concludes
with a most vehement appeal to the judges : " I shall desist from any
further accusations; ye have heard, seen, and experienced : — ye know ! —
decide then !"
§ 2. This speech forms a great epoch in the life of Lysias, in his
employments and studies, in the style of his oratory, and, we may add,
in the whole history of Attic prose. Up to that time, Lysias had prac-
tised rhetoric merely as a Sophist of the Sicilian school, instructing the
voung and composing school-exercises. The peculiarity and manner-
ism, which must have naturally resulted from such an application of
eloquence, were the less likely to be escaped in the case of Lysias, as he
was entirely under the influence of the school which had produced
Gorgias. Lysias shared with Gorgias in the endeavour to evince the
power of oratory, by giving probability to the improbable, and credibility
to the incredible ; hence resulted a love of paradox, and an unnatural and
forced arrangement of the materials, excessive artifice of ornament in the
details, and a total want of that natural earnestness which springs from
conviction and a feeling of truth. The difference between these
* = ii-'Jv;;. ■!■ iUT IpauroZ Turrsr; oilrl &\X.0T£IH <7oayv,UTCC Tou^a;, EratOSth, } •!.
2 K
498 HISTORY OF THE
teachers of rhetoric consisted in this one feature: that Gorgias, who
had naturally a taste for smart and glittering ornaments, went much
farther than Lysias in the attempt to charm the ear with euphonies,
to captivate the imagination with splendid diction, and to blind the
understanding with the magic of oratory: whereas Lysias (who was, at
the bottom, a man of cood, plain common sense, and who had imbibed
the shrewdness and refinement of an Attic mind by his constant intercourse
with the Athenians, having belonged to their party even at Thurii,*)
combined, with the usual arts of sophistic oratory, more of his own
peculiarities —more of subtle novelty in the conception, and more of
terseness and vigour in the expression.
We derive this notion of the earlier style of Lysias principally from
Plato's Phcedrus, one of the earliest works of that great philosopher, t
the object of which is to exalt the genuine love of truth high above that
snorting with thoughts and words to which the Sophists confined them-
selves. The dialogue introduces us to Phcedrus, a young friend of
Socrates, whom an essay of Lysias has filled with enthusiastic admiration.
This essay he reads to Socrates at his request, and partly by serious
argument, partly by a more sportive vein of reasoning, is led to recognize
the nothingness of this sort of oratory. It is probable that Plato
did not borrow the essay in question immediately from Lysias, but
composed it himself, in order to give a comprehensive specimen of the
faults which he wished to point out. Its theme is, to persuade a beauti-
ful youth that he should bestow his affections upon one who loved him
not, rather than upon a lover. As the subject of the essay is quite of a
sophistic nature, so the essay itself is merely the product of an inventive
genius, totally devoid of spirit and earnestness. The arguments are
brought forward one after the other with the greatest exactness, but there
is no unity of thought, no general comprehension of ideas, no necessary
connexion of one part with the other ; nor are the different members
grouped and massed together so as to form one consistent whole : hence,
the wearisome monotony of conjunctions by which the sentences are
linked together. \ The prevalent collocation is the antithesis tricked out
with all its old-fashioned ornaments, the Isocola, Homoeoteleuta, &c. §
The diction is free from the poetic ostentation of Gorgias ; but it is so
* Lysias left Thurii when, after the failure of the Sicilian expedition, the Lace-
dremoiuaii party there got the upper hand, and domineered over the Athenian
colonists.
t According to the old tradition, it was written before the death of Socrates
(01. 95, 1. b.c. 399).
\ In this short essay, three senteuces begin with iviTi..., and four with *ai
iiAv ih . . •
(> In the passages (p. 233) : ixiivoi ya^ xcci (a) xytf7rfitrovcrt, xa.) (b) uxoXovS-zitrouiri,
xa.) (c) T'li Sv(>ii; vfewiri, xa.) (a) fzuXitrra. riT0r,<rovrxi, xa) (/3) obx IXci^irr'/iv %«{/v t'Uovrm,
xa) (y) <7toXXa uyatu, kvtoTs ivfyvreu, the sentences a, 8, y are manifestly divided
into three only for the sake of an equipoise of homceo'elcuta.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 499
carefully formed, and with so many artificial turns, that we are at once
struck with the labour which such a school-exercise must have cost the
writer.
§ 3. In the extant collection of the works of Lysias we have no
school-exercise (jxeXinj) of this kind, and, generally, no speech anterior
in date to the accusation of Eratosthenes : we have only those works
which he composed in his riper years, and which exhibit the more
matured taste of their author.* Among these, however, there is one
which presents traces of his earlier declamation ; the reason of which is
to be sought in the difference of subject. The Funeral Oration for the
Athenians who fell in the Corinthian war, which was written by Lysias
after 01. 96, 3. b.c 394, but could hardly have been delivered in public,
belongs to a class of speeches formally distinguished from the delibera-
tive f and judicial % orations, because it was not designed to produce
any practical result. On this very account, the sort of speeches to
which we refer, and which are called " speeches for display," " show-
speeches," § were removed from the influence of the impulses which
imparted a freer and more natural movement to orations of the prac-
tical kind. They were particularly cultivated by the Sophists, who
professed to be able to praise and blame everything; and, even after
the time of the Thirty, they retained their sophistic form. Such a work
is the Epitaphius of Lysias. This oration, following the fashion of such
" show-speeches" (iwilei^Eio), goes through the historical and mythical
ages, stringing together the great deeds of the Athenians in chronological
order ; dwelling at great length on the mythical proofs of Athenian
bravery and humanity, such as their war with the Amazons, their exer-
tions in obtaining the sepulture of the heroes who fell at Thebes, and
their reception of the Heracleidae ; then recounting the exploits of the
Athenians during the Persian invasion ; but passing rapidly over the
Peloponnesian war;— in direct contrast to the plan of Thucydides ; — and
in general laying the greatest stress on those topics which were most
adapted for panegyrical declamation. || These ideas are worked out in
so forced and artificial a manner, that we cannot wonder at those scholars
who have failed to recognize in this speech the same Lysias that we find
in the judicial orations. The whole essay is pervaded by a regular
* With the exception, as it seems, of the singular little speech, <r^o; rob; o-uveu-
ciutTra; xaxoXoyiav, which is neither a judicial speech nor yet a mere piXirtl. It
seems to he based upon real occurrences, but is altogether sophistical in the
execution. It is a tract in which Lysias renounces the friendship of those with
whom he had been on terms of intimacy and friendship.
■\ trvy./ioi/XivTix.ov yivoi, dcliberativum genus.
J hxavixev, judiciale genus. § iTihixrixiv, -ruvriyv^ixov ytves-
|| The only passage in which he evinces any real inUvest in his subject is that
in which he extols those who put down the tyranny of the Thirty, add among
them, the strangers who fought for the democracy on that occasion, and conse-
quently obtained in death the same privileges as the citizens themselves (§ CGJ.
U 12 k 2
500 HISTORY OF TIIK
monotonous parallelism of sentences, the antithesis being often one of
■words rather than one of thoughts : * Polus, or any other pupil of Gor-
gias, could hardly have revelled move in assonances, f and such-like
jingling rhetoric.
§ 4. It is probable that Lysias would never have escaped from this
forced and artificial style, had not a real feeling of pain and anger, like
that which was excited in his bosom by the audacious impudence of the
ex-tyrant Eratosthenes, given a more lively and natural flow, both to his
spirits and to his speech. Not that we fail to recognize, even in the
speech against Eratosthenes, the school in which Lysias had lived up to
that time ; for the tendency to divide, compare, and oppose, peeps out in
the midst of the most violent and energetic declamation. But this
tendency is here subordinated to the earnest vehemence with which Lysias
unveils the baseness of his opponent.
This occasion convinced Lysias what style of oratory was both the
most suited to his own character and also least likely to fail in producing
an effect upon the judges. He now began, in the 50th year of his life,
to follow the trade of Antiphon, and wrote speeches for such private
individuals as could not trust to their own skill in addressing a court.
For this object a plain, unartificial style, was the best suited, because the
citizens, who called in the aid of the speech writer, were just those who
had no skill in speaking and no knowledge of rhetoric : + and thus Lysias
was obliged to lay himself out for such a style, in which, of course, he
became more and more confirmed by habit. The consequence was, that
for his contemporaries, and for all ages, Lysias stands forth as the first,
and, in many respects, the most perfect pattern of the plain (or homely)
style. §
Lysias distinguished, with the accuracy of a dramatist, between the
different characters into whose mouths he put his speeches, and made
every one, the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the educated
and the uneducated, speak according to Lis quality and condition : this
is what the ancient critics praise under the name of his Ethopa'ia. || The
prevalent tone, however, was that of the average man; accordingly,
Lysias adhered to the looser collocation of sentences, •([ which is ob-
* As when Lysias says (§ 25) : " sacrificing their body, but for virtue's sake
setting no value on their life :" where body and life (^v^/i), form no real opposi-
tion, but only a \pivbii; avrlkirt;, according to the striking remark of Aristotle, li/tet.
III., 9 e.rtr.
f vragtiXKft'h such as [cvvptiv rrapd rri; tpri/jj'/i; y.ufiuv, Epitaph. § 3.
% See Quinclil., Instit. Or. III. 8, $ 50, 51 : Nam sunt multsc a Grsccis Latinis-
que composite orationes, quibus alii uterentur. ad quorum conditioncm vitamque
aptanda, qure dicebantur, fuerunt : — ideoque Lysias optime videtur in iis, qua?
scribebat indoctis, servasse veritatis fidem.
§ i itr%vi>;, aiptxi;; %x£u-*rYi(>, tenue dicendi ffenus.
|| Dionys. Halic. de Lysia jiid., c. 8, 9, p. 4G7 Reiske. Convp. d* hao, c. 3,
p. 589.
If \i%t; hccXiXvftiw, nearly the same as ii^ahr,.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 501
served in ordinary conversation, and did not trouble himself with the
structure of periods, which were just coming into fashion : although, at
the same time, he shows that he understands the art of combining sen-
tences in one whole ; and, when the occasion serves, he can group his
thoughts together and present them to his hearers with a vivid conception
of their unity.* The figures of thought, as they are called, which we
have mentioned above as interruptions to the natural current of our feel-
ings, arc used by Lysias very sparingly : but, at the same time, he alto-
gether neglects the figures of speech, which made up the old-fashioned
ornaments of rhetoric, and indeed, the more so in proportion as the tone
of the particular speech is plainer and more simple. In the individual
words and expressions Lysias keeps strictly to the ordinary language of
every clay life, and repudiates all the trickery of poetic diction, compound
words, and metaphors. His object is to supply his client with as many
convincing arguments as he can deliver before the judges in the short
time which the water-clock {clepsydra) allowed to the plaintiff and
defendant in an action. The procemium is designed solely to produce a
favourable impression, and to conciliate the good will of the judges :
the narrative part of the speech, for which Lysias was particularly
famous, is always natural, interesting, and lively, and is often relieved
by a few mimic touches which give it a wonderful air of reality ; the
proofs and confutations are distinguished by a clearness of reasoning, and
a boldness and confidence of argument, which seem to leave no room
for doubt ; in a word, the speeches of Lysias are just what they ought to
be in order to obtain a favourable decision, which was the only object
proposed by their writer ; an object in which, as it seems, he often suc-
ceeded.
§ 5. The most conspicuous among the speeches of Lysias are those
which are designed to resent the injuries brought upon Athens and her
individual citizens, in the time of their depression, by means of the
oligarchical intrigues which preceded the tyranny of the Thirty, and by
means of that tyranny itself, and in which Lysias and his family had so
grievously suffered. To this class belongs the speech against Agoratus,
which, among his extant orations, immediately follows that against Era-
tosthenes ;f and, although not delivered in the author's name, presents
many points of resemblance to the latter. By suggesting that the party
* 'H tTU/rrpifwta to. iv/^mtu. kou (TTooyyCkois \»f'ioi>vffa X<*;:, as it is called by Dionys.
Hal., de Lysia jiul., (», p. 4(54. He differs from Thucydides in placing the con-
firmatory sentences and participles sometimes before and sometimes after the
main sentence: e.g. the external circumstances first, and the subjective reasons
afterwards.
f It was delivered 01. 04, 4. n.c. 401, and is an accusation avayuyr,;, i. c. directed
towards an immediate execution of the punishment, hecausc the accuser regards
Agoratus as a murderer, who, in defiance of the established law against murderers,
still frequented the temples and public assemblies.
5C2 HISTORY OF THE
accused is the common enemy of the judges and of the accuser, the
procemium at once conciliates the good will of the judges. It draws the
attention of the audience to a highly interesting narrative, in which the
fall of the democracy is connected with the ruin of Dionysodorus, whom
the accuser seeks to avenge. This narrative, which at the same time
unfolds the state of the case, and is premised as the main point in
it,* hegins with the battle of iEgos-potami, and details all the detestable
manoeuvres by which Theramenes endeavoured to deliver up his native
city, unarmed, into the power of her enemies. The fear of Theramenes
lest the leaders of the army should detect and thwart his intrigues, led
to the guilt of Agoratus : according to the orator's account of the matter,
Agoratus willingly undertook to represent the commanders as enemies
of the peace, in consequence of which they were apprehended and
judicially murdered by the Council under the Thirty Tyrants. This
narrative, which is given in the most vivid colours, and, in its main
features, is supported by evidence, concludes, with the same artful and
well-contrived simplicity which reigns throughout the speech, in a scene
in the dungeon, where Dionysodorus, after disposing of his property
leaves it as a sacred duty to be performed by his brother and brother-in-
law, the accuser, and all his friends, nay, even by his unborn child, that
they should take vengeance for his death on Agoratus, who, according to
the Athenian way of viewing the matter, was considered as the chief author
of it. The accuser now briefly sketches the mischiefs done by the
Thirty — who could not have got their power without the intrigues here
referred to ; confutes some pleas which Agoratus might bring forward in
his justification, by a careful scrutiny of all the circumstances attending
his denunciation ; then enlarges upon the whole life of Agoratus ; the
meanness of his family, his usurpation of the rights of citizenship, his
dealings with the liberators at Phyle, with whom he sought to identify
himself, t but was rejected by them as a murderer; then justifies the
harsh measure of the summary process (cnrayaiyi'i), which the accuser
had thought fit to employ against Agoratus ; and finally proves, that the
amnesty between the two parties at Athens did not apply to Agoratus.
The epilogue very emphatically lays before the judges the dilemma in
which they were placed, of either condemning Agoratus, or justifying the
execution of those persons whose ruin he had effected. The excellence
of this brief but weighty speech will be perceived even from this
* The hvyntris is elsewhere used by Lysias as the Kardtrrxins, or definition of the
status cansce, and immediately follows the exordium ; whereas Antiphon follows up
the exordium, without the introduction of any Karao-rain;, by a part of the proofs,
e. (j. the direct proof or formal nullification, and then at last introduces the Iwywi;
to pave the way for other proofs, such as those springing from probability,
•f Here an obscure point remains to be settled — what induced Agoratus to join
the exiles at Phyle 1 ? The orator gives no reason for this conduct, but only adduces
it as a proof of his shameless impudence, § 77.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE.
503
summary of it : it lies open to only one censure, which is generally
brought against Lysias by the old rhetoricians — that the. proofs of his
accusation, which follow the narrative, hang together too loosely, and
have not the unity which might easily have been produced by a more
accurate attention to a closer connexion of thought.
§ 6. Lysias was, in these and the following years, wonderfully prolific
as an orator. The ancients were acquainted w r ith 425 orations which
passed under his name ; of these, 250 are recognized as genuine : we
have 35 of them, which, by the order in which they have come down to
us, appear to have belonged to two separate collections.* One of these
collections originally comprised all the speeches of Lysias arranged
according to the causes pleaded in them, a principle of arrangement
which we have already discovered in the case of Antiphon. Of this
collection we have but a mere fragment, containing the last of the
speeches on manslaughter, the speeches about impiety, and the first of
the speeches about injuries :t either from accident or from caprice, the
Funeral Oration is placed among these. The second collection begins
with the important speech against Eratosthenes. It contains no complete
class of speeches, but is clearly a selection from the works of Lysias, the
choice of speeches being guided by their historical interest. Con-
sequently, a considerable number of these speeches carry us deeply
into the history of the time before and after the tyranny of the
Thirty, and are among the most important authorities for the events
of this period with which we are not sufficiently acquainted from
other sources. As might be expected, none of these speeches is
anterior in date to the speech against Eratosthenes : \ nor can we show
that any one of them is subsequent to 01. 98, 2. B.C. 387, § although
Lysias is said to have lived till 01. 100, 2 or 3. n.c. 318. || The
arrangement is neither chronological, nor according to the causes
pleaded ; but is an arbitrary compound of both.
* According to the discovery made by a young friend of the Author, which will
probably be soon brought out in a complete and finished state.
f The speech for Eratosthenes is an a-xoXoy'ia. (ptniov, and is followed by the speech
against Simon, and the following moi t^ccvumto;, which also belong to the tpovixr.i
X»y»t\ then come the speeches wig} acri/iuas, for Callias, against Andocides, and
about the Olive : then follow the speeches xxxoXoyiav, to his comrades, for the
warriors, and against Theomnestus. The speech about the Olive ia cited In Har-
pocration, v. iryxos, a* contained iv toI; rn; ««/3s/a?, and so his ruv c-v/u-jioXaiuv x'oyoi,
iriT^oi-ix/ii Xoyoi, are also quoted.
+ The speech of Foh stratus does not belong to the time of the Four-hundred,
but was delivered at. the scrutiny (Wi^aa-ia) which Polystratus had to undergo as
an officer of his tribe, and at which he was charged with having belonged to the
Four-hundred. The speech Iripou x.u.TuXvtnu>f avokoylct was delivered under similar
circumstances.
§ The speech about the property of Aristophanes probably falls under this year.
|| A speech in the first series (that against Theomnestus) was written later, —
Ol. 98, 1, or 99, 1. B.C. 384.
; HISTORY OF THE
CHAPTER XXXVI.
§ 1. Early training of Isocrates; but slightly influenced by Socrates. § 2. School
of Isocrates ; its great repute ; his attempts to influence the politics of the day
•without thoroughly understanding them. § 3. The form of a speech the prin-
cipal matter in his judgment. § 4. New developement which he gave to prose
composition. § 5. His structure of periods. $ G. Smoothness and evenness of
his style. § V. He prefers the panegyrical oratory to the forensic.
§ 1. It is very doubtful whether Plato would have accorded to Isocrates
in his maturer age those high praises which he has bestowed upon him
in the earlier years of his life, or would have preferred him so decidedly
to Lysias. Isocrates, the son of Theodoras, was born at Athens in 01.
86, 1. b.c. 436, and was, consequently, about 24 years younger than
Lysias. He was, no doubt, a well-conducted youth, eager to acquire
information ; and, to get himself thoroughly educated, became a pupil,
not only of the Sophists Gorgias and Tisias, but also of Socrates. In the
circle of his friends so strong an impression was created in his favour,
that it was believed that " he would not only in oratory leave all other
orators behind him like children, but that a divine instinct would lead
him on to still greater things. For that there was an earnest love of
wisdom in the heart of the man." Such is the prophecy concerning him
which Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates himself. Notwithstanding
this, however, Isocrates seems to have made no use of the great philo-
sopher beyond acquiring from him such a superficial knowledge of moral
philosophy as would enable him to give a colouring of science to his
professional exertions. Rhetoric was, after all, his main occupation, and
no age before his had seen so much care and labour expended on this art.
Accordingly, Isocrates essentially belongs to the Sophists, differing from
them only in this, that he could not any longer oppose the Socratic phi-
losophy by the bold proposal of making all things equally true by
argument :* on the contrary, he considered speech as only a means
of setting forth, in as pleasing and brilliant a manner as possible, some
opinion, which, though not very profound, was, at any rate, quite praise-
worthy in itself. If, however, he was less concerned about enlarging
his ideas and getting a deeper insight into the reality of things, or, in
general, comprehending the truth with greater clearness and accuracy,
than about perfecting the outward form and ornamental finish of his
* See the speech sref) uvnYoeiui, § 30, where he justly repudiates the charge,
that he was corrupting the youth by teaching them to turn right into wrong in the
courts of justice. Comp. $ 15.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 505
style, it follows that Plato, if he had criticized him when farther
advanced in his career, must have classed him among the artizans,
■who strove after a mere semblance of truth, in opposition to the true
philosophers.
§ 2. Isocrates had a strong desire to give a political turn to the
art of speaking which, with the exception of the panegyrical species,
had hitherto been cultivated chiefly for the contests of the courts :* but
bashfulness and physical weakness prevented him from ascending him-
self the bema in the Pnyx. Consequently, he set up a school, in which
he principally taught political oratory ; and so sedulously did he instruct
young men in rhetoric, that his industry was fully recognized by his
contemporaries, and his school became the first and most flourishing in
Greece.! Cicero compares this school to the wooden horse of the Trojan
war, because a similar number of oratorical heroes proceeded from
it. Public speakers and historians were his principal auditors ; and the
reason of this was, that Isocrates always selected for his exercises such
practical subjects as appeared to him both profitable and dignified, and
chiefly proposed as a study to his hearers the political events of his own
time— a circumstance which he has himself alleged as the main distinc-
tion between himself and the Sophists. \ The orations which Isocrates
composed were mostly destined for the school ; the law-speeches which
he wrote for actual use in the courts were merely a secondary considera-
tion. However, after the name of Isocrates had become famous, and
the circle of his scholars and friends extended over all the countries
inhabited by Greeks, Isocrates calculated upon a more extended publicity
for many of his orations than his school would have furnished, and
especially for those which touched on the public transactions of Greece :
and their literary circulation, by means of copies and recitations, obtained
for him a wider influence than a public delivery from the bema would
have done. In this manner, Isocrates might, even from the recesses of
his school, have produced a beneficial effect on his native land, which,
torn with internal discord, was striving against the powerful Mace-
donian ; and, to say the truth, we cannot but allow that there is
an effort to^attain this great object in those literary productions
which he addressed, at different times, to the Greeks in general, to the
Athenians, to Philip, or to still remoter princes; § nay, we some-
* ro iixa.vtx.oy yU,;. Isocrates, in his speech against the Sophists, J 19, blames
earlier rhetoricians for making the 3i*«|«rAw the chief point, and so bringing
forward the least agreeable side of rhetoric.
f He soon bad about 100 hearers, each of whom paid a fee of 1000 drachma;
(one-sixth of a talent).
X See especially the panegyric on Helen, {» 5, 6.
§ In this manner Isocrates endeavoured to work upon the island of Cyprus,
where at that time the Greek state of Salamis had raised itself into importance.
His Evagoras is a panegyric on that excellent ruler, addressed to ins son and
successor, Nicocles. The tract Nicocles is an exhortation to the Salaminians to
506 HISTORY OF THE
times find in them a certain amount of plain-speaking ;* but it is quite
clear that Isocrates had none of those profound views of policy which
could alone have given weight and efficiency to his suggestions. He
shows the very best intentions, always exhorts to concord and peace, lives
in the hope that every state will give up its extravagant claims, set free
its dependent allies, and place itself on an equal footing with them, and
that, in consequence of these happy changes, something great will he
undertaken against the barbarians. We find nowhere in Isocrates any
clear and well -based conception of the principles by which Greece may be
guided to this golden age of unity and concord, especially of the rights of the
states which would be affected by it, and the claims which would have to
be set aside. In the speech about the peace, which was published during
the Social War, he advises the Athenians, in the first part, to grant inde-
pendenee to the rebellious islanders ; in the second part, he recommends
them to give up their maritime supremacy— judicious and excellent propo-
sals, which would only have the effect of annihilating the power of Athens
and checking every tendency to manly exertion. In his Areopagiticus
he declares that he sees no safety for Athens, save in the restoration of
that democracy which Solon had founded and Cleisthenes had revived;
as if it were possible to restore, without the least trouble in the world,
a constitution, which, in the course of time, had undergone such manifold
changes, and, with it, the old simplicity of manner, which had altogether
disappeared. In his Panegyricus, he exhorts all the Greeks to give up
their animosities, and to direct their ambition against the barbarians;
the two chief states, Athens and Sparta, having so arranged as to divide
the Hegemony or leadership between them : a plan very sensible at the
time, and not altogether impracticable, but requiring a totally different
basis from that which Isocrates lays down ; for presuming a violent
objection on the part of the Lacedaemonians, he proves to them, from
the mythical history of early times, that Athens was more deserving of the
leadership than Sparta, t The only true and correctly conceived part of
the. speech is that in which he displays the divided condition of Greece,
and the facility with which the Greeks, if only united, could make con-
quests in Asia. Lastly, in his Philip, a tract inscribed jp the king of
Macedon, when this prince, in consequence of the treaty concluded by
obey their now ruler; aud his harangue to Nicocles is an exhortation addressed to
the young ruler, on the duties and virtues of a sovereign.
* " I am accustomed to write my orations with plainness of speech," says lie
in his letter to Archidamus (IX.), §13. This letter is undoubtedly genuine ; but
the following, that to Dionysius (X.), is, as clearly, the work of a later rhetorician
of the Asiatic school.
f What Isocrates says in this speech (written about 01. TOO, 1. B.C. 380) : tJ;v
fjXv hfjuit'^av -xoXn pfiitv Wi raura *M«.y«.yi7v, at all events does not accord with the
result of the negotiations given in Xenoph., Hellen. VI. 5, § 3, 4 ; VII. 1, \ 8 and
14(01. 102, 4. B.C. 369) ; where Athens renounces the only practical method of
sharing the Hegemony, by land and water, which the Lacedaemonians had offered.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 507
^Eschines, had placed Athens in a disagreeable predicament, he exhorts
the Macedonian to come forward as mediator between the dissident states
of Greece — the wolf as mediator in the quarrels of the sheep — and then
to march along with their united forces against the Persians — the very
thing which Philip wished to do, but then he desired to do so in the
only possible way by which it could be brought about, namely, as their
leader, and, under this name, as the ruler of the free states of Greece.
How strange, then, must have been the feelings of Isocrates, when
news was brought to him of the downfal of Athenian power and Greek
independence at Cheeronea ! His benevolent hopes must have been
so rudely dashed to the ground by this one stroke, that probably it was
disappointment, no less than patriotic grief for the loss of freedom, that
induced him to put an end to his life.
§ 3. The manner in which he speaks of them himself makes it evident
that his heart was but little affected by the subjects treated of in these
speeches. In his Philip he mentions that he had treated on the same
theme — the exhortation to the Greeks to unite themselves against the
barbarians — in his Panegyricus also, and dwells on the difficulty of
discussing the same subject in two different orations ; " especially since,"
to use his own words, " the first published is so accurately composed
that even our detractors imitate it, and tacitly admire it more than those
who praise it most extravagantly." * In the Panathcnaicus, an eulogium
on Athens, written by Isocrates when far advanced in age, he says, that
he had given up all earlier kinds of rhetoric, and had devoted himself to
the composition of speeches which concerned the welfare of the city and
of Greece in general ; and, consequently, had composed discourses " full
of thoughts, and decked out with not a few antitheses and parisoscs, and
those other figures which shine forth in the schools of rhetoric and com-
pel the hearers to signify their applause by shouting and clapping ;" at
the present time, however, being 94 years old, he did not think it be-
coming in him to use this style, but would speak as every one thought
himself capable of speaking if he chose, though no one would be able to
do so who had not bestowed upon his style the necessary attention and
labour. f It is clear, that, while Isocrates pretends to be casting his
glance over all Europe and Asia, and to have his soul filled with anxiety
for his native land, the object which he really has in his eye is the
approbation of the school and the triumph of his art over all rivals. So
that, after all, these great panegyrical orations belong to the class of
school-rhetoric, no less than the Praise of Helen and the Busiris, which
Isocrates composed immediately after the pattern of the Sophists, who
frequently selected mythical subjects for their encomiastic or vituperative
* Isocrat. Philipp., ( } 11. See the similar assertion in the Panegyricus itself $4.
f Isocrat. Panaihen., j 2.
50S HISTORY OP THE
discourses. In the Praise of Helen he blames another rhetorician
for writing a defence of this much maligned heroine, after having
professed to write, her eulogium. In the Busiris he shows the Sophist
Folycrates how he should have drawn up his encomium of this bar-
barous tyrant, and also incidentally sets him right with regard to an
ill f elected topic which he had introduced into an accusation of Socrates,
composed by him as a sophistical exercise. Polycrates had given
Socrates the credit of educating Alcibiades; "a fact which no one had
remarked, but which redounded rather to the credit than to the discredit
of Socrates, seeing that Alcibiades had so far excelled all other men." *
In this passage Isocrates merely criticizes Polycrates for an injudicious
choice of topics, without expressing any opinion upon the character of
Socrates, or the justice of his sentence ; which were considerations
foreign to the question. Isocrates attempts to pass off his own rhetorical
studies for philosophy, f but he really had very little acquaintance with
the philosophical strivings of his age. Otherwise he would not have
included in one class, as " the contentious philosophers," the Eleatics
Zeno and Melissu?, whose sole object was to discover the truth, and the
Sophists Protagoras and Gorgias. J
§ 4. Little as we may be disposed, after all these strictures, to regard
Isocrates as a great statesman or philosopher, he is not only eminent, but
constitutes an epoch in himself, as a rhetorician or artist of language.
Over and above the great care which he took about the formation of his
style, Isocrates had a decided genius for the art of rhetoric ; and, when
we read his periods, Ave may well believe what he tells us, that the
Athenians, alive as they were to beauties of this kind, felt a real enthu-
siasm for his writings, and friends and enemies vied in imitating their
magic elegance. When we read aloud the panegyrical orations of
Isocrates, we feel that, although they want the vigour and profundity
of Thucydides ' or Aristotle, there is a power in them which we miss
in every former work of rhetoric — a power which works upon the mind
as well as upon the ear ; we are carried along by a full stream of har-
monious diction, which is strikingly different from the rugged sentences
of Thucydides and the meagre style of Lysias. The services which
Isocrates has performed in this respect reach far beyond the limits of his
own school. Without his reconstruction of the style of Attic oratory
we could have had no Demosthenes and no Cicero ; and, through these,
* Busiris, o 5.
f e. g. in the speech to Bemonicus, § 3 ; Nicocles, § 1 ; Concerning the Peace, § 5 ;
Busiris, § 7 ; Against the Sophists, §14; Panathenaicus, §263. In his <rioi avri-
~'"?ias, § 30, he opposes the a*sg) ru; Vtxa; xaXsvlovfttvou to the Kiol rh« tfiXurofyix*
\ Praise of Helen, § 2 — 6 : -h -rio) ras tylx; QiXotrotpia. Similarly in the speech
mo) a'jri&offms, § 208, he mixes up the physical speculations of the Eleatics and
Pythagoreans with the sophisms of Gorgias.
LITERATURE OE ANCIENT GREECE. 509
the schoul of Isocratcs has extended its influence even to the oratory of
our own day.
Isocrates started from the style -which had heen most cultivated up to
his time, namely, the antithetical.* In his earlier labours lie took as
much pains -with this symmetrical structure as any Sophist could have
done : but in the more flourishing period of his art he contrived to melt
down the rigidity and stiffness of the antithesis, by breaking through the
direct and immediate opposition of sentences, and by marshalling them in
successive groups and in a longer scries.
Isocrates has always one leading idea, which is in most cases of suit-
able importance, fertile in its consequences, and capable of evoking not
only thought but feeling; hence his fondness for general political sub-
jects, which furnished him best with such topics. In these leading
thoughts he seizes certain points opposed to one another, such as the
old and the new times, or the power of the Greeks and that of the bar-
barians; and expanding the leading idea in a regular series of sequences
and conclusions, he introduces at every step in the composition the
propositions which contradict it in its details, and in this way unfolds an
abundance of variations always pervaded and marked by a recurrence of
the original subject; so that, although there is great variety, the whole
may be comprehended at one glance. At the same time, Isocrates is
careful that the ear may be cognizant of the antitheses which are pre-
sented to the thoughts, and he manages this after the fashion of the older
Sophists: but he differs from them, partly in not caring so much about
the assonances of individual words, as about the rhythm of whole sen-
tences ; partly by seeking to break up the more exact correspondence of
S2ntences into a system less marked by the stiff regularity of its members ;
and partly by introducing into the' longer sets of antithetical sentences a
gradual increase in the force and intensity of his language ; this lie
effected by extending the sentences, especially in the third member and
at the end ; t and thus an entirely new vigour of movement was given to
the old antithetical construction.
§ 5. The ancients recognize Isocrates as the author or first introducer
of the circle of language, as it was called,} although the Sophist Thrasy-
machus, a contemporary of Antiphon, is acknowledged to have been
master of " the diction which concentrates the ideas and expresses them
roundly." \ It was the same Thrasyniachus whose chief aim it was
* afTIKllf/AVil X'^iS'
f " Iii composite sentences," says Demetrius, de Elocut., § 18, " the last mem-
ber must be longer than the others." % *"**•'!> orbis orationis.
t it ffuffrp'tfoua-a to. ~&ia.vor,wu,Ta xu.) arfmyyuXu; Ixtpipovtra, XtJ;/?. See Theophrastus
(ajmd Dionys. de Li/s. judic., p. 4114), Mho lays claim to this art on behalf of Lysias
also. What is meant by the crptyyiXov appears clearly from the example which
Hermogenes (Walz. Rhetores III., p. 7(W) has given from Demosthenes: u<rna yap,
llrii ixllvuv id>.u, ffii tcl&% olx av 'iyoa^ac ovru;, ay <rv vuv aku;, a\}.o; ou ygayn, Such
a sentence is lik.fi a circle which necessarily returns to itself.
510 I1ISTOIIY OF THE
to have the power of either rousing or quieting the anger of his hearers
((?. g. the judges), and, in general, of working at pleasure on the feelings
of men. There was a work of his called. " The Commiseration Speeches"
(tkeoi), and it is to be remarked that this tendency of his eloquence must
have induced him at the same time to give an easier and more lively flow
to his sentences. It was Isocrates, however, above all others, who, by a
judicious choice of subjects, imparted to his language the harmonious
effect which is so closely connected with the circle of language, as it is
called. By this we understand such a formation and distribution of the
periods that the several members follow one another as integral parts
of one whole, and the general conclusion is expected by the hearer in the
very place where it occurs, and is, as it were, almost heard before it is
uttered.* This impression is produced partly by the union of the
several sentences in larger masses, partly by the relation of these masses
to one another, so that, without counting or measuring, we feel that there
is a sort of harmony which a little, either more or less, would utterly
destroy. This is not merely true of primary and subordinate sentences,
in the .proper sense of the word, which are mutually developed by the
logical subordination of thoughts to one another,! but also holds of the
co-ordinate masses of opposed sentences (in that antithetic?d style \ to
which Isocrates' longer periods mostly belong), if a periodical cadence
is introduced into them. The ancients themselves compare a period in
which there is a true equilibrium of all parts with a dome § in which all
the stones tend with equal weight to the middle point. It is obvious that
this must be regulated by the rhetorical accent, which is the same in oratory
that the grammatical accents are in language, and the arsis and thesis in
rhythm : these accents must regularly correspond to one another, and
each fully occupy its own place : an improper omission, and especially a
loss of the fuller accent at the end of the period, is most sensibly felt by
a fine and correct ear. The ancients, however, like the moderns, rather
leave this main point to be fixed by a sort of general feeling, and reserve
definite rules for the subordinate details, upon which Isocrates has be-
stowed most extraordinary pains in his panegyrical speeches. Euphonious
combinations of sound, avoidance of hiatus, certain rhythmical feet at the
beginning and end of sentences, these are the objects which he aims at
with labour far more than proportioned to the effects which they produce
on the hearer. This sort of prose has, in these particulars, a great
resemblance to tragedy, which also avoided the hiatus more than any
other kind of poetic composition. ||
* Compare Cicero's admirable remarks, Orator. 53, 177, 178.
t Such as temporal, causal, conditional, and concessive protases, with their
apodoses.
X avriKQiiAfA Xt%i;. § XtpQsgils triyn.
|j The ancients frequently express their •well-founded opinion, that the juxta-
position of vowels in words and collocations of words produces a soft {molle quid-
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 511
§ 6. Isocrates was justly impressed with the necessity of having a
certain class of subjects for the developement of this particular style.
He is accustomed to combine the substance and form of his oratory, as
when he reckons himself among those "who wrote no speeches about pri-
vate matters, but Hellenic, political, and panegyrical orations, which, as all
persons must allow, are more nearly akin to the musical and metrical lan-
guage of the poets than to those speeches which are heard in the law-
courts."* The full stream of Isocratic diction necessitates the recurrence
of certain leading ideas, such as are capable of being brought out in the
details with the greatest possible variety, and of being proved by a con-
tinually increasing weight of conviction. The predominance of the rhe-
toric of Isocrates consequently banished from the Attic style more and
more of that subtilty and acuteness which seeks to give a definite and
accurate expression to every idea, and to obtain this object a sacrifice was
made of the correspondence of expressions, grammatical forms, and con-
nexions of sentences, which formed the basis of that impressive and sig-
nificant abruptness of diction by which the style of Sophocles and Thucy-
dides is distinguished. The flowing language and long periods of Isocrates,
if they had had any of this abruptness, would have lost that intelligibility
without which the hearers would not have been able to foresee what was
coming, and to feel the gratification resulting from a fulfilment of their
expectations. In Thucydides, on the contrary, we can scarcely feel con-
fident of having seized the meaning even when we get to the end of the
sentence. Hence it is that Isocrates has avoided all those finer distinc-
tions which vary the grammatical expression. His object manifestly is
to continue as long as possible the same structure with the same case,
mood, and tense. The language of Isocrates, however, though pervaded
by a certain genial warmth of feeling, is quite free from the influence
of those violent emotions, which, when combined with a shrewdness and
cunning foreign to the candid disposition of Isocrates, produce the so-
called figures of thought. t Accordingly, though we find in his speeches
vehement questions, exclamations, and climaxes, we have none of those
stronger and more irregular changes of the expression which such figures
beget. Isocrates also seeks a rhythmical structure of periods, which
seldom admits of any relation of the sentences calculated to cause sur-
dam, Cicero) and melodious effect ^J.Xos, is the expression of Demetrius), such as
was suitable to epic poetry and the old Ionic prose. The contraction and elision
of vowels, on the other hand, make language more plain and compact ; and, when
all collisions of vowels at the end and beginning of words is avoided, a kind of
smoothness and finish is produced, such as was necessary for dramatic poetry and
panegyrical oratory. According to Dionysius, every hiatus is removed frdm the
Areopagiticus of Isocrates ; to produce this, however, there must have been a
greater number of Attic contractions (erases) than we find in the present state of
the text.
* Isocrates, -rt/>) avriioinu;, § 16.
t «'£>V*«7« rr,; ^invoice;, (.'hap. XXXIII., j 5,
512 HISTORY OF THE
prise by their inequality : * he aims at an equability of tone, or at least
a tranquillity of feeling; deep and varied emotions would necessarily
break the bonds of these regular periods, and combine the scattered
members in a new and bolder organization. The ancients, therefore,
agree that Isocrates was eutirely deficient in that vehemence of oratory
which transfers the feelings of the speaker to his audience, and which is
called SsLi'orriQ in the narrower sense of the word ; not so much because
the labour of polishing the style in its minor details mars this vigour of
speech (as Plutarch says of Isocrates : " How could he help fearing the
charge of the phalanx, who was so afraid of allowing one vowel to come
in contact with another, or of giving the isocolon one syllable less than
it ought to have," t), but because this smoothness and evenness of style
depended for its very existence upon a tranquil train of thoughts, with
no perturbations of feeling to distract the even tenor of its way. .
§ 7. In the well-founded conviction that his style was peculiarly
adapted to panegyrical eloquence, Isocrates rarely employed it in
forensic speeches ; in these he approximates more nearly to Lysias.
However, he was not, like the orator just mentioned, a professed speech-
writer, or logographus. The writers of speeches for the law courts
appeared to him, as compared with his pursuits, to be only doll-makeis
as compared with Phidias ; \ he wrote comparatively few speeches for
private persons and for practical purposes. The collection which has
come down to us, and which comprises the majority of the speeches
recognized by the ancients as the genuine works of Isocrates, § con-
tains 15 admonitory, panegyrical, and scholastic discourses, which w^ere all
designed for private perusal, and not for popular assemblies or law-
courts; and after these come six forensic orations, which, no doubt, were
written for actual delivery in a court of justice, (j Isocrates also wrote,
* As in the beautiful antithetic period at the beginning of the Panathenaicus,
the first part of which, with the fitv, is very artificially divided by the opposition
of negation and position, and the developement of the negation in particular by
the insertion of concessive sentences ; while the second part is broken off quite
short. If we express the scheme of the period thus: —
A B
I ^ "~II
a, a, b. /3, g, y a b
E consists only of the words mu-j V o : SS o-ruaoZi rob; retouTtu;. In this Isocrates may
have imitated Demosthenes.
f Plutarch, do gloria Athen., c. "VIII. Demetrius {do Elocut., §247) remarks,
that antitheses and paromcca are not compatible with ln/om;.
J Tifi avrihotricj;, § 2.
§ Csecilius acknowledged as genuine only 28 speeches. We have 21.
|| The speech about the exchange (vr%o\ «vmSe<re«s) does not belong to this class.
It is not a forensic speech, but written when Isocrates was compelled by the offer
of an exchange to sustain a most expensive liturgy, — the Trierarchy. In order to
correct the false impressions which were entertained with regard to his profession
and income, he wrote this speech as " a picture of his whole life, and of the plan
which ho had pursued," \ 7.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 513
at a later period, a theoretical treatise, or ri\yi], embodying the prin-
ciples which he had followed in his teaching, and which he had improved
and worked out by practice. This work was much esteemed by ancient
rhetoricians, and is often quoted. *
We have now brought the history of Attic prose, through a series of
statesmen, orators, and rhetoricians, from Pericles to Isocrates : we have
not yet arrived at its highest point ; but still this was a remarkable
eminence. We now go back again for a few years, in order to com-
mence from a new beginning, not only of Attic training, but of the
human mind in general, and to take under consideration a series of
remarkable appearances springing from that source.
# # # To this point the work was brought, when the learned
Author proceeded to Greece for the purpose of making personal
researches, but where, unfortunately, death brought his labours
to a close. The Society have therefore determined to close the
volume here ; and to leave to the writer of the subsequent portion
of the History of Greek Literature a perfect freedom as to the
form and manner in which he shall undertake the task.
INDEX.
2 L
INDEX.
Page
ACH2EUS (tragedian), his age and coun-
try .' 383
his manner artificial ib.
a good writer of Satyric dramas .... ib.
ACUSILAUS (historian), his age and
country 261
his works, dialect, &c ib.
2ESCHYLUS (tragedian), time and place
of his birth 317
fought at Marathon 318
a poet by profession ib.
arranged and conducted his choruses
without assistance ib.
his peculiar actors, Cleandrus and
Myniscns ib.
seventy of his plays extant in anti-
quity 319
period within which they were written ib.
obtained the prize for tragedy thirteen
times ib.
three tragedies and a Satyric drama for
each contest . ib.
each three connected in subject and plan ib.
differed in this from his successors . . ib.
instance and nature of a trilogy 320
all his extant dramas late in his career ib.
earliest extant, The Persians ib.
its date, outline of its plan ib.
critical examination of its subject, and
allusions 321
other lost plays in the same trilogy ;
the Phineus ib.
the Glaucus Pontius 322
residence of JEschylus in Sicily ib.
reasons assigned for it 323
The Persians reproduced before Hiero ib.
The Seven against Thebes — its probable
date ib.
its plan and subject ib.
conjectures as to the trilogy of which
it formed part 324
his disposition and opinions as shown
by his poetry 325
The Suppliants — trilogy to which it
belonged ib.
its want of dramatic interest owing to
its being the middle piece 326
the other plays of the trilogy ib.
time of its production 327
the Prometheus Bound — probably one
of his last productions ib.
its allegorical tendency ib.
what character is represented by Pro-
metheus ib.
Page
AESCHYLUS,
plan and purport of the trilogy 328
his tragedies require faith in a divine
power , 329
general critical remarks on the trilogy ib.
loss of the Prometheus Unbound, to be
lamented 330
plan of it traced by its fragments .... ib.
the Orestean trilogy 331
its great value ib.
only complete trilogy extant ib.
time of its production ib.
the Agamemnon ib.
character of the hero ib.
tragic effect of the play 332
The Choifhorai — its plot ib.
progress of the action ib.
the Furies, according to the view of
jEschylus 333
The Erinnyes, concluding play of the
trilogy ib.
the artist combined with the poet in
their exhibition ib.
plan and action of the play ib.
Satyric drama attached to this trilogy —
the Proteus 334
critical remarks on iEschylus 335
his language, grammatical construction,
&c ib.
adapted his language to his characters 336
success of the Orestean trilogy ib.
his return to Sicily, and death ib.
great respect shown to him and his
works after his death ib.
.&SOP 145
account of him, his age, &c 146
character of his fables ib.
metre, &c. of them ib.
AGATHARCHTJS (scene-painter) 310
AGATHON (tragedian), his age, &c. . . 383
strange demeanour and habits ib.
his style", Sfc ib.
his "Flotcer" 384
AGIAS of Trcezene. (See Cyclic poems) 69
ALC^US (lyric poet) 166
his birthplace and family ib.
his age, and perilous times 167
his poetry full of passionate emotion . . ib.
subjects of his poems ib.
those called 2 }ari l/ m P oems °y the an-
cients 168
his convivial poems ib.
his erotic poems — connexion with Sappho 169
superior to the odes of Horace ib.
2 l 2
516
ALC^IUS,
his religious poems — hymns to different
deities
metrical forms used by him
metre named after him, the Alcaic ■ .
ALCMAN (musician and choral poet) 162,
his country, age, &c
taste and style influenced by his Lydian
extraction
devoted himself to the cultivation of art
his choruses, their subjects, &c
his metre, dialect, and poetic tone ....
his embateria or marches
he invested with grace the rough dia-
lect of Sparta
difficulty of estimating him from his
remains
his simple and cheerful views of human
life
AN ACREON (lyric poet)
his country and age
sketch of his history and that of his
times
most of his poetry composed at Samos
his style of poetry and subjects
show no deep passion of love
his love for Eurypyle, and satirical
poems c
his poetry less reflective than that of
. Alcaeus or Sappho
his versification and metres
the poems attributed to him
scarcely any of them genuine
of much more modern origin
ANANIUS (Iambic poet)
greatly resembled Hipponax
ANAXAGORAS (Ionic philosopher) ..
account of his age, life, &c
his treatise on Nature
his philosophy
accused of atheism
ANAXIMANDER (Ionic philosopher),
his age and country
his treatise on Nature
his astronomical researches, his doc-
trines, &c
ANAXIMENES (Ionic philosopher), his
age and country
his language, dialect, &c
his theory of the formation of outward
objects from air
ANDOCIDES (orator), his age, family,
&c
his remaining speeches
which not genuine
his inferiority to the other celebrated
orators
ANTIMACHUS (elegiac and epic poet)
his age, country, and style
his epic poetry
his Thebais
ANTIPHON (orator and sophist)
his history and death
made a business of writing speeches . .
. his school of rhetoric
INDEX.
Page Page
ANTIPHON,
his remaining speeches 471
170 those delivered in court 472
ib. their style 473
171 accuracy in expressions 474
193 their language ib.
193 structure of his sentences 475
his use of figures of speech, &c 476
ib. general qualities of his eloquence . 477
194 APHRODITE (Venus), see 11 n.
ib. Homeric hymn to 76
195 Sappho's ode to 175
196 APOLLO — songs at the worship of ... . 24
bards who composed ..... ib.
ib. Homeric hymn to the Delian 74
to the Pythian 75
197 ARCHILOCHUS — character of his
elegies 113
ib. some epigrams by him remaining .... 127
180 inventor of Iambic poetry 128
ib. opportunities afforded him by the festi-
vals of Demeter 133
181 his origin, age, &c ib.
182 his public and private life 134
183 his quarrel with Lycambes, and its
ib. results ib.
his excellence 135
184 loss of his poems ib.
partially imitated by Horace ib.
ib. their metrical structure ib.
185 distinction between his Iambic and
186 Trochaic poems 136
ib. other forms of his poetry 137
187 his inventions and innovations in the
143 musical recitation 138
ib. his language and dialect 139
246 made use of fables 142
ib. ARCTINUS of Miletus. (See Cyclic
ib. poems) 65
247 ARES (Mars), see 11 n.
248 ARISTOPHANES (comedian) 405
his age, country, &c ib.
242 early devoted to the comic stage .... ib.
ib. early pieces produced by others — rea-
sons for this 406
243 his first play, the Daialeis — descrip-
tion of ib.
ib. The Babylonians — date, plan and ob-
ib. ject of 407
performed at the great Dionysia .... ib.
ib. The Acharnians — date of — earliest of
his extant plays 408
477 criticism upon it — plot, &c ib.
478 dramatic complications in — the chorus,
ib. &c 409
full description of the play 410
ib. The Knights — date of 412
453 entirely directed against Cleon 413
ib. boldness of the attempt ib.
454 character and description of the play . . ib.
455 chorus, not of imaginary characters .. 414
469 The Clouds — date of — not successful in
470 the contest 415
ib. disquisition on this play 416
471 its real object — its plan 417
INDEX.
517
Pace
ARISTOPHANES,
error of the poet with respect to
Socrates 417
characters, chorus, &c 418
The Wasps — date, object, plan, and
characters of 419
one of his most perfect plays ib.
the Peace — date and subject of 420
tcdiousness of some of its scenes .... ib.
gap in the series after this play ib.
The Birds — date of — state of affairs at
the time 421
its plan and characters ib.
a satire on Athenian frivolity and cre-
dulity 423
The Lysistrata and Thesmophoriazusw
— their date, &c ib.
circumstances of the times — their plan,
&c 423, 424
The Frogs — its date, description of the
play 425
supposed contest between JEschylvs and
Euripides „ 425
political references in it 426
Aristophanes the only great Athenian
poet who survived the Peloponnesian
war „ ib.
The Ecclesiazusce — its date, style, and
subject „ * ib.
its technical arrangement parsimonious 427
the Plutus — its date, transition to the
middle comedy ib.
the extant play not the earlier one of
that name ib.
the conception on which it is based . . ib.
its language more decent, but less genial
than in older plays ib.
APJON (lyric poet) 203
his age and country ib.
celebrated as the perfecter of the
Dithyramb ib.
the best player on the cithara of his time 204
introduced the tragic style into the
Dith yramb ib.
ARISTARCHUS (tragedian), his age,
country, &c 383
ARTEMIS (Diana), see 11 n.
ASCRA (the dwelling-place of Hesiod) . 80
ASIUS (epic poet), his country, age, and
works 102
ATHENA (Minerva), see 11 n.
ATHENS, distinguished as a capital in
literature and art 276
causes of this, physical and political . . ib.
nature of the country, &c ib.
purity of the air , 277
political circumstances ib.
Solon 278
the Pisisfratids — their dominion, &c. . ib.
their patronage of literature and art . . ib.
the most excellent works of Athens
produced in the midst of political
convulsions 279
the time between the expulsion of
Hippias and tlio battle of Salamis . 279
Page
ATHENS,
results of this period in art, &c 279
the Persian war ib.
extension of her sovereignty 280
Pericles — his age and administration . . ib.
his aim and object ib.
shown by the extant works of his time 281
his connexion with literature ib.
with Sophocles and Anaxagoras .... ib.
his domestic arrangements 282
sentiment attributed to him by Tlmcy-
dides ib.
gradual decay of Athens ib.
its causes and progress ib.
qualities by which the Athenians were
most distinguished 283
their dexterity in the use of words . . ib.
eloquence, fluency, and loquacity .... ib.
the Sojihists — their mode of teaching. . 284
Plato's opinion of the Athenians and
Pericles ib.
the old and new-fashioned Athenians,
contest between ib.
literature and art not affected during
the Peloponnesian war by the cor-
ruption of morals 285
BACCHUS (Dionysus), see 11 n.
BACCHYLIDES (lyric poet) 213
nephew of Simonides- — his age, &c. . . ib.
his style of poetry ib.
structure of his verse, metres, &c 214
B ORM US— mournful ditty 19
CADMUS of Miletus (historian), his
age, &c 261
subject of his history ib.
CALLINUS (elegiac poet) 107
his age, &c, how proved 108
his elegies martial and spirit-stirring. . 109
CARCINUS (tragedian), his family, &c. 383
satirized by Aristophanes ib.
CERES (Demeter), see 11 n.
CHARON of Lampsacus (historian), his
age, &c 263
merely a dry chronicler ib.
CHERSIAS (epic poet), his country, age,
and works 102
CHiEREMON (lyric poet), his age, &c. 387
deterioration of style in ib.
his poem, The Centaur ib.
his dramatic productions rich in descrip-
tions ib.
charming pictures of female beauty . . ib.
Aristotle's opinion of him ib.
CH(ERILUS (tragedian), his age, &c. .. 294
excelled in the Satyric drama ib.
(■MoRAL poems and songs. (See Lyric
poetry) '. . . 190
CHORODIDASCALOS— meaning of the
term, and to whom applied 37
general employment of in early times
in the Peloponnesus 192
in comedy 405
CHORUS, the its origin and character . 22
518
CHORUS,
tragic, how provided 297,
dress and appearance
number and arrangement of
signification of its different branches . .
represented the ideal spectator
metrical forms and changes of metre . .
rhythmical treatment of the several
parts
variety in the number, length, and ar-
rangement of the parts
might carry on a lyrical dialogue ....
examples rare of the chorus conversing
among themselves
such examples confined to Euripides . .
how employed by Sophocles
its position essentially perverted by
Euripides
the Embolima — introduced by Agathon
comic chorus derived from the lesser
Dionysia
costume, number and arrangement of
the comic chorus
the parabasis and epirrhema explained
CIN^THON (epic poet), his country
and age
works attributed to him
CINESIAS (lyric poet)
ridiculed by Aristopluxnes
Plato's opinion of him
CLON AS (musician)
COMEDY of the Greeks
sprang from the same cause as Tragedy
critical distinctions between
corresponding features of tragic and
comic poetry
Wit a chief element of comic repre-
sentation
forms of comedy developed by Attic
genius
their construction referred to the wor-
ship of Bacchus
the lesser Dionysia
comic chorus especially derived from . .
the old lyric comedy
traditions respecting Susarion
Epicharmus (Sicilian comedian). (See
his name)
his residence, Doric origin, &c
age, &c. of Susarion. (See his name)
Chionides, Magnes, Ecphantides —
their age, &c
constitute the first period of Greek
comedy
second period
Cratinus, Crates, Telecleides, Hermip-
pus, Eupolis, &c, their age, &c
Aristophanes. (See his name)
transition to the middle comedy of the
Athenians
Diodes, Philyllius, Sannyrion, &c. . .
apparatus of the comic drama
points it had in common with tragedy
number of actors
costume, masks, &c
INDEX.
Page Page
COMEDY,
318 costume and number of the chorus — . 400
ib. its arrangement ib.
300 parabasis and epirrhema explained . . 401
310 comic dancing — the kordax 402
311 rhythmical structure and metres .... 403
ib. meanings conveyed by rhythm 404
the language and dialect of comedy . . ib.
ib. Cratinus. (See his name) 428
Eupolis. (See his name) 430
312 Crates. (See his name) 431
313 Sicilian comedy — its flourishing period 433
its principal writers ib.
316 earlier in its development than the
ib. Athenian 436
348 middle Attic comedy ib.
its poets and their period 408
364 new comedy ib.
365 Menander (see his name), and other
writers ib.
395 Roman imitations 439
characteristics of the new comedy .... 440
400 characters introduced 442
401 manners and feelings of the age .... 443
its power of ridicule 444
100 COMOS, festive rejoicing, described by
101 Hesiod 21
448 CORA (Proserpine), see 11 n.
ib. CORAX. (See Sophists) 466
ib. CORINNA (lyric poetess) 217
161 celebrated in the youth of Pindar .. ib.
391 assisted him with her advice ib.
ib. her style, &c ib.
ib. CORYBANTES,
Phrygian worship of 26
392 CRATES (comedian) 431
originally an actor of Cratinus ib.
ib. his style — artificial design and deve-
lopment of his plots ib.
393 . CRATINUS (comedian), his style and
manner 428
ib. his choruses 429
394 his play, the Pytine — its plot, &c. . . ib.
395 made himself the subject of his own
ib. comedy ib.
396 law passed in his time restraining
comic satire 430
ib. CYCLIC poems 64
ib. origin of the name ib.
ib. dates and countries of the poets .... ib.
must have possessed perfect copies of
397 Homer's poems ib.
Arctinus of Miletus — age of 65
ib. account of his poems ib.
ib. The destruction of Troy and the Mthi-
opis 66
ib. Lesches or Lescheus — age of ib.
account of his poems — the Little Iliad,
&c ib.
398 abridgment of the Cyclic poems by
ib. Proclus 67
ib. Stasinus of Cyprus — his poem, the
ib. Cypria 68
399 preceded the Iliad in the Cyclus .... ib.
ib. Agias of Trozzene — his poem, the Nostoi 69
INDEX.
519
Page
CYCLIC,
subject of and place in the Cyclus. . .• 69
Eugammon of Cyrene, age of — his
poem, the Telegonia 70
continuation of the Odyssey ib.
other Cyclic poems — The war of the
Ar gives against Thebes ib.
the Thebais — the Epigoni 71
DAMOPHILA (lvric poetess and friend
of Sappho) 180
DEITIES of the Greeks 11
as described by Homer ib.
names as used in this work ib.n.
character and attributes of in early
times 13
how modified in the Homeric description 15
the Chthonian deities 230
the mysteries connected with their
worship alone ib.
the mysteries of Demeter or Eleusinian
mysteries 231
nature of ib.
the Orphics or followers of Orpheus.
(See Orpheus) ib.
DEMETER (Ceres), see 11 n.
joint worship of with Dionysus 25
singers and birds ib.
her festivals afforded occasions for wan-
ton and licentious raillery 132
her mysteries 231
DEUS ex machina, the, (See Euripides) 363
DIALECTS
variety of accounted for 7
of the primitive tribes of Greece 7,8
difficulty of forming a correct opinion of 8
divided into two main branches 9
JEolic — including Doric ib.
Ionic 10
DIANA (Artemis), see 11 n.
DIOGENES (Ionic philosopher), his age
and country 248
expanded the doctrines of Anaximenes ib.
his philosophy, .and spirit of inquiry . . 249
his language . . ib.
DIONYSIUS (historian), uncertainty re-
specting 265
DIONYSUS (Bacchus), see 11 n.
worship of, conjointly with Demeter . . 25
ditty sung at his festival by the women
of Elis *. 192
the Dithyramb, sung at his festivals,
(see Dithyramb) 203
worship of Dionysus Zagreus by the
Orphics 231
very different from the popular rites of
Bacchus 232
nature of the Orphic worship 237
legends of the Orphics respecting Dio-
nysus ib.
origin of dramatic poetry connected
with his worship 287
tin' . 1 a iln sh riii and Agrionia 288
his worship distinguished by enlhvr
siasm ib.
Page
DIONYSIUS,
his festivals at Athens celebrated near
the shortest day 288
comedy referred to his worship 393
connected with the lesser Dionysia 394
those festivals described ib.
the comic choruses especially belonged
to them 395
DITHYRAMB, Bacchanalian song 203
perfected by Arion ib.
mode of its representation ib.
tragic style introduced into it by Arion 204
performed by circular choruses ib.
the new form of the Dithyramb 447
introduced by Melanippides ib.
its mode of exhibition 450
its metres, &c ib.
assumed a mimetic character ib.
subjects to which it was applied .... ib.
DRAMATIC poetry 285
causes of its rise in Greece ib.
represents actions 286
essential difference between epic and
dramatic poetry ib.
source of the style of dramatic poetry ib.
the force with which it developes the
events of human life ib.
its creation required great boldness of
mind 287
great step made by the Greeks ib.
reference to the dramatic poetry of the
Indians ib.
to the mysteries of the middle ages . . ib.
its origin connected with the worship
of Bacchus ib.
and of other deities ib.
Eleusinian mysteries probably a mys-
tical drama ib.
other mimic representations in the wor-
ship of Bacchus 288
the Anthesteria, Agrionia, &c ib.
the enthusiasm of his worship essential
to the drama ib.
grotesque and beautiful forms of the
subordinates in that worship 289
custom of disguise and wearing masks
at ib.
direct evidence respecting the origin of
the drama ib.
tragedy as well as comedy originally a
choral song ib.
of the class of dithyrambs ib.
account by Herodotus of tragic choruses
at Sicyon 290
tragedy, its commencement and pro-
gress. (See Tragedy of tht Greeks) 291
comedy, its commencement and pro-
gress. (See Comedy of the Greeks) 391
general survey of the progress of the
drama from JEschylus to Menander 445
ECHEMBROTUS (elegiac poet) 107
■ (musician) 162
ELEGEION or elegy, Btyle of poetry .. 105
name refers to the form, not the s%d>jcct ib.
520
INDEX.
Page
ELEGEION,
its metrical form 106
word probably of Asiatic origin ib.
its recitation accompanied by the flute
alone ib.
at least in its early period 107
its subjects — must express emotion . . 108
symposiac elegies 113
no necessity for dividing the subject
into the different branches, of mar-
tial, symposiac, erotic, &c 125
different tone assumed by, in the
Alexandrine period ib.
Mimnermus, Theognis, Terpander,
Echembrotus, Callinus, Tyrtceus,
Archilochus, Simonides, Solon,
Xenoplianes. (See those names)
the later elegiac poetry and its writers 452
ELEUSINIAN mysteries. (See Deities
of the Greeks) « 231
EMBOLIMA. (See Chorus) 365
EMPEDOCLES (Sicilian philosopher),
his age and country 253
great personal reputation ib.
his poem on Nature 254
his physical philosophy and theories . . 255
EPIC Poetry or Epos. (See Poetry of
EPICHARMUS. (See Comedy of the
Greeks) 397
his age and residence 433
his character and that of his plays . . 434
their mythical form reconcilable with
their ethical tendency 435
EPIGRAMMATIC poetry 126
form and original subject of the epigram ib.
object t;> ennoble the subject ib.
celebrated authors of 127
occasional variances in the metre .... 128
EPIRRHEMA. (See Chorus) 401
ERINNA (poetess) 180
her poem, called The Spindle ib.
EUGAMMON of Cyrene. (See Cyclic
Poems) 70
EUMELUS (epic poet), his country and
age 101
works attributed to him ib.
genuineness of most denied by Pau-
sanias ib.
EUMOLPUS
a Pierian, not a Thracian 26
EUPOLIS (comedian), 430
his style and characteristics ib.
EURIPIDES (tragedian), 357
difference between him and Sophocles ib.
his character 358
his age, &c ib.
his philosophical convictions opposed to
his legends ib.
his employment of mythical subjects
explained 359
Aristotle's distinction between him and
Sophocles ib.
his characters like the Athenians of his
day ib.
Page
EURIPIDES,
his minute attention to petty circum-
stances „ 360
hi3 remarks, &c. on the life and habits
of women ib.
unjustly described by Aristophanes as
a woman-hater .... ib.
his frequent bringing of children on the
stage ib.
his allusions to public events and po-
litics ib.
fondness for general and abstract views
of things 361
the favourite of the modern youth of
Athens ib.
his alterations in the form of tragedy. 362
the prologue described and explained . . ib.
the dens ex machind almost introduced
by him 363
its frequent employment in his later
plays ib.
all the weight laid upon it at the end
of his career ib.
his object in so using it ib.
position of the chorus essentially per-
verted by him 364
the lyric element thrown more into the
hands of the actors 365
Cephisophon, his chief actor, eminent
in the monodies ib.
loose and irregular metrical form of
these pieces ib.
style of his dialogue , 366
his language ib.
distinction between his earlier and later
plays ib.
the A/cestis — first of his extant plays.. 367
account of it — added to a trilogy instead
of a Satyric drama ib.
not to be included in his regular tra-
gedies ib.
the Medea — a model of his tragedies . . ib.
its date, plot, &c ib.
Aristotle's judgment of Euripides as a
poet 368
the Hippolytus crowned — its date, &c. ib.
its plot — characters of women in these
plays ib.
the Hecuba — tragedy of jmthos 369
unjustly censured for want of unity of
action ib.
its plot and perepeteia ib.
class of subjects of his later plays. . . . 370
do not depict such energetic passion . . ib.
rich in allusions to the events of the
day ib.
the Heracleidce — its political views .. ib.
its plan and subject ib.
the Suppliants — its affinity to the
Heracleidse 371
its political action ib.
its independent beauties — songs of the
chorus ib.
the Ion — its beauties and defects .... ib.
its plot and general object 372
INDEX.
521
Page
EURIPIDES,
the Raging Hercules — composed in the
old age of the poet 372
its emplojonent of the eccyclema .... ib.
two independent actions ib.
intrinsic evidence of the dates of the
last two plays 373
the Andromache — its plot and object., ib.
political references very prominent .... ib.
The Troacles ib.
consists of a series of significant pictures 374
epilogue probably lost ib.
the Electra — its period * ib.
incidents of — murder of JEgisthus and
Clytemnestra ib.
how treated ib.
the Helena — alteration in her story . . 375
how effected — plot of the play ib.
the Iphigenia at Tauri — its date .... 376
its beauties — moral worth of the cha-
racters ib.
friendship of Orestes and Pylades .... ib.
the Orestes — its contrast to the preced-
ing play 377
its date and the effect it produced .... ib.
its plot, and the impression left by it on
the mind ib.
The Phcenissw — its date ib.
its beauties and defects 378
plays brought out by the younger
Euripides ib.
last days of Euripides spent in Mace-
donia ib.
The jBacc/i#— probably produced at the
court of Archelaus ib.
its story — religious opinions of the poet
at the close of his life 379
the Iphigenia at Aulis — not extant in
a perfect state ib.
its plan and object ib.
interpolations in 380
his lost plays ib.
his Satyric dramas 381
one extant — The Cyclops ib.
date of his death ib.
shortly before that of Sophocles ib.
FABLES— their origin in Greece 142
first appearance in Ilesiod ib.
meaning of the term aTvi; ib.
employed by Archilochus ib.
and by Stesickorus 143
fables of beasts, &c, probably intro-
duced from the East ib.
the Libyan fables 144
the Cyprian, Cilician, Lydian, and
Carian 145
fables of JEsop. (See yEsoji) ib.
GNOMIC poems and sentences — of Solon 119
ofPhocylides 120
hexameters best adapted to ib.
OOUGTAS. {See Sophists) 463
GRAMMAR,
grammatical forma
Page
GRECIAN history and historians 258
antiquity of Eastern history ib.
causes of its existence 259
difference between the Oriental nations
and the Greeks ib.
causes of the comparative lateness of
Grecian history ib.
its want conducive to poetry and the
fine arts 260
probable antiquity of the art of writing
in Greece ib.
first rudiments of history ib.
the lead taken by the lonians ib.
flourishing condition of Miletus ib.
Cadmus of Miletus. (See his name) . . 261
Acusilaus. (See his name) ib.
Hecatwus. (See his name) ib.
Pherecydes. (See his name) 263
Charon of Lampsacus. (See his name) ib.
Hellanicus. (See # his name) 264
Xanthus. (See his name) ib.
Dionysius. (See his name) 265
the term logographers, to whom applied ib.
Herodotus. (See his name) 266
Thucydides. (See his name) 479
HECATiEUS (historian^, his age and
country 261
his works — travels and geographical re-
searches 262
his maps, genealogies, &c ib.
HELICON,"and its" neighbourhood 27
HELLANICUS (historian), his age and
country 264
his works ib.
HEPH^ISTUS (Vulcan), see 11 n.
HERA (Juno), see 11 n.
HERACLITUS (Ionic philosopher), his
age and country 244
his character and doctrines ib.
placed the first principle mfire 245
despised the popular religion ib.
rejected its whole ceremonial ib.
HERMES (Mercury), see 11 n.
Homeric hymn to 75
H iiRODOTUS (historian) 266
his family, birthplace, age, &c ib.
residence at Samos, and its cause .... ib.
passed the latter years of his life at
Th •> rii ib.
time of his going th«rc, how fixed. . . . ib.
frequently called a Thurian by the
ancients 267
his travels, their object and extent. . . . ib.
unit to Egypt and Asia in his youth . ib.
gradual formation of the plan of his
al work ib.
his book upon Assyria ib.
recited his history at festivals 268
such recitations confined to detached
portions ib.
his great work not composed till the
Peloponnesian war ib.
questionable whether he lived to the
-,■! oiul period of that war ib.
522
HERODOTUS,
sketch of the general plan of his work .
designedly enlarged by episodes
instances of
unity of his history combined with ex-
tent of subject
its epic character
idea of a fixed destiny — how carried out
speeches introduced
comparison with the different parts of a
Greek tragedy
a theologian and poet as well as his-
torian
his veracity, how far questionable ....
his confessions of being deceived by
misrepresentations
his familiarity with Oriental manners,
&c
his skill in portraying character
impression made by reading his work . .
his style, language, and dialect
HESIOD, circumstances of his life ....
general character of his poetry ......
his manner essentially different from
that of Homer
his description of the commencement of
his poetical career
dwelt at Ascra by his own testimony .
attempts to connect him by relationship
with Homer .
nearly cotemporary with Homer
did not borrow his epic language from
him
distinctions between his poetry and
that of Homer
his Works and Days
allusions in that poem to his dissen-
sions with his brother Perses
allusions to the various kinds of Boeotian
industry
general tone of the poem
his lost poem, the Lessons of Chiron . .
his Theogony
first gave the Greeks a kind of religious
code
sketch of the subject and philosophy of
the poem
beings traced from chaos
war with the Titans
Zeus and the Olympian gods
design of the poem proved to have been
maturely considered
discrepancies between his genealogy
and that of Homer
his art of composition not so perfect as
Homer s
the Theogony interpolated by the Rhap-
sodists
additions to that poem
the procemium — not an original intro-
duction to the Theogony
was in fact a hymn to the Muses ....
critical remarks on these poems
treatment of Women by Hesiod and the
ancient epic poets
INDEX.
Page Page
HESIOD,
269 other poems of the school of Hesiod —
ib. the Great Eoice 96
ib. the JVaupactia ib.
the Catalogue of Women 97
271 distinct from the Eoios ib.
ib. other poems attributed to Hesiod —
ib. scanty remains of 98
ib. the Melampodia, JEgimius, Marriage
of Ceyx, &c ib.
ib. the Shield of Hercules ib.
date of, how proved 99
272 treatment of, distinct from Homer's
ib. shield of Achilles ib.
these poems connected with lyric poetry ib.
ib. tradition respecting the death and burial-
place of Hesiod 96
273 his wit and humour compared with that
ib. of Homer 130
ib. HIERAX (musician) ...162
274 HIPPONAX (Iambic poet), his country
77 and age 141
78 satires against luxury, &c 142
his personal enemies ib.
79 his language, metres, and style ib.
HISTORY. (See Grecian History and
ib. Historians)
80 HOMER — his birthplace ;— claims of the
Athenians — of Chios 41
81 the claims of Smyrna, how supported 42, 43
ib. of the Cumasans and Colophonians .... 43
traditions as to the foundation of
ib. Smyrna ib.
other poets connected with Smyrna . . 44
82 mental energies stimulated by the con-
ib. flux of different tribes and races in
that neighbourhood ib.
83 shown to be of Ionic race and descent . 45
recognized as such by Aristarchus .... ib.
84 other proofs of his Ionian origin ... 46
85 time of his existence according to He-
86 rodotus and the Alexandrine chro-
87 nologists 47
his poems not originally committed to
ib. writing 38
how proved — the digamma ib.
ib. discrepancies in the catalogues 56
89 gave epic poetry its first great impulse . 47
90 causes of this ib.
91 novelty of his subjects ib.
subject of the Iliad 48
ib. scheme, philosophy, and characters of . 49
its plan extends beyond what was neces-
ib. sary 50
extension accounted for ib.
92 historical details objected to by Thucy-
dides 51
ib. patriotic motives for the extension .... 52
93 inconsistencies in, and presumed addi-
tions to 53
ib. cheerful cast of the earlier part as com-
ib. pared with the later ib.
94 catalogue of the ships — discrepancies in 54
critical doubts as to genuineness of. . 54, 55
95 catalogue of the Trojans and their allies ib.
INDEX.
Page
HOMER,
too scanty 56
general remarks on the originality of
particular books ib.
subject of the Odyssey 57
second story interwoven in it 58
has much in common with the Iliad . . ib.
but shows a more developed state of
epic poetry ib.
scheme and plan of the poem 59
offered many opportunities for enlarge-
ment and insertions 60
shown to be written after the Iliad . . ib.
proofs of this from the descriptions of
society and manners, characters of
the gods, the management of the lan-
guage, &c 61
supposition that the Odyssey was com-
pleted by a disciple 62
difficulties in accounting for the compo-
sition of these poems, before the use
of writing ib.
must have been occasionally recited in
their integrity ib.
not longer than the tragedies, &c. per-
formed at one festival ib.
recited in scattered fragments by the
Rhapsodists 63
indebted to Solon or Pisistratus for
compelling the Rhapsodists to recite
them in order ib.
the Hymns or Proosmia — their general
character 72
not connected with the actual ceremo-
nies of religion 73
occasions on which they were sung . . ib.
by whom composed ib.
the hymn to the Delian Apollo .... 74
Pythian Apollo .... 75
• ■ Hermes ib.
Aphrodite 76
Demeter ib.
his poetry full of archness and humour 130
criticism on it in that respect ib.
loss of the Margites 131
that poem ascribed to Homer by Aris-
totle ib.
its nature as collected from fragments. . ib.
the Cercopes ib.
the Bat rarh omyomachia, &c 132, 147
his witty and satirical poems contrasted
with those of Archilochus 132
HOMERIDS, the 40, 41
the Chian and Samian families 41
HYAIEN2EOS, bridal song 21
described by Homer and Hesiod .... ib.
HYM MS, the Homeric. (See Homer) . . 72
HYPORCHEME, {vv'opxnp.*) species of
choral dance 23
IALEMUS, plaintive song 18
IAMBIC and Satyrical poetry 128
its contrast with other cotemporaneous
poetry 129
created by Archilochus 128
IAMBIC,
license afforded to raillery by the festi-
vals of Demeter, &c
name of Iambus thence derived
the Iambyce, musical instrument ....
Fables and Parodies, nearly allied to . .
Archilochus, Simonides, Solon, Hippo-
nax, Ananius. (See those names)
IB YCUS (lyric poet)
his age and country
his poetical style — resembled that of
Stesichorus
his metres, and the subjects of his poems
ILIAD, subject of the, &c. (See Homer)
ION (tragedian), his age and country ..
a prose author as well as a poet
took the subjects of his tragedies from
Homer
ISOCRATES (orator), his age, country,
family, &c
pupil of Gorgias and Tisias, also of
Socrates
belongs essentially to the Sophists ....
prevented by bashfulness and weakness
from speaking
set up a school of oratory
most of his orations destined for the
school
his Areopagiticus, Panegyricus, Phili2>
his Panathenaicus, Praise of Helen,
Busiris
more eminent as a rhetorician than as
a statesman or philosopher
his style
departed from that which was then
usual, viz. the antithetical
his language
his Commiseration Speeches
the subjects of his speeches
his language different from that of
Sophocles and Thucydides
deficient in vehemence of oratory ....
Plutarch's opinion of his style
collection of his works
523
Page
131
132
139
143
205
ib.
ib.
206
48
282
ib.
ib.
504
ib.
ib.
505
ib.
ib.
506
507
508
509
ib.
ib.
510
511
ib.
512
ib.
ib.
JUNO (Hera), see 11 n.
JUPITER (Zeus), see 11 n.
LAMENTS for Hylas and Adonis 19
LANGUAGES
affinity of — generally 3
— with the Greek ib.
— the Indo-Germanic branch. 4
Classical and Modern
effect of on the ear and on the under-
standing 6
characteristics of the Greek language., ib.
variety of forms, inflexions, and dia-
lects in 7
dialects of the several tribes, and their
characteristics 8
LASUS (lyric poet), his country, \c . . 214
rival of Si a, mi ides • • - • ib.
peculiarly a dithyramhic poet 215
instructor of Pindar in lyric poetry . . ib.
524
INDEX.
Pase
LASUS,
his over-refinement in rhythm, &c. .. 215
LESGHES or Lescheus. (See Cyclic
poems) 66
LINUS, the songs so called 17
traditions respecting 18
LITERATURE of Greece— as confined
to particular races 275
early formation of a national literature
in Greece ib.
celebrated cities, &c ib.
Athens acquired the rank of a capital.
(See Athens) 276
LITYERSES, melancholy song 19
LOGOGRAPHERS— meaning of the
term and to whom applied 265
LYRIC poetry 148
transition to from the Epos, through
Elegiac and Iambic ib.
its connexion with music ib.
and with dancing 149
characteristics of Greek lyric poety . . ib.
distinctions between the JEolic and
Doric schools 164
reasons for such division, structure,
dialect, &c ib.
Epode, origin of in the Doric school.. 165
the Doric school choral ib.
JEolic, usually for recitation by an in-
dividual ib.
exceptions to this ib.
loss of JEolic poems caused by the un-
intelligibility of the dialect 166
A lewus. (See his name) ib.
metres employed by the JEolic lyric
poets 170
Sappho. (See her name) 172
Anacreon. (See his name) 180
the melos, designed to be sung by a
single person 187
the scolion — description of 188
scolia, distinguished from other drink-
ing songs ib.
principally composed by Lesbians .... ib.
composers of— said to be invented by
Terpander , ib.
subjects of those which are extant .... 189
connexion of lyric poetry with choral
songs 190
gradual rise of regular forms from this
connexion t , . . 191
specimens of simple ancient songs 192
Alcman. (See his name) 193
Stesichorus. (See his name) 197
Avion. (See his name) 203
the Dithyramb. (See that title) ib.
Ibycus. (See his name) 205
Simonides. (See his name) 207
Bacchylides. (See his name) 213
Lasus. (See his name) 214
Timocreon. (See his name) 21 5
Pindar. (See his name) 216
its falling off after the time of the great
tragedians 387
Ckeeremon. (See his name) ib.
LYRIC poetry Page
improved by the new Dithyramb .... 447
Melanippides. (See his name) ib.
Philoxenus — Ginesias — Phrynis. (See
their names) , 448
Timotheus. (See his name) 449
other poets and musicians of minor
note ib.
LYSIAS (orator), his family, age, and
personal history 496
his speech against Eratosthenes 497
comparison of him with Gorgias .... ib.
notion of his earlier style derived from
Plato's Phcedrus 498
extant collection of his works ...... 499
description of his Funeral Oration . . ib.
alteration in his style — how caused . . 500
his speeches adapted to the parties for
whom written ib.
his use of the figures of thought and
speech 501
compression of his style — reason for . . ib.
his speech against Agoratus — descrip-
tion of ib.
very prolific as an orator 503
genuineness of the works attributed to
him c . . . ib.
MANEROS, song similar to the Linns . . 19
MARS (Ares), see 11 n.
MELANIPPIDES (lyric poet), his age
and country 447
gave a new character to the Dithyramb ib.
MELISSUS (Eleatic philosopher), his age
and country 252
a close follower of Parmenides ib.
MELOS. (See Lyric poetry) 187
MENANDER (comedian), his age, &c. 438
his cotemporaries and successors .... 439
clear conception of his plays given by
the Roman imitations ib.
scene and characters of his plays .... 440
state of morals and manners in his time 443
comparison with Euripides 445
MERCURY (Hermes), see 11 n.
METRES, Dactylic form adapted to epic
poetry 35
peculiarities of this form ib.
MIMNERMUS (elegiac poet) 106
his age and style 115
political and patriotic ib.
his love elegies 116
MINERVA (Athena), see 11 n.
MINOR Epic poets ] 00
their general character ib.
importance of their fragmentary re-
mains ib.
poems by uncertain authors — The Talc-
ing of QZchalia 102
poems containing different legends of
Hercules 103
Cinmilwn, Eumelus, Asivs, Chersiae.
(See those names)
MUSiEUS, a Pierian, not a Thrncian . . 26
MUSIC of the <uveks Mi)
INDEX.
525
Page
MUSIC,
its connexion with poetry, especially
lyric 149
its history commences with Terpcmder.
(See Terpander) ib.
the musical scale 151
distinction between the scales, and the
styles or harmonies 152
three styles, the Boric, Phrygian, and
Lydian ib.
musical instruments employed 153
intermediate styles described 154
to whom attributed ib.
musical notation and tunes or nomes. . ib.
Lesbian school of singers ib.
Terpander's inventions enlarged by
Olympus. (See Olympus) 156
further improvements by Thaletas.
(See Thaletas)
other musicians and their improve-
ments. Clonas 161
Hierax, Xenodamus, Xenocritus, Po-
lymueslus, Sacadas, Alcman, Echem-
hrotus - 162
MYRTIS (lyric poetess) 217
celebrated in the youth of Pindar .... ib.
NEOPHRON (tragedian), his age, coun-
try, &c 382
one of his plays said to be imitated by
Euripides in the Medea ib.
NEPTUNE (Poseidon), see 11 n.
NOME, musical tune 154
ODYSSEY, the— its subject. (See Homer)
OLYMPUS, the abode of the gods
where situated .
OLYMPUS (Phrygian musician)
enlarged the system of Greek music . .
considered its founder by Plutarch . .
his age, &c, obscure — more than one of
the name
cultivated the enharmonic scale
his nomes intended for the flute
names of some of them preserved ....
introduced a third class of rhythms . .
description of the rhythms
a mere musician, not a poet
ONOMACRITUS (Orphic poet). See
Orpheus
ORATORY of the Greeks, sketch of its
rise and progress
Athens its native soil
Tin mistocles, not distinguished as an
orator
/'. rides, his style of speaking
no speech of his preserved in writing. .
only explanation of this
a few expressions preserved
Cicero's opinion of Pericles, Alcibiades,
and Tli ucydides
manner, diction, and idiom of Pericles
Antiphon. (See his name)
Andocides. (See his name)
Lysias. (See his name)
57
28
ib.
156
ib.
ib.
ib.
157
ib.
ib.
ib.
158
ib.
235
457
458
ib.
ib.
459
ib.
ib.
460
461
469
477
469
Page
ORATORY,
Isoerates. (See his name) 504
ORPHEUS,
scanty accounts of 25
connected with the worship of Dionysus 26
not a Thracian, but a Pierian 27
his followers, the Orphics (oi 'Op<pint>i) 231
account of them, the objects of their
worship, &c ib.
time of their institution difficult to as-
certain 232
their poems, tendency of, to humanize
and improve ib.
Pherecydes, his poems resembling the
Orphic 234
reason of the loss of the earlier Orphic
poems ib.
their connexion with the philosophy of
Pythagoras ib.
account of several Orphic poets and
their works 235
Onomacritus, the most known ib.
his works • ib.
Cercops, Brontinus, Arignote, Persi-
nus, Timocles, Zopyrus ib.
the OrfheotelesU ib.
spirit and character of the Orphic poems ib.
the idea of a creation occurs in them . . 237
Orphic worship of Dionysus. (See
Dionysus ib.
PARABASIS. (See Chorus) 401
PARMENIDES (Eleatic philosopher),
his age and country 251
resemblance of his philosophy to that
of Xenophanes ib.
account of his doctrines, &c ib.
PARNASSUS, where situated 27, 28
PARODY, account of this species of
poetry 146
attributed by some to Hipponax .... 147
P.EAN, the
song of courage and confidence 19
vernal pseans of Lower Italy 20
paeans of the Pythagoreans ib.
mode of singing ib.
new subjects introduced into 452
Aristotle's paean on Virtue ib.
PERICLES. (See Athens) 280
PHERECYDES (Ionic philosopher) . . 240
one of the earliest prose writers 241
account of him and his works ib.
his genealogies ami mythical history.. 263
PHILOSOPHY of the Greeks 239
its opposition to poetry ib.
led to prose composition ib.
earliest philosophers classed by races
and countries 240
the Ionic philosophers, their researches
in physics ib.
philosophers of the Ionic school — Phe-
recydes. (See his name) ib.
Thales. (See bis name) 241
the seven Sages ib.
Anaximaitd, ,-. (See his name) 242
526
INDEX.
Page
PHILOSOPHY,
Anaximenes. (See his name) 243
Heraclitus, (See his name) 244
Anaxagoras. (See his name) 246
Diogenes. (See his name) 248
the Eleatic philosophers 249
Xenophanes. (See his name) 250
Parmenides. (See his name) 251
Melissus. (See his name) 252
Zeno. (See his name) ib.
Empedocles. (See his name) 253
the Italic philosophers 256
Pythagoras. (See his name) ib.
PHILOXENUS (lyric poet), his age,
country, &c 448
his treatment by Dionysius the elder ib.
estimation of his poems ib.
PHRYNICHUS (tragedian), his age,
country, &c 293
the lyric predominated over the tragic
with him ib.
employed only one actor ib.
introduced female parts ib.
his distribution of the chorus ib.
his play of The Phoenissce ib.
its resemblance to The Persians of
iEschylus 294
his Capture of Miletus — effects of its
production ib.
PHRYNIS (lyric poet), his age, country,
&c 448
abused by Pherecrates ib.
PIERIA
distinguished from Thrace 26
PINDAR — his age — cotemporary of
jEschylus 216
his birthplace 217
his family skilled in music ib.
instructed by Lasus 218
not a common mercenary poet ib.
though employed by Hiero and others . ib.
his freedom of speech to Hiero and
Arcesilaus 219
his intercourse with princes limited to
poetry ib.
excelled in all varieties of lyric and
choral poetry 220
all lost except his epinikia, or trium-
phal odes ib.
the epinikia, and their mode of per-
formance explained ib.
their style lofty and dignified 222
turn upon the destiny or merit of the
victor ib.
though delivered by a chorus, express
his own feelings, &c 224
contain much sententious wisdom .... ib.
but more occupied by mythical narratives ib.
reference of these to the main theme,
either historical or ideal 225
copious mythology introduced 226
his meaning frequently difficult to com-
prehend at the present time ib.
general characteristics of his Epinikian
odes 227
PINDAR,
style and metres — Doric, JEolic, and
Lydian 227
distinction between 228
his language, &c ib.
differs widely from Homer in his no-
tions respecting the state of man
after death 229
PISISTRATIDS, the. (See Athens) .. 278
POETRY of the Greeks
its first efforts 16
songs of the husbandmen 17
the Paan 19
the Threnos and Hymenceos 20, 21
origin and character of the chorus. ... 22
ancient composers of sacred hymns . . 24
in the worship of Apollo ib.
of Demeter and Dio-
nysus 25
of the Corybantes,
&c. 26
Thracian origin of several early poets. . ib.
influence of this origin on the poetry of
Homer 28
Epic poetry— its metrical form, &c. .. 35
poetical style and tone of the ancient
epic 36
perpetuated by memory, not by writing 37
subjects and extent of the ante-Homeric
epic poetry 39
the exploits of Hercules — the ship
Argo, &c 40
never favourable to the elevation of a
single individual 49
its state more developed in the Odyssey
than in the Iliad 58
the Didactic Epos described 86
general remarks on the influence of the
Epos 103
the only kind of poetry before the 7th
century, b.c 104
its connexion with the monarchical
period 105
influence of the forms of government
on poetry ib.
Elegiac poetry. (See Elegeion) .... ib.
Epigrammatic poetry. (See that title) 126
Iambic and Satyrical poetry. (See that
title) 128
Lyric poetry. (See that title) 148
moral improvement after Homer evident
in the notions as to the state of man
after death 229
general alteration in the spirit of Greek
poetry during the first five centuries 238
Dramatic poetry. (See that title) . . 285
later epic poetry and its writers 454
Antimachus. (See his name) ib.
POETS or minstrels.
their social position in the heroic age. . 29
as depicted by Homer 30
before his time 31
as depicted by Hesiod, &c 32
epic poets connected with the early
minstrels 36
INDEX.
527
Page
POETS,
Cyclic poets. (See Cyclic poems) .... 64
Epic poets. (See Homer, Hesiod, Minor
Epic Poets)
POLYMNESTUS (musician) 162
POSEIDON (Neptune), see 11 n.
PRATINAS (tragedian), his age, coun-
try, &c 295
excelled in the Satyric drama ib.
PROSE compositions of the Greeks .... 239
causes of the introduction of prose . . 240
opposition of philosophy and poetry . . ib.
writing necessary for prose composition ib.
period during which it was most culti-
vated 456
three epochs in the history of Attic
prose » . ib.
first epoch introduced by Athenian po-
litics and Sicilian sophistry ib.
sketch of this epoch ib.
oratory. (See Oratory of the Greeks) 457
began a new career after the Pelopon-
nesian war c 496
PROSERPINE (Cora), see 11 n.
PROTAGORAS. (See Sophists) 469
PYTHAGORAS (Italic philosopher) .. 256
his personal history, and traditions re-
specting him ib.
his opinions, how far influenced by his
residence 257
his influence exercised by means of
lectures and the establishment of
Pythagorean associations ib.
no authentic account of his writings,
nor any genuine fragment ib.
works attributed to him forgeries by
the Orphic theologers ib.
his fundamental doctrines ib.
their scientific development subsequent
to his time 258
his opinions promoted both theoretically
and practically by music ib.
RELIGION of the Greeks 11
earliest form not portrayed in the Ho-
meric poems ib.
earlier form directed to the outward
objects of nature 12
similarity to the religions of the East.. 13
deficient in the notion of eternity in
their deities 87
also in the idea of a creation 88
improved between the times of Homer
and Pindar 229
and by the Orphic association 232
Epim en ides — Abaris — Aristeas — ac-
count of 233
Pherecydes — account of 234
sacerdotal sages, their writings, &c. . . ib.
RHAPSODISTS -explanation of the term 32
SAGES, the Seven 241
SAPPHO (lyric poetess) 172
her birthplace and age ib.
her character ib.
Page
SAPPHO,
cause of imputations upon it at a later
period 173
treatment of women amongst the Ionic
races and the iEolians ib.
strictness prescribed by Athenian man-
ners ib.
her love for Phaon 174
story of her leap from the Leucadian
rock ib.
shown to be fictitious 175
her poetry — fragments only remaining, ib.
account of her ode to Aphrodite .... ib.
her intimacies with women 176
females at Lesbos not confined icithin
the house ib.
probably her pupils and rivals in poetry 177
fragment of her poetry preserved by
Longinus 178
her Epitlialamia or Hymenaeal poems ib.
also composed hymns to the gods .... 179
rhythmical construction of her poems . . ib.
greatness of her fame ib.
appreciated by Solon , . . ib.
SATYRIC drama 294
separated from Tragedy by Choerilus . . ib.
subjects and characters of 295
separation completed by Pratinas .... ib.
SCEPHRUS, plaintive song 18
SCOLION, species of drinking song. (See
Lyric poetry) 188
SIMONIDES (elegiac and lyric poet),
his country and age 125, 140
stated to have been victorious over Ms-
chylus in a contest ib.
a great master of the pathetic ib.
a celebrated writer of epigrams 127
his Iambic poetry — coarse and severe.. 140
his family and character 208
nature of his lyric poety ib.
enjoyed great consideration in his life-
time 209
the versatility and variety of his know-
ledge ib.
the first who sold his poems for money 210
account of his poems — their variety, &c. ib.
his epinikia, dirges, &c 211
criticism on his style 212
SOCRATES— unfairly treated by Aristo-
phanes 417
SOLON — his character and that of his
elegies 117
the elegy of Salamis, account of ib.
its effect 118
his elegy cited by Demostlienes ib.
his elegies styled Gnomic 119
his Iambic poetry 140
fragments of his Iambics and Trochaics 141
his influence at Athens 278
SOPHISTS (the profession of the) . ..462
essential elements of their doctrines . . ib.
Protagoras, his age and country .... 463
banished from Athens for scepticism . . ib.
his doctrines ib.
Gorgias, his age and country ib.
528
INDEX.
Page
SOPHISTS,
his method of arguing, &c 463, 467
pernicious results of his doctrines .... 464
Hippias, Prodicus — their methods . . ib.
general effects of the labours of the
Sophists ib.
Callicles, Thrasimachus — doctrines at-
tributed by Plato to 465
the Sophists greatly improved written
compositions ib.
means by which this effect was pro-
duced ib.
Corax — his age and country 466
his " Art of Rhetoric" ib.
Tisias, pupil of Corax ib.
orator and author of an "Art of Rhetoric" ib.
language of Gorgias 467
Polus, Alcidamas — their language, &c. 469
Antiphon. (See his name) ib.
SOPHOCLES (tragedian) 337
his advance upon JEschylus ib.
his birthplace, age, &c ib.
first appearance in a dramatic contest. . 338
particulars of the contest and successful
play ib.
The Antigone, first of his plays now
extant ib.
excellence and effects of ib.
his acquaintance with Herodotus .... 339
number of plays ascribed to him .... ib.
period within which produced ib.
increasing rapidity of their production 340
order of his extant plays ib.
his own opinion of his style as compared
with that of JEschylus ib.
changes made by him in the constitution
of tragedy 341
increased length ib.
diminution of the lyrical element .... 342
third actor introduced - advantages of . ib.
his general object and design ib.
plan, and philosophical scheme of the
Antigone 343
characters in 344
the Electro, — comparison with the
Orestea of iEschylus ib.
different view of the subject taken by
Sopihocles ib.
The Trachinian Women 346
conflict between the legend and the in-
tentions of the author ib.
plan and object of the play ib.
the King (Edipus ib.
what it does not mean ib.
action and progress of the plot 347
traces of the poet's sublime irony .... ib.
his mode of employing the chorus .... 348
the Ajax ib.
extraordinary character of the hero . . ib.
Eccyclema scene introduced 349
plan of the play ib.
the Philoctetes 350
date of — produced in the old age of the
poet ib.
employment of the Deus ex machina . . ib.
SOPHOCLES. Pag °
plan of the play 350
simplicity of its construction 351
prevailing ideas of the preceding pieces
ethical , ib.
the (Edipus at Colonus — develops his
religious ideas 352
connected with his last days — brought
out by his son .... ib.
sketch of his family affairs in his old age ib.
allusion to in this play 353
description of the play — its allusions to
the scenes of his youth ib.
plan and object of 354
general criticism on his tragedies .... 355
his language ib.
his style and metres 356
the most pious and enlightened of the
Greeks 357
difference between him and Euripides . ib.
STASIMUS of Cyprus. (See Cyclic
poems) 68
STESICHORUS (lyric poet) 99
wrote on similar subjects to Hesiod . . ib.
made use of fables 143
his age and country ] 98
his name assumed — real name Tisias . . ib.
his alterations in the form of the chorus 199
his metres and dialect ib.
subjects of his choruses 200
his treatment of them compared with
that of Pindar ib.
his mode of treating mythic narratives
different from the Epic 201
Helen and the Trojan war ib.
his language 202
composed also hymns and^ewwis .... ib.
romantic and bucolic poems ib.
imitated by Theocritus 203
remarkable as a precursor of Pindar. . ib.
SUSARION. (See Comedy of the Greeks) 397
TERPANDER (elegiac poet) 107
founder of Greek music 149
his probable origin, &c ib.
his age 150
victor at the first musical contests .... ib.
introduced the nomes for singing to the
cithara ib.
invented the seven-stringed cithara . . 151
his musical scale ib.
distinction between the scales and the
styles or harmonies 152
the Doric, Phrygian, and Lydian styles ib.
first marked the different tones in music 154
his notation and tunes or nomes ib.
rhythmical form of his compositions .. 155
said to have invented the scolion .... 188
THALETAS (musician) 159
third epoch in Greek music ib.
his country and age ib.
his musical and poetical productions . . 160
the Pyrrhic or war-dance 161
THALES (Ionic philosopher) 241
his age, character, &c ib.
INDEX.
529
Page
THALES,
astronomical calculations 241
not a poet, nor the author of any writ-
ten work 242
THEATRES— construction of, &c. (See
Tragedy of the Greeks) 298
THEODECTES (rhetorician and dra-
matist), his age, works, &c 388
his manner, style, &c 389
THEOGNIS (elegiac poet) 107
acconnt of his compositions 120
his country and age 121
the character of his elegies ih.
his personal relation to Cyrnus 122
state of convivial society as shown by him 123
THESPIS (tragedian), his age, &c 292
added one actor to the chorus ib.
and consequently dialogue ib.
importance of the dances of the chorus ib.
the dances of Thespis performed in the
time of Aristophanes ib.
THRENOS, lament for the dead 20, 21
merits of those composed by Simonides 211
THUCYDIDES (historian) 479
his birth, family, country, &c ib.
his property at Scapte Hyle ib.
sketch of his personal career 480
an Athenian of the old school 481
his character as a historian ib.
his work a history of the Peloponnesian
war only ib.
distribution and arrangement of his
materials 482
no violent breaks in his work 483
what the work would have been if com-
pleted ib.
sketch of the first book ib.
manner of treating his materials 485
his work not a compilation ib.
his truth and fidelity , 486
the practical application of his work. . 487
his skill in delineating character .... ib.
account of the speeches contained in his
work 488
no attempt to depict pecidiar modes of
speaking 489
his chief concern to exhibit the princi-
ples of the speakers ib.
beneficial application of his sophistical
exercises 490
his disapproval of the Athenian policy 491
his peculiar style and diction ib.
his dialect 492
construction of his words and conse-
quent rapidity of description ib.
connexion of his sentences 493
structure of his periods ib.
his use of figures of speech, &c 494
TIMOCREON (lyric poet), his country,
&c 215
his style ib.
his hatred of Tkemistocles and Si-
monides • ib.
TIMOTHEUS (lyric poet), his age and
country 449
TIMOTHEUS,
his innovations in music 449
cultivated the Dithyramb ib.
TRAGEDY of the Greeks,
originally a choral song 289
its commencement and progress 290
its connexion with the worship of
Bacchus . . ib.
name explained, and its derivation. . . 291
Dorian tragedy made no further ad-
vance ■,.... ib.
its origin and development amongst the
Athenians ib.
their Dionysiac festivals ib.
Thespis. (See his name) 292
only one actor besides the chorus .... ib.
played several parts ib.
example from the Pentheus ib.
dances of the chorus still a principal part ib.
versification employed by the early
tragedians \ ib.
Phrynichus. (See his name) 293
Chcerilus. (See his name) 294
the Satyric drama — account of ib.
three tragedies and one Satyric drama
represented together ib.
Pratinas. (See his name) 295
JEschylus. (See his name) ib.
great development of tragedy by him . ib.
ideal character of the Greek tragedy . . 296
costume of the actors ib.
furnishing of the choruses 297
the mask — the cothurnus ib.
tragic gesticulation ib.
masks changed between the acts .... 298
management of the voice by the actor . ib.
structure of the theatre ib.
ancient theatres 299
the stone theatre at Athens ib.
theatres in Peloponnesus and Sicily . . ib.
plan of the theatre at Athens ib.
the Orchestra ib.
the Thymele, its nature, use, &c ib.
number and arrangement of the chorus 300
Emmeleia — tragic style of dancing. ... ib.
form and construction of the Stage. . . . 301
the Scene, Parascenia, and Proscenium ib.
the action of Greek tragedy necessarily
out of doors 302
the entrances and doors to the stage . . 303
each associated with certain localities
or incidents ib.
marked effect of these inflexible rules . . ib.
a second actor added by jEschylus . ■ . ■ 304
number of good actors small ib.
a third by Soph cfesand occasionally by
ASschylus ib.
a fourth by Sophocles in the (Edipw
at Colonvs 305
technical names of the three actors . . ib.
explanation of the terms Protagonist,
Deuteragonist, Tritagonist 306
changes of scene seldom necessary.. . . 307
reason of not representing bloody spec-
tacles, &c ib.
2 M
530
INDEX.
Page
TRAGEDY,
other reasons than that given by Horace 307
no arrangement for complete change of
scenic decorations 308
the Periactce, explained ib.
mode of representing interiors when
requisite 309
the Eccyclema and Exostra described ib.
the scene-painting of Agatharchus . . 310
union of lyric poetry and dramatic
discourse . . ib.
analysis of, suggested by Aristotle. ... ib.
the stasimon, the parodos ib.
the prologue, the episodia, the exodus 311
dividing the tragedy into certain parts ib.
TYE/LEUS (elegiac poet) 110
cotemporary of Callinus ib.
stories respecting, how far credible .
ib.
subjects of his elegies, and their inten-
tion Ill
how recited 112
his embateria or marches 196
VENUS (Aphrodite), see 11 n.
VULCAN (Hephaestus), see 11 n.
WOMEN,
how treated and described by the an-
cient epic poets 95
their origin according to Simonides . . 140
difference of their treatment by the
Ionic and jEolian races 173
strictness prescribed by Athenian man-
ners .... . . . ib,
WRITING and written memorials
not usual in the early times of Greek
literature 37
WRITING,
this accounts for the rarity of useful
historical data 37
and for the late introduction of prose
composition 38
proved also by the ancient inscriptions ib.
rendered necessary by the introduction
of prose composition 239
probable antiquity of the art in Greece 260
XANTHUS (historian), his age and
country 264
his genuine works 265
spurious works attributed to him .... ib.
XENOCRITUS (musician) 162
XENODAMUS (musician) ib.
XENOPHANES (elegiac poet), his coun-
try and age 124
his character and that of his elegies . . ib.
wrote an epic poem on the founding of
Elea 250
first of the Eleatic philosophers ib.
his philosophy ib.
written in the poetic form ib.
his ideas on the godhead ib.
condemned the anthropomorphic con-
ceptions of the Greeks concerning
their gods 251
ZENO (Eleatic philosopher), his age and
country 253
friend and disciple of Parmenides .... ib.
his doctrines and sophisms ib.
ZEUS (Jupiter), see 11 n.
origin of the name 14
called Cronion or Cronides before
Homer and Hesiod 87
G. Woodfall and Son, Printers, An^el Court, Skinner Street, London.
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