UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES GREECE, ANCIENT AND MODERN. LECTURES DELIVERED BEFORE THE LOWELL INSTITUTE. By C. C. FELTON, LL.D., LATE PRESIDENT HARVARD CNIVIB8ITT. TWO VOLUMES IN ONE. >bun^!nf^J 1 tf* w iffSiiF^S BOSTON AND NEW YORK: HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. Cf)c HibenSttte J3re&f, Camfirrtfffe. 1893. AA-0 Enter: i According to Act of ";ongresg, in the year IBM, by THE LOWELL INSTITUTE, IB the C!erk' Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. NINTH EDITION. / 2 5 74 PREFACE. The Leures now given to the public were delivered in the yearsl852, 1853, 1859, and 1854, the Course desig- nated as thA third having been the latest in the order of delivery. It has been thought best thus to transpose the third and fourv, rather than to insert the course on Modern Greece betweeitwo courses on Ancient Greece. These Lecture though written very rapidly, almost al- ways in the inteirals between their delivery, embody the results of lifelong study, and of a conscientiously careful and accurate scholarship. The labor of revision and editor- ship has devolved toon a friend, who has performed it however inadequate^ with loving diligence, and with the earnest desire to rader these volumes a not unworthy memorial of their evfr-lamented author. References have been, so far as was possible, verified, authorities consulted, and translations compared with their originals; and the ut- most attention has been\ paid to the passage of the sheets through the press. It is believed that the work fills in our literature a place not beftre occupied, and that it will ren- der essential service to that cause of liberal culture to which the author's whole life was consecrated. CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME FIRST COURSE. THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY i-IOTCBK JPai I. The Origin of Language ....... 3 II. Classification of Languages 18 III. The Indo-European Languages. The Origin of Writing 32 IV. Alphabetic Writing. Primeval Literature of the East 50 V. The Earliest Greek Poetry. The Homeric Poem9 71 VI. Homer and the Iliad ....... 89 VII. The Odyssey. The Batrachomyomachia . 106 VIII. The Homeric Hymns. Hesiod. Greek Musio . . 126 IX. Ionian Lyric Poetry 145 X. ^olian and Dorian Lyric Poetry . . . 166 XI. Pindar. The Greek Drama. tEschylus . 188 XII. Euripides. Sophocles. Aristophanes ) . . 214 XHI. The Later Greek Drama. Decline of Letters. The Alexandrian Period. The Byzantine Period. Mod- ern Greek Poetrt iv SECOND COURSE. THE LIFE OF GREECE. I. Hellas and the Hellenes . . 271 H. Outline View of Hellenic Culture . 289 III. The Decline of Hellas. Rural Life in Greece .' 310 IV. Roads. Houses. Furniture. Marriage. Xenophon's CEconomiccs . S3 1 * VI CONTENTS. V. Household Expenses. Occupations. Food. Feasts. Markets .... 356 VI. Dress. Armor. Artistical Drapery. Manufactures, Trade, and Commerce 379 VTI. Dorian Manners and Customs. Clubs. Provision fob the Poor. The Medical Profession .... 398 VTH. Education 417 IX. General Culture. Worship. Divination. Oracles . 434 X. Temples. State of Religious Belief. Philosophers. Funeral Rites and Monuments. Belief concerning a Future Life. Wills ....... 452 XI. Government . ^478 A-LL Literature. The Theatre .... , 48.1 CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME. THIRD COURSE. CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. LCCTUBK PjBJ I. General View of Greece. Greek Polity . . 3 II. Constitutions op the Heroic Age. Slavery 18 III. Plato and Aristotle on Slavery. Slavery and Chris TIANITY 34 IV. The early Tyrannies. The Spartan Constitution 52 V. Athenian Kings. Solon and his Laws . . . 71 VI. The Constitution of Cleisthenes .91 VII. The Persian Wars. Origin of Attic Eloquence. Per- icles) Ill VIII. Genius and Services of Pericles. Athens in the Times of Pericles ) 133 IX. The Peloponnesian War.' The Demos. Antiphon. Andocides 146 X. ( The Spartan Ascendency. Epoch of Theban Glory J LYSIAS. ISOCRATES. IS.EUS. LYSIAS AND Is^US COM- PARED . . . . . .171 XI. Trial of Socrates. Plato's Republic. Age of Philip and Alexander. 1 Lycurgus. -(Eschines. Hyperides 196 ; f XII. Demosthenes -f . . . .219 FOURTH COURSE. MODERN GREECE. I. Introduction. The Greek Revolution. Character of the Modern Greeks. Character of the Turks 249 II The Macedonian Ascendency. Greece under the Ro- mans 272 V CONTENTS. III. From Constantine to the Byzantine Period . 29fl IV. Greece Christianized. St. Chrysostom. The Eastern Church . .... 816 V. The Byzantine Empire. The Latin Emperors. The Dukes of Athens . 340 VI. Turkish Conquest of Constantinople. Literature of the Byzantine Period ....... 360 VII. Byzantine Scholarship. Greece under the Turks . 384 VIII. The Greek Revolution 408 TX. History of the War of Independence . . 431 X. Greece after the Revolution. Ascension of King Otho 455 XI. First Years of Otho's Reign. Constitution of 1844. Greece since 1843 476 XII. Language and Pronunciation. Education. Litera- ture. Poetry. Adventures of Travel .501 General Index . - - M' FIRST COURSE. THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY LECTURE I. THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. In the present course of lectures, I propose to discuss three main topics. These are : 1. The Position of the Greek Lan- guage in the History of Human Speech ; 2. The Position of Greek Poetry in the History of Poetic Culture ; and 3. The History and Value of Greek Poetiy, in itself considered. In handling these subjects, I shall adopt the method of compari- son, because true knowledge, upon any subject whatsoever, is gained chiefly in this manner. In our classical studies, we are too much inclined to follow the beaten way, and to forget that the great languages of Greece and Rome, the great masters who wielded those marvellous instruments of thought and intellectual power, the great literatures which have ridden out the storms of many ages, and have come, though with torn sails and shattered hull, down to our times, stood in close relations to those that went before, as they stand in close rela- tions to those that have followed after them. Moreover, if we would gain a comprehensive view of the diversities and powers of language, we must not limit the com parison to the single group of languages, however extensive, tc which the English and the Greek belong, for these are all constructed on a single type ; but we must extend our research to those vast families of languages that occupy the greater part of the continents of Asia, Africa, and America : and we shall see that the ideas we form by studying a single model, under how many varieties soever, require to be greatly mcdified and enlarged by the other terms of the comparison. The Ian- 1 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. guage of savages and that of children throw the most impor- tant light upon the whole philosophy of speech, and I shall venture, very briefly, to touch upon these illustrations so far as my limited studies enable me to do. Perhaps the best established despotism in the world is the government of the verb by the nominative case ; but there are languages in which the verb governs the nominative case. Many topics belonging to each of the above-named heads must be wholly passed over ; many must be just alluded to : many I shall dismiss with a slight discussion. But I hope 1 shall be able to deal, however inadequately, with those which are the most important. If we look over the present world, we are amazed at the infinite variety of the human character, while we feel the everlasting ties which bind its myriads of forms into one com- mon nature. The physiologist traces and classifies the races of men ; the geographer places them within their appointed habi- tations ; the historian follows out their fortunes in their succes- sive migrations and dispersions : and as we look back into the past, these distinctions of race are as strongly marked in the earliest times of which we have record, as they are at the present moment ; nor has any new race been formed, nor any tendency to the formation of a new race been demonstrated, since the beginning of the written or monumental history of man. We see them issuing, like so many processions in long array, from the portals of the past, taking up their lines of march along the great highways of nature, and moving in various directions over the surface of the earth. At times they come into mutual conflict, or cross one another's path; now there is a partial blending of the streams of life ; and then a wide divergence or strong repulsion. Nations occupy the tage of history, and, having spoken their speech and played their part, retire ; others are midway in the great drama of their national existence. Some are touching their catastrophe, and others are rehearsing for exhibition, and preparing to make their first appearance on the theatre of the world. THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 5 Is there any unity of plan in these complicated and ever- shifting scenes ? Yes : that unity is in the nature of man. In all time, in all space, he is the same being in all that makes him a human being. He has the same religious tendency, the same reasoning power, the same gift of speech. Whether all the historical forms of religion can be accounted for by one primeval revelation, or not ; whether all the physical varieties of mankind can be referred to one initial race, or not ; whether all the migrations that have overrun the earth can be traced back to one starting-point, or not ; whether all the varieties of speech that make the earth an illimitable Babel have come from a single language communicated to man at the moment of his creation, or not, amidst all this warfare of unsettled disputes, unanswered questions, contradictory opinions, man remains essentially the same, a religious being, a reasoning being, a speaking being, and these are the three attributes that constitute the sublime unity of his nature. Speech, then, though not, as some of the ancients asserted, the sole distinguishing attribute of man, is among the chief of them. Universal as it is, not one of the marvels that encom- pass our life is so miraculous. Little as we think of it, we cannot think without it in one or another of its forms. To employ language, to speak, is to set in motion the divinest organism of our being. With what inexpressible skill is the machinery of speech framed together, and adapted part to part! The articulating organs ; the life-supporting air ; the mind that sends its orders from the brain, where it sits enthroned, along the nerves which set these organs in motion ; the impulse borne on the wings of the wind, sweeping through the intervening space, knocking at the porches of the ear, passing along the nerves of sensation, and leaving in the presence of another mind a bodiless thought, which the flying messenger was sent to bear, how familiar, yet how miraculous, is all this ! Rhe- nius, a missionary in the East, at the close of the Preface to his Tamil Grammar, exclaims : "To God, the eternal and al- mighty Jehovah, and Author of speech, be glory for ever and ever." b THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. Language is at once the evidence and the memorial of the universal brotherhood of man. It binds with its everlasting chain every nation and race and kindred. By articulated speech, thought answers to thought, as face answers to face in a glass, and we know what passes in the mind of our brother. By written speech we record our experiences for the instruc- tion of those who shall come after us, and make those books, which, in the language of Milton, contain " the life-blood of master-spirits laid up for a life after life." Written words are the instruments of communion between all races and all lands, the carrier-birds of human thought from country to country, from age to age, across the dividing and reuniting seas, across the abysms of centuries and millenniums. Language embodies the literature of nations, and so becomes the most vivid expres- sion of character. The action, suffering, and passion of the human race are best read in its successive literatures. The actual world, as it has been mirrored in the mind of man, and the ideal world of art, built upon the foundation of reality, but rising high above it, stand before us, in the histories, phi- losophies, and poetic creations, recorded in the many-voiced languages of men. In the earliest dawn of history, many distinct forms of civili- zation rise upon the view, luminous points in the obscurity of the past. What hidden relations exist between them ? This question leads us upon a track of inquiry, which an instinct or law of our nature forces us to pursue, in search after the beginnings of things. But our inquiries, however earnest, are often baffled by the fact, that they who lived and wrought in the beginning kept no records, they died and made no sign. Trace the course of man as far back as we may, we reach only a state of things requiring long previous ages to bring it about. Trace language back as far as we may, at the remotest point which our inquiries can reach we find a perfectness in the structure and a completeness in the development of speech, that imply ages of practice and thought ful culture. We seem no nearer a single primitive language. THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 7 than we now are with two thousand spoken languages that fill the earth with their dissonances. If we strive to pierce to the beginnings of literature, we are forced to acknowledge that we find, not rude and barbarous essays, but the masterpieces of art, the highest finish of composition, the most exquisite command of all the resources of practised genius. There is, then, no evading the conclusion, that letters and art, narrative and song, flourished before the dawn of our historical day among primeval nations, the long-descended ancestors of those whom we were wont to place at the very commencement of human affairs. Revelation indeed informs us, and science demonstrates the fact, that human existence, in the history of the globe, had a comparatively recent origin ; but neither tells us precisely when. Our chronologies are but rude approximations on im- perfect data, nor can the life of man on earth be bounded by them. Man began to be, has been, and is ; he was fashioned intellectually in the semblance of his Maker ; he is doing the work he was intended to do, and he is speaking the thought he was intended to speak. But under what circumstances was he created ? In what condition of body and mind was he born into conscious being ? Was he gifted with speech, or only with the power of speech ? Was his mind filled with thoughts, or only endowed with the power of thought, to be called in action by the need of thinking ? If we knew the history of language completely, all these questions might be answered with certainty; for this knowl- edge would tell us whence came every word, under what motive it was selected, what it meant, and what changes of meaning it has undergone ; that is, it would tell us all the thoughts that have ever been uttered by men, it would con- tain a perfect record of the intellectual and moral history of the race. And so far as the history of language can be traced, so far can the history of the race be illustrated. So far as its mysterious origin and its miraculous structure can be unfolded, so far can we pierce into the hidden laboratories of thought ; for the forms of thought mould and define the organism of language. THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. The questions that grow out of language were considered, however unskilfully, by the ancients, or some of them. Herod- otus relates, on the authority of an Egyptian priest, that until the time of Psammetichus that nation thought themselves the oldest people on the earth. But in order to decide the point beyond a doubt, Psammetichus placed two new-born children under the care of a shepherd, with orders not to speak a word in their hearing, "wishing to know what word they would first utter when they should abandon their inarticulate whimper- ings." At the end of two years, as he opened the door of their cabin one morning, they ran to him with outstretched hands, crying, Be/cos ! ySe/co? / This having been repeated many times, the shepherd reported the fact to the king, who sent in all directions to ascertain what people called anything by that name. It appeared that the Phrygians called bread /Se/to?, from which it was inferred that they were the oldest nation. This is the first attempt at comparative philology on record. It was a common idea among the ancients that language was imparted to man by the gods. Plato discusses to some extent the question suggested by the experiment of Psammetichus, whether there is any natural and inherent relation between the word and the thing signified by the word ; as, for instance, whether avdpwiros, man, must signify a human being, or might equally well have meant a horse. To solve the problem, he resorts to a fanciful etymology, fixing the meanings of its several parts ; but, on the whole, he leaves the subject much as he found it. The same question, with different applications, has often been discussed in modern times. According to the sensual philosophy, which regards man as only a higher animal, lan- guage springs from brutish inarticulate sounds. Lord Mon- boddo, in his acute and learned work on the origin of language, does not exactly degrade man to the monkey, as he is some- times accused of doing, but he raises the monkey into man. He maintains that the orang-outang, or wild-man of Africa, is in the first stage of human progress ; that horses in Tartary, THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 9 beavers in America, and monkeys in Africa, are "political ani- mals ; and that, therefore, Aristotle's definition of man, as a ttoXitikov %(oov, fails to distinguish him from many of the quad- rupeds. Of an orang-outang, whose stuffed skin he saw in Paris, he says : " He had exactly the shape and features of a man ; and particularly I was informed that he had organs of pronunciation as perfect as we have. He lived several years at Versailles, and died by drinking spirits." In the opinion of this class of writers, language is not natural to man, though he has proved himself capable of acquiring it. In his natural state, he employs only inarticulate sounds ; but, being a rational animal, he learns by slow degrees the convenience of dividing long-protracted sounds into smaller portions, and thus finally works out a perfected speech. "Impotent philosophers," ex- claims Mazure, " who, in the production of the divine work of speech, forgot only one element, the divine hand of the Maker!" The vague sounds made by animals are indeed expressive, but not of thought. Whatever be the range of their tones, they convey only the most indefinite expression of the most general feelings, such as pleasure or pain. One could hardly fail to understand the physical joy that inspires the song of the bobolink in spring, or the agony that pours from the robin's throat when the stealthy cat approaches her young. Within certain narrow limits, the vocal powers may be improved in some animals by training: but the mocking-bird plays his vocal tricks by instinct, not by thought ; and the parrot, taught by sailors to swear, has no conception of the depravity of his pro- fane masters. In these cases the vocal organism of the animal has outrun the intellectual, a foreshadowing, it may be, of the higher strain carried to its full perfection in the harmo- nious organism of man. The human being begins with the vocal expression of vague instinctive feelings, like the animal ; but he passes from these indeterminate wails, or joyous prolon- gations of sound, to articulated, or divided speech, as surely, as universally, as inevitably, as he grows up into a man, and not a 10 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. quadruped or bird. He was born to speak, and speak he will, let the arguments of theoretical philosophers prove what they may. The word is in him, the organism is in him, placed there by the hand of Infinite Wisdom : the organism will work, and the word will be uttered, as certainly as the man will walk upright. He needs not to learn to build from the swa 1 - low, to weave from the spider, nor to sing from the robin. He declines to accept the compromise offered him by the materi- alists of the last century, who deprived him of speech, but by way of compensation appended to him a tail ; the disappear- ance of the one, and the acquisition of the other, being alike the final consummation of a tedious series of civilizing habits and experiments. I think we may safely say, that the business of proper human life cannot be carried on without language in some form ; and that human beings, leaving out a few easily ex- plained exceptional cases, employ language as naturally as they breathe the vital air. The absolute historical beginning of hu- man speech is left as much in the dark as the mode of the beginning of human life in general. Herder was inclined to believe that man first awoke to conscious existence in the beau- tiful valley of Cashmere, and that human speech was first heard in those lovely regions. An opposite opinion supposes that man appeared simultaneously wherever the earth was fitted to sup- port his physical existence ; and that the intellectual differences which mark the varieties of the race, and the corresponding diversities in the form and structure of speech, began with the beginning of all things. According to one view, a certain stock of words, like a certain amount of bodily strength, was fur nished to man, or certain varieties of words to men, from which the work of forming language or languages was to be carried forward and completed ; according to another, man was left with the capacity only, and had to do the whole work him- self. We cannot attain a perfectly satisfactory conception of the method of the transaction in either case. The ways of the AJmighty are past finding out. But we may rest assured tha THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 11 the miracle of language, on which the beginning of human speech reposes, like the miracle of creation itself, was an exer- cise of the Divine power, carefully and wisely adjusted to the exigencies of the case. We may, however, venture to draw nigh the origin of speech, and imagine to ourselves its early characteristics ; for we are able to trace its now existing forms back into a remote and awful antiquity. We may picture the earliest men, as they looked with wonder on the world around them, and expressed in sound the images with which their minds were filled. Speech gave back the emotions out of which it sprang. Soft and harmonious sounds expressed the gentle feelings of the heart ; while rough and violent intona- tions embodied in mimetic vocalism the harsh, the painful, the agitating passions, as they arose to disturb the serenity of life. The elemental sounds, in this way, had a general signifi- cance ; but the few imitative monosyllables, of which the prim- itive language or languages consisted, were combined and recombined, to adapt themselves to the illimitable range of shifting and multiplying thought. It has been a subject of inquiry among philologists, what classes of words were first invented or inspired. Some have claimed precedence for interjections, as if the first employment of new-created man were to feel astonishment and to express it by exclamations ; others, for nouns, as if man first busied himself with giving names to the objects around him, and mak- ing out catalogues ; others, still, trace the earliest form of speech in the verb ; as if action the doing this or that had been the first manifestation of life that clothed itself in sound. So far as we can judge, neither of these was exclusively the first, but the same word was employed with all these modifications of sense. This fact holds partially in the present state of all languages, and wholly in some, as the Chinese. The word ex- presses the idea of size, for instance, in the most general way In one combination it means great, in another greatness, in an- other to make great, in another to be great, in another greatly We may infer, then, that sometimes one and sometimes another 12 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. part of speech came into existence first, according to circum- stances ; sometimes the act, sometimes the quality, some- times the degree ; the root of the word undergoing the modifications required by all these shapes of thought in the inflecting languages, and containing them all by implication in the uninflecting languages. The inquiry becomes then an idle one, and can lead to no results. But what was the primitive language of man, if there was one ? Does it exist, in whole or in part, in any known lan- guage, or does it lie dispersed and hidden among them all ? If we could trace all languages back to one, and follow that to its primeval form, we could answer with certainty this question, which has so often been answered positively enough, but on the most uncertain grounds. As I have said, the question can- not well be answered, because at the earliest point to which our investigations ascend, all the languages which we have the best means of knowing were sufficiently formed to meet all the great demands for communication among the nations and races speaking them. Enthusiastic scholars, however, endeavored to pierce the veil, and to determine what language the first man spoke, what language Adam used in Paradise. But opinions swayed in favor of this or that, according to the personal pre- dilections or favorite studies of writers. Some enthusiastic Irish patriots stood up stoutly for the Erse or Wild Irish ; Welshmen claimed the honor for a kindred dialect, the Welsh ; Gaelic has not wanted its champions. The universally ac- knowledged antiquity of the Hebrew, and the circumstance that the Sacred Writings were composed in that venerable dialect, naturally led many to the conclusion that Adam was created with this language ready formed upon his lips, and that from this all others are directly or remotely derived. Perhaps the strangest opinion of all is that of certain Quixotic Spanish scholars, who have proved that the Basque language is not only the first ever spoken by man, but, on account of its incomparable perfections and unexampled copi- ousness, must have been infused by the Almighty into the THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 18 minds of our first parents. The Basque is a rude dialect, spoken by the peasantry on the Pyrenean borders of France and Spain. It has no traceable affinities with any other lan- guage of Europe, and appears to have come down from a very remote epoch, undisturbed by the revolutions of time or empire. It has been thoroughly examined by that great and philosophical scholar, William von Humboldt, and, from a care- ful and beautiful analysis, pronounced to be a remnant of the Iberian tongue, or the language spoken by the primitive inhab- itants of the Peninsula, before they were disturbed by the immigration of the Celts. Whether they were the children of the soil, created on the spot, or came in from Asia at a period anterior to the earliest legends, by a migration which has left no certain trace behind it on the way, Humboldt does not undertake to decide. The earliest literary document in this language dates no farther back than the Roman age ; coins and medals carry its written memorials into the Phoenician times. Its alphabet, so far as it can be made out, is Greek or Phoenician. This meagre fragment of a language, that must have been poor enough in its best estate, is said by Mr. Astarloa to contain 4,126,564,929 words ; i. e. fifty times as many words as are comprised in all the languages and dialects spoken on the face of the earth at the present day. Another Spanish scholar, Mr. Erro, is scarcely less extrava- gant. He maintains that the Basque is the primitive language. He analyzes the names of the letters, which are in reality only corrupted forms of the names of the Phoenician alphabet, and finds them significant of the profoundest truths. Consequently, the Greek alphabet was derived from the Basque ; and if so, then the Hebrew, Phoenician, and so on. This, of course, carries the Basque farther back than the dialect of the patri- archs. One more long step in the same direction takes us to the Tower of Babel, which, though it did witness the confusion of tongues among the builders, had no effect on Noah and the Armenians, since they had no participation in the sin that led to that great catastrophe. From this it is plain sailing beyond 14 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. the Flood, and as Noah spoke Basque, it remains only to trace it through the few generations between him and Adam. Seth recorded his astronomical observations on two stone columns, in Basque, and he learned it, of coui'se, from his father. These are the whims of one-sided scholarship, of philology run mad. Some of the conclusions drawn by those who en- deavored to trace the primitive language as scattered in frag- ments among the various languages of the different branches of the human family, were almost equally whimsical. Towards the close of the last century, a French writer, M. Court de Gebelin, published a work called the Primitive World, in four quarto volumes, of about eight hundred pages each. The main object of this was to found a universal system of etymology, by adjusting the elements of sound to the expression of thought, by analyzing all sounds, and giving to each its abstract, ideal, or primitive signification, and by arranging all words, derivative and radical, according to their vocal elements. These ele- ments are the primitive or natural language taught to man in his cradle, and all the languages that have ever been spoken are derived from this original source. For example, what sound of all possible sounds expresses the idea of roundness ? According to him, Gur, or Gryr. In Arabic, Kur is Spiral; Ma-Kur, turban; kura, to bind. In Hebrew, Gur means to assemble, with several derivatives involving the idea of circu- lar. In Greek we have Guros; in Latin, Circus, Circulus, &c. ; in Anglo-Saxon, G-yrdan, to turn; Gryr del, Girdle. What is the natural or necessary sound for water? Luc, lug, or loc, found in the names of so many sheets of water, Lacus, Laguna, Loch, Lac, Lake. It is plain enough that this system cannot be supported on any fixed or scientific principle. In carrying the theory out, its author is driven to adopt purely arbitrary analogies, and very violent and improbable derivations. Nev- ertheless, his is, in many respects, an admirable work. It is written in an elegant and perspicuous stvle ; it is always inter- esting and often eloquent. Mr. Murray, a Scotch linguist of considerable eminence, THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 15 took a shorter method, and arrived at a more precise conclu- sion. According to him, all the Indo-European languages spring from nine monosyllables, each being a verb, and a name for a species of action. These are, I. To strike, or move with sharp effect, Ag ; if the motion be less sudden, Wag ; if made with great force, Swag. These several forms were used originally to mark the motion of fire, water, wind, darts. II. To strike with a quick, impelling force, Bag, or Bwag, of which Fag and Pag are softer varieties. III. To strike with a strong blow, Bwag, of which Thwag and Twag are varieties. IV. To move or strike with a quick, tottering, unequal im- pulse, Ghoag, or Cwag. V. To strike with a pliant slap, Lag, or Slag. VI. To press by strong force or impulse, so as to condense, bruise, compel, Mag. VII. To strike with a crushing, destroying power, Nag and Snag. VIII. To strike with a strong, rude, sharp, penetrating power, Rag, or Srag. IX. To move with a weighty, strong impulse, Swag. Of a language formed out of such beggarly elements as these, I can only say, that, if it was ever spoken at all, it must have been spoken by the three ancient tribes mentioned in South- ey's most amusing work, " The Doctor," the tribes of Taag, Raag, and Boab tails. The result of all these studies and speculations is that no primitive language now exists, in either of the senses just con- sidered ; but the inquiries to which they have given rise have been far from useless. The comparative study of language a science of which the ancients had only a faint presentiment, and which has become a positive science only within the pres- *nt century scarcely goes back beyond the revival of learn- ing in the fifteenth century. From the division of the Roman "mpire, the Latin and Greek held divided sway, the one in the 16 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. West, the other in the East. They were the media of the scholarship, the science, the theology of the Middle Age ; the East, however, knew but little of the one, and the West but little of the other. The revival of learning meant the revival of ancient classical studies, to which the dispersion of learned Greeks over Europe, after the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, added a powerful impulse. At the same time the great geographical discoveries of this age opened other and distant parts of the world to the knowledge of Europe, and brought the long separated branches of the human family into a re- newed and closer acquaintance with each other. Next, clas- sical philology connected itself with the study of Hebrew and the kindred Arabic, Syriac, and Aramaic, on account of their relations to the theological questions then agitating the world. In the seventeenth century classical, Hebrew, and antiquarian studies were prosecuted with extraordinary energy and devo- tion. There were giants in those days ; and the vast monu- ments they have left behind them huge pyramids of learning bear witness to the more than Egyptian toils, compared with which our puny efforts are the insignificant achievements of pygmies. Thus was a foundation laid for the comparison of languages, which led first to those whimsical theories I have already described. In the following century many able writers, Leibnitz, Harris, Home Tooke, Kant, Bilderdyk, discussed the general principles of language, some of them with a partic- ular view to the formation of what they called a universal lan- guage. But the most important events in their influence upon these studies were those which brought the nations of Europe into closer relations with Hindostan, especially the establish- ment of the Anglo-Indian Empire. The name of Sir William Jones, that wonderful scholar and linguist, at once occurs in any consideration of this subject. The vast stores of Oriental learning acquired by him were communicated constantly to the European world, both through the pages of the Asiatic Journal and by independent works. His writings upon the Sanscrit, the ancient and venerable language of Indian literature, and THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. .17 his translation of the Sacontala, excited extraordinary interest, and drew scholars away from the exclusive attention they had previously bestowed on the comparatively narrow range of the classical and sacred languages, to the wider field of philology presented by the languages and literatures of the remote East. The remarkable affinities between the Sanscrit and the Greek and Latin were at once appreciated, and the entire view of the connection between the various families of speech under- went a rapid change. Early in the present century, the pub- lication of Adelung's Mithridates afforded large means for comparing and classifying languages according to their affini- ties, and first established the line of distinction between mono- syllabic and polysyllabic tongues. The general views that had been silently forming were next distinctly developed by Fred- eric Schlegel, whose little work on the Language, Philosophy, History, and Poetry of the Hindoos excited an interest rarely equalled, by its magnificent generalization combining in one line of intimate affinity the Sanscrit, Zend, Greek, Roman, and German. He has been followed by a long array of illus- trious scholars, most of whom are still alive, Bopp, Burnouf, Lassen, Grimm, Klaproth, Meyer, Eichhoff, Rosen, Wilson, Van Kennedy, Bunsen, and, in our own country, Duponceau and Pickering, who have wrought comparative philology into its present form, and, connecting it with history, ethnology, and physiology, have made it a guiding lamp, casting a broad and steady light upon many long-darkened passages in the early destiny of the human race. VOL. I. LECTURE II. CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES. In the first Lecture I gave a brief account of recent studies in comparative philology, so far as relates to the unity of origin and type among the languages of the world. We have now arrived at the point where the proper science of language commences. We have reached the path which has led to great results, and will lead to others still more comprehensive ; for the path is the right one, and the principles on which it is pursued are sound and philosophical. The first essays of com- parison endeavored to trace one language up to another, the Latin up to the Greek, the Greek up to the Hebrew, and the Hebrew up to the garden of Eden. I have already shadowed forth the contrary result, reached by the true meth- od of determining affinities. Let me ask your attention for one moment to the exact and philosophical meaning of affinity of speech. If we look at the words of any language with which we are familiar, the first fact that strikes our attention is, that most of them consist of two parts, one containing the general mean- ing, and the other expressing the particular form of that mean- ing. For instance in making, the significant part is mak, the formal part ing. The meaning of the word lies in the first ; the second gives it a specific form, in this instance the participial. Thus also in man's we have the general idea in man, and the special relation in the s of the possessive case. These two por- tions of a word suggest at once two kinds of affinity ; the first, that which consists in identity or similarity of the signifi- cant parts of individual words ; the second, that which consists ir CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES. 19 identity or similarity of structure, of grammatical inflection, of the formal part of the words. The former might arise in vari- ous ways, either by descent from one common language, as the languages of the South of Europe are descended from the Ro- man ; or by frequent commercial, literary, or other intercourse, by neighborhood, or by the intercommunication of scientific ideas and the appropriate terminology, as in the intercourse between the Greek and Roman in the Augustan age, and between the French and the English, or the English and the German, of our day. This process has been constantly going on since the beginning of history. In regard to the second kind of affinity, that of grammatical structure, the end to be accomplished by speech, namely, the communication of thought, is always the same, notwithstanding the contrary opinion of a celebrated diplomatist ; but the means of accomplishing that end are vari- ous, opening a wide range of choice to man's free agency, in the plastic period of the formation of speech. A certain degree of coincidence in the methods employed is to be expected from the uniformity of the laws of the human mind ; but similar grammatical devices for expressing the specific forms, the re- lations of thought, the ideas of time, the connecting links between persons and things, cannot have been accidentally adopted by different and distant nations, cannot have been borrowed from one another in accidental intercourse; but must point to an earlier and closer affinity, if not to identity of origin. Verbal resemblances may be accidental ; grammatical resemblances cannot. Conclusions from the former may be fallacious ; those drawn from the latter must be true in the inflecting languages ; those drawn from both united must be true, both in the inflecting and the agglutinating. If the sepa- ration took place at a period of imperfect development, then the separated nation, though retaining many radical resemblances, will unfold so many peculiarities in the organic individual growth of its language, that they will become utterly unintel- ligible to each other. Greek and Persian, English and French, descended from the same great stock, speaking the same radi 20 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY cals, employing the same type of grammatical forms, look upon one another as so many different races. Mr. Schleicher, a very distinguished comparative philologist, gives an illustration of the danger of drawing conclusions of affinity from coinci- dences of sound and meaning between words belonging to languages of different types. The Magyar word for Wolf resembles in form and sound the Sanscrit name for the same animal, and, as the Magyar belongs to the Tartar stock, it might be inferred that one had been borrowed from the other ; but they are radically different. The Magyar name is derived from a word signifying tail ; the Sanscrit, from a word signify- ing to rend. The Magyar, being a hunter, always on horse- back, named the animal from that which was the most conspic- uous feature, contemplated in his point of view ; the Hindoo knew him more as the destroyer, and named him from his formidable teeth. They thus drew their characteristic desig- nations from opposite extremities ; the one called him a tail-er, and the other a tearer. This analysis of words into the significant and formal ele- ments not only furnishes the means of comparison, but suggests a principle of classification, admirable for its simplicity and comprehensiveness. Since the beginning of all languages must have been made with monosyllables, all languages may be grouped according to the stage beyond this primitive condition to which they have respectively attained. Those which re- main in that form, like the Chinese, without grammatical inflections, constitute one group, called the monosyllabic ; those which have taken a step beyond, and express the grammatical relations by connecting other words loosely with the significant elements, constitute another group called the synthetic, or ag- glutinating ; those which express grammatical relations, either by changes within the significant word itself, or by parts added or prefixed in such a manner as to make them an integral por- tion of the word, constitute a third group, called the inflecting These three groups, with their subordinate varieties, exhaus 4 all the possibilities of language. CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES. 21 The distinction may be very simply illustrated by taking the two English monosyllables, man and book, and placing them in a grammatical relation with each other, for instance, that of possession. In the uninflected monosyllabic state, the relation would be intimated by position, Man booh, signifying a book belonging to a man. In the agglutinating stage it would be, Man his booh; that is, another word containing the idea of pos- session is loosely joined to express that relation. But in the final and inflecting stage it becomes Man's booh. Here the inflectional termination is not the word his abbreviated, as is sometimes very erroneously supposed. It comes from another source, and has no further signification than as a sign to mark the grammatical relation. All children pass from the mere animal cry, first to the simplest monosyllable consisting of a consonant and vowel ; then to two consonants and a semivowel ; then to the complete monosyllable ; next to the synthetic or agglutinating process, in which two or more syllables are put together ; and last of all to the inflectional. A faithful record of the sounds uttered by a child during the first two years of life would help greatly to illustrate the philosophy of language. An intelligent mother could not render a better service to science than by keeping such a journal. The grammatical relations in monosyllabic languages arc contained, as it were by implication, in the words themselves, and are conveyed by position in the sentence, or by tone, or are left to be divined by the hearer. These languages are few in number, are of necessity extremely meagre in their vocabulary, and are obscured by numerous inevitable ambigui- ties. The agglutinating languages, like the Tartar and the North American Indian, are the most numerous, and occupy the largest portion of the surface of the globe. The inflecting languages are also numerous, and are all related to one another by radical and grammatical affinities. They are the languages spoken by those nations and races which have achieved the history of human progress. Their mechanism displays a 22 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. higher order of intellect, more complete development, greater activity, in all directions. They are the languages spoken and written by the masters of the world, by those who were the masters of the world at the outset, and have been so ever since. The monosyllabic languages, as their name implies, consist of monosyllables, without grammatical inflection. To illus- trate their character, I will give a few sentences from a Chi- nese writer, Confucius, first literally translated, and then ren- dered into the forms of our inflecting language. The follow- ing is that philosopher's definition of law. " Heaven order what call Nature ; Nature conform what call Law ; Observe law what call instruction ; Law, not can hair wander ; Can wander no Law ; because good man watch and attend what no appear ; Fear and dread what not hear." These are the words, arranged in their order, and representing as nearly as possible the Chinese monosyllables of which the passage is composed. The meaning, when clothed in grammatical forms, is this : " The order established by Heaven is called Nature ; that which conforms to Nature is called Law ; the observance of Law is called Instruction. The Law changes not a hair's breadth ; for, could it change, it would not be Law. This is the reason why the good man watches the things which the eye sees not, and gives reverent attention to the things which the ear hears not." The agglutinating languages, with numerous subdivisions, are commonly arranged under two general divisions ; 1. Those which occupy a great part of Asia and a few isolated positions in Europe ; and 2. The Indian languages of the American continent, called by Humboldt the incorporating languages. I will venture to add a third, those of the African continent, ex- cept a narrow fringe on the North, on grounds which I wiL state by and by. In the first, the grammatical inflections are rendered by closely joining or inserting other words ; in the second, clauses and even whole sentences are formed by run- ning words together, or incorporating them into a single long- CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES. 23 protracted utterance. The Turkish verb denoting to love may illustrate the former mode of inflection. The negative not to love is rendered by inserting a word in the middle of the verb ; not to be able to love, by inserting two words in the middle of the verb ; and so on through a vast variety of combinations. No subject connected with this country has more deeply in- terested the scholars of Europe than the Indian languages, and no department of our literature has been more eagerly sought after or more highly appreciated than the writings of our scholars upon them. In truth, the knowledge of the peculiar structure of these languages has changed the whole theory of speech, and introduced new and unsuspected forms of the ex- pression of thought to the philological world. From the Frozen Ocean to the extremity of South America, the languages of this continent are constructed upon a peculiar agglutinating plan, exhibiting features which distinguish them from the Asiatic tongues. They are divided, however, into numerous families, radically different from one another ; and these families again are subdivided into hundreds of local dia- lects, differing in details, but agreeing in the main features of a common speech. Mr. Gallatin estimates the number of lan- guages within the territory of the United States, east of the Rocky Mountains, at sixty or more, which may be reduced to eight families. The languages west of the Rocky Mountains are similarly distributed into radically different families. In the nations composing the Mexican empire, fifteen or sixteen languages were spoken, at the head of which stood the Aztec, the language of the court and the capital. A similar variety was found in Peru and the other regions of South America. When the Europeans arrived there, they detected vast differ- ences in the stages of culture between the utter barbarism of the northernmost tribes and the semi-civilization of Mexico and Peru. Some of the languages were found to be harsh as the hissing of snakes or the howl of demons, others remarkably soft and musical. But with all these variations of form, phrase, vnd sound, they agree, with a single doubtful exception, in the 24 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. agglutinating or synthetic method, called by Humboldt incoi- poration, by Cass coalescence, and by Schoolcraft accretion , the principle being, in the language of Gallatin, " to concen- trate in a single word all the ideas which have a natural con- nection, and present themselves naturally to the mind." Jonathan Edwards, the great metaphysician of our country, had his early training among the Mohican or Stockbridge Indi- ans, and their language was more familiar to him than his own. He says that his thoughts ran in Indian when a child. In his observations on their language, he says that, if you ask an Indian the word for hand, holding out your own, he will answer by a word signifying thy hand; if you point to his, he will say my hand; if you point to that of a third person, he will give a word that means his hand ; but never the simple, general term hand. This specific character is shown in all the American languages. In the Delaware there is no generic term in use for oak; but the Spanish oak is called, A-mang-ganasch-qui-minski, that is, the tree with large leaves like the hand. In Cherokee, the act of washing has thirteen different combinations, I wash myself, my head, another's head, my face, another's face, my hands, another's hands, my feet, another' s feet, and so on. The longest Cherokee word has seventeen syllables, Wi-ni-tan- ti-ge-gi-na-li-skaw-lung-ta-nan-ne-li-ti-se-sti, meaning " They will by that time have nearly done granting favors from a dis- tance to me and thee." In the Aztec, the words are, if not of learned length, at least of thundering sound. The capacity of forming new com- binations was well tested by the missionaries, as in the term for original sin, tla-cat-zin-til-iz-tla-tla-colli, meaning " the foundation of the sins of men," and others still longer and more extraordinary. But the most remarkable trait in this Aztec language, and the one that shows the deep degradation in whioh the people were sunk, is what the grammarians have called the reveren- tial form. This is not like the terms of respect and deference found in other languages, but it runs through all the parts of CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES. 25 speech, and was used in speaking to or of superiors, parents, priests, gods, in every mode of expression. Nouns, verbs, adverbs, and so on, were made reverential by prefixing or add- ing syllables, or both, to the common words. Thus, of a com- mon man, they said yoli, he lives ; but when a great man con- descended to live, it was, mo-yo-litia. A common man slept in two syllables, cochi; but a lord or priest slumbered more magnificently in five, mo-coehi-tia. When a common man swallowed, it was toloa ; but when a great man did it, it was tololtia. A common person eat in a monosyllable Ka, and was perhaps glad to get that ; but a great man required two more, Kaltia. Another strange peculiarity of this language, which might have been employed to some purpose by the Woman's Rights Convention, was, that, in speaking of the natural relations, the women were not allowed to use the same terms as the men. In the speech of the Massachusetts Indians, the agent, the action, and that which is affected by the action, the doer, the thing done, and the thing or person done to, are all comprised in the verb. Every possible mode of action or ex- istence combines with the verb, so that this part of speech is, in a peculiar manner, the soul of these languages. Adjectives expressing qualities in the abstract scarcely occur; but they always combine with other forms into agglutinated verbal masses, so as to express the quality in some special mode of existence. Take for instance old. One combined word means old people, another an old man, another an old woman, an old animal, an old bird, an old male quadruped, an old female quad- ruped, and so on to infinity. The psychological explanation of these peculiarities is the fact, that the Indian tribes had not arrived at that stage of reflection in which abstract conceptions formed an independent and considerable part of their ideas, to be combined and recombined into logical series of thoughts. Their languages are not wanting in the words, but the words are used as elements to combine with specific relations. This is the reason why they have no substantive verb. They wer 26 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. in the habit of employing, not the idea of mere existence, but that of the concrete forms of existence. They spoke of standing here, or walking there ; of being in the act of doing this or that ; of smoking the pipe, or hunting the deer, or scalping the enemy. These peculiarities of combination have given much trouble to translators out of inflecting languages, which are so largely made up of abstract terms and words used in secondary 01 metaphysical senses. Mr. Duponceau illustrates this by an example taken from a translation of Luther's Catechism from the Swedish into Delaware Indian. The words " Gracious God " are rendered Vinckan Manitto ; literally sweet Grod ; but the word Vinckan is used only in combination with eata- bles, so that the Delawares were given to understand that the white man's God was something good to eat, which is too often the case. To the two types of which I have spoken I am inclined, as I have said, to add a third ; namely, the African. The mission- aries of the Gaboon mission in Western Africa have published an excellent grammar of the Mpongwe language, with vocabu- laries. This represents a general family of languages occupy- ing the southern half of the African continent, connected as dialects springing from one common origin. It is a singularly regular language in its formation, and peculiar in its principles of agglutination. I will call it agglutination by assimilation and repetition ; and to illustrate the mode by which these prin- ciples are carried out, I will cite the adjective to show the assimilation, and the verb to show the repetition. The adjec- tives are few ; and they have no case, gender, nor degrees of comparison. Nouns also have no gender nor case ; but these relations are expressed by adding onomi, man or male, and nyanto, woman or female; as onwana onomi, a child-man (boy) ; onwana nyanto, a child-woman (girl). In the parable of the prodigal son, the fatted calf is called the child-cow-fat. Nouns, however, are arranged into four classes, according as they begin with a consonant, or with either of the vowels, e i o : and the same adjective takes all the corresponding forms CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES. 27 singular and plural, assimilating itself to the different classes of nouns. The verb, on the other hand, has one set of agglu- tins ed forms to express five modifications of action ; as, 1. kamba, to speak; 2. kambaga, to speak frequently ; 3. kam- biza, to cause to speak ; 4. kambina, to speak to or for some one; 5. kambagamba, to speak at random. Then six more forms are made by repeating these simple agglutinated ones, in combination ; namely, {kambaga and kambiza united) kam- bizaga, to cause to speak frequently ; kambinaza, from kambina and kambiza,, to cause to speak in behalf of some one; kam- binaga, from kambina and kambaga, to speak to some one fre- quently ; kambagambiza, from kambagamba and kambiza, to cause to speak at random; and kambagambaga, from kamba- gamba and kambaga, to speak at random frequently. This is what I mean by repetition. It appears, therefore, that we do not exhaust all the forms of the second type of language without taking into the account Asia, America, and Africa ; and that strictly speaking they should be arranged in three classes : 1. agglutination by attachment, the characteristic form of the Asiatic languages ; 2. agglutination by incorporation, the characteristic form of the American languages ; 8. agglutination by assimilation and repetition, the characteristic form of at least the southern half of Africa. My brief sketch of the lower classes of languages, and the illustrations I have adduced, will of course suggest by con- trast the immense advantages on the side of the inflecting languages. In the first place, the flexibility and clearness of their grammatical forms enables them to express with the utmost precision all the shades and relations of thought, and protects them against the necessary ambiguity of the monosyl- labic languages, and from the endless complications of the agglutinating and incorporating languages. Then their parts of speech have each and all an independent existence, with special functions and well-established relations to one another. Finally, they are susceptible of being wrought into an infinite 28 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. variety of beautiful forms of art ; so that they have been the great instruments of civilization, the chief organs of that higher intellectual life which crowns our existence in this world like a radiant glory. There is something singular in the geographical distribution of the three great types. The monosyllabic from the remotest times has nestled in the southeastern corner of Asia, where in China it has attained its highest development, and become the organ of a rich and extensive literature. The agglutinat- ing extend from the Deccan, in the south of Hindostan, fring- ing the southern shores of the continent, interrupted by the monosyllabic Chinese, reappearing in the boundless regions of Central and Northern Asia, coasting the Frozen Ocean and reaching Tibet and Caucasus, crossing the Ural Mountains into European Russia, passing into Eastern Europe, where an iso- lated outpost, the Madgyar, has maintained itself for ten cen- turies, and leaving from a period which History herself has forgotten to record a solitary monument at the western ex- tremity of the Pyrenees, filling up the whole of South Africa, finally passing to the American continent, or springing up there by an independent creation, and spreading almost from the North Pole to the South. The inflecting languages, again, occupy an extensive zone, running southeast and northwest, from the Himalaya and the Ganges to the western shores of Europe. In Asia, they extend along the southern slope of the heaven-piercing moun- tain range, expanding down the eastern and along the south- ern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Passing into Europe, they divide into several branches, one line of closely related languages holding the peninsulas of Greece and Italy ; an- other penetrating into the heart of Europe by the Danube, and so reaching the northwestern shores; another filling the vast regions of the northeast, the kingdom of Poland and the empire of Russia. These are the languages which, start- ing from a common source in the Iranian region of Asia, have marched east and west, conquering and to conquer, supplant* CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES 29 mg gradually the lower types of speech, by which, however, they are still almost surrounded, embracing in their compre- hensive genius the noblest forms of art, science, history, phi- losophy, poetry, and eloquence. Midway in this illustrious procession the Greek language holds its place ; the Sanscrit stands at one extremity, and the English at the other. Two or three general questions arise upon the consideration of the three great types of language, and their geographical distribution. Were the races speaking them endowed from the outset with diiferent degrees of intellectual faculty, which fixed unalterably the lines of structural development in the forms of speech ? Did the languages all start from the same point, the primitive monosyllabic type, and each arrive at a predestined result, one reaching this stage, another that, and all thereafter remaining permanently moulded ? Or were there outward influences at work, whose forces we have no means of determining with precision ? Whichever may have been the case, the question lies be- yond the limits of history, and I do not think that philological science is yet in a condition to render a conclusive answer. But it seems to me that we may at least be satisfied of this conclusion, that the monosyllabic type of speech represents the earliest condition of speaking man, the agglutinating the second, and the inflecting the third ; and if the world has been peopled by a series of great migrations from a common centre, these migrations may be divided into three great primeval periods. The first took place when language was in its least formed state ; the second, when language had reached its second stage ; and' the third and last, when language had become a perfected organism for the expression of human thought. The earliest primitive ages are represented by the Chinese; the middle primitive ages are represented by the numerous agglutinating races of which I have spoken ; and the modern primitive ages are represented by the nations which belong to the European stock. It is true, our received chro- nologies are not comprehensive enough to take in all these 30 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. great epochs ; and even the last is shown by unquestionable monuments to require a very considerable expansion to ac- commodate all the periods of its historic development. The types of language never pass into one another. The monosyllabic has the germs, as it were, of the next higher order, but never becomes agglutinating ; the second type has the germs of inflection, but never becomes inflecting. Nor does either of the higher types fall back into the lower. No inflecting language has ever become agglutinating, and no agglutinating language has ever become monosyllabic, within historical times. There was, then, behind the veil that always falls between the beginnings of history and the origins of things, a formative or plastic period, during which the higher primitive languages were assuming their predetermined types. Mr. Schleicher marks off two great periods, the ante-historical and the historical. No race appears on the stage of history until it has completed the formation of its language. Then it is ready to take its place, and play its part on the stage of national existence. But from the moment it enters upon the sphere of activity, its thought is withdrawn from words, and occupied with facts and events. Now commences a reverse process with its language. Slowly the elaborate grammatical forms fall away, and by a species of analysis, or logical resolu- tion, the same relations are expressed by independent words, by prepositions, auxiliary verbs, and the like. This is illus- trated on a great scale by comparing the Sanscrit, which pre- sents the fullest perfection of grammatical forms, and geo- graphically stands at the eastern extremity of the line, with the English, which stands at the western extremity, and has gone farthest in the process of analysis. Here, however, the terms of comparison are drawn from opposite extremes in time and space. On a more limited scale, it may be illustrated by taking the middle term, the Greek, and comparing the Homeric forms with the later Attic, and the later Attic with the Greek of the present moment. The changes in this point of view are striking. The same thing may also be shown bv CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES. 31 comparing the Gothic with the German, the German with the Anglo-Saxon, the Anglo-Saxon with the English. In all these cases the process of analysis has been steadily going on ; but there is no tendency here to fall back into the agglutinating or the monosyllabic types. I have thus spoken of the inflecting as the only proper his- torical languages ; and I have briefly described the course of studies in comparative philology, by which their true relations and affinities with one another have been established. I have also shown that these languages, the civilizations which have found expression in them, and the races which have spoken and still speak them, represent in their most ancient forms, in their earliest histories, and in their very first traditional wan- derings over the face of the earth, the last of the great pri- meval revolutions in the condition of man as a speaking, civil- izing, and political being. LECTURE III. THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES. THE ORIGIN OF WRITING. In my last Lecture, I spoke of the three great types of lan- guage, and their geographical distribution. I propose now tc trace the dispersion of the Indo-European race and its inflect- ing type of language, from its Iranian centre. The languages of this class are not to be regarded, at least in their primitive form, as descended from each other, but as allied by collateral affinities, which bind into one family the numerous languages spoken from the Ganges to the western shores of Europe. They represent a series of migrations, all belonging, however, to the third and last period, and occupy- ing ages which, like the geological epochs, it is impossible pre- cisely to determine. History, tradition, language, all point to the Iranian region of Asia as the centre of dispersion ; and the physical form of the earth's surface, in the parts of it occupied by these races, shows in all directions the lines of march they took up, as well as the controlling causes by which their final settlements were decided. The lofty mountains guided them east and west, and the river valleys drew them south. They poured into the boundless regions of the Indus and the Ganges, and were arrested by the impassable heights of the Hima- layas. Southward they descended into the valleys of the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Tigris. Westward they pushed along he table-land of Asia Minor, filling up its shores and the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea ; they rounded the Euxine, through the Caucasian passes ; they poured into the valley of the Danube, and gradually occupied the heart of Europe. Southward they descended the dividing streams, THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES. 3d through the Haemus gate, and, blending with another tide that crossed the Hellespont, occupied the Thracian, Mace- donian, Thessalian, and Boeotian plains, pressed on Attica and the Peloponnesus, and filled the western regions of Greece. Others still, moving forward, found their way into the Italian peninsula ; others held on their course, until they reached the west of Europe and were stopped by the Atlantic shore. Other mighty waves succeeded, crowding upon those that had gone before ; and others after them, until the Indo-European world was fully occupied by the multiform varieties of speech and culture which these great families of nations have presented in their history. If we start from the Atlantic, we meet as the memorials of the earliest great migrations, first, the Cel- tic tongue in the Armorican, Erse, Welsh, and Gaelic dialects ; next, the Gothic, or Germanic, in the English, Swedish, Dan- ish, Dutch, and German ; farther south, the Pelasgic pair, the Latin and the Greek, with their modern representatives; then, passing northerly again, by the side of the Gothic, the widely extended Slavonic. Crossing the Hellespont, we discern traces of kindred languages in Asia Minor ; turning southward, we have the Phoenician, the Hebrew, the Himyai'itic, the Egyp- tian, which has at last been added to the Semitic stock ; east- ward again, the Babylonian, Assyrian, Median, Persian, Zend ; and finally, the Sanscrit and its cognate forms, which bring us once more to the Himalayas. Here are brought almost into each other's presence strangely contrasted types of language, and types of race ; the monosyllabic Chinese, meagre, unin- flected ; the Sanscrit, with its richly unfolded forms and its boundless wealth of expression. It takes but a few moments to tell in outline this traveller's story ; but how many ages does it subtend, and what endless varieties of adventure marked the wanderings of these pri- meval pilgrim-nations of the world ! Their line of march has been interrupted from time to time, through all history, by vigorous assaults made by the ^ther races dashing down upon them from the north through the mountain passes. They have 34 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. been engaged in almost incessant warfare among . themselves. And so, fighting or struggling with hordes of invaders, strug- gling too with one another for temporary mastery, thev have built up and overthrown mighty empires, they have tmfoldea and destroyed widely extended, various, and beautiful civiliza- tions ; but yet the work of culture and humanity has been slowly and constantly advancing with every new combination of political strength, language, art, and poetry. We have, then, the Indo-European stock, representing the spoken thought of these nations, ranging through the whole extent of recorded history, and bound together by the twofold affinities of similarity of verbal roots and identity of grammatical structure. Those which stand in the direct line, southeast and northwest, are more nearly allied than the collateral branches, although more widely separated in space and time. The San- scrit and the Greek are much more alike than the Greek and Hebrew, or any other two languages, either of which lies out of the line of migration. The first generalization, it is true, took in only the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and one or two more so-called Oriental tongues ; but as knowledge increased, the direct relationship between these was given up, and the Indo- Germanic group formed the next and more philosophical gener- alization. The third still more general view comprehended the languages of the Semitic offshoot, to which recently have been added the dialects spoken by the Babylonians, Assyrians, later Persians, and still more recently by the investigations of Egyp- tian scholars, especially the grammatical researches of Bunsen, the ancient sacred language of the Pharaohs themselves. And anally, the Celtic dialects of Western Europe, once supposed to have no affinities with the other European tongues, have been introduced, upon unquestionable documentary proofs of relation ship, into this great family. The Celts, as I have already said, represent the first great wave of migration that reached the Atlantic, in the northernmost of the two divided European lines. The Egyptians represent the first offshoot, at right angles from the mam advancing Asiatic column. The Phoenicians, Syrians, THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES. 36 Hebrews, and Babylonians belong to a subsequent series of deviating lines. The Egyptian language stood at a lower stage of structural organism than the Phoenician and the He- brew ; and these again stood at a lower stage than the old Sanscrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, and Gothic. These languages, in their more or less full development of principles lying at the common foundation of them all, give us some approximation to a correct view of the chronological order according to which they assumed their several subordinate varieties of type. Through these languages there run many words identical in root, and often identical in form. I have already given .some illustrations of the danger of making hasty inferences from this class of resemblances. No one would be justified in asserting an affinity between the Mpongwe and the Greek, be- cause polu means great in one and much in the other ; or because the verbal termination iza gives a causative significa- tion to the verb in the one, while CCp has the same effect on a few verbs in the other. But when we find those words which are of prime necessity in all nations; those which express the natural relations, as father, mother, sister, brother, son ; or numerals, which must everywhere have been among the first words in use ; or the simplest actions, such as to give, to know ; or the names of the animals which everywhere minister to the wants of man ; or the connecting particles which bind the parts of sentences together ; or the names of the most striking objects in nature, as the stars, or the parts of the human body ; when we find these classes to a considerable degree identical, with only such variations as the laws of the conversion of sound require in passing from one to the other, we must suppose an intimate relation at some remote period of time. And if, in addition to this, we find the conjugations and declensions the same, with such changes alone as arise from appreciable causes ; if we find exactly the same modes of ex- pressing the relations of time, exactly the same modes of marking tht agreement of adjectives with substantives in gender, number, and case ; and so on through all other gram- 36 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. matical inflections; the probability before established amounts to a demonstration, the conclusion is just as certain as an\* result in physical science. Such, in fact, are the relation? among the languages now under consideration. Nearly all the personal pronouns are the same from the Ganges to the Atlantic Ocean. The numerals are the same. The word two, for example, is in Sanscrit dux or dwaja; in Persian, du; in Greek, hvo ; in Latin, duo ; in Gothic, twa ; in the Old Ger- man, tue; in German, zwei; in Anglo-Saxon, twa ; in Dutch, twee; in Danish, to; in Icelandic, tvo; and so on through the languages of the South of Europe. Take for an example the preposition over; it runs through the same line, ufar, tnrep, sil- ver, ober, iiber, ofer, over. Take again the word name, nama, ovofia, nomen, nam, nom, naam, navn, name. Thus, too, we have in the same sense, in Sanscrit, Pita; in Greek, Tlarr^p; in Latin, Pater; in German, Voter; in Danish, Fader; in Dutch, Vader ; in Anglo-Saxon, Feeder ; it. English, Father ; also in Sanscrit, Mata ; in Greek, MrjTrjp ; in Latin, Mater; in German, Mutter; in Anglo-Saxon, Modor ; in Erse, Ma- ihair ; in English, Mother. So is it with brother, sister, and the like. Sometimes the line is broken in one language, and re- appears in the next, the wanting link being supplied from some other source, because the true etymological word has been ac- cidentally lost or employed in another sense. Thus (pparrip in Greek means, not brother, as its representative does in San- scrit and the other languages, but it expresses a more distant relationship, another term derived from the common tie on the mother's side, d8e\6<;, being made to take its place. Perhaps these examples will be sufficient to illustrate this class of relations. The number of words which have been traced in this manner, through the whole or part of the series, is about a thousand. In the ordinary intercourse of life we use scarcely double this number ; in the early stages o** society, a thousand words would be a reasonable supply tv express the simplest class of ideas. The grammatical affinities are still more conclusive. Thosi THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES. 37 Detween the Sanscrit and the Greek are so minute and exten- sive, that some knowledge of the former is now held to be necessary for the complete illustration of the latter. Many irregular forms of the Greek can be explained only from the Sanscrit, where they occur as parts of a regular whole that ha? not been retained in the Greek. The meaning and construc- tion of cases in Greek are placed in a clearer light by compar- ing them with the more richly unfolded declension of the Sanscrit noun ; the several meanings of a case in the former having each its appropriate and independent form in the latter. Most remarkable of all, it has been recently placed beyond a doubt, that the Sanscrit system of accentuation is identical with that of the Greek, and that its principles were discussed and set- tled by Sanscrit grammarians two centuries before the time of Aristophanes, the Greek grammarian to whom the first sys- tematic treatment of the subject has been attributed, a strong proof how vital the accentuation was, and how important it is to a just appreciation of the Greek as a living language. The points of illustration might be greatly multiplied, but these must suffice. The Sanscrit is not only more copious in grammatical forms than the Greek or any other tongue, but more regularly derived throughout from roots within the language itself; and the reason of this is, that the people speaking it were earlier settled in their preappointed habita- tions, passed through a less interrupted development, and were exposed to fewer invasions from abroad, than their westward- marching brethren. Besides this, when they first moulded their social and political organizations, they introduced into their fundamental institutions certain principles of permanence, which gave such durability to their legislative and religious system, that it has undergone few and slight changes, except a single great religious schism, for more than four thousand years. On the contrary, struggles, wanderings, revolutions, displacements, migrations, marked unceasingly the fortunes of the many-titled tribes, which, after ages of suffering and con- flict, laid tlie foundation of the Pelasgic states and plantrd 38 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. the germs of Hellenic culture. The incomers by 'and wer* blended on the margin of the JEgean Sea with the wanderers over the deep, bringing with them other styles of thought, other forms of speech, other modes of action. Thus, while the Hellenic character grew up among the stormy conflicts of sea and land, the language, too, lost that mechanical regularity of structure which marked its elder sister. So much the better for it, as the destined organ of Hellenic genius yet to come. A language is all the worse for monotonous regularity. Not- withstanding the eulogy of the missionaries upon the language of the dwellers on the Gaboon, as " so beautiful and so philo- sophical in all its arrangements," it is still the language of a barbarous tribe. The manifold experiences of the Greeks, the infinite range of their plastic imagination, and their large intercourse with related nations in the East, stamped themselves upon their forms of speech, and gradually wrought out of its fine and delicate materials the most flexible and transparent body in which human thought has ever been clothed. How has our English speech been enriched by the like ex- perience ! Placed at the outpost of this long line, it has been moulded and remoulded by every successive wave of language that swept upon it. Celtic, Roman, German, under many forms, first from the incessant Northern stream, then from the conquering advance of the Southern tide, have each and all brought to it their argosies of thought-conveying words, and helped to make it the mighty tongue it is. We talk of Anglo- Saxons, and write sounding paragraphs in popular speeches about the great things they are doing all over the world. Car- dinal Hughes, on the other hand, abuses them in good set terms. Praise and abuse may both alike be spared ; for no Anglo-Saxon now lives upon the surface of the earth. They did their share in building up our English language ; but the present rage for Saxondom is a pedant's dream. Saxon is but one of many elements out of which the fine felicity of out 'uriously interblended language has resulted, through the all harmonizing and all-uniting spirit of time and human activity THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES. 89 Let us see what benefits the English language has enjoyed from its position at the confluence of so many streams, by a single class of examples. Take the words father, brother, daughter, and their derivatives. These all come from the Northern stock, which by fixed laws of the conversion of sound have changed the initial consonant of the Sanscrit and the Greek; and from them we have fatherly, brotherly, daughterly, to express the affections which those relations involve. But in the Southern languages of Greek and Roman descent the earliest forms have been preserved, and from them we have paternal, fraternal, JUial, to express the relations themselves. There is no end to the varied wealth of speech which our lan- guage has gathered in from so many sources. The so-called confusion of tongues has often been bewailed as a great calamity. But variety is the condition of intellect- ual progress. Imagine the possibility of a universal language. We must then have had one of two things. Either one monot- onous style of thought would have prevailed all over the world, without local coloring or national idiom ; or else the language would have become so vast in the extent of its vocabulary and the variety of its forms that no human being could have mas- tered it. There would have been no standard of style or taste, no literature in any high sense of the word. All vigor of thought would have been drowned in a wishy-washy ocean of fluctuating verbiage. Providence arranges these things better. Now, wherever there has been a civilized nation, it has had a language fitted to be its organ ; it has set up its standards of taste ; it has formed its classic style. Instead of having no standards of literature, we now have as many literatures, wrought into the highest forms of taste and art, as there have been civ- ilized nations and languages. Thus the intellectual treasures of the world have been multiplied, just in proportion to the number of finished and classical languages that have been created for the use of man. Allow me to call vour attention for a moment to another 40 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. general top:e, which has important bearings upon some great questions relating to classical literature, and even, it may be, upon the views we are to entertain with regard to the sacred writings. The art of writing is so commonplace, that we lose all sense of its extraordinary character. Yet how much of vain experiment, how many ineffectual efforts, must have been made, before the completion of the refined analysis on which this second miracle of human genius rests ! We know well enough whence all the existing nations received this precious inheritance ; but who invented it ? What mortal first con- ceived the idea of imprisoning sound in sign, and making both the carriers of thought to the end of the world ? Dogberry said, " To be a well-favored man is the gift of for- tune ; but to write and read comes by nature." Pliny affirms that the use of letters is from all eternity. Strabo says that the Iberians had written laws, in verse, six thousand years before his time. Epigenes asserts that the Assyrians possessed the alphabet seven hundred and twenty thousand years before his time. The common statement of the Greeks was, that Cadmus the Phoenician brought letters into Greece, and the approximate date assigned to that event is about 1500 B. C. The Egyptians assigned the invention to the god Theuth, or Thoth. In the Prometheus Bound of ^Eschylus, Prometheus claims the inven- tion for himself. All the European, most of the Asiatic, and some of the African nations, appear in history bringing with them the art in some form or other, from the dark times beyond. On this continent, the Mexicans and Peruvians i were found to have invented a peculiar system, which answered to some ex- tent the purposes of historical annals and distant communica- tion ; and Mr. Schoolcraft has shown that many of the North- ern tribes had invented ingenious systems of record, and even a set of mnemonic signs, by which the words of popular songs, once learned, could be recalled to the memory. Nowhere can we trace any doubt amongst the ancients that the art is coeva/ with the formation of society; nowhere is it alluded to as newly invented or recently introduced. Yet, notwithstanding THE ORIGIN OF WRITING. 41 this striking fact, modern criticism has not scrupled to draw the most sweeping conclusions as to the form and nature of early literary compositions, on the air-built hypothesis that the use of writing was not known in the ages when those composi- tions originated. On this point I shall have something more to say, in speaking of Homer ; at present I desire briefly to examine the facts which must be the basis of all argument upon the subject. If we try to picture to ourselves the man who conceived the idea of representing things by signs, we shall undoubtedly come to the conclusion, that the first step he took was to make a picture of the object, or a delineation of the scene, to be put on record. This mode answers well for large classes of objects, conveying ideas independently of time. Suppose that the time- element next enters, and he desires to say that morning, noon, or night was the time when the pictured scene occurred, how shall this be expressed ? The figure of the rising, midday, or setting sun, or of the moon, would naturally come to his aid. The idea of light in general, by a further movement in the same direction, would be conveyed by the images of the sun and moon. Again, a physical quality is to be expressed, as strength. The lion is the strongest of animals, and a rude out- line of him would readily convey the idea. A moral quality would be conveyed by a similar analogy. He has now ad- vanced a long distance. He can communicate numerous ideas, by representations, partly direct and partly indirect, of the ideas themselves. In short, he has invented an ideographic system of writing. But the imperfection of this method of intercommunication would not long remain unnoticed. The direct picture of course suggests the name, that is, the sound of the name, of the object itself. Here lies the first germ of phonetic representa- tion, so that the next step is to combine pictures suggestive of words, with the symbolical pictures suggestive of qualities or acts. Here we have writing composed of two elements, vocal and ideal. Pursuing the same course, it is next found that a 42 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. picture may represent the principal sound in the name of th< object ; and, as in a primitive language this is likely to be the initial sound, the picture finally stands for the first sound in the name of the object. Here has already begun the analysis of words into their elementary sounds ; and it appears that every spoken word consists of a certain number of these, and that each of these is the initial sound of some other word or name of an object, and may therefore be represented by the figure of that object. Here we have in fact an alphabet. This would not, indeed, be universally applied, because the other methods are already established ; but certain classes of terms names of places and of men would at once be written out phonetically : and, as many names of objects begin with the same sound, in the course of time there would be a large range for selection. Suppose, for instance, it were proposed to write the name of Boston, with the means we have now at hand. The figure of a bow would be the initial, which has the additional recommenda- tion of representing the original inhabitants ; an oyster would convey the second sound, and no unpleasant association with it ; a school-house, the pride of the city, would give the third ; a tile, the fourth ; an orange, symbolical of commerce with the tropics, the fifth ; and the nib of a pen, significant of literature, the last. But this is a troublesome mode of writing. Not all men can make pictures easy to be recognized. An outline is soon sub- stituted, and then a simple mark, or combination of marks, for the figure representing the idea or the sound. We have, then, three natural stages, well defined, in the progress of this art : 1. the pictorial representation of words, of ideas, of simple sounds ; 2. the outline representation of the same ; and 3. the representation of the same by simple marks and combinations of marks. Each of the earlier nations has the alphabetic ele- ment blended with the other two. This blending will continue until some great practical want suggests the next step, namely freeing the alphabetical element of writing from the others, and constituting a purely phonetic system of signs of a convenient THE ORIGIN OF WRITING. 48 form, representing the simplest elements of sound. It is nei- ther to be expected noi desired that any alphabet should ex- hibit sounds precisely as they are. Pronunciation, like ever}' other part of language, changes with time, place, and climate ; and to chain so fugitive and fluctuating an element to visible forms is beyond the power of man. But alphabets originally gave the prevailing sounds of the languages for which they were made, when they were made, and in the places where they were made. This sketch sounds like a mere theory, a natural one, it must be admitted. Yet the written systems of Egypt and China show that such was the course which the invention actually followed. One remark, however, should here be made. It is only languages of the two higher types, strictly speaking^ that are susceptible of being alphabetically represented. Take the Chinese, the most advanced specimen of a monosyllabic lan- guage. The number of independent words must be extremely limited, because the number of possible combinations of sound in monosyllables is limited. The roots in the Chinese, in fact, are only four hundred and fifty monosyllables. This number is quadrupled by sing-song tones, four in number, in which they are pronounced, making, however, less than two thou- sand words for the entire stock of articulations with which the language is furnished. Another fact follows directly from this, namely, that every word must be used in a great variety of senses. This is the case with the Chinese monosyllables, the number of significations belonging to a single word sometimes amounting to thirty or forty. The sounds of these words are indistinctly articulated ; consonant, vowel, and nasal run into the pronunciation so curiously, that it is very difficult to repre- sent them by alphabetic characters. Of this any one may con- vince himself by listening for a single moment to a Chinese talking or reading. But if this were not the case, if every word could be precisely written out in a Western alphabet, it would be impossible to read three sentences intelligibly ; it would be impossible to decide which out of the twenty or thirty 44 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. meanings of each word was the right one for the particular place. Written language would have all the ambiguity of spoken language, and none of the means a speaker has of re- moving it. Here, then, lies the insuperable obstacle to reduc- ing a language of this type to proper alphabetic writing ; and this is the answer to the question so often asked, why the C\ i- nese, with so much of intelligence and civilization as they pos- sess, have not long since abandoned the cumbrous system of writing which makes their language such an inscru table puzzle. The invention of written characters in China is referred by the Chinese to the remotest antiquity, when Fu-hi governed the world. By some the date of this semi-fabulous monarch's reign has been placed about 3400 B. C. The Chinese legend says that, looking up to heaven, he saw figures traced in the sky ; and casting his eyes down upon the earth, he saw modeis for imitation there, the forms of birds, of trees, of animals, of mountains, lakes, and rivers ; so that heaven and earth united to furnish the harmonious system, which took the place of the more ancient communication by knotted cords. The first Chi- nese signs were pictures, as we have seen in our theoretical view. The figures of the sun and moon, of mountains and animals, represented the objects themselves. Next they were combined to express ideas indirectly or symbolically. Thus the sun and moon together represented light ; the figure of a man stretched very uncomfortably across the top of a moun- tain signified a hermit ; the figure of an eye, with running water, signified tears ; the figure of a woman, with a broom in her hand, signified a matron. But the direct representa- tions soon gave way to others, in which the pictorial principle was scarcely traceable, and finally disappeared almost alto- gether. The existing system of writing embodies the toil :f ages, and is one of the most extraordinary monuments of pa- tient industry and refined analytic skill that record the labors of man. The number of written characters, like the number of spoken words in other languages, is variously stated. Tht dictionaries ordinarily contain about forty or fifty thousand THE ORIGIN OF WRITING. ime of the native dictionaries, however, is said to contain two hundred and fifty thousand. It is frequently stated that this system is ideographic throughout, that is, that it conveys ideas directly, and not through the medium of sound. Air. Dupon- ceau and Mr. Pickering have shown that this cannot be the case to the full extent of the assertion ; were it so, the Chinese them- selves would read the same written text into different words, and there could be no such thing as poetical composition de- pending on some particular rhythm or similarity of sound. Every written character is uniformly read into the same pho- netic utterance ; but the ambiguities of the spoken language are avoided in the following manner. Each syllable or word has, in the first place, a considerable number of characters, made up originally of different elements, and so having doubtless in themselves different significations. Practically, each of these homophones may be used for the word, in whatever sense that word may be employed ; and if this were all, the written lan- guage would be like the spoken, a series of ingenious puzzles. But the characters as actually written consist not only of this phonetic part which determines the sound of the word ; but there is joined closely to this another character which has no sound at all, but represents an idea only. There are, therefore, in each sign a phonetic element and an ideographic element. For example, the character Tsehen, by itself, means ship; but the same word as spoken has a great many other meanings, and the special meaning which it has in any particular connection is determined by the ideographic sign annexed. Among its mean- ings are, besides ship, water-brook, the pole of a wagon, plume, arrow. Suppose it is to be used in the sense of water-brook. If spoken, it would be ambiguous ; if written, this sign would give the phonetic element, but there would be added to it an- other, pronounced shut, and meaning xoater, not spoken in this combination, but showing that Tschen is used in that par- ticular meaning which has reference to water ; that is, brook. These ideographic signs, called clefs or keys, represent whole classes of ideas, and are two hundred and fourteen in number. 46 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. I believe that the peculiarities of the Chinese graphic system are sufficiently apparent from this slight sketch. It will be seen how this complicated contrivance remedies the imperfec- tions of uttered speech, and why it would be impossible for the Chinese to abandon it for any strictly alphabetical character. It will also appear why the Chinese scholars think so much more of their written than of their spoken language ; why .Chi- nese education consists chiefly in mastering its principles and details. A fair business education embraces a knowledge of about two thousand characters, with a ready skill in writing them ; a good literary education might extend to ten thousand, and only men of extraordinary learning attain to twenty thou- sand. In China, more than anywhere else, a literary man is literally a man of letters. The inflecting languages, and many of the agglutinating, have from the earliest times taken the last step indicated in the theoretical view. They have analyzed words into their simplest elements of sound, and represented these by a lim- ited number of signs, which, being combined and recombined, have offered to the eye all the words in all these languages, with as little ambiguity or complication as the words them- selves present to the ear. This invention Mr. Erro claims for the Biscayan language, and carries it back to Adam, by a process of reasoning similar to that by which he proves the Adamitic antiquity of the language itself. Adam knew by inspiration, or rather intuition, that the sound a signified vast extent; he gave it a name, alfa, which has that meaning; he took a rod and traced that meaning in the sand by drawing a pair of human legs, stretched wide apart, and striding through infinite space. This is the origin of the first letter in the al- phabet, and all the other letters he explains in a like whimsi- cal manner. Undoubtedly the world is indebted to Egypt for this illus- trious invention. The Pyramids, "placed," as Dr. Picker ng finely expresses it, " like a rock in the current of time, contain the names of the ancient kings, Cheops and Ceplv THE ORIGIN OF WRITING. 47 ren, by whom they were built. Egypt has been justly called the monumental nation. No country on earth has such numerous, gigantic, and magnificent memorials of her early power and splendor ; and these monuments were antiquities in antiquity. The Greeks from Homer down, the Hebrews from Moses down, refer to Egypt as an old, if not the oldest na- tion. The monuments are described by Herodotus, Diodorus, Clemens of Alexandria. The writings with which those mon- uments and the papyri found in them are covered, on which the priests founded their statements to Herodotus, and Manetho constructed his historical lists of the kings, and Horapollo his explanations of the symbolical characters, are coeval with the oldest monuments, running back far beyond the recorded his- tory of any other nation, and intimating a long history of form- ing and consolidating civilization anterior to themselves. From this primeval period the hieroglyphical inscriptions were con- stantly employed, through the Pharaonic dynasties, the Per- sian supremacy, the line of Greek sovereigns from Alexander, and to the third or fourth century of the Roman rule. Several ancient writers, especially Herodotus and Clemens of Alexan- dria, left general descriptions of the Egyptian graphic system ; but as it ceased to be employed, and its place was supplied by the Coptic alphabet in the fifth or sixth century of our era, the knowledge of its principles gradually faded away, and was at length completely lost. When, in modern times, this subject began to excite the interest of scholars, the words of Herodo- tus and Clemens were greatly misunderstood. Only one thing seemed clear from their united statements, that Egyptian writing consisted of three kinds, the Hieroglyphic, the Hieratic, and the Demotic, the first, as its name imparts, being that used in sacred sculptures ; the second, that employed by the priests ; and the third, that employed by the people. But upon what graphic principle these were founded was wholly unknown. The monuments and the ancient papyri exhibited the three forms ; and upon comparing them it appeared that the hiero- glyphic or sculptural form was the basis of the other two ; thv 48 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. hieratic substituting abbreviated outlines, and the demotic almost arbitrary characters, for the entire figures of the first, con- venience of use being evidently the ruling motive for both these modes of shortening the process of writing, as the practice be- came more general. Innumerable conjectures have been hazarded, nearly all wide of the truth. Lord Monboddo's, so far as I know, was the only opinion which later researches have shown, in its main features, to be correct. The problem of the Egyptian Sphinx remain unsolved until the present century. The discovery of the Rosetta Stone, now in the British Museum, furnished the long-lost clew to this ancient mystery. On this stone was found an inscription in three forms, Hieroglyphic, Demotic, and Greek. Parts were mutilated, but enough remained unhurt to show clearly what it contained ; and the inference at once nat- urally suggested itself, that the Greek was a translation of the other two. Copies were immediately circulated among the European philologists. The Greek was carefully examined and interpreted. It was found to be a commemorative inscrip- tion by the priests of Memphis, in honor of a visit of the young Ptolemy Epiphanes to that city, on the eighth anniversary of his accession to the throne under a guardian ; the date of the record being 196 B. C. On comparing the hieroglyphics with the Greek, it was found that certain groups of figures, enclosed in a ring, an arrangement which had often before been ob- served in the monuments of every age, corresponded to the name of Ptolemy ; and it was naturally inferred that these groups represented that name in some way or other. The next thing to be done was to analyze the groups themselves. Many attempted this with more or less success. Dr. Young, a great English mathematician, determined the phonetic value of a part of the figures ; but he missed a complete solution, because it never occurred to him that they were all alphabeti- cally employed. Starting from the point reached by Dr. Young, Champollion assumed that all the characters were ased as Dr. Young had shown that some of them were ; an& THE ORIGIN OF WRITING. 49 fortunately having obtained another bilingual inscription con- taining in Greek the name of Cleopatra, and, corresponding to it, a group of characters in a ring, he rightly inferred that, if his principle were correct, the identical letters in the two names would be expressed by the same characters, which proved to be the case. This conclusion was confirmed by numerous other compari- sons, and a hieroglyphical alphabet was determined. Thou- sands of inscriptions on the monuments have been examined by the aid of this key , and it has been clearly shown that the alphabetic element enters largely into all. Manetho's lists of kings have been, to a considerable extent, identified, and a foundation laid for the reconstruction of Egyptian history, and, through that, of the collateral history of neighboring countries and nations, back to a period compared with which the dawn of Grecian poetry seems but of yesterday. The principle of this alphabetic element has received the technical name of acrophonetic, or the principle of initial sounds, the figures representing the sounds with which the names of the objects commence, the figure of a Lion, for example, standing in these phonetic groups for L, because the Egyptian word for lion was Laboi. The meanings, however, of the greater part of the ascertained hieroglyphics have been decided by their position in combination with others previously determined ; the figures sometimes failing to suggest the objects, and the Egyptian names of the objects not being always known. In the epithets applied to proper names, and in the words of the continuous hieroglyphical texts, other characters, namely, the pictorial and the symbolical, are blended, so that it is a very difficult and complicated problem to read them into words. But, beyond all question, the use of strictly alphabetic signs, in each of the three kinds of writing, is coeval with the ear- liest monuments, and the use of hieroglyphical alphabetic char- acters goes back to an epoch not much later than 3000 B. LECTURE IV. ALPHABETIC WRITING. PRIMEVAL LITERATURE OF THE EAST. If we proceed from Egypt in a northeast direction, we find another kind of monumental writing, called the wedge or arrow-head, the writing of the earliest settlers along the Tigris and Euphrates. These nations from the first were often brought into relations of peace and war with the Egyptians ; but they had not that persistency in the method of inscription which so surprisingly characterized the Egyptians. Yet, from a period commencing about 2000 B. C, their monuments con- tain cuneiform inscriptions, in this character, which continue below the age of the Persian kings. A few years ago these were considered the unknown signs of lost languages : but by the learned labors of the eminent philologists Grotefend, Lassen, Burnouf, and especially Rawlinson, these characters in their later use have been entirely, and in their earlier forms are in a fair way of being entirely deciphered. The system was not purely alphabetic in its earliest stages ; syllabic and symbolical forms entered largely into its composition. But in process of time, we cannot tell how early, the alphabetic element supplanted the others ; and in the reign of Darius, if not as early even as the beginning of the Achaemenian iynasty, a complete alphabet, representing about thirty-eight sounds, was established. The characters are all formed from the parts of a single elementaiy figure combined in diiferent numbers, positions, and relations ; and the words are written by giving to each sound in them its appropriate phonetic orthography. This mode of monumental writing was used, as I have said, ALPHABETIC WRITING. 51 by the myriads of people constituting the Babylonian, Assyri- an, Median, and Persian empires, and was applied to all the languages spoken by them. The most remarkable document tnus written is the great Behistun inscription, carved on the side of a rocky mountain, perpendicularly smoothed for the purpose. The mountain was known to the ancient Greeks as the Bagistan, formed from an old Persian word, implying sacred to the Bagas, or the Gods. In the time of Diodorus Siculus, it contained an inscription, said to have been placed there by Senriramis. That has disappeared. What remains, however, is sufficiently remarkable. The sculptures consist of twelve figures in relief, which were mistaken by one of the early travellers for the twelve Apostles. Above them is a sin- gular form in the air, representing the Zend and Persian Deity Auramazda, or Ormuzd. Connected with the figures are large panels on the smoothed surface of the rock, filled entirely with arrow-head inscriptions ; the whole occupying a space of a hundred and fifty feet in length, and about a hundred in breadth, and at the inaccessible height of three hundred feet from the mountain's base. This extraordinary document had been often described by travellers, who surveyed it through telescopes, and attempted with very poor success to copy it. The French Commissioners, who endeavored to approach it, came home and reported that it was inaccessible. But Eng- lishmen consider nothing impossible but failure. Colonel Raw- linson, residing at Bagdad in an official capacity, determined that the thing should be done ; and it was done, by what means he has not fully informed us in the very interesting memoirs upon this subject, which occupy almost the whole of several numbers of the Asiatic Journal. It is enough to say that he has copied, interpreted, and translated the Persian part of the inscription, which proves to be a very interesting and important record of the early portion of the reign of King Darius. The figures are those of the king and two attendants, Into whose presence are brought, with their hands tied behind them and cords about their necks, nine captive rebels. The 52 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. several inscriptions contain an account, in three languages, of their misdeeds and their punishment. Besides this monumental alphabet, these nations possessed an abbreviated writing, corresponding to the Demotic of the Egyptian. Here we come into the line of the Zend and San- scrit, which seem to me, both from the number of their letters and their phonetic values, the former containing thirty-nine and the latter forty-eight signs, to be closely connected with the arrow-heads. At least, there is no trace of their having originated in pictorial representations. They are very com- plete, especially the Sanscrit, and their use is coeval with the beginning of their literatures, dating in all human probability two thousand years before our era. Having followed the course of the art of writing to its ut- most limits eastward, let us cast a glance in the opposite direc- tion, and come a little nearer home. On the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, from the earliest dawn of history, had been established a race, vigorous, active, and intellectual. The sea is one of the greatest civilizers. The moment you tread its shores, and breathe its bracing air, you become a new being. Its restless waves tempt you to dare the conflict with them, and lo ! the white sails of adventure, war, or commerce bear you away to distant lands. The passion grows until you feel yourself the master of the stormy element, and force the :nessenger winds and waves to do your bidding. So grew up rhose Phoenician merchants and mariners, who distributed the products and gathered in the wealth of the ancient world, who built up powerful commonwealths on the eastern margin, and dotted the southern and northern shores of the Mediterranean with their colonies. This sea-roving race had from the begin- ning close and constant intercourse with the already ancient realm of the Pharaohs. There they found the art of writing, not yet reduced to its simplest idea and form ; and there thev found all the instruments and materials of writing in common use. The art was just what they wanted, not the sculpturea hieroglyphic ; for how could they take granite slabs for their ALPHABETIC WRITING 53 ledgers and bills of lading, and troops of artists to hew out their accounts current, on those distant voyages ? or how could they stop to paint the pictures of the hieroglyphics, or even the out- lines of the hieratic style ? or how could they find the time business men as they were, in a piratical as well as a commer- cial way to describe their bales of merchandise, or exchange receipts with their customers, by painfully writing out a series of symbolical representations? They took the idea, not thp form ; they struck out the pictures and symbols ; they fixed the alphabetic part by adopting a character from some one object for each letter ; they simplified the characters for convenience of writing; and so they had an alphabet of sixteen sounds, rep- resented by easily written and remembered characters, retain- ing the names of the objects from which they were taken, and finally increased in number to twenty-two. This Phoenician alphabet was carried by them round the Mediterranean and through the adjacent countries, and became the basis of all the alphabets of Europe and many of those in Asia. How much more convenient this was than the Egyptian, from which it was taken, or the arrow-head, or the Chinese, it is needless to point out. How much more convenient it is than the Sanscrit or the Zend, notwithstanding the boasted superiority of the former in phonetic completeness, any one who has compared them as to facility of reading will not hesitate to admit. Thus the last step in this great art was taken, in the Zend and Sanscrit speaking countries, by men whose minds were occupied with deep speculations or poetic flights ; and thei** graphic systems exhibit the minute analysis and theoretic per- fection which were to be expected from their authors. In the West, it was taken by practical men, whose speculations were in trade, and who cared little for theory, provided they had a compendious instrument for the transaction of business. Phil- osophical meditation produced the one system, commercial ne- cessity the other ; and from the first moment of their use down ro the present moment, the two systems have borne inefface- able marks of the sources from which they came. >4 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AN1) POETRY There is reason to believe that, even before the time of Cad mus, the simplest form of the Phoenician alphabet was known in several parts of Europe, probably in Greece and Italy, cer- tainly throughout Asia Minor, on the southern shore of which Phoenician colonies had been already established. But were this not so, the alphabet was known and used in Europe at least five centuries before Homer ; and when the Ionian colo- nies crossed the iEgean Sea, and settled the western coast of Asia Minor, they came into direct contact with an ancient civilization, in which the art of writing had been established for a thousand years. I will ask your attention, for the remainder of this lecture, to a very rapid view of the literature which these systems of writing have been the means of handing down to us. The Chinese have a very extensive literature, which con- tinues unbroken from very ancient times. A considerable portion of it has been translated into the European languages. The ancient writers speak of the Egyptians as the most learned of mankind. Plato alludes to Egyptian poems ten thousand years old ; and we now know that they had written records from the time of Menes downward, that is, from 3000 B. C, and that the achievements of the ancient kings, embla- zoned in commemorative sculpture, were celebrated in songs or heroic lays. We know from Clemens of Alexandria that they had forty-two Sacred Books, among which was a collec- tion of hymns in honor of the Gods, handed down, in the relig- ious worship, from the earliest times, and adapted to musical recitation. The most remarkable of these books is the Book of the Dead, the most complete copy of which was found in the Tomb of the Kings at Thebes. It is written in the sacred language and the hieroglyphic character, and the date of this particular copy is supposed to be about fifteen centuries B. C. ; so that we have here a literary work, representing the soul of ihe departed on its journey to the Celestial Light, and contain ing the solemn hymns chanted by the disembodied spirit in its PRIMEVAL LITERATURE OF THE EAST. 55 acts of adoration to the Deities, on the way to its final rest. The now existing original of the volume, published a few years age by Lepsius, is contemporary with Moses, and may have been read by him. With regard to the form of poetical com- position, it would appear that the Egyptians had invented the peculiar species known to Hebrew scholars as parallelism, de- pending for its effect, not on quantity or accent or rhyme, though in some of the Hebrew compositions the elements of the last two are thought to exist, but upon a balance of clauses, sentences, and ideas, extremely well suited to choral recitation and the accompaniment of the solemn dance. The various forms of this parallelism have been well explained in the elegant work of Lowth, and the more appreciating dia- logues of Herder on the spirit of Hebrew poetry. Mr. Gliddon gives a few lines, from the sculptures of Rame- ses III., belonging to the sixteenth century B. C, and some from a still earlier period, which, if rightly interpreted, show beyond a doubt that this peculiar rhythm is Egyptian in its origin. " Thy name is firm as heaven, The duration of thy days is as the disk of the snn." And again: r " Koll, the barbarian land, is under thy sandal, Kush is within thy grasp." It is a curious fact that the same rhythm is found in the In- dian war-songs. I am indebted to Mr. Schoolcraft's recently published work for one of them : " I am rising to seek the war-path ; The earth and the sky are before me ; I walk by day and by night, And the evening star is my guide." Mr. SeyfFarth ' says, that the Egyptian literary works, from Ibraham down to the second century of our era, if printed together, would fill two hundred folio volumes; and he re- joices in the prospect of having them all translated into his mother tongue. I do not know whether scholars who have m THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. had so much trouble in worrying out the little we now possess will sympathize in this peculiar idea of enjoyment. The Phoenician and Syrian poetical literatures have suffered shipwreck, and it would be a waste of time to weave a web of hypothesis out of the slight information we possess relating to their festal poetry, and the sacred songs which formed a part of their temple worship. Moving a little eastward we come upon the poetical lit- erature of the Hebrews, so familiar to the Christian world. The religious use to which this remarkable poetry has been applied tends, in some measure, to blind us to its merely lit- erary excellences. The Hebrew language is not copious in its lexicon ; it is defective in its inflections, somewhat clumsy in movement, expression, and construction. Probably it could never have lent itself to the many forms of a various literature, in the European sense of the term ; for it does not wind itself flexibly round the ever-shifting thought of cultivated man. In narrative it is abrupt ; the parts and clauses not running into each other, by subtile and refined connections, as in the Indo-Germanic languages, but standing out distinct and indi- vidual, like the hieroglyphs upon a Theban temple. In poetry, it presents masses of thought, in the boldest imagery, in a rhythm of limited compass, though more varied than the Egyptian, from which it was borrowed. The literature of this language begins with the hero, poet, historian, and legis- lator, who was strangely saved from death by the daughter of Pharaoh for a mighty destiny. He was trained in all the lore of Egypt, but untouched by the superstition and idola- try in which the people were sunk. Learned in their libra- ries, familiar with their sacred hymns, drawing from these sources of knowledge, but deriving his inspiration from his own rich genius and from a higher fountain J head, he was des- tined to lay the foundation of the Hebrew literature as well as of the Hebrew polity. The historical papyrus-rolls gave him models for his narrative, and the hymns he had so often heard chanted by poets and priests suggested the form of the tri- PRIMEVAL LITERATURE OF THE EAST. 67 umphal song of Moses and Miriam, so full of the lyrical spirit. From this time forward for a thousand years, the Hebrew na- tion produced a series of writers, poets, prophets, psalmists, whose works, in grandeur of ideas and magnificence of im- agery, have not been surpassed. Their range of art was ex- clusive and narrow, but admitted some variety of form. Of epic poetry they had none. Lyric poetry, of the highest type, was the most characteristic of their genius. The pastoral pas- sages of Solomon's Song are sweeter than anything in Theoc- ritus and Bion. Their elegies breathe a more tender sadness than those of Mimnermus. But they are all cast in one mould. The laws of art had not yet assigned to each species its appro- priate form, as was done by the refined taste of the Greeks. The most finished specimen of Hebrew art is the Book of Job, whose name has had the evil fortune to pass into a prov- erb, and is identified at once with the lowest and most sordid poverty, and with the most painful and loathsome visitation to which the flesh of man is subject. This grand poem, to which I refer for a single moment, though not a drama, is dramatic in its conception, embracing scenes both in heaven and earth. The Introduction contains the germ of the Prologue, and the conclusion is not unlike those choral closes in which the scenes of a Grecian tragedy find their fitting solution. The unknown author of this singular poem was evidently familiar with all the knowledge, science, and practical art of his age. The deep significance of its subject and substance shows that he dealt with the profoundest questions of human destiny ; while in splendor of poetic imagination, and in the picturesque presentment of the glories of the Eastern world, so far as I know, he is without his peer in ancient Asia. I do not think that any poet has so powerfully described the terrors of a supernatural visitation. "A word stole secretly to me, Its whispers caught my ear : At the hoar of night visions, When deep sleep falleth on man. &8 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. ' I was seized with fear and shuddering, And terror shook my frame ; A spirit was passing before me, All my hair stood on end ; He stood still, but I saw not his form, A shadowy image was before my eyes." This is the highest point which the Hebrew art of poetry attained, and of course the highest Semitic type. We know that the Assyrians, Persians, and Medes had their poetical culture. It is expressly mentioned in the Behistun Inscrip- tion. " I reinstituted for the state the sacred chants," says the king, alluding to them as of very ancient origin. These sacred chants were probably the religious hymns of the Zend writers, such as Zoroaster, whom Plato and Aristotle reckoned among the most ancient sages, though modern scepticism has reduced him to a myth. Whether so or not, he is said to have laughed on the day of his birth, an omen of his future greatness. Heeren places him eight centuries B. C, and Burnouf, the most critical Zend scholar of our times, says that the language of the Zend-avesta is at the same stage of development with the Sanscrit of the Vedas, and these have been placed about 2000 B. C. What has struck me most in this compilation of the ancient sage is his conception of virtue or true goodness, as consisting in purity of thought, purity of word, and purity of deed. Heeren says : " With the exception of the Mosaical Scriptures, we are acquainted with nothing (the untranslated Vedas perhaps excepted) which so plainly wears the stamp of remote antiquity, ascending beyond the times within which the known empires of the East flourished." If we pass along in the track of empires, visit the desola- tion where once stood the capitals of mighty kingdoms, and ask what voice of poetry Babylon had to utter, or Nineveh, or Persepolis, or Ecbatana, we are answered by the silence of the tomb. Scattered memorials of their former greatness the splendid halls of ancient royalty, the very throne itself of those anr.ient masters of the world are coming again to light, from PRIMEVAL LITERATURE OF THE EAST. 59 choir burial of ages. But the storm of desolation has swept uway the memorials of their poetry, and their very languages exist only in the stone-cut inscriptions, placed beyond the reach of the destroyer's hand. These too remained a sealed book, until the genius of our own searching age broke the seal. What traces of literary culture does the mount of Bagistan reveal to us, now that its gigantic records have been deci- phered? Doubtless some practice in historical writing, and some characteristic features of the Oriental mind. It is not without interest that we read in those rocky pages a style re- sembling that of the ancient Hebrew narratives. " Saith Da- rius the king : By the grace of Ormuzd, I am king ; Ormuzd has granted me the empire." It is not unpleasing to see the constant recognition of a higher power, on whose grace even the Great King depends ; at the same time, we cannot help recognizing the strange union of piety and ferocity which has always marked the course of Oriental despotism. " Ormuzd brought help to me. By the grace of Ormuzd my troops entirely defeated the rebel army, and took Sitrantachmes, and brought him before me. Then I cut off his nose and his ears. He was kept chained at my door. All the kingdom beheld him. Afterwards I had him crucified at Arbela." In another part of the Inscription the king says : " The crown that had been wrested from our race, that I recovered ; I established it firmly, as in the days of old ; thus I did. The rites which Gomates the Magian introduced, I prohibited. I reinstituted for the state the sacred chants and worship, and confided them to the families which Gomates the Magian had deprived of these offices." In another place his Majesty says of the rebellious provinces : " The evil one created lies, that they should deceive the state." "Thou," continues the king in a moralizing vein, " thou, whoever mayest be king here- after, exert thyself to put down lying ; the man who may be neretical, him entirely destroy." Ascending from these records of the Persian empire to a higher period of antiquity, and a more northern region, we come 60 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. upon the strangely mysterious realm of the people of the Zend, and the great name of Zoroaster, who by some modern sceptics has been reduced to nonentity. By the early Greeks, espe- cially Plato and Aristotle, he was regarded as one of the most ancient sages of the human race. Fables gathered around his name, as around other great names of remote antiquity. Among the wonders related of his precocious achievements is the story of his birthday, already referred to ; if it is true, he was the most sensible infant phenomenon on record. There is too much both of form and of substance in his acts and words to allow us to hold him as a mere myth. The tenor of the books that bear his name, and the combination of facts, circum- stances, and narratives in Persian and Median history, compel us to acquiesce in the view which places him and his system of religious legislation in a period of primeval antiquity long anterior to the establishment of those empires. The Zend- avesta, or Living Word, attributed to him, contains a series of works highly curious in a literary point of view, and of the greatest interest in their moral and religious aspects. They bear witness to a literary system, at a very early period, earlier than the civilization of any part of Greece, exten- sively prevalent through the region bordering on India, and connecting itself closely with the religious legislation of the Hindoos themselves, and equally to a development of language and the art of composition, contemporaneously with the ear- liest nations that flourished on the banks of the Tigris and Eu- phrates. I have no time, nor does it belong to my subject, to give even an outline of his system ; but in quoting his concep- tion of virtue as consisting in purity of thought, purity of word, and purity of act, and in alluding to his attempt to solve the problem of evil, I shall have done enough to show that this elder sage of the Orient dealt with high questions and came to great moral conclusions, that he was a man of deep medita- tion and large experience. Pursuing our journey eastward, and entering the regions of the Indus, the Himalayas, and the sacred Ganges, we find ou* PRIMEVAL LITERATURE OF THE EAST. 61 selves again surrounded by the venerable and imposing memo- rials of an unfathomable antiquity. Of course we must ex- clude from our view those immeasurable and inconceivable periods of time, and reigns of dynasties, to which credulity, or love of exaggeration, or childish tampering with huge, unman- ageable numbers, has given birth. Swayimbore reigned a bil- lion and two hundred thousand million years. Nandu had an army of ten billions of soldiers. Two kingdoms were separated by a mountain six hundred thousand miles high. Sagur had sixty thousand sons born in a pumpkin. There is, doubtless, some influence of the mighty physical features of the country to be seen in these monstrous fictions. Tremendous contrasts of climate ; the highest mountain ranges in the world ; some of the largest rivers ; plains of boundless fertility ; and animals of wondrous variety, growth, and fierceness, all these things we may trace in their traditions, literature, art, and especially their poetry. There is no doubt that the race which founded the peculiar polity, religion, and literature of this remote part of the world, were immigrant conquerors from the West and North. Their own traditions point in these directions ; the organism of soci- ety, which has come down to our time, proves that a conquer- ing race established the system of caste ; and, lastly, the philo- logical and ethnological inquiries of the present day have shown that tribes and languages still exist in the southern parts of the peninsula wholly different from the Brahmins, and speaking languages that have no affinities with the Sanscrit or any of its descendants. Alexander found the society and civilization of the Indi, in all its leading features, the same as the modern Europeans found it in the fifteenth century. Though the chronological arrangement of Indian history cannot be made out with any degree of precision, still certain points have been settled suffi- ciently well to answer the purpose for which I introduce the subject here. This much is sufficiently established, that in a very re- 62 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. mote antiquity, second only to the primeval periods of Egyp- tian annals, established communities, highly civilized, with a philosophical religion and a religious legislation, both implying the experience and the intellectual discipline of many centu- ries, already existed. The Vedas, or most ancient sacred Scriptures of the Indi, can hardly be brought much lower than the twentieth century before our era, the latest date assigned them being the sixteenth. The laws of Menu are but little, if any, later ; and these, with the Vedas, form the basis of a civilization wonderful for its complicated arrangement, its philo- sophical insight, its poetical beauty, and its permanency of du- ration. The poetical literature of the Sanscrit commences even with the Vedas, and continues in long succession down to the fifth or sixth century after Christ, a literature for copiousness and extent absolutely unparalleled in the history of the hu- man race. In its course of development it sustains a singular parallelism with the Greek ; but more of its early forms have been preserved. Next to the Vedas comes a most luxuriant development of epic poetry, especially in the two great works under the titles of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, the former by Valmiki, and the latter by Vyasa. They have been com- pared to the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer ; but the contrast is more striking than the similitude. They antedate, probably, by several centuries, the works of the Ionian singer. Like the Greek epic, the Sanscrit is closely interwoven with mythologi- cal conceptions, taking into the sphere of epic action, not only human heroes, but supernatural beings. But it also descends from these heights, and embraces the animal world in grotesque combination with the world of mea and the world of gods. Life is short, and Sanscrit poems are very long. The Ra- mayana extends to more than a hundred thousand lines, that is, three times the length of the Iliad, Odyssey, and JSneid put together ; and the Mahabharata is twice as long as the Rama- yana. Sir William Jones says : " Wherever we direct our attention to Hindoo literature, the notion of infinity presents PRIMEVAL LITERATURE OF THE EAST. 63 itself; and sure the longest life would not suffice for the single perusal of works that rise and swell, protuberant like the Him- alayas, above the bulkiest compositions of every land beyond the confines of India." The subject of the Ramayana is the victory of Rama oyer Ravana, the prince of the Rakshasas, a race of Titanic genii or demons. This supernatural personage, a being endowed with ten heads, has driven forth the gods from Lanka, the capital of Ceylon, and thence spread terror among gods and men. The gods implore Vishnu to become incarnate. He consents, and appears on earth in the form of Rama, son of Dasaratha (who is already nine thousand years old) and of Kansalya, the king and queen of Ayodhya. The early exploits and edu- cation of the Godlike are minutely set forth. He wins the beautiful Sita, daughter of a neighboring monarch, by bending a marvellous bow, so heavy that eight hundred men were re- quired to draw the eight-wheeled car in which it is borne. Rama bends it till it breaks in the middle, and makes a crash like a falling mountain. As a reward for drawing so long a bow, he marries Sita. Rama's father, feeling the infirmities of age creeping over him, as well he may, proposes to dele- gate his power to his son ; but our hero refuses to accept it. The father, stirred up by the jealousy of another wife, sends him into exile, but soon dies of grief for his loss. Rama retires with his bride to the forests, defeats a host of evil demons, and cuts off the nose and ears of the sister of their king. This naturally enough stirs up the wrath of Ravana, her brother, who by a trick succeeds in kidnapping Sita and carrying her into captivity in Lanka. Rama returns, and, learning what has happened, betakes himself to King Sugriva, the powerful monarch of a neighboring nation of monkeys, who despatches le most eminent of his courtiers in search of Sita. This most politic diplomatist of the monkey tribe, Hanuman by name, finds out the prison of Sita, and, in the form of a rat, holds an interview with the captive princess. Then, in his proper per- on, he frightens the giants by running ovel the roofs of their 64 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. nouses. He is at last brought into the presence of Ravana, who questions him ; but Hanuman, by the shrewdness and wit of his answers, turns the laugh against the monarch. The monkey, indignant at the slight that the king has put upon him by not offering him a seat, makes a coil of his tail, until it reaches the height of the throne, and then sits upon it. What is to be done with this droll and impudent stranger ? After much deliberation they make up their minds to have a holiday, and to disport themselves by setting fire to Hanuman's tail, on which he seems to pride himself more than is becoming. All the old rags, paper, and dry chips in the city are brought forthwith, and piled around the offending coil. Hanuman, like Sampson's foxes, runs through the city, over the cornfields, among the hay-ricks, and a horrible conflagration breaks out in all directions. Seeing what a blunder they have committed, they tear after the blazing beast, in the vain hope of extin- guishing him. Away he scampers, climbing the highest tower in the city ; after him hasten the hurrying giants, and when the tower is filled with them, he tumbles it down about their ears. Escaping from the crash and hurly-burly, he dips his tail in the ocean, extinguishes it, and returns to Rama. A huge army of monkeys is gathered together. They throw a bridge across to Lanka, and lay siege to the fortress of Ravana, who encounters them with his chariots of war. A battle fol- lows, whicli makes the earth shake for seven days; Rama slays Ravana, frees the earth from giants, and rescues Sita, who proves her suspected innocence by a fiery ordeal. The whole world rejoices at the result, and the gods themselves express heir rapture by applause. These deeds accomplished, our hero dismisses the monkey host, and establishes himself in his royal power. He attains to the height of felicity, and governs a happy people with paternal sway. Peace and prosperity reign throughout his dominions ; no suffering, no death, dis- turbs the placid serenity of this golden age. When a hundred and ten thousand years shall have glided thus happily away, Rama shall *eave his kingdom, and ascend to the world of Vishnu. PRIMEVAL LITERATURE OF THE EAST. 65 The grotesque, gigantic, and incongruous details into which the Oriental imagination runs, in these old epics, is sufficiently obvious from this slight sketch of the Ramayana. The narra- tive is frequently tedious and prolix ; and the epithets, espe- cially in describing illustrious personages, are numerous, pom- pous, and, according to Western notions, absurd. It runs out into episodes, of extravagant disproportion to the whole, con- sidered as a work of art, but containing many of the most strik- ing and poetical passages. The style of rhythmical compo- sition is advanced beyond the Hebrew, but not to the stage of the Greek. It is founded on quantity ; the epic measure being what is technically called a sloca, or distich of two lines, each sixteen syllables long, and only the last line subjected to any law of quantity. How fundamentally different all this was from the rigid practice of the Greeks, I shall have occasion hereafter to show. Notwithstanding these defects of the Hindoo epic, judged by the severe rules of art, there are innumerable passages con- ceived in the most exquisite spirit of poetry, and executed with a simplicity and fineness of taste beyond which it is impos- sible to go. I quote a short passage translated by Rev. Mr. De Ward. It is the address of Sita to her husband, in which she declares her resolution to follow him into the wilderness. " Son of the venerable parent ! hear, 'T is Sita speaks. Say, art thou not assured That to each being his allotted time And portion, as his merit, are assigned, And that a wife her husband's portion shares ? Therefore, with thee this forest lot I claim. A woman's bliss is found, not in the smile Of father, mother, friend, or in herself; Her husband is her only portion here, Her heaven hereafter. If thou indeed Depart this day into the forest drear, I will precede and smooth the thorny way. 0, chide me not ; for where the husband is, Within the palace on the stately car, VOL. I. 5 66 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. Or wandering in the air, in every state, The shadow of his feet is her abode. Forbid me not. For as a gay recluse, On thee attending, happy shall I feel Within this honey-scented grove to roam ; For thou e'en here canst nourish and protect. A residence in heaven, Raghuon, Without thy presence would no joy afford. Pleased to embrace thy feet, I will reside In the rough forest, as my father's house, Void of all other wish, supremely thine. Permit me this request, I will not grieve, I will not burden thee, refuse me not ; But shouldst thou, Raghuon, this prayer deny, Know I resolve on death, if torn from thee." The Descent of the Ganges, from the first book of the Ra- mayana, has been often translated ; best of all by Augustus William Schlegel, into German hexameters. It has been extremely well rendered into English, in long trochaic meas- ure, by Professor Milman : " Up the Raja, at the sign, upon his glittering chariot leaps, Instant Ganga the divine follows his majestic steps ; From the high heaven burst she forth, first on Siva's lofty crown ; Headlong then, and prone to earth, thundering rushed the cataract down. Swarms of bright-hued fish came dashing; turtles, dolphins, in their mirth, Fallen or falling, glancing, flushing, to the many-gleaming earth ; And all the host of heaven came down, sprites and genii in amaze, And each forsook his heavenly throne, upon that glorious scene to gaze. On cars, like high-towered cities, seen, with elephants and coursers rode, Or on aoft-swinging palanquin lay wondering, each observant god. As met in bright divan each god, and flashed their jewelled vestures rays, The corruscating ether glowed, as with a hundred suns ablaze ; And in ten thousand sparkles bright went flashing up the cloudy spray, The sn^wy flocking swans less white, within its glittering mists at play. Ana aeadong now poured down the flood, and now in silver circlets wound ; Then lake-like spread, all bright and broad, then gently, gently flowed around Then 'neath the caverned earth descending, then spouted up the boiling tide Then stream with stream, harmonious blending, swell bubbling up or smooth subside . PRIMEVAL LITERATURE OF THE EAST. 67 By that heaven-welling water's breast, the genii and the sages stood ; Its sanctifying dews they blest, and plunged within the lustral flood. The world, in solemn jubilee, behold these heavenly waves draw near, From sin and dark pollution free, bathed in the blameless waters clear. Swiftly King Bhagiratha drave, upon his lofty glittering car, And swift with her obeisant wave, bright Ganga followed him afar." I will read one passage more from the Ramayana, the episode of the death of Yadnadatta, the only son of two blind recluses, accidentally slain by King Dasaratha while hunting. The bereaved parents are led to the body of their lost son, and the pathos of the scene falls scarcely short of the laments of Priam and Hecuba over the body of Hector. " And she, the mother of the dead, his face kissed tenderly ; And while the tears flowed down her cheeks, in piteous accents cried : ' Yadnadatta, am I not more dear to thee than life 1 Why, then, thy long, last journey take, and speak to me no more ? Why art thou angry, my son, and answerest not my word ? ' And then his father mournfully the lifeless body touched, And all unhappy to him spake, as he were yet alive : ' son, did I not come to thee, with thy loved mother come ? Arise then, fold us in thine arms, embrace this neck, my son. And when the shadowy night descends, whose honeyed voice shall I Within this grove the holy word hear chanting from the Ved ? And who, when evening orisons and fiery offerings cease, Shall glad my heart, with filial hands encompassing my feet ? And who shall bring the roots ana heros, the sylvan fruits shall bring, To thy blind parents, O my son, by famine sore oppressed f O stay awhile, nor yet depart to Y ana's arear abode. With me to-morrow thou shalt fare, shalt with thy mother go ; For both, with sorrow all forlorn , of help and strength bereft, Full soon must yield the breath of life, descending to the shades." 1 have already spoken of the enormous length of the other great Sanscrit epic, the Mahabharata. It is somewhat more recent in its composition than the Ramayana, and is founded upon a great civil war between the Koravas and the Pandavas, collateral descendants of Bharata, an ancient king of Hastina- j ura, now Delhi. In this poem, again, we have an incarnatiop 68 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. of Vishnu, bearing the name of Krishna, at once a deity and the champion of the Pandavas. The date of the historical transactions on which the poem is founded has been fixed at the fourteenth century before our era. It is more episodic than the other ; there is less coherence of parts, less of order and plan. Several of the episodes have been separately pub- lished, and form complete and very beautiful poems. One of these is the Bhagavat-Gita, a curious dialogue, on Fate and the condition of man, between Krishna and one of the heroes, Arjuna, on the field of battle. The conflict of the kindred nations is about commencing. The leader of the opposing host " thunders like a roaring lion," and blows his shell of battle, to which the conchs and all the warlike music of his host reply. Arjuna drives his chariot, drawn by white steeds, into the space between the armies, accompanied by the god Krishna. A feeling of sadness and sorrow comes upon him, and he addresses his Divine companion : " My kindred, Krishna, I behold, all standing for the battle armed ; My every quailing member fails, and wan and withered is my face. On every side, fair-haired God, I see the dark, ill-omened signs ; My kindred when I 've slain in fight, what happiness remains for me? For victory, Krishna, care not I, nor empire, nor the bliss of life ; For what is empire, what is wealth, and what, great king, is life itself, When they for whom we thirst for wealth, and toil for empire and for bliss. Stand in the battle-field arrayed, and freely peril wealth and life, Teachers, sons, fathers, grandsires, uncles, nephews, cousins, kindred, friends ? Not for the triple world would I, O Madhius ! conqueror, slaughter them ; How much less for this narrow earth, though they would sternly slaughter me ! " Krishna argues in a reply which Mr. Milman describes as breathing "the terrible sublime of pantheistic fatalism." " All undestructible is he that spread the living universe ; And who is he that shall destroy the work of the undestructible * Corruptible these bodies are, that wrap the everlasting soul, The eternal, unimaginable soul. Whence on to battle, Bharata ! For he that thinks to slay the soul, and he that thinks the soul is slain, Are fondly both alike deceived. It is not slain, it slayeth not ; It is not born, it doth not die ; past, present, future, knows it not ; PRIMEVAL LITERATURE OF THE EAST. 69 Ancient, eternal, and unchanged, it dies not with the dying frame. Wherefore the inevitable doom thou shouldst not mourn, O Bharata ! " The argument is continued at great length ; the compassionate reluctance of the mortal hero slowly yields to the mystical doctrines of the God ; the carnage proceeds, the action ends with a battle which lasts eighteen days, and steeps the earth in prodigious slaughter. Victory declares in favor of the Pandavas. Another remarkable episode embodies the Hindoo legend of the Deluge ; but I have no time to dwell on this. It has been well translated into German by Bopp. I close these considerations with a passage translated from M. de Chezy's somewhat extravagant eulogy of Sanscrit poetry. " It is especially in epic poetry that the Sanscrit language appears to bear the palm from every other; and among the epic poets, the great Valmiki, in his Ramayana, appears to have best understood the art of unfolding all its beauties. Under his magic pencil, we see it lend itself, without effort, to every tone and all varieties of coloring. Are soft and melting scenes to be described? This beautiful language, sonorous as it is copious, furnishes him the most harmonious expressions ; and like a tranquil stream, softly winding over moss and flowers, it smoothly bears our imagination along, and transports it gently into an enchanted world. But in subjects which require energy and force, in the description of battles, for example, his style becomes as rapid, as animated, as the action itself. Cars roll and bound ; maddened elephants dash their enormous defences together ; war-clubs strike against each other ; darts whiz and break ; death flies on every side ; we no longer read, we are borne into the very midst of the horrid fray." We have thus taken a rapid, and necessarily a superficial, survey of the literary culture of the remoter nations preced- ing Homer or contemporaneous with him. We have followed the track of poetry from the Egyptian temples and the banks of the Nile, among the primeval nations of Central Asia, to the Indus and the Ganges. We have seen the first germs of rhythmical composition putting forth in the sacred hymns of 70 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETBY. the priests of Isis and Osiris, and that early form unfolded to its beautiful perfection in the Hebrew poet who sang the sorrows and the triumph of the man of Uz. Coming upon the direct line of the Indo-Germanic races, we have found a series of more copiously developed languages, more elastic adapta- tions of sound to thought, more plastic materials of rhythmical composition. Suddenly, after groping among the bricks of Babylon, the buried palaces of Nineveh, the ruined castles of Persepolis and Pasargada? after having paused to read the rocky page and sculptured heights of the consecrated mount of Bagistan, we pass into the mysterious realm of Ormuzd and Ahriman, with their ministers of grace and ministers of evil. From the half discerned forms in that far-off land and pri- meval time, suddenly we emerge, at the eastern extremity of the Indo-European line, into the brilliant light of a literature commencing before any authentic date of European history, and pouring out its abundant streams through an unexampled series of centuries. Here we suspmd our adventurous flight. LECTURE V. THE EARLIEST GREEK POETRY THE HOMERIC POEMM In my last lecture I gave a rapid view of that literature, which, in its several stages, bears the most striking resem- blance to the Greek. Though the Sanscrit must be considered as the elder, both as a language and a literature ; yet, for a large part of the literary age of both, they were contemporary. The brilliant era of Vikramditya was several centuries later than the culminating period of Athenian letters and art ; fall- ing a little before the Augustan age of the Romans. Outward circumstances and political institutions fully explain the con- trasts that present themselves in the midst of general corre- spondence and agreement. The races that peopled Greece had a longer march from the common centre, and a harder Struggle after they had reached their appointed seats. The ante-historical periods of Greece are filled with a con- fused and confounding mass of traditions, which historians, an- tiquarians, philologists, in vain attempt to separate and arrange in any coherent order or intelligible system. The unsettled state of Greece is well described by Thucydides ; but his view is limited to Greece itself. The causes of the commotions within the boundaries of the country he points out in that phil- osophical spirit which so largely characterizes his immortal work ; but he does not trace their connections with the great northern and eastern world beyond. If we examine a map of Greece, we see that not only are the northern regions marked off into defined physical sections, framed in by crossing chains of mountains that embrace the valley-basin of the rivers ; but, as we proceed southward, their 72 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. size ana regularity diminish, while their general conformation continues nearly the same. These framed valleys were filled by the earliest waves of migration that poured in from the North, on their western march from the centre of Asia. The migrations coming in at different periods each pressed upon its predecessor, and each brought a condition of language and of general culture more advanced than had belonged to those who had left their primeval abodes at an earlier period. At length the country, down to its southern extremities, is filled with a population of various stocks, and as dense as its scantily unfolded resources will support. When the arts of agricuU ture and the forms of civil life have made some progress, the characteristics of these physically severed communities begin to display themselves. Still the crowding from the North con- tinues, and half-formed polities are uprooted by overpowering numbers, and seek other abodes beyond the mountains or across the sea. Meanwhile Phoenician mariners come with their fleets and merchandise to trade with the tribes and nations that have so long wandered through the forests, among the moun- tains, or along the river-sides. The names of these tribes and their chieftains, the traditions of their sufferings and achieve- ments, the legends of their origin from some supernatural be- ing, are handed down or rudely recorded; but so many tales of wonder gradually weave themselves into the tissue, that it loses its reality and passes into a myth. The traditions mostly rest upon a basis of fact ; but to separate fact from fiction transcends the highest powers of criticism. I shall not under- take to say whence came the elder heroes of the mythical lines, or where dwelt each particular race, whose forms, magni- fied by the exaggerations of tradition, figure in poetry as supernatural beings, as demigods and gods. These races and their leaders did, however, in the course of time, and at periods of indeterminate date, settle down in these definitely marked physical regions, and did therein unfold the societies, the mythologies, and the heroic tales, which lie in the back- ground, behind and beyond the pictures of the Iliad and Odyssey. TH1 EAELIEST GREEK POETRY. 78 To this primeval period belong those gigantic Pelasgian works, which are found not only in Greece, but east and west of this classic centre, proving the existence, the activity, and the civilization of European races whose monuments were antiquities in the days of Homer. I venture despite the un- certainty that hangs over the origin and fortunes of the Pelas- gians, who have given so much trouble to historians and an- tiquaries to designate by this term all those migrations, whether by sea or land, and all those elements of language, art, religion, and social life which preceded the Hellenic proper, by which I shall denote the immediate basis of Greek cul- ture, both before the line of ascertained history commences, and through the successive ages of Grecian letters and life. By some of the Greeks, the Pelasgic element was thought radically distinct from the Hellenic, and the Pelasgic language a barbarous speech wholly distinct from any form of the Hellenic. By others, some vague notion of the real and radical identity of the two was entertained. The broader views of the modei'ns place this identity quite beyond a doubt. The Pelasgians of Greece and those of the farther East, I be- lieve it must be admitted, came often into conflict and collision by sea. The coasts of Asia Minor were visited by ships long before the earliest war of Troy recorded in the Iliad ; and on the shores of Greece hovered many a fleet, long before the Phoenician sailors kidnapped and carried away the daughter of the Argive king, and so, according to the tradition recorded by Herodotus, laid the foundation for those hostilities out of which sprang the Trojan war, from which afterwards followed the Persian Invasions, and later still the campaigns of Alexander. I draw the line, then, between the Pelasgic or primitive basis, and the Hellenic or historical superstructure of Greek life, nationality, art, letters, and poetry ; and I am inclined to the opinion that even in those remote and primitive times cor- responding with the older dynasties of Egypt, with the establish- ment of the Phoenicians on the east of the Mediterranean Sea, with the primitive patriarchs of the Arabian races, with the 74 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETR\. first monarchs and earlier arts of the Brahmins and the Chi nese, there existed on the soil of Greece religious centres, hymns and songs of temple worship, and a written language The Hellenic stage, in its earliest form, represents the migra- tions that left the Asiatic homes at a more advanced period of culture, and, blending with those which had preceded them, gradually wrought out a higher intellectual life and a nobler language, and laid the foundation of that poetical literature which has filled the world with its fame. To some extent I admit that this is a matter of speculation ; but the view in its broad outlines is sustained by tradition, monuments, physical geography, and local relations. Within the Hellenic period I include the establishment of those kingdoms and royal houses whose fates and fortunes are the theme of so many later tragedies ; the Theban race of Labdacus, whose sorrows are immortalized in so many stately strains of jEschylus and Sophocles ; the races of Hercules, Theseus, Eurystheus, and Panthous; the line of the Pelopidae, and all those other mighty names which fill the legendary and heroic ages of Greece, and dimly shadow forth the actions and events that finally shaped the Hellenic character. Even in those early times we find the Hellenic genius widely differ- ing from the Oriental types, from the Egyptian, the Ara- bian, the Zend, the Hindoo. The mythologies of the East, founded on the powers of nature, but rising to forms of mon- strous shape and uncouth horrors of expression, have given place to more pleasing and imaginative creations, from which the poets afterward framed their Olympian deities, and the sculptors chiselled their marble gods. The system of caste has either disappeared, or left but faint traces in the princely and priestly families which stand at the head of those ancient tribes. The Brahmin has gone, and in his place has succeeded the singer, the moral teacher, or the giver of oracles from the shrine or tripod of the God. That terrific fate which crushed to the earth Arjuna's spirit on the battle-field no longer chains the moral freedom of man, but has yielded to a power, awfu' THE EARLIEST GREEK POETRY. 75 ind mysterious indeed, but lying far away, vaguely con ceived, at one moment, as controlling the course of the world, at another, as separated from human affairs by the interposing power of Zeus. In earthly life the seraglio in its thousand forms, and polygamy with its attendant wrongs and horrors, have been strangely supplanted by the idea of domestic life and the single marriage tie. Are not these changes wonder- ful ? Do they not figure to our minds a great progress in moral and intellectual culture, beyond that of all the Asiatic branches of the Indo-Germanic stock, and in some respects beyond that of the Hebrews themselves? Such, in a few words, I conceive to have been the condition of the tribes or nations that filled the peninsula of Greece, at the period at which we must place the events, whatever they were, that laid the basis of the Trojan war, and all the le- gends connected with that tale of wonder. Contemporary, or nearly so, with the epoch of the Hellenic le- gends, we have the mighty monarchies of Assyria and Babylon, whose early splendors still amaze the world, in their architec- tural and sculptural monuments : the flourishing ages of Phoe- 1 icia, who gathered the wealth of the world in her magnificent cities of Tyre and Sidon, and carried her commerce to every quarter of the then known world ; Egypt already an ancient kingdom, and perhaps drawing nigh the period of her decline ; the states of Italy, with their Oriental types of civilization, con- solidating into permanent forms of civil and religious polity ; Thrace and Scythia crowded with tribes of roaming barbari- ans, assailing from time to time the growing civilization of the South ; Asia Minor occupied by Trojan, Phrygian, and Lydian kingdoms ; and along the Indus and the Ganges, those popu- lous and ancient monarchies, even then embellished with let- ters and philosophy. This period is filled with supernatural legends and the achievements of the demigods ; and here, I think, we are tc place the first establishment of those religious centres whence Mowed the earlier streams of Grecian song in the North, Olym- 76 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. pus, Dodona, and Delphi, where the magnificent hexameter was first used, having been invented by Phemonoe, the priest- ess. Here we must place Orpheus, who drew after him ani- mals and trees, and softened the inexorable deities of hell by the magic of his strains ; and Amphion, who turned his lyre to the more practical purpose of building cities, forcing the blocks of stone to leap to their places as he touched the strings. Advancing one period further, we find the armaments of Greece uniting to avenge the insulted honor of a royal house. The Trojan war has been usually placed, by a kind of compro- mise between extreme opinions, in the twelfth century before our era. I shall not venture to say how much of historic truth may be hidden in a story which some have considered a mere poetical invention ; but it seems to me quite probable, if not certain, that the germ at least of this famous transaction is one of a series of expeditions, military or migratory, which brought the tenants of the opposite shores of the ^Egean Sea into con- tact or collision ; and as genealogical registers were carefully kept throughout the Oriental world, I see not why there may not have been a foundation of truth for the fates and fortunes of the leading personages. In the Iliad there are allusions to a former war of Troy waged by the progenitors of the race of heroes then on the stage. This intimates a series of those movements, of which the Homeric war was one. While the South of Greece was pressed by the still inflowing tide from the Northern wave, a backward movement commenced by sea, and remingled, on the western Asiatic shores, Greeks with those from whom they had long been severed, and to whom they had become as strangers. At length, as we approach the historic day, those old Hellenes break upon us in three divided yet related nationalities, the ^Eolians, Dorians, and Ionians. With a common Hellenic bond, they still possess their peculiar characteristics in man- ners, language, and religion. They have been broken up, more or less, so that this threefold division is not wholly ter- ritorial ; but, to speak in general terms, the Cohans on the THE EARLIEST GREEK POETRY. 77 mainland hold the northernmost regions, the Ionians the mid- dle, and the Dorians the southern ; and when thty returned again towards the old Asiatic homestead, the islands of the ^Egean and the coasts of Asia Minor presented three tiers of colonies, standing in the same local relations, the JEolians on the north, the Ionians in the middle, and the Dorians in the south. Thus we have three subordinate type^s of civili- zation, early forming themselves in those regions where the energetic races, trained to hardihood by their long wanderings in the North, Were brought face to face with the arts and lux- uries of Asia. The Greek colonial migrations here briefly described, which are placed a century or a century and a half after the Trojan war, I regard as belonging to a series of move- ments commencing long before, and distinguished from those that preceded them only by their greater extent and impor- tance. They, however, furnished the basis for the earlier forms of authentic Greek literature. I shall have another occasion to speak of their characters somewhat more in detail, and of the manner in which they were remoulded, as it were, by long contact with the vices of Asiatic civilization. At present, I content myself with the remark that the Ionians and iEolians had reached a higher point in culture than the Dorians ; and of these two, the Ioni- ans surpassed the .iEolians. Doubtless they all brought with them essentially the same language ; but the Ionians had found the means of drawing from it richer tones than their neigh- bors. The earliest poetical forms, on the Grecian mainland, were doubtless the religious teachings and oracular utterances of the priestly guides ; the next, the songs of bards in honor of the warlike deeds of leaders and kings. For one class, we have the authority of tradition ; for the other, the luminous representations of Homer. In this way the poetical resources of the language were unfolded ; groups of heroic characters were gradually formed ; and a body of poetical literature, like the popular ballads of Scotland, England, Germany, Modern Greece, came into existence, and had a wide currency, pass- f8 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. ing from mouth to mouth, and held in the memory of singers and listeners from generation to generation. One thing shows conclusively that such must have been the case. I mean the state of the language as it came to the hands of the first Chian bards ; and this is a point which I have never seen illustrated. Its close resemblance, even in many of its minutest peculiari- ties, to the Sanscrit, shows that these were not unfolded among the Ionians, but long before, at a period of time much nearer to the original separation of the races. In the colonial socie- ties, all the traditions of former times, and all the ballads of the Grecian mainland, were fondly cherished ; and in the sud- den splendor to which they rose in that heaven-favored cli- mate, those national minstrelsies served to delight the listening multitudes, at the religious or popular assemblies, in the halls of nobles and princes, and on all occasions which brought men together. Here were revived the achievements of their ances- tors, in a land to them far off, at a time when, to their vivid imaginations, the gods came down and walked with mortals. In this sketch I make no allusion to the employment of writing ; not because I suppose the art to have been unknown, but be- cause I believe that the popular minstrelsies, at this stage of their progress, took precisely the same form, in precisely the same manner, with bodies of popular minstrelsy in historical times ; and that, until the permanent settlement of the Ionian colonies, the state of no Hellenic race was sufficiently stable to permit the growth of a written literature. In Ionia, the popular enthusiasm took a poetical turn, and the genius of that richly-gifted race responded nobly to the call. The poets singers as they were first called found in the orally transmitted ballads the richest mines of legendary lore, which they wrought into new forms of rhythmical beauty and poetical splendor. Instead of short ballads, pieces of greater length, with more fully developed characters and more of dra- matic action, were required by a beauty-loving and pleasure- seeking race. The leisure of peace and the demands of refined luxury furnished the occasion an4 the impelling motive to th;* THE EARLIEST GREEK POETRY. 79 more extended species of epic song. It was the rhythmical recital of these /cXea avSpwv Lays of Men and of hymns to the gods, performed in choral dances near the altars and shrines, at the panegyrical gatherings, which was to them theatre, opera, concert, sacred and secular. Thus the Grecian epic was a species of story-telling, nearly as abundant as the modern novel, for the entertainment of assemblies of men, on festive occasions, in princely halls, at Amphictyonic gatherings, or at religious solemnities. It w r as delivered in a kind of musical recitative, with a slight accompa- niment of the phorminx, like the minstrelsy of the Minne- singers and Troubadours, who sang to the cithern in the baronial castles of the Middle Ages. Thia is the first, most racy, most original epic poetry. Its proper objects of comparison are the ballads of England, Spain, * and Germany ; one step farther in advance, the' noble epic fragment in the old Spanish, called the Poem of the Cid ; and in a more fully unfolded form of the epic spirit, though encompassed w r ith clouds and mist, and thus widely distin- guished from the sunbright clearness of the Ionian epic, the German lay of the Nibelungen. The elaborate works called epic poems of Dante, Milton, Tasso, Klopstock, great as they are, are not in this sense epic. They are the reflective products of strongly moved, impassioned natures, enriched with genius, creative power, and all human learning, working upon materials gathered from a thousand quarters besides the lore of popular tradition, not upon ideas that touch the chords of instant national sympathy and the common heart. They are works written to be read, not created to be heard. They do not connect themselves closely with an unbroken ' series of minor minstrelsies, which thev take up into them- selves and transfigure by combining them into works of larger grasp, nobler plan, more skilful execution, the bright consummate flower of the human mind in this particular field >f its activity. It is not every nation that passes, in its epic pulsiveness and simplicity, this Ionian language, so sprung and so nurtured, had attained a descriptive force, a copiousness and harmony, which made it the most admirable instrument ov THE EABLIEST GREEK POETRY. 81 which poet ever played. For every mood of mind, every shade of passion, every affection of the heart, every form and aspect of the outward world, it had its graphic phrase, its clear, appropriate, and rich expression. Its pictured words and sen- tences placed the things described and thoughts that breathe, in living form, before the reader's eye and mind. It was vivid, rich, melodious ; in its general character, strikingly concrete and objective ; a charm to the ear, a delight to the imagina- tion ; copious and infinitely flexible ; free and graceful in move- ment and structure, having at the beginning passed over the chords of the lyre, and been modulated by the living voice of the singer ; obeying the impulse of thought and feeling, rather than the formal principles of grammar. It expressed the pas- sions of robust manhood with artless and unconscious truth. Its freedom, its voluble minuteness of delineation, its rapid changes of construction, its breaks, pauses, significant and sudden transitions, its easy irregularities, exhibit the intellect- ual play of national youth, while in boldness and splendor it meets the demands of the highest invention and the most ma- jestic sweep of the imagination, and bears the impress of genius in the full strength of its maturity. Frederic Jacobs says, fan- cifully, yet truly, that " the language of Ionia resembles the smooth mirror of a broad and silent lake, from whose depth a serene sky, with its soft and sunny vault, and the varied nature along its smiling shores, are reflected in transfigured beauty." a Ionia, to borrow the expressions of the same eloquent writer, the mind of man " enjoyed a life exempt from drudg- ery, among fair festivals and solemn assemblies, full of ser- sibility and frolic joy, innocent curiosity and childlike faith. Surrendered to the outer world, and inclined to all that was attractive by novelty, beauty, and greatness, it was here that the people listened, with greatest eagerness, to the history of the men and heroes, whose deeds, adventures, and wanderings filled a former age with their renown, and, when they were (echoed in song, moved to ecstasy the breasts of the hearers." At this age about 1000 B. C. and in this realm of the VOL. I. 6 82 THE GREEK LANGUAGE - AND POETRY. lovely iEgean islands and the Asiatic shores, epic poetry passed from the ballad form to the completeness of the art in the Iliad and Odyssey. These two immortal poems, which embody the entire poetic life of the age, have come down to us with the accumulated admiration of all the intervening centuries. An- tiquity paid divine honors to the name of Homer, and seven rival cities contended for the glory of having given him birth. Artists embodied in marble their conception of the features of that marvellously gifted man ; and some of these noble por- traits, worthily representing the blind old singer of Chios, have come down to our day. Whether there is anything of historical truth in them we cannot say. From these poems the ablest critics inferred the laws and cited the normal examples of poet- ical composition. The cities of Greece had their copies, under the authority of the state, which the treasures of kings could not buy. The greatest poets of succeeding times were proud to confess that they drank in their inspiration from the inex- haustible Homeric fountain. The most magnificent festivals of the most refined city in the world were graced by the public delivery, with suitable pomp of accompaniment, of these already ancient works. The most advanced minds acknowl- edged their fealty to the old master, by giving their best ener- gies to the correction and preservation of his text. Yet modern criticism has ventured to set aside all these unquestionable facts, and a famous theory of the origin and character of these poems, previously suggested in some of its outlines as by Battista Vico, but unfolded with marvellous learning and power by Wolf, the greatest of modern scholars, had for a time wide currency. It would be tedious to enter largely into this discussion now ; but some of its leading fea- tures belong to my subject, and I will briefly state them. Cer- tain Greek critics of later times expressed a doubt whether the Iliad and Odyssey were the works of the same author ; but the overpo wering weight of the best opinion was on the side of unity of origin. Again, there were traditions that, when these poems first became known to the continental Greeks, they THE HOMERIC POEMS. 8& existed in a broken state, and were collected and rearranged, once by Lycurgus at Sparta and afterwards by Peisistratus at Athens. Another tradition was, that they were preserved in the memory of the rhapsodists, and not reduced to writing until a later period. The basis of fact on which all these traditions rest has been immensely enlarged by modern scholars. Even Frederic Ja- cobs, led away by the Wolfian theory, says, in his eloquent manner : " Writing conquers speaking, and kills it dead. The lyre is silenced, and lives only as a figure of speech in written odes ; song dies in the musical sign ; and the written precept soars proud and cold over the surrounding scene, away to a remote and wide-extended world, and often beyond the present, directly to coming generations Almost five centuries had gone, before the poems of Homer were impris- oned in written characters ; and even then, mindful of their original destination, they flowed more sweetly from the tongue to the ear." The theory has been carried out to the extent, first, of denying the personal existence of Homer, and resolv- ing his name into an etymology. Next, the Iliad and Odyssey are not whole works of Homer, or of any one else, but dis- connected compositions, happening to be on such subjects that they were capable of being strung together, in something like connection. And finally, it is alleged that the art of writ- ing was not known at all in Greece and Ionia in that age, or, if known, that the materials were so scarce, cumbrous, and costly that the art was unavailable for literary purposes, and employed, if employed at all, only for public inscriptions on wood and stone. Moreover, the possibility of keeping so large a mass of poetical composition in the memory alone is supposed o be proved by certain well-authenticated marvellous feats of hat faculty. This view is supported by the non-existence of ontemporary inscriptions or other documents, which might and would have proved the use of the art, had it been used in the age which is supposed to have produced the Homeric poems. The same view is supposed to be further sustained by 84 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. internal evidence, by a want of coherent relation between the parts, by inequalities of style, by discrepancies in the de- scriptions of manners, by contradictions, and by numerous other minute indications, which the sagacity of criticism has traced out. This brief statement contains the substance of the Homeric question, as it has been handled by various writers. I do not wish to take up the subordinate distinctions it has assumed with particular schools of critics ; as to whether, for instance, the Iliad was wrought out in this way, and the Odys- sey was the work of one author of a much later date ; and whether the Iliad is a series of disconnected rhapsodies, or a mass of accretions formed upon an epic nucleus, the Achil- leis, until it reached its present extent. To consider all these aspects of the question would lead me into a labyrinth of discussion too intricate for this occasion. To these arguments I answer : 1. No person in the exer- cise of common sense would ever suspect, while reading the Iliad or Odyssey, a want of unity, completeness, or coherence. This is substantially admitted by Wolf himself, who eloquently describes the charm by which the continuity of interest hur- ried him along, whenever he gave up his critical questioning, and surrendered himself to the spirit of the poetry. 2. Contradictions, inequalities, and incoherences to an equal extent may be found, and have been found, in the best authors, and therefore prove nothing, or too much. The critical dogma, as stated by Hermann, is, " that no two passages of the same work, contradictory to or irreconcilable with each other, can be by one and the same author." Applying this to the uEneid of Virgil, there would be at least nine authors ; about as many to Milton's Paradise Lost ; more than a hundred to Don Quixote ; and three or four to each of Walter Scott's novels. In " The Antiquary," the scene is laid on the eastern coast of Scotland; but in the adventure of the storm the sun sets on the sea. Either, therefore, the sun must set in the east in Sir Walter's astronomy, or this chapter is by a different hand. 3. Internal evidence of ungenuineness or genuineness, founded THE HOMERIC POEMS 85 on mere style, is the most deceptive in its nature, and the least to be relied upon, of every species of literary proof. It is not many years since a poetical work of high merit, k * The New Tiinon," was published anonymously in London ; and though written by an author whose style is very peculiar, its author- ship long remained a secret, while internal evidence caused it to be ascribed to many writers widely different from one another. Here criticism was called upon to decide a question of authorship, in the mother tongue, in our own day, in a city where the writer was living among his literary compeers ; and criticism, with the strongest possible internal evidence, failed to solve the problem. It is needless to remark, how much less tangible the problem becomes, when the question is transferred to an ancient language, a distant country, and a remote age. 4. The non-existence of documents proves only their pres- ent non-existence. The objection is, moreover, too absolutely stated. The poets of the seventh and eighth century B. C, allude to Homer and to writing. Pausanias describes an heir- loom in the royal family of Corinth, the chest of Cypselus, inscribed with hexameters and pentameters, which he copies, and which belong to a period as early as the eighth century B. C, and most probably considerably earlier ; and there is now in existence a metallic plate, containing the Eleian treaty, a docu- ment belonging to the seventh century B. C. These facts not only show the use of writing in the time of their respec- tive dates, but exhibit it as a long-practised and well-understood art, with a completed alphabetic character. But without these evidences, the facts I have given in a former lecture to illus- trate the origin and progress of alphabetic writing in the East demonstrate that the Greeks of Ionia were in constant in- tercourse with nations, one of which certainly had completed the invention, and had an abundance of cheap and convenient materials, at hast fifteen centuries before Homer was born, supposing him to have been born at all. If the Ionians were not sufficiently advanced in mechanic art to manufacture ne materials and instruments for themselves, their relations 86 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. with Phoenicia and Egypt were sufficiently intimate to furnish them in commercial exchange. No one can believe for a moment that so intellectual a race as the Asiatic Greeks a race capable of carrying the epic art to its highest perfection would not have instantly adopted alphabetic writing from their neighbors, even if they had not, as I believe they had, already brought it with them from the Grecian mainland. There is one kind of internal evidence, however, which has the greatest weight, and that is the unity of spirit and char- acter; and this evidence exists in the highest degree in the Homeric poems: first, in the broader sense of the term, when we look at the poems as a whole ; and, secondly, when we ex- amine the details, especially in the characters of the heroes who carry forward the action in the Iliad and Odyssey. The first species of unity is less conclusive than the second ; for there is in every literary age a pervading spirit that marks all its liter- ary productions ; and it may be said, as it has been said, that this proves only that the Homeric poems belong to the same epoch, which after all may extend through several centuries. The other species cannot be set aside by this consideration. True, we may suppose that the subject of the Trojan war had been already handled by the ballad-singers, in the age im- mediately following that series of events, and in hexameter verse. We must suppose, too, that the names and exploits of the heroes had already been madefamiliar so far as the Grecian name extended. Characters, even, had by degrees assumed their legendary types, like the Cid, in the ballads of Spain, like Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, like Char- lemagne and his peers, like Hagen, Gunther, and Siegfried in the mediaeval poetry of Germany. But it is not in the na- ture of ballad poetry to develop characters with minute and careful study of the nicer shades. A few broad outlines pre- sent these creations of the popular fancy to the mind ; but to work them out into finished details, as the sculptor chips his marble into the exquisite forms of a Venus or Apollo, is a work f trained poetic art under the guidance of principles which THE HOMERIC POEMS. 87 have resulted from long study and mature experience. Thus Homer used the materials accumulated by his ruder predeces- sors. Thus Shakespeare, working in a kindred spirit, breathed his own immortality into traditions and characters whose out- lines had been traced by the feeble hands of those who had go:ie before him. A great poet is a rare bird. Whoever composed the Iliad and Odyssey shared in the richest gifts of knowledge and genius that have ever been showered upon mortal man. If one author 'gave them being, remarkable as is the fact, it is not without example elsewhere ; if many authors combined, having in equal measure the poetical power, the combination were marvellous, unexampled, and incredible ; but when we add to this the other necessary statement, that they not only had equal shares of the poetical gift, but worked in precisely the same spirit, conceived not only the leading characters, but a vast number of subordinate ones, in precisely the same way, and marked their appearance, their actions, their speech, by precisely the same traits and turns of expression, so that each and all should on each and every occasion conduct them- selves consistently, express themselves consistently, and give not only to the modern reader, but, so far as we know r , to those who lived nearest the times of their composition, a deep impression of their unity, to believe that these results should have been accomplished by a succession of poets of the highest order of genius, requires a degree of credulity on the part of the sceptical critics quite beyond my feeble power of com- prehension. Again, ballad-poetry may be transmitted by memory, and may be composed without the artificial aid of writing. Any kind of poetry may be learned by heart, to any extent, as we see by the example of players. But inventing ballads, with their sim- plicity of incident, is quite a different thing from composing long and comprehensive epic narratives, with the great variety of characters, so nicely discriminated, so carefully finished, so consistently sustained, as those ot the Iliad and Odyssey. More- over, preserving in the memory a vast mass of compositions. 8b THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. laboriously committed to its charge, but from another source, is one thing; and carrying forward in the memory a splendid array of events and characters of one's own invention, keeping all the parts forever present to the mind, incidents, person- ages, phrases, modes of action, places, previous history, sur- rounding scenery, so that all shall cohere in one grand and brilliant picture, shall be so created by one surpassing genius, and by him transmitted through successive generations of rhap- sodists, to do all this is quite another. The former is pos- sible, and has been done. The latter we do not know to have been done, and we believe it to be quite impossible. The fundamental errors of the whole theory are these : 1. The opinion that the art of writing, for literary purposes, was introduced among the Greeks at too late a period for the author or authors of the Homeric poems to have employed it. 2. The confounding of two widely differing stages of poetical development, the ballad and the epic; the supposing that the Greeks failed to take the last step which led to the completion of the epic art, and the production of its highest models ; the presenting of a very mutilated picture of a progress, perfectly natural and organic ; the believing that the earliest steps were; taken in this magnificent art, though not a single fragment of document remains to testify to the facts ; and the disbelieving in the last, though its two immortal monuments the Iliad and the Odyssey, more durable than the Pyramids of Egypt, more stable than the Alps and the Himalayas stand there as fresh, as beautiful, as full of the glorious youth of the Hellenic genius, as when they were first built up in their fair proportions by the plastic hand of their creator. I believe, therefore, that the Wolfian theory has not an inch of ground to rest upon. I believe that the greatest of poets save one had a personal exist- ence ; that his name is not an etymology, and his being not an agglutination of fifty or a hundred ballad-mongers ; that he who knew everything else known in his age knew his ABC, and how to write ; and finally, that he, the man Homeros, did actually compose and write down his own poeti- cal works. LECTURE VT. HOMER AND THE ILIAD. We have followed the Hellenic races to their earliest settle- ments in Greece. We have seen the blending of migrations across the sea with the great tide by land. We have wit- nessed the conflicts between the opposite shores of the ^Egean, after the vicissitudes of national childhood had passed, and neighboring monarchies, combining at times into extensive con- fedaracies, had been established. We have gone with them to the Trojan War, the ten long years of that distant strife. We have traced their changing fortunes, in the JEolian, Ionian, and Dorian re-migrations, a century or two later, to the Asiatic coast ; the returning wave breaking again upon the primeval land. With them they carried that warlike minstrelsy, which had clung to their religious hymns from the mysterious oracu- lar centres in the North. The Ionians had from the beginning a superior natural endow- ment for literature and art ; and when this most gifted race came into contact with the antique culture and boundless com- mercial wealth of Asia and Africa, the loveliest and most fra- grant flowers of the intellect shot forth in every direction. They carried with them the traditions of their race and the war-songs of their bards, from the Grecian mainland to the very scenes where the famous deeds of their forefathers had been performed, a neighborhood crowded with the traditions of the hardly less famous foes of their ancestry. These local circumstances awakened a fresh interest in the old legends, and epic poetry took a new start, a bolder character, a loftier sweep, a wider range. A general expansion of the intellectual powers 90 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. and the poetical spirit suddenly took place in the midst of the new prosperity and the unaccustomed luxuries of the East,- -in the midst of the gay and festive life which succeeded the ages of wandering, toil, hardship, and conflict, like the Sabbath re- pose following the weary warfare of the week. The loveliness of nature on the Ionian shores and in the isles that crown the ^Egean deep was soon embellished by the genius of Art. Stately processions; hymns chanted in honor of the gods ; grace- ful dances before the altars, statues, and shrines ; assemblies for festal or solemn purposes, in the open air under the soft sky of Ionia, or within the halls of princes and nobles, these fill up the moments of the new and dazzling existence which the excitable Hellenic race are invited, here and now, to enjoy. Their first and deepest want that which, in the foregoing periods of their existence, had been the first supplied was the longing of the heart, the demand of the imagination, for poetry and song; and it would have been surprising if the bright genius of Ionia, under all these favoring circumstances, had not broken upon the world with a splendor which outshone all its former achievements. Poets sprang up, obedient to the call ; and a new school of poetical composition rapidly devel- oped itself, embodying the Hellenic traditions of the Trojan story, and the legends handed down from the Trojans them- selves. Troops or companies of these poets, singers, doiBoi as they were called, were formed, and their pieces were the delight of the listening multitudes that thronged around them. At last, among these minstrels who consecrated the flower of their lives to the service of the Muses, appeared a man whose genius was to eclipse them all. This man was Homer. Who, what, when, and where was Homer? Several lives of the poet have come down to us ; none of any critical value. They prove, however, amidst their mass of fabulous stories, the constant belief of the ancient world that he was an Asiatic Greek ; and the tone and coloring of the Homeric poetry es- tablish this fact beyond all rational question. I will not enter upon the details, they are of no worth, except to the classi- HOMER AND THE ILIAD. 91 zal scholar. Thus much is certain, that the minstrel school of Chios was the most distinguished in that poetical age. On this fair island, probably, Homer was born ; or if not, it was doubtless the place of his early resort and the favorite scene of his studies. Here, certainly, he lived a part of his life ; and the name of Chios is forever linked with his fame. The tradi- tions of Homer, the blind old beggar-bard, are the creations of later times, partly founded on the description of Demodocus in the Odyssey. If we draw our conception of him from his poems, and they are all we have of him beyond the two facts of his Ionian birth and his poetical profession, we shall picture to our- selves the man and poet Homer in quite a different light from that of tradition. We may be sure that he was born in a con- dition of life which surrounded his childhood with favoring in- fluences. We may be sure that he had the most exquisite or- ganization ever bestowed on the finely organized Hellenic race ; that the blood ran full, and free, and strong through his veins ; that his eye was so keen and bright that no object, great or small, escaped its vigilant and roving glance ; that his ear was attuned to all the melodies of nature and the harmonies of art ; that his sensitive nerves vibrated to every breath of heaven, and every impulse of the spirit within ; that his busy fancy was forever moulding and recombining what his eye had seen, his ear had heard, his heart had felt. We may be sure that he, an inspired boy, had listened with inexpressible delight to the songs of the bards, reciting the achievements of another age ; that he had wonderingly and reverently gazed upon the stately processions, and listened to the solemn prayers of the priests, as the blessing of his country's gods was invoked. And when the restless period of youth arrived, we may well believe that he embarked with the Phoenician seamen, and visited the cities of the elder monarchies of Asia and Africa ; that he floated on the bosom of the sacred Nile, and saw the royal Pyramids along its margin, and looked upon the sublime and awful temples of hundred-gated Thebes that his watchful eye traced the hiero- 92 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. glyphs, the sculptures, the paintings of ancient kings ; that he lingered with throbbing heart and fiery enthusiasm upon those battle-pieces which to this day record, on imperishable structures, the wars and conquests of Egypt's elder monarchs, of Sesostris and Rameses the Great. We may be sure that every path upon the coasts of Asia Minor was familiar to his footsteps ; that he had pressed the soil of every country in Greece, and knew by heart every famous city ; that the field of war had witnessed his presence, as well as the quiet scenes of peace ; that wherever he wandered, nothing in nature or the life of man passed unseen or escaped unremembered. At sea he knew every rope in the ship, we read it in all his descrip- tions now, and surpassed the sailors in nautical lore. Of every weapon of attack and defence his hand was master, and he knew from personal experience what there is of good and what of evil in the spirit of Ares. He had listened, through the watches of many a night, to the long stories the Phoenician yarns of those primeval tars ; and their tales of wonder he had laid up in a memory the most fast-holding and capacious, to be afterward used for purposes he but little dreamed of. And then the frenzy of youthful adventure once appeased, his knowledge embracing all that was known in his age he image of the beautiful Ionia once more arose to his vision, and a home-longing, like that of Odysseus, sitting on the rocky shore of Calypso's isle, yearning for Ithaca, the dwelling of his wife and son, compelled him to return. Again he listens to the lays of the bards, and his soul is stirred within him. No doubt his thoughts have, before this, voluntarily moved harmo- nious numbers, and found fit utterance in verse. The in- spiration of the Muse has stolen upon him under the walls of Thebes, in the shadow of the Pyramids, on the bosom of the roaring sea, on the storm-lashed shore, under the blaze of day, in the crowds of men, in the deep silence of the starry night, at the rising of the sun, at the setting of the Pleiades. His genius has been long training itself, instinctively, if not consciously, for his fore-appointed but as yet unknown task. HOMER AND THE ILIAD. 93 He has searched the coffers of his native Ionian tongue round &ni round for the ample phrase and resounding line, into which his fervid spirit may freely pour the burning stream of its thought. The lesson has been practised in silent meditation or in rapt soliloquy ; but he has never tasked his powers nor tried his skill in an assembly of men. As he listens to the favored minstrels, he feels that they have not yet touched the deepest chord. Be sure there is that in the appearance of the young man which excites interest and commands attention ; a mingled gentleness and power in the soul-speaking face ; an expression, glancing and shifting with every emotion ; a sweet modesty, like that of Shakespeare ; and an inborn nobleness of manner, which, without arrogance, asserts itself in every presence. At length, on some festal day, he comes forward and takes his place among the rival minstrels. He touches on the phorminx a few preluding notes, and sings a lay. And what is it ? He is still in the bloom of early youth and the fire of manly passion. Of what, then, shall he sing, but the wrath of Achilles, the boy-hero of the Trojan tale ? A sudden sense that no common hand is upon the lyre hushes the tumultuous crowd to a still- ness broken only by the rich and powerful voice of the new minstrel, as he invokes the Muse, Mrjviv aeiSe, Bed. The strain rises and swells upon the ear, and the marvellous hexameters possess the souls and entrance the sense of the hearers. The story of the chieftain's quarrel is soon told, too soon the rhap- sody ends ; while each of that mighty throng is bending forward, unconscious where he is, "for the godlike voice is still pouring around him." A moment more, and loud and prolonged ap- plause, like the roaring of the waves upon the Hellespontine shore, goes up to the concave heaven. Prince and people, priest and worshipper, men and women, feel that here is one mightier than they. Musicians and minstrels now must own their master. Here is the great creative intellect, the wisest man, of his age. Henceforth, there is no doubt in Ionia, soon there is no doubt in the Grecian mainland, who is the light 94 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. and glory of the world. Wherever he goes, honor, obeisance, and populai enthusiasm wait upon his steps. The business of his life is made clear to him. Year follows year, and the circle of his fame enlarges. By degrees, in the course of his poetical task, scene after scene evolves itself, until the whole magnifi- cent Iliad stands before him. The outline of the tale the characters and the incidents of the war of Troy had been sung by other bards of lesser gifts ; but he sees their larger poetical capability, and seizes, by the right of the strongest, the rich material out of which a new poet- ical creation shall arise. Story, character, and incident have al- ready taken hold of the popular imagination ; the issues of the great contest between Priam and his mighty pair of antagonists have sunk deep into the popular heart; but the picture kin- dles into new life beneath his glowing pencil. The actors in the Ilian tragedy come again upon the stage at his bidding, each with all the attributes of fine poetic individuality. And now, in conducting the fable through its varied and contrasted scenes, by land and by sea, his manifold experience and abun- dant wealth of knowledge crowd the song, and gather into it the whole world of action and art, thought and passion. Mid- way in the poet's life the creation of the Iliad the organic growth of long and studious, but practical years has reached its natural termination, has expanded to its completed form, has received from the fusing and ordaining and overmastering genius its unity of spirit, of continuous and uninterrupted de- velopment. In this wonderful work, to use the comparison of Longinus, Homer is the sun at his meridian height. In the practice of his noble art for so many years, he had combined the epic elements of heroic tradition which had been forming for centu ries, achieving thereby a twofold result, breathing fresh life into ancient forms, and a vital force before unknown ; and bringing the several parts of the Ilian story into such intimate connection and harmony, that they no longer appeared as ballad minstrelsies, serving the poet's turn for brief rehearsals, at the HOMER AND THE ILIAD. 95 gatherings of the people, or in the halls of the princes, but embodied in one magnificent panorama, partly by direct narra- tion, partly by allusion and recapitulation, all the essential fea- tures of the great national adventure. The time filled up by the action of the Iliad extends only to a few days, between forty and fifty ; but a knowledge of the rest is to a certain ex- tent implied, a knowledge, that is, of what preceded and fol- lowed it in the national traditions. This, of course, might be presumed to exist on the part of the Ionian audiences for which the poem was intended; and this again shows that the unity of the Iliad is the unity of continuous composition, and not of a previously concerted plan, a unity springing from the or- daining action of high and thoroughly trained creative genius, and not conceived at the outset by deep premeditation. But Homer was a singer and an actor. His profession was, not the writing and publication of poems to be circulated like the books of a library, and to be read by gentlemen and ladies, at their leisure, by the fireside and the evening lamp. He re- hearsed them in person, he acted them as Shakespeare acted in his plays ; for in his age the minstrel's art consisted in de- livering the poetical numbers in a musical cadence, preluded and partly accompanied by notes struck upon the lyre. The poet not only practised this art himself, but trained up the ac- tors, so that troops and schools of performers were established, like the theatrical companies of later times. Those schools, the most renowned of which was that of the Homeridae, at Chios, were the characteristic literary feature of that age. This style of action or representation, having its origin in the old Ionian times, lasted in the hands of the rhapsodists far into the flourishing period of Attic literature. In all this practice, the art of writing long since brought in from Phoenicia was doubtless employed in the preparation, teaching, and transmission of these compositions. Poet and performers had their copies, which they carried with them, as they strolled from city to city, from festival to festival, frcm panegyris to panegyris, just as the player now takes his Shake- 96 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. speaie ; but the public recitals of these poems were, like the performances of actors, from the memory alone. And in this way the Homeric poems were first diffused among all the Hel- lenic communities on either side the iEgean Sea. The story of the Iliad is very simple. It begins with the quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles about a captive girl, in the ninth year of the war. Achilles in anger withdraws from the Grecian camp. A series of battles follows, in which the Greeks, deprived of their swift-footed champion, suffer defeat and slaughter. In the mean time the secondary heroes press forward, and become the leading figures in the martial picture. In separate chants the valiant deeds of Diomedes, Ajax, Men- elaus, Agamemnon, are commemorated. But the Trojans, led on by the crested Hector, drive the Greeks down to the very ramparts of the ships. One by one the heroes are wound- ed and disabled, and the prospect of disastrous overthrow stares the army in the face. Agamemnon, at length, convinced of his fatal error, and anxious to recall the angry hero, sends an embassy with the offer of ample reparation. The proposal is haughtily rejected. The war again proceeds, with varying for- tune. The Greeks are driven within their walls, and the Tro- jans, led on by Hector, threaten to fire the ships. The battle wavers ; Hector is wounded, and the Trojans are driven back. Achilles at length consents that Patroclus, his brother-in-arms, shall put on his armor, and go forth to battle. The appearance of this champion, clad in the complete steel of the son of Thetis, at. first strikes terror into the hosts of Troy, and gives heart to the Argives. But he is slain and spoiled of his arms by Hector, and fierce combats for the possession of the dead body follow. The Greeks prevail, and bear the slain hero back to the camp. Achilles, overwhelmed with sorrow, abandons himself to unre- strained lamentation. This calls his mother, Thetis, up from the sea. She finds him prostrate with grief, yet eager to exact a bloody vengeance from Hector and the Trojans ; but Hector has the armor. She goes to the smithy of Hephaistos, who "eadily forges a new shield of divine workmanship, a breast HOMER AND THE ILIAD 97 plate brighter than the blaze of fire, a strong- wrought helmet with a golden crest, and metal greaves. Achilles receives the arms, becomes reconciled with Agamemnon, who sends him precious gifts, and restores the captive Briseis. After lament- ing over the dead Patroclus, he mounts the car and rushes to the field, careless of life, and longing only for vengeance. And now the war comes to its terrible turning-point. The Trojan and Grecian champions are arrayed in deadly strife, and the divided deities share, according to their several likings, in the battle. As the action approaches a close, the description rises in grandeur. At length both armies are withdrawn from the field, and Achilles and Hector alone remain. A single com- bat follows, and Hector falls. Achilles insults the body of his foe, lashes him to his car, and drags him down to his tent, in the sight of Priam and the Trojans, who gaze heart-stricken from the walls upon the dreadful spectacle. The Greeks re- turning to the camp, funeral games are performed in honor of Patroclus, and twelve Trojan youths are slaughtered to ap- pease his shade. Thus twelve days are consumed. Priam resolves to visit the hostile camp, and to implore of Achilles the restoration of his dead son. An auspicious omen inspires him with hope. He departs, taking with him costly gifts, by which he thinks to appease his vindictive enemy. He is mel by Hermes, in the form of a young man, who guides him to the tent of Achilles. The Grecian hero, astonished at his sud- den appearance, gives him a hospitable reception, and, overcome by pity for his unequalled woes, consents to surrender the body of Hector. It is borne back to the city ; the inhabitants receive it with loud lamentations ; funeral rites are performed ; and so the poem closes. Now, from this slight sketch, it must be evident that one spirit, one mind, runs through the whole ; that in this sense it has unity and completeness ; that the central figure is Achil- les, and that every important turn in the fortunes of the wai depends upon his presence or absence. On the other hand, the preceding events the mustering of the hosts of Greece, 98 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. the voyage, the landing, the battles of the first eight years, the struggle that followed the death of Hector, the taking of Troy, and the departure of the victorious fleet are dealt with only by implication and allusion ; and it is a very remarkable fact, that precisely these omitted portions of the Trojan story were taken up by the poets that immediately followed the Homeric age, who thus confessed that Homer had made what- ever his hand had touched his own forever. Homer's mode of dealing with the divine agencies in his works was objected to as irreverent by some of the more serious among the ancients. This objection can have no weight now, whatever it might have had in the time of Plato. To us the gods are like the fairies of modern poetry ; and con- sidering the manner in which the heroic conceptions of super- natural beings were formed, from the personified phenomena of nature and passions of man, the management of this machinery is highly felicitous. They have their favorite heroes, by whose side they stand in battle, and from whom they avert the arrow eager to taste of human flesh. With their shields they inter- pose to protect them from the edge of the sword, or snatch them, shrouded in a dark cloud, from defeat. Nay, the gods themselves are driven in dishonor from the field, gashed with wounds, and covered with blood. Ares gets a thrust that makes him outroar nine thousand troopers. Aphrodite is wounded by Diomedes, and flies to her mother's arms to be protected and cured. Even the fierce quarrels that disturb the festivities and vex the domestic, circle of Olympus, the sarcasms of Zeus, and the downright scolding of Hera, are not unnatural, if we bear in mind that, according to the early conception of the Greeks, the divine life, morals, and manners were only human life, morals, and manners carried out upon a grander scale. I have already alluded to the clearness and consistency with which the characters in the Iliad are managed, not merely the leading, but the subordinate persons. But Homer rarely describes his characters, as a second-rate poet would have been HOMER AND THE ILIAD 99 ukely to do. The dramatic element enters largely into the whole texture of his works ; it is action that brings his heroes out, and gives them such poetical life. And this makes it ne- cessary to follow them through all the scenes in which they appear, as we would study the characters of living men by watching them under every variety of circumstance. Achilles, in the rudely outlined figures of the ballad-makers who pre- ceded Homer, was a fierce, vindictive, overbearing, intolerable bully ; but when Homer took him in hand, though he preserved, while softening them, all the essential points of the popular tradition, he civilized him by adding others which are unfolded in the progress of the action, beautifully rounding and complet- ing the character ; so that the Homeric Achilles is the type of youthful bravery, his fierce passion and lust of revenge counterbalanced by the deepest sensibility to friendship, and a generous readiness to yield to the impulses of pity. A similar analysis, with the same result, might be made of each of the other important characters ; and we should find that they are so naturally developed, that, while different scenes bring out different qualities, these qualities harmonize together, and serve to finish off the Homeric conception of the persons. Again, the Trojan characters are discriminated with equal fineness of art, and admirably contrasted, as Oriental and Asiatic, with the Greek. Homer deals with both sides im- partially, while, however, he remains faithful to the ethical views of his Hellenic origin. Troy is a rich, sensual, extrava- gant Asiatic city. Priam is the Sultan, his palace contain- ing his harem and the apartments of his numerous sons and daughters. Paris is a handsome young voluptuary, half pirate, half dandy, not destitute of courage when driven to the wall, but showy and profligate, liking better to polish his arms than to use them. His original crime of violating the sacred rites of hospitality has brought the impending doom over the royal city ; and this is hastened on by the treachery, falsehood, and sensuality by which he shows his haughty dis- regard of justice, and his scorn of tine avenging Nemesis. But 100 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. here the poet has relieved the general darkness of tins picture by the exquisite beauty of the half-repenting Helen, the patri- otic deeds, words, and character of Hector, and the unrivalled pathos of the parting scene between him and Andromache. With such refined art has this great poet managed the various scenes of his stoiy, and the play of contrasts between man and man, between nation and nation. We have seen with what clearness of poetic life the human characters are drawn by Homer. Humanity is the proper quality by which, like the great creations of Shakespeare, they rouse a fellow-feeling in all men of all ages. They are not mere embodiments of peculiarities and humors, such as artifi- cial society often unfolds ; but they are flesh-and-blood men, whose physical life is full of energy and fire, and whose pas- sions are not schooled to uniformity by the laws and insinceri- ties of fashion. They think fearlessly, and speak plainly, calling a spade a spade. If they get angry, out it comes, some- times rudely enough, with no mincing of phrase, and no Pick- wickian or Congressional explanations afterwards. If they are hungry, they eat with no fastidious selection of delicate morsels, but like hearty men, earnestly bent on doing the work conscientiously. At table respect is shown to superior rank or bravery, not merely by helping it first, but by giving it twice or three times as much. Thus Agamemnon honored Ajax with a whole sirloin of roast beef after his fight with Hector, while the other guests were helped to not more than five or six pounds apiece. When they were thirsty they drank, not water alone ; for the water of the Hellespont wasaiot good, and tea and coffee and lemonade were as yet unknown. " Set forth a bigger mixer," says Achilles to Patroclus, when Agamem- non's ambassadors visit his tent ; " draw it stronger, and ham. each man a beaker, for much-beloved men are beneath my roof. 1 ' Homer was not only a poet, but a practical man ; and, in all the operations before Troy, he kept an eyo upon the commissariat. Some think that cooking, eating, and drinking aie vulgar, and quite beneath the notice of the Muse ; and the HOMER AND THE ILIAD. 101 consequence is, that in poems and other literary works the heroes and heroines are often carelessly placed in positions, for weeks together, where they could not possibly get a morsel to stay the hungry edge of appetite, or a drop of water or any- thing else tc quench their thirst, or a change of linen even ; so that the wonder is, how they survive the hardships of the first volume. But Homer felt the great truth which he puts into the mouth of one of his heroes, that men cannot fight upon an empty stomach. That even grief grows hungry, Achilles proves to Priam, by the example of Niobe. He took his meas- ures accordingly. Some of the troops were employed in tilling the fields of Troy ; others, in the less honest business of pil- laging the neighboring towns ; and a brisk trade for wine, in ex- change for brass and iron, hides, cattle, and slaves, was carried on with Lemnos and other islands, the Maine law not hav- ing yet been enacted. On one occasion, when Agamemnon had received a thousand measures, " All night the Greeks enjoyed the plenteous feast ; The Trojans and their aids, in Ilion too, Were feasting; but throughout that gloomy night t The sire of gods his wrathful thunders rolled, Dread sign of coining woes. Pale terror shook The knees of all ; and from their bowls they poured Libations large; presuming none to drink Before they poured to Jove omnipotent." Another point in Homer's natural delineation is the open- ness and candor with which his heroes confess it, when they are afraid. Even Hector, on one occasion, after discussing the question at some length with his own magnanimous spirit, very honestly admitting that he is horribly frightened, fairly takes to his heels and runs. The point of honor, which requires a man to be afraid of seeming to be afraid of what he is afraid of, formed no part of the Homeric idea of heroism. The style of Homer possesses the transparent clearness which is common to poets of the highest order. The same quality is found in Chaucer ; it is found embellished, perhaps, by excess 102 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. of ornament, in Spenser ; it is found pre-eminently in Shake- speare ; and is characteristic of the ballad-minstrelsy of al? nations. It has been alleged that the ancient poets had no genuine love of Nature. I confess I do not understand the meaning of this strange assertion. Wherever men have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to feel, Nature is to them a living presence. She speaks to them in her myriad voices, and they hear. She looks upon them smilingly or sternly, and they understand the elo- quence of her mute appeal. She gazes down upon them with the starry eyes of Night, and they feel a solemn calm under the august silence of her inspection. She speaks in the thun- der, in the frantic ocean, and they listen with awe. The pic- tures of Nature are the first to stamp themselves on the mem- ory, and the last to be blotted out. The assertion cannot be true ; least of all is it true of Homer, to whom every aspect of Nature Was intimate and dear. What a picture is this, to be drawn by one who had no true feeling for the beauty o e Na- ture ! " As when the stars of the night, encircling the moon in her brightness, Glitter on high, and the winds of the air have sunk into silence ; Bright are the headland heights, and bright the peaks of the mountains, Bright are the vales, and, opening deep, the abysses of ether Sparkle with star after star, and the heart of the shepherd rejoices." Hundreds of such passages might be selected, showing not only the truest and deepest sensibility to Nature that ever poet had, but the most brilliant power of reproducing whatever is striking in her forms. Our language has several translations of Homer, possessing various degrees of excellence, but marred by great defects. Chapman's is quaint and vigorous, but rough. - Pope's is de- liciously smooth, but modern, dainty, and unfaithful to the local coloring. Cowper is truer to the word, but wanting to the spirit. Sotheby is laborious ; but his management of the English couplet utterly fails to reproduce the effect of the Ho- meric hexameter. Mumford's blank-verse translation is unsur- HOMER AND THE ILIAD. 103 passed in passages ; but he has not been able to give sufficient variety to the divisions and pauses to save it from monotony. The Germans have several times translated Homer, as they have every other classic, into the measure of the original, or, I should rather say, a measure analogous to the original ; for the hexameter of the modern languages is only an accented one, while the classical measures were all constructed upon the prin- ciple of quantity, setting accent, in the Latin as well as in the Greek, wholly aside ; and there is all the difference between the two methods that there is between chanting and reading. Some of the earlier attempts at English hexameters were not quite so successful as could be desired. These lines from Stanyhurst's Virgil, published in Queen Elizabeth's time, are contained in the famous description of JEtna : " Neere joinctlye brayeth with rufflerie rumboled Etna. Soomtyme owt it bolcketh, from bulck clouds grimly bedimmed Like fyerd pitch skorching, or flash flame sulphurous heating : Flownce to the stars towring, the fire like a peller is hurled, Ragd rocks up raking, and out of the mounten yrented From roote up he jogleth ; stoans huge, slag molten he rowseth, With route snort grumbling in bottom flash furie kindling." Look on this picture ; now look on this from Longfellow : " Still stands the forest primeval ; but far away from its shadow, Side by side, in their nameless graves, the lovers are sleeping. Daily the tides of life go ebbing and flowing beside them, Thousands of throbbing hearts, where theirs are at rest and forever, Thousands of aching brains, where theirs no longer are busy, Thousands of toiling hands, where theirs have ceased from their labors, Thousands of weary feet, where theirs have completed their journey ! " Some attempts have been made to render Homer into Eng- lish hexameters, and I think with fair success. The following passage is from a specimen-version in Blackwood's Magazine. " Sing, O Goddess, the wrath unblest of Peleian Achilleus, Whence the uncountable woes that were heaped on the host of Achaia ; Whence many valorous spirits of heroes, untimely dissevered, Down unto Hades were sent, and themselves to the dogs were a plunder, And all fowls of the air ; but the counsel of Zeus was accomplished ; 104 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. E'en from the hour when at first were in fierceness of rivalry sundered Atreus' son, the Commander of Men, and the noble Achilleus." Here are two striking passages as translated in hexameter* by Shadwell : " Burning with fury the God came down from his high habitation ; Full quiver hung by his side, and elastic bow from his shoulder ; Loud at his side was the clanking of darts, as he sped from Olympus Swift as the Night through the sky, deep vengeance silently brooding ; Nearer arrived to the fleet, then he stayed ; and the silvery bowstring Fearfully twanged, as the shafts flew abroad, death dealing amongst them. First on the mules and the dogs fell thickly the murderous shower ; Next on themselves the destructive darts, wide-wastefully wounding, Light ; and the funeral piles were daily and nightly rekindled. Nine days long through the camp raged fiercely the shafts of Apollo." " As when a sea runs high, which a westerly wind hath awakened. Wave upon wave to the land rolls in with a boisterous uproar, Gathering a crest on the water afar ; some, noisily roaming, Break on a deep, bold shore ; some again, on a bluff-lying headland Dashed up aloft, curl over and fling spray wildly to leeward ; So then advanced to the battle, in wave-like order, Achaia's Host, rank following rank." Part of the scene in the tent of Achilles is thus rendered ut Blackwood : " All unobserved of them entered the old man stately, and forthwith Grasped with his fingers the knees, and kissed the hands of Achilles, Terrible, murderous hands, by which son upon son had been slaughtered. And Achilles was dumb at the sight of majestical Priam, He and his followers all, each gazing on other bewildered. But he uplifted his voice in their silence, and made supplication : ' Think of thy father at home,' he began, ' godlike Achilles ! Him, my coeval, like me within age's calamitous threshold. Haply this day there is trouble upon him, some insolent neighbors Bound him in arms, nor a champion at hand to avert the disaster. Yet even so there is comfort for him ; for he hears of thee living. Day unto day there is hope for his heart amid worse tribulation. That yet again he shall see his beloved from Troja returning. Misery only is mine ; for of all in the land of my fathers, Bravest and best were the sons I begat, and not one is remaining. HOMER AND THE ILIAD. 105 But one peerless was left, sole prop of the realm and the people. And now at last he too, the protector of Ilion, Hector, Dies by thy hand. For his sake have I come to the ships of Achaia, Eager to ransom the body, with bountiful gifts of redemption. Thou, have respect for the gods, and on me, O Peleides, have pity, Calling thy father to mind ; but more piteous is my desolation, Mine, who, alone of mankind, have been humbled to this of endurance, Pressing my mouth to the hand that is red with the blood of my children.' Hereon Achilles, awaked to a yearning remembrance of Peleus, Rose up, took by the hand, and removed from him gently the old man. Sadness possessing the twain, one, mindful of valorous Hector, Wept with o'erflowing tears, low-laid at the feet of Achilles ; He, some time for his father, anon at the thought of Patroclus, Wept, and aloft in the dwelling, their long lamentation ascended." From the beautiful scene of the lamentations over the body of Hector, after the return to the city, I take the wail of He- lena : " Hector, dearest to me above all in the house of my husband ! Husband ! alas that I call him ! better that death had befallen ! Summer and winter have flown, and the twentieth year is accomplished, Since the calamity came, and I fled from the land of my fathers ; Yet never word of complaint have I heard from thee, never of hardness : But if another reproached, were it brother or sister of Paris, Yea, or his mother, (for mild evermore as a father was Priam,) Them didst thou check in their scorn, and the bitterness yielded before thee, Touched by thy kindness of soul, and the words of thy gentle persuasion. Therefore I weep, both for thee, and myself to all misery destined ; For there remains to me now, in the war-swept wideness of Troja, None, either courteous or kind ; but in all that behold me is horror." The poem ends with these lines : " Swiftly the earth-mound rose ; but on all sides watchers were planted, Fearful of rush unawares from the well-greaved bands of Achaia. Last, when the mound was complete, and the men had returned to the city, All in the halls of the king were with splendid solemnity feasted. Thus was the sepulture ordered of Hector, the Tamer of Horses." LECTURE VII. THE ODYSSEY. THE BATBACHOMYOMACHIA. Much that we have said of the Iliad is equally true of the Odyssey. So far as concerns unity of plan and of character, especially the former, the proofs of homogeneousness are more conclusive in the Odyssey than in the Iliad. I do not mean to assert that no changes have been made, in the course of time, in the text of both. When we consider the vicissi- tudes through which these works have passed, first, in the hands of the Homeridae, the earliest actors who represented them ; secondly, in the hands of the rhapsodists, or strolling singers, of a subsequent age ; thirdly, in the editions or copies possessed by numerous cities for public use ; fourthly, in the revisions made at Lacedaemon, at Athens, and elsewhere ; fifthly, in the copies prepared under the critical supervision of the Alexandrian scholars ; and, finally, in the copies made by professional transcribers from Homer's own time down to the multiplication of editions by the art of printing ; when we look at this long history, we see ground for two general views, not inconsistent, but supporting each other. First, the immediate and universal fame which placed these works at the head of their class, and caused them to be so widely diffused and so carefully preserved by public authority throughout the Grecian world, was also a guaranty for the substantial purity of the text. But, secondly, numerous verbal alterations, not materially affecting the sense, yet giving rise to various read- ings, could not well have been avoided, as they passed through the hands of so many copyists. Hence arose the necessity, in the age of grammar and criticism, when the elder literature of THE ODYSSEY. 107 Greece came to be the subject of scholarly study under the munificent patronage of the Ptolemies, of comparing the read- ings and establishing a critical text. The text which we now possess is founded upon manuscripts which are themselves derived at a longer or shorter remove from the Alexandrian copies. As these poems were originally composed to be sung or performed, rather than to be read, and as the copies were chiefly in the hands of the troops of players, it would naturally follow that the particular orthography, the division into books marked by the letters of the alphabet, and many other minute external details of the text, are the work, not of Homer, but of critics and editors since his time. With these qualifications and exceptions, I have no doubt that we have the Homeric poems as their great author sang and wrote them. The plan of the Odyssey is more complicated than that of the Iliad, and the materials present a richer and more beauti- ful variety. If the Iliad, with all its simplicity, could not have resulted from the accidental coherence of different min- strelsies, bound together only by unity of subject and tradi- tion, for much stronger reasons is it impossible to conceive, on rational grounds, that the vastly more complicated structure of the Odyssey should have been wrought out in the same manner. I believe that the view of Longinus one of the ablest critics of antiquity was the right one, that the Iliad was the work of the poet's fiery youth and early manhood, and the Odyssey, of his serener age, the one the glory of the mid-day, the other that of the setting sun. The plan of the Iliad grew upon him as he proceeded with the composition of its parts ; and when he had reached its completion, he paused in his creative work, and gave years, perhaps, to retouching, recombining, and harmonizing its varied elements and char- acters. His occupation as a professional singer, also, took him, with his great poem, from island to island, and from city to city, until the whole Hellenic world had grown familiar with every passage of the Iliad, and had stamped it upon their minds. But, after a time, the overmastering impulse to create 108 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. comes upon him again, and, his master-work already moulded and remoulded until its immortal scenes can receive no higher finish even from his plastic hand, he looks about him for some new subjec*. This readily suggests itself from among the in- numerable legends of the return of the heroes from Troy, their detentions, sufferings, adventures by sea and land, after the great revenge has been exacted, the great trial held, the sentence passed, and judgment executed. Among the leaders, the wise Odysseus, and his long wanderings before he trod again the shore of rocky Ithaca, are among the favorite themes of the singers. His ready counsel, that fine eloquence which in the Iliad is aptly described as " falling like the snow-flakes of winter," his prompt device in every difficult emergency, and, I must add, the little scruple he had in resorting to diplo- matic disguises of the truth when they served a useful purpose, made his character and fortunes a subject on which the Greek imagination always loved to linger. The adventures of Odys- seus, therefore, naturally fixed the attention of the poet, and formed a centre around which the second great epic action revolved. The poet had passed the fiery years of youth ; he had exhausted all the poetical resources of martial achieve- ment, and now the calmer aspects of life rose before him with more attractive charms. It is true that even in the Iliad he had drawn occasional pictures of home and its affections, which afforded the sweetest contrast to the clang of war, and the din of embattled squadrons ; but there were few bright openings in the general tumult of strife and death. The return of Odys seus reversed the picture. The war was over, and the scenes of home and the quiet of peaceful pursuits resumed their pre- eminence, and stood in the foreground of the picture of life. Looking at the Odyssey as a work of art, it exhibits much more of careful premeditation in its general plan and outline than the Iliad ; so much more, that no one can read it without feeling that here certainly is the work of one mind. All the parts so cohere together, and are so artfully arranged about a common centre of interest and action, that its accidenta. THE ODYSSEY. 109 growth out of an accumulation of minstrelsies from different au- thors and times would be little less than miraculous. The ex- planation of this difference between the Iliad and the Odyssey is quite natural, I might almost say inevitable. The poet had already arrived at the conception of a great epic, which should carry the ballad-composition up to the highest form, and in the years of labor spent in the gradual elaboration of the Iliad he had perfected the execution. When, therefore, the Odyssey the return of Odysseus first presented itself to his thoughts, it appeared to him, not as the subject of a song, not as a brief minstrelsy for the amusement of the passing hour, but in the outlines of another great epic plan, which is distinctly recog- nizable in the very first line. The different ways in which the poems open have never been remarked upon in relation to this view of the growth of epic poetry. They seem to me, how- ever, highly significant and important. The Iliad begins, " Sing, O Goddess, the wrath of Achilles," which in the first con- ception seems to be the only theme present at the moment to the poet's mind, although it connects itself naturally and dra- matically enough with all that follows. The Odyssey begins, " Tell, O Muse, of the much experienced man, who wandered far and wide, after he had sacked the sacred town of Troy " ; as if the whole world of adventures that befell the wily hero had been distinctly drawn, at the opening moment, on the imagination. In the former, the Goddess is invoked to sing the wrath; in the latter, the Muse is invoked to tell the wan- derings : it being thus implied that the former was designed to be chanted, the latter to be narrated ; in fine, that the Iliad began in a ballad, and ended with becoming an epic poem ; while the Odyssey was an epic poem in its first conception. The general characteristics of the Odyssey are the same with those of the Iliad, if we make allowance for the difference of subjects, and the natural changes which take place in a man's style of thinking and writing, as he passes from one period of life to another. The scene of the Iliad is laid in A.sia, though descriptive passages witn reference to Greece 110 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. and allusions to its local peculiarities frequently occur, all marked by such vivid truth to nature, that they have stood the test of modern scrutiny by learned travellers, and are as faithful at the present moment as they were three thousand years ago. Asiatic nature and life are represented with the most graphic fidelity. The battle of Achilles with the Rivers, suggested by the violent rushing of the spring- torrents as they came down from the neighboring mountains, and inundated the Trojan plain, resembles in its whole conception, its spirit, and its local coloring, the Descent of the Ganges. The scene of the Odyssey, on the other hand, is chiefly laid in continental Greece, and so minute and faithful are the panoramic pictures which it successively presents, that the Odyssey is said to be even now the best guide-book the traveller can take with him over those classic regions. In some respects it is a finer poem than the Iliad. There is perhaps no single portion equal to such tragic passages as the parting of Hector and Andromache, or the lament over Hector, or the supplication of Priam in the tent of Achilles. But over the whole Odyssey grace and amenity reign, shedding a poetic charm upon the commonest scenes and conditions of life. The house of the old swineherd Eumaeus is delineated in the most natural manner, with all the homely circumstances around it ; and yet so felicitous and tasteful, as well as true, is the Homeric management of the details, that it is transfigured into one of the most affecting conceptions in poetry. I have already alluded to the opinion which was started by some of the ancient critics, that the Odyssey is not from the same author as the Iliad. Certainly there would be no impos- sibility in this, though a considerable improbability that two poets of the highest order of genius should have flourished in the same country in the same age. Nature does not bring forth her Homers, her Davids, her Dantes, her Shakespeares, in pairs. Many great poets may dwell together at the same time, but only one greatest ; many great artists may be contempora- *ies, but only one greatest ; many great orators may entrance THE ODYSSEY. Ill the listening multitudes, but only one greatest can at the same moment fulmine over Greece. The best critics of the ancient schools thought that the opinion of the chorizontes, or separat- ists, had here nothing to stand upon, and rather laughed at it as a piece of word-catching than respected it as the conclusion of a sound judgment. Modern criticism has, however, attempted the same process of dismemberment as with the Iliad, though the task of the carver has been found more difficult, because the plan of the Odyssey is much more complicated and artful. There are several distinct threads of adventure, all leading to the same point, the proper adjustment and right management of which required, not only more of previous reflection, but a more constant and careful arrangement in the imagination, and a more subtile power of organizing, to carry them out, and to keep them always subordinate to the general design. The story opens with a description of Odysseus, detained on Calypso's Isle, where he has already been for seven years, the other heroes having reached their homes or perished. Now the gods resolve that he shall return to Ithaca. Athene is sent in the form of Mentes to his son Telemachus, to urge him to visit Pylos and Sparta for the purpose of gaining information concerning his long absent father. He commands the suitors, who have long been devouring his estate in revelry while await- ing the decision of Penelope, to leave the house ; but they scornfully refuse. He arrives at Pylos, where he is received with hospitable entertainment by the old but still hearty Nes - tor. Thence, accompanied by the son of Nestor, he travels onward to Sparta, where he is recognized by Menelaus and Helen, now living amicably together, and at this moment cel- ebrating the marriage of their children. '' From her perftimed chamber wending Did the high-born Helen go ; Artemis she seemed descending, Lady of the golden bow ; Then Adraste, bent on duty, Placed for her the regal chair : 112 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY Carpet for the feet of beauty Spread Alcippe, soft and fair. Throned then, and thus attended, Helena the king addressed: ' Menelaus, Jove-descended, Knowest thou who is here thy guest * Shall I tell thee, as I ponder, What I think, or false or true, Gazing now with eyes of wonder On the stranger whom I view ? Shape of male or female creature Like to bold Odysseus' son, Young Telemachus, in feature As this youth I seen have none. From the boy his sire departed, And to Ilion's coast he came, When to valiant war he started, All for me, a thing of shame ! ' And Atreides spake, replying : ' Lady, so I think as thou. Snch the glance from eyeball flying ; Such his hands, his feet, his brow ; Such the locks his forehead gracing ; And I marked how, as I told Of Odysseus' deeds retracing, Down his cheek the tear-drop rolled ' Nestor's son then answered, saying, What thou speakest, king, is true. He who at the board is sitting Is of wise Odysseus sprung. Modest thoughts his age befitting Hitherto have stilled his tongue. Many a son feels sorrow try him, While his sire is far away, And no faithful comrade by him, In his danger, prop or stay. So my friend, now vainly sighing O'er his father, absent long, Finds no hand, on which relying, He may meet attempted wrong.' THE ODYSSEY. 113 Kindly Menelaus spake him, Praised his sire in grateful strain ; Told his whilom hope to take him As a partner in his reign. All were softened at his telling Of the days now past and gone ; Wept Telemachus, wept Helen, Fell the tears from Nestor's son. Then to banish gloomy thinking, Helen, on gay fancy bent, In the wine her friends were drinking Flung a famed medicament, Grief-dispelling, wrath-restraining, Sweet oblivion of all woe ; He the bowl thus tempered draining Ne'er might feel a tear to flow, No, not e'en if she who bore him And his sire in death were laid, Were his brother slain before him, Or his son, with gory blade. In such drugs was Helen knowing ; Egypt had supplied her skill, Where these potent herbs are growing, Some for good, and some for ill." Menelaus then relates his own wanderings, and tells all he knows of Odysseus. Meanwhile, the suitors, having learned the departure of Telemachus, lay a plot to murder him on his return. Calypso now receives from Hermes the command of the gods to let Odysseus go ; and reluctantly she obeys. Odys- seus builds a ship and sails away ; but on the eighteenth day, in the neighborhood of Scheria, his vessel is shattered by a storm. After swimming and floating for two days, he reaches the island of the Phseacians, and, being somewhat wearied, covers himself with leaves and falls asleep. Here he is found by Nausicaa, the daughter of the Phaeacian king, who with her maidens has come from the city to wash the garments of the household in the flowing stream. This gives occasion foi one of the most delightful descriptions in the book. She takes 114 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. pity on the forlorn condition of the shipwrecked and naked wan derer, and gives him food and clothes ; and then he follows her to the grove of Athene, whence she returns alone to the city. Concealed in a cloud he enters the town and the palace of the king, whose queen he supplicates to help him on his home- ward way. He relates his departure from the Ogygian Isle. Alcinous assembles the Phaeacian princes, requires them to furnish a ship for the stranger, and invites them to a banquet. There Demodocus, the bard, sings of the fall of Troy. Odys- seus betrays himself by weeping. " So sang the rapt minstrel the blood-stirring tale ; But the cheek of Odysseus waxed deathly and pale. While the song warbled on of the days that were past, His eyelids were wet with the tears falling fast, As wails the lorn bride, with her arms clasping round Her own beloved husband laid low on the ground. From the town, with the people, he sallied out brave, His country, his children, from insult to save. She sees his last gasping, life ready to part, And she flings herself on him, pressed close to her heart; Shrill she screams o'er the dying, while enemies near Beat her shoulders and back with the pitiless spear. They bear her away ; as a slave she must go, Forever a victim of toil and of woe. Soon wastes her sad cheek with the traces of grief. Sad as hers showed the face of Ithaca's chief. But none saw the tear-drops which fell from his eye, Save the king at the board, who was seated close by." The king, now informed who his guest is, invites him to re- late his adventures after his departure from Troy. Through four books or cantos the story runs ; and a more varied, grace- ful, and wonderful narrative poet never invented. Here, I think, the bard found space to interweave his own travels and adventures, and the seamen's stories he had picked up from the Phoenician mariners in his early youth ; the Cico- nians ; the Lotophagi ; ^Eolus and his bag of wind ; Lsestrygoni ms, big as mountains, whose king ate up a Greek alive ; Circe ind her enchanting, bestializing cup ; the gloomy, but most THE ODYSSEY. 115 striking scene with the spirits of the dead; the Sirens, and his crafty escape from their fatal charm ; Scylla and Charybais : the slaying of the oxen of the Sun, which, in the opening lines of the poem, is alluded to slightly, but with consummate art ; the destruction of the ship and crew in consequence, and the escape of the hero alone to the island of Calypso, where we found him at the beginning. So far nothing can exceed the skill which the conduct of the complicated action displays. " Thus he spake ; and they all remained in silence, And they were entranced by the charm through all the shady halls." Loaded with presents, and furnished with a ship, he departs at evening from the island of the Phaeacians. He is landed on the shore of Ithaca asleep. Athene appears, informs him of the absence of his son, changes his form into that of a beggar, gives him a staff, and bids him go to Eumaeus the old swine- herd, while she departs for Lacedaemon, to look after Telema- chus. Eumaeus now describes to Odysseus the insolence of the suitors, and declares his incredulity as to his master's re- turn. The story now turns to Sparta, where Telemachus is warned in a vision to beware of the snare set for him by the suitors, and on returning to Ithaca to visit the swineherd. He goes first to Pylos, and thence embarks for his native island, stop- ping, according to the direction of Athene, at the hut of Eu- maeus. Odysseus there makes himself known to his son, and they consult upon the means of slaying the suitors. Telema- chus, the next day, enters the city, followed by Odysseus in the beggar's garb, who is met by the suitors with contumely and rude insult. The riot and insolence of the suitors in- crease, as if madness had seized upon them while the shadows of fate were coming down. The beggar is sent for by Pe- nelope, who has been told that he has news of Odysseus. She explains to him the device of the Web by which the suitors have been put off. The old house-nurse recognizes him, \\ hile washing his feet at night, by the scar of a wound he had re- 116 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. ceived in hunting. A trial of archery is planned for the next day, on which the feast of Apollo is to be celebrated, and the winner is to claim the lady's hand. Odysseus retires to a rude couch in the outer court, like the beggar that he appears. In the restless wakefulness of the night, he hears the mirth and laughter of the faithless women of his household, who share in the debaucheries of the suitors. " As growls the mastiff standing on the start, For battle, if a stranger's foot approach Her cubs new-whelped, so growled Ulysses' heart, While wonder filled him at their impious deeds." He hears also the lamentation of his wife from her chambei , as she wakes from a dream, in which her long-lost Odysseus seemed to be at her side. He prays for a favorable omen, and for propitious words from some one in the house. Thunder greets his ear ; and the voice of a belated woman at the mill, plying her task for the service of the rioters long after the rest are asleep, is heard supplicating that their feast this day may be " the last that in Ulysses' home The suitors shall enjoy, for whom I drudge, With aching heart and trembling knees their meal Grinding continual." The next day the suitors assemble, and prepare to celebrate the New Moon, the festival of Apollo. The trial of the bow of Odysseus is to decide the fortune of the suitors. Penelope iscends to the chamber where it is kept, " With lifted haud aloft, took down the bow In its embroidered bow-case safe enclosed ; Then sitting there, she laid it on her knees, Weeping aloud, and drew it from the case. Thus weeping over it long time she sat Till, satiate at the last with grief and tears, Descending by the palace steps she sought Again the haughty suitors, with the bow- Elastic, and the quiver in her hand Replete with pointed shafts, a deadly store." THE ODYSSEY. 117 The suitors try in succession the mighty bow, but not one can bend it. Meantime Odysseus makes himself known to two of his retainers, of whose fidelity he has become assured. He demands to make trial of the bow, in turn, and his demand is scornfully rejected ; but the noble swineherd bears it to him, by preconcerted agreement, and the doors of the palace-hall are secured. " But when the wary hero wise Had made his hand familiar with the bow, Poising it and examining at once As when, in harp and song adept, a bard Unlaboring strains the chord to a new lyre, With such facility Ulysses bent His own huge bow, and with his right hand played The string, which in its quick vibration sang Clear as the swallow's voice. Keen anguish seized The suitors, wan grew every cheek, and Jove Grave him his rolling thunder for a sign." He draws the arrow-head home. " Right through all the rings From first to last, the steel-charged weapon flew." Now the struggle begins. One after another the insolent rioters fall, pierced by the arrowy shower. All are slain ex- cept Phemius the singer, and Medon the herald ; the faithless maid-servants are hanged, and then the hall is cleared of the dead bodies. Odysseus reappears in his proper form, and is recognized by his wife ; and they relate their adventures dur- ing their long separation of nearly twenty years. " She told him of the scorn and wrong She long had suffered in her house, From the detested suitor throng, Each wooing her to be his spouse, How, for their feasts, her sheep and kine Were slaughtered, while they quaffed her wine In plentiful carouse. And he, the noble wanderer, spoke Of many a deed of peril sore, Of men who fell beneath his stroke, Of all the sorrowing tasks he bore. 118 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. She listened with delighted ear ; Sleep never came her eyelids near, Till all the tale was o'er. So closed the tale. Then balmy sleep, The healer of all human woes, Did their relaxing members steep In soft oblivion of repose." The next day Odysseus leaves the city to visit his father, the aged Laertes. The singular passage in which Hermes con- ducts the souls of the slain suitors occurs here. The friends and relatives of the victims form a conspiracy against the vic- torious hero ; the rebels are attacked by Odysseus and his friends ; but the battle is arrested midway by the interposition of Athene, and Odysseus grants peace and pardon to the foiled conspirators. This outline shows, not only the complication of the struc- ture, but the coherence of the parts. A careful examination, of course, brings out more conclusively the unity of plan and the premeditation which that plan implies. A comparison of the language with that of the Iliad, and of the characteristic features of the acting personages, making due allowance for difference of subject, of time, of scenery, and of circumstance, shows the strongest ground for believing that this poem also came from the master mind of him who wrought the Iliad This train of argument has been very ably carried out by Mr. Mure, in the second volume of his unfinished work on Greek Literature. Among the most striking passages in the Odyssey is the following description of Argos, the old dog, who alone recog nizes his master and dies. This beautiful incident is com- mented on by Professor Wilson, with a depth of poetical feeling, and a gushing richness of expression, such as only Christophei North, and he only in his best days, could command. " Then as they spke, upraised his head, Pricked up his listening ear, The dog whom erst Odysseus bred, Old Argos lying near. THE ODYSSEY. 119 He bred him, but his fostering skill To himself had naught availed ; For Argos joined not in the chase, until The king had to Ilion sailed. To hunt the wild-goat, hart, and hare, Him once young huntsmen sped ; But now he lay, an outcast there, Absent his lord, to none a care. But when by the hound his king was known, Wagged was the fawning tail, Backward his close-clapped ears were thrown, And up to his master's side had he flown ; But his limbs he felt to fail. Odysseus saw, and turned aside, To wipe away the tear ; From Eumaeus he chose his grief to hide, And ' Strange, passing strange, is the sight/ he cried ' Of such a dog laid here. Noble his shape, but I cannot tell If his worth with that shape may suit , If a hound he be in the chase to excel, For fleetness of his foot ; Or worthless as a household hound, Whom men by their boards will place, For no merit of strength or speed renowned, But admired for shapely grace.' ' He is the dog of one now dead, In a far land away ; But if you had seen,' the swineherd said, ' This dog in his better day, When Odysseus hence his warriors led To join in the Trojan fray, His strength, his plight, his speed so light, You had with wonder viewed ; No beast that once had crossed his sight In the depths of the darkest wood 'Scaped him, as, tracking sure and right, He on its trace pursued. But now, all o'er, in sorrows sore, He pines in piteous wise ; The king upon some distant shore In death has closed his eyes ; -20 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. And the careless women here no more Tend Argos as he lies ; For slaves who find their former lord No longer holds the sway No fitting service will aftbrd, Nor just obedience pay. Far-seeing Jove's resistless power Takes half away the soul From him who of one servile hour Has felt the dire control.' This said, the swineherd passed the gate, And entered the dwelling tall, Where proud in state the suitors sate Within the palace hall. And darksome death checked Argos' breath When he saw his master dear ; For he died, his master's eye beneath, All in that twentieth year." Several other poems were attributed to Homer. Among these was the Margites, a satirical work upon some famous dunce, of which only three or four lines are preserved. " Many the things that he knew, but in all things his knowledge was worthless. Him nor a digger of earth, nor ploughman, the Immortals created. Only a dunce was he, and he blundered in all he attempted." The Battle of the Frogs and Mice the Batrachomyomachia is always included in the collections of the Homeric poems. It is, however, without doubt, a much later production. The composition is in the style of travesty, which hardly belongs to the age of heroic minstrelsy. Satire, epigram, numorous deline- ation, and the mock-heroic imply the manners and the contrasts of character of dissipated, not to say fashionable society. I cer- tainly do not mean to deny to Homer the possession of wit, but only the exercise of it in this particular manner. The spirit of his age was not inconsistent with a humorous view of life, or with touches of satire in the portraiture of individual characters. I doubt not Homer had many a hearty laugh at the whims of opinion, and absurdities of conduct, in all the societies he fre- THE BATRACHOMTOMACHIA. 121 quented. The description of the malicious buffoon Thersites the ugliest man that went to Troy shows no feeble power of ludicrous delineation ; the trick played by Odysseus upon the one-eyed Cyclops was brought about by a pun ; and even the immortal gods break into a fit of inextinguishable laughter, as they see the halting Hephaistos putting on the airs and graces of a cup-bearer. But though Homer could not have been insensible to the humorous side of life, his was not the time nor his the tem- per to make it a prominent element in poetry. Burlesque and travesty come after the mind of man has gone the round of earnest sentiment and natural expression. They require, not only the whims and humors that grow out of a state of society that has long since passed this stage, but the previous existence of a literature and a language fitted for all the quips and quib- bles of witty perversion and bantering conversation, conditions not fulfilled in Homer's time. Nor, had they been, was it likely that he would have made his own gorgeous creations, wherein he had poured the treasures of his heart and brain, the theme of ludicrous play, of perversion, banter, and parody. These considerations, aside from the internal evidence, on which I do not lay so much stress, convince me that, though the poem is a happy imitation of the style of an earlier age, it was the produc- tion of some Athenian wit, and belongs to a late period even of Attic literature. It is certainly a very fine specimen of the burlesque. The drollery consists in a witty application of the hexameter to such a subject ; in parodying the long and somewhat boast- ful speeches of the warriors in the Iliad, their prolix geneal- ogies and the minute description of their arming ; and, lastly, in the significance of the names. In the Iliad, the father of Achilles is Peleus ; the author of this little poem chooses to derive it from Pelos (mud), and gives it to the father of the principal hero among the frogs. All the other names are com- pounded in such a way as to express the characters and qual- ities of those who bear them, and to make a ludicrous contrast 122 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. between their meaning and the sonorous loftiness oi their sound. The story is this. A mouse, running away from a weasel, quenches his thirst at the margin of a lake. A frog comes up and politely offers to take him on his back and show him the wonders of the deep. The invitation is accepted, ana all goes on swimmingly until the splashing of the water frightens the mouse and his ally. A water-snake rears his head, and the frog in terror dives to the bottom, leaving the poor mouse to sink into a watery grave. He struggles for a time, but, finding his fate inevitable, utters a horrible denunciation of the false and cowardly frog, and gives up the ghost. The father of the deceased is the king of the mice, and rallies his martial forces to the field to avenge so dire an injury. " ' Three sons had I, three, wretched three ; and now not one is left to me. Out of his hole the watching cat dragged one, a curst mishap ; And monster man, with cunning fraught, my second in an engine caught, A new-invented mouse-destroying engine, called a trap. We had this third, our darling, sad to me and to his mother sad. But let us arm, and arm with speed, for this the villain frog shall bleed ; Arm, arm, be clad in mail complete, and let us vengeance take,' He said. At once to arms they flew, and Mars himself their weapons drew. Split bean-shells green served them for greaves, which they were nibbling at Deftly all night ; a cat's stout hide their breastplates happily supplied, Strengthened with interlacing reeds j right glad they skinned the cat ; The oval of a lamp their shield ; the needle for a lance they wield, Long, piercing keen, nor Mars a sharper weapon sported ; Nor helmet fitted e'er so well as on their heads the walnut-shell." The frogs also arm themselves, and meet the enemy on dry land. " All arm, and straight the mallow leaves they wrap their legs for greaves ; Before their breasts the broad beet-leaves for breastplates they advance ; The colewort leaf supplied the shield, nor weapon wanting was to wield ; Each a tough-pointed bulrush held before him for a lance ; And for their helmets furbished well, they simply wore a cockle-shell." The gods, meanwhile, resolve on neutrality, or non-interven tion ; Minerva being enraged with the mice for having nibbled THE BATRACHOMYOMACHIA. 123 one of her dresses, and with the Frogs for keeping her awake by their croaking. A terrible battle begins ; incredible deeds of valor are done on either side, and many a hero of world- wide fame bites the dust. Just as the Frogs are about to be utterly cut off from the land of the living, Jupiter breaks his neutrality. He first tries to stop the battle by thunder and lightning; but, finding this means unavailing, he orders a pla- toon of cuirassiers to assail the flanks of the victorious Mice. They execute the manoeuvre. "Sudden they take the field, crook-clawed, round, anvil-backed, and pincer- jawed, Lob-sided, marching all awry, shell-clampt, and bare, and bony ; Shining-shouldered, broad in back, grasping close though hands they lack ; With their eyes below their breasts, looking stern and strong, Called Crabs, with purpose firm and fixed, they march the combatants be. twixt, Discomfiting the furious Mice, who would have soon turned tail, But tails they 'd none, the Crabs bit through tails, hands, and feet." The Mice, thus mutilated and sore beaten, make for their holes, and the Frogs croak over their irreparable losses. I have ventured to put some of the opening lines into sucn hexameters as my creeping Muse allowed. " First I invoke the chorus of Muses, from Helicon's mountain, Into my breast to descend, and inspire the melody tuneful, Which upon tablets outspread on my knees I lately have written, Endless contention and war-rousing action of Ares ; Hoping to bring it to hearing of all articulate mortals, How the hosts of the Mice on the Frogs their valor displaying, Equalled the deeds of the Giants, the earth-born monsters aforetime. So ran the tale among mortals, and such the beginning of battle. Once on a time a mouse, from the chase of a weasel escaping, Came to the margin athirst, and dipped his soft chin in the wavelet, Drinking the honey-sweet water ; and him then espied there Pond-grace, the far-famed, and thus a brief salutation delivered. Stranger, who art thou, and whence to the shore comest ? Who is thj father f Tell me the truth and the whole truth, lest I detect thee in lying. For should I find thee my friendship deserving, home I '11 conduct thee; Gifts will I give thee many and noble, with fair entertainment. L24 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. I am Puff-jaw, the Prince, who, all the pond over Held in high honor, am king of the Frogs, sole ruling in power. Mudkin the sire who begat me, my mother was Damp-queen the famous, Wedded in love on the banks of Eridanus, far-flowing river. Thee, too, I see to be handsome and mighty, far above others, Royally sceptred in peace, and a fighter in war-fields. Come then and tell me at once thy name and thy lineage.' Him then Snatch-crumb answered, and these were the words that he uttered ' Why dost thou ask me my race, O friend ? It is known unto all men, And to the Gods on high and the winged birds of the heavens. Snatch-crumb my name is ; I boast to be Bread-biter's offspring, the valiant Lick-meal, my mother, was daughter of King Bacon-nibbler the mighty ; And I was born in a hole, and fed with almonds and dried figs, Sweetmeats of all kinds and toothsome in taste, such as mouselings are fond of How canst thou make me thy friend who in nothing am like thee Thy life and dwelling are under the waters ; but my way of living Is to eat ajl that man does ; nor 'scapes me the thrice-kneaded bread-loaf Packed in the well-rounded basket, nor gingerbread seasoned with spices ; Ham, too, I like in thick slices ; and liver, white-robed in fat caul ; Fresh-curdled cheese, made of rich new milk from the dairy ; Honey-cake nice, too, which even the immortals long to devour ; Whatso cooks prepare for the revels of word-speaking mortals, Tables adorning with delicate dishes from all the world over. Nor did I ever fly from the terrible shout of the battle ; Always I rushed to the onset, and mingled with foremost champions. Man is no terror to me, though huge is the body he carries ; Creeping up over his bed, I nibble the tip of his finger ; Seizing his heel, I bite it, but he is unconscious of smarting ; Sweet is his slumber ; nor flies it away, so neatly I nibble. Two things, however, I fear, of all that this earth-ball inhabit, Hawk and the cat, who cause me great sorrow forever ; Traps, too, so doleful where false Fate watches in ambush. Horribly fear I the cat, Grimalkin, most crafty of mousers, Chasing one into a hole, and clawing him out in a twinkle. Radish I eat not, nor cabbage, nor pumpkin so plump and so yellow. Pale-green horehound I hate, nor pick up my living on parsley. Dishes like these are for you, who live submerged in cold water.' Smiling, Prince Puff-jaw replied, and these were the words that he answered: Stranger, thou braggest too loud of thy stomach. We too have something Many the marvels by water, and wondrous on land, to be looked at ; Double the forage to Frogs was given by mighty Kronion ; Leaping on land, or hiding our bodies under the water, Dwell we amphibious ; in elements twofold our houses THE BATRACHOMYOMACHIA. 125 Wouldst thou all this see with thine own eyes ? Handy the way is Mount on my back, fast-holding thereon lest thou shouldst perish, Then shalt thou joyfully come to my well-furnished mansion in safety.' So then he spake, and gave him his back, and swiftly he mounted, Clasping the Frog's soft neck with his arms, and jauntily leaping. First he was pleased as he saw the neighboring bays and the inlets, Gratified, too, with the swimming of Puff-jaw; but all of a sudden, Splashed with the purple waves that were roaring around him, he blubbered. Vainly lamenting his folly and tearing his hair out by^ handfals. Under his belly he drew up his feet, and his heart in his bosom Beat at the scene unaccustomed, and longed to return to the dry land. Dreadful the groans that he uttered by compulsion of terror that froze him. Spreading his tail like an oar at first he paddled the waters, Praying the gods to help him ashore from the waves that were surging ; Shrilly he squeaked, and such was the speech that he spluttered." LECTURE VIII. THE HOMERIC HYMNS. HESIOD. GREEK Ml SIC. Besides the Iliad and Odyssey, the genuine works of Ho- mer, and the Margites and the Frogs and Mice, which are un questionably the productions of a later age, there is a consider- able body of poetical compositions, bearing the name of Hymns, which also pass under his name. I have already mentioned the temple songs ascribed by tradition to the priestly bards, Olen, Orpheus, Linus, Musaeus, and others, long before the Ionian age. This species of composition lasted through the epoch of Homer, and came down into the later times, even as far as the era of Alexandrian culture. The oldest pieces now preserved are the Homeric Hymns, so called, written mostly in a gay and festive spirit, and not showing the most profound reverence for the deities in whose honor they were composed. They are of various lengths, and amount to nearly fifty in number. In language they are marked by the same free-flowing and beautiful rhythm which is the charm of the Homeric hexameter ; and from their whole tone, we can hardly place them much later than Homer; for they are perfectly Ionian in spirit, and quite free from the plaintive, egotistical expression which runs through the elegiac poets of Ionia, at a later period, when public and private life had lost the exuber- ance of youth, and the shadow of impending disaster had fallen upon the land. The longest, and perhaps the most beautiful, is the Hymn tc Apollo. This is particularly interesting, because the poet, who- ever he was, speaks of himself, his blindness, and his home in Chios ; and these verses of personal history have, been apph * o Homer. THE HOMERIC HYMNS 127 < Virgins, farewell ! and 0, remember me Hereafter, when some stranger from the sea, A hapless wanderer, may your isle explore, And ask you maids, of all the bards you boast Who sings the sweetest and delights you most, O, answer all, < A blind old man and poor, Sweetest he sings, and dwells on Chios' rocky shore.' " The Hymn to Hermes is a good example of the laughing manner in which the writers of these Hymns sometimes dealt with the history and character of their deities. It has also its antiquarian value. The god is born at daybreak ; at noon he has constructed a lyre out of the shell of a tortoise he had caught at the mouth of his native cavern ; at evening he steals a herd of Apollo's cows, which he forces to walk backward to baffle pursuit ; two of them he kills and cooks, and before dawn the next morning gets into his cradle. Apollo discovers the theft, finds the young rogue pretending to be asleep under the bed-clothes, and charges him with the crime. The infant phenomenon replies in a most ingenious defence. I quote a few lines from Shelley's spirited translation : " An ox-stealer should be both tall and strong, And I am but a little new-born thing, Who, yet at least, can think of nothing wrong : My business is to suck, and sleep, and fling The cradle-clothes about me all day long, Or, half asleep, hear my sweet mother sing, And to be washed in water clean and warm, And hushed and kissed aua isyf recure from harm. O, let not e'er this quarrel be averred ! The astounded Gods would laugh at you, if e'er You should allege a story so absurd, As that a new-born infant forth could fare Out of his house, after a savage herd. I was born yesterday, my small feet are Too tender for the roads so hard and rough : And if you think that this is not enough, I swear a great oath, by my father's head, That I stole not ycur cows, and that I know Of no one else who might, or could, or did. Whatever things cows are I do not know ; For I have onlv heard the name." 128 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. When the matter is laid before Zeus, the young rascal has the face to say : " Great father ! you know clearly beforehand That all which I shall say to you is sooth ; I am a most veracious person, and Totally unacquainted with untruth." Zeus laughs heartily to hear his hopeful progeny " give such a plausible account, And every word a lie," but tells him to make restitution. Hermes complies, and gives to Apollo, by way of douceur, the stringed shell ; and then, as with the romantic damsels in the play, a sudden thought strikes them, and they swear an eternal friendship. Many other poems, of which the titles alone have come down to us, were ascribed to Homer. The two or three centuries between Homer and the lyrical poets were filled with a series of epic compositions, by poets of Asia and the Grecian main- land. They are called the Cyclic Poets, and are described by an ancient scholiast " as those who treated, in a circle round the Iliad, the events of previous or subsequent history, or those derived from or connected with Homer's own immediate sub- jects of celebration." They ranged, in truth, from the creation of the world down to the return of the heroes from Troy. Titles, epitomes, and short passages are all we have to show for this immense mass of literature, which, in the dates of its com- position, extends from the period immediately following Homer to the seventh century before Christ, or even a little later. A remarkable fact, to which I have already alluded, in regard to this long series of epics, is that their authors passed by the sub- jects of the Iliad and Odyssey, thus recognizing, not only the superiority of their author, but his indefeasible right to the ground he had occupied ; and this is what the scholiast refers to when he speaks of the " circle round the Iliad." The Homeric poetry was the bright, consummate flower of a poetical existence under favorable circumstances. The mind THE HOMERIC HYMNS. 129 of its author grasped all the knowledge of his age, and saw the picture of human life in its heights and depths clearly reveal- ing itself. He had measured the strength of human passion, and sounded the abysses of the heart. Over all the varied and contrasted scenes which his genius touched, he poured the illumination of a poetic spirit, which still draws to the heroic age of youthful Greece the fiery heart of kindred youth, wher- ever the love of song and the passion for literary culture have rooted themselves. The reign of Homer lasted through the whole existence of the Greeks, and his supremacy is still undis- puted. The wonderful beauty which he breathed into the Ionian speech consecrated it forever in its several stages as the chosen language of what was loveliest and loftiest in thought. In Athens, his works were the basis of literary edu- catic n, and were learned by heart at school. Lyric and dra- matic poets drew from him as from an inexhaustible fountain. jEschylus said that his own works were only the crumbs which he had thankfully gathered up from the Homeric ban- quet. Plato's genius was enriched by the overflowing tide of Homeric thought ; but he wisely chose to be the first of prose- writers, rather than the second of poets. The sculptors and the painters reproduced the fair and august forms which the inward vision of the Chian singer had first seen in their terror and their beauty. When the constructive genius of later times crowned the hill-tops of Hellas and Ionia with those temples, wherein grace and grandeur, massiveness and light- ness, solid strength and delicate proportion, are so exquisitely blended, that their fallen and broken remains are our best teachers, then the forms of men and gods which adorned the outer walls, or dwelt in the marble shrines, were the heroes and gods as Homer had conceived and moulded them. At Dlympia, where all of Hellenic lineage assembled every four years, the statue of Zeus, wrought in ivory and gold by the hand of Pheidias, was the Homeric father of gods and men, from whose head the locks ambrosial waved, and who shook great Olympus with his nod. Tne Acropolis of Athens, the vol. i. 9 130 THE GREEK LANGUAGE A>*D POETRY. central point of religious observance and aesthetic cult are, was an earthly Olympus, peopled with the creations of Homer Thus vast was the influence over every form of human thought and every region of imagination song, painting, plastic art, eloquence, education of that one transcendent mind, which rose with the dawn of European poetry, and filled with its light the morning sky of Ionia. If we compare these works with the great poems of the Gan- ges, we see how strangely the rigid laws of Hellenic taste con- trast with the exaggeration, the mysticism, the gigantic imper- sonation of an overwhelming Nature, the monstrous conception of divine things and supernatural beings, which swell in the current of Sanscrit thought ; and with the loose varieties of rhythmical structure, the languid flow of indeterminate meas- ure, the weak connections, careless transitions, countless epi- sodes, and desperate length, which mark the epic style of the Sanscrit. Here, the powers of nature are brought out of chaos, and overmastered by the spirit of order ; they are freed from the deformities of unbridled imagination, and clothed in the serenest attributes and most graceful forms ; and the scheme of epic composition is brought within those limits of law so well traced out by Aristotle in another branch of poetic art which neither confuse nor exhaust our powers of conception and com- prehension. If we turn westward, the terms of the comparison change. Rome had her early ballads, as Niebuhr has shown, and Ma- caulay has beautifully reconstructed them ; but Virgil, a great ooet, was not a Homer. Mediaeval Europe was vocal with epic minstrelsy ; but the last step was not taken, because the learned and vulgar languages were separated by impassable barriers. While the ballad-monger how like and yet how lifferent from the aoiSos of Ionia was entertaining his rude peasant circles, or cheering the barbaric splendors of the feudal castle with songs in his native dialect, the scholar meditated, m his retirement, some canticle in the forgotten tones of the Roman tongue, and the monk relieved the grim solitude of his THE HOMERIC HYMNS. 181 cloister by turning into uncouth hexameters the tales of fight or foray which he nad picked up in his occasional sallies into the fresh air of the outer world. In this separation of knowl- edge and action, of clerical and lay, of learned and popular, of the cloister and the castle, no Homer could be born. And when the vulgar dialects had fought their way through the obstacles of antiquated Latinity, and had given to the world the singular, but short-lived beauty of Provencal song, when ballad poetry bloomed among the mountain fastnesses of Greece beyond the reach of the Turk, througt the forests of Germany, through the fair fields of Italy and Sicily, ovei sunny France and romantic Spain, in merry England, and through the whole North of Europe, with an affluence of poetic spirit and of epic elements which astonishes us in the great collections of the popular poetry of these countries and lan- guages, still the growth of epic art was broken, and no Homer rose to combine the scattered parts, and to stamp upon them the impress of his uniting and organizing mind. Italy had her Dante, and, later, a long line of great poets of chivalry ; Spain had her Poem of the Cid ; Germany, her Nibelungen song ; England, her Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, rude, strong, and terse, and in her English age, Spenser and Milton, famous poets and illustrious men >ut a Homer was not among them, standing at the head of &. line, giving to a living art its last consummate finish, and teaching, alone and unapproached, the race of kin- dred men that should follow him. The peculiarity of the Iliad and Odyssey may be summed tip in a few words. They hold their place in the natural growth f a popular poetry, embodying in the richest rhythmical forms the heroic life of the ancestry of the poet's own contempo- raries, a life not then too old to come within the range of the popular sympathy ; and they stand, in spirit and substance, in subject and form, in the closest relations with the popular poetry of the Greeks in after time s. One man only, and he in another fcrm of art, holds an equal eminence with Homer. The Greeks seem almost to have 132 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. had a forewarning of the mighty rival who should take the stih vacant height of the double-crested Parnassus, and forever stand by his side. Homer and Shakespeare have alone the right to hold those heaven-kissing stations, inaccessible to other mortal footsteps. Thus far we have considered poetical culture among the Asi- atic Greeks alone. We are not, however, to suppose that the mainland of Hellas was during all this time without the solace of song. No doubt the nations and tribes that remained at home were far behind their brethren in Asia in all that embel- lishes life. Still they had the same character, the same lan- guage, the same ethical ideas. Outward nature was less favor- able. A less genial climate, a harder soil, greater distance from the old civilizations, retarded the growth of the arts at first, although finally a more healthy harvest, of longer duration, was reaped there. At any rate, the epic poetry of Ionia reached the mainland, and circulated wherever the Hellenic race was found. Not long after the age of Homer, there sprang up a style of composition called Epic, mainly because it was written in the epic style and language, but widely differing in sub- stance from both the Iliad and the Odyssey. Hesiod of Ascra, in Boeotia, represents this school or group. His works consist of a poem called the Theogonia, a history of the origin of the Gods and the creation of the world ; the Works and Days, a didactic poem on the duties and occupations of life ; and a Calendar of lucky and unlucky days, for the use of farmers and sailors. Aside from their intrinsic merit as poetical composi- tions, these poems are of high value for the light they throw on the mythological conceptions of those early times, and for the vivid pictures presented by the Works and Days of the hardships and pleasures of daily life, the superstitious observ =mees, the homely wisdom of common experience, and the oroverbial philosophy into which that experience had been ivrought. For the truthfulness of the delineation generally all antiquity vouched ; and there is in the style of expression HESIOD. 133 and tone of thought a racy freshness redolent of the native soil. Another short poem, the Shield of Hercules, is in ex- press imitation of the Shield of Achilles, in the Iliad, and is therefore more epic in spirit as well as in form than those already mentioned. The titles of several other of Hesiod's poems have been preserved. Upon a general survey of these works, we must place their author high among the poets of original genius, but far below Homer, to whom he himself appears to have looked up as to his master. He was a man of keen practical observation, and had drawn from both observation and experience large stores of ethical and religious wisdom. He showed at times great brilliancy of imagination and copiousness and vigor of expression ; but he had not that instinctive sense of the beau- tiful and that natural perfectness of taste which rarely desert- ed Homer. The Ionian epic, again, is wholly objective ; the poet or singer never appears personally, but the subject is all in all. The Boeotian epic is subjective ; the poet's individ- uality is brought frequently and prominently forward. From this peculiarity we know various special facts of the life of Hesiod ; we know something of his family relations ; something of his circumstances ; something of the neighborhood in which he lived, and a good deal of the troubles to which his life was exposed. Sheep-feeding, farming, and poetry were the three Bmployments in which his days were passed. He was a terri- ole grumbler ; he grumbled at the climate of Boeotia, which was intolerable in winter and not to be endured in summer ; he grumbled at the hard soil, which gave such scanty returns to labor; he grumbled at his brother Perses, with whom he had a lawsuit, and the verdict went against him ; he grumbled at judges and jury, whom he accused of corrupt motives in help- ng his brother chouse him out of a part of his inheritance. All parties in this famous dispute owe their immortality to his grumbling hexameters, which contain the only report of the case. Yet when Perses, like the prodigal son, had wasted his ll-gotten substance in riotous living, the grumbling poet did 134 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. what grumbling elders always do, helped him, not only with money, but with good advice. Hesiod was not much of a traveller. The only voyage he made was across the Euripus to Chalcis, over a stream about as wide as Charles River at Brighton Bridge. Of this he says (I use Elton's translation) : " Ne'er o'er the sea's broad way my course I bore, Save once from Aulis to the Eubcean shore. From sacred Greece a mighty army there Lay bound for Troy, wide-famed for women fair. I passed to Chalcis, where around the grave Of King Amphidamas, in combat brave, His valiant sons had solemn games decreed, And heralds loud proclaimed full many a meed. There, let me boast that, victor in the lay, I bore a tripod eared, my prize, away. This to the maids of Helicon I vowed, Where first their tuneful inspiration flowed. Thus far in ships does my experience rise ; Yet bold I speak the wisdom of the skies ; The inspiring Muses to my lips have given The lore of song, and strains that breathe of heaven." Women are especially a favorite theme of complaint with Hesiod. He never spares their extravagance, their giddiness, their love of dress and of gossip. He delights in the story of Pandora and her box. On this topic his tone deepens into the earnestness of personal experience ; and one cannot help think- ing, either that he had been jilted by some Boeotian coquette or that his life had been made discordant by some Ascraear. termagant. The creation of Pandora is thus described : " The Sire who rules the earth and sways the pole Had said, and laughter filled his secret soul. He bade famed Vulcan with the speed of thought Mould plastic clay, with tempering waters wrought ; Inform with voice of man the murmuring tongue, The limbs with man's elastic vigor strung, The aspect fair as goddesses above, A virgin's likeness with the brows of love. He bade Minerva teach the skill that sheds A thousand colors in the eliding threads : HESIOD. 1 86 Bade lovely Venus breathe around her face The charm of air, the witchery of grace ; Bade Hermes last implant the craft refined Of thievish manners and a shameless mind." They proceed with their work : " Then by the wise interpreter of heaven The name Pandora to the maid was given ; Since all in heaven conferred their gifts to charm, For man's inventive race, this beauteous harm." Notwithstanding our poet's misogamy, such is the power of truth over the most obdurate mind, he relents, and gives some very good advice about the choice of a wife'. The proper age for a man to be married is, according to him, thirty, and for the bride sixteen. He concludes this topic by saying : " No better lot has Providence assigned Than a fair woman with a virtuous mind." But, apparently remembering his inconsistency, he adds : " Nor can a worse befall, than when thus fate Allots a worthless, feast-contriving mate." Some of his didactic passages are worth repeating. " Now haste afield : now bind thy sheafy corn, And earn thy food by rising with the morn. Lo ! the third portion of thy labor's cares The early morn anticipating shares. In early morn the labor swiftly wastes ; In early morn the speeded journey hastes ; The time when many a traveller tracks the plain, And the yoked oxen bend them to the wain." Among the maxims of good manners, he says you must not pare your nails at table, enouncing it with a sort of Pythago- rean and oracular solemnity. " When in the fane the feast of gods is laid, Ne'er to thy five-branched hand apply the blade Of sable iron ; from the fresh forbear The dry excrescence at the board to pare." On the somewhat ancient subject of industry he says: 136 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. " Love every seemly toil, that so the store Of foodful seasons heap thy garner's floor From labor men returns of wealth behold ; Flocks in their fields, and in their coffere gold. From labor shalt thou with the love be bleat Of men and gods ; the slothful they detest. Not toil, but sloth, shall ignominious be ; Toil, and the slothful man shall envy thee. The idler never shall his garners fill, Nor he that still defers and lingers still. Lo ! diligence can prosper every toil ; The loiterer strives with loss, and execrates the soil." Of evil speaking he says : " Lo, the best treasure is a frugal tongue ; The lips of moderate speech with grace are hung. The evil speaker shall perpetual fear Return of evil ringing in his ear." The description of winter is not inappropriate to the passing season. " Beware the January month ; beware Those hurtful days, that keenly piercing air Which flays the herds, those frosts that bitter sheathe The nipping air and glaze the ground beneath. From Thracia, nurse of steeds, comes rushing forth, O'er the broad sea, the whirlwind of the North, And moves it with his breath ; then howl the shores Of earth, and long and loud the forest roars. He lays the oak of lofty foliage low, Tears the thick pine-trees from the mountain's brow, And strews the valleys with their overthrow. He stoops to earth ; shrill swells the storm around. And all the vast wood rolls a deeper roar of sound." With one passage more I close my citations from Hesiod. It is a part of the battle between the Gods and the Giants, which Milton imitated and improved in his description of the conflict with the fallen angels. " And now the Titans in close ranks arrayed What hands and force could do, each host displayed. The illimitable ocean roared around ; HESIOD. 137 EartL wailed ; the shaken heaven sent forth a sound Of groans ; while huge Olympus from his base Rocked with the onset of the immortal race. E'en shadowy hell perceived the horrid blows, Trembling beneath the tumult as it rose ; Such rushing of quick feet, such clanging jar Of javelins hurled impetuous from afar, As soared the din of conflict to the skies, And hosts joined battle with astounding cries. And Jove incensed no longer brooked control ; He put forth all his might, full filled his soul With valiance, and at once from heaven's bright i sad And dark Olympus' top he thundering strode ; Lightnings and bolts terrific from his hand Flew swift and frequent, wrapping sea and land In sacred flames ; all-bounteous earth, amazed, Howled burning, while her mighty forests blazed. Forthwith began the land and sea to steam ; The fiery breath of ocean's boiling stream Involved the Titans ; flames rose through the skies To blast with splendor dire the Titans' eyes ; And when at last the light through chaos gleamed, Such the concussion, such the uproar seemed, As if the earth and heavens together blending The one torn up, the other down descending Had met ; whereat, upsprang the winds of air, And whirled the dust-clouds 'mid the lightning's glare. Wind, thunder, lightning, from the hand of Jove, Their track of ruin through mid-battle drove. Loud and stupendous thus the raging fight, Whilst warred the Titans with an equal might. At length the battle turns. Cottus the fierce, Gyges and Briareus, through mid-ranks pierce ; From their strong arms three hundred rocks they throw, And with these monstrous darts o'ercloud the foe ; Then forced the Titans deep beneath the ground, And with afflictive chains the rebels bound. Despite their pride, beneath the earth they lie, Far as that earth is distant from the sky." Numerous other poems, genealogical or local in their subjects and character, fill up the century after Hesiod, but fall not within the range of either the Homeric or the Hesiodic school. 138 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. as they relate to individuals or the legends of particular places. They belong, however, to the same great and prolific period of Hellenic poetry, the productions of which may be distributed under six heads : 1. The earliest form, the religious poetry, of which nothing remains ; 2. Epic ballads before Homer, of which we have traces in Homer, and perhaps a specimen in the song of Demodocus at the court of King Alcinoiis, in the Odyssey ; 3. The Iliad and Odyssey, which fortunately remain ; 4. Hymns and other minor poems, of which a considerable number remain ; 5. The Cyclic epics, filling out the circle in which the Iliad and Odyssey stood, of which the titles, some passages, and some brief summaries are preserved ; 6. The Hesiodic poems, or those of the Boeotian school, didactic, mythological, and heroic ; 7. Genealogical, local, and individual narratives, in the epic manner, of which considerable notices remain. The period commences at an indefinite antiquity, and extends to the middle of the seventh century before Christ. In all discussions of the poetry of the Greeks in the next great period (the lyrical), the subject of Greek music holds a prominent place. As Mr. Pickwick said of Chinese meta- physics, it is a very abstruse subject to one who is not favored with what is called a musical ear, and equally so to one who is. It is doubted whether the art of music among the ancients was founded on the deep scientific principles which underlie that of the last fifty years ; and yet its influence was held to be so important, that philosophers and legislators regarded it as en- tering deeply into the structure of political society. The musical element of time largely influenced the common pro- nunciation of the language, and poetical rhythm was wholly founded upon it ; so that between language and music there must have been a closer connection than can exist in our modern systems. In this combination of power, the over- ruling element was the language through which the idea was conveyed. The separation of the two was regarded as a cor- ruption of art, most pernicious to morals. And when, in th GREEK MUSIC. 139 process of lime, the instruments were multiplied and their compass enlarged, and the exact sense of poetic speech began to lose itself in floods of vague sentiment, excited by voluptu- ous sound, then the conservative philosophers, statesmen, and poets set themselves agains^ these innovations, and punished with heavy penalties the innovators as the corrupters of youth. The old airs of the Homeric rhapsodists, and the tunes which nerved the neroes who fought at Marathon, were placed in contrast with the enervating compositions of Phrynnis. The moral degeneracy which marked the later periods of Greek history was traced, by philosophers and satirists alike, to the corruption which had glided into the heart through the melt- ing tones of a luxuriant and over-refined music. Plato and Aristophanes, agreeing in few other things, agree in this. But the new men carried the day ; and in the public delivery of lyric and choral poetry, all the resources of the art, and all the varieties of instrumental accompaniment which the inventive genius of that age had devised, were carefully and ingeniously combined ; so that the exhibition became quite a different affair from the simple arrangement of the old Homeric masters and the earlier Doric choruses. The Oriental nations have always been deeply susceptible to musical influences ; but I suppose their music would not now be highly esteemed by the composers of Europe. The germs of the art came into Hellas with the first settlers, who brought also the simplest instrument, the four-stringed lyre, the only accompaniment of the epic song. Three strings were added by Terpander ; and the lyre was finally enlarged to two or even three octaves. This and the flute were the principal in- struments of the Greek orchestra. Most of the changes came in from Asia Minor in the seventh, sixth, and fifth centuries before Christ, and were contemporaneous with the changes in the form and spirit of Greek poetry. The different styles of music were thought to express the qualities of the races which respectively affected them ; and they were artfully and sys- tematically adapted by the poets to the classes and kinds of emotion intended to be expressed in their compositions. 140 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. One finds it hard to understand the power attributed to music by the ancients. Athenseus relates that Cleinias the Pythago- rean, when he felt himself moved to anger, touched the cithern, and said, irpavvofiat, I appease myself. According to Plu- tarch, Terpander was sent for to quell a sedition by his music. Solon roused the Athenians to renew the war against the Me- gareans by singing a few verses. Pythagoras prevented an in- dignant young gentleman inflamed with wine from setting fire to the house of his mistress, who had jilted him, by making a flute-player perform a spondaic rhythm in the neighborhood. The Dorians moved to battle, as Milton says, to the sound of flutes and soft recorders. In the war with the Messenians, Tyrtaeus restored the flagging fortunes of the Lacedaemonians by playing a Phrygian air. Music was also used as a medi- cine. Asclepiades cured deafness by the sound of a trumpet Thaletas cured the plague, and Xenocrates restored maniacs to reason, by the sound of instruments. Theophrastus asserts that music is a remedy for dejection, mental disorder, and the gout. Galen proposes that the flute should be played upon the aching part. The Tyrrhenians, tender-hearted souls, flogged their slaves to the sound of the flute. Quintilian says that music is the gift of nature, to enable man the more patiently to sup- port the ills of his condition. And poets, from Pindar down to Shakespeare, have denounced in unmeasured terms the un- fortunates who are not musical. " The wretches whom immortal Jove Deigns not to honor with his love, Hear in confusion the Pierian strain On earth or in the mighty main." Shakespeare or rather the lovesick Lorenzo sitting in the moonshine says : " The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved by concord of sweet sounds Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils ; The motions of his spirits are dull as night And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted." GREEK MUSIC. 141 Pretty words these for a young gentleman who has just robbed a doting old father of his daughter and his ducats ! The details of Greek music are given to some extent by tte ancients themselves. The subject was very ably touched upon by Aristotle ; Aristoxenus, a contemporary of his, wrote a work in three books, called the Elements of Harmonics ; Euclid, the mathematician, treated the subject geometrically ; Nicomachus wi Ae a Manual of Harmony ; Alypius, a later writer, a Musical Introduction, chiefly occupied with a technical account of the modes, intervals, and scales ; Gaudentius, also a late writer, wrote a Musical Introduction ; Baccheius, an Introduction to the Art of Music, a sort of catechism on the subject ; and Aris- teides Quintilianus, three books concerning Music. Plutarch, also, has on the subject a very interesting, though somewhat confused dialogue, valuable for recording many curious histor- ical facts. If we do not understand Greek music, it may be our own fault; but at all events, I know from personal ex- perience having read the authors conscientiously through that it is emphatically the pursuit of knowledge under diffi- culties. It was generally supposed that not a note of the old Greek music had been preserved, except some faint reminiscence of it, perhaps, in the four styles of chant in the Greek Church, unquestionably handed down from a high antiquity. But in the sixteenth century three Greek hymns were found in an old manuscript, with a musical notation, in the diatonic kind and Lydian mode. A fourth scrap was published in the sev- enteenth century by Father Kircher, having been found by him in a Sicilian monastery. It contains the first eight verses of the first Pythian Ode of Pindar, with the musical arrange- ment, in the Lydian mode. It has been reduced to the modern notation by Burette, Burney, Marpurg, Forkel, and lastly by Boeckh, the learned editor of Pindar, and author of an admi- rable and most incomprehensible essay on that poet's music Anxious to form some idea of those effects which had alarmeJ philosophers and controlled the policy of sovereign states, I 142 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. persuaded a skilful hand to try it on the piano. The musical world has gained little by disinterring from their sepulchre these unearthly notes. The result of the experiment was like that of the classical banquet in Peregrine Pickle. The listeners were all reminded of the old hymn, " Hark ! from the tombs a doleful sound." 1 have no idea that it would be fair to judge of the music of the Greeks by these doubtful fragments. They must have attained a comparative excellence in the art, or all the ancients who have touched upon the subject were under a delusion. It is doubtful whether they possessed harmony, in the modern sense, though the word constantly occurs in their treatises. Yet they played with both hands on stringed instruments of considerable compass ; they united many voices of different qualities, and combined several kinds of instruments ; but they fell far short of the modern orchestra in variety and power. Intimately connected with the musical accompaniment, in the representation of the lyric composition and the choral part of the drama, was the orchestric, or rhythm and harmony of motion. This, too, like the music of the cithara, dates from the earliest times, and is elaborately described by Ho- mer. When they appease the wrath of Apollo, it is done with music, song, and dance. On the shield of Achilles, a prominent group represents a chorus of youths performing a Daedalian dance. The suitors of Penelope soften the rigors of delay with music and the dance. Odysseus is entertained at the court of Alcinoiis by a beautiful exhibition of dancing. Dancing was connected with religion, with festivity, with pub- lic celebrations of every kind, all over the ancient world. David ianced before the ark, though his wife upbraided him for such an unseemly exhibition ; and Sophocles danced round the altar, in the paean composed in honor of the victory of Salamis. This art, cultivated by all nations, was most cultivated bv the Greeks. It was carefully adapted to express the varying amotions of the mind, by the application of well-defined prin GREEK MUSIC. 143 ciples of art. To famous dancers golden crowns were decreed, and to some even statues were raised. Lyric poetry had all these accompaniments, and was set off by all these ornaments. It was written to be represented in this threefold manner. The poetry, however, always held the first place, and possessed the highest dignity. The others were ancillary arts, never wholly emancipated from the supremacy of the elder and more illustri- ous child of the imagination. The poetry of the ancients we still feel as a living presence ; but their music and dancing have passed away, with the vibrations which their momentary existence impressed upon the air. There were certain general ideas which the ancient teach- ers and philosophers included in their conception of music, giving it an extension quite beyond the modern meaning of the term. They considered man as placed in the centre of an harmonious universe. As he looked upon the objects of nature, their colors not only pleased him by their variety, but combined in an harmonious effect upon his organs of vision. The sounds of nature, the song of birds, the voices of the winds and the waves, filled his ear agreeably, and im- pressed his mind with an indefinite sense of harmony. EV>rms also the varying surface of the earth, the outlines of the hills, the myriad varieties of trees, animals, and men, the ever shifting, ever beautiful clouds, flitting across the sky stirred within him a rhythmical perception which did not wholly dis- tinguish itself from the harmony of sound. These objects, too, are in life and motion ; and this motion, indeterminate as it may be, has a regularity and a rhythmical progress ; while some of the objects of nature which strike the senses the earliest and the most deeply the stars, for instance move on in their silent courses in such solemn order, that the imagination of man, in the primitive ages, conceived an unheard music of the spheres, which the philosophers themselves did not refuse to believe ; and the moral adaptation between man and the world constituted an ethical harmony, never to be lost sight of when ve endeavor to reproduce to our minds the thoughts, feelings, 144 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. and speculations of the ancient world. On these primitive harmonies the fine arts were built. Harmony of form ripened into sculpture, architecture, and plastic art generally ; harmony of color, combined with form, was embodied in painting and the arts of design ; harmony of sound found its artistic expres- sion in music, poetical rhythm, and impassioned expression in oratory ; harmony of motion was brought into order and system in the rhythmical and modulated movements of the dancer, and in the refinements of the orchestric art. But there was a deeper harmony still, that blended all these special rhythms into one, and constituted that music which the ancients conceived of as the basis of civilization and the essence of instruction. To them the natural man was not the savage running naked in the woods, but the man whose senses, imagi- nation, and reason are unfolded to their highest reach ; whose bodily forces and mental powers are in equipoise, and in full and healthy action ; who has the keenest eye, the surest hand, the truest ear, the richest voice, the loftiest and most rhyth- mical step ; whose passions, though strong, are held in check ; whose moral nature runs into no morbid perversions, and whose intellectual being is robustly developed ; whose life moves on in rhythmical accord with God, nature, and man, with no discord, except to break its monotony, and to be re- solved in the harmony of its peaceful and painless close. This is the ideal being, whose nature is unfolded without disease, imperfection, or sin, to perpetual happiness and joy. This is the ideal education, such as the ancient teachers conceived it. This is the ideal music into which all the harmonies of the world were blended. This is the ideal man, the musical man Df whose possibility the ancient philosophers dreamed. LECTURE IX. IONIAN LYRIC POETRY. The period of Greek poetry on which we are now entering is a brilliant one ; but the numerous works which filled it exist, with few exceptions, only in fragments. In time, it ex- tends from the eighth century B. C. down to the flourishing age of Athenian letters. It has usually been called the lyrical period, a designation sufficiently accurate for general use. With the exception of Pindar's works, the poetry of the Greek lyrists is found only in passages quoted by other writ- ers, rhetoricians, grammarians, scholiasts, and especially in the work of Athenseus, a learned Greek of Naucratis in Egypt, who lived in the third century after Christ. As we are in- debted to this scholar for many curious particulars relating to the ancients, as well as for passages from about eight hun- dred authors, a brief notice of his work will not be out of place here. It is called the Deipnosophistse, or Philosophers at Supper, and is cast in the dialogue form, which, as is well known, was a favorite species of composition with the ancients. It professes to be an account of an entertainment given at the house of Laurentius, a noble Roman, among whose guests are Athenaeus, Galen the medical writer, and Ulpian the lawyer. The conversations and the plot in general are managed with none of the dramatic skill and lifelikeness that belong to Plato's works ; and to make the whole scheme more clumsy still in point of art, the dialogues purport tc have been related to Timo- crates, a friend of the author. It extends through fifteen books some of them preserved only in epitomes and fills more than a thousand octavo pages ; yet it gives the conversations at VOL. I 10 146 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. a single feast. The entertainment itself embraces the products of every season, country, and climate ; and the interlocutors must have thought of each other, as Eve thought of Adam, " With thee conversing, I forget all time." The discussions are as various as the dishes. Athenseus was at once a scholar and an epicure. He was familiar with the old literature and the recent science of the Greeks. He had the works of the authors at his tongue's end, and knew the criticisms of the Logotheroi the word-hunters of the Alexandrian schools, who, however they quarrelled with one another, were on the best terms with a man who kept so good a table He was equally learned in all the qualities of the juice of the grape , he knew the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the game of the woodland, fen, and mountain, and the denizens of the farm- yard, in their zoological and gastronomical relations. His book, therefore, is a vast assemblage of racy anecdotes, and quota- tions from poets, historians, philosophers, physicians, upon the fine arts and the art of cookery, upon poetry and natu- ral history, upon fish, crabs, oysters, comedy, and tragedy. In one department alone, that of the middle comedy, he had nade extracts from eight hundred plays ; and as he wrote at a time when ancient literature had as yet sustained no heavy losses, his book contains fragments of many authors whose works but for him would have utterly perished. It is to him that we are indebted for the anecdotes of the illustrious glutton Apicius, who embarked for Africa in search of lobsters, but, having ascertained, as he drew near the coast, that African lobsters were no larger than those he had eaten in Italy, re- turned without landing. As the three great leading nationalities came separately for ward in the lyrical period, and stamped themselves upon their poetical works, it seems natural to divide these works accord- ing to the national characteristics, and to the dialects which now asserted severally an independent existence and a classical ank. These subdivisions then will be: 1. The Ionian poetry, 2. The ^Eolian poetry ; 3. The Dorian poetry. A correspond IONIAN LYRIC POETRY. 147 ing subdivision of styles should also be made. The character- istic form of the Ionian of this period is the elegiac distich, or alternate hexameter and pentameter, differing from the epic versification by taking one foot from every alternate line. The characteristic form of the ^Eolian poetry is the strophic com- position, that is, the combination of several different verses, and their regular recurrence in the same order, so that the antistrophe always corresponds with the strophe. The char- acteristic form of the Doric poetry is the choral composition, in which to the strophe and antistrophe of the jEolians a third part, called the epode, was added, closing the measure. The elegiac composition admitted no further variety of form than the alternating hexameter and pentameter. The other two kinds were susceptible, within the form of art assigned to them, of a great variety. The Doric, with its three rhythmical ele- ments, and its four or five musical modes, gave scope for the greatest variety of all, in the permutations and combinations by which these elements and modes could be interlaced. The elegiac form is the oldest ; the Ionian poets who employed it coming directly after the epic age, and being closely connected in language and style with the poetry of that age. The JElo- lian has a less direct relation to the parent stem, and is wholly independent of it in dialect and in rhythmical form. The Dorian begins at a considerably later period, and is even more jroadly marked as to structure and language, as to rhyth- mical form and dialectic peculiarity. But all three speaking in general terms may be regarded as contemporaneous for a considerable part of their literary existence. The Doric, how- ever, outlived the JEolian, passed into the age of Athenian lit- erature, and came to be considered in a special manner as the 'anguage and the form of lyric poetry, consecrated peculiarly o that department of the art. In the heroic times, a system of monarchy or hereditary "lie, embracing within itself the germs out of which sprang the complex variety of later constitutions, had been established ; the orders of society being kings, nobles, freemen, and slaves. The L46 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. first two orders in the state underwent many changes, and in the historical democracies were finally abolished ; the last two remained undisturbed. The long absence of so many chief- tains in the Trojan war, and the extensive migrations which took place in the two following centuries, tended to overthrow the anciently universal system, although the traditions of the old heroic authorities were carried across the iEgean, and the political forms were renewed with diminished strength in the islands and on the Asiatic shore. Aristocracies, oligarchies, and tyrannies ensued ; the heads of these shifting polities being generally self-made men, or descendants of the old houses who had gone over to the popular party. The history of this period is obscure in its details, for want of documents. But through the general darkness we discern some brilliant points, whence light is thrown abroad ; here and there a splendid capital and court ; centres of literature and art ; places illumined by re- nowned names of poets and their patrons, as Samos by that of Polycrates, Corinth by that of Periander, Mitylene by that of Pittacus, Athens by that of Peisistratus. Commercial wealth had brought in all the ministers of luxury, and furnished the usurpers with the revenues that enabled them to sup- port the troops of poets of which their retinues and private circles consisted. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Ho- meric style of dealing with poetical subjects became a little old-fashioned ; that literature and language underwent numer- ous and important changes, branching out into novel forms, modes, and tastes, revelling, as it were, in a lavish luxuriance of manifold expression. These political changes tended on the one hand to democracy, and on the other to aristocracy and monarchy, as individual freedom or despotic will became the prevailing element. The former ended in the legislation of Solon and the democratic constitution of Athens ; the latter, in the iron legislation of Lycurgus and the double-headed royaltv of Sparta. The Ionian race cherished a political freedom, extending to the liberty of the individual citizen. The Dori- ans contemplated freedom in relation to the body politic, buf IONIAN LYEIC POETRY. 149 wholly sacrificed the individual to the general good. The Mo- lians, politically speaking, were absorbed by the other two. These diverging tendencies were not strong enough to destroy the consciousness of a common bond in the Hellenic spirit, and a sense of difference which broadly separated all from the outside barbarian world. With the increasing development of these nationalities, the feeling of Hellenism, of an affinity which united them all together, became deeper and more intense. A general idea of the geographical relations of these races or nationalities, on the Grecian mainland and the Asiatic shore, has been already given. Their colonies, however, extended along the shores of the Propontis, the Euxine, Thrace, and Macedonia ; and passed over to Lower Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, and the coasts of Africa, Spain, and Gaul. But however im- portant this colonial extension was in a political point of view, it had little bearing on poetical literature. I mention it now, only to show in a word the great sweep which the Greek lan- guage and culture were taking over the world, preparing for that universal empire over literature which Athenian genius finally asserted. Another general remark should be made here. Each dialect was consecrated to a special kind of poetical composition. The old Ionic was the language of the epic ; the later, of the ele- giac ; the jEolic, first cultivated for a particular species of lyric poetry, namely, the strophic, continued the special lan- guage of that species ; the Doric, first refined for literary pur- poses in choral composition, remained ever after the language of that poetical style ; and neither the Doric nor the ^Eolic was ever used for epic composition,, though poets of all three races wrote in all the poetical forms. Thus the poetical literature actually existing in these three dialects is not in all cases the work of the nations speaking them. These three types, while agreeing in those qualities that made them all Hellenic, had each its own moral and intellect- ual physiognomy. The causes of these varieties analogous to what we see around us every day and everywhere lie 150 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. beyond the limits of our investigation ; the facts and results are all that we can pretend to fathom. Ionian life, under the lovely skies of Western Asia and on the isles that crown the jEgean deep, has already been in part described. The senses of the Ionian were keen, and his sensibility to beauty, whether of nature or of the human form, was ever vivid. His clear and sunny spirit was kindled by an insatiable curiosity, which made him, on the one hand, a patient listener to the long-drawn 6tories of the epic singers, and, on the other, an acute observer of the phenomena of nature which were witnessed around him in their fullest beauty and splendor. His external prosperity until it was overshadowed by the Lydians and Persians and the freedom he enjoyed in his political relations gave full scope to the natural and national expression of his heart and his passions. In the later period of decline, the joyousness of the Ionian was tempered by the pale cast of introspective med- itation. He became a sorrowful egotist and a sentimental vo- luptuary. He was a good observer of the actions of men, and readily fathomed their motives. The expression of the indi- vidual sentiment, therefore, and of ethical or political wisdom, or of plaintive woes, and despair most musical, most melan- choly, took the place, in Ionia, of that unconscious reflection of the world of nature and the world of man which so marked the elder epic. To adopt the German phrase, the Ionian passed from the objective to the subjective. The original Ionian of Attica removed at first from the blandishments of Asia, and afterwards from the crushing weight of Asiatic despotism, living on a soil which required labor to till it, and made commerce needful to supply the defi- ciency of its scanty productiveness laid the foundation of his culture in deeper qualities, built up a prosperity of a slower growth, but on a more solid basis, and grew into a hardier and stronger style of man than the Ionian of Asia. The Athenian character resembled that of the Ionian of Asia in its general outlines, especially in taste for beauty and genius for art ; but added the element of stability, gathered from longer and IONIAN LYRIC POETRY. 151 Harder struggles with a less bountiful Nature. The poetry of the Ionian belongs partly to Asia, and partly to the mainland ; and while it is all Ionian, it has shades of variety in tone, spirit, and style, borrowed from the influences of nature and of political condition. The earliest rhythm, I have said, was the elegiac ; but the trochaic, iambic, and anapaestic were changes which the Ionian rhythmical systems underwent in rapid suc- cession, and all these were used by most of the Ionian writei s on either side the ^Egean Sea. I will name one or two of these poets, quoting a few speci- mens of the fragments which remain. The first is Callinus the Ephesian, who belongs to the latter part of the eighth century before Christ. The invention of the elegiac distich is attrib- uted to him. An invasion of Asia Minor, and the destruction of several of the most flourishing Ionian cities, are the events alluded to in the few passages four fragments in all which we have. The longest is part of a fine war-elegy, much in the Btyle of Tyrtaeus. I read the translation by H. N. Coleridge " How long will ye slumber ? when will ye take heart And fear the reproach of your neighbors at hand ? Fie ! comrades, to think ye have peace for your part, Whilst the sword and the arrow are wasting our land ! Shame ! grasp the shield close ! cover well the bold breast ! Aloft raise the spear as ye march on the foe ! With no thought of retreat, with no terror confessed, Hurl your last dart in dying, or strike your last blow. O, 't is noble and glorious to fight for our all, For our country, onr children, the wife of our love ! Death comes not the sooner ; no soldier shall fall, Ere his thread is spun out by the sisters above. Once to die is man's doom ; rush, rush to the fight ! He cannot escape, though his blood were Jove's owu. For a while let him cheat the shrill arrow by flight ; Fate will catch him at last in his chamber alone. Unlamented he dies ; unregretted. Not so, When, the tower of his couatry, in death falls the brave ; Thrice hallowed his name amongst all, high or low, As with blessings alive, so with tears in the grave." 152 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. Archilochus, the Parian, stands next in point of time, his life extending from 728 B. C. to 660, sixty-eight years. Next to Homer, he was the most celebrated poet of the early Greeks. A Delphic oracle foretold to his father his future fame in song. An epigram, still extant, says it was fortunate for Homer that Archilochus gave his genius to the inferior kinds of poetry. Longinus speaks of his divine inspiration. But his malice and evil temper were as famous as his poetical gifts ; and the cir- cumstances and mishaps of his life gave unusual scope to these unamiable qualities. He has the bad eminence of having been the first to degrade literary talent to the slander of private character. Though belonging on his father's side to one of the noblest families of Paros, his mother, Enipo, was a slave. Early in his life a fair daughter of Lycambes, a Parian citizen, named Neobule, had captivated the fiery heart of the poet. She was promised to him in marriage, but for some unexplained reason the promise was not kept. When he found himself in the un- pleasant situation of a rejected lover, instead of making the best of it, and affecting to congratulate himself on his fortunate escape, as a sensible man would have done, he fell into a hor- rible passion, and attacked the whole family in a series of iambic and epodic invectives, some of which were publicly recited at the festivals, charging father and daughters with every conceivable vice and crime, and keeping up the accu- sations with dogged and diabolical pertinacity. In one of his fragments he says : " One great thing I know, The man who wrongs me to requite with woe." He kept his word. Under this extraordinary and till then unheard-of style of persecution, Lycambes and his daughters, finding life a burden too heavy to be borne, made a family party and hanged themselves ; the lady of his love choosing the alternative of a noose without him rather than with him. If her choice lay between these extremes, she chose wisely ; but it seems an extraordinary compliment to pay to the power ot a venomous pen. In that age, however, literary invective IONIAN LYRIC POETRY. 153 against private character was a novelty ; and when the shafts were winged by poetic fancy, they seemed as terrible and in- evitable as the fatal arrows of the silver-bowed Apollo. His native island shared in his invectives, whether because Neobule had lived there, or because he was not held in the estimation he thought he deserved, a very common source of hatred in such minds. *" Away," he says, " with Paros, her figs and fishy life." From Paros he went to Thasos, and, taking part in a battle there against the invading Thracians, he incurred the disgrace of losing his shield. Instead of hush- ing the matter up, he must needs proclaim it to the world in a poem, imitated afterwards by Horace, to whom the same acci dent happened at Philippi : " Some Saian triumphs that he has the shield I dropped while running from the battle-field, Unwilling dropped ; but let the bull-hide go, Another shield will do as well, I trow." But, after all, he did not feel quite right towards an island that had witnessed his disgrace, and he thus avenged himself: " Like the sharp backbone of an ass it stood, That rugged isle, o'ergrown with shaggy wood; No leafy grove, no lawn for poet's dream Is there like those by Siris' pleasant stream." When he visited Sparta, the authorities, taking a different view of shield-dropping, as was shown by the Spartan mother, who said to her son as she handed him his shield, "Either with this or on it," ordered him to leave the city in an hour. He was a restless vagabond, wandering about wherever Greeks were to be found, and making himself and others unhappy everywhere. Finally he returned to his native island, and was killed in an affray with the neighboring Naxians. His poetical genius was remarkable for richness, strength, and versatility. His style reached the highest degree of force and elegance. As an iambic writer, he held undisputed the foremost rank. The severity and caustic satire which filled his works with their poison are justified by Dion Chrysostomus, who says that 154 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. they were intended to make men better, and were more effec- tive in accomplishing this purpose than the eulogistic spirit that warms the poetry of Homer. As an artist he was one of the most distinguished intellects of that great age. His inventive power was shown, not only in the splendor of his imagination, but in the many exquisite rhythmical forms with which he enriched the language. The ancient critics arranged his writings under seven classes. About two hundred fragments of them are found scattered through more than a hundred authors, some of a few words only, and the longest of only a few verses. The following seven trochaic verses, in which the poet addresses his own soul, and braces himself to bear the ills of life, show his better side : " Soul, my soul, with helpless sorrows overladen and distraught, Bear thee firm, to hostile hosts a manly heart opposing ; When the foeman's shafts fall thickest, motionless thy post maintain ; If victorious, yield thee not to open triumph overmuch ; Nor, if conquered, cast thee down, at home thy doleful lot bewailing ; But in pleasures take thy pleasance, and in evils bear thy sorrow, Nor too much, but understand the rhythm that governs mortal men." The following trochaics, apart from their poetry, have an in- terest, as showing the effects of an eclipse, a then unexplained phenomenon, on the imagination of the poet : " Naught can now be unexpected, nothing with an oath denied, Nothing fill our hearts with wonder, since the Olympian father Zeus Night hath hung for noonday brightness, hiding all the glorious light Of the blazing sun in heaven, and on man hath terror fallen ; All things henceforth credence find, wonders all surprise no more. Nor let any mortal, seeing, marvel at the unwonted sight, Though the wild beasts with the dolphins their sea-pastures interchange ; And to them who loved the mountain and the woodland wilds to haunt, DeareT have the sounding billows of the surging sea become." Three verses have been preserved from the description of a storm, said to be part of a poem on that Thracian war in which the poet lost his shield : " Glaucus, look ! the deep sea heaves already with its yeasty waves, And, around the headlands bending, stands the pile of thunder-clouds, Sign of storm, and sudden terror overspreads the land and sea." IONIAN LYRIC POETRY. 155 Liike all the poets of his time, indeed, like all Greek poets of all times, Archilochus had steeped his mind in the poetry of Homer, whose thoughts and turns of expression here and there shine out in the texture of the Parian poet's composition, but not in such a way as to impair the vivid effect of his origi- nality. For there is little resemblance between the wise equa- bility of the spirit of Homer, whose mighty heart lovingly embraced every form of life and every joy and sorrow of man, and the imperious will, the violent inconsistency, the gusts of passion shifting from fierce love to fiercer hate, and driving the objects of both to despair and self-murder; between the pervading cheerfulness that gladdens earth, sea, and sky in the Homeric world, and the moody gloom that avenges wounded pride and thwarted will, by loading the fair islands of Greece, the witnesses of the poet's fancied wrong and real shame, with bitter taunts and contemptuous epithets ; between the calm sense of enjoyment, the judicious but hearty moderation, which Homer everywhere sets forth, and the desperate rush to the drunkard's bowl, draining it to the bottom, the frantic plunge into the abyss of sensuality, the self-inflicted tortures, which wasted so much of the life of Archilochus. Yet sometimes the unrest of his spirit was calmed by the bland influences of the enchanting nature around him. The sudden contrasts and shifting pictures of that half-oriental sea and earth and sky drove out the evil demons that haunted his spirit, and furnished it with the superb imagery in which his better moods are clothed. The unalterable march of destiny in the affairs of the world sometimes overcame him with a sacred awe ; and his verse, seized with befitting earnestness, rises to a dignity worthy of the stately theme. This is the aspect of his poetical char- acter which has an interest for us. Another noted poet of Ionia was Mimnermus the Colopho- nian. He flourished later than Archilochus, being a con- temporary of Solon the Lawgiver, who, in one of his extant fragments, addresses him by name. Little is known of his personal history, except that he had, or professed to have, a 156 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. passion for a flute-player named Nanno, to whom some of his poems were addressed. In the hands of Mimnermus the elegy became less warlike, and more exclusively the expression of sorrow and lamentation. The gloomy circumstances of Ionia at this time, and gloomier forebodings for the future, had their share in producing this result, by acting on the nervous tem- perament of the poet. It often happens that public calamity overwhelms private virtue, by breaking the bonds that hold society together. In war and pestilence, while death is stalk- ing through the land, men strive to drown the sense of over- hanging doom by snatching a fearful joy from reckless volup- tuousness, while there is yet left a breath of life. It is only after the storm is past, and men, returning to their senses, reflect on the moral of the disaster, and seek to repair the ruin, that the law of God reasserts its supremacy. In the mean time, literature breathes the spirit of sensuality, unsatisfied desire, impatience of the present, and weariness of life under its accu- mulating load of evils. It was under just these circumstances that Mimnermus appeared in Ionia. He was extremely sus- ceptible to outward influences, plunging into the gayety of the hour, but with a constant feeling of its vanity, drinking deeply of the cup of pleasure, but knowing well the disappoint- ment and dreariness that were sure to follow. His constant topics were the helplessness of man, the uncertainty of his hap- piness, and the wretchedness of old age. For all these, love and wine are the only solace ; and. when the time for these is gone, life is no longer worth the keeping. The contrast between him and Solon is well drawn in this fragment of a dialogue : Mimnermus. " O that my days, free from disease or woe, On placid waters down life's stream may flow ; And when their course shall reach its sixtieth year, Death's friendly sleep may close my sojourn here." Solon. " Bear with me, gentle Colophonian friend, If I one sentence of thy wish would mend ; The life oi man, on terms like these begun, Its prosperous course full eighty years may run." IONIAN LYRIC POETRY. 157 The following specimen will give some idea of the poetical character of Mimnermus : " We are like leaves that are thickly put forth in flowery spring-tide, When in the beams of the sun gorgeously grow they anew ; Like to these for a span, with blossoms of earliest manhood, Take we our pleasure and joy, taught by the gods neither ill, Neither good, while close by our side the black fates are standing ; One is holding the end, gloomy and sorrowful age; Death's term holdeth the other ; the fruit of our youth swift decayeth. Swift as over the earth speedeth the light of the sun. When already is past and gone the sweet prime of our being, Then, 0, then is to die better than longer to live ! For to the heart many agonies come ; at one time possession Vanishes wasted away ; sorrows of want take its place. One is unblest with offspring, the chiefest desire of his bosom, And to the regions below, childless to Hades descends; Life-wearing sickness another endures, nor is there a mortal Unto whom Zeus giveth not manifold evils to bear." This specimen may represent the poet's general turn of thought, but not that grace and elegance of style which wer* celebrated among the ancients. Simonides of Ceos belongs both to the Doric and to the Ionic poets. His name fills a large space in the literary annals of this age. He was born about the middle of the sixth century B.C., and his literary labors embrace every species of composition known in his time. Early in life he was -a favored guest in the brilliant circles of Peisistratus and Hipparchus at Athens ; later he went to Thrace, and was welcomed there by the princely fam- ilies of the Aleuadse and Scopadse. He returned to Athens about the time of the Persian invasion, where he was employed in celebrating the victories of the Greeks over the Barbarians. He was the successful rival of ^Eschylus for the prize in an alegy on those who fell at Marathon, a few lines of which are quoted by Lycurgus the orator in the trial of Leosthenes. But the most famous of his minor compositions is the inscription on the tomb of the tnree hundred who fell at Thermopylae, con- sisting of two verses, of which Professor Wilson says : " All 158 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. Greece, for centuries, had them by heart. She forgot them, and Greece was living Greece no more." " Stranger, the tidings to the Spartans tell, That here, obeying their commands, we fell." Afterwards he went to the court of Hiero, the tyrant of Syra- cuse, by whom he was held in the highest honor. He became one of the most distinguished of a poetical society which num- bered among its members Pindar, Bacchylides, and iEschylus. He died at the age of ninety, B. C 467. His personal char- acter seems to have been free from the vices that stained so many of the Ionian poets ; and his conduct was marked by tem- perance, regularity, self-command, and reverence. The rules by which he lived were to enjoy the pleasures of the present moderately, and to make its cares as light as possible. He sometimes indulged in pungent sayings. To a person who preserved a dead silence during a banquet, he said, " My friend, if you are a fool, you are doing a wise thing ; but if you are wise, a foolish one." He has been pronounced the most pro- lific and popular of all the lyric poets ; but his works exist only in fragments, of which about two hundred have been collected from the authors that quoted them. Wordsworth says : " ye who patiently explore The wreck of Herculanean lore, What rapture, could ye seize Some Theban fragment, or unroll One precious, tender-hearted scroll Of pure Simonides ! " The poem on Danae, quoted by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, has been translated ten or twelve times. The subject is drawn from the mythical age. Danae is exposed on the sea, with her infant son Perseus, her father Acrisius having been warned by an oracle that he was to be slain by his grandson. Bryant's translation is a tender and exquisite poem, but not sufficiently close to the original. Professor Norton's is equally poetica and more faithful : IONIAN LYRIC POETRY. 159 " When the strong ark which Danae bore Was tossing 'mid the water's roar, While rising winds her soul dismay, She bent o'er Perseus as he lay, Gazed with wet cheeks, and placed her arm Around him, as to shield from harm. ' My boy,' she said, ' what woe I bear ! But thou sleep'st sweetly, free from care, An infant's sleep in this drear room, Dim lighted, 'mid a night of gloom. Though the high waves are dashing by, As yet thy clustering hair is dry ; Wrapt in thy purple mantle warm, Thou, darling, dost not heed the storm But were this dreadful scene to thee As dreadful as it is to me, Then wouldst thou turn a quickened ear, Thy mother's troubled words to hear. Sleep, sleep, my child, in slumber deep ; Would that the waves and I might sleep ' May there some change of purpose be, Disposer of my fate, with thee ! Grant me a bolder prayer I make Grant justice for this infant's sake.' " If we now turn our attention for a few moments to the Gre- cian mainland, we find the same species of Ionian poetry flour- ishing there, but breathing a more manly vigor. I shall limit my present view to two examples, Tyrtseus and Solon, the former the author of the famous war-elegies written for the Spartans in their contests with the Messenians, and the latter employing verse in aid of his political and legislative labors. Military poetry, I mean that which is founded upon mere fight- ing, is not much to the Christian taste. But it connects itself with so many feelings deeply planted in the human heart, that in one form or another it has been a favorite species with all nations. Much of the lyric poetry of the Old Testament breathes this spirit ; it runs through the Greek poetry of every age ; and within the present century we have witnessed an ex- raordinary outburst of war-poetry, in the songs of Korner, Fol 160 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. len, and the other German poets of the War of Liberation, Liberty, love of country, and the firm resolve to maintain her rights and her honor, are, perhaps, indissolubly connected with the idea of fighting ; and these transcendent and all-inspiring themes clothe with a glory not his own the blood-stained Mars, the shaker of walls and sacker of cities. The flourishing period in the life of Tyrtseus fell between 680 and 660 B. C. According to the ancient accounts, the Spartans, hard pressed by the Messenians, sent to Athens, in obedience to a response of the Pythoness, requesting fVom their neighbors a general to take command of their armies. They selected for this purpose Tyrtseus, a lame schoolmaster of Aphidnae, who was forthwith adopted with public formalities as a citizen of the state, and clothed with the powers of com- mander-in-chief. It has been supposed I know not why that the Athenians intended to play a practical joke on their neighbors by this selection. But it seems to me that they could not have made a better choice ; for his lameness would only be a hinderance to running away, and this, as a Spartan said to a lame soldier who asked for a horse, was not the Spar- tan fashion ; and no training, I am sure, is a better preparation for the duties of a general in the field than the administration of a school. The result, at any rate, showed the wisdom of taking the schoolmaster. The ability of his measures was so great, and the enthusiasm roused by the martial poetry of his appeals to his adopted countrymen was so overwhelming, that the tide of battle was turned, civil discord quelled, the suprem- acy of Sparta restored, and the tarnished glory of the Dorian name illumined with fresh lustre. His works numerous in their day, but now existing only in a few fragments were publicly recited on marches, in the camp, and on the battle- field ; and during the whole subsequent history of Sparta they were honored in public and in private, as expressing, with Laconic terseness and vigor, the spirit of martial bravery and heroic self-devotion so dear to the heart of the nation. I shal 1 e;ive a single fragment, line for line, in hexameter and pentam IONIAN LYRIC POETRY. 161 eter, without changing a thought or scarcely a word ; prefer- ring this literal rudeness to the style of translation in which all that is characteristic vanishes. It is an exhortation to bravery, and contains a picture o^ the horrors of exile consequent on defeat. On this point, the history and poetry of Greece, from Homer to the Tragedians, contain numerous, emphatic, and most affecting testimonies. Neither rank, age, sex, nor character saved the conquered from the extremities of want, servitude, and every species of personal degradation. In this respect we have certainly risen to a nobler humanity than the noblest of the ancients. " Glorious is it to perish, among the foremost expiring, When the brave-hearted man dies for his dear native land ; But from his birthplace banished, and leaving rich acres behind him, Poverty's burden to bear, O, that is saddest of all ! Wandering abroad with his mother beloved, and his gray-headed father, Children of tender age, and with the wife of his youth, Hateful, in sooth, shall he be unto whom his footsteps have led him ; Bearing the foulness of want, bowing to penury's yoke. Friends he dishonors, and covers with shame his figure resplendent ; Follows him every disgrace ; insult and evil pursue ; Honor is none for the wretch who roams a beggar in exile, Nor respect for his name afterwards cherished by men. Gallantly, then, let us fight in the warfare for country and offspring ; Willingly pour out our blood, lavishly risking our lives. Strike then, young champions, each by the other courageously standing Never in base flight lead, never in cowardly fear ; But in your bosoms arouse a strong, invincible spirit, Loving not life overmuch, while with the foeman ye fight. Old men, too, whose knees no longer are nimble in battle, Leave not alone on the field, leave not the elders to die. Shameful to all would it be, in the foremost ranks of the battle, If in front of the young perished the elder in years, Whitened already his head, and his chin with snowy beard covered, Gasping his brave soul away, lying outstretched in the dust ; Wounded and bloody the members his arm is vainly protecting, Shameful tor eyes to behold, dreadful for heart to conceive ; Naked of armor his corse. But all to the youthful is seemly, While in his gracious prime lasts the bright flower of youth, 'razed at by men with wonder, and dear to the nearts of the women, oi>. i. 11 162 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. Long as he lives, and fair, fallen 'mid ranks of the foremost. Firmly, with feet well parted, let each then stand to his duty, Planting him strong on the ground, biting his lips with his teeth." Solon belonged to the most ancient and illustrious family in Athens ; but he lived at a time when the old aristocracy and the popular body were in a state of hopeless strife and discord. Instead of looking back with longing and regretful eyes upon the departed grandeur of his caste, he betook himself to prac- tical life, and retrieved by skill and honor in commerce the dilapidated fortunes of his house. In the course of time, he gained so strong a hold upon the confidence of the citizens, that he was clothed with the august charge of giving them a new constitution, and so appeasing the dissensions of the state, holding in his hands for a time the sovereign power. How well this confidence was deserved, the history of the Athenian republic and the administration of justice ever since through- out the civilized world attest. Perhaps no one man has ex- ercised so wide an influence over human affairs as Solon. Merchant, traveller, legislator, poet, he was illustrious and memorable in all aspects. In early life he amused his leisure hours by the composition of love-songs and convivial pieces, after the fashion of the day. He, too, sighed over the ephemeral happiness of man, and sang of love and wine as the best alleviators of the cares of life. But the earnest busi- ness which the distracted state laid upon him forced him out of these fantastical lamentations, and made the poetic art to him a secondary matter, subservient to political aims ; though nature, as well as study and experience, had made him a poet of distinguished ability. In his famous Salaminian ode, of whnh only two or three verses remain, he is thought to have equalled Tyrtaeus. In the fragments of his other poems his language and versification are correct and elegant, and some- times his verses are nervous and pointed, and not without ad- mirable poetical images. His morality is pure and lofty ; and his expression of religious feeling is marked by humble submis- sion to the Divine will. Among legislators he was the greatest IONIAN LYRIC POETRY. 163 poet ; among poets, the greatest legislator ; and his only fault was that of setting the bad example of remaining a bachelor through a life of eighty years. I give two short passages. The first is on justice. " Short are the triumphs to injustice given. Zeus sees the end of all ; like vapors driven By early spring's impetuous blast, that sweeps Along the billowy surface of the deeps, Or, passing o'er the fields of tender green, Lays in sad ruin all the lovely scene, Till it reveals the clear celestial blue, And gives the palace of the gods to view. Then bursts the sun's full radiance from the skies, Where not a cloud can form, or vapor rise. So Zeus avenges ; his no human ire, Blown in an instant to a scorching fire, But slow and certain ; though it long may lie Wrapt in the vast concealment of the sky, Yet never does the dread avenger sleep, And though the sire escape, the son shall weep." My second extract is the fragment of a poem, seemmgly written to warn the people against the arts of aspiring dema- gogues, probably at the time when his kinsman his second- cousin Peisistratus had commenced the course of intrigue which ended in his usurping the government, with the support of the military and of the body of needy citizens, whose favor he had secured by scattering money among them. " Out of the cloud the snow-flakes are poured, and fury of hail-storm ; After the lightning's flash follows the thunderbolt ; Tossed is the sea by the winds, though now so calmly reposing, Hushed in a motionless rest, emblem of justice and peace. So is the state by its great men ruined ; and under the tyrant Sinks the people unwise, yielding to slavery's thrall ; /Tor is it easy to lower the ruler too highly exalted, After the hour is gone. Now is the time to foresee." I have omitted Anacreon in speaking of the Ionian poets, because the pieces which now pass under his name are amo- rous and bacchanalian compositions of a much later age, - 164 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. written, it may be, in something of his spirit, but bearing no resemblance to the style of those brief snatches which are all of his poetry that has survived. In the character of Anacreon, as delineated by the ancients, there is nothing which deserves to be dwelt upon for a moment. A parasite at the table of princes and tyrants, careless of the great interests of country and of the welfare of private life, so that he could drink and revel to his heart's content, sober only long enough to record his tipsy jollity, he reached the dishonored old age of the vo- luptuary, and died an appropriate death, choked by a grape- stone. In all the other lyric poets, faulty as they were in some respects, there was earnest and deep feeling. In looking back over this department of Greek poetry, we are struck with the variety of the pictures which its imperfect fragments present, and with the scenes of change and revolu- tion which they bring dimly before us. The compact system of the heroic and Homeric times is broken in pieces ; but the long accustomed trains of thought and modes of expression occasionally reappear. Gleams of the old epic spirit here and there flash out ; but generally the passing interests the agi- tations caused by the downfall of ancient forms and the uprising of new societies have disturbed the calm of the old imper- sonal and picturesque delineation, and substituted the individ- ual feeling, the reflection, the suffering, of the person and the moment. Old institutions, old principles, old prosperity, have gone to decay ; old families have died out, or sunk into imbe- cility or poverty ; tradition and antique reverence have lost their vital force ; stability is no more, and vicissitude is the order of the age. The thoughts of men flow no longer steadily in the ancient channels of reverend authority, but sweep over ..he stormy surface of life, nowhere finding rest. Driven back, they take refuge in egotism and sensual indulgence. Then comes the reaction, the sentimentality, the "satiety, the despair. Able and bold usurpers, leaguing with the oppressed commons, grasp at tyrannic sway, then are toppled down by the outburst of popular passion. Brilliant displays of intellect- IONIAN LYRIC POETRY. 165 aal life illumine distant points, Lesbos, Samos, Sicily, Athens, Thessaly ; but the hurricane and the swelling seas dash from their base the beacon-lights which for a few brief seasons had shot their rays across the storm, the surge, and the night. In Ionian Asia the prospect darkens, as the overhanging cloud of the Barbarians draws nigh ; but on the mainland of Hellas the old Ionian stock exists, not yet wakened to the full concious- ness of its life, though at times displaying its vigor, in contrast with the growing decrepitude of the early unfolded and early dying culture of Asiatic Ionia. It is preparing a new career of bolder enterprise, greater tenacity, more varied beauty. The seeds of liberty have been sown in the soil of Attica, a barren soil indeed ; but it shall be fruitful in noble men, in brilliant poetry, in exquisite and unapproachable art, in the loftiest as well as the most exact phi.'->sophy, in immortal eloquence. LECTURE X. JEOLIAN AND DORIAN LYRIC POETRY. We pas3 now to a brief consideration of the second of the three subordinate types of the Hellenic character, as manifested in the lyrical ages, the .ZEolian. The ^Eolians were widely spread over the continent of Greece, the -3gean Islands, and the Asiatic shore. Accordingly, they showed many local varieties of language and character ; yet, taken together, they exhibited peculiarities of ethical notions, of poetic style, and of music, which distinguished them clearly, not only from the distant Dorians, but from the Ionians on whom they bor- dered. The ./Eolians had less of mental vigor than either the Dorians or the Ionians. Incapable of strong political activity, they never dreamed of establishing the institutions for which their neighbors were celebrated ; and the traditions of a great and heroic past had but little weight in steadying the levity of their public and private character. The present and its enjoyments overpowered all consideration for the future, and the luxuries of home drowned all care for the public good. They were addicted to self-indulgence, and liked not to be disturbed at the moment of enjoyment by the struggling world and the warfare of life. But a distinction is here also to be made between the jEoli- ans of Asia and those of the Grecian mainland. The former rapidly fell from the primitive virtues which early gave a high pre-eminence to the race ; the latter retained more of manly vigor, and formed a character which longer withstood the storms of vicissitude and the wear of ages. On the jEolian Islands, life surrounded itself with every allurement that ad ^OLIAN AND DORIAN LYRIC POETRY. 167 dressed the passions and kindled the senses to the delights of animal existence. Their physical organization was perhaps finer than that of the Ionians ; but their sensuous temperament often ran into sensuality. The Attic comedians, from whom the popular impressions have been drawn, give exaggerated representations of their depravity, which are not^ sustained by contemporary evidence ; and in some particular cases they in- dulged in a vein of calumny, for which literary history has not yet held them to a sufficiently stern account. Lesbos was the principal seat of jEolian culture, described in the Iliad as a well-inhabited island, whose maidens surpassed in beauty all the tribes of woman-kind. Here lyric poetry be- gan very early to flourish ; hence proceeded Terpander, the heir of Orpheus, to lay the foundation of the improved Greek music ; here were early established temples, shrines, and altars, and the joyous festivals, in which the worship of Artemis, Apollo, and Dionysos was celebrated. Here maids and matrons were not restrained to the privacy of domestic life. They shared in all the amusements, and were active in all the intel- lectual occupations of their countrymen, especially in the culti- vation of music and poetry. Whether they assumed the dress, too, of manhood, we are not informed. Nearly the whole body of the poetical literature of Lesbos is the work either of Lesbian poetesses, or of those who were trained under their influence and instruction. They had societies or clubs for friendly, social, and literary objects ; and even public competitions were instituted for the prize of beauty. All these things, combining with the genial temperament of the ./Eolians, developed in them a mad love of beauty, especially of the human form, which expresses itself in a frantic, intoxicated enthusiasm, in nearly all the fragments of their literature. Even the The ban JEolians illustrated this bias of the national passion by enact- ing a law imposing a fine upon any sculptor or painter who should not represent the beauty of the human form as greater than the reality, however great that might be. This passion- ate love of beauty lent a glow tr their language, which, among lb*8 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. a people of less sensitively attuned nature, and of a hardier cast of thought, would have implied great dissoluteness. Their language was never widely used as an instrument of literary composition ; and never became the idiom of philosophy or history. It was originally one of the rudest dialects, and it remained in its unpolished state, the language of many rustic communities, down to a very late period. Those of the ./Eolian race who distinguished themselves in literature abandoned the language to which they were born, and adopted one of the other dialects, except in the species of lyric poetry cultivated by Alcaeus and Sappho. In this style it was marked by a very peculiar grace, made up of naive simplicity and piquant turns of phrase. The omission of the rough breathing, the redupli- cation of the liquids, and the throwing back of the accent, gave it a soft and yet spicy vivacity, in which it has been not unaptly compared to the Castilian. I would rather compare the entire poetical literature of the Lesbians the influence of women, the courts of beauty, and the brief duration of its blooming period with the gay science of the Provencal Troubadours, the short-lived flower of whose song blossomed in the spring- time of the Romantic poetry of the South. In the midst of all these blandishments, under the soft sky of the fairest JEgean islands, within the sound of the flashing waves of the midland sea, the lisping, liquid, and passionate language of the ^Eolians was moulded to strophes of delicate beauty ; and Sappho and Erinna mingled the melting tones of voice and lyre with the subduing harmonies of nature. To them " All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of love." Setting aside Terpander the musician, and Arion, whose ride ashore on the dolphin's back is the subject of one of the pleasant stories in Herodotus, the proper beginning of the Les- bian poetry is with Alcaeus. He lived towards the end of the seventh century B. C. He seems to have played not a very creditable part in the political agitations of the island, .fiOLIAN AND DORIAN LYEIC POETRY. 169 being at one time a warm supporter of Pittacus, and at another his bitterest enemy, writing against him the coarsest and vilest slanders. But the wise prince he was reckoned one of the seven sages hanged neither himself, as Lycambes did, nor Alcaeus, as he might have done. He set him at liberty, with the magnanimous remark, that " forgiveness is better than re- venge." In a battle with the Athenians, Alcaeus was seized with the epidemic tendency of the ancient lyric poets, took to his heels, dropped his shield, and ran away. Like Archilo- chus, he thought the event worth recording in a poetical epistle to his friend Melanippus of Mitylene, whom he informs, in a very rhythmical line, that "Alcaeus is safe, though his arms are lost." The Athenians hung them up as a trophy in the temple of Athene, at Sigeum. Notwithstanding this little ac- cident, he passed with the ancients as a model of bravery. They judged him more by his words than by his deeds. He had a great deal to say against tyrants, and talked wonderfully well of patriotism and the love of liberty ; but it does not ap- pear that his labors in this direction conferred any social or civil blessing on his native island. He was a hater of poverty, and a lover of money. This sentiment appears in several of his fragments, as in the following : " The worst of ills and hardest to endure, Past hope, past cure, Is Penury, who with her sister-mate, Disorder, soon brings down the loftiest state, And makes it desolate. This truth the sage of Sparta told, Aristodemus old, Wealth makes the man ' ; on him that 's poor Proud Worth looks down, and Honor shuts the door." The war-poems of Alcaeus were very famous for vigor of style and brilliancy of imagination. His convivial songs were favorites with the topers of Greece and Rome. Here is what he thought of drinking in summer " Glad your hearts with rosy wine, Now the doir-star takes his round. 170 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. Sultry hours to sleep incline, Gapes with heat the sultry ground. Crickets sing on leafy boughs, And the thistle is in flower, And men forget the sober vows They made to the moon in some colder ho it." And here is what he thought of drinking in winter : * "Zeus descends in sleet and snow; Howls the vexed and angry deep ; Every stream forgets to flow, Bound in winter's icy sleep. Ocean wave and forest hoar To the blast responsive roar. Drive the tempest from your door, Blaze on blaze your hearthstone piling, And unmeasured goblets pour Brimful high, with nectar smiling." And here is what he thought of drinking in general : " Why wait we for the torches' lights ? Now let us drink, the day invites ; In mighty flagons hither bring The deep red blood of many a vine, That we may largely quaff, and sing The praises of the god of wine, The son of Zeus and Semele, Who gave the jocund grape to be A sweet oblivion of our woes. Fill, fill the goblet, one and two ; Let every brimmer, as it flows, In sportive chase the last pursue." We cannot wonder at any madness or folly in the life of a man so devoted to the god of wine. The longest piece remaining of this poet is his brilliant de- scription of the martial furniture with which he had embellished his own habitation ; and this piece of military foppery is a proof that it was the show and gauds of war, and not its hard blows, to which he was addicted. " From floor to roof the spacious palace-halls Glitter with war's array; OIJAN AND DORIAN LYBIC POETRY. 171 With burnished metal clad, the lofty walls Beam like the bright noonday. There white-plumed helmets hang from many a nail Above, in threatening row; Steel-garnished tunics, and broad coats of mail, Spread o'er the space below ; Chalcidian blades enow and belts are here, Greaves and emblazoned shields, Well-tried protectors from the hostil* spear On other battle-fields. With these good helps our work of war 's begun ; With these our victory must be won." A. fine fragment of this poet was paraphrased by Sir William Jones, in the noble lines so often quoted, " What constitutes a State?" Upon a careful examination of the life and genius of Alcasus, as they appear in the fragments of his works, we must admit the correctness of the high estimate the ancients placed upon his poetical merit. We cannot respect his personal character, which was stained by boastfulness, excess, and perhaps profli- gacy. He was an unscrupulous and bitter hater of men who had in any way offended him, and he slandered them without stint or decency. But his poetical powers were brilliant and versatile. His works perfected the JEolic style ; and though he never departed from the strophic order of composition, yet he enriched that with new rhythmical forms, which were after- wards happily reproduced in the Latin by Horace, who con- fesses his indebtedness to his Lesbian prototype. But the literary history of the Lesbian poetesses, and of those who were formed in that school, is by far the most interesting and characteristic chapter in ^olian literature ; and the cen- tral figure in this lovely group is Sappho. She was called the Lesbian nightingale, and li ~ed contemporaneously with Pitta- cus and Alcaeus. By universal consent, as well of the moderns as of the ancients, Sappho has always been held to be the mir- acle of her sex. Homer was called " the Poet," and Sapphc " the Poetess " ; and she is placed by the grave authority of 172 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. Aristotle in the same rank with Homer and Archilochus. uElian says that Solon, on hearing one of her poems recited, prayed the gods that he might not die until he had had time to learn it by heart. Plato called her the tenth Muse. An epigrammatist describes her as the nursling of Aphrodite and Eros, the delight of Hellas, the foster-child of the Graces. The time in which she lived, and the leading facts of her life, are established on fair authority, some of them on contem- porary fragments. Her family seems to have belonged to an iEolian colony in the Troad, and to have removed, perhaps in her father's lifetime, thence to Lesbos. The names of her par- ents and of three brothers are preserved ; some notices of two of the brothers are given by Herodotus, and there is a frag- ment of a poem addressed to the other by herself. She was married to a good sort of rich man, from the neighboring island of Andros, named Cercolas, whose only distinction, as is gen- erally the case with the husbands of famous women, was that he was the husband of Sappho. In such cases the wives are celebrated per se ; the husbands, per alias. She had a daugh- ter named Cleis after the name of her own mother whom she addresses in one of the preserved fragments. Her fame and her brilliant genius drew around her a circle of women whose tastes and pursuits were akin to her own, and who con- stituted a sort of poetical academy or school devoted to music, poetry, and every elegant pursuit. According to the scandal of later times, the art of love was one of the fine arts taught to the younger members of this sisterhood. Cercolas is not heard of in these agreeable occupations, being probably engaged in taking care of his property over in Andros. These are all the facts positively known, from contemporary authority, of this celebrated woman. There is an obscure allusion to a flight from Mitylene to Sicily, to escape some unexplained dangei, between 604 and 592 B. C. She must have lived to a some- what advanced age, since she calls herself yepatrepa, an elderly person, which, of course, implies in a woman a considerable number of years. .EOLIAN AND DORIAN LYBIC POETRY. 173 The peculiarity of her social position, and the freedom o\ manners generally allowed to the Lesbian women, joined to the warmth and tenderness of her own poetry, presented tempt- ing subjects of malicious innuendo and exaggerating satire to the unscrupulous wits of the Athenian comic stage three cen- turies later. With them Sappho became a stock character. They converted an old fable of Phaon into a fact, and the hero of it into a reality, and so wove out of these fictions, which are never alluded to by any writer until a century after Sap- pho's death, the celebrated story of the Loves of Phaon and Sappho. From another ancient myth, they concocted the story of the Lover's Leap from the Leucadian cliff. On this promontory was the site of an early temple of Apollo, where human sacrifices were performed by throwing the victims into the waves below. In the course of time, the worship of Aphro- dite took its place, and there grew up a superstitious notion of the remedial agency of the waters under the cliff, especially a > a water-cure for disappointed love. It was generally tried, however, with the precaution of attaching bladders or other buoyant substances to the body, as well as stationing life-boats near at hand. An Epeirot named Machatas the Sam Patch of the classic ages tried it four times with perfect success, and was known, from this circumstance, as Leucopetras, or Whitestone. Suicide was, however, sometimes committed in this way. Several well-authenticated examples occur, as Ar- temisia of Halicarnassus and Diodorus. The Phaon of the fable was a young man of surpassing beauty and irresistible command over the affections of all who fell in his way. In consequence of these inconvenient gifts of Venus, he was constantly exposed to what old Mr. Wel- ler calls inadwertent captiwation. To avoid the importunate claims of his Lesbian admirers, he fled to the distant wilds of Acarnania, and there built the temple of Apollo Leucas. They, however, found him out; for what savage hiding-place will not Love explore ? and, reduced to despair by his ob- durate coldness, threw themselves into the sea. These myth- 174 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. and traditions were fastened upon Sappho by the Athenian comic poets. Menander in a fragment says : " Where yonder cliff rears high its crest in air, White glittering o'er the distant wave, There Sappho, headlong in a briny grave Entombed, with frantic plunge, her love and her despair." The story was echoed by the Roman poets, particularly, six hundred years after her time, by Ovid, from whom the com- mon notions of the character of the poetess are directly drawn. His epistle of Sappho to Phaon one of the eloquent infamies by which that great poet, but weak and bad man, disgraced the literature of the Augustan age was translated by Pope, and imitated, in its poetical as well as objectionable features, in his epistle of Eloisa to Abelard. Byron says in Childe Harold : " Childe Harold sailed and passed the barren spot, Where sad Penelope o'erlooked the wave ; And onward viewed the mount, not yet forgot, The lover's refuge, and the Lesbian's grave. But when he saw the evening star above Leucadia's far projecting rock of woe, And hailed the last resort of fruitless love, He felt, or deemed he felt, no common glow." Thus Sappho has come down to our day as the type of love- lorn, despairing, suicidal damsels. On this count in the in- dictment against her, I say : 1. There is not a single men- tion of the name of her supposed enchanter in her works. 2. The epithet elderly^ which she frankly applies to herself, is against the story. 3. Though there is passion enough in her poems to burn a whole Troubadour's court of love, there ig not the slightest intimation of any desire to make way with herself, or even to cure the distemper, certainly not by cold water. In one of those fervent fragments, as Moore calls them. " Which still, like sparkles of Greek fire, Burn on through time and ne'er expire," ihe says : JCuLIAN AND DORIAN LYEIC POETRY. 175 " Come, Aphrodite, come Hither with thy golden cup, Where nectar-floated flowrets swim ; Fill, fill the goblet up ! Thy laughing lips shall kiss the brim, Come, Aphrodite, come." 1 submit that the woman who wrote this did not, as the grave-digger in Hamlet says, " drown herself wittingly " : " argal, she that is not guilty of her death shortens not her own life." Two other charges, somewhat inconsistent with that of hav- ing drowned herself, have been brought against her by the an- cient libellers, and too hastily believed by modern copyists : 1. That her life was immoral. 2. That she was short, b'ack, and ugly. To sustain the first, her husband, that good man, is reduced to an etymology. The two great solvents in mod- ern criticism to put out of the way any person whose exist- ence is incompatible with a theory are myth vjil etymology Sappho has suffered by this and the reverse process. They have not only vaporized her husband into an etymology, but have consolidated a myth into a lover. Her husband thus pu* out of the way, she was next represented by the comedians as engaged in disreputable intrigues with Anacreon, Hipponax, and Archilochus. A fancy sketch, by Hermesianax, a writer in the age of Philip, is very picturesque, but entirely without foundation : " With her the sweet Anacreon strayed Begirt with many a Lesbian maid ; And fled for her the Samian strand, For her, his vine-clad native land, A bleeding country, left the while For wine and love in Sappho's isle." Professor Volger, who published an historico-critical essay upon this subject in 1809, takes sides against her, but considers the charges of no consequence when compared with the lustre of her genius. He was followed by two German Professors, who, with a transcendental gallantry worthy of the scholarship 176 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. )f their erudite nation, and of the reverence for woman cher Ished by the ancient Germans in the time of Tacitus, have roken lances in defence of the calumniated poetess who has been in her grave these five and twenty centuries. The work of oneN^f her defenders is called " Sappho freed from a Prevail- ing Prejudice " ; and that of the other, " Sappho and Erinna, described according to their Lives, and the Fragments of their Works." The vindication set up by these able and chivalrous Professors has been very generally acquiesced in ; but recently the whole subject has been reconsidered by Mr. Mure, who examines the evidence with the metaphysical acuteness of a Scotch advocate, and draws a strong conclusion against the poetess. He scrutinizes every expression in her poems, for the purpose of detecting autobiographical intimations and confes- sions of guilt ; pries into all the circumstances and conditions of her life, and deals with her as austerely as John Knox dealt with poor Queen Mary. It almost seems as if Scotch Presby- terians had an invincible antipathy to handsome women. Pro- fessor Volger believes the story of her being in love with Pha- on, and throwing herself in despair from the Leucadian cliff: though he admits that she must have been at least forty years of age, since she had been married, had already a grown-up daughter, and was now a widow. As to the improbability of her having been so desperately enamored at that sober and respectable age, he says, we are not without examples of old ladies in love with young gentlemen, and of young gentlemen not in love with old ladies. As to the other lovers, Archilochus died before Sappho was born ; Hipponax was born after Sappho died ; and Anacreon was two years old when Sappho was forty-eight. There is, therefore, what the logicians call a violent improbability that any unbecoming relations could have existed between Sappho and either of these distinguished poets ; and theirs are the onlj names specified by the ancient libellers. As to the charge of ugliness, the testimony of persons who jved many centuries after she was dead and gone is hardly to .EOLIAN AND DORIAN LYRIC POETRY. 177 be taken, unless corroborated by other evidence. That villain Ovid represents her as short and black ; Maximus Tyrius, a tedious writer in the time of the Antonines, says that she was diminutive and swarthy ; Bayle calls her, I presume on these authorities, laide; petite et noire; Madame Dacier says she was petite et brune; and Professor Dalzel, a Scotchman, takes a middle course, and describes her as one " quce neque inter pul- chras, neque inter deformes, sui sexus, numerari possit." I be- lieve it is a general fact that ugly women, if there be any such, set an exaggerated value upon personal beauty. Madame de Stael is said to have declared that she would surrender all her genius and learning in exchange for beauty. Now, applying this precedent inversely to the case of Sappho, there are two lines, quoted by Galen the physician, in which she says : " Beauty, fair flower, upon the surface lies, But worth with beauty e'en in aspect vies " ; from which we may infer that Sappho, being beautiful, set no undue value upon it. Alcseus addresses her as "Violet- crowned, pure, sweetly smiling Sappho " ; and it would not be easy to make a pleasanter picture than is here suggested in a single graphic line. Plato repeatedly calls her " the beautiful Sappho," and Plutarch and Athenaeus adopt this description. There are, besides busts, several portraits of Sappho on coins and gems of her native island, in all, I believe, six. These are published in Wolf's edition of the Greek Poetesses ; and they confirm the hints of Alcaeus and the description of Plato. I conclude, on the whole, first, that she did not leap off the Leucadian cliff; secondly, that she was not an immoral woman ; and thirdly, that she was a handsome woman ; or, at any rate, that she had a fine intellectual brow, the charm of a sweet and amiable countenance, and a brilliant expression of poetic sensi- bility and dazzling genius, and that she justly commanded the unmeasured admiration of some of the best minds of antiquity. Her works, like those of the other lyric poets, exist, with two exceptions, only in fragments. But from these slight speci- mens we can well understand the ground on which her poetical VOL. I. 12 1T8 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. fame rested. In some, there is a slight touch of convivial gay- ety ; others breathe a depth of passion, and are touched with a warmth, to which the coldness of Northern natures has but little magnetic affinity. Her style is arch, vivid, flowing. She delineates the softer passions with tenderness and ideal beauty. She clothes her thoughts with incomparable suavity of language. She gathers around them images borrowed from the fairest and brightest objects in creation, from the stars, the breath of heaven, the musical fall of rain among the branches and the leaves ; from the ruddy light of morning, and the gray stillness of evening ; from fruits and trees ; from the rose, the violet, the primrose, and the lily, children of Nature, and objects of her fervent sympathy and passionate love. Achilles Tatius, of the fifth century, gives, in prose, the sub- stance of a little poem of Sappho. " If Zeus had willed to set a king over the flowers, the rose would have been the king of the flowers. It is the ornament of the earth, the glory of the plants, the eye of the flowers, the blush of the meadow, beauty that lightens. It breathes of love, it welcomes Aphrodite, it is plumed with sweetly perfumed leaves, the petal laughs to the zephyr." The qualities of Sappho's mind and heart, as well as the vivid characteristics of her style, are seen distinctly enough in the few brief snatches of her song which time has spared to us. A delicate feeling for quiet Nature breathes in these lines t. " The stars around the lovely moon Their radiant visage hide, as soon As she, full-orbed, appears to sight, Flooding the earth with her silvery light." Her love of intellectual pursuits is expressed in a short passage from an address to some rich and proud Lesbian woman, whc had shown her indifference to poetry. It is the only sarcastw passage in all the fragments : " In the cold grave where thou shalt he, All memory, too, of thee shall die, Who, in this life's auspicious hours, -EOLIAN AND DORIAN LYRIC POE'iRY 179 Disdain'st Pieria's genial flowers ; And, in the mansions of the dead, With the vile crowd of ghosts, thy shade, WTiile nobler spirits point with scorn, Shall flit neglected and forlorn." The following lines refer to her daughter : " I have a child a lovely one In beauty like the golden sun, Or like sweet flowers of earliest bloom ; And Cleis is her name, for whom I Lydia's treasures, were they mine, Would glad resign." This little dialogue with the rose embodies a graceful senta- ment : " Sweet rose of May ! sweet rose of May ! Whither, ah whither fled away ? " Bosb. " What 's gone no time can e'er restore ; I come no more, I come no more." The following lines, describing a happy and honorable love, speak well for Sappho : " Yes, yes, I own it true, Pleasure 's the good that I pursue , How blest is then my destiny, That I may love and honor too ! So bright, so brave a love is that allotted me." The two poems on which the common idea of her character as a woman and a poetess is chiefly formed are the " Ode to Venus," and the " Ode to a Beloved Object." They doubt- less express, in a fervent manner, her apprehension of the pas- sions she so vividly describes ; but I see no ground for giving them the autobiographical application which some critics as- sign to them. Plutarch compares her heart to a volcano. It is said that one of the Greek physicians found the symptoms of love so accurately described, that he copied the whole second ode into his book of diagnosis, and regulated his prescriptions by it. Longinus, in a different mood, quotes it in his treatise on the Sublime. " Is it not wonderful," ssys that able an \ 180 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. elegant critic, " how she calls at once on soul, body, ears, tongue, eyes, color on all at once she calls as if frantic and beside herself, and how, with opposite effects and emotions, she freezes, she glows, she raves, she returns to reason, she shakes with terror, she is on the brink of death? It is not a single passion, but a congress of passions." These poems are well known in English literature, in the old and very gracefu translation of Ambrose Phillips. I have preferred to delineate her character, as I understand it, from the fragments, which seem to me to have a closer personal bearing. I have dwelt on these details of the life and works of an illustrious woman, because she has shared the fortune of others of her sex, en- dowed like her with God's richest gifts of intellect and heart, who have been the victims of remorseless calumny for assert- ing the prerogatives of genius, and daring to compete with men in the struggle for fame and glory. A long list of Greek poetesses has been preserved, with nu- merous fragments of their works. Some of their names, how- ever, have proved to be mere epithets. The name of Agacle, which has made some noise in literary history, says an inge- nious writer in the Edinburgh Review, " is no better than an accusative case." An elegant epigrammatist of the Augustan age selects nine, and recognizes their claims to be reckoned as the mortal Muses. " These the maids of heavenly tongue, Reared Pierian cliffs among : Anyte, as Homer strong ; Sappho, star of Lesbian song; Erinna ; famous Telesilla ; Myro fair ; and fair Praxilla ; Corinna, she that sang of yore The dreadful shield Athene bore ; Myrto sweet ; and Nossis, known For tender thought and melting tone ; Framers all of deathless pages, Joys that live for endless ages P Nine the Muses famed in heaven ; And nine to mortals earth has given." JJOLIAN AND DORIAN LYRIC POETRY. 181 JErinna was the contemporary, friend, and pupil of Sappho. Though not born in Lesbos, she was called the Lesbian, on account of her habitual residence there, having been drawn thither, like many other young persons of genius and enthusi- asm, by the attractions of the literary circle that gathered around Sappho. She was a maiden of refined temperament, fervid imagination, and intellect ripened into too early matu- rity by the excitements of such scenes and such society. Her sensitive nature soon exhausted itself, and she died at the age of eighteen or nineteen ; but not until she had written poems which some of the ancient critics placed higher than Sappho's. Her early death is the subject of many touching little poems in the collection of epigrams. The only two lines preserved of her principal poem, which was written in hexameters, breathe a melancholy tone, as if that foreboding which so often seems to cast its shadow over the tremulous sensibility of richly gifted youth modulated her song, without her own conscious- ness, to a plaintive strain : " Soon shall the faint-breathing echo to unseen Hades be floated, And with the dead be silence ; for darkness pours over the eyelids." For the sake of briefly exhibiting the contrast between the iEolian spirit on the Asiatic side and that on the European Bide of the iEgean Sea, I will mention one or two more poet- esses. Corinna of Tanagra was a contemporary and rival of Pindar. She was a poetess of extraordinary vigor, and though she at first censured Myrtis, who had taught Pindar the lyric art, and afterwards beaten him repeatedly in it, " Shame and scorn to Myrtis bold ! She, though cast in female mould, Dared to strike the rival lyre, And battle wage with Pindar's fire," yet she afterwards changed her mind, and herself gained five lyrical victories over the great Theban. Pausanias, the Greek traveller, in describing his visit to Tanagra, says : " There is a monument of Corinna, the only Tanagrean woman who wrote poetry, in a conspicuous part of the city ; and there is a 182 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. picture in the gymnasium, in which she is represented with s wreath upon her head, on account of a poetical victory she gained over Pindar in Thebes. She appears to me to have gained it," says the crusty old traveller, " partly by her dialect, since she sang not in the Doric, as Pindar did, but in that which was understood by the jEolians; and partly because, if we may judge by her portrait, she was the most beautiful woman of her age." I am sorry to add that the great Pindar was so little pleased with his defeat, that he very impolitely called her a sow. Besides lyrical, she wrote heroic poems, one of which was on the War of the Seven against Thebes. The character of the Dorians was one of the most remarkable phenomena in ancient history, remarkable in itself and in its contrasts with the other races. In the great speech of Pericles in Thucydides, he runs a covert comparison between the Athenians, who were the extreme Ionians, and the Spar- tans, who were exaggerated Dorians. The opposition was so deep and violent, that, in spite of the Hellenic bond of unity, they finally rushed into the Peloponnesian war, which wai marked by all the fierceness, revenge, obstinacy, and blood- shed that naturally belong to wars of races. The Dorian had no private life. The moment he was born, he was submitted to a public inspector to decide whether he was worth bringing up. If he did not give proof of a sufficiently vigorous constitu- tion for the hard life the Spartan was called to lead, he was handed over to the tender mercies of the wolves of Mount Taygetus ; if he did, to the still sharper discipline of a Spartan education. This education had a grim kind of sociability about it. He lived in the company of his equals in age and station, with whom he sat at table and ate his black broth, not being allowed to take it home where he might have made as many wry faces as he pleased. An Athenian once visited Sparta on some public business. As usual with distinguished strangers, he was entertained at a public banquet. Returning to Athens, and reporting the result of his mission, he added that be now jOLIAN AND DORIAN LYRIC POETRY. 183 understood why the Spartans were so ready to remain on the battle-field ; for a Spartan death was less formidable than a Spartan dinner. Had the Spartan been asked, what was the chief end of man, his answer would have been, to live as un- comfortably as possible, and to die fighting, spitted by a hostile spear in front. The passion of friendship and respect for the aged were, however, cherished sentiments in the Dorian heart, and throw the light of humanity over Dorian existence. On the other hand, their cruelty to the Helots, their slaves, sur- passed the cruelties elsewhere inflicted, whether in ancient or modern times, upon the victims of hideous wrong in that for- lorn condition. They held woman in high honor, but not in that chivalrous respect which permits not even the breath of heaven to visit her too roughly. Their sentiment was not gal- lantry nor romance, nor a poetical appreciation of woman, such as led the knight of the Middle Ages to worship her. The Dorian girl underwent a training nearly as severe as her brother's. Her rights were acknowledged, her opinions re- spected, and the corresponding duties were exacted. In box- ing, wrestling, and warlike exercises, in giving hard blows, whether abroad or at home, the men found the women quite their match, as the nickname they bore at Athens, Broken- ears, sufficiently shows. The effect of this gymnastic training is hinted at in a scene of the Lysistrata of Aristophanes. The women of Greece have been called to a general convention to take measures for the establishment of peace. On the arrival of Lampito, the dele- gate from Lacedsemon, she is saluted by Lysistrata : "Hail! Lampito, dearest of Laconian women. How shines thy beauty, O my sweetest friend ! How fair thy color, full of life thy frame ' Why, thou couldst choke a bull. " Lampito. " Yes, by the twain; For I qo practise the gymnastic art, And, leaping, strike my backbone with my heel* 184 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. " LY9I8TRAT A . " In sooth, thy bust is lovely to behold." The Dorians were the quintessence of unreasoning conser- vatism. The institutions of their ancestors were the height of wisdom, and to change them was impious. They refused to put a new seasoning into their broth, or an additional string to the ancient four-stringed lyre. Old bread, old meat, old iron, old black soup, old fellows, everything old, except old wine, they liked. In his speech, the Dorian was crusty and brief, partly because he had few things to say, and partly because he thought few things worth saying at all. Like the English, he had a great talent for silence. Often, however, when he did speak, there was a deal of meaning in those pithy sentences. He despised the lisping Lesbian and the fluent Ionian, and sometimes a single phrase of his struck 'ead a whole oration of his eloquent neighbors. To the old-fashioned dialect which his fathers brought down from the mountains he adhered with a religious veneration. The broad alpha was as sacred to him as the broad brim of a Quaker hat is to the follower of Penn. The peculiarities of his speech terse in words, full and broad in sound, short in construction gave a point to his conversa- tion, scarcely to be represented in another language. Agesi- laus the Great, hearing one praise an orator who had the power of magnifying little things, said, " I do not like a shoe- maker who puts large shoes on a small foot." Another, hear- ing a lame Spartan soldier ask for a horse, said, " Friend, dost thou not see that war needs men not to run, but to stand ? " The king was once asked to hear a singer who imitated the nightingale. He said, "I have often heard the nightingale her- self/' Being asked which of the virtues was the better, brav- ery or justice, he said, " Bravery is useless without justice ; but if all men were just, there would be no need of bravery." To an Athenian who said, " We have chased you many a time from the Cephissus," Antalcidas replied, " But we have never chased you from the Eurotas." Eudamidas, seeing Xeno- crates the philosopher, already advanced in age, discussing jEOLIAN and dorian lyric poetry. 18b some subject with his disciples, asked who that old man was. Some one replied, that he was one of the wise men who seek after virtue. " If he is still seeking it," he replied, " when will he find and practise it?" To a fellow who said, while taking a punishment, " I did the wrong without meaning to," a Spartan replied, " Then be flogged without meaning to." Periander, the physician, was distinguished in his profession, but had written some very poor poems. "Why," said a Spar- tan friend, " do you prefer to be called a bad poet, rather than a good doctor ? " Sometimes they showed traces of a higher and more humane philosophy than these pungent sayings in- dicate. Ariston, hearing a person praise the maxim of Cle- omenes, who declared it to be the duty of a good king to benefit his friends and injure his enemies, replied, " How much better, my good sir, to benefit his friends, indeed, but to make friends of his enemies ! " The Doric language was widely spoken. It spread over the Peloponnesus and nearly the whole north of Greece. It occu- pied the great island of Crete, and the whole southwest of Asia Minor. It was established in Africa, in Sicily, in a great part of Magna Grecia, and in the southeast of Italy. In its literary form it always remained the language of choral composition, whether lyric or tragic, and in its spoken form it continued in its original seats down to the second or third century of the Christian era. The literature of this language was copious, and the architecture which bears the name of Doric was prom- inent among the Grecian styles ; but the Dorians themselves showed little aptitude for letters or arts. Their women some- times wrote. Telesilla of Argos was famous for her Odes ; but more famous for having led out the women to drive back an in- vading army from the walls. She was honored with a statue, which represented her as looking at a helmet, which she held in her hand, about to p^ace it on her head, while her books lay scattered at her feet. The longest poem known to have been written by a Spartan Dorian consists of three lines. It was called the Trichoria, and was sung at the festival celebrated by old men, youths, and boys. 186 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. " OLD MBIT. " Brave youths were we in the days gone by. " YOUTHS. " Brave youths are we ; if ye doubt, ye may try. "BOYS. " Braver youths far than ye, in our day, we shall be." There is a line of a dancing song, quoted by Lucian, and thus rendered by Mure : " Forward ! boys, and merrily foot it, and dance it better and better still." They had many festivals ; but the poems for them were gen- erally written by the Greeks of other races. Their war-songs and elegies were for the most part the work of Ionians, in the Ionian language. The proper Doric poetry was generally writ- ten by Ionians or JEolians. Such pursuits the Dorians held to be unworthy of a manly and warlike race. Dorian music was composed and Doric edifices were built by artists whom they employed, as they would so many dancing-masters. When a distinguished composer was introduced to a Spartan king as the best harper of the age, the king returned the compliment by introducing his own cook as the best maker of black broth. It is singular that the very earliest Spartan poet, Alcman, who flourished in the middle of the seventh century B. C, should have been one of the most jovial in all Greek literature. He was, however, an Asiatic by birth, and was brought into Peloponnesus as a slave. His revelling pieces enjoyed a great popularity with the ascetic Spartans, who seem to have sea- soned their black broth by trying " to cloy the hungry edge of appetite by bare imagination of a feast." I pass over the fragments in which he celebrates the pleasures of eating and drinking, or describes his favorite dishes, or eulogizes his own amazing appetite, or glories in his title of the all-devouring Alcman, or gives a list of his favorite wines, to quote a piece of natural description, which I think is mai'ked by great beauty of thought, as well as by picturesque expression : MOUAN AND DORIAN LYRIC POETRY. 187 Now o'er the drowsy earth still night prevails. Calm sleep the mountain-tops and shady dales. The rugged clifls and hollow glens ; The wild beasts slumber in their dens, The cattle on the hill. Deep in the sea The countless finny race and monster brood Tranquil repose. Even the busy bee Forgets her daily toil. The silent wood No more with noisy hum of insect rings ; And all the feathered tribe, by gentle sleep subdued, Perch in the glade, and hang their drooping wings.' LECTURE XI. PINDAR THE GREEK DRAMA. jESCHYLUS In the picture I have endeavored to give of the poetry ot Greece during the lyrical age, I have been obliged to omit many names belonging to each of the three races, taking only such as seemed to me to have something more characteristic than the rest. It may have occurred to some to ask, why Pindar, the greatest lyric poet of Greece, and, in the estimation of some, the greatest in the world, has not been brought for- ward among the Dorian lyrists. The reason is, that he is to be regarded as the poet of the nation rather than of a race. He rose to an eminence in the literature of Greece second only to that of Homer himself. Homer was called the poet, Sappho the poetess, and Pindar the lyrist. Chronologically, he was the contemporary of the great dramatists. In early youth he studied at Athens, and ever afterward the relations between him and that city, which he calls the " prop of Hellas, divine city, splendid Athens," were marked by the interchange of mutual and gracious offices of kindness and regard. After his death, the people, who had often welcomed him with public honors and private hospitalities, commemorated their appreciating love of his genius by raising a statue to his memory, which Pausa- nias saw there six centuries later. His compositions, in their form and in the mode of their delivery, bore the closest resem- blance to the choral parts of the Attic tragedy. Since, then, he was in style the poet of the Greek nation, and since, in time and in the circumstances of his education, as well as in tiis literary relations, he was connected with Athenian cul- ture, and may be regarded as the most brilliant phenomenor PINDAB. 189 that heralded in the Attic age, I have decided to give a brief account of him and his works, as an introduction to the Attic drama. Pindar was a native of Boeotia, bom in Thebes, or, accord- ing to others, in a small town called Cynocephalae, in the neigh- borhood of Thebes, in 522 or 518 B. C. His family was one of the oldest in Thebes, claiming descent from Cadmus. For several generations they had shown a special talent for music and poetry, and had become noted as able performers at the poetical and musical festivals. The profession of the lyric poet, to which hereditary taste and personal inclination destined Pindar from his childhood, required a very elaborate training, not only in the details of poetical composition and the science of metre and rhythm, but in orchestric dancing, or the poetry of motion, and in the whole art of vocal and instrumental music. Not only this, but a familiar acquaintance with the works of the great poets, and with the entire circle of mythi- cal, traditional, and historical lore, was to be studiously ac- quired. It was for this reason that the father of Pindar sent him to Athens, already fast becoming the chief school and centre of literature. From the instruction of Lasus and his other masters there, he passed to the tuition of his famous countrywomen, Myrtis and Corinna, under whom, especially the latter, he appears to have finished his poetical education. The earliest of his extant poems was written at the age of twenty. His brilliant genius soon made him known all over Greece. He was held in equal honor at the courts of princes and in the capitals of republican states. He was invited to Syracuse by Hieron, where he remained about four years, the brightest ornament of poetical society. The Rhodians deposit- ed in the temple of the Lindian Athene his seventh Olympian ode, written in golden letters, a very beautiful composi- tion, in honor of Diagoras, one of their countrymen. Though his usual residence was at Thebes, yet, like other poets of hi? time, he made frequent journeys to i isit the cities and men that vied with one another for his friendship, and to be present 190 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. at the panegyrical assemblies and festive celebrations which his verse commemorated and adorned. His character was deeply tinctured with a reverential feeling towards the ob- jects of religious worship, and he was a rigid observer of the forms of ancient piety. He dedicated a shrine or chapel a firjrpmov to the mother of the gods, near his own house ; a statue to Zeus Ammon in Libya ; another to Hermes in the Agora at Thebes. He made frequent pilgrimages to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, where Pausanias saw the iron chair on which he sat while chanting the hymns he had composed in honor of the gods. He died at or near the age of eighty. The prime of his life coincides with the great events of the Persian wars. The battles of Marathon and Salamis, in which his contemporary ./Eschylus fought with distinguished bravery, passed with their great issues before his eyes. But in common with his countrymen, and perhaps, like Goethe, controlled by love for the tranquil pursuits of art, he took no personal part in those high feats of patriotic valor.' He seems to have suf- fered to some extent the common lot of distinguished excel- lence, from the envy of rivals ; but we know little of these personalities, except from a few scornful allusions in his odes : and whatever they were, they failed to obscure in the least the brightness of his fame, after Death, the all-reconciler, had set his seal upon it. The enthusiastic admiration of Greece for him increased as the glory of Thebes gradually vanished into the mists of the past. When Alexander the Great took Thebes, and razed it to the ground, he gave strict orders to his soldiers that no damage should be done to the house where Pindar had lived and died, an incident beautifully alluded to Dy Milton in one of his sonnets : " Lift not thy spear against the Muses' bower ; The great Emathian conqueror bid spare The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower Went to the ground." Pindar was not only one of the greatest, but also one of th* most copious, writers of ancient times ; his works the pro- PINDAR. 191 duct of a long, peaceful, and prosperous life exclusively occu- pied with religious, social, and poetical duties embracing compositions in all the forms that were current in his day. The only pieces, however, which have come down to us entire are four series of Epinician, or triumphal odes, celebrating victo- ries gained at the four great national games, the Olympian, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian, in the races, athletic exer- cises, and musical contests, held on those great panegyrical oc- casions. These Panegyreis, or general meetings, are a striking and characteristic feature of the social, political, and literary history of the Greeks. The peculiar style of the Pindaric ode can hardly be illustrated, without touching on some of the main points of this subject. From before the Homeric age as we see in passages of the Iliad and Odyssey down to the later literary epochs, feats of bodily strength enjoyed an exaggerated favor, which was noticed and complained of by the deeper-thinking and more philosophical minds among the Attic writers. These were at first exclusively the objects of the games, and always the leading objects, though at later periods contests involving quickness of hand and eye were introduced, then horse and chariot races, and, finally, music, poetry, and eloquence gave a more intellectual cast to these oft-recurring holidays. The Olympian and Pythian games were celebrated at intervals of four years, and the Nemean and Isthmian, at intervals of two. The month in which they were held was sacred. Heralds proclaimed peace, or at least an armistice, throughout the Hellenic world. It was like the " God's-peace " of the Church in the Middle Ages. States sent deputations, splendidly equipped, consisting of their most illustrious citizens, to repre- sent them. Safe-conduct was granted through every territory to all who were travelling to the sacred spot. Private citizens who possessed any talent for anything sought to distinguish themselves there. Athletes put themselves, and jockeys their horses, in training. The poet Durnished up his last ode or epic ; the philosopher rounded anew the periods of his latest L92 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. discourse on the nature of things ; the artist gave the finishing touch of the pencil or the chisel. Kings and high-born cava- liers put their four-horse chariots in first-rate order. Mer- chants and pedlers packed up their wares. In short, there was a universal hubbub and commotion. The roads that led to the scene of festivity and strenuous rivalry were crowded with multitudes on foot, on horseback, and in carriages ; and all was life, confusion, jollity, and joy. The scenes that broke upon the view, as one came in sight of the great world-fair, were well suited to keep up the excite- ment at fever-heat ; magnificent temples crowded with wor- shippers ; statues of the gods, like the Olympian Zeus by Phei- dias ; sacred groves, filled with the marble forms of heroes, statesmen, poets, kings, and victors ; ranges of tents, far as the eye could reach ; motley multitudes from every tribe and na- tion ; the hum of voices innumerable, uttering the nimble elo- quence of the Greek tongue, here a philosopher, like Gorgias, holding forth to a group of wondering disciples, there, a fa- mous poet or historian, with the glistening eyes of a ring of hearers fixed upon him, yonder, a bad poet, grasping by the edge of his himation the hapless victim who wishes him and his Pindarics the other side of the Styx. By and by the Hel- lenodicae the judges of the games take their stand, and silence steals over the countless multitude. The chariots are brought to the lists ; the combatants mount ; the trumpet-sig- nal is given, and off* they start. The trampling horses, the thundering wheels, the rising dust, a car overturned and broken to pieces, and the charioteer slain, fill up a few breathless mo- ments ; and then Theron of Agrigentum is proclaimed by the loud-voiced herald victor in the chariot-race. The welkin rings with the shouts of the frantic multitude. A procession is formed to bear the happy victor to the altar or temple, with music and song, that he may thank the gods who have crowned him with so much glory. Then the congratulating friends crowd to the Kwfio Where sea-born breezes gently blow O'er blooms of gold that round them glow, Which Nature boon from sea or strand Or goodly tree profusely showers ; Whence pluck they many a fragrant band, And braid their locks with never-fading flowers." TO THE SUN UNDER AN ECLIPSE. Beam of the sun, Heaven-watcher, thou whose glance Lights far and wide, unveil to me, unveil Thy brow, that once again my eye may hail The lustre of thy cloudless countenance. Surpassing star ! Why thus, at noon of day Withdrawing, wouldst thou mar Man's stalwart strength, and bar With dark obstruction wisdom's winding way ? Lo ! on thy chariot-track Hangs midnight, pitchy black ; While thou, from out thine ancient path afar Hurriest thy uelated lar. Bnt thee by mightiest Zeus do I implore, O'er Thebes thy fleet steeds' flight 196 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND P0E1RY. To rein, with presage bright Of plenteousness and peace forevermore. Fountain of Light ! venerated Power ! To all of earthly line A wonder and a sign, What terror threatenest thou at this dread hoar * Doom of battle dost thou bring ; Or cankerous blight, fruit-withering ; Or crushing snow-showers' giant weight ; Or factions, shatterers of the state ; Or breaching seas, poured o'er the plain ; Or frost that fettereth land and spring ; Or summer dank, whose drenching wing Drops heavily with rain t Such fate, portendeth such, thy gloomy brow ? Or deluging beneath the imprisoned deep This earth once more, man's infant race wilt thou Afresh from off the face of Nature sweep 1 " f From this time forward, Athens concentrates upon herself the chief literary interest, " Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence, native to famous wits." The germ of the city, in the old Pelasgian times, was a stronghold, built on the summit of a rock. In the early Hel- lenic times, it became, under the semi-mythical Theseus, the head of twelve confederated communities. The Homeric king, Menestheus, had his " well-built palace " there. After the Trojan war, the Attic commonwealth underwent many politi- cal changes. Kings were succeeded by Archons for life, then for ten years, then for a year. Then came the essay at a leg- islative revolution by Draco ; next, the triumph of wisdom and common sense in the legislation of Solon ; then, the usurpation fcr half a century, by Peisistratus and his sons ; and finally, the infusion of a larger popular element into the government bv Cleisthenes, and the rapid rise of Ionian-Attic genius to pros- perity, power, and culture, under the favoring auspices of politi- cal freedom. Then occurred the Persian invasion ; and from the THE GREEK DRAMA. 197 imitations of that fierce struggle Athens gained her leadership among the Grecian states, and from the ashes of the war-swept city rose in statelier splendor her battlements, altars, temples, statues, and shrines. Poetry, plastic art, political eloquence, took a fresh start in the plays of JEschylus and Sophocles, in the Athene Promachos, the Olympian Zeus, the friezes of tue Parthenon, by Pheidias, in the great orations of Pericles. The Attic dialect, founded on the old Ionic, had gained in strength and terseness by the habit of political and forensic dis- cussion, while it still retained its flexibility of phrase and con- struction. It had become the dialect of business-men as well as of the lovers of the beautiful, and the style of poetical com- position shared in the general influences under which the lan- guage had been modified. During the period from the sixth to the third century be- fore Christ the Attic age the characteristic species of po- etry at Athens was the dramatic, in its four forms of tragedy, comedy, satyric drama, and tragicomedy; and the elegant literature of the world is indebted to the great writers of that age for the establishment of the laws of dramatic composition, and for the most exquisite and masterly productions in that department of art. In the representation of the Homeric poems so dramatic at the great Panathenaic festival, and in the mimetic delivery of elegiac and lyric poetry, especially of the dithyramb, which was a peculiar combination of lyric ele- ments with a tragic story taken from the legends of Dionysos In whose honor it was composed, the Athenians already had some of the forms and ideas of dramatic poetry ; and even the terms tragedy and comedy were in familiar use at Corinth, Argos, Sicyon, and Megara, long before the proper tragedy and comedy came into existence at Athens. The first step taken in the direction of the drama proper was to diversify the choral representation by the introduction of a narrative, delivered in the style of the old epic recital ; the next was the introduction of a second performer to sustain the part of respondent to the first. The former step was taken by Th?s- 198 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. pis, a strolling player, who stands as the representative of the rudest form of the drama ; and the latter by JSschylus, all of whose earlier plays were acted by the dithyrambic chorus and two players. A third actor was added by Sophocles ; and here the external form of the dramatic representation reached its completion. Comedy had a similar origin in the jocose festi- vals of the same deity, and advanced nearly by the same stages, and at the same time, with tragedy. The one presents the dark side of the great world-drama that passes every moment before us ; the other reverses the picture, and gives us the hu- mor, the jest, the satire, and the laughter. We see the influ- ence of those old Greek masters in the classical compositions of Corneille and Racine, of Alfieri, of Ferreira, and of Goethe in his Iphigeneia ; in the JEschylus-like simplicity and grand- eur of the Samson Agonistes of Milton ; in the sweet, sad strain of that most beautiful echo of the classical spirit, the Ion of Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd. The old dithyrambic exhibition was held in some open place, the movements being made round the altar of the god. The earliest dramatic shows, like the pieces of Rueda in Spain, re- quired a temporary stage and ranges of seats for the spectators. At length the exigencies of a rapidly perfecting art demanded a permanent structure ; and th ; great Dionysiac theatre was built under the Acropolis, large enough to seat all the free in- habitants of the city, and with a lavish outlay of architectural, sculptural, and scenic decoration, in keeping with the general magnificence of public architecture in the age of its building. Dramatic representation at Athens was always under the charge of the chief magistrate, and constituted a part of the religious worship. The festivals to which it especially belonged were the two Dionysiac celebrations held in the spring. The chief one lasted eight days, at the most beautiful season, when the capital was crowded with deputies from subject states, and with visitors from every part of the civilized world. The pieces were always offered in competition for the dramatic prize, the rivalry lying between the tribes to which the poets respectivelj THE GREEK DRAMA. 199 belonged. They were submitted in the first instance to the archon, and, if approved by him, three actors and a chorus were assigned to the poet, who was required to train them, not only in the dramatic parts and the choral movements, but in the music, and sometimes to play himself. A board of judges was appointed by the archon, whose duty it was to sit through the whole, and then award the prize. As the performances commenced at daylight, and lasted with little intermission all day long for several days together, the office of theatrical judge was far from being a sinecure. The contest being decided, a record was inscribed on a choragic monument, containing the name of the archon of the year, the tribe, the choragus, and the poet; and a celebration was held at the house of some friend of the victor, similar to that I described in speaking of the Olympian games. These monuments, surmounted ea^h by a votive tripod, lined the street that led to the theatre round the corner of the Acropolis ; and from the inscriptions on them later writers compiled the annals of the stage. The theatre was built in the side of the Acropolis. Its size was enormous. It was open to the sky, so that, if a violent storm came up, the performances were interrupted until it had passed. The whole structure consisted of three main divis- ions, the aKrjvri, or stage, the orchestra, and the dearpov, or place for spectators. Behind the stage stood permanent archi- tectural fronts representing palaces. Three entrances led upon the stage ; through the central one the actor of the principal part made his appearance. The orchestra, as the name im- ports, was the place assigned to the choir, where the lyrical parts were sung, and the elaborate dances, like those in the lyrical representations, were performed. The semicircular seats were occupied by the spectators, generally, it would ap- pear, arranged according to tribes. Seats were reserved for magistrates and official personages, and some of the front seats were assigned to foreign ministers, and other distinguished strangers who were invited by decree of the senate to be pres- ent. They had a great variety of stage-machinery for the 200 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. change of scenes, which was accomplished partly by structures turning on a pivot and suddenly presenting the interior of a room, partly by painted scenery, which was changed during the singing of the choral songs. They had machines for mak- ing thunder, and for letting gods and other supernatural persons down upon the stage ; also, a stairway, called the Charonian steps, from beneath, for infernal deities and ghosts to come up, very much like the passage by which the Lowell lecturer as- cends from the lower regions. The principles of Greek art required that the player should represent his character, not only in language, sentiment, and act, but in outward appearance. A small and puny player could not personate Achilles ; a man with a pug nose could not play Apollo. But as nature does riot always accommodate the men best fitted intellectually with the corresponding outward face and figure, the Greek players supplied the deficiency by arraying themselves in stately costumes ; heightened their fig- ures by wearing high-soled boots or cothurni, expanded them- selves by padding their persons, and put on masks elaborately carved to mimic the character or passion intended to be rep- resented. The making of these masks for the tragic and comic poets became an important branch of plastic art. Innumer- able representations of them and of costumes are preserved in the pictures of ancient vases and other works of art, published by Gerhard, Panofka, and Wieseler. Julius Pollux enumer- ates about thirty masks, representing general characters, accord- ing to age, sex, rank, disposition, and aspect ; as, for instance, the shaven man, the pale man. The chief hero was generally in the vigor of life, with black, curly hair and beard ; and this mask was called the black man. The hero of the second class was generally blond, with yellow hair and waving locks ; and this mask was the yellow man. A gay young fellow, ready for anything, was beardless, brown-complexioned, with luxuriant hair ; and this mask was termed the Trdy^pva-ro^, or up-to-any- thing. Another was the fiery fellow, with crisp hair and raised eyebrows. Then there was the tender gentleman, with deli THE GREEK DRAMA. 201 cate pink color, blond hair, and a soft smile. The irivapol were the dirty fellows ; the melancholy gentlemen were o)%pot, pale- complexioned, with sunken cheeks, and long, straight hair. Of female masks there were the sad lady, the sharer in the misfor- tunes of the prince, the middle-aged lady, the newly married, the marriageable maiden, the despairing maiden, with distracted eyeballs and dishevelled hair. These are only specimens se- lected from the Onomasticon of Julius Pollux, to give a general idea of the study expended by the Athenian dramatists upon the scenic part of the representation. A large part of the action of a Greek tragedy took place behind the scenes, and was narrated at proper intervals by the actors. This was owing to several causes, to the original simplicity of the plot, to the Greek ideas of dramatic decorum, and to the practicaLjlifficulty the player would have found in performing any very violent feats, stilted, padded, and masked. His action must have been limited to a somewhat stiff and stately tread across the stage, solemn and declamatory .recital, and an exaggerated style of gesticulation. The by-play of ex- pression, and the features changing according to the moods of the passion, found no place in the representation, except by the change of mask and costume in the great crises of the principal characters. Thus CEdipus, for example, at the opening of the play, appears surrounded by the pomp and circumstance of royal power; at the close, his glory has departed, he is a blind and wretched outcast, the victim of his own rash conduct, and of an overruling destiny that visits "the iniquity of the fa- thers upon the children, to the third and fourth generation." Many of the Greek plays were first brought out in three connected pieces, called a trilogy, and the series was closed by a fourth, a farce called a satyric drama, from a chorus of Satyrs. It would appear that sometimes the fourth piece was a tragicomedy, like the Alcestis of Euripides. The trilogical form appears to have been an enlargement of the original tragic outline, when the subject, like that of the woes of the house of Agamemnon, running on from generation to genei- V 202 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. ation, could not be brought within the limits of a single plot, and naturally divided itself into the opening, middle, and con- clusion ; each, however, being by itself a tragic whole, while it formed only a part of the grander scheme that compre- hended and embodied the poet's entire conception. We have only one entire trilogy, the Oresteia of ^schylus ; but many of the now extant plays belonged originally to trilogies, the other parts of which are lost. This form, however, was not universal. Sophocles, in particular, was accustomed to offer single plays ; and indeed this must have been often done, or many of the best subjects would have been entirely excluded. The expenditures for these costly entertainments were de- frayed partly by the treasury, from a fund called the Theori- ion, or show-fund, and partly by the wealthier members of the several tribes, on whom the duty was laid, in a pre- scribed order, as one of the burdensome offices due to the state, ranking with the Trierarchy, or furnishing the fleet, and other expensive requisitions, all of which were regulated by law, and vere known under the general name of liturgies. At first the admission fee was fixed at a drachma, or eighteen cents ; then it was reduced to two obols, or about six cents; and the fee was allowed from the treasury to any citizen who desired it. The salaries of the actors also were paid by the state. The technical divisions of a tragedy are the prologos, or the speeches and dialogues, which are delivered 'on the stage be- fore the first appearance of the chorus ; the" parodos, or ana- paestic song delivered by the chorus as they enter, and pass round the ihymele, or altar, to their position in the centre of the orchestra ; the episodes, or dialogues between the choral songs ; the stasima, or choral songs chanted in the course of the ac- tion, in varying rhythms, and with music artfully adapted to the feelings intended to be expressed ; and the exodos, or the part which follows the last stasimon, and closes the play The divisions made by the choral songs correspond somewha to the acts of the Roman and the modern drama. The chorus, in the Attic drama, has been a stumbling-block THE GREEK DRAMA 203 to many. I do not see why it is any more unnatural than the music between the acts of a modern play. It is only fair, in judging of its propriety, to place ourselves in the Greek point of view. The chorus was the form of entertainment out of which the drama sprang, or rather on which it was engrafted ; and though the acted dialogue rapidly became the most im- portant element, still the choral songs continued to have a vital connection with the action, and to form a very essential part of the piece. The chorus is most prominent in jEschylus ; in Sophocles, subordinate ; in Euripides, more nearly independent , but in all, indispensable. Schlegel's idea, that the chorus was intended to represent the idealized spectator, is too narrow and theoretical. Sometimes it does this, by embodying relig- ious feelings and ethical ideas naturally growing out of the action, and therefore naturally springing up in the heart of the spectator. At other times, as in the opening of the Agamem- non, it draws into the circle of the piece, and presents or re- calls to the audience, incidents remotely connected with the catastrophe, and far-off springs of action, which have in reality, though not apparently, set in motion the events of the drama. This subtile employment of the chorus was a convenient re- source for the poet, on account of the narrow limits within which the proper dramatic action was required to move. Moreover, the chorus was sometimes arranged so as to present a picturesque group to the eye, while the ear was filled with poetry and music, and thus to entertain the audience while the stage was preparing for new scenes and the actors were chan- ging their masks and costumes. It will be readily imagined that, under circumstances so favorable for stimulating talent, and with such a public demand each year for new dramatic pieces of every kind, the produc- tiveness of Athenian genius was immense during the culmi- nating period of Athenian culture. Upon a moderate compu- tation, it has been estimated that the number of tragedies existing at its close, written by about a hundred and fifty poets, was more than fifteen hundred, and that of comedies, written u^ 204 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. by about a hundred and five poets, not far from nineteen hundred. Of all these, there are preserved only seven of ^iEschylus, seven of Sophocles, nineteen of Euripides (namely, seventeen tragedies, one tragicomedy, and one satyric drama), aund eleven of Aristophanes. The sources from which the materials of tragedy were irawn were wholly national, the legends and traditions of the myth- ical ages, the fates and fortunes of the great half-historical families before the Trojan war, and those of the heroes in the Trojan war or their immediate descendants. Recent events were rarely dramatized. Herodotus relates that Phrynichus made the fall of Miletus the subject of a tragedy, which threw the audience into such convulsions of grief that they fined him a thousand drachma?, or nearly two hundred dollars, for having exhibited so painful a picture of the recent calamities of their countrymen, ^schylus, in one of his extant pieces, drama- tized the overwhelming defeat of the Persians, in which he had taken so large and brave a part. Besides these sources, they had a long and many-colored national existence to look back upon ; they had the epic and elegiac literature, embodying in the most exquisite forms the genius of the great poets who had preceded them ; they had the wisdom of life recorded in the condensed sayings of the early sages ; and with all these, they wrought into their dramatic compositions, not only the political ideas under which they lived, but the general truths of moral- ity and religion, of personal accountability, and a judgment to come, modified, however, by individual experience and be- lief, and by peculiarities of individual character, in a manner singularly striking and impressive, often with a solemnity of style hardly surpassed by the Hebrew Prophets and the author of the Book of Job. Although the dramatic period has a much longer extent, the last recorded comic exhibition, by Poseidippus, having been in 250 B. C, and the last tragic, by Theodectes, in 334, yet the greatest works belong to the age which includes the lives of iE^hylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. ^Eschylus was born, THE GREEK DRAMA. 205 probably, in 625 B. C, and died in 456 ; Sophocles was born in 495, and died in 405 ; Euripides was born in 480, and died in 406. Sophocles, therefore, survived Euripides one year, and iEschylus fifty-one years ; and from the birth of ^schylus to the death of Sophocles was a hundred and twenty years ; that is, the flourishing period of Greek tragedy was less than a cen- tury, beginning soon after the close of the Persian wars, lasting through the Athenian supremacy, and continuing, with scarcely diminished splendor, through the disastrous scenes of the Pelo- ponnesian war, and then, shorn of its former magnificence, through the Macedonian supremacy. The public expenditures at Athens, during this age, on the works of art with which the city was crowded, were enormous, and excite the astonishment of the student. How did the gov- ernment obtain the means for this costly embellishment of the capital, and for this comprehensive patronage of literature ? They had a carefully adjusted financial system, consisting of rents, taxes on every kind of property, fees, custom-duties, and especially tribute from the confederate states, the most productive source of their revenue. This system was estab- lished soon after the close of the Persian war, for the purpose of supplying a permanent fund for naval and military forces against Persia, whose power was'still an object of terror to the Greeks. The proportion was assessed by Aristeides the Just ; the temple of Apollo, in Delos, was fixed upon as the treasury, and the place of meeting for the allied states ; and the admin- istrators of the funds were Athenians, appointed by the Athe- nian government. At first the annual amount was four hun- dred and sixty talents a year, or not more than half a million of dollars. Pericles, by a coup d'Stat like that known in our political history as the Removal of the Deposits, transferred the treasury from Delos to Athens ; and from this time the Atheni- ans assumed its entire control, and expended the money for the exclusive benefit of their city. The amount of the tribute in the time of Pericles was raised to six hundred talents, and finally to twelve hundred, or nearly a million and a half of dollars. 206 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. This, added to the other sources of revenue, made an immense income, considering the high value of money and the cheapness of living in those times. The lavish expenditure on the various festivals, of which the Dionysiac was one of the chief, inspired the people of Athens with an insatiable love of amusement, which often fatally interfered with the public service. This is the theme of many an indignant remonstrance in the great orations of Demosthenes. In one of his Philippics he exclaims : "* The Panathenasa, the Dionysia, are always celebrated at the proper time, festivals on which you expend more money than on any naval enterprise, and for which you make such prepa- rations as were never heard of elsewhere ; but when you send out a fleet, it always arrives too late." And Plutarch makes a Lacedaemonian say, that " The Athenians erred greatly in mak- ing serious matters of trifles, in expending upon the theatre sums sufficient for the equipment of large fleets, and for the maintenance of great armies. For if it were calculated what sum each play cost the Athenians, it would be found that they had spent more treasure upon the Bacchai, the Phcenissai, the CEdipoi and Antigonai, and the woes of Medea and Electra, than upon wars undertaken for empire and for freedom against the barbarians." The character of ^Eschylus was grave and earnest. He be- longed to a distinguished eupatrid family, probably descended from Codrus, the last Athenian king. From his earliest youth he was accustomed to witness the solemn spectacles of the Eleusinian Mysteries, into which he was, at the proper age, initiated ; and the severe and ascetic doctrines of Pythagoras formed a part of his intellectual and moral training. His im- agination had been excited by the pomp of the Dionysiac worship, the plays of Phrynichus, and the lyric glow of the dithyrambs chanted by the chorus in stately dance about the altar of the god. One day, when he was employed in watch- ing the vines in the field, he fell asleep while musing over these things ; and Dionysos, appearing to him in a vision, com- ,eschylus. 207 inanded him to " write tragedy." As soon as he reached the legal age, he obeyed what he regarded as a divine injunction. But the times were crowded with excitements more stirring than the contests of rival tragedians. The capture of Miletus, in 494, was a forewarning to the Greeks of the designs of Persia upon Hellas herself. JEschylus did not remain behind in the brave muster. He and his gallant brothers, Ameinias and Cynaegeirus, were in the battles of Marathon, Artemisium, and Salamis ; and all three were conspicuous for their achieve- ments on those illustrious days. In 484 B. C, he gained his first tragic victory. In the course of the next fifteen or sixteen years he won the prize twelve times more. But in 468 Soph- ocles gained the victory over the old poet, whom he doubtless surpassed in polish of style and in mastery of all the resources of tragic art. The taste of the times began to change, and the lofty tone of the Marathonian days and the austere spirit of the old hero-poet were less pleasing to the more fastidious race. For this, and for other causes not well known, -ZEschy- lus banished himself from his native land, and resorted to the splendid court of Hieron, king of Syracuse. It was after this that he composed the great trilogy, the Oresteia, containing the Agamemnon, the Choephoroi, and the Eumenides ; and it would seem that he must have returned to Athens to super- intend its representation, since he gained the victory with it in 458 B. C. In one of the parts, the Eumenides, he aimed to sustain the authority of the Areopagus against the innovating spirit of the times, but without success. He lived about three years after this, and died at Gela in Sicily, in 456 B. C. The subject of this trilogy is the fate of the house of Aga- memnon, the leader of the Grecian host against Troy. Out of the thirty-one extant Greek tragedies, thirteen are upon the his- tories of two royal houses, that of (Edipus in Thebes, and that of tne Atreidae at Argos. The race of the Atreidae traced their origin back to the gods. From generation to generation, the ouse had been stained with crime and blood. The Thyestean banquet, in the generation before the Trojan war, finished the 208 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. climax of horrors, which should call down the awful vengeance of the gods. Meantime the warlike brothers had married into another family doomed to affright the world by its surpass- ing wickedness. Helen, the wife of Menelaus, causes the Trojan war. The Trojan war draws Agamemnon from his home, and so gives opportunity to ^Egisthus, the son of the guilty but wronged Thyestes, to lay his schemes at leisure for the ruin of his hereditary enemy. The evil spirit of Clytem- nestra is easily wrought upon by the arts of ^Egisthus ; and the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, to appease the wrath of Artemis, by which the fleet has long been detained at Aulis, supplies to her already perverted mind a fearful motive for the murder of her husband on his return from Troy. This is plotted between her and her paramour ^Egisthus, who has stolen into the place of the royal lord of the palace. The first part of the trilogy contains the return of Agamemnon, his reception with feigned excess of joy by the fiend, his wife, his murder in the bath, and the establishment of the blood-stained and adulterous p^ir on the throne of Argos. But the shedding of blood must ba atoned for, and the dread duty of vengeance falls on him who is nearest of kin to the murdered man. Now comes the strug- gle severer than the conflict in Hamlet's breast in the heart of Orestes. An overpowering sense of the retribution due to the shade of his foully slaughtered father subdues the " compunctious visitings of nature," he returns, and slays the slayers on the very scene of their crime. Says the chorus : " Wont hath been and shall be ever, That when purple gouts bedash The guilty ground, then blood doth blood Demand, and blood/or blood shall flow. Fury to Havoc cries ; and Havoc, The tainted track of blood pursuing, From age to age works woe." In the short and terrible dialogue between Clytemnestra an' her son, she exclaims at last : " Thou wilt not kill me, son 1 jESchylus. 209 Orestes. I kill thee not. Thyself dost kill thyself. Clttemnestea. Beware thy mother's anger-whetted hounds. Orestes. My father's hounds have hunted me to thee. Clttemnestea. The stone that sepulchres the dead art thou, And I, the tear on it. OEESTE8. Cease ; I voyaged here With a fair breeze ; my father's murder brought me CLTTEMNESTEA. Ah me ! I nursed a serpent on my breast. Orestes. Thou hadst a prophet in thy dream last night ; And since thou kill'dst the man thou shouldst have spared, The man that now should spare thee can but kill." But the revulsion speedily follows. Even over the bodies of the guilty wretches, Orestes, after justifying the deed. says: " Let grief prevail. I grieve Our crimes, our woes, our generation doomed, Our tearful trophies, blazoned with a curse." He feels the horrors of blood, the silently approaching foot- steps of the dread avengers of a mother killed. He must flee to Delphi, to seek the protection of the god who "charmed him to this daring point " ; " For I must flee This kindred blood, and hie me where the god Forespoke me refuge. Once again I call On you, and Argive men of every time, To witness my great griefs. I go an exile From this dear soil. Living or dead, I leave These words, the one sad memory of my name." The Furies appear, and he flees ; and here ends the second VOL. I. 14 210 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. part of the trilogy. The third part, the Eumenides, opena with a scene of supplication in the temple of Apollo at Delphi. The action is thence transferred to the Areopagus, the most venerable court of Athens, before which came cases of blood- shed for their solemn sentence. The seat of the worship of the dread goddesses was hard by the Hill of Mars, where they were established in the final reconciliation to which the trial of Orestes leads. " Go, with honor crowned and glory, Of hoary Night the daughters hoary, To your destined hall. Where our sacred train is wending, Stand, ye pious throngs attending, Hushed in silence all. Go to hallowed habitations, Neath Ogygian earth's foundations. In that darksome hall, Sacrifice and supplication Shall not fail. In adoration Silent, worship all." In the second and third parts, there are scenes of awe and 'error, which almost make the hair stand on end ; but the sub- ject the atonement for sin, and the reconciliation of man with offended Deity is too vast for human solution. The point of interest is that, in that age, a poet should so have anticipated the problem which lies at the very heart of Chris- tianity. The first play, the Agamemnon, comes more within he range of human sympathies. Its idea of fate is identical -vith the law of retribution, whereby crime begets crime, and by the fixed decree of eternal justice the child keeps up the succession of guilt, and falls under the condemnation of the gods. The character of Clytemnestra is the most terrible and masterly conception of the poet. She has been often com pared to Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth ; and there is some resemblance, but only in one or two points, especially in the unrelenting purpose to slay. Clytemnestra is a character of much more depth and complication, a combination of fiend- iESCHYLUS. 211 is\i |ualities, whose darkness is not relieved, but only made more visible, by the lurid light of her motherly remembrance of her slaughtered Iphigeneia. The art with which she cheats her husband by simulated joy for his return ; the devilish irony which, with, an amazing power and subtil ty of expres- sion, the poet weaves into her words of welcome ; the fierce gladness with which she throws off the mask, and revels in the voluptuousness of revenge ; the exquisite effect of the beautiful description of Iphigeneia by the chorus, in the midst of sacri- ficial horrors ; the fine contrast between the tender sorrow in the house of Menelaus, after the flight of Helen, and the bloody consequences to which that flight led; the most tragi- cal situation of Cassandra, gifted with the art of divination, but denied the power to make her prophetic ravings intelligible to others, advancing to the fatal palace-door, within which her foreboding soul beholds the preparations for her own and Aga- memnon's slaying, while phantoms of the murdered children of Thyestes haunt the gory house, seen by her alone ; the band of Furies clutching with the grasp of death' the race foredoomed to such awful expiation ; the choral odes, from the beginning filled with dark forebodings which will not depart at the bid- ding, the darkness slowly and surely deepening until sud- denly the glare of murder clears it up, these are some of the points which make the Agamemnon so extraordinary a tragedy. T close with a few striking extracts. IPHIGENEIA. " Her piteous cries to a father's ear. Her spotless maidenhood, And youthful charms, at naught They set, chiefs war-athirst ; And, the prayer o'er, that father dear Bespake the priestly rout, All downcast as she lay, to lift her high, Raised like a kid, on the altar-stone to die. Then pouring o'er the plain her golden blood, Fair as a pictured maid, in beauty's prime 212 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. She pierced each sacrificer's heart With pity's keenest dart, Shot from her sadly supplicating eye, Striving to speak as, oft at banquets high, In the great chambers of her father's hall, She poured her voice." THE HERALD'S DESCRIPTION OF THE TEMPEST. " Fire and the sea, sworn enemies of old, Made friendly league to sweep the Achaian host With swift destruction pitiless. Forth rushed The tyrannous Thracian blasts, and wave chased wave Fierce 'neath the starless night, and ship on ship Struck clashing ; beak on butting beak was driven , The puffing blast, the beat of boiling billows, The whirling gulf, an evil pilot, wrapt them In sightless death. And when the brilliant sun Shone forth again, we saw the ^Egean tide Strewn with the purple blossoms of the dead And wrecks of shattered ships." SPEECH OF CLYTEMNESTRA OVER THE BODY OF AGAMEMNON " I spoke to you before ; and what I spoke Suited the time ; nor shames me now to speak Mine own refutal. For how shall we entrap Our foe, our seeming friend, in helpless ruin, Save that we fence him round with nets too high For his o'erleaping ? What I did, I did Not with a random, inconsiderate blow, But from old hate, and with maturing time. Here, where I struck, I take my rooted stand Upon the finished deed, the blow so given, And with wise forethought so by me devised, That flight was hopeless, and to ward it vain. With many-folding net, as fish are caught, I drew the lines about him, mantled round With bountiful destruction ; twice I struck him, And twice he groaning fell, with limbs diffused Upon the ground ; and as he fell, I gave The third blow, sealing him a votive gift To gloomy Hades, saviour of the dead. And thus he spouted forth his angry soul, &SCHYLUS. 213 Babbling a bitter stream of frothy slaughter, And with the dark drops of the gory dew Bedashed me ; I delighted nothing less Than is the flowery calix, full surcharged With fruity promise, when Jove's welkin down Distils the rainy blessing. Men of Argos, Rejoice with me in this, or if ye will not, Then do I boast alone. If e'er 't were meet To pour libations to the dead, he hath them In justest measure. By most righteous doom, Who drugged the cup with curses to the brim, Himself hath drunk damnation to the dregs." LECTURE XII EURIPIDES. SOPHOCLES. ARISTOPHANES. The three great tragic poets of Athens were singularly con nected together by the battle of Salamis. JEschylus, in the heroic vigor of his life, fought there ; Euripides, whose parents had fled from Athens on the approach of the Persians, was born in Salamis, probably on the day of the battle ; and Sophocles, a beautiful boy of fifteen or sixteen, danced to the choral song of Simonides, in which the victory was celebrated. These three great poets, so singularly brought together, differed in style of thought and in literary manner, as if the several rela- tions they bore to the Persian struggle had exerted a moulding influence upon their characters. jEschylus is always grave and lofty, with something of a Marathonian tread in his tragic cothurnus. He never forgets that he is a soldier ; and in the inscription written by him for his own tomb he speaks of his military exploits, but says nothing of his tragic victories. Sophocles carries the rhythmical movement, in which he first appears to us, through his whole life. Elegance, propor- tion, finished art, are the characteristics of the man and the poet ; but within these limits he shows an orderly force and even sublimity of genius. The pomp, the poetry, and the tri- umphs of the war, and the glory accruing to Athens from her jrave and generous part in the strife, have dwelt upon and taunted his mind ; but he shares not the deep enthusiasm which lifted the older poet sometimes beyond the comprehen- sion, and often beyond the sympathies, of his audience. Euripides, again, born in the midst of war's alarms, knew nothing about them until they were over, and the ordinary EURIPIDES. 215 tone of thought and feeling had resumed its sway. Philosoph- ical speculation, more than the inspiration of national glory, or even than the sense of the beautiful and the love of art, occupies his mind. He is accused of having lowered the character of tragedy from the stately heights at which it had been kept by jEschylus and Sophocles ; of having interwoven in its web the glittering threads of a pernicious sophistry ; of having set aside the rigid laws of construction ; of having loosened the connec- tion between the choral and the dramatic part of his tragedies ; and of having degraded the artistical, compact, and richly- wrought Greek tongue by a fluent, sometimes eloquent, but' often merely loquacious rhetoric, borrowed from the tawdry compositions of the sophists. There is some truth in these ac- cusations ; but their real grounds were greatly exaggerated by the malicious parody of Aristophanes, whose humorous attacks have too much influenced some of the modern schools of criti- cism. His abatement of the lofty bearing of tragedy brought it more within the common apprehens. on ; his eloquence pleased the nimble fancy of the Athenians ; his pithy obser- vations on common life, and even the argumentative tilts of his characters, where, dramatically considered, they are wholly out of place, were not displeasing to the disputatious mob that flocked to the Dionysiac theatre ; and so it has happened, owing to this greater popularity among the multitude, that more of his pieces have come down to us than of both the oth- ers together, and among them the only specimens of a tragi- comedy and of a satyric drama that we possess. Some of his plays are planned and executed with as much art, and are in- formed with as deep a tragic power, as those of Sophocles. Several of his characters, especially Medea and Alcestis, the former a powerful representation of the jealousy, madness, re- venge, and crime of a bold ana passionate woman, whose love has been lavished on an unworthy object and then scornfully flung away for a new tie, and the other, the sweetest and most delicate conception of disinterested, self-sacrificing affection, are among the first of poetical creations. Alcestis is a being in 216 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. whom all thought of self is merged in an absorbing love of those to whom she is bound by the tenderest ties ; and the scenes be- tween her and her husband for whom she is about to lay down her life, when she comes abroad to look for the last time on the light of heaven, furnish, in their pathos and beauty, a perfect contrast to the stormy agitations of Medea, while both together illustrate the variety of the poet's powers. As I shall not recur to Euripides except by allusion, and as this is the only tragicomedy remaining in Greek dramatic lit- erature, I will occupy a few moments with some remarks upon it, and one or two brief extracts. It is the legend of King Admetus, who, by the decree of fate, could be saved from death only by the voluntary death of another. His friends naturally decline ; even his father and mother think themselves quite as well entitled to what remains of life as he is. It is with- out his knowledge that Alcestis devotes herself; and this takes away something from our contempt for the man who, under any circumstances, will let another die in his place. With the pathetic scenes the poet has singularly blended grotesque pas- sages, in which the drunken and gluttonous Hercules fills the house of mourning, to which he has come unaware of what is about to happen, with clamorous shouts for more drink, re- proaches the servants for their lugubrious looks, and finally, when he is told that Alcestis is dying, marches off to dispute the possession of her soul with Death, gains the victory, and restores her to her sorrowing husband. In reading the play, as has been justly remarked by President Woolsey, we are reminded of Shakespeare's Hermione, and the grouping of the characters at the winding up is strikingly similar to the tab- leau at the close of " The Winter's Tale." A few lines from the parting speeches, in that scene so fuli of tender beauty, will give some idea of the tragic portion of the piece. " Alcestis. O let me go ! O lay me down to die ! My feet are tottering, death is pressing on ; Dark night already o'er my eyelids creeps. SOPHOCLES. 217 My children ! see, your mother is no more. Farewell, my children, take my last farewell, And live rejoicing in the light of day." Here is part of the farewell of Admetus : " I pray the gods to grant a father's joy In these my children, since I have no more The dear delight thy gentle presence gave ; And I shall mourn thee, not one year alone, But every day my lingering life holds out. For thou hast saved me, yielding for my life All that was dearest. Must I not then mourn My sad bereavement of a wife like thee ? Yes ! cease the festal throng, the social scene ; No more the wreath, and music's dulcet strain, In these lone halls where they but lately reigned For I can never touch the lyre again, Nor lift my spirit to the Libyan lute, Since thou art gone, and joy is fled with thee. And in my dreams oft coming, thou wilt cheer My saddened spirit, while my senses sleep ; For e'en in shadowy visions of the night T is sweet to see the loved one stand before us, Though swiftly flits the well-known form away. If Orpheus's voice and wondrous song were mine, That, Ceres' daughter and her mighty lord Subduing by the magic of my strain, I might from Hades bring thee to the day, I would descend ; and neither Pluto's dog, Nor Charon at the oar, the gcide of ghosts, Should hold me, ere I sped thee back to life. But since I may not, wait my coming there When I shall die ; and have a home prepared, That we may dwell together in that world ; For I will bid them lay my hreathless corse In the same cedar, side by side with thco ; For I will not be sundered, e'en in death, From thee, who hast alone been faithful to me." To illustrate a little more in detail the form and character of the Attic tragedy, I go back to Sophocles, who holds the highest 21 3 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. rank as a dramatic artist, though perhaps in original power & little inferior to ^Eschylus. The greatest of his works are the three plays on the fates of the house of (Edipus. They em- body his powerful conception of destiny. In the first, the plot is the most artfully contrived of all the Greek tragedies ; events following one another with breathless rapidity, and leading to the inevitable catastrophe which casts (Edipus down from his kingly state, an unconscious and self-convicted parricide. The second ends with the mournful and mysterious death of the dethroned, blind, and wretched (Edipus, who has sought the grove and shrine of the Eumenides, the very spot that wit- nessed the close of the great ^Eschylean trilogy, to die within its hallowed precincts, unseen by mortal eye, and thus to bring about the great solution of Destiny by death. The third car- ries on the tragic stoiy of the house, the civil war between the sons of (Edipus, their mutual slaughter, and the punishment of Antigone for burying the corpse of her brother Polyneices s the invader of Thebes, against the prohibition of Creon, who has succeeded to the throne. And here occurs the memorable collision between a sacred duty, founded on natural instincts and hallowed by antique usage, with the presumed binding sanction of the law of God written on the heart, on the one side, and the edicts of power, on the other. Both are pushed to extremes, and double destruction is the consequence. So the problem presented itself, in its tragic complication, to one of the wisest minds of antiquity. But the conflict gives occasion to noble and poetic scenes. I will read one, where Antigone, detected by the king's guard, is brought into his presence. " Creon. Thee, thee, with earthward-bending look, I ask, Dost thou confess or dost deny the deed ? Antigone. I do confess it ; I deny it not. Cbeon. Thou mayst betake thyself where'er thou wilt. Free from all peril of this heavy charge. SOPHOCLES. 219 But thou, tell briefly, not with many words, If thou didst know it had been heralded, That none should bury Polyneices' corse. Antigone. I knew how not ? for 't was proclaimed to all Ckbon. How didst thou dare, then, to transgress the law ! Antigone. It was not Zeus that uttered this decree, Nor Justice, dwelling with the gods below, Gods who ordained these burial rites for man. Nor did I think thy will such power possessed That thou, a mortal, couldst o'errule the laws, Unwritten and immovable, of God ; For they are not of now or yesterday, But ever live, and none their coming knows ; Nor would I, through the fear of human pride For breaking them, be punished by the gods. For I know well that I must die how not ? Without thy loud proclaim; and if before My time I die, I think it gain to die. For how can one whose life is circled round With woes like mine, not think it gain to die ? No grief I feel for such a doom as this ; But had I left my mother's child to lie Unhonored and unburied on the plain Ay, that were grief; I sorrow not for this; And if so doing I am thought a fool, He is the fool who dares to think me so." Passing over these three great plays, which in subject and connection might form a trilogy, but do not, having been writ- ten at different periods of the poet's life, I will ask your at- tention to a somewhat more detailed account of a single piece, the subject of which is taken from the Trojan war, the Ajax, or Aias. This hero holds a prominent place in the chivalry of the Iliad. Born in Salamis, his story was connected with the <>arly legends of Attica, and one of the ten tribes was called 220 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY by his name. In the Trojan war, his strength and daring placed him next to Achilles himself; his prowess was, on many occasions, the bulwark of the Greeks. But he had a fatal defect of character, an overweening confidence in him- self. When warned by his father Telamon to undertake noth- ing without the help of the gods, he gave an arrogant and scornful reply, and drew down upon himself the heavy wrath of the higher divinities, especially of Athene. Herein lies the far-off motive power, which slowly brings on the catastrophe, though the hero is descended from Zeus himself. During the siege, he captures and destroys the city of Teleutas, a Phry- gian prince, whose daughter Tecmessa, according to the cus- toms of the age, is assigned to him as his prize, and becomes his wife. They have a son, named Eurysaces. After the taking of Troy, consequently at a later stage of the Ilian story than the close of the Iliad, Achilles, according to his mother's prediction, is slain. A fierce struggle follows between the Greeks and Trojans for the dead body, which at last is borne away by Aias, while Odysseus keeps the pursuing Tro- jans at bay. The divine arms of the fallen hero are claimed by Aias and Odysseus, and are finally awarded to the latter. This disappointment strikes so deeply the proud and self-exag- gerating spirit of Aias, that, in his thirst for vengeance, he goes forth at midnight to break into the tents of the Atreidae and slay them. Athene suddenly smites him with frenzy, and in his delusion he falls, sword in hand, upon the flocks and herds, killing some with their keepers, and leading others bound to his tent. Two of these he mistakes for his enemies he cuts off the head of one, and, lashing the other to a pillar, scourges him ; all the while loading them both with bitter re- vilings. When he comes to his senses, and sees what he has done, shame and the sense of lost honor drive him to despair, and he kills himself. This is the story as given by Homer and the Cyclic poets. The Attic tragedian here has for his hero a man brave ana generous, connected as an eponymus with the early legends SOPHOCLES. 221 or' Athens, and so appealing to the pride of the nation ; yet in thought and act showing that overbearing insolence on which the wrath of Heaven falls, leading to fierce, vindictive passion, madness, and dishonor which can be washed out only in his own blood. On the other hand, the character of Tec- messa drawn by the poet with that delicate beauty which so distinguishes his creations sheds a lovely but mournful light over the tragic horrors, and gives a natural occasion for situa- tions of great tenderness and pathos. Of a similar general tone are the feelings excited by the sorrows of Teucer, the half- brother of Aias, his friend in arms, his second self, standing by him in peace and war, and watching over him in death after the heroic fashion. Again, contrasted with these, we have his hated and successful rival Odysseus, so hated that even in Hades, in that solemn passage of the Odyssey where his visit to the souls of the departed is described with such gloomy colors, the soul of Aias, meeting his living enemy, strides in silent wrath away. " Naught answered he, but sullen joined His fellow-ghosts." The subordinate characters, at least so far as this action is con- cerned, are Agamemnon and Menelaus, the generals of the host, who resolve to wreak a mean but characteristic ven- geance upon Aias, by refusing to his body the honor of burial rites. For the chorus, there are the Salaminian sailors, who have followed Aias as their leader to Troy ; who revere him as their prince, glory in his renown, grieve in his sorrows, and suffer in his shame. To an Athenian, whatever of dishonor had befallen the hero was removed by his death ; and the be- stowal of funeral honors vindicated his fame, and appeased his shade. The whole scheme of an ancient tragedy was very simple ; hut much care and art were required to adjust the parts. The characters were to be so arranged and balanced that they could be distributed between the Protagonistes, the Deuteragonistes. and the Tritagonistes. In many of the pieces there is an evi- 222 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. dent attempt to make the divisions of the dialogue correspond to each other, like the strophes and antistrophes of the chorus. This is shown . particularly in those parts called stichomythic or line-for-line dialogues, responding like the alternate strokes of hammers on the anvil. Shakespeare, who so often and so wonderfully resembles the Attic tragedians in sentiment, imagery, and condensed force of expression, being the most classic of dramatists, because the highest in genius and the truest to man and nature, has this peculiarity or mannerism, not at all from imitation, but from an instinctive seizing upon the same means to work out a similar effect ; as in the dialogue between King Richard and Queen Elizabeth, in Richard III., Act IV. Scene 4. In the Aias, the parts are distributed thus : I. The Protagonistes plays Aias and Teucer. II. The Deuteragonistes plays Odysseus, Tecmessa, and Menelaus. III. The Tritagonistes plays Athene, Agamemnon, and the Messenger. There are also mute figures, as Eurysaces ; attendants, &c. The scene is laid on the Trojan shore, with the ships and tents on one side, along the extended beach ; on the other side, hills and a grove, these represented at either end of the stage by means of theatrical machinery and scene-painting. The play opens early in the morning after the hero's insane act, near his tent. The prologos is a conversation between Athene and Odysseus, whom she discovers endeavoring to track the perpetrator of the outrage. Aias, from within his tent, takes part towards the conclusion. Then follows the parodos, or entrance of the chorus, chanting in anapassts, as they advance, a lament for the condition of Aias ; the wail passes into a cho- ral strophe, antistrophe, and epode ; then ensues a lyrical dia- logue between the chorus and Tecmessa, changing gradually into iambics, in which she relates the actions and describes the state of Aias, who now appears and gives utterance to his iespair, hinting at his resolution to kill himself. Tecmessa SOPHOCLE& 223 implores him, by every tender argument which the loving heart of woman can suggest, to relinquish nis dreadful purpose. This is followed by a dialogue between Aias and Tecmessa, the pathetic effect of which is heightened by the presence of their child. The chorus now chant a song, in which the memory of distant Salamis, and of friends and home, is introduced with natural beauty. This is interrupted by a speech of Aias, in which he uses the craft of one bent on suicide to make them believe that he has abandoned the purpose of self-destruction. Here occurs a beautiful passage, in which, while declaring his change of feeling, he describes the universal vicissitude of things : " For snow-piled winter yields to fruitful summer ; The orb of melancholy night retires For Dawn, with steeds of white, her blaze to kindle ; The blast of dreadful winds hath hushed to rest The groaning sea ; and all-subduing Sleep Loosens his chain, nor always holds in thrall." Hearing this, the chorus break into a strain of frantic joy, in rhythms expressive of exuberant emotion. At this moment a messenger arrives announcing the return of Teucer, who has been absent on a hunt among the Mysian hills. Hearing what has taken place, he consults Calchas, the soothsayer of the army, and learns from him that the crisis of danger has come, and that, if Aias pass this day unscathed, the anger of the god- dess will cease. He sends word to the attendants to restrain him from leaving his tent, but too late. He has stolen forth, under pretence of offering sacrifice, and purifying himself from the gore in the running stream, but in reality to seek a spot where, unseen of men, he may end his life with the sword given him, in a chivalrous exchange of presents, by his foeman Hector. In haste and terror they fly to search for him. The scene now changes, and presents on one side a forest, iust within the edge of which Aias is seen, having firmly set the sword, on which he is about to fall^ in the ground. At this moment he utters the soliloquy, as celebrated on the Athenian 224 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. stage as that of Hamlet on the English. An actor named Timotheus is mentioned, who was particularly famous for the effective manner in which he delivered this speech. From this circumstance he was called the killer, 6 aayv ARISTOPHANES 229 lndeous strife of mutual hatred and jealousy brought about. The corruption of public and private morals in Greece at this epoch gave the amplest scope to the spirit of travesty and satire. The prevalent philosophical speculations, especially those of the Ionian school, some leading directly to panthe- ism, others to atheism, and all to the formation of secret creeds adverse to the popular mythology, constituted an- other element in the agitation of the times. A class of schol- ars, or teachers, called by the general name of Sophists, but embracing every variety of philosophical and ethical view, had long been travelling over Greece, and discoursing to such hearers as they could find and as could pay them well for their lessons. Among them unquestionably were some men of ability and honor ; but, generally speaking, if we may judge by the manner in which Plato holds them up to ridicule and reprobation in his incomparable Dialogues, they were a set of word-snapping quibblers, who, however, were prodigious favor- ites with the talkative and disputatious Athenians, men who proved that right was wrong and wrong right, and that there was neither wrong nor right; that knowing one thing is know- ing everything, and that there is no such thing as knowing any- thing at all ; that speaking is the same as silence, and neither is anything ; that you have no father ; that your father is a dog, and that horses, pigs, and crabs belong to the same family-circle with yourself; that as the beautiful exists by the presence of beauty, so a man becomes an ass by the presence of an ass ; and so on, ringing myriads of changes, like the fools in Shakespeare, upon these quirks of word-jugglery. The danger of such trifling appeared when the same worthless slang was applied to moral and political questions ; and this sophistry, before contemptible, combined with a showy rhetoric to under- mine the principles of eternal justice, on which alone the state nay repose in safety, and of eternal morality, the only stead- fast hope for the character of individual man. Here then was & lawful subject for the handling of the comic stage. Another aim of Attic comeay was to amuse by a witty trav- 230 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. esty of the tragic poets. The same audience that were dissolved in tears one day by the spectacle of heroic sufferings the next day were thrown into convulsions of laughter at the sight of the same illustrious personages placed in the most ludicrous situations. There is also a running fire of single sharp allu- sions to well-known passages or persons, which an Attic audi- ence readily took. Thus a market-man addresses a fine Copaic eel in a strain of affection, parodied from the speech of Admetus to Alcestis : " For I will never, even after death, Be parted from thee, dressed with leaves of beet." An ambassador apologizes for his long detention in Thrace by a snow-storm that buried the country many feet deep, brought on by a tragedy of Theognis, a frigid poet of the time. Again, political events, such as those of the Peloponnesian war, and magnificent projects of universal empire, like that which drove the Athenians out of their senses at the time of the Sicilian expedition, were brought upon the stage in the most amusing manner, and often with more effect than fol- lowed the political discussions in the Ecclesia. Grand schemes of revolution and reform, of annexation and reannexation, and wild speculations of any and every kind, which were constantly coming to the surface of the seething caldron of Athenian life, were dramatized with infinite wit and unsparing ridicule. Public men were brought upon the stage by name ; and the actors, by the aid of portrait-masks and costumes imitated from the dresses actually worn, represented in the most minute particulars the personages themselves. Socrates, whose strange Derson and grotesque manners offered irresistible temptations to the wits of the comic stage, is said to have been present when he was brought out in the play of " The Clouds," and to have stood up before the audience with imperturbable good humor, that they might compare the original with the mimic semblance on the stage. From this brief account, it will be seen that a large part of the function of the comic theatre con sisted in discussing dramatically, and with all the liveliness tha ARISTOPHANES. 231 wit and sarcasm could lend, and all the force that party-passion inspired, the measures and men that occupied the public atten- tion for the moment. Objectionable as its tone frequently be- came, coarse, ribald, and libellous as the less scrupulous writers generally were, they scarcely descended to such a depth of falsehood and slander as is reached by the worst specimens of the political press, under similar circumstances, in free coun- tries. Finally, any miscellaneous subject by which the Demos could be amused even ridicule of the Demos itself was very good-humoredly allowed by that admirable impersonation of the humors, passions, faults, and follies of the Athenian pop- ulace. These are the principal features of the old comedy, to which all the plays of Aristophanes, except one, belong. The middle comedy comes a little later, when it was forbidden by law to introduce individuals by name ; but in other respects it resem- bles the old. The new comedy, was a still later modification, not iealing with individuals, but, like modern comedy, inventing general characters to represent classes, and gathering its mate- rials from the observation of contemporary life and manners. The remaining plays of Aristophanes are quite sufficient to show his unrivalled talent in his art, the copiousness of his in- vention, the brilliancy of his wit, the vigor of his imagination, and the singular boldness with which he grappled with the most formidable demagogues of his time. There was no more accomplished master than he of the Greek language, in its lyric sweetness and grandeur, in its infinite capability of rhythmical variations, in its graphic delineations, in its lofty eloquence, in its abusive slang, in its flashing fancies, as well as in burlesque, parody, pun, and alliteration, in its philosophical jargon and its patriotic cant. Sometimes he reminds us of the extravagant whimsicality of Rabelais ; sometimes, of the quiet humor of Lu- cian ; again, of the sharp and indecent satire of Swift; again, f the wit of Moli&re, who, to be sure, borrowed many of his best things from him ; still oftener, of the splendid versatility of poetical genius, the absolute command over all the felicities 232 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. of language, the plastic adaptation of rhythm to the breathless succession of thought, displayed by Goethe in his Faust. The philosophers and sophists are handled in " The Clouds." The aristocratic and plebeian demagogues are lashed with infinite and impartial humor in " The Knights," where the high-born equestrians deprive Cleon, the leather-dresser, of the favor of the Demos, by setting up the claims of Agoracritos, the sau- sage-seller. The pretensions of the rival tragedians are wittily set forth in " The Frogs." Bacchus, the god of the drama, goes down to Hades to bring up Euripides. On his way across the Achero- nian lake he is saluted by a chorus of frogs, from which the play takes its name. In the lower world he finds Euripides, claim- ing the tragic throne, which has been held by -/Eschylus. Pluto, in a puzzle, begs Bacchus to decide. The two poets sing and declaim specimens of their art. At last a balance is brought, to weigh their verses against eacl* other. The verse of JEschy- lus instantly sends up the scale of Euripides. Out of patience, -^schylus tells Euripides to get in himself with all his works, his wife and children, and Cephisophon into the bargain, against only two of his lines. Bacchus decides for .^Eschylus, who places Sophocles on the throne, ad interim. The following is a part of the dialogue between Charon, Bacchus, and the chorus : " Chabon. Thou shalt no longer trifle, but stand firm, And row with might and main. Bacchus. How then can I, Unskilled in naval Salaminian tactics, Handle the oar > Charon. Most easily ; for thou, When once thou 'st struck, wilt hear the sweetest strains. Bacchus. From whom t Chabon. From frogs, swanlike and wondrous melody. ARISTOPHANES. 233 Bacchus. Give out the signal then. Charon. Oop op, Oop op. Chorus. Brekekekex, koax, koax, * Brekekekex, koax, koax. Ye marshy children of the lake, Let us of social hymns awake The tuneful sounding strain, Koax, koax." In "The Peace," "The Lysistrata," and "The Acharnians," Aristophanes deals many hard hits at the Peloponnesian war. In " The Wasps," the passion for litigation so strong a trait of the Athenian character is admirably ridiculed. Racine's " Les Plaid eurs " is taken from this. The Thesmophoriazousae is devoted to the most remorseless ridicule of Euripides. In the comedy of "The Birds," the Athenian system of uni- versal annexation and intervention in the affairs of other nations is satirized by the establishment of a commonwealth of birds, which reduces all mankind to terms by controlling the rain, and brings the gods to terms by cutting off the sacrifices. The gods, reduced to absolute starvation, send an embassy to Nephe lococcygia, or Cuckoocloudland, consisting of Hercules, Nep- tune, and a barbarian deity of the Triballi. The archon of the feathered commonwealth lays down his ultimatum, that Jupiter shall surrender his sceptre and give him his favorite Basileia, or royalty, to wife. At first the ambassadors refuse these terms as unreasonable and extravagant ; but Hercules, who is always represented as a gourmand, snuffing the odors of the kitchen, immediately begins to relent. He begs the archon to tell him what the entertainment is which is going forward. The ar- chon replies : " O, it is only a few birds who, being found guilty of resisting the democratic birds, have been hauled over the coals, and are roasting." Hercules can stand it no longer, and votes at once to ratify the treaty. 234 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. The speculations of the philosophers, too, are here amusingly hit off; especially in the Parabasis spoken by the birds after thw <^aim to supreme dominion is made out. " Ye children of man, whose life is a span, Protracted with sorrow from day to day, Naked and featherless, feeble and querulous, Sickly calamitous creatures of clay ! Attend to the words of the sovereign birds, Immortal, illustrious lords of the air, Who survey from on high, with a merciful eye, Your struggles,)pf misery, labor, and care, Whence you may learn and clearly discern Such truths as attract your inquisitive turn, Which is busied of late with a mighty debate, A profound speculation about the creation, And organical life and chaotical strife, With various notions of heavenly motions, And rivers, and oceans, and valleys, and mountains, And sources of fountains, and meteors on high, And stars in the sky. We propose by and by, If you '11 listen and hear, to make it all clear ; And Prodicus henceforth shall pass for a dunce, When his doubts are explained and scattered at once." Then they give their theory of the world. I have time, in the present Lecture, to sketch only one more vf these pieces. I select it especially because it relates to a class of ideas which is commonly supposed to belong exclusively to modern times ; and I beg you to remember, as I read extracts from the comedy, that it was brought out more than twenty- two hundred years ago. In the play called the Ecclesiazousae, or Women in Congress Assembled, is represented a conspiracy of the women to usurp the government for the purpose of re- forming the state. Questions of this kind occupied the most philosophical minds from Protagoras to Plato. The rights of women were in some sort recognized by the Dorians and Cohans, so far as participation in the arts and in education went. It would appear that Aspasia, the left-handed wife of the great Pericles, introduced certain enlarged views into Athe* ARISTOPHANES. 235 rtian society from the saloons of that statesman. She had a great deal to do with the direction of public affairs, and is said to have polished the eloquent periods of her husband's orations. From the topics discussed by her and her followers, the bolder spirits, in the course of time, began to question the justice of excluding women from political influence. And it must be admitted that the legal disabilities under which they labored at Athens were neither few nor small. They had no rights of property except through the representative character of a "next friend " ; they had no voice in answering the most important personal question ever put to a woman ; they had neither the privilege, as we in our vanity think it, of saying ye%, nor the pleasure, as they in their wickedness think it, of saying no. This state of things must have often vexed the female philoso- phers and politicians, who seem after the Peloponnesian war to have made Athens the head-quarters of their speculations. These discussions form the subject of the play, which compre- hends all the schemes of communism that had ever suggested themselves to the teeming brains of the ancients. The piece was brought out in the midst of the vexatious warfare in Asia Minor, at a time when, doubtless, the female world-reformers were particularly active. It dates about 392 B. C, and is the last of the author's pieces belonging to the old comedy. There were in Athens, as in every civilized community, some gentleman-like women and about an equal number of lady-like men. One of the former, a strong-minded female, Praxagora by name, who formerly lived near enough to the Pnyx to overhear the eloquent debates, is seized with an in- tense desire to become a politician, and to harangue the as- sembly on the welfare of the state. To bring this about, she forms a party among the women, to steal their husband's gar- ments early in the morning, to put on false beards, and, hur- rying to the assembly, to pass a decree to transfer the reins of government to their own sex. As the constitution of Athens was at this time ultra-democratic, allowing universal suffrage *an? scrutin, no practical difficult^ lay in the way of this couy S36 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. d'Stat, except the want of practice in debate, and the habit of swearing certain feminine oaths, as by Aphrodite, Hera, and the like. This is all got over in a preliminary caucus, held at midnight. In this meeting, before declaiming their speeches, they apologize for being a little behind the time. The hus- band of one had supped on sprats, and had a fit of indigestion which made him cough all night ; the husband of another had returned late, and it was but a few minutes ago that she had an opportunity to filch his suit ; another has brought her woollen work, that she may make clothes for the children, and hear too. Praxagora instantly rebukes this last, and orders her to throw her work aside. They proceed with their discus- sion ; but every one, until it comes to Praxagora's turn, blun- ders by appealing to the goddesses, or addressing the assembly as ladies. At last the leader of the plot speaks in a strain of eloquence that commands the admiration of all present, show- ing up the maladministration of the men and the superior qualifications of the women ; and as a logical conclusion comes to the proposal, " That we the men resign the helm of state, Asking no idle questions, as, ' What course Of policy will they pursue 1 ' but simply Investing them at once with sovereign power. For their good conduct, be our guaranty Naught else save this, that, being mothers, they Will seek their children's good ; for who more anxious Than the fond parent to protect her nursling 1 ? Then for the ways and means, say who are more skilled Than women 1 They too are such arch deceivers, That when in power they ne'er will be deceived. More needs not ; only follow this good counsel, And soon ye '11 see the Athenian state will flourish. First Woman. The very cream of speaking, my Praxagora ; Prythee impart the source of all this wisdom. Praxagora. What time within the walls, from dread of wai, We refuge sought, I and my husband lodged ARISTOPHANES. 237 Hard by the Pnyx ; then I oft heard the speakers. And from a list'ner have turned orator." Praxagora is appointed mouthpiece and leader on the spot , and they adjourn. While their husbands still sleep, they proceed to the assem- bly disguised in "bloomers," and pass the revolutionary decree. Meantime the men begin to bestir themselves. The wardrobe of an Athenian citizen at this period of national depression was not overstocked with spare garments, and they find themselves in a somewhat embarrassing predicament. How- ever, there is no help for it, and, slipping on the dresses of their wives, they open their doors and peer cautiously up And down the streets, to see if the coast is clear. Blepyrus, the husband of Praxagora, is first seen emerging, in a pair of high-heeled woman's boots, and a short bright-yellow petticoat, uttering a soliloquy, not very complimentary to that " gadding jade," his wife. Another citizen in similar plight comes down the street, and, seeing his unfortunate friend, asks : " Who 's this 1 not surely neighbor Blepyrus ? By Zeus, but 't ism very sooth the man ; Prythee, what means this yellow that I see f Blepyrus. I 've just come out of doors with my wife's kirtle Of saffron die, she mostly wears herself." While they are discussing their singular condition, and won- dering what it all means, another citizen, Chremes, drops in from the assembly. He is apparently a bachelor, for he has just returned from the Pnyx without comprehending the rev- olution, and is surprised by the extraordinary appearance of Blepyrus. " Chremes. What dost thou ? why this woman's garb art wearing f Blepyrus. Why, in the dark I took what T could find. But whence camt you ? " 23b THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. He tells him that he has seen at the assembly " a mighty mob of fellows Greater than ever crowded to the Pnyx, Whom we that saw them likened unto cobblers. Nor this alone ; 't was wonderful to see How multitudinously white the assembly was. So I and many others lost our fees." Chremes gives a comical account of the manner in which the popular orators were hustled out when they undertook to oppose the proceedings. The men, especially Blepyrus, were abused by a " comely youth," who proves in the sequel to be his own wife, and finally a decree was passed "t' invest The women with the powers of government ; For in the many changes which our state Has undergone, this only is untried." The law is carried into effect. Praxagora is made President, and, at the demand of her constituents, proceeds to define hei position by laying down what we call a platform. The prin cipal doctrines are, community of goods ; the abolition of the family relation ; all children to be considered the children of the state ; no more courts or jails ; the halls of justice to be converted into feasting saloons for the great social community. Blepyrus listens with astonishment to the long series of re- forms, so nimbly rattled off by his wife. He throws in, here and there, a sly objection ; but she has some ingenious salvo to meet every case, so that, when she plumply puts to him the question, " These specimens how like you of our skill in legislation ? " he is obliged to confess, " Unqualified applause do they deserve, and approbation." The President issues her edicts with as much promptness anc energy as the President of the French Republic. All the citizens, except one, obey. He grumbles at the requisition, re- cuses to put his property into the common stock, but yet insists ARISTOPHANES. 239 on having Ins share with the rest. The streets are filled with people bringing pots, kettles, and every kind of household stuff, to the public stores of the community, and busily discussing the new measures on the way. As all are to be on an equality in everything, the rights of the old and ugly in matters of the heart are provided for by an edict. A young gentleman, on the way to visit the maiden he loves, is claimed by three old ladies in succession, each uglier than the other, and each there- fore asserting a prior right to his attentions. He is seized by two, and a third comes to the rescue. Seeing her, he ex- claims : " Ye Pans, Corybantes, Castor, and Castor's twin brother, What shape meets my view ? a hag worse than the other ! By all that is hideous in earth or in air, Thy name, race, and purpose, dread phantom, declare ! Art some ape, daubed with paint, and tricked out for a show, Or a beldam sent up from the regions below ? " He resists, and appeals to the gods in the most pathetic manner : " Now, by Zeus the Preserver, who ever beheld A wight more ill-fated than I, thus compelled To remain at the mercy of two ugly crones, Who are nothing at all but parchment and bones 1 " But his struggles are vain ; he is in the hands of the law, and is dragged away, singing as he departs his own funeral dirge. Preparations are immediately made to inaugurate the refor- mation by a grand banquet. The citizens are all invited ; in the most comprehensive hospitality, the half-tipsy maid-servant, who officiates as the President's herald, extends the invitation to the board of dramatic judges, and to all spectators of the piece ; and the play closes with a change of scene, bringing to view a superb dining-room, with tables running its whole length, crowded with the members of the regenerated society, before Vyhom a feast is spread, described in a single word, but that \-ord ten or a dozen lines long, compounded, or rather agglu- 240 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. filiated, from the names of all the dishes on the table, and thus representing a sort of gastronomic solidarity. " Limpets, oysters, pickled fish, And of skates a dish ; Lamprey-eels, with the remains Of sauce-piquante, and birds' brains, With honey so luscious, Plump blackbirds and thrushes ; Cocks' combs and ring-doves, Which the epicure loves,' Wood-pigeons blue, Juicy snipes too, And partridge-wings fine, And rabbits in wine." The invitation is accepted, the reform is in the full tide of successful experiment, and so we leave the jolly company tc make a night of it. Such are some of the features of the ancient comic drama. The Athenian Republic we might almost fancy to have changed places with the North American. We seem to be present at a masquerade of the ages. We follow familiar forms through the crowd of fantastic figures ; the mask is raised, and in this strange disguise we recognize a face that we have en- countered in our daily walks. The next moment the visor drops ; the phantom flits away, and the vision of the past is mpplanted by the realities of the present. LECTURE XIII. THE LATER GREEK DRAMA. DECLINE OF LETTERS. THE ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD. THE BYZANTINE PERIOD. MOD- ERN GREEK POETRY. The dramatic writings of the great tragedians and of Aris- tophanes the comedian are the only entire representatives of the Attic drama which we possess. All together they contain a body of poetry but little more in mass than the works of Shake- speare, whose genius, in its grandeur, versatility, and beauty, in its power of seeing into the heart of man and representing hu- man life in all its earnest, solemn, and terrible forms, as well as in its light, humorous, ludicrous, and burlesque aspects, seems to comprehend in one what in Athens was divided among many ; just as he often brings into the same piece dramatic elements which, under the more rigid laws of Hellenic taste, were re- garded as incongruous and as belonging to different forms of the art. Shakespeare is the best commentator on the Grecian dramatists, and they should always be read in connection, the reader bearing in mind, however, the distinction between he occasion, purpose, aim, and end of the Greek drama, the cir cumstances of its representation, the limitations of its structure, and its intimate relations with religion and the state or the entire body of the people, and the widely different outward condition of the drama in Queen Elizabeth's time. Shake- speare, when we make these distinctions and allowances, is infinitely the most classical, so far as I know the dramatic literature of recent times, of all modern writers for the stage. The classical French tragedy of Corneille and Racine is writ ten in more express imitation of the Attic, especially in the rigid observance of the unities of time, place, and action, whicb VOL. I 16 242 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY the Athenians, like Shakespeare, often set aside, when the higher unity of the poetic spirit required it. But it seems to me that those illustrious poets do not come so near the true classi- cal tone as Shakespeare, because they do not stand so near to Nature, who is always classical, because they do not paint the passions and unfold the tragic ideas which lie at the basis of all genuine dramatic representation with a directness and force equal to his. At the same time, I am far from assenting to the justice of Schlegel's severe condemnation of the old clas- sical tragedy of France. Having recently studied it afresh, after a long interval, and for the purpose of comparison, I have been impressed with a sense of its power, such as in my more youthful studies escaped me ; and I have been led to distrust the soundness of Schlegel's judgment. The classical pieces of Alfieri, short as they fall of jEschylus and Sophocles, will stand a fair comparison with Euripides ; his " Alceste " is, in many points, a finer drama than its Grecian prototype ; and he has handled the tragic fortunes of the house of Agamemnon with great force of style and depth of insight. The modern classical drama I mean the express imitation of the ancient ought, indeed, to be judged chiefly by making Euripides the term of comparison. But, I repeat it, taking the whole Attic drama together, the grandeur of conception, the profound views of man's destiny, the terrors of retribution for crime, the terse expression of the results of experience and of the deepest truths of intuitive philosophy, the force, loftiness, and exquisite rhythm of language, Shakespeare and the Greek tragedians are each other's best expounders. The comedy of the Athenians took a wider flight than that of any modern nation. Moli^re well illustrates the merely witty, humorous, and satirical element ; but in breadth of view, in lyrical spirit, in patriotic aim, in infinite and unsating variety, a comparison between him and Aristophanes cannot be sustained for a moment. The French comedy, for the last fifteen or twenty years, in fineness of expression, in directness rf political and social allusion, and in general bearing upon the THE LATER GREEK DRAMA. 243 manners, circumstances, and characters of the contemporary world, especially in the works of authors of the first class, like Scribe, affords an excellent parallel to the Athenian comic stage ; but in the higher poetical qualities the parallel ceases. A singular feature in the history of the ancient drama was the continuance ol the dramatic art in the same families, some- times for three generations. The poet, like the great artists of modern Italy, surrounded himself with disciples who learned from him the principles and the practice of his art ; and it so happened, in the case of all those whom I have mentioned, that the mantle of their genius fell upon their descendants, who also inherited their unfinished and unrepresented works. The contemporaries of the great masters were doubtless men of genius, since their dramas often gained the victory over those of JEscbylus, Sophocles, and Euripides ; but we are justified in inferring, from the destruction of all their works, that the plays we possess of these three poets contain, in fair measure, the best productions of the tragic stage, ^schylus left a son, Eupho- rion, and two nephews, Philocles and Astydamas, who were all distinguished tragic poets ; the last having brought out, after the Peloponnesian war, two hundred and forty pieces, and gained the victory fifteen times. Sophocles left a son, Iophon, distinguished in the lifetime of his father, and a grand- son, the younger Sophocles, who was the rival of Astyda- mas, and gained the prize twelve times. There was also a younger Euripides, nephew of the great tragedian, who was a very successful author. Two sons of Aristophanes followed their father on the comic stage. Thus dramatic literature was long sustained at Athens after its most illustrious writers had passed away. Yet the public affairs of Athens in this pe- riod had undergone a decline. The Peloponnesian war had broken down her power and exhausted her wealth. From that disastrous overthrow she sprang up with her inborn elasticity but she never wholly recovered. Her constitution was re- stored in its* main features after the overthrow of the Thirty 244 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. Tyrants by Thrasybulus and the returning exiles, and some of her former confederates renewed their allegiance ; but her treasury was empty and her revenue crippled. Though the literary and festal delights that made Athens at every season of the year the centre of attraction for the civilized world were the last the people would resign, yet the splendor of the ex- hibitions was greatly impaired by the loss of public wealth and the diminution of private fortunes. The drama continued, on a reduced scale, through the wars in Asia Minor which fol- lowed the Peloponnesian, through the struggle which Demos- thenes sustained with desperate odds against Philip and Alex- ander, and even through the period of Macedonian and Roman supremacy. In comedy the most important name after Aristophanes is Menander, the loss of whose works is the greatest disaster which Athenian literature has sustained. He was born at Athens in 341 B. C, being the son of Diopeithes, the commander of the Athenian fleet in the Hellespont, well known in the his- tory of the times from the circumstance that he was the friend of Demosthenes, and that, when brought to trial by the Mace- donian party on the charge of violating Philip's territory, he was defended by the great orator in his still extant oration on the affairs of the Chersonese. He was the nephew of Alexis, also a distinguished comic poet, by whom he was said to have been instructed in the principles of the art. Theophrastus the phi- losopher was one of his teachers, and Epicurus was his intimate friend. Both of these men had great influence on his charac- ter. He wrote an epigram on Themistocles and Epicurus, to the effect that the former rescued the country from slavery, the latter from nonsense. No doubt he was somewhat of a voluptuary as well as a fop. His dress was always studied and elegant, and he delighted in perfumes. He was one of the Andsomest men of his age ; the beauty of his countenance having been rendered, perhaps, more piquant by the slightest possible squint, As Suidas says, he was cross-eyed, but sharp- witted. The first Greek king of Egypt, Ptolemy, already THE LATER GREEK DRAMA. 24ft desirous of assembling at his court in Alexandria the eminent literary men of the age, invited him thither ; but he preferred tc remain at Athens. He lived to the age of fifty-one or fifty-two years, and perished by drowning in the Peiraeus, having written more than a hundred comedies, and gained the prize but eight times. This comparative want of public success, which he bore with the good humor of a follower of Epicurus, is attributed by some to the superiority of his pieces over those of his competi- tors in elegance and dignity. However this may be, they were pronounced, by the consenting voices of the ancient critics, the most finished models of the new comedy. With the generation that followed they rose to the highest fame. They continued to be played down to the time of Plutarch, and were translated and imitated by the comic writers of Rome, especially by the elegant Terence. The beauty and propriety of his style, the skill with which, like his master Theophrastus, he caught the humors and delineated the characters of society, the depth of his observation, and the pith of his sayings, made him a uni- versal favorite among his countrymen. Of this fact there can be no doubt ; and the numerous fragments of his plays show that their estimate of his genius was well founded. It is sur- prising that, while there exist passages belonging to seventy or eighty of his plays whose names are known, and five hundred more fragments of pieces not named, no entire play should have come down to us. I quote the following fragments. " To me most haupy, therefore, he appears, Who, having once, unmoved by hopes and fears, Surveyed this sun, earth, ocean, cloud, and flame, Well satisfied, returns from whence he came. Is life a hundred years, or e'er so few, , 'T is repetition all, and nothing new ; A fair where thousands meet, but none can stay An inn where travellers bait, then post away ; A sea where man perpetually is tossed, Now plunged in business, now in trifles lost. Who leave it first, the peaceful port first gain. Hold then ! no farther launch into the main ; Contract your sails. Life nothing can bestow 246 THE GREKK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. By long continuance, but continued woe ; The wretched privilege daily to deplore The funerals of our friends who go before ; Diseases, pains, anxieties, and cares, And age surrounded with a thousand snares/' " You say, not always wisely, 'Know thyself : ' Know others/ ofttimes, is a better maxim." ' Of all bad things with which mankind are curst, Their own bad tempers surely are the worst." " The rich all happy I was wont to hold, Who never paid large usury for gold. * Those sons of fortune never sigh,' I said, * Nor toss with anguish on their weary bed ; But, soft dissolving into balmy sleep, Indulge sweet slumbers, while the needy weep.' But now the great and opulent I see Lament their lot, and mourn as well as we." " If you would know of what frail stuff you 're made, Go to the tombs of the illustrious dead ; There rest the bones of kings ; there tyrants rot ; There sleep the rich, the noble, and the wise ; There pride, ambition, beauty's fairest form, All dust alike, compound one common mass. Reflect on these, and in them see yourself." I will here quote a fragment the only one extant of Strato, a poet of the same period. It seems to be taken from the speech of a person who has just been been put out of pa- tience by the pedantry of his cook, who insists on inventing new-fangled words and using the language of Homer. " I 've harbored a he-sphinx, and not a cook ; For, by the gods, he talked to me in riddles, And coined new words that pose me to interpret. No sooner had he entered on his office, Than, eying me from head to foot he cries, < How many mortals hast thou bid to supper ? ' ' Mortals ! ' quoth I, what tell you me of mortals ? let Jove decide on their mortality ; DECLINE OF LETTERS. 24 7 Yon 're crazy, sure ! none by that name are bidden * No table-usher 1 none to officiate As master of the courses ? ' ' No such person. Moschion, and Niceratus, and Philinus, These are my guests and friends, and amongst these You'll find no table-decker, as I take it.' ' Gods ! is it possible ? ' cried he. ' Most certain.' I patiently replied. He swelled and huffed As if, forsooth, I 'd done him heinous wrong, And robbed him of his proper dignity. Ridiculous conceit ! 'What offering makest thou To Erysichthon ? ' he demanded. 'None.' * Shall r.ot the wide-horned ox be felled ? ' cries he. ' I sacrifice no ox.' ' Nor yet a wether ? ' * Not I, by Jove ; a simple sheep perhaps.' ' And what 's a wether but a sheep ? ' cries he. ' I 'm a plain man, my friend, and therefore speak Plain language.' ' What ! I speak as Homer does ; And sure a cook may use like privilege And more than a blind poet.' Not with me ; I Tl have no kitchen Homers in my house : So pray discharge yourself.' This said, we parted." Several species of miscellaneous poetry flourished in Athens and in other parts of Greece during this and the preceding period, and for seven or eight centuries later. There was the Gnomic poetry, mostly in elegiac measure, contemporaneous with the lyric, and forming the transition between poetry and philosophic prose, which was, singularly enough, the earliest form of prose composition in Greece. There was a vast num- ber of smaller pieces, called epigrams, or inscriptions, of va- rious lengths, from two lines, like that in honor of the Lace- daemonians who fell at Thermopylae, which I read in a former lecture, to ten or twenty. These range from the sixth century before, to the seventh after Christ ; and, of course, are of every degree of merit, in every conceivable style, and on every im- aginable subject. The period of nearly two centuries from the death of Alex- ander to the fall of the Achaean League and the subjugation of Greece to Rome, was a period of great decline in public 248 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. spirit and in private morals. Philopoemen, who perished in the final struggle for independence, has been called the last of the Greeks. Literature suffered with the decay of national honor and the consciousness of the lofty rank hitherto held by the Hellenic race. But for six or seven centuries Athens was the university which educated the leading minds of the Roman world. The ablest young men, the sons of the highest person- ages in the Roman Republic and Empire, were sent to that city, where the illustrious monuments of the art and genius of a great race softened and refined their characters, and where the most accomplished teachers in literature and rhetoric were to be found. No doubt the vices of sycophancy and servility the accursed offspring of political degradation were to some extent the characteristics especially of the Greek adventurers who sought their fortunes in the distant capital of the Empire. But we must beware of applying the darkly colored portraits drawn by the Roman satirists from these discredited originals to the whole Hellenic race. The scholars and philosophers at Athens still retained, not only the faults, but many of the vir- tues, of the corresponding classes in the days of their national independence. They not only delighted in discussion and wrangling, but they showed the same ardent love of knowl- edge, the same passion for novelty, the same readiness of intel- lectual apprehension, the same fervid eloquence, which had marked their predecessors. Their municipal institutions re- mained mostly unchanged. The local administration of local atfairs still gave some scope to the old consciousness of activity, and was one of the causes which prevented the absorption of Greece into the overgrown body of the Roman empire. It was one of the secrets, too, of the permanence of the Greek race, the only race which has come down with its language, character, and physical peculiarities from the classical ages to our own. It was also one of the causes of the elasticity with which they recovered themselves after so many disastrous over- throws. The schools of philosophy continued until they were suppressed by Justinian, in the sixth century. The fortunes THE ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD. 249 of the city during these ages ; the slaughters by Sylla ; the gleams of happiness under Hadrian ; the assaults by the Goths from the northern, and the Scandinavians from the eastern shore of the Hellespont, in the third century ; the revival of letters in the fourth ; the whirlwind of invasion in which Alaric and Attila swept over the land; the introduction of Chris- tianity ; the gradual decay of pagan rites and the appropriation of temple-property to private uses ; the conflicts between the new religion and the old ; the manner in which the Christian Church, by its liberal principles and harmonizing interests, gained upon heathenism in the favor of the people, borrowing its designation of ecclesia from the old political assembly, and many portions of its ritual from the old national festivities, and so getting a hold upon the popular affection ; the formation of Christian communities upon a free and democratic basis, which so continued until the religion was raised to the imperial throne and became an organ of statecraft, and its bishops and patri- archs surrounded themselves with the pomps and gauds of this world ; all these features in the history of Greece, and espe- cially of Athens, until country and city disappear almost from sight for many centuries, from the sixth to the thirteenth, constitute a story of melancholy interest, and teach an impres- sive lesson of the vicissitudes of human affairs. The Ptolemies, who succeeded to that portion of Alexander's empire which included Egypt a little more than three centu- ries B. C, found Egyptian schools of art, science, and poetry still existing in Thebes, Memphis, and Heliopolis. On these institutions they engrafted schools formed after the model of those in Athens. The distinction in principle was this: the old Egyptian schools were connected with the temples and the priesthood; the Greek schools were, until after the Alex- andrian age, wholly independent both of the priests and the state, subject only to the general supervision of the magistrate, like every other institution, in other words, science and the popular religion were complete^ separated. The aim of the Ptolemies was to unite the science, literature, and poetry of 250 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. the Greeks under an Egyptian organization, supported at the expense of the state, and subject to its control. And when, just before the commencement of our era, the Roman domination succeeded to the Macedonian, the emperors respected the in- stitutions founded by the Greeks, and the schools of learning, the Museum, the Serapeion, the Brucheium, and the libra- ries. Literature, science, poetry, theology, in the schools of Pagans, Jews, Christians, acting and reacting upon one anoth- er, blending large Oriental elements with the doctrines of the West, mingling Neo-Platonism with Christianity, give a motley aspect to this chapter of the history of the human mind. I have time to notice only some of the points in the history of Greek poetry here, and that too very briefly ; tor the lead- ing characteristics of these centuries are the study and criti- cism of the old authors, the investigations of philosophy, and the accumulation and classification of the facts of science. I think that injustice has always been done to the talent and industry displayed in this age, because men are too apt to compare it in one point alone that of original creation in poetry with the illustrious ages which preceded it. The time mode of comparison would be to take the whole intel- lectual activity of both periods, and to weigh against each other the positive results as well as the refinements of literature and art. That modification of the Greek language called the Later Attic, or Hellenistic, had become the organ of civilization all over the world ; and it is true that most of the poetry was imi- tative rather than original. Callimachus, born in Cyrene about 280 B. C, was keeper of the Alexandrian Library, and wrote various poems, of which six hymns and a few epigrams remain. Theocritus of Syracuse, the most original poet of this cen- tury, carried pastoral poetry to its highest perfection in the Sicilian-Doric dialect. This was founded on the rustic life of the beautiful island of Sicily, and therefore, breathing as it does a fine truth to nature in the poems of Theocritus, it has a value and an effect quite different from the solemn and silly THE ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD. 251 Eclogues of Virgil, and still more so from the nauseating and detestable sentimentality of modern pastorals. The most en- tertaining among the pieces of Theocritus now extant is the gossiping dialogue of half a dozen women of the middle class, at a festival held by the Queen of Egypt. Apollonius, though born in Egypt, called the Rhodian from his long residence in Rhodes, lived from 235 to 194 B. C, and is known chiefly as the author of the Argonautica, an heroic poem that contains passages of great descriptive beauty. Aratus, the author of an astronomical poem, a work of much merit in its way, belongs to this age. In general, there was at this period a want of taste, and an abundance of glitter, far-fetched ornament, and conceit. These faults were carried so far that many poems were composed in lines of varying lengths, so as to represent the forms of axes, altars, birds, eggs, and the like. Some of the most famous writers cultivated obscurity as successfully as the transcen- dental poets of our own time. Lycophron, whose dramatic writings gave him a place in the tragic Pleiad of his age, wrote a poem called Cassandra, in fourteen hundred and sev- enty-four iambic verses, so desperately involved and obscure that even his countrymen gave him the nickname of aicoTeivos, or the darksome. We have reason to thank Heaven that not one of his four-and-sixty tragedies has come down to torment us ; only four lines out of this accumulation of Egyptian dark- ness have been preserved by Stobaeus. The truth is, the old spirit of Greek popular life, the animating sentiment of liberty, had long since departed, and the poetical genius of the race had died with it, or fallen into a deathlike trance to endure for the ages of thraldom. Imitative poetry continued, however, to be written. In the "ifth century flourished Musaeus, author of a short epic poem on the stor}' of Hero and Leander, in which the ponderous compound adjectives, more than the storm and the sea, carry the swimming Jover to the bottcm. Coluthus of Lycopolis, *:arly in the sixth century, wrote a poem in imitation of the 252 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. Homeric style, on the carrying off of Helen, very dull. Tryphiodorus wrote one on the destruction of Troy, duller still. Quintus Smyrnseus wrote one in fourteen books, on the portions of the story omitted by Homer ; it would have been wise had he omitted them too. The series of Egyptian Greek writers closes with the conquest of Egypt by the Saracens in the seventh century; and it was high time, for the stock had run out on the banks of the Nile. The influence of the Greek Church, the writings of the eailv fathers, the ritual formed between the fourth and the seventh century, and the hymns chanted in the service, imitated partly from the Jewish Psalms and partly from the Greek poets, tended powerfully to preserve the language through the Byzan- tine period, and down to our times. Byzantium was originally a Doric colony, as appears from historical facts, inscriptions, and documents, such as the public decrees quoted by Demos- thenes in the oration on the Crown. Its position on the Bos- porus, between Asia and Europe, early made it a point of great commercial and military importance. Early in the fourth century it became, under Constantine, the capital of the Ro- man empire and the centre of the Christian religion. The first Constantinopolitan emperors endeavored to make it Ro- man in language, manners, and character; but their success was only partial. The sycophancy of the courtly circles led them to comply with the imperial wishes ; they abandoned the name of Hellenes or Greeks, and assumed that of Peofiaioi, or Romans ; and the Greek language, modified to some ex- tent by the Latin, whence it had borrowed many words, especially legal terms and ceremonious titles, was called Ro- maic, down to the late Greek Revolution. But the people, the Church with the exception of the highest dignitaries, and a large part of the educated classes, both in the capital ana throughout Greece, refused to Romanize, adhered to their nationality, and continued to cultivate their old Hellenic tastes. The separation was increased by the division of the empire near the close of the fourth century, and by the controversiei THE BYZANTINE PERIOD. 253 waged between the Eastern and Western Churches on the pro- cession of the Holy Ghost and the worship of images, until the Pope of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople regarded each other as damnable heretics. From the fifth century Con- stantinople was the principal centre of Greek learning; but it will be seen from the brief sketches already given, that for more than a century there were three rival seats of culture, Athens, Alexandria, and Byzantium. The literature of the Byzantine period, which lasted until the conquest by the Turks in the middle of the fifteenth cen- tury, divides itself into two main branches, the historical and the theological ; the former consisting of a series of writers from the fourth to the sixteenth century, the latter beginning prop- erly before the Byzantine age, and extending to the twelfth century. Among these writers were a few poets ; for the taste for poetry had not wholly disappeared. Even the old Athenian drama was partially revived on the Byzantine stage. The plays of jEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were for a time brought upon the boards ; but the circumstances which gave them interest had long ceased to exist, and the coarser taste for spectacles, dancing women, and exhibitions of animals supplanted the legitimate drama, and made the theatres the scenes of vulgar debauchery. This state of things drew down the censures of the Church. In the first Councils, the ecclesi- astics launched their anathemas against the play-houses and the actors ; but finding the thunders of the Church of little effect to stay the growing evil, they determined to fight the Devil with his own weapons, and to draw the people away from the worldly shows by the superior attractions of dramatic enter- tainments in the churches on sacred themes. This is the origin of those curious and absurd theatrical compositions on Scriptural subjects, called Mysteries and Miracle-plays, which in all the countries of Europe preceded the modern drama. The sketch of a Miracle-play in Mr. Longfellow's Golden Legend is a most faithful representation of these ecclesiastical performances in the Middle Ag >s. 254 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. Passing over the chants which form part of the Liturgy of the Greek Church, and which date from about the seventh century, tiiat is, near the time when the element of quantity, though still employed as a matter of art and study, had yet nearly ceased to have a vital connection with the spoken lan- guage, the earliest Christian poet, whose works are entitled to notice, is Synesius, who flourished at the end of the fourth century. At first he belonged to the school of the Neo-Pla- tonists, but was converted to Christianity, and, though mar- ried, was made Bishop of Ptolemais by Theophilus, the Patri- arch of Alexandria. His principal writings were ecclesiastical, and have held a high rank for purity and elegance. He wrote a few epigrams, and there are remaining ten of his hymns. These are written in the rhythm known as Anacreontic, which has a singular effect contrasted with the solemnity of the sub- ject, analogous to the frisky measures in which the hymns of the Latin Church are so inappropriately written. Some of these pieces are very long. They do not contain many passages of vigorous imagination, or much felicity of expression or clear- ness of thought ; but they are the outpouring of a pious heart, filled with the love of God, delighting in endless ascriptions of praise and glory, and finally vanishing beyond all mortal com- prehension in a golden-glowing mist of Platonic and super- substantial transcendentalism. The first hymn opens : " Come, my sweet-toned harp, After the Teian song, After the Lesbian strain, On loftier themes henceforth Resound the Dorian song; Not of tender maidens, Smiling the smile of love, Nor of youths fresh-blooming, The soft attractive charms ; For the offspring unpolluted Of God-producing wisdom Impels me to a strain divine To strike the cithern's chords, And bids me fly the cares Of sweet, but earthly loves" THE BYZANTINE PERIOD. 255 Thus begins the second, a morning hymn : " Again the light, again the morning, Again the day abroad is shining, After the nightly-wandering shades ; Again, my soul, thy prayer lift up To God in morning hymns, Who gave the light to morning, Who gave the stars to evening, The universal choir. All things upon thy will Depend ; thou art the root Of present and of past, Of all around, of all within ; Thou art father, thou art mother ; Thou art male, thou art female ; Thou art voice, thou art silence ; Thou art nature's nature fruitful ; Thou art king, the life of life, So far as human voice may speak thee. All hail, of earth the root, All hail, of all things centre, Immortal numbers' unity, The unsubstantial kings " And here, as we are getting into the foggy land of No-meaning, we will pause. This style is characteristic of the poetry of the early Christians generally, so far as I am acquainted with it. The Greek language here is in imitation of the later lyric, and flows as easily as the Anacreontic, with which I have already compared it. The next poet of whom I shall speak is quite a different person, Paul the Silentiary. This title was an official one at the court of the Byzantine emperors, nearly equivalent to Privy- Councillor, although in the earlier classical Latin it meant confidential servant. He lived towards the end of the sixth century, and is known as the author of a minute and elegant description, chiefly in hexameters, of the church of Saint Sophia. This, however, is distinguished rather for ready flow of rhythm and for architectural accuracy, than for poetical 256 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. sentiment. In fact, it was an occasional poem, delivered by the author at the second dedication of the church, after the dome which had fallen in was repaired, in 562. Besides this and another similar poem, he wrote epigrams, of which eighty- three have been preserved. They are generally love-poems. In one of them, the Privy-Councillor says that Cupid has poured upon him a whole quiver-full of arrows ; and if one half of what he says of himself is true, he was as combustible as if he had been made of gun-cotton. I copy one of the least explosive, " On the Insupportableness of Absence." " When I left thee, love, I swore Not to see that face again, For a fortnight's space or more ; But the cruel oath was vain, Since the next day I spent from thee Was a long year of misery. O, then, for thy lover pray Every gentler deity Not in too nice scales to weigh His constrained perjury. Thou, too, O pity his despair ! Heaven's rage and thine he cannot bear." Here is another poem in which he describes a mishap in ne of his adventures. " The voice of the song and the banquet were o'er, And I hung up my chaplet at Glycera's door, When the mischievous girl, from a window above, Who looked down and laughed at the offering of love, Filled with water a goblet whence Bacchus had fled, And poured all the crystal contents on my head. So drenched was my hair, three whole days it resisted All attempts of the barber to friz it or twist it ; But water, so whimsical, love, are thy ways ! While it put out my curls, set my heart in a blaze." A. pretty story for the Emperor's Privy-Councillor I I will now read a short poem on a Portrait of Sappho, b* Oemocharis, who lived in the same age. THE BYZANTINE PERIOD. 2.57 1 Nature herself this magic portrait drew, And, painter, gave thy Lesbian Muse to view. Light sparkles in her eyes ; and fancy seems The radiant fountain of those living beams. Through the smooth fulness of the unclouded skin Looks out the clear ingenuous soul within ; Joy melts to fondness in her glistening face, And love and music breathe a mingled grace." Early in the seventh century, in the reign of the Emperor Heraclius, lived George the Pisidian, who wrote in iambics an account of that Emperor's Persian expedition. As he was an eyewitness of what he relates, his work has an historical value, and is included in the collections of the Byzantine writers. It is divided into three cantos, or hearings. After a prodigiously long introduction, he thus enters upon his subject, addressing the Emperor : The shadowy night of hostile armies spread O'er all the earth by men inhabited ; For Persian lust, still eager for its prey, With sateless passion, still desired to slay ; But thou, beneath the evening's falling shade, Thyself hast ne'er to balmy sleep betrayed." Perhaps so ; but if these hearings were as hard as the read- ing, I venture to say His Majesty more than once betrayed himself to balmy sleep while struggling to listen to them. From this time forw r ard, though the educated Greeks, at Constantinople and elsewhere, continued to study and write the classical language, still the changes in its structure rapidly increased, and literary taste declined with the general decline of art following the iconoclastic fanaticism, which was more destructive to the rich legacies of ancient genius than all the visitations of Goths, Visigoths, and Huns. The observance of quantity had long been gradually disappearing; and soon after the seventh century it seems to have wholly vanished from the spoken language, though, as a matter of learned prac rice and scholastic exercise, it has always continued to be stud- ied. The spoken language, thus deprived of the musical ele- VOL. I. 17 258 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. ment of time, and regulated entirely by accent, had quite developed its new rhythms and idioms in the twelfth century, a period of very peculiar literary character, whose principal representatives are Constantine Manasses, Tzetzes, and The- odoras Ptochoprodromus. The first wrote a versified chron- icle from the creation of the wOrld down to Alexis I., in an- cient Greek, but with the rhythm wholly accentual. The second wrote hexameter poems in imitation of Homer, and a gossiping sort of historical work, in accentual measure, called the Chiliads. He was a very learned man, and inordinately vain, boasting that he wrote his verses with the speed of light- ning which accounts for their being such uncommonly slow reading. The last, Theodoras Ptochoprodromus, is a more hearty and interesting personage. He was a scholar of high repute, and in acknowledgment of his abilities and learning received the title of Kvpios, or Master. His writings are nu- merous, both in prose and verse. Among them is a metrical romance, said to be dull ; but as I have never read it, I will not express an opinion upon it. He wrote also an iambic poem, of some wit, in imitation of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, called the Galeomyomachia, or War of the Cat and the Mice, in which, the cat being killed by a decayed piece of timber fall- ing from the roof of a house, the mice are of course the vic- tors, though with heavy losses. The messenger, who describes the battle, says : " First has fallen the satrap of the nation, Cramb-picker ; next to him Bone-stealer breathed His last." But he is chiefly remarkable for having written the earliest poem in modern Greek that has been published. A few lines at the beginning, and a few at the end, are in the ancient lan- guage and rhythm, but all the rest is in the accentual iambic tetrameter, like the Chiliads of Tzetzes. It is addressed to the Emperor Manuel Comnenus, and is chiefly occupied with com plaints of the needy and neglected condition of men of letters in that age. Near the beginning, there is a figure which Ooraes calls poetical, elegant, and worthv of a better ac THE BYZANTINE PERIOD. 2t>9 " For thou the ^aveless harbor art of those who 've fled for refuge, And scarce had I the sea escaped of briny-bitter sorrow, When I attained the blessed sea of thy great benefaction ; For thou the fount of pity art, and thou the grace of graces." He laments that, over-persuaded by his father, he had de- voted himself to letters, instead of some handicraft. " From childhood, my old father used to say to me, ' My son, learn let- ters, if thou wouldst prosper. Seest yonder man, my son ? He used to walk on foot ; and now he wears his golden spurs, rides his fat mule, and a horse splendidly caparisoned ; he used to have no shoes ; and now, thou seest, he wears his pointed sandals ; when he was a youth, he never saw the threshold of the bath ; and now he takes the bath three times a week.' " And so the good father carries the argument out. " And when, king, I heard the old man my father, (for holy Scrip- ture says, ' Obey your parents,') I learned letters, but with how much toil ! And ever since I became a scholar, I want a crust, a mouthful, or even a crumb ; and on account of my hunger and my poverty, I curse learning, and wail, and cry, ' Accursed be letters ; accursed be the time and the day when they sent me to school, that I might get learning, and my liv- ing from it.' " He then contrasts his own condition with what it would have been had he made himself a fashionable tailor. Then his cupboard would have been full of bread, and wine, and meat; now, he opens "one cupboard, nothing but pa- per; another, bags of letters; another, writings still," and so on. In this age, then, just before the overthrow of the Byzantine empire by the Latins, the age of Anna Comnena, and in the literary circle assembled in her palace, in all respects the most brilliant society of the twelfth century, there was still something of poetical composition, though not much original- ity. And there was this extraordinary phenomenon, that the writers adopted either the ancient language, with all its rhyth- mical principles or with the accentual system, or the Romaic with the accentual system. Here is the point where the old 260 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. and the new come together; but the old is for the scholars, the new is the language of the people. During this time, the mainland of Greece, Athens especially, remained sunk in the deepest obscurity. In an historical point of view, it has a sad interest ; in a literary aspect, there is nothing to be said, except that the Athenians, in the midst of poverty and political insignificance, shifted about from master to master, an easy prey of barbarians, a century or two later of crusaders, Venetians, Florentines, Catalans, and pirates, still retained, as we learn from the few notices we have of them from their contemporaries, the same ready and flexible talents that distinguished their ancestors. The overthrow of the Byzantine empire and the establish ment of the empire of Romania, in the thirteenth century, again connected the East with the West, disastrously for the former ; for again the arts and the literature treasured in Byzantium suffered irreparable losses from worse than bar- barian hands, by wanton conflagration, by pillage, and by brutal fanaticism. The Dukedom of Athens, which lasted from the beginning of the thirteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century, under the houses of De la Roche and De Brienne, the Grand Catalan Company of Aragon, and the Florentine Acci- auoli, presented a faint mediaeval reflex of former prosperity ; and the annals of this period, known in Western Europe at the dawn of modern poetry, suggested to Chaucer, Dante, and Shakespeare the title of Duke of Athens, bestowed by them on the ancient Theseus. The capture of Constantinople, in the middle of the fifteenth entury, put an end to the Byzantine period ; and the exten- sion of the Turkish conquest soon after over the greater part of Greece proper introduced the reign of barbarism over those plassic regions. But among the mountain fastnesses of the North, especially in the neighborhood of Olympus and Pindus, the descendants of the old ^Eolian and Dorian tribes preserved themselves un mixed and unsubdued Although the language, here as else- MODERN GREEK POETRY. 2b'l whjie, had lost its ancient character, and had become assimi- lated in general structure to the modern languages, still it had suffered less corruption on the one hand from the early Slavo- nian colonies between the sixth and tenth centuries, and recently trom the Turkish, and on the other from the Italian, than any other of the seventy dialects spoken in Greece in the day of her degradation. The language, however, in all these forms, is substantially and radically the same as the ancient ; and it has been greatly improved, within the last half-centuiy, by educated writers, who have endeavored to fix the principles of its grammar, to remove the barbarous additions from the Sla- vonic dialects and the Turkish, and to substitute for the Italian idioms words and idioms drawn from the old Greek. It is true, the scholars of Greece have been, and still are, much divided us to the expediency of founding style on popular usage, or of restoring as far as possible the lost forms of the ancient tongue. A middle course is likely to be followed ; at any rate, the ques- tion will be definitely settled as soon as a great poet arises to stamp the language with his own immortality. Meantime, during the last century and the present, espe- cially since the Greek Revolution, a very considerable litera- ture, in prose and poetry, has enriched the language. Dra- matic and lyric poetry have something to offer worth the schol- ar's attention. Of the former, the plays of Rizos, though not entitled to a high rank, have a certain classical finish. His Aspasia has been republished in this country, a tragedy the scene of which is laid in the time of the Plague of Athens, the personages being Pericles, Aspasia, Socrates, and other well-known names. The effect of the patriotic songs of Rhigas, the gallant Thessalian chief who was handed over by Austrian treachery to the tender mercies of the Turks, is well known, itid has become historical. The gay lyrics of Christopoulos breathe the freshness of nature and the spirit of the old ^Eolian enjoyment of life, and are far superior in delicacy of feeling and true poetical insight to the poems which pass under the name of Anacreon. Michael Perdicares, Kalvos, Alexander 262 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND POETRY. Soutsos, and Salomos, author of a famous Ode to Liberty, ar< well known to their countrymen, and not unknown to others. These are all the recent poets with whose works I have had an opportunity to become acquainted. But doubtless the most characteristic and original composi- tions are those of the mountaineers and islanders to whom I have already referred, chiefly the former. These tribes are Known as Klephts and Armatoles, the former wholly inde- pendent during the Turkish dominion ; the latter partially ac- knowledging the Turkish authorities, and having some sore of nominal organization under them. The Klephts, under the leadership of their captains, who bore a strong family likeness to the personages of the heroic age from the same neighborhood, seized every opportunity of dashing down upon Turkish villages and camps, killing and plundering, and climbing back again to their rocky habitations before the enemy could rally for pursuit. These semi-barbaric heroes, retaining many of the customs, superstitions, and traditions of ancient times, were the most formidable assailants of the Turks during the war of the Revo- lution ; but when the war was over, they gave the government much trouble in reducing them to obedience and the usages of civilized life. But the point of singular interest in them is their strong sensibility to poetry, and their facility in compo- sition. They were found to possess a body of poetical liter- ature consisting chiefly of Dirges, strongly resembling the funeral laments as far back as Homer, and of a very peculiar species of ballad, highly picturesque and characteristic of their mode of life. Like the earliest epic songs of Greece, these poems were composed not written to be sung, and were handed down by oral tradition. They were first written, from the lips of those to whom they had descended as a poetical heirloom, by a French scholar, M. Fauriel, who published two volumes of them in 1824. It is surprising how well he accomplished his task, considering that he was a foreigner, and depended on the ear alone. Still his text is marred by numerous errors, ind in some of the poems there are important omissions, which MODERN GREEK POETRY. 263 injure the sense, and make them appear more abrupt than they really are, though they are sufficiently so in their complete form. A year or two ago my friend and colleague, Mr. Sophocles, revisited his native country, and took occasion to revise the text of Fauriel which he had partly done before from his own recollection by comparing the poems as printed with the recollection of aged people in the North of Greece. In this way several of the finest of them have been much amended and improved ; and the specimens I am about to read I have translated from this text. The rhythm of most of them is the unrhymed iambic tetrameter catalectic, like that employed in the twelfth century. Among the traditional ideas changed from the ancient con- ceptions, and adapted to the circumstances of their modern condition, is that of Charon, the old ferryman of the dead. Among the mountains he has become a horseman, who gathers the souls of the departed, and gallops with them over the hills to the place of rest. This idea is simply, and I think poetically, handled in the following ballad, which I give in the measure of the original. CHARON AND THE GHOSTS. " Why are the mountains shadowed o'er? Why stand they mourning darkly 1 Is it a tempest warring there, or rain-storm beating on them ? It is no tempest warring there, no rain-storm beating on them, But Charon sweeping over them, and with him the departed. The young he urges on before, behind the elders follow, And tender children ranged in rows are carried at his saddle : The elders call imploringly, the young are him beseeching. Ghosts. My Charon, at the hamlet stop, stop by the cooling fountain, That from the spring the old may drink, the young may play with pebbles And that the little children may the pretty flowerets gather. Charon. I will not at the hamlet stop, nor at the cooling fountain ; For mothers meeting at the spring will know again their children, Ind man and wife each other know, and will p- more be parted." 264 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND i'OETRY. My next specimen is quite dramatic, and ferociously warlike. It breathes the fiercest spirit of the Pallicar, or Klephtic hero. It belongs to the rough regions of Mount Olympus, where the Pallicars had some of their inaccessible strongholds. A dispute arises between Mount Olympus and Kissavos, the ancient Os- sa, on the question of precedence as shown by snow and rain. The suggesting idea, I presume, is that Ossa feels aggrieved because Olympus, on account of his northern exposure, is the first to be covered with snow. The personages of the dialogue are the two rival mountains, an eagle, and the head of a slain warrior, each of which has something to say on the occasion. OLYMPUS AND KISSAVOS. " Olympus once and Kissavos, two neighboring mounts, contended Which of the two the rain should pour, and which shed down the siiow-stonn And Kissavos pours down the rain, Olympus sheds the snow-storm. Then Kissavos in anger turns, and speaks to proud Olympus. Kissavos. Browbeat me not, Olympus, thou by robber-feet betrampled ; For I am Kissavos, the mount in far Larissa famous : I am the joy of Turkestan, and of Larissa's Agas. Olympus turned him then, and spake to Kissavos in anger. Olympus. Ha ! Kissavos, ha ! renegade, thou Turk-betrampled hillock ; The Turks, they tread thee under foot, and all Larissa's Agas ; I am Olympus, he of old renowned the world all over ; And I have summits forty-two, and two-and-sixty fountains, And every fount a banner has, and every bough a robber, And on my highest summit's top an eagle fierce is sitting, And holding in his talons clutched a head of slaughtered warrior. Eagle. What hast thou done, head of mine, of what hast thou been guilty ? How came the chance about that thou art clutched within my talors? Head. Devour, O bird, my youthful strength, devour my manly valor, And let thy pinion grow an ell, a span thy talon lengthen. In Luros and Xeromeros I was an Armatolos ; In Chasia and Olympus next, twelve years I was a robber ; And sixty Agas have I killed, and left their hamlets burning MODERN GREEK POETRY. 265 And all the Turks and Albanese that on the field of battle My hand has slain, my eagle brave, are more than can be numbered ; But me the doom befell at last, to perish in the battle." From Olympus we now descend, and, crossing the ^Egean Sea, return to the birthplace of Homer and of the perfected epic, to Chios, still the source of many beautiful compositions. As we began with the Iliad, in setting forth from this beautiful and famous island, so, in retracing our steps, we will end with a Chian ballad. It is on a subject which has gained currency in the popular poetry of many nations, but which perhaps is treated with the most fulness and force by Burger, in the bal- lad of Lenore, so graphically illustrated by Retsch. It is a ride by night of the living with the dead. The Chian poet's management of the story is wholly different from Burger's, and his rapid style is a curious contrast to the particularity of description in the German. The unknown Chian poet seizes upon the main ideas, and in the briefest, most hurried manner hastens to the conclusion, as if a ghost were after him. It is dramatic, chiefly, in its form, the persons being the bard, a mother who has nine sons and one daughter, and the daugh- ter. Her the mother has nurtured tenderly and secretly ; but at length one from a distant land from Babylon, which since Aristophanes has been the type of distant regions seeks her for his wife. The mother reluctantly consents, overcome by the stranger's entreaties and the solicitations of her son Con- stantine, who promises to restore her, should any mishap befall. The other brothers resist. It is a superstition among these islanders, and I believe elsewhere, that birds are gifted with the power of seeing ghosts. This superstition explains one of the features of the piece, the part taken by the birds in the dialogue, which is called THE NIGHT RIDE. " Pobt. mother, thon with thy nine sons, and with one only daughter, Whom in the darkness thou didst bathe, -n light didst braid her tresses. 266 THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND P DETRY. And then didst lace her bodice on abroad by silvery moonlight ; Nor knew the neighborhood at all she had so fair a daughter, When came from Babylon afar a wooer's soft entreaty. Eight of the brothers yielded not, but Constantino consented. CONSTANTINE. O mother, give thine Arete, bestow her on the stranger, That I may have her solace dear when on the way I journey. Mother. Though thou art wise, my Constantine, thou hast unwisely spoken Be woe my lot, or be it joy, who will restore my daughter ' POBT. And then God's blessed name he called, he called the holy martyrs, Be woe her lot, or be it joy, he would restore her daughter. And then the year of sorrow comes, and all the brothers perish, And at the tomb of Constantine she tears her hair in anguish Mother. Arise, my Constantine, arise, for Arete I languish ; For thou didst call God's blessed name, didst call the holy martyrs, Be woe my lot, or be it joy, thou wouldst restore my daughter. Poet. And forth at midnight hour he fares to bring her to her mother, And finds her combing down her locks, abroad by silvery moonlight. Constantine. Arise, my Aretoula dear ; for thee our mother longeth. Arete. Alas ! my brother, what is this ? Why art thou here at midnight 1 If joy betide our distant home, I wear my golden raiment; If woe betide, dear brother mine, I go as here I 'm standing. Constantine. Let joy betide, let woe betide, yet go as here thou standest. Poet. And while they fare upon the way, and while they journey homeward, They hear the birds and what they sing, and what the birds are saying Birds. Ho ! see the lovely maiden there ; a ghost it is that bears her. Arete. List, Constantine, list to the birds, and hear what they are saying. Constantine. Yes ! birds are they, and let them sing ; they 're birds, heed not their saying. MODERN GREEK POETRY. 267 Abetb. I fear for thee, my brother dear ; for thou dost breathe oi morose. CONSTANTINE. Last evening late I visited the church of Saint Johannes ; And there the priest perfumed me o'er with clouds of fragrant incense Unlock, O mother mine, unlock ! thine Arete is coming. Mother. If thou a spirit art, pass by ; if thou art death, depart thee ; My hapless Arete afar is dwelling with the stranger. CONSTANTINE. Unlock, mother mine, unlock ! thy Constantino entreats thee ; I called upon God's blessed name, and on the holy martyrs, Be woe thy lot, or be it joy, I would restore thy daughter. Poet. And soon as she unbarred the door, away her spirit fleeted." SECOND COURSE. THE LIFE OF GREECE. LECTURE I. HELLAS AND THE HELLENES. In the course of lectures which I had the honor to deliver hist year in this place, my principal subjects were the position of the Greek language in the development of human speech, the position of Greek poetry in the history of civilization, and the value of Greek poetry considered as an expression of the heart and mind of man. The language stands near the middle of the line from the Ganges to the western shore of Europe, one extremity being the Sanscrit, the other the English, and all forming the class or group designated by comparative philolo- gists as the Indo-European stock. It has such analogies with the ancient Sanscrit, both in grammatical inflection and in words, that no doubt remains of an early relationship between the two ; while the number of words which are similar or identical in both is so small, compared with the whole body of the respective languages, that the nations speaking them must, in their historical development, have been wholly independent of each other. The common starting-point belongs, in space, to the Iranian plains of Asia, and in time, to those mysterious iepths of antiquity which historical research is totally unable to fathom. The polity of the East was early moulded into per- manent types by civil and religious institutions, which have already lasted unaltered for more than four thousand years, and seem hardly susceptible of decay. The Western tribes, moving from country to country, changing from institutions to nstitutions, passed through Protean diversities of character, :ondition, and culture, presenting a striking picture of the capabilities of the race. The Sanscrit language unfolded into 272 THE LIFE OF GREECE. a rich copiousness of expression and a fulness of grammat ical flexions elsewhere unknown, but with a regularity that stamps it with a singular monotony of type. The Greek, on the other hand, has grammatical forms somewhat inferior in number, while its vocabulary, sufficiently rich for all the pur- poses of life, art, and letters, presents varieties and irregular- ities corresponding with the greater activity and more varied experiences of the races that employed it, and, instead of the monotony of the Sanscrit, is especially marked by a sparkling and exhilarating vivacity. The literature of the Sanscrit was developed with wonderful order and system, but in forms of such gigantic dimensions that the most industrious scholar shrinks before them appalled ; and even Sir William Jones compared them to the Himalayas, the loftiest mountains under the sun. Epic, lyric, and dra- matic poetry succeeded each other in an order which seemed to obey some law of nature, and with a luxuriance like that of animal and vegetable life beneath the blazing heavens of the tropics. The features of nature in the midst of which this literature arose were on an overpowering and colossal scale. All was immense, unmanageable. In Greece, on the other hand, spaces were contracted. Excesses of climate and of animal and vegetable life were tempered. Instead of reposing on the bosom of all-embracing Nature, man was compelled to struggle with the earth and the elements for his existence. Instead of shaping his outward, religious, and intellectual being by the unchanging mould of caste, he asserted his freedom and claimed his individual rights. Instead of worshipping the un- couth and gigantic forms suggested by an overwhelming Nature, he clothed his deities with the loveliest attributes of human grace and beauty. Instead of bowing down to despotism, he became a political being, making his own laws according to principles of right evolved by the exercise of his own under- standing ; administering his own enactments either in person or by agents appointed by and representing himself. Instead of the harems of Eastern kings with their accumulating horrors, HELLAS AND THE HELLENES. 27 B VA he established the family with all its blessed relations ; he em- bellished his life with the graces of art, invigorated it with science, animated it with politics, crowded it with intellectual joys. Literature was brough 1 within the compass of order, proportion, beauty; it became the reflection of busy life no less than the record of philosophic musing and ascetic contem- plation. Art grew rich and radiant from the teeming but dis- ciplined imagination and the delicate training of the hand. It is idle to say that there is no standard of beauty ; there is one, and it is found in the cultivated judgment of the most intel- lectual races, pre-eminently in the unfolded skill of the artists and poets of Greece. To say that the Hottentot knows nothing of this, that the woolly head and flattened nose and protuberant lip form his ideal of personal charms, is only to say that he is a Hottentot and not a Greek ; that he is igno- rant of beauty, not that beauty does not exist ; that he has a false standard, not that there is no true standard. On the contrary, the fact that the Hottentot has any conception of beauty proves that there is beauty incorporated from the Di- vine mind in the created universe ; and if so, then there is an idea of beauty in the Divine mind, and that divine idea is its prototype and standard, which the Greek race have most nearly embodied and interpreted in their art and literature. This seems to have been the function which they were specially sent upon the earth to perform. As we look on the map of Greece, and compare that country with the other regions of the earth, the first idea which strikes us is its insignificant extent. Side by side with the vast spaces ?f Asia, it almost disappears from our sight. Measured with the other countries of Europe, itself the smallest grand division of the globe, it shrinks into a third-rate country. Added to the United States or Mexico, it would make no appreciable enlargement of the boundaries of either. The spirit of annexa- tion would hardly pause to consider it ; Manifest Destiny would ievour it without a moment's satiety to its enormous appetite. If we scrutinize the map of Greece a little more closely, we VOL. I. 18 274 THE LIFE OF GREECE. are struck with the remarkable indentations of its coast, and with the extraordinary variety of its surface ; broken up and moulded by mountains, hills, and plains ; diversified by rivers traversing it in every direction ; marked off into strongly discriminated physical divisions, producing every conceivable diversity of circumstance and influence under which the spirit of man may be trained to play its part on the mortal scene. The spine of the country is the range of the Pindus. From Lacmon, its most remarkable height, five rivers diverge to the Adriatic and the Ionian Sea, the Thermaic Gulf, the JEgean, and the Gulf of Corinth. These rivers are the Aous, the Arachthus, the Haliacmon, the Peneius, and the Achelous. They flowed through fertile valleys, under thick forests, by opulent cities. The Aous passed along the line of the colonies of Corinth, and so communicated with the coast that fronted Italy. The Arachthus, rising near the source of the Aous, flows into the Ambracian Gulf, opposite the promontory of Actium, where Augustus decided the fortunes of the Roman world. The Haliacmon takes its course in the opposite direction, and, run- ning by Beroea, falls into the Thermaic Gulf at Thessaloniea, both consecrated names in the early history of the Christian Church. Rising near the same spot, flowing at first nearly in the same direction, but separated by the Cambunian range, is the Peneius, which waters the vale of Tempe, so celebrated by the ancient writers for the assemblage of amenities that pleased the senses and captivated the imagination. Mount Olympus, the dwelling of the gods, rose high and snow-capped on the north, Ossa on the south, and between them the Peneius en- tered the gulf. The fertile plain of Thessaly breeder of horses and mother of heroes was guarded on the west by Pindus, on the north by the Cambunian Hills, on the south by Othrys. The Achelous, the largest of the rivers, flowed through a mountainous and thinly peopled country, and entered the sea at the mouth of the Corinthian Gulf. From Mount Tymphrestus, the centre of the mountain sys. fern, we follow the line northwardly to Pindus, eastwardly HELLAS AND THE HELLENES. 275 along the Othrys chain to the sea. Southeasterly runs the chain of (Eta. Westerly, on the frontiers of ^tolia and Acarnania, the Agraean Hills extend to the shore of the Ambracian Gulf. Another line along the south of Phocis bears the renowned name of Parnassus ; passing into Boeotia, it is the equally fa- mous Helicon ; under the appellations of Cithaeron and Par- lies both immortalized in Athenian poetry it separates the valley of the Asopus from the Attic plain ; and dividing Attica, under the names of Brilessus, Pentelicus, and Hymettus, it slopes to the shore at the promontory of Sunium, reappearing in the islands of Ceos, Paros, Delos, and the Cyclades and Sporades of the JEgean Sea, " which," says Wordsworth, " serve as natural stepping-stones to conduct us across the Archipelago to the continent of Asia from that of Greece." The Peloponnesus is similarly traversed and divided. The central region is Arcadia, a massive table-land, supported and defended by mountain ranges ; on the west, by Mount Lycseus and its curved chain ; on the north, by the woody Eryman- thus and Cyllene ; on the east, by the pine-clad Msenalus and the snowy Parnon, which, running southeast, forms the eastern boundary of Sparta ; while, nearly parallel to this, the noble and famous Taygetus bounds Sparta on the west, and ends in the Tsenarian Promontory, the southernmost point of Greece. Thus from the mountainous territory of Arcadia branch off the mountain-framed valleys of Argolis, Laconia, Messenia, Triphylia, Elis, and Achaia. The Peloponnesus was called by Strabo the Acropolis of Greece. Such is a brief outline of the physical features of Greece. My purpose is not to illustrate the geography of the country in detail, but only to mark out the framework within which the scenes of its ancient history were enacted. Each of these physi- cal features connects itself with a thousand brilliant associations of history or poetry, consecrating to immortal memory every nch of the classic soil of Hellas. The limestone formations, the stalactite caverns in which the plastic fancy of the Greeks saw the works of nymphs and other powers of their mythological 276 THE LIFE OF GREECE. creed, the marbles of A f tica, Eubcea, and Paros, the porphyry of Thessaly and Laconia, the silver mines of Laureium, the cop- per mines of Euboea, iron in the islands and in many portions f the continent, mineral springs like the still existing hot springs at Thermopylae, furnished the materials for building and the fine and useful arts, for commercial exchanges and household convenience, for sacred and sanitary uses, during the historical period of the Hellenic race. With great varieties of temperature, there was yet a prevailing equability and beauty in the sky and air, which favored the intellectual devel- opment of the people. The climate was equally removed from the enervating influences of the south of India, for example and the severity of the north. To these natural agencies in the formation of character may be added the rich and varied fertility of the soil where cultivated, and the products of the woods and mountains, the wild animals for the chase, and cattle for the support and convenience of daily life. Lions were found only in poetry, having disappeared from the soil of Greece before the historical ages ; but bears, wolves, wild boars, and deer afforded abundant and attractive game to the hunter ; and, later still, fishing and fowling, in all their forms, multiplied the means of amusement and the sources of luxury. Birds of the farmyard, field, and forest not only supplied the wants of the table, but pleased the fancy and moved the heart of the susceptible Greek. The swallow was the herald of spring, and the nightingale was the songstress " that honeyed all the thickets round " ; while other birds furnished the omens by which superstition sought to bring to human knowledge the will and the purposes of the gods. How accurately the forms, colors^ habits, and peculiar characteristics of the birds were ob- ' served, may be pleasingly witnessed in the gayest of the come- dies of Aristophanes, and in the scientific treatises of Aristotle. The land, thus furnished by nature, was surrounded bj sparkling seas, winding into the continent by curves and har- bors, which made the coast-line one of extraordinary length. The dwellers along its shore wert early tempted to engage iv HELLAS AND THE HELLENES. 277 distant enterprises of commerce and war ; and the fleets of the elder nations on the eastern margin of the Mediterranean were attracted to its numerous landings, and brought the pro- ducts and arts of their more ancient civilization to exchange tor the fruits and the mineral wealth of Hellas. How early this action and reaction between the opposite sides of the jEgean Sea commenced, it is not possible to decide from the inter- rupted records of history ; but it must have been very early ; for the Phoenician fleets visited every shore of the Mediterra- nean at least a thousand years before the authentic history of Greece commences. Whence came the people who filled up these fair regions with an active and teeming race ? Over this question darkness and perplexity hang. The answer cannot be given in detail, except as a series of conjectures, founded partly on tradition, partly on comparison of languages, and partly on physical pe- culiarities. But so much as this is tolerably certain, that the great waves of migration, which, in the primeval periods of human history, moved westward from the heart of Asia, over- flowed in divergent streams that poured down through the mountain passes, and filled up the valleys of the peninsulas in Southern Europe ; and this great fact is confirmed by another, namely, that the most ancient centres of the primitive religion and poetry of the race were among the mountains and the fertile valleys of the North, Dodona, Olympus, Delphi, and that from the same regions came the semi-mythical Thamyris, Olen, Orpheus, and Amphion, whose mighty names throw a gleam of poetic splendor across the darkness of that cloud-surrounded age. At a later period more cultivated settlers came in by ship from the older communities of the Oriental world. The culture that resulted from the interblending of these elements y land or sea was deeper and richer in its nature and more permanent in its duration, and, in fact, constitutes the peculiar type of civilization which we call Hellenic. This is not a name, put a prodigious and splendid reality, which has controlled the course of intellectual development for five-and-twenty centuries 278 THE LIFE OF GREECE. Did these primitive immigrants find an unpeopled country V or did they come upon, and displace or mingle with, an aborig- inal population ? The Athenians claimed to be autochthones, or children of the earth ; and the Arcadians called themselves older than the moon. These claims may simply mean that they had held the soil they inhabited from immemorial ages, or they may mean that they were actually created on the spot. The question which theory is true belongs to the realm of speculation, not of demonstration. Those who hold to the unity of origin of the human race must believe that the first wave of migration swept over a solitary country, and filled it with a new life ; those who hold to the theory of original crea- tion wherever the earth was fitted to sustain the existence of man, may believe that in Greece, as in other parts of the world, the creative power placed a portion of the human family, the original possessors of the soil. The discussion does not belong to this place or to my subject. The early traditions of the race are involved in inextricable confusion. This is undoubtedly owing, not only to the want of documentary records, but to the long series of movements from the East, bringing tribes and hordes into the country at very different stages of culture, with different mythologies and ethical ideas, which, blending with their predecessors in peace- ful intercourse, or by military conquest, sent down by oral tradition a confused history, which all the acuteness of subse- quent criticism has been quite unable to unravel with perspi- cuity of method and clearness of result. There was a civiliza- tion in Greece anterior to the heroic age, as is attested by gigantic ruins, which were antiquities before the days of Homer. The walls of Tiryns, the treasury of Atreus, the lions of Mycenae, and other Cyclopean structures, over which time seems to have no more power than over the works of nature, are indisputable proofs that an older race held the land, and put forth gigantic energies to mark the traces of its existence there. The writers of Greece point out localities in which were found the remains of a language, which thev "all HELLAS AND THE HELLENES. 279 Pelasgian, and consider as wholly different from their own. Here they were probably somewhat mistaken in the absolute conclusion at which they arrived. The Persian and the In- dian seemed equally to the Greek to be languages having no affinities with theirs, and yet nothing is more certain than the relation between them. It seems singular that these affin- ities should have escaped their attention ; that, of the many educated Greeks who visited the Persian court and spoke the Persian language, none should have detected the resemblances ; that even Ctesias, who passed many years there as court-phy- sician, and who wrote a history of Persia from Persian docu ments, took no notice of this philological fact ; that the men of letters who accompanied Alexander in his Oriental campaigns, and who must have heard the Sanscrit language constantly spoken, have listened to the recital of Sanscrit hymns, and have conversed intimately with the learned Brahmins, failed to remark the wonderful resemblances between the Sanscrit language and the Greek. All this can be accounted for only by the fact, that the science of comparative philology was totally unknown to the most accomplished men of antiquity, and that, in their estimation, all languages except the Greek were barba- rous, and those who spoke them were barbarians. There can be no doubt that the Pelasgian was the basis of the Hellenic, as it was of the Roman tongue, and that a considerable part of its words exist, under modified forms, in the dialects of the Greek language, as the Celtic and the Saxon form the basis of the cultivated English. In imitation of the Romans we call the inhabitants of Hellas, collectively, Greeks. They never called themselves by this name. The Greeks were a small and rude people of Epirus, scarcely recognized in the classical history of Greece ; but they appear to have been early known to the people of the neigh- boring peninsula of Italy, who applied their name, by a gen- eralizing process, to all the inhabitants of the country. Hellas, on the other hand, was originally only a small district in Tlies- saly, and the Hellenes were at first an insignificant tribe. As 280 THE LIFE OF GREECE. late as the time of Homer there was no common designation. The numerous divisions, partly founded on difference of de scent, and partly caused by the strong lines of physical demar- cation which parcelled out the country, were known by theii several names as Achaioi, Danaoi, Hellenes, Argeioi, Athe naioi, each having its separate organization, its worship, its leaders, and probably its peculiarities of language. But in the historical ages, before the times of Herodotus and Thucydides, the local name of Hellenes was extended into a national desig- nation, and is uniformly employed by the classic writers in that sense ; and the name Hellas had a similar enlargement. We ought to call the country Hellas, and the people Hellenes, simply because these are their names, while Greece and Greeks are only Roman nicknames. We may consider the culture that preceded the Hellenic, whatever it was, as Pelasgic, and the historical development of the people as Hellenic. Looking at this people in their collective capacity, there are several prominent and characteristic traits which strike the attention on a superficial survey. The remains of Hellenic art exhibit a type of extraordinary physical beauty ; and that this type was not an ideal one is proved by the well-known fact that the artists studied simple, unadorned nature more dili- gently and exclusively than those of any other age. The hu- man figure, in its real proportions, was constantly before their eyes ; the climate and customs of the country favored the studj' of the nude, and the artists laid down this study as the basis of their practice. The same type of beauty has remained in those regions under all the changes of circumstance which have since taken place. The facial angle and the straight nose, which are the common characteristics of Greek statuary, are by no means uncommon among the inhabitants of the Greek islands, and in those parts of the continent where the race has not been supplanted by Slavonians and Albanians. Propor- tion entered largely into the conception of personal beauty. In detail, a white skin, yellow hair in waving locks, well- formed extremities, a round head of moderate size, delicate HELLAS AND THE HELLENES. 281 iips, a straight nose never surmounted by spectacles, and deep- blue eyes, constituted the most prevalent conception of beauty, especially among the Greeks of the heroic age. It was the Caucasian type. Among the Southern Greeks a darker com- plexion, hair, and eyes presented frequent exceptions in these individual points, while the type of figure, height, and outline remained the same. It was a saying of Chrysippus that beauty consists, not in the symmetry of the elements, but in that of the parts ; and Adamantius, a writer on physiognomy, of the fifth century, describes the pure Greek race as tall and straight, with white skin, soft yellow hair, fair and firm flesh, handsome extremities, head of moderate size, strong neck, square or oval face, delicate lips, straight nose, liquid eyes of dark blue or azure, having much light in them ; " for of all nations," he writes, "the Greeks have the handsomest eyes." Plato, in alluding to the occasional departure from the common type in beautiful persons, says : " You praise one who has a snub nose as being piquant and agreeable ; and a hooked nose you declare to be a mark of royalty. The dark-complexioned are manly to look upon, and the light-complexioned are children of the gods." Yet the healthy brown, resulting from exercise in the open air, was greatly prized in comparison with the pale com- plexion caused by sedentary life. " The pale man," says one, " shows the effeminacy of life in the shade " ; and it was a prov- erb, that " pale men are good for nothing except to be cob- blers." The value they placed on health, and the endless pains they took to secure this best of blessings, show the good sense of the race in a most striking contrast with the absurdi- ties of every nation since their day. The poet Simonides says, " To be healthy is the greatest boon to man " ; and Ariphron, quoted by Athenaeus, was the author of the following paean : " Health, brightest visitant from heaven, Grant me with thee to rest ! For the short term by nature given, Be thou ray constant guest ! For all the pride that wealth bestows, 282 THE LIFE OF GREECE. The pleasure that from children flows, Whate'er we count in regal state That makes men covet to be great, Whatever sweet we hope to find In love's delightful snares, Whatever good by Heaven assigned, Whatever pause from cares, All flourish at thy smile divine; The spring of loveliness is thine, And every joy that warms our hearts With thee approaches and departs." Of such ideas as to health, long life was a natural conse- quence. The bodily powers came early to maturity, but this did not lead to a premature old age ; for development did not end with youth, nor decay commence with budding manhood. As far back as Hesiod the proper time of marriage was fixed at thirty for a man and sixteen for a woman ; Aristotle changes the proportion to thirty and eighteen ; and Plato to thirty and twenty, which is much more reasonable than the rule of Hesiod, who, thinking ill of the sex, probably fancied the evil would be less if they were caught young. The military age was from the twentieth to the sixtieth year. Hippocrates says that a man is a Trpeafivrr)? a word commonly, but incor- rectly, translated old to the fifty-sixth year, and from that time is a yepcop. An unusually large proportion of the emi- nent Greeks retained all their powers of mind and body to the eightieth, ninetieth, or even the hundredth year. Gorgias lived to the age of one hundred and eight, and Theophrastus to a hundred, in the full possession of their faculties ; and the father of ^Eschines died at the age of ninety-five. The intellectual character of the Greeks corresponded to the external circumstances in which they were placed, and to the beauty of form which so pre-eminently belonged to them. The harmony between their mental, moral, and physical condition is a striking proof of the perfectness of their organization. Ac- cording to Xenophon, Socrates declared that the elements of a good nature, that is, one well endowed with faculties, were the HELLAS AND THE HELLENES. 283 ability to learn quickly whatever received the requisite atten- tion, a good memory, and a passion for all knowledge by which one may be helped to discharge in the best manner his public and private duties. These the Greeks possessed almost univer- sally. Besides these, they had a certain moderation of temper, which, however it might have been lost from sight in special cases, still generally stamped itself on the conduct and even on the speech ; a propriety and becomingness of demeanor ; a tem- perance in all things ; a balance of character, which is remark- ably expressed in the serene and tranquil beauty of their plastic art. Yet so delicate was their susceptibility of the gentler emo- tions, that they were easily moved to lamentation and tears, to pity, love, and friendship ; and they were exquisitely sensitive to the effects of music, which with them was not the amusement of an idle hour, but entered deeply into the moral condition of the soul, and had important bearings on the welfare of the state. " Good men are inclined to tears," was a proverbial saying. " The Greek standard, however," says Hermann, " was never anything higher than the purely human. That which he [the Greek] was to admire or reverence, he must first clothe in human forms and analogies, especially whatever belonged to surrounding Nature and her powers. The rule of man over matter he nobly established, and he clothed his religion in anthropomorphic conceptions, making it the vehicle of a humanity by which man exalted himself to the likeness of the gods." The faults and weaknesses of the Hellenic nature were often terribly manifested in the course of their history. The Greek acknowledged the duty of obedience to the laws of piety and gratitude ; but these legal and ethical obligations did not re- strain him from giving free scope to his passions. Cruelty and revenge stained his conduct and justified itself to his reason. Says Archilochus : " One great thing I know, The man who wrongs me to requite with woe." To benefit a friend and to harm an enemy, was the commonly 284 THE LIFE OF GREECE. received maxim of duty, until Socrates penetrated deeper into the ethical basis of conduct, and taught the opposite doctrine. Selfishness, and an over-estimation of money, not in the least diminished by the additional experience of twenty-five centu- ries, show their ugly faces in the midst of the lovely concep- tions of poetry and art. "Money makes the man," says Al- cepus. " The rich man is the good, the poor the bad," is the burden of the elegies of Theognis : " From poverty to flee, From some tall precipice into the sea, It were a fair escape to leap below." The value of man as man was better recognized, however, in the later times of the Athenian Republic. The prevalence of corruption, fraud, and falsehood, and the violation of oaths and treaties, stain the pages of the Greek historians and orators, and afford the amplest materials for the satirical delineations of the comic theatre. The severe judgment of Polybius, who despaired of his countrymen, applies to the more degenerate period, when Greece had become a Roman province under the name of Achaia. "Those who handle the public money among the Greeks," says he, " if they are trusted with only a talent, having ten controllers and as many seals, and twice as many witnesses, cannot keep their faith." But as far back as Solon's time, the disposition to make free with the public money is severely reprehended as a common vice by that illustrious law- giver. Public corruption, peculation, and fraud, despite the safeguards and securities with which the Athenian constitution surrounded the treasury, are the ever-recurring topics of ridi- cule and satire in the comedies of Aristophanes. Traitors and takers of bribes, in the days of Demosthenes, are represented as constantly thwarting his patriotic policy. These faults of conduct and character look very badly when brought togethei in a narrow compass ; though I do not know that they are worse developments than have been made in many periods of modern history, French, English, and American. As dark a picture might be drawn of the acts of profligacy and corrnjv HELLAS AND THE HELLENES. 286 tion committed in our time by public men, of the selfishness of private life, the frauds of trade, and the advantages taken by the unscrupulous over the simple and confiding. The adulter- ation of the coin, the repudiation of debts by states, the lies of faction, and the violence of parties, give us but a poor picture of the superiority of modern over ancient public or private morals. But these things must be looked at in their relation with the whole life of a people, in their bearings upon grand results, and not in their isolated deformity. Although the lines that I have rapidly traced embrace the leading features of the collective character of the Greeks, a closer inspection reveals a wonderful diversity of local, national, and individual peculiarities. Theophrastus, in the Introduction to his Characters, says, addressing Polycles : " I have always been perplexed when I have endeavored to account for the fact, that among a people who, like the Greeks, inhabit the same cli- mate, and are reared under the same system of education, there should prevail so great a diversity of manners. You know, my friend, that I have long been an attentive observer of human nature ; I am now in the ninety-ninth year of my age ; and during the whole course of my life, I have conversed familiarly with men of all classes and of various climes, nor have I neg- lected closely to watch the actions of individuals." The same variety which led this old and accurate observer to draw the inimitable series of characters so often imitated, so seldom equalled, in modern literature, existed among the tribes and nations which together made up the Hellenic race. " The complete assemblage of the good and evil qualities," says Her- mann, " was furnished only by Athens." This remark is well founded, as we shall by and by see, when we come to a more especial consideration of that part of Greece. If we take the leading races, we notice how singularly they are discriminated, and how they shade into each other. If we examine the Greeks of the mainland, and compare them with the colonists m Asia or in Itaiy or in Africa, we are struck with a perpet- ual play of diversities in the midst of general resemblance. 286 THE LIFE OF GREECE. The ^Eolian, occupying a northerly position, was vigorous, active, and sound, with a keen perception of beauty, and with a tendency to fall into sensual excesses. In the fruitful plains of Thessaly, he established an aristocracy, which rose to great material prosperity, and then gave itself up to extravagant pleasures. Jn .ZEtolia, he turned his energies to robbery ana plunder. In Boeotia, he became heavy, sluggish, and aban- doned to the lowest gratifications. On the other hand, in the islands of the JEgean and in the .^Eolian cities of the Asiatic coast, the primitive qualities of the race were refined into an exquisite genius for music and poetry, which, however, rapidly degenerated into a taste for effeminate and licentious indul- gence. The Dorian character, in its iron consistency, was chiefly unfolded in Crete and Sparta. The austere principles by which the life of the Dorians was professedly regulated em- bodied themselves in the constitution of Lycurgus, and in the arrangements of public and private affairs by which it was car- ried into effect. The tersest simplicity and most pregnant brevity of speech was the characteristic of Sparta. In Asiatic Doris we find traces of the original vigor of the race, and in some portions of it, as in Byzantium, they survived the down- fall of the mother country. But, generally speaking, the stem peculiarities of the Dorians gave way before the encroaching spirit of Oriental luxury, and rapidly disappeared, without leav- ing any remarkable monument to preserve the memory of its existence ; while in the western colonies, in Syracuse and Tarentum, the Dorians became notorious for their love of luxury. The Ionians, who are represented on the continent by Athens chiefly, and who there exhibited the richest develop ment of genius, even in Euboea show many of the peculiarities of their character. But the earliest manifestations of its excel- lence were in the islands and cities of the Lydian and Carian coasts. The beauty of the country, the charm of the climate, and the rapidly accumulated wealth of an extensive commerce HELLAS AND THE HELLENES. 287 acting upon a vigorous nature, a proud spirit, and a love of enterprise in art and letters as well as in practical life, carried the culture of the Ionian race in early times to a lofty height. In epic poetry the world has not yet surpassed, or even equalled them. In elegiac verse, the remaining fragments are of almost equal excellence. In festive celebrations, uniting in grand exhibitions the finest of the arts, music, song, and dance, in stately processions, in genial worship of their pro- tecting deities, in elegant and tasteful enjoyment of the un- equalled delights of earth and sky that surrounded them, they made of human existence one perpetual holiday. But neither a race nor an individual can long endure under such conditions. Strenuous toil, a brave battling with hard necessity, is as much the spring of national greatness as of individual power. A fertile soil is not the best foundation for a mighty empire. Festivity is not the best school in which to train a hardy na- ture. The neighborhood of an ancient, worn-out, and luxuri- ous civilization exercises not the most favorable influence upon the youthful virtues of a fresh and blooming race. Even the deathless verse of Homer could not save the Asiatic Ioni- ans from premature decay. His warlike line did not defend them against the debility of Oriental habits ; nor did the brave spirit of his heroes hover over them, and shield them from the Persian hordes. Achilles and Ajax, Diomedes and Nestor, were in their minds, but not in their hearts. The death of Hector, the downfall of Troy, the captivity of Hecuba and Andromache, were avenged in the decay and ruin, after a brief period of glory, of the JEolian and Ionian colonies. But on the mainland the Ionian stem took a deeper root, shot up with a slower but hardier growth, maintained a longer exist- ence, bore richer fruits. Athens produced no Homer, for he consummated and exhausted the genius of epic poetry ; but what else that does honor to the spirit of man did she not pro- duce in her long career of intellectual supremacy ? All these varieties of character and of race were bound to- gether bv a common Hellenic spirit, which made them one as 288 THE LIFE OF GBEECE. contrasted with the rest of the peopled world. They often waged furious wars with each other, but they never forgot their relationship. They were Hellenes, and all beside were bar- barians. Variety in unity was the law of their existence as of their epic art. When we look over the field of their intel- lectual achievements, how deeply does this fact impress itself on the mind! Politics, art, poetry, social life, under what Protean forms do they stand before us, and yet how radically different are all of them from poetry, art, social life, politics, in the Oriental world ! Glance along the series of communities and governments which occupy the foreground of Grecian his- tory, and note the multitudinous forms of their constitutions ; survey the plastic and pictorial arts ; see the simplicity of de- sign running into the most beautiful variety of combination, style, and execution, the schools and styles of sculpture and its manifold materials, and the orders of architecture ; observe the kinds of poetry, discriminated with unerring taste, and wrought out with the enthusiasm of genius, guided by the hand of con- scious criticism ; the Ionian, jEolian, Dorian modes of lyric com- position, with their several rhythms and harmonies ; the drama of Athens, under the forms of tragedy, comedy, satyric drama, and tragicomedy, with their rules and principles, proportions and balancing parts ; enter the courts and assemblies, and listen to the ever-changing variety of eloquence, demonstra- tive, judicial, and deliberative ; then pause in the Academy or the Lyceum, hear the conversations and lectures of philoso- phers and teachers of youth, and watch the infinite vivacity of the discussions, the ingenuity of the arguments, the wit of the rapid retorts, through all these diversities runs the same Hellenic spirit. They cannot be mistaken for anything else. Egypt had nothing like them. Phoenicia and Palestine had nothing like them. " The wealth of Ormus and of Ind " had no such intellectual abundance to show. Hellas, in this re- spect, as the boldest illustration of unity in the largest variety ttands alone in the history of civilization. LECTURE II. OUTLINE VIEW OF HELLENIC CULTURE. In the first Lecture of this course I sketched an outline of the physical conditions which surrounded the Greeks during their national existence. Next I attempted an outline, equally general, of the physical, moral, and intellectual qualities of the Hellenic race, and of the distinctions between its subordinate types. The general subject of the course is entitled " The Life of Greece," a designation borrowed from Dicsearchus, a contemporaiy of Aristotle. That eminent writer, the loss of whose works is one of the heaviest calamities of ancient literature, was a man of the widest range of knowledge, em- bracing philosophy, geography, history, and politics, on all of which he wrote. He was an extensive traveller and an admirable observer ; but titles, abridgments, and fragments are all that survive of the numerous writings he gave to the world. One of them contained an account of the geography, history, morals, and religion of Greece ; of the life and man- ners of the inhabitants ; of education, learning, the arts, the ausical and Dionysiac contests ; in short, of everything neces- ary to the complete understanding of the condition and char- acter both of people and country. This great work he entitled Bios T?}f its antiquity, the houses generally mean and inconvenient, VOL. I. 19 290 THE LIFE OF GREECE. so that a stranger would at first hardly believe this to be the celebrated city of Athens. But when he should see the superb theatre ; the costly temple of Athene, called the Parthenon, overhanging the theatre ; the temple of Olympian Zeus, which, though unfinished, fills the beholder with amazement by the magnificence of its plan ; the three Gymnasia, the Academy the Lyceum, and the Cynosarges, all of them shaded by trees, and embellished with grassy lawns ; when he should have be- held the haunts of the philosophers, the various schools, and the festive scenes by which the cares of life are cheated of their prey, he would have another impression, and believe that this was in very truth the famous city of Athens. The hospitality of the citizens makes the stay of the stranger agree- able, and induces an oblivion of slavery. The city abounds with supplies for every want and the means of gratifying every desire, the neighboring towns being but its suburbs. The in- habitants are prompt to honor all artists ; and though among the Attics there are busybodies and gossips who pass their time in spying out the conduct of strangers, yet the genuine Athenians are magnanimous, simple in manners, trusty friends, and accomplished critics of the arts. In short, as mucb as other cities excel the country in the means of enjoyment, so much does Athens surpass all other cities. As Lysippus says : " Hast Athens seen not 1 Then thou art a log. Hast seen and not been caught 1 Thou art an ass." Leaving the city, the traveller takes the road to Oropus, which is rough and hilly, but on account of the frequent places of refreshment and the beauty of the views, is not fatiguing to the traveller. Of the city of Oropus he thinks very ill on account of the dishonesty of the innkeepers and the im- positions of the custom-house, apropos to which Jie quotes a couple of lines from Xenon : " They all are publicans, and robbers all ; May the Oropians have an evil end ! " Hence he proceeds to Tanagra, through a wooded region OUTLINE VIEW OF HELLENIC CULTURE. 2131 planted with olives, and wholly free from the fear of robbers. The city is elevated, the fronts of the houses beautifully adorned with encaustic pictures, and the inhabitants of a very different character from the Oropians. They are wealthy, but not extravagant in their way of life ; conspicuous for the ob- servance of the virtues of justice, faith, and hospitality ; liberal to the poor of the city and to foreign mendicants ; utterly averse from filthy lucre. It is the safest city in Bceotia for strangers to reside in ; for there is in the character of the in- habitants a downright and austere detestation of vice, because they are contented with their lot and love industry. " I ob- served in this city not the slightest inclination to any species of intemperance, which is generally the cause of the greatest crimes among mankind." From this model city our traveller proceeds to Plataea, the citizens of which, he remarks, have nothing else to say for themselves, except that they are colo- nists of Athens, and that the battle between the Greeks and Persians occurred there. On arriving at Thebes, by a smooth and level road, he gives a somewhat graphic description of the city, and sketches the character of the inhabitants. " The city lies in the midst of the Boeotian plain, and is about seventy stadia in circumfer- ence. It is entirely smooth, round, and its soil of a dark color. Though an ancient city, it has been recently laid out with greater regularity, having been three times destroyed, as his- tory informs us, on account of the overbearing and haughty character of the inhabitants. It is well adapted to the breeding of horses, being all well-watered, verdant, and deep-soiled, and having more gardens than any other city in Greece ; for two rivers flow through the plain that lies round the city, irrigating the whole of, it. Water is also brought under ground from the Cadmeia by pipes said to have been constructed by ancient Cadmus. Such is the city. The inhabitants are high-spirited, and wonderful for their sanguine hopefulness in the affairs of life ; but they are bold, overbearing, and haughty, quarrelsome, indifferent alike to stranger and to native, and scorners of justice. 292 THE LIFE OF GREECE. Disputes arising out of trade they will not settle by argument, but apply to them the law of violence and force of arms. Only controversies arising from the gymnastic games are referred to the judicial tribunals. Thus it happens that a law-case occurs scarcely once in thirty years. For whoever ventures to speak of such a thing among the people, and does not instantly quit Boeotia, but remains for the shortest possible time in the city, is watched by those who object to the trial of causes at law, and falls by a violent death at night. Murders are committed among them for very trifling causes. Such is the general char- acter of the men, though there are some honorable exceptions, noble-minded persons, and worthy of the highest regard. The women have the noblest presence, the tallest figures, the most dignified and harmonious movement, of a.ny in Greece. The covering they wear on the head is such that the face seems to be concealed by a mask, the eyes only being visible, but all the other parts hidden by the garments, which are all white. Their hair is yellow, and bound in a knot on the top of the head, which is called by the natives a torch. They wear thin and low shoes, of a red color, so laced as to leave the foot almost naked. The women have a pleasant voice, while that of the men is harsh and disagreeable. The city is very delight- ful to pass the summer in ; for it has an abundance of cool water and numerous well-planted gardens. It enjoys pleasant breezes, has a green aspect, and is well supplied with provisions and summer fruits. But it is detestable in winter on account of the scarcity of fuel, and on account of the rivers and the winds. Snow falls there also, and it has a great deal of mud." After visiting one or two more places, the traveller sums up his observations on Boeotia by quoting a popular description of the qualities belonging to the chief towns. " The love of filthy lucre dwells in Oropus ; envy in Tanagra ; quarrel- someness in Thespise ; avarice in Anthedon ; meddling in Coroneia ; bragging in Plataea ; the fever in Onchestus ; stu- idity in Haliartus. These misfortunes have gathered from OUTLINE VIEW OF HELLENIC CULTURE. 293 every part of Greece into the cities of Boeotia; so that th counsel of Pherecrates is justified, If thou art wise, run from Boeotia.' "' Leaving Boeotia, he passes over to Chalcis in Euboea, which he describes as a city well furnished with gymnasia, galleries, temples, theatres, pictures, and statues ; and the people as polished, fond of science, kind to strangers, quiet and orderly. The narrative suddenly breaks off here, and the next pas- sage contains the author's opinion of the extent of Hellas or Greece, including within its boundaries Thessaly on the north, because the original Hellas, from which the name ex- tended over the country, was a town in that region founded by Hellen. From these few touches we may form some idea of what Di- caearchus meant by the Life of Greece ; and from the pointed and graphic manner in which he brings out the peculiarities of cities, countries, and men, even under the disadvantages of an abstract, we may judge with what ability the work was ex- ecuted. It is a most interesting fragment, not only from the talent of the author, but from the time in which he lived and wrote ; from the fresh picture of contemporary life ; from the notices of little characteristic circumstances, which perish with the occasion, never to be recovered unless recorded at the mo- ment. He lived four centuries earlier than Strabo, six centu- ries earlier than Pausanias, and six centuries and a half earlier than Athenaeus, the three authors to whom we are chiefly in- debted for our knowledge of the details of ancient life. Here and there his sentences open most curious and instructive glimpses into the buried scenes on which humanity was once so busy. The inhabitants of towns of which now scarce a vestigp remains repeople the silent and deserted streets ; temples, the- atres, galleries, rise in their fair proportions ; the throng and tumult of commerce return to fill the solitudes ; the Athenian, Oropian, Tanagrsean, and Theban, each with the several peculi- arities of form and character whicn marked him in the day of his historical existence, gaze upon us from the vivid page ; and 294 THE LIFE OF GEEECE. the white-robea countrywomen of Pindar, moving with grace- ful and rhythmic step, come forward from the dark and solemn past, fix upon us their melancholy eyes gleaming out through the envious veil, and then vanish into the unfathomable ob- scurity from which they emerged to a momentary renewal of their existence. The life of Greece was a life of a thousand years. A na- tion, like an individual, comes upon the stage in the freshness and vigor of youth, passes to its maturity, begins to decay, and finally yields its place to others. It has been recently said, that this analogy has no basis in necessary truth ; that it is the creation of fancy ; that national life is not, like individual life, made up of perishable elements, and has no inherent principle of decay. Perhaps this is theoretically correct, or at least plau- sible ; but the sources of a nation's character and the means of a nation's growth are changeable and exhaustible. The faith and enthusiasm which belong to the period of its youth the period of construction and development do not endure forever. Heu prisea fides, was the natural exclamation of the Roman poet, when Rome meant the world ; but the ancient Roman spirit was felt to be dying out. The physical resources of a country do not last always ; and the crowded population of one epoch dwin- dles away, leaving another age to wonder how it could ever have been. Forests are cut down ; the soil is exhausted ; the fertilizing rivers shrink to streamlets, or entirely desert their ancient beds. Perhaps art might resist the gradual exhaustion of nature ; but the attractions of new regions draw off the ad- venturous spirits, and the world is never full. The lines of commercial intercourse change. The great land-roads are deserted for the more expeditious and less expensive passage by sea. New and more convenient centres are found ; and imperceptibly the splendors of the ancient seats become dim, and grass grows up through the crevices in the pavements. Power flies to other strongholds, and empires that once ruled the world fall into inward and outward decline. Where are Babylon, Persia, Syria, Egypt? It was not vice alone that OUTLINE 7IEW OF HELLENIC CULTURE. 295 destroyed them. It was a combination of causes, physical, moral, and mental. It was the ever-shifting relations of the world. The process goes on around us ; but we do not heed it. Old communities are decreasing ; young communities are increasing ; change, fluctuation, death, are written en all human things ; development and dissolution are the law to which men and nations are alike subjected. Some have a longer, others a shorter term of existence ; but the longest is a mere span, nor has any medicine yet been found to arrest or conquer death in either. The oldest nations now on the European stage have not reached the age of Greece and Rome. Farther east, the existence of nations has been artificially protracted ; but it is only a life in death. We are less than a century old ; and we can hardly infer an endless existence from the unexampled rapidity of our childhood's growth. Rather let us fear the seeds of a premature decay, unless we guard our national con- stitution by a wise temperance, justice, moderation, integrity, morality, religion, the laws of national health. The life of Greece, as I have said, may be considered as lasting, effectively, a thousand years. How long was the period which preceded its actual a'ppearance on the stage, how many ages were consumed in combining the elements of its being and character, and preparing it for its great career, it is impossible to say. That this period was neither short nor unimportant, the length, variety, and brilliancy of its his- torical existence afford us trustworthy proof. The country, as we have seen, was admirably fitted for an energetic development of intellectual power. The face of na- ture was young and fresh ; its features diversified and beautiful. Mountain, hill, and vale ; woodland and meadow ; rivers, lakes, harbors; fertile plains alternating with hard and uneven soil : a climate of unsurpassed healthfulness and loveliness, and of every variety ; the whole surrounded by the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, along whose shores were clustered the noblest seats of ancient culture, these were the framework within which Hellenic life unfolded its fairest and most fra- 296 THE LIFE OF GREECE. grant flowers. Here was laid the only true foundation of civil society, in the family relation, extending the range of its influ- ence to the remotest branches of kindred. Here were formed political societies, in which constitutions were modelled, em- bracing every principle of social and political science. Here poetry unfolded itself under the most inspiring circumstances and the most favoring auspices. Here eloquence was applied to its highest and noblest ends, with a consummate mastery of the resources of speech, logic, and intellectual force. Here belief in the existence of the gods gave to every form of nature and every affection of the human heart its relation to the divine nature, and clothed itself in the glories of plastic art. Here sprang up the exact sciences, geometry, astronomy ; the intellectual science of the philosophy of the human mind ; the moral or ethical science of duty towards God and man. Here a noble system of education, the germs of which were planted in Greece long before history was able to record them, devel- oped the faculties of the mind and the powers of the body in harmonious proportion. Here history, an art closely allied to political liberty, not only began its career, but reached its highest perfection. These are the springs, the momenta, of the life of Greece. For the life of a nation grows out of the family affections ; it is strengthened by the patriotic spirit, which sees the welfare of the individual bound up in the welfare of the state ; the chastisement of suffering and disaster nerves it to brave endurance ; the sunshine of national prosperity expands it into luxuriant growth ; the teachings of nature give it color- ing ; the splendors of creative genius exalt and refine it ; let- ters and art remove it from rudeness ; poetry kindles its fer- vor ; eloquence heartens it to the great contests which it may have to breast before its day has risen to the height of heaven ; philosophy shows its intellectual relations ; religion opens its view into the other world ; on the breast of Mother Earth the soul and character of a nation lovingly repose ; underneath the sky, its teeming energies are wakened into thrills of ecstasy action tasks its strength, by putting the ideal to the test of OUTLINE VIEW OF EELLENIC CULTURE. 297 reality ; and so by unnumbered influences, some too subtile to be expressed in human speech, is evolved by slow degree? that wonderful phenomenon of creative power and goodness, a nation's life. How far the development of the early life of Greece wa?. directly affected by intercourse with the primitive seats in Asia, it is of course impossible to say. How far the civilization of Egypt influenced the culture of Greece, in art and religion especially, comes more within the scope of investigation ; but even this cannot be precisely determined. The poetical liter- ature of the Sanscrit-speaking nations followed the same order of growth with the poetical literature of Greece ; but we find few analogies between the mythologies. The germs of the doctrines taught by every school of philosophy in Greece have oeen discerned by Oriental scholars in the teaching of the Brahminical sages ; and it has been supposed that the philoso- phers of Greece travelled into the remote East, in search of wisdom. This is possible, but doubtful. On the other hand, the Greeks themselves recognized in the names and attributes of the Egyptian deities the types of their own. Thus Neith became the goddess Athene. Some ideas of architecture and sculpture were doubtless suggested by the stupendous works which filled the valley of the Nile. Solid walls, columns with ornamented capitals, supporting architrave, frieze, and cornice, gigantic statues of gods and heroes, existed there long before the earliest marble temple rose on a headland, acropolis, or hill- top of Greece. The art of writing, first by pictures, secondly by symbolical signs, thirdly by pictures standing for whole words or names, and fourthly by figures standing for the initial . sounds of the names of objects, or alphabetic writing, had been invented in Egypt two thousand years before the age of Homer. All these things were well known to the authors of the earliest civilization in Greece, and may have furnished a starting-point. But the grandeur of immensity marked the architecture of the Nile ; solemn repose was expressed in the stony faces which crowded its temples and propylaea ; all were 298 THE LIFE OF GREECE. built for eternity ; but the spirit of beauty was not there ; the : dea of fitness and proportion was not there. Enormous masses were piled up by mechanical contrivances, the secret of which we know not ; huge figures, awkward, stiff, ugly, were reared for gods and men. Beauty was not the attribute of Egyptian -art. Whatever else the Greeks may have borrowed from the land of the Pharaohs, beauty they did not borrow. In this supreme quality and vital principle of their life, they were wholly original. Their first essays were marked by a rude strength. The iEginetan marbles have the stiffness of Egypt ; and some of the ancient figures of the gods would not have found themselves out of place in company with the sienite monsters of Luxor and Karnak. But as soon as the Greek got command of his materials and tools, he broke loose from the ancient traditions, and followed the instincts of his genius, which led him into the land of beauty. Through the Phoenicians, who completed the invention of alphabetic writing by select- ing from the Egyptian characters representing initial sounds, the Greeks received this art, and turned it to its highest pur- poses. The Egyptians used it for monumental inscriptions, for papyrus-records in the tombs of the departed, and perhaps for some of the transactions of life ; but never apart from the proper hieroglyphics. The Phoenicians, abandoning the hiero- glyphics, employed writing as a convenient instrument for com- mercial transactions, and, in the course of time, for the preser- vation of their national annals ; but they never rose into the higher regions of literary culture, and so they left but the shadow of a mighty name. The Greeks, on the other hand, seizing this art, which was communicated to them by the older nations, perfected it, and made it the means of laying up, for a life after life, the best part of their national existence. In this consisted their originality. They made whatever they received their own, by working it over again. They breathed into rude ma- terials and ungainly forms the elegance and grace of their own brilliant spirits. They turned inanimate matter into the almost breathing forms of art. They raised death into life, and stamped upon life the seal of immortality. OUTLINE VIEW OF HELLENIC CULTURE. IW The life of Greece commences, as we have seen, in the mte-historical times. The legends of gods and heroes occupy the background of the picture. The princes who waged the war of Troy, and their predecessors, the contemporaries of Hercules and Laomedon, emerge into a half-poetic, half-historic light. They are the chivalry of the classical ages, and are de- scended from the legendary gods. They appear to us as the rulers of a series of kingdoms, mostly along the coasts of Greece, with kingly authority not unlike that of the princes and barons of the Middle Ages. They are more or less related, either by consanguinity or by the tie of friendship ; but in political forms and powers they stand wholly indepen- dent of one another. Sometimes they unite in temporary con- federacies for special and limited purposes. The invasions of Troy, the second of which furnished the legends for the divine tale of Homer, resulted from such a combination. The chief portions of the Grecian mainland, from Thessaly on one side nearly up to Illyria on the other, are at this era settled by established communities, governed apparently by similar polit- ical authorities, but already discriminated from one another in national character and tendencies, as we see in the living pic- tures of Homer. They are organized into classes, princes, nobles, freemen, and slaves. They have their splendid palaces, adorned, it may be, with the display of barbaric art. The principles of justice, understood to have come from the father of gods and men, restrain the arbitrary temper of the rulers, and secure the rights of the governed. Splendid furniture and stores of richly wrought garments are among the posses- sions of the wealthy. Flocks and herds fill the pastures and cover the hillsides. Agriculture in all its departments has made considerable progress, as we see by the description of the shield of Achilles. Shins of great size, propelled in part by oars and in part by sails, have been built, and Grecian sailors have coasted a considerable part of the Mediterranean. Priests interpret the will of the gods, and exercise a spiritual power over the laity, respected and feared, though not always 300 THE LIFE OF GREECE. obeyed, by kings. The minstrel, with his harp, fills the hall of feasting with the music of his song. He rouses the enthusi- asm of his listeners by chanting the lays of famous men, and creates a popular poetry destined to ripen into the glories of the Iliad and Odyssey. The most distinguished personages of the heroic society are the chiefs, the soothsayers, the ship- builders, and the carpenters. Odysseus is a first-rate work- man, as the craft he built to escape from Calypso's isle abun- dantly testifies. Achilles can cook as well as eat a sirloin of beef. Young ladies of princely birth find it not beneath them to do the family washing in tubs by the river-side : nothing is said of soap. Queens embroider and weave : Helen embroiders a battle-piece, and Penelope gives to Odysseus a garment on which she has wrought the picture of a chase. The life of the divine beings in whom the popular faith is centred resembles the life of man on earth. Zeus is the head of the household on Olympus, and he sometimes finds h hard enough to keep its unruly members in order. Whether the starting-point of the ancient mythology was the primitive belief in the unity of the Divine nature, as many suppose, may be doubted ; and yet the Divine power is sometimes referred to, as if the expression sprang from a deeply seated though darkling consciousness of this great truth. But the common conception was no doubt polytheistic. The gods were for the most part understood to be supernatural existences indeed, but with characters endowed with the qualities of human beings on a larger scale. Again, the vivid imagination of the early Greek gave life and spirit to all the objects by which he was surrounded, to the tree, the wind, the storm. The appear- ances of nature suggested to him a power in and above na- ture, and were moulded, in his plastic conception, into con- scious and distinct personalities. Passions and affections were at first inspirations, and then became embodied deities. Pan, the shepherd-god, is worshipped among the mountains, along the shores, and on islands laved or lashed by the ocean- waves. Temples and altars rise to Poseidon, shaker of the OUTLINE VIEW OF HELLENIC CULTURE. 301 earth. The lovely and majestic form of the virgin-goddess Athene represents the genius of wisdom and the spirit of pro gress. The love of man for woman rises from the waves in the sea-born Aphrodite, afterwards embodied in the statue that enchants the world. Women sometimes scolded their lords ; and so the golden-throned Hera, the wife of Zeus, keeps a watchful eye upon the Thunderer, who is not always to be trusted out of her sight, and gives him tongue like any mortal termagant. Men sometimes lie, and Hermes begins to fib the moment he is born. So, partly, it may be, from primitive tra- dition, but chiefly from the forms, elements, and powers of nature and the passions of the human heart, the plastic imagi- nation of the Greek moulded the crowd of mythological per- sonages that filled the popular mind, and in material forms dwelt in the marble temples, on which genius and treasure alike were lavished with uncalculating liberality. Behind the motley assemblage of the Olympian deities stood a darkly ap- prehended power or nature, to which even the gods themselves must yield obedience. The ruling authorities of heaven bore another resemblance to humanity; they had been subject to revolution and overthrow. Several changes of dynasty had taken place before Zeus rose to power; and even he had some misgivings that his throne was not completely secure, and, like mortal monarchs, banished, imprisoned, or bound in chains the unfriendly deities who might be the nucleus of a dangerous opposition. The Titans were not only over- whelmed with mountains, in the battle which decided the dis- puted title to sovereignty, but were shut up afterwards in Tar- tarus. Prometheus, the philanthropist, as a suspected charac- ter, was chained and bolted to a rock where the vulture daily came to gnaw his liver. This purely human element in the elder mythology explains the discontent of the later philoso- phers with the whole system. Plato thought the things said by the poets of the characters and conduct of the gods wholly unworthy of them, and of evil moral tendency in their influ- ence on the young. Houier, on this account, was to be e* 302 THE LIFE OF GREECE. eluded from his imaginary republic. The free treatment of the deities, as in the Homeric Hymns, and more remarkably in the Attic comedy, as in the Birds, the Frogs, and other pieces, sprang, no doubt, from this same human conception of the nature of the gods, and is not to be regarded as a dis- play of irreverence, just as the fairies in Shakespeare are clothed in the attributes of humanity, and made susceptible of jealousies and passions, without trenching on the popular rev- erence for supernatural persons and objects. The union of the Greeks against the nations inhabiting the opposite shore of the ^Egean first brought them into a con- sciousness of Hellenic nationality. At what period this took place there are no means of deciding within several centuries. All that we know about it is drawn from the older legends alluded to in the Homeric poems, and from the account of the great Trojan war ; and here again no two persons will agree in drawing the line between historic verity and poetical fiction. Some reject the whole as a brilliant invention of the Ionian bard ; others receive nearly the whole as matter of fact, metri- cally recorded; others believe in a foundation of fact, with a prodigious superstructure of fancy. A middle ground is prob- ably the true one. The great facts which it is impossible to doubt are, that, at a considerable period before the era of the Olympiads, that is, before the eighth century B.C., there was a flourishing civilization on the islands and coasts of Asia Minor; that these regions had been colonized by .iEolians, Ionians, and Dorians, from the Grecian mainland ; that the geograph- ical relations of the colonies corresponded nearly with the geo- graphical relations of the races on the mainland ; that the col- onists carried with them the language and dialects of their fathers, and a goodly store of heroic legends and religious and ballad poetry ; that they cherished the memory of the heroes who fought at Troy, and from whom their principa. eaders claimed descent; and that they were brought into the immediate neighborhood of the scenes where the nine years' warfare had been waged, so that to the pure Hellenic OUTLINE VIEW OF HELLENIC CULTURE. 303 traditions were added those of the Asiatic descendants of their . antagonists. We may say, at least, when we take these facts into the account, that the story of the war of Troy, with the delineation of Grecian life wrought into that imperishable tale, is a very natural one in its outline and its principal features. So far I believe it to be a true history; but it comes to us embellished with the coloring of the second period of the life of Greece, the period of ^Eolian and Ionian culture on the eastern side of the .iiEgean. This period embraces the flour- ishing age of epic poetry, wherein the Greeks, carrying with them their fresh and youthful energies into the neighborhood of an elder civilization, suddenly blossomed into a free and beau- tiful life under the soft skies of the fairest region in the world. " The fame of Ionian refinement," says Jacobs, " filled the world ; the works of Ionian poetry and prose suffused every heart of sensibility with delight Here was enjoyed a life exempt from drudgery, among fair festivals and solemn assem- blies, fall of sensibility, exhilarating joy, innocent curiosity, and childlike faith. Surrendered to the outer world, and inclined to all that was attractive by novelty, beauty, and grandeur, here the people listened with the greatest eagerness to the history of the heroic men whose deeds, adventures, and wanderings filled a former age with their renown, and, when they were echoed in song, moved to ecstasy the breasts of the hearers. It was thus that the poets first took up those heroic legends here as the most favorable materials for their art, and from the legend by degrees sprang the epic poem, the narrative clear, imaginative, picturesque, varied, and minute, as the youthful feelings of the age and of the lis- tening multitude required. That the deed should be mirrored in the song ; that every form should stand out distinct and vivid ; that even in single parts the whole should be shadowed forth ; in a word, that the glorious world of heroes should move in perfect dignity and serene poetic splendor, this was the aim of the epic poet, as of every one in whose fresh and vig- orous fancy a subject kindled into life is struggling for utter- 304 THE LIFE OF GREECE. ance." These few sentences express the leading idea of the life of Greece as it appeared in Ionia. But as this beauty and felicity had sprung up by a rapid growth, so they fell into an early and swift decay. No matter: Homer was left to teach the coming world. As Ionia declines from her sudden splendor, the scene of Hellenic life shifts to the slowly growing communities on the mainland. The heroic families die out ; new men ap- pear, with new ideas ; loyalty to kings yields to the passion for political liberty. Constitutions supplant the old de/xio-res, " the common law which was traced upward to the very throne of Zeus. Arbitrary will surrenders to definite, law- protected, personal rights. The tyrants, who hold a middle ground between the heroic monarchies and the later polities, after a brief enjoyment of their power, are toppled down and vanish from the scene. Dorian life is most strikingly unfolded in Sparta; Ionian, under Attic forms and modifications, at Athens. Sparta adds something of military experience, some- thing of legislative skill, something of public and private econ- omy, to the common stock. She trains her citizens to brevity of speech, to bravery, to black broth, and iron coins. How strong the contrast to the gayety and elegance of Ionia ! The legislation of Lycurgus was the mould in which these iron men were cast and their characters determined for six or seven centuries. This stands just on the border line of authentic history. Within this line the legislation of Draco, short-lived, and unsuited by its impracticable severity to the free and im- pulsive individuality of the Ionian race, enjoyed a momentary existence, and fell like its author, who was smothered with cloaks at the theatre, the people pretending that they wished to protect him from the cold. Next came Solon, one of the wisest men of the ancient world. He called order out of chaos ; gave liberty a legisla- tive existence; surrounded human rights with the ramparts Df law ; placed the sovereignty, not in the despotic will of the individual, but in the deliberate conclusions of the popular OUTLINE VIEW OF HELLENIC CULTURE 305 bodies, reached in certain prescribed methods, announced under solemn sanctions, and executed in due form by the warrant of public authority. This constitution was changed to meet the exigencies of changing times. It was made more and more democratic ; but the principle of liberty remained. It was overthrown more than once in the long course of Athenian national existence ; but it was always soon restored, The longest period during which it was held in abeyance was during the eight ignominious months of the tyranny of the Thirty. The other states of Greece grouped themselves about these leading capitals ; those in which the aristocratic or oligarchi- cal element prevailed falling naturally into the circle of Spar- tan influence ; those in which the democratical element had the preponderance rallying round the city of Athens. These were the two centres of Grecian life. It was Sparta and Athens that breasted the shock of Persian invasion, that at Thermopylae, this at Marathon, at Salamis, and on other fields of glory. The former claimed the leadership of the Grecian states by land ; the latter asserted it by sea. Sparta sacrificed the citizen to the state ; she bound the natural affections in the iron bands of rule ; she was always clothed in armor. The elegant arts were her scorn ; eloquence, her aversion. The bridegroom, instead of peaceably conducting home his bride, must needs take her by force, as if she were a piece of bag- gage belonging to a hostile army; as much as to say that man, m his tenderest relations, is nothing but a fighter. The infant had to pass the scrutiny of hard-hearted judges ; and if he did tot promise well for the warlike purposes of the state, he was tossed to the wolves of Taygetus. The mother who dismissed her son to foreign service complacently received the news that he had fallen, pierced through the breast by a hundred ipears, on the field of battle. The drudgery of daily life was laid upon the slaves. Yet these cast-iron men sometimes oroke through all the restraints of law, and usage, and fixed prejudice, and let Nature have her way. When iron melts, VOL. I. 20 306 THE LIFE OF GREECE. it runs off in a fiercely glowing liquid, and nothing can resist its voracious fervor. When the Spartan once yielded, there was no stopping him. The austere liver became the all-de- vourer ; the rigid moralist wallowed in sensuality. The poet Alcman the favorite poet of these hardy men lets his im- agination run riot in the joys of eating and drinking. The dishes and wines on which he dwells with a gloating affection make an odd contrast with the public professions of self-denial and frugality. The men who had legislated old iron into a legal tender fell the most readily under the temptation of Eastern gold, and Sparta became far more venal and corrupt than any other state in Greece. So universal is the law that one extreme leads to another. In Athens, on the other hand, the wise and liberal institu- tions of Solon rapidly developed an extraordinary measure of public virtue and private happiness. Men of wonderful ge- nius educated themselves in the service of the state, and raised her to the height of glory and power. Themistocles, Miltiades, Conon, Pericles, what country can surpass these in brilliancy of statesmanlike gifts and effective labors ? Aris- tides, surnamed the Just, the ideal of incorruptible integ- rity for all ages, where shall his superior be found ? And yet the institutions of Athens encouraged a cheerful enjoy- ment, and every elegance that can embellish life. The affec- tation of Spartanism, which was at one time a fashionable mode, was met with laughter and ridicule. Hilarity and confidence marked the daily intercourse of the citizens ; com- merce brought to them the luxuries of the world ; art refined the coarseness of existence into all conceivable beauty ; con- versation, repartee, discussion, social meetings in clubs, sing- ing, dancing, revelling, the play of wit, enlivened the gay capital with an endless succession of pleasures and joys. Yet, as Pericles boasted, the Athenians were as brave when the crisis for bravery came as were those rivals who made peace only the image of war by the continual labor of preparation. "We love the beautiful with economy; we pursue wisdon OUTLINE VIEW OF HELLENIC CULTURE. 307 without effeminacy ; we use wealth for real occasions, not for ostentatious boasting. It is no disgrace to any one to con- fess his poverty ; but it is a shame to him if he do not labor to escape it. The charge of public and private affairs belongs to the same men, and those who are occupied with common labors well understand political affairs. We alone regard the man who takes no interest in politics, not as a quiet and harmless person, but as a useless one. We do not consider eloquence as an obstacle to the public good ; but we do consider it as a misfortune not to be instructed by previous discussion as to the measures which we are obliged to undertake. For we possess this characteristic above all others, that we are at once daring, ^nd accustomed to reflect on what we are about to take in hand ; whereas ignorance gives boldness to others, and reflection induces delay. They should be rightly ad- judged the boldest-hearted who, knowing most clearly the terrible and the agreeable, yet shrink not for this reason from dangers. In brief, I may call the city the school of Greece, and the citizen of Athens is personally best fitted, by variety of talent, for the graceful performance of all the duties of life." This, no doubt, sounded a little boastful in the ears of the contemporary world. But Pericles was right. Athens was the school of Greece. His boast fell short of the truth : Athens is the school of the civilized world. Think of her sculptors and painters, the Acropolis, covered with temples and peopled by more than three thousand marble statues ; call to mind her lyric and dramatic literature, tragedy and com edy ; remember her admirable principles of justice, which, with all the errors of application in particular cases, are the basis of its administration everywhere ; consider her philos- ophv in the persons of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and their teachings in the Academy and the Lyceum ; recall the almost Christian ethics which strengthened the heart of Socrates to brave the passions of an angry populace, demanding with threats and imprecations that he should put a vote which was to consign men illegally to tne executioner ; contemplate the 308 THE LIFE OF GREECE. religious faith which enabled him, heathen though he was, to Lok death calmly in the face, and to spend the last hours of his life in discussing the highest themes with his weeping dis- ciples ; then pass in review the doctrines of his most eloquent followers on the immortality of the soul, the nature of sin, the necessity of retribution, the essence of justice, the misery of wickedness even when triumphant ; recollect, too, the lofty civil prudence, which for a large portion of her existence swayed the counsels of the Athenian state, and the masculine eloquence which has come down to us in the volumes of the Attic ora- tors, with its stirring appeals to all that is noblest in the hu- man heart, its passages of profound wisdom, irrefragable logic, resistless passion, and unequalled majesty of expression ; es- pecially bring before your thought the image of him who was greatest among the greatest, who gave his days and nights to the service of a country whose honor, glory, and prosper- ity were dearer to him than life itself, who dispensed his pri- vate fortune in ministering to the wants of others, redeeming the captive, endowing the daughters of the poor, supplying the exigencies of the state when disastrous defeat veiled her pride and trailed her honors in the dust, submitting to exile when the madness of the populace turned upon his incorrup- tible integrity the eye of suspicion, yet, while banished from the city of his love, lending the might of his eloquence to bring back success to her arms and to restore her to the post of honor in Greece, finally dying in the temple of Poseidon, when the glory of Athens had grown hopelessly dim beneath the malignant star of Macedon, summon up these and a thousand immortal memories, and the grandeur of the position asserted for Athens by the illustrious ruler commends itself to the coolest judgment of history and posterity. How singular the contrasts between these aspects of Gre- cian life in the historical ages ! Grim Sparta fought her way bravely, and fills many a chapter in the warlike annals of antiquity ; but her life perished with her life. Athens fought her way when fighting was called for, and sometimes when OUTLINE VIEW OF HELLENIC CULTURE. 309 it was not ; but the life of her spirit lives on wherever intel- lectual culture has existed or now exists ; it spreads with the extension of the realm of letters and art ; it legislates over the kingdom of beauty ; it increases in power and intensity with every advancing century ; it can fall only with the downfall of civilization, and the usurped dominion of barbarism over the face of the earth LECTURE IIJ THE DECLINE OF HELLAS. RURAL LIFE IN GREECE. The life of Greece, commencing in the mythical ages, was not only varied and intense, but, if we add to the thousand years of its glory the two thousand years of its transformed existence through the Alexandrian, Byzantine, and Middle ages, to the present time, of extraordinary duration. The Ionian or Homeric period, commencing ten or twelve centu- ries before our era, lasts three hundred years ; the historical period, commencing seven or eight centuries before Christ, lasts until the Roman conquest. The hegemony, or leadership, is divided between Athens and Sparta, with an occasional short- lived interlude played by some inferior state, as by Thebes under the able management of Pelopidas and Epaminondas. Life the life of civilization is concentrated in Southern Greece, shading off gradually into the semibarbarism of Thes- saly and Macedonia, and the complete barbarism of Illyria. The battle of Chseroneia, in 338 B. C, establishes the suprem- acy of the Macedonian princes. The Achaean League, two centuries before Christ, rises to a temporary importance, under Philopoemen ; but in 146 B. C, all Greece, under the name of Achaia, becomes a part of the Roman empire, and is heard of no more except as a portion of a province governed by a Roman proconsul. She retains, however, something of her internal freedom. Municipal institutions are not much changed \n form, the constitution of Lycurgus having been previously annihilated by Philopoemen and the Achaean League, B. C. 188. Meanwhile, though politically dead, Greece is still the school of the world, and Athens is the school of Greece. For THE DECLINE OF HELLAS. 311 several centuries the Roman youth resort thither, as to a great university, to be trained in the liberal arts ; the son of Cicero studies there ; Cicero himself has studied there. In the third century the Goths commence their ravages; in the fourth century Alaric renews the assault with more destructive rage ; next come the Huns, before the fourth century is completed. In the sixth century Justinian closes the schools of Athens, which have existed from the time of Socrates. In the midst of these successive disasters, the population of Greece has rapidly dwindled away. Political oppression and social demoralization have had their deadly effects. The small proprietors who occupied the land in the flourishing ages have vanished from the soil, and lords of immense landed es- tates sure sign of decay have spread over the country The central power at Byzantium ceases to protect a region from which only a scanty revenue can be drawn, and little or no resistance is now offered to the barbarous hordes from the North. The Slavonian successors ef the Goths and Huns pour through the pass of Thermopylae, and find no Leonidas there to dispute their entrance. The marble lion, placed over the mound that covers the Three Hundred, has no terrors for these Russian multitudes ; and on they press until they hold the fairest parts of Greece in possession or subjection, down tc the southern extremity of Peloponnesus. Greece seems re- moved from Greece. So far is the process of supplanting car- ried, that some have doubted whether any portion of the old Hellenic race remains in the land of their fathers. In the eighth century Constantinus Porphyrogenitus writes : " The whole country became Slavonian and barbarous." But to- wards the end of this century the deluge of barbarism begins to recede before the arms of the Empress Irene, who is an Athenian by birth. A new impulse is given to the native society, which rallies against the foreigner and the barbarian. Yet for six or seven centuries the Slavonic tongue is spoken, conjointly with the Greek, all over Greece ; and to this day the names of rivers, mountains, and towns, from Thermopylae to the 312 THE LIFE OF GREECE. southern point of Peloponnesus, bear witness to the extent of the inroads of the Slavonians, and the length of their period of possession. But in the interior regions, among the highlands, in many of the cities, in Athens for example, and in most of the islands, the Hellenic people and language, through all these changes, keep their ground, and the race perishes not in the Slavonian flood. The language is preserved in its general structure especially through the influence of the Greek Church, although, after the downfall of Athens and Alexandria, Byzantium is the principal seat of ecclesiastical power and literary culture. The East and the West are divided in religion and in politics. Not only are the nations of Roman descent, under the general name of Franks, regarded as heretics by the orthodox Emperors at Constanti- nople, but the wars with the Normans of Sicily and Italy have induced a general hostility between the Frank and the Greek races ; so that when the Crusaders pass on their war- fare against the infidels who hold possession of the Holy Sep- ulchre, they are regarded by the Greek Christians rather as old enemies than as brethren of one common faith. The mis- chief done to the Eastern Christians by these pious marauders from the West is incalculable. The Orientals, before their appearance, had laid the foundation of a new order of things in the cultivation of the soil by freemen. The Crusaders in- troduced feudal tenures and predial servitude. The Byzantine empire was conquered in the beginning of the thirteenth century, and the empire of Romania took its place. On the continent of Greece and the neighboring islands kingdoms and principalities were established under Frankish rulers, some of which endured from the thirteenth to late in the sixteenth century. There was the despotat of Epirus ; the so-called empire of Thessalonica ; the principality of Achaia, in the Peloponnesus ; the dukedom of the Archipel- ago, or Naxos, the longest-lived of all the Frankish estab- lishments in the East. But the dukedom of Athens has the greatest interest in its relations to the condition of Greece. THE DECLINE OF HELLAS. 313 At the beginning of the thirteenth century Athens and Thebes were wealthy and populous cities for the times. Leo Sguros, u Peloponnesian noble, hearing of the arrival of the Crusaders at Constantinople, formed the design of establishing for him- self an independent principality, by taking advantage of the confusion of the times, and throwing off the imperial author- ity. He first led his army over the Eleusinian plain by the Sacred Way, and laid siege to Athens ; but the people, having removed their property to the Acropolis, made vigorous prep- arations for defence. Sguros, finding that the reduction of the city was likely to give him trouble and to cause a long delay, endeavored to set it on fire, laid waste the surrounding country, collected vast stores of plunder, and then marched upon Thebes. Eastern Greece, as far as Thessaly, submitted to his authority, and he prepared to meet an army of Cru- saders which was advancing from the North. They met at Thermopylae; the Franks were victorious; and Sguros and his remaining Peloponnesians, as unlike Leonidas and his Spar- tans as possible, fled to Corinth and shut themselves up in the fortress on the Acrocorinthus. Thebes and Athens readily opened their gates, and submitted, on favorable terms, to the invaders ; and Otho de la Roche became master of Attica and Bceotia. Five princes of this family ruled at Athens from 1205 to 1308. During this period Athens was one of the most popu- lous, wealthy, and civilized capitals of Europe. The country around it was covered with flourishing villages, well watered by aqueducts and cisterns. Vineyards, orchards, olive-groves, almond and fig trees, furnished the materials o^ an extensive commerce ; cotton, silk, and leather were oianufactured at home, and sold at high prices in the markets of Western Eu- rope ; and the splendor and luxury of the Dukes of Athens were celebrated everywhere. Muntaner, the true and loyal Spanish chronicler, who had been made familiar, in a long and adventurous life, with all the countries around the eastern end of the Mediterranean, says : " The chivalry there was the best 314 THE LIFE OF GREECE. In the world, and they spoke French as well as at Paris." '* The Duke of Athens was one of the noblest men in the empire of Romania, and next to the king the richest." The aid chronicler, apropos to this text, describes a ceremony which took place at Athens, accompanied with an extraordi- nary display of wealth and splendor; on which occasion the Duke presented to Boniface, a nobleman from Verona, a knightly "estate, and the daughter of a Baron of the Duchy, who was heiress of one third of the city and island of Negro- pont. "What think you?" he asks. "The festival began in full splendor. When they were assembled in the princi- pal church," (probably the Parthenon, which had been con- verted into a church of the Panhagia, or Blessed Virgin,) " where the Duke was to receive the accolade, the Archbishop of Athens said mass, and laid down the arms of the Duke on the altar." His description of the ceremony, which is extremely interesting, shows how completely the principles of Western chivalry were established in this gay and gallant court. It does not appear that the governing orders blended with the native population by marriage. The same authority says: "The Duke distributed castles, houses, lands, among his knights, and so a thousand Frankish knights were settled there, and sent for their wives and children from France. Their successors took wives from the noblest houses in France, and they remained unmixed noble families." The house of De la Roche was succeeded by the Duke of Brienne, the Grand Catalan Company, the Sicilian branch of the house of Aragon, and the house of Acciauoli in Flor- ence, thirteen princes reigning in Athens until 1456. It is not within my plan to enter into the military events that be- long to this period. The chronicle of Muntaner relates many of them with graphic simplicity, and we have still more in the versified Greek chronicle of the wars of the Morea, publishea by Buchon, a record of the greatest interest and importance, both with respect to the history and the language of that age But these two centuries form a singular episode in the life of THE DECLINE OF HELLAS. 315 Grreece, the feudal system, the institutions of chivalry, the anguage of France, established on the classical soil of the ancient republic, and dukes and knights assisting at high mass in the Parthenon, and holding revels in the Propylaea of the Acropolis, converted into a baronial residence, the keep oi which still remains, mighty princes, whose splendid pageants were famous all over Europe in the days of Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer. Another curious episode in Hellenic life is the history of the empire of Trebizond, the ancient Trapezous, on the southern shore of the Black Sea. Of this Gibbon knew but little. Professor Fallmereyer published, in 1827, a history founded upon a Greek chronicle of Panaretos, dis- covered by him at Venice. Down to that time little or noth- ing was known of this remarkable offshoot from the Byzantine empire, which endured from the thirteenth to the middle of the sixteenth century, notwithstanding its exposed position and the assaults of the sultans. It is interesting and impor- tant as a part of mediaeval history, but we cannot dwell upon it here. The details are very ably given in Mr. Finlay's last historical work, under the title of " Mediaeval Greece and Tre- bizond." The capture of Constantinople by Mahomet II., in 1453, was the prelude to the reduction of Greece under the power of the Turks. Francis, the last Duke of Athens, surrendered the city to Omar, the son of Turakhan, in 1456, three years after the fall of Constantinople. The wealth of Attica, so remarkable at the beginning of this period, had perished under the successive hordes of invaders, and city and country had fallen into the deepest poverty; "but still," says Emerson Tennent, the historian, " the haughty spirit inherent to the blood, which crept, however sluggishly, in their veins, forbade them totally to relinquish the habits of their fathers for the customs of the barbarous stranger, and they still retained a sufficiency of their former characteristics to tell the world that they were Greeks." Greek life slumbered under the Turkish despotism until, 316 THE LIFE OF GREECE. in our day, the ancient spirit of the people roused itself, and Bhook off the ignominious yoke. A writer of the sixteenth century, Nicolas Gerbel, in alluding to the condition of Ath- ens, exclaims : " O unhappy revolutions in human affairs ! O tragic change of human power ! A city once so mighty in walls, shipyards, buildings, arms, wealth, men, so flourishing in prudence and all wisdom, now reduced to a small town, or rather hamlet ; once free, living under its own laws, now under the yoke of slavery to the crudest brutes. Go to Athens, and, instead of the most magnificent works, behold piles of rubbish and lamentable ruins. Rely not too much on thy strength, but put thy trust in Him who saith, 'I am the Lord thy God.' " Another writer, Pinet, soon afterward says : " Of Athens, once so renowned, not only the chief of Greece, but of many other nations, there now remains good God ! only a small castle, and a hamlet, undefended from the foxes, wolves, and other wild beasts." And Laurenburg finishes the sad picture in these words : " Greece once was ; Athens once was ; now neither in Greece is Athens, nor in Greece is Greece." The few intimations gathered from native writers agree in representing the condition of the country and its inhabitants as deplorable ; while all assert that the old Hellenic spirit still survives. In a letter of Zygomala to Martin Kraus, written in 1575, that writer says: "The cause of their ignorance is the poverty produced by the oppression of the tyrants ; but the inhabitants of this country are of the quickest apprehension, when they have an opportunity of acquiring learning from a master." There was but one school in which ancient Greek was taught, and that was at Napoli di Romania. Cabasilas writes that the dialects in Greece were numerous, being more than seventy, that of Athens being the worst. "Athens," he continues, " still contains many of its splendid monuments, Buch as the Areopagus, the old Academies, the Lyceum of Aristotle, the grand Pantheon [Parthenon], which is, of al] existing edifices, the most excellent, being covered external!} THE DECLINE OF HELLAS. 317 with the sculptured history of the former Greeks ; and amongst others we can there behold, above the grand entrance, two horses said to have been the work of Praxiteles, which so closely resemble nature that they seem snorting for human flesh. But why do I dwell upon Athens? It remains to- day nothing more than the skin of an animal long since dead." The population of Athens, reduced to a small remnant of the descendants of her former inhabitants, mingled with Jews and Turks, and all together less than twelve thousand, supported a miserable existence by fishing in the Gulf of Salamis, or by cultivating a few olive-groves on the banks of the Ilissus. The condition of Greece attracted the attention of De Cour- menin early in the seventeenth century ; of the Jesuits and Capuchins, who, a little later, established missions in Athens ; and of several French and English travellers, of whom the most entertaining are old Sandys, Spon, and Wheeler. San- dys remarks that the spoken Greek differs not so much from the ancient as the Italian from the Latin. "And there be yet of the Laconjans," lie writes, "that speeke so good Greeke (though not grammatically) that they understand the learned, and understand not the vulgar. Their liturgy is read in the ancient Greeke, with not- much more profit perhaps to the rude people than the Latin service of the Romish Church to the illiterate Papists." In the middle of the last century the great work of Stuart and Revett made the condition of Greece and the antiquities of Athens the common property of the civilized world ; and from that time to the present, the series of works published by tourists and scholars is innumerable. When Wheeler returned to England in 1676, the event was considered a special providence, and he closes his narrative with an appropriate psalm. Now the tour of Greece is only a racation ramble. The apparent resurrection of Hellas is one of the most remarkable phenomena of our day. There can be no doubt that the old Hellenic blood still flows in Hellenic veins. The Greek language is still heard en the scene of its former tri 318 THE LIFE OF GREECE. umphs, in broken tones, it is true, its ancient musica. character and the rhythms of the poets lost forever, modern in its construction and versification, but retaining a large propor- tion of the words employed in the age of Demosthenes, with the same accents and many of the same grammatical forms. A Greek newspaper published now may be easily read by one who understands the language of Thucydides and Xenophon. Mr. Blackie, Professor of Greek in the University of Edin- burgh, insists that it is not a dead but a living language, and teaches his students to pronounce it as they do in Greece. He says : " The language of Homer is not dead, but lives, and that in a state of purity to which, considering the extraor- dinary duration of its literary existence, twenty-five hundred years at least, there is no parallel, perhaps, on the face of the globe, certainly not in Europe." Quoting an article giving an account of Kossuth's visit to America, he says: ''In three columns of a Greek newspaper of the year 1852 there do not certainly occur three words that are not native Greek." In this country the same opinion was ably maintained more than a quarter of a century ago, by Mr. Pickering, who in his private reading adopted the modern Greek pronunciation. I think that Mr. Pickering had strong arguments in his favor, and I join in the commendations which some of the English journalists bestow on Mr. Blackie for rejecting the established system, which has little or nothing but the inveterate preju- dices of English and American colleges to uphold it. Whether there is to be a new lease of national life to Greece, under the guaranty of the great powers of Europe, remains to be determined. It is very certain that Hellas still suffers from the exhaustion of many oppressive ages. To restore the Hellas of antiquity, the physical properties of the country must be restored. The mountains, now bare *nd rocky, must be clothed again with forests ; and the streams and rivers must be replenished with copious and sparkling waters. Can these things be in the present state of the world ? Can Athens regain her ancient precedence BUBAL LIFE OF GBEECE. 319 tn arts and civilization while London and Paris exist? Can the Bema resound with the eloquence that once fulinined over Greece, so long as her nearest neighbors, who control her policy, are despots who abhor the voice of freedom? The thrilling associations of the past will forever fix upon her the regards of the world ; but the tide of power and prosperity has worn for itself other channels, where, in the times of her ancient splendor, hung the night of barbarism and the silence of intellectual darkness. The teaching of history is summed up in the poet's majestic line : " Westward the course of empire takes its way." Having made this rapid survey of the life of Greece down to the present time, let us now return to what is commonly understood by the national existence of that country. The idea of Greece usually entertained is that of a country of heroes, poets, artists, and philosophers ; and in truth, the great significance of Hellas in the history of man is em- bodied in the individuals belonging to these illustrious classes of her sons. Yet the common life of man was lived there as well as by us. Through the openings of the splendid cur- tain which presents itself to our vision as the true picture of Hellas, we catch glimpses of familiar scenes, of the toil for daily bread, of the vulgar wants of humanity. The life of Greece was not all heroism, romance, poetry, and art. It rested, as life everywhere rests, on the bosom of the common Mother Earth. If the Greeks were pre-eminently a nation of poets and artists, they were no less pre-eminently a nation of farmers. They understood the theory and the practice of agriculture, though some of the sciences now deemed impor- tant to the best cultivation of the earth were wholly unknown to them. In Homer we find lovely sketches of the primitive country life and the rural tastes and habits of the most eminent per- sonages. Hesiod's Works and Days is chiefly devoted to the rustic lore which experience had taught to the cultivators of B20 THE LIFE OF GREECE. the earth in his age, both with respect to the virtues of industry temperance, and thrift, and to the practical methods of hus- bandry. The precepts seem to have been drawn in a great measure from the poet's own experience. * He was a Boeotian farmer, and, like the farmers of New England, had a great amount of proverbial philosophy at his tongue's end. The early Greek agriculturists carefully observed the phenomena of the heavens, and knew all about the weather. The habits of ani- mals ; the flight of birds, according to the season ; a knowledge of the properties of different soils, and their adaptation to differ- ent kinds of crops ; the method of discovering springs, were among the subjects of their practical observation and study j and their skill in them would surprise those who think that sense and observation are of modern growth. Wagons, carts, ploughs, and harrows were generally manufactured on the farm, if it was a large one, or in its neighborhood, by smiths and car- penters ; and the kinds of wood chosen for these purposes were determined with much care. Corn was ground, first, in a large mortar, with a pestle. The list of other implements scythes, pruning-hooks, saws, spades, shovels, rakes, pickaxes, hoes, and the like could hardly be extended now. The methods of en- riching the soil were carefully studied ; the utility of guano and Bea-weed, as well as of the common manures, was perfectly understood and largely verified in practice. Land was allowed to recover its strength by lying fallow, as Xenophon teaches in his CEconomicus. To protect the grain from birds, scarecrows were set up in the fields ; and to make all sure, they were ac- customed to try a curious spell. Having caught a toad, they carried him around the field by night alive, and then put him into a jar, sealed him up, and buried him in the middle of the ground. After these precautions it was supposed that the grow- ing blade was safe from enemies. Hay was an article whose value waj well understood. The time for mowing was carefully determined ; and the hay-ricks were made with due precautions against dampness on one hand, and spontaneous combustion on he other. When the time of harvest came, the laborers at RUBAL LIFE OF GREECE. 321 A-thens ranged themselves round the agora, and waited to be employed by the farmers. Homer has an animated passage in which he compares the rushing together of two hostile armies to rival parties of harvesters starting from opposite sides of the field : " As reapers each to the other opposite With haste rush forward, mowing quickly Stalks of wheat or barley in some rich man's field, While dense before them fall the sheafy heaps ; So rushing terribly, with mutual rage, Trojans and Greeks the slaughter waged." In another place, the same incomparable poet presents to us a delightful harvest-scene : " There, in a field, 'mid lofty corn, the lusty reapers stand, Plying their task right joyously, with sickle each in hand. Some strew in lines, as on they press, the handfuls thick behind, While at their heels the heavy sheaves their merry comrades bind. There to the mows a troop of boys next bear in haste away, And pile upon the golden glebe the triumphs of the day. Among them, wrapped in silent joy, their sceptred king appears, Beholding in the swelling heaps the stores of future years. A mighty ox beneath an oak the busy heralds slay, With grateful sacrifice to close the labors of the day ; While near, the husbandman's repast the rustic maids prepare, Sprinkling with flour the broiling cates whose savor fills the air." The grain was trodden out from the straw by horses, oxen, or mules, on a circular threshing-floor, usually placed on an emi- nence in the open field. A pole was set up in the centre of the floor, and the cattle were fastened to it by a rope reaching to the circumference. As they moved round it, the rope coiled itself about the pole, until they were brought up at the centre; then their heads were turned in the opposite direc- tion, until the cord was unwound. Sometimes a rude thresh- ing-machine, toothed with stones or iron, or a flail, was em- ployed. As early as the time of Homer winnowing-machines were used. The whole process is described by him, in one of those similes which are finished off like elaborate pictures. The granaries were prepared with the utmost care ; and when VOL. I. 21 822 THE LIFE OF GREECE. the fruits of the season were housed, the event was celebrated by a festival in honor of Demeter and Dionysos, of which the distinguishing feature was that no bloody sacrifices were offered, but only cakes and fruit, fine loaves made of the new corn being among the offerings at the festival of the Thalysia. The culture of the vine, it is perhaps needless to say, was a subject of great interest and importance among the Greeks. The selection of the spot for a vineyard, whether on a sloping hillside or on a plain, the direction of the exposure, and the effects of climate and of particular winds, were sedulously con- sidered. The hedging in of the ground, the rooting up of what- ever might be harmful to the vine, the trenching of the soil, the setting out of the slips, the treatment of the growing vine, are all discussed very minutely by the ancient writers who preceded Virgil. The appearance of a vineyard composed wholly of tree-climbing vines, one of the three varieties created in Greece by different modes of cultivation, is thus described by Mr. St. John : " A vineyard, consisting wholly of anadendroids, most common in Attica, presents in spring and summer a very pic- turesque appearance, especially when situated on the sharp de- clivity of a hill. The trees designed for the support of the vines, planted in straight lines, and rising behind each other, terrace above terrace, at intervals of three or four and twenty feet, were beautiful in form and varied in feature, consisting generally of the black poplar, the oak, the maple, the elm, and probably also the platane, which is still employed for this pur- pose in Crete. Though kept low in some situations, where the ^oil was scanty, they were in others allowed to run thirty or forty, and sometimes even sixty, feet in height. The face of the tree along which the vine climbed was cut down sheer like a wall, against which the purple or golden clusters hung thickly suspended, while the young branches crept along the joughs or over bridges of reeds, uniting tree with tree, and. when touched with the rich tints of autumn, delighting the eye by an extraordinary variety of foliage. As the lower boughs of these noble trees were carefully lopped away, a RURAL LIFE OF 3REECE. 323 series of lofty arches was created, beneath which the breezes could freely play ; abundant currents of pure air being regarded as no less essential to the perfect maturing of the grape than constant sunshine." The vintage was a season of great rejoicing, as it is every- where. In Greece it was particularly memorable on account of its connection with the origin of tragedy and comedy. A considerable portion of the grapes was reserved and kept fresh, or converted into raisins for the use of the table. It would be endless to describe the variety of fruits, and the methods of raising and preserving them practised by the Greeks. The olive was perhaps the most extensively used, as the oil was not only employed for lights, but was the basis of cookery. Figs, citrons, pomegranates, apples, quinces, and pears were among the principal ; and from apples and pears large quantities of cider and perry were manufactured. The farm-yard had a multitude of noisy tenants. Geese and ducks often waddled into the kitchen, in one corner of which might be heard the comforting sounds of the occupant of the pig-sty. The art of enlarging the goose's liver to please the fas- tidious appetite of the gourmand, by cooping him up in a heated room and stuffing him with fattening food and drink, was not left for German gastronomers to invent, but was well known to the Greeks, and to the Egyptians before them. Henneries, furnished with roosts, were attached to the kitchen, so as to receive its smoke, which was supposed to be agreeable to barn- door fowls. Peacocks, pheasants, guinea-hens, partridges, quails, moor-hens, thrushes, pigeons in immense numbers, many smaller birds, and even jackdaws, were found in the establishments of the wealthier farmers. The curious scenes in the Birds of Aristophanes show the great familiarity of that poet with the labits and character of every known species of bird. The laboring animals were much the same as in modern times, except that the horse was leSs commonly employed in the work of a farm. Oxen were used as now. The arrange- ments of a Greek dairy were not unlike our own ; and though 324 THE LIFE OF GREECE. butter was not much used in the classical ages, it is mentioned by Hippocrates, under the name of Twcepiov (pikerion) Cheese was universally eaten, generally while fresh and soft. Milk was sold in the Grecian markets by women ; and it fre- quently reached the customer in the shape of milk and water. A method sometimes employed for detecting the fraud per- haps it may be useful now was to drop a little milk on the thumb-nail : if the milk was pure, it would remain in its place ; if not, it would flow away. These are only a few points in the rural life of the Greek farmer; sufficient, perhaps, to show the homely side of the life of Greece, or at any rate to open a glance into its labors, resources, and joys, behind the splendid scenes that fill the theatre of history. Another aspect claims our regard in the pastoral life of the Greeks, "a kind of parenthetical existence," to borrow the words of St. John, "a remnant of the old nomadic habits once common to the whole race, of which we obtain so many glimpses through the leafy glades and grassy avenues of Greek poetry." Pastoral life in the East is said by travellers to re- main much as it is described by the ancient poets. Indeed, it could not well be otherwise ; since its entire simplicity and the very limited range of its objects afford but few possibilities of change. Modern pictures of pastoral life, by poets of Western Europe, are feeble and mawkish, because they are mostly drawn by men who know nothing of the realities on which pastoral poetry is founded. In Greece, and in the East generally, the care of flocks in the primitive ages was not below the dignity of a prince ; and the royal shepherd, in the tranquil solitudes of the country, on the hillsides, under the lovely skies of those delightful regions, could not help becoming a poet, and giving utterance to his meditations in song. " Abroad much after lark," says a writer whom I have already quoted, " in a cli- mate where the summer nights are soft and balmy beyona expression, and where the stars seem lovingly to crowd closer about the earth, they necessarily grew romantic and super- BUBAL LIFE OF GBEECE. 326 stitious. Their very creed was poetry. Tree, rock, mountain, spring, everything was instinct with divinity, not mystically, as in certain philosophic systems, but literally ; and, as they believed, the immortal race their invisible companions at all hours could when they pleased become visible, or rather remove from their eyes the film which prevented their habitu- ally beholding them." In Greek poetry, Paris, Anchises, Bucolion, and many others, will at once occur to memory ; and in sacred history, David, the psalmist of Israel. The superb description of the night in Homer lights up a pastoral scene : " As when about the silver moon, when air is free from wind, And stars shine clear, to whose sweet beams high prospects under the brows Of all steep hills and pinnacles thrust up themselves for shows, And even the lonely valleys joy to glitter in their sight, When the unmeasured firmament bursts to disclose her light, And all the signs in heaven are seen that glad the shepherd's heart." The dangers of the shepherd's life afford Homer an apt term of comparison : " As when the hungry wolves on folds forsaken by the watch Descend, the kids and tender lambs by thievish force to snatch ; Or when the timid, browsing crew are scattered far and wide, And seized, by witless shepherds left upon the mountain-side." And again, the lion appears on the scene : " Thus the night-watching shepherds strive, but vainly, to repel The angry lion, whom the stings of want and rage impel. Upon the carcass fastens he ; his heart no fear can quell." The shepherd's pipe, made of the donaz, or reed, sounded, I fancy, much better in poetry than in fact. Of the shepherd's dog we know more. Let me quote the eulogy passed upon this noble animal by an ancient writer well acquainted with his virtues. " The dog is falsely said *o be a mute guardian ; for tfhat man announces the wild beast or the thief more clearly or with so great an outcry as he does by his barking ? What servant more fond of his master ? what companion more faith- ful? what guardian more incorruptible? what watchman can 32b* THE LIFE OF GREECE. be found more vigilant ? what defender or avenger more con- stant?" The Arcadians called themselves nrpoae\r\vot^ or older them the moon; and they passed among the ancient, and, we may add, the modern poets, as a race devoted to eating acorns and sing- ing to the pipe. Arcadia suggests to the reader a vague idea of shepherds and shepherdesses, sitting in the cool shade, con- templating their kids feeding among the rocks, and breathing strains of sentimental passion. Palmerius discovers the de- scendants of the Arcadians among the Irish, one of whose national insignia is a triangular harp. Arcadia, however, was not the most agreeable seat for this contemplative, poetical existence. The best pictures of pastoral life are those so fresh and radiant with natural beauty in the idyls of Theoc- ritus, beside which all subsequent pastoral poetry seems flat and foolish ; and they are drawn from shepherd-life in Sicily. There are fragments of other writers belonging to this school, which are full of charms. The shepherdesses in these pieces are bewitching in hexameters, whatever they may have been in the fresh air of buxom life ; and they are not wanting in coquetry, if we are to believe Theocritus, who, in a beautiful description of a scene wrought on a pastoral cup, writes : - " And there, by ivy shaded, sits a maid, divinely wrought, With veil and circlet on her brows, by two fond lovers, sought, Both beautiful, with flowing hair, both suing to be heard, On this side one, the other there, but neither is preferred ; For now on this, on that anon, she pours her witching smile, Like sunshine on the buds of hope, in falsehood all and guile, Though ceaselessly, with swelling eyes, they seek her heart to move By every soft and touching art that wins a maiden's love." There is a daintier bit of life-painting in a fragment of Chseremon, representing a troop of these beauties sporting b moonlight. I will read a few verses. " Another danced, and, floating free her garments in the breeze, She seemed as buoyant as the wave that leaps o'er summer seas , While dusky shadows all around shrank backward from the place, Chased by the beaming splendor 6hed like sunshine from her face." RURAL LIFE OF GREECE. 327 After describing another, the poet exclaims : And oh ! the image of her charms, as clouds in heaven above Mirrored by streams, left on my soul the stamp of hopeless love." A critic not much given to sentiment remarks : " There is here no straining after the ideal. Like Titian's beauties, these shepherdesses are all creatures of this earth, filled with robust health, dark-eyed, warm, impassioned, and some- what deficient in reserve. They understand well how to act their part in a dialogue. For every bolt shot at them they can return another as keen. Each bower and bosky bourn seems redolent of their smiles ; their laughter awakens the echoes ; their ruddy lips and pearly teeth hang like a vision over every bubbling spring and love-hiding thicket which they were wont to frequent." I need not dwell longer on this subject. The pastoral poets of the Greeks seem to me to have the magnetic attrac- tion belonging to all literature that breathes the fresh air of life and is racy of the earth. Their pieces are the only pas- toral poetry that I can read without an uncomfortable feel- ing, something akin to sea-sickness. The love of rural life was one of the deepest passions of the Grecian heart, beyond the realm of Arcadia, real or ideal. What lovely touches of nature adorn with their exquisite beauty the Dialogues of Plato, and even the Comedies of Aris- tophanes ! Through the whole compass of Greek literature, the sights and sounds of the country the sweet, calm sun- shine ; the fleecy clouds ; the song of the lark and the night- ingale ; the murmuring of the bees ; the rising sun, smiting the earth with his shafts ; the rich meadows ; the cattle feed- ing in the pastures furnish images on which the most arti- ficial of the city poets delight to dwell, and share with the sea the thoughts that move harmonious numbers. The rustic land-owner, shut up in the city by the fashionable wife whom in an evil hour he was tempted by the matchmaker to wed, sighs to return to his fields and his farm-house. When the Peloponnesian war began, the plains of Attica were covered THE LIFE Ot 3REECE. with residences, elegantly furnished, on which the inhabitants looked back with regret and tears from the walls of the city, while the Spartan armies were laying all waste with fire and sword. The country was tastefully decorated with little tem- ples or chapels, consecrated to the nymphs and rural deities ; and the lands were made holy ground, because in them were buried the ancestors of the families now occupying them, a circumstance alluded to in one of the legal arguments of Demosthenes to prove an ancient title to an estate, as one of the usual concomitants of long possession in the same family. Statesmen and generals delighted to surround themselves with gardens, combining every conceivable feature of a pic- turesque retreat. Xenophon, after his return from the expe- dition of Cyrus the Younger, lived on a beautiful estate near Elis, which the Lacedaemonians had granted to him. The description of its various attractions is one of the most pleas- ing passages in the Anabasis, and we cease to wonder that he could bear his exile with resignation. It was three miles from the temple of Zeus. A river flowed through it, well stocked with fish. There were groves and wooded hills with plenty of game. There was a temple to Artemis, built by Xenophon at his own cost, and an annual festival estab- lished in her honor, to which was devoted a tithe of the in- come of his property. The neighbors, with their wives and children, assembled to enjoy the hospitality of the goddess. Friends came from far and near to hunt with Xenophon ; and as his residence was on the way from Lacedaemon to Olym- pia, gentlemen going to attend the games dropped in, and were welcomed to the best by the hospitable host. And so the pupil of Socrates, the leader of the immortal retreat of the ten thousand, passed the remainder of his days, divid- ing his time between the manly pleasures of elegant rural life, literary pursuits, the society of friends, and religious duties. Even at this distance of time one can hardly picture to himself the retirement of the illustrious exile without envy RURAL LIFE OF GREECE. 32<* As we read his books we call up the delightful scenes so in harmony with the simplicity and quiet beauty of his style. We feel the influence of woodland, plain, and mountain, with their refreshing breezes and cooling shades and flowing waters, stealing over us from the ever-enchanting page. Peisistratus and Pericles relieved the cares of state by oc- casional repose in their gardens. Epicurus is called by Pliny the master of gardens. He held his school at Athens in the midst of a garden, in which was assembled everything that could charm the senses. The Greek gardens were laid out with lawns, groves, thickets, arcades, and avenues. Fountains poured their wa- ters, which flowed in winding rivulets, feeding a perpetual verdure. Myrtles, roses, pomegranate-trees, shed their per- fumes, which were wafted by the breezes through the opened apartments of the house. Beds of violets, hyacinths, and asphodel gave a soft and varied beauty to the scene. Here Athenian taste and luxury were displayed. Here the poetry of nature soothed the fierce ardor of ambition, or, blending with the contemplations of philosophy, gave to them that liv- ing charm which they possessed in the eyes of Milton, "Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute." With what rich and melodious rhythm Socrates sets forth the beauty of the scene on the banks of the Ilissus, where the immortal dialogue takes place between him and the youthful Phsedrus ! "Is not this the tree to which you were leading us? It is indeed a delightful spot; for the plane-tree is lofty and spreading, and beautiful the stature and shadiness of the agnus, which, in full blossom, should load the air of the place with its sweet fragrance ; and most graceful the fountain that flows from under the plane-tree, and cooling its water, to judge by the foot; sacred to the nymphs and Acheloiis, it would seem from the offerings and images there. How sweet and grateful the breeziness of the spot ! It resounds with the summer music and the chirping chorus of the cicadge ; 330 THE LIFE OF GREECE. and tne gentle slope of the grassy lawn is a soft and quiet pillow for the head, inviting to repose." Yet it is some- times affirmed that the Greeks had no appreciation of the beauties of nature ! The city and the country present one of the contrasts in the life of Greece. I have dealt with the country very briefly, with the purpose of suggesting rather than complet- ing the picture. The intimations are numerous in the Greek writers ; on some points the details are quite complete ; but they form no part of the common conception of ancient Hellas. The Greek, as a farmer or country-gentleman, is not the Greek of classical associations ; and yet, perhaps, precisely in these relations he was most intensely Greek. " Now, O Socrates," says Ischomachus, the model man of Xenophon, " you shall hear the philanthropy of this art. For can it be otherwise than noble, an art not only the most useful, but most agreeable to exercise, most beautiful, most dear to gods and men, and, besides all this, most easy to learn ? For the learner is not obliged, as in the other arts, to spend a long time before he can earn his living. Other craftsmen conceal the most essential rules and principles of their professions, but the most skilful farmer is best pleased when others witness his operations ; and if you ask him, he conceals nothing from you, but will readily explain to you the secret of his greatest successes ; so that you see, Soc- rates, farming has the strongest tendency to exalt the moral character of those who are devoted to it." LECTUKE IV. ROADS. HOUSES. FURNITURE. MARRIAGE. XENOP HON'S CECONOMICUS. We know but little of the state of the roads by which the communication between the Greek commonwealths was carried on. The roads are alluded to incidentally, but nowhere par- ticularly described ; and very few traces of them, I believe, are to be found at the present day. The Sacred Way, from Athens to Eleusis, over which the processions passed to the celebration of the mysteries, is still discernible, with some of the paving- stones, and the ruts worn by the chariot-wheels. The direction of other roads leading out of Athens* east, north, and south, is tolerably well ascertained. It seems certain that the prin- cipal thoroughfares were, from an early period, passable for chariots, but probably narrow, and not very elaborately built. Telemachus, journeying in search of his father, goes by ship to Pylos, but travels thence, with Nestor's son, in a car- riage drawn by a pair of horses, in which the careful house- keeper has bestowed a plenty of food and wine for the journey. At the nightfall of the second day they arrive at Lacedaemon, ind stop at the palace of Menelaus, having travelled at no very rapid rate. In the legend of (Edipus, the murder of his father takes place in consequence of a quarrel between the attendants of Laius, who is travelling in his royal car with a retinue, and CEdipus himself. The general use of cars by the princes of the heroic age implies the existence of roads. Herodotus employs a phrase that points to two kinds cf roads : the one, cut roads, that is, built and fenced in ; the other, mere tracks. Thu- cydides, in describing the improvements introduced into Mace- 832 THE LIFE OF GREECE. donia by Archelaus, says that " he cut straight roads." Di- csearchus, in the passage I read in a preceding lecture, points out some of the characteristics of the roads over which he travelled. The nature of the country generally indicates the direction which the great highways must have taken. The sea and rivers, so far as was possible, were resorted to as the most convenient means of intercourse between country and country. The principal towns had inns for the accommodation of travellers, and those who stopped at them often had occasion to complain of bad wine and extortionate charges. It fre- quently happened, however, that the traveller enjoyed rela- tions of hospitality with some citizen of the place he desired to visit, in which case he lodged at the house of his friend. Travelling in the best times was a tedious affair in ancient Greece ; and it is no wonder that distances which appear to us insignificant then seemed enormous. But let us turn from these external arrangements to the privacy of domestic life in Greece. We cannot enter into numerous antiquarian details, which would be inconsistent with the purpose of this course. I shall attempt nothing further than to select some of the main points, so as to present the most characteristic features, and a few of the leading scenes. " First provide a house," was a precept as old as Hesiod. Fol- lowing the spirit of this rule, let me ask your attention to such particulars of the building and furnishing of a Greek house as are least doubtful or disputable. It will be readily understood that in the arrangements of houses, as well as in all the other accommodations of life, fashions varied from age to age, passing from the extreme of simplicity to the height of luxury. In different parts of Greece, also, the houses were probably con- structed after different patterns. There certainly was a wide difference between country and city residences ; and in both there must of course have been the greatest contrasts between the dwellings of the rich and those of the poor. The small farmer, with his few acres, and only a slave or two to assist him in their cultivation, lived in a plain and homely way, a houses. 333 compared with the man of large property and refined educa- tion, who surrounded himself with all the elegances of wealth and ta,ste. The Spartan lived in a style quite different from that of the Athenian ; and in the city itself, the poorer citizen contented himself with a lodging according to his circum- stances' sometimes narrow enough. Domestic comforts were not so necessary to any in the Grecian climate, which had ever} qrjlity to tempt one out of doors, as under the sterner skies of 'he North. From the notices that have come down to us incidentally in the authors, we can form only very general notions on this subject. In putting these notices together, care enough has not always been taken to discriminate among the various cir- cumstances of time, place, and rank, to say nothing of the individual taste of the tenant. In Homer we have several princely establishments described with considerable detail, as the palace of Priam, the house of Ulysses, the palace and gardens of King Alcinoiis, the palace of Menelaus, the dwell- ing of Nestor. The most detailed accounts are given of the regal dwellings of Priam in Troy, of Ulysses in Ithaca, and of Alcinoiis in Scheria. When Hector returns to Troy, to beseech the Trojan dames to offer up prayers to Athene, the poet pauses, as he reaches the royal threshold, to point out its arrangements. Priam's family was an Oriental, not a Grecian household. His harem was numerous, and his domestic accom- modations were as extensive as those of a Turkish sultan. He had fifty sons and twelve daughters ; and with the most com- prehensive hospitality, they, with their wives and husbands, are lodged beneath the paternal roof. " To Priam's beauteous palace he proceeds, With polished porches framed ; within were built, Of polished marble, fifty chambers high, Beside each Other built ; and there the sons Of Priam dwelt, each with his wedded wife. And opposite, within the court, were built Twelve other rooms of polished marble made Beside each other, where the 6ons-in-law Abode, each dwelling with his wedded wife." 334 THE LIFE OF GREECE. In the twenty-fourth book of the Iliad, Priam drives his chariot from the vestibule and sounding portico ; and in another place Hecuba descends to a ihalamos, or chamber, in which precious articles are kept, and selects from a chest a splendidly wrought robe, as an offering for Pallas Athene. The house of Ulysses, in Ithaca, is somewhat more carefully described ; and remains, in some degree corresponding to it, were discovered by Sir William Gell, and delineated in his work on the geography and antiquities of Ithaca. " This house, Eumasus, of Ulysses seems Passing magnificent, and to be known With ease for his among a thousand more. One pile supports another, and a wall Crested with battlements surrounds the court. Firm, too, the folding doors all force of man Defy." Homer, indeed, gives no detailed outline of this mansion ; but as so much of the action of the Odyssey takes place in and around it, almost every part of it is mentioned in the course of the poem. The establishment of King Alcinoiis his palaces, and magnificent gardens yielding fruits through the year is upon the whole the most attractive one de scribed by Homer. But perhaps we have already lingered too long among these epic abodes. They contain the elements of the subse- quent house-building of the Greeks, and as such deserve something more than a passing allusion. The houses of the farmers, in the historical times, were more comfortable than elegant. Strepsiades, in the play of the Clouds, who has been tempted into a marriage with a fine city lady from the aristocratic clan of Megacles, has had time to repent at his leisure. Kept awake by the heavy debts incurred by his spendthrift son, the effect of which he compares to the biting of fleas, he muses with regret upon the ease and homely abundance he enjoyed ir the country, and heartily wishes himself back again. houses. 335 ' Alas ! alas ! forever cursed be that same matchmaker Who set me on to wed thy lady-mother ; For I the sweetest rustic life was leading, Unwashed, unswept, and doing what I would ; Full of my bees, my sheep, my figs and raisins. Then I, a farmer, married from the city A niece of Megacles' long-descended house, A proud, luxurious, and high-flying dame. And so we married, I of cheeses smelling, And lees of wine, and mighty store of wool , But she with myrrh and saffron and tongue-kisses scented, Feasting and dainties, and rites of Genetyllis. I can't say she was idle, but too fast. I used to tell her, showing my old coat All out at the elbows, Wife, you are too fast.' " In the earlier times of Sparta the private dwellings appear t have been rude ; but after the Peloponnesian war, the Spartans, at least in the country, would seem to have built for themselves costly houses, and furnished them with many luxuries. In Athens, also, during the simple days of the Commonwealth, the most eminent citizens contented them- selves with dwellings no richer or better furnished than those of their poor neighbors ; but with the progress of luxury and the arts, the republican plainness of the Marathonian times disappeared. In the age of Dicaearchus, the general aspect of the private residences, compared with the splendor of the public edifices, was, as we have seen, far from imposing; yet there must have been, even then, many houses whose inte- riors, at least, were embellished with costly furniture, orna- ments, and works of art and taste ; and the luxury of their times, contrasted with the virtuous frugality of their ances- tors, is the subject of frequent rebuke by the orators. But, whether it be right or wrong, such is the inevitable progress of events. There was one circumstance, however, which may have hindered the growth of this species of extravagance *mong the Greeks, and especially among the Athenians. In- door life was by no means so general or important among ,hem as among us. The market, the court, the gymnasium, 336 THE LIFE OF GREECE. the odeum, the theatre, the barbers' shops, the work-shops, the schools of the philosophers and sophists, and the leschce, or club-rooms, filled up the days of the citizen, leaving him but little time for home, except at meals and during the period of sleep ; and even these hours were not always passed un- der his own roof. Socrates, as we know, was very irregular in his hours, haunting every sort of place where he could enjoy the delights of talk and argument. If he went to a symposium, he was likely enough to stay all night, and, having composed all his companions on their couches, just to wash his face, go to the lyeeum or academy, and set in for another day's talk ; while his wife stayed at home with the children, " nursing her wrath to keep it warm." Vitruvius, the architect of Augustus, gives the plan of a Greek house in his day ; and so far as concerns the general divisions and their uses, his description coincides with the intimations of other authors ; but in one important point he contradicts them, and that is as to the position of the women's apartments, which he places in the front part of the house. This has given great trouble to the architectural critics, who cannot conceive that the Greeks should have allowed the women to live next the street, while the men were thrown into the background. Some of them propose a compromise by arranging the two suites of apartments side by side, on the front, giving both sexes an equal privilege of peeping into the street ; others have placed the women's apartments in the front of the second story ; but though the second story was so used in the heroic palaces, the general arangement in the historical times was undoubtedly to place the rooms occu- pied by the chief members of the family on the ground floor. Perhaps Vitruvius was giving directions for building accord- ing to a fashion prevalent in his times, or in some single lo- cality. At all events, though no specimen of a Greek house remains to illustrate the subject, unless the houses of the buried Pompeii may be so termed, the outline of the usua> ; arrangements can be determined with tolerable precision houses. 337 These arrangements may, however, have differed much at dif- ferent periods. The two principal divisions, into which all houses were laid out, were the andronitis, or men's apartments, and the gynceconitis, or women's apartments ; and according to Lysias, in the time of the Peloponnesian war, or later, the women's apartments were on the ground floor, and behind those of the men. The front was- narrow, but the space required for all the household purposes was secured by car- rying the house in to a considerable depth ; and in the city, houses were built side by side with only party-walls be- tween them. The outside wall was usually constructed of stone or brick, very skilfully made, and then covered with stucco. Socrates's idea of a good house was, that it should be cool in summer and warm in winter; convenient for the family, and safe for their property; that the winter-rooms should be towards the south, and higher, to let in more sun ; the summer-rooms lower, and towards the north, to receive the cooling breezes. This seems to imply a semiannual mi- gration from one side of the house to the other. Usually there was no open space between the street and the house- door, though the more aristocratic residences sometimes stood within enclosures. In front was placed a statue of Apollo Agyeus, or a bust of Hermes, the object of religious vener- ation to the members of the household. Over the door was set an inscription containing the name of the owner, and some words of good omen, as ayada> dai/xopi, to the good genius. The threshold was the object of a superstitious notion, that it was unfortunate to tread on it with the left foot ; and this is the reason why the steps leading into a temple were of an uneven number. The door was generally made of wood, but sometimes of marble or bronze, especially the doors of temples. It turned on a pivot, and was secured by bolts running into a socket in the sill, and by a cross-bar, inserted into sockets on each side. Locks and keys are also described, the locksmith weing called a /cXetoWoio?, or key-maker; and vol. I. 22 338 THE LIFE OF GREECE. if we may believe the novelist Achilles Tatius, doors were sometimes locked both inside and out, and the door opened indifferently either way. Passing the hall-door, we enter a passage called the 0vpa>v or dvpcopeiov, on the sides of which were arranged the porter's lodge and the stables. Beyond these we enter a square court open to the sky, suriounded by a peristyle and covered arcades. This is the androni- tis, around which chambers for the use of the male mem- bers of the family opened into the columned passages. Di- rectly in the rear of this a passage conducted to another open square, surrounded on the sides by columns, and similarly fur- nished with covered arcades, upon which, on each of three sides, chambers opened. The passage was called p,erav\o<; or /j, be found at Mr. Waterman's. The fuel commonly used was wood, charcoal, and sometimes mineral coal. Bellows were employed from the time of Homer. From the kitchen we pass by the association of contrast, as the philosophers call it, to the toilette of the mistress of the house. Dress and costume will be referred to in another place ; we are now considering only the different parts of the house, with their several furnishings. A good deal of attention was paid to the ornamenting of the person, even in the heroic age. Ear-rings are named in the Iliad and Odyssey ; and eight or ten different kinds of them are mentioned. Necklaces were as various. Of armlets and bracelets there was a great diversity. Signet and jewelled rings adorned the taper fingers of the Grecian ladies. They had tooth-powder, black paint for the eyebrows, rouge-pots, blanching-varnish, essence-bottles, hair-powder, exquisite dyes for the hair, oils for softening it and MARRIAGE. 348 giving it a charming gloss, curling-irons, fillets, golden pins, and so on, without end. Perhaps these few details will be sufficient to suggest the idea of what a Greek house of the better class was. It cer- tainly was not deficient in any of the means and appliances of a tolerably comfortable existence. Following out the spirit of the ancient and modern maxim, which directs us to provide a house and then to get a wife, let us see how the second part of the rule was practised by the Greeks. I have already al- luded to the fact that monogamy, or the marriage of one man to one woman, was early established as the basis of Hellenic society. It is true that the traditions of the heroes do not represent them all as adhering to this rule. Hercules trav- elled about the earth, subduing monsters and marrying wives ; wherever he journeyed, he set up a domestic establishment: but the jealousies to which this vagrant style of domesticity ex- posed him cost him his life ; he put on the poisoned tunic of Nessus, sent to him by Dejaneira, and expired in agony on the funeral pile. Yet despite this sad experience, his spirit Ascended to Olympus, and there married Hebe, the daughter of Hera, greatly against the wishes of the old lady, and that is the last we hear of him. After all, there was not much in the earthly fortunes of Hercules to tempt his admirers into imitat- ing his example ; and the moral does not appear to have been lost on them. The education of girls, in Athens, was for the most part a secluded one. Whatever accomplishments they acquired were acquired in the presence and under the superintendence of the mother. There were, however, many celebrations, connected with the religion of the country, in which the women partici- pated. They walked in processions through the streets of the city to the temples of the gods ; they attended funerals and mar- riages ; and it would seem that, in the more primitive times at least, youths and maidens joined in some of the public dances. They were, also, present at the theatre, at least at some of the representations, and they took part in the Eleusinian mysteries. 344 THE LIFE OF GREECE. Thus there were not wanting numerous occasions for men and women to become acquainted with each other, occasions nearly as good as the modern ball-room affords. Thrasyme- des, an Athenian youth, fell in love with the daughter of Peisistratus, and ventured to salute her as she walked in a religious procession. This liberty was resented by the young men, her brothers ; but the father, taking a more sensible view of the case, said to them, " If we punish men for loving us, what shall we do with those that hate us ? " But the course of true love did not yet run quite smooth. The lover deter- mined to carry the young lady off. Taking some of his com- panions with him, he seized the opportunity of a sacrifice on the sea-shore, and, placing her in a boat, set sail for JEgina. Un- fortunately, one of her brothers, happening to be cruising about the bay on the watch for pirates, captured the bark, and car- ried the whole party back to Athens. They were brought into the presence of Peisistratus, and, expecting nothing better than death, told him to do what he pleased, since they had staked their lives on the venture, and were quite ready to take the consequences. The old gentleman, admiring their spirit, freely bestowed his daughter on Thrasymedes. The lovers were married ; and here, like a modern novel, the story ends. It was not at all unusual for enamored young gentlemen to cover walls, columns, or trees with the names of the maidens who had inspired them with the tender passion. Saj's Lucian, " Every wall was carved, and all the bark of the soft tree proclaimed the beautiful Aphrodite." Even the leaves of trees were written over with the beloved name. Sometimes verses were sent to the object of affection ; sometimes garlands of flowers were hung before her doors ; sometimes the love-sick swain wore a wreath all awry upon his head, to signify the agitated state of his feelings. Maximus Tyrius, a later Greek writer, as quoted by St. John, speaking of the origin of love, says : "Its wellspring is the beauty of the soul, gleaming up- ward through the body ; and as flowers seen under water appear still more brilliant and exquisite than they are, so MARRIAGE. 34* mental excellence seems to manifest additional splendor, when invested with corporeal loveliness." By the best minds of antiquity certainly the relation of the sexes in the family was as justly estimated as it is at the present day ; and they have left as admirable pictures of the influence of the affections on life and conduct as are to be found in modern literature. Witness the stories of Odysseus and Penelope, of Alcestis and Admetus, of Haemon and Antigone. Even the satirical Lucian calls the union of husband and wife a divine and holy law. To the god of love altars were built, sacrifices offered, and festivals instituted. In the words of an eloquent writer, " Love breathed the breath of life into their poetry ; it was supposed to elicit music and verse from the coldest human clay, like the sun's rays from the fabulous Memnon ; it allied itself in its energies with freedom ; to love, in the imagination of a Greek, was to cease to be a slave ; it emancipated and ren- dered noble whomsoever it inspired ; it floated winged through the air, and descended even in dreams upon the minds of men or women, revealing to sight the forms of persons unknown, annihilating distance, trampling over rank, confounding to- gether gods and men by its irresistible force." It was a tendency of the Greek mind to trace every institu- tion back to some inventor; and Cecrops has the honor of having invented marriage. There is an opposite picture to that just given. From Hesiod downward, there were not wanting sarcastic writers, who held up the female character to derision and contempt ; charging women, in the mass, with every vice that could ren- der them most despicable, with gossiping, gadding about the streets, intriguing, gluttony, hard drinking, extravagance. Eu- ripides was the most poetical of these misogynists ; and yet even he drew the lovely character of Alcestis. Of course, in their general representations of the marriage life, these writers regard it as a necessary evil, which must be submitted to for reasons of state. But it is a curious commentary on these satirists, that, while every conceivable crime is discussed by the 346 THE LIFE OF GREECE. Attic orators as having been committed by men, there is, sc far as I remember, in the whole body of the legal arguments preserved, only a single instance of the impeachment of the character of a married woman. It is true that Plato describes the feminine character as more secret and stealthy than that of man ; and it is true, too, that the legal position of woman was, in the utmost degree, that of dependence. The peculiar view which the law took of the duty of mar- riage perhaps has had some influence in lowering our estimate of the institution, as it existed in ancient Greece ; and the particular modes by which marriages were doubtless, in many cases, brought about, have helped to strengthen the misappre- hension. Thus at Sparta the man who did not marry, or who postponed marrying too long, laid himself open to a prosecu- tion. Solon is said to have made a similar law, though he was never married. All this shows that marriage was looked upon by the lawgivers as an institution on which the whole political structure rested, yet without denying that it had another aspect with regard to its private relations, and its bearings on individual happiness. It is very true that the intermar- riage of children was often settled by the parents, probably without much consulting the inclinations of the parties most concerned ; young men were often put under the restraints of matrimony as a remedy for dissipation ; fortunes were united by wedding the heirs of adjoining properties; dilapidated estates were repaired by seeking out and securing the hands of heiresses ; and, in the last resort, the daughter was obliged to submit to the father's authority, and to take whomsoever he chose to give, for better or worse. It must have happened that marriages often turned out unhappily when contracted in this manner, with little or no mutual knowledge ; and one of the reforms suggested by Plato was a mode of bringing men and women into a better acquaintance with one another. Besides this, there were in Athens persons whose business was match-making, as poor Strepsiades found to his cost. Bachelors, if too old, were subject to a legal penalty, both in MARRIAGE. 347 Sparta and in Athens. At what age they were supposed to have reached the end of their tether we are not informed. Whether any indulgence was extended to those unhappy abnor- mal s who, having made frequent experiments, could honestly plead the impossibility of finding any one to have them, remains also doubtful. Probably they were not excused ; the law pre- suming that some one of the many methods of getting a wife would meet the most exceptional case. These are agreement between the parents or guardians ; agreement between the par- ties ; a bargain negotiated by a match-broker ; elopement with an heiress ; and, finally, the legacy of a departing friend, who, by the law of Athens, could devise not only his estate, but his widow, as a mark of particular regard, to a surviving friend or kinsman. In truth, a bachelor on compulsion, after these methods had been exhausted, must have been a deplorable nondescript. In the Homeric age the suitor paid to the father of the lady a sum proportioned to his circumstances, or perhaps to his estimate of the value of the purchase ; though the princely brides of that age are also spoken of as bringing large posses- sions to their husbands. In the historical times the dowry was the subject of legal regulation ; and at Athens a considerable part of the movable property was held in this form. It was a matter of frequent litigation, as appears especially in the speeches of Isaeus. The dowry was generally indispensable to marriage. We are told that the dowry of the daughters of the poor citizens varied from ten to thirty minas, or from one hun- dred and eighty to five hundred and forty dollars, which last was the sum bestowed by the state on the daughters of Aristi- des, who died poor. The daughter of Hipponicus received ten talents, or about eleven thousand dollars, with the promise of as much more. This, however, was an extraordinary fortune. The husband was obliged by law to give security for the dowry, he receiving only the income of it during the continuance of the marriage relation, the property belonging to the wife and children. 348 THE LIFE OF GREECE. The marriage having been determined on, the first step taken was the betrothal, made by the legal guardian of the bride, and attended by the friends and relatives of both parties, on which occasion the dowry of the wife was agreed upon. A day or two before the marriage a sacrifice was offered by the father of the bride to Hera, Artemis, and the Fates, to whom the bride consecrated a lock of her hair. On the wed- ding day the happy pair were bathed in water taken from a particular fountain at Athens, the Enneacrounos. Then they put on their best attire, their wedding garments ; and the friends of both families having assembled, the women engaged in the recitation of prayers and the presentation of offerings. After these ceremonies were performed, the bride was led from the house, and placed in an open carriage between the bride- groom and his paranymphus or groomsman, both robed in the most costly attire, and crowned with garlands. A proces- sion was formed of the company present, which moved on to the temple, where a part of the ceremony was usually performed, the oath of fidelity taken, and the hand of the bride placed by the father in that of the bridegroom. In later times the cere- monies consumed neai'ly all the day, and the procession arrived at the house of the newly married pair not long before night- fall. Hymeneal songs, accompanied by the flute, were sung as the procession passed, and the people on the way poured out their good wishes and congratulations. The bride was conduct- ed into her future home by the bridegroom's mother with a lighted torch, and sweetmeats were scattered over them as they entered. In some places the axletree of the carriage was then broken, to intimate that, having found a new home, the bride would have no occasion to return to her father's house. The house was splendidly illuminated ; and, to suggest the idea of practical domestic duties, there was a great show of pestles, sieves, and pitchers. An ancient hymn was chanted, the burden of which was, " I have escaped the worse, I have found the better," words to be commended to the seri- ous consideration of all single gentlemen who have chosen the xenophon's CECONOMICU8. 349 worse and shunned the better. At the close of the hymn a troop of dancing girls, crowned with myrtle-wreaths, entered, and performed an expressive ballet, appropriate to the occasion. The feast was sumptuous, consisting of wines, meats, sweet- meats, and wedding cake. The guests at this feast were considered in the light of legal witnesses to the marriage. Women were present, but sat at different tables from the men, with the veiled bride among them. The last ceremony of the feast was the eating of a quince by the husband and wife together, to signify that their communion should be sweet and harmonious. When the company had retired, the epithala- mium was sung by a chorus of damsels standing at the door of the 7rao-Ta?, or nuptial chamber. Another song was chanted on the following morning, and the day was occupied in re- ceiving presents from friends. Perhaps I ought to leave the subject here ; but as there is a pretty fair sketch of a good housekeeper in Xenophon's (Economicus, I will close this Lecture by an abridged transla- tion of it. The work is intended to embody the ideas of Soc- rates on the management of a family ; and the passage to which I refer is that in which he gives an account of a conversation he once held with a friend, Ischomachus by name, shortly after that gentleman's marriage. " Seeing him one day," says Socrates, " sitting in the porch of Zeus Eleutherios, as he seemed to be at leisure, I ap- proached him, and, taking a seat by him, said, ' How is \t, O Ischomachus, that you, so little accustomed to be unem- ployed, are sitting here ? ' 'I should not be here, had I not agreed to wait for some friends.' " After a few preliminary compliments, Ischomachus remarks, that he is entirely free to attend to his business out of doors, because his wife is fully competent to manage everything in the house ; and that is the reason why he has risen so high in the estimation of the citi- zens, alluding to a compliment Socrates had just paid him "I should be glad to know," says Socrates, "whether you educated your wife yourself, or whether she was taught by 350 THE LIFE OF GREECE. her father and mother to perform the duties belonging to hei station." " Why, she was only seventeen years old when I married her ; and she had been brought up in great privacy, where she could hear, see, and ask as little as possible. I think I ought to have been content if she knew how to super- intend the weaving, and to distribute the tasks among her handmaids. One thing, however, she was particularly well educated in, and that is the most important thing for man or woman either, namely, temperance." "Then you edu- cated your wife in all other things yourself, so that she be came qualified to perform all her duties ? " " Not," replied Ischomachus, earnestly, " until I had sacrificed and prayed, that I might teach and she might learn what would most benefit both of us." " Did your wife join in the sacrifice, and offer the same prayers ? " " To be sure she did, and made many promises to the gods if she might become what she ought to be, and showed plainly that she was not going to neglect her lessons." " In God's name," said Socrates, *' tell me what you taught her first: I would rather hear it than the play." " Well, Socrates, when she began to get a little acquainted with me, so as to converse easily, I said to her, * Do you know, wife, why it was that I chose you, and your parents gave you to me, when there were plenty of others we might have mar- ried? The reason was, that I was looking out for the best partner for myself, and your parents for the best one for you. If God give us children, we will, when the time comes, con- sider the best methods of educating them to be our dearest friends and supporters in old age. Now this is our common dwelling. All that each of us has brought is thrown into the common store. The question is not, who has brought in the largest sum, but whichever of us proves the better companion contributes the most.' She answered, ' What can I help you to do ? What power have I ? Everything depends on you My mother taught me that my duty was to be virtuous.' Certainly,' said I, ' and my father taught me the same. Bu: xenophon's (economicus. 351 it is the duty of an honest man and woman to make their pres- ent condition as good as possible, and to improve it by every fair and honorable means.' ' What can I do,' said she, ' to help improve our condition ? ' ' What the gods designed you should do, and the law approves, strive to do in the best possi- ble manner.' ' What is that ? ' said she. ' Duties of the highest importance,' I replied, ' if the work of the queen-bee in a hive is of great importance.' " He then enters upon a general consideration of the aim and end of the marriage relation, and the respective duties of the husband and wife. A large part of the work of life is to be carried on in the open air ; but the care of children, the weav- ing of cloth, and the like, must be within doors. God has framed the constitution of man so as to fit him for business abroad, and the nature of woman He has adapted to the charge of the household. He has fitted the body and mind of man to endure heat and cold, journeys and marches, and therefore has laid upon him work out of doors. But he has made the body of woman less able to bear these hardships, and therefore has assigned to her the labors in the house. He has inspired her with a greater love of children, and has intrusted their care to her rather than to man. He has made her more timid, that she may keep a watchful oversight ; and him more courageous, that he may the better defend the household against the wrong-doer. And as both have to give and to receive, on both he has bestowed the faculties of memory ano intelligent superintendence, so that it is impossible to say which of the sexes has the superiority, except that whichever is the better God has made the superior. But as they are not equally fitted for both classes of duties, they stand in need of each other, and union is by far the highest good of both. This is the view taken by the law when it weds the man and woman, making them alike sharers in all the fortunes of the home ; and the law is in harmony with the purposes of God in their creation. For it is more honorable to the woman to remain within than to be out of doors ; and for the man it in more 352 THE LIFE OF GREECE. shameful to remain within, than to attend to his affairs abroad. And if a man violates the natural law of God, he cannot escape the consequences of neglecting his proper business, and attending to that of his wife. It is therefore her business to look after the servants, assign them their tasks, receive what is brought into the house, and adjust the expenditures, so that the provision of a year may not be used up in a month. If a servant fall sick, she must take care of him. " ' It seems to me,' she replied, ' that, after all, you are the head ; for all my care of the household would be ludicrous, unless you provided the supplies.' ' And all my supplies,' said I, ' would be ludicrous, unless there were some one at home to take care of them There are other duties which become agreeable, as when you make an ignorant person intelligent, and so double the value of his labor; and when you have it in your power to do good to those who are good and useful to the family ; and, what is the most delightful of all, when you prove yourself to be better than I am, and so make me your servant, having no fear lest, as age advances, you be held in less honor in the family, but assured that, the older you grow, the more you will be honored in the home, according as you have discharged your duties to me and your children.' " This is the substance of the first curtain lecture. Socrates naturally desires to be informed what effect it had. Nothing could be more satisfactory. The subject of the next lecture is Order, the most useful thing in the world. It is illustrated by the rhythmical move- ments of the chorus ; of an army on the march or the field of battle ; of a ship with its rowers and passengers ; all of which require the most exact order for beauty or efficiency. Dis- order, on the contrary, is like a farmer who sows barley, wheat, rye, and beans, all together, and who, when he wants a barley- cake, or wheaten bread, or pulse, must needs be picking and choosing, instead of taking directly what he wants. The true principle is, a place for everything, and everything in its place , and the servant must be taught whence to take and where XENOPHON'S (ECONOMICS. 353 to put whatever is needed for use, which he will soon learn. This the speaker further illustrates by what he once saw on board a Phoenician merchant- vessel, where by a careful economy of space, and by exact order, a great quantity of rigging and warlike armament and a cargo of costly goods were snugly stowed away in a place not larger than a dining- room, and the officers of the ship knew the pUce of each arti- cle as well as he who can spell knows the letters in the name of Socrates. The master remarked, that in a storm at sea there would be no time for hunting after anything out of the way, for God threatens and punishes the indolent. " Now if seamen can find a place for everything, and keep such exqui- site order in a vessel tossed about on the waves, it were a great shame to us if, in houses standing on the solid earth, we should not do the same. It is pleasant to have a place for shoes, for clothes, for bed-clothes, for brazen vessels, for table- furniture ; and though an elegant gentleman might smile at the assertion, there is something rhythmical in seeing soup-dishes properly arranged. The arrangement of furniture is like that of a circular chorus ; not only the chorus itself is a beautiful spectacle, but the clear space within it is beautiful. There is no difficulty in finding a person who will learn the places, and remember to put each thing in its proper place. If you send a servant out to purchase anything in the market, he will know precisely where to go and find it, because there is a particular place for everything ; but if you look after a man you are not so certain where to go, because there is no fixed place to await him in." This was the second curtain lecture. "Well," says Socrates, " did she promise to undertake all this ? " " To be sure she did, with the greatest alacrity, and entreated me to set about putting things in order at once." They then together examine the arrangements of the house, in which utility had been studied more than ornament. It was well built for comfort both in summer and winter. They first collected all the furniture connected with sacrifices ; hen the ornaments and apparel for festival occasions, armor, vol. I. 23 364 THE LIFE OF GREECE. bed-clothes, women's shoes and men's shoes, the implements for spinning, cooking utensils, bathing-furniture, towels, table- furniture ; then the things that were to be used every day, those reserved for company, and so on. Every kind of fur- niture was put in its proper place. Servants were properly instructed, and a housekeeper selected, whose interest it was made to enforceMhe regulations of the family. " I taught my wife," proceeded Ischomachus, " that as it is not enough in well-regulated states to enact good laws, but guardians of the laws must be chosen to see that they are duly executed, so the wife ought to be the executive officer in the house, to see that the laws are enforced, and, like a queen, to distribute blame and praise and honor as they are deserved. I told her, too, that she must not take it hard if I charged her with more duties in relation to the property than I should require of a servant to undertake, since it was merely taking care of her own." " What did she say to that ? " " Why, that I did not understand her if I thought the duty proposed were a hard one, to take care of her own ; it would be much harder if I told her to neglect it." " By Juno," said Socrates, " your wife has the sense of a man." " I will tell you something better than all this, as a proof of her good sense and magna- nimity." " What ? I would infinitely rather listen to the virtues of a living woman, than see the finest picture Zeuxis ever painted." " I noticed that she was in the habit of using cosmetics, that she might seem fairer and ruddier than she was, and of wearing high shoes, that she might appear taller than she was by nature. ' Tell me, my dear,' said I, ' should you esteem me more highly as a sharer of your fortunes, if I told you ex- actly the state of my property, or if I tried to deceive you by exhibiting false coin, and necklaces of gilded wood, and robes of spurious instead of genuine purple ? ' She replied instant- y, ' Heaven forbid ! Were you such a man, I never could love you from my heart.' ' Well, then, would you like me better, if I appeared before you sound and healthy, fair ana XENOPHON'S (ECONOMICUS. 355 vigorous, or with painted cheeks, and artificially colored eye- lids, trying to cheat you by offering you paint instead of myself? ' ' Why,' said she, ' I like you better than paint ; I prefer the natural color of your cheeks to rouge, and I would rather look into your eyes sparkling with health than with all the cosmetics in the world.' ' Then I would have you to know that I am more charmed with your native complexion than with paint. These false pretences may deceive the casual observer, but not those who live together. They are exposed before the morning toilette, or by perspiration, or by tears, or by the bath.' ' "What, in heaven's name, did she answer ? " " Why, she said she would not do so any more, and asked my advice as to the best means of making herself really beautiful. I advised her not to sit all the time, like a slave, but to be up and stirring ; to look after the bread-maker to stand over the housekeeper as she measured out the allow- ance ; to run all over the house, and see if everything was in its place ; for this would combine both duty and exercise. I said that it was a good exercise also to mix and knead the bread, to shake out the clothes, and make the beds ; and that thus she would have a better appetite, and grow healthier, and would in reality apDear handsomer. And now, Socrates, my wife lives and practises according to my instructions, and as I tell you." LECTURE V. HOUSEHOLD EXPENSES. OCCUPATIONS. FOOD. FEASTS. MARKETS. Soceates admitted that all he had heard of Ischomachus and his wife was very pleasant, and highly creditable to both. Perhaps a sigh of regret escaped him, philosopher though he was, when he was reminded, by these details of his friend's household, how different a home awaited him when he returned from strolling about the city. The image of Xanthippe con- trasted painfully with the fair and docile bride of Ischomachus^ and we may fancy that he felt a momentary doubt whether, after all, he did the wisest thing in the world when he married her for the sake of the moral discipline of being compelled to bear the outbreaks of her violent temper. At all events, the experiment is not one to be recommended, except perhaps to philosophers and reformers. The conversation between him and Critobulus in the same piece illustrates his usual way of thinking about money. " I do not need anything more than 1 have, Critobulus ; I think myself already sufficiently rich ; but you seem to me poor, and by Jupiter I sometimes pity you very much." " In Heaven's name, Socrates," replied Crito- bulus with a smile, " how much do you suppose your property would bring, if sold? and how much mine ? " " Why, I sup- pose, if I could find a good purchaser, that all my property, in- cluding the house, would easily bring about five minas ; yours, I know, would bring more than a hundred times as much." " How is it, then, that you think you need no more, and pity me for my poverty?" "Because my property is sufficient for n : y wants ; but your stvle of living, and the figure you mak*> HOUSEHOLD EXPENSES. 357 in the world, are such that, if your estate were three times as great, it would not equal the demands upon it. You have to offer numerous and magnificent sacrifices ; you have to re- ceive and entertain sumptuously a great many strangers, and to feast the citizens ; you have to pay heavy contributions towards the public service, keeping horses and furnishing choruses in peace, and in war bearing the expense of triremes and pay- ing war-taxes ; or, if you fail to do all this, they will punish you with as much severity as if they caught you stealing their own money. Besides, I see that you fancy yourself rich, and you are careless about making money, and occupy your mind with trivial subjects, as if you had a right to do so. Therefore I pity you, and am afraid you will suffer some incurable evil, and get involved in great embarrassment. As for me, I know and you know that, if I need any addition to my income, friends stand ready to help me, and a very small sum would over- whelm me with abundance ; whereas your friends, though much better able to bear their own expenses than you yours, are always expecting to be benefited by you." The property which Socrates declared to be sufficient for his wants amounted to something less than a hundred dollars of our currency, from which, at the rate of interest usual in Athens, he might have received an annual income of twelve dollars, a slender revenue to support a wife and three chil- dren. His own expenses were small. He wore no under garment, and his outer garment was always an old one, both in summer and winter. He went barefoot, having been known to possess but one pair of shoes in all his life. When he was invited to the drinking bout at Agathon's house, in honor of a dramatic victory gained by that poet, he appeared in a dress so much smarter than usual that all his friends were astonished, as remarkable a transformation as Mr. Samuel Weller's first appearance in the new suit which Mr. Pickwick gave him. He lived on bread and water, except when he was invited out ; and the only seasoning he took was a long walk before dinner. But how did his wife and children live ? Per- 358 THE LIFE OF GREECE. haps they worked ; perhaps Xanthippe had a little property of her own ; perhaps Socrates had, as Demetrius Phalereus asserted, besides his real estate, seventy minae, or twelve hun- dred and sixty dollars, lent on interest to Crito, which would give something over one hundred and fifty dollars a year for household expenses. However this may have been, these three men present a not uninstructive picture of society ; Socrates, reducing the wants of life to the lowest amount, and maintain- ing a sturdy independence ; Ischomachus, a wise and prudent man, managing his property with thrift, living on a liberal scale of expenditure, relieving the poor, helping his friends, and per- forming every public and private duty with order, punctuality, and a conscientious regard to the rights and interests of all around him ; Critobulus, a man of high birth, hereditary prop- erty, large and liberal tastes, open-handed hospitality, some- what ostentatious in his way of living, and, though sometimes pressed for ready cash, recklessly going on with the profuse expenditures which his rank and reputation seemed to demand. Ischomachus is the mean between the two extremes, - in his day doubtless regarded as the best citizen of the three ; be loved by his friends ; adored by his slaves ; called a koXo? tcdyaOos, or perfect gentleman, by the citizens ; looked up to by his amiable little wife as the complete model of a man. Yet we should never have heard of his name but for Xeno- phon, who has made the whole world wiser and better by his records of the goodness and wisdom of Socrates. The occupations of a day, for an Athenian of the rank and character of Ischomachus, were not disagreeable. Since the gods have connected happiness with the performance of duties, and these again require the light of knowledge, he opens the labors of the day by a prayer for health, strength, and prosper- ity, for a good name among the citizens, and success in worldly affairs. Having risen early enough to find people at home, he eats a morsel, and then makes his business visits in the city, com. bining exercise and profit. 'If no affairs detain him in town, he sends his horse out into the country by a servant, and walks food. 359 thither himself; and having inspected the work going on at the farm, he mounts his horse, and takes a rapid gallop, not mind- ing whether it is up hill or down, leaping over ditches and trenches, just as he would have done in war. Then he gives his horse up to the servant, walks home to a light break- fast, and devotes the day to intercourse with friends, miscella- neous business, visiting places of amusement, or discharging the civil duties which belong to every Athenian citizen, to say nothing of hearing and adjusting the complaints of servants, reconciling differences among friends, endeavoring to con- vince them that it is much better to be friends than enemies, and discussing the conduct of public men ; " and sometimes," says he, "I am taken to task, O Socrates, and put on my trial." "By whom? for this had escaped my notice." "By my wife." "And how do you get on in the defence?" - " When it is for my interest to tell the truth, pretty well ; but when the contrary, O Socrates, I cannot make the worse ap- pear the better reason." But let us look a little more closely into the interior of this establishment. How did the family live? What was their food ? When and how many times a day did they eat ? Of course, the principal provisions were brought in from the coun- try. The grain had been trodden out on the threshing-floor, in the manner already described, and, after some further prep- aration, either pounded in the mortar, or ground in hand-mills, or, at a later period, in mills worked by mules. Bread was made of many other grains besides wheat and barley, as rye, millet, spelt, rice, mixed with lotus-root, which was used as the potato is sometimes used now. The variety of loaves and cakes produced by the ancient bakers is exceedingly puzzling; and the forms were as curiously contrived as in any modern bakery. Some were baked in ovens heated by wood, and large enough for a batch of prodigious magnitude ; others in vessels set on the coals ; and some kinds, as our corn-cakes, before or on the coals. i The size varied from slender rolls to loaves requiring three bushels of flour. The bread sold by the 360 THE LIFE OF GREECE. artopolides, or bread-women, in the Attic markets, enjoyed a reputation throughout Greece, like that of French bread at the present day. The principal vegetables used were lettuce, radishes, turnips, asparagus, beans, peas, garlic, and onions. A great many other articles were used as vegetable food, which I believe are seldom sold for that purpose now, such as choke- weed, clematis, and elm-leaves. Beef, mutton, goat's flesh, and pork were the most ordinary meats. The flesh of the ass was sometimes eaten, but rarely, except perhaps when the sausage- sellers seasoned it so that it passed for something else. Hares were a favorite luxury. Attic poultry was famous every- where. Thrushes enjoyed a reputation similar to that of the canvas-back duck. There was a good supply of doves, black- birds, becaficos, starlings, partridges, wild pigeons, geese, fran- colins, and quails, most of which have not lost the estimation in which they were held by the ancient gastronomers. Fish, however, were the objects of the greatest solicitude, Copaic eels, conger-eels, soles, the tunny, the mackerel, the young shark, the mullet, turbot, carp, gudgeon, anchovy, halibut, and a great many others which cannot be identified with species now known, though mentioned by Athenaeus, and most of them described by Aristotle ; and among shell-fish, snails, peri- winkles, mussels, oysters, echini. A Spartan, being once in- vited to dine where echini constituted one of the dishes, took one upon his plate, and put it into his mouth. The prickly shell was somewhat uncomfortable, and he disdained to inquire how to eat it. In short, he found himself much in the condi- tion of Davy Crocket with the olive. At last he got angry, and, crushing the shell with a mighty effort of his teeth, he exclaimed, " Accursed beast ! I will not let thee go, now that I have cracked thee to pieces ; but I will never touch thee again ! " Archestratus says : " For mussels you must go to jEnos ; oysters You '11 find best at Abydos. Parion Rejoices in its urchins ; but if cockles Gigantic and sweet-tasted you would eat, J> FOOD. 361 A voyage must be made to Mitylene, Or the Ambraeian Gulf, where they abound, With many other dainties. At Messene, Hard by the narrows, are Pelorian concha, Nor are those bad you find near Ephesus. For Tethyan oysters go to Chalcedon." The Copaic eel celebrated in Aristophanes is found by modern travellers fully to justify the classical eulogies bestowed upon it, and the eagerness of the old Acharnian to put an end to the Peloponnesian war, that he might again enjoy its flavor roasted on the coals and wrapped in beet-leaves. The princi- pal fruits were figs, apples, quinces, peaches, pears, citrons, plums, cherries, mulberries, blackberries, filberts, walnuts, al- monds, olives, chestnuts, pistachio-nuts, dates, and, last and best of all, the noblest fruit of the earth, the grape. The two principal beverages of the Greeks were water and wine. The wines of Thasos, Cos, Myndos, and Halicarnassus enjoyed a high reputation. Egyptian wines were not disliked. Nectar was made near Olympus in Lydia, by mingling honey and fragrant flowers with the juice of the grape. Not to enter into the particulars of this subject, we may say that the use of wine as a beverage was universal among the ancient nations, with a few individual exceptions. Demosthenes was a water- drinker ; but JEschines was so far from agreeing with him, that he made this a ground of insult and reproach to his antagonist. Some of the deepest thinkers arrived at the conclusion that the highest efficiency of the bodily and mental powers is to be at- tained only by total abstinence from wine. " Old wine," some of the physicians said, " shatters the nerves and produces head- ache ; new wine is the parent of horrible dreams." The doc- tors and wine-dealers were at feud, considering each other as natural enemies. The philosophers, too, differed from the doc- tors. Plato and Socrates though not hard drinkers could stand a good deal upon occasion. The poets, however, in word if not in deed, were the vintners' best customers. Musaeus thought that the reward of virtue in the next world would be everlasting intoxication. Anacreon describes himself as making 162 THE LIFE OF GREECE. nis breakfast on a piece of cake and a whole cask of wine, - like Jack Falstaff's bit of bread and monstrous deal of sack. Pindar, who said, " Water is the best," meant it for something else besides drinking, and in another place professes a liking for old wine and new songs. The comic poet Diphilus ex- pressed the general feeling (I am sorry to believe) in verses as flowing and glowing as Tom Moore's : " O friend to the wise, to the children of song, Take me with thee, thou wisest and sweetest, along. To the humble, the lowly, proud thoughts dost thou bring ; For the wretch who has thee is as blithe as a king ; From the brows of the sage, in thy humorous play, Thou dost smooth every furrow, every wrinkle, away ; To the weak thou giv'st strength, to the mendicant gold ; And a slave warmed by thee as a lion is bold." The hero worshipped at the port of Munychia was named Acratopotes, or the drinker of unmixed wine. Wine was im- ported into Athens from nearly all the islands and cities of the Mediterranean. They had Lesbian, Euboean, Thasian, Pram- nian, and several kinds of Italian wine. In the island of Thera they thickened wine with the yolk of eggs, making a sort of egg-nog. Ice and snow were used to cool wine, just as in our times. The ordinary style of Greek living was frugal and temper- ate. The usual number of meals was three a day. The break- fast (aK.pa.THT pa) was taken immediately after rising, some- times while it was yet dark, and consisted only of bread soaked in wine ; but what perhaps should more properly be called the breakfast (apiaTov) was commonly eaten towards noon, as we saw in the case of Ischomachus, who made his morning calls or visited his farm, and took a long gallop, before he breakfasted. This meal was somewhat more elaborate, consisting of warm food. The principal meal was towards the close of the day, and was called helirvov, which corresponded nearly to our dinner. The common meals were prepared, under the direction of the mistress of the house, by her slaves, one of whom was usually a cook ; but at dinner-parties, or symposia, professed cooks were FEASTS. 363 employed. It is supposed that generally the men and women in a family took their meals apart ; but this could not have been universally the case, since Menander introduces a young dandy complaining what a bore it was to be at a family party, where the father, holding the goblet in his hand, first made a speech, abounding with exhortations, the mother followed, and then the grandmother prated a little ; then afterward stood up her father, hoarse with age, and his wife, calling him her dearest, while he meantime nodded to all present. The occasions for more formal entertainments were numer- ous among the wealthier class. Public and private sacrifices were at all times celebrated by convivial meetings, as were birthdays of members of the family and of distinguished indi- viduals, living or dead; also the leave-taking of a friend, or his welcome home after' a long absence ; and after the burial of a person, a funeral feast was held by the surviving relatives and friends. The gaining of a victory or a prize in a dramatic contest was likewise thus celebrated. Entertainments were sometimes got up by parties, dividing the expense among them- selves, or each bringing a share of the provisions, after the manner of modern picnics ; and excursions into the country or to the sea-shore, with provisions packed in baskets and wine in jars, were no uncommon method of passing a pleasant day. The usual expression was a class of men essential to the commercial enterprises of the Athenians, who will be mentioned in another place. The most important part of the agora was the fish-market. Notice was given when the sale commenced by ringing a bell ; and all other quarters were deserted, everybody rushing to the spot. Rich gourmands hurried in with their baskets and slaves to get the first choice ; the poor looked away, as one of them expresses it, " Lest, if I saw the fish they ask so much for, I should at once to marble turn." The fishmongers, both male and female, bore the same char- acter in Athens as in London and Paris. Amphis, the comic poet, describes their surly manners : " Ten thousand times more easy 't is to gain Admission to a haughty general's tent, And have discourse of him, than in the market Audience to get of a cursed fishmonger. If you draw near and say, ' How much, my friend, Costs this or that 1 ' no answer. Deaf you think The rogue must be, or stupid ; for he heeds not A syllable you say, but o'er his fish Bends silently like Telephus, (and with good reason ; For his whole race he knows are cut-throats all). Another, minding not, or else not hearing, Pulls by the legs a polypus. A third With saucy carelessness replies : ' Four oboli, That 's just the price. For this no less than eight, Take it or leave it' " And Alexis writes : " But when a paltry fish-fag will look big, Cast down his eyes affectedly, or bend 878 THE LIFE OF GREECE. His eyebrows upward like a fall-strained bow, I burst with rage. Demand what price he asks For, say two mullets ; and he answers straight, Ten oboli ! ' ' Ten 1 that 's dear ; will you take eight ! ' ' Yes, if one fish will serve you.' ' Friend, no jokes ; I am no subject for your mirth.' Pass on, sir ! And buy elsewhere.' Now tell me, is not this Bitterer than gall ? " There was a law forbidding 'the fishmongers to water their fish so as to give them the appearance of being fresher than they were. Another regulation required them to have but one price. With regard to the former law, Xenarchus says : " Commend me for invention to the rogue Who sells fish in the agora. He knows, In fact there 's no mistaking, that the law Clearly and formally forbids the trick Of reconciling stale fish to the nose By constant watering. But if some poor wight Detect him in the fact, forsooth he picks A quarrel, and provokes his man to blows. He wheels meanwhile about his fish, looks sharp To catch the nick of time, reels, feigns a hurt, And prostrate falls just in the right position. A friend placed there on purpose snatches up A pot of water, sprinkles a drop or two, For form's sake, on his face, but by mistake, As you must sure believe, pours all the rest Full on the fish, so that you almost might Consider them fresh caught." I will close this ancient and fish-like subject with a fish- story from Strabo. A harp-player had gathered a circle of admiring listeners around himself, when suddenly the bell of the fish-market began to ring. In an instant they all deserted him, except one man who was deaf. " I thank you," said the musician, " for the honor you have done me in not going like the others at the sound of the bell." " What ! " said he, " did you say the bell had rung?" "Yes." "God bless you, then," said he, and took to his heels. L.ECTUKE VI. DRESS. ARMOR. ARTISTICAL DRAPERY. MANUFACTURES TRADE, AND COMMERCE. A picture of the private life of the Greeks would be very- incomplete, without some account of their style of dress. The ancient draperies were doubtless much better suited to artistic representation than the dresses in which human beings have disguised themselves in our own more enlightened days. The body was less constrained by the contrivances worn to shield it from the rigors of an inclement sky, than it is by the walk- ing fetters and jails in which modern tailors bind and shut us up. Small-clothes and knee-buckles have some venerable associations ; cocked hats remind us of our grandfathers ; long waistcoats, with deep pockets, excite a profound respect; silk stockings, with silver-buckled shoes, have an aristocratic sound ; but can anything be more absurd, if looked at in an economi- cal or aesthetic point of view, than each and all of these instru- ments of torture? The present costume is even less pictu- resque. Boots, trousers, waistcoat, coat, and at, lay them out or hang them up together, and what logical connection would Aristotle himself have imagined to exist between them and man, that paragon of animals ? Yet the personality of man is so closely identified with these monstrous .productions of the nightmare of dyspeptic tailors, that probably no human being would be recognized by his next-door neighbor in his simply draped humanity. The female costumes have always been more tasteful, owing to the instinctive loyalty to the spirit of beauty which is the characteristic of the sex ; and why any one of them should so far forget the innate gracefulness of her 380 THE LIFE OF GREECE. being as to cherish a morbid desire to step into the shoes and so on of the more tasteless sex, is to me one of the most inex- plicable mysteries of the times. If it depended upon my vote, the exchange should very readily be made. The modern hat, a piece of funnel with a top and border, is modelled prob- ably from " Luke's iron crown," selected by the poet as an illustration of the wanton excesses of tyranny. Shoes and ooots are so contrived as to mutilate the fair proportions of the foot, pinching the toes, which in their natural condition are ornaments to Jiuman nature, in cases of emergency capable of supplying the place of hands and fingers, into the most piti- able deformity and imbecility. To be set in the stocks was once a disgraceful punishment ; yet what are boots and shoes but stocks, with this great disadvantage, that they go with us wherever we go, turning our feet into bunches of corns, and making the services of the chiropodist of more imminent neces- sity than those of the surgeon in the economy of life ? The Greeks had a great variety of sandals, shoes, and boots ; but to go barefoot never offended the usages of society, except on festive or state occasions ; and any one who remembers with what delight he felt the first touch of the soil, in spring or early summer, when the time came for throwing off his shoes and stockings, will agree with me in thinking that the Hellenic usage in this respect was more natural and agreeable than our own. Of all the enjoyments of childhood and youth in the country in former times, that of the soft, fresh feeling of the genial earth, pressed by the unshod sole of the foot, is undoubt- edly one of the most delicious, a pleasure, I fear, now fast vanishing from the face of our planet. Though the Greeks had various coverings for the head, it was also perfectly in ac- cordance with the customs of polite society to go bai'eheaded. They had no fear of uplifting the noble throne of the intellect into the clear air, and allowing the breezes of heaven to play freely around it ; and here they showed their instinctive saga- city. But to pass from the painful contrasts which these com- parisons suggest, let us spend a few moments upon the detail? of the Grecian dress. DRESS. 381 There was one striking difference between the dresses of most of the other known nations of the ancient world and those of the Greeks and Romans. Trousers, or pantaloons, were worn by the Oriental nations, Medes, Persians, Assyrians, Parthians, and by the principal Western nations of Europe known to the ancients, especially the Dacians and Gauls. The first women who are known to have assumed this dress were the Amazons ; but even these ladies, unlike their successors, the Bloomers, modestly limited the time of imprisonment in such masculine habiliments to the period of warlike expeditions, after which they resumed the customary and graceful attire of their sex, laying aside the garb of manhood with the helmet, shield, and spear. These garments were made of skins, or richly wrought cloth, sometimes fitting tightly to the limbs, like those in use here, and sometimes loose and hanging in folds over the shoes, like the Turkish trousers. The Greeks never wore them at all ; nor did the Romans until the time of the Em- perors, who attempted to introduce breeches among their sub- jects, as a means of making them forget their ancient liberties. The Greek style of dress was not, however, precisely the same as the Roman, though there was a general resemblance. The himation of the Greeks and the toga of the Romans were dif- ferent in shape, and differently worn, though as an outer gar- ment they answered the same purpose. The materials used by the Greeks were furnished partly by domestic manufacture, and partly by commercial exchange. They were fabrics of woollen, cotton, linen, and, in the later times, silk. The woollen was frequently spun and woven by the women of the house- hold, though there were also large establishments where this as well as the other tissues was manufactured to supply the market. The Dorians differed somewhat from the other Greeks in their notions of propriety. At Sparta, the women appeared in the public games and dances in a style of undress or half-dress, which shocked the refinement of Athenian society. At Athens, a much more becoming style prevailed, except per- haps among the artistes who danced for hire at the private 382 THE LIFE OF GREECE. and public entertainments, at which, be it remembered, modest women were never present. The essential parts of the Grecian dress remained, with some changes in form, fashion, and make, nearly the same from Homer down to the latest times. When Agamemnon's morning slumbers are broken by the deceptive dream from Zeus, he first sits up in bed, rubs his eyes, and then proceeds to dress, much as Alcibiades or Pericles would have performed the same operation seven or eight hundred years later. First he put on his soft chiton; next he threw over it the ample pharos ; under his shining feet he bound his beautiful sandals ; and over his shoulders he slung his silver- hilted sword. The articles of a Grecian wardrobe may be classed under two heads; first, those drawn on, or got into; and second, those thrown over the person : the former called by the general term evBvfiara (endymata), and the latter eiri^Xri/jLaTa (epible- mata). The principal garment of the first class was the yiTtav {chiton), which was worn next the body, like a flannel un- der-waistcoat. In early times, it was large and long, reaching to the feet ; but later it was of varying length, extending some- times to the knees and sometimes to the feet. Sometimes it was made with two sleeves, closed, either by the needle, or by clasps or hooks placed at intervals down the arm ; but fre- quently there was only one sleeve, or arm-hole, the garment being secured by a broach or pin over the other shoulder ; and in some of the works of art it is fastened by broaches over both shoulders. The one-sleeved kind was called the efw/xt? (exomis), and was less elaborately made, being worn by laboring people. Whether any garment was at any time worn under this among the Greeks is doubtful. The principal outer garment of the class of eirifiXrifiaTa was the himation. This was a square piece of cloth, of a more or less costly fabric, according to the circum- stances of the wearer. It was thrown over the left shoulder, drawn across the back to the right side, generally below the right arm, but sometimes over it, and again over the right shoul- der or arm. There were many styles of wearing this garment, DRESS 383 and the gentility of the personal appearance depended much on the adroitness with which it was managed. It usually reached to the knee, but the Spartan tribon was much shorter. In the time of simple and hardy manners, the boys com- monly wore only the chiton. The young men, from the age of seventeen to twenty, called ecfyrjfioi (ephebi), instead of the Mmation, wore a garment of a somewhat different shape, the chlamys, differing principally in being oblong, the length about twice the breadth, gores being added at the sides. This garment was also the military cloak, since it was more convenient for journeys, especially for riding on horseback. The shorter side was passed round the neck, and fastened by a broach ; then it hung down the back and reached the heels. That worn by the youths was saffron-colored. Sometimes it was hung over the left shoulder, so as to- cover one side of the body ; or it was passed across the back, and over one or both arms, like a lady's shawl. There was indeed an infinite diver- sity in its adjustment. The dress of the women consisted of the same principal ele- ments, but greatly diversified in form and in the manner of wearing. A belt or zone was clasped about the waist, and sometimes a second confined the dress below. They had, too, a number of additional contrivances, and one or two garments seldom worn by the other sex. Julius Pollux describes first the epomis or diploidion, an outer garment with sleeves fall- ing down to the feet, and often made so long as to fold over at the top, and hang down over the breast and the back. Some- times this garment was so nearly the same for both sexes, that husband and wife could wear it with equal convenience. Xan- thippe is said to have steadily refused to wear her husband's. The most distinguishing article of female apparel was called the fcpoic or long-haired. At all times the hair was especially culti- vated by the Greeks. Brasidas said, " The hair makes the handsome handsomer, and the ugly more terrible." Hero- dotus relates that the spy of Xerxes found the Spartans comb- ing their heads just before the battle of Thermopylae. At Athens, the youth reaching the age of an ephebus (seven- teen) cut off his hair, and consecrated it to some deity ; but in manhood the hair was worn longer, and the fashion in which it was worn was a point of as great consequence as any other part of what Mr. Hamilton calls the personal scenery of a gen- tleman. The barbers in Athens were numerous; and hair-cut- ting, as well as paring the nails and removing warts and frec- kles, was attended to in their shops. Persons dissatisfied with the natural color of the hair found here the means of correct- ing the mistakes of Nature ; ointment, perfumes, oils, essences, were recommended by the professional gentlemen, and were often used by those whose minds were exercised on such sub- jects. The first appearance of gray hairs was frequently a warning to call in the art of the hair-dresser. The beard and mustache were usually allowed to grow, though not univer- sally. It was considered rather effeminate to have them taken off. In short, shaving was a little disreputable. Alexander ordered his soldiers to be shaved, because the beard presented the most convenient handle for the enemy in battle. The suc- cessors of Alexander shaved, and so the poets of that period Menander, for example appear to have done. The care of the beard and mustache cost a good deal of time and thought, except among the sophists, who rather affected to leave it untrimmed, to designate their contempt of sublunary affairs. Some of the philosophers, however, such as Aristotle, and the physicians generally, are represented as shaved. Alciphron, to whom I shall have occasion to refer on an- other occasion, says in one of his pleasant epistles : " You saw what a trick the cursed barber near the street playec. on me, that prating, gossiping fellow, who sells the looking DRESS. 387 glasses of Abrotesion, the fellow that tames crows and ravens, and plays cymbal-tunes with his razors. When I went to get my chin shaved, he received me with great politeness, perched me up in a high chair, put on me a new napkin, and brought the razor down softly over my jaws, thinning off the beard. But in this he proved a villain and a reprobate ; for, without my noticing it, he did his work only in part, and not over the whole jaw, so that it was left in many places rough, in others smooth. As I knew nothing about his villany, I went, according to my custom, uninvited to Pasion's, and the guests, as soon as they saw me, died with laughter, until one of them came forward, and, taking hold of the remain- ing beard, gave it a twitch. I tweaked it out with a deal of trouble and suffering. I should like to take a billet of wood and break the rascal's head." The writer of this epistle means to intimate that he did not look into the mirror after he had got shaved, which is the height of improbability ; since large mirrors were usually ranged round the walls of the bar- bers' shops, in all directions. These same shops also fur- nished wigs of any size or color to gentlemen standing in need of them. Scented lard, and various other pomatums, were sold there. Young gentlemen resorted thither to get their hair curled, for which curling-irons were constantly heating. Other articles used for the hair were bear's grease, onion-juice, olive- oil, the gluten of snails, bruised cabbage-leaves, burnt frogs, walnuts, and pitch. It was thought that wearing a hat or bonnet tended to make the hair turn gray, so that such cover- ings were avoided as much as possible. Many of the works of art represent the hair of men, as well as of women, curled and hanging down in parallel ringlets. In some, indeed, it is drawn up and bound in a large bunch on the top of the head ; but in many it is left long and luxuriant, without any restraint. The women had a variety of nettings, caps, and coiffures, from very remote antiquity. There was the sling-shaped band, the broad part passing over the forehead, and the narrow part round the sides of the head ; tnere were hair-nets made of golden threads. 388 THE LIFE OF GREECE. or silk, or byssus ; there were sacks, either covering the whole head, or leaving the front bare, open behind, so that a kind of queue might hang out ; and so on. Umbrellas and sunshades, almost exactly of the modern shape, appear in the works of art. It was the fashion to carry a cane, both in Athens and in Sparta. This was a sort of reminiscence of the spear, borne universally by the heroes in the Homeric age. Young gentle- men, who whisk a slender stick as they walk through the street, seldom remember the martial origin of so innocent an imple- ment in their white-gloved hands. The men sometimes wore hats or caps, especially in certain trades and on journeys. The petasus was a broad-brimmed hat, varying in fashion as to the brim, but always with an arched crown. The causia had a higher crown, flat on the top, also with a broad brim. Boatmen wore caps fitting closely to the head, and without a brim, usually red. The petasus was sometimes white, with a red brim ; but the purple causia was the more stylish. Rings on the fingers came earlier into use among the men than among the women, for the reason doubtless that they were employed for seals. Ear-drops, however, and rings and chains about the arms, neck, hands, and feet, were the pe- culiar ornaments of the better sex. These were all included under the name of yjpvaia (chrysia), as golden ornaments. Coan and Amorginian tissues were famous for their gauze- like and transparent fineness of texture, and were used to enhance the effect of female costume, as well as for other nore objectionable purposes. In Ionia, the extravagance of dress appears to have been carried to its height. In Athens,- luxury went very far in this matter ; but generally speaking, the fashions were restrained, among respectable men and women, within the limits of good taste. The profligate, there as elsewhere, outraged modesty by their style of dress no less than by their vices. Crowns and wreaths were much used by the Greeks ; anc 1 ARMOR. 1589 particular species were consecrated to certain deities, as that of oak-leaves to Zeus, that of laurel-leaves to Apollo, of wheat- ears to Demeter, of myrtle to Aphrodite. Wreaths were the prizes of the victors in the games, wild olive in the Olym- pian, laurel in the Pythian, parsley in the Nemean, and pine in the Isthmian. The diadem was the emblem of royalty ; a wreath of olive-branches was worn on occasion of the birth of a son, a flower-garland at weddings and feasts ; and golden or gilded crowns were conferred on public men for signal services to the state. This may be as suitable a place as any to mention the prin- cipal pieces of armor used in war, since the hardships and dan- gers of military life naturally made a great change necessary in the covering of the body. The defensive armor consisted of helmet, breastplate, greaves, and shield. The helmet had a visor, either movable or immovable ; the top adorned with plumes or with horses' manes cut square at the edges, and passing over from the back to the front, and the surface embellished with chariots, griffins, and other insignia, richly wrought. The breastplate was sometimes in two pieces, one to cover the front and the other the back, fastened to- gether at the sides ; sometimes of square plates or long slips, secured by studs on a leathern doublet. The shoulders were protected by a separate piece, coming down to the breastplate, and fastened to it by strings or clasps. To this was attached the zoma, a sort of kilt, hanging below, and under it a belt lined with wool, to protect the body from the friction of the armor. A girdle, often richly ornamented, was worn out- side of the armor. The greaves were the defences of the legs, rising above the knees, and secured behind with loops or clasps. The shield was commonly circular, but often oval. It was provided with loops inside, and a strap or bar across. The arm passed under the latter, and the shield was held by the loop on the opposite side. In the centre, on the outside, was a raised knob or boss ; and around it were numerous de- vices, ike the arms on the shields of the knights of chivalry. 890 THE LIFE OF GREECE. In a passage of the Seven against Thebes, this feature of an cient knighthood is brilliantly displayed. The Messenger, in describing Tydeus, says : " On his shield's face A sign he bears as haughty as himself, The welkin flaming with a thousand lights, And in its centre the full moon shines forth, Eye of the night and regent of the stars." And of Capaneus : " His orbed shield The blazon of a naked man displays, Shaking a flaring torch with lofty threat In golden letters, * I will burn the city.' " And of Eteoclus : " His breadth of shield Superbly rounded shows an armed man Scaling a city, with this proud device, 'Nor Ares' self shall hurl me from these towers.' " Polynices, who stands at the seventh gate, bears upon hia shield the double blazonry, " A woman Leading with sober pace an armed man All bossed in gold, and thus the superscription : ' I, Justice, bring this injured exile back To claim his portion in his fathers' hall.' " Six of the seven wear shields with these boastful devices but, singularly enough, the poet gives to the wise seer Am- phiaraus " A full-orbed shield Of solid brass, but plain, without device. Of substance studious, careless of the show, The wise man is what fools but seem to be, Reaping rich harvests from the mellow soil Of quiet thought, the mother of great deeds. Choose thou a wise and virtuous man to meet The wise and virtuous. Whoso fears the gods Is fearful to oppose." The chief offensive weapons were the short broadsword, suspended on the left side by a belt, and the long spear, witfc ARTISTICAL DRAPEEY. 391 a sharpened end to the shaft, by which it might be fixed in the ground. In Homer, the heroes usually carry two of these last-named weapons. Bows and arrows were not common in the later ages among the Grecian soldiers ; but they appear in the Homeric warfare, with covered quivers to protect the arrows from rain and dust. Apollo, Artemis, and Eros are also represented as furnished with these arms ; and what mischief they did especially the last troublesome little immortal the poets, from Anacreon down, abundantly testify. The Greek warriors in the heroic ages made frequent use of war-chariots, each drawn by two horses. By the side of the chief stood his attendant to guide the horses, while he fought. It is singular that in Homer, riding horseback, which one would think so much more convenient, especially where the ground was un- even, is never mentioned, except on a single occasion. Diome- des and Ulysses go out upon a midnight marauding expedition to the enemy's camp ; they slay Rhesus and his attendants, who have just arrived with a superb team ; they then steal the horses, and make their escape by mounting them and galloping back to camp. The drapery of ancient art, in its best and most ideal days, is to be discriminated from the dresses worn in the common occupations of life. The principal object of dress is the pro- tection and comfort of the body ; and only so much of art as is consistent with this primary object is admissible in its form and texture. It is true that the natural desire to please leads young persons especially to sacrifice the substantial to the graceful. In our present style of manly garb, no amount of genius can throw a particle of grace into the dress-coat, for example, with its skirts and pockets. The ordinary dress of the ancients was much better suited to the purposes of art than ours, and might be copied with effect in a marble statue ; but think of putting either our dress-coat, or that still more ludi- crous deformity, the sack, shaped like a pea-jacket, into stone, to be gazed at by laughing eyes two thousand years hence Notwithstanding the superior effect of the ancient 392 THE LIFE OF GREECE. dress, the Greek artists made a distinction between dress and drapery. Drapery was wholly subordinate to the form and motion of the body, which it was designed to exhibit, not to conceal; to set off, not to disguise. Says Achilles Tatius, " The chiton became the mirror of the body." All the ar- rangements of the drapery were made expressly for this pur- pose, and not to produce a counterpart of the every-day dress. It is this consideration which renders the drapery of the an- cient sculptors as suitable to the purposes of art at the present moment as it was in the days of Pheidias. It was founded on artistic principles and ideas, not on practical utility. It was an accessory, not a leading part. This view does not in the least contravene the historical importance of portraiture in which a minute fidelity to the style of dress is observed ; but it shows how unfounded are the objections sometimes urged against the employment of ancient drapery in the treatment of modern subjects, when a great idea or a momentous crisis is to be expressed through the medium of human form and action. Every one remembers the criticisms that passed cur- rent for a time upon the noble statue of Washington, by an eminent and lamented sculptor, a work, both in design and execution, worthy of the best days of Grecian plastic art. Standing in the centre of a public square, with no covering but the arch of heaven, the marble semblance of the Father of his Country, in the simple majesty of form, attitude, and expression, makes a powerful impression on the mind of the beholder, and fills it with emotions of grandeur. Party spirit and personal aims are rebuked and abashed in the presence of that silent, heroic, godlike figure. Genius has here achieved one of its highest triumphs ; it has stamped on the heart of the living generation the unforgotten lessons of patriotism, by the sublimity and beauty of an immortal act, embodied with noble simplicity in the imperishable form of art. These details of private life modes, fashions, and enjoy- ments necessarily imply an extended system of domestic in- dustry and foreign commerce. The policy of Lycurgus was MANUFACTURES, TRADE, AND COMMERCE. 393 to encourage idleness among the free-born, except in warlike exercises. The policy of the Athenians was just the opposite. A Lacedaemonian, happening to be in Athens when a citizen was prosecuted for being a lazy fellow, remarked that the Athenians punished a man for being a gentleman. Draco punished this crime with death. Solon made laziness on the third conviction a capital offence. Rewards for distinction in any useful art were the same as those bestowed on eminent magistrates and generals, a proof of enlightened views as to the real interests of the state seldom given by modern com- monwealths. A constant competition was thus kept up in the career of invention and improvement. Plutarch, speaking of the great enterprises undertaken by Pericles, says : " The me- chanics also did not go without their share of the public money, nor yet received it to maintain them in idleness. By the con- structing of great edifices, which require many arts and a long time to finish them, they had equal pretensions to be recom- pensed out of the treasury though they stirred not from the city with the mariners, soldiers, and garrison. For the dif- ferent materials, such as stone, brass, ivory, gold, ebony, and cypress, furnished employment to carpenters, masons, braziers, goldsmiths, painters, turners, and other artificers ; the convey- ance of them by sea employed merchants and sailors, and by land, wheelwrights, wagoners, carriers, rope-makers, leather- dressers, pavers, and iron-founders ; and every art had a num- ber of the lower people ranged in proper subordination to exe- cute it, like soldiers under the command of a general. Thus by the exercise of these different trades was plenty diffused among persons of every rank and condition." There were in- dustrial exhibitions, called Seigeis, or shows, which brought together specimens of all the inventions and improvements that had been entered for the prize in their respective departments. At Sybaris, as Athenseus relates, the author of a new dish in cookery was rewarded with the monopoly of the article during the year. Some occupations, indeed, such as that of the per- fumer, were not considered reputable frr a man to engage S94 THE LIFE OF GREECE. in ; and sausage-sellers and fishmongers were not held in high esteem. Domestic industry was encouraged by restrictions laid on foreigners. Young persons were apprenticed to trades, as now ; and no man could legally carry on more than a single branch of business, the division of labor being considered the foundation of all excellence in the manufacturing arts. This principle is discussed at great length by Plato in his Republic and Laws. " There are two things," he says, " which are the ruin of manufacturers, wealth and poverty. A potter, for instance, getting rich, will grow idle and neglect his art ; and if he has not the means of procuring proper tools and materials, he will manufacture inferior wares, and make his sons and apprentices worse workmen ; so that a moderate com- petence is most desirable for the individual and the commu- nity." There was at Athens no system of castes, by which the son was necessarily brought up to his father's trade ; but it often happened that the same pursuit was adopted by several generations of the same family in succession. The practical arts were successfully cultivated in many parts of Greece. Boeotia manufactured famous chariots ; Thessaly, easy-chairs ; Chios and Miletus, beds ; Megara, Corinth, and Cnidos rivalled Athens in the exquisite form and finish of their earthen-ware. Public mills, worked by slaves or animals, and even wind- mills, were common in Attica. Menedemus and Asclepiades, when poor, supported themselves by laboring in a mill by night, giving their days to the study of philosophy. The story is told by Athenseus, that these poor scholars were charged with idleness, few knowing the sources of their income, and brought to trial before the Areopagus. The miller who em- ployed them testified that he paid each of them two drachmas (about two shillings) a night. The judges of the Areopagus, pleased with this honest method of procuring the means of obtaining a liberal education, not only acquitted them, bu gave them a present of two hundred drachmae. I have aiready spoken, in connection with another topic, of MANUFACTURES, TRADE, AND COMMERCE. 395 the manufacture of the articles of prime necessity to life, and of the bakers, cooks, vintners, and butchers. Other trades were those of the goldsmiths, stone-cutters, blacksmiths, cutlers, and armorers, who attained the highest degree of skill in their several branches of business. Mining was carried on under the auspices of the state. Charcoal-making was an important branch of industry, connected not only with various trades, but with the daily operations of the household. House-build- ers, cabinet-makers, wheelwrights, turners, glass-blowers (who carried the manufacture of this article to the highest possible perfection as to form, transparency, and color), oil-dealers, druggists, weavers, glovers, shoemakers, tanners, hatters, dyers, and innumerable other craftsmen, were to be found in every enlightened state of Greece, but especially in Athens, carrying on their business, and supporting the gigantic struc- ture of prosperity and civilization, upon which, in those far distant ages, we gaze with wonder. The genius and position of Greece equally invited her to engage in commercial enterprise ; but the institutions of some of the states were much more favorable to its development than those of others. As a general rule, the Spartans were less inclined to this pursuit than the Athenians; but even they, with all their antipathy to foreigners, and despite their iron-money theories, could not resist the course of events and the march of civilization. The early traders of Phoenicia and Greece appear to have united the professions of merchant and pirate ; but this state of things was limited to ages when the lines were not strictly drawn between mine and thine. The jEginetans were among the first to engage in distant ven- tures, carrying their trade eastward to the Black Sea, and west- ward to Tartessus. In Egypt the Greeks had commercial establishments at Naucratis in the Delta, like the English and American houses in Canton ; and they built there nine cities, lour of the Ionians, fout of the Dorians, and one of the Coh- ans. Of all the Dorian cities on the mainland, Corinth was the wealthiest and the most addicted to foreign commerce, as well 396 THE LIFE OF GREECE. as to manufactures. "No state," says Xenophon, "can ever export anything, if it be not submissive to the mistress of the sea; upon her depends all the exportation of the surplus prod- uce of other nations." The inland traffic of Greece appears to have been carried on chiefly by fairs, held at convenient and accessible places, and particularly at the sites and seasons of the four great games, the Olympian, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian. Athens, however, had a richer and more extensive commerce than any other portion of the Grecian world. The purity of her coin made it current everywhere, as a favored medium of exchange ; her system of banking was especially adapted to the encouragement of trade ; her harbors were admirable ; her large commercial marine enabled her to ex- port and import with the greatest facility ; and as her own soil did not produce breadstuffs in sufficient quantities for the consumption of her teeming population, she was obliged to rely on the foreign producers, who were always anxious to supply her markets. At the same time, the freedom of her institutions, and the liberality of her commercial code, tended powerfully to develop the mercantile spirit into energetic action. She everywhere sought markets for her manufacture? of every description, from wine and swords to books. Hei relation to the other states of Greece also made her the general agent for all their business operations ; so that Athens was the resort of merchants, traders, and all kinds of business- men, not only from the Hellenic states and the colonies round the Mediterranean Sea, but from the wealthy communities of the Oriental world ; and there is but little doubt that an indirect trade was carried on with China, through India. The Peirasus, or port of Athens, always presented a busy, bustling scene, resounding with a hundred languages, and enlivened by the strange dresses of a hundred nations. Goods and merchan- dise from every part of the world were crowded into its ware- houses and bazaars ; and an incessant din of sellers and buyers was kept up from morning till night. It was the boast of Isocrates, that Athens had established the Peirasus as an en> MANUFACTURES, TRADE, AND COMMERCE. 397 porium in the centre of Hellas, so abundantly supplied, that it was easy to procure there all those things which it was difficult to find in other places. And he justly sets forth this fact as one of the strongest claims of Athens to the supremacy he asserts for her among the Grecian states. LECTURE VII. DORIAN MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. CLUBS. PROVISION FOR THE POOR. THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. The details which have been given of the private life of the Greeks relate mostly to the manners and customs of the Athe- nians. The same way of living, or nearly the same, prevailed in the other cities and states founded by the Ionian stock. The Dorians had different views of life, and manifested them in the adoption of widely different usages. Crete and Sparta were the principal seats of Dorian life ; but a general similarity to the Doric type was to be seen in Argos, Cos, Cnidos, and many other places ; the similarity embracing personal, domestic, and social customs, and the principles of government. Among its features we may name a rigid discipline in private and in public, respect for ancient usages, reverence for established laws, and submission to the authority of elders, who were re- garded as so sacred that to treat them with disrespect, to apply to them contemptuous epithets, or to set them aside on any oc- casion, was deemed offensive alike to sound morals, polite man- ners, good taste, and common sense, the surest mark of a wanton disposition, a vulgar tone of feeling, and a base soul, at once coarse, impious, and sacrilegious. The genuine Spar- tans were not allowed or expected to engage in trade or agri- culture ; these occupations being limited to the inferior classes, the Perioeci and the Helots. Their houses were simple in arrangement and structure ; the laws of Lycurgus aiming to restrain excess and extravagance in private dwellings, and for- bidding useless ornaments, but not interfering with the archi- tecture of public buildings. The solid and magnificent Doric DORIAN MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 399 architecture the noblest style in Greece was at once the invention and the type of this race. With regard to their cos- tume, I have already spoken in general terms. The unmar- ried women appeared in public more than the married ; and when they appeared, their faces were not concealed behind a veil. It was in accordance with Dorian propriety for them to walk in the streets with young men ; they were spectators in the gymnastic contests, and sometimes took part in them them- selves. They wore a garment like the Athenian chiton, but with no sleeves, fastened by clasps over the shoulder, so ar- ranged as not to impede the motion of the limbs, and without a girdle; and this was usually their whole dress when they performed their exercises or danced in the chorus. The dress of the men was equally simple. The tribon, a garment of thick cloth and small size, was worn by Spartan youths, and some- times by old men, the whole year through. Ointment-makers and. dyers were excluded fr6m Sparta. Clemens Alexan- drinus quotes the Spartan saying, "Deceitful are dyes, deceit- ful are ointments." The beard was considered the ornament of man, and in several Doric states shaving was prohibited by penal enactments. The hair remained uncut, and was tied in a knot over the crown. Like the Quakers, they wore hats with broad brims. They differed widely from the Ionians in their usages with regard to daily meals. They dined together at public tables ; and though they reclined like other Greeks, it was on hard benches without cushions. Foreign cooks were not allowed to practise their profession in Sparta ; and native cookery was a business that passed by hereditary descent from father to son. The principal dish was the famous black broth, which was always made according to a traditional receipt, and continued equally detestable from age to age. They sometimes indulged in pork, poultry, beef, and kid's flesh. They drank wine mixed with water, but never toasted one another, apparently thinking this custom a waste of words, Fat men were looked upon with suspicion, and were liable to severe penalties. In- 400 THE LIFE OF GREECE. toxication was forbidden by law, and all citizens were prohib- ited from attending symposia. The men were organized for the public tables in small companies, or societies, into which new members were admitted by election. Conversation turned chiefly on public affairs, though the terseness and point of the Laconian style of talking often enlivened these otherwise some- what dismal entertainments with pungent jest and witty rep- artee. The adult men attended these meals ; the youths and boys had their separate places and companies ; and the small children sat on low stools near their fathers, and received from them a half-allowance, being permitted to steal something more, if they could do it without being found out. The women took their meals at home. Among the Cretans, tables were always set for strangers ; and the citizens of allied states had the privilege of occupying a place at one another's tables unasked. The rigid rules which the Spartans adopted in ac- cordance with a theoretical view of human nature and a me- chanical idea of political communities, gave place to the most wanton excesses of luxury when the novelty had worn away, and the irksomeness of the undue interference of legal re- straints with individual liberty made itself felt. The domestic relations were on a different footing in Sparta. A broad line was drawn between the rights of the citizen at home and abroad. Inside of his hall-door he resumed his indi- viduality, while outside of it he was completely merged in the state. Young persons of both sexes had many opportunities of free mutual intercourse. Young men, living more con- stantly in the presence of unmarried women, came to value their good opinion more highly than was usual in other parts of Greece ; and Mr. Miiller thinks that love-matches were much more common, because the damsels were so often seen dancing on ornamented cars on the way to the temple of Helen, and riding horseback in the midst of assembled multitudes. How- ever this may be, the beauty of Lacedaemonian women was proverbial from Helen down, a somewhat masculine beauty, owing partly to the gymnastic exercises. This is amusingly CLUBS. 401 alluded to in the Lysistrata of Aristophanes, where the ruddy health of Lampito, the Spartan delegate to the women's con- vention, is admired and applauded by her sister represent- atives. Marriage at Sparta consisted of two ceremonies ; first, the betrothal by the father or guardian of the bride ; and secondly, the violent seizure of the bride by the bridegroom, who car- ried her off from a chorus, or from some place where he chanced to meet her, placed her in the hands of a bridemaid, who cut off her hair, went to a public banquet as if nothing had hap- pened, and then joined his wife without anybody's knowing it. These stolen interviews were kept up for a long time before he introduced his wife to his own house. The obligation to marry, as a matter of public duty, has* already been alluded to. I will add here that old bachelors, very properly, were not allowed to be present at the gymnastic exercises of the young girls; and the magistrate was invested with the wholesome power of making them run round the market-place in winter naked, singing verses containing satires upon themselves. A penalty was enforced, not only on those who married late or not at all, but also on those who married unsuitably, mar- riage being regarded less as a private relation than as a public institution. Each party was required to have a certificate of health and beauty, a rule that must have operated severely on some of the single men. The Dorian wife seems to have enjoyed a high degree of respect and honor, as the female head of her family ; she was saluted by the title of Beavoiva (mis- tress), while the husband was called eo-Ttov^o? (possessor of the hearth), and the Spartans were often laughed at for their quiet submission to the authority of their wives. The clubs of Sparta and Athens form a feature of the life of Greece, not to be passed over. In every Grecian com- munity there \*as a place of resort called the Lesche. In Sparta it was peculiarly the resort for old men, who assembled round a blazing fire in winter, and were listened to with pro- vol. i. 26 402 THE LIFE OF GREECE. found respect by their juniors. These retreats were numerous in Athens, and not only afforded a convenient place of meet- ing for the talkers and political gossips, but a refuge where the poor might obtain warmth and shelter gratuitously. The term "Lesche" is indeed used to designate any kind of convention or council, as well as the place where such meetings were held ; but at Athens it is said that there were three hundred and sixty Leschae for the special purposes I have mentioned. Clubs for mutual relief were common in Athens, the members paying a stated sum, and having the right to draw upon the treasury when they fell into distress or poverty; these were called eranoi. The laws of Solon allowed the members of these associations to frame such rules for their regulation as they pleased, provided that they infringed no public law. Clubs were formed in a similar manner for numerous other purposes of a social or business character, as to carry on mercantile ex- peditions, to perform certain sacrifices, to dine together on such occasions as the great national festivals. These classes of clubs were called eranoi and thiasoi, the former more especially devoted to social pleasures, and the latter to religious affairs. But the charitable or relief clubs also, as has been said, called eranoi were the most common and useful. The sums advanced to needy members were, however, regarded as debts of honor, to be scrupulously repaid as soon as the circumstances of the recipient enabled him to do so. The subscription to most >f the clubs was not only a debt of honor, but one which could je legally enforced, and many cases growing out of these club obligations were tried before a special court. The principal officer of the club was chosen by lot or elected by the mem- bers, and combined the functions of president and treasurer ; his duty being to collect the assessments and regulate the meetings. The members of the convivial clubs dined at one another's houses alternately, or at taverns resembling the club- houses of our times ; but they appear to have restrained then expenses within moderate limits, justly considering the legiti- mate object of such associations to be the pleasures of societj PROVISION FOR THE POOR. 403 and conversation, rather than a show of extravagance and lux- ury. The nature of the obligation laid on members by these debts is seon in the fact that Leocrates, who was prosecuted by Lycurgus, the orator, for treason in deserting his country after the battle of Chaeroneia, left it in charge of his brother in Ath- ens to pay his club-debts. In a society so intensely political as that of the Athenians, such reunions almost inevitably assumed a party character, and were often turned to the accomplishment of partisan purposes. The administration of justice was not seldom interfered with by partialities and attachments growing out of these associa- tions ; and popular votes on public questions were a good deal influenced by the prejudices of the clubs. Thucydides de- scribes the feeling they generated as stronger than attachment to country. They were sometimes made the instruments of conspiracy and revolution. Thus the overthrow of the de- mocracy, with the establishment of the Oligarchy of the Four Hundred, in the Peloponnesian war, by Phrynichus, Antiphon, and other conspirators, was brought about mainly through the help of the clubs. The various classes of these institutions, their character, objects, and influence, are tersely and ably described by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics, where they are all treated under the head of political societies. It is pleasing to find that the claims of the poor were not neglected in ancient communities. The question of their sup- port, however, nowhere in antiquity assumed so formidable an aspect as it has in modern times. Their wants were easily provided for, not only by the associations I have briefly described, but in various methods, by the state or by the wealthier classes. On certain festivals, entertainments were given by the rich citizens to the members of their several tribes, either voluntarily, or in rotation by a fixed rule ; for the feast must be given somehow. The number of guests on one >f these occasions is estimated by Boeckh to have been usually more than two thousand. When sacrifices were offered, it was 404 THE LIFE OF GREECE. customary to distribute parts of the victim among the poor. In times of famine or scarcity, corn was dealt out at the Odeion, or the Peiraeus, or the Arsenal. On one occasion Psammetichus, the king of Egypt, presented to the people of Athens a quantity of wheat sufficient to bestow on each citizen seven or eight bushels. Athenaeus relates that when Ion, a dramatic poet of Chios, won the tragic prize on the Athenian boards, he presented to every citizen a jar of the best Chian wine, which one would think must have nearly exhausted his cellars. The plunder brought home by victorious generals sometimes furnished the means of entertaining the people on a grand scale. Chares spent sixty talents, or about seventy thousand dollars, in feasting the Demos, in the agora. A similar entertainment was given by Conon after the naval vic- tory over the Lacedaemonians at Cnidos. Cimon made him- self immensely popular by throwing open his gardens to the public, and keeping a table constantly laid for any one who chose to dine there. Whenever he went abroad, two or three attendants followed him with bags of money to be distributed among the needy ; and if he saw an Athenian meanly clad, he ordered one of his servants to exchange clothes with him, an exchange no doubt infinitely more agreeable to the citizen than the servant. Provision was made at the public expense for soldiers disabled in war, and for the education of the children of those who had fallen in battle. Still beggars were not want- ing, beginning with Irus in Homer, and coming down through every age. Some of them went about the country with a tame crow or raven, singing a ditty which has been preserved by Athenaeus : " Good people, a handful of barley bestow On the child of Apollo, the sable crow. Or a little wheat, kind friends, give. Or a loaf of bread, that the crow may live ; For on these she loves to feast full well. Who to-day gives salt, the honeycomb's cell To-morrow will give. Pray open the dcor. Why keep me waiting a moment more? PROVISION FOR THE POOR. 405 " Plutus has heard our prayers ; A little maid to the raven bears A basket of figs all fresh and sweet. God bless the maiden, so trim and neat ; May she all good fortune prove, The joys of wealth, and a husband's love, And in her aged father's arms A grandson place, with his winning charms, And on her loving mother's knee A little maiden as fair as she." The luxuries of the poor, in their ordinary way of living, were extremely limited. Antiphanes, as quoted by St. John, " describes a poor man's meal as consisting of a cake bristling with bran for the sake of economy, with an onion, and for a relish a dish of sow-thistles, or of mushrooms, or some such wretched produce of the soil, a diet producing neither fever nor phlegm." Two Pythagorean philosophers are mentioned, who lived all their lives on water and figs, and grew very healthy and stout on this fare. But it gave their persons a very unpleasant odor, like that by which ancient smokers pol- lute the breath of heaven, so that when they appeared at the baths, or other places of public resort, their presence was like the reading of the riot-act, and caused an instantaneous dis- persion. Alexis, the poet, introduces a poor Athenian woman describing, not without a natural pathos, the condition of her family : " Mean my husband is, and poor, And my blooming days are o'er. Children have we two, a boy, The father's pet, the mother's joy, And a girl so fair and small, And this good nurse, we 're five in all ; Yet alas ! alas ! have we Food enough for only three. So two of us must often make A scanty meal on barley-cake ; And when the board there 's naught that cheers, Our sorrows break in sighs and tears : And we who once were strong and hale 406 THE LIFE OF GREECE. By fasting grow so weak and pale. For our best and daintiest cheer, Through the bright half of the year, Is but acorns, onions, peas, Or beans, lupines, radishes, Vetches, wild pears, when we c^n, And a locust now and then. As to figs, the Phrygian treat, Fit for Jove's own guests to eat, They, when happier moments shine, They, the Attic figs, are mine." The profession of the physician was held in the highest honcr among the Greeks, from very early times. Says Homer, " A wise physician, skilled our wounds to heal, Is worth whole armies to the commonweal." In the warlike scenes of the Iliad, the surgical part of the pro- fession was naturally the most needed ; and the practice was evidently of the simplest kind. Podaleirius and Machaon passed for sons of JEsculapius, who was afterwards worshipped as the god of medicine ; but they knew how to fight as well as to heal. At first, the priests appear to have combined the practice of medicine with the functions of their sacred office ; divination and the healing art having been closely connected in the ideas of men. Leech-craft never ceased to be accounted divine ; and one of the titles of Apollo was the Healer. In the course of time, the priestly and medical characters were distin- guished ; and the recorded observations of ages were moulded into a science. But in the popular mind ignorant and super- stitious notions always remained ; magical arts were resorted to ; amulets were used ; dreams were relied upon ; and it is even supposed that animal magnetism and clairvoyance were employed by the ancient quacks. Certain diseases, such as 3pilepsy, were accounted sacred, being supposed to have come ilirectly from some supernatural interposition of the Deity. A sudden death was caused by the invisible and gentle shafts of Apollo or Diana. These ideas and illusions were never wholly dissipated, except among the most enlightened practitioners. THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. 407 The great centres of the healing art were the Asclepieia, or Temples of jEsculapius, established in many places, and gener- ally on spots known for the salubrity of their situation, as on some breezy highland or in the neighborhood of medical springs. The three principal schools or hospitals were those of Rhodes, Cnidos, and Cos. These places were frequented by invalids, who placed themselves under the care of the resident physicians ; and the records of the cases, kept from one gener- ation to another, constituted the basis of facts on which the theories of medicine were founded. The pupils of these schools appear to have scattered themselves all over Greece. What standard of professional attainment was applied in the admission of candidates, we cannot precisely tell ; but no one was allowed to practise without giving some proof that he pos- sessed the necessary qualifications for the performance of his delicate and important duties. In many places there was a body of -physicians chosen by public authority, and paid by the state. Democedes of Crotona, 540 B. C, received in JEgina one talent, or about one thousand and seventy dollars ; Athens made a higher bid for his services, of about seventeen hundred dollars ; and at last, Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos, obtained him on a salary of two talents, or about two thousand one hun- dred and forty dollars. We are not told what duties were re- quired of these public physicians in return for the salary ; but they were probably limited to residence, a general supervision of the public health, and occasional consultation with the magistrates ; at all events, they do not appear to have interfered with their fees, which were sometimes exacted in advance, for fear, perhaps, that the patient might die, and the heir dispute the bill, though, according to Aristotle, this was no plea in bar of the claim. The physician made up his prescriptions, as the pharmacopolai, or druggists, were generally ill-educated and low persons, unfit to be trusted. He had an office, called Iatreion, where his attendants and pupils remained, and where he received calls. His regular patients were visited at their own houses. The patients belonging to the lower classes of 408 THE LIFE OF GREECE. society were attended by his subordinates. All the branches of the profession were exercised by the same individual, until a late period, when oculists, dentists, and the like occupied themselves each exclusively with his special department. Of all the ancient physicians, Hippocrates was, by universal consent, placed in the very highest rank. I am, of course, in- competent to speak of his professional merit ; but I am told by my friend Dr. Wyman, than whom no man living is better qual- ified to judge, that many of his professional writings are of the highest order of excellence ; that his observations are of great value, and his descriptions of diseases and their symptoms, con- sidering the imperfection of the measurement of time and the consequent uncertainty in counting the pulse, remarkable for precision and accuracy. There are among the writings of Hip- pocrates other works less strictly professional, and of general interest, embodying the observations of a most profound thinker on the characters of men and nations; showing that his long and various life had been actively and sagaciously employed in the accumulation of practical knowledge, and in the application of it to the service of the human race. It was said of him, " Hippocrates is a man who knows not how to deceive or to be deceived." He was born in Cos, probably in 460 B. C, though there is considerable doubt as to the year, of the family of the Asclepiadae. His forefathers had long been at the head of the most distinguished temples of health, and he there- fore inherited the accumulation of wisdom which they, the most illustrious family of this profession in the Grecian world, had left behind them. He learned the rudiments of his profession under the direction of his father, from the reports of cases in the Asclepieion of Cos, and was for a time under the tuition of Herodicus, a physician often mentioned by Plato as the one who first applied gymnastic exercises to the cure of diseases, but who killed more than he cured by his energetic practice. He was educated in polite learning by Gorgias and Democritus. Finishing his preliminary studies he set out upon his travels and visited Delos, Athens, Thrace, Thessaly, and probably THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. 409 more distant regions, practising and teaching his profession. He is supposed to have been in Athens at the time of the great pestilence, or during one of the subsequent attacks of the dis- ease, and to have been consulted by the magistrates as to the best mode of treating it. Galen, as quoted by. Dr. Adams, remarks that " Thucydides gives only those symptoms which would strike a common, that is, an unprofessional man, where- as Hippocrates describes the disease accurately, like a profes- sional man, but gives few of those symptoms which appeared most interesting to Thucydides." The historian affirms that the skill of the physicians could do nothing to mitigate the se- verity of the disease. One of the traditions relating to Hippoc- rates is that he declined large offers from the king of Persia to pay a professional visit to his court. The reputation of the Greek physicians stood high at the court of that monarch, as we know from other sources. Hippocrates was well known at Athens, as unquestionably the most eminent man in his profes- sion ; and he is sometimes represented as the family physician of Pericles ; but how long he remained in that city, and whether he resided there more than once, is not known. The latter part of his life he passed in Thessaly ; and he died at Larissa, at a very advanced age, the statements on this point varying from eighty-five to one hundred and nine. Mr. Clinton places his death in B. C. 357, at the age of one hundred and four. The writings which pass under his name are very numerous. They are not all, however, supposed to be genuine ; but most of them belong at least to the Coan school. They are in the Ionic dialect ; generally, however, in a brief and abrupt style, as if the ideas were jotted down by a man whose time was oc- cupied with professional engagements, and who was solicitous only to preserve the substance. He was a person of the highest order of abilities, and, by character, position, and attainments, the worthy associate of his illustrious contempora- ries, Pericles, Socrates, Euripides, Sophocles, Ictinus, and Pheidias. To close the catalogue of his professional acoom- 410 THE LIFE OF GREECE. plishments, if we may take the bust that has come down to m as genuine, he was the handsomest man of his age in Greece. It may not be uninteresting to give the views of this distin- guished man on some of the general subjects relating to his profession. In a brief treatise called " The Law," he sums up the qualifications of the good physician. " Medicine," he says, "is of all the arts the most noble Whoever is to acquire a competent knowledge of medicine ought to be possessed of the following advantages, a natural disposition, instruction, a favorable place for study, early tuition, love of labor, leisure. First of all, a natural talent is required ; for when Nature opposes, everything else is vain ; but when Nature leads the way to what is most excellent, instruction in the art takes place, which the student must try to appropriate to himself by reflection, early becoming a pupil in a place well adapted for instruction. He must also bring to the task love of labor and perseverance, so that the instruction taking root may bear proper and abundant fruits. Instruction in medicine is like the culture of the productions of the earth. For our natural disposition is, as it were, the soil ; the tenets of our teacher are, as it were, the seed ; instruction in youth is like the plant- ing of the seed in the ground at the proper season ; the place where the instruction is communicated is like the food im- parted to vegetables by the atmosphere ; diligent study is like the cultivation of the field ; and it is time which im- parts strength to all these things and brings them to maturity. Having brought all these requisites to the study of medicine, and having acquired a true knowledge of it, we shall thus, in travelling through the cities, be esteemed physicians, not only in name, but in reality. But inexperience is a bad treas- ure and a bad fund to those who possess it, whether in opinion or reality, being devoid of contentedness, and the nurse both of timidity and audacity. For timidity betrays a want of power, and audacity a want of skill. There are indeed twc things, knowledge and opinion, of which the one makes it* possessor really to know, the other, to be ignorant." THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. 41] The physician's profession was regarded as sacred, in many points of view, and as not to De entered upon lightly, or from motives of gain. The Asclepiadae were very rigid in examin- ing the characters and overseeing the conduct of their disciples. The oath required of them is preserved in the Hippocratic writings, and is substantially as follows : "I swear by Apollo, the physician, by jEsculapius, by Hygeia, by Panaceia, and all the gods and goddesses, calling them to witness, that I will fulfil religiously, according to the best of my power and judgment, the solemn promise and the written bond which I now make. I will honor as my parents the master who has taught me this art, and endeavor to minister to all his necessi- ties. I will consider his children as my own brothers, and will teach them my profession, should they express a desire to follow it, without remuneration or written bond. I will admit to my lessons, my discourses, and all my other methods of teaching, my own sons and fhose of my tutor, and those who have been inscribed as pupils ^nd have taken the medical oath ; but no one else. I will prescribe such a course of regi- men as may be best suited to the condition of my patients, according to the best of my power and judgment, seeking to preserve them from anything that may prove injurious. No inducement shall ever lead me to administer poison, nor will I ever advise its administration I will maintain relig- iously the purity and integrity both of my conduct and my art. Into whatever dwellings I may go, I will enter them with the sole view of succoring the sick, will abstain from all injurious conduct, and observe the strictest propriety and purity of demeanor towards all. If during my attendance, or even un- professionally in common life, I happen to see or hear of any circumstances which should not be revealed, I will consider them a profound secret, and maintain on the subject a religiou? silence. If I observe this oath, and do not break it, may I enjoy prosperity in life, and in the practice of my art, and obtain general esteem forover ; shomd I transgress it, and be- come a perjurer, may the r averse be my lot ! " 412 THE LIFE OF GREECE. The notion formerly entertained that the ancients were igno- rant of anatomy, except so far as a knowledge of it might be acquired by examining the skeletons of animals, appears to be at present abandoned in its absolute form. It is true that the religious respect entertained for the bodies of the dead by the Greeks interfered with this study ; but there was a tradition that the Asclepiadae of Cos possessed a human skeleton, which they used in the instruction of their pupils, and which .was finally bequeathed to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. It is stated by Dr. Adams, that the works of Hippocrates display a wonderfully minute acquaintance with osteology ; but physiol- ogy, as now understood, belongs essentially to modern science, of which it is one of the noblest triumphs. There were pecu- liar opportunities for surgical practice in Greece, so far as external wounds were concerned, owing to the national pas- sion for the contests in the games. Accidents of a serious nature, and often fatal, were constantly occurring; and the ser- vices of a skilful surgeon in setting fractured bones and reduc- ing dislocations were very often called in requisition. The pro- cesses are minutely described, and in several cases are exactly the same as those in use at the present day. For example, the method of reducing the dislocation of the shoulder-joint, described in the treatise of Hippocrates on Articulations, cor- responds to the one described as the best known in Sir Astley Cooper's work on Dislocation ; except that the Greek physi- cian suggests a modification, to meet particular cases, which did not occur to Cooper. The description of the Iatreion, or Surgery, a curious work, contains minute directions for the operator, the patient, the assistants, the instruments, the adjustment of the light, the position of the patient, the kinds of bandages to be used in various cases, the amount of compression, the application of Bplints, and so on, with a clearness and precision which, to an unprofessional reader at least, appear very remarkable. Of bandaging, for example, he says : " It should be done quickly, painlessly, neatly, and elegantly ; quickly, by despatching THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. 413 the work ; painlessly, by being gently done ; neatly, by having everything in readiness ; and elegantly, so that it may be agreeable to the sight." And the method of doing all this is carefully laid down. Again: " The suspending of a fractured limb in a sling, the disposition of it, and the bandaging, all have for their object to keep it in place." To illustrate a little further the character of his observations, allow me to quote a few of his aphorisms. " Life is short ; art is long ; the occasion is fleeting, experi- ment fallacious, and judgment difficult. The physician must be prepared not only to do what is right himself, but also to make the patient, the attendants, and externals co-operate." " Old persons endure fasting most easily ; next, adults ; young persoas, not nearly so well ; least of all, infants ; and least of them, such as are of a particularly lively spirit." " Both sleep and wakefulness, when immoderate, are bad." " Neither repletion, nor fasting, nor anything else, is good, when more than natural." " When in a state of hunger, one ought not to undertake hbor." " Persons who are naturally very fat are apt to die earlier than those who are slender." " Those diseases which medicines do not cure, iron cures ; those which iron does not cure, fire cures ; and those which fire does not cure are to be reckoned as wholly incurable." In his dissertation on the sacred disease, Hippocrates combats the popular notion with arguments drawn from observation and common sense. In the course of the discussion, he de- scribes graphically several nervous affections, quite as remark- able, he thinks, as the sacred disease. " I have known many persons in sleep groaning and crying out, some in a state of suffocation, some jumping up and running out of doors, and deprived of their reason until they awake, and afterwards be- coming sane and rational a? before, although they are pale and weak ; and this will happen not once, but frequently." His opinion on the sacred disease is : " They who first referred 114 THE LIFE OF GREECE. this disease to the gods appear to me to have been just such persons as the conjurers, purificators, mountebanks, and char- latans now are, who give themselves out as being excessively religious, and as knowing more than other people." The tricks devised by them, to impose on the people, he does not hesi- tate to denounce as impious and unholy ; since " the disease is nowise more divine than others ; but has its nature such as other diseases have, and a cause whence it originates, and its nature and cause are divine only just as much as all others are ; and it is curable no less than others, unless when, from length of time, it is confirmed, and has become stronger than the remedies applied." In the work on Epidemics there are records of a series of cases of great interest, I presume, for the professional man ; but I shall quote only a few sentences, to show how these things were managed by the ancient physicians. A considerable number of these cases were of disease brought on by intem- perance. Thus, " Silenus lived on the Broad Way, near the house of Eualcidas. From fatigue, drinking, and unseason- able exercise, he was seized with fever." Then all the phases of the disease are recorded day by day, until his death, which occurred on the eleventh day. The following case is very curious : " Criton of Thasos, while still on foot, and going about, was seized with a violent pain in the great toe ; took to his bed the same day ; at night, was delirious. On the second day, swelling of the whole foot ; acute fever ; became furiously deranged ; died the second day from the beginning." Another case is that of a man who supped in a heated state, and drank more than enough. The progress of the disease is minutely described until the eleventh day, when he died. Here is another case of intemperance : " In Thasos, Philistes ,iad headache of long continuance, and sometimes was con- fined to his bed, with a tendency to deep sleep ; having been seized with continual fevers from drinking, the pain was exa- cerbated " ; and so on. " On the second day, deafness ; acute THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. 415 fever , . . . . delirium about midday. On the third, in an un- comfortable state. On the fourth, convulsions ; all the symp- toms exacerbated. On the fifth, early in the morning, died." It will appear by these records, that the weaknesses, ex- cesses, vices, and sufferings of men have always been the same. The consequences of the violation of the laws of health have been, as they still are, bound by an adamantine chain to their causes. The ancients had no distilled liquors, it is true, and they escaped some of the worst forms of intemperance ; but if any scholar ever dreamed that the intemperate drinking of wine, in the genial spirit of the Anacreontic and symposiac poetry of the Old World, could be habitually practised, and the terrible penalty of shattered nerves, broken health, shortened life, and a miserable death, not come at last, let him read the I'ecorded cases of Hippocrates. The practice of medicine was not only connected with the priestly office, but had close relations with the sects of philos- ophy. When the society of the Pythagoreans was dispersed by popular violence, many of its members became vrepioSevTat, or travelling physicians, as distinguished from the Asclepiadse, who had charge of the hospitals at the temples. Alcmaeon, Empedo- cles, and Acron are among the prominent names belonging to this class of practitioners. The masters of the gymnasia also united the treatment of diseases with exercises for strengthen- ing the body. They regulated the diet, and prescribed for in- valids ; and one class of the functionaries, called larpaXecirrac, attended to the practical details of anointing, rubbing, bleeding, dressing wounds, fractures, and the like. Among these were Iccus, and Herodicus who has been already mentioned. For a long time there was a rivalry between the practitioners of the gymnasia and the travelling physicians on the one side, and the temple-physicians on the other. The Asclepiadse long pre- served the secrets of their profession ; but when the other party brought the whole subject into public discussion, and seemed about to supplant the templars in the public confidence, it was found expedient to throw aside the veil of mystery, and yield i 16 THE LIFE OF GREECE. to the spirit of the times. The physicians of Cos and Cnidos published their methods and principles ; and it was to this movement that the world was indebted for the Hippocratic writings, "a collection," in the language of M. Renouard, " Avhich threw into the shade all the medical publications of the period, and which constitutes one of the most precious monuments of ancient medicine." LECTURE VIII. EDUCATION. One of the most remarkable and significant aspects of the life of Greece is presented to us by her systems of education. The spirit of caste, as we have already seen, which lay at the foundation of ancient Oriental society, was unknown in the Grecian commonwealths. The Greeks seem to have set out upon new principles, instinctively adopted even before the commencement of their authentic history. The germs of the peculiar Greek education are traceable in the ideas and char- acters around which poetry and fable have thrown their bril- liant draperies ; and with all the changes introduced by the advancing epochs of history, the same fundamental ideas pre- vailed. Here, as in other things, unity in variety was the law. Ages and races varied from one another in details, while they shared a common spirit, which distinguished the Hellenic type of civilization from every other. The Orient, it is said, required a thousand years for what Greece accomplished in a century. Progress was the charac- teristic of the Grecian communities, though not equally of all. Some of the Greeks were moulded by political institutions into a spirit of reverence for the past, which made them distrustful of change ; while others were eagerly looking forward, and hastily trying experiments with their fundamental institu- tions, living, in short, in a perpetual fever of change and reconstruction. The education of the young varied in the several states of Greece according to these characteristic ten- dencies. In the heroic age, the elements of education were simple ; vol. I. 27 418 THE LIFE OF GREECE. but, not being borrowed from abroad, they corresponded to the character of the people, and so became the natural basis of the entire system of Greek culture. The aim was to render man energetic in word and deed, able to make his influence felt in peace, to discharge his duties bravely and vigorously in war, and to defend himself and those around him from the assaults of the wrong-doer, from whatsoever quarter he might come. The women were trained to domestic honor, household pru- dence and virtue, and skill in the accomplishments of spinning, weaving, and embroidery. The hospitalities of the princely palaces were dispensed under their gentle superintendence. The religious element the belief in divine power and in its interposition in the affairs of the world was an all-per- vading element in the culture of the heroic age. The gods mingle in the affairs of mortals ; the Erinnyes pursue the guilty soul, and work out a terrible punishment for crime. The man on whom a curse has fallen wanders an outcast over the face of the earth, until atonement is made, and the dreadful penalty is fulfilled. The will of the gods is signified to mortals by signs, omens, dreams, and sacrifices, which the prophet or diviner interprets. The legend of Cheiron, the wise Centaur, who trained in knowledge Asclepius, Telamon, Peleus, Theseus, Jason, Ma- chaon, Podaleirius, and, last of all, Achilles, the most renowned disciple of his mythical school, is a singular and interesting reminiscence of the earliest heroic education. Some have re- solved the legend into an allegory ; the double form of the Centaur being typical of the transition from the rude and sav- age state to milder manners and a more humane culture. The traditional picture of the education he imparted embraced in- struction in the use of arms, the healing art, music, divination, and justice. The principal elements of Hellenic education musical and gymnastic culture are very clearly indicated in the Homeric p"- miis. Achilles and Odysseus are characters which illustrate I 'he most striking manner the prominent features of the phys- EDUCATION. 419 icai, intellectual, and ethical training of that early age. The Achilles of Homer is the model of heroic vigor, with strength and swiftness unequalled, bravery that shrinks from no danger, and sensibility to honor and friendship which no fear of death can overcome. He knows no reserve in the expression of his feelings, and cares for no consequences in avenging an insult or enforcing his personal rights. Odysseus is the type of that peculiar form of intellectual ability the power of devising means for ends, and of extricating one's self from difficulty and danger which in everj- age commanded the admiration of the Greeks. Nestor, again, is the model of the wisdom of ex- perience, his counsels drawn from the observations of a life protracted to the third generation after those with whom he started on his career have disappeared. He indulges in wise saws, and makes long speeches, sometimes a little tedious, but ending at last in the best advice the case admits of; and, aged as he is, he is equally ready to play his part at the feast and the council-board, a hearty old soul, liked and respected throughout the camps. The child of the heroic age is carefully nurtured under the supervision of the nurse, the mother, and the father. As he grows up, he is fed on the richest meat and the marrow of sheep. An attendant, his superior in age, is assigned to him, half friend, half servant, as Phoenix, first the friend of Peleus, afterwards had the charge of Achilles, as Patroclus was the ompanion, attendant, friend, squire, of the same hero. Next come the teachers of song and the lyre, who even in these pri- meval times were held in high honor. Orpheus, Linus, and Thamyris are the traditional types of the older masters in these arts. Phemius and Demodocus appear in some of the most graceful scenes of the Odyssey; and Achilles himself solaces the weary hours of inactivity by singing the lays of heroes in his tent. The knowledge of good and evil the one to be practised, the other to be avoided is carefully instilled into the mind of the young chief; and maxims of civil prudence embodying the experience of the past referring to the life 420 THE LIFE OF GREECE of men, the worship of the gods, the principles of humanity, the duties to one's country, and the obligations of friendship and hospitality are interwoven in the Homeric poems, and doubtless comprise much of the educational wisdom of the times. Reverence for the aged and affection for parents are constantly inculcated. These sentiments and sayings consti- tute the groundwork of the remarkable eloquence which dis- tinguishes so many of the debates in council, represented in the Iliad, and doubtless copied in their leading outlines from the life of the poet's own age. Whether the young men of the heroic age were taught the use of letters is a much disputed question. The weight of tradition in antiquity is wholly in favor of the early knowledge of the art of writing, and the consequent instruction of the young in its use ; and this is something, notwithstanding Wolf's elaborate attempt to prove that even Homer did not know how to read and write. But when we add to this the facts, at present unquestionable, that the art and the materials of writ- ing existed in Egypt more than two thousand years before, that the Phoenicians borrowed the art from them many cen- turies before Homer, and that commercial intercourse existed between Phoenicia and Greece from the earliest times, I think we cannot well avoid the admission that the contemporaries, if not the predecessors, of Homer might have known their A, B, C. After the Homeric age, the three leading divisions of the Hellenic race came more prominently and distinctly forward, and the methods and principles of education among them cor- responded to these modifications of the national character. The outlines of the several types have already been presented. The jEolians of Boeotia made gymnastics and music the basis of their education. The tones of the flute were supposed by their lawgivers to temper the violence of the passions, and to produce a favorable effect on the moral condition. The music of the lyre was equally cultivated. In early times the dis- cipline of the young in this part of Greece appears to have EDUCATION. 421 produced a high degree of order and obedience to law. Simi- lar ideas prevailed in the other JEolian communities, both on the European continent and in the -/Eolian cities of the jEgean Sea and of Asia Minor. Sparta, as we have already seen, was the principal seat of Dorian education, which was completely interwoven with the political institutions. It was wholly subject to law, and subor- dinated to the interests of the state ; the fundamental principle being the subjection of the individual will unconditionally to the collective will of the community. The new-born child was taken to the Lesche, and submitted to the inspection of the grave and reverend seniors, who decided whether he was worth rearing or not. If his promising appearance led to a favorable decision, he was allowed to remain in the paternal mansion until his seventh year, under the care of the mother and nurse. Nurses in Sparta were held in especial regard, and were al- lowed to celebrate an annual festival, called the Tithenidia, or nurse-day. The law required that the limbs of the infant should not be constrained by swathing-clothes. At the age of seven the child belonged to the state, and was subjected to the rules and regulations of public instruction. The first and principal object here attended to was the development of the bodily powers by gymnastic exercises. Reading, writ- ing, and other branches of learning, though not absolutely neglected, were by no means made so prominent as in Athens. The poems of Homer were used as a means of education here, as well as in other parts of Greece. The didactic compositions of the later poets, Tyrtaeus and Alcman, were also learned by heart in the schools, or by frequent recitation at meals or festi- vals, and on military expeditions. The tunes of the ancient musical composers were thoroughly taught, in study and prac- tice, from the earliest years ; and all were obliged to learn them. What was done to those unfortunate persons who had no ear, we are nowhere informed. In speech, the young Spar- Wn was required to cultivate the habit of brevity, called brachyhgia, condensing the greatest amount of meaning into 422 THE LIFE OF GREECE. the fewest words. Many of these Laconic sayings were cur- rent in the ancient world, and have been handed down by Plutarch and others to our times. They hated eloquence, and proscribed the rhetoricians. To an ambassador from one of the islands in the JEgean, who at a time of famine asked assistance in a moving speech, they said, " We do not under- stand the conclusion, and we have forgotten the beginning." Another ambassador was sent, who, without saying a word, ex- hibited an empty sack ; and the assembly unanimously decreed to supply the petitioners with provisions. A young Spartan, travelling in some other part of Greece, took it into his head to become an orator. On his return he was punished by the magistrate for attempting to impose on the understanding of his countrymen. Sometimes their sharp replies embodied wisdom as well as rebuke. An old man once complained to King Agis that all was lost, because some violation of the laws had taken place. He replied, " Quite true ; I remember, when I was a boy, I heard my father say that, when he was a boy, he heard my grandfather say the same thing." Yet it would seem that, in the time of Sparta's supremacy, the able men who con- iucted her foreign affairs must have placed themselves in a 2ondition to meet the representatives of other states, and to speak in popular assemblies, on a footing of equality ; and ac- .ording to Thucydides, who records many speeches of Spartan ambassadors and generals, this was actually the case. The sciences were not admitted within the range of Spartan education ; but dancing especially war-dances was a lead- ing subject of attention. The gymnastic training of the women has already been spoken of. The result of the whole system a highly artificial system it was certainly exhibited for a time a race of men of unexampled hardihood, and of women whose beauty was celebrated all over Greece, and whose heroism fills some of the brightest pages of ancient history. The Doric education was long and firmly retained in Crete, with some local peculiarities of detail. The domestic train- ing here continued till the seventeenth year, when the boys EDUCATION. 423 were admitted into a body called the ayeXij, or herd, and be- came thenceforth subjected to the hard discipline of public education. They remained in this stage ten years, during which they participated in the public meals of the men, but received only a half-allowance, and were under the charge of an officer called the iratZovofio ficial class of composers. Fluency of speech without corre eponding abundance of ideas, sophistical arguments, and word catching, wholly regardless of sound and solid reason, wer* t38 THE LIFE OF GREECE. favorite accomplishments; and showy rhetoric, veiling religious indifference and moral deformity, passed current among the degenerate fashions of the times. Yet some of the best and ablest men appeared amid the growing corruption ; many of the masterpieces of eloquence, history, and philosophy belong to this period ; and the circle of sciences was immensely enlarged in the veiy midst of the moral perversion of the sophists. Plato, Aristotle, and Demosthenes are proofs of the undiminished vigor of the Athenian character. After the time of Alexander, the system of instruction was expanded to what was called the encyclic education, that is, a course of studies including in its circle the principal subjects of human knowledge ; and this course was gradually adopted as the basis of Hellenic culture, as far as the Greek language and literature extended. The Alexandrian scholars not only culti- vated criticism and literature, but greatly enlarged the boun- daries of mathematical and physical science. The professors of the Museum and the Serapeion gave their lives to these pursuits ; and the patronage of the Ptolemies collected in the Alexandrian libraries the literary and scientific treasures of the world. The encyclic or liberal education, at this period, embraced seven departments ; namely, Grammar, Rhetoric, Philosophy or Dialectics, Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, and Astronomy. And now came into existence the learned class, professionally considered ; that is, a class of men set apart from the ordinary vocations of life, and wholly devoted to study. Erudition, without specific, practical aims, gradually grew into a distinct pursuit; special departments of study became ex- clusive professions ; and the methods and details of instruction were changed and improved. The principal seats of science and education at this stage were Athens, Rhodes, Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, Smyrna, and especially Tarsus, immortal- fzed as the place where St. Paul acquired that various and ac- curate learning which made him the most efficient teacher of Christianity among the first disciples of Christ. Strabo says, that here, so great was the zeal of men for the cultivation of GENERAL CULTURE. 439 philosophy and the other branches of a liberal education, that Tarsus surpassed Athens, Alexandria, and every other place that could be mentioned, where the lectures and schools of philosophers have existed. There was one peculiar defect in the liberal education of the Greeks, distinguishing it from that of our own times, which deserves to be pointed out. There was no study of foreign languages. It was but seldom, and then only for some prac- tical purpose, that a scholar attempted the acquisition of any language but his own. Travellers indeed sometimes learned to speak the language of the nation they visited ; and ambassa- dors sometimes, but not always or frequently, sought to facili- tate their intercourse with foreign diplomatists by learning to converse with them in their own tongue. Themistocles, we are told by Thucydides, when he fled to the Persian court, asked permission to remain a year before presenting himself to the monarch ; and during that time he made himself com- pletely master of the Persian language. Appearing at court at the expiration of the year, he was received with distinguished honor, and was able to hold personal intercourse with King Artaxerxes, the son of Xerxes. During the Roman domina- tion many Greeks studied the Latin language, either for the purpose of repairing to Rome, or for convenience of inter- course with the Romans who visited Greece. In Egypt the commercial establishments of the Greeks required the services of interpreters ; and there were many persons whose sole busi- ness was to officiate in this capacity. According to Herodo- tus they were Egyptians by birth, who had been permitted to study the Greek language, and whose descendants con- stituted a class, caste, or guild, called the interpreters' guild. Similar arrangements were made at other important commer- cial stations, as at the emporium of the Borysthenes, where a considerable business was carried on with the Scythians. But the study of their own language was one of the most impor- tant subjects of attention, not only in the early system of the Athenians, but through all the ages of Hellenic culture ; and 44:0 THE LIFE OF GREECE. not only on the continent of Greece, but in Egypt, Asia Minor, Byzantium, and wherever Greek colonies were established or Greek culture was known. Improvisation was practised by the sophists of Smyrna, Pergamus, and other seats of rhetori- cal study. According to Philostratus, Herodes Atticus loved to extemporize more than to be looked up to as a man of consular rank, descended from consular ancestors. The same distinguished man gave to the sophist Polemon, for three dis- courses, twenty-five thousand drachmae, or between four and five thousand dollars. The Asiatic style was distinguished for excess of ornament, aiming constantly at brilliant diction, rhythmical sound, bal- anced sentences, sharp antitheses, metaphors, and comparisons, which delighted the ear, without always satisfying the under- standing of the hearer. We have a considerable number of these showy discourses in the works of Dion Chrysostomus and Aristeides Quintilianus, some of which are not devoid of interest and value. In the schools, rhetorical exercises on themes propounded by the teacher constituted a favorite mode of discipline. The following may serve as a specimen of the subjects : " Demosthenes affirming under oath his innocence of the charge brought against him by Demades, that he had re- ceived a bribe of fifty talents from Persia, on information drawn from the accounts of Darius sent by Alexander to Athens." Gymnastic education was comparatively, though not wholly, neglected during these later ages ; but training for the great games continued to occupy the young men, even down through the imperial times. The ancient spirit of law and liberty a sense of the rights, privileges, and duties of the free cit- izen had long ceased to animate the systems of education; and so, with many noble exceptions, and with a remarkable development of science and philosophical speculation, a false taste in style, pedantry of manner, and a want of practical wis- dom in the aim of intellectual culture, gained ground with the slow and sure degradation of public morality. Christianity was slowly working her way ; but the warfare she had to wage GENERAL CULTURE. 441 with heathenism and sophistry was long and desperate, and for a time the confusion of the intellectual chaos seemed to grow more hopeless. The literary character, as has been more than once the case in modern times, ceased to enjoy or to deserve the public respect. Lucian, in his Hermotimus, introduces an old gentleman complaining to the teacher of his nephew that the young man had grown no better, but rather worse, by his instructions ; and in his Symposium one of the personages, having listened to the discordant talk of the philosophers, says : " While these various matters were going on, I was reflecting by myself on the obvious thought, that science and literature are of no service, unless a man reform his life thereby. These men, so fluent and excellent in speech, I saw bring ridicule on themselves in their actions ; and then it occurred to me whether the common saying be not true, that a literary educa- tion withdraws from the path of common sense those who look only to books, and to the ideas contained in them." This is certainly a discouraging result ; but, on the other hand, many eminent and venerable names occur to grace these ages of decline. Aristeides the rhetorician, Plutarch, Dion Chrysostomus, Philostratus, Libanius, Themistius, de- serve especial mention; and that their examples and instruc- tions were not without effect may be fairly deduced from the sketch, by the distinguished writer first named, of the charac- ter of Eteoneus, a Grecian youth of noble soul and liberal education, whose early death he deplores. " He was more beautiful and perfect than all his companions, pnd made the most agreeable impression on those who beheld him. In his bearing he was the most modest and liberal of men ; dis- tinguished by magnificence joined with simplicity, so that it was not easy to judge whether he was a boy, a youth, or a man in middle life ; for he had the artless disposition of the boy, the blooming vigor of the youth, the intellect of manhood. The admirable feature of his mind was, that it bad nothing over-bold, forward, and presumptuous. The vigor of his un- derstanding was accompanied by a gentle reserve, while his 442 THE LIFE OF GREECE moderation had nothing paltry, low, or sluggish. His char- acter was like the soft and well-attempered air of spring, wherein keenness is blended with mildness. Solidity and grace were so combined in his intellectual and moral charac- ter, that neither quality was injured by the other." The religion of the Greeks, in its relation to the life of Greece, is to be looked upon from two principal points of view. First, it is to be considered as a system of positive belief in the existence of gods, or supernatural beings, who, under the human form, and with some of the passions and imperfections belonging to man, yet governed this world sub- stantially according to the decrees of eternal justice, taking a direct and personal interest and agency in the scenes of life and the destinies of men. The second aspect in which it pre- sents itself to us is as a system of moral and religious doctrines, on the divine being and nature, the moral law, the immortality of the soul, the obligations of purity, piety, humanity, benefi- cence, and the duty of making one's self as much like the divine being as possible in this life, this system having been elabo- rated by the higher order of philosophical intelligences, like Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. These two systems were not always in harmony ; the popular belief in the mul- titudinous deities of Olympus, with their appetites, passions, and intrigues, was often rudely jostled by the scepticism of the philosophers ; and the philosophers, in their turn, by the freedom of their speculations, subjected themselves to popu- lar odium and vehement persecution, as heretics with regard to the established church. The external worship of the Greeks was an imposing ritual, uniting the grandeur of art, the attractions of public and private festivity, processions, holidays, sacrifices, purifications, libations, intellectual and sensual enjoyment. Songs and dances filled the day, glad- dening the eyes and ears of the worshipping multitude as the performers moved around the altar, or marched in festal array to the temple. The temples themselves, occupying places con- secrated to the gods, were the habitations in which the deities WORSHIP. 443 dwelt, embodied in statues wrought by the genius of art, and dedicated by the piety of the state. They were surrounded by sacred grounds, often planted with trees, or occupied by other buildings connected with the worship. Architectural magnificence was lavished upon them long before the art of the statuary or painter had made any important progress. But the tympana, friezes, and metopes, in the course of time, were embellished with the finest sculptures, and no expense was spared in rendering these structures houses fit for the godhead. Without entering upon architectural details, I may mention that the temples were classified not only according to the orders of architecture, Dorian, Ionian, Corinthian, orders exclusively devoted to sacred uses, and never adopted for private residences, but according to the number and position of the columns at the ends and sides, and as they were roofed or open at the top. They were generally divided into three parts, the pronaos or vestibule, the naos or cella, and the opisihodomos. r /he naos contained the statue of the god, facing the enhance, which was in the centre of the front portico. In those temples which were connected with the celebration of the mysteries, the interior division was open only to the priests and the body of the initiated. Many of the temples, such as those at Delphi, and on the Acropolis of Athens, were filled with gold, silver, precious stones, and costly works of art, sent thither by states, kings, or private in- dividuals, to propitiate the favor of the gods, or in token of gratitude for blessings received ; so that, in times of war, these centres of Hellenic piety became tempting lures to rapacious leaders, whose soldiers were clamoring for plunder. Some- times the temples served as a safe place of deposit for the public revenues. Thus the temple of Apollo at Delos was the treasury of the contributions paid by the allies of Athens for the common defence, until Pericles removed the deposits to Athens ; and the public moneys of Athens were deposited in the opisihodomos, or rear apartment, of the Parthenon. Connected with the temples were estates called sacred prop- 444 THE LIFE OF GREECE. erty. This property consisted partly in lands, which, unless prohibited by a malediction, were leased, and the revenue ap- propriated to the support of worship, or the defraying of the cost of sacrifices. Taxes were in many instances levied on the community, and tithes were an invention of the Greeks, as well as of the Jews. The temple of Athene had a tithe of the prizes taken in war, and of certain fines ; the temple of the Delian Apollo received tithes to a large amount from the Cyclades ; the temple of Artemis in Ithaca received tithes from an estate, the possessors of which were bound to keep it in repair ; and so with others. Each important temple had an officer attached to it generally appointed by the people who acted as receiver of the revenues and treasurer. The appoint- ment of priests and priestesses was determined by different rules and principles in different places ; the general idea of the priestly function being that of an intercessor between the gods and man, though the need of such an intercessor was by no means universally recognized. The head of a family might offer prayers and sacrifices without the help of a priest ; but at each important centre of worship a body of officiating persons was generally attached to the temple, and directed the acts of religious homage performed there. A few priesthoods were hereditary, as that of the Eumolpidae at Athens ; others were temporary in their tenure ; others were for life. In some cases celibacy was required; in others, marriage was allowed. In the more ancient worship of Zeus, Pausanias asserts that the officiating priest was a boy, chosen for his beauty; and that, as soon as his beard began to grow, he gave place to another younger person, chosen upon the same principle. The offices of these ministers of the gods were mainly prayer and sacrifice. They were bound in a peculiar sense to maintain themselves in all honor and purity of character, as was becoming those who were admitted into such intimate communion with the deity, and who dwelt in the sacred precincts, shared in the reverence paid to the gods, and lived upon the temple revenues. To them the place of honor was assigned in the theatre, and at other re worship. 445 sorts of amusement and business. Their costume was carefully studied, the stole being usually white. Garlands and fillets were worn on the head in public ceremonies, and the hair was suffered to grow long. Sometimes they appeared in the typical costume of the deity they served. Thus the priestess of Athe- ne, selected from the tallest and most beautiful of the maids of Athens, appeared on some occasions with the panoply and the triple-crested helmet of the goddess. In the later periods it sometimes happened that the same individual held several priesthoods, and enjoyed their united incomes, a fact which proves pluralities not to have been an original invention of modern hierarchies. The priests had under their direction a great number of attendants, to perform the labors connected with such an establishment, to assist in the sacrificial services, to bear the sacred vessels, to execute the choral dances and walk in the processions, besides a class of servants to perform the menial duties necessary in many parts of the ceremonial ; and all these partook of the good cheer furnished by the vic- tims offered on the altars. On the whole, these priests led a jovial life, much like the merry times enjoyed by the monks, or some of them, unless the stories of the Middle Ages are in- ventions of the enemy. The four great games the Olympian, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian were a characteristic feature of Hellenic wor- ship and life, and a bond of union for all of Hellenic descent. They were celebrated at stated intervals under the sanction of religion, and drew together immense multitudes of people from every Grecian state. Originally intended only for athletic ex- ercises, they combined in the course of time competitions in the fine arts, eloquence, poetry, and philosophy. To the Olympian celebration, held every four years, came Greeks from Asia, from Africa, and from every part of Europe where Greek colo- nies were established. Peace was proclaimed over the Grecian world. The territory of Elis, where stood the temple of Olym- pian Zeus, was inviolable. Commercial transactions on the most extensive scale were concluded there. Deputies, with 446 THE LIFE OF GREECE. gorgeous equipments, from cities and states, made an emulous show of their magnificence. Women were not allowed to be present, under penalty of being thrown down the Typaean Rock, though they might send chariots to the races. The festival lasted five days, and was under the immediate su- perintendence of Olympian Zeus, whose statue, in gold and ivory, was deemed the greatest work of the sculptor Pheidias. Within the sacred precincts were altars and shrines to many other gods, statues to victors in the games, and magnificent offerings consecrated by the munificence of cities and princes. Besides the intellectual entertainments provided by the genius , of poets, rhetoricians, and artists, the contests consisted in foot-races, wrestling, the throwing of the discus and the spear, boxing, the chariot-race, the pancration, horse-races of divers kjnds, various exercises of boys, and the armed race. These exercises probably occupied four days, and the fifth was taken up with the processions, sacrifices, and banquets given to the victors. The garland of wild olive, cut from the sacred tree in the grove of Altis, near the altars of Aphrodite and the Horse, was the only prize. The victor was crowned upon a table made of ivory and gold, or a tripod covered with bronze ; and his name, with that of his father and bis country, was proclaimed by the herald to assembled Greece. Such a victonf was regarded as the highest boon the gods could bestow on mortals. Returning to his native city, the conqueror was es- corted home by a triumphal procession, and his glory was com- memorated by the loftiest strains of Pindar or Simonides. The occasion was one of the greatest splendor and stateliness in the varied range of Hellenic worship. The other national games agreed in their general type and aim with the Olympian ; and there was an endless diversity of similar celebrations, of a local character and less comprehensive purposes. Passing from the external pomp of Grecian worship to the influence of superstitious ideas upon the natural yearning of the human heart for intercourse with the spiritual world, and the insatiable curiosity to pry into the secrets of fate, w DIVINATION. 447 shall find a wonderful apparatus, partly of delusion, partly of imposture, partly of mistaken apprehensions of the phenomena of nature, by which the eager minds of the Greeks ever searching, but ever baffled strove to appease the mighty hunger for the unknown. The modes of divination, so far as the interpretation of the will of the gods was concerned, may be ranged under two general heads, inspiration, and the interpretation of signs ; and these were sometimes connected with temple-worship, sometimes wholly independent of it. The interpretation of dreams was considered of some importance, even by the most philosophical minds. The sort of divination which judges of the future by the past, though often attributed to divine inspi- ration, was generally conceded to be nothing more than the application of sense and sagacity to the current affairs of the world. The signs to be interpreted were innumerable. The most common were the flight and voices of birds, their habits, which were carefully observed, and their manner of alighting. In so common regard and use were these, that the word bird had become, even in Homer's time, synonymous with omen. Particular birds were more ominous or prophetic than others. Thus the crow and the raven were specially favored with the ability to act as mediums between man and the gods. Numer- ous accidental events, a violent fit of sneezing, any little devi- ation from the ordinary course of things, a sudden sound, in- terrupting the stillness of the hour, the unexpected suggestion of a thought, a bright idea occurring to one not accustomed to such angel-visitants, all these were special interpositions of the gods, and indications often blind enough of their will and purposes. In the sacrifice of victims, omens of the most important bearing were discerned. In the historical times, no important enterprise was undertaken, unless the omens fa- vored it ; though it is likely enough that the omens were favor- able, or the contrary, mzch as the leaders in the undertaking desired. The circumstances from which conclusions were drawn on these occasions were the manner of burning, 448 THE LIFE OF GREECE. whether the flame shot up clear and bright, or smouldered and hissed, as it reached the victim's body, lying on the pile or altar ; the form and appearance of the ashes, after the flame subsided ; and, above all, the inspection of the entrails, and the shape and aspect of the liver. At the temples, where much of this business was carried on, the resident priesthood were the professional interpreters. In some places, simple altars were special seats of divination. At an altar of Hermes, the first word heard after the sacrificer had completed his offering, was supposed to contain the answer to the question pro- pounded. There was in Thebes an altar of Ismenian Apollo, the ashes of which were prophetical. These, and a thousand other methods, were resorted to every day, and every hour of every day, all over Greece. The oracular responses at the shrines and temples were more imposing, and had a wider influence over public affairs. The most ancient and venerable centre of oracular lore was the temple of Zeus at Dodona, where the responses of the gods were gathered from the rustling of the leaves on the sacred oaks that overshadowed the holy ground, and from the mur- muring of the fountain flowing hard by. Apollo, however, was, in a pre-eminent degree, the oracular deity. His oracles were established in many parts of Greece. Not only was he the organ of communication between the monarch of the gods and the human race, but to him belonged the power of making men or women the mediums of his responses, by throwing them in- to a state of inspiration or ecstasy, in which they delivered un- consciously the words of the god. The sites selected for these oracles were generally marked by some physical property, which fitted them to be the scenes of such miraculous mani- festations. They were in a volcanic region, where gas es- caping from a fissure in the earth might be inhaled, and the consequent exhilaration or ecstasy, partly real and partly imaginary, was a divine inspiration. At the Pythian oracle in Delphi there was thought to be such an exhalation. Others aave supposed that the priests possessed the secret of manu- ORACLES. 449 factoring an exhilarating gas, and kept it to themselves for this purpose, as no such phenomenon has been observed on that spot in modern times. Perhaps the fumes of the laurel which was burned there produced the effect. At first, the Delphian oracle was open to the consultation of visitors only once a year ; next, every month ; and finally, several days in each month. The persons wishing to consult the oracle were required to pass through a process of purification by bathing in water from the Castalian stream, and to offer sacrifice, before they could draw nigh to the presence of the god. In each of the oracular temples of Apollo, the officiating functionary was a woman, probably chosen on account of her nervous tempera- ment ; at first young, but, a love affair having happened, it was decided that no one under fifty should be eligible to the office. The priestess sat upon a tripod, placed over the chasm in the centre of the temple. The smoke, gas, or ether, or per- haps her own imagination, reduced her quickly to a state of intoxication, and her ravings in this condition were taken down by the prophetes, one of the managing priests, em- bodied in verse more or less enigmatical, and delivered to the inquirer as the response of the god. The brain of the medium was the more easily affected, as before ascending the tripod she usually spent three days in preparing herself by fasting and bathing. The priesthood in this temple appear generally to have been very crafty and able. They had a vast amount of secret information about men and things, which they turned to the purposes of imposture. They kept poets in their pay, or as members of the fraternity, who acquired immense skill in turning the nonsensical prose of the Pythoness into high- sounding, but very unintelligible verse. The great point, in cases where no information was in their possession, was to give the response in such a way that, two opposite events being the only possible ones, the construction of the language would allow ts application to either ; while it would be impossible to know anything about it until after the event, which made the whole as plain as daylight. vol. i. 29 450 THE LI*K OF GREECE. The influence of the oracles of Apollo over Greece was boundless, and extended far beyond the countries occupied by the Hellenic race. There is no doubt that the statesmen and warriors of the historical times availed themselves of the ora- cles as a means of carrying out their plans. " The Pythia Philippizes," was an expression of the great Athenian orator, implying that the king of Macedonia had tampered with the sacred persons of the Delphian temple. Sleeping in temples, and judging by dreams, which undei such circumstances were considered divine communications, was another mode of divination. The custom was to slay a victim and sleep on the skin, which one would suppose to be a very natural way of producing dreams of the most unpleas- ant description. There were other temples, called Plutonia, where the spirits of the dead were conjured up to answer questions propounded to them. By what sort of deception this trick was accom- plished, the jugglers have not informed us. Besides the public and recognized shrines of these mysterious rites, there were localities without temples, supposed to be favorable for the summoning up of ghosts ; and these were called Psychopom- peia and Psychomanteia, offices for calling up and ques- tioning departed spirits. Maximus Tyrius described one of these spots, in Magna Grsecia, where a great business was car- ried on. " There was a place near Lake Avernus, called the prophetic cavern. Persons were in attendance there who called up ghosts. Any one desiring it came thither, and, hav- ing killed a victim and poured out libations, summoned what- ever ghost he wanted. The ghost came, very faint and doubt- ful to the sight, but vocal and prophetic ; and, having answered the questions, went off." In a more secret manner still, this species of imposture was conducted for private gain. It is a singular fact, that the imposition was practised chiefly by women of a low and vulgar character, though men were not wanting to help in the cheat and share in the profit ; and, what s perhaps even more singular, the obvious bad faith of the im- OBACLES. 451 postors, the coarseness of the means they resorted to, and the baldness of the delusion, did not hinder them from drawing many, who should have known better, to sanction the impu- dence of their pretensions. It is only with the very lowest style of ancient superstition that the wretched imposture of spiritual rapping, which is now emptying the churches and filling the mad-houses, can be com- pared. An oracle poetically expressed with two meanings is more ingenious than a badly spelled message, rapped from un- der a table, with no meaning at all. A ghost summoned from the realm of the departed, in a Plutonian temple or a gloomy cavern, answering questions and then vanishing, is more pleas- ing to the imagination than one which upsets furniture. A pythoness, raving with the fancied inspiration of Apollo, with priests and poets moulding her crazy exclamations into well- sounding hexameters, presents a finer picture than a medium, generally a tricky girl or a nervous woman, writing feeble sentences which an idiot would blush to own, and then libel- ling some departed worthy by attributing them to the dictation of his ghost. The agitation of the laurel-branches round the holy tripod, as the inspiration came over the pythoness, sounds better than making a table dance across the floor by the ap- plication of a dozen hands. Spiritual rapping is nothing but the old Athenian imposture repeated in more vulgar forms, with a few modifications of circumstance for the convenience of the rappers. It differs in being a more impudent cheat on the one side, and a more imbecile delusion on the other, and in being more fatal in its consequences ; and it shows how easily an imposture which seduces the human mind to believe a lie, degrades its godlike powers to the most pitiable feeble ness. LECTURE X. TEMPLES. STATE OF KELIGIOUS BELIEF. PHILOSOPHERS FUNERAL RITES AND MONUMENTS. BELIEF CONCERN ING A FUTURE LIFE. WILLS. Pausanias, the Greek traveller, who made the tour of Hel- las in the second century of our era, left a work, somewhat dry in style and inartificial in arrangement, in which he de- scribes the objects of interest he saw on his travels. So far as the monuments of sculpture and architecture remain, they evince the accuracy and fidelity of his accounts. In an anti- quarian point of view, his narrative is of the highest impor- tance, though its literary merits are not remarkable. When he visited Elis, the temple and statue of Olympian Zeus and the most splendid memorials of the Olympic celebrations were still standing uninjured. " The temple," says he, " is built ac- cording to the Dorian order, and is surrounded by columns (or a peristyle). It is constructed of the light marble which the country produces. Its height, from the foundation to the ped- iment, is sixty-eight feet ; its breadth, ninety-five ; and its length, two hundred and thirty. Its builder was Libon, a na- tive Eleian. Its roof is not of burned tiles, but of marble from the Pentelic quarries, wrought after the manner of tiles." He next describes in detail the sculptural ornaments, the shields, And the other embellishments of the exterior of the temple, which were of the most elaborate and admirable character The site of this temple is well ascertained, as are its plan ano dimensions. The excavations undertaken by the French sci- entific expedition to the Morea laid open the foundations of the structure, and brought to light numerous fragments of col- umns and pieces of sculpture of the finest workmanship cor- TEMPLES 453 responding to the description of Pausanias. The columns are shown to have been more than seven feet in diameter, surpass- ing in size those of any other Greek temple now extant. The most elaborate examination of these ruins and their interesting associations is by Ernst Curtius, in a discourse recently deliv- ered at Berlin, accompanied by a diagram of the temple and its site, as restored. On this diagram the goddess of Victory surmounts the vertex of the temple ; at each corner is a tripod, the memorial of a victory ; and at the feet of the goddess hangs a shield, with a Medusa's head in the centre, in celebra- tion of a battle won by the Spartans. The architrave was covered by a row of consecrated shields, placed there, however, at a late period, by the Roman general Mummius, after sup- pressing the last Greek revolt. In the centre of the triangular tympanum the figure of Zeus was seated. The groups on the right and left were devoted to the mythical tale of Pelops. The former represented the old Pelasgian king CEnomaus, with his attendants ; and the latter, the Phrygian adventurer, with Hippodameia. On the right was the river Alpheius - f and on the left, the Cladeus. The contest of Pelops in the race of four-horse chariots, which, according to the myth, decided his own destiny and that of the country, here stood very properly as the type of the principal contest in the games. The mo- ment represented is that just before the contest begins, Olym pian Zeus sitting beneath the goddess of Victory, and presiding over the scene as the supreme judge. The sculptures on the west exhibited the battle of the Centaurs and the Lapithae. En- tering the pronaos through the bronze gates, and over a mosaic floor, the visitor reaches the presence where was enthroned the colossal statue of the Olympian Zeus, the deity of the tem- ple and the place, the work of Pheidias, the last and greatest triumph of his sublime genius. "Pheidias, the son of Char- mides, the Athenian, made me," was the simple but proud inscription, in which he was permitted to record for immortal memory this achievement, one of the wonders of the world. The famous lines of Homer, describing the nod of Zeus, wero the inspiration under which he wrought 454 THE LIFE OF GREECE. " ' This is the mightiest sign ; for a clear, irrepealable purpose Waits an accomplishment sure, when the nod of my head is the token.' So did he speak, and at pausing he signed with his shadowy eyebrows ; And the ambrosial curls from the head everlasting were shaken, And at the nod of the king deep trembled the lofty Olympus." Pheidias, having completed his greatest works at Athens, re- moved, on a public invitation, with his most eminent pupils, to Elis, where he had a studio assigned him, near the sacred grove of Altis. Here he began his most illustrious task, in 437 B. C, and finished it in four years. The style of sculp- ture was that called the Chryselephantine, or ivory-and-gold. The god was represented seated on a throne of cedar-wood, adorned with gold, ivory, and precious stones, crowned with a wreath of olive, holding a statue of Victory in his right hand, and a sceptre surmounted by an eagle in his left. The royal peplos, which covered the lower part of the statue, was of beaten gold, variegated with chased and painted figures. The throne and the platform on which it rested were richly adorned with painted and sculptured compositions of mythological sub- jects, which are all enumerated by Pausanias. The quantity of gold used was enormous. According to Lucian, each lock of hair weighed six minae, and must have been worth some hundreds of dollars. In the judgment of the ancients, the statue stood at the head of all the productions of Hellenic art, and was regarded with a superstitious veneration, as the real presence of the deity, in material form. Elis became the sanc- .uary of peace ; the clang of arms was never allowed to break in upon the sacred repose of the region blessed by the direct supervision of the king of gods and men. Livy says that iEmi- lius Paulus, in his march through Greece, " went up through Megalopolis to Olympia, where he was affected in his mind as if he had beheld Jupiter in present form, and ordered a sacri- fice more magnificent than usual to be prepared." The author of an epigram in the Anthology says, " Either the god de- scended from heaven, to show his form, or thou, O Pheidias, didst go up to behold the god" Quintilian writes: "The STATE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 455 Athenian Minerva ana the Olympian Jupiter at Elis possessed b. beauty which seemed to have added something to religion, the majesty of the work was so worthy of the divinity." Flax- man, having well considered all the information that has come down to us respecting it, says, " It was justly esteemed one of the seven wonders of the world." It was removed by the Em- peror Theodosius I. to Constantinople, where it perished by fire, A. D. 475 ; and so in smoke and flame vanished from >arth the great god of Olympus, nine hundred and twelve years ifter he was placed on the throne of Grecian worship at Elis. One of the characters drawn by Theophrastus is that of the superstitious man. Some of the marks which distinguish him are these. " If a weasel cross his path, he will not proceed until some one has gone before him ; or until he has thrown three stones across the way. If he sees a serpent in the house, he builds a chapel on the spot A mouse, perchance, has gnawed a hole in a flour-sack ; away he goes to the seer to know what it behooves him to do ; and if he is simply answered, ' Send it to the cobbler to be patched,' he views the business in a more serious light ; and, running home, he consecrates the sack as an article no more to be used If on his walks an owl flies past him, he is horror-struck, and exclaims, ' Thus comes the divine Athene ! ' On the fourth and seventh days of the month, he directs mulled wine to be prepared for his family," (a rite practised within the memory of the present generation on other days as well,) -"and, going himself to purchase myrtle and frankincense, he returns, and spends the day in crown- ing the statues of Hermes and Aphrodite. As often as he has a dream, he runs to the interpreter, the soothsayer, or the augur, to inquire what god or goddess he ought to propitiate. Whenever he passes a cross-way, he bathes his head. For the benefit of a special purification, he invites the priestesses to his house ; who, while he stands reverently in the midst of them, bear around him an onion or a little dog." The folly and degra- dation of these lower forms of superstition were seen distinctly enough, and exposed and ridiculed by the clear intellects that 456 THE LIFE OF GREECE. rose from time to time in Hellenic society. Aristophanes treated them in this fashion, especially in the comedy of " The Birds." When the soothsayer comes up to Birdtown with an assortment of spiritual wares, pretending that the oracles have directed the citizens of Nephelococcygia to give him a pair of shoes and a portion of the flesh of the sacrifices, he is met by a counter-oracle. Peisthetairos, the archon of this airy republic, tells him : " This oracle differs most remarkably From that which I transcribed in Apollo's temple : ' If, at the sacrifice which you prepare, An uninvited vagabond should dare To interrupt you, and demand a share, Let cuffs and buffets be the varlet's lot, Smite him between the ribs, and spare him not.' " And producing a horsewhip, he proceeds to execute justice on the shoulders of the soothsayer, who takes to his heels. The philosophers of Greece represent the favorable side of the Hellenic religion. Taken collectively, they were a most remarkable body of men, whether we consider the variety of their attainments, the depth of their intuition, the precision and accuracy of their logic, the splendor of their eloquence, or the weight of their personal influence. Philosophy among the Greeks was a very comprehensive term, embracing every department of knowledge, human and divine, looking upon the universe of mind and matter as a grand unity, all the parts of which were worthy of the serious and reverent study of man. Physical science had not made the world of matter so subject to the human mind as now. Their theories were often wild, fanciful, and poetical, rather than scientific. Yet even here, one is sometimes startled by intuitive foreshadow- ings that comprehend and anticipate the last conclusions of modern research. Thus Philolaus, the Pythagorean, main- tained that the sun was a globe in the centre of the system, that the other planets revolved around it, and that the earth had a movement on its own axis, which caused day and night, PHILOSOPHERS. 457 and gave an apparent motion to the stars. Xenophanes drew from the fossil remains imbedded in the rocks the conclusion that the earth had in previous ages undergone prodigious revo- lutions, in which the existing races of animals were destroyed ; and that the shells and petrifactions of marine products on tne mountains proved the surface of the earth to have gradually- risen from beneath the waters of the sea. The philosophers universally rejected the popular notions of the gods, and, almost universally, the belief in a multiplicity of gods ; though, as a matter of expediency and prudence, they generally fell in with the observances of the popular worship, so far at least as the laws of the state required religious conformity. But after all, there was a wide separation between them and the body of the people, who, partly from the fanaticism natural to igno- rance, and partly from the apprehension of losing the enjoy- ments placed within their reach by the religious festivals, per- secuted with unrelenting hostility any man who was suspected of questioning the national faith. They could laugh over the vices and absurdities attributed by the poets to the gods and goddesses, the cowardice and lewdness of Dionysos, the in- trigues of Aphrodite, the sneaking amours of Zeus, the scolding jealousy of Hera; but if an earnest seeker after the truth came to doubt the existence of these precious models of the divine nature, and pronounced that the universe was created and governed by one God, holy, omnipresent, eternal, and indi- visible, he could look only for banishment or death from the popular tribunals. This discord between the faith of the peo- ple and the religion of the philosophers naturally led the latter to regard the doctrines in which their conclusions were em- bodied as secrets or mysteries, to be communicated only to the interior circle of their disciples. Here was another .source of confusion and hostility ; and perhaps a part of the blame is to be laid upon the philosophers themselves, for so long withhold- ing their own loftier conceptions of the divine essence and of religious duty from the great body of their contemporaries. Thales taught that " God is the oldest of all things, for he is 458 THE LIFE OF GREECE. without beginning"; that "death differs not from life, the soul being immortal " ; that " a bad man can hide neither evil ac- tions nor evil thoughts from the divine power " ; that " the world is the fairest of all things, for it is the work of God. Cheilon's precepts were, "Not to slander our neighbors; to be more ready to share the misfortunes than the prosperity of our friends ; to keep watch over ourselves ; to suffer harm rather than take a dishonest gain ; to be meek when in power ; to bear injuries patiently ; to seek peace ; to honor age ; to obey the laws." Cleobulus said : " Do good to your friends, that their friendship may be strengthened ; to your enemies, that they may become your friends. Be more eager to hear than to speak. Avoid injustice ; bridle the love of pleasure ; do violence to no man ; instruct your children ; keep up no enmities." Pythagoras, the first to adopt the title of philos- opher or lover of knowledge, enjoined upon the membeis of his fraternity, not only silence, but modesty, temperance, and brotherly love. I like the early Christians, they lived together in a social community, with funds in common, administered by one of the members. The master taught : " The one Deity is the source of all things ; his form, light ; his essence, truth. He is the giver of good to those who love him, and as such is to be worshipped. He is the soul of all things, pervading and maintaining the universe. The souls of men exist after the death of the body. The soul strengthens its holy dispositions by the exercise of devotion. Knowledge should be sought as the means of approaching the nature and felicity of the Deity." Xenophanes said, " There is one eternal, infinite, immortal Being, by whom all things exist, and this one being is God. Incorporeal and omnipresent, he hears all, sees all, but not by human senses. He is at once mind, wisdom, eternal exist- ence." Heracleitus affirmed that the universe is governed by one unerring Supreme Will or Deity. He told his countrymen of Ephesus, that they might as well pray to the stones of their houses as to stone images ; and in the spirit of a later watch- word of polytheistic fanaticism, " Great is Diana of the Ephe- PHILOSOPHERS. 459 sians," they banished him. Anaxagoras declared, that "Phoe- bus himself, the great Delphian god, is nothing more than a glowing ball, which communicates its heat to the earth ; that the moon, the Artemis of the Greeks, and the Isis of Egypt, is nothing more than another habitable earth, with hills and valleys like our own ; that there is but one God, the intelli- gent Mind which has given movement and form to the atoms of the universe, and which, though pervading and governing all nature, is separate, and unmixed with any material sub- stance." But bigotry was alarmed ; Diopeithes procured a decree to be passed, that those who were guilty of denying the existence of the gods should be tried before the assembly of the people ; and all the influence and eloquence of Peri- cles, when at the height of his power, availed only to procure the commutation of the sentence of death into banishment from Athens. The argument of Socrates on the existence of God as an intelligent Creator, as reported by Xenophon, anticipates all the material points of Paley's beautiful reasoning from the ap- pearances of design. "The senses of man are furnished him for his benefit and ha'ppiness. It is a proof of benevolent fore- thought, that the eye, being delicate, is protected by the eye- lids, which are opened while it is used, and closed when in sleep; that the ear receives all sounds, without being filled"; and so on, through every part of the body the acute and wonderful reasoner demonstrates the existence, power, and benevolence of the Deity. " But God," he continues, " was jot content with bestowing a body thus matchlessly endowed ; lie planted in man the greatest of his gifts a sovereign intellect, fit to use the faculties of the body, and rendering man like a god among the other beings of this world." His conversations were full of this divine wisdom. He was ever striving to bring the minds of his companions and disciples into a state of intense activity, so as to make real knowl- edge take the place of seeming knowledge, and to lay a deep and strong foundation of principles, on which character and 460 THE LIFE OF GREECE. conduct might securely rest. He is rightly said to have drawn Philosophy down from heaven, and to have placed her among the habitations of men. The path of duty was marked out for him by the Divine Spirit, whose voice he seemed to hear in the depths of his soul. Differing from many of the preceding phi- losophers, he sought every opportunity of intercourse with common men, teaching them moral, political, and religious truth, and enforcing it by illustrations, drawn with admirable tact, from the most familiar objects at hand. These peculiari- ties are delightfully portrayed in Xenophon's Memorabilia, and especially in the Dialogues of Plato. His conflicts with the sophists, also, exhibited the ethical and religious side of his character in a wonderfully attractive man- ner ; and the solemnity and earnestness of his convictions, the depth of his piety, his far-reaching insight into the being of God, the nature of man, and the relations between God and man, are enlivened by the play of the richest wit that ever adorned the conversation of a human being. His arguments on the spiritual and immortal nature of the soul are acute and convincing, marked by the finest logic, and the soundest and healthiest ethical tone. The duties of a citizen, the principles of household economy and state administration, the obligation to obey the laws, even when perverted to unjust ends and against ourselves, are set forth by him, as his discourses stand recorded in the immortal pages of Xenophon and Plato, with a beauty and eloquence which make the pulse throb and the heart beat, so many centuries after all the actors and speak- ers in the scene are silenced and turned to dust. Socrates is a universal presence in the life of Greece. We meet him at every turn. If we stroll into the market-place, he is there ; if we join the throng, and walk outside the city gates to the Academy or Lyceum, be sure he is the centre of a circle who hang entranced upon his lips. A sophist, emi. nent for his gifts and graces, arrives at Athens, and stops at the house of a friend. The young men hasten to hear his .ectures, and are captivated with the charm of his rhetoric. PHILOSOPHERS. 461 and the rhythm of his sentences ; but before his triumph is quite completed, the droll figure of Socrates that indescribable nose, Greek only in the accident of its birth ; that bald head ; that round body, barefooted, with no chiton ; the eyes rolling and twinkling with shrewdness and good humor ; polite, but with the slightest possible touch of irony this figure, so well known in the streets and shops of Athens, drops in unperceived, and puts a modest question, as if for information : " O Gorgias, what is this rhetoric which you profess to teach?" This leads to another and another question, until the discussion passes out of the technical points of rhetoric, and the sophist and his admirers find suddenly exposed to their view the hollo wness and profligacy of their deceptive profession. They are drawn into an earnest argument on the great principles of justice, the misery of wickedness, the blessedness of virtue, the certainty of a future state of reward and punishment ; and all the objects of vulgar ambition for which mistaken men soil the whiteness of their souls riches, power, empire, fame dwindle under the moral grandeur of his eloquence, almost into the insignificance and nothingness which would seem to be their essence, were they viewed from another world. " No one," says he, in the tone of an apostle and a martyr, " no one, who is not utterly wanting in sense and manhood, fears to die. Sin is a thing to be feared ; for it is the most dreadful of evils to pass into the other world with the burden of sin upon the soul." No wonder that even the profligate Alcibiades said : " When I listen to him, my heart leaps, and tears rush to my eyes. I have heard Pericles and other able orators, and I thought they spoke well ; but I had no such feeling, my soul was not agitated, I was not held in thrall. I have been so moved by this Marsyas, that, in my condition of soul, life seemed to me not worth the having. I have felt towards him a sentiment which no one would sup- pose to exist in me, of mingled shame and respect. I know that duty requires me to obey his injunctious ; yet the mo- ment I leave his presence I am conquered by the applauses of the multitude. You understand not this man. Outwardly he 462 THE LIFE OF GREECE. is like the sculptured Silenus, his speech is jesting and ironi cal ; but within he is full of earnestness and the sweetest vir- tue, the very shrine of the Deity, so divine, so beautiful, so wonderful, that I must needs do whatever he commands." Such a man we should expect to resist the popular passion, when civic duty placed him at the post of danger. We should expect him, when brought to trial for his life, on charges that appealed to the popular bigotry, to meet his accusers with the serenity of an unruffled spirit, and the unshaken soul of a man conscious of innocence and fearless of death ; to receive with calmness the fatal sentence, fatal to his judges, not to him. We should expect him to pass the intervening time in meditating anew on the highest religious themes, consoling his weeping friends, confirming their faith in virtue and immortality ; and, when the sun went down those western hills at the close of the last day, quietly to drink the poisoned bowl, and, without a reproachful or complaining word, to sur- render his spirit to God who gave it. No wonder that Eras- mus, in the fervid admiration inspired by these undying mo- ments of the dying man, exclaimed, " Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis ! " There is but one end of human life. Its restless endeavor, its hopes, enjoyments, and sufferings, cany it forward with equal step to the house appointed for all mankind. Therefore it is that the secrets of the grave and the world beyond present themselves to the imagination with an absorbing interest. The lessons of mortality are impressive alike to the mighty and the mean, to the strong and the weak. Death comes, sparing nei- ther hope nor love, melted not by sorrow, or supplication, or tears. The hour of mourning strikes in the life of all of mortal birth. The eye closes in the long sleep ; the soul vanishes, un- seen, save by the vision of faith. The living and the dead, the sorrowing and those insensible to sorrow, part at the door of the tomb, and go alone on their several ways. " The graves of the departed," says the Baron Stackelberg, " encompassed with the dread solemnities of the future, endowed with the won FUNERAL RITES AND MONUMENTS. 463 drous power to move the inmost and strongest chords of the soul by the harmonies of memory and grief, to subdue the mighty and tame the violent by the image of the transitoriness of this world's glories, to bring low the pride of the haughty by the prospect of future equality, to console and elevate the wretched and the bowed down by the approaching end of their sorrows, exercised from the earliest times the most decided reaction upon the depths of life. Death was always the first teacher and refiner of the human race. In the richly en- dowed and sunny land beneath the southern sky, the natural man, who, trusting in his rude strength alone, enjoyed the happiness of his existence, must have been aroused from his thoughtlessness, and led to a forecast of a higher being, by the sorrowful dissonance in creation presented by Death, the over- taker of all, the all-conqueror." Sensibility to the claims of blood and friendship, tenderness to the sufferings of the invalid, and reverence for the remains and the memory of the dead, distinguished the Hellenic char- acter. Even a fallen enemy, except in peculiar cases, was not denied the customary burial ceremonies and honors. The most sacred of duties from the living to the dead was to bestow on their mortal remains the last sad rites, whereby the beloved form was committed in its solemn beauty to the bosom of the common mother Earth, or passed through flames into the kin- dred elements, leaving a little ashes to be wept over and in- urned in the tomb. When the tender offices of affection and the skill of the physician had proved unavailing, the eyes were closed by the hand of the watcher, and the body bathed and sprinkled with costly perfumes, crowned with flowers of the season gathered by friends, and robed in white garments of the richest texture. A coin was placed in the mouth, as a fare to be paid to Charon for ferrying the spirit over the dark Acherontian waters to the place of its final abode. The dead was laid on a couch in the house, with the face looking to- wards the door ; a cushion or pillow being placed under the head, and painted earthen vases ranged around it. A vessel 464 THE LIFE OF GREECE. of water, drawn from some neighboring well, was set before the door, for all who visited the house to sprinkle themselves , since the presence of a dead body was supposed to require the purifying influence of lustral water to guard the living from contamination. Relations and friends surrounded the couch, and the women gave vent to their sorrow in loud lamentat'tns The burial took place soon after death. The laying out was usually on the second day, and the burying or entombment early on the following morning. Sometimes it was necessary to postpone the funeral longer, to allow of the arrival of distant friends. The dead was borne to the place of interment on the couch, supported by kinsmen or intimates, persons chosen as a mark of distinction ; preceded by the threnodoi, or professional performers of the funeral wail, generally females ; and followed by a procession of friends and relatives, and other persons who chose to join it, the men preceding the women. In the case of the latter, there were some legal restrictions of age and rela- tionship, though they do not appear to have been enforced. The practice of burning and that of burying were both in use during all the periods of Hellenic existence, until the preva- lence of Christianity put an end to the former. Of the simul- taneousness of the two modes there is at present no doubt. The opening of ancient graves, and the finding of skeletons entire in their coffins, as well as of ashes, have settled the disputes of the learned by indisputable facts ; though usage varied some- what in different parts of Greece. The coffins were some- times of cypress-wood, but were generally made of tiles of burnt earth, put together in different forms and ways, painted, and adorned with arabesques. A considerable number of these are engraved in Stackelberg's interesting work entitled " The Graves of the Greeks," some of them having been taken from the ground by the author, and containing the re- mains of the dead, with vases and other funeral objects buried with them. Some are in the form of a triangular prism ; oth- ers oval, shaped like a bathing-vessel ; others still, of burnt tiles, the section of which would be an oval, with upright tiles at the foot and head. FUNERAL RITES AND MONUMENTS. 465 The tombs, or places for burial, whether for the ashes after burning or for the body, were either near the house, or on a spot of ground in some other part of the family estate, and were considered the most sacred of possessions ; but for those who were destitute of landed property, there was at Athens a common burial-ground, between the Itonian gate and the Peiraean road. The cenotaphs of warriors slain in battle were outside the walls, on the way to the Academy. The monu- ments were of various fashions and degrees of splendor, accord- ing to the taste, feeling, and wealth of the family. Slabs of stone set upright over the grave, with sculptured ornaments, and the name of the deceased, were the most common. To the name was added a farewell twice repeated, and often a sketch of the life of the departed, a description of his virtues, or an expression of the grief felt in his death. Sometimes verses, mostly in hexameters and pentameters, recorded the merits of the dead. There was a classical Old Mortality, by the name of Diodorus, who wrote a work on Sepulchres, which, however, has not survived. In the tomb were placed such objects as arms, painted vases, and symbolical articles, of which immense numbers now exist in the great collections, and are described in the works of Panofka, Gerhard, and others, constituting one of the most important and interesting branches of the antiquities of art. Monuments of great archi- tectural and sculptural beauty sometimes adorned the resting- places of the dead. Stackelberg gives a very interesting ac- count and engraving of a funeral structure of this description, made of Pentelic marble, and found in 1819 near the Dipylon gate, on the Sacred Way, where the most important monu- ments were built. It represents the front of a Doric heroon, or chapel to a hero, at the entrance of which sits the sculptured form of the deceased lady, clothed in an Ionian chiton, reach- ing to the feet, with clasped sleeves, with a full and richly or- namented peplos thrown over the bust, the head encircled with a triple band, and a short veil hanging down and sup- ported by her left hand, while in her right she holds a written vol. i. 30 466 THE LIFE OF GREECE. scroll. Her little daughter a figure of the most delicate and touching beauty stands at her knees, and gazes with child- ish curiosity into the scroll, which may be a missive commend- ing the departed spirit to the deities of the other world. On one side is a servant, with an open box containing offerings. On the lintel above is inscribed, in letters elegantly cut, the name Phrasicleia. The beauty and touching expression of the group, and the exquisite design and execution of the sculp- ture, prove it to belong to the best days of Athenian art ; while the wealth and refinement indicated by the general char- acter of the monument, and the particular objects represented on it, seem to show that the lady whom it was intended to commemorate belonged to some distinguished Athenian family. But this monument tells us all we know of her history. Her name nowhere else occurs. The imagination alone can supply the story of her life, following her into the privacy of the do- mestic scene adorned by her beauty and modest virtues, and saddened by her early death. We see her presiding grace- fully over the household of her husband, directing the labor of her dependents, sharing in the religious ceremonies assigned to her rank and sex, and setting an illustrious example of wise reserve, economy, elegance, purity, and piety, to the fair child who is so soon to mourn her loss. We watch over her anxiously during her illness ; but even Hippocrates cannot avail to snatch her from the tomb. Her delicate form sinks under a rapid consumption ; she breathes her gentle life away, in the midst of her family. No hired mourners here are needed to add a fictitious sorrow to the bitter realities of bereaved affection. Breaking hearts follow her as she is borne from the house she has blessed, clad in white, and crowned with the freshest flowers of spring. She is committed to the earth, which has never held a more sacred trust ; and her name and form are chiselled in the undying marble, by the noblest ar- tists of a noble age. Is this the fair young bride of Ischo- machus, the friend of Socrates, whose simple virtues were re- corded by Xenophon, and whose lovely form still remains for FUNERAL RITES AND MONUMENTS. 467 us to gaze upon, while her soft and melancholy countenance looks sadly away from the daughter at her knee, the child God has given her, as if she would tell but her marble lips cannot the story of her life ? After the burial, sacrifices were offered, r the first on the third day, and the principal one on the ninth, when the formal feast for the dead took place. The usual period of mourning was thirty days ; and the outward manifestation of grief consist- ed in laying aside the ordinary dress, wearing a black himation, and cutting off the hair. Places of amusement were scrupu- lously avoided, and the graves were piously cared for by the survivors. The neglect of the graves of ancestors was regarded at Athens as a disqualification for office, and was a subject of express scrutiny at the examination of the candidates. Offer- ings were made, and chaplets suspended on the monuments, at stated times ; the birthday of the deceased and the anniver- sary of his death were held in remembrance ; and frequent visits to the grave were supposed to be grateful to the departed spirit. Over the remains of those who fell fighting for their country a public service was held, and a eulogy pronounced by some distinguished orator. After the disastrous battle of Chaeroneia, Demosthenes was appointed by his countrymen to discharge this sad office ; and the funeral feast, as he himself states, was held at his house. There is a funeral oration of Lysias, pronounced over some Athenian soldiers who fell at Corinth. But the most noted illustration of this fitting and patriotic observance is the oration of Pericles, delivered at the funeral of those who had fallen in the first year of the Pelo- ponnesian war, as recorded in Thucydides. " In the same winter," says the historian, " they publicly celebrated the burial-honors of those who had first fallen in this war. They vere attended by citizens and strangers ; and the women be- longing to the families of the dead were present as mourners. The interment was in the most beautiful suburb of the city, where all those who fell in battle are buried, except the heroes of Marathon, whose valor, pre-eminent above that of 468 THE LIFE OF GREECE. all others, was honored by sepulture on the spot where they died. Pericles, the son of Xanthippus, was the orator on the present occasion. Leaving the tomb, he ascended an elevated platform, so that he might be heard as far as possible by the multitude, and spoke as follows." The discourse, as reported by Thucydides, is one of the most condensed and forcible pieces of ancient eloquence. It is by no means limited to the eulogy of the dead, but is a most able exposition of the Constitution of Athens, and the modes of her social life, as contrasted with those of Sparta. The topics were chosen with admirable felicity ; for the struggle for life and death between the opposite principles of the two systems had just commenced, and the Athenians needed every argument and encouragement to meet the dangers of so appall- ing a crisis. He holds up before their eyes the fair picture of a country entitled to the love of its citizens, and worthy to be defended at the hazard of life. He points out the merits of her institutions, and the glorious distinctions they secure to the people. For such a country the heroes of past ages laid down their lives, and are held in everlasting remembrance. For of illustrious men the whole earth is the sepulchre ; signalized not only by the inscription on the column in their native land, but, in lands not their own, by the unwritten memory which dwells with every man. " Emulous of men like these," says he, turning to the young Athenians, " do you also, placing your happiness in liberty, and your liberty in courage, shrink from no warlike dangers in defence of your country." Webster, quoting from this oration of Pericles, exclaims, in a spirit kin- dred to that of the great Athenian statesman : "Is it Athens or America ? Is Athens or America the theme of these im- mortal strains ? Was Pericles speaking of his own country, aa he saw it or knew it ? or was he gazing upon a bright vision then two thousand years before him, which we see in reality as he saw it in prospect ? " I have dwelt upon this oration for a few moments, because it presents a highly characteristic scene of Hellenic life and death. BELIEF CONCERNING A FUTURE LIFE. 4t59 The ideas of the people as to the abode and condition of de- parted spirits were neither clear nor consistent. In the won- derful and mysterious passage of the Odyssey where Odysseus visits the shades, the ghost of Achilles presents a dismal picture of discontent and misery. The most loathed life on earth he would prefer to the gloomy nothingness of his state in Hades. He would rather be the meanest slave of the hardest task- master than king of the miserable dead. So far is he from sharing in the oft-quoted sentiment, " Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." But in the process of time and of in- tellectual culture, more cheering and gladsome prospects en- livened the dark journey which all must take. Pleasant Ely- sian fields, the islands of the blessed, the company of the just and good, and occupations resembling the most dignified pur- suits of earth, presented themselves to the imaginations of men, who grasped at the most fleeting shadows for consolation, when they " left the warm precincts of the cheerful day," to fread the dark unknown. The mysteries were a source of faith and hope to the initiated, as are the churches of modern times. Secret doctrines, regarded as holy, and to be kept with invio- lable fidelity, were handed down in these brotherhoods, and no doubt were fondly believed to contain a saving grace by those who were admitted, amidst solemn and imposing rites, undei the veil of midnight, to hear the tenets of the ancient faith, and the promises of blessings to come to those who, with sincerity of heart and pious trust, took the obligations upon 'ihem. The Eleusinian mysteries were the most imposing and ven- erable. Their origin extended back into a mythical antiquity, and they were among the few forms of Greek worship which were under the superintendence of hereditary priesthoods. Thirlwall thinks, that ** they were the remains of a worship which preceded the rise of the Hellenic mythology and its attendant rites, grounded on a view of Nature less fanciful, more earnest, and better fitted to awaken both philosophical thought and religious feeling." This conclusion is still furthej 470 THE LIFE OF GREECE. confirmed by the moral and religious tone of the poets, such as jEschylus, whose ideas on justice, sin, and retribution are as solemn and elevated as those of a Hebrew prophet. The secrets, whatever they were, were never revealed in express terms ; but Isocrates uses some remarkable expressions, when speaking of their importance to the condition of man. " Those who are initiated," says he, " entertain sweeter hopes of eter- nal life " ; and how could this be the case, unless there were imparted at Eleusis the doctrine of eternal life, and some idea of its state and circumstances more compatible with an ele- vated conception of the Deity and of the human soul than the vague and shadowy images which haunted the popular mind ? The Eleusinian communion embraced the most eminent men from every part of Greece, statesmen, poets, philosophers, and generals ; and when Greece became a part of the Roman empire, the greatest minds of Rome drew instruction and con- solation from its doctrines. The ceremonies of initiation which took place every year in the early autumn, a beautiful season in Attica were a splendid ritual, attracting visitors from every part of the world. The processions moving from Athens to Eleusis over the Sa- cred Way sometimes numbered twenty or thirty thousand people, and the exciting scenes were well calculated to leave a durable impression on susceptible minds. Purifications, sac- rifices, the oath of secrecy, the mystagogue leading the rev- erend company, in the darkness of the night, into the lighted interior of the temple, to behold the awful sights and hear the awful sounds never to be repeated to the profane world with- out, were part of the machinery by which the influence of the doctrines was more deeply stamped on the heart, through the imagination. The formula of the dismissal, after the initia- tion was over, consisted in the mysterious words, konx, ompax ; and this is the only Eleusinian secret that has illuminated the world from the recesses of the temple of Demeter and Per- sephone. But it is a striking illustration of the value attached to these rites and doctrines, that, in moments of extremest peril, WILLS. 471 as of impending shipwreck, or massacre by a victorious enemy, men asked one another, "Are you initiated?" as if this were the anchor of their hopes for another life. Before the final scene, the departure from life, it was the citizen's duty to dispose of his worldly goods under the so- lemnities of the law. The arrangements of the funeral, also, were sometimes minutely determined by the testator. The will was drawn up in due form, either by the person lum- self, or by some friend, folded carefully, sealed, and in the presence of witnesses deposited in the hands of a confidential associate or adviser. Immediately after the death of the tes- tator, the document was produced by the individual having it in charge, and in the presence of the family, and of those who had witnessed its deposit, opened and read. The fact of its deposit was all to which they could then testify ; but after hearing it read, they set their seals to it, in attestation of its contents. The document usually commenced with the for- mula, earai fiev ev, "It shall be well," and proceeded di- rectly to describe and dispose of the various items of property. As the wills of several persons are preserved in the Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius, the best illustration of this topic will be to read one of the shortest. " Plato," says that writer, "was buried in the Academy, where he had passed the greater part of his life in the pursuit of philosophy, whence his school was called the Academic. His funeral was attended by a large body of friends and disciples ; and his will was as follows : ' Plato hath left this property, and thus disposed of it. The farm in Hephaestiadae, next to which on the north is the road from the temple in Cephissia, on the south the temple of Her- cules in Hephaestiadae, on the east Archestratus the Phrearian, on the west Philippus the Chollidian, this farm shall neither be sold nor alienated, but is to remain the property of my son Adeimantus, as far as possible. Also the farm of Eroiadae, which I bought of Callimachus, bounded on the north by Eurymedon the Myrrhinusian, on the south by Demostratus the Xypetian, on the east by Eurymedon the Myrrhinusian, on 472 THE LIFE OF GREECE. the west by the Cephissus ; also, three minse of silver ; a silver goblet, weighing one hundred and sixty- five drachmae ; a cup, weighing forty-five ; a gold ring and a gold ear-ring, together worth forty drachmas and three obols. Eucleides, the stone- cutter, owes me three minas. To Artemis I give her free- dom. I leave the following slaves, Tycho, Bictas, Apollo- niades, Dionysius. The furniture is enumerated in the sched- ule of which Demetrius has a copy. I owe no man anything. Executors : Sosthenes, Speusippus, Demetrius, Hegias, Eury- medon, Callimachus, Thrasippus.' " The document is a very simple one ; and it is a comfort, while reading it, to know that a philosopher in those days was so well off. I am afraid there are not many teachers of philosophy, or of anything else, now, whose last will and testament would make so goodly a show of farms, cash, goblets, rings, and money due him, with the re- markable clause, " I owe no man anything," for which the memory of Plato ought to be blessed forevennore. LECTURE XI. GOVERNMENT. Hippocrates, in his treatise on Airs, Waters, and Places, says: "A climate which is always the same induces indolence ; but a changeable climate, laborious exertions both of body and mind. From rest and indolence cowardice is engendered ; and from laborious exertions and pains, courage. On this account the inhabitants of Europe are more warlike than the Asiatics ; and also owing to their institutions, because they are not gov- erned by kings, like the latter ; for where men are gov- erned by kings, there they must be very cowardly ; for their souls are enslaved, and they will not willingly or readily un- dergo dangers in order to promote the power of another ; but those that are free undertake dangers on their own account, and not for the sake of others ; they court hazard and go out to meet it, for they themselves bear off the rewards of victory, and thus their institutions contribute not a little to their cour- age." The contrast between the Asiatic and the European character, and the causes especially the climatic and politi- cal which produced it, were noticed by other great men among the ancients, especially by Aristotle, whose searching intellect nothing could elude. This diversity of political expe- rience, whether traceable to the sources referred to by Hip- pocrates, or to an origin lying deeper in the European consti- tution as it came from the hand of the Creator, brings to view one of the most curious and important aspects of the life of Greece, and perhaps that of all the most useful to be studied by the men of our times. We have already seen chat the governments of the heroic 474 THE LIFE OF GREECE. age were nearly alike all over Greece. The elements of political society were the princely houses, holding hereditary power ; a nobility ; the freemen, who constituted the popular body; and the slaves, even then numerous. Time brought with it revolutions, which introduced changes in the forms and functionaries of government, more or less complete in different parts of Greece. The sharper distinctions of race were not without their influence ; and innumerable local peculiarities stamped themselves on civil institutions too deeply to be mis- taken. The Dorians were the most conservative ; the Ionians, the most progressive. In Sparta, the former substituted for the heroic monarchy the double rule of the Heracleid kings, re- strained by the supervision of a council chosen for life, and of the five ephors, an elective magistracy, as well as by a popular assembly, which possessed a considerable amount of legislative power. The latter, in Athens, passed through a long series of political revolutions, from -the monarchy to the archonship for life, for ten years, and for one year, and from one archon to nine, with powers distributed among them. Then succeeded the short-lived legislation of Draco, which fell by its inherent unfitness for the condition and wants of men. The constitu- tion of Solon came next, and furnished the basis for the future greatness and glory of the Athenian commonwealth. Several organic changes were soon introduced by Cleisthenes, a popu- lar leader, by which the range of citizenship was enlarged ; but the elements of the government remained so nearly the same, that the constitution was always called by the name of Solon, who was reverenced, under all the subsequent forms, as the founder of the republic. The Greek writers divide governments into classes, according to the prevailing principles of their constitutions. The simplest classification is that of ^Eschines, who includes all forms of government under the three heads of monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy, the two former being administered accord- ing to the character of the rulers, the latter by enacted laws But it is evident that such a government as that of Sparta GOVERNMENT. 475 would hardly come within either of these descriptions, since it combines in certain proportions the elements of all three ; and it is therefore justly called by Aristotle a mixed government. In surveying the scene of Grecian politics, we notice several very prominent characteristics, the first of which is the variety of the constitutions ; the next, the passion for autonomy ^ or state independence ; and the third, the predominance of single cit- ies, as representing states or combinations of states. In polit- ical life, as in everything else, there was a universal Grecian character, which distinguished all Hellas ; while there was such diversity, such contrast, such opposition among the cities, that it seems absurd to consider the Hellenes a single nation. They were united by panegyreis, or festal communions, which, however important in relation to art, commerce, and social life, had but little connection with politics. Again, they were united by amphictyoneis, or confederacies with a common coun- cil, composed of representatives from the confederated states. Of these the Amphictyonic Council, which assembled every six months, alternately at Delphi and at ThermopylaB, is the most important in an historical point of view. But in these confed- eracies though they sometimes interfered with effect to en- force the principles of international law there was nothing of the nature of a common government. The members might assemble, and pass a decree, for example, that a force should be raised for a special purpose at such a time ; but they had little or no power of compelling the several states to furnish their contingents, unless the conduct of the whole business was placed in the hands of some powerful prince, like Philip of Macedon, who had the resources of a kingdom at his command. Another bond of union consisted in the interchange between the states of mutual hospitalities, and of civil rights, such as the right of intermarriage and that of owning property. But each of these forms of relation or union, and all of them together, fell short of a common central government, clothed by a nation with the power of making ^ws and enforcing them. Here was the element of weakness, which led to the exhau?tion of 476 THE LIFE OF GREECE. frequent wars, and the final overthrow of Hellenic freedom, first under the Macedonian monarch, and afterward by the Roman armies. Each little community claimed the sovereign right of regulating its own affairs, and of treating with every other on the footing of absolute equality, with no supreme head, and no controlling authority, except the principles of international law as discussed by the heralds and ambassadors, through whom their intercourse with one another was carried on. Every city, therefore, had its constitution ; and from this state of things we readily understand and credit the assertion that Aristotle had studied more than two hundred constitutions before he wrote his work on Polity. The seeds of division were planted by the predominance of the city over the coun- try; by extensive migrations, which severed the ties of blood and nativity ; by jarring local interests ; by conflicting systems, as those of democracy, oligarchy, and tyranny ; and, finally, by the formation of rival confederacies, on an extensive scale. Before the Persian wars, Sparta took a leading part in the affairs of Greece. The close of the Persian wars left Athens a maritime power, thus giving her the leadership ; and from that period to the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, the states of Greece i-anged themselves under these two imperial capitals, as the chief representatives of two systems of government and two contrasted races. At the close of the Peloponnesian war, Sparta was for a time the controlling power of Greece ; but Athens soon regained a portion of her former influence, and began again to compete with her ancient rival. For a brief pe- riod, under the energetic leading of Pelopidas and Epaminon- das, Thebes asserted her claims to the headship ; so that three powers were striving, with mutual jealousy and hate, to hold the mastery in their hands. When Philip of Macedon com- menced his ambitious career, this condition of things in Greece facilitated the schemes of universal empire which his active, able, and grasping spirit led him to form, and at the sama time magnified the difficulties with which the supporters of national independence in the several states had to contend GOVERNMENT. 477 The moment the designs of Philip were understood, the only hope of safety lay in a close union of the Grecian common- wealths, under a common government, or at least a common congress ; and this was the policy urged with unfaltering energy and matchless ability by Demosthenes. But Philip's gold corrupted many of the popular leaders ; others could not be convinced of the imminency of the danger ; others still, and perhaps this was the most fatal symptom of all, like Phocion the incorruptible, and the somewhat timid Isocrates, either from the deep discouragement inspired by the public vices of the times, or from a doubt of the possibility or expedi- ency of resistance, opposed the measures of Demosthenes, tied his hands, and crippled his strength. All these causes com- bined led to the final downfall of the Grecian states, and the establishment of the Macedonian power over their ruins. In the states themselves, especially in the democracies, the warfare of contending parties was fierce and incessant ; and the struggles springing from it often resulted, not in the peaceable retirement of the defeated, and the assumption of power by the victors, but in the banishment or death of the heads of the un- successful party. A constitutional opposition scarcely entered the thoughts of the ancients. On all these points the details are endless, and most instructive to the citizen of a modern re- public. The political evils existing in the world around them led philosophic minds into speculation upon the means of avoid- ing or removing them. The violence of parties, the influ- ence of demagogues, the oppressions exercised by the rabbl over the great and good men who incurred their displeasure, the insecurity of property, and the perpetual agitations of soci- ety, discouraged and disheartened them. Xenophon was an ad- mirer and an advocate of Spartan discipline. Plato looked with distrust on the popular courts, which he stigmatized as mobs. In his Republic he shadows forth a constitution of society, by which he seems to tnink the evils that afflicted humanity under existing institutions might be cured ; but the cure, so much 478 THE LIFE OF GREECE. worse than the disease, is a sad proof how little the most bril- .iant genius and the most profound learning avail in dealing with human affairs on a priori grounds, setting aside the lights of experience. The disbanding of the family ; the absolute subjection of the individual to the state ; the consequent abo- lition of marriage and overthrow of the relations growing out of it ; the division of the community into classes founded upon a theoretical analogy between the appetites and faculties of man on the one part, and the functions of the state on the other, the reason in man corresponding to the ruling power in the state, the anger to the military, the appetites to the body of the people, these things make us doubt the wisdom of in- trusting a merely speculative philosopher with the affairs of government. It is true, the work contains numerous passages of the grandest moral eloquence ; admirable ideas on the education both of men and of women ; thoughts on the nature of law, which have their eternal application to the condition of mankind ; discussions on justice, which perhaps have never been surpassed ; but all this wisdom failed when the author came to construct on paper his working-model of a republic. He anticipates every one of the ideas of modern socialists, clothing them, however, in an elegance of form, which the plagiarists, beginning with St. Simon and ending with the phalansterian pedants of our day and land, have been utterly unable to copy. Aristotle had nothing of the eloquence and fervor which be^ longed to Plato, whose discourses he had heard at the Acad emy ; but he had the most capacious intellect and piercing reason that have ever yet appeared on earth. His insatiable eagerness for knowledge gained for him the title of the Reader, in the cultivated circles of Athens. He was appointed by Philip to educate the young prince, afterwards known as Alex- ander the Great. The enlightened views of commerce, civil- ization, and literature, which so honorably distinguish Alexan- der from the vulgar herd of conquerors, were doubtless owing to the teachings of the philosopher of Stagira ; pity that he ivas not able to reason his royal pupil into sound views of right GOVERNMENT. 47 sousness, temperance, and judgment to come. Wherever the monarch marched, the Iliad of Homer, prepared by Aristotle, was his companion, Greek culture followed his footsteps, and civilization found a home. The objects of natural history were collected, without reference to cost, and sent to his tutor, then in Athens, and lecturing at the Lyceum, on the banks of the Ilissus. Those collections furnished the materials of his woik on the History of Animals, which to this day is a manual in the hands of the student of science, and which anticipates the four great divisions of the animal kingdom demonstrated by Cuvier and Agassiz. Let me add, as an illustrious example of en- lightened liberality, that Alexander sent eight hundred talents, or more than a million of dollars, to carry out the scientific projects and researches of the Lyceum. Here Aristotle passed many years of his laborious life, discoursing to crowds of emi- nent persons and loving pupils on physical science, on logic, which he commenced and perfected, on metaphysics, some de- partments of which have not advanced since his day, on rhetoric, poetry, and politics. Plato was more imaginative, and soared to sublimer heights of ethical and religious speculation. In morals he was Christian, before Christianity. With him justice was the law of the universe and the voice of God. Aristotle, with a style somewhat dry and precise, was a keener observer of na- ture, and a surer judge of practical ethics, political questions, and constitutional systems. The range of his positive knowl- edge was vastly greater, being coextensive with the literature and the science of his times. Plato ascended on the wings of speculation to the highest empyrean of thought ; but Aristotle had a firmer foothold on the solid earth. His work on Polity, or Government, has been thought by the greatest masters of this science to have exhausted the sub- ject. In style it is somewhat formal, and severely logical and exact. He is sparing of words, sometimes too much so for the comfort of the reader. But no man can study it even now without surprise at the knowledge, sagacity, and wisdom of its author. In his criticism of the defects and errors of govern- 180 THE LIFE OF GREECiS. ments, he not only expounds the past of his own time, but deals prophetically with what was then in the future ; and a large part of his principles and comments are as applicable now as they were three-and-twenty centuries ago. He maintains that the legitimate object of government is not to increase the wealth of the few, nor to favor the poor at the expense of the rich, nor to encourage mere equality ; nor is it established for mutual defence alone, nor for the promotion of trade and com- merce only, nor for any other exclusively material purpose ; but its greatest and highest aim is, to make virtuous and good citizens, to promote the happiness arising from blamelessness of life, to lead to the perfecting of man's social and moral nature, and to encourage those great and noble deeds that dignify and adorn one's country. Those, therefore, who can most contrib- ute to these results have the best title to a share in the gov- ernment. The object of all good government is the pursuit of the common welfare. Tyranny is the corruption of monarchy, oligarchy of aristocracy, and democracy of a republic ; for tyr- anny is monarchy looking only to the interest of the monarch, oligarchy regards the interests of the rich alone, and democ- racy cares only for the interest of the poor : neither consult- ing the good of the whole. The number of citizens invested with the governing power in a state ought to be sufficient to insure all the purposes of security and well-being for which society was founded. Differing fundamentally from Plato, he makes the family the institution first in order, and growing out of daily exigencies the basis of the state ; next, the vil- lage ; next, a collection of villages, or a commonwealth ; so that the same necessity of our nature that leads to association produces government, and man is just as much formed by nature for a state of political society, as he is for the simplest bonds of union, those of the family and the village. But all systems of communism he rejects as impracticable and absurd, except in some specific cases, under particular forms of admin- jstration, in which, though the property should be private, the use of it may be public. One of the reasons why he reject? GOVERNMENT. 48] communism is remarkable. " To give pleasure and aid to frierds, guests, or companions, is the greatest of delights ; and this belongs to private, individual property." Marriage he recognizes as a divine institution, designed not only for utility, but for happiness. He discerns the plan of Providence in the characteristics of the sexes which fit them for their different careers in life, the nature of each being foreordained by God, and pointing to the union of both for their mutual hap- piness. He has made the one stronger, for protection and de- fence ; the other weaker, for watchfulness : the one for active life out of doors, the other for quiet domestic occupations ; the one to support the rising family, the other to nurture and educate it. In another work, the History* of Animals, it is true, he admits that there are some men who have the quali- ties of women, and some women who have the loud voice of men, and can vie with them in physical strength ; and he adds, by way of illustration, that it has been observed that some hens take it upon themselves to crow, and so far unsex themselves as to come off victorious in cock-fighting. The duties of practical statesmanship are thus forcibly summed up. " The statesman is not always able to adopt the measure which appears to his judgment to be clearly the best, but is obliged to put up with that which circumstances enable him to carry ; and he is bound to look, not to the pres- ent only, but to the stability and duration of his country's in- stitutions. He must observe what is fitting for men in general, and not stand out for what is theoretically the best ; he must aim at what is possible and acceptable, and not follow the example of those who are never content but with some fancied perfection. It is not an easier matter to renovate a constitu- tion than to found one." On the best government he says : " What is morally true of individuals is also true of a govern- ment ; for a government represents the moral life of a commu- nity. Accordingly, as in all states there are three great divis- ons, the very rich, the very poor, and the middle classes, and as it is admitted that a happy mediocrity is the thing most VOL. I. 31 482 THE LIFE OF GREECE. to be desired, it is evident that the best condition of society is that in which the middle classes most abound ; for of all classes they are the most likely to be governed by calm reason. But the two extremes of society the very wealthy and the very powerful on the one hand, and on the other, the necessitous, weak, ignorant, and base are with difficulty brought to sub- mit to reason. The former are overbearing, and wicked on a great scale ; the latter are mischievous, and wicked in a small way. A state composed of these two extremes may be said t< consist of tyrants and slaves. The latter know not how t< rule, but must submit to despotic authority ; the former kno\" not how to obey, but will exercise a tyrannical sway over tht rest That state will be best conducted which is com posed, as far as possible, of those whom we call its main stay. For they neither covet what does not belong to them, nor are they exposed to envy; and being neither the objects nor the authors of aggression, their position is secure. Wherefore Phocylides the poet wisely prayed : ' Happiest are they who walk the middle path ; - That middle path grant me in the state.' " Aristotle saw with unerring glance the dangers that beset popular governments. " The insolence of demagogues," sayt he, "is generally the cause of ruin in democracies. First, they calumniate the wealthy, and rouse them against the govern- nent, thus causing opposite parties to unite against a common danger. Next, they produce the same result by stirring up the populace and creating a sense of insecurity. Nearly all the tyrants of old began with being demagogues In well- balanced commonwealths, besides the strict observance of es- tablished laws, it is especially necessary to keep a close watch upon little matters. For a great change in the laws may creep on gradually, just as a small expense often incuned ruins a large fortune Next, let men be on their guard against those who flatter and mislead the multitude ; their actions prove what sort of men they are Of the tyrant, spies and informers are the principal instruments War is his favor* GOVERNMENT. 48d* ite occupation, for the sake of engrossing the attention of the people, and making himself necessary to them as their leader. An unbridled democracy is exactly similar to a tyranny. Its objects and instruments are the worst, and both are equally served by the tamest of mankind. It is always anxious to loi-v it as a sovereign : it therefore has its flatterers in the shape of demagogues. Ancient customs must be done away with ; an- cient ties, civil and sacred, must be broken ; everything must be changed according to new and false theories ; and the result is, an assimilation of democratic to tyrannical government, in its habits and modes of action." In a remarkable passage on the functions of legislation, he says : " There are two parts of our nature, the higher and the lower. The latter seems to subsist for the sake of the former, and in order, under right direction, to be instrumental to its development. The arts minister to and aid the reason. Labor and business are under- taken for the sake of leisure ; war, for the sake of peace ; the most necessary and useful things, for the sake of leading to the most beautiful. The legislator, therefore, embracing all these in his consideration, should have regard not to the inferior arts and results alone, but to the highest ends and objects of our existence. Business and war are right in their turn ; but far better are peace and leisure. The things necessary and useful to our daily life are to be attended to ; but even more, the true, the beautiful, and the honorable The military virtues should be regarded chiefly as the means of maintaining peace ; and peace and leisure should be made fruitful by the devotion of men's minds to justice and temperance, philosophy and wisdom, in which alone, and not in idle and luxurious enjoyment, true happiness consists." I close these abstracts of doctrine from the Polity of this great philosopher with a condensed view of his ideas on edu- cation. " In childhood and in the earliest period of educa- tion, have more care for the health of the body than for tin wind, and for the moral character than for the intellectual. Let nothing base or servile, vulgar or disgraceful, meet the 484 THE LIFE OF GREECE. eye or assail the ear of the young ; for from words to actions is but a step. Let their earliest and first impressions of all things be the best. Let them be taught fully all the es- sential elements of education, and as much of what is useful in a merely mechanical point of view as will have the effect of rendering the body, the soul, and the intellectual powers capable of arriving at the highest excellence of their respect- ive natures. A too exclusive devotion to some of the mere mechanical arts is apt to injure the bodily faculties, and to depress the mind by unduly absorbing it. Therefore let not only those things be learned which are the usual instru- ments of instruction, but those which, like the fine arts, teach us how to enjoy and embellish leisure. The merely useful or absolutely necessary matters of education are not the only ones that deserve attention ; but to those should be added such as exalt and expand the mind, and convey a sense of what is beautiful and noble. For to be looking every- where to the merely useful, is little fitted to form an elevated character or a liberal mind." Great and generous sentiments these, which, if adopted in the government of a state and the education of its children, would most assuredly render it im- mortal. How far did any ancient constitution come up to this stand- ard of the most practical mind of antiquity? Many of the faults and errors of government which Aristotle blames cer- tainly existed in the Constitution of Athens, which I proceed to sketch in outline, as it worked during the historical times, without noticing particularly the changes and adaptations it underwent from period to period. Madame de Stael, in her lively manner, said to Sir James Mackintosh, " Tell me all about the British Constitution in ten words." I shall try to do the same with the Constitution of Athens ; for in Athens the chief interest concentrates, in this as in so many other regards. I must leave out of the view the numerous boards appointed to transact city or local business, to examine the qxialifications of candidates for office, to audit their accounts GOVERNMENT. 485 on leaving office, and to conduct the administration of the rev- enue, a very interesting and instructive subject, admirably illustrated by Boeckh, but not belonging to the mere outline of the government now proposed. The details of police must also be omitted. The people of Attica, as we have seen on the authority of Thucydides, had been from the earliest times less dis- turbed than other parts of Greece by great immigrations and the inroads of invaders, the lightness of the soil and the hilly character of so large a portion of the territory present- ing fewer attractions to the wandering hordes from the north. The plains, however, especially that in which stood the city of Athens, watered by the Cephissus and the Ilissus, became rich and beautiful under the refining hand of Attic industry and taste. In the midst of this plain rose the rocky hill around which the town was formed, and on which were built the Parthenon, the Erechtheium, and the Propylaea. This was virtually the focus of Hellenic art and religion, crowded not only with temples, but with altars and innumerable stat- ues. On the southern side were the great Dionysiac Theatre and the Odeium of Pericles ; on the west, the Temple of Victory, and the magnificent entrance, up which the great Panathenaic procession wound its way with the sacred peplos of Athene, wrought by the fairest hands in Athens. Just below lay the Agora, with its bustling scenes of commerce, statues of the Eponymic heroes, galleries, and courts of law ; beyond rose the Pnyx, the place of popular assembly ; on the north, the Areopagus, the Temple of the Eumenides, and Co- lonus, the birthplace of Sophocles ; on the east and northeast, at a short distance, those immortal hills, Hymettus and Pen- telicus. The city was joined to the port of Peirseus by the Long Walls. The Athenian government was founded on a territorial di- vision into ten tribes, named after ten of the ancient heroes, and a subdivision into demoi, or districts, at first one hundred in number, but afterwards increased to one hundred and sev- 486 THE LIFE OF GREECE. enty-four. These were named from the chief towns in them, as Marathon, Eleusis ; or from the names of leading families or clans, as Daedalidse, Boutadae, and the like. Each demos and each tribe, like our towns and counties, had its municipal organization, with religious rites, festivals, property, taxes, and officers of various kinds to execute the local laws and regula- tions. In designating a citizen, it was customary, at least in all formal documents, to affix the name of the demos to which he belonged, as well as his father's name, as Demosthenes, the son of Demosthenes, the Paeanian. Notwithstanding the character of the soil of Attica, it was the most populous region in Greece, on account of its indus- try and extended commerce. It is one of the most difficult problems of antiquarian science to ascertain definitely the pop- ulation of a city or country at any particular epoch. The number of the citizens of Athens who shared in the public affairs is usually stated as between twenty and thirty thou- sand. Boeckh, in his excellent work on the Public Economy of the Athenians, after examining all the facts, and the con- clusions drawn from them by others, rates the entire population of Attica men, women, children, and slaves at five hun- dred thousand, as a probable average. The ratio of the free population to the slaves was about one to three. Slaves were more humanely treated in Athens than in any other part of Greece. Aristotle recognizes them as property, indeed; but he adds that they are also persons, having rights not to be violated. They were brought into the Athenian market from Thrace, Lydia, Phrygia, and other parts of Asia, and even from Africa. The highest price mentioned as paid for one was a talent, or about eleven hundred dollars ; but prices varied from this to ten dollars. Government slaves were mostly prisoners of war. In Athens slaves were subjected to vexatious restrictions with regard to dress and ways of life, and they might be put to the torture as witnesses in law cases ; but they were also under the protection of the law, and could prosecute their masters for assault and battery. GOVEKNMENT. 487 Hyperides, as quoted by Athenaeus, says, " Our laws make no distinction in this respect between freemen and slaves; they grant to all alike the privilege of bringing an action against those who insult or injure them." The Constitution provided that slaves might purchase their own freedom so soon as, by the prudent management of the private property secured to them by law, they were able to pay their master a fair price for the loss of their services. Almost every citizen owned slaves ; the wealthier classes, a large number. Plato says that a citizen often owned fifty. The father of Demos- thenes owned more than fifty ; Hipponicus had six hundred ; and Nicias had a thousand working in the mines alone. It belongs to the very nature of the servile condition, that those who are its victims have no part or lot in the administra- tion of the government. By Solon's Constitution, the rights of citizenship depended on property ; and a numerous class of the poorest freemen, as well as the slaves, were excluded from the political franchise. But the democratic element gained strength, and the basis of citizenship was enlarged, until every free-born Athenian, of the legal age, and not disqualified by crime, had his full share in the government of the state. The official persons were appointed by lot or election ; it being as- sumed that every man who enjoyed the legal rights of citizen- ship was qualified in other respects to discharge the duties of any office. To this, however, there were some exceptions. Nine magistrates were annually elected, under the title of Archons. One, the head of the board, was called the Epony- mus, and the acts and events of the year ran in his name ; the second was styled the King Archon ; the third was named the Polemarch, because originally his duties related to the depart- ment of war ; and the last six were the Thesmothetae, so called in reference to the annual revision of the laws. These officers were the official heads of the state, so far as the state had an)' head at all. The legislative bodies were, first, the Boule, 01 Senate of Five Hundred, fifty being annually drawn by lot from each tribe, among persons not under thirty years of age, 488 THE LIFE OF GREECE. and in all respects of honorable standing as citizens ; and, sec- ondly, the JUcclesia, or popular assembly, which all citizens of legal age eighteen or twenty were entitled to attend. Every subject of domestic and foreign policy was discussed and determined by these two bodies, the latter of which met three or perhaps four times every month, besides being calleo together by special notice on sudden or very important emer- gencies. The Senate had the initiative in every measure. A bill which had passed that body was called a probouleuma, or preliminary decree ; and having passed the lower body, it be- came a psephisma, or law. Negotiations with foreign states were carried on by the popular assembly, not through resident ministers, but through ambassadors sent whenever the occasion called for such a mission. As the salaries of foreign ministers have lately become an interesting subject of debate, it may be mentioned that the ministers of Athens received an appro- priation of two shillings a day for the whole period of their absence. The consequence was, that they transacted the business as quickly as possible. But the example is not to be recommended. Public advocates corresponding to our attorney-general received a shilling a day ; a member of the Assembly, nine cents ; a Senator, a shilling. The administration of justice was assigned to several classes of courts. The highest, the Areopagus, was made up of the ex-archons who had honorably discharged the duties of their office. This court and the Senate were regarded by Solon as the elements of stability in the Constitution, " on which the state, riding as upon anchors, might be less tossed by storms." Two courts of arbitrators, consisting of citizens who had reached the middle period of life, forty or fifty years of age, determined a great variety of civil actions, without recourse to the ordinary tribunals. There were many other courts, before which various classes of actions relating to mu- nicipal, civil, and military affairs were brought. Sometimes the collective body of the people resolved themselves into a tri- bunal, and proceeded to try a special case, or to refer it, after GOVERNMENT. 489 a preliminary inquiry, to one of the regular courts. But thb great mass of the legal business at Athens was transacted by the dicasts, or jurymen, of the Heliastic courts, of which there were ten in number, corresponding to the ten tribes. Out of those members of the several tribes who were thirty years of age and upwards, and who possessed all the rights of citizen- ship, five thousand were* annually drawn by lot, under the su- perintendence of the archons and their secretary ; and to these were added a thousand supernumeraries, making the whole number six thousand. A single jury, numbering five hun dred, usually constituted a court ; but sometimes, when the cause appeared to be of great public interest and importance, two or three were united ; so that the number of dicasts sitting in a single case might vary from a quorum of less than three hundred to a thousand or fifteen hundred. Each case was en- tered with one of the archons, or some other magistrate, whose jurisdiction was fixed by law ; and he prepared it for trial by the court. This magistrate was said to have the hegemony, or leadership of the court, because he not only took preliminary charge of the case, but presided at the trial. His functions, however, bore no resemblance to those of the modern judge. He merely determined, in the first instance, whether there was any ground for action ; and if there was, officiated as president, maintaining order, and putting the question to vote when the pleadings were over. The courts were ready for business except on festival days and the days of assembly meetings. The oath administered to each dicast before taking his seat is given by Demosthenes, in the oration against Timocrates. " I will vote according to the laws and the decrees of the people of Athens, and of the Sen- ate of the Five Hundred, and I will not vote for a tyrant, or an oligarchy ; and if any one should attempt to overthrow the popular Constitution of Athens, or should speak or vote ad- versely to its principles, I will not support him. I will not vote for the repudiation of private debts, nor for a division of the land of the Athenians, nor of their houses. I will not re- 490 THE LIFE OF GREECE. store the exiles, nor those against whom sentence of death has oeen passed, nor will I exile those who remain, contrary to the existing laws, and the decrees of the people and of the Senate of the Five Hundred. I will neither do these things myself, nor will I permit them in another. Nor will I establish an office to be held by one who has not rendered account of a pre- vious office ; . . . . and the same man shall not hold the same office twice, nor two offices in the same year. I will not re- ceive bribes on account of the court, nor shall another in my behalf, nor shall others with my knowledge, on any ground or pretext whatsoever. I am not less than thirty years of age. I will hear both the accuser and the defendant impartially, and will so decide on the matter of the prosecution. I invoke Zeus, Poseidon, Demeter. I imprecate destruction on myself and my house, if I violate any of these obligations ; but if I keep my oath, I pray for many blessings." Law cases were generally divided into two classes, according as they affected the individual or the public. Another distinc- tion was made between cases in which the fine or penalty was to be estimated by the court, and those in which it had been fixed by the laws. The theory of legal process required the parties to conduct the business in person. There was no bar, as in our times ; but the litigants were at liberty to consult friends, or experts in the law. The arguments were often written out by persons employed and paid for the work, and delivered memoriter by the parties. This system had at least the advantage of enabling the lawyer to get a fee on both sides. In the course of time, the advocate was allowed to appear for his client ; and in certain cases public prosecutors were appointed, and their fees determined by law. Thus, though in form there was no Athenian bar, the necessities of the public administration of justice established customs and usages which amounted to the same thing. The dicast re- ceived from the paymaster three obols, or about nine cents, for every day's work. The decision was given by ballot. No doubt the law was in general fairly administered by the GOVERNMENT. 491 Athenian courts. Every question involving rights of person or property was discused with consummate ability, as we know by the extant pleadings of the Athenian advocates. But there was no learned, upright, and independent judge to rule the points of law, and to sum up the evidence in the case. The dicasts took the law and the facts into their own hands ; and from their verdict, however unjust, there lay no appeal. The passions of the moment were excluded from the seats of justice by no barrier which they could not easily overleap. The consequence was, and it is a most instructive fact in the history of jurisprudence, that the courts of Athens, at times, were stained with acts of perjury and blood, which fill us with contempt and horror as we read them ; and for the moment we feel no surprise that Plato, after the judicial murder of Socrates, placed them on the same level with other mobs. But this at least may be said, that the administration of the law was open and public, and became a matter of history. Despots have another mode of compassing the ends of injustice. The stealthy arrest, the prison hidden from every human eye except the keeper's, the secret execution, shut their judicial misdeeds from the blaze of notoriety, in which the death of Socrates and that of the generals of Arginusae have received the execration of the world. The idea of trial by jury lay at the foundation of the legal procedure of the Athenians ; but with no judge, with juries of five hundred, a thousand, or fifteen hundred, and with their comprehensive powers, the courts were inevitably liable to be swayed by the gusts of popular passion ; and we gain a very important lesson, when we contrast the different results under the different method of applying the same principles in our own courts, and see how greatly the security for every Bpecies of right is increased by a few simple safeguards, chiefly suggested by Anglo-Saxon tact and experience. The defect in the political arrangements of Greece was the want of a federal union with an effective central government. The defect in the Constitution of Athens was the want of a distinct 492 THE LIFE OF GREECE. executive head, and the blending of legislative, judicial, and ex- ecutive functions in the same persons. But we can trace every maxim of civil prudence to the philosophers and statesmen of Greece. In the practical working of the liberal institutions of Athens, commerce, industry, and the arts flourished ; and this shows a high degree of confidence in the wisdom of the gov- ernment. Abuses, no doubt, existed, and crimes were com- mitted ; but during the whole history of the courts of Athens, nothing was perpetrated so bad as the judicial murders which have stained the annals of England, no deed so dark and damning as the bloody trials for witchcraft in our own model State. The Demos of Athens was encroaching and arrogant ; he longed after the lands of his neighbors ; he annexed the cit- ies and islands of the iEgean Sea ; he wanted to annex Sicily, because it might else give a foothold from which his rival, the Spartan, could annoy him ; and he thought that his irresistible destiny beckoned him thither. But with all his faults and vices, he developed the ideas of law, order, and justice, which lie at the basis of good government wherever existing ; and he left the imperishable records of his wisdom and experience as fountains of instruction to the world. LECTURE XII. LITERATUEE. THE THEATRE. Greek literature is the basis of modern civilization. Of its absolute merits as an instrument of culture, no reasonable per- son, with competent knowledge, can entertain a doubt. To its importance in the systems of study on which modern educa- tion rests, the best minds have borne the strongest testimony. It was remarked that in the circle of Greek education foreign languages found no place, and in this respect we certainly have an advantage over the ancients. As an extensive intercourse with the world removes prejudices and enlarges the mind, so a range of study which embraces foreign languages and their literature furnishes a wider scope for the exercise of reason, judgment, and taste, and creates a higher point of observation, whence we may survey the achievements of man in the exer- cise of his loftiest faculties. But before the Greeks there were no Greeks to study ; and in the time of the Greeks, they could do nothing better than study themselves. The classics of their own language were their only classics ; and the thoroughness of their training in these was a point in their education which deserves the respect of all times. We can be familiar with them, and with our own writers besides. The latter need not be neglected on account of the former. We should do the one, and not leave the other undone. We should study Homer, but Milton also ; we should make Shakespeare the companion of iEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides ; and Aris- tophanes should be illustrated by Goldsmith and Sheridan. Plato intimates that the invention of writing, which he at- tributes to an Egyptian deity, had weakened the faculty of 494 THE LIFE OF GREECE. memory. It may be so ; but I think no reasonable man would hesitate to surrender, if necessary, a portion of his individual memory for an art which eternizes the memory of the human race, and by intellectual intercourse binds the nations and the ages together. To us, literature presents certainly one of the most beautiful aspects of the life of Greece. Its relation to the daily being and enjoyments of men was, however, in many re- spects very different from that which the art of printing and the abundance of books have given to it in our day. It affect- ed the taste, mind, and heart, more through the ear than by the written page. The Homeric poems were delivered, first by the author himself, and then by singers, who travelled like actors from place to place, and rehearsed the divine verses from memory to enchanted multitudes. When the epic age passed away, the lyric succeeded ; and here, too, public deliv- ery, accompanied by the music of instruments and the rhyth- mical movements of numerous choruses, was the form in which the poet addressed himself to the general mind. The national games and local festivals were occasions on which not only poetry found a voice, but even history and philosophy attracted attention and won applause. Herodotus, reading his immortal work at the Panathenaea, is one of the commonplaces of classi- cal allusion. The discourses of the philosophers in the public square, the gymnasium, and the panegyrical assemblies, gave an intellectual cast to scenes originally connected, only with busi- ness or with contests of physical strength. At the Panathe- naic festival, the most gorgeous ceremonial in Athens, rhap- sodists, appointed by public authority, rehearsed the poems of Homer. Musical and lyrical contests were held in the Odeium, and discourses delivered, of which the Panathenaicus one of the most finished orations of Isocrates affords an interesting specimen. The public debates the harangues of the orators, which were not listened to, unless they had received the last touches )f literary elegance must be regarded as a very important means of intellectual influence, instruction, and delight, from LITERATURE. 495 the time of Solon down to the death of Demosthenes. Im- agine the majestic person of Pericles, Olympian Pericles, speaking to the people of Athens in those magnificent periods which made men say that he thundered, and lightened, and stirred up all Hellas. Imagine the austere and sorrowful coun- tenance of Demosthenes, when, after his patriotic hopes have been dashed to the ground by the disastrous battle of Chaero- nea, the occasion is seized by his personal and political ene- mies to assail his public and private character, to impeach his motives, to overbear him with invective and slander, to load his private life with the loathsome calumnies of malice and personal hatred, to make the people, who have honored and trusted him, believe that he is profligate in morals and the hire- ling of northern gold ; he, who exhausted the midnight lamp in studies that have made his works immortal ; who upheld the public faith, when an attempt was made to break it down ; who year after year rallied the faltering courage of his countrymen, and breasted the onsets of the Macedonian ; who labored, spar- ing neither time, nor strength, nor health, to unite the Greeks against domestic treason and foreign levy ; who, when his only daughter died, strove to forget the anguish that wrung his heart by increased devotion to the honor and glory of his country ; who was liberal above measure of his private fortune, to redeem captives and relieve the wants of the poor, and for this was libelled by JEschines the slanderer as a spendthrift who had ridiculously wasted his property; he to whom the august image of Athens, standing on the loftiest height of glo- ry in this world, surrounded by the memorials of her heroes, sages, and artists, was the most inspiring theme of eloquence, until his dying day ; imagine this man, whose genius has been his country's stay and staff for thirty years, without his having been the official head of the state, rising to vindicate his character and policy before his assembled countrymen. Eight years have passed since tr.e first step in the trial was taken. The rumor of the contest nas gone forth to every corner of the Grrecian world. Crowds, greater than ever thronged to a festi- 496 THE LIFE OF GEEECE. val, fill the city, and press to the centre of interest. The &04 THE LIFE OF GREECE. let us die together. God forbid that I should know what it is to feel that thou art no more. For what blessing would then remain ? . . . . The king has also invited Philemon ; he will take time to consider ; but thou, O Glycera, art my judgment, my Areopagus, my Heliastic court, and, by Athene, my every- thing. By the twelve gods, I have not the remotest idea of embarking for so distant a kingdom as Egypt ; nor, were Egypt in iEgina, over yonder, would I desert my kingdom, which is thy love, to behold, without my Glycera, a populous solitude in so great a mob of Egyptians. For all the golden splendors of the court, I would not exchange the pleasures of the stage, of the Lyceum, and the divine Academy. I would rather be crowned with the Dionysiac wreath, than with the diadem of Ptolemy, if Grlycera were sitting in the theatre and looking on." This shows, in the first place, that the author knew how to write a love-letter, and, in the second place, that women attended dramatic entertainments. The two Dionysiac festivals, at which the tragic and comic representations chiefly took place, were in the spring. The chief one, called the Great Dionysia, was from the 10th to the 18th of the Attic month Elaphebolion, a time nearly cor- responding to our first week in March, a very beautiful season there, whatever it may be here. It was a period when the city was crowded with deputies from tributary and allied states, who had visited the capital to settle the accounts of their respective cities with the Athenian treasury ; with suit- ors in law-cases, who were awaiting the action of the Heli- astic courts ; with travellers from every part of the civilized world, who had come to enjoy the pleasures of the great Hel- lenic holiday ; with merchants and traders, who brought their wares, on this occasion, as to a great mart or fair ; with artists, poets, sophists, and philosophers, drawn thither in the hope of fame or profit. Nothing was wanting to make the Great Dionysia one of the most splendid and imposing pictures in the life of Greece ; and if we consider that it was the occasion for the development of the last great original form of Greek THE THEATRE. 505 literature, the dramatic, the peculiar boast of Athens, and the crowning flower of her genius, we shall see that there was reason in the enthusiasm and excitement which univer- sally prevailed. The city put on its holiday attire. From daylight until sunset, the excited multitudes enjoyed a suc- cession of pastimes, from the tricks of the juggler up to the loftiest representations of the Tragic Muse. The Athenians were early risers. Aristotle says, that the man who would accomplish great things must be up while it is yet dark. The lovely Grecian morning was more tempting than our freezing and sleety spring days, and there was something to encourage the citizen to leave his bed. Courts sat by the dawn, and the jurymen were sometimes conducted to the Heliaea by link- boys, as the city was not lighted at the public expense. The Senate and the popular Assembly usually met before sunrise. The Athenians were a people who loved the light of heaven. They thought that it was intended for the wakeful use of the faculties. With the exception of the mystic rites, some of the Dionysiac orgies, and occasional entertainments, such as that of Agathon, which did not interfere with the early morning hour, since the revellers were already up, the Athenians were a people who observed the old adage, " Early to bed, early to rise," and enjoyed to the full the predicted consequence of health and wisdom. They had no balls, no theatre, no con- certs, in the evening, and so they went to bed ; and when the rosy-fingered Aurora shot her earliest arrows up the east- ern hills, they were on foot, and ready for the frugal meal a bit of bread, a fig, or a bunch of grapes which preceded the morning occupations. In the days of the Dionysia, the theatre was thrown open with the earliest dawn, and the citizens and strangers were astir betimes, to secure their seats. The wealthier persons were followed by their attendants with cushions and sunshades, and perhaps a luncheon ; for the ses- sion was likely to be long. Theophrastus, in his character of the Adulator, says . " At the theatre, taking the cushions from the servant, whose business it is to adjust them for his mas- 506 THE LIFE OF GREECE. ter, lie performs this office himself." You might have seen the magistrates, in their robes of office, proceeding, with strangers honored by the city, to their official place ; ladies, veiled, wind- ing their way along the passages, to apartments curtained off, perhaps, from the rude stare of the multitude ; the untitled crowd, with their two-obol tickets, pressing through the street of the Tripods, after the solemn procession of dignitaries has passed by, to gain admittance into the common seats, scram bling over one another to secure the best. By the time it is light enough to see, the religious ser- vice begins. The board of dramatic judges are on the critical bench, looking wise as so many reviewers. Perhaps a golden crown has been voted to some illustrious statesman for emi- nent services to the country. The herald comes forward, in the presence of all that is most distinguished in the world, and makes proclamation of the fact ; that the world may know his merits, that the citizens may be stirred to emulate his ex- ample by so noble a reward, that his children may follow in the patriotic footsteps, and exult in the honored name, of him to whom they owe their being. Fit prelude this to the heroic doings and sufferings which are to follow in mimic life upon the stage. The dramatic contest commences, under the auspices of the god to whom the theatre is a temple. In suc- cession the choruses of the rival tribes appear. Actors, scen- ery, costumes, have been elaborately prepared ; music, move- ment, delivery, have been taught by the poet, down to the minutest point. The figures on the stage, too distant from the spectators for the flexible play of feature, present, in the sculp- tured countenance of the mask, only the great outlines of the character or passion which the poet has set down for them. They stand in groups, like compositions of plastic art; their solemn and stately recitation is heightened in its power by the increased volume imparted to the voice through the mask; and the sound rolls over the vast multitude, and reverberates from the colonnade behind and above them. The prologue over, the chorus enters, moving in anapaestic rhythm to the central THE THEATRE. 507 altar, around which most of their part of the action revolves ; singing a lyrical ode, artfully constructed, embodying the relig- ious or moral ideas growing out of the drama; or recalling distant events, which have something to do with the destinies of the characters ; or moralizing in Doric strophes upon the action, as it is developing itself on the stage. The spectators express their enthusiasm by rousing applause ; or, if an actor stumbles, they hiss him off the stage, or pelt him with figs and apples, rotten eggs not having yet been thought of. In the interval between the first and second representations, acquaintances exchange greetings, and, after mutual inquiries about the health of their families, begin to discuss the merits of the pieces. The dramatic judges take notes and compare opinions on the same subject, under the weight of official re- sponsibility. Less intellectually disposed persons seize the op- portunity to refresh the inner man with some dainty bit and a flask of wine ; nuts, raisins, sweetmeats, cakes, are passed round ; and such a clattering of teeth and hum of voices fill the theatre as only twenty thousand hungry and sociable cit- izens can produce. As soon as the scenes are shifted, the next choregus on the list marshals in his dramatic troop, and an- other play, or the second part of a trilogy, is performed. How many come on in succession, we do not know, but the greater part of the forenoon was doubtless given to the tragic poets ; and as the pieces were not long, a considerable number might be heard, when we consider the early hour at which they set to work. The representation of comedies was held sometimes at the Lenaean Festival, a short time earlier than the Great Dionysia, and sometimes at the Dionysia, probably in the afternoon of the same days on which the tragedies were brought out. They were under the same general regulations, except that the i>oard of judges consisted of ten, instead of four. A pecu- liar feature of the ancient comedy consisted in the parabasis. or address to the audience, in which the author, speaking bj the mouth of the chorus, gave his opinions in a very free styl* D08 THE LIFE OF GREECE. upon public events, or criticised the pieces of his rivals, or commended his own, generally uttering some ludicrous threat against the judges if they should fail to award him the prize. It is obvious that the business of the magistrate who had to read the pieces and to assign the chorus, as well as that of the dramatic judges who had to hear them and to decide their merits, was no sinecure. Imagine the mayor of this city re- quired to examine plays offered for representation by rival poets from all the wards, and four aldermen obliged to rise at the peep of day, and, after eating a morsel of bread soaked in wine, going to an immense uncovered theatre, taking their places on marble seats, and sitting through ten or a dozen tragedies a day, for five or six days in succession ! The nature of the sources from which the Attic tragedy was drawn, and the high-toned doctrines of ethics and religion it inculcated, have caused the stage to be compared to the pulpit in modern times. This holds surprisingly true of ^Eschylus and Sophocles. The destinies of the ancient princely houses, whose awful crimes of murder, parricide, and incest overloaded the traditions of Greece, were well suited to stamp on the sus- ceptible Hellenic spirit the profoundest lessons of the nature of sin and justice, and the terrible consequences of the wrath of God. Says the Chorus in the Agamemnon : " For Zeus doth teach men wisdom, sternly wins To virtue by the tutoring of their sins ; Yea ! drops of torturing recollection chill The sleeper's heart ; 'gainst man's rebellious will Zeus works the wise remorse ; Dread powers, on awful seats enthroned, compel Our hearts with gracious force." This solemn tone runs through the three plays in which the crimes, woes, and atonements of the doomed family of Agamemnon are unfolded with a grandeur of language and thought, and a force of characterization, worthy of the genius of Shakespeare ; while the overwhelming impression of the rep- resentation may, without irreverence, be compared with that THE THEATRE. 509 of the Hebrew prophets. This topic might be equally illus- trated from the extant pieces of Sophocles, in which similar doc- trines are preached, but in a style of more subdued elegance. In a state of such lively political susceptibilities as Athens, an instrument of influence like the stage could not have been neglected by struggling parties. Notwithstanding the lofty and ideal tone of the tragedy, so suitable to the subjects bor- rowed from a distant heroic age, the poet sometimes gave his pieces a bearing, direct or indirect, upon the politics of his own times. .ZEschylus attempted to protect the court of the Are- opagus against the encroaching radicalism of his age. Sopho- cles has frequent political allusions. In the Antigone, freedom and despotism are so powerfully contrasted with each other, and so much to the advantage of the former, that the author was not only overwhelmed with the applause of the people, but was appointed general in the Samian war, as the colleague of Pericles and Thucydides. It was, however, only in the form of general principles, or by allusions, easily understood indeed, yet not conveyed in express terms, that tragedy dealt with contemporary politics. For a vivid, though doubtless exaggerated, picture of the morals, manners, passions, and demagogy of the passing day, we must turn to the pages of Aristophanes. This most brilliant, but somewhat unscrupulous and wholly fearless genius, belonged to the same great age with the tragedians. He was a hearty 'over of ^Eschylus and Sophocles, but made Euripides the con- t tant butt of his ridicule. Socrates, as the friend of Euripides, was most unjustly held up by him as the master of a sophisti- cal school where atheism was taught, and the art of making the worse appear the better reason was a daily practice. So far as his satire was levelled at the Sophists, whose skill turned on verbal quibbles, by which they not only proved that " naught is everything, and everything is naught," but that the right of the strongest is right by the law of nature, and that this is the >nly measure of justice ; that pleasure and virtue are synony- mous and convertible terms; that physical enjoyment is the 510 THE LIFE OF GREECE. rule of morality, so far as he aimed to hold this mountebank philosophy up to reprobation, he was to be praised. Again, he was to be praised for pointing the finger of scorn at the dema- gogues and generals who were urging the country into the abyss of ruin in the Peloponnesian war ; as in the " Peace,' where Trygaeus ascends to heaven, and finds that two giants, named War and Tumult, have usurped the place of the gods, and are employed in pounding the states of Greece in a huge mortar, using the generals as pestles, while Peace has been sunk to the bottom of a well, whence she is drawn with the greatest difficulty. The same subject is wittily handled in " The Acharnians," where the blessings of peace are amusingly contrasted with the horrors of war. Again, in the " Lysistrata," the Women, wearied out with the calamitous state of things, conspire in a general congress of delegates from the contending ing states to bring the foolish men to terms, by stopping do- mestic supplies of every kind. One of the great complaints on which the uprising is justified is the melancholy fact that the citizens are so long absent in the wars, that the young maids are left to grow into old maids, and, when the soldiers return, they marry down into the next generation. The base com- pliances of party leaders with the passions and appetites of the demos are admirably exposed in the play of " The Knights," where Agoracritus, the sausage-seller, is set up against Cleon, the leather-dresser, the popular idol of the hour. The ma- nia for extending empire, which wrote the bloodiest pages in Athenian annals, and finally led to the ruin of the state, is touched with infinite liveliness in " The Birds," who, under the guidance of a speculative Athenian, found an empire in mid- air, to cut off sacrificial supplies from the gods and the blessed rain of heaven from men, and so to reduce the universe under their sway. The frenzy of litigation, which had seized hold of the demos by the vast accumulation of suits, the pecuni- ary interest which the citizens felt in them, and the sense of personal importance and delight of gratified vanity when the yomrion Athenian dicast, no matter how ignorant and vulgar, THE THEATRE. 511 found himself the subject of solicitation to suppliant suitors from every quarter of the Athenian empire, are wonder- fully set forth in " The Wasps," where a crazy old dicast, being restrained of his liberty by his son, strives to escape through the chimney to join his fellow-jurymen on their way to court. Being hindered by a cap placed over the top of the chimney, he pretends that he desires to send a donkey to market, is detected hanging under the legs of the ass, like Ulysses escaping from the Cyclops' cavern under the ram, and finally is appeased only by having a court established in his own house for the trial of the dog Labes, who has been caught stealing a Sicilian cheese. When foolish schemes of the best possible republic were agitated by the philosophers, and the class of women described by Aristotle and compared to translated hens increased the uproar of discordant opinions by agitating the question of the rights of women, Aristophanes turned the offensive folly into ridicule that killed it dead, in the play of the " Ecclesiazousae." In this way the comic stage dealt with the politics and the follies of the hour. Tragedy and comedy are two sides of the same scene ; both are to be carefully studied if we would pass behind the curtain, and enter into the interior of the habitation of Demos. END OF VOL. L THIRD COURSE. CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. tol. n. LECTURE I. GENERAL VIEW OF GREECE. GREEK POLITY. The subject of the present course of lectures is the Consti- tutions and the Orators of Greece ; but I will take the liberty of prefacing the discussion of it with a few general remarks. European culture traces its origin mainly to the inhabitants of that comparatively diminutive country. In the remote East sprang up in early times forms of political existence, which, lasting, some a few centuries, and others many centuries, on completing their career, left but little for the instruction of the following ages. On the Indus and the Ganges, far back in the primeval times, civilized communities existed, in which the in- stitution of caste established itself as a permanent organization, more despotic than despotism itself. Philosophy flourished there, as did poetry in all its forms ; human life suggested to speculative minds ethical conclusions of large significance ; and Divine themes occupied men's thoughts, leading them into mazes which still perplex the world. Egypt unfolded many sciences, and carried some of the arts to a high stage of pro- gress. Her temples, pyramids, and gigantic statues amaze the traveller by the grandeur of their conception and the perfect- ness of their details. She performed a still greater service by the invention of hieroglyphics, which, including the germ of alphabetic writing, have furnished the means of placing on per- petual record the wisdom of the wise and the fair creations of the inventive mind. In Palestine, among the chosen people, God saw fit to manifest himself in a peculiar manner, through the inspired teachings of his servants, the prophets and leaders of Israel. But it was in Greece that literary taste, ideal art, 4 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. political constitutions, and the eloquence of the senate, the popular assembly, and the court of justice, first took a sys- tematic form, and determined principles to be thenceforth rec- ognized wherever civilization should plant itself. By Hellenic culture the world was prepared for the Chris- tian dispensation ; first, by the humanizing spirit of the Greek philosophy, especially by the almost inspired teachings of Soc- rates, and of the two great men who afterwards divided the realm of speculative and practical wisdom between them ; secondly, by furnishing a language through which the divine teachings of the Saviour and his Apostles might best reach the mind and heart of the world ; and thirdly, by organizing the family relation on the basis of a true marriage of one man to one woman, and thus making it, not only the sanctuary of the best affections, but the source of the highest intellectual de- velopment. On this last great fact I place the chief stress in estimating the providential purposes which the Hellenic race were destined to accomplish. The Greeks were the earliest race to lift human society out of the infinite degradation and woe of polygamy, into which the primitive nations had fallen, into which the latest of the great impostures would sink man- kind again. The cultivated and subtile Brahmin, with all his depth of speculative insight, and his immaculate purity of caste, neither saw the evil nor devised the remedy. The Egyptian, with all his art and ingenuity, surrounding himself with master works of architecture built for eternity, and shield- ing his mortal body from decay in the anticipation of another life, was blind to the simple law ordained by the Almighty, and recorded by his hand in the perpetual wonder of the nu- merical equality of births of man and woman, the law which is the one condition of order in the state and of happiness in the household. The Hebrew even, though holding loftier ideas of the Divine nature than any of his neighbors and contempo- raries, though led f-om Egyptian bondage through the great and terrible wilderness into the promised land by supernatural guidance, and warned, taught, rebuked, encouraged by seer GENERAL VIEW OF GREECE. 5 and prophet, failed to rise above the dreadful barbarism into which the domestic life of the Oriental races was plunged. In his home, the Hebrew was the master of a harem, and not the husband of a wife, though the first book of his sacred records, written by the great lawgiver of his ancestors, held up to his view an enchanting picture of the primeval condition of man. There is a wonderful coincidence between the best lessons drawn from Greek history and philosophy, and the teachings of Him who spoke with Divine authority in the Sermon on the Mount. It was not without a deeper cause than the casual incidents of travel, that St. Paul was courteously taken up the Hill of Mars, and, in sight of the prison where Socrates with his dying breath consoled his sorrowing disciples by his great argument for the immortality of the soul, unfolded the doc- trines of the Christian faith to the listening sages of the city of Athene. The play of contrasts between the Hellenic and the Oriental world is wonderful. Whence came these Greeks, and whence came the wisdom and the genius which, in so remarkable a manner, were embodied in their institutions and their history ? Were they also, like the Brahmins, Egyptians, and Hebrews, children of the primeval and mysterious East, and did they come into their chosen land by a series of migrations, dating beyond the dawn of authentic history, and disguised under the veil of myth and fable ? or were they, as they claimed to be, autochthones, children of the soil on which they ran their brilliant historical career ? The earliest legends of incomers from the East represent them as finding the country occupied. They bring with them the arts and wealth of older communities, and establish by their aid a predominating influence among simple and primitive tribes. Danaus flees from Egypt to Argos, and perpetuates his name in one of the appellations of the Hellenic people ; Pelops brings his royal treasures from Phrygia, and gives his name for all future time to the great southern penin- sula of Greece ; Cecrops carries civilization from Egypt to Athens, and leaves a memorial of himself in the Cecropia, the 6 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. ancient and poetical designation of the Acropolis ; Cadmus sails from Phoenicia with a more precious freight than adventurer ever bore to a distant land, and leaves the alphabet among the Greeks, and his name to the citadel of Thebes. But we find before them all the Pelasgians, with their simple religion, their rude handcraft, their oracles, their primitive habits, their hardy virtues, and their artless speech, destined to give birth to the mighty pair of languages which have brought safely down to us the most precious stores of thought from the wreck of the ancient world. Certain it is that there was an early connec- tion of some extent between the inhabitants of Greece and the Aryan tribes of the East, from which they were so widely sun- dered in the historical ages. The affinities of language place this fact beyond a reasonable doubt ; but they do not deci- sively settle the question, whether the first Pelasgic inhabitants of Greece came in one or in several migrations, or came at all from the Aryan land ; and he who presses the argument from philology to an extreme conclusion is misled by his zeal for a theory, rather than guided by the pure love of truth. At all events, when the Greeks first come within our his- toric survey, they have the Hellenic characteristics, with here and there an old Pelasgic background in the picture. Intel- lectually, morally, politically, they are heaven-wide from the Orientals, whose kindred they are supposed to be. Physically, too, the Hellenic type of humanity is very different from the Oriental. The earliest distinct forms of Hellenic political society are those of the heroic age, as they are represented especially in the poems of Homer. Here we find domestic servitude, in- deed, but scarcely a trace of Oriental despotism, no tokens of Brahminical caste, no polygamy. On the contrary, though the people are under the rule of kings, and the kingly power is hereditary, the monarch himself holds his sceptre from Zeus, and administers laws that come from Zeus. He is surrounded by wise counsellors, who gJve their opinions on all matters brought before them, with an outspoken freedom not always GENERAL VIEW OF GREECE. 7 aafe in a republic. He calls his people together; they listen to the debate, and express their approbation or disapprobation, sometimes in a tumultuous manner which is anything but agreeable to the prince. The Iliad and the Odyssey are full of pictures of the political freedom of the heroic age, which contrast strangely with the despotism and corresponding ser- vility among the Orientals. I have spoken of the peculiar physical type which distin guishes the Greek from the Oriental. Compare the faces in the frieze of the Parthenon with the statues or figures in relief on the Egyptian temples or the marbles of Nineveh, or with the physiognomy of the ancient Hebrews among the captives of the Egyptian kings. What made the difference ? Were they originally of different types ? or did external causes develop the balanced head, the large facial angle, the straight nose, the short upper lip, the bowlike curve of the mouth, in the one, and the prominent features, especially the hooked nose and high cheek-bones, of the other ? How is it that these races, wherever they exist, retain their characteristic marks, as strongly distinguished from each other as they are in the surviving monuments of Nineveh or Thebes, and of that won- der of the ages, the Parthenon at Athens ? The Greek boy, dressing vines on the slopes of Delphi, might still serve as a model for the god whose temple lies hard by in ruins, below the rifted heights of the double-peaked Parnassian rock. The Greek girl, who comes down to Athens to prepare herself to teach the maidens of her native village among the mountains, and who reads Homer with a beauty of intonation and a music of rhythm which would drive a Porson, Bentley, or Wolf to despair, would furnish to a modern Pheidias the study for a modern Athene. The Hellenic intellect, from the beginning, was keen, search- ing, brilliant. The Greek rejoiced in the loveliness of nature, without brooding over it as the modern sentimentalist does. To him nature was the framework of the picture of human life ; and human life, in its shifting manifestations, with its 8 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. tragic fates, or its laughter-provoking incongruities and absurdi- ties, was of deeper interest than even the charm of the beau- tiful nature which encompassed him. He was social, fond of talk, full of gay fancies, but logical as well as eloquent, de- lighting alike in argument, in song, in the dance, and in the feast ; yet happily constituted by the law of his being with a just perception of the true, the temperate, the beautiful, and therefore rarely transcending the line beyond which lies crude excess. The physical character of Greece itself is most propitious to the happiest development of the human faculties of body and mind. The coast line is more indented than that of any other European country. The mountains are lofty, in proportion to the extent of the surface ; and their ranges, cutting one another, divide the land into a succession of plains of various dimensions ; while the gleaming appearance of the limestone and marble, contrasted with the belts of foliage that encircle the slopes, at least of the northern chains, give a singularly bright, silvery picturesqueness to their aspect. Olympus, seat of the gods, is nearly ten thousand feet high ; Parnassus, haunt of the Muses, is more than eight thousand ; and Cyllene, in Arcadia, rises al- most to the same elevation. On Olympus, snow lies in spots all summer, justifying the Homeric epithet, snowy. It is used by the inhabitants of Thessalonica, as we use ice, to cool wine and water. In the rifts of Parnassus it is often found nearly to the middle of summer. Thus, notwithstanding its low lati- tude, its extreme southern point being thirty-six degrees, the climate of Greece is various, though generally temperate. In the lowlands the heat of summer is moderated by delicious breezes from the Mediterranean ; while the mountain air in Arcadia, and along the ridges of Parnes, Helicon, Parnassus, Othrys, Pelion, Ossa, and Olympus, gives all the upper regions a refreshing coolness when the season is the hottest. It is im- possible to exaggerate the beauty and grandeur of these moun- tain scenes, or to over-estimate the effect they must have had in exhilarating and exalting the minds of an intellectual race. GENERAL VIEW OF GREECE. 9 As you approach Greece from either side, you behold these 6ummits touching the very sky, which arches over them with indescribable loveliness. As you coast along the Pelopon- nesus, the lofty heights of Cyllene and Taygetus bound the distant horizon ; you enter the Corinthian Gulf from the Ionian Sea, and gaze with admiration upon Parnassus and Helicon ; you pass down the Saronic Gulf, and Parnes, Pentelicus, and Hymettus shut in the plain of Athens, in the midst of which rises the immortal rock of the Acropolis, surmounted by the majestic remains of the Parthenon. Farther on, your eye rests upon the wooded heights of JEgina, with the picturesque soli- tude of the Panhellenian Zeus's mouldering columns. The headland of Sunium and the gleaming ruins of the temple of the Sunian Athene next salute you. From the eastern shore of Magnesia, the lofty and most picturesque and classic sum- mits of Pelion, Ossa, and Olympus fill the eye with their united grandeur. From the height above the ancient Thessalonica you look down the Thermaic Gulf, surrounded by a panorama of magnificent mountain chains, such in natural beauty as few spots of earth have to show, such as in charm of association are absolutely unrivalled. Farther on towers over the sea, in fair weather visible from the opposite shore of the ^Egean, the singular shape of Mount Athos, against which were wrecked the Persian fleets, and on whose rocky slopes are now the ancient monastic establishments, constituting an ecclesiastical republic, and organized on the principles of representative gov- ernment. From all these mountain heights, the traveller lookt abroad upon prospects of unexampled splendor. The extent of Greece is so small, the coast so indented, the sea eveiy where sc near, that from every hill-top the landscape spread out be- fore the eye includes all the elements of a beautiful picture, a valley with a stream winding through it, distant hills, and at least a glimpse of the blue sea, with the sunny islands that gem its surface. From Parnassus and Helicon, from Cithteron and Parnes, from Pentelicus and Hymettus, the eye ranges ovei plains, rivers, gulfs, bays, and straits, whose names are im- mortal in history and in song. 10 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. How can I describe the air of Greece ? How can I depict the splendid atmospheric effects which crown the spring and summer day? How can I paint the glories of the rising sun, as seen in Athens, when he comes up from beyond the blazing ridge of Hymettus, pouring his light into the plain and over the marble ruins of the Acropolis, and turning their em- browned surfaces into burnished gold? The atmospnere of Greece is wonderfully transparent. The voice is heard at amazing distances ; and we at length understand how the ora- tors on the Bema and the actors on the Dionysiac stage, in the open air, could be distinctly heard by the multitudes that thronged the popular assembly and the theatre. As the sun goes down, the succession and play of colors, the gold, violet, and purple, that come over the landscape and linger on moun- tain slope and headland and the still surface of the neighbor- ing deep, are wonderful and enchanting. Seen from the steps of the Parthenon, it is a spectacle that never loses its varied attraction, its matchless beauty and splendor ; no painter could copy it; the colors of Claude and Titian are tame and dim in the comparison ; even the magnificent verse of Byron, grand as it is, falls below the realities which th<> poet would fain describe : " Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run, Along Morea's hills the setting sun j Not, as in Northern climes, obscurely bright, But on? unclouded blaze of living light ! O'er the hushed deep the yellow beam he throws, Gilds the green wave, that trembles as it glows. On old jEgina's rock, and Idra's isle, The god of gladness sheds his parting smile ; O'er his own regions, lingering, loves to shine, Though there his altars are no more divine ; Descending fast, the mountain shadows kiss Thy glorious gulf, unconquered Salamis ! Their azure arches, through the long expanse. More deeply purpled, meet his mellowing glance ; And tenderest tints, along their summits driven, Mark his gay course, and own the hues of heaven ; Till, darkly shaded from the land and deep, Behind his Delphian cliff he sinks to sleep." GENEEAL VIEW OF GREECE. 11 After the sun goes down, the beauty of the night is equally wonderful, but different. The unfathomable depth of the sky, the aa7reT09 a\6r\p of the ancients, out of which the stars come, and through which the moon in her queenly majesty moves, filling the* air with her soft lustre, and silvering over the silent mountains, the stately columns of the Olympian Zeus and the Acropolis, and the sparkling but hushed sea, seems to take the soul out of all earthly conditions, and to wrap it in the legendary associations of a far-off, mythical, po- etical antiquity, when Artemis came down from just such a sky to watch the sleeping Endymion. The climate of Greece was and is remarkably healthy. Why should people sicken and die before their time, with such a sky bending lovingly over them, with such pleasant breezes from the mountains and the sea, with such a sun and such a moon ? We know from the biographies of the ancients, that a large proportion of them lived to what we should call an extraordi- nary age. Isocrates relates, in his Panathenaicus, that he be- gan that work when he was ninety-four years old ; that when it was about half written, he was seized with a violent illness, from which he did not fairly recover until three years later ; and that then, induced by the urgency of friends, who had read the completed portion, and who feared something might hap- pen, he resumed and finished it at the age of ninety-seven. When, in the following year, the news of the disastrous battle of Chaeroneia reached Athens, unable to bear the disappoint- ment of the hopes he had placed in Philip of Macedon, he put an end to his life by starving himself. It is to him that Milton alludes in the lines, " That dishonest victory At Chaeroneia, fatal to liberty, Killed with report that old man eloquent." In the letter of The jphrastus, the friend and pupil of Aris- totle, which he prefixes to his " Characters," he says to Poly- cles : " You know, my friend, that I have long been an atten- tive observer of human nature. I am now in the ninety-nintb 12 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. year of my age ; and during the whole course of my lite 1 have conversed familiarly with men of all classes and of various climes, nor have I neglected closely to watch the actions of individuals, as well the bad as the good. With these quali- fications, I have thought myself fitted for the task of describ- ing those habitual peculiarities by which the manners of every one are distinguished." And then the vigorous centenarian proceeds to write one of the keenest and sprightliest books to be found in any language. Gorgias, the rhetorican and sophist, lived to the age of one hundred and seven, and died with the characteristic expression on his lips, " Sleep is now beginning to lay me in the hands of his brother." In our day, the instances of longevity are not, perhaps, so common, partly because the habits of life especially in the matter of bathing are not so healthful, and partly because the country is less cultivated than it was in ancient times, and is in some places, at some seasons of the year, malarious. Yet you often meet with hale and active men nearly as old as Isocrates when he finished the Panathenaicus, and sometimes we en- counter a rival of Gorgias. A year ago I saw General Per- rhgebos, who must be at least ninety, and who was said to be a nundred, standing among the crowd, and listening to an ex- amination of a class of young ladies in Homer and Demos- thenes, at six o'clock in the morning. In 1843, when the Constitutional Assembly met in Athens, they chose for their President Mr. Notaras, the deputy from Corinth, then one hundred and seven years old ; and at the banquet given at the close of their constitutional labors, the President was the most jovial of the party. Whether this hearty old Corinthian is still living, I cannot say. I have myself conversed with a monk in the monastery of Mount Parnes, whose memory of events for the last twenty or thirty years is rather vague, but who recalls with distinctness the transactions of a period which goes back almost a quarter of the way to the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, in 1453. I think that these GENERAL VIEW OF GREECE. 13 facts show the great salubrity of the climate in Greece, one important condition certainly for a free and prosperous devel- opment of social and political life. The ancient Greeks were not only united by the bonds of a common nationality, in the broad sense of that word, but they were separated into minor nationalities, sometimes called races. As against the Barbarians, and all who were not Greeks were Barbarians, they held tenaciously to their distinguish- ing Hellenic honors. But among themselves, not only were they divided into Achaians, JEolians, Dorians, and Ionians, each broadly discriminated from all the rest, but each city claimed to be independent of every other, and clung passion- ately to its independent administration, under the name of autonomy. They had their amphictyonies, or unions, for special religious or festal purposes ; they had their great national games, from which all who could not prove their pure Hellenic descent were rigidly excluded, and to which all of Hellenic descent, whether from Asia, Africa, Sicily, or Italy, were ad- mitted ; but they never had a central government, with a controlling political power over the members of an extended confederacy. They had temporary combinations, either of equals with equals, or of inferior states, under the headship of some prominent city. In the heroic times, the poetical legends picture to us the Greek kings from Thessaly to Ithaca joining their forces to avenge against the ancient city of Priam the piratical abduction of Helen, the most beautiful of women. They array themselves under the leadership of Agamemnon and Menelaus, sail with a mighty host across the ^Jgean, and, after a siege of nine long years, burn the offending capital to ashes. But this warlike enterprise in a common cause leads to no permanent union among the companions in arms. It only prepares the downfall of the royal houses, opens the way to political revolutions, substitutes new rulers for the old, and places the changing and agitated political societies of Greece on that career of progress which afterwards made her the teacher, not only jf science, letters, and art, but of civic wis- 14 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. dom, and not only the illustrious teacher, but the example, the warning, the admonition of the world. In a terse and vigorous passage of Aristotle's Politics, that wise man draws the distinction between the Asiatics and the Greeks with his usual firm hand, and touches upon the weak- ness as well as the strength of the latter. " The Asiatic nations,'' says he, " are intellectual, and skilful in art, but without force of mind ; wherefore they continue ruled and enslaved. But the Hellenic race, occupying a middle position between the Northern regions and the Asiatic, participates in the qualities of both ; for they are high-spirited and intellect- ual ; wherefore they maintain their freedom, they have the best political institutions, and, could they be brought under one government, they might rule the world. And there are simi- lar differences between the several tribes of the Greeks them- selves ; for some of them have a one-sided nature, while others are well blended and tempered to the exercise of both these forces. It is evident, then, that those who are to be well trained by the legislator to virtue must be both intellectual and high- spirited." In the same passage the philosopher speaks of the Northern races as being " full of spirit, but lacking in intelli- gence ; wherefore they maintain their liberty, but are incapa- ble of political organization, and cannot rule over their neigh- bors." To him, as he looked at the condition of the human race from Athens as a central point of observation, with the history of Asiatic despotism contrasted with the regulated liberty of the Hellenic people on the one side, and the lawless freedom of the tribes of the frozen North on the other, these were the three categories under which the nations of the earth ranged themselves. As we look back upon the history of antiquity, we are, per- haps, inclined to think that the merits of the Greeks were lim- ited to the production of exquisite models in literature and the arts. In studying Homer and the tragedians, we feel the tran- scendent excellence of their poets. When we come to He rodotus and Thucydides, the flowing and picturesque narrative GREEK POLITY. 15 of the one, and the deep wisdom, condensed style, and powerful coloring of the other, impress us with the belief that historical exposition was their special gift. When we master the perfec- tions of Demosthenes, and rise from his inspired page glow r ing with the emotions excited by the loftiness of his pure and pa- triotic spirit, we are apt to fancy that the genius of Hellas cul> minated in political eloquence. When we wander through the museums of Europe, and gaze upon the sculptured gods and godlike men of Greece, the Apollo, the Olympian Zeus, the Aphrodite, the Athene, the Demosthenes, the Pericles of the Vatican, or the matchless marbles from the Parthenon now collected in the British Museum, we scarcely resist tLe convic- tion that they must have been a race of artists, and nothing more, so high beyond the utmost reach of modern genius did the Hellenic masters rise in those marvels of beauty and grand- eur which once adorned the city of Athens, and now give the laws of taste to the whole civilized world. When we follow Plato through the realms of speculative philosophy, and Aris- totle over the immense sweep of his observation of nature and man, and consider how these sovereign intellects have borne absolute sway in the kingdoms of philosophy, from their day to the present, it seems to us that the mind of Greece must have exhausted itself in philosophical investigations and the construc- tion of theories on God, man, and nature. But either of these impressions would be hasty. In these several ways the Hellenic genius made illustrious and ever-memorable achievements ; but when we sum them all up into one superb whole of national deservings, they form only a part of what those ancients did towards the perfecting of human society. The Romans not only sent their sons to Greece for literary culture, they s^nt their senators to copy the Grecian laws. All the leading principles of Roman law had their origin in the legislation of Greece ; so that Greece not only introduced the arts into La- tium, but laii the foundation, by her legislative talent, at once subtile, profound, and practical, of the law of Europe and America. 16 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECK With one or two exceptions, the city was the state ; the constitution, iroktreia, was the organization of the city, 7roA.t9. Thebes was not the capital of Bceotia, though she was its most important city. The other towns of that province had their several constitutions, and never, except upon some strong com- pulsion, yielded the right of sovereignty the power of form- ing alliances, of making war and concluding peace to their ambitious neighbors. The political duty of the citizen was to the town of his birth or settlement. To the Plataean and the Thespian the Theban was politically an alien, and sometimes a deadly foe. Cities on opposite sides of a mountain, though acknowledging the common Hellenic tie, seldom considered themselves as belonging to the same country ; their citizens were not fellow-countrymen ; their institutions were not iden- tical ; when they met in battle array, they fought as any other enemies might have done, and the victorious party set up its trophy in the field. The Italian republics of the Middle Ages furnish a parallel in some points, but not a perfect one. The lines of separation among the Greeks were both geograph- ical and ethnical ; and sometimes ethnical affinities deter- mined the character of political institutions. This state of severance, combined with the intellectual ac- tivity of the race, led to an unexampled variety of political or- ganizations. If every city had its constitution, it had also of necessity its constitution-makers and lawgivers ; and the people who were to select the constitution-makers and to accept the laws were not likely to perform their functions silently. Dis- cussion of all conceivable questions naturally and necessarily had free course ; and every little community formed a circle, not of village politicians, as in our modern country towns, but of statesmen who had to deal with high questions of constitu- tional law and foreign policy. "With our multiplying States, we imagine that we have a complicated system of governments, State and National ; but our State Constitutions are essentially alike, that is, they are, as the United States Constitution re- quires they should be, all republican. But the Greek city of GREEK POLITY. 17 state trained its fundamental law as it pleased, with no refer- ence to a central tribunal, and no apprehension of a conflict with the constitution of the united country. In the historical times, the less powerful cities were distracted bv factions ; but these factions or parties did not turn upon the interpretation of the fundamental law ; they turned upon the question of hav- ing this or that form of government, not as to whether one party or another should come in and wield the powers of gov- ernment, while the other went out and became the opposition. It was a conflict of life and death between a tyranny or an oli- garchy on the one side, and a democracy on the other ; and the party which gained the upper hand sometimes exiled or put to death the opposing leaders. In one case, according to the striking expression of the Attic orators, the people the demos was overthrown ; in the other, the people was restored. But under these three forms the variety of details was very great. Some notion of the wealth of political experi- ment, if not of experience, in Greece, may be drawn from the fact that the lost work of Aristotle, the Politeiai, contained an analysis of one hundred and fifty-eight constitutions of cities, besides several peculiar democratic, oligarchic, aristocratic, and tyrannic forms, and that fragments of fifty-two of these consti- tutional analyses are found in his extant writings. Ok II. LECTURE II. CONSTITUTIONS OF THE HEROIC AGE. SLAVERY. At the close of my last Lecture, I alluded to the great num- ber of political constitutions in which the experience of the Grecian commonwealths was embodied. The study of Homer gives us the outlines of what may be called the primitive or heroic constitutions, which seem everywhere to have been nearly identical, the factors constituting the state having been an hereditary king, a class of nobles or counsellors, the common people, who, though having nothing to do, strictly speaking, with government, yet sometimes made their voices heard and respected by their princes, and were beaten or other- wise maletreated if they ventured too far beyond the limits, and the slaves. The royal constitutions gave way to the progress of political ideas or to violent revolutions ; in some places leaving the name king as the only memorial of their existence, as in the King Archon of Athens ; in others, as in Sparta, still attaching more substantial prerogatives to the name. The no- oles, as a distinct order, lasted longer, either with real influence as aristocracies or oligarchies, or with only the influence of public opinion in favor of the high-born and the long-descended, as in the case of the Eupatridae. The scene in the Iliad, when, in order to test the feeling of the army, Agamemnon proposes to return to Greece, leaving the war unfinished, probably presents a good picture of the mutual relations of king, nobles, and people in that age. The people are summoned to the assembly, Rumor moving about among them as they swarm along the shore. Nine heralds keep them in order. Agamemnon rises, sceptre in hand, and, CONSTITUTIONS OF THE HEROIC AGE. 19 having recounted the mishaps of the war, proposes, hard as it is, to go home. No sooner is this said than the people who hear the speech are stirred with a mighty desire to behold again their native land. The assembly is moved like the waves of the Icarian Sea, stirred by Eurus and Notus ; they shout to one another ; they rush to the ships and begin to launch them , and thoir cries rise to heaven. But this is not exactly what the king wishes ; they have been too prompt to take him at his word ; and forthwith Ulysses, instigated by the blue-eyed Athe- ne, throws his cloak aside, takes Agamemnon's sceptre, and hastens to the ships. There, meeting nobles and leaders, he addresses them politely, and intimates that Agamemnon did not mean exactly what he had said, and that it is not for such men as them to play the coward. But whatever man of the people he finds clamoring, he smites him with the sceptre, and rebukes him with speech, the blow coming first and the word afterwards, and the word quite as hard as the blow. "Sit down, sir, and listen to your betters. You are of no account in war nor in council. We cannot all be kings here ; the rule of many is not good. Let there be one ruler, one king, to whom the son of Saturn has given the sceptre to rule therewith." And they meekly submit. We cannot help admiring the truly wonderful originality with which Homer has wrought this scene ; the unsuccessful trial of the sentiment of his people by Agamemnon ; the readiness with which they take his word ; the aristocratic demeanor with which Ulysses discriminates between the common man and the lord, when he quells the tu- mult ; the meekness with which the men submit to the royal interpretation of their liberty, namely, the liberty of doing ex- actly what they please, provided they please to do exactly what the king desires. Still, the germs of freedom are quite dis- cernible even here. The people, easily scourged back to the field of war, which, for a brief moment, they dreamed they were to quit forever, have at least had the privilege of showing what they wish ; one day they will take the reins into their own hands, and will have their turn at applying the scourge 20 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. In speaking of the constitutions of the Greeks, and the bodies that made up the state, we everywhere encounter the frightful anomaly of human slavery. There was a traditior. that, in the primitive age, the soil of Hellas was free from this curse ; and in historical times the inhabitants of some of the inland districts as the Locrians still lived in such sim- plicity that they employed no slaves. But from the earliest dawn of historical light, slavery was the rule, the absence of it the exception, in the Grecian states. Homer, true to humanity and to nature in this as in every other aspect of life, while taking the fact as he saw it everywhere around him, did not fail to mark its character in two memorable lines, which Plato misquotes in his Laws : " Zeus takes from man one half his worth away When on him falls the day of slavery." And in that wonderfully pathetic scene, never surpassed even by Shakespeare, the parting of Hector and Andromache, the firm soul of the hero, over whom the shadows of impending fate are closing, is shaken only by the vision of his country's downfall, and of the wife of his bosom dragged into pitiless slavery. Similar feelings are expressed in the Attic tragedies. The sorrows of Tecmessa reach the Homeric strain; and the frantic soul of Cassandra, as she approaches the house of death, struggles in vain with the woe of captivity, enhanced by the ghastly prophecies of murder destined to stain anew the dwell- ing over which hovers the boding troop of the Furies. Every- where captivity and slavery go hand in hand. Both are taken for granted as the fixed order of human society. The prisoner of war is reduced to slavery ; the inhabitant of the conquered city is sold into slavery ; the woman and child, kidnapped by the roaming mariner of the Mediterranean, are borne off to a distant island or city, and bartered away for corn or wine, never o return to their native land. Even the Greeks of those early days, free as they were from most of the Oriental vices, had retained or adopted the commerce in human beings, and that most dangerous of all the self-indulgences of the Asiatic world. SLAVEEY. 21 the habit of living on the unpaid work of those less fortu- nate and gifted, whom an unequal destiny had placed in their power. Even in that early age the trade in slaves flourished all around the JEgean Sea, and the houses of the wealthy were crowded with the victims of violence, theft, and treachery. They tilled the ground, and took care of the cattle. Eumseus, the godlike swineherd of the Odyssey, and the faithful friend of Ulysses, is a slave. Telemachus speaks of the slaves that his father has left in his charge. When prisoners were made, they were divided among the chiefs, like other articles of plunder. Thus Agamemnon received Chryseis, and Achilles the captive Briseis ; and many of the Trojans, some even of royal birth, had been transported to the islands and sold before the war was over. It is singular how little this status changed, while all the other constituent elements of the commonwealth were con- stantly undergoing modifications. The kings went down ; but the slaves remained. The tyrants rose on the ruin of the old heroic monarchies ; but the slaves remained. Republics came into being, ran their brilliant career, and sank under the Mace- donian or Roman supremacy ; but the slaves still remained. The Roman Empire fell in the West, and the Byzantine, ten centuries later, in the East ; but the slaves still remained, the one permanent and indestructible order in the state. Though existing everywhere, and everywhere substantially the same, the condition of the slave varied in details in the several states, partly according to the other political institu- tions, and partly according to the race of the masters. In the Homeric and heroic ages, it is probable that the servile popu- lation were in much the same position all over Greece, and that the difference between the slave and the poor freeman was less than it was afterward. But when the distinctive pe- culiarities of the Dorian, jEolian, and Ionian divisions of the Hellenic people came prominently out, manifesting themselves in political tendencies, in literary culture, in forms of art, and in dialectic variations from the old Homeric speech, then the 22 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. relation between master and slave assumed a corresponding vari ety of aspects. The Dorians and the Ionians were most strongly contrasted in this regard, as they were generally in their politi- cal principles and their views of civil life. The Dorians were originally a rude and warlike race of mountaineers. They came down from their northern fastnesses, and, having conquered the old Achaian inhabitants, settled themselves in the most im- portant portions of the Peloponnesus. Tradition and poetry embodied these transactions under the name of the return of the Heracleidse ; and the ruling families of the Spartans, which became in time the most conspicuous and powerful representa- tives of the Dorian race, claimed to be the direct descendants of the doughty hero Hercules. The Dorian, under influences all of which cannot be traced, became in Sparta a most singular specimen of humanity. According to him, the chief end of man was to live on black broth at home, to march about in heavy armor, to fight with or without cause, to beat or kill the Helots, and to die on the field of battle. The Dorian, enter- taining such views, regarded all occupations except governing and fighting as menial. Tilling the earth, the mechanic arts, and commerce were disreputable, and fit to be conducted only by a servile race. Slaves, therefore, he must have ; and the system which he organized, and for a long time pitilessly car- l'ied out, the system of Helotism, was the most logical, the most cruel, the most fatal in the end, that ever blighted a civil community. Sparta produced many noble men, who signalized their country and immortalized themselves by great deeds. Many pithy sayings have come down to us, showing the concentrated force and resistless point of the Laconic style of expression. But the Spartan constitution, especially as modified by Lycur- gus, was a terrible outrage upon human nature ; and human nature avenged itself at last. Sparta perished, as an ancient writer says, for want of Spartans ; and, as Thucydides pre- dicted would be the case, the traveller at the present day, wandering among the scanty traces of the ancient city, finds it SLAVERY. 23 difficult to believe in the greatness of her former power. Spartan virtue is an oft-repeated phrase. The Spartans were brave and hardy. They were men of iron, and tried their best to make their women women of iron. They taught theii children that the state was all in all, the citizen noth- ing. They brought them up in a socialist community ; they inculcated craft and deception ; they exposed the sickly child on Mount Taygetus, after a jury of public nurses had pro- nounced it too weakly to be reared for the purposes of the state. The Helots were the original Achaian inhabitants of South- ern Laconia, subdued in war, and made the serfs of their con- querors. The name refers to this circumstance, being de- rived either from the verb that means to capture, or from a local name, Helos, the inhabitants of which made desperate fight before they surrendered. I am inclined to the former explanation, as more in accordance with Grecian usage. After the Spartans had conquered their neighbors, the Messenians, they included them also among the Helots ; and they continued enslaved until Epaminondas restored them to liberty and their country, after the battle of Leuctra. The Helots had the doubtful privilege of belonging to the state, while their ser- vices only were granted to indrviduals. They cultivated the land to which they were attached, paying their masters a cer- tain rent in a fixed proportion of the fruits of the "earth ; they were domestic slaves ; they waited on the public tables ; they accompanied the Spartan soldiers to the field ; and sometimes, when they showed distinguished bravery, or rendered great services to the army, they were emancipated. These circum- stances present the bright side of the picture. On the other hand, the general cruelty of their treatment, and the impla- cable hatred they cherished towards their masters, are too woll attested to admit of a doubt. They were flogged for no fault, but to keep their spirits down, and to remind them that they were slaves. Those who showed abilities or high quali- ties of character, which might be an element of danger to the 24 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. state, were ruthlessly slain ; and if the master failed in his duty to put out of the way a slave of this description, he was exposed to a legal penalty. They were made drunk for the amusement or warning of the young. By an established usage, called crypteia, when the masters had reason to apprehend an outbreak from the increase of the servile class, or from some crisis in public affairs that might tempt them to insurrection, the ephors selected a certain number of the young Spartans, put arms into their hands, and sent them out on a hidden mis- sion to slay, wherever they encountered them, as many of the doomed bondsmen as they pleased. This was not only a meas- ure of state security, but a school of martial training for the future warrior. I do not believe that this proceeding was often resorted to. Nothing but the panic of a servile insurrection could have drawn even Spartans into a measure at once so cowardly and so barbarous. But the fact that such assassina- tions took place under such circumstances must stand, I am afraid, as a dark blot on the pages of Spartan history. If we pass over to Athens, we encounter slavery again as one of the fundamental institutions of the state ; but, as I have already intimated, with somewhat mitigated rigor. Athenian society was a more natural, cheerful, humane mode of exist- ence than the Spartan. Art, letters, and industry in various forms were held in honor there. Solon, the great lawgiver and the founder of the democracy, had been engaged in trade, which he adorned with philosophy and poetry. He was not a mere theorist, nor a merely practical man ; but his practice was en- lightened by general principles, and his general principles were guided, modified, and controlled in their application by practice. In his constitution property had great weight, property qual- ifications determining the citizen's share in the power of the state and his eligibility to office. His institutions thus brought industrial and commercial pursuits to something near a level with patrician birth and hereditary wealth in political influ- ence and social estimation. The Athenian citizen, therefore, was not taught to regard all labor as servile. I do not mean SLAVERY. 25 to say that there was not, even among the Athenians, too large a leaven of the old contempt for the work of the hands ; yet the tendency was to a liberal feeling upon this subject. The Athenian was fond of country life, and often not only took the oversight of his fields and his gardens, but labored hard among his slaves with his own hands, while his wife ap- portioned the domestic tasks to her maidens, and taught them how to do the work, which, if needful, she could well perform herself. The picture which Xenophon gives us in the GEco- nomicus, of the household arrangements of Ischomachus and his young bride, is a charming representation of domestic life among the middle classes of the Athenian citizens. It was no uncommon thing for men engaged in the mechanic arts to exercise influence in public affairs, either by their na- tive talents or their acquired wealth ; and sometimes coarse and vulgar men, by the mere force of impudence, gained an ascendency which overmatched the sway of historical names and aristocratic birth. But with all these popular tendencies, the ancient, time-honored institution of slavery was assumed as a necessity, and taken for granted, by statesmen and philos- ophers alike. We know more of the condition of the slaves in Attica than elsewhere, because we know more of Athens gen- erally than of any other commonwealth in Greece, through the immortal records of her literature. Boeckh estimates the en- tire population of Attica at about five hundred thousand, of whom three fourths were slaves. According to Aristotle, the neighboring island of jEgina, which now has a population of only a few hundred, contained, at the period of its greatest power, four hundred and seventy thousand slaves. The slaves were partly private and partly public property, partly pris- oners of war and partly bought in the slave marts. Some were imported from Thessaly, but the largest portion from Asia Minor, through the intermediate agency of factors among the Greek cities of the coast or the ^Egean islands. Chios, which boasted to be the oirthplace of Homer, early enjoyed the bad eminence of being the greatest slave-market in the 20 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. Grecian world, and of making the largest profit from the sale of human beings. Another class of slaves consisted of those who were born in servitude, and inherited their parents' condition. The possession of a black, that is, an African slave, was a fash- ionable distinction. Theophrastus, the friend and pupil of Aristotle, in one of the admirable series of Characters which nas come down to us from the wreck of his works, mentions among the characteristics of the vain man that "he takes vast pains to be provided with a black servant, who always attends him in public." With showy ladies it was also a point of rivalry to have negro slaves in their train. But, in general, the slaves belonged to the Northern and the Asiatic nations, styled by the Greeks Barbarians. They considered it a settled point, that Hellenes might rightfully enslave Barbarians. The numbers owned by rich Athenians were sometimes very great. The poorest citizen had at least one slave to assist him in his labors. In the houses of those of larger means, in the city, slaves were employed in every kind of service, grinding (their business from the days of Homer), baking, cook- ing, marketing, making clothes, and attending upon their mas- ters and mistresses when they appeared abroad. Three such attendants, at least, were necessary to a stylish appearance ; and many more were frequently to be seen in the train of a wealthy citizen. They were employed in all sorts of trades and handicrafts, sometimes under the owner's eye, sometimes under the charge of an overseer, as in the case of Nicias, who paid a salary of a talent to the superintendent of his men in the mines. The father of Demosthenes a substantial citizen of the industrial class carried on the manufacture of cutlery and bedsteads with a gang of more than fifty slaves, who constituted a large part of his estate at his death. The trading vessels of Athenian commerce were generally manned by slaves, and fre- quently they were mingled with freemen in the crews of vessels of war ; but they did not, like the Helots of Sparta, serve in the army. Of the public slaves, some were employed in the service of the courts, having been qualified at the public charge for the SLAVERY. 2t duties of their respective places. A kind of city-guard, or po lice, called bowmen, or Scythians, consisted also of slaves, to the number of three hundred at first, and afterwards twelve hundred. One .of their duties was to keep order at the public meetings, and to remove unruly persons when directed to do so by the presiding officers. The slaves of the private citizen were absolutely the property of their master. Their earnings were his revenue. They were subject to his will, and the victims of his caprice. They could be given in pledge like any other property. They could be scourged with impunity. Their testimony was not taken on oath, but only under torture. It seems most strange that this hideous abuse should ever have grown up, I will not say among a civilized people, but among those who had the small- est conceivable endowment of common sense. Yet the melan- choly truth is, that not only did Pagan antiquity adhere to the belief that torture was the sole means of obtaining the truth from servile witnesses, but Christian nations, down to a com- paratively late period, were under the same horrible delusion. Generally speaking, the administration of justice was conducted on humane principles among the Athenians ; but the courts admitted this absurd anomaly, and the orators, apparently with- out suspecting its fallacy or its cruelty, constantly allude to it, or offer it in evidence, or challenge it from their opponents. How often it was practised we cannot tell ; but every slave >vas liable to be put to the question, on the offer of his master or the demand of his master's opponent, whenever a litigation arose between them. On the other hand, the slave at Athens enjoyed the pro- tection of the laws in some important respects. He could not be put to death without the commission of crime, and the sen- tence of a legal tribunal. No man could strike or maletreat him, without rendering himself liable to an action. If he had a cruel master, he could seek asylum in the temple of Theseus, and demand to be sold ; so that Demosthenes justly boasts of the superior humanity of the Attic law in its treatment of 28 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. Blaves. When manumitted, as they might be, and frequently were without any formality, the slaves took rank with resi- dent aliens, but were not entirely released from obligations to their former masters, who sustained the relation of patrons towards them, a relation involving certain reciprocal duties, regulated by law. Yet notwithstanding the alleviations of the servile lot at Athens, its victims were not satisfied. The slave the "animated instrument," as Aristotle calls him frequently made his escape ; and the master, if he chose to pur- sue him, could either capture the fugitive, or recover him by offering a reward. I find nowhere a treaty or agreement to send back fugitive slaves, though there may have been such ; nor do I find any class of persons mentioned, like the Fugi- tivarii of the Romans, who employed themselves in recovering them ; nor do I find any trace of a law forbidding the affording them shelter, until Greece became a part of the Roman empire. The truth is, I believe, that the laws on slavery among the Greeks were never systematically organized ; certainly not as between the different cities. In the only allusion I remember to the runaway, in Greek literature, the master avows his pur- pose of pursuing him himself. If the slave ran away, the owner had to run too, if he wanted to catch him, or else to pay some one the arpov for bringing him back. But it is probable that the fugitive to another city would have had no protection in the laws or sentiments of the people there ; and that the owner or his agent might lay hands upon his " animated in- strument," without the slightest opposition from those who had animated instruments of their own at home. I need not add, that, as the Athenian slave was his master's property, he could be sold like any other species of property \n Athens ; that one division of the Agora was appropriated to this traffic ; and that the article to be sold was obliged to mount a stone block, to show himself to the- purchaser, and to undergo any amount of manipulation the customer might re- quire to satisfy himself as to the quality of the merchandise Hence the well-known phrase, to be sold from the stone. SLAVERY. 29 I have already alluded to the sources from which the Greeks procured their slaves. The general doctrine was, that captives ir, war and barbarians might rightfully be reduced to servitude captives in war, because the captor has a right to the life of his enemy, and, for stronger reasons, to his services ; bar- barians, because, they being inferiors, and it being a law of nature that inferiors shall serve their superiors, bondage is their natural condition. The doctrine with regard to captives was modified by the introduction of the principle and usage of ran- som into the laws of war among the Grecian states. To dis- miss prisoners without a ransom was a rare act of humanity. Among the noble deeds of Demosthenes, none deserve a higher praise than his frequent charity in ransoming from captivity countrymen who were too poor to ransom themselves. This rule, however, was often set aside. The inhabitants of cities taken after a long siege were not seldom sold in a body. I am sorry to say that the history of Athens is blackened by more than one transaction of this sort ; and when the Athe- nians themselves met with disaster in the wild invasion of Sicily, the survivors of their defeated army expiated the na- tional crime by laboring in the quarries under the blazing sun of noonday, or perishing by the nightly dew and frost. A few owed a milder fate to the verses of Euripides, which they had learned by hearing his plays in happier hours at the Dio- nysiac Theatre, and now softened the animosity of their captors by repeating. Strange contradictions of the Hellenic char- acter, one day to condemn to hopeless servitude and cruel task-work men of the same lineage with themselves, and the next day to set the captives free for a mere song ! Other examples examples of individuals are still more striking. Diogenes the Cynic was taken by pirates, and car- ried to Crete, where, being offered for sale, just as the auction- eer was about to call for bids the captive shouted out, " Who wishes to buy a master ? " He was bought by a Corinthian gentleman, Xeniades, over whom he acquired such influence that he gave him his freedom, and intrusted to him the edu 30 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. cation of his children. When afterwards he had a slave of his own, and the slave, not fancying the service of a master who lived in a tub, ran away, Diogenes shrugged his shoulders, and said, " If he can do without Diogenes, Diogenes can do without him," a very sensible comment, and the best way of disposing of the whole matter. Perhaps the personal expe- rience of the philosopher made him reluctant to undertake the pursuit. A still more remarkable case is that of Plato. In one of his visits to Sicily, he was invited by Dionysius, the ty- rant, to an interview. The philosopher rather romantically ventured to preach liberalism to the despot, who answered, uncivilly enough, "Your words are the words of a dotard," to which Plato replied, " And yours are the words of a ty- rant." The tyrant had the advantage in power, though the philosopher was the stronger in argument. In a rage, Diony- sius handed him over to Pollis, a Lacedaemonian ambassador, who took him to JEgina and sold him as a slave ; though what use could be made of him in that capacity it is not easy to divine. He was rescued from this condition by Anniceris, a philosophic friend, whose acquaintance he had made at Cyrene, and who paid for him twenty or thirty minae, that is, about twenty or thirty times the price of a common slave, but only about one third of the price of a superintendent of the mines. On his return to Athens, his fellow-citizens sent the money to Anniceris, who refused to receive it, saying, " The Athenians are not the only people in the world who have a right to esteem Plato." The money was afterwards laid out in purchasing the grounds of the Academy, about a mile and a half out of the city of Athens on the north, the spot which his genius made forever illustrious, the spot which Cicero, on his way to Athens, turned aside to visit before entering the gates of the city, the spot on which every scholar treads with indescrib- able emotion, as he wanders among the olive-groves, which still, as of old, are watered by the rills of the Cephissus. That piece of ground, whose name is clothed with the noble asso- ciations of the highest philosophy, was secured to immorta\ SLAVERY. 31 fame for the price affixed by his owner to the great founder of the Academy as a slave. It was not, therefore, exclusively barbarians who, in polished Greece and in the best days of Athenian letters and art, were subjected to the lot of servitude. Of course, the condition in which a large majority of the population were found, and into which any one might fall, could not fail to be considered by thoughtful minds. How was it regarded by them ? I have already shown that its necessity seems to have been admitted, almost without an exception. Homer, whose language is so pathetic in describing its woes, does not appear to have con- ceived a remedy ; and in delineating its evils, his sympathy is limited to the condition of those who fall from high estate, by the cruel chances of war, into the slavery of captivity. It was Hecuba, it was Andromache, royal ladies, whose un- equalled woes drew tears from Ionian assemblies, as the rhap- sodist chanted the undying tale. As for the common. lot of the serf tilling the ground, or the maiden grinding at the mill, that was too much a matter of course, too fixed and permanent a form of life, to wake the song of the epic muse. Tragedy, like the epic, dealt in stately numbers with the sorrows of the great, the crimes of kings, and doomed heroic houses. The slave is the scarcely noticed attendant, the messenger, the armed retainer, or here and there the son or daughter of a princely race, wearing the unworthy weeds of a degraded lot; and it was these whose sorrows, told in the verse of ^schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, drew tears from the spectators. It Vas again Andromache, Polyxena, Cassandra, Hecuba. Here the sentiment which touched the popular heart was Cassan- dra's, " The inspiration remains, even in the mind enslaved " ; or that of Sophocles, "If the body is enslaved, the mind is free " ; or of Euripides, " To many slaves, there is the shame- ful name ; while their minds have larger liberty than the minds )f those who are not slaves " : " One thing alone dishonor brings on slaves, The name; in all things else the ?irtuous slave Lb the equal of the free." 32 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. In the old comedy, which occupied itself with political rela- tions and living characters, or with literary controversies and poetical rivalries, the slave appears as a standing and necessary figure, but plays a subordinate part. He is sometimes a joker or a buffoon ; sometimes a character much like Sancho Panza. Xanthias, in "The Frogs" of Aristophanes, the slave of Bacchus, and his companion in the descent to Hades, is an amusing specimen of this class. Carion, in the " Plutus," is introduced as lamenting his unhappy lot, that, not being the owner of himself, he must needs follow a crack-brained master wherever he chooses to lead ; and in the dialogue on the bless- ings procurable by wealth, his selection of favorite objects is quite in Sancho Panza's vein. In the later comedy, which was founded on the general observation of life, the slave comes forward much more prominently, and probably appears in the real character he bore as an element of Attic society. The poet of the later comedy was entangled by no theories. Ad- mitting the fact as a necessary one, he was not, like the theo- retical statesman, bound to justify it, nor did he care directly to condemn it. The general character of the slave with some variety in the shading is that of a good-natured rogue, often wittier than his master. He is wasteful, extravagant, a glut- ton, a wine-bibber, in spite of the laws that prohibited the drink- ing of wine to his rank, a prohibition considered to be one of the hardest conditions of his lot. He lies to the most enor- mous extent, why should he not ? He is the pimp and pander to all the vices of the young. He has a boundless supply of jokes, good, bad, and indifferent. He is without the slightest moral sense on any subject. In short, his animal appetites have the largest development ; his moral qualities the smallest ; while his intellectual faculties are sharpened, by the temptations of his position, for the successful performance of all sorts of petty rascalities. Sometimes he comes in as a cook, priding himself on a fine-flavored sauce of his own inven- tion, or on the manner in which he has served up a tunny, or a mullet, or a Copaic eel. In one very amusing fragment, the SLAVERY. 83 cook has a passion for quoting Homer, and drives his master, who cares more for dinner than for poetry, nearly out of his senses. In short, the slaves of the new comedy exhibit all the low humors, drolleries, and vices of common life in Athens. But on the other hand, the comic writer, true to all the as- pects of Athenian life, was not blind to the fact of the essential humanity of the slave. As the tragedian said that the Divine inspiration remained in the mind enslaved, so the comic painter often gave expression to the natural, and therefore inextin- guishable, feeling of the universal manhood of man. Says on of the characters in a fragment of Philemon : " Although a slave, his flesh is just the same ; For none by nature e'er was born a slave : But chance it was the body that enslaved." Says the slave in another fragment of the same author: " Although a slave, O master, none the less Is he a man, if he but be a man." Menander, the masterly observer of human nature, the loss of whose works is the greatest loss that ancient literature has sustained, says : " The slave in all things learns to be a slave, And so a rogue ; but give him liberty, 'T is that shall make him better than all else." And again: " Serve like a freeman, thou shalt be no slave." LECTURE III. PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON SLAVERY. SLAVERY AND CHRISTIANITY. I have given a rapid sketch of the institution of slavery among the Greeks, and of the way in which it was regardea by the people and represented by the poets. I should leave this part of my subject quite too imperfectly handled, if I did not trace, at least briefly, the speculative views expressed with regard to it by the leading Greek writers on political science. I shall limit myself to two, Plato and Aristotle, though the subject is touched upon, in a fragmentary manner or inci- dentally, by many others. There are two works of Plato that have a special interest in this regard, the "Republic" and the "Laws," both be- longing to the later period of his life. Of their general char- acter I shall elsewhere speak ; I refer to them now only in connection with this one subject. Plato was descended from the most illustrious families in Athens. Not only had his great natural genius been improved by the usual education of ar Athenian gentleman, but he had travelled largely, and had mjoyed the benefits of an extensive acquaintance with the most eminent personages political and literary in other countries. I have already alluded to one of the incidents of his years of travel which was not altogetner agreeable. Re- turning to Athens, he began to teach about B. C. 389, and remained there, with the exception of the time spent in two visits to Sicily, until his death, B.C. 347, more than forty years. In his teachings, as was customary with the Greek philosophers, he connected theology, philosophy, ethics, and PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON SLAVERY. 35 politics, regarding these sciences as having the most intimate mutual relations. Plato did not approve of the Athenian democracy. The instability and violence which occasionally disturbed his philo- sophic serenity, the imperfections in the administration of jus- tice, and, especially, the judicial murder of his friend and master, the purest and wisest man of the ancient world, whose name has acquired a saintly character in the best judgment of succeeding ages, thrust themselves upon his attention, and made him look elsewhere for a model commonwealth. I think that his experience with Dionysius could not have made him in love with despotism. Indeed, the searching ex- posure of the wickedness and misery belonging to the con- dition of the tyrant, which we find in that admirable dia- logue, the Gorgias, perhaps owes some of its point and power to personal recollections. Tyranny and democracy were, therefore, out of the question. There remained the Spartan form of government and the institutions of Lycurgus, for which it is evident that Plato had a theoretical preference. The characteristics of those institutions which attracted his inter- est were the apparent order and system with which every class in the state performed its functions, and every individual filled his allotted place. What he would have thought of them had he lived near Sparta, had the Academy been on the banks of the Eurotas, instead of the Cephissus, it is not easy to conjecture ; but it is one thing to admire the working of a machine at a safe distance, and quite another to have an arm or a leg caught in a band or crushed between the wheels. The evils of the Athenian democracy were near at hand, and real ; the evils of the Spartan Constitution were at a distance ; while the discipline and regularity were obvious to every be- holder, and made themselves felt in every martial enterprise. At all events, the polity delineated in Plato's ideal common- wealth has much more :>f the Spartan than of the Athenian spirit in it. Did the illustrious author incorporate in it either the Helot system of Sparta, or the milder system of Athenian 36 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. bondage ? Of the general merits of the work I have nothing to say now ; I wish only to show how the sage of the Academy disposed of an institution universal in the Grecian world, when, framing a purely ideal republic, such a one as he conceived to be the best organization of society, could society be made over again, he had everything in his own way. For some reason, he does not introduce slavery here under its own name ; but he founds his scheme upon the analogy be- tween the individual man and the state, the perfect man and the perfect state. The parts of the ideal republic are, first, the fiovXevTi/cov, the counselling order ; secondly, the eiriKovpiKov, the supporting order ; and, thirdly, the XP 7 ll iiaTI ' (rTt ' KOV > or the order devoted to gain ; that is, the three orders constituting the state are to be counsellors, whose business it is to meditate and decide on what is for the good of the whole ; guards, or defenders, whose function it is to maintain and protect the state with military power ; and workers, whose duty it is to furnish by their labors the means of living to all. The first class the men of intellect are to govern the state ; the second, the men of courage, are to defend it ; of the third, those who have neither intellect nor courage, but only the lowest qualities, the mere multitude, the men fit for noth- ing but physical labor, are to cultivate the earth and to prac- tise the handicrafts ; those whose physical powers are least ade- quate to these tasks are to sit in the market-place, and carry on the system of trade ; while another division are to engage in commerce of a larger kind by land and by sea. From the products of these branches of labor, the governors and protec- tors are to be supported. It is for the good of the state that these classes should be perpetually distinct, and that their sev- eral functions should become a part of their nature, transmis- sible by descent. Especially are the members of the lowest <*lass to be forever separated from the governing and protecting classes. Yet the possession of the qualities that fit men for these several positions is an indispensable requisite to their con- tinuing to hold them ; but he supposed that in most cases the PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON SLAVERY. 37 tnesus employed would secure the permanent possession of them. Sometimes it might happen otherwise. In the course cf generations, one of the governing order might fall below the qualifications for his condition, or one of the order of laborers might rise above the level of his. Then, what is to be done ? " You, who are members of the state," says Plato, in the person of Socrates, " are all brethren, but the god who made you mingled gold at their birth in the composition of those who were to govern, and for this reason they are the most honorable ; silver in those who are to protect and de- fend ; iron and brass in the tillers of the earth, and other hand- laborers. As you are all of the same kith and kin, you will, for the most part, have offspring who will resemble yourselves. But sometimes silver may be born of gold, and gold of silver, and so of the other metals. God then commands the rulers first and foremost that they show themselves good guard- ians in nothing so much as in the care of offspring, and in observing what has been mingled in their souls. If their own children have a portion of brass or iron, they must by no means be moved by pity, but, assigning to them the rank belonging to their nature, thrust them out among the artisans or farmers ; and if, on the other hand, one of these be born with gold or silver in his soul, they must duly honor him by raising him to the rank of warrior or ruler ; since there is an oracle that the state shall perish when brass or iron shall govern or protect it." There is something quite noticeable in this passage. 1. All the orders of the state are supposed to work harmoniously ogether. 2. Each member of every order is supposed to have his just rights meted out to him, duties and rights be- ing correlative. 3. All the members of all the orders of the state are addressed as brethren, a remarkable expression. 4. The name and the system of slavery, as they existed in every Greek commonwealth, are excluded from this ideal state. From this circumstance it is fair to' infer, as Wallon does, that Plato meant to say, that, if he could organize human society accord- ing to his views of a perfect commonwealth, he would exclude 88 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. slaves as property, but would accomplish the industrial ob- jects secured to actual societies through that institution by the labor of a rigidly organized body of freemen, not-fitted to take part in the functions of government, and possessing only the faculty of labor ; yet not so absolutely fixed that any mem- ber of this order, showing natural aptitudes above his rank, might not ascend to the more elevated classes. But we cannot infer, I think, that Plato positively disapproved of the existing institution, or that he saw any really practicable mode of dis- pensing with it in existing Hellenic societies. I do not speak here of objections, both theoretical and practical, which would be fatal to Plato's republic, if looked upon as a serious plan for reforming political institutions. I am only drawing out from the philosopher his idea of what would be desirable, on this particular head, in a state of society which he could con- ceive of, but might never hope to realize. In a striking passage of Book Fifth, one of the interlocu- tors in the dialogue says, in speaking of war and its ordinary results : " First, concerning enslavement, does it appear to you just that. Greeks should enslave Greek cities ? or that they should do their best even to prevent others from doing so, and accustom them to spare the Greek race, guarding it against be- ing enslaved by the barbarians ? " " Absolutely and entirely, it is best to spare them." " And not to possess Greek slaves themselves, and to advise the other Greeks so too ? " " Cer- tainly they would then turn more to the barbarians, and abstain from one another." Here the non-enslavement of Greeks is recommended, but rather from motives of prudence than from any fundamental objection to slavery as such. Wallon is mis- taken in saying that Plato recognizes the natural injustice of this destiny. We shall come nearer to Plato's views of the then existing state of things by examining his " Laws." In this work a system of institutions, conceivable as introduced into an actua\ state, which was to be reorganized after having been depopu- lated, is carefully unfolded. In speaking about househol fLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON SLAVERY. 39 arrangements, after some very admirable instructions for the formation of families, handing down the lamp of life to suc- cessive generations, and serving the gods according to the laws, the author takes up the subject of slavery at some length. "As to other matters," says he, "they are difficult neither to understand nor to procure ; but the subject of slaves is wholly perplexing The Helotism of the Lacedaemo- nians gives occasion to the greatest question and doubt, some naintaining that it is a good thing, and others that it is a rery bad one. In other forms of slavery, the embarrassment s less. Now, looking at all this, what are we to do with regard to the possession of slaves? We should all agree that it is necessary to have slaves as kindly disposed and as good .is possible ; for many slaves have proved better than sons and brothers, and have saved the lives, property, and families of their masters. These things are told, as we know, of slaves. And, on the other hand, it is sometimes said that there is nothing healthy in the slavish soul, and that a man of sense must never trust one of the race. As the wisest of our poets has said, Of half his mind far-seeing Zeus deprives The man on whom the day of slavery falls.' With such different views, some place no trust in the race of slaves, and render their souls, not threefold, but many times more slavish, by scourging them with goads and lashes, as if they were wild beasts ; and others treat them in just the oppo- site manner. Man is a creature not easily adapted to these distinctions of slave and freeman and master. The slave is in- deed a troublesome possession, as has been proved many a time by facts, as in the frequent, even customary, revolts of the Messenians, and all the evils that happen in the case of cities possessing many slaves speaking one language Consider- ing all these facts, a man might well doubt what course it were best for him to take. Two devices alone remain, to see that those who are expected to submit easily to servitude should as far as possible not be of the same country nor of the same 40 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECR language ; and next, to treat them well, and hold them in re* spect, not merely for their own sake, but for the good of the masters themselves. And the proper treatment of such persons is not to behave with insolence towards them, but to be more careful not to wrong them than not to wrong one's equals. For he shows strikingly that he truly and not fictitiously rever- ences justice, and really hates injustice, who commits no wrong upon those whom he can easily injure. He, then, who has no stain of injustice and unholiness with respect to the manners and conduct of slaves, will be the fittest to sow the seeds of virtue. And the same may be said of the despot, or the ty- rant, or any one who exercises irresponsible power over those weaker than himself. Yet it is necessary to chastise slaves, and not to make them put on airs by admonishing them as if they were freemen. Every address to a slave should be al- most a command. There should be no jesting with slaves, male or female, a habit which some persons very foolishly like to indulge in, thus making it more difficult for their slaves to be governed, and for themselves to govern." From this passage it is evident, first, that Plato accepted slav- ery as inevitable, very much on the principle of Metrodorus, that it is an indispensably necessary institution, though a disa- greeable necessity ; secondly, that he, in common with his coun- trymen in general, felt the dangers of the institution in some of its forms; and thirdly, that he saw no practicable method of averting those dangers, except by devising measures to prevent an easy combination among the slaves, and training them by kindness and respect to identify their interests with those of their masters, and thus willingly to submit to the conditions of their lot. I find in Plato no traces of the idea that a general abolition of the system as established from the earliest times would be possible or desirable. Aristotle was the disciple of Plato ; but he differed from him in many respects, both as to philosophical and political views. He subjected existing facts to a searching scrutiny, and drew his principles from large inductions. He examined constitu- PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON SLAVERY. 41 tions, epic poems, and tragedies, as he did the soul of man, or the structure of a fish or a quadruped. His aim was to as- certain the central fact or principle, to lay out in order the con- stituent elements, and to determine the exact nature of things. Like Plato, he connected politics with ethics; but he main- tained with more distinctness than Plato did, that it is the duty of the legislator to make the whole state happy, by com- bining the greatest possible number of advantages, whether ex- ternal or intellectual. The best state is that in which the citizen can secure to himself the largest amount of happiness by the practice of virtue. He wrote two works, which deal with the subject before us ; the Politeiai, in which he ex- amined the existing constitutions, and which is lost ; and the Politica, in which he gives his own ideas of what a state should be, founding them, however, not, like Plato, upon an ideal conception, but upon the facts of political life, as developed in human societies. There is a third work, the GEconomica, which bears upon some parts of the general subject. One of the conclusions he draws is, that, in the best regulated state, the citizens who are to be just men, that is, men performing all the duties belonging to citizenship, must be free from all the cares of handicraft and trade, for a life devoted to such pursuits is unfavorable to virtue ; nor should they be farmers, for lei- sure is an indispensable condition to the generation of virtue and to political activity. How is this leisure to be secured to the favored citizens ? The state is founded upon the family ; and the constituent elements of the family are man, woman, and slave. Without either element, social and political man ceases to exist, at least in his perfection. Here, then, is the germ of the system ; and this germ is furnished by nature. The relation of the slave to the master is like the relation of the body to the soul, whence the slave is called a body, fia ; he is his master's body, but detached from him ; the master is the master only of the slave, but is not his ; the slave is not only the slave of his master, but is wholly his. The natural ruler and the natural subject must be united for their common 42 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. safety. That which can foresee by the intellect is the natural rnler and master ; that which can render bodily service is the natural subject and slave ; and man is by nature a political animal. There are some, he admits, who affirm that to be a master is against nature, that the slave and the freeman ex- ist by law, but differ in no respect by nature ; wherefore the relation is not just, because it comes of violence. He merely states this opinion as a fact, without attempting a direct an- swer. In the economy of a family, instruments or organs are required ; and of these there are two kinds, the inanimate and the animate, as to the pilot the rudder is the inanimate organ, and the man on the look-out the animate. The slave is an animate organ, and indeed the first of organs. But if every organ, either commanded or foreknowing, could perform its proper office, as did the works of Daedalus, and the tripods of Hephaestus which the poet describes as moving of themselves into the assembly of the gods, if the shuttle could thus weave and the quill could thus play the lyre, the architect would want no servants, the master would need no slaves. Thus we see the nature of the slave and his capacity. He who by na- ture is not his own, but another's, and is yet a man, he is by nature a slave ; and that man is another's, who is a piece of property, being a man. But whether there really is such a person by nature or not, whether it is better, whether it is just, that one should be slave of another, or whether all slavery is contrary to nature, admits of question. To Aristotle slavery appears necessary, expedient, and founded on a principle of subordination running through all the orders of nature, so that some, from the hour of birth, are marked out for ruling, some for obeying. Those who are in- ferior to others, as the body is inferior to the soul, are slaves by nature, and it is for their good to be thus governed. Such persons are those whose function is the use of the body, and this is the best thing to be had of them. Nature intends to make the bodies of slaves and freemen different from each other; the former strong, for necessary use; the latter erect, PLA/O AND ARISTOTLE ON SLAVERY. 43 useless lor menial labors, but useful for civil life. Sometimes, however, the contrary happens If this be true of the body, it is still more just to draw the distinction with respect to the soul, although it is not so easy to see the beauty of the soul as to see that of the body. Yet it is clear that some men are freemen by nature, and others are slaves, and to the latter slavery is beneficial and just. Again, it is asked whether a slave can possess any virtues except the instrumental and servile, any traits nobler than these, such as temperance, fortitude, justice, and the like. This question brings the inquirer into difficulties which are very fairly stated by Aristotle. If they possess these virtues, wherein will they differ from freemen ? Yet, as they are men, and participate in reason, it is absurd to suppose that they may not possess them. Another puzzling question is, how far might makes right. Victory seems to imply some superior ability. Does it prove the justice of the cause ? No one will say that the man who is undeservedly enslaved is a slave, (and he might have illus- trated this proposition by the case of Plato). Men of the noblest families might happen to be slaves, and the descend- ants of slaves, if they or their ancestors have been taken pris- oners of war and sold. But they are not slaves, this name must be limited to those who are slaves by nature. Men of noble descent are not only so regarded in their own country, but everywhere. Thus Helen, in Theodectes, says: " Who dares reproach me with the name of slave, When from immortal gods, on either side, I draw my lineage 1 " Again, Aristotle concludes that some persons are slaves and others freemen by the ordinance of nature ; and that there may exist a mutual utility and friendship between the master and the slave, when they are placed by nature in that relation to each other ; while the contrary is the case with those whn are reduced to slavery by custom or by conquest. Our author then treats of the knowledge which a slave 44 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. ought to possess, inasmuch as one kind is suitable to the mas- ter and another to the slave. At Syracuse, he states, there was a person who, for a stipulated fee, instructed the boys in the routine of a household slave. The knowledge of the master is how properly to employ his slaves. Not that this knowledge contains anything great or lofty ; but what a slave ought to know how to do, the master should know how to order. Those who have it in their power to be free from such toilsome matters employ a steward for this business, and ap- ply themselves to public affairs or philosophy. I must close this sketch of Aristotle's views on slavery by the substance of a passage in the CEconomica, a brief treatise which contains much excellent matter upon the do- mestic relations. Here, as in the Politica, the necessity of having slaves is assumed. The conduct of the master towards them, it is said, should be such as not to render them insolent or negligent. He should make distinctions among them, ac- cording to their capacities and qualities, since, as other men grow worse when they gain nothing by being better, so is it with slaves It is likewise requisite that to all things an end should be set ; it is therefore both right and expedient that freedom should be held up to them as a reward ; for they will be willing to labor when a prize and a definite time are proposed. It is right also to bind them as hostages by their families ; and to appoint holidays and festivals more for their sake than for the free, since the free possess so much larger means of daily enjoyment. I have thus endeavored to present to you, chiefly in his own language, the opinions of the most sagacious and learned writer of antiquity on the institution of slavery among the Greeks. The sum of the matter, according to him, is : 1. Slavery is founded on natural distinctions ; and it is necessary and useful for both master and slave. Yet practically it exists where no such distinction can be found ; and how this contradic- tion between fact and theory is to be dealt with, he does not explain. 2. The slave, though an article of property, an SLAVERY AND CHRISTIANITY. 45 wholly his master's, is yet a man, and is to be treated with justice and kindness. 3. He is influenced by the same mo- tives as affect other men, and therefore the highest excellence of character and conduct can be produced only by the highest motive. And what, according to Aristotle, is the highest mo- tive that can be held up before him ? Why, freedom. But, if there be the sharp division between those who are natu- rally slaves and those who are naturally masters, which his theory implies, and which is the justification of slavery, how can the prospect of freedom be a legitimate motive to set before the man who was born to be a slave, and whose inter- ests are bound up with the very existence of the relation ? The truth is, that the institution was there as a long-established fact, to be examined like any other fact; but it had elements of perplexity which the acute, honest, and humane genius of Aristotle could not reconcile with many of the phenomena of human nature that he witnessed in Hellenic society, and he was obliged to leave the theory vitiated by contradictions, while he gave practical rules conformable to his own sense of justice, and inspired by his calm wisdom and serene hu- manity. I expressed the opinion, in the first Lecture, that there is a coincidence between the spirit of Christianity and the best teachings of Greek philosophy. In my judgment, St. Paul on the Hill of Mars is the complement to Socrates in his prison, to Plato in the Academy, and to Aristotle in the Lyceum. The wisdom of the Hellenic sages is carried out and perfected, its shortcomings are made good, its partial truth is rounded and completed, by the deeper wisdom, the holier inspiration, the broader views of the great Christian masters, the Apos- tles and early Fathers of the Church. The humane tenden- cies of Grecian philosophy became fundamental principles in the philosophy of the Son of God. The errors of the Acad- emy and the Lyceum were corrected under the heavenly light of the Church. Plato maintained that God had made all the members of his ideal commonwealth brethren ; Paul declared *6 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. that God had made the whole human race of one blood Plato and Aristotle taught that the master should treat his slaves kindly ; Paul taught Philemon, and through him every other Greek master, that he must receive the returning fugi tive, " not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brothei beloved," receive him as he would Paul himself; prom- ising at the same time, a very significant fact, that, if Philemon had suffered any loss through Onesimus, it was to be put to his Paul's, account, and he, Paul, would repay it. On one most important point bearing upon the relation of master and servant, Christianity corrected an error of Greek philosophy. The Greeks regarded certain kinds of work as servile, requiring a servile class for their performance ; yet more, as disgraceful, requiring therefore a dishonored, a con- temptible class. But the Son of God took upon himself the humblest form, the lowliest offices, and thereby exalted all labor to a divine significance. "Come unto me," said he, "all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me ; for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls." The influence of the Beatitudes and of St. Paul's expositions of the Christian spirit on the tone of feeling in Greece, doubtless coin- cided with the national sentiment, and carried it forward in the same general direction which had been imparted to it by phi- losophy. It did not attack institutions in their outward forms ; but it strengthened the noble and generous attributes of hu- manity within those forms. It assailed no established rights, and broke no laws ; but it transmuted the violence with which those rights were sometimes enforced into gentleness and love. It recognized duties on both sides in legal relations ; it sanc- tioned and justified no outrages on person or property, no encroachment even, no withholding of legal dues. It cannot be said that these men adopted so mild a course be- cause they feared the personal consequences of stronger meas- ures. Champions of Divine truth, taking their lives in their hands, counting tortures and death as naught in the service of SLAVERY AND CHRISTIANITY. 47 Jieir great Master, they made no compromise with principle, they sacrificed nothing to the world ; but they dealt with all the relations of man to man in the way which they knew to be wise, and right, and in accordance with the law of God. The glimpses and intimations of truth which the Hellenic sages saw, on the subject we have been discussing, they bright- ened into the perfect day. They struck at the root of war, and of all other systems of violence; they overthrew the pretexts for international prejudice and wrong ; they made all honest labor honorable ; they thus dried up the sources from which the bitter stream of bondage flowed. They established prin- ciples which, in proportion as they were carried out in the ancient world, removed the evils which the philosophers saw and felt, and could only abate. It is not in ' the nature of social life to undergo radical changes in a moment. Christianity had a struggle of cen- turies, before its outward triumphs raised it to high places in the world ; and its struggle to gain an inward triumph over the evil passions of man will probably last as long as the earth shall endure. But the seed was sown ; the plant grew and ripened here and there ; and human life was refreshed by the Divine fruit. The Fathers of the Church faithfully proclaimed the doctrines of Christ and the Apostles upon the essential equality of man. Justin declared that the sons of freemen and the sons of slaves are o/xoTifioi, of equal honor. St. Basil, while admitting that the inferior should be under the guidance of the superior, yet maintains that there is no such thing among men as a slave by nature. St. Chrysostom is equally emphatic. All these teachers inculcate, indeed, the duties of order, obedience, and fidelity, on the slaves ; but equally those of kindness, gentleness, respect for natural rights, and sympathy as for brethren in Christ, on the masters. Gregory of Nazianzus expressed himself in gnomic verse to the effect that tyranny, not nature, had divided the rare of men ; that every bad man is a slave, every good man is free. Greg- ory of Nyssa said, that the Divine seal set upon the brow of 48 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. our first parent was perpetuated down to his latest descendant as an ineffaceable mark, since man is in all ages the same being to that Supreme Power which has neither past nor future. These views the Fathers of the Church maintained under all circumstances ; but they did not find it their duty to attack outward forms. The revolution they sought to effect was in the heart of man. Where the heart was right, all that it was desirable to have would soon follow. They held slaves themselves, because the ordinary service of a household could hardly bo otherwise supplied. But while accepting the ex- ternal relation, universal in those times, the Church acknowl- edged no real distinctions save in the qualities of the soul. But human nature is not easily changed. The treatment of slaves was the frequent subject of the faithful rebukes of Chrysostom. " When you go to the theatre or the bath," says he, " you take with you a train of servants ; but you make no such effort to bring them to the church, where they may hear the word. And how shall the slave hear, when the master is attended by him in another place ? " The characters of the slaves, too, as drawn by the Christian Fathers, are much like the pictures given by the ancient poets ; but the Christian father boldly states the causes, while the old poet or philos- opher only hinted at them. Says St. Chrysostom: "It is a thing generally acknowledged, that slaves are lazy, rebellious, unmanageable, unfit to receive instruction in virtue, not by the vice of nature, God forbid! but by the negligence and misconduct of their masters in regard to them As their masters require only service at their hands, they tolerate their disorders on this condition, and thus the slave falls into the depths of vice. If in spite of the active oversight of a father, a mother, a teacher, in spite of the influence of equals and of the sentiment of birth, we have such difficulty in avoiding the company of the wicked, how must it be with those who, de- prived of all these supports, mingle with criminals, or with whom they please, no one caring what friendships they form \ f his is the reason why it is so hard for slaves to be good SLAVEKY AND CHRISTIANITY. 4JJ They receive no instruction abroad or at home ; they have no intercourse with educated freemen, who attach a high value to public opinion. How then should net it be a wonderful thing to find a slave a good man ? " Once more, in a remarkable passage, touching upon the con- clusion to which the doctrines of the Church were tending, the eloquent preacher says : " What need of so many slaves ? As in other things, you should limit yourself to the necessary. And what is the necessity here ? I do not see it. A master should content himself with a single slave ; or rather, one slave should be enough for two or three masters. If this appears hard, think of those who have none, and are better served ; for God has created us with the power to serve our- selves and others. If you doubt, listen to St. Paul : ' Mine own hands are sufficient to serve myself and others.' Thus this teacher of the world, worthy of heaven, was not ashamed to serve so many thousand men ; and you would think your- self disgraced, unless you were followed by a train of slaves, ignorant that it is this which disgraces you It is not necessity which has created the race of slaves ; if it were, a slave would have been created with Adam," and much more to the same effect. I think that among the early Greek Fathers, the able and eloquent men who preached the Gospel in Constantinople, Antioch, Ephesus, Alexandria, and Tarsus, there was but one voice upon this subject. As the Church became more thoroughly organized under the decrees of oecumenical councils, the subjects of human slavery, and the treatment of the enslaved, were constantly forced upon its attention ; and everywhere the equality of men in Christ, and the brotherhood of the whole human race, were the central ideas embodied in decrees and ordinances whose object was to restrain the wanton excesses of irresponsible power, and to protect the bondsman. Down through the Middle Ages, dur- ing the long decline of the Greek race under the Byzantine empire, the relation still existed; and now again, as in the earlier classic ages, it was often the fate of the best-born and 50 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE most accomplished to be seized by freebooters, pirates, or rov- ing adventurers on the Grecian seas, and carried into hope- less captivity. How often the shores of Greece were desolated by barbarians engaged in this merciless traffic, the terrible history of those centuries of gloom and darkness may tell us. The Church still spoke in the same voice, although ecclesiastics and monks were often the owners of bondsmen. About the beginning of the ninth century, there died at Constantinople Theodorus Studita, abbot of the monastery of Studium in that city, who left, in the form of a testament for his successor, his confession of faith, and a series of practical directions, one of which thus reads : " Thou shalt not possess a slave, neither for thine own use, nor for the monastery, nor for the field, since he is a man made in the image of God. This, like marriage, is allowed only to the people of the world." I need not dwell upon these times ; the picture is essentially the same through the ages of decline. At length the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, in 1453, and the extension of their conquest over Greece in the three following years, reduced all alike to a barbarous servi- tude, some of the forms of which were more painful than any ancient bondage of the barbarian to the Greek. This general enslavement of the Hellenic race lasted almost four hundred years, a long, bitter, and degrading lesson for those whose ancestors had been the teachers of the world. The yoke was heavy, the agonies of servitude entered their souls, and it seemed as if no hope could send its light into their prison- house. I need not recount the circumstances of their great deliverance, the heroic deeds and dreadful sufferings through which they passed. It is enough to state one fact which has a bearing upon my subject, and is surely not discreditable to the Hellenic race. When the war of national liberty commenced n Greece, an assembly was called at Epidaurus, to draw up a declaration of independence, and to frame a provisional govern- ment. Among the earliest articles of the Constitution were one for the universal education of the people, and another SLAVERY AND CHRISTIANITY. 51 abolishing slavery forever. And when, in 1843, the deputies at Athens, ten years after the beginning of the reign of Otho, framed a new Constitution, they embodied in it both these principles, declaring that slavery shall never be allowed in the kingdom, and that the bondsman, of whatever race or nation- ality, becomes free the moment he sets his foot upon the soil of Greece. " In Greece, man is neither sold nor bought. The bondsman or slave, of every race and every religion, is free the moment he treads on Grecian soil." Thus this institution, which outdates Homer and the heroic age, which occupied the thoughts of poets, philosophers, legislators, saints, and mar- tyrs, from the beginning of political society and the dawn of speculative science, under which the Greeks were sometimes masters, and sometimes slaves, closed its melancholy but tenacious existence only in our day, after the most wonderful diversity of national experience, and with the direct influence of Christianity acting upon it for eighteen centuries. LECTURE IV. THE EAELY TYRANNIES. THE SPARTAN CONSTITUTION In the heroic constitutions we trace the germs of the free and varied political forms in which the Grecian states abounded through the historical ages. Besides the head of the state, we uniformly find a body of counsellors and a popular assembly ; and through all the forms of government, which gave Aristotle so large a field of investigation and such a copious collection of tacts from which to draw his inductions, we find, in one shape or another, under one name or another, magistrates or counsel- lors and members of the popular body concurrently working to carry out, by legal enactment, the collective will of the people. In the colonies which were established in the period following the Trojan war, and for centuries afterward, the institutions of the mother cities the fArjTpoiroXei^ were copied, but with modifications to adapt them to the varied wants of co- lonial society. These colonies extended along the western and southern coasts of Asia Minor, and to the shores of the Euxine Sea ; along the coasts of Thrace and Macedonia ; over the -3gean Islands ; to the west as far as Sicily ; and over a large portion of Southern Italy, called from this circum- stance Magna Grsecia, Great Greece, as being more ex- tensive than the mother country. The colonies on the coast of Asia Minor arranged themselves in geographical order, the jEolian in the north, the Ionian in the centre, and the Dorian in the south, each race maintaining its peculiarities of language and of political forms, though on this latter point oui information is scanty. The colonies of Sicily were mostly Dorian ; those of Italy, Dorian and iEolian. The Ionians of THE EARLY TYRANNIES. 53 Asia Minor were the first to excel in poetry and art. To them belongs the imperishable glory of Homer and epic poetry. The JEolians followed, and the lyrical school of Les- bos, and the impassioned strains of Sappho's muse, constituted their especial renown. The Dorians, as was to be expected of their peculiar genius, came last into the field of letters, though from early times they possessed a vigorous martial min- strelsy. In some of the colonies the descendants of the old .leroic families were leaders and founders. In others, new men came up from the people. In general there were many changes, and a new order of things arose. The states of which we have the best information are Sparta and Athens, Sparta, the most conspicuous representative of the Dorian, and Athens, the crowning flower of the Ionian race. It is probable that the other Dorian and Ionian states framed their institutions generally upon the metropolitan models. Among the most remarkable changes that succeeded the downfall of the heroic monarchies were the rise and establish- ment of what the Greeks called tyrannies. This word did not originally refer to the manner of exercising power, but to the nature of the office and the mode of gaining it. To the Greek mind, the source of power was the popular will ; and the object of its exercise was the benefit of the body politic. Fiom what has been said in previous Lectures, it will of course be understood that the servile classes enjoyed the benefit of these principles but imperfectly, if at all ; and when we speak of the freedom which the constitutions of Greece generally developed, and the admirable results of the Greek polity, a large reservation on this head must always be made. We say, then, that the popular will was the source and the people's good was the aim of government in the Hellenic conception of civil society, whether under the Dorian or the Ionian system. Any government that established itself with- out the co-operation of these principles, and refused to ac- knowledge its accountability to the people, was, in the Greek 5-4 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. sense of the word, a tyranny, no matter how wisely or hu manely it might be administered. When the old hereditary rule lost its hold upon men's minds, either by the disappear- ance of the royal families, by violent revolutions, or by pro- gress in political ideas, a free opportunity was thrown open for bold and aspiring men, who could command the support of powerful parties by their wealth, or ingratiate themselves by an insinuating address, to usurp the places once held by the champions of the Trojan war or their descendants. These men often found, in the confusion of changing institutions, no great difficulty in accomplishing their purposes ; and some- times they secured their families in power for several genera- tions. Their period commences in the seventh century before Christ, and continues about two hundred years. They were, therefore, contemporaneous, or nearly so, with the great legis- lators, who stand as the impersonations of the legal, as con- trasted with the tyrannical principle. The oldest tyranny was that established at Sicyon, by Orthagoras, said to have been originally a cook. His de- scendants the Orthagoridse governed the city for about a hundred years ; and their rule is praised by Aristotle for its mildness. It ended with Cleisthenes, whose daughter, Agariste, married Megacles the Athenian, and became the mother of the Cleisthenes so distinguished as a popular leader in Athens. In the third century before Christ, Sicyon became again subject to a tyranny. In the seventh century B. C, the ancient house of the Bacchiadae the kings of Corinth was overthrown by Cypselus. This prince belonged, by his mother's side only, to the old Doric nobility of Corinth. An oracle had declared that he would be dangerous to the reigning family ; and his life being threatened, he was saved by being concealed in a chest, from which circumstance he received his name. This chest was a splendid work of art, and an heirloom in the family, who after- wards consecrated it at Olympia. Pausanias saw it there eight hundred years later, and has given a minute description of it. Cypselus was succeeded by his son Periander, an able THE EARLY TYRANNIES. 55 ruler and a patron of literature. The family of the Cypselidae remained in power about eighty years. Similar tyrannies were established in Epidaurus, Megara, Pisa, Phlius, Chalcis, also in some of the cities of Asia Minor, and in Samos, of whose tyrants Polycrates was the most renowned. At Athens, a tyranny, under Peisistratus, followed the legislation of Solon, and lasted, with intervals, until the expulsion of Hippias. The tyranny in Sicily was the longest and the most successful, be- ginning with Phalaris of Agrigentum, and continuing through the reigns of the Syracusan kings. The tyrants sometimes rose to power by the aid of the people, who preferred one ruler to the oppressions of the nobles. Sometimes they gathered around themselves a body of foreign mercenaries, and seized the power by force. The nature of their government depended in both cases on the per- sonal character of the tyrant. Many of them were enlightened men, who collected poets and philosophers at their courts, and swayed the sceptre with mildness and clemency. But arbi- trary and irresponsible power was not in harmony with the genius of the Hellenic people, and the dignity and splendor of the courts of most of these princes were short-lived. They fill, however, a remarkable chapter in the history of Greece. The earliest legislation appears to have been that of Crete ; but in the mass of fable and the embellishments of poetry, of which that beautiful island was from the oldest times the centre, it is impossible to make out a clear and intelligible account of the Cretan system. There probably was a king named Minos. He was the first, according to Thucydides, to establish an important naval power, and to clear the Eastern seas of pirates. The tradition which traces Cretan insti- tutions back to Minos may be accepted as historically true ; and the Cretans would seem to have been of Dorian origin, by the resemblance of their laws to those of Lycurgus. Minos was so renowned for his justice, that he became, with Rhada- manthus, one of the judges of the lower world. The early kings of Crete were succeeded by boards of ten magistrates. 56 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. called Cosmioi, chosen from certain families, who, along with other functions, bore the chief command in war. A coun- cil or senate of thirty (yepovaia) held the supreme executive and judicial power, without written laws and free from ac- countability. The members of this body were taken from those Cosmioi who had honorably discharged the duties of their office. There was, according to Aristotle, an ecclesia or general as- sembly, in which all were allowed to participate ; but this assembly had no other power than to sanction, without dis- cussion, the decrees of the senators and Cosmioi. In the ar- rangements of private life, there was also a resemblance to those of Sparta. Agriculture and the industrial arts were despised, and left wholly to the servile classes. Youths and men lived at public tables, the expense of which was defrayed partly by the payment of one tenth of his income by each citizen, and partly by contributions from the government ; and these contributions were drawn in part from the public lands, and in part from the revenues derived from the serfs. But the land was not equally divided among the citizens, as it osten- sibly was in Sparta, nor was it inalienable. I suppose that these faint outlines are tolerably correct. The rhetoricians were fond of delineating the primitive felicity of the Cretans, and of contrasting the degeneracy of their own times with the purer morality of the Saturnian age ; but, like all other primi- tive felicities, the Cretan pretensions on this score will hardly stand the scrutiny of investigation. At all events, in the later ages, the Cretans enjoyed no enviable reputation for personal morality or regard to truth. Their lying spirit became a by- word and their licentiousness a scoff among the Greeks. St. Paul quotes a proverbial expression, which troubles the Cre- tans at the present day. " The Cretans are always liars," was said of them by a Greek poet, Callimachus of Cyrene, because they affirmed that the tomb of Zeus was in their island. I have heard an accomplished Cretan lady maintain that her ancestors were right ; that Zeus was a man, raised by the ancient superstition to the rank of a god, ana THE SPARTAN CONSTITUTION. 57 that he really died and was buried in Crete, so that there was no lying not even a mistake about it. The Spartans were the quintessence of the Dorians. Spar- tan institutions exhibit the Dorian political genius in all its strength and in all its weakness. The Spartan man was the Dorian man raised to the highest power. He had all the virtues of his race in their brightest form ; and the faults of his race, that is, the faults generated by their training, in the fullest development. Sparta stood on the right bank of the Eurotas, just below the ranges of Taygetus and Parnon, in a situation of great natural beauty. It was not surrounded with walls until the Macedonian age ; it was however built, like most other an- cient cities, round an acropolis. The plain of Sparta forms the heart of Laconia. It was originally inhabited by the Le- leges ; then it fell under the power of Achaian princes ; and in the heroic age it was the capital of Menelaus, brother to Aga- memnon, and of Helen, the most beautiful of women. Two generations later, the Dorian invasion dispossessed the Achaian kings, and the city became the portion of Eurysthenes and Procles, who claimed to be descended from Hercules. The names of thirty-one descendants of the former and twenty- seven of the latter are given, from the foundation of the Dorian government down to the last quarter of the third century be- fore Christ, that is, till after the epoch of the Macedonian su- premacy. The Dorian conquerors supplanted the old Achaian institutions by introducing the Dorian usages, under which they had been trained in their mountain homes ; and it was upon this established order that the constitution of Lycurgus, or the system of rules and ordinances which passes under his name, was built up. It is very clear that Lycurgus did not construct de novo the institutions of Sparta. They existed long before his time, as Dorian institutions ; and all that he did was to reform and reorganize tnem. So much uncertainty exists, 'n the midst of the contradic- tory statements of the ancients, as to the personal history of 68 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. Lycurgus, that some sceptical investigators have rejected it altogether, and reduced him to a myth. This view, how- ever, must be considered untenable ; we must admit the actual existence of the lawgiver ; we must admit the out- lines of his character, and his claims as the reorganizer of the Spartan commonwealth ; but at the same time we must accept it as at least a probable conclusion, that he was only a re- former, and not the creator of a new system. It is hardly necessary to say, that to impose on a people a constitution and forms of private life materially different from those to which they have been accustomed, is an impossible task. Institutions grow up as naturally as plants and animals. They may be modified under fitting influences, and by legislative skill ; but they cannot be forced into existence without a radical con- nection with the ancient usages, laws, customs, and establish- ments of the people. The period at which Lycurgus lived is wholly uncertain. A.ristotle placed him in the age of Iphitus, which is in the ninth century before Christ; Xenophon, still earlier. He is said to have been the brother of Polydectes the king, and afterwards the guardian of that king's posthumous son. He is said also to have visited Crete, Asia Minor, Egypt, Libya, and even the more distant countries of Iberia and India. Of his having travelled in other countries we need not doubt ; as to the particulars of his travels, we are not bound to believe much. At all events, on his return he was welcomed by all parties as the only man capable of curing the evils under which the state was laboring from the dissensions of the orders. According to the custom of the times, he began by securing the sanction of the oracle at Delphi, a political engine of no mean importance even in those early days, and often employed in accomplishing the far-reaching purposes of warriors and statesmen. He also had from the beginning the support of a large party of citizens. Thus fortified, he set about his task. Having finished the work, he called the people together, and required of them a promise that they would make no change THE SPARTAN CONSTITUTION. 59 m his laws until his return from a distant journey, which he was about to take. According to Plutarch, he went to Delphi, and, having sacrificed to Apollo, received from the oracle the assurance that, while the people of Sparta observed his laws, the state should enjoy the height of renown. He determined, therefore, so far as lay in his power, to make it immortal, and to hand it unchangeable down to posterity. " He therefore," adds Plutarch, " put an end to himself by a total abstinence from food ; thinking it a statesman's duty to make his very death, if possible, an act of service to the state, and even in the end of his life to give some example of virtue, and effect some useful purpose." The general principle here laid down is very just ; while the particular exemplification of it is characteristic of the uniform sentiment of antiquity on suicide. A slight sketch of the Spartan Constitution is all that time will allow. Lycurgus found two kings, representing two branches of the royal family, and he left them as he found them. He proceeded to ordain a council, or senate, called yepoves T which he named after ten of the ancient heroes, Erechtheis, iEgeis, Pandionis, Leontis, Acamantis, (Eneis, Cecropis, Hip- pothoontis, iEantis, and Antiochis. Very wisely, these tribes were not purely geographical. They were subdivided, each into ten districts or boroughs, called Srjfioi, denies, but singularly combined, so that the demes constituting a tribe were not contiguous to one another. The number of deme? THE CONSTITUTION OF CLEISTHENES. 93 was afterwards increased from one hundred to between a hun- dred and seventy and eighty, occupying the whole territory of Attica. In public documents the citizen's name was given, generally with the name of both the deme and the tribe to which lie belonged, as well as the name of his father. The demes and tribes had their special organizations, their deme officers and tribe officers, their feasts, sacred rites, public prop- erty, and the like ; and every free and qualified citizen was entered on the lists, and could transfer the relations thus con- tracted, and relieve himself from the duties thus imposed, only by certain public ceremonies', by which he left the old society and was adopted into the new. The system of tribes regulated the new organization of the state, and carried out the demo- crati c principle much more completely than the old order of things, inasmuch as it determined the number and the modes of election o'f most of the great political and executive bodies. ( -7 yhe nine archons were still retained. The duties of the ar- chons we i-p partly jnrlirntil The Archon Eponymus had charge of orphans and heiresses ; all the cases which arose in relation to their affilirs came before him in the first instance ; and if they were finally referred for decision to one of the courts, he presided. He received various informations and complaints against individuals, and prepared them for trial ; and, finally, he superintended the Greater Dionysiac Festival, and the Thar- gelia in honor of Apollo and Artemis. The Archon Basileus, or king archon, was chiefly occupied in religious affairs, in which he represented the ancient kings in their function of high-priest. The Polemarch, as the name indicates, was origi- nally the commander-in-chief of the army, and he served on the field as late as the battle of Marathon ; afterwards, his duties were restricted to the home administration, and were especially connected with the resident aliens, to whom he stood in the same relation which the other archons bore to the citizens. The remaining six, the Thesmothetae, were required to make an annual scrutiny of the laws, and, if any were found inconsistent with others, or redundant, to propose amendments. 94 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. They were also extensively concerned in the general adminis- tration of justice, and had charge of the preliminary proceed- ings in a great variety of cases. These magistrates were ah elected from the highest-property class of Solon ; but the office was afterwards thrown open to all th e A thenian citizens. There were two legisl ative bodies^ 1. /Th e JScclesia, or pop- ular assembly . The right- to a membersh ip of this body was carefully restricted to the citizen s; and citizenship depende d on birth from parents both Athenian, or on adoption. The a dopted, however, though possessing the right of voting, could no t become archons or priests. All citi zens of full s tanH 1 *"^ whose n ames had been registeredrin the Honks of flip rlpmps, a nd who had been guilty of no infamous crime, were members of the Ecclesia from and after the age o f twenty, and all had t he right of speaking upon every question la id before them._ The usual practice was ibr the herald, or public crier, to ask who of the citizens, more than fifty years of age, desired to address the people ; and then to call upon any other citizen whe-4jad anything to say. lheJ9oW^)rsenate. Solon's senate consisted, you will Jmber, of four hundred, taken from the four Ioni c tribes. T his arrangement was now changed ; the number was raised J:o five hundred, fifty being drawn annually from eac h tribe. A substitute for every senator was drawn by lot, to take his place in case of the illness, inability, or degradation of the prin- cipal. All citizens, in full standing, of thirty years of age and upwar d, were capable of being drawn into the senate. The business of this body was to prepare the questions that were to come before the assembly. They also controlled the finances, and received foreign ministers. A bill might be pro- posed by a private citizen, he having first obtained, on petition, the privilege of appearing before the senate, with whose ap- proval he could lay his proposition before the people. In fact, io law or decree could come before the assembly without naving first been approved by the senate. The Boule* was divided into ten sections of fifty each, the members ot wnicb THE CONSTITUTION OF CLEISTHENES. 95 Swere called Pryzaneis, or presidents, because a member of them acted as presiding officer of the senate or assembly, the members from each tribe holding the office for thirty-five or thirty-six days, thus dividing the year into ten periods called Prytanie*. The tribes exercised these functions in succession, the order being determined by lot. Every prytan body of fifty was divided into five committees of ten each ; and its period of office into five of seven days each ; so that ten prytans called irpoeSpot (proedri) divided between them the presi- dency for seven days. The president of the day was called the Mpistates, and during his day he kept the public records and the seal of the city. In some cases of small importance, the senate could act definitively without the concurrence of the Ecclesia. The business of legislation was therefore carried on b y two bodies, each of whir.h aotpd sppnratply upon the matter in hand. The more select body originated the bill, while the Ecclesia could adopt the senate's measure in whole or in part, or could throw it out altogether, both bodies exercising the largest freedom of discussion. It does not appear that it was necessary to send an amended bill back to the senate for their concurrence. This may perhaps be considered as an offset for the absence of the power of originating measures in the pop- ular assembly. The principle established by this arrangement is the important one, that every legislative act must pass be- fore two bodies differently constituted. There was no execu- live. head endowed with the power of vetoing the enactments jf the leg islature. Sometimes the people instructed the senate to act finally on specific subjects, without bringing them before the Ecclesia. The senate also received eisangelice, or informa- tions of extraordinary crimes against the state, for which no provision had been made by the laws. These cases corre- sponding to the modern impeachment might be dismissed by the senate, or referred for trial to one of the courts. It has been mentioned that the senate had the charge of the finances, in tne administration of this department representing the exe*** 96 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. utive power, while the legislative authority, regulating the amount of expenditure and determining the sources of the rev- enue, was vested in the popular assembly. The senate, says Boeckh, arranged the appropriation of the public money, even in trifling matters. The determination of the salary of the poets, the superintendence of the state cavalry, and the exami- nation of the infirm maintained at the cost of the state, are spe- cially mentioned among its duties. The public debts were also paid under its direction. The pry tans met daily at the Pry- taneum, or city-hall, where they dined together, and remained in readiness to receive any communication on public affairs. The senate-house was called the Bouleuterion, in which were chapels to Zeus Boulaios, the god of counsel, and to Athene Boulaia, the goddess of counsel, in both of which prayers were offered before the business of the meeting was opened. The meetings of these bodies were of two kinds, ordinary and extraordinary ; the former held on stated days, appar- ently four times in every prytany, those of the senate almost daily ; the latter summoned on the occurrence of extraor- dinary or alarming events, requiring the immediate action of the government. On holidays, and these were pretty fre- quent, as on the saints' days of the Greek Church, no business could be transacted, whether legislative or judicial. The popular assembly was held at first in the Agora, after- wards it was transferred to the Pnyx, and in later times it sometimes met in the great Dionysiac theatre. Extraordinary assemblies were occasionally convened at other places, even as far out of the city as the Peiraeus. Meetings could be called by the prytans, or by the generals with the consent of the prytans or of the senate. The pay of the senators was a drachma for every day on which they sat ; of the ecclesiasts, at first an obol (between two and three cents), afterwards a three-obol piece. It seems probable that the richer class attended gratuitously, and that whe fee was intended to enable the poorer citizens to perform their public duties without too much interruption and damage to their private affairs. THE CONSTITUTION OF CLEISTHENES. 97 For the administration of justice, very careful provision was made in the amended Constitution. In early times there were five places where courts were held ; and under the new Constitution the number was increased. A large amount of business was transacted by the courts of Dicetetce, or arbitra- tors, of whom there were two classes, public and private ; the former appointed by the people, probably four from each tribe, forty in all, taken by lot from the citizens over fifty years of age ; the latter selected for each case by the parties con- cerned. The Areopagus exercised judicial functions in charges of murder, murderous assault, and other specified crimes of a heinous character ; and as their powers were somewhat vague, under the general authority to exercise a censorial oversight, or to act as guardians of the laws and as superin- tendents of public order and decency, they could, especially in cases of great emergency, bring almost any subject or person within their official cognizance ; so that it is not at all surprising that Pericles was anxious to limit the jurisdiction of this body. The most important tribunal, however, and the one in which the~citizens were most deeply concerned, was the Helisea, or the Heliastic court. The word is an old one, in use among the Dorians, and by them applied to the public assembly. At Athens it was always used, at least after the time of Cleis- thenes, for the great popular tribunal. The membe rs of this court were drawn by lot, from the quali fied citizens of the ten tribes over thirty years of age. Th ey were chosen under the super intendence of the nine archons and their secretary^ each of whom drew from the trib e assigned to him six hun- d red persons. T he whole body amounted to six thousand, who ' were li able to be called upon as dicasts, or jurymen, during the year. They "were divided, according to the tribes, into ten sections of five hundred each, leaving a thousand super- numeraries to fill vacancies or to attend to any unusual cases. All the members of each section belonged to the same tribe. The sections were designated by the first ten letters >f the alphabet, from A tc K inclusive. Trey sat in eight 98 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. or ten places, including some of the five places of the aucien* courts. The dicasteria, or court-rooms, were painted of differ- ent colors, and each had a letter of the alphabet inscribea over the entrance. The portion of the court occupied by the members that is, the dicasts, the parties in litigation, the advocates, and the presiding officer was surrounded by a railing, outside of which there was room for spectators ; and on opposite sides were stands bemata for the antagonist speak- ers. In ordinary matters, one section was considered sufficient for the adjudication of the cause ; in extraordinary cases, some- times two sections, sometimes three, were united. The judicial business was distributed among the courts, when there was more than one of them could attend to in a single day ; and the arrangement of the sections was determined by lot. The first ten letters of the alphabet, representing the ten sections, were thrown into one urn ; and the letters of the several dicas- teria, with their distinctive colors, into another. A ticket, or letter, was then drawn from the first, which would designate the section, and one from the second, which would designate the court. For example, suppose that a number of cases were to be tried, and the letter T was drawn from the first urn, and a yellow A from the second, it determined that the P, or third section, was to sit in that one of the dicasteria which was marked with A, and painted yellow. If two sections were to be united, two letters, for instance T and K, were drawn from the first urn, and one from the second, B, red, it may be, signifying that the third and tenth sections were to sit ogether in the dicastery marked with B and painted red. Each .ndividual received on his election a tablet with the letter of his section and his name, as a certificate of his appointment ; and as he entered the court, a staff was presented to him as the emblem of his office, and a symbol, or ticket, which, on being presented at the proper place, entitled him to his Heliastic fee This was a three-obol piece (a little over eight cents) for each cause he tried. The court was opened with religious ceremo- nies and the administration of a judicial oath. THE CONSTITUTION OF CLEISTHENES. 99 Let me in this place remind you that the tribes and demes had their several boards of public functionaries, their local usages and associations, and their funds to be administered for local purposes. I must also explain a point of consider- able importance, which should always be borne in mind in speaking of the Athenian institutions ; and that is the pecu- liar relation that existed between Athens and Attica, between the capital and the country. While, of course, there was the usual difference between the permanent inhabitants of the city and the permanent inhabitants of the country, in manners, education, social usages, and the like, yet, politically speaking, every Attic was an Athenian. In other words, Athens, as the centre of political life, belonged as much to the free-born farmer beyond the Ilissus and the Cephissus, as to the city-bred gentleman who lounged daily in the Agora. The people in the country had as much right to attend the meetings of the assembly, and were as likely to be drawn into the senate and the dicasteries, as the people who were crowded in the narrow streets of the town. And when a great crisis arrived, it was customary to send notice among the rustic demes, so as to have as large a meeting as / possible. Athens was the political homestead of all Attica, j The magistrates appointed, whether by ballot or by lot, were 1 as likely to come from the country as from the city. The fire was constantly kept burning in the Prytaneum, and the \ hearth of the Prytaneum was politically the hearth of the resi- J dents in Acharnae and Sunium, no less than of the club-men of the Diomeian gate. The father of Demosthenes belonged to the deme of Paeania, of the tribe Pandionis, and the great *\ statesman was born in Paeania, just at the entrance into the \ Mesogaea, where an old grim lion, without any hind legs, 1 looks gravely upon the surrounding solitude ; yet he was none the less entitled to his share in the associations and privileges of the civic fireside. The number of these local divisions, it has already been said, was finally not less than / % hundred and seventy or eighty ; the names of a hundred 100 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. and sixty-one of which were found by Dr. Ludwig Ross in inscriptions. To return to the state boards of officers or magistrates, who were appointed by one of the two modes already indicated, the basis o f the election was genera lly th p diviainn i"*r> Hhea, one magistrate rep resenting each tribe. Next to the archons in the administration of the state were the ten generals, who were chosen by public vote, that is, by hand-vote. For this office certain special qualification*! were required, which seem at first sight to have but little to do with military science. The candidates must be men living in honorable matrimony ; they must possess landed property ; like all the other magistrates, they were subjected to a rigid scrutiny, under which they must show that they possessed these qualifications in addition to com- mon citizenship ; and at the termination of the official period an equally rigid system of accountability, in closing the affairs of their administration, was enforced. The archons were at first elected by hand-vote, but after- wards, and it would appear from the time of Cleisthenes, by lot. They, too, were subjected to the same law of scrutiny before entering upon office, and of accountability at the close. Many other offices were distributed by lot among those legally qualified ; but the scrutiny and accountability dimin- ished the objections that might be theoretically urged against this system, and the public was still further secured against the mischiefs that might have been anticipated from it by an additional provision that, at the commencement of each prytany, an incompetent or unfaithful officer might be re- ferred to a public vote, and, if the charge were proved against him, might be degraded from his officety The general principles of the new Constitution may be briefly stated as follows :-41.JThe authority of the state was effectively lodged in the body of the people, by the extensive powers conferred on the popular assembly, especially in the .ater periods of the republic, when almost every subject, both of peace and war, came before it for final consideration THE CONSTITUTION OF CLEISTHENES. 101 fl> 2.yThe first check upon this power was found in the annual senate, which alone exercised the right of originating measures of government ; but that check was again counterchecked by the right of the assembly to amend a proposition sent down by the senate, to reject it, or to substitute another on the same subject, without referring it again to the senate. f 3.) The second check, as in the Constitution of Solon, was found in the court of the Areopagus, which still consisted of those archons who had faithfully discharged the duties of their year of office, and who held their seats in this court for life. Aristotle calls this an oligarchical body, but not in a bad sense ; though its power might be easily abused, and it would not have been easy to bring any member of it under the common laws of the state for a breach or abuse of trust. (4. J The influence of the people was very profoundly felt in the courts of law, especially in the Heliastic courts, of which the members were so numerous that Plato classes them with other mobs. This mode of trial anticipated in part the prin- ciple of the jury trial. The dicasts, however, were judges and jurymen combined. They were called Enomotoi (^ju- rors), sworn triers of the case before them; but they were not in theory the peers of the prisoner, standing to defend him from the government considered as the contending partyA they were his peers, but at the same time they" were a popular assembly, representing the sovereign people and exercising a function of government. The parties appeared before them, and argued their own cases to the best of their ability, often aided by the written arguments of others. They made their own statements, produced their own witnesses, hunted up the laws, had such passages as they thought applicable to their cases read by the secretary of the court, and the presiding officer never interfered. When the vote was to be taken, or, as we should say, the verdict rendered, the herald called upon those who thought the accused guilty to hold up their hands, which were counted ; then those who thought him innocent did the same ; and the votes of the majority decided the case 102 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. Sometimes a ballot was taken, and black and white beans were cast into two urns, the black for condemnation, the ' white for acquittal, here, again, the major vote deciding the case. It is easy to see in this arrangement a sway of the popu- lar will too open to the inroads of passion and prejudice to be always safe for the citizen or conducive to the ends of jus- tice ; yet the impartial student of history will acknowledge that the cases of gross wrong were few and at long intervals. Some there were which are terrible illustrations of the deadly force of popular prejudice and unreasoning fury, unchecked Sthe strong barrier of a learned and independent judiciary. The power of the people was preserved by the principle of choice by lot, rather than by ballot, because this operated as a hindrance to the formation of parties in the state. There could be no organization to promote the election of such or such a man as Archon Eponymus, because he represented the principles of this or that party ; there could be no caucus nominations, no platform of principles so called per anti- phrasin^ as the grammarians say to be pulled down like other show-platforms when the exhibition is over. The For- tune which decided the question and placed the citizen in office was rigidly impartial, and no combination, coalition, compro- mise, bargain, corruption, promise, threat, availability, or other mysterious source of political influence, could swerve the god- dess from her course. This was, perhaps, an advantage on | the whole ; and we find few complaints of the incompetency or unfaithfulness of the magistrates so elected. I know of no instance of an archon's having been displaced or degraded, and we have lists of several hundred of them. It was worth something to save the people from their friends, who do all their political thinking for them. Fortune was quite as good as a caucus, and a lot was as good as a platform ; for Fortune and the lot always chose from among those who were legally and theoretically qualified, while the caucus and the platform are in the frequent habit of pitching upon those who are no* qualified at all. THE CONSTITUTION OF CLEISTHENES. 103 It is probable that t he busine ss transacted in the courts was of moderate extent at first; but with the rapidly unfolding power of the common wealth, the number of cases of litigation was proportionall y increased. The commercial relations of the Athenians were extended and complicated ; the mechanic arts were numerous ; while enlarged political power, from various circumstances, led to numerous entanglement? with fcreign cities and kingdoms. The Peirseus became the emporium of the world. A financial system of the most r^ni -^d character was gradually formed with the increasing wants of the state. An extensive mercantile marine came into active operation. Questions on loans, securities, interest, contracts, guardian- ships ; a complex system of port-duties ; disputes as to tem- ple-property, and the rights of temple-corporations therein; controversies between citizens of the allied states and citizens of Athens, which were carried up to the courts of Athens, all these caused a rapid accumulation of business, which finally employed a large part of the citizens in daily attendance upon the dicasteries. The fees they received made it for their per- sonal interest to multiply the cases as far and as fast as pos- sible, and generated a love of litigation which, while it sharp- ened the intellect, was a dangerous enemy to regular industry, and undermined the moral character. The detestable race of p ublic informers, making a business of getting up accusations mos tly f alse against the citizens, especially those of the highest respectab ility, was bred by the public corruption into a miserable, mischievous, and con temptible existence. Some- times the love ot the Jaw led to a kind of in sanity, like that described by Sir Walter Scott in the character o f P^tpr Peebles ; an d Aristophanes, withtiis customary skill, seized 'tlp on th is frenzy for the subject of one of It's most amusing comedies, " The Wasps," to whicn I made a cursory refer- ence in a former course of Lectures^ The characters in this piece are drawn from the life, but are not individuals actually living, like the persons in " The Knights " and some other of the author's plays. The prin- 104 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. cipal dramatis persona are Philocleon, an old dicast, and, as his name indicates, a friend of Cleon ; his son, Bdelycleon, a hater of the demagogue ; two servants, Sosias and Xanthias ; a cho- rus of old dicasts, masquerading as gigantic wasps, with tails and stings significant of their vocation ; three children, sons of Carcinus, represented by a practical pun on their father's name as young crabs ; a dog, and a door-keeper. Philocleon has the dicastic disease in the most virulent form. The son, wiser than the father, and wearied out with his extravagances, tries to cure him. Finding argument of no avail, he shuts him up at home, and places sentinels to keep guard over him, and re- strain him from attendance in the courts. Medicines are ad- ministered to him in vain ; Corybantian rites are resorted to, with no better result. He tries to crawl out through the drain ; to bore the wall ; to ascend the chimney, where he is stopped only by clapping a lid over the top of it. Then he pretends that he desires to sell a donkey, and fastens himself under the ass's belly. He is discovered, torn away from his hiding- place, carried back into the house, and shut in with bolts and bars stronger than before. Something falls from the roof on the head of Sosias. It is a tile loosened from the roof by the old juryman, who has worked his way between the rafters. A troop of dicasts passing by to court, early in the morning, the old man is driven to madness, gnaws through the net they have spread over the house, and attempts to descend by a rope ; but he is again caught, and the chorus of wasps are beaten off. They turn upon the young man, with a charge of tyranny. The old man declares that nothing but death shall separate him from the courts ; and his son, discouraged by the hopeless- ly incurable character of the disease, surrenders, and promises to convert the house into a court of law for the administration of justice among the inmates. This idea is eagerly laid hold of by the old man, and is at once carried into execution. A hitle difficulty occurs at first in finding a case ; but Xanthias is heard swearing at " A graceless cur, a most atrocious cur," THE CONSTITUTION OF CLEISTHENES. 105 who has broken into the kitchen and eaten up a whole Sicilian cheese. The dog is Labes, a name intended for Laches, a general who had been tried on a charge of peculation in Sicily. He the dog is immediately arrested, and the trial proceeds with all the forms of an Athenian court. Xanthias is accuser, and Bdelycleon is counsel for the prisoner at the bar, for whom he makes an eloquent speech, and resorts to the usual method of exciting pity by producing the wife and children of the ac- cused. The puppies behave much like puppies, and are dis- missed from the stand. The dog is acquitted, to the great dis- tress of the dicast. Other modes of cure are resorted to. The old juryman is with difficulty persuaded to exchange his tat- tered cloak for a new one. He is taught how to eat and walk, to sing songs and take attitudes, like a gentleman. But he only rushes from one madness to another. He becomes in- toxicated, and beats his slave ; falls to leaping, dancing, and shouting ; and, as one of the servants says, performs " all the antics of an ass over-stuffed with roasted barley." He abuses his son ; gets into a quarrel with a baker-woman, beating her and overturning her bread-basket into the street ; fights a man he encounters in one of his mad freaks, and is threatened with a suit for damages. At length he is dragged into the house by main force, where, hearing a flute, he is seized with a passion for dancing, and challenges every one to a trial. The chal- lenge is accepted by the sons of Carcinus, who appear in the form of young crabs. The dance commences, the old crab (Carcinus) joins the madness of the hour, and the piece closes with a wild travesty of tragic and comic choral movements. The moral and mental distemper which furnishes the ground- work of this fantastic piece has its type in human nature, under such circumstances as existed at Athens, and as exist wherever the spirit of litigation is fostered. Each of us, prob- ably, can recall examples of it ; but I have nowhere seen it so powerfully exhibited in literature as in this comedy. Philo- cleon is past cure ; the only diversion to his madness is to turn it into other channels. In this consist the consiunmate art ot 106 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. the poet, and the affecting moral affecting in the midst of the most grotesque extravagances which the comedy teaches and illustrates. I have preferred to set forth the unhappy consequences which, in individual cases, followed from the extension of the judicial system of Cleisthenes, by citing the picture drawn by the Greek satirist, who was a keen observer of human nature, and thoroughly familiar with the working of the institutions of his country and the tendencies of his age. It must be re membered, however, that he was a satirist, and not a philos opher ; and as such it was his business to exhibit, not the whole truth, but only such aspects of the truth as were ca- pable of producing a comic effect by ludicrous exaggeration. There was a morbid state of the Attic mind, the disease springing from an original weakness of character, but developed and made intense by the action of institutions, but the mind was in the main good. We must not take caricature as his- tory, but only as a vivid illustration of side-views of history. There were dangers in the judicial system of Athens ; and the dicastic disease was one of them. Another and more serious danger was the risk of sacrificing the object of popular dislike to the passions of the hour, as was done in the case of Socrates. But with all these perils and morbid tendencies, the Attic process was open and above-board. There was no stealthy arrest ; no hurrying to prison without remedy, or keeping in prison without end ; no secret questioning ; no hopeless concealment from the public eye. The arrest was in the broad day ; the trial was in open court ; fellow-citizens pro- nounced the verdict, after a defence in which all freedom of speech was allowed, and the accuser was confronted with the accused. In a long course of administration of private and public justice, the cases are very few in the history of the Attic courts where wrong was done or right was not done. That any occurred is lamentable ; but the same may be said of courts of justice elsewhere. I think I may venture to affirm, that, ir. th< variety of questions discussed, in the general soundness and THE CONSTITUTION OF CLEISTHENES. 107 *quity of the decisions, and in the ability with which the cases were argued, the history of the popular courts in Athens is honorable to the demos, and will compare favorably with that of any modern nation. This leads me to a special ordinance in the Constitution of Cleisthenes, which I must utterly condemn r while T think T" see the reasons that wrought on the legislator's mind in enact- ing it. 1 refer here to ostracism. It was a process known in principle to othe r states as well as to Athens. The pur- pose was to remove temporarily any citizen who, by wealth, ability, general influence, or aspiring character, might be~ thought b y a cons iderable number of the people to be dan - g erous to the commonwealth. The words of Aristotle are : " Democratic states were accustomed to ostracize and remove from the city for a definite time those who appeared to be superior to their fellow-citizens, by reason of their wealth, the number of their friends, or any other means of influence." It is clear that it was meant to be applied to cases where no crime had been committed ; and at Athens it worked no forfeiture of property and no personal disgrace. The ex- perience of the Greek republics taught them the danger of usurpation, under a popular constitution. The true protection against the danger was to have a strong executive head, a unit, instead of scattering executive powers and responsibili- ties among many boards and individuals. But the law-makers, in their dread of concentrating powers in one person, were deterred from this course, thinking, perhaps, that such a magis- trate might easily become a despot, a view curiously illus- trated by the present Constitution of the Swiss Republic, in which the members of the council of state hold in succession the office of President. The explanation given me by a statesman of that country was, that the makers of the Constitution were ifraid that a President with a long tenure of office and full executive powers would soon be converted by the neighboring monarchies into a despot. Cleisthenes Had witnessed the ap- Daront ease with whi h the house of Peisistratus had risen 108 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. to power, and the difficulty with which that power had been overthrown. He probably thought, in the existing state of things, that danger to the government was still lurking in the unconstitutional desires of adherents of the tyrannical house, or of other ambitious members of the Eupatrid order ; and reasoning upon past experience, he came to the conclusion that it would be easier and better to get rid of the dangerous individual before he should surround himself with the muni- ments of usurped power than afterwards, which, as he might have remembered, was the suggestion in Solon's warning verses. He probably thought, also, that he had sufficiently guarded ostracism from abuse ; for he provided that the senate and assembly should first inquire whether such a step was necessary. If they decided in the affirmative, then the people were summoned to a general meeting in the Agora, each bringing a bit of tile, ostracon, on which he wrote the name of the person whose banishment he desired. The nine archons and the presiding officers superintended the proceed- ing ; and the citizen against whom six thousand bits of tile were deposited was ostracized. He was required to leave the city in ten days. Mr. Grote, from whose judgment I do not think it ordi- narily safe to differ on a question of Greek history or polity, approves of ostracism. To be banished for ten years with- out even the allegation of a crime could inflict no personal dishonor. It was a great hardship, no doubt, both to the vic- tim and to his family. But he could return at the expira- tion of the time, resume his place as a citizen, take charge of his property, and all might go on as before. Yet ten years is a long time to be in exile, anywhere ; for an Athenian to be away from Athens, on compulsion, for ten years, and all for no crime, was certainly a hard measure for being a well- born, wealthy, or otherwise distinguished or ambitious man, or for being, as was the case with Aristeides, universally callea the Just. It might well be objected, also, that, where political rivalries were vehement and the passions ran high, such a mode THE CONSTITUTION OF CLEISTHENES. 109 of removing a competitor offered too great a temptation to slander and all the base arts of secretly undermining the rep- utation. No doubt in practice this was the case. I ques- tion if there was ever an instance of a successful resort to this measure in any other way or for any other purpose. As might have been expected, the best men were in almost all cases the victims, Themistocles, Aristeides, Cimon. It never was of any benefit to the state, and it generally did nothing but mischief. It would be enough to say, that it was unjust, and that injustice is always inexpedient, if the principle of justice were always recognized as the controlling and guiding rule in the formation of political institutions. The experience of the world, taken collectively, shows the evil and deadly con- sequences that inevitably flow from the incorporation of wrong into the fundamental law of a state. There is an Eternal Power which sends its retributions sooner or later, and re-estab- lishes often on the ruins of ancient thrones and long- descended dynasties, and often on ground drenched with the blood of the innocent descendants of the original authors of the wrong, the immortal principle of justice. Ostracism, however, was not strong enough to maintain itself, and to require so solemn a catastrophe to end it. Two Athenian statesmen, Nicias and Alcibiades, united to ostracize Hyperbolus, a lamp-maker, a coarse and vulgar demagogue ; and by ostracizing him they ostracized ostracism itself. From that time forth it was vulgar; it smelt of the lamp of Hyperbolus ; it was unfit for a gentle- man. If I had been an Athenian, I should have preferred to have had it abolished because it was wrong, rather than discon- tinued because it had grown vulgar; but I should have been glad to get rid of it in any way. I have endeavored to point out the defects as well as the J excellences of the Athenian Constitution. The latter greatly j predominate over the former in number and weight. It was \ a marvellous piece of wisdom. It contains all the principles/ of free government, to which modern times have added only \ new application* and combinations. Legislation and the ad- J 110 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. ministration of justice by the people or their representatives , legislation by two distinct bodies, insuring careful considera- tion before the enactment of laws ; the administration of jus- tice, through fair trial by equals, and in the open day, these rand securities of liberty are the fundamental principles of he Constitution of Athens. Under that Constitution, she pse to power ; she made for herself immortal renown in the world's history ; she confronted the multitudinous hosts of ersia ; she survived the Peloponnesian war ; she survived he Macedonian conquest; she maintained herself as an in- tegral part of the Roman Empire. Even through the Dark A.ges, parts of her ancient Constitution her magistrates and ribunals still remained. Under the Turkish oppression, Athens still had her archons ; and under the Constitution )f 1843 she has her court of the Ephetae, and her Areopa- us before which, only a few years ago, an over-zealous classicist of the Athenian bar moved a reversal of the sentence of Socrates. Thus vital and durable are human institutions, when founded on natural right, and animated by the spirit of liberty and rf justice. LECTURE VII. THE PERSIAN WARS. ORIGIN OF ATTIC ELOQUENCE - PERICLES. Lycubgus intended to make his people a brotherhood of warriors. His object was to keep them apart from other na- tions ; of course, to repress the passions which lead to foreign conquest. But even his stringent rhetrce could not utterly subdue the nature of man. He did not count upon the effect of jealousy excited by the spectacle of others, living under different systems, and rising to power by different means. Athens is only a hundred and fifty miles from Sparta ; and it was impossible for the Spartans to be indifferent to what was going forward in Athens. Sparta was the natural ally of despots and oligarchs everywhere. She was the natural ally of Peisistratus and Hippias and Hipparchus ; and she sought every opportunity of interfering with the growth of a power like that of Athens, founded upon principles so alien from her own. Isagoras invoked the aid of Sparta against Cleisthenes. Through her influence, Cleisthenes was com- pelled to quit Athens, as one of the accursed family of the Alcmaeonidae. Cleomenes, the Spartan king, being despatched with a military force, entered Athens without resistance, and, having expelled seven hundred families, attempted to dissolve the Senate of Five Hundred, and to place the government un- der the control of three hundred adherents of Sparta. This was carrying matters with too high a hand. The people flew to arms. Cleomenes and Isagoras fled to the Acropolis, but were obliged to surrender in two days. They were allowed to withdraw ; but their followers were slain. The exiles were 112 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. at once restored, and two results immediately followed: 1. A feeling of hostility was created between the two states, never afterwards completely removed. 2. The free Constitution was more deeply rooted in the affection of the people by this un- successful attempt of domestic treason and foreign violence to overturn it. Another attempt was made by sending a Peloponnesian army, under the command of both kings, into Attica. But the Corinthian allies, ascertaining the object of the expedition, denounced the enterprise ; and Demaratus, the second Spartan king, agreeing with the Corinthians, the army broke up. Not content with this, the Spartans called a congress of their allies to consult on the restoration of Hippias, whom they invited to be present. Again they found the proposition to restore the tyrant not well received. The Corinthian dep- uties expressed the general sense of the congress. " Surely," said they, " heaven and earth are about to change places, when you Spartans propose to set up in the cities that wicked and bloody thing called a tyrant. First try what it is for yourselves, at Sparta, and then force it upon others. If you persist in a scheme so wicked, know that the Corinthians will not second you." The Spartans were forced to abandon their unprincipled scheme ; and Hippias went back to Sigeum in Asia to wait for better times, and to see what he could do by intriguing with the Persians. The Constitution, having weathered the storms that broke upon its early days, rapidly became the object of the devotion of the citizens ; and in the short period about eighteen years which elapsed between these attempts of Sparta and the breaking out of the Persian war, all ranks of men, from the highest to the lowest, became ardently attached to the country and to its wise and beneficent institutions. The Greek colonies in Asia Minor had been subjected to the Persian Empire. About 500 B. C, movements of revolt oegan to take place, especially among the Ionians, who nat- urally applied to their kinsmen, the Athenians, for support THE PERSIAN WARS. 113 A fleet way despatched across the jEgean, and the troops, uniting with a strong Ionian force, marched upon Sardis, one of the principal cities of the Empire, to which they set fire ; but being obliged to retreat before a superior army, they were overtaken on the way to Ephesus, and severely beaten. On hearing of this insult to his royal authority, Darius, the Per- si^m king, fell into a paroxysm of rage, and made immediate preparations to put down the revolt, which had rapidly ex- tended. Miletus was closely besieged, the Ionian fleet was de- feated near Lade, the city was taken by storm, the men were mostly slain, and the women and children were carried into captivity in the interior of Asia. The downfall of Miletus, and the fate of its inhabitants, furnished the subject for a tragedy brought out at Athens in the following year by Phrynichus, which threw the audience into such convulsions of grief, that they fined the author a thousand drachmae " for having re- called to them their own misfortunes." These events hap- pened B. C. 495, and led to the complete subjugation of the Ionians to Persia. Darius was not forgetful of what he regarded as the inso- lence of the Athenians in the burning of Sardis. He sent an army, B. C. 492, under the command of his son-in-law Mardonius, with orders to bring to Susa the Athenians who had insulted the authority of the great king. But the fleet was wrecked on the rocky coast of Athos, the land-troops were exhausted by fighting the Thracians, and he was obliged to lead back the shattered remnants of the host across the Hellespont. The king made preparations on a larger scale, and two years later sent a vast army under Datis and Ar- taphernes, who were commanded to burn Athens and Eretria to the ground, and to carry away the inhabitants into slavery. The Persians had seen enough of Mount Athos, and they now sailed across the jEgean and made for Euboea. Eretria was soon reduced ; and then, crossing over the narrow strip of sea, they landed on the immortal plain of Marathon. At Ath- ens were three men, educated by her free institutions, who 114 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. were fully equal to the emergency, Miltiades, Themistocles, and Aristeides, all of whom were chosen on the board of ten generals for that year, the people doubtless making this most judicious selection with reference to the threatened invasion. A courier was sent to Sparta to solicit assistance ; but no assist- ance came in season. On religious grounds the Spartans were unwilling to march before the full moon, now some days off. But the Athenians immediately hurried over to Marathon. I need not recount the history of the memorable day which, un- der the auspices of the great Miltiades, made the name of that beautiful plain a rallying-cry for freedom and patriotism forever. The mound raised over the Athenians who fell there still stands on the field, and speaks to the soul with its eloquent associations in the midst of silence and solitude. This decisive victory released the Greeks from fears of Persia for ten years. Athens went steadily forward as a free state, not without warm debates, and even discords, among her great men. Themistocles and Aristeides, after the death of Mil- tiades, were the most distinguished leaders. The peril of the Persian invasion had brought them to act harmoniously in the common cause of the country ; but after the storm had swept by, they often differed, sometimes acrimoniously. Aristeides was a man of the most incorruptible virtue, so that he was pop- ularly called the Just. Not only was it impossible to bend him from the straitest course of honor by any prospect of per- sonal advantage, but even the interest of his country could not swerve him in the least. With these admirable qualities, he was at the same time, if one may venture to judge of a public man of two-and-twenty centuries ago, a little too rigid in his adherence to the old. He was averse to innovation, and did not sufficiently appreciate the universal fact that changes in manners, customs, occupations, and social usages are inev- itable in every free people. His wish was to prevent the Athenians from rushing into such movements. He tried to hold them back. He preferred the simplicity of the earllei times, and dreaded the consequences of the love of noveltj THE PERSIAN WARS. 115 inder the stimulus of growing power at home and abroad. No doubt Young Athens soon began to regard him as an old con- servative, though without losing confidence in his integrity. Themistocles, on the other hand, was a much more brilliant and versatile genius. He was for striking out new paths of honor and glory. In intuitive sagacity, unfailing invention, boldness in executing his plans, insight into the purposes of his enemies, and skill in thwarting them, he was one of the ablest statesmen of the ancient world. But he failed to make the same impression of honesty as his great rival. He could be wily, artful, perhaps a little tricky, upon occasion. He was not always open in his management. He had no objec- tion to a bit of intrigue. He was an advocate of progress. He urged the Athenians to develop their maritime resources and to build fleets, all against the advice of Aristeides. Looking back from this distance of time, we cannot but see that the counsel of Themistocles was the best, and that the Athenians were wise in following his leading rather than that of Aristeides. These contrasts of character brought them into frequent col- lisions, and to some extent led to the formation of parties in the state. We have seen that the peculiar distribution of powers, administrative, political, and judicial, almost precluded the possibility of parties, in the modern sense of the word. The archons, the senators, and many other high officers, were chosen by lot from among the qualified citizens ; there could therefore be no factions headed by any of these functionaries, and struggling for victory in the elections. Still, in every free country there will be certain general differences of opinion and tendency, which will bring like-thinking citizens together, and into opposition to other bodies similarly united in opinion, There will be in the community, for example, a class of men who will take their stand upon experience, and hold by what k established, composed in great part of the sober, elderly, wealthy, well-born citizens ; and there will be another class of restless, ardent, hopeful, umbitious men, or of those who have 116 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. their career to make or their fortunes to win, who will be eager for change, for reform, or for what they call reform, who will endeavor to overturn what is established, and to reconstruct institutions upon principles and theories hitherto untried. At Athens there was much of this : and the leaders of the more popular tendency were quite as often from the high-born and proud old families as from any other. The battles were fought on single questions in the senate and be- fore the popular assembly. It was utterly impossible before- hand to count upon a majority, or to form anything more than a conjectural opinion before the vote was actually taken ; and it would often happen that antagonists on one question would be found voting together on another. It may be added, that questions so discussed were less likely to be wrongly settled than in countries where the party lines are so drawn through the community, that the people look more to their political combinations and relations than to the absolute merits of the arguments addressed to them. Such was the state of parties under the Constitution of Cleis- thenes, when the next Persian invasion under Xerxes took place. His mighty preparations, continuing those which his father had commenced, excited a great commotion in Greece. Even Sparta laid aside her ancient exclusiveness, and united with Athens, in a congress at Corinth, in an attempt to bring about a union of the Greek states. But the formidable hosts of the invader paralyzed many of the states with terror, so hope- less did it seem to make any resistance. By far the larger num- ber submitted to the first demand of the enemy, who insolently required of them to send him earth and water. Left almost alone, Sparta and Athens resolved to make a stand. At first they fixed on the Vale of Tempe ; but Thermopylae, farther south, was finally determined upon. I need not recapitulate the circumstances of the battle in which Leonidas and his three hundred fell. Their memory haunts the spot, as if they had trodden the narrow passage but yesterday. Never before nor afterwards did Dorian courage show so gloriously. In the THE PERSIAN WARS. 117 fragment of an Ode by Simonides the deeds of Leonidas are nobly celebrated : " Of those who at Thermopylae were slain, Glorious the doom and beautiful the lot ; Their tomb an altar; men from tears refrain, To honor them, and praise, but mourn them not. Such sepulchre, nor drear decay Nor all-destroying time shall waste ; this right have they. Within their grave the home-bred glory Of Greece was laid ; this witness gives Leonidas the Spartan, in whose story A wreath of famous virtue ever lives." The sea-fight of Artemisium, about the same time, left both Beets disabled, and furnished the prelude to the great defeat of Salamis, whither the Greeks retired and the Persians followed. And now again the selfish policy of the Dorians showed itself Leaving the barbarians to pursue their way by land, they be- gan to fortify the Corinthian Isthmus. The Athenians were obliged to transport their families to Salamis, Troezen, and JSgina. Themistocles called in the aid of the Delphian ora- cle, which he caused to respond, " The divine Salamis will make women childless ; but when all is lost, a wooden wall shall shelter the Athenians." The Persian army approached the city. The patriotic zeal of the inhabitants mounted with the occasion. The banished were recalled, Aristeides on the proposition of his rival Themistocles. The members of the Areopagus contributed individually, and used their authority to procure funds, for the public service. The Persian host took possession of the city, desecrated and burned the temples, and put the few defenders who remained there to the sword. The barbarian fleet arrived at Phalerum, while the confederated fleets of Athens and Sparta were lying in the harbor of Sala- mis. The commanders of the Spartan and Corinthian con- tingents were on the point of deserting their position. In an angry debate, Themistocles warmly remonstrated against so un- worthy a course ; and, the Spartan Eurybiades being incensed at his words, and lifting his s f an to strike him, Themistocles gave 118 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. the famoas answer, "Strike, but hear." After all, the narrow and unpatriotic views of the Dorians were counteracted only by an artifice of Themistocles ; and the battle of Salamis, which again crowned the Grecian arms with glory, was due to the skilful management of the Athenian general much more than to the bravery of the Dorians with whom he was associated, ^schylus, who was present in the conflict, gives in his play of "The Persians" a most animated description of it. The battle of Platsea, in which the Dorian states contributed an effective force, finished the Persian campaign in Greece ; and the victory of Mycale, in Asia Minor, closed the war. In these momentous events we plainly see the working of the two sets of political institutions. The Spartans, brave on the field, were narrow and selfish in policy. When the first terror of the Persian invasion came over the country, and a majority of the states sent earth and water to the insolent barbarian, the spirit of Sparta was roused. She placed herself in the front rank. She covered herself with imperishable renown. But it was only the Athenian statesmen who discerned the true nature of the conflict, and understood the vital importance of a general resistance by the Hellenic race. Thermopylae belongs to Sparta doubtless ; but the great deliverance is the undying honor of Athens. It is due to her that the nascent civilization of Eu- rope was not crushed under the conquering despotism of the Orientals. The position which Athens so nobly maintained gave her a foremost rank after the storm had swept by. The city was re- built. Literature and art took a sudden spring forward. The tragedies of iEschylus, animated by the great thoughts which the Persian wars had aroused, taught, in the sublimest poetry, the noble lessons of justice, righteousness, and retribution for overbearing human pride. Athens was looked up to by the other states as their deliverer. She was the acknowledged head of a great confederacy, extending round the iEgean Sea and over the islands. She contracted to protect her allies with her naval power against any future attacks of the Persians. THE PERSIAN WARS. 119 and they agreed to furnish the pecuniary means, by a contribu- tion which they left to the judgment of Aristeides the Just to apportion among them. Her prosperity advanced with rapid strides ; and her institutions were imitated wherever the rights of men were decided by reason and not by force, as Isocrates truly claimed. A congress of deputies was organized, which met at Delos, where the common treasury of the confederacy was established ; but from the beginning, although these deputies had in theory the disposal of the funds, Athens, the protecting city, really controlled the application of them. The union was called at first the Confederacy of Delos ; the assessment was fixed at four hundred and sixty talents ($460,000), and was placed under the care of certain officers called Hellenotamice. Though the old hostility between Themistocles and Aris- teides had been temporarily suspended during the dangers of the Persian wars, and Aristeides had surrendered many of his former prejudices, yielding perhaps to the necessity imposed on him by the democratic tendencies of the times, it was re- vived when Themistocles, who had withstood the temptations of the hard times of war, fell before those of peace and prosper- ity. He was ostracized in his turn ; but the fact of his being subjected to this punishment is in his favor, as showing that his enemies could not prove against him a strong case of criminal- ity, though he was commonly accused of corruption and fraud in dealing with the confederated cities. It was in some measure due to the influence of Sparta, who bore a special grudge against the Athenian statesman, that he was driven into exile. He re- tired to Asia, where he was received with dislinguished honors by the Persian king, who assigned to him the town of Magne- sia for his residence. He died there at the age of sixty-five. His remains were said to have been secretly brought to Attica, md a tomb, the ruins of which still form a striking object on the right of the entrance into the harbor of Peiraeus, was sup- posed to cover his body, a most picturesque and fitting spo* for him who founded the navy of Athens, and who, more thar any other man, was entitled to the honor of the victory of 120 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. Salamis ; for the monument overlooks the blue waters and the island where that great event took place. An ancient inscrip- tion commemorated the illustrious Athenian : " By the sea's margin, on the watery strand, Thy monument, Themistocles, shall stand ; By this direction, to thy native shore The merchant shall convey his freighted store ; And when our fleets are summoned to the fight, Athens shall conquer with thy tomb in sight." During the period which I have rapidly sketched, the states- men of Athens guided the public counsels by the personal in- fluence they wielded in the senate and the popular assembly. Open debate on every question of domestic or foreign policy, whether in peace or war, universally preceded legislation; and the great men, Cimon, Miltiades, Themistocles, were all obliged to maintain their ground by public speech. It was not neces- sary to the statesman to hold any office, in order to guide the policy of the state. Membership of the Ecclesia was to him what a seat in the House of Commons is in England, or a seat in the House of Representatives in the United States ; there he made himself felt, and from the Bema his voice was heard controlling and directing the sovereign people. The states- man was often elected to offices ; but these offices had nothing to do with his position as a statesman, except so far as the duties belonging to them took him off from the political deliberations in the assembly. The office of general was often filled even by poets, as Sophocles was once appointed commander in the Samian expedition, in which Pericles was his colleague. We do not hear that he performed any very brilliant martial ex- ploits ; but he made himself a pleasant companion to the offi- cers and citizens, and doubtless took the opportunity of visiting the coast of Asia Minor and the plain of Troy ; for about this time he brought out the splendid tragedy of " Ajax," the scene of which is laid on the Hellespontine shore. I do not think it would be in the least degree correct to ascribe the origin of Attic eloquence to the development of the ORIGIN OF ATTIC ELOQUENCE. 121 Constitution^ or to the growth of political and judicial business consequent on the extension of the confederacy. The Ionian had from the beginning the temperament of eloquence ; and he established forms of life and of social intercourse eminently fa- vorable to the arts of speech. His language was a marvellous instrument for every possible effect. Rich, sweet, flowing, flex- ible, and at the same time exact and precise in discrimination ; sometimes soft and gentle as a summer breeze, again strong, grand, and mighty as the winter storm ; reflecting every aspect of the most beautiful and lovely scenes in nature, and express- ing every mood of the intellect, every affection of the heart, every relation of thought, with equal facility and completeness, it adapted itself to the quick and varied movements of the Ionian mind, whether they manifested themselves in the sport- ive sallies of a bright imagination, or the rapid and vehe- ment outbreaks of resentment, or the ardor of love, or the severest logic of the understanding. Doubtless there has never been such an instrument of thought such an organ for every species of literary record, or for immediate impres- sion by uttered speech as the Ionian and Attic Greek. It is no exaggeration to say that Homer showed himself a consum- mate master of every species of eloquence. The ancient rhet- oricians recognized this fact, and acknowledged him as their un- disputed master. In the councils of the leaders at Troy ; in the quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles ; in the visit of the chiefs to the tent of the angry hero ; in the interview of Hector and Andromache ; in the lamentations over the dead body of Hec- tor ; in the appeals to the courage of the soldiers on the eve of battle, Homer undoubtedly proved himself to be not only the greatest poet of the world, but possessed of all the qualities and all the genius of the greatest orator. Every speech is suitable to the person who makes it, and fitted to the occasion on which it is made and to the audience to which it is addressed. Whether it be indignant denunciation or pathetic appeal, whether it be reasoning or exhortation, he is alike master of all the topics of persuasion, of all the arguments that can con- 122 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. vince, of all the words and thoughts that can touch the heart or satisfy the understanding. From the time of Solon, if not earlier, this treasury of eloquence was open to the Athenian youth. The poems of Homer were recited in public and studied in private ; many an Athenian knew them by heart ; and every Athenian regarded them as a kind of sacred scrip- ture. By nature, by example, by the influence of political in- stitutions, the Athenian was moulded into an orator. But during the growing period of Athenian power, the leading men thought more of action than of eloquence. Placed as they were, they had to spend their time and exercise their genius in devising plans for the public defence, in executing the de- crees of the people, and in leading the troops to battle. The gift of speech was an instrument to effect the purpose of the moment, not a means of securing fame for itself alone. Even jiEschylus the sublimest of tragic poets thought more of Marathon and Salamis, than he did of the Prometheus or the Agamemnon. The arts of eloquence, however, came much into request with the multiplication of causes in the courts, and with the enlargement of the political relations of Athens. Diplomatic intercourse with the other states w r as maintained by the liv- ing voice of the orators, sent on special missions to address the governments of those states. There were no diplomatic notes exchanged by resident ministers ; there was the senate, ,r the assembly, or some similar body, to be met face to face in argument. It would not answer to send on such a mission any sensible man who might offer himself. He must be master of all the resources of reasoning and all the forms of speech, as well as familiar with the matter to be dealt with. The meet- ings of the deputies at the Amphictyonic assemblies also fur- nished occasions which demanded ready eloquence ; and we accordingly find that the persons chosen to represent Athens, at least in the Amphictyonic Assembly at Delphi and Thermop- ylae, were among the ablest debaters. The congresses of the confederates made similar demands upon the faculty of speech, ORIGIN OF ATTIC ELOQUENCE. 123 These congresses were held at Athens, at Delos, at Corinth, at Sparta ; and the subjects discussed called out animated ha- rangues from all the leading members. Even the Spartans could not well insist upon the universal adoption of their La- conic style. Once, when an Athenian ambassador had finished his oration to the assembly there, a Spartan rose and said, " I have forgotten the beginning of your speech, and I do not un- derstand the end." But before the Peloponnesian war broke out, when it was necessary for the proud old Dorian city to take counsel with her allies, she had to submit to regular speeches, as we know from Thucydides, who records the sub- stance of their debates. The conservative Spartans, no doubt, denounced the innovation, and groaned terribly over the flood of words and of new ideas that threatened to drown the Con- stitution of Lycurgus. But it was of no avail ; the force of circumstances was stronger than even Spartan prejudices, and words carried the day. The increased complication of the laws, and the variety of cases which came before the Attic courts, in the course of time required a class of men like the modern advocates. Properly speaking, there was no bar in Athens. The plaintiff and the defendant, the prosecutor and the accused, were compelled to appear personally and to argue the cases themselves. But it is evident that this could not always be done ; and the parties in a suit or prosecution would resort for advice and aid to persons who were known or supposed to be familiar with the laws and skilful in preparing an argument. Thus a class of lawyers was called into existence by the wants of the public, which could not dispense with their aid. The counsellor sometimes pre- pared the speech, and his client delivered it in court. This method enabled the lawyer, if he chose, to get a double fee by writing on both sides, though it is to be presumed that this was seldom done. By degrees, the custom naturally arose foi the party in the case to open his defence or his accusation in a brief speech, and then to ask permission of the court for his friend, who stood by him, to finish the argument. Many of 124 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. the extant speeches of the Attic orators were either not de- livered at all by their authors, or were uttered only in contin- uation of an argument opened by the litigant. Demosthenes commenced his career by writing speeches for others, a prac- tice with which ^Eschines reproaches him, adding that he was guilty of betraying the arguments of his client to the opposite party, though of this there is not a particle of proof. The people sometimes appointed advocates to manage causes in which important public interests were at stake, or when a question in any way involving the city was to be argued be- fore an Amphictyonic meeting. On one occasion jEschines was thus appointed ; but the court of the Areopagus cancelled the appointment, on the ground of his being an unsuitable person to represent the city, and selected Hyperides to per- form the duty. If the accused or the defendant was disabled from any cause, the court allowed the advocate to speak in his stead. Thus Miltiades, after his expedition to the island Pa- ros, was impeached for treason ; but having received a severe wound in the thigh, which made it necessary to bring him into court on a litter, his brother Tisagoras addressed the court in his behalf. These few notices will, perhaps, be sufficient to give an idea of the position and functions of advocates at Athens, but not of their fees. The theory at the outset was, that the lawyer appearing for his friend should not take a fee ; but sc transcendental a doctrine probably never gained an extensive assent among the practical members of the profession. In point of fact, we know that large incomes were made by the able men such as Isaeus, Lysias, and Isocrates who occu- pied themselves with this as the business of their lives. The public advocates received a drachma each for every case they managed ; so that the honor of the appointment must have con- stituted the principal part of their fee. In this state of things the art of rhetoric naturally began to enter into the education of a young man who aspired to be- come a leader in Athenian politics ; and this was a careei PERICLES. 125 which had resistless attractions for a large part of the Athenian youth. A class of public professors, or teachers, called Soph- ists, as being teachers of wisdom, had already appeared in Greece. The name includes men of the most opposite char- acters ; and in judging of them, great injustice is sometimes done by not considering this fact. Some of them were philosophi- cal teachers of the highest worth and accomplishments ; while others, degenerate professors of wisdom, sought only to impart the false and glittering craft of tickling the fancy by a show of knowledge, without real knowledge, and of corrupting the heart by confounding good and evil, or teaching that pleasure is good and might is right. No doubt many young Athenians were led astray by the seductive arts of these men, cheated by them into the belief that success in Athenian politics could be secured without the profound and life-long study which alone can make the true statesman. But we do not find such among the real leaders of the Athenian Demos. Closely connected with the Sophists, and sharing their virtues as well as their vices, were the Rhetoricians. It is singular that the earliest scientific expositions of the principles of rhetoric should have been made by Sicilian Greeks. Corax and Tisias are named as the inventors that is, the first au- thors of technical systems of rhetoric ; Gorgias of Leontini known to the Athenians by his mission to the city and by subsequent visits there, known to fame by the noble Dia- logue of Plato which bears his name made improvements in the art ; but it was in Athens, where practice preceded theory, and where theory was restrained by practice, that rhetoric, as a science, was completed and perfected. The Rhetoric of Aristotle is still the most profound and masterly rhetorical treatise extant. The intellectual condition of the Athenians having reached this point, there appeared a young main who was destined, as statesman, orator, and ruler, to set his native city on the highest pinnacle of fame. In the Vatican there are several tLarble busts of a man of singular beauty of countenance. 126 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. united with a manly dignity, and an expression of power v which would arrest the spectator's gaze were no name in- scribed upon the plinth. The head is always helmeted ; but, though a skilful general, the eminent person whose features we look upon was most distinguished for his philosophical studies, his literary tastes, his majestic eloquence, his love and appreciation of art, his elegant manners, his profound concep- tion of the duties of a statesman, and the unbending firmness with which he carried his patriotic plans into execution. We read the name, it is Pericles, son of Xanthippus, the Athe- nian. We recall then the single weakness of the great man, who, on account of a slight disproportion in the height of his otherwise magnificent head, chose to go helmeted down to posterity, rather than to have it said, " What a pity the head of Pericles had that one little fault! " It is said that every man has his foibles. That of Pericles was harmless enough ; but I have often wished to pull the helmet off, and see the princely man as he was seen by the friends who frequented the saloon of Aspasia. The helmet did not conceal the defect. The comic poets, eager for any topic of ridicule, did not spare the Olympian, as, in the midst of their sarcasms, they could not help calling him. By birth Pericles was among the noblest Athenians ; his mother being a niece of Cleisthenes, and so connected with the princes of Sicyon. His fortune was ample, without being excessive. His youth was passed in careful preparation for the career of statesmanship, by a much wider range of literary and philosophical study than had before been customary. The ablest men of the age, in every depart- ment of culture, were employed, and all his hours were oc- cupied in the most regular and intense devotion to the most elevating pursuits. Pythocleides instructed him in music, Da- mon in political science, Zeno of Elea in logic ; but the great teacher who exercised the profoundest influence in moulding liis character was Anaxagoras, his guide, philosopher, anc friend. Anaxagoras was the first speculative thinker who clearly announced the doctrine that the system of the universe PERICLES. 127 is the combination and arrangement of an intelligent First Cause ; and his life and teachings were in harmony with this sublime conception. By birth and association Pericles belonged to tie popular party, although connected with so many of the Eupatrid families. He first appeared in public life in the year B. C. 469 ; and, carrying the industrious habits he had formed in the course of his education into his new pursuits, he devoted him- self to them with the greatest assiduity. He was never seen lounging in the streets ; he was never present at a convivial meeting but once, and that was on the occasion of the mar- riage of his nephew. He had but few intimate friends, and those among the best and most accomplished persons. He was constant in his attendance at the assembly, but was not over eager to mingle in every debate. Even the measures he desired to carry were often proposed by one or another of his adherents, while he reserved his own eloquence for great occa- sions. He never spoke without the most careful preparation ; and in this respect he must be considered chronologically as the earliest of the Attic orators. Suidas states that he was the first man who ever spoke a written speech in the court, all before his time having extemporized. In the management of his fortune he was liberal, yet economical ; for he would not have his integrity suspected, and he therefore would not attempt, with his moderate means, to rival the lavish expendi- ture of Cimon. Pericles carried many measures which were denounced by the aristocratic party. He procured the passage of a law that the poorer citizens might receive two obols apiece for admit- tance to the dramatic exhibitions, in order that the whole people might share in the benefit of the representations which were connected with one of the oldest of their religious rites. I think that it is an injustice ti, Pericles to suppose that he merely desired to ingratiate himself with the people by pro- moting their amusements. It was no amusement to listen lo a tragedy of iEschylus or Sophocles, it was a great de 128 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. light doubtless ; but you might as well call it an amusement to hear the grandest sermon that Jeremy Taylor ever deliv- ered, as to call it an amusement to go at five o'clock in the morning and hear the Agamemnon of JEschylus performed in the great Dionysiac Theatre at Athens. The people that could relish such a representation were not the coarse, illiterate, vul- gar mob they are sometimes supposed to have been. It was Pericles, also, who procured laws for the payment of the He- liastic jurors and of other public servants, measures whose obvious justice should have saved their author from the cen- sures unthinkingly cast upon him. It was right that men should be paid for the work they did for the public. It was right that poor men should hear the grand teachings of jEschy- lus, as it is right that the poor should have the Gospel preached to them. That all these privileges were afterwards abused is true. The abuses are to be condemned, and the men who, perverting good things to evil uses, led the people astray, are to be condemned. Pericles, I think, was right. He carried out his principles steadily and consistently, from the beginning to the end. He was not permitted, however, to go on without the usual political conflicts. Cimon was the leader opposed to him, as a defender of the more aristocratic system ; but Pericles, though ordered to conduct an impeachment of his adversary, ab- stained from putting forth his power, and his opponent was acquitted. Next, he limited the somewhat indefinite juris- diction of the Areopagus. For this attempt he was severely denounced, and even the austere genius of iEschylus came to the rescue of that ancient and venerable court. It was a bold thing to attempt ; but the restriction of its irresponsible authority seems, so far as we can judge at this distance of time, to have been founded on wise policy. The ostracism of Cimon, which soon followed, was less justifiable, or rather was wholly unjustifiable ; but Pericles repaired the wrong of a pernicious institution by soon afterwards proposing the iecree for his recall. PERICLES. 129 Among the noblest conceptions of this great statesman was the plan he formed for uniting all the Greek states in a single powerful confederation. He moved a decree, inviting all the Greeks of Europe and Asia to send representatives to a con- gress to be held at Athens, for the discussion of a project for lasting peace and union among the Grecian states, together with the subordinate topics of rebuilding the temples left in ruins by the Persian invasion, and of securing freedom of navi- gation in the Grecian seas. Twenty men, selected from the most discreet citizens over fifty years of age, were sent among the states to urge the adoption of this plan. It is one of the sins for which the Dorian obstinacy and jealousy must answer at the bar of history, that they intrigued successfully to prevent the success of a scheme at once far-reaching, wise, and absolutely necessary, not only to the future welfare, but to the very safety of Greece. It was as if, when our fa- thers proposed to make a durable union, under a constitution which might forever secure internal peace and external pros- perity, one half of the States, whose institutions were different from ours, had set themselves in opposition, and prevented the wisest and most fortunate scheme of government ever conceived by sage or enjoyed by freemen from being success- fully carried into operation. Pericles must have learned the result of his nobly patriotic attempt with a foreboding soul. No one understood better than he the Spartan character and institutions, both of which he had profoundly studied and vigilantly watched. He saw that the only hope of averting a deadly war was by bringing Ionians and Dorians into a strong union, founded on common interests, and perpetuated by some central authority that could govern both and keep them from flying at each other's throats. It seems to me that Pericles has never had the honor he deserves for this most statesmanlike scheme, and for the deep insight which led him to comprehend all its importance ; and I will add, that our own national experience offers the first thoroughly satisfactory tommentary on the wisdom of the Athenian statesman. ltfO CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECfc. Having failed in the project of a general union of the Greeks, he resolved to make Athens the most illustrious city in the world ; and he fulfilled his resolution. He crowned the Acropolis with wonders of architecture which no other city has approached; he filled the temples and public squares with sculptures, whose fragments are the teachers of modern artists, as they gaze upon them with delight, wonder, and despair; he caused the masterpieces of tragedy and comedy to crowd the Dionysiac Theatre at the great festivals ; and he connected Ins own name with the most important and brilliant period in the history of culture and civilization. He was" moderate in his counsels, and always opposed extravagant schemes of foreign conquest. Had he lived longer, no Sicilian expedition would have decimated the youth of Athens, and sent the miserable survivors of a defeated army to die in the quarries of Syracuse. His eloquence was always, not only stately, but effective. We have none of his speeches entire. Though written, and carefully polished, they have disappeared. Plutarch preserves a few passages, and Thucydides gives us three orations, at some length. " .JSgina," said he in one of his harangues, " is the eye-sore of the Peiraeus " ; in another, " I see war advancing from the Peloponnesus." After the Samian expe- lition, in which he had led the Athenian arms to victory, he was appointed to deliver the eulogy on those who had fallen in battle. Of this Stesimbrotus has preserved the following sentences. " They have become immortal like the gods. We do not behold the gods in the body ; but we know by the honors they receive, and the blessings they bestow, that they are immortal ; and such is the condition of those who die for their country." Aristophanes, in " The Acharnians," says : " Pericles the Olympian lightened, thundered, roused up all Greece." He was at the height of his influence when the war which he .ad seen advancing from the Peloponnesus burst upon Attica. The weight of his character and the grandeur of his eloquence PERICLES. 131 controlled the policy of the Athenians. Thucydides, as I have already mentioned, reports the substance of three of his ad- dresses ; first, a masterly exposition of the necessity of re- sisting the Spartans, and of the resources of the Athenians ; secondly, the funeral oration which he pronounced by public appointment over those who fell in the first year of the war, B. C. 431; and thirdly, his defence of himself before the people after the second invasion of Attica by the Peloponnesians. Of these the funeral oration has the greatest general interest. It is not only an elaborate eulogy upon the heroic dead, but a most able exhibition of the merits of the Constitution of Athens, her social life, and her claims, as tacitly contrasted with Sparta, to the leadership among the Hellenic common- wealths. Such a country, so liberal, so generous, so free, is entitled to the love of her children, and must be defended at the hazard of life itself. '* We enjoy," said he, " a form of government which needs not to imitate the laws of neigh- boring states ; for we are ourselves their model." He shows in what manner the Athenian institutions secured, not only equality of rights before the law, but a generous mutual confidence in the intercourse of private life, cherishing obe- dience to the magistrate, and a refined sense of honor which submitted to the unwritten laws of noble conduct, both from the self-respect of gentlemen and from a feeling of the shame justly attached to their violation by public opinion. He ap- peals to their patriotic pride in the great achievements of their ancestors and in their own deeds of valor. Unhappily for Athens, in the second year of the war, the pestilence struck the city, sweeping off multitudes of the crowded population, and demoralizing the survivors. Pericles was bereaved of two of his sons, and of many relatives and friends ; and a lingering fever, perhaps a broken heart, sent him to the tomb just, at the moment when his great abilities und his unbending integrity were most needed by his country, overwhelmed by the calamities of war and pestilence. Thu- cydides draws his character in a few brief and pregnant 132 THE LIFE OF GREECE. sentences, with which I close this Lectui'e. " During the whole time that he stood at the head of the state in peace, he governed it with moderation and watched over its safety. Under him it rose to the highest pitch of greatness. After the war broke out, it was seen that he had a true conception of its magnitude. After his death his foresight in relation to the war was still more clearly recognized. The cause of his influence was, that, powerful in dignity of character and wis- dom, and having conspicuously shown himself the most incor- ruptible of men, he curbed the people freely, and led them, instead of being led by them. For he did not speak to gain their present favor, endeavoring to win power by unbecoming means ; but he dared to brave their anger, while holding fast to his own dignity and honor. The Constitution was a democ- racy in name ; but in fact it was the government of the most distinguished citizen." LECTURE VIII ENIUS AND SERVICES OF PERICLES. ATHENS IN THE TIMES OF PERICLES. The life of Pericles offered tragical contrasts. Nobly born, splendidly endowed with intellectual gifts, educated in the most liberal manner in all the learning and accomplishments of the age, coming into public life in the early vigor of the Constitu- tion which Cleisthenes had amended, with the favoring gales of popular applause, it seemed as if a fortunate and happy ca- reer lay open before him. By his wisdom and transcendent genius he governed Athens forty years. The ends he aimed at were his country's ; his motives were noble ; and the means by which he sought to carry out his plans were, for the most part, just and generous. He rose to distinction by the most legitimate means, by the influence of genius, prudence, and integrity. Unlike Peisistratus, he had no armed retinue. He had resorted to no legerdemain to build his power on the basis of popular superstition. His political principles were liberal, but not radical ; his political action was clear, decided, saga- cious, but considerate and magnanimous. In the antagonism of public life he was never violent nor vindictive. The treasury of Delos was removed to Athens in 461 B. C. ; the contributions were raised from four hundred and sixty to six hundred talents, perhaps by adding new members to the confederacy; and Athens, by the force of circumstances, was placed in the position of an imperial or despot city. That 6he did not always exercise her power discreetly or generously is very certain. The Demos, like other despots, sometimes showed himself a tyrant, and made the subject cities, as he was 134 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. fond of regarding them, groan under his oppressions and exac- tions. Pericles restrained his excesses with a strong hand; and it was not until after that statesman's death that the worst of them were committed. But Pericles favored a system of pub- lic expenditure, the object of which was to make the city of Athens the most superb of capitals. The end was worthy of his profound genius and cultivated taste ; but his political opponents censured the means to which he resorted. They opposed the removal of the treasure, which they said belonged to the confederacy, and not to Athens alone. It was answered, that, if Athens performed her part of the contract, and defended the states with her fleets, she had a right to do what she would with the treasure. They attacked his expenditures. Pericles offered to pay for the public works from his own fortune, if the people would allow his name to be inscribed upon them ; but the people said, No : they were not going to be deprived of the glory of connecting their own fame with such magnifi- cent works. They had been trained to appreciate the refine- ments of art ; and they could not think of saving money at the cost of their artistical reputation. The treasury was run- ning over. Gold in ingots, gold in coin, silver, the income of the customs, and the contributions of the confederates, solid metal, and not bank-notes, fell upon the city like Da- nae's golden shower. And so they voted all that Pericles asked; and the Propylasa and the Parthenon and the Erech- theium went up, and the bronze Athene took her station, spear in hand, looking down on the city she protected. Pericles had heavy trials to bear, besides the bitterness of political opposition. He married the divorced wife of Hippo- nieus, and the marriage was not fortunate. His oldest son, Xanthippus, was a graceless reprobate, and died of the pesti- lence. Paralus, his second son, was soon afterwards swept away by the same dread disease. Only one son was left, the son of Aspasia, whom Pericles had married after divorcing his first wife ; but by the laws of Athens, this son his mother being a foreigner was not a legal citizen. The people, how- GENIUS AND SERVICES OF PERICLES. 135 ever, pitying the solitary condition of the illustrious statesman, voted the rights of citizenship to his son, and authorized him to take his father's name. Aspasia herself was brought before the courts on a criminal charge by one of his enemies ; but the eloquence of Pericles successfully defended her. Anax- agoras, his noble friend and teacher, was prosecuted, and had to leave the city, to which he never returned. Pheidias, the sculptor, to whom Pericles was warmly attached, was charged with pilfering a part of the gold furnished to adorn the statue of the goddess. The ornaments were taken off and weighed ; and the accusation was triumphantly refuted. The attack was renewed, on the frivolous accusation that he had introduced portraits of himself and Pericles in the sculptures on the shield of Athene, and he was thrown into prison. In all these en- counters with adverse fortune and with enemies, the brilliant Athenian lost his self-possession but twice, once when he was obliged to defend his wife before a court of his country- men, and again when the pestilence struck down his second and favorite son. On his death-bed, while his friends standing about him were extolling his great achievements, he simply re- marked, that he considered it his greatest glory that no Athe- nian citizen "had worn mourning on his account." It was not the memory of achievements on the field, or of his triumphs in the popular assembly, it was not even the Propylaea and the Parthenon, that came with consolation to his last hours ; it was no earthly glory, no title to fame, on which his calm and clear mind dwelt in that supreme moment : it was the simple thought a thought which few public men of the ancient world could truly entertain that, in his long course of pub- lic administration, he had not shed a drop of human blood ; and with this sublime tribute on his lips to the superior noble- ness of the gentler virtues, the most illustrious Athenian of his age expired. The prosperity which his great works brought to Athena m the encouragement of genius and in the demands for me- chanical skill is vividly described in a passage of Plutarch. The 136 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OP GREECE. purchase and transportation of so many materials, whether from other parts of Attica or from more distant regions of Greece ; the quarrying of the marbles of Pentencus, Paros, Eleusis, and of the ruder material called the Peiraic stone, used often for floors and basements; the gold, silver, ivory, and brass ; the different kinds of timber, much of which must have been brought from distant forests, employed great numbers of contractors, and whole armies of artisans, who, working under the stimulus of good pay, and with an order and system which must have been admirably conceived and carried out in order to accomplish so much in so short a time, diffused an activ- ity, contentment, and universal industry which Athens never saw before, and perhaps will never see again. If we judge by the results, and their permanent influence on the course of civilization, these few years, between the commencement of the public works of Pericles and the breaking out of the Pelo- ponnesian war, must be considered as constituting one' of the most important periods. It was fortunate for Athens and for the world, that a man like Pheidias was found to co-operate with Pericles in carrying his plans into execution. The genius of this great artist, at once various and sublime, practical as if his whole life had been passed as a master workman, but with a fiery imagination that could reproduce the Homeric conception of the father of gods and men, uniting rapidity of execution with exquisite finish, this unrivalled genius for plastic art, unrivalled in all the ages that have passed since his day, was wonderfully, one may say providentially, adapted to the work for which Pericles summoned him. It was the union of these two ex- traordinary men that made the wonderful creations of that age possible. He was a little younger than Pericles, who had been in public life eight or nine years when Pheidias, having studied under Ageladas and Hegesias, began to be known. From this time, B. C. 460, to B'. C. 432, every year was sig- nalized by the production of works which are pronounced, bj the unanimous consent of artists, the highest achievements of ATHENS IN THE TIMES OF PERICLES. 137 the genius of man in sculpture and in every department of sculpture. One year before the breaking out of the Pelopon- nesian war this illustrious ornament of human nature died. He was spared the sight of the calamities which were impending over the city he had so adorned and honored. He heard the distant threatenings of the war, but saw not its approach ; he witnessed not the dreadful scenes of the pestilence ; and, above all, he did not live to mourn the death of the noblest of his friends, and to behold the desolation of that friend's household hearth. He died at the culminating moment of the glory of Athens, in the meridian light of his genius and the highest splendor of his fame. What is there of the creations of Pheidias ? What of the Athens of Pericles ? To find the Athens of Pericles you must go to Rome, to Florence, to Munich, to Berlin, ti Paris, to London. Especially, would you study the genius of Pheidias, you must give days and weeks and months to the Elgin marbles in the British Museum. There you will find colossal figures from the divine assemblies on the pediments of the Parthenon, from the metopes, groups of the Centaurs and the Lapithae, exploits of Theseus, and a large part of the Panathenaic procession, all constituting the very flower of the Periclean age and of the genius of Pheidias. But Athens still stands ; the Parthenon venerable and touching in its ruins still surmounts the Acropolis; the Propylaea still admit the traveller into the sacred enclosure, which contains myriads of fragments, eacli marked with some memorial phrase or some token of departed greatness. Epaminondas, in the assembly of the Thebans, said, as if he could by no other expression so strongly embody his patriotic hopes: "We must transport the Propylaea of the Acropolis of Athens, and place them in front of the Cadmeia." Demosthenes, in the following century, testified, in a fine passage in one of his orations: "The people were never inspired by the desire of wealth ; but by the love of glory, as by nothing else. The proof is, that, having come into possession of greater treasures than all the rest of the Greeks. 138 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. they expended everything for honor. Contributing from their private resources, they shrank from no danger in the cause ot glory. Therefore they have left us immortal possessions, the memory of illustrious deeds, and the beauty of the works consecrated to them, yonder Propylaea, the Parthenon, the porticos, th<; ship-houses." As he spoke, he pointed to the temples, porticos, and statues in the Agora around him ; and above, on the ascent to the Acropolis, to the Propylaea, the flight of marble steps, the Doric front, the marble wall with five entrances, and the magnificent bronze gates, to the temple of Wingless Victory on the right, and, within, to the Athene Pro- machos, t/.e Parthenon, the Erechtheium, and a city of heroes, demigod^, and gods. Five centuries later, Plutarch, who was a frequent visitor in Athens, wrote : " These works appear, at the present moment, fresh and newly wrought ; they seem to wear the bloom of perpetual youth, their glow untouched by time, as if they breathed the breath of immortality." Later still, PHlostratus said : " The Propylaea and the Parthenon suffice " to gratify the aspirations of Pericles." And well they miglit nave filled even his aspirations. Ap so large a portion of these Lectures relates to Athens, indeed, it is surprising how large a part of all our associations with Greece belong to Athens exclusively, and as the scene of the remainder of the course, on the Orators of Greece, must necessarily be laid in Athens, I have thought it would not be unacceptable to take a walk round the present city, and see how much of the ancient Athens is still in Athens. The maps and diagrams before you will, I trust, give you as good an idea as you can have without going thither. The visitor enters the Peiraeus, where the foundations, and, in places, four or five courses of the ancient walls, may be traced round the harbor, which was closed by a chain thrown across it from opposite towers. The wall then continues round the Munychian hill, and encloses the beautiful little cir- cular harbor of Munychia, where are the foundations of the undent vewcroiKoi, ship-houses, with portions of the walls. ATHENS IN THE TIMES OF PERICLES. 139 Passing through the Peiraeus, just as we leave the town we find considerable portions of the Long Walls ; but, on the way to Athens, not another trace. [Most of the residue of this Lecture was given extemporaneously, from the author's fresh and vivid recollections of Athens. His man- uscript from this point contains merely the names of the sites and ruins which he successively described, and the following paragraphs, which we print without attempting to supply the intervening blanks. Editor.] The Theseium is used as a museum of ancient sculptures. Many monumental stelce of the most interesting character, with beautiful groups in low relief, and touching funereal inscriptions, are collected there. But the most curious and important mar- bles are a series of slabs, found (in 1834) in the Peiraeus, con- taining records of the Athenian navy ; lists of ships, with their names ; inventories of rigging and furniture ; names of ship- builders ; names of statesmen, such as Demades and Demos- thenes, who were connected with the naval service ; and numerous other interesting and valuable particulars. These inscriptions are very clearly cut, and, except where the marble has been broken, are easily read; and they cover a considerable portion of the public life of Demosthenes. The temple of The- seus, as we have already stated, is one of the best preserved buildings in Greece. It is of the Doric order, 104 feet in. length by 45 in breadth. It has six columns at each end, and thirteen on each side, of 3 feet 4 inches in diameter, and 1& feet high. From the stylobate to the upper angle of the pediment, the height is 31 feet. The sculptures on the pedi- ments are all lost. Those on the metopes are supposed to re- late to the labors of Hercules and Theseus. Of the vast temple of Olympian Zeus, the platform on which it stood, and sixteen Corinthian columns, one of which was overthrown in 1852 by a hurricane, are all that remain. The peribolus of the temple was 680 feet long and 463 broad ; the temple itself, 354 feet Dy 171. It had ten columns on each 140 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. front, and probably twenty on each side ; the height from the pavement to the top of the capitals, 55 feet 3 inches ; the di- ameter at the base, 6 feet 4 inches. The statue of the god was of ivory and gold. Near the theatre of Bacchus still stands the choragic monu- ment of Lysicrates, erected on the Street of Tripods in 335 B. C, to commemorate a musical victory. It is a circular structure, eight feet in diameter, standing on a square base, its whole height being about thirty-four feet. It is the earliest specimen of Corinthian architecture. This exquisite little monument was saved from destruction by having been built into the walls of a monastery. The monastery is now in ruins ; but the monument of Lysicrates stands almost com- plete. The tripod by which it was surmounted is gone, but the inscription on the architrave is still legible. But the noblest works of the Athenian architects were on the Acropolis. The ascent is at the western end. The chief buildings of the Periclean age on this citadel were the Propy- lsea, the Erechtheium, and the Parthenon. The Propylsea served at once as an architectural embellishment and a mili- tary defence of the Acropolis. Among the ancients they were more admired than even the Parthenon, for the skill with which the difficulties of the ground were overcome, and for the grandeur of the general effect. The approach was a flight of sixty marble steps, and was seventy feet broad. At the top of the steps was a portico of six fluted Doric columns, 5 feet in diameter, 29 feet high. Each of the side wings, on platforms 78 feet apart, had three Doric columns, fronting upon the grand staircase. The north wing contained the Pinacotheca, a hall 35 feet by 30 ; the hall of the south wing was 27 feet by 16. Behind the Doric hexastyle was a magnificent hall 60 feet broad, 44 feet deep, and 39 feet high, with a marble ceiling resting on enormous beams, supported by three Ionic columns on each side of the passage. At the east end of this hall was? ATHENS IN THE TIMES OF PERICLES. 141 the ivall, through which there were five entrances, with doora or gates. The central opening, through which the Panathe- naic procession passed, was 13 feet wide, 24 feet high ; those next the central were, on each side, 9 feet wide, and the smallest 5 feet, the height varying in proportion. These gates were the only public entrances into the Acropolis. Within the wall, on the eastern side, was another hall 19 feet deep, its floor elevated about ty feet above the western side, and terminated by another Doric portico, of six columns. The pediments and ceilings of this admh'able structure have been destroyed. Most of the columns remain, some of them entire, and others more or less broken, with heavy fragments of the architraves. Passing through the Propylsea, we come to the Erechtheium, on the left or northern side of the Acropolis, and the Parthenon on the right, near the southern or Cimonian wall. The form of the singular structure first mentioned was oblong, with a portico of six Ionic columns at the east end, a kind of transept at the west, a portico of four columns on the north, and the portico of the Caryatides, standing on a base- ment eight feet high, on the south. At the western end there is a basement, on which are four Ionic columns, only half de- tached from the wall, and supporting a pediment. The eastern and western divisions of the temple are on different levels, the eastern being eight feet higher than the western. Enough remains of this extraordinary and beautiful edifice to give a perfectly correct idea of its outward form ; but the interior is in so ruinous a condition that the distribution and arrangement of the apartments are subject to the greatest doubt. The numerous antiquarian questions which suggest themselves here cannot be discussed in this place. We come now to the Parthenon, the noblest monument in Athens and in the world. The contrast between this temple And the Erechtheium is strikingly beautiful. We have already incidentally alluded to the principal points in its history, and the various fortunes in which it has shared. It was built of 142 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE Pentelic marble, under the superintendence of Pheidias, by Ictinus and Callicrates. It stands on a base approached by three steps, each 1 foot 9 inches high, and about 2 feet 4 inches wide. Its breadth, on the upper step, is 101.33 feet; its length, 228 feet; the height to the top of the pediment from the upper step of the stylobate is 59 feet, and with the stylobate, 64 feet. The temple is Doric, octostyle, or with eight columns at each end, and peripteral, or colonnaded all round, there being fifteen columns on each side, not counting those at the corners, 46 in all. The length of the sekos, or body of the temple, is 193 feet, and its breadth 71 feet, omitting fractions. The space between the peristyle and the wall is nine feet at the sides, and eleven feet at the fronts. The interior is divided by a transverse wall into two unequal portions ; the eastern being the naos proper, an apartment for the statue of the goddess, 98 feet in length ; the western, the opisthodomos, having been commonly used as the treasury of the city, 43 feet long. Within the peristyle, at each end, were eight columns, 33 feet high, on a stylobate of two steps. Within the naos was a range of ten Doric columns on each side, and three at the west end, forming three sides of a quadrangle ; above them, an architrave supported an upper range of columns, which Wheeler, at the time of whose visit they were still standing, calls a kind of gallery. Fourteen feet distant from the western columns is the pavement of Peiraic stone, on which the great chryselephantine statue of Athene was placed. Besides the in- ternal decorations, the outside of the temple was ornamented with three classes of sculptures. 1. The sculptures of the pediments were independent statues resting upon the deep cor- nice. The subject of those on the eastern pediment was the birth of Athene ; of those on the western, the contest between Poseidon and Athene, for the possession of Attica. 2. The groups on the metopes, ninety-two in number, represented com- bats of Hercules and Theseus, of the Centaurs and Amazons, and perhaps some figures of the Persian war. These groups were executed in high relief. 3. The frieze round the uppei ATHENS IN THE TIMES OF PERICLES. 143 border of the cella of the Parthenon contained a representation of the Panathenaic procession in low relief. All these ' sculp- tures were in the highest style of the art, executed either by Pheidias himself, or under his immediate direction. Most of them were in place when Wheeler visited Athens, in 1676 ; and drawings of the figures on the pediments were made, in 1674, by Carrey, a French architect in the suite of the Mar- quis de Nointel, Minister of France at the Porte. The in- terior of the temple was thrown down, in 1687, by the ex- plosion of a bomb in the Turkish powder-magazine. The front columns of the peristyle escaped, but eight of the col- umns on the north side, and six of those on the south, were overthrown. Morosini, in endeavoring to remove some of the figures on the pediments, broke them, and otherwise did great mischief. At the beginning of the present century, Lord Elgin dismantled a considerable part of the Parthenon of the remaining sculptures, which form the most precious treasures of the British Museum at the present moment. A question has been much discussed, as to whether any portion of the ex- terior of the temple was decorated with painting. It is hardly possible to doubt the fact, after a personal examination. Many of the mouldings have traces of beautifully drawn patterns. Under the cornices, there are delicate tints of blue and red, and in the triglyphs, of blue. The architraves and broader surfaces were tinged with ochre. All these figures were executed so delicately and exquisitely, that it is impossible to accept the theory sometimes advanced, of their being the work of subse- quent barbarous ages. There are other traces of colors on the inner surface of the portion of the walls still standing, which ev- idently belong to a period after the stone-cutters Eulogius and Apollos had converted the Parthenon into a church. Among the inscriptions there is one, found in 1836, containing a record of money paid for polychromatic decorations. The Parthenon was built in the best period of architecture, and under the in- spiration of the highest genius in art ; and the best results of science were united in producing its exquisite perfection. The t44 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. pathetic beauty of its decay is indescribable. The impression it makes is that of a solemn and wondrous harmony. Its aspect is simple ; but scientific investigation has not yet exhausted its beauties and refinements. The combination of the most delicate architectural proportions with the sculptural compositions, of which enough of each class remains, after all the ruin wrought by time, and war, and barbarism, to give us a vivid idea of their admirable execution, and the variety of these composi- tions, differing in character and size according to their position and subjects, but all relating to a central idea which harmonizes them, must have been magnificent beyond description, when the temple first stood in its fresh glory under the sky of At- tica. But delicacies of construction have not ceased to be dis- covered in this wonderful building. In 1837, Pennethorne, an English traveller, noticed the inclination of the columns. Hofer, Schaubart, and others, have examined the subject, and published their observations upon the inclination of the col- umns and the curved lines of the stylobate and architraves. Mr. Penrose, an English scholar and architect, visited Athens in 1845, and was afterward sent by the Society of Dilettanti to complete the investigations he had already commenced. The results were published in a spendid folio, in 1851. They may be briefly summed up thus. The lines which in ordinary ar- chitecture are straight, in the Doric temples at Athens are delicate curves. The edges of the steps and the lines of the entablatures are convex curves, lying in vertical planes, and nearly parallel, and the curves are conic sections, the middle of the stylobate rising several inches above the extremities. The external lines of the columns are curved also, forming a hyperbolic entasis. The axes of the columns incline inward, so that opposite pairs, if produced sufficie ltly far, would meet. The spaces of the inter-columniations, and the size of the capitals, vary slightly, according to their position. From the usual points of view, these variations and curves are not per- ceptible, but they produce by their combination the effect of perfect harmony and regularity, and the absence of these re> ATHENS IN THE TIMES OF PERICLES. 14l finements is the cause of the universal failure of buildings con- structed in modern times according to what have been sup- posed to be the principles of Hellenic architecture. This subject is treated by Mr. Penrose in detail, with remarkable precision ; also by M. Beule", in a learned work entitled UAcropole d'Athenes, Paris, 1853-1855. I have endeavored, to the best of my ability, to reproduce for you Athens as she was in the days of her ancient glory. If I have but partially succeeded, it is not my fault, but the fault of Pericles. I have had considerable experience in con- versing with the spirits of the departed, through those favored individuals called mediums. I have even been honored with a written communication from a distinguished Athenian drama- tist, in English doggerel, the genuineness of which some scep- tics had the hardihood to call in question. However that may be, in one of the spiritual circles I invoked the ghost of Pericles, and he was good enough to take possession of the organism of the medium. I put to him a series of questions about Athens in his time ; but he had not only lost the knowl- edge of all that he had ever done during the forty years of his administration, but had even forgotten his mother tongue. I could only exclaim with Hamlet, " Alas ! poor ghost! " and turn again to my books. TOL. II. 10 LECTURE IX. THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR. THE DEMOS. ANTIFHON. ANDOCIDES. Pericles died in the midst of public calamities and private bereavements. He had striven in vain to establish a union among the Greeks, which would have secured them from for- eign invasion and domestic war. Dorian obstinacy and narrow- mindedness were too much for his wise policy and far-reach- ing views. Spartan education and the institutions of Lycurgus were unsuited to participate in his enlightened scheme, and the consequences were inevitable. War advanced from the Pelo- ponnesus, and arrested the public works of the great statesman and the prosperity of the Athenian empire. He had foreseen it ; he was prepared to meet it ; he laid his plans before the people, and they adopted them. He let the Spartans ravage the plain of Athens unopposed ; he called in the people to the city, every foot of which was thronged ; and when the Spartan nvader spared his own estate, he sent out and burned his villa to the ground, to thwart the treacherous purpose of the enemy, who hoped to excite the suspicions of the citizens against him. He sent a fleet to ravage the coast of Peloponnesus, to show the invaders that the Athenian power was in their wooden walls, and that the laying waste of the plain, the cutting down of the trees, the destruction of the harvest, without a battle, did po harm that might not be easily repaired ; while the seas were swept by Athenian ships, and the whole Peloponnesus lay un- defended and helpless. It was a losing game for the Spartans, and Pericles was resolved to play it out. He resisted the popular discontent, and refused to call a meeting, well knowing that the citizens would vote to hurry forth tumultuously and THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR. 147 attack the invaders ; for the Athenians were fond of country life, and were indignant to see from the walls their pleasant fields trampled by the rude soldiery and their uouses reduced to smoking ruins. When the clamor became too great, Peri- cles addressed a public meeting, and calmly and ably defended his policy. But one thing he could not avert, the pestilence. That dreadful visitor stalked through the streets, and the dead and dying were everywhere. The house of Pericles was deso- late, and all his plans were overthrown. There was no great man to take his place. There were able men in Athens ; but there was none who, by pre-eminent ability and weight of character, could keep the ship with strong hand on the course that Pericles had laid down. Party passions broke fiercely out ; party leaders, known as demagogues, each with selfish aims, came into light when there was no Peri- cles to hold them in check. The popular assembly was the scene of their struggles ; the courts were agitated by their pernicious influence. " Those who came after Pericles," says Thucydides, " being more on an equality with one another, and each eager to stand foremost, turned to the gratification of the people, and sacrificed to this the public interest." A lower and lower tone of public feeling among the best of the popular leaders became prevalent, and a lower style of address was adopted. Of demagogism, in the bad sense of the word, little had been seen before ; but now a succession of low-bred, vulgar, and violent men had the opportunity of making them- selves felt. The war became more and more savage. It was marked by the twofold horrors of civil strife and hatred of race ; civil strife, because, first, it was a war between dif- ferent branches of the Hellenic stock ; and secondly, because it gave rise to seditions and dissensions in the cities themselves which were gradually drawn into it; hatred of race, because the contrasted institutions of the Spartans and Athenians made them almost two different races. Thucydides says that he wrote his history, not for the pur- pose of present entertainment, but that it might be an eternal 148 CONSTITUTIONS AND OKATORS OF GREECE. acquisition. It was no boast on the part of that great writei, The profound exposition of the causes and consequences of that mortal strife, the clearness of the narrative, and the pow- erful historical painting, make his work the still unsurpassed production of the historic Muse. History is philosophy teaching by example. The example of the Peloponnesian war is one of terrible significance ; and the philosophy of it is conveyed in a passage, a part of which I shall quote because it illustrates the inevitable effects of the war of angry and jealous common wealths, clashing together, with no common government to hold them in check. It was only a few years after the strug- gle commenced, when the dreadful condition of things here described presented itself to the eye of the great historian, who was himself clothed with a military command in the early stages of the conflict. " Afterwards," says the grave and profound writer, having first detailed the bloody feuds at Corcyra, "the whole Hellenic world was thrown into commotion. The leaders of the popular party called in the Athenians, those of the oligarchical party, the Lacedsemonians, feuds existing everywhere, .... each party forming alliances for the damage of its antagonists and its own security. Pretexts for summoning foreign aid were easily furnished to those who aimed to effect political changes. Many heavy calamities befell the states through these feuds, which happen, and always will happen, so long as the nature of man remains the same; greater or milder, and varying in their aspects, as variations of circumstances in each case arise. For in peace and prosperity both communities and individuals are better disposed, because they are not driven to intolerable necessities. But war, withdrawing the supplies of daily life, is a hard teacher, and subdues the passions of the many to tks quality of present circumstances. Discord then reigned throughout the states And they changed the customary meaning of words applied to things, according to the caprice of the moment ; for reckless audacity was considered manl^ fidelity to party ; prudent delay, fair-seeming cowardice , THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR. 149 moderation, the screen for feebleness. Headlong frenzy was set down to the account of manhood. The unrelenting man was trusted ; whoever argued against him was suspected. He who plotted, if successful, was thought sagacious ; he who counter- plotted, still more so. He who used forethought that he might not need these resorts was charged with ruining his party and fearing its opponents. In a word, he was applauded who got the start of another, intending to do an injury, or who tempted one to do a wrong when he had no thought of do- ing it himself. And what was worse, kindred became less regarded than party, because party was readier for any deed of unscrupulous daring. For such combinations aim not at the benefit of the established institutions, but in their grasping spirit run counter to the lawful authorities. Their pledges to one another were sanctioned, not by the Divine law, but by their having together violated law. The cause of this state of things was the lust of power for purposes of rapacity ana ambition, and the hot temper of those who were engaged in the conflict. Thus neither party held to sacred honor ; but those were more highly spoken of who, under cover of plausible pre- tences, succeeded in effecting some purpose of hatred. The citizens who stood between the extremes, and belonged to neither, both parties endeavored to destroy. So every species of wickedness became established by these feuds all over the Hellenic world. Simplicity of character, wherein nobleness of nature most largely shares, being scoffed at, disappeared ; and mutual opposition of feeling, with universal distrust, prevailed. For there were neither binding words nor solemn oaths to compose the strife. And for the most part, those who were meanest in understanding were^the most successful ; for, fear- ing their own deficiency and the ability of their adversaries, apprehensive lest they should be worsted in argument and elo- quence, and outwitted by the intellectual superiority on the other side, they went audaciously on to deeds of violence ; but their opponents, contemptuous in the presumption of fore- knowledge, and not feeling the need of securing by action 150 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATOBS OF GREECE. what could be compassed by genius, the more easily perished undefended." This state of things, this profound demoralization, was brought about by the discords in the several states consequent on the war. The dissensions in Corcyra began the dreadful strife ; but it spread with the rapidity and the fatal effects of a pestilence. It was not only war between the Dorian and the Ionian, war between Sparta and Athens ; it was a more pernicious war in the very vitals of every city that was drawn into the hurrying, headlong stream, war which struck at the roots of patriotism and of civilization itself. And herein is to be found the ominous lesson, the warning voice, which will prove a prophet's voice so long as the nature of man remains the same. The chief events in the conflict were the brief peace of Nicias, eleven years after its commencement, 421 B. C. ; the Sicilian expedition in 415 B. C, and its disastrous termination in 413 B. C. ; the intrigues of Alcibiades ; the oligarchical conspiracy at Athens, by which the Constitution was overthrown, and the government of the Four Hundred established with irresponsible power, in 411 B. C. ; the over- throw of this oligarchy four months afterwards, and the res- toration of the old Constitution, with the limitation of the franchise to five thousand ; the death of Archeptolemus and of Antiphon the orator, leaders of the extreme wing of the oligar- chical party ; the appointment of Lysander as commander of the Lacedaemonian fleet; the battle of Arginusae, in 406 B. C, and the deplorable event of the execution of the generals, one of whom was Pericles, the son of the great statesman : and finally, the battle of ^Egospotami, in 405 B. C, in which the Athenians were utterly defeated, and four thousand pris- oners, with the generals, put to death, by order of Lysander. This was the finishing blow. Athens was compelled to surren- der at discretion, and to submit herself to the odious govern- ment of the Thirty Tyrants, whose short reign of six or seven months reads in history like one of the worst . chapters of the French Revolution. The lists of the proscribed ; the denun THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR. 151 ciation of those who attempted to check the shedding of blood, and to inspire moderate counsels ; the impeachment and lead- ing away to death of accused persons, with only a mockery of the forms of justice, and sometimes not even that, all these were only a prophecy of the reign of terror. But the day of retribution swiftly came. Thrajiybulus, an exile, with a few supporters, seized the pass of Phyle, where the old Hellenic fortress still stands in a most picturesque position, looking down on the plain of Athens and the distant. Acropolis. Here assembled a body of brave m> n, resolved to rescue their unhappy country from the odious tyranny undei which it was groaning. They were attacked in their strong hold by the troops of the Thirty, and repelled them. They marched down to the Peirseus, and took possession of the hill of Munychia. Again the oligarchy sent a force, with one of their own number, Critias, in command, to dislodge them. Again they were defeated, and Critias was slain. The oligar- chy of the Thirty was changed to a government of Ten, who called on Sparta for aid ; but the jealousies of the Spartans against their great commander, Lysander, paralyzed the opera- tions at Athens. Thrasybulus and the exiles entered the city ; a general amnesty was passed ; the oligarchy was overthrown, the people restored, and the old Constitution, with all its forms, securities, and immunities, re-established. Notwithstanding the exhaustion of this almost continuous war for eight and twenty years, complicated with internal dis- sensions, with all their demoralizing consequences, the free principles of the government of Athens, the genius of the race, and the elasticity of mind produced by the habit of par- liamentary debate, by the open administration of justice, and by the general education of the people, were so conservative in their effects, that, after each internal revolution, the city rallied and returned to her old institutions. Pausanias, the Greek traveller of the second century, says, bearing witness to the general wisdom of the Athenian government : " We know of no other people who have elevated democracy. By it the 152 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. Athenians advanced to great prosperity ; for they surpassed the other Hellenic races in native power of understanding, and were most obedient to the established laws." But the period of the Peloponnesian war was intensely try- ing, both to the character and to the permanence of the institu- tions of the states generally, of those of Athens, of course, in a peculiar degree ; but Athens, though overthrown for the mo- ment, rose again, and in the following age bore a brilliant part in the great struggle with Philip and Alexander. Even in the midst of the war, literature, to which the genius of Pericles had given so strong an impulse, continued to be cultivated. JE,s- chylus died twenty-four years before the war broke out ; but Sophocles was at the height of his splendid renown ; Euripides, a little younger, shared with him the mastery of the tragic stage ; Aristophanes began his brilliant dramatic career four years after the war commenced; and other men, of genius only inferior to theirs, in tragedy and comedy, appeared annu- ally in competition for the honors of the dramatic victory and an inscription on a monument in the Street of the Tripods. Euripides died two years, and Sophocles one, before the sur- render of Athens ; but Aristophanes survived it, and con- tinued his dramatic labors under the restored democracy. The most brilliant period of dramatic literature was therefore just in the midst of the Peloponnesian war. But there is also another side to the picture. I have al- ready alluded to the rise of the demagogues, after the death of Pericles. With all its excellent features, the Athenian Constitution opened to this pernicious class of men an unusu- ally free career, especially at times when there were no states- men of such undeniable superiority that these pestilent fellows, these disturbers of the state, could be kept in their proper place by wholesome fears, like dogs scourged into their kennels by their roasters. At Athens a succession of such men, whose names have been immortalized by history and the comic Muse, made their appearance. There was Eucrates, a seller of flax ; there was Lysicles, a sheep-dealer ; and, most renowned of all, THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR. 153 there was Cleon, the leather-dresser. It was not that these men practised handicraft trades ; but it was their ignorance, coarseness, and brutality that made them nuisances to the commonwealth. A man may be a leather-dresser, as we all know by a beautiful example, and yet be endowed with re- fined tastes, liberal culture, and the most delicate virtues. But Cleon was a cruel and vindictive man, a loud-voiced brawler and braggart, impudent and fearless. Even before the death of Pericles his influence began to be felt. The people were attracted by his ready speech, his rude wit, his adroit reason- ing, and, most of all, by his power of vituperation. It was a new sensation to them to hear the characters of the ablest and best men traduced by this open-mouthed slanderer ; and they applauded him for the" entertainment. Beginning with ap- plause, they ended with bringing themselves under his power. When a question was before them for decision, Cleon always clamored for blood, if blood was to be had. When the Myti- lenaeans, after their revolt, B. C. 427, had been subdued, in the debate on what disposition was to be made of them, he proposed to put all the men to death and to sell the women and children into slavery, the innocent as well as the guilty. He carried the vote ; and under the influence of this base dem- agogue, the Athenians came near committing a crime which would have been a blot on their history forever. A trireme was despatched with the bloody order to Paches, the com- mander of the fleet. But with the silence of night remorse entered the hearts of the people. Early in the morning an- other assembly was called, and the vote reversed. A second trireme was sent, and the rowers were promised large rewards if they arrived in season. By the most strenuous exertions, they reached the harbor of Mytilene just as Paches was pre- paring reluctantly to carry the previous orders into effect, and the bloody purpose of Cleon was thwarted. This ought to have overthrown Cleon's influence forever. Thucydides describes him as at this time the most trusted by the people of all the public men. A whimsical turn of fortune, 154 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. a year or two later, gave this coward the reputation of a gal- lant warrior and a skilful general, as fortune sometimes seems to delight in favoring the most undeserving. During the siege of Sphacteria, which had been so long protracted that the peo- ple began to show ominous signs of dissatisfaction with their generals, Cleon was boastful and violent as usual in the as- sembly. " If I were general, I would have the Spartans here us prisoners in twenty days." Nicias, one of the generals, was present ; and when some one said to the demagogue, " Why do you not go ? " he offered to resign his office. It was the weakness of the Athenian people, that they could never resist a good joke. The idea of making a general out of the bragging and boisterous leather-dresser set the assembly into a roar. Cleon tried in vain to retract. He was a mere bully, and did not relish going to the scene of danger. He could talk and bluster on the bema ; he could put the people up to any deed of blood ; but as to risking his own precious person with- in reach of the Spartan sword and spear, it had never entered his thoughts, and he was most horribly frightened at the un- pleasant prospect opened before him. The more blank he looked, the more determined the people became to thrust the unwelcome honor upon him. Go he must. Meantime De- mosthenes, the general on the spot, had been vigorously push- ing the siege ; and when the new general arrived, everything was done, except actually taking the place. The assault was at once made ; the place was carried ; the flower of the Spar- tans were taken prisoners. Cleon immediately returned to Athens, and within twenty days, as he had boasted, he ex- hibited his captives to the gaping populace. His reputation as an irresistible warrior was now established ; and three years later, he was thought the only man in all Athens competent to cope with Brasidas, the ablest and best of the Spartan generals, who was then manoeuvring in the north. He was despatched; and the moment he came into the presence of his really distin- guished antagonist, his utter unfitness for the command mani fested itself. He was easily defeated and slain. THE DEMOS. 156 I have recapitulated these facts, partly to exhibit one aspect of Athenian demagogism, and partly to introduce the Attic Demos, and to illustrate the working of the free Constitution under the peculiar circumstances of the Peloponnesian war. It is no uncommon thing, in a free country, for the spirit of wit and fun to embody the leading characteristics of the natidn in the person of an individual, with the ludicrous features greatly exaggerated for comic effect. Thus, the American na- tion figures under the name of Brother Jonathan, in the form of a lantern-jawed person, with long, straight hair, lank figure, and trousers half-way up to his knees. The British nation is personified as John Bull, a person quite the opposite of Brother Jonathan in all these particulars. But a personification much more striking in its verisimilitude is Demos, the representa- tive of the people of Athens. In the histories and orations of Athenian writers, this conception was carried so far, that, in speaking of the overthrow of the popular government, a common phrase was, " Demos was overthrown " ; in speaking of its restoration, "Demos was restored." Demos, the peo- ple, holding the assembly, and through that controlling nearly all the affairs of peace and war, appointing the numer- ous courts by detailing large bodies from his own number, and so administering justice, extending his conquests in every direction, and constituting himself the head of a mighty em- pire, Demos made himself felt in so many ways in his collective capacity, that the personification was inevitable. Parrhasius, the painter, made a picture of this character, which, according to Pliny, embodied the expressions of fickle- ness, anger, injustice, inconstancy, placability, clemency, pity, boastfulness, haughtiness, humility, ferocity, fugacity, and sev- eral others ; but how he managed in one picture to convey so much, Pliny does not inform us. This picture was painted about the time of which we are now speaking, soon after the close of the Peloponnesian war, or at all events within tin* period that includes the life of Aristophanes. The plays of this great writer are of special value, as illui- 156 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. trations of the political side of Athenian life, if we always bear in mind, as I have intimated before in speaking of his representation of the dicastie passion, that he was a brilliant caricaturist, no more historical, but infinitely more witty, than Punch. I repeat the remark here, because I am going to give a brief sketch of a play of his, which handles Demos, and the demagogues, whether high or low. It is called the " Hippeis," or " Knights," and was brought out in 424 B. C, eight years after the commencement of the war. The chief personages of the drama are Demos, a crusty old fellow liv- ing in the Pnyx, and so called Demos Pycnites, as if the Pnyx were a borough to which the man belonged, irritable, jealous, easily cajoled, ready to believe the most enormous lies, and constantly having his pockets picked ; Nicias and Demos- thenes, two of the generals, one of whom caused Cleon to be sent in command to Sphacteria, and the other helped him take it, here introduced in the character of servants or slaves to Demos, and shockingly ill-treated by the old gentleman ; and Cleon, the leather-dresser, another slave lately bought from Paphlagonia, who, by his lying, coarseness, impudence, and boundless vulgarity, has secured the good graces of his master, and become the tyrant and terror of all his fellow- slaves. There is a chorus of knights, who sympathize with the condition of Nicias and Demosthenes, the upper servants, representing the more aristocratic party in the state. Nicias, Demosthenes, and the knights, having been unsuccessful in maintaining their position by adhering to the men of their own rank in society, resolve to employ the tactics of their oppo- nents, and to address themselves to the lowest passions, by pampering the vanity, flattering the ignorance, and adopting the prejudices of Demos, in short, by dealing in slander and slang, until they have outslandered and outslanged the natural masters of these vulgar arts. Unable to manage Demos, and to counteract the designs of the leather-dresser, they form a con- spiracy, and select from the market a coarser, more ignorant, more vulgar fellow than Cleon, Agoracritus, the Sausage THE DEMOS. 157 Seller, of whom Mr. Frere remarks: "His breeding and education are described as having been similar to that of the younger Mr. Weller, in that admirable and most unvulgar ex- hibition of vulgar life, the Pickwick Papers." The piece is occupied with the struggles of these parties, in the kitchen of Demos, to gain the favor of the master of the house. When the Sausage-Seller is first saluted with profound respect by those who intend to make political use of him, he conducts himself very much as did Christopher Sly when told that he r a: a nobleman. " DEM08THENE8. We must seek him out. Nicias. But see there, where he comes ! Sent hither providentially as it were ! Demosthenes. happy man ! celestial sausage-seller ! Friend, guardian, and protector of us all ! Come forward ; save your friends, and save the country. Sausage-Sellek. Do you call me ? Demosthenes. Yes, we called to you, to announce The high and happy destiny that awaits you. Nicias. Come, now you should set him free from the encumbrance Of his table and basket, and explain to him The tenor and the purport of the oracle, While I go back to watch the Paphlagonian. [Exit NiciAi Demosthenes (to the Sausage-Seller, ynively). Set these poor wares aside ; and now bow down To the ground, and adore the powers of earth and heaven. Sausaoe-Skllkb. Heyday Why, what do you mean ? Demosthenes. O happy man I Unconscious o your glorious destiny, 158 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. Now mean and unregarded, but to-inorrow The mightiest of the mighty, lord of Athens. Sausage-Seller. Come, master, what 's the use of making game ? Why can't you let me wash the guts and tripe, And sell my sausages in peace and quiet ? Demosthenes. simple mortal, cast those thoughts aside Bid guts and tripe farewell ! Look there ! Behold [Pointing to the audiene; The mighty assembled multitude before you ! Sausage-Seller (with a grumble of indifference). 1 see them. Demosthenes. You shall be their lord and master, The sovereign and the ruler of them all, Of the assemblies and tribunals, fleets and armies ; You shall trample down the senate under foot, Confound and crush the generals and commanders, Arrest, imprison, and confine in irons. Sausage-Seller. What! I? Demosthenes. Yes, you yourself; there 's more to come, Mount here ; and from the trestles of your stall Survey the subject islands circling round. Sausage-Seller. 1 see tnem. Demosthenes. And all their ports and merchant-vessels * Sausage-Seller. Yes, all. Demosthenes. Then are n't you a fortunate, happy man ? Are n't you content ? Come then for a further prospect Turn your right eye to Caria, and your left To Chalcedon, and view them both together. Sausage-Seller. Will it do me good, d' you think, to learn to squint THE DEMOS. 19 Demosthenes. Not so ; but everything you see before you Must be disposed of at your high discretion, By sale or otherwise ; for the oracle Predestines you to sovereign power and greatness. Sausage-Seller. Are there any means of making a great man Of a sausage-selling fellow such as I ? Demosthenes. The very means you have must make you so, Low breeding, vulgar birth, and impudence, These, these must make you what you 're meant to ot Sausage-Seller. I can't imagine that I 'm good for much. Demosthenes. Alas ! But why do you say so ? What s the meanint Of these migivings 1 I discern within you A promise and an inward consciousness Of greatness. Tell me truly ; are you allien To the families of gentry ? Sausage-Seller. No, not I ; I 'm come from a common, ordinary kindred, Of the lower order. Demosthenes. - What a happiness ! What a footing will it give you ! What a groundwork For confidence and favor at your outset ! Sausage-Seller. But bless you ! only consider my education ! I can but barely read in a kind of a way. Demosthenes. That makes against you, the only thin;, against you, - The being able to read, in any way ; For now no lead nor influence is allowed To liberal arts or learned education, But to the brutal, base, and under-bred. Embrace then and hold fast the promises Which the oracles of the gods announce to vou." ICO CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. After a little more encouragement, the Sausage-Seller gives up his apprehensions, enters the lists as a candidate for a place in the household of Demos, for the kitchen cabinet is not an exclusively modern idea, and, by a series of well- plied flatteries, makes rapid progress. He steals a hare-pie and offers it : " Here 's a hare-pie, my dear own little Demos, A nice hare-pie I 've brought you ! see, look here ! " Cleon, who is standing by, exclaims: " By Jove, the wretch has stolen it from me. Sausage-Seller. Just as you stole the prisoners at Pylos. Demos. How did you steal if? I beseech you, tell me. Sausage-Seller. The scheme and the suggestion were divine, The theft and the execution simply mine. Cleon. I took the trouble Sausage-Seller. But I served it up. Demos. Well, he that brings the thing must get the thanks." The competition goes on briskly. Demos is perplexed ; but upon searching the chest of Cleon, and finding it full of all sorts of dainties filched from his own kitchen, while the Sau- sage-Seller's is wholly empty, all this backed up by an oracle that points clearly to the Paphlagonian as the fated victim, notwithstanding Cleon 's declaration that he stole only for the public service, he turns him out. The Sausage-Seller, being iskei what is to be done with the Leather-Dresser, says: " He shall have my trade j With an exclusive sausage-selling patent To traffic openly at the city gates, To extend his wares with dogs' and asses' flesh, THE DEMOS. 151 With a privilege moreover to get drunk, And bully among the rabble of the suburbs And the ragamuffin waiters at the baths." And Demos says to his new minister: " You '11 fill the seat Which that unhappy villain held before. Take this new robe, wear it, and follow me." If we look at this representation in its proper light, con- sidering it as what it was meant to be, a caricature founded on truth, a bodily presentation and lively exaggeration of facts likely to come to the surface of political life in every free com munity, we must pronounce it admirable ; and we cannot help commending the genial good-humor of the Demos, who not only could bear to have his faults and foibles so unspar- ingly exposed, but had the sense to crown the brilliant author with a dramatic first prize, a strong testimonial to the ex- cellence of the piece. And it is excellent for the vigor of its impersonation, the impartial severity with which the lash is ap- plied to the high as well as to the low, and the admirable wit with which the pretences of the Attic demagogue are exposed, and his utter selfishness held up to ridicule and reprobation. In several other comedies the witty Athenian has touched upon the political relations of his times. The Peloponnesian war furnished the themes of " The Acharnians " and " Lysis- trata," in both of which, with some coarseness in the former and a great deal in the latter, the men who were concerned in its civil and military transactions, and the transactions them- selves, are handled with a masculine vigor and with infinite drollery. To turn now to the culture of oratory in this period, I have no doubt that, besides the debates reported by Thucydides, several of which are of commanding interest, many occurred in the Ecclesia in Athens, and at the great crises of the war, in which high qualities of popular eloquence were exhibited, but of which we have no report at all. Alcibiades, though injured by an affected drawl and lisp, was a skilful intriguer, and upon VOL. II. 11 162 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE occasion an eloquent debater. Had his principles been equal to his genius, his name might have been set high among the highest ; but he was a contemptible profligate, and his public conduct was as despicable as were his private morals. By turns general, traitor, popular favorite, and flying for his life, he had but one good impulse, his affection for Socrates. The Alexandrian critics established a canon of oratory, as of poetry ; and the earliest name on their list of ten is Anti- phon. This distinguished person was born at Rhamnus, a deme on the eastern side of Attica, B. C. 479. Educated by nis father, who was a Sophist, he devoted himself to politics and the rhetorical art. He was involved in the intrigues of Alcibiades, and had much to do with establishing the oligarchy of the Four Hundred. Indeed, Thucydides affirms that it was he who drew up the plan of that short-lived government. His personal character was free from blemish, and he was a man of courage and resolute will. Thucydides seems to have formed a high opinion of him. " He was a man," says he, " inferior to none of his contemporaries in virtue, and distin- guished above all others in forming plans, and recommending his views by his oratory." He made no public speeches, in- deed, nor did he ever of his own accord engage in the litiga- tion of the courts ; but though he was suspected by the people on account of his high reputation, there was no one in Athens who was better able to assist by his counsels those who had any contest to wage, whether in the law courts or before the popu- lar assemblies. When, after the downfall of the Four Hundred, he was tried for his life as having been a party to the estab- lishment 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. The decree of the Senate is pre- served, ordering the arrest and trial of Antiphon and several associates for treason, on the charge of having visited Sparta for purposes hostile to the Demos, and directing certain persons to act as accusers. This is followed by the record of the sentence that thej be handed over to the Eleven, their property confis antiphon. 163 cated, their houses razed to the ground, their descendants de- vested of the rights of citizenship, and their bodies deprived of burial at Athens. The terms of the sentence show clearly enough the influence of popular passion, which had not yet sub- sided after the overthrow of the Four Hundred. There is but little doubt of his technical guilt ; but to punish as treason all participation in a revolutionary movement at such a time looks more like the fierceness of private revenge than the calm ad- ministration of justice. I regret much that we have not the speech, which excited the admiration of so good a judge as Thucydides. I have no doubt it was far superior to any of his speeches that have come down to us. These show ability, sub- tilty, and great command of the language of argument ; but, being composed for others, they have not the passionate ear- nestness inspired by personal danger. An able man, long prac- tised in the arts of rhetoric and argument, speaking for his life, and conscious of no moral guilt, is quite a different person from the same man putting together ingenious arguments in the case of a client, especially if he is not to deliver them himself. The proper business of his life was the writing of speeches, which with him first became an important business ; though indeed it had been practised before, and always remained a necessary avocation, as I have already explained. He also established a school of rhetoric, in which the arts of compo- sition and of speaking were systematically taught. Like the older Sophists, he took up general subjects as practical ex- ercises. There are fifteen of his speeches remaining, and of these twelve belong to the species of rhetorical exercises. They are in the form of tetralogies, each tetralogy containing a speech and a reply of the plaintiff and the defendant. The first te- tralogy is on the supposed case of a citizen returning with his slave from a supper party, and slain by assassins. The slave, though mortally wounded, lives long enough to inform the family that he recognized among the murderers a man who was at enmity with his master, and who was about losing an im- portant case pending between him and the murdered persor. 1 6-1 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. The man is indicted, and the speeches, of course, turn on the probabilities of the case. An element in the estimation of the evidence is the Greek notion, that the testimony of a slave is of no value unless he is first put to the torture. The argu- ments on both sides are extremely acute, and show the subtilty and skill of the writer in a remarkable manner. The second tetralogy is upon a question of involuntary or accidental homicide. Two boys were throwing javelins in a gymnasium. It happened that, just as one had hurled his weapon, the other ran within the range of the missile, and was killed. The father of the deceased prosecutes the one who threw the missile as a homicide ; the other transfers the blame to him who put himself in the way of being hit. The issue is joined upon the question which is the guilty party. The case is a little like that so ably argued by the grave-digger in Hamlet ; but it is not without its interest, especially in illus- trating the power of the Greek language in drawing nice dis- tinctions. The arguments are short, and the exercise is a very good one. The third tetralogy puts this case. A young man and an old man fight together. The young man hits harder than the old one, and the latter dies. The young man is accused of murder. He defends himself by turning the charge of hav- ing commenced the w r rong upon his antagonist. The plea is technically called an avTeytcXrjfia, or counter-charge, the accused urguing that he slew 7 his antagonist in self-defence. More- over, he did not kill him at all ; for the man did not die im- mediately, but many days afterward. He died because of the blundering of an unskilful surgeon whom he had called in 7 not on account of the blows. Yet more, he died by his own rashness, having been forewarned by other physicians, that, if e submitted to such a treatment, though curable, he would die. But if any man supposes that the death resulted from the blows, and that he who inflicted them is the murderer, let him consider that the blows first inflicted by the beginner of the wrong constitute him, and not the striker of the blows that ANTIPHON. 165 proved fatal, the cause of the death. The accusers are really guilty of the crimes they charge upon the accused ; " for," he argues, " they have plotted my death, when I am innocent ; endeavoring to take away my life, which is the gift of God. They are impious towards God ; and unjustly plotting my death, they confound the principles of the laws, and become my murderers ; and by trying to persuade you fthe dicasts) to take my life, they become the murderers of your reputation for piety." In addition to these exercises there are three of this orator's speeches, written upon real cases, and delivered in court. One is the accusation of a step-mother for poisoning her hus- band. This contains, in the statement of the case, an excellent specimen of simple and perspicuous narrative. The story of the poisoning is extremely well told ; and the argument upon the circumstances is subtile and acute. It was delivered by the son of the murdered man. The issue is technically called aro^ao-fio?, or conjecture, that is, probability from circum- stantial evidence. One of the arguments against the accused is that she had refused to give her slaves up to the torture. The second of these speeches is the defence of a man from Mytilene, named Elos, who made a voyage with Herodes to ^Enos. When they reached Methymna, in Lesbos, they took passage in another vessel. Herodes went ashore in the even- ing, and never appeared again. On the return of Elos alone, the relatives of Herodes indicted him for murder. The de- fence begins by excepting to the indictment, alleging that rob- bers and thieves are malefactors, and that the prosecutor has not shown that Elos had been guilty of any act that would bring him under this category. He then proceeds to a general defence. He gives a very lucid statement of the facts of the case, puts in th? testimony of witnesses, and founds his defence upon a careful induction from these facts. It is remarkable that, in reply to the testimony of a slave against him, he argues exactly as we should argue now against the value of this kind of evidence. " Before he was placed upon the wheel, and 166 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. until ne was reduced to the last necessity, the man persisted in declaring my innocence ; when he could bear it no longer, he gave false witness against me, in order to be released from the torture ; and when he rested from the torture, he again de- clared that I was not guilty, and bemoaned me and himself as the victims of injustice, not through any desire to favor me, how could that "be, when he had borne false witness against me ? but because he was compelled by the facts to confirm the truth of his first statements." One would suppose that such an incident and so conclusive an argument would have abolished the barbarous practice of torturing slaves. The last speech is the defence of a choregus on a charge of murder, under the following circumstances. The choregus was the person who was called upon to train a chorus, one of the expensive public duties, or liturgies. The person in question had at his own house the young men who were in training for the festival. One of them swallowed some kind of poison, to make his voice clearer, and lost his life by it. The father of the boy prosecutes the choregus on a charge of murder. The accused denies the charge. The evidence is only circumstan- tial. The statement of facts here also is in excellent style. It has a special interest as illustrating incidentally many points connected with the Athenian system of liturgies, and especially the training for the musical and dramatic contests. It is said that Thucvdides the historian was taught in the school of Antiphon. This is likely to have been the case. The general manner of the speeches in the historian resembles that of the speeches of the orator. There is the same vigor and sub- tilty of thought, with some lack of ease and fluency in diction, but at the same time with great accuracy of t.xpression, as shown in nice distinctions often drawn between words appar- ently synonymous. In arrangement of ideas Antiphon shows wonderful skill ; yet it must be confessed that the artifices of style are sometimes carried too far for the best effects of practi- cal oratory. The balancing of clauses, the recurrence of sim- ilar sounds and like endings, the antitheses, and other figure* ANDOCIDES. 167 of diction, show that the rhetorical style was not yet equally adapted to the highest literary standard, and to direct influ- ence on living men upon questions that came home to their business and bosoms. The next orator in the canon is Andocides, the son of Leo- goras, born of a noble Athenian family, and destined from his vouth to a public career. He was early employed as a com- mander, then as ambassador on several missions. His public career was unfortunately arrested by his being involved in the trials for mutilating the Hermae a transaction which excited in the highest degree the superstitious fears of the Athenians in 4io B. C. He narrowly escaped death, partly by taking an active lead in denouncing others, not a very honorable mode of escape, and partly by exiling himself to avoid the probable atimia, or degradation, which would have been per- haps the smallest penalty to be expected in the fanatical ter- ror which filled the community. He left Athens, and en- gaged in foreign commerce. When the oligarchy of the Four Hundred was established, he returned ; but the sudden fall of that government again drove him from the city. He repaired again to Athens, but could not safely remain. He withdrew to Elis, and did not venture another return until the overthrow of the Thirty, when he came back under the protection of the general amnesty. He rose again to important political influ- ence ; but his former enemies, resolved on his ruin, revived an old charge that he bad profaned the Mysteries of Eleusis. Against this charge he defended himself successfully. Some years later he was sent on an embassy to Sparta, B. C. 394, but the results of his mission were so unsatisfactory that the Athenians banished him, and he died in exile. Such were the vicissitudes of a public life at Athens in those troublous times. There are only three of his speech.es remaining ; one on his return from exile ; the second, his defence on the accusation of having profaned the Mysteries ; and the third, delivered in 892 B. C, on the peace with Sparta. There is another speech that against Alcibiades usually printed under his 168 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. name, but which the critics have pronounced spurious. The oration on the Peace was also questioned by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. It seems to me, notwithstanding what some of the critics have said in depreciation of Andocides as compared with Anti- phon, that he was, if not as subtile, at least as able. His narra- tive is as clear and precise; his arguments, standing on broader grounds, are more readily comprehended ; his style has fewer mere rhetorical figures ; he understands better how to make an appeal to his judges in a natural and effective manner ; and he is, in all respects, a more pleasing writer. I will read a few sentences from his defence on the charge of profaning the Mysteries. In answer to the suggestion that he ought not to have returned from Cyprus, where he was leading a pros- perous and happy life, to take the hazards of his unpopularity at Athens, he says, I think, with a skilful appreciation of the feelings of an Attic court : "I hold, gentlemen, an opinion very different from theirs. A life elsewhere, enjoying every blessing, but deprived of my country, I would not accept, even were the city as hostile to me as my enemies assert. I should greatly prefer to be a citizen of Athens rather than of other cities, which seem to me, perhaps, at the present moment, to be very fortunate. Thinking thus, I have committed my life to your hands. I pray you, gentlemen, to grant to me, the defendant, a more favoring mind than to my accusers, knowing that, although you listen impartially, the defendant is neces- sarily at a disadvantage. They, having long conspired, and organized their attack, themselves out of the reach of danger, make the accusation. 1 make my defence with fear and peril, and under the heaviest calumny. It is reasonable, therefore, that you should accord to me a more favoring mind than to my accusers." In my judgment, this passage, as well as manv others, shows uncommon skill in dealing with a jury. In the speech vindicating the peace with Sparta, the topics appear to me to be admirably arranged and powerfully urged. Some one had argued that peace with Sparta would work the ANDOCIDES. 169 overthrow of the people. He replies by recapitulating the blessings which had come to the Athenian people, in former times, from peace. " It is your duty, men of Athens, to use the past as evidence of the future. When we were at war in Eubcea, and possessed Megara and Pegse and Trcezen, we desired peace. We recalled the ostracized Miltiades, the son of Cimon, then in Chersonesus, for no other reason than, as he was a friend of the Spartans, that we might send him to them to offer terms of peace. And then we had peace ; and in that peace were the people of the Athenians overthrown ? No man can say so ; but I will tell you what benefits flowed from that peace. First, we enclosed the Peiraeus with defences, and built the northern long wall. Next, in place of the old and unseaworthy ships, with which we defeated the King and his barbarians, and gave freedom to Greece, we built a hundred war-triremes. These and other benefits, with a great increase of power, accrued to the people of Athens from that peace with Sparta. Again, we had a war on account of the JEginetans ; and after having suffered and inflicted many injuries, again we desired peace. Ten ambassadors selected from all of the Athe- nians (one of whom was Andocides, my grandfather) were sent, with full powers, to Sparta, to conclude a peace. They concluded a peace for thirty years. And in this long time, were the people of Athens overthrown ? Were any persons detected in working their overthrow ? Quite the contrary. That very peace raised the people of Athens so high, and made them so strong, that we deposited in the Acropolis, in those years of peace, a thousand talents, and assigned them by law to the exclusive use of the people ; and in the next place, we built a hundred more ships of war, constructed docks, increased our police, and built the southern long wall. These benefits and this increase of power accrued to the peo- ple of Athens from the peace with Sparta. Again going to war on account of the Megareans, leaving our country to be ravaged, and suffering many privations, again we made peace, through the agency of Nicias, the son of Niceratus ; and I am 170 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. sure you all know that through that peace we deposited in the Acropolis seven thousand talents in coin ; that we built more than four hundred ships of war ; that a revenue of more than twelve hundred talents came in ; that we gained possession of Chersonesus and Naxos and more than two thirds of Euboea. .... And while enjoying these benefits, again we became in- volved in war with Sparta, at the call of the Argives. Now, men of Athens, remember the proposition which I laid down at the beginning of the argument. Was it not that the Athe- nian people have never been overthrown by peace ? That proposition is certainly proved." It appears to me that the historical argument in this passage is well put ; the cases are apposite, and the facts striking. It was not the orator's purpose to undervalue the glory of martial achievements. That would not have been a welcome topic to an Athenian assembly, who could never hear an allusion to Marathon or Salamis without going off in a patriotic frenzy. On the contrary, the manner in which he brings in the old, disabled war-galleys that fought the Persians at Salamis, just glancing at that memorable day, was well suited to stir the blood of the hearers as with the sound of a trumpet. He wished to remind them, however, that, in every case in which peace had been made, the dignity and power of the Demos had received lasting increase ; and by inference, those who nego- tiated peace on these several occasions were public benefactors. The argument is, of course, a vindication of the treaty which he had himself assisted in negotiating. These two orators belong especially to the period of the Peloponnesian war, and to the years of agitation which fol- lowed it. It is singular that so much study and care, in such a time, could be expended on art by men whose personal for- tunes and whose very lives were so involved in the vicissi- tudes of war and the revolutions of the state. They are two highly significant figures, illustrating by their characters and works the Attic genius in an important and trying period. LECTURE X. I HE SPARTAN ASCENDENCY. EPOCH OF THEBAN GLORY. - LYSIAS. ISOCRATES. IS^EUS. LYSIAS AND ISMUS COMPARED. In the last Lecture I endeavored to present an outline of public events, as they affected Athens and her institutions, during the Peloponnesian war. The internal revolutions were briefly indicated, and the general demoralization, as described by Thucydides, was noticed. I also cited the testimony of the Comedies of Aristophanes, as illustrative of the rapid de- terioration of public life after the death of Pericles. The play of " The Knights " was briefly analyzed, in illustration of the intrigues of the demagogues to win the favor and con- trol the affairs of the Athenian Demos. The downfall of Athens, at the close of that fierce and protracted encounter of grasping and vindictive passions, gave the Spartans unques- tioned pre-eminence in the affairs of Greece. The islands and cities which had previously acknowledged the leadership of Athens now tell under the sway of Sparta, who proceeded to exercise her power by displacing the democracies and sub- stituting oligarchies. These were mostly bodies of ten, consti- tuting a kind of council of state, and exercising the functions of gover.iment despotically. In some places, however, they set up a governor under the title of Harmost, or Regulator, who was a petty tyrant, responsible only to Sparta, and quite certain to find ample support at home for any amount of op- pression he might see fit te> exercise. At Athens, the Demos was restored, it is true, but shorn of its power and splendor. Lysander took away all her fleet but twelve triremes, de- 172 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. stroyed the arsenals, and burned the unfinished ships on the stocks. The walls and bulwarks of the city were demolished, while flute-players and dancing girls were insolently employed to give to the work of destruction the aspect of a festival. But, fortunately, the Athens of Pericles and Pheidias the Acropolis with its Propylasa and Parthenon, its bronze mo. marble statues yet remained. Athens was still, as before, the most illustrious centre of art, the consecrated home of all tha* was most precious and delightful in the works of genius and the refinements of social life. Her confederates soon began to groan under the Spartan bondage, and to look back regretfully to the milder rule of the city of Athene ; and hardly had the supremacy of Sparta been established, when the incurable vices of Laconian institutions began to threaten their dissolu- tion. Greece and Asia Minor were overrun by military ad- venturers, thrown out of employment by the cessation of arms. A large body, known in history as the Ten Thousand, en- listed in the service of Cyrus the Younger, in his rebellious at- tempt to dethrone his elder brother, and, after the defeat and death of Cyrus, performed that wonderful march of fifteen hun- dred miles through a hostile country, under the able leadership of Xenophon the Athenian, who has immortalized the retreat in the most interesting; of his books. Asia Minor became the scene of hostilities between the Spartans and Persians, inter- rupted only by hostilities at home between the tyrant city of the Peloponnesus and her discontented allies. The destruc- tion of the Lacedaemonian fleet by Conon, in the battle of Cnidos, ci'ippled the power of Sparta by destroying her naval supremacy. The peace of Antalcidas, B. C. 387, negotiated by that diplomatist, but really dictated by the Persian king, and recognizing him as the arbitrator of the destinies of Greece, completed the odium under which Sparta justly fell. Other troubles in Central and Northern Greece aggressions of the Spartans in Boeotia, and the seizure of the Cadmeia of Thebes tended to keep alive a hostile spirit very disastrous to the pi*osperity of the cities. The Athenians took the alarm, and EPOCH OF THEBAN GLORY. 173 alliec themselves with Thebes. Gradually the Athenian con- federacy was reorganized, and preparations were made for a new wai. Unfortunately for Sparta, a man of the highest military ge- nius now appeared at Thebes, Epaminondas, as much dis- tinguished for probity as for bravery, thought by some to be the greatest general Greece had yet produced. He was a man, too, of high intellectual accomplishments and endowments, familiar with the literature and philosophy of his times, and eloquent beyond all his countrymen. Pelopidas also was be- ginning to be known as an able statesman and commander ; and these tw r o eminent persons were united in the bonds of intimate and cordial friendship. Under the guidance of these great leaders the power of Thebes increased so rapidly as to excite the jealousy of Athens, who offered terms to Sparta; but the cessation of hostilities was only momentary. Antalci- das was sent to Persia, B. C. 372, to solicit the intervention of that power ; but a general desire for peace led to a renewed ne- gotiation, and a congress of deputies was held at Sparta, B. C. 371. The terms of a general peace were agreed upon by all except Epaminondas, w r ho represented Thebes. This is known in history as the Peace of Callias, as Callias, one of the rep- resentatives of Athens, was very active in bringing it about. The refusal of Thebes caused the greatest irritation among the Spartans, and Boeotia was immediately invaded. The decisive battle of Leuctra, fought only three weeks after the conclusion of the Peace of Callias, sent a thrill through all Greece, and set up a new power over the ruins of the defeated leadership of Sparta. Thebes now assumed the position which Sparta held before ; and Sparta sank so low that she sent ambassadors to solicit the aid of Athens. The battle of Mantineia, B. G. 362, again gave the Thebans a victory, dearly bought by the death of Epaminondas ; and this brings us down to the period when the power of Macedon began to be ominously seen in the af- fairs of Greece. The Spartan supremacy had continued from the downfall of Athens, only *)r a few years unresisted, an<) 174 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. then maintained with costly struggles till the battle of Leuetra, B. C. 371. The supremacy of Thebes was bound up in the lives of two men, Epaminondas and Pelopidas, and disap- peared when the shadows of an approaching conflict began to fall upon the face of the land from the north, about B. C. 361. Within this period are included the closing years and the judicial murder of Socrates, the latter part of the life of Aris- tophanes, and the exhibition of three or four of his Comedies. Plato was a young man of twenty-four or twenty-five at its commencement, and survived it fourteen years ; Aristotle was a youth of three-and-twenty at its close, and had been for about three years a student of philosophy in Athens ; and De- mosthenes just about the same time was prosecuting his un- faithful guardians for squandering his estate, and giving the first proofs of that intellectual superiority which afterwards carried him to the highest pinnacle of fame. Philip was still a hostage in Thebes, studying the characters of the leading men of Greece, the relations of parties, and the struggling passions in the states, and acquiring that knowledge of the Greek language and literature of which he made such mas- terly use in his subsequent reign. The grouping of these im- portant personages in this period presents a striking picture, a wonderful variety of intellectual forces, each destined to make its mark in history, and to tell upon the condition of the world. The three orators whose lives and labors fall within this period are Lysias, Isocrates, and Isaeus. The first was born in 458 B. C. ; the second, in 436 B. C. ; and the last, some years later. Lysias died in 378 B. C. ; Isocrates lived till 338 B. C. ; and Isaeus died ten years earlier, 348 B. C. The family of Lysias was Syracusan by origin. His father, Cephalus, was invited by Pericles to settle in Athens. He is introduced in Plato's Republic as a venerable old man, greatly beloved by all who knew him. Lysias joined the colonists who emigrated to Thurii in 444 B. C, though then but fifteen years old. There he studied rhetoric under the Sicilian masters LYSIAS. 175 Tisias and Nicias. In 412 he returned to Athens, and, though only a resident alien, not having therefore the full rights of citizenship, he established a school. He and his family were ardent supporters of the democracy ; and when the Thirty came into power, his brother Polemarchus was put to death, while he saved his life only by fleeing to Megara. He gave his support to Thrasybulus, raised a body of men for the en- terprise, and returned to Athens with the triumphant liberator. When Eratosthenes, one of the Thirty, ventured to return to Athens under the general amnesty, Lysias appeared as his prosecutor ; for it had so happened that Eratosthenes was the man who had arrested the brother of the orator. The oration delivered on this occasion was the first spoken by him in open court ; and it marks an important epoch in his life ; for up to this time his labors had been limited to teaching, and writing speeches as school exercises. Eratosthenes denied that he had voted in the senate-house for the death of Polemarchus, and he claimed that he belonged to the more moderate party of the Thirty : but there was the undeniable fact that he had carried out the decree of the Thirty, and had put. Polemarchus to death without any form of law ; nay, more, that the dead body of the murdered man had been treated with gross in- dignity, an outrage on Hellenic feelings worse than death itself. No wonder, then, that a strong feeling of personal ani- mosity pervades the oration. The temper of the speaker is shown in the very first paragraph. " It is not difficult for me, judges, to begin this accusation, but it is difficult to leave off speaking. Crimes so great in magnitude and so many in number have been perpetrated by these men, that he who might be willing to falsify could not exaggerate their enormity, nor, if he adhered to the truth, could he tell the whole truth ; but, of necessity, either the ac- cuser must give out, or the time would fail him. Formerly it was necessary for accusers to explain the ground of their hos- 'lity to the accused ; but now it becomes our duty to inquire !>f the accused what was their enmity to the city, and whv 176 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. they dared to commit such crimes against it. I speak thus, not because I have no private wrongs and griefs ; for all the citizens have more cause of resentment for their personal suf- ferings than for the offences committed against the state. But, judges, having never before appeared for myself or others, I am now compelled by what has taken place to come forward as this man's accuser ; and I have often despaired lest, on ac- count of my inexperience, I should conduct the prosecution in behalf of my murdered brother and myself in a feeble and unworthy manner. Nevertheless, I will endeavor to lay the whole case before you in the fewest possible words." He then recounts, in the most animated manner, the history of his family, their emigration to Athens, the establishment of the Thirty, the denunciation of himself and his brother, and his own arrest and escape. Melobius and Mnesitheides, he says, ar- rested him. He was carried to the house of Damnippus, where Theognis was holding others in custody. Damnippus thought it best to speak with Theognis, who would do anything for money. While the conversation was going on, Lysias, who was familiar with the house and remembered that it had entrances on both sides, resolved to attempt an escape, considering that, if he could get away unseen, his life would be saved, and if he were caught, Theognis was open to bribery, and would take the money just as readily ; or, if not, he (Lysias) would die as if nothing had happened. On this calculation, he made the attempt, the guard being placed at the front door. Luckily he found all three of the doors through which he had to pass open. He took refuge in the house of Archeneos, a well-known ship-owner, and, sending him to inquire what had become of his brother, and learning that Eratosthenes had arrested him in the street and dragged him to prison, he went by sea the fol- lowing night to Megara. The Thirty sentenced Polemarchus to suffer the customary death by drinking hemlock, without even informing him of the reason why he was to die ; so far tvere they from affording him a fair trial with an opportunity rf defence. "They plundered his property, insulted his corpse LYS1AS. 177 and, in their shameless eagerness to rob, even tore the golden ear-rings from the ears of his wife." After a few more statements urged in a like vehement manner, he says : " I thought the charges already made were enough ; for I am of opinion that the accusation should be so far pushed that the accused shall be proved to have committed crimes deserving death. Death is the extreme penalty which we can exact from them. And I do not know that there is any occasion to carry the accusation further against men who could not satisfy justice by dying twice for every one of their deeds." Yet, after this strong description of the nature of the case, he goes on through many more pages of narrative, invective, argument, and passionate calls for justice on the offender ; and closes with the pithy sentence, " You have heard, you have seen, you have suffered ; you have him, judge." Another speech of similar import, and much in the same style, is that against Agoratus. This man appears to have been a miserable tool in the employ of the oligarchical party, and an informer in the pay of the Thirty Tyrants. One of the victims of his infamous trade was Dionysiodorus, a near relative of Lysias. He was prosecuted by Lysias for murder. Here again we meet with the same vehemence of personal feeling, and the same clearness and vigor of narrative, in a recital which extends over the period of the downfall of Athens and the establishment of the Thirty, containing therefore many facts of deep historical interest. Bringing the story down to the time when the victims had been condemned to death, in a few simple words he paints a scene in prison, which must have been very impressive before a body of citizens who had so recently escaped from the horrors of so lawless a tyranny. " Judges, when sentence of death had been passed upon fhese men, and they were doomed to die, they sent for their friends to the prison, one for a sister, one for a mother, one for his wife, each for the person nearest to him, in order that they might embrace t'nem for the last time before they died. And Dionysiodorus sent for my sister, his wife, tc VOL. II. 12 178 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. the prison. Immediately on receiving the message she went, clothed in mourning, as was becoming, her own husband being involved in such a calamity. In the presence of my sister, Dionysiodorus disposed of his property as he thought right, and then spoke of this Agoratus, declaring him to be the author of his death, and charging me, and his own brother Dionysius, and all his friends, to avenge him upon Agoratus ; and he enjoined upon his wife to tell, when the time should come, her then unborn child, should it be a son, that Ago- ratus had killed his father, and to bid him pursue him as his father's murderer." At the opening of the speech he had represented Agoratus as the common enemy of himself and the dicasts. Now, hav- ing brought to their imaginations the scene in prison, he pro- ceeds at once to charge upon the accused a participation in the other crimes of the Thirty. " I grieve, men of Athens, to remind you of the calamities that have befallen the city ; but it is necessary, judges, on the present occasion, in order that you may see how little Agoratus deserves your pity. You know the citizens brought over from Salamis, who they were and how many, and what a death they died at the hands of the Thirty ; you know the victims from Eleusis, how many shared the same fate ; and you remember those who, through private enmities here, were dragged to prison, men who had done no wrong to the city, but were doomed to perish by a most shameful and ignominious death, some leav- ing behind them aged parents, who hoped to be cherished in old age by their sons, and to be laid by their hands in the tomb, when they had closed their life ; others leaving sisters unmarried ; others, little children, needing their tender care. What think you, judges, would be their feelings towards this man, or what verdict would they render, if they had a verdict to give, they who were robbed by him of their nearest and dearest? " In another passage he says: "I desire to show you, judges, what sort of men you have been deprived of by Agoratus. LYSIAS. 179 Some of them, having commanded your armLs, transmitted the city greater to their successors ; others, having held vari- ous high magistracies, and having performed faithfully all their public duties, never had their characters impeached. Some were preserved, whom he would gladly have slain, and against whom he procured a sentence of death ; but by the favor of fortune and of God they escaped, and, returning with Thrasy- bulus from Phyle, are honored by you as noble men. Of such men as these, some Agoratus slew, others he drove into txile. And who is he? You must know that he is a slave, the off- spring of slaves. Such is the wretch who has done all this wickedness." In another place he says : " I hear that he is prepared to as- sert, in his defence, that he fled to Phyle, and returned with the exiles ; and that this is what he chiefly relies upon. It was so ; he did go to Phyle, and how could he show himself a greater villain, than, knowing that men were there who had been driven to banishment by himself, by daring to go where they were ? Well, the moment they saw him they took him out to kill him, to the spot where they were wont to slay thieves and malefactors when they caught them. But Any- tus, the commander, said it was inexpedient at that mo- ment to take vengeance on their enemies ; but if they should ever be restored to their country, then they could punish the guilty." I have dwelt at some length upon these two orations, be- cause they belong to a period of agitation, before the passions of men had entirely subsided from the stirring events of the war, the tyranny of the Thirty, their expulsion, and the first days of the restored democracy. Lysias was somewhat under the influence of the Sicilian school, which delighted in artifices of style ; but he had more terseness and vigor of expression than his models. His early works, that is, his school exercises, have not been preserved. The speeches that remain belong to the maturity of his genius and taste. In the fiftieth year of his age he commenced the 180 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. business of writing arguments for others. In doing this, he proceeded upon a somewhat original plan, and studied to adapt his compositions to the character, education, age, and circum- stances of the persons who were to deliver them. He scru- tinized the ordinary language of men in common life, em- ployed figures but sparingly, and aimed to furnish his client with the greatest amount of arguments compatible with the nature of the case and the time allowed to the speaker. He always begins by endeavoring to conciliate the good will of the court ; the narrative is always lively and interesting, and has the air of entire truthfulness and sincerity ; and the reasoning is clear, coherent, forcible, and, if the case admits of such a possibility, conclusive. With these qualities, one is not sur- prised to learn that he very often gained his causes, in short, that he was a most successful jury-lawyer. Add to this, that he was one of the most prolific of the Attic logographers. Four hundred and twenty-five orations once passed under his name, and two hundred and fifty were acknowledged by the ancients as genuine. Thirty-five have come down to us ; and among them are several which are the best and most interest- ing authorities for the period between 401 and 387 B. C. The next eminent rhetorician of this period is Isocrates, of whom, according to Plato, Socrates predicted : " He not only in oratory will leave all others behind him, like children, but a divine instinct will lead him on to still greater things, for there is an earnest love of wisdom in the heart of the man." The father of Isocrates was a wealthy and respectable citizen of Athens, named Theodorus, who carried on the manufacture of flutes, a circumstance that gave occasion to many satirical allusions by the comic poets of the time. Isocrates was born in the first year of the 86th Olympiad, or B. C. 436, in the archon- ship of Lysimachus, a little less than half a century before the birth of Demosthenes, and five years before the breaking out of the Peloponnesian war. He was, therefore, about seven rears older than Plato. Theodorus had two other sons, Tele- sippus and Diomnestus, and a daughter. His father's fortune ISOCRATES. 181 enabled Isocrates to secure the ablest teachers of the age, and he listened to the lessons of Tisias, Gorgias, Prodicus, and even of Socrates ; but the natural timidity of the young man, and some physical disadvantages under which he labored, pre- vented him from engaging personally in the career of public life, which had such transcendent attractions for ambitious spirits in Athens. He accordingly devoted himself to the study of the theory of eloquence, and to the training of pupils, by teaching and writing, for the assembly and the courts. It appears that his patrimony was diminished, like so many other estates of Athe- nian citizens, by the calamities of the Peloponnesian war ; and one object which he had in view was to repair these losses by the income derived from his business as a teacher of rhetoric. He first opened a school in Chios, where he had but nine pu- pils ; though he is said to have assisted in the formation of a republican constitution for that state, on the model of that of Athens. After this unsuccessful attempt, he returned to his native city, where the number of his pupils soon increased to one hundred, and his instructions gained him a large fortune and an extraordinary reputation. Besides teaching, he was employed, like many Greek rhetoricians, in writing discourses for others, for one of which he is said to have received the enormous sum of twenty talents. The wealth of Isocrates exposed him to the usual burden- some offices to which the possessors of property at Athens were liable. He served in the expensive liturgy of a trierarchy, B. C. 352, with great magnificence. When somewhat advanced in life, he married Plathane, the widow of Hippias the Sophist, and adopted her youngest son, Aphareus. Having spent many years in the laborious profes- sion of a teacher of eloquence, lie died a voluntary death im- t mediately after the disastrous result of the battle of Cbaeroneia, B. C. 388 " That disnonest victory At Chaeroneia, fatal to liberty, Killed with report that old man eloquent " 182 C0NSTI1UTI0NS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. The lilt; of Isocrates extended over a period that embraced the most important events in the history of Athens. His youth and early manhood were passed amidst the scenes of the Pelo- ponnesian war. He witnessed the establishment of the tyranny of the Thirty, and the triumphant restoration of the democ- racy by Thrasybulus. The romantic expedition of Cyrus the Younger, and the immortal retreat of the Ten Thousand, took place in the flower of his age. The death of his teacher, Socrates, by the atrocious sentence of a popular court, sad- dened his reflecting mind. With patriotic jealousy he watched the progress of the Spartan arms in Asia under Agesilaus, and shared in the hopes and the disappointments of the Corinthian war. He submitted impatiently to the Spartan supremacy, and doubtless witnessed the sudden glory of Thebes, the bril- liant exploits of Epaminondas, and the downfall of the ancient rival of Athens, without regret. When Philip became a prom- inent personage in Grecian politics, Isocrates was one of those who looked to him as the saviour of the country. He felt that Philip had the power, and he gave him credit for the disposi- tion, to unite the discordant and warring elements that dis- turbed the peace of the Grecian states, and to bend their con- centrated forces upon the great enterprise of conquering the barbarian world. These hopes and this confidence were over- thrown by the battle of Chseroneia, and the aged teacher refused to survive an event so disastrous to the liberties of Greece. Thus, from the quiet scene of his labors and studies, Isocra- tes saw passing before him, with startling rapidity and dramatic effect, the shifting scenes of the Athenian fortunes. Perhaps these events of more than tragic interest turned his mind from the sophistic subtilties in the midst of which he had been edu- cated, to the serious, earnest, and ethical views of life, and of eloquence in its influence upon life, which are so profusely scattered through his works ; for he was the first to apply the art of eloquence to public questions and the affairs of state. In his school were trained the most eminent statesmen, orators, ISOCRATES. 183 *nd philosophers of his age. It was the resort of persons dis- tinguished for birth and talents from every country where the civilization of Greece was known and honored. Even foreign princes corresponded with Isocrates on terms of equality. His manner of composition was precise and technical. We see in it the habits of the careful student, nicely adjusting and rounding off his periods; not neglecting the matter, yet over- scrupulous in respect to the manner. His Panegyric Discourse is said by some to have been for ten years, by others for fifteen, under his hand ; and none can read it without discerning the traces of a scrupulous finish, which contrasts strikingly with the practical vigor and overpowering vehemence of Demosthenes. Demosthenes was as careful as Isocrates in the preparatory labor which he expended on his orations ; but the necessity of addressing a living multitude forced him to mould his speech into those forms of pointed cogency, crystal clearness, and ada- mantine strength which no orator of modern times, perhaps, has approached so nearly as the great American Senator whose statue now guards the portals of our State-House. Isocrates, on the other hand, intent upon the rhythm of his sentences and the balancing antithesis of his clauses, sometimes draws out his constructions to such a length, that it would have been equally difficult for the speaker to deliver them without breaking down, and for an audience to hear them without losing part of the sense. Nowhere is the difference between the practical states- man and orator and the philosophical rhetorician more instruc- tively exhibited. But the language of Isocrates is the purest Attic ; and his composition is an exquisite specimen of the artificial and elabo- rate type. " His diction," says Dionysius, " is no less pure than that of Lysias, and it employs no word carelessly ; . . . it avoids the bad taste of antiquated and far-fetched phrases." However unsuited to public delivery, to the reader it is clear, elegant, and delightful. It is select, carefully framed, polished to a high degree, and, though at times richly ornamented, it is also at times beautifully simple ; but it is rarely concise and 184 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. forcible. His merits were discerned by tbe principal critics of ancient times. The most formal examination of them is that by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, to which may be added the ob- servations in the sketch of his life and character by Plutarch. Cicero, Quintilian, Lucian, Pausanias, ^Elian, Philostratus, Photius, Suidas, and even Eustathius, have touched upon his works with more or less minuteness. His moral sentiments are generally elevated, and, however mistaken he may have been in some of his opinions, the patriotic spirit of his writings is unquestionable. Sixty orations were formerly extant that bore the name of Isocrates ; but only twenty-eight of them were recognized as genuine by Caecilius, a critic in the age of Augustus. Twenty- one have been preserved. Besides these, we have the titles and some fragments of twenty-seven more. There are also ten letters, written to his friends on political subjects, one of which, the tenth, is pronounced spurious. The title and a few frag- ments of a Theory of Eloquence (Te^yq 'P^to/mac?]) have been preserved. The twenty-one orations now extant may be thus classi- fied: 1. Three Paraenetic Orations, or discourses written for the purpose of giving advice, resembling moral epistles. They are addressed, one to Demonicus, and two to Nicocles, the son of Evagoras, king of Cyprus. 2. Five Deliberative Orations QavfAftovXevTiicot,*) : the Pane- gyricus, those addressed to Philip and to Archidamus, the Areopagiticus, and that on the Peace. 3. Four Encomia: on Evagoras, Helen, Busiris, and the Panathenaicus. 4. Eight Judicial Discourses : the Plataicus ; on Exchange >f Estates; a pleading for the son of Alcibiades ; the Trape- 7'ticus,. against Pasio the banker, on a question of deposit ; the Paragraphias ; the ^Egineticus ; against Lochites ; and the Defence of Nicias. 5. A discourse against the Sophists. ISOCRATES. 185 These are all of great interest, as illustrating the age of Isoc- rates and his personal character. A few extracts from two or three of them, touching upon the latter point, may be allowed, to complete my biographical notice of the rhetorician. In the Oration to Philip he says : " I was by nature the least fitted of all the citizens to take part in public affairs ; for I had not sufficient power of voice nor boldness enough to en- counter a multitude, and to wrangle with the orators storming from the bema. But I claim the honor of intellectual ability and of a liberal education ; wherefore I take it upon myself to advise, in the way that suits my nature and my talent, the city, and the other Greeks, and the most illustrious men.'' In the Panathenaicus he says : " I have had my share of the greatest blessings that all men would pray to receive. In the first place, I have had health of body and of mind in no common measure, but to such a degree as to rival those who have been most fortunate in each of these respects. In the next place, I have had an affluence of the means of living, so as never to be deprived of any reasonable gratification that a man of sense would desire. Then I have never been over- lo< ked or neglected, but have always ranked among those of whom the most accomplished Greeks thought and spoke as persons of character and influence. All these blessings have been mine, some superabundantly, others sufficiently." He then proceeds to point out circumstances in his lot which make him sometimes querulous and peevish. Near the beginning of the oration he states that, when he began it, he was ninety -four years old ; and towards the close he says that, when the composition was about half done, he was seized with a violent illness, which he "passed three years in combating"; that he was then persuaded by the urgency of friends, to whom he had read portions of it, to attempt its completion. He resumed the work, as he says, when he wanted but three years of a hundred, and in such a state of health as would have pr nented any one else not only from attempting to write a discourse, but even from listening will- ingly to the discourse of another. 186 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. The oration on the Antidosis, or Exchange of Estates, con- tains valuable personal notices. The antidosis was a technical proceeding, by which the Attic law allowed a person on whom a costly liturgy had been imposed to call upon another citizen, whose estate he believed to be greater than his own, either to assume the office or to exchange estates with him. On one occasion, a person, Lysimachus probably, tendered to Isocrates the antidosis, and he, as the least evil, served the liturgy, and appears to have done it in a magnificent style. The discourse was composed many years afterward, in the form of a defence in a fictitious trial. Scholl commits an error when he says that Isocrates pronounced it in defending himself against Ly- simachus. He begins by stating that he had been exposed to many cal- umnies from the Sophists, which he had disregarded ; but when he was far advanced in life, an exchange of estates had been tendered to him upon the trierarchy ; and his opponent had made such statements with regard to his wealth, that he was compelled to take the burden upon himself. He was then led to reflect on the best method of refuting these injurious misrep- resentations, and of setting his character, life, and pursuits in a true light before his contemporaries and future generations. '* Upon mature consideration,*' he says, "I found I could effect this purpose in no other manner than by writing a discourse which should be, as it were, an image of my mind and life ; for I hoped that by this means my character and actions would be best understood, and that the discourse itself would remain a much more honorable memorial than tablets of brass With these views I set about the composition of the present discourse, not in the full vigor of my powers, but at the age of eighty-two." He says of himself: " I have so lived during the time that is past, that no one, either in the oligarchy or the democracy, has charged upon me any insolence or wrong, and no arbitrator or dicast has ever been called to sit in judgment upon my conduct." He then describes himself as keeping aloof from politica ISOCRATES. 187 affairs, from courts of law, from assemblies, from the arbitra- tors, and contrasts his own habits with those of his enemies, who haunted every place of public resort, and intermeddled with suits and prosecutions of every kind. He states that he has written, not upon the common business of man with man, but upon subjects of general importance, " Hellenic, political, and panegyrical discourses," which rank, as works of art, with those compositions which are embellished with music and rhythm ; and that many have desired to become his disciples, thinking that thus they might make themselves wiser and bet- ter men. He then reviews his principal compositions, giving passages from the Panegyricus, the discourse on Peace, and one of the addresses to Nicocles. " These," says he, "having been written and published, I acquired great reputation and received many pupils, not one of whom would have remained with me, had they not found me to be such as they had sup- posed. And now, when there have been so many, some of whom have lived with me three years, not one will be seen to have found any fault with me ; but at the end of the time, when they were about to sail home to their parents and friends, they were so attached to their residence, that they took their departure with a heavy heart and with tears." He then enu- merates his pupils and friends who had received golden crowns from the city on account of their public merits ; and, in fact, all the important circumstances of his life are so minutely described, that the discourse answers the purpose he intended, of conveying an image of himself to posterity. The Panegyricus I shall notice at greater length, partly be- cause it is an excellent specimen of the best manner of Isoc- rates, and partly because, by its plan, it presents a review of the history of Athens from the mythical ages down to the period following the treaty of Antaleidas. The date of the Panegyricus has been much discussed, and differently settled by different scholars. The events alluded to in the discourse itself furnish the means of deciding this point approximately, but not exactly. The number of yeai* 188 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. during which Isocrates kept the work in his hands makes it uncertain whether these allusions to historical facts of his time have reference to the moment of writing the respective pas- sages, or to the time of publication. Setting this element of uncertainty aside from the calculation, we may assume that the Panegyricus appeared about 381 B. C. ; since the author speaks of the Cyprian war " being already in its sixth year," and that began in 386 B. C. Of course it must have been published before the end of the war, B. C. 376, and the death of Evagoras ; since there is no hint in the discourse of either of these events. This is the latest date. If this be assumed as correct, Isocrates finished the oration at the age of fifty-five. [t was published in the time of the Spartan supremacy which lasted from the peace of Antalcidas, B. C. 387, to the battle of Leuctra, B. C. 371 and about twenty years before the name of Philip of Macedon began to be heard of in Greece. The object of the Panegyricus is the vindication of the Athe- nian claim to supremacy, and the reconciliation of the Greeks, particularly Sparta and Athens, for the purpose of assailing the Persians with their united forces. After introductory remarks upon the nature of the sub- ject, upon its having been often handled before, and the orator's own ideas as to the proper manner of treating it, he proceeds to maintain the claims of Athens to the suprem- acy, on the ground of the antiquity of the city, and the purity of the origin of the Athenians ; then, on the score of what Athens has done towards adorning, cultivating, and embellish- ing life ; her services in founding colonies ; her laws and insti- tutions ; her hospitality, and the liberal manner in which she has conducted herself towards other states ; her elegant fes- tivities and shows, in which genius has been cultivated and honored ; and her pursuit of literature, especially of eloquence and philosophy. He then passes on to her history, beginning with the mythi- cal times, Adrastus, the Heracleidae, the wars with the Scythi ans. Thraeians, Amazons, Persians. He touches lightly upor ISOCBATES 189 jhe Trojan story, but is especially emphatic on the wars with Darius and Xerxes, in which the Spartans and Athenians were rivals. The pre-eminence of the latter was acknowl- edged then, and this fact is an argument in support of their present claim to the hegemony. In the next place, he considers the conduct of the Athenians in administering their power; their leniency, and their care for the safety of their allies, as contrasted with the oppression and cruelty of the Lacedaemonians, which have led to great dis- orders and disasters among the Grecian states. He then points out the folly of the Greeks in contending among themselves, when they might gain such advantages by uniting against the Persians ; describes the weakness of the Persians, and the proofs and sources of it ; speaks of the nat- ural hostility of the Greeks against the barbarians, the reasons that encourage the Greeks to war, especially the favorable circumstances of the times and the state of Persia, and the necessity of a federal union among the Greeks, in order to compose their own discords. Finally, he argues that the Greeks should set their minds upon the prosperity they may transfer from Asia, and that they who have the power should study to reconcile the Spartans and the Athenians. The orators are exhorted to renounce the petty subjects which now occupy them, and to expend their rivalries on this, which is by far the most important interest to which their attention can be directed. I think we can hardly assign to Isocrates the position or dory of a great statesman, or a man of profound convictions, or of very earnest character ; but his influence was important in a literary and rhetorical point of view, especially as he directed the studies of his pupils into the channel of popular speaking, as distinguished from the oratory of the courts. The eloquence of his style was captivating to the Athenians, who were always sensitive to beauty of form. In this respect he was undoubtedly much superior to all his predecessors ; but he was quite deficient in what the ancient critics call 190 CONS TITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. 8eii/oT7/9, that union of passion and vigor, which made Demos- thenes the sovereign ruler of the bema. He wrote a few speeches to be delivered by others ; but preferred to discuss subjects of general interest to the Hellenic world, in a form suited rather to private reading than to popular assemblies or the courts of law. The third and last orator whom I have placed in this period i< Isaeus. Very little is known of his life, and even as to his birthplace there is a question between Chalcis and Athens. His father's name was Diagoras ; and he flourished between the Peloponnesian war and the Macedonian age. He went to Athens early, if not born there, and there passed the greater part of his life ; he studied under Lysias and Isocrates ; wrote orations for others to deliver in the courts ; and finally estab- lished a rhetorical school, which was resorted to by many men who afterwards became eminent. But the great glory of his school, that which makes it illustrious forever, is the memora- ble fact that here Demosthenes received a portion of his early instruction, and hence derived the knowledge of some branches of the law, especially the law of inheritance, and the plain, practical mode of dealing with practical subjects which wc admire so much in his earliest speeches, namely, those which he delivered in the suit against his guardians. Of the orations of Isaeus only eleven have been preserved ; and these are all on questions arising out of disputed inherit- ance. Their chief value consists in the illustrations they afford us of the Attic law on this important head. Among modern critics, Sir William Jones thought Isaeus of sufficient impor- tance to translate his orations and to comment upon them. That his works were regarded by the ancients as worthy of profound study is shown by the admirable treatise of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, devoted to an elaborate comparison between Lysias and Isaeus. This striking essay, which would have made in modern times a capital article for a quarterly review, abounds in elegant and acute criticism, and felicitous compan- ions. The writer considers Isaeus as so far a successful studen! LYSIAS AXD IS^US COMPARED 191 and imiUtor of the style of Lysias in many particulars, that a superficial reader would not be able easily to decide, between the two, the authorship of some of the extant discourses. But with this general resemblance, he discriminates between them thus. The style of Lysias is more clear, more ethical, that is, expressive of character, more naturally composed and more simply formed, more attractive and graceful. The style of Isaeus is more artistical and accurate than that of Lysias, more curious in its composition, and distinguished by a greater va- riety of figures. As much as it is inferior in grace, it is superior in power and in weight of phrase, and served as a model for the forceful style of Demosthenes. In the arrange- ment of the subject-matter, Dionysius also finds Isaeus more subtile than Lysias, and accuses him of sometimes dealing un- fairly with his adversary, attempting to manoeuvre with the judges, and resorting to every means to support the cause he is advocating. In another place the critic says : " In reading the narratives of Lysias, one would suppose, not that they were artfully constructed, but that everything was told according to nature and truth, not reflecting that the highest excellence of art is to imitate nature. In the narratives of Isaeus, he would have the opposite feeling, not supposing that anything is told spontaneously and without elaboration ; and if anything chance to be related in an off-hand style, he would fancy that it was done with a design, and for some purpose of deception. He would believe the one, even when he told a falsehood ; but would not listen to the other, even when he told the truth, without suspicion." This is a curious criticism, a part of which only can be founded on the existing works of Isaeus ; the rest must have been drawn from some of his pleadings which have perished. There is another illustration of the difference between these two orators, which has been much admired. "There are," says the ingenious critic "certain ancient pictures, very simple in their coloring, and having no variety in the blending of the Snts ; but they are exact in drawing, and have much that is 192 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. pleasing in this respect. There are others, more modern, less accurately drawn, but more finished in the details, more varied with light and shade, and more forcible in coloring. Lysias, in simplicity and grace, resembles the ancient pictures ; Isaeus, in elaboration and art, the modern." The writer then pro- ceeds to illustrate this difference by quoting the opening pas- sage of an oration of each of them. The passage from Isaeus belongs to a lost oration ; and as it is on a curious subject, illustrative of Attic life, I will read it. It is the commencement of an argument in defence of Euma- thes, a metic, or resident alien, who was a banker at Athens. He had been a slave, but was emancipated. The heir of his former master attempted to recover him as a part of the estate of the deceased. He was defended by a citizen, for whom Isaeus composed the argument, which is thus introduced : " Judges, on a former occasion I was of no little service to Eumathes, the defendant, and with justice ; and now, if it is in me, I shall endeavor to rescue him from ruin with your help. I beg you to hear me briefly, that no one may suppose I have engaged in the affairs of Eumathes from forwardness or from any wrong motive. In the archonship of Cephisodorus I was called upon to serve in the fleet, and the report came home to my friends that I had fallen in a sea-fight. I had a deposit of money with Eumathes, the defendant. Sending for my family, he disclosed to them the funds which I had on de- posit with him, and paid over the whole amount, honestly and justly. For this reason, when I returned in safety, I became more intimate with him than before, and when he established his bank, I joined with others in furnishing him a capital. Afterwards, when he was claimed by Dionysius, I determined to vindicate his freedom, knowing that he had been manu- mitted in open court by Epigenes. But on these points I will Bay no more." The case in which the critic quotes from an oration of Lysias was in principle similar to one that had occurred many years before. A man bearing the relation of guest to a citizen LYSIAS AND IS^US COMPARED. 193 Df Athens was claimed as a slave, belonging to the estate of one Androcleides, who, it was asserted, had given him his free- dom. His Athenian friend undertook his defence, and applied to Lysias for a speech, stating to him the facts of the case. The opening, as quoted by Dionysius, is as follows : "I think it my duty, Judges, to speak to you first of the friendship subsisting between me and Pherenicus, the defendant, that no one may be surprised that I, who never before have spoken in behalf of any of you, now undertake this man's defence. Ce- phisodotus, his father, was my friend and host ; and, Judges, when we were at Thebes in exile, I was constantly made welcome at his house, as was every other Athenian who de- sired it. After having received many kindnesses from him, both in public and in private, we were restored to our native land. "When, therefore, these men, falling into like misfor- tunes, became exiles, and fled for refuge to Athens, feeling that I owed them the greatest possible debt of gratitude, I re- ceived them into my house on so intimate a footing that no visitor who was not previously aware of the fact could have told to which of us the house belonged. Pherenicus knows well, Judges, that there are in this city many speakers abler than I am, and more experienced in such affairs ; but he be- lieves that my friendship is the most to be trusted. It seems to me, therefore, that it would be shameful, when he implores me to render him the help which he can justly demand, if I should allow him, without such effort as I am able to make, to be deprived of the boon of freedom he received from Androcleides." Dionysius compares these passages, sentence by sentence, and points out their characteristic peculiarities of phraseology with admirable precision. The substance of the discussion is, that the opening of Lysias is more easy, natural, and affecting; hat of Isseus more highly wrought and more artificial. The critic should, however, have added, that the facts in the two cases are quite different. In the one, the motive for interfer- ince was a previous instance of honesty on the part of the VOL. II. 13 194 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. defendant, in a pecuniary transaction ; in the other, it was the sacred tie of hospitality, coming down from a past generation, and connecting itself by generous services with the sad rec- ollections of public and private suffering and the bitterness of exile. We have now passed through the periods of the growth of the Athenian power; the magnificent exhibition of Attic genius in literature, philosophy, and art ; the origin and progress of the arts of speech, applied to the affairs of life as involved in questions of right and wrong, to be decided by the united judgments of impartial men. The eloquence of debate called into active operation by great public crises, national dangers, or struggling parties, had not yet taken a literary form, or at least had not been made a matter of permanent record. Great questions were discussed from the be ma ; passionate appeals were made to living men, and responded to by thronging and excited multitudes ; all the highest effects of popular eloquence had been produced again and again ; but the pen had not pre- served them for after ages. They were wrought out under the pressure of the moment ; the excitement of conflict ; the fiery impulses of eager multitudes swayed with mighty internal forces, and kindling with tumultuous sympathy. The flashing eye, the tremulous nerve, the sudden word that opens the floodgate of feeling, the moment of inspiration carrying the soul of the speaker out of himself and compelling the souls of his audience to go with him in his daring flight, all these had been witnessed in the assemblies of the Pnyx ; but the fleeting exaltation and its effects had not yet been arrested and bound to the written word. In the courts, on the other hand, the subtilties of argument, the precision of analysis and logical reasoning, had, as we have seen, long been made the subject of art, reduced to system, and taught in the rhetorical schools. But as the courts were numerously constituted, topics of popu- lar appeal were wrought into the most abstruse discussions, and |iAssionate utterances interrupted the severest chain of logica. deduction. Here personal feeling often found vent, and love ATHENIAN ORATORS. 195 hatred, and vengeance poured themselves out in the most vehement expression. We find in the written pleas of those old lawyers all the eager pursuit of victory sometimes re- gardless of means that shows itself in the competitions of the modern bar. We see all the passions of advocacy, in their fullest vigor, entering into and possessing the pleaders. It is an impressive and solemn thing to recall from the dead silence of the past these tones of human feeling that died away so long ago, and yet speak to us in the recorded page. Those busy brains, those subtile intellects, those hearts throbbing with the tender or fierce emotions of a crowded life, still breathe in the living present, still teach us their lessons of human strength and weakness, still appeal to us as men of like minds and passions with themselves. LECTURE XI. TRIAL OF SOCRATES. PLATO'S REPUBLIC. AGE OF PHILIP AND ALEXANDER. LYCURGUS. ^SCHINES. HYPERIDES. The trial and death of Socrates, early in 'the period which was the subject of the last Lecture, showed the workings of the passions brought into play by the Peloponnesian war, and the dangers to which the object of momentary popular dislike was exposed, when he came before an Athenian court on a criminal charge. Mr. Grote has examined this case with his usual am- plitude of learning and acuteness of reasoning ; and while we may not agree wholly with his conclusion, palliating to some extent the atrocity of the verdict, we must admit that the result of the trial of that great man is not at all inexplicable. He had often censured the popular excesses, and exposed the hollow pretensions of the popular leaders. Just, magnanimous, pure beyond his age as he was, and his character more in accord- ance with the Christian than the heathen type, his society had yet been sought by the profligate Alcibiades and the oli- garchical Critias. The natures of both were too far perverted even for his controlling personal influence, except while they were in his presence. In the Symposium of Plato, Alcibiades is made to speak the praises of Socrates with earnest and affec- tionate eloquence. He compares Socrates to those figures of Silenus, which conceal under an unseemly exterior the most exquisite images of the gods. Such was Socrates to those who knew him best, in his comic exterior and in his grand and noble soul. He kept aloof fr^m politics, because he would not bend himself to the base com- _ liances by which he saw the demagogues yield to the lowe.^ TRIAL OF SOCRATES. 197 and fiercest passions of the mob ; and he freely censured the defective principles and the corrupting influences of that de- scription of public life. But he discharged the duties which his country's laws laid upon him, in war and in peace, bravely and magnanimously. He served in the army, and excited the wonder of the common soldiers by his power of hardy endur- ance. He served in the assembly, and with a still braver spirit faced the roaring multitude who clamored unjustly for blood. After the battle of Arginusae, a complaint was made against the generals, that they had neglected to collect the bodies of the dead that were floating on the stormy sea. Such a neglect touched the Hellenic sentiment to the quick ; the friends of the fallen called for vengeance ; and the generals were brought to trial before the assembled people. Though their guilt was not clear, the passions of the moment were roused to fury and demanded their sacrifice. Socrates happened to be the pre- siding officer on that day; and seeing that a judicial murder would be perpetrated, if the question were decided, he re- fused, in spite of the menaces of the mob, to put the vote. The meeting was adjourned till the next day, when a more pliant president occupied the place, and the generals were yielded to the still unabated storm of popular fury. His opposition to the Sophists was equally uncompromising, and probably excited a still deeper and more dangerous resent- ment against him. It is true he had been held up by Aristoph anes, many years before, as the chief of a school of Sophists, and represented in the most ludicrous situations. He had, however, regarded it as a piece of amusing caricature ; and such was his imperturbable good humor, that he went to the theatre to see the mimic Socrates, and when the actor ap- peared, disguised in a portrait-mask, according to the custom of the comic stage, the real Socrates stood up that the audience might judge how well the artist had succeeded in making a faithful likeness. The subsequent friendly intercourse between the philosopher and the poet shows that he harbored no more resentment against the witty caricaturist than Lord Brougham 198 CONSTITUTIONS AND ORATORS OF GREECE. may be supposed to feel against the writers in Punch, who fin so many years made a standing joke of his Lordship's pro- tuberant nose. I think Socrates must have foreseen that such a course of opposition as his to the tendencies and passions of his times especially in a period so revolutionary and dangerous would sooner or later bring him into personal peril. When, there- fore, the blow was struck, four years after the tyranny of the Thirty, before the passions of that bloody period had cooled down or the wounds they inflicted had had time to heal, while its bitter memories were still fresh, it caused him no surprise, nor did it for a moment ruffle the serenity of his spirit. He was prosecuted before the Heliastic court, on the charge of impiety and of corrupting the youth. He refused to resort to the common arts of defence, and declined to make use of an elaborate speech prepared for him by Lysias, as being unsuited to his character ; but he answered his accusers point by point, with calmness and ability, and with the unshaken spirit of one conscious of innocence and fearless of death. Here I must explain one of the peculiarities in the admip.s- tration of the laws of Athens. Besides many other distinctions and classifications, there was a general division of criminal causes into two classes, called aya>ve