mam LIBRARY^ UNivtRsmr OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO V'A A HISTORY GREEK LITERATURE. -I C O M PA N IOX VOLU M E . A HISTORY OF ROMAN LITERATURE; KHOM TUB EARLIEST PEKIOU TO THE TIMES OP THK ANTONINES. BY CIIAHLKS THOMAS CUTTTWELL, M.A., FKLLOW OF MEllTON COLLEGE, OXFORD; HEAD MASTEli OP MALVEIiN COLI.EtiE. A HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE FROM Che (Earliest JJcrrob o it TO Che c;ith of gemosthenes. FRANK 15 VII OX JHVOXS. M.A., Tl'TGtt IX THE UMVKIi.SITV OF IH'KHAM. NEW YORK : CIIAKLKS SCTiUJNKU'S SONS. 188'!. THE rEXERABLE II. II'. U'ATKIXS, D.D., Cbis 1'Clorfe IS c;i: ATKFULLY INSCRIBED THE AUTHOR. PREFACE. Tins, like the preceding volume in this series, " is designed mainly for Students at our Universities and Public Schools, and for such as are preparing for t lie- Indian Civil Service or other advanced Examinations." But it is also intended to l>e intelligible, and, it is hoped, will be found interesting to thn.se who know no Greek. "With this purpose, Greek and all points involving Greek scholarship have been relegated to the Notes and Appen- dices. A list of the works consulted and niilised in writing tins book would occupy many puuvs. To note on each paii'e. iu the German fashion, every obligation and refer- ence would swell the \vork to twice its present size. I must therefore content myself with saving that I have, endeavoured to draw n all the best treatises on the sub- ject in I'jigh>h, French, and German. Much, especially of the German work, deals with isolated points: the prin- ciples which determined the growth of Greek literature via PREFACE. have been comparatively neglected by previous writers. The present effort may, I hope, contribute towards remedy- ing 1 this neglect. I :un indebted for valuable guidance to my former tutor, II. Richards, Esq., M.A., Fellow of "\Yadham Col- lege, Oxford, and to J. T. Danson, Esq., F.S.A. F. B. J. UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, DURHAM, July iSS6 CONTENTS. INTRODUCTORY. PAOB Difference between classical period and later periods of Greek litera- ture (Jreek literature the proper introduction to literature generally Classical period divisible into poetry (epic, lyric, and dramatic) and prose (history, oratory, and philosophy) . I PART I. EPIC, LYRIC, AX I) THE DRAMA. BOOK I. EPIC POETRY. CHAPTER I. Till: ILIAD. Its background Three ways of painting in a background Skill of Homer The pi. >t Its unity and interconnection Artistic dis- posal of side-issued ......... C1IAPTKK IF. Till-: ODYS.-KY. CIIAITKK 111. HoMKKic <>n:sTnix. X CONTENTS. PAGE AiTEN'mx. Ilcadhi'/, Writing, and Publication in Classical Greek Times: Origin of writing Date of Greek alphabet Of a read- ing public in Greece Recitation, publication Hoineridoe . 41 CHAPTER IV. TIIK KPIC CYCLE. J'roclus His summary of the Ci/pria, the jfithiopis, Little Iliad, th Sack of 7'nii/, the Return, Telegonia Tlieban epics ... 54 APPKNUIX. Jtelritinn of the E^ic Cycle, to Homer : Homer and the cycle Proclus' summary and the original poems Cyclics avoid Homer Borrow inspiration Date what they imitate . 6 1 CHAPTER V. TIIK HOMKHIC HYMNS. epigrams ........... 69 CHATTER VI. HKSIOI) AND HKS10DIC POKTKY. Difference between Hesiod and Homer Hesiod didactic- Nature of didactic pot-try --Life of Hcsiod Merit of his work- -\\',,rk-s and /tni/n Tin in/mill aiul its origin Shield of Heracles and lost works Genealogical poems ....... 77 CHAPTER VII. OTIIKi: Ki'IC I'OKTS AMI OTHKIl \VKIIKU.S ()!' HKXAMKTKUS. Tt -isandcr -Tanyasis-- Antimaclius of (joli.jilmn Clio'rilus of Sainos Ariniii.tjiiia of Ari>tias Orphic poets- Verse philosophers Slow development of prose -Connection between philosophy and poetry Xenophani's - - Tiirmenides - J'hnpudoclcs ... 88 UOOK IL LYRIC rOETRY. CHAPTER I. TIIK KI.KCIAC AM) lAMIilC I'OKTS. Iii.--e of lyiio Its nature and difference fiom epie and from modern Its -. mis Son^s of the people l-'oix-igji elements IV! 1C CONTENTS. XI CHAPTER II. PACK I,YKIC POETRY : MEUC. Nature of melic Four periods in its history Terpander, Glorias, and Thaletas Terpander's extension of the Home Alcnian J'artkenia Arion The dithyramb ...... 121 CHAPTER III. MELIC POETRY : AI.C.V.US AND SAPPHO. Life of Alcreiis Political verses Estimate of antiquity Drinking- songs His work as a whole Sappho Her life Her excellence and style Damophila Erinna Stesichorus . . . .130 CHAPTER IV. ELECIAC AND IAMBIC WRITERS CONTINUED. The Theaynidca Life of Theognis His political, moral, and social views Demodocus 1'hocylides Spurious 1'hocylidea Hip- pouax Other writers of elegiacs or iambics .... 147 CHAPTER V. M E L I C A T C U R T. Ibycus His odes choral Influence of tyranny and democracy on literature Anacreon Simonides Dithyramb Encomia Payment for poetry Threni Epigram Bacchylides and others . . . . . . . , . . . i ^5 CHAPTER VI. PINDAR. Early life Tenth Pythian -Pythian games Sixth Pythian Twelfth Pythian Pindar and Athens Kle\ eth Olympian 1'ifth Xemean Second Period- Eourth Pythian Third Period Relation of choral lyric to previous and subsequent kinds of poetry Decay of choral lyric . . . . . . .170 BOOK III.- Till- DRAMA. CHAPTER I. EARLY TI:A:KI>Y. Origin of Tragedv Thespis Pratinas - Satyric drama- The Cyclops Aristias Phryniehus Phinii-ian Jt' // /i - --C'luerilus . . APPENDIX. Metre, Dialect, and Divisions uf Trayedy . . . CONTENTS. CHAPTER II. ^SCHYLUS. Influence of religion Visit to Sicily Its cause His politics The umcnidesThe Persia ns Suppliants I'hn Seven Prometheus i'oW Characters Clytemestra Chorus in ^Eschylus Style Fragments "School" of ^Eschylus Euphorion Astydamus 192 CHAPTER III. SOPHOCLES. ' school " 2O6 CHAPTER IV. EURIPIDES. Life and plays Popularity Transitional character of his work Consequent defects Prologue and deux ex rnacfiinu Chorus Character-drawing Style Fragments " School " Achsbus, Agathon " Reading tragedians "Decay of tragedy . . 220 CHAPTER V. COMEDY : ORIGIN AND GROWTH. Wurship of Dionysius and Phallica Mimetic dances Megara .Mil-sun and Su.-arion Sicilian comedy Epieharmus litres H'< '/(/<'/(/ Origin of Sicilian coniedy Influence of Epicharmus on Attic comedy Sophron and his mimes .... 234 CHAPTER VI. THE OLD COMEDY. CHAPTER VII. ARISTOPHANES. Two periods of Aristophanes' work The BuLi/lonians The Achar- iiinna 'l'i;e Kn'njlits and (Jl.-on The patriotism of Aristophanes - The influence of ci lined v on politics Tlie CLou'ls and Socrates Ari.itoj.han.-s on jthilosophy JIi~ discontent with the present CONTENTS. xia I'AOB Unsatisfactory text of the Cfnuds The real nature of the attack on Socrates The Waup* and its construction Chanyo in Aris- tophanes' attitude The Peace The Hirdsand its beauty Lost plays Li/sintrata and Thesmopkoriazusai Kuripides und the l-'nxjs EcclesiaziiscB J'lutus Lost plays ..... 253 APPENDIX A. The Ways ........ 277 B. The Parabasis ........ 278 C 1 1 A P T F, R V I 1 1. MIDDI.K COMKDV. Old and middle comedy Reason of their difference Disappearance of the chorus Reason thereof Plot in old, middle, and new Characters Sources of our information Alexis Antiphanes Ana.xandrides Eubulus Other comedians .... 279 PART II. HISTORY, ORATORY, AXI) PHILOSOPHY. BOOK I. HISTORY. CHAPTER I. THK I!K<;iNMN<;.S OF I'UOSE. Pros.j literature invented in Miletus Cadmus and Pherecydes The ]ii--,i^r;iphcrs Hecaticas ])iony.-ius of Miletus Xanthus Hippocrates His life and works ...... 297 OH A I'TKR I I. IIKKODOTUS. His date and life Ohj-et of his travels Outline of his History Inti-ndrd for recitation Incomplete The As-yriun hi>tor\ I'nity of liis work - Its national sentiment Xemesis his philo- sophy of history His cretiulity, capacity, In iu->tv. m- ans of iuformation .......... 30'") CII A PTK 15 I I I. run VDIDKS. IJfe Importance of the IVloponnesian war It-- int'-re-t Its moral The object of Thneydides His "pusitive" character Hi< annali^tic inetiiod His iiterarv gL-nius Literary delects and their causes Compared with Tacitus ..... 327 xiv CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. PAGE XENOPHON. Life Works, historical, philosophical, and miscellaneous Anabasis Its authorship I/ethnics Its defects, and their various explana- ti<>ns Xenophon and Thucydides Cyropcedia Other historical and miscellaneous works Object of the philosophical works Xenophon and Plato ........ 34 CHAPTER V. OTHER HISTORIANS. Ctesias His relation to Herodotus Theopompus Ephorus Others 3 6 2 BOOK II. ORATORY. CHAPTER I. THE BEGINNINGS OF RHETORIC AND THE FIRST LOGOGRAPHERS. Eloquence and its development into oratory The Sophists Pro- tagorasSicilian rhetoric : Corax and Tisias Gorgias The logngraphers and their services Antiphon His life Imma- turityThe Tetralogies The "severe" style His merits . 367 CHAPTER II. PRACTICAL ORATORY: ANDOCIDES AND LYSIAS. Andocidf 1 * His life -Not a rhetorician His weaknesses and his strength The four surviving speeches Lysias His life Speeches, spurious, epideictic, deliberative, and forensic Ethos Plain style Grace Thrasymachus, Theodorus, Euenus, Critias ........... 379 CHAPTER III. EPIDEIiTie RHETORIC AND THE TRANSITION. T-ocruUs A lo.joi.'raphiT tht-n a Sophist Pan-Hellenism Style fpidfictic Hiatus avoided-- Smoothness Antisthenes Aid- damus-- Polycrates Zoilus the Hoineroina.-,tix Anaximenes I -ifcus His influence on Demosthenes ..... 392 CONTENTS. XV CHAPTER IV. FA OK DEMOSTHENES : FIRST PERIOD. Relation of Demosthenes to earlier oratory and to the culture of his time His character and early life His youthful exaggeration Want of self-control Imitation Lack of artistic sense and ethos 404 CHAPTER V. DEMOSTHENES: SECOND PERIOD. His excessive argumentation His lighter qualities The speech for Phormio Political speeches Constitutional speeches The Demegories Their ethos The speech against Midias On the Embassy 412 CHAPTER VI. DEMOSTHENES : THIRD PERIOD SPEECH OF THE CROWN. Points at issue between ^Eschines and Ctesiphon The speech as delivered and as we have it Demosthenes' power of language His rhythm His intellectual superiority His morality The Harpalus affair Death of Demosthenes . . . . .425 CHAPTER VII. THE CONTEMPORARIES OF DEMOSTHENES: THE ANTI-MACEDONIAN PARTY. Divisions in the Anti-Macedonian party Hyperides His life and character His grace and charm Speech fur Euxenippns For Lycophron Discovery in Egypt of fragments of Hyperides Speed) against Demosthenes Funeral oration Lvenrgus llegesippus and the speech on the Hiilunnesus Polyeuctus . 436 CHAPTER VIII. jESCillXKS AND THE ORATORS OF THE MACEDONIAN PARTY. ^Eschines --Life Speeches .Eschines and Demosthenes compared and contrasted Deinades Aristo^iton M in or u raters The decline of oratory Its causes A development of pre exi.-ting tendencies .......... 450 XVI CONTENTS. BOOK III. PHILOSOPHY. CHAPTER I. PLATO AND THE PHILOSOPHERS BEFORE HIM. Anaximander, Anaxinirws. and Heraclitus Zeno Anaxagoras Other philosophers Plato Life Acquaintance with Socrates Travels Why lie adopted the form of dialogue Its place in Greek literature His stvle, dicLion, structure of sentence, rhythm Its affinity with poetry and with comedy Aristotle on Plato's literary qualities Authenticity of the works ascribed to Plato . . . . . . . . . . . COXCLUSIOX. 484 A HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. INTRODUCTORY. CLASSICAL Greek Literature Logins with Homer, and ends practically, if not precisely, with the death of Demosthenes. During this period Greece was frcn. With the loss of liberty, literature underwent a change. Greece ceased to produce men of genius, and this constitutes one difference between the cla-.-i- cal and later periods. A second great difference is that wheivas the literature of the classical period was written not only by Greeks, hut for Greeks, later literature was cosmopolitan ; and to this change in the literature corresponds the change in the language, which from pure Greek became Hellenistic Greek. The earliest period of Greek literature is, then, clas.-ical because it is the work of genius, and is due solely to Greek genius. It reflects Greek life and expresses Greek thoughts alone, and, like the language in which it is clad, contains no foreign elements. Classical Greek literature is the proper int reduction to litera- ture generally, because in it the laws which determined its development are simple, and can be easily traeed. It was pure, and original, and its development, unlike that of subsequent literatures, was not complicated by the influence of a f"ivi'jn literature. Further, the various kinds of literature, poetry and prose, epic, lyric, and the drama, history, philo-<>phy, and oratory, not only remained true, each to its own typ'-, but on the whole they developed in orderly suecessi. 'ii. This was because they were the work of different members of tin- race, whose latent literary tendencies required ditfeient p and social conditions to draw them out. They were e after the other by political and social changes ; and so tic- A 2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. in the development of literature correspond with those of the nation's life. The growth of Epir, j/odry, the earliest form of the literature which has bequeathed remains to us, was favoured by a stage of civilisation in which patriarchal monarchy formed the political machinery, and family life furnished the society and the literary public. Lyric t the next branch of literature, found favouring conditions in the aristocracies which succeeded to monarchy, and in which the social communion of the pri- vileged class took the place of family life, and provided a new public fur literature. The Drama was designed for the enter- tainment of large numbers of persons, and was a response to the demand- of democracy. From this time on, literature no longer found its home in the halls of chieftains, or its audience in the social meetings of the few ; but when the state came to consist of the whole of the citizens, literature became united with the life of the state as a whole, and thenceforward was but one of the ways in which that life expressed itself. Literary men were not a class distinguished by their profession from the rc-t of the community, nor was literature a thing apart from the practical matters of life. The UrHtura were active politicians; or men of law ; ami their speeches were not literary displays, but had a practical object, to turn the vote of the Assembly, or to gain a verdiet. injury was the record of a contemporary war, or of a war whi<-h had occurred in the previous generation. 1'hilu^npJiy was but a picture in words of the conversations between culti- vat<- cmise- (pienees, is hut an incident in the story of the Tr j in war. Achilles and Agamemnon ijnanvlled before the wails of Troy, a- we are informed at the beginning of the ti:.-t book ; ha; tne reader has to lie informed how it came about that Achilles and Agamemnon were besieging Troy, and tins is the storv ot the Trojan war, which is presupposed ii; HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. of the Iliad. In the same way every plot, whether of an epic, or a drama, or a novel, presupposes a state of things existing before the action begins; and the way in which the author contrives to acquaint the reader with this state of things, in other words to paint in the background, gives us a test of his skill. 1. The simplest and most inartistic way is that adopted by Euripides in many of his plays. Before the drama begins, one of the characters, or even a figure who does not appear in the play itself, comes on the stage, and, speaking to the audience, tells them what they have to imagine in order to understand what is going to be done on the stage. This is the most in- artistic, because the pleasure one gets from seeing a play depends on the illusion depends, that is to say, on our believing for the time that what we see performed before us is real : and in the prologues of Euripides the author practically comes forward and disenchants us by warning us that what is going to come is only a play. In a novel, too, the author may begin at the beginning and tell us methodically from point to point all that his story presupposes ; and then, having got this preliminary matter out of the way, proceed with his real subject. But this method is usually repulsive to the reader, whose interest is not awakened, and he puts down the book. 2. The next and more usual way of painting in the background is to begin with the real subject, at the point the author thinks most attractive ; and then, after having gained the reader's attention, to go back to the beginning of things and explain the circumstances in which his characters iind themselves. This is more, artistic than the first way, though how much more depends on the artist. It may be done clumsily, the author without any excuse simply saying in effect, " Now let us retrace, our stops, and sec how this came about;" or it may b" done more skilfully, as when the author arranges things so that one of the characters naturally relates the antecedent eir- cum.-taneo.s for the, benefit of another character. Thus, in the , Virgil begins with a storm at sea which throws ./Kneas coast of Carthage; and the Queen of Carthage naturally to know the. history of the stranger, who then relates at ngth all that is necessary for the reader to know in i comprehend the story of the /Kneid. Even h'Te there jives of t-kill, for in some cases it is evident that the 'lent state of things is narrat"d bv one character to EPIC POETRY : T1IK ILIAD. 9 To make, the characters talk at the reader in this way is bail workmanship. 3. There is yet a third way of painting in the background. It consists in making the plot itself disclose what it presupposes, in not telling the reader, but allowing him to infer how what lie sees has come about. This is the best way, not because it is most natural, but because it most resembles nature. It is not the method which most naturally suggests itself to the author ; but it is the way in which the spectator of a scene in real life, enacted by people unknown to him, gains the know- ledge necessary for a comprehension of the scene. This, as it is the best, is also the most dillicult method. To construct scenes which shall be necessary to the plot, and yet at the same time shall serve the purpose of conveying information to the reader, demands great power in the, artist. It is the third method, needless to say, which is acted on in the Iliad. At the beginning of the epic we are simply told that Achilles and Agamemnon, being Aciuvans, quarrelled about a captive, liriseis. That they were at the time beleaguering Troy, we incidentally learn from the words of Uriseis' father, who prays that the Acha?,ans may succeed in capturing Troy, if only they will restore him his daughter. AVhy the Achreans are. besieging Troy we are not formally told, but some light is given us when, in the heat of the angry ijiiaiTel, Achilles says lie is here for no advantage of his o\vn, but of Menelaiis and Agamemnon, to gain recompense for them. Evidently, then, the two sons of Atreus are besieging Troy to right some wrong they have suil'cred, and Achilles and others are. then.- to help them. The hint thus afforded is confirmed, and the information developed, when in the tir.-t engagement we observe Meiiehuis single, out one of th>' Trojan waniors and challenge him to Hid we disci iver that the .- . lilt this inf' irmatii >;i i- n ing at, the reader ; i: eniT.il attack, IO HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. natural opportunity for giving a list of the Achseans who took part in this great war, and of their opponents. The same inci- dent, too, is utilised as a means of allowing the reader to dis- cover the length of time which the siege has lasted, and the hardships it has entailed. Before venturing to make a move- ment of such importance, Agamemnon resolves to try a ruse and prove his army's mettle by proposing to abandon the siege, inasmuch as nine years have been fruitlessly spent on it. The readiness which the people show in accepting the offer demon- strates the sufferings they had undergone, and the omen of the sparrow and her eight young ones devoured by a serpent, an omen boding the capture of Troy after nine years' siege, further impresses the reader with the number of the years. There remains yet one more point to be noticed here before we dismiss the subject of the skill with which Homer paints in his background. It is a point of much importance, and lias been sometimes overlooked. In the fighting which followed on the violation of the truce, and in which iJiomede displayed. his valour, when the Ache-cans are wavering, Here upbraids them thus : " Fie upon you ! . . . While yet noble Achilles entered continually into battle, then issued not the Trojans even from the Dardanian gate ; for they had dread of his terrible spear." l This passage, which is corroborated by others (v. 788, ix. 352, xv. 721), shows that we are to suppose the Trojans as confined to their lines for the first nine years. Now that Achilles is no longer against them, they venture forth : and this is important, not only because occurring, as the first passage docs, in a book devoted to the prowess of Diomede, it keeps the attention of the reader to the absence of Achilles and the consequences of his absence, but also because, if we overlook this aspect of the circumstances preceding the action of the Iliad, we fail to understand that the total result of the fir.st day's fighting, though indecisive in itself, is yet, compared with the previous state of things, most encouraging to the Trojans. Having examined the background of the Iliad, let us turn now to the, plot itself. "Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles, I'eleus' son, the ruinous wrath that brought on the Achaian.s woes innumerable." In these, the opening words of the Iliad, we have the subject fully stated ; the poem is the story of Achilles' wrath and its consequences. The plot is the way in Avhich the wrath was aroused, displayed, and finally exhausted. 1 If. TO Illl tlio liiml l> EPIC POETUY : THE ILIAD. I I If now we examine the Iliad we shall find there is little in it that was not designed whether by a single original author, or by the authors of subsequently added books for the purpose of carrying forward the plot. Given the subject, different authors might work it out in different ways, might imagine different causes for the quarrel, different forms for Achilles' anger to take, and different modes of terminating it. But in the Iliad there are no traces of any differences on any of these points. The plot is one and the same throughout. The cause of the quarrel is always the unfair and dishonouring treatment of Achilles by Agamemnon in the matter of Briseis ; the form which Achilles' anger takes is always abstention from assisting the Achavms ; and the resolution of the entanglement is always the death of Patroclus, and the consequent renunciation by Achilles of his punitive inaction. Let us now examine the plot a little more closely, and see how the details fit in with the main outline of the story, and are necessitated by it and by each other. Achilles complains to Thetis of the wrong put on him, and she obtains from Zeus a promise that the Achreans shall suffer for their conduct. This promise dominates the whole story, there is no hint of any other reason for the general reverse in spite of temporary successes of the Aclueans ; and from this interference of Zeus, which is implied by the whole of the Iliad, flow the events of the first day's fighting. That these events might have been framed differently by the poet is true, but this does not show that they were originally conceived by him in some other way. The cause, the exhibition, and the termination of Achilles' anger, might have been worked out in a manner different from that in which they have actually been developed. Hut no one argues from this that they were originally developed differently ; and the reason is that the actual treatment of any one of these points is consistent with itselt', and harmonises with the ivst. So too the events of the first -lay's fighting. Tiie deceitful dream sent by Zeus induces Agamemnon to make a general attack, which he prefaces by proving the spirit of his men; and the Trojans are encouraged by the intervention of Zeus to accept the engagement. Thus Paris and Menelaiis are brought faee to face ; the duel naturallv and it* conscqu-nces necessarily follow. If the duel had been fought out. terms acted on. the war would have ended, and Zen*' would have been broken. The treachery of I'andaru- fore, and a general eir-ra'jvnient were necessitated duel. 12 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. The other incidents which, belong to this the first day of fighting, the second of the Iliad's action, follow from the pro- mise of Zeus, and are implied by what happens after them, as well as by the state of things which is represented as existing at the moment when the Iliad begins. That is to say, the fighting is necessitated by the treachery of Pandarus (which is referred to several times, v. 206, vii. 69 and 351); disaster to the Achaeans is involved by the promise of Zeus ; while the overwhelming numbers of the Achaeans (ii. 123 ff.), and the nine years' terror of the Trojans, made it impossible for the poet to represent the Achaeans as suffering a crushing defeat the very iirst time they met their foes in the open field. In these considerations we find the explanation and justification of the books which relate the prowess of Diomede. On the one hand, the promise of Zeus made it imperative that the Achaeans should suil'er defeat ; on the other, the demands of probability and consistency required that the promise of Zeus should be, if not overridden, at least to some extent thwarted : and the solu- tion of this difficulty was found in the intervention of the deities that sided Avith the Achaeans an intervention which showed itself in supporting Diomede. Thus the appearance of Diomede rests on conceptions which are at the very foundation of the plot. On the appearance of Diomede depend the departure of Hector for Troy to institute prayers for his repulse, the meeting of Hector and Andromache, and the contrasted scene between Hector, Paris, and Helen. All these incidents derive their connection with the plot from the exploits of Diomode, as the latter in their turn derive much of their aesthetic value from the fact that the former depend on them. The next event, the single combat between Hector and Ajax, does not flow from the exploits of Diomede, but serves to impress the same conclusion on the reader, viz., that the Trojans, who had long been inferior to the Acha-ans, Men- now proving a match for them. JJut for tin- Trojans merely to prove a match for the Aelupans w;i- no fultilment of the promise made by Zeus to Thetis. Thanks to the prowess of Diomede and the intervention of some of tin: gods, the Aclueans had by n-> means suffered so severely as the wrath of Achilles and the. promise of Zeus de- manded, it became necessary, therefore, f. >r Zeus to intervene in a yet more decided manner ; and the angry speech in which he f"ibids any of the gds to assist the Ach;eans was necessi- tate.! by -\vhat had occurred, and shows the close connection between this part of the Iliad and the preceding books. The EPIC POETRY : THE ILIAD. I 3 success which Zeus now interferes to secure to the Trojans, sufficient to make Agamemnon desire once more the services of Achilles, hut not sufficiently overwhelming to satiate Achilles' wrath, naturally results in the embassy to the offended hero, which as naturally fails. The episode known as the Doloneia filling the Tenth Book has no connection with the plot. But in the Eleventh Book we begin to see what is an essential part of the subject of the Iliad, the " woes innumerable" entailed by the wrath of Achilles. One after the other, Agamemnon, Diomede, and Ulysses, as well as inferior Achaean chieftains, are wounded and have to retire from the fray. What Achilles had prayed for was beginning to come to pass. Now he has the Achneans on the hip : when they came to him before, they did not understand the fury of his resentment. And this was but the earnest of what was to come ; for the Trojans attacked the wall which the Acha'ans, thus practically acknowledging their inferiority, had built at the end of the first day's fighting to protect their ships. But though the cup of victory seemed so near the Trojans' lips, it was not to reach them. To represent the Achseans. so long masters of the field, as yielding all the time and making no stand, was alike opposed to probabilities and to the poet's patriotism. The necessity for their ill-success was the will of Zeus, and the only power capable of even temporarily opposing the father of gods and men was to be found in Poseidon, the brother, and Hero the sister-wife of Zeus. This agency is accordingly set in action ; and the tide of Trojan victory, which threatened to be unbroken and monotonous, is checked for a time, until Zeus again interferes, and once more the tide rolls on. Achilles is i-o far satisfied with the sufferings of the Ad 10 'ans for now his wrath had, as the proem of the Iliad summarises it, ''hurled down into Hades many strong souls of heroes, and given their bodies to be a prey to dogs and all winged fowls" that he is willing to allow Putroclus to assume his armour and light for the Acha'ans. After this the plot moves rapidly and easily. Patroclus is slain : the loss of Achilles' armour, the lending of which to Patrodus had been suggested as far back as the Tenth ]'>ook by Xe.-tor, necessitates the making of new armour, and the vengeance which Achilles must take compels him, reluctantly enough, to submit to recon- ciliation with Agamemnon. With the death ( ,f Hect-r at the hands ,,f Adiilles. th.. action of the r,jad is sometimes said to be ended. Hut a little reflec- tion will .-how us that this is not quite th- 1 rase. In order to 14 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. be able to avenge the death of Patroclus, Achilles desired the Achseans to move against the Trojans ; but this could only be done by the order of Agamemnon, and before giving this order Agamemnon insists on Achilles accepting the gifts he had already offered. Achilles allows them to be thrust on him, plainly because he cares for nothing but vengeance, not because his feeling against Agamemnon has died out entirely. The feeling of wrath is outweighed, not banished, by the desire of revenge ; and it is only in the Twenty-third Book that we find the wrath of Achilles finally banished from his bosom. In that book, at the end of the funeral games held in honour of Patro- clus, Achilles makes an opportunity of paying Agamemnon a courteous compliment, which shows his resentment to be ended as plainly as, in the so-called reconciliation of a previous book, his behaviour showed that he still harboured some feeling of resentment. The last book of the Iliad cannot be said to be indispensable to the action or the plot ; the subject of the epic, the wrath of Achilles, is exhausted. But for the interest, for the character- drawing, and on Aristotle's principle that an epic must have, as well as a beginning and middle, an end, the Twenty-fourth Book is indispensable. Having examined the structure, and seen the essential unity of the plot, and having admired the way in which Homer con- veys to the reader's mind the state of things which must be supposed as preceding the action of the Iliad, we may now con- sider the skill with which he dismisses the subject, as it were. The state of things which ensues on the story has to be indi- cated, as well as that which precedes it ; in other words, the background has to be completed. This is clone inartistically by Euripides in sonic plays by means of an epilogue, in which the author explains the subsequent fate of his characters thereby admitting that his play is not complete and satisfactory in itself, that, in Aristotle's words, it has not an end. Xow although in the Iliad the subject proper, the wrath of Achilles, is brought to a full, satisfactory, and tragic termination, there are things which cannot com<' to an end within the limits of the action, which yet the reader wishes to be satisfied about. The interest inspired by Hector is naturally terminated within the limits of the. pint, because it is part of the plot that he should be killed. But the fate of Troy, which the story makes a point of interest, by the conditions of the plot cannot form part of the plot. Still more is the reader anxious to know the fate of Achilles ; and we have no\v to admire the; skill with which the poet satis- Eric roETiiY : THE ILIAD. i 5 fics these natural demands, without violating the laws of illusion as the epilogues of Euripides violate them. "With consummate art Homer anticipates the feelings which will be roused in the reader. Instead of waiting till interest and curiosity are aroused, and then providing the answer, he gives the information at once. Two advantages obviously re- sult from this : in the first place, to wait for the curiosity to bo aroused, and then to provide the answer, would be as though the subsequent events were not really the consequences of the action, but had been invented by the author to satisfy the reader a violation of the laws of illusion which one feels in the termination of many novels. In the next place, by provid- ing the solution along with the problem, Homer prevents the render's attention from being distracted from the action of the book to side issues. As an illustration we may take the fate of Troy. As soon as we have been placed in full possession of the causes of the Trojan war, have seen Helen. Paris, and Menc- Lius, have seen the forces mustered on both sides, and have had our sympathies with the Trojans awakened by Hector and Andromache, at once the question of the fate of Troy is settled, and speculations on the subject precluded, by means of the gods in the Fourth Book. Zeus pretends to be thinking of allowing the duel between Paris and Menelaus to put an end to the war, in which case " the city of King Priam may yet be an habita- tion, and Menelaus take back Helen of Argos." But although lie regrets that Troy must be sacked, he gives Here permission to do as she is minded, and destroy the place. And the destruc- tion of Troy is felt all through the Iliad to be certain and immi- nent. The omen of the sparrow and her eight young ones, indicating the success of the Achseans in the- tenth year, the confidence of IHomede that Troy is doomed, when Agamemnon proposes to fly in consequence of the abortive embassy to Achilles; and in the Fifteenth I look the express declaration of Zeus that Achilles shall rout the Trojans " until the Achaians take steep Ilion;"all are touches painting in this necessary feature of the backgroimd. The fate of Achilles, which was more certain even than the fate of Ti'iiy to muse the reader's interest, is another nrr-ssary feature of the hackuTound. and the skill with whieh it is paint i d in is great. At first the indications of it aru only death looms at no great distance. But as th" and as the figure of Achilles becomes more and m< of the action and the interest, the d^atii \vhidi d"_; 1 6 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. soon as the quarrel is over, Achilles' words to Thetis, " Mother, seeing thou didst of a truth bear me to so brief span of life," show us dimly -what is to happen. When Achilles next appears upon the scene, in the Ninth Book, the figure of death takes a clearer shape. Achilles says to Ulysses, " If I abide here and besiege the Trojans' city, then my returning home is taken from me, but my fame shall be imperishable ; but if I go home to my dear native land, my high fame is taken from me, but my life shall endure long while, neither shall the issue of death soon reacli me." Thus his death is to be not only soon, but during this Trojan war. When Achilles, in the Eighteenth Book, is about to take vengeance on Hector, his death is yet more sharply defined. Thetis says to him, " Straightway after Hector, is death appointed unto thee." Then the mode of death is vaguely brought before our eyes when Achilles says to Polydorus, " My life, too, some man shall take in battle, whether with spear he smite or arrow from the string." Soon this too becomes clearer, for in the Twenty-first Book the hero says, "Under the wall of the mail-clad men of Troy I must die by the swift arrows of Apollo." Last, in the next book, the dying Hector warns his player " of the day when Paris and Phot-bus Apollo slay thee, for all thy valour, at the Skaian gate." Is it necessary to dilate on this perfect piece of art? What to other writers would have been a stumbling-block, Homer makes into an ornament and a support. The death of Achilles has nothing to do with the plot of the Iliad; it is a side-issue which must be disposed of somehow ; and it is further a side- issue which threatened to ruin the unity of the epic by becom- ing more interesting than the proper subject, by thrusting the latter into a secondary and itself taking the first place. The side-issue is allowed to develop all its strength and then made to strengthen the main plot. Whenever Achilles appears before the reader, it is to the accompaniment of these, funeral notes. They mark his presence on the stage as in a work of Wagner's a ' motive 1 ' marks a character's appearance. As the interest of the subject increases, and as the action advances, these notes become louder and louder, until the climax of the excitement is r< ;,ihi d and the crescendo ends with llect'-r's dying pro- phecy in a final and terrible crash. EPIC POETRY: THE ODYSSEY. 17 CHAPTER II. THE ODYSSEY. THE Odyssey has been more popular in modern times than the Iliad. This is doubtless partly due to its being domestic and not military in its subject. Descriptions of fighting done with obsolete weapons have mainly but an antiquarian interest; and the various kinds of wounds and various modes of shedding blood have less charm for an industrial and domestic society than have the sufferings of a faithful wife. The domestic interest is indeed present in the Iliad, and Hector and Andro- mache, for that reason, tended in the Middle Ages to come to be regarded as the leading characters and the central interest of the Iliad a wholly false conception of the epic. Another reason for the popularity in modern times of the Odyssey is that the poem contains fairy tales. Ogres and ogresses, the floating island of /Eolus, the marvellous bag containing the winds. Scylla and Charybdis, the descent into the realms of th^ dead, the enchanted isles of Circe and Calypso, the one-eyed giant, are all tales which exercise now, as they seem to have done from the earliest Aryan times, an inexhaustible influence over the popular fancy. A third reason for the popularity of the Odyssey is that, in addition to the poetry with which all these tales are invested, they are woven with consummate artis- tic skill into a single whole. Eet us now see wherein the unity of the Odyssey, as we have it, consists ; for that it possesses unity is universally admitted, though it is disputed whether this unity is the deliberate, design of one artist, or the result of the labours of successive generations of poets working at. the saint; subject. The theme of the Odyssey is as simple as that of the liiad : the one is the wrath of Achilles and its consequences, the other is the return of < Mysseus home. As Aristotle .-ays (/'o'7;V'x, iy\ the ar_:unirnt of tin- ( Myssey is slight : a man being away from home for many years, things at home fall into such a condition that his sub- stance is devoured by suitors, and pints are fuiined a^ain-t his sun; at length, after a stormy voyage, the hero comes home, an liavinu' ivveal'-d himself to a few ] the suitors, comes oil' safe hin>>'if Everything else is epi~<>de. lint tin whether by one prt or more - that if envious Time h;id iohl-d I 8 mSTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. only the Odyssey, there never, in all probability, would have arisen the question whether the Homeric poems are the work of one author or more. As in the Iliad, so in the Odyssey, there are at the beginning of the epic several books which do not advance the action of the poem, but depict the state of things preceding it and serve as an exposition. The first four books of the Odyssey contain the journey of Telemachus to Pylos and Sparta in quest of news of his father. In them Telemachus is the principal figure, and they have in consequence been called the Telemachia. From these books, as from certain books of the Iliad, the hero of the epic is absent. But in the Iliad the absence of Achilles is necessary, because the Greeks have to be made to feel the consequences of his wrath. In the Odyssey the absence of Odysseus from home is equally part of the theme of the poem ; and for the interest of the poem it is necessary that the state of things in the hero's home should be depicted, so as to enlist the reader's sympathy with the hero in his struggles to return, and with the hero's wife and son in their longing for his return. The art with which both these objects are attained in the Telemachia hardly needs pointing out. The insolence of the suitors is brought into high relief by the device of bringing Athene on the scene in the guise of a stranger : the impression made on the seeming stranger by the wantonness of the wooers is felt to be the judgment which any impartial and honest man would pass upon their conduct. Further, the evil character of the suitors comes out more and more, the more we see of them. The evil which they work is not confined, as it might be inferred from the First Book, to the house of Odysseus. In the Second Book we find in the assembly that they behave to the people of Ithaca as insolently as they treat Penelope and Telemachus; and finally, in the Fourth Book, they plot the death of the son while hoping by force to wed the mother, and they enjoy the humour of the situation. By the side of this picture we have that of the faithful wife. This strand in the thread of the story runs through all the four bonk-s. It appears not only in the First Book, but in the Second ]!opailys-ey. AVi'V should il Wliterwho h:ni ll-'ViT heard of tin- Odyssey happen, when relating a voyaue of T>'It mar'tins, to ijivo ju-t such infonnatin as is required fur the undei'stuiuttn;: of the Odyssey, anil then hrcak oil" at the point where arnth'T ]"-t. \v.>rkin_; iiideju-ndi-Iitly, liMPoelied ]>ri-i'i>ely to he-in? 2O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. prudence ; he deliberately courts misfortune and voluntarily (inters the Cyclops' den. This was probably an essential feature in the popular tale ; and Homer, in adopting the story, has retained this feature ; but so far from leaving it as an unsightly inconsistency, he has turned it to advantage. This piece of folly in which Odysseus indulges is " the beginning of evil." It led to the blinding of the Cyclops, which provoked the wrath of Poseidon, and that was the cause of all Odysseus' wanderings. From the land of the Cyclops he was carried to the floating island of ^Eolus, but the safe return which the wonderful wallet might have procured for Odysseus was frustrated, evidently, as ^Eolus says, by the gods. After this indication of the nature of the power that was presiding over his course, it is not surprising that Odysseus should next losa all his ships but one among the Lsestrygonians, and then be carried to the enchanted island of Circe. After his year's stay there, he is sent by Circe down to Hades, there to learn what wanderings destiny yet has in store for him. Thus his subse- quent course does not appear to be the arbitrary arrangement of a poet working up given material, but has the seal of fate set on it by the appalling scene among the dead. From Circe's isle, JExa. he sails by the Sirens, the Rocks Wandering, Scylla and Charybdis, and thus readies the Island of the Sun. There his crew commit the offence they were warned acrainst, and kill the sacred herds of Helios. Thus all his crew perished, and Odysseus alone was saved on Calypso's isle. There he spends eight years, until Athene pleads for him against Poseidon among the gods, and he is allowed to sail from Ogygia to the land of the Phseacians, not, however, without suffering wreck once more from Poseidon's power. From Phfeacia he reaches Ithaca in safety. We see, then, that the latter half of the hero's adventures are bound together by the utterance of the seer Teiresias in Hades, and that the descent to Hades was one of the conse- quences of the wrath of Poseidon. The direct intervention of tin's god occurs in the wreck of the raft on which Odysseus set sail from Ogygia, and the misfortunes of Odysseus generally are ascribed to Poseidon both by Teiresias and by Athene. J!ut in mo.st of the calamities that overtook Odysseus there is no special mention of Poseidon as the immediate cause. This has be-n regarded by some critics as a proof that in the original Odys-'ey there was a different conception of the cause of the liM'o's wandering-, and that the introduction of Poseidon is later than the " kernel ;! of the Odyssey. Jjut this theory pro- EPIC POETRY : THE ODYSSEY. 2 I cccds on the tacit assumption that if the adventures of Odysseus had been composed by the same poet who wrote the Telemachia and the last twelve books, and who ascribed the adventures and misfortunes of Odysseus to Poseidon's anger, he would in relating each of them have specially mentioned Poseidon as the cause. But of this there is no proof, and it may be questioned whether the continued introduction of Poseidon, time after time, would not have been monotonous and inartistic. The popular stories which Homer wove into the Odyssey had origi- nally no connection with Odysseus, and therefore none with Poseidon ; and so far the importation of Poseidon into them is later than the stories themselves. Possibly these stories had become popularly associated with the name of Odysseus before Homer wove them together by the device of making Poseidon the ultimate cause of all Odysseus' adventures. If this be so, the only question left is whether the poet has made it suffi- ciently clear that Poseidon was the cause ; and inasmuch as he three times expressly and as it were officially by the mouth of a goddess, of Teiresias and of Odysseus declares that Poseidon teas the cause, and twice introduces Poseidon as directly intervening, it seems to be hypercriticism to require more, and to ascribe some of the work to one author and the rest to another, because the poet has not labelled each and every story with the signature of Poseidon. The fairyland adventures of Odysseus, then, have all the unity with each other which stories of such diverse origin could have,. Their connection with the rest of the Odyssey is even closer. The Telemachia and the Thirteenth Book both ascribe these adventures to the action of Poseidon. Teire- sias in Hades prophesies the destruction which overtakes the wooers in the later books. The appearance of the ghost of Anticleia in Hades is confirmed by the mention of her death in the later books. Further, the fidelity of Penelope is a feature common to all three divisions of the < >dys>ey. It is brought out in the same way, that is, by pointed contrast with the conduct of (,'lyteniestra. in all three; and the happiness of Arete and Nausiciia in their Imme in Pha'acia can scarcely be Mil accidental contrast to the suii'erings of Penelope in her home in Ithaca. Finally, the .summary which Odysseus gives to Penelope of his adventures confirms the account in Hooks v. to xii. Thus Hooks v. xii. are dominated by the same conception of the cause of Odysseus' wanderings ami of the. stale of things in lihaca as i.s the ivst of the Odvssev. \\'e have m>w to consider 22 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. the skill with which the climax of the Odyssey is wrought out in Books xiii.-xxiv., and with which these books are interwoven with the Telemachia,. Telemachus having been sent by Athene to Sparta, is recalled by her to Ithaca, and, in order to avoid the ambuscade of the suitor?, is bidden to land, not at the city, but near the steading of Eumseus.. the swineherd. Thus Telema- chus is brought into the company of Odysseus, and the threads of the Telemachia and Books v.-xii. are united. 1 The next stage in the action is brought about very simply and artistically. Telemachus, with the same consideration for his mother's feel- ings as he displays in the Telemachia, where he takes steps to conceal his journey from her, sends Eumseus to the city to inform Penelope of his safe return. Thus the stage is cleared for the recognition of Odysseus. After this, Telemachus goes first, and Odysseus follows him to the city. The omens indica- tive of the vengeance that is nigh become more and more fre- quent, reaching their climax in the vision of Theoclymenus, a character that appears in the Telemachia as well as in Books xiii.-xxiv., and helps to unite these two parts of the Odyssey. While these tokens of the gods' will are manifesting themselves, the suitors are filling the measure of their wrong-doing by their fresh plot against the life of Telemachus, by their contumely towards the disguised Odysseus, in defiance of the protection which Zeus accords to strangers and beggars, and in strong contrast to the behaviour of Eumseus; while the universal misery and hatred which the wooers have excited is revealed in one marvellous flash, when at the dawn of the day of Odysseus' vengeance the woman at the mill prays to Zeus, " Fulfil now, I pray thee, even to miserable me, the word that I shall speak. .... They that have loosened my knees with cruel toil to grind their barley-meal, may they now sup their last." The crescendo of the wooers' crimes is common to the Telemachia and Books xiii.-xxiv. The excitement of the plot is heightened by the fact that on the very day Odysseus enters his house in disguise, Penelope, having, in defiance of public opinion, refused for so long to wed, has, with infinite grief, resolved to make an end of her resistance to the suitors. Her husband had charged her to wait, if he did not return, no longer than till their son was a grown man : that time had come, and regard for her son's future prompted her to a decision. Thus she resolves on the trial of the bow : EPIC POP:TRY : THE ODYSSEY. 23 and on that day Odysseus arrives. The situation is dramatic ; but it is said by some critics that there are indications in the poem itself that this is not the tale as it was told in the original Odyssey. In the last book the ghost of Amphimedon ascribes the trial of the bow to the ingenuity of Odysseus, who suggested it to his wife in order to bring about the wooers' destruction. This, we are told, proves that, originally, Penelope was not about to succumb to the twenty years of weary waiting and hope deferred that she had suffered. The disguised Odysseus suggested, and she accepted it, as a means of further delay, since it was certain that none of the wooers could succeed in the trial. Thus there was originally no situation : things were going on much as usual, and there was no particular need for Odysseus to arrive at this time rather than any other. Consequently our admiration of the unity of the Odyssey is, at least as regards this point, misplaced, because here we have not unity, but dis- crepancy of design. It does not, however, seem necessary to accept this conclusion. That Amphimedon, knowing nothing of the facts, should ascribe the conjunction of events which brought about the slaughter to the cunning of Odysseus is natural, and is consistent with the repeated tributes to the hero's cleverness which occur throughout the poem. To press the words further is unsafe, and we are not much encouraged to draw from them conclu- sions about the original form of the Odyssey, when we find that the passage in which they occur the second ^S'eknia is regarded by the same critics as having been introduced long after the original form of the. Odyssey had been lost. The unity of design in the later books of the Odyssey has also been attacked on other grounds. Athene, having transformed and re-transformed Odysseus, again gives him the appearance of a beggar, and in that disguise he goes to his home : is ill-treated by. and kills, the suitors. Then, without being changed hack into his proper shape, he is recognised by .Penelope. This fact that. Odysseus is not mentioned as being changed again int<> his real shape is taken to show that originally there was no trans- forming of Odysseus at all. In the original Odyssey, the h'To, aged and altered by years and sufl'ering, was naturallv pr<>teeied from immediate recognition. \\\\[ a later and more ' reflective " a^'e found a supernatural transformation necessary to aec"Uiit for the non-recognition of Odysseus by his ~,,\\, -\vife. and servants : and sn the original tale was patched with this view. P>ut fortunately the minimi conception is still to be seen by seen;_r eves. If Odvsselis had oriu'inaiiv and leaiiv been tlali>- 24 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. formed, then of course the scar on his leg would have been transformed too. But the scar on his leg was not transformed ; he shows it to his father, to Eumaeus, and to the neatherd, and Eurycleia discovered him by it ; therefore Odysseus was not transformed in the original Odyssey. Consequently, instead of unity, we have again discrepancy of design ; for these scenes are a patchwork combination of the work of two very different ages. As these arguments have been put forward gravely, they must receive a grave answer ; and we may say, first, that before Odysseus is recognised by Penelope, he is, as a matter of fact, re-transformed (xxiii. 156-163) by Athene. She does not, indeed, use her wand as she does in first transforming him, but to the gods all things are possible. Secondly, in all countries and literature, the supernatural and marvellous precede the employment of purely natural causes. Fairy tales come early, not late, in a nation's growth ; so that if two versions of the story did exist, we should be justified in concluding that the version which contained a magic change was earlier than that which relied solely on the changes brought about by the natural operation of age and suffering. Thirdly, the subject of trans- formation is a difficult and obscure one. IT one story the change seems to leave untouched at least the psychological identity of the person transformed ; whereas in another a very simple measure of transformation is enough to cause the person concerned to ask, "Can this be IT' The limits within which are confined the changes wrought by transformation seem to be shifting, and to be so elastic that, if Homer cays or implies that Odysseus was indeed transformed, but the transformation did not take effect upon his legs or the scars upon his legs, we may fortify ourselves by the analogy of the prince in the Arabian Nights (who conversely had his legs changed into black marble, but not the rest of his body), and take Homer's word for it. Without here entering upon the question as to whether we have the " original " Odyssey or not, and, if not, how the changes that have been made icere made, we may at least con- clude that the traces of such chances are not considerable enough to aii'cct the admiration which critics, from Aristotle onwards, have felt and expressed for the unity and dramatic interest of the Odyssey. It is better to profit by the beauty of the poem as we have it, than to bestow our admiration upon the Odyssey, 'original " it may be, as constructed by .some modern critics. Eric POETRY: THE HOMERIC QUESTION, 25 CHAPTER IIL THE HOMERIC QUESTION. IN very early times there seems to have been a " Homeric question," though it has very little in common with the Homeric question of modern times. From an early period any epic which pleased the popular fancy appears to have been ascribed to Homer, as any law at Athens which had anything to recom- mend it was ascribed by the orators to Solon. But in the course of time, and on grounds which, like the epics themselves, are lost to us, one epic after another was abjudicated from Homer, and the Iliad and Odyssey were the only epics of which Homer was allowed to be the author. But the process of separation did not stop here. Photius, a Patriarch of Con- stantinople, who died A.D. 891, quotes from a late writer named Proclus a statement to the effect that Xenon and Hellanicus denied that the Odyssey was by Homer. Of Xenon AVC know nothing (he is mentioned in one of the Scholia Greek com- mentaries of various dates to the Iliad, and that is all) : Hellanicus was senior to the famous Alexandrian grammarian and Homeric critic, Aristarchus, whose date is about B.C. 222- 150. The upholders of the view that the Iliad and the Odyssey were by different authors Avere called the Chorizn-nb'.i or Separatists, and were combated by Aristarchus. In antiquity the theory was considered a paradox; and in modern times the question whether the two poems are by the same author has yielded to the question whether either poem is by a single author. The arguments on which the ancient separatists proceeded were partly linguistic and partly mythological, so far as can he learnt from the scattered notices to be found in ancient Greek commentaries on the Iliad. As an example of their linguistic arguments, we may take that based on the use of the word proparoithen, "before." This word may be used, like the English "before," either of things in space or of things in time, and probably was iirst used of space, and subsequently extended to time. In the Iliad, the Chori/oiites said, the word is used of space; in the ( 'dyssey, of time. (>l>vun;>ly, therefore, lan- guage, had undergone some development between th the Iliad and the Odys-ey were written. lint, as fact, the word is used of time in the Iliad a- ofu f th 26 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. drawn from mythology is the fact that in the Iliad Charis is the -wife of Hephaestus ; in the Odyssey, Aphrodite. This is undeniable; but in the " fluid" state in which mythology was in early times, the fact does not go for much. A stronger argu- ment is that in the Iliad there is one Charis, in the Odyssey there are several Charites. which may indicate that the legend had undergone development, and thus point to a later origin for the Odyssey. Another mythological argument used by the ancient Chorizontes is that in the Iliad Iris appears as the messenger of the gods ; in the Odyssey, Hermes. But the facts do not wholly bear out this argument; for although in the Iliad Iris is frequently the messenger, Hermes also acts on one important occasion in this capacity ; while in the Odyssey, though Hermes appears once as messenger, the functions of Iris had certainly not died out of memory, as is shown by the jest of calling a beggar who ran messages Irus. 1 In modern times the arguments of the ancient Chorizontes have been taken up for the purpose of showing that whether each poem is by one, and only one, author or not at any rate the Odyssey belongs to a later period than the Iliad. JS T o one professes to assign much weight to the arguments used, though the conclusion is pretty generally accepted. That there are differences between the two poems is undisputed. The question is whether the differences are greater than the difference in subject naturally involves. "Minstrels" are frequently men- tioned in the Odyssey, but are unknown in the Iliad. But minstrels were apparently the appanages of a court, not of a camp. In the Iliad the gods are much more violently opposed to each other than in the Odyssey, which shows a progress in religious sentiment. But the strife in Olympus gives majesty to the mortal conflicts of the Iliad, whereas in the Odyssey there is no such commotion on earth as to rouse war in heaven. Again, it is said that the Odyssey, dealing with the return from Troy, presupposes, and is therefore later than, the Iliad. The subject of the one certainly presupposes the other. But there is no reference in the Odyssey to the Iliad. The current mythology doubtless embraced the tales of the Trojan war and of the return of the Greeks before either Odyssey or Iliad was composed ; and this is all that either presupposes. The Odyssey, again, is supposed to show development of legend ; but the fluid state of myths and legends makes it quite possible that variants, or even different stages, of a legend's growth continued to exist side by side. Arguments have been drawn also from the differ- 1 See Decides, PrMtm of the Homeric Poems, 52-60. EPIC POETRY: THE HOMERIC QUESTION. 27 enco in the vocabulary of the two poems, but little weight is usually given to them. Finally, geographical knowledge in the Odyssey is said to be wider, and consequently later, than that in the Iliad. But the Odyssey gives greater scope for the display of such knowledge ; and the question is further complicated by the fact that passages which are quoted by the one side are rejected as interpolations by the other. But the ancient doubts whether both the Odyssey and Iliad were by Homer have sunk into insignificance by the side of the modern doubts whether either the Iliad or the Odyssey is by Homer whether there was ever such a person as Homer whether either poem is by one author whether the poems are not the fortuitous aggregate of unconnected ballads -whether they are of any antiquity at all. These difficulties, which con- stitute the modern Homeric question, were first definitely raised at the end of last century, and to "Wolf is justly due the honour of having raised them. 1 Friedrich August Wolf was a professor in Halle, and being engaged on an edition of the Iliad, in his endeavours to gain a safe standing-ground from which to criticise various readings and to emend faulty readings, he was led to inquire of himself by what means the text of Homer had come down to us, and particularly how it had been transmitted in the earliest times. He found that not only, on the current view of the great antiquity of Homer, was it ex- tremely difficult to account for the transmission of so extensive a text, but that the current view itself was based, as he supposed, on two impossibilities. First, it implies the existence of writing in Homer's time ; next, it implies the absence of any diil'erence between the state of nature existing in Homer's time and the artificial condition of later Greek civilisation. In both these difficulties, which Wolf stated in his famous Prolegomena to Homer (1795)5 we see the influence of the general current of thought of the eighteenth century. " Xature" had been brought into very sharp contrast with the artificial complexity of modern civilisation by Rousseau, and the same contrast was sought for in the literature of early and " natural" times as compared with the productions of an advanced society. 1 Heforo "\Volf learned men had had transient doubts, e.fi. Casaubun. and 1'erizonius, whether the poems wtre originally committed to wiitiiifj; Hentley, whether Homer intended the poems to be recited as wholes; an Italian scholar, Vico, had denied the existence of Homer; Wood (AV.*/// on the Oriiiiinil GotiiiK (tin! Writhi/ix of H-ni'icr, 17^0) had raise.! the ques- tion of the antiquity of writing; Zoega (1788) had called attention to incon- sistencies in the poems ; and Herder and lleyne contributed to the compara- tive study of ballads and epics. Hut all tiie-e taken together do not impair the originality and magnitude of Wolf's achievement. 28 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. Works belonging to primitive times must, like the ballads of our own early literature, be short, simple, inartificial in fine, natural. With the advance of society literary compositions became longer and more complex, and as the resources of art accumulated, works of art became more artificial. In the Nibelungcnlied was found a parallel to Greek epics : the Nibe- lunfienlied was demonstrated to have been made out of ballads, and the analogy was applied to the Homeric poems. With these views on the history of literature, there could be no hesitation in concluding that the Iliad and the Odyssey, in their present form, belong to the later and more complex period of literary development. Parts of each poem may belong to the simpler and earlier period, but they have evidently been overlaid by the work of the more artificial period. The other difficulty which Wolf found in the way of the popular belief in the great antiquity of the poems as we have them, resulted from applying to the origin of the Homeric poems a question which was being put, with equally important results, in philosophy with regard to knowledge, viz., how is it possible ? What are the conditions necessarily involved in the supposition that the poems existed in times of great antiquity? and did these conditions, as a matter of fact, exist ? In the first place, the transmission of the poems for many centuries implies the existence of writing. But before, say, B.C. 700, writing did not exist in Greece. Either, then, the current view is wrong in attributing to the poems a greater antiquity than B.C. 700 ; or, if the poems did exist before that date, they must have been short and simple enough to be committed to memory and trans- mitted orally. And the latter hypothesis agrees with the view that the poems of early and natural times were simple and short. But inasmuch as the evidence as to the date of the introduc- tion of writing into Greece is scanty, Wolf brings forth another condition which is indispensable for the composition of such extensive works as the Iliad and the Odyssey, and could not have existed in the time of Homer. An artist must have a puUic. A poet writes to be published. Now, whatever the date at which writing was introduced into Greece, the habit of reading was not established until very late times. Homer, that is to say, composed to be recited and heard, not to be read. But no audience could sit through a reading of the Iliad or the Odyssey, each consisting of twenty-four books and over 9000 verses. Therefore, to the impossibility of carrying so long a work in the. memory has to be added the impossibility of ever finding an audience for so long a poem. But if there was no EPIC POETRY: THE HOMERIC QUESTION. 29 audience to be had for such a work, it is pretty certain that no such work would be composed. The length of a poem in those times must have depended on the conditions under which it Avas to be recited, and those conditions admitted of the recita- tion of short poems only. Indeed, we know, as a matter of fact, that in historic times, when Homer was recited at festivals, it was not the whole Iliad or the whole Odyssey that was given, but only short portions of them called rhapsodies. We may, then, sum up Wolf's objections to the common view of the great antiquity of Homer thus : in their present condition the poems are not of the short and simple character which is the mark of early and natural literature, and they are too long to have been transmitted by memory or to have ever even found an audience. The conclusion he drew was that Homer whose existence and genius he did not dispute living in primitive times, before writing was in common use, and before the exist- ence of a reading public, could not have composed the whole, but only parts, of the Iliad and Odyssey as we have them. The rest consists of additions made by various subsequent poets and professional reciters or rhapsodists. "Which parts were by Homer and which by later hands, Wolf made no attempt to dis- cover, although he lived for many years after framing his theory and publishing his Prolegomena. There remains a third point to be noticed in Wolf's theory. If Homer did not commit his poems to writing, and if the pre- sent form of the Iliad and Odyssey is not due to Homer, by whom were the poems committed to writing, and to whom is their present form due? Wolf foresaw this difiiculty and pro- vided an answer. 1'isistratus, the famous tyrant of Athens, first caused the, poems to lie committed to writing. lie al.-o united the poems, composed )>y dilleivnt hands and recited indi- vidually, into the two great wlmles now known as the Iliad and Odyssey. And this he did by means of a Commission of four (i 1 Maskeuasts,'' whose name-, according to Wolf, were Onoma- critus, ( irpheus of C'roton, Simonides, and Anacreon. The evi- dence for these statements \Yolf for.nd in passages from Cicero, 1 1'ausanias- (an antiquarian who flourished about; A. n. loo), ^Kliair ; (whose date is about A.n. 180). a Life of Homer 1 (author unknown, date late), and a grammarian, Diomedes 5 (Very late). Although these writers disagree as to the reason whv L'isistratus 3O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. caused the poems to be edited into their present shape some say it was because previously they had never been committed to writing, and that Pisistratus gave an obol for every line any one could provide ; others, because the poems had suffered from fire?, earthquakes, and floods, and were therefore much scattered 1 still they all maintain the present form to be due to Pisistra- tus ; and so closely does their language in this respect agree, that it seems probable they either copied from each other or from some common source. Since Wolf's time, on the strength of a passage in Tzetzes (a Eyzantian grammarian, date about A.D. 1160), the names of the four Diaskeuasts have been given as Onomacritus, Orpheus, Zopyrus, and Epikonkylos (the last name is conjectural). But inasmuch as Tzetzes is separated by an interval of 1700 years from the time he was writing about, and is an inaccurate writer, we may dismiss him. We have now to consider the worth of Wolfs authorities for the Commission of Pisistratus. In the first place, they are none of them sufficiently near in point of time to the period of Pisis- tratus to carry any great weight. Cicero, the earliest of them, lived 500 years after Pisistratus. How comes it that during those 500 years no author makes mention of so important a fact in literary history 1 Aristotle, who made extensive inves- tigations into the history of literature, knows nothing of this Commission, or of any other form of Homer than that we pos- sess. The Alexandrine critics of this period, Avho worked so much on Homer, know nothing of it. Xo allusion to it is to be found in Plato, none in the orators, who had various occa- sions in their speeches when they would gladly have claimed for Athens the distinction of such an important literary achieve- ment had they known of it. It seems improbable that such a valuable piece of information should have escaped so many eager ami competent students for half a millennium and then have been discovered by Cicero. A more reasonable explana- 1 Tliis must be placed to the credit of Diomedes, the grammarian. Ha too says thnt Pisistratus invited everybody \\lio knew any Homer to contri- bute tlieir information, and paid them so much a verse. The result was that some spurious verses tiie woik of those, we may conjecture, " qui linea denaria scrihebant " were sent in, and they are now marked by an obelisk. Diomedes then -proceeds to uet confused apparently between the revision by Pisistratus and tiie Septnagint, for he says that Pisistratus formed a com- mittee of seventy-two revisers (each paid an honorarium worthy of learned critics), who set to work separately on the material thus provided them, and then compared tlieir results, and came to the conclusion that the best version was that product d by Ai istarehus, tiie next best that of Zcnodotus (Aristar- chus and Zrnodotus lived about -joo years after Pisistratus), This is inter- esting as a specimen of the worth of 1>\ zantine learning. EPIC POETRY: THE HOMERIC QUESTION. 31 tion is that it was unknown to them, because it was only invented after their time. 1 The common source of all these stories seems to be an inscrip- tion quoted in an anonymous Life of Homer, and there said to have been taken from a statue of Pisistratus. The question then arises whether the inscription was taken from the statue of Pisistratus ? In the first place, the Athenians' hatred of the PisistratidsB makes it unlikely that any such statue was erected in memory of Pisistratus ; and, in the next place, the words of the inscription are remarkable. " Thrice tyrant, thrice the populace of Athens expelled me, thrice recalled me, the great Pisistratus, who collected Homer, erewhile sung scatteredly," &c. It is improbable that, in an inscription intended to do honour to Pisistratus, his military achievements and his services to religion should be entirely omitted, while his repeated ex- pulsions from Athens important facts in his life, but not those which his heirs, wishing to remain tyrants of Athens, would care to have remembered are dwelt upon. And what is the great achievement which, according to the inscription, outweighs all else that Pisistratus did, and is to constitute his political rehabilitation? A reform of the text of Homer. Assuming that this reform was the work of Pisistratus, we certainly never find it mentioned by any historian, orator, or other writer before Alexandrine times, either as an extenuatirg circumstance in Pisistratus' tyranny or in any other way. On the other hand, we know that the royal patronage extended in Alexandrine times by the Ptolemies to learning produced a reaction in favour of discerning tyrants, and that the composition of epi- grams was a favourite exercise amongst the literary men of Alexandria. A service then to literature was precisely the one fact which an Alexandrine writer would regard as worth record- ing in an epigram on Pisistratus. This is one suggestion as to the origin of the epigram and tin.' stories based upon it. It seems, however, more plausible to trace the epigram to the rivalry which existed between the two great schools of learning, Alexandria and Pergamum. Cicero, in whom the story, as far as we can trace it, iirst appears, had but little acquaintance with Alexandrian learning. On the other hand, his education in Rhodes brought him under the 1 The same lino of argument may 1>^ applied to the statement that On<>ma- critus was one of the nn-mliers of the ( 'ominission. If in- was, how is it that, Herodotus (vii. M, \vho knows th;it < >noin:ieritus "revised" many oracles in the interest of Pisistratus, and was i-\|>rlied froiii Athens i.y II ipi'.irchus for a le>s HIT. ]>tah!e revision of Mu>;< us' oracles, has nothing t say of his ver- sion of Homer? 3 2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. influence of the Pergamum school. In Rhodes, Cicero was a pupil of Posidpnius, who was a pupil of Panoetius, who again was one of the followers of Crates of Mallos, the founder of the Pergamum school. Thus Cicero's statement about Pisistratus seems to go hack ultimately rather to Pergamum than Alexan- dria, and the circumstances which there gave rise to the story seem to have consisted in the desire to depreciate Alexandria and its royal patrons, by showing that there was nothing so very remarkable in learning receiving royal patronage. Even so long ago as the time of Pisistratus tyrants interested themselves in literature. Be this as it may, the epigram, in whatever spirit composed, betrays its late date by the fact that, whereas Pisis- tratus was expelled twice, it says he was expelled three times. Thus the authorities on which Wolf relied for proving that the present shape of the Homeric poems is due to Pisistratus seem to have their source in an epigram, which, whatever the motives for composing it, is certainly untrustworthy. Further, the epigram itself gives no countenance to the inference which Cicero and other later writers have drawn from it, viz., that Pisistratus caused a recension of Homer to be made. The epi- gram says that before Pisistratus Homer was " sung scattercdly." Now we know on good authority that of the orators Isocrates, B.C. 436-338, and Lycurgus, B.C. 395-329 that the singing of the rhapsodies at the great Athenian festival was regulated by law ; but who introduced the law does not seem to have been known. In Alexandrian times it certainly was a matter of conjecture who introduced the law; and it is a. reasonable in- ference that in the epigram of which we are speaking we have nothing more than the author's conjecture, stated positively, that the law was due to Pisistratus. For thirty years or more nothing was done to carry out the views which Wolf had expressed in his Prolegomena ; and yet, as we have pointed out, although Wolf demonstrated the diffi- culties in the way of the traditional view of Homer, he con- tributed nothing himself towards pointing out what in the poems was Homer's work and what was not. When at last, after more than thirty years. Hermann took up the question, although he came forward with a criterion by which to distinguish the original parts of the poems from subsequent accretions, he never fully carried out the process of applying his criterion. J!ut more important is it to notice, the nature of iiis criterion, and the change of view which it involves. For the purpose of distinguishing between what is Homer and what is later than Homer in the poems, inconsistencies and discre- EPIC POETRY : THE HOMERIC QUESTION. 3 3 paucies are important. l)ut no solution of this part of the Homeric question can be satisfactory which explains only the inconsistencies. The general consistency of the poems is an equally important factor in the problem, and a satisfactory solution must account for the consistency as well as the incon- sistencies. The natural reaction from the "Woliian theory took the direction of insisting on the importance of the second factor, and it is in the explanation of this factor that the importance of Hermann's work lies. According to Wolf, the unity of the poems was, as it were, mechanically superinduced by the Commission of 1'isistratus. According to Hermann, if the poems in their present shape possess unity, it is because the original kernel possessed unity. Homer sang of the wrath of Achilles and the return of Odysseus in two poems, short enough to be carried in the memory and transmitted orally, and these poems contained in outJine the essential structure of our Iliad and Odyssey. In the process of time later poets inserted various compositions of their own, expanding incidents in the original work, and interpolating, so far as the original permitted, other incidents, and made the expansions and interpolations fit in with more or less neatness. Thus H-Tinaim provided a solu- tion capable of accounting for both the general unity and the particular discrepancies, though he did not or could not work it out so as to recover the original poems. It should also be noticed that on Hermann's theory Homer is not regard' d as a rude and primitive bard, but as possessing architectonic genius. The next attempt to solve the Homeric problem on the lines laid out by Wolf \va- that of Laehmann. Starting on the assump- tion that in primitive times only short lays were possible, he tir>L attacked the .\Y/<>/////y> tttil. and dissected it into twenty lays. He then in the same way dissected the Iliad into eighteen lays. The principle upon which he proceeds is thai primitive poets anxiously avoid the leas; inconsistency in details ; thu-, if we iind an incon.-i.-teiicy between any two parts of the Iliad, we may conclude that, these parts belong to diti'erent lay-. Tin? lay has no inconsistencies within itself. Thus Laehmann proceeded considerably farther than "\Yolf; for "Wolf allowed Homer some share in the composition of the Iliad and the Ody.-sey. while Laehmann disintegrated the Iliad into lays which were composed i[i;ite independently of each other, and became more or less fortuitously agglomerated together in course of time, and were finally worked into the Iliad as we have it by Onoimieritus, actin<_: for 1'isistratus, Witli regard t<> I.achmann's theory, it should be noticed that c 34 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. auy support it may have once derived from the dissection of the Nibdungerdied is much weakened now, since there is consider- able reason to believe that that poem is the work of one author, and not an aggregate of lays. In the next place, analogies drawn from the literatures of other countries have to be used with cir- cumspection. The origin of the Mahdbhdrata is disputed. The French chantons are not epics ; and the literary genius of Greece is hardly to be measured by restrictions drawn from the analogy of a Finnish epic the Kale>/-ala. Setting aside these presump- tions based on analogies, we have to examine Lachmann's theory in itself. In the first place, we may use the argumentum ad hominem. If Lachmann regards an inconsistency as proof of divided authorship, why does he not subdivide those of his lays which contain inconsistencies in themselves ? His principle rigorously carried out would necessitate the supposition of a larger number of lays than that which he has resolved the Iliad into. And this is one fundamental weakness of the theory it lacks any vestige of proof. The same principle applied by another hand would discover a different set of lays, and have as much claim to represent the primitive elements of the Iliad as the eighteen lays Lachmann has produced. In other words, of the two things which require explaining in the Homeric poems their unity and their inconsistencies Lachmann overlooks one the unity and only offers for the other an explanation wholly incapable of proof, and not even consistently carried out by himself. 1 Thus his theory distinctly falls behind the advance which Hermann had made towards the solution of the problem. Hermann recognised the double aspect of the question, and put forward a theory which at least endeavoured to meet both points. Lachmann sought a one-sided solution, and in framing a hypothesis to account for all the inconsistencies, he lost sight of the other factor in the problem, or imagined that Onoma- critus and Pisistratus were capable of accounting fur what unity the Iliad possesses. But we have already seen that there is no historical proof of the existence of the Commission of Pisistratus, and we may now ask whether the supposition of such a Commission is capable of accounting for the unity of the Iliad. In the first place, inasmuch as " diaskcuasts ;! have been credited with much activity in the .shaping of the Homeric poems, it is well 1 Another serious difficulty in the way of his theory is that of understand- hit; how ci^lirei ii different poets, working independently and in ignorance of each other's wutk, should all happen to choose for their sulijeet some incident relating to the few days of Achilles' ahsence from the war. EPIC POETRY : THE HOMERIC QUESTION. 3 5 to understand who diaskeuasts were. They were not a class of men united or distinguished by the possession of any special experience or innate powers of working up given material into epic shape. If a playwright touched up or re-wrote a play of his own, already performed, with a view to producing it a second time, he was said to dictskeuazein or revise his play. lint, more than this, any man who made a correction in a manuscript was a diaskeuast; and if the "correction" was wrong, he was none the less a diaskeuast. So to say that the shaping of the Iliad was the work of diaskeuasts may be true, but it does not help us much, for any man could be a dias- keuast, but not every man could make an Iliad out of given material. On Lachmann's theory, indeed, it would require an artist of consummate skill to give to eighteen wholly inde- pendent lays the amount of consistency and unity which the Iliad possesses. Thus the mechanical device of a Commission is inadequate to the purpose. "What is required is a poet of no mean rank, and Lachmann gives us, with no satisfactory proof, Onomacritus, who spent his life on Orphic poetry, and would have worked up his material in accordance with his training in Orphic poetry, whereas no Orphic elements are to be traced in our Iliad. We may further ask what object could Pisistratus have had in amalgamating separate lays into one whole ? It could not have been in the interests of literature, for, according to Lach- mann, the separate lays arc more beautiful than our Iliad. And further, if this was the case, how did Pisistratus contrive to supplant the older, better known, and more beautiful lays by his novel amalgamation? His authority extended only to Athens, but all Clreece accepted the Iliad as we have it. If we waive this difficulty, the question .-till remain.- what was the object of tin 1 amalgamation, since it was not to benefit literature ? Pisistratus, we have seen, was apparently believed by some to have regulated the text for purposes of recitati-u ; but the short lays which Lachmann supposes to have exi>ted would be much better adapted for recitation than our Iliad, and to amalgamate these lays into a lengthy whole would not render their recitation the easier. "\Ve next come to the views put forward by the groat his- torian of (ireeoe, (_iroU>. The question -\viikh Wolf had sug- gested, but had not attempted to >olv<>, viz., what is Homer's work, and what is not, in the Iliad and Odyssey, (I rote took up and answered. P>ut in other respects he is not a follower of Wolf. The assumption, univer.-ally accepted hi.-t century, that 36 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. primitive poems or lays must be short, Grote did not accept. He quotes from Chodsko's Popular Poetry of Persia the fact that " one of the songs of the Calmuck national bards sometimes lasts a whole day ; " and refers to the fact, which had been pre- viously used by Lachmunn, that the old German poem Parsifal contains 24,810 verses, and was the work of a man, Eschenbach, who could neither read nor write. Thus the composition of the Iliad or the Odyssey before writing was known in Greece has nothing impossible in it. Nor has the oral transmission of the poems ; the songs of the Icelandic Skalds were thus trans- mitted for more than two centuries ; and we may add that the Vedas were transmitted in this way for a much longer period. In modern Greece blind singers carry in their memory large quantities of verse which they recite at village feasts. Fur- ther, if Homer was, as the oldest traditions relate, blind, writ- ing, even if known in his time, would have been of no use to him. In anticipation of the objection that the power of memory might not be so great among the Greeks as among other nations, Grote refers to the fact that in Socrates' time, as Ave learn from Xenophon, there were many Athenians who were taught to learn both the Iliad and the Odyssey by heart, and the rhapsodists professionally repeated the poems from memory. Having thus cleared the ground, and shown that there is no impossibility in composing and transmitting poems of the length of our Iliad and Odyssey by means of memory alone, Grote proceeds to investigate the question of the original unity of these epics on critical grounds, and he begins with the Odyssey. The question at issue is, as he says, whether the gaps and in- consistencies which constitute the proofs " of mere unprepared coalescence " preponderate "over the other proofs of designed adaptation scattered throughout the whole poem 1 " The con- clusion h<; roaches is, "The poem as it now stands exhibits unequivocally adaptation of parts and continuity of structure, whether by one or several consentient hands. It may, perhaps, 1)0 a secondary formation out of a pre-existing Odyssey of smaller dimensions ; but if so, the parts of the smaller Avhole must have been so far recast as to make them suitable members cf the larger, and are noway recognisable by us." Further, " Its authors cannot have been more compilers of pre-existing materials, such as Pisistratus and his friends; they must have been ]>( lets, competent to work such matter as they found into a new jind enlarged design of their own." The Odyssey, thon, is itself a proof of the falsity of the assump- EPIC POETRY: THE HOMERIC QUESTION. 37 tion that " long continuous epics with an artistical structure- are inconsistent with the capacities of a rude and non-writing age," for in the Odyssey " the integration of the whole and the composition of the parts must have been simultaneous." Grote then applies the same critical method to the Iliad. Here he finds that the original scheme of the Iliad, viz., to relate the wrath of Achillas and its consequences does not com- prehend the whole poem. Those books which carry out the original scheme hang together by themselves. Those books (ii. to vii.) which do not relate to the original scheme hang on the whole fairly well together, but present dis- crepancies with the first set. The portion of the Iliad which lias direct relation to the original scheme, as expounded in the opening lines of the First Book, Grote called an Achilleis. The other books "are of a wider and more comprehensive character, and convert the poem from an Achilleis into an Iliad." They give us, not any information about the wrath of Achilles, but a picture of the war against Ilium. They have been worked into a certain conformity with the Achilleis, and " they belong to the same generation and state of society as the primitive Achilleis." Finally, Grote thinks that the Odyssey and Iliad belong to the same age, hut are not by the same author ; that the Odyssey is probably by a single author, the Iliad probably not. We may now see how far Grote has laid the difficulties raised by Wolf. The assumption that primitive poems must be short seems to break down under the attack made upon it by Grote and others. As for analogies drawn from other literatures, even wore the fact of a ballad origin for epics established, Homer's spiritual and intellectual superiority over the halladists makes comparison unsafe. Hut the other diiliculty raised by Wolf, vi/.. , as to the possibility of the composition of such poems as our Iliad and Odyssey in times when writing was unknown, is not answered by Grote. Everything Grote, says about the possibility of composing and transmitting long poems by means of the memory alone may be admitted, and must always be taken into account in any solution of the Homeric <[ue,-tion ; but Homer composed, as Grole admit ih ore was none bul for recitation although the Athenians in later time day listening to the performance of Ritiicc for the. recitation of the Il though the bare possibility of comp 38 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. the non-existence of a reading public leaves the difficulty raised by Wolf unsolved. But this failure to shake "Wolf's niain position, so far from weakening G rote's theory of the Iliad, rather strengthens it. If Wolf was right in denying the possibility of composing long poems in very early times, then Crete's Achilleis is a step in the right direction ; and as a solution of the problem how the Iliad as we have it arose, it is superior to Lachmann's lays. Grote's theory does what Lachmann's failed to do it explains the general consistency of the poem. But unless there is some external necessity compelling us to suppose that originally the Iliad must have been shorter than it now is, Grote's theory is open to the objection which may be alleged against all attempts to extract the original from the present Iliad it is subjec- tive. The weight assigned to discrepancies or to proofs of design will always depend on the critic : there is no external standard whereby to ascertain their real weight, and consequently no hope of settling the question. Since Grote, the most important "variety" of the Wolfian theory that has arisen is the view of Professor Paley. With Wolf, but more strongly than Wolf, he insists on the late date of writing, and on the still later date at which a reading public came into existence. But, unlike the Wolfians, he insists on the unity of the Iliad. Thus he reaches the conclusion that the Iliad is posterior to the growth of a reading public, and the latter he correctly dates, on various grounds, as extending from about B.C. 430 on. He does not seem to believe in an original nucleus aruund which other stories kept collecting, or in a theory of interpolations. The Iliad is not the fortuitous work of time, nor the deliberate work of successive generations, but the design and execution of a single mind working on ancient material. The Iliad, he says, may ' be aptly compared to a stained-glass window composed from a quantity of old materials, more or less detached and of different dates, but rearranged and lilled in with modern glazier's work, so as to form a har- monious whole, by some cunning artist who had an eye for unity of design, harmony of colour, and a general antique eil'i-et." The pro"fs of this; theory are to be found in the non- existence of a reading public before B. " Homer " do indeed occur; but Homer was a name used to cover nearly am thinu' written in hexameters. Professor Paley 's point is that references to our Homer are not found. EPIC POETRY : THE HOMERIC QUESTION. 39 display of acquaintance with Homer in Plato and later authors ; and, finally, in the language of Homer, which shows, both in grammar and vocabulary, a thorough mixture of old and new, of genuine and spurious archaisms, which seem to imply that the dialect was not a living or spoken, but a conventional one. The argument based by Mr. Paley on the evidence of works of art is one for specialists to discuss, and it is enough here to say that it is a question on which specialists disagree. The same may be said of the argument based on the evidence of language. But we may add that the words, formations, gram- matical usages, and the omissions of the digamma which Mr. Paley cites to show the late character of our Homer, have been paralleled by Dr. Hayman (in his edition of the Odyssey) in the olilest Greek literature that we possess; while Mr. Monro has pointed out (in his article on Homer in the Kncyclupvedia Jlrit'tniiii-a} the leading features which stamp the dialect of HOIIKT as the oldest form of the Greek language that we possess. The faet that Pindar and the Tragedians seem to have preferred to draw on the Cyclic Poets instead of on Homer for subjects, does not compel us to infer that our Homer was unknown to them. There are two good reasons to explain the fact. The first is one pointed out by Aristotle: the plots of the Iliad and Odyssey are so simple that they only admit of being dramatised in one or two ways. The second reason is that Pindar and the Tragedians were too wise to challenge comparison with Homer on his own ground, and were too artistic to endeavour to "paint the lily or gild refined gold." Finally, if Homer is, as Mr. 1'aley seems to maintain, a compilation, is the work of a jobber of ancient literature, is, in fact, a sham literary antique, there is only one period to which it could be assigned, and that is the post-classical period. In B.C. 420 nothing of the kind could become as popular as Homer undoubtedly was, as is shown by the fact that Antimaclms of Colophon did compose, an imitation epic, and the (Ireek public refused to be put oil' with such patchwork, lint our Homer, as Mr. 1'aley admits, was composed before post-classical times, and we may In; sure that in classical Greek literature the only period capable of pro- ducing a irreat epic was tin 4 epic period. Antimachus him-lf certainly did not compile our Homer, as Mr. Paley suggests, for we know from Porphyrius that he plagiarised our Homer. Theiv remains a ditliculty raised by \Yolf against the anti- quity of Home!' which we have left untouched that of under- standing how poems ;is long as the Iliad and Odyssey could have been recited. A single recitation, it is said, would nt 4O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. suffice. This is true ; and the inference is that the poems were designed to last through several recitations. This simple ex- planation lias long escaped recognition hecause we are apt to forget that all classical Greek literature was designed for re- citation, and that at different times the manner of recitation differed. In the times when an author's audience consisted of the whole body of citizens (in the time, e.g., of the drama or of choral lyric), an audience was only got together at long inter- vals, and therefore what was put before it had to be finished at a sitting. But in Homeric times the poet's audience con- sisted of the household of a chieftain such as Odysseus or of a king like Alcinous ; and this audience gathered together night after night. There is, therefore, nothing in the conditions under which epic poetry was produced to make the recitation of the Iliad and the Odyssey impossible. Attempts have frequently been made to show that one part of the Iliad or of the Odyssey is inconsistent with some other part, and therefore could not have been composed by the same author. But, in the first place, it is still more unlikely that an interpolator, whose first business would be to make his inter- polation harmonise "with the original, would make these mis- takes ; and next, there are inconsistencies to be found in Milton, Shakspere, Dante, Virgil, and novelists of all kinds, quite as groat as in Homer. A logical inconsistency goes for little in these questions; and a poetical inconsistency yet remains to be discovered in Homer. "We can only protest against the spirit in which some critics approach the greatest of poets. They examine the Homeric poems as they would a candidate's dissertation for a degree, and have no hesitation in rejecting the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey for not know- ing his Homer. The question whether the Iliad and the Odyssey are both the work of a single hand admits of no positive proof. If it could be demonstrated by internal evidence that they must belong to different ages, the question would be settled. I'.ut 1bero is nothing in the poems to show that they do not belong to the same age; and although we cannot say that (ircecf: was incapable of producing two poets possessing the marvellous genius required to produce such a poem as the Iliad <)] tlie Odvs-ey, it seems safer to adhere to the literary tradition, whi'-h is not on the whole likely to have been mistaken on Mich a point of capital importance, and which attributes both tin; Iliad and the < My.-scv to Homer. EPIC POETRY : THE HOMERIC QUESTION. APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III. READIXG, WRITING, AND PUBLICATION IN CLASSICAL GREEK TIMES. ALL alphabets and syllabaries, ex- cept the Sanskrit alphabet, seem to have had their origin in picture- writing. The idea of communicat- ing information by rough sketches of objects occurs sooner or later to most peoples. The Red Indians by means of sketches on bark can or could send simple messages to each other, as, e.g , the number of an advancing enemy. In these messages a man is drawn in much the same way as schoolboys draw men on a slate a big circle sur- mounted by a smaller one and rest- ing on two more or less perpendi- cular strokes. If the figure is represented with a hat, it stands for a white man ; if not, for a red man. The .signature and address are conveyed by sketches of the creatures which the chiefs have adopted as totems and taken their names from- The picture-writing of the Aztecs, though still sketch- ing, was capable of expressing more ideas and more abstract ideas than that of the Red Indians. This was the result of the continual use of picture-writing for the purposes of governing a large and heterogeneous empire and for recording its history. The next stage in the development is when the sketch comes to be re- garded not so much as a picture of the object depicted as the symbol of the r.ame of the <>bju-t ; and by the time the signification of the sketch has become conventionalised, the sketch has generally ceaat-d to have any great resemblance to the natur.il object, and is itself a con- ventional symbol. This stage is represented by the 214 ''radicals" iii ( "uitiese. These characters, which by themselves, and in composition with other marks, form the written symbols of every word in the lan- guage, are not letters, nor syllables, but each is a word. The next stage is reached when the character, hav- ing long represented merely the sound of the object's name, comes to stand for the sound of the first syllable only. In this stage writing consists of a collection of symbols representing the sound of syllables, that is, a syllabary. This i.s repre- sented by the cuneiform or arrow- headed inscriptions, which, like the Chinese " radicals," are descendants from sketches. The uniform and generally rectangular appearance of cuneiform inscriptions is a marked instance of the influence exercised by the nature of the writing material on the form of the writing itself. Straight strokes thicker at one end than at the other are the natural result of rapid writingwith a pointed instrument on clay. Using such writing materials, the Assyrians lol- lowed the line of least resistance and eliminated curves. Finally, the character which at first stood for the whole word and then for the first syllable came to stand for the first letter, and an alphabet was attained. We have illustrated the development of the alphabet trom the writing of various nations, but in Egyptian all these stages co-e.\i.-;. Some characters stand for a word, some for a syllable, and some lor a letter, thus clearly indicating tin- origin of alphabets. From the Ku'vptians the 1'hn-ni- cians obtained their alphabet, from the 1'liu-nieiaii-i the (irecks, iY"!ii the (ifecks the Homans, tVum them mod' rn Kui'op'-an nations. '1 he sourer f ru m whieh the various iMvt-k alphabets were derived i.-, indicated partly by tradition, fur the Gic< ks HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. attributed the alphabet to Cadmus, whose name is Semitic (" Kedem," Eastern), partly by the form of the letters themselves and partly by the names of the letters. When borrowed, the alphabet necessarily underwent some changes, since the Phoenician alphabet contained sym- bols of sounds not used by the Greeks (e.g., several sibilants), and in Greek there were vowel sounds not known to the Phoenicians. "We have, however, to do not with the history of the Greek alphabet, but its date. The names of the Greek letters which end in the "emphatic aleph " (contrast, e.g., beta, the Greek name for B, with the Hebrew bcth), show that the alphabet was bor- rowed from the northern Semites, those of Tyre and Sidon ; and it has been argued that the borrowing must belong to the period of the Phoenicians' naval and commercial supremacy over the Mediterranean. So, too, it lias been argued that the borrowing by the Italians from the Greeks must be referred to Graeco- Italic times, i.e., tlie time when the Greeks and Italians yet formed one people, lint in these remote ages we get out of our chronological depth, and we have no means of knowing, at any rate at present, what "must" have happened or when. It is better to say that these data are uncertain in them- selves and give a general presump- tion of antiquity to the introduction of the alphabet, which must, how- ever, wait upon better established facts. For these facts we may look either to ancient Greek authors themselves or to inscriptions. For instance, if Homer mentioned writ- ing, and the date of Homer were lixed, we should get a date for writ- ing. As a matter of fact, there is a well-known passage in the Iliad (vi. 169) in which it is said tliat Proitos sent Bellerophon to Lycia, " :uid gave him tokens of woe, graving in a golden tablet many deadly things, and bade him show these to Antei'i's father, that he might be slain." But, as we have seen, there are more ways of sending a message than by means of an alphabet ; so the passage is not conclusive. In the next place, the passage may have been tampered with ; and finally, as the date of Homer is vague, it does not help us much to date the alphabet. The difficulties in the way of utilising Homer to date the alpha- bet are applicable to all passages from ancient authors. When we go farther back than B.C. 500, the dates assigned to authors become hard to check ; and there is always the possibility which may or may not amount to a probability that the passage relied on may not be genuine. With inscriptions, how- ever, we are on safer grounds : they do not admit much of interpolation, and we may rely on their being now in the shape the action of time and weather excepted in which they came from the sculptor's hands. Forgery is, indeed, possible even on stone, but much less likely than in the case of MSS. But in- scriptions get destroyed, and the earlier their age the fewer survive. In the valley of the Kile, indeed, which has the least destructive climate in the world, inscriptions of enormous antiquity do of course survive, but it is not on the banks of the Kile that wo can expect to find Greek inscriptions. And yet it is there we iind the oldest inscription in Greek that is yet known or can be dated. On the banks of the Kile in Kubia is the temple of Abu Simbel. In the temple of Abu Simbel are huge statues of stone, and on the legs of the second colossus from the south are chipped the names, witti- cisms, and records of travellers of all ages, in alphabets known and un- known. The earliest of the Greek travellers who have thus left their names are a body of mercenaries. They seem to have formed part of the expedition which was led as far as Elephantine by King Psammatichos EPIC POETRY : THE HOMERIC QUESTION. 43 whether the first monarch of that name or his successor docs not appear. 1 From Elephantine they seem to have set out on a voyage of discovery up the river, and to have gone past Kerkis the locality of which cannot be fixed as far as the stream allowed, perhaps to the second cataract. On their return they put in at Abu Simbel, and on the left leg of the colossus inscribed the record of their bold voyage, llesides the common record, we find the names of various members of the detachment inscribed separately by those who wished at once to display their ability to write and to perpetuate to all time their con- nection with the expedition. This interesting inscription can be dated by two methods, which check each other, and thus give tolerable, certainty to the result. In the first place, the letters used, and their shape, show that the inscription is older than inscrip- tions, generieally similar, which aiv known to belong to about B.C. 540. For instance, in our inscrip- tion there is no special symbol for the long of the Creek alphabet, the onieira. One and the same symbol has to do duty for the long und for the short o. Inscriptions of li.c. 540 have acquired a special symbol for the omega. As we have already said, the Greeks, possessing a more extensive vowel system than the Phoenicians, had to modify the alphabet they borrowed ; and the late origin of the sign for the omega is betrayed by that letter's position in the Greek alphabet. As for the shape of the letters in the Abu Simbel inscription, the sign for x, instead of being made with four strokes, as in the sigma of the B.C. 540 inscriptions and that of the ordinary Greek alphabet (2), is made by means of three strokes only, which is known on other grounds to be the older form. Thus the epigraphie evidence makes the inscription to be some time older than B.C. 540. The evidence from the contents of the inscription places the date between n.C. 620- 600, according as we take the Psammatichos mentioned to be the first or the second king of that name. 3 AVe have, then, got a date for the existence of writing in Gree-je. In B.C. 600 the art of writing was so 1 A Hhodian pinax, discovered lately at Naukr.itis, which probably belongs to the time of 1'sammatichos II., shows epigraphie peculiarities resembling those of the Abu Simbel inscriptions. See Mr. E. A. Gardner in the Academy, No. 700. - This inscription, having a bearing on the Homeric question, has boon dis- credited. As for the epigraphie evidence, it Is said that it is inconclusive because against the evidences given above that the inscription belongs to B.C. Ooo, we have to set the fact that the writing runs from left to right, whereas it was only biter than this period that this direction was adopted. In the iK.-vt place, we have a distinct sign for ft it, which is again a later introduction. As for the contents, the fact that in the inscription there appears not only a King I'sammatichos, but a mercenary -the commander of the exploring detachment -of the same name, points to the inscription's being a " hoax. ' lint if we confine ourselves to the Ionic alphabet, the. only evidence we have whether the sign for <'tn was current, in B.C. f.w is our inscription. \Ve cannot reject it because we have no other of B.C. (x>\ If we go beyond the Ionic alphabet, we tind that in Thera this siuii was used about B.C. '"W. So too with regard to the direction of the wining: the left to ri_;ht direc- tion only became general in the tifth tentury )!.('., but exceptions before that period occur. This is one. As for the "hoax" theory, it implies :i knowledge of the early history of the Greek alphabet which probably n,,t even a learned Creek possessed, and may be on tiie whole safely denied to a practical joker. 44 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. well established in Greece that in a detachment of mercenaries a cer- tain number could write. There is, however, another point to notice : the names of these soldiers show that they came from different parts of Greece, some being lonians, others Dorians ; but all use the same Ionic alphabet. This means that not only was writing well enough established for Greeks from all parts of Greece to possess the art, but also that since the intro- duction of writing enough time had elapsed for the Ionic alphabet to spread and to become common amongst theDorian-speaking peoples in the south-west of Asia .Minor. What amount of time we ought to allow for thess tilings to come about, it is impossible to say. Low races at the present day pick up writing very quickly from our colonists ; and amongst the quick- witted Greeks it would spread very rapidly. Instead of losing our- selves in conjectures, let us look for evidence. Since writing had in B.C. 600 been known for some time in Greece, a passage in a Greek author older than B.C. 600 that refers to writing is not, from the mere fact of such reference, suspicious. Now in Ar- chilochus, who is generally supposed roughly to have lived about B.C. 700, there is a reference to writing. Archiloehus had a great faculty for saying unpleasant things, and he ued fables of his own invention with great effect. With regard to one of these fables he speaks meta- phorically of "a grievous syta/&" A s/.-i/t'ile was a stall' on which a strip of leather for writing pur- poses was rolled slant-wise. A lues-age was then written on the leather ; the leather was then un- rolled and given to the messenger. Now if the messenger were inter- reptril. the message could not be deciphered, for only when the I'-ather was rolled on a stall' pre- cisely the same si/e as the proper one would the letters come riu'lit. Such a staff, of course, the recipient by arrangement possessed. This primitive method of cipher con- tinued to be used a long time by the Spartans for conveying state messages. To return to Archilo- ehus : the leather from the skytal& was without the staff an enigma ; the key to the enigma was tho zkytale. The fable of Archiloehus was to outward appearance innocent of any recondite meaning, but was a "grievous skytale" for the person attacked. It seems reasonable to accept this passage as indicating a knowledge of writing in Greece about B.C. 700. This date allows a century for the diffusion of the art and the spread of the Ionic alphabet which are implied by the Abu Simbel inscrip- tion ; and the passage does not prove too much. It does not im- ply even that Archiloehus himself could write. The invention or in- troduction was sufficiently novel and admirable to furnish a poet with a metaphor ; and the skytalS was probably then, as in later times, a governmental institution. Thus the mention of a tkytide accords with the probable supposition that writing was used for governmental purposes before it became common among the people. Dut the knowledge that writing was known in Greece in B.C. 700 is not sufficient for our purpose. It may have been a government monopoly, or at any rate, so little known as to be useless for literary purposes. What we want to know is first when a reading public ex- isted. We must, however, realise that such a reading public as exists at the present time was never known in antiquity, for two reasons : tii>t, the population, and consequently the possible number of readers, was much less in the city-Mates of the ancient world than in the nation- states of modern history ; secondly, ancient authors could not reach their public by any means of pub- lication to be lompared with the EPIC POETRY : THE HOMERIC QUESTION. 45 printing-press. Further, the means of attaining publicity were more restricted in classical Greek times than in Koine. The large number of literary slaves in Rome made the multiplication of manuscripts easy, and cheapened and extended their sale. In Greece, multiplica- tion was less rapid and circulation more restricted. Recognising then the limited extent of the Greek reading public in classical times, we have to see what evidence there is for its existence at all ; and we may regard its existence as satis- factorily proved when we find trade in books going on. Now we tind a book-market ' mentioned in Eupolis, that is to say, existing between B.C. 430 and B.C. 405. The trade in books thus indicated may also be illustrated by a passage from Xeno- phon (who lived about B.C. 444- 35_sA in which he says, that from a ship wrecked at Salmydessus on the 1'ontus many books - were re- covered. We may therefore take it as reasonably proved that a trade in books existed at the end of the fifth century B.C. Other in- dications of a reading public may be lound in Aristophanes, who in the Taiist(r, 3 speaking of a young man gone wrung, ascribes his ruin to "a book, or Prodicus, or bad company." But we may go a little farther back. In fragments of the old comedy we find as terms of abuse such expressions as " an un- lettered man," "a man who docs not know his A, B, C." 4 And the extent of education thus implied to exist about B.C. 450 cannot he regarded with su-pieion when we find in Herodotus 5 that boys' schools existed in Chios in the time of Histiaeus, say about B.C. 500. Before, however, inferring the ex- istence of a reading public in B.C. 500, we must look rather more closely at our evidence. Reading and writing were taught B.C. 500, and to be unable to read and write was, half a century later, a thing to he ashamed of. But this does not of itself prove the existence of a reading public. Enough education to be able to keep accounts, to rend public notices, to correspond with friends or business agents, may have been in the possession of every free Athenian in the period B.C. 500 to B.C. 450, and the want of such education may have caused a man to be sneered at ; but this does nut prove the habitof reading literature. There is, however, a passage in the 1 ov ra 3i3\i' ut'ia, Meineke, F. C. ii. 550. 2 TroXXcu fii3\oi. yeypa/j.fj.tva.1, An. \ II. v. 14. 3 Fr. 3, 7} ,ji.J\ioi> OL((p6opfV 7} HpJciKos 77 T&V d5o\(O"x_wi> els ye ns. This pass tu'i', and tin; general proofs th;it reading was common in Aristophanes' time, make it improvable that the passage in the /'Vo.'.''S HM. Ji3\iui> r i\uiv ?KaV Tra\ai ffocfiSiv di'S/iQi', oi's tKftvoi Ka.Tf\nrov iv ^(.iXiois -,/idC i- crfs, di'<- \i77o.')' noii'rj civ 7015 i\ots Oifpxo/j.at, Kui ai> ~i oi.I'uti' d-,af'ov (K\f~ t ii u.i ('a. It seems from this that not only were Soei.ites ami h s friends in the habit of rca-iin^ together, but that the habit, of writinir books \\as svillicielitly we'll tixfd for tiiem to ascribe to it coiisiih-i able ant:i|uity. Aliotiier pa-ssago. I'iatu, .-!/ i//. 26 I), which l:as been taken to show that the physical treatises of A 11:1 \auoras wvre on sale in the theatre (at other times than those of theatrical performances) is uncertain, and lias been explained to refer to theatrical j.ri'ur.iiii mes. 4 'AraXoa.il/7os. &*jpduu.a.Tos. - 1 vi. 27, TraiJt ^ipa.fjLf.idTC'. JiSaffKOfJ.tVQliTi ci'tTTurt i] t'x>. EPIC POETRY : THE HOMERIC QUESTION. 47 same size might be fastened together by means of a string run through holes in the tablets. Now, on a number of the.se dcltoi an author might write his work, but to mul- tiply and circulate copies of his productions would be so cumbrous that it is difficult to believe that any one sought or gained publicity by such means. Still it must bo remembered that the Assyrians car- ried on business and formed large libraries out of even more unpro- mising writing materials slabs of clay. When we tind that the per- sons wishing to consult a book in an Assyrian library are requested to write the name of the book and its author on a proper piece of clay and hand it in to the librarian, we must obviously get rid of some of our preconceived notions as to the material difficulties in the way of circulating waxed tablets. But although waxed tablets may have been at one time the best means the Greeks had of commit- ting their thoughts to writing, they were for literary purposes eventually superseded by papyrus, on which the scribe wrote with a reed-pen, cit'aiiins, 1 and ink, melan,* out of an inkstand, mflanodochcion. 3 These were materials much more adapted for literary purposes ; and if we as- sume that authors did not begin to circulate copies of their works until papyrus was common in Greece, and if we can dale the introduction of papyrus, then we shall have a date before whirh we may perhaps deny the multiplication and circulation ol manuscripts. Xow papyrus was known and used for writing pur- poses in Egypt from times of the greatest antiquity ; and it has been assumed that as soon as the Greeks had any commerce with Egypt they would at once adopt this conveni- ent writing material and import it largely. This may have been the case, but, in the absence of evidence to show that it was, we ought not to build on the supposition. We must look for something more trust- worthy, and this we find in Hero- dotus. In a chapter in which he traces the origin and hi-tory of the Greek alphabet in a manner shown by recent epigraphical researches to be correct, Herodotus declares that from of old 4 tlie lonians had used papyrus for writing purposes, l-.vcn it' we decline to trust Herodotus' information on this point, we must at any rate admit that papyrus was so much in use in his day that there seemed to him nothing improbable in its having been in use for a long time among the Greeks. That is to say, papyrus was well established in B.C. 450. Hut between Herodotus, n.e. 450, and Theognis, B.C. 550, is a century. In B.C. 450 the material conditions admitted of the multiplication and circulation of works. In B.C. ^50 they admitted at least, of an author's committing his works to writing, but whether at this time an author had to use waxed tablets or could use papyrus, we can hardly say. But this century is precisely the period <>!' the rise of prose literature in Greece, and it may be said that this fact in itself implies that litera- 1 KaXauoj. " rb ^e\ai>. 3 fj.eXavoSo'xeioi'. 4 v. 58, KO.I raj 8i'3\o\is SirpOfpas KaX/ot'tn curb roO TraXaiou ol "Iwi/es, on KOTf (v cnrdi'i ^i''.i\uv ixptwi'TO 5i(t>'Jipr]sed themselves? To find an answer we must go to the Homeric poems themselves. "Whatever the origin and growth of these poems, all inquirers admit that there is embodied in them n.ueh that is ancient and much that relleets the life and manners ol the tine before B.C. 700. We 'nay therefore reasonably seek to find oil! from them the position of poc's in the e irliesl 1 ini'-.-t. Now we tin 1 haix : ne-nt ioned sever d times in the ( idyssey. and they are always eoiiceivud oi as att u-le'd to a LTieut house df a royal cuiirt : and they are always ivpt. seiited as re- citing their poems over the con- clusion of a meal. Thus, attached to the court of King Alcinous was the minstrel Demodocus, " whom the Muse loved dearly, and she gave him both good and evil ; of his sight she reft him, but granted him sweet song." In the house of Odysseus there was Phemius the minstrel ; and King Agamemnon left his wife Clytemestra under the care of a minstrel," whom the son of Atreus straitly charged, as he went to Troy, to have a care of his wife." The audience, therefore, to which the minstrel addressed himself was that to be found in a great house or a royal court. Odysseus says to King Alcinous, " Nay, as for me, I say that there is no more gracious or perfect delight than when a whole people make merry, and the men sit orderly at feast in the halls and listen to the singer, and tables by them are laden with bread and flesh, and a wine-bearer drawing the wine serves it round and pours it into the cups." To his audience the minstrel might sing either lays he had learnt from others or his own poems. Phemius says, " None has taught me but myself, and tin; god has put into my heart all man- ner of lays, and methinks I sing to thee as a god. " Such being the audience for which an epic pout composed, and such the conditions under which he pro- duced his work, the question now arises whether granted a pout cap- able, of composing the Iliad or the, Odyssey, and of carrying the poem in his head there is anything in these conditions to mak*- the de- livery of so long a poem impossible Obviously it would be impo. ibie, to finish the ivcita! ion in a single evening; and Wolf argued that this proved that the |;j...d and (Mvss'-y could not have been origi- nally of anything like their piv-.-nt length. I'.ut is it impossible, to suppose th it tie' poet look up the thread of his story one evening \\ here he ii.id dro;i: .ed ii i he piwi- D HISTOKY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ous evening ? If it is possible for us to put down a book one day and take it up again the next, and not lose the thread of the story, there is no difficulty in imagining the epic poet's audience listening one night to a story commenced on some previous night. 1 The Arabians, at any rate, found nothing impossible in supposing a Caliph listening to tales in this way lor a thousand and one nights. The ancient Greek seems to have experienced the same temptation as the modern novel- reader to sit up all night over an interesting work, for when Odysseus breaks otf relating his adventures to the Phseacians on the ground that it was time for sleep, Aleinous, who compares him to a minstrel, says, " Behold the night is of great length, unspeakable, and the time for sleep in the hall is not yet ; tell me therefore of those wondrous deeds. I could abide even till the bright dawn, so long as thou couldst endure to rehearse me these woes of thine in the hall." And if Odysseus proceeds to finish his tale, it is not because the Phseacians would have refused to listen to its conclusion the following evening, but because he wished to return to Ithaca as soon as he might. So far then as concerns the audi- ence and the manner of reciting his works, the epic poet might well liave composed a poem too long to be finish >d in a single sitting. And Ave have seen that poems of great length can be composed and trans- mitted without the aid of writing. It seems, therefore, that the difficul- ties raised by Wolf against the com- position of the Iliad and the Odys- sey in their present form are not sufficiently great to exclude the hy- pothesis that we' have the Homeric poems substantially as they were originally composed. This, how- ever, is only a negative conclusion ; when the poems were as a matter ot' fact composed, and whether since then they have remained substanti- ally unaltered, are questions which have yet to be answered. There remain a couple of subjects to be briefly noticed before this chapter can be completed. First, there is the method of recitation in post- epic times ; second, the question by whom were the poems transmitted ? So long as the royal and aristo- cratic form of society described in the Homeric poems existed, so long the mode of recitation also described in Homer would last. I5ut with changes in the social and political systems of Greece, changes would also come about in the audience and the manner of addressing the audi- ence. The epic age was succeeded by the period of lyric poetry, and the lyric poets fall roughly into the two classes of poets who composed personal lyrics designed for recita- tion before the circle of their own aristocratic friends, and of poets who composed choral lyrics to be performed at the expense of a tyrant or a government before an audience consisting, not of a narrow circle, but of the whole population of the city. The political conditions that rendered possible the oligarchical society for which personal lyrics were composed differed from those described in Homer. Royalty had disappeared, and the aristocracy were engaged in a struggle with the people for their privileges ; but the audiences in an aristocracy wc.ro but little different from those in the regal times of Homer. They were more restricted : the royal hospitality of old times had given way to the exclusive narrowness of good society ; and the class interests of the audience, being shared by the poet, who was himself a member of F.riC POETRY : THE HOMERIC QUESTION. their society, tended to injuriously affect, both directly and by the re- action of audience on author, the character of the lyrics. But in the main, the conditions under which epics were recited re- mained the same as in the previous period, though, as the epic age was over, the reciters were no longer authors, or at any rate authors of epics. But when oligarchy was overthrown by either a tyrant or a democracy, the nature of the de- mand for epic recitation changed, and along with it the character of the supply. Tyrants and demo- cracies alike catered for the amuse- ment, not of a restricted circle, but of the whole free population of a city. This is shown by the char- acter of the literature which suc- ceeded personal lyrics. The very essence of choral lyric is. that it was performed in public on the occasion of some public festival, whether of religious worship or of general re- joicing over the honour brought to the city by the triumph of some citizen at one of the national games of (j recce. Now, whereas a royal household or a circle of friends might be gathered together night after night, and thus give the epic poet the opportunity of reciting a poem which required several sit- tings for its recitation in full, the whole population of a city could only be gathered together from time to time, and the occasions were separated by periods too long to admit of a recitation being re- sumed, when interrupted by the dispersal of the audience lor an un- certain period. Tile result of this change in the conditions was, as wn have said, a change in the method of reritation. An epic poem was no lunger recited as a whole, but those parts of it. \\hich could lie detached, and which were tolerably complete in themselves, were re- cited at public festivals. The por- tions thus chosen were called "rhapsodies," and those who de- claimed them were called " rhap- sodists." The word " rhapsodist " simply means " singer of verses." 1 The inferences just drawn from the nature of the lyric poety of the sixth century B.C. as to the method of reciting epic poetry in that cen- tury are confirmed in two ways. In the iirst place, we know on other evidence that rhapsodies were por- tions of a length suitable for recita- tion at public festivals ; and in the next, we find it is precisely in the sixth century that rhapsodists tirst begin to be known. The earliest notice of rhapsodists is the mention of them in Herodotus 2 as existing in Sicyon in the time of the tyrant Cleist'henes (B.C. 600-560). Prizes were offered at festivals by the vari- ous cities of Greece to the rhapsodist who declaimed best ; and conse- quently there soon rose a class of professional rhapsodists, who tra- velled from place to place to de- claim epic poetry. The change which thus came over the mode of recitation is easy to understand, and is still testified to by the Eng- lish meaning of the word "rhap- sody." Reading in a room to a limited audience is a much more subdued performance than is decla- mation in the open air to a large number of people ; and we know that the declamation of the rhapso- dists was theatrical and sensational, effects being sought after by gesture and inflection of the voice, which wefti unknown in earlier times, and Were condemned by good critics in later periods. The rhapsodists continued to declaim epic poetry until the latest classical times ; and :it Athens at least their recitation of Homer, who alone of poets was HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. allowed to be recited at the Pana- thenaea, was regulated by law, pro- bably in the iii'th century B.C. The rhapsodists contending at the fes- tival, if left to choose their own selections, would probably all have chosen much the same pieces those they knew the audience liked best. The law therefore determined that the competitors should follow the order of the poem, and that one rhapsodist should take up the reci- tation where the last one left off. Thus the audience, instead of hearing the same piece over and over again, heard a considerable part, if not the whole of the poem. It remains for us now, having seen the way in which epic poetry was recited in post-epic times, to briefly consider the way in which it was transmitted. During most, if not all of the period of the rhapsodists, writing was probably sufficiently developed in Greece for epic poetry to be safely transmitted on tablets or papyrus ; so that we need not trust to the memory of the rhap- sodists for the transmission of epics. But there remains the time before the rhapsodists, before B.C. 600 ; and to account for the transmis- sion of Homer, the Homcridte, sons of Homer, have been much used. They have also been used to account for the expansion of the "original" Iliad and Odyssey to their present length ; and they have further been used to account for Homer himself. It has been supposed, that is to say, that the Homeridse were a guild of epic poets, working on common artistic methods and com- mon literary principles, who jointly produced epi<-s winch they ascribed to the mythical founder of their guild, Homer. "We may compare them, iu their descent from a mythical eponymous foiindi-r, to the hereditary he-raids at Sparta, who clainn-d to be descended from the hero Talthybius. In their common literary methods we might compare them to the " school " of yEschylus, which consisted of dra- matists descended from the great tragedian, but that it is incorrect to say though it is said that the " school " of JEschylus worked on principles common to themselves and their ancestor. With regard to the Homcridse, we have first to say, that though they may account for the trans- mission of Homer, they leave un- solved the problem how the other epic poets managed to transmit their works. In the next place, we must know who and what the Homeridse were, for the word is used in different senses apparently by ancient writers. By Pindar it is used as equivalent to rhapsodists, and by 1'lato as meaning students of Homer. Strabo (14. 64.5) says the Homcridte were people who lived in Chios, and were so called because they were relatives of Homer. Xow if this were all the evidence there were to go upon, it would be insufficient ; for here we have no mention ol a guild, nothing to show that the soi-disant descen- dants of Homer wrote poetry of any kind, nothing but the fact that there were people living in Chios who claimed kinship with the great poet, and that students of Homer were called Homeridae. AY hat then is there to supply these missing links '( The statement of a scholiast. According to the scholion on the passage of Pindar above referred to (Xein. ii. i), the descendants of Homer inherited and .sang his poems. These Homeridie were sub- sequently called rhapsodists, and introduced many ver>cs into the poems. 1 What is the worth of a scholiast ? A scholiast was any per- son who wrote scholia or notes on the margin of a manuscript of an ancient EPIC POETRY : THE HOMERIC QUESTION. 53 author, and some scholia are as Into ng A. i>. i_)00or A.I). 1500. ]>ein<,' of vari- ous dates and of very various value, scholiasts are now only regarded as trustworthy .so far as they can 1m supposed to In: quoting from good authorities ; their own conjectures are not to be relied on. Now in the srholion we are concerned with, there is no indication that the scholiast had before him any other authorities than those we possess ; and there is every indication that lie took the very easy chance which was given him of making a con- jecture of his own. So far as negative evidence has any value, it is against this conjecture. The scholia to the Iliad, which are valu- able simply because they contain many quotations from Aristarehus, the famous editor of Homer, and from other Alexandrine critics, never mention the Homemkc ; and when they mention that a verse was suspected or rejected in anti- quity, they never attribute the spu- rious verso to the authorship of a rhaps de or a Homerides. Not only is the evidence for a literary guild of Homerid;c weak, and not only is the assumption of such a guild inadequate to explain the transmission of the body of epic poetry which was by other authors; than the real or supposed Homer; it does not even account for the transmission of the Homeric poems. If they were the hereditary property of a guild re>ideiit in Chios, and if it is only by means ot such a lite- r.iry organisation that we can ex- plain the transmission uf ll"mer in the absenee of wri;iir_', then the Homeric poems should only have b^en known in Chios. Their spread throughout ' lr-.'1'ce remains a greater mystery than ever. l'>ut it iray be said ;i considerable body of epics whether Homerie or n on- Homeric was transmitted somehow, and if not by some such literary organisa- tion, then in what wav ? To this we may reply, that the diffusion of epic poetry, while it negatives the supposition of local guilds, also indicates a free and spontaneous cultivation of epic poetry, not a mechanical system of oral teaching designed to secure the perpetuation of literature. From the way in which Phemius prides himself in the Odyssey on composing original poems, it may be inferred that other minstrels recited more poems by other composers than works of their own ; and this is confirmed by the scenes in Alcinons' palace where Demodocus is called on for lays already known to his audience. We may conjecture, then, that in epic times a poet, before beginning to compose original works, associ- ated by a natural tendency with other poets, and stored his mind with the epic poetry which was in part their work ami partly learnt by them from older poets. This may explain the transmission of epic poetry. It will also explain its dill'usion ; for a minstrel who travelled from place to place would doubtless gladly learn and gladly teach other minstrels whom he met. E\vn when the epic age was over and lyric poetry took the place uf epic, the mode of transmission and ditlusion seems, until the rhap- sodists arose, to have been mueh the same. Poets, though they no longer wrote epies. deehtjmed epie poetry and sought mueh of their inspiration from it. The intlu- enee of epic poetry over the lyric poet Stesichorus, for instance, was unduly strong ; while 'IVrpander. Clonas, Poiyniiiestus. and other early lyric poets are mentioned ' as declaiming epic. In tine, the natural ami obvious cultivation of poetry by free communication and personal contaet betwo n poets in time< when writing was not used for literary purposes, sullices to explain the tr.inbini.ssion and ditlusion of 1 Plutarch dc Mi 54 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CHAPTER IV. THE EPIC CYCLE. THERE were other epic poets in early times besides Homer. Their works, though they have not reached us, were preserved until the time of the Alexandrian grammarians, and probably for some centuries later. Some of these writers took for their subject incidents from the history of the expedition against Thebes ; others incidents from the Trojan war. At some time or other the poems dealing with the Trojan war were arranged in the order of the events they narrated ; the same thing was done with those which related the Thcban war, and the two sets of p >ems together formed an epic cycle, so called apparently because it embraced the whole round of the mythological events related in epic poetry. Then in later times, when readers did not care to wade through all these poems, and yet wished to possess an acquaintance with the mythological events related in them, a pro.se summary of their contents was drawn up. This prose " epic cycle " began at the beginning of all things, with the wedding of Heaven and Earth, from whom were born the Cyclops, and related the origin, course, and consequences of the Theban and Trojan war?, iinishing with the death of Odysseus, unwittingly killed by his son Telegonus. This prose summary was the work of 1'roclus, but whether of the neo- Platonic philosopher of that name, who lived in Constantinople about A.D. 450, or of the tutor of Marcus Aurelius, is somewhat uncertain. It seem?, however, more probable that the latter should be the author than that a neo-Platonic philosopher should have condensed the epic poets into a manual of mytho- logy ; and accordingly Eutychius Proclus of Sicea is generally regarded as the author. As it i.s from the summary of Proclus that we derive our chief knowledge of the poems contained in the Trojan cycle, we will give a brief account of the contents of Proclus' work, as it has come down to us. The principal fragment of his sum- mary was found prefixed to some of the manuscripts of Homer. It begins with the epic called the Cypna. "\Vhy the poem was called the Cyjiria we cannot now tell. It may have been because the rape of Helen, which is the main subject of the poem, was the work of the Cyprian goddess Aphrodite, or because the author of the poem was born at Cyprus. But who was the author is also uncertain: some ascribed the poem to Homer, EPIC POETRY : THE EPIC CYCLE. 5 5 but Aristotle expressly denies the Homeric authorship of tho work ; according to others, Stasinus or Hegesias was the author. This is a point which cannot be settled : let us turn to the con- tents of the poem. Once on a time Zeus took counsel \vith Thetis how the earth, overcrowded with men, might he relieved of her burden, and he resolved that there should be a great war, the Trojan war. Therefore Thetis was married to Peleus, and from thorn was born the hero of the Iliad, Achilles. At tho marriage-feast the goddess of strife, Eris, appeared, and by the golden apple which she gave to be awarded to the fairest, brought the three goddesses Athene, Here, and Aphrodite to contend about their beauty. They appointed Paris (or Alexander) to decide between them, and, won over by the promise of the fairest of wives, he awarded the apple to Aphrodite. She then bade .Eneas set sail with Paris from Troy for Greece ; and, in spite of the prophecies of Helenus and Cassandra, they departed. In Sparta they were entertained by Menelaus, the husband of Helen, the fairest woman in Greece. During the absence of Menelaus Paris carried off Helen. A storm first drove them to Sidon, which Paris captured, and thence they went to Troy. At this point in the poem an episode seems to have been introduced concern- ing the adventures of Helen's brothers, Castor and Polydeuces, relating the death of the former and the alternate immorta- lity conferred on them by Zeus. After this, Iris, the messenger of the gods, announced to Menelaus the flight of Helen, and Menelaus along with Agamemnon took steps to gather an army together to recover her by force of arms. First Menelaus went to Xe.-tor, who made a long speech about Epopeiis and tho daughter <>f Lycus, about (F.dimis and the madness of Heracles, and about Theseus and Ariadne. Then they gathered together the chieftains of Greece, except < >' 1 ysS'-US, who, foivse. ;!)'; tl,,. duration of the war, feigned to be. mad. but was found out by tin 1 device of Palamedes, <>n whose sii-_'u'estion the infant T-Ie- maehus was placed in th>.' furrow where ()dy~s<'iis wa< ploughing. The expedition then, after prophecies from ( 'alchas, set sail, and c.iine to Teuthrania, which they sacked. 1 There Telepimp killed Thersander, the son of I'olvneices, and was him.-eif wounded by Achiile-. AVhen the Greeks proceeded on their voyage they were caught by a storm. Achilles was carried to Scyrus, when' he wedded PJeidauieia : and on his return to Argo< ho healed 56 HISTORY OF GEEEK LITERATURE, Telephus in order that he might guide the Greeks to Troy. The expedition, scattered by the storm, again assembled at Aulis; but while there, Agamemnon killed one of the deer sacred to Artemis, and the goddess in vengeance detained the fleet by contrary winds. When Calchas informed the Greeks that the anger of the goddess could only be appeased by the sacrifice of Iphigcnia, the daughter of Agamemnon, she was brought to Aulis on the pretext that she was to be wedded to Achilles, and then was offered as a victim. But Artemis substituted a deer, and carried off Iphigenia to Tauri, making her immortal. Then the Greeks, obtaining fair weather, set sail. They touched at Tenedos, where Philoctetes was bitten by a hydra, and in consequence of the offensive nature of the wound the Greeks abandoned him on the isle of Lemnos. On their arrival at the land of Troy, Achilles quarrelled with Agamemnon on a point of precedence, and the Trojans at first repelled the Greeks, Hector slaying Protesilaus. But Achilles joined the fray and the Trojans were defeated. The Greeks then opened negotia- tions with the Trojan?, demanding back Helen and the wealth she had carried off. The Trojans rejected the demands, and the. Greeks proceeded to ravage the country. At this time Achilles was desirous of seeing Helen, and Thetis and Aphro- dite brought them together. The siege did not advance, and the mass of the army longed to return home, but Achilles pre- vented them. They then continued devastating and plunder- ing, and amongst the spoils Briseis fell to the lot of Achilles, Chryseis to Agamemnon. There then follows the death of Palamed'-s, the resolve of Zeus to assi.-t the Trojans by with- drawing Achilles from the fighting, and a catalogue of the Trojan ;dlies. The L'n'jiiia was followed by the Iliad of Homer, and the, next poem in the cycle was the A : .1li ///y //.-. which took up the story where the Iliad left it. The A : Jln<>iii* was by Arctinns of Miletus, the greatest of th" epic poets after Homer. His dale is made by the ehrnnologists to be ab^ut 776 i;.c. After the death and burial of lli'rtr. the A:na/.<>n IVnthesilea. the daughter of Ares, came to assi.-t the Trojans, and was killed by Achillas. The Trojans, by the gm-d otiices of Achilles, were allowed to bury the heroine, and this gave Thersites occasion to speak evil of Achilles and Pent hesilea, Knraircd at this, Achilles slew Thersites with a bl<.w from his list, and hence arose dissension in the Gieek army. In the end, Achilles sailed to Ler-bos, and there having sacrificed to Apollo, Artemis, and Leto, he was purified frm the guilt of blood by Odysseus. EPIC POETRY: THE EPJC CYCLE. 57 After this, Memnon, son of Eos, the dawn, clad in armour made by llepha-stus, came to the assistance of the Trojans. Thetis foretold to Achilles the doom which awaited him if he killed Mem nun ; but when Aiitilochus, the friend of Achilles, had been slain by Memnon, Achilles in vengeance killed Memnon, who was conveyed away by his mother, Los, and made immortal by Zeus. Achilles routed the Trojans and chased them into the city, whore he fell by the hands of 1'aris and Apollo. A fierce light arose over the body of the Greek hero, which was at last carried back to the ships by Odysseus, whilst Ajax kept oil' the foe. Then Antilochus was buried, and lamentation was made over Achilles by Thetis and her nymphs. "When the body was placed on the pyre, Thetis convoyed it. a\vay to the isle Leuce ; the Greeks erected a mound and held funeral Barnes in honour of Achillas ; and at these panics, in which the divine armour of Achilles was oip' of the prizes. Odysseus and Ajax contended for the armour, which was awarded to <>dysseus. The next poem is the Little Ilia'?. It is generally asso- ciated with the name of Lesches, who was said to belong to Lesbos, litit Aristotle prefers to speak of the author of the Little Iliail without pretending to know his name, and it is therefore probable that he thought there was no authority for as.-igning the poem to Lesches. This is confirmed by the fact that Hellanicus of Lesbos, who on patriotic grounds would pro- bably have credited his fellow-countryman with the author- ship if there had been any excuse, for doing so, attributes the work to Cin.Tthon of Sparta. Further, it has been conjec- tured that Lesches is not a proper name, but is derived from the word A*.- 1 //'', a market, and meant, merely the man who saii'_' in the market to the assembled people. that the award of Achilles' divine le to Athene. Ajax, in his an^er at ireference shown to ( >dy.-si-u~. eh leltains ; but At heiie sen! lew sheep tr men, and when ic killed himself. nus. bv means < >f 58 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. became the wife of his brother, Deiphobus. At this point in the poem yet new characters are brought on the scene. Odys- seus fetched Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, from Seyms, and gave to him his father's divine armour. For the Trojans, a fresh hero appeared in Eurypylus, the son of Telephus. Neop- tolemus and Eurypylus fight as their fathers had (in the Cypria) fought before them, and Eurypylus is slain. Mean- while Epens, inspired by Athene, contrives the famous wooden horse, Odysseus, having mutilated and disguised himself, steals into Troy to gather information, and though recognised by Helen, returns in safety. After this, in company with Diomede, he succeeded in entering Troy and carrying oil' the Palladium, or image of Pallas, whicli as long as it was in the possession of the Trojans secured Troy from overthrow. Then picked men of the Greeks were shut up in a wooden horse ; the rest of the army burnt their tents and sailed away, as though they had raised the siege. But they only went as far away as Tenedos. The Trojans in their joy at the end of the war pulled down part of their wall to admit the horse into the city, and feasted and rejoiced because they had defeated the Greeks. Proclus says that the Little Iliad was followed by the Sack of Troy, the work of Arctinus of Miletus. According to Arctinus, the Trojans at first were doubtful about the hoi-se. Some proposed to throw it over a precipice, others to burn it, others to place it as an offering to Athene in the temple of the goddess. The last view prevailed, and the Trojans made merry. Laocoon, who had urged the destruction of the horse, was killed by two .serpents that came out of the sea ; and /Eneas, who had supported Laocoon in his opposition to the reception of the horse into the city, withdrew with his followers to Ida. Sinon, a Greek, who had gained entrance into Troy by a stratagem, then gave the signal to the Greek fleet by a torch. The Greeks returned, and Troy was simultaneously attacked from without by the main body, and from within by those who had gained admittance by means of the horse. Neoptolemus slew Priam at the altar of Zeus : Menelaus killed .Deiphobus and carried off Helen to the ships. Cassandra, daughter of Priam, fled to the temple of Athene, and, still clinging to the image of the goddess, was dragged away by Ajax Oileus. Dismayed at this reckless impiety, his fellow- soldiers would have stoned Ajax to death, but that he fled for protection to the altar of the very gddess he had offended ; and therefore, when the Greeks sailed away, Athene devised destruction for them on the sea. Astyauax, the little sou EPIC POETRY : THE EPIC CYCLE. 5 9 of Hector and Andromache, was killed by the advice, if not the. hand, of Odysseus; and Andromache became the prize, of Xeoptolemus. Then the city was burnt, and Polyxena slaughtered on the tomb of Achilles as an offering to the hero's ghost. The tiark or' Trmj was followed by the, Nostni, or "The Return," or, as it was sometimes called, "The Return of the Atrid.T.'' l Proclus calls the author Agias ; Pausanias, Ilegias. Kustathius says he was a C'olophonian. It seems probable that there were several poems called the IMur/i. The one sum- marised by Proclus takes up the story when; the Sark of Troy left it. The wrath of Athene, roused by the impiety of Ajax Oileus, and extending to all the (1 reeks because they failed to punish Ajax, now begins to manifest itself. First, she caused the two sons of Atreus to quarrel about setting sail : Agamemnon stayed to appease Athene, but Menelaus set sail, following the example of I tjomede and Nestor, who reached their homes in safety. Menelaus, however, lost all his ships but live, and then was driven to Iv_rypt. Calchas the seer, Leontes, and Poly- poetes, went on foot to Colophon, 2 and there buried Teiresias. When Agamemnon was about to sail, the ghost of Achilles appeared and warned him, but in vain, of his doom. There next follows the storm in which Ajax perished. Xeoptolemus, by the advice of Thetis, returns by land, meeting Odysseus in Marom-ia ; and eventually, after burying his father's old friend, the aged knight Phu-nix, returns to his grandfather, Peleus. The poem concludes with the murder of Agamemnon by yiv-iisthus and Clytemestra : the vengeance taken by Orestes and I'yl.des, and the return of Menclau- home. Finaily. the tale or story of ibnlil r,. ( Idyssey cloM-ly, tal VI/ , \\\{\\ I he their relatives, am 11, e!V. |[, received a Agamcdcs, accomi>li>h '/''/, ,/,1/tin attached it-elf t 60 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. of war, however, routed Odysseus' army, but then was fought by Athene, until Apollo intervened. After the death of Calli- dice, Polypoetes, the son of Odysseus, inherited the kingdom, and Odysseus returned to Ithaca. Meanwhile Telegonus, the son of Odysseus by Circe, had sailed from ^Eaea in quest of his father, and had come to Ithaca. He was ravaging the island when Odysseus came to the assistance of the Ithacans and was killed by Telegonus. Then Telegonus having discovered who it was he had slain, took the body of Odysseus, with Telemachus and Penelope, to his mother Circe. She made them immortal Telegonus married Penelope, Telemachus Circe. It may be asked what grounds there are for ascribing a consider- able antiquity to the sEtk/opis, Cypria, the Sack, the Return, &c. ? In the first place, there is the unanimous belief of antiquity that the earliest period of Greek literature was an age of epic poetry, and that these epics belonged to that period. In the next place, there are the perpetual allusions throughout lyric and dramatic poetry to the tales of Troy and Thebes which were told in these epic?. Further, in the way of definite external evidence there is the mention by Herodotus of the Cijpria as distinct from the work of Homer and as inconsistent in some of its details with the Iliad. The Epiyoni also, one of the poems relating to Thebes which was incorporated in the cycle, is mentioned by Herodotus (iv. 32). In Theognis. who flour- ished about B.C. 540. there is a quotation from the Cypria. 1 Finally, Callinus, whose date is placed about B.C. 730, mentions the Tlirlju.is, another of the poems incorporated in the cycle which dealt with Thebes, though he ascribes it to Homer. As we have said, the Epic Cycle included n t only a series of epics relating the story of the Trojan war, but also another series relating the expedition against Thel>es. Of the latter we have no summary and practically no knowledge. We may gain some- idea of the. contents of the Theban epics from tragedies fin the same subj>"-i. but we can f<>nn no idea of the way in which the tale <>f Thebes was treated by the authors of the epic poems, ii'>r of their literary merit. Tin: most famous of the Theban epics was the Y/W /"V/x. Its author is unknown. It treated of the history of OXdipus and his s<>ns, as did also, to judge from the name, the (Eilt^wJeia, which is ascribed to CiiuHhon. The /,'/e- of the various events wliicli made cause he reiies on his ([notation to up the story, and for this purpose prove that the O/7<> - /-( was not the he may have l.ad to omit or to alter work ot Homer. He says, accord- parts of some ol 'the poems. If two iiiLT to Homer, Paris went to Sidon, poi-ms narrated the xime event. In- Init aeeoniini: to tiie <',. t ,;,/. i,.- .;iil would, for cleiii'ness. have to omit not. \\ e have, tiieii. here a case one iii-i oinit ; and if miu poem did in winch the ver>ioii ot the < ' , not join on naturally to that wldeh with wliieli \vij are aei[uainti 1 preeeddl or that wllich 1'olioWed it, thri'ii^h 1'loclus lias 1'eeii alti'l'e.l In would l:ave to alter its l'e_'in- in ordi-r to make the general l!o\v iniej; or end in order to make the of the story harmonious, and p.irti- " u. 117. 62 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. further, it seems that, according to a scholiast, 1 the poem mentioned at least one incident, the death of Polyxena, in the sack of Troy. But this does not prove that the action of the poem included the taking of Troy. The Cypria is essentially the narrative of the beginning of the war, and a refer- ence to an incident at the end of the war no more proves that the taking of Troy was a part of the subject of the poem than the refer- ences in the Iliad to the death of Achilles prove that his death came within the action of the Iliad. 2 We may therefore reasonably con- clude that the Cypria ended where 1'roclus makes it end. 3 The Cy/iria was followed in the cycle by the Iliad, and after the Iliad came the sEthiopis of Arc- tiuus. As far as can be judged, the beginning of the Jathinpia seems to have originally iitted on to the end of the Iliad so well that no alteration or omission was neces- sary. But when we look to the rest of the poem, the case is diffe- rent. In the first place, according to Proclus, the ^Ethiopia ends with a quarrel between Ajax and Odys- seus about the armour of Achilles, the issue of which is contained in the Little Iliad. But the sEtht'opis could not have ended in the middle of the quarrel ; it too, as well as the Little Iliad, must have related the issue. Even there, however, it could not have stopped. The suicide of Ajax was not an event of sufficient importance, did not exer- cise so great an influence on the course of the war that an epic could find a natural close, or the story of the war find a breathing place therein. If the JSthiopis did not, however, end with the suicide of Ajax, where did it end ? The answer seems to be given by the fact that Arctinus did actually carry on the tale of Troy as i'ar as the taking of Troy. This he related in the poem which Proclus sum- marises and calls the Stick of Troy. Doubtless Proclus was right in call- ing what he summarised the Sack of Troy ; but it was not a separate poem : it was part of the ^Ethiopia, and this part got its name from its contents, in the same way as different parts of Homer have received their names from their contents. It seems, therefore, probable that the beginning of the ^thio/jis was placed next after the Iliad because it immediately took up the story of tlie Iliad. Then the Ltllc Iliad was appended to this portion of the ^Ethiopia because it contained a fuller account of the events which led up to the making of the wooden horse than the corresponding por- tion of the sEthiopis presented. Then the rest of the +-fithifi/>iit, re- lating the taking of Troy and called the >'ue/t of Troy, was brought in to wind up the tale. If the j-Ethiopis has suffered by being thus divided into two parts, the Little Iliad has also suffered by being sandwiched between the two parts. The Little Iliad could not have begun by relating the issue I'nlyxena to tlje < '////, ;; And as lie iii;d;--s it poet could in>ei I so much of the rest of wind UM the iuose t-uds of las own story. ry to KPIC 1'OKTKY : THE KPIC CYCLK. 63 of the quarrel between Odysseus Odyssey as it was embodied in and Ajax ; it mu>t have related the cycle was called the " Cyclic llic cause of tin- quarrel, and i>ro- Odyssey." The ''Trojan Table" balily the poem covered much the which was found at liovilhe, and same ground as the beginning of may have formed part of the deco- the +I-ltliit>i,is. So, too, the Little ration of a library, contains pictures 1/nnl would not merely relate the and legends which confirm Proelus making of the wooden horse ; it in the order he places the poems would also go on to tell how it was composing the cycle in. Used and with what result, i.e., tell When the poems were arranged the taking of Troy. This is proved so as to form an Epic Cycle is un- by the (act that I'ausanias and other certain. The "Trojan Table," which authors reler to incidents of the seems to presuppose the existence of sack as occurring in the L'Mln the cycle, probably belongs to the //in,/; while Aristotle says that early part of the reign of Tiberius. from it tragedians drew the plays The "Cyclic Odyssey" carries the called the .<<(,/ f Trmj, t^Miiuj ?ai/, cycle back to the time of Didymus, ^iii'iH. and Triunlm. who lived in the reign of Augustus, Fin.tilv, the Hitnrn and the 7V< and from whom comes the. inl'or- !i'it'it seem to have titled naturallv mation about the alteration of the into thi.-ir p'iaees in thi; cycle, and final verse of the Iliad and the to have needed and received no ' Cvclic Odyssey." Hut further alt' -rations. back than this it is as yet impos- The question now arises whether sible to trace the arrangement of the alterations, or rather the omis- the poems into a cycle. We know sions, juM described are to be re- indeed that Zenodotus arranged in garded as the work of 1'roclus, or order the poems of Homer; but whether the independent ] ..... ins, this seems to refer rather to tin) when they came to be arranged so cataloguing of the Homeric poems as to form a cycle, were altered .so for the library at Alexandria than as to lit. on to each other and make a to the editing of the cycle. continuous story '/ The latter seems We now have to ask what is the to have been the case. 1'roclus says relation of these poems to Hoiiu-r expivs.-iy that the poems of the There are many incidents which cycle Were much read, preciselv be- thev have in common, and which cau.-e they, or rat 'her it, made a one mav have borrowed from the other. The murder of Agani'-m- nou is told in the Odyssey and also lit turn. There are through- ut Hoiner numerous references and lusions to events which ai>: late I in full in the cyelics : and e may suppose either that th' ut in detail hints nr we may > i v the works o'f the him, and Was ivlel'- de, d. when we that a min-trel 6 4 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. is asked to sing the lay of the horse, we seem to have a reference to the Little Iliad or the ^EtMopis, But there are not only references between the cyclics and Homer ; there are cross references. If, for instance, the Iliad presupposes the Sack of Troy, the ack also presup- poses the Iliad, which would prove that each poem was later than and borrowed from the other. It seems, therefore, that we must seek some other explanation. This may perhaps be found in supposing that the references, say in the Iliad to the fate of Astyanax. are not to the Sack, but to the floating popular legend. So, too, it would not be necessary to assume that the lie- turn, expanded the brief allusion to Agamemnon's death contained in the Odyssey. Both authors may have drawn independently from the stories of the people. In fine, the cyclics need not have borrowed from Homer, nor Homer from the cyclics ; both may have borrowed from a common source. This indeed assumes that there was a common source for Homer and the cyclics to draw upon, and it has been denied that we have any proof of the existence of a popular legend telling the tale of Troy. But this denial seems to be made on insufficient grounds and to lie opposed to farts. In the first place, all peoples have their folk- lore, floating mythology, and popu- lar legends. In the next place, the comparison of Greek mythology and legends with those of other Arvan peoples shows that the Greeks hud folk-tales long before the epic period. Again, each city and place in Ciiveee li;nl abundant local myths and legends. Further, we have already seen that many of the tales incorporated in the Odyssey, so far from being tin- invention of Homer, are not even ;he special creation of Greece, but are found among p>-o|,!es of toiidly i;i>tinet origin. Finally, We have in Homer distinct references to lays. (.'/., of the horse and the sack of Troy, as existing before Homer's time ; while the introduc- tion to the Odyssey says, " Of these things, goddess, declare them even unto us," which implies if the line is genuine that the goddess in- spired other poets before Homer. But although we may be fairly certain that there existed in popu- lar story a common source from which Homer and the cyclics may have drawn without one borrowing from the other, it is very improbable that Homer and the authors of the cyclic poems composed their works simultaneously and independently. It is also very improbable that the authors of the later poems which- ever were the later poems were unacquainted with, and therefore uninfluenced by, the work of their predecessors. Further, if we assume that all the poets were ignorant of each other's work, we cannot under- stand how it came about, for in- stance, that the C>//,ria just ended where the Iliad began, and that the jthir>f>is just began where the Iliad ended. A common source may ex- plain the points which the poets have iu common, but it .Iocs not explain their avoiding each other's subjects. Of course, it may be said that our knowledge of the cyclic.? comes from Proclus' summary of the cycle ; that in the cycle the poems were cut down so as to tit on to each other ; and that there- fore- we have no right to say that the Rttnrn, for instance, in its origi- nal form did end where the Odyssey begins, or the Ttlcynnia, begin where, the Odyssey ended. To this we reply, that we, can only form our opinion on this point by means of the evidence WO pos.sCSS. The -11111- mary of tin- (.'///.?! makes it toler- ably cvid'-nt that the poem in its original form did end where tin; summary malv-s it end ; just as the summary "f the tEthiajti* mak--s it probable that the original poem be- gan where the summary begins (i.e., at the end of the Iliad), but did not end where the summarv ends. So. EPIC POETRY : THE EPIC CYCLE. too, the Return and the Tdegonia as summarised are evidently poems complete in themselves, and there is nothing in the summary of them which points t<> their having been mutilated in order to lit on to the Odyssey in the cyele. We have then these facts to ac- count for : whereas the action of one cyclic poem, e.y., the ^Ktkiojiis, occupies the same ground as is taken up by that of another, e.f/., the Little Hind, the action or the Iliad and Odyssey does not clash with or overlap that of any cyclic poem. We may say that this is accidental ; that the authors of the four poems which touch the Iliad and Odyssey knew nothing of Homer, nor he anything of them, find that they all happened to just avoid each other's ground. Hut tliis is too improbable to he readily accepted. Ii is much more likely that either Homer found the Cy dies or they found Homer in possession of certain ground and intentionally avoided poaching on the preserve. We have therefore to draw one of two conclusions ; either Homer found the Cyclies in existence, and forbore to go over their ground again, for fear of challenging a comparison with them unfavour- able to himself a modesty which has received its reward in the re- spect shown to Homer by everv generation of civilised men since his time ; or the eyclics found Homer in possession of certain prcnmd, and seeing that they could not improve on Homer, c.inteiited themselves with occupying the space that he had left a decision the wisdom of which is seen in the fact that it allowed their work to live by the side of Homer for many centuries, while its .soundness is shown by the universal verdict in favour of the superiority of Homer. 1 Further, it is necessary to ob- serve that there is the same sharp line between the subjects of Homer and Pindar, of Homer and the Tra- gedians, as there is between Homer and the Cyclies. Now, either 1'in- dar and the Tragedians knew Homer or they did not. Both views have been held ; let us see what each view implies. According to the view that Pindar and the tragedians had no acquaintance with Homer, this was because Homer was a la to compilation trom the floating pop- ular legend which recounted the tale of Trov. This compilation was made about i;.c. 420, for the satis- faction of the reading public, which then was coming into existence for the first time. Hut according to this view, not only were the Iliad and the Odyssey compilations from the unwritten tale of Troy, but the Ciipria, ^'Et/iiopis, Little Iliad, the a>-k. the Juturn, and the other cyclic poems also were compilations from the same source, and were made about the same time as the Iliad and Odyssey. The same ar- guments which show that the Iliad and Odyssey us we have them must have been later than i;.c. 4 p. and could not have been the work of an author living before i;.r. 700, also show that the I'uir'nt. *fit/iia/i!it, \'c., could not have tak-n separate and distinct form before u.r. 420, and could not have been the work of authors living in tie- earliest :im>-s. " All these. I ;im eoiitident." s.iys Mr. I'uley, " were writ;< n epirom >s of different parts of a story, whi ': 66 niSTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. in the time of oral recitation formed one general and undistinguished whole." Thus, according to Mr. Paley, Homer and the Cyclics are both later than Pindar and the Tragedians, and Homer is later than the Cyclics. Therefore, in order to explain why the part of the tale of Troy which is found in Homer is not touched on l>y Pindar, the Tragedians, or the Cyclics, we must either believe that Pindar and the Tragedians, having exactly the same unwritten tale of Troy to draw upon as Homer, by some extraor- dinary chance managed to avoid precisely the incidents afterwards selected by the compiler of our Homer ; or else we must believe that the unfortunate compiler came on to the field after Pindar, the Tragedians, and the compilers of the cyclic poems had used up all the incidents in the legend of Troy which they thought lit for their purpose. Then we must further believe that the incidents which lyric poets, dramatists, and epic compilers indeed all the poets Greece possessed had one after another deliberately rejected as un- fit for any kind of poetic treatment whatever these incidents, as soon as they were strung together by some obscure compiler, whose very name is lost beyond conjecture, at once obtained a success and a repu- tation which wholly eclipsed every other epic compilation, at once took rank above the poetry of the great- est poets, was at once honoured with the name of Homer, and, fin- ally, in spite of its modern allusions, its late and bastard dialect, and its obvious patchwork character, was unanimously declared by Greek critics of all kinds to possess the very highest antiquity and to be a model of epic unity. 1 There have been instances of literary forgery in ancient and recent times, but surely none deserves to rank by the side of our Homer, which thus deceived the very elect of nations, a people whose taste was trained in the finest literature a country ever possessed, whose linguistic sensi- tiveness is unparalleled, whether viewed from the side of philology or of literature, whose collective powers of criticism were a pruning- knife, that allowed none but the pure works of genius to flourish. Fortunately we are not compelled to accept such an improbable theory as results from assumingthat Homer was later than the Tragedians. "We have the alternative of assuming that Homer preceded Pindar and the Tragedians. But on this as- sumption we have to explain why Pindar and the Tragedians avoided the ground chosen by Homer, and the same explanation should also explain why the cyclicpoets avoided Homer's ground. In the tirst place, w> have the reason given by Aris- totle ; the subjects of the Iliad and Odyssey are so simple that they do not afford material for more than one or two plays. The subject of the Odyssey is the return of Odysseus ; of the Iliad, the wrath of Achilles. Kaeh subject is indivi- sible ; it would be practically im- possible to construct a play which should have, say, tin; first half of the story in the Iliad for its plot, 1 Mi-. Pa ley at least will not allege that the fame of our H< in.-r is due to the w;iy in which his compiler strung together these incidi.-nts, whirh were rejected by all other poets. Antimachus. or whoever il was, was merely a com- piler, not an author. {'' I never said or spoke of late authorship." 1'uft Kjiic W'frt/.t, p. 27, n. I.) The merit of the pot-ins, according to Mr. Paley, is that they contain pieces of beautiful ancient work set together, in which, as be- longing to the " one and undistinguished whole,'' fanned by the talo of Troy in the time of oral recitation, must have been known to the Tragedians (though not known iu their present connection), and yet were rejected by them. EPIC POETRY : THE EPIC CYCLE. and bo complete. In the next place, to tell the story of Odysseus' re- turn or Achilles' wrath over again in the same way as Homer told it, would be to challenge Homer, the greatest of pouts, on his own ground ; and it is a proof o! the sound judg- ment of Greek authors that now; we know imagined he could gild Homer's refined gold, 1 or tell Ho- mer's tale better than Homer told it. 2 But, it may be said that even if the plot o! the Iliad or the Odys- sey does not admit of much drama- tisation, there are many episodes which can be detached from the plot, and would suffice to make a drama. This is true ; and it is just in dramatising these episodes that the Tragedians show they were ac- quainted with both what is told in our Homer, and with the way in which it is toll l>y our Homer. The death of Agamemnon is no part of the plot of the Odyssey, though it is alluded to in the poem. The death of Agamemnon, therefore, was made the catastrophe of the Jle/urn and the subject of tragedies. HoT.er's allusions to the matter arc slight enough to allow of other authors developing the hint, and tilling up the sketch in their own fashion ; and we find that the author of the H'tnrn and .Ksehylus have each developed Homer's out- line alter their own fashion, and in a way which .-hows that .Ksehylus did not follow ill" nou-l!omcrie version more clo-ely than he tol- lows Homer. The author of the Hi tin-it made the de ith of Aganiem- lii'll to be the consequence of the wrath of Athene. The Greeks, by not punishing Ajax for his otfeiice a;_'aiii.-i the goddess incurred luT wrath; and Agamemnon, as the leader and repiv-eiitative of the Greeks, paid in his own person for his followers' fault. yKschylus also gives a theological colouring, as it were, to the cause of Agamemnon's doom ; but instead of attributing it ultimately to the otl'ence of Ajax, he uses it to confirm his theory that the mystery ot undeserved suller- ing is to be explained by guilt in the sufferer's ancestors. In the same way, every incident in the tale of Troy which does not come within the action of the Iliad and Odyssey, but belongs to the causes or consequences of the action, has been worked by other authors into epic or dramatic form. Further, although neither any epic or any tragic poet ventured to challenge comparison with Homer on his own ground, the like respect was paid neither by epic poets to each other, nor by the Tragedians to epic poets. But not only do the epic and tragic poets, both by the incidents in the tale of Troy which they ac- cept and those they reject, show an evident acquaintance with our Homer, and distinguish between the plot and the episodes of each of the Homeric poems : there are parallelisms between the Cyclicsand Homer which seem to be cases of imitation. Kor instance, in the 7'ili : /i,iiiii, Telegouus, the son of Odysseus and Circe, sets forth on an expedition to obtain tidings of his father ; in the Odyssey, Tele- machtis. the son of Odyss us and I'enelope. does the same. Now it Seems itiliicult to avoid the conclu- sion that one author borrowed the idea Irom the otle-r : and if this is a case of plagiarism, wv have to remember that, in older to prove Homer to be later than the ( 'ycii.-s, we inns; >;1 v th.it he plagi <} i--d, and ]'LiL r i.iri.--d lioni an author who 1 Somebody did dramatise Homer's own -uhjects, for Aii.-.',.t!e s iy- so. P.ut the very i;:,mes of both author ui.d tra-edy have perished the i'um-h- ineiit of presumption. '-' '' To attempt to tell the story [of l-'al-ralT'i h f < ] in better words ih.a Sh:ik.'. 22$. 68 HISTOKY OF GREEK LITERATURE. brought his poem to a fitting close by making Telegonus marry Pene- lope, and Telemaehus marry Circe. Again, in the Cypria, Achilles and Agamemnon quarrel. Achilles with- draws from the lighting, and the Trojans gain successes until Achil- les comes forth from his tent. In the Cypria, this is but an episode, while in the Iliad a similar quarrel (which has a different origin) con- stitutes the subject of the whole poem. In the JEtkiopis, again, Antilochus, the friend of Achilles, is slain by Memnon. Achilles, in spite of the prophetic warning of his mother Thetis, takes vengeance on Memnon, kills him, and then is killed himself. In the Iliad it is Patroclus who is slain by Hector, and it is the vengeance on Hector which Thetis warns Achilles will be followed by his own death. An- other parallelism from the Ethio- pia is to be found in the funeral games with which the body of Achilles, as in the Iliad the body of Patroclus, is honoured. From the Little Iliad we may take the way in which Menelaus insults the body of Paris before it is returned for burial to the Trojans, as parallel to the treatment of Hector's body by Achilles in the Iliad. In the Itcturn there was a descent to the nether world, which at once sug- gests that of Odysseus in the Iliad. Further, we may notice that the characteristics of certain actors in the tale are repeated in a way not likely to have occurred indepen- dently to two authors. In the Cypria, Xestor, when consultrd by Meiielaus about the recovery of Helen, at once makes a long speech full of ancient instances, exactly parallel to his speech in the em- bassy to Achillas in the Iliad. Attain, in the ^tlilnpis, Thermites is as obnoxious as in th>: Iliad, talk- ing ribaldry about Achilles and the Amazon Penthesilea. In all these cases, if Homer is more ancient than the Cyclics, as sound iii'L'iiK'iit declares. a:r.l as is agreed upon by the immense majo- rity of writers on the subject, the Cyclics have imitated incidents in. Homer, changing either the names of the actors or the occasion of the scene. Hut if, as most people will allow, this is so, we may derive from the cyclics valuable informa- tion as to the contents of Homer in their time. For instance, the ex- pedition of Telegonus in quest of news of his father shows that in the Odyssey, which the author of the Teleyonia possessed, the expedi- dition of Telemachus was an inte- gral portion. That is to say, since we have no reason to doubt the date assigned by the chronologists to Eugamon, the author of the Tele- fjonia, viz., B.C. 560 or B.C. 570, then what is called the Telcmachia of our Odyssey was part of the poem at the beginning of the sixth cen- tury. So, too, the scene in the nether world in the Return shows that the Xckuia of the Odyssey be- longed to the poem when Agias if he was the author lived. His date we do nor know : we can only say that the literary superiority of the Return to the Telcgnnia makes it probable that it belongs to an earlier period. Further, if the lie- turn is but an expansion of the sketch iiiven in the early books of the Odyssey of the adventures of Menelaus, Agamemnon, and Xestor on their return from Troy, we carry back the Tel machia to before the time of the Return. The information we derive from the Cyclics as to the form and con- tents of the Iliad is even more valu- able. The last two books of the Iliad have been frequently con- demned as late additions ; but at any rate, they were probably an integral part of the Iliad before the time of the Little Iliad or the j'Etkio/'is, for the funeral games of Achilles in the latter, and the con- tumelious treatment of Palis' body in the former, are imitated from what is related in Iliad xxiii and xxiv. Xow Leeches, the author of EPIC POETRY : THE HOMERIC HYMNS. 69 the Liitle Iliad, is dated n.r. 700 ; parrulousness of Xestor in tlie C?/p- Art.'tinus, (Im author of tin; A-'.t'iin- ria, are reproductions of scenes pis, B.C. 770; and although wo which occur in Iliad ii. and ix., i.e., have no means of jmL'iiiL,' <>n what in books whieh, according to Mr. grounds Kusehins and Hieronvinus* Urote, were nut. part of tlie original dated these early authors, wo have Iliad. These Looks then appear to no grounds for disputing their have Ix-cn part of the Iliad at least dates. A.L'ain. tlie behaviour of before U.G. J/O." Theisited in the ^Eliiuipis, and the CHAPTER V. THE IMM EH 1C HYMN'S. TIIK Homeric hymns arc a collodion of upwards of tliirfy poems written in hexameter verse. They vary in length from three lines to six hundred, tlie majority being short. They belong to widely different ages, and consequently to very various authrs. The motives with which they were composed were ditl'eivnt, though the majority appear to have had the .-ame ohjcct. The authorship is in all eases extremely doubtful, and their literary m^rit varies considerably, Tney arc called Homeric because they were supposed to lie the work of Ilonu-r or of H-nicric poets ; and some are hymns in the original rather than in tin; later sense of the word. That is to say, they are sonu's, in a necessarily addressed to or telling of the gods, and, wlicii a god is their Minject, they an; not necessarily of a di-vo- t onal character. The ('-reek word ///////n \vhat is 1 P.usi liill!) \\' :' 1',:-ii >1> i.f ( ':r <:n v :i alioilf A.U. :pO. ! l ; s chi'on, il, .j v, -i:; L -ll is i-'" ji'e it v ihlf to tin' historians of anririit tinns. a!,il ins ree"i\ ni many ci'i.til 111 ii ':'..- Iioni Iiioili-ni iii>i-'i\ el 'ie-, was cnllt:iiii--ii in ii:s lii;-- IT; 'I'.rrit, .a. . :' "in ti,e bi-iniiin^ of rhe wi.rld to A.M. ^-'5'. \\ liav.- . n \ l':a.'- iiieiits ,,f tins wni k. trait shit i a in; I. i ; in. and run; inn- . 1 by I I'.-i . >n\ :ni:>. - Tiiis, dt" eniiix.', do t -s nut alf'-et Mr. (::-:'< id. nry. wiii'-ii I'l-.-ifd^ :":i.j lator bunks MS milled ,.n t,i t'n.' Hi.d inniifdi ''>' al't-.-r t!i-' tan- ..:' 11 ',1,-r. wiiii.-!i. ueooniin.: to II. i-.-d.i;u~, \i ,s a i .;,: U.c. 7O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. prayed for, or why the gods are invoked, and then we may be able to see why these poems, though of different ages and origin, have been collected together. When the collection was made may be discussed subsequently. In some cases the prayer seems to be merely a general one for blessing and happiness. For instance, the hymn to Athene (xi.) contains four lines ad- dressed to the goddess describing her attributes, and concludes " Hail, goddess ! and grant us fortune and happiness." So, too, in the hymn to Heracles (xv.), the poet says, in effect, I will sing of Heracles, son of Zeus and Alcmene, who did and suf- fered many wondrous things, and now has a place in Olympus by the side of Hebe : " Hail, king ! son of Zeus ; grant us pro- sperity and to deserve it." But in other prayers we find a much more definite petition. In the hymn to Hestia, the god- dess of the hearth (xxiv.), the poet prays to her, wherever she be, to visit this house and give grace to his song. What song she is to give grace to we see at once from the hymn to Selene (xxxii.), the moon, which ends, "Hail, goddess ! having begun with you, I will sing the praise of demi-gods, whose deeds minstrels make famous." The demi-gods are the heroes of the story of Troy or of Thebes, and the praise which the bard, after his invocation of Selene, is about to sing is a lay of his own composition or a portion of some epic. This is the character of the collection of the Homeric hymns as a whole. They are prayers or invocations to some god, made by a minstrel or a rhapsodist about to recite an epic poem. Many of the hymns end like the hymn to the Dioscuri (xxxiii ) : " Hail, Tyndaridoe ! riders of fleet horses, and I will make mention of you in another song." Why the poet should make mention of them, or whatever god he prays to, in another song appears from the end of the hymn to the Earth (xxx.) : " Hail, mother of the gods ! spouse of the starry Sky ! graciously grant me a goodly livelihood in return for my song, while I will make mention of yon in another song." If the god hears the prayer, the worshipper will continue his worship : and he prays for a goodly livelihood because, whether a wandering bard or a rhapsodist, it is by tin- poetic art he makes his living. Other hymns, like one to HI.TIIICS (xviii.), end, "Hail, son of Zeus and Maia ! having begun with you, I will go on to another song." These too are evidently preludes to the recitation of epic poetry, the epic poem recited beinu r the other song which the bard will go on to. We are then-fore justified in conclud- ing that hvmns such as the one to Zeus (xxiii. ), ending, ' l!e gracious, son of Kronos, most glorious and greatest," although EPIC POETRY : THE HOMERIC HYMNS. 7 I they contain no reference to the recitation which the minstrel is about to make, and for the success of which he prays, were, like the rest, preludes to a recitation. But two exceptions must be made. The hymn to Poseidon (xxii.) expressly prays that the god will help those at sea, and the hymn to Ares (viii.) expressly prays for peace. 1 By what accident these two hymns came to be incorporated in a collection of preludes it is impos- sible now to say. Having established the nature of the hymns, let us now see what is known about the practice of preluding a recitation of epic poetry by a short invocation. There is in Homer a passage which, describing the bard Demodocus as beginning the lay of the horse, is generally translated, "He being stirred by tlie god, began;" but it is probable that it should be trans- lated, "He being stirred, began with the god," i.e., began with a brief invocation, such as we have in the hymns.- In this ease the custom ^,,,'s back to Homeric times, though it is doubtful whether anv of the hvmns go back to so early a date. There is no reason to doubt, that bards, when about to recite poems of their own composition, made a brief invocation ; and a short hymn to Aphrodite (x.), which prays her to "grant a delightsome song," seems in those words to be rather the praver of a poet about to recite a p . >em of his own than of a rhapso- dist. :; In this case, Hymn x., which has much beauty in its brief compass, would belong to the epic age, i.i\, to the time 1 1'rohably \ve ou^ht to include amonc; the exceptions a hymn to Dionysus (xxvi.), which ends - cos 6' 7).(ta; ^ai/ioj'ras t's aipas ai/ris 'tKftrOat, tK <)' cu' ; '/ u'/idu'i' as roes TroXXoi'-s ii'iurrovs. - (id. viii. 40-), o o' 6/'in;''tij (of' ///>\T<>. Tin- (ran -.lal on ui veil al MIX e is si.iin- \vh:it ei.nfirni' d 1'V a u'eiieral n-xemManoe li.Mvi'iii In.' f.innula of the hymns ai:d the passage in the Odyssey. The li'5 (IfiCi TOl 1Tpj(f>pti)l' ''<'>$ U'TTcliTf I'tJTril' doiOl'll'. A recollection of tin- ]>:is~a^e seems to have coloured the diction of the hymn to Helios l,\\\i.'. whieli ends - (The coii>tnii-;ion without ](y::i:i-; t J So too x\\., which say- c i, t'/-<.. ; ;r TiH'}-ar' don"/;." ; and vi. i i~ ',$ y is' d- ; I'!'i I'.'M;;- rcvOt merio hymns. Three of them are as long as the average book in Homer, and the other one is over 290 lines. A ditli- cnlty therefore has been felt in believing that these long hymns could have been nie;u:t as preludes to a recitation, since they are long enough for a recitation in themselves. Various ways out of tho difiiciilty have been imagined. The expansion theory, which piays so large, a part in the reconstruction of the "original' 1 Homer, has been applied to the Homeric hymns. It is said that the>e long hymns were originally short, but were gradually interpolated ;.nd expanded to their present length. ]5ut why rhapsodists should defeat their own object and stultify themselves in this manner it is difficult to see. If in their present form they are too long to serve the purpose for which they were intended, it is vain to say they have reached it by expansion. If rhupsodists would not compose preludes (or epics) too long for their purpose, neither would they expand them to such a length. A more reasonable theory is that the interpolations are much later than the time of rhapsodi.-ts ; that they are the work of stupid scribes, or perhaps of editors. The text is indeed in a very bad state, and there are many obscurities, due in ail probability to stupid interpolations, in- deed, tin; lir.-t hymn to Apollo is really tsvo distinct hymns run together. Hut, on the other hand, many obscurities are due to equally stupid omissions. Incomplete as the text is, it would be much mere, incomplete had not Matiha-i in 1772 discovered a manu.-cript in a .-table at Moscow containing a fragment of a hymn to I>i"iiy.-us and a long hvmn to IOmeter, hitherto 74 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. by a long hymn, which served as a prelude to the whole pro- ceedings. But this is a pure conjecture, supported by nothing in the hymns themselves, nor by any analogy outside of them. There remains yet another conjecture to be mentioned ; it is that the long hymns are not preludes at all, but lays with which the authors actually competed for the prize; that, in fact, we have in them specimens of the lays of which, on the accretion theory of Homer, the Homeric poems are a fortui- tous aggregation. This conjecture seems refuted by the fact that the long hymns, like the short ones, end with the de- claration that the poet having begun with the god, will now go on to his recitation. But the general stupidity of the MSS. makes it possible that these verses have got tagged on to poems to which they do not belong. A more fatal objection is that the hymn to Apollo which Thucydides ascribes to Homer, and which seems to have boon a prelude, not an independent poem, contains 178 lines. Having exhausted the various con- jectures made on the subject, and having found none of them satisfactory, we must expand our notions of what rhapsodists could recite and Greek audiences listen to. If 178 lines were not too much as a prelude to the real business of recitation, possibly neither were five hundred. Although the different hymns belong to different dates, that to the ])elian Apollo being the oldest, they probably most of them belong, if not to the epic period, to a time not very long after it. The question how old this collection is is different. The very faulty condition of the text, with other considerations, makes it probable that the collection was made after Alexan- drine times. The oldest reference to be found to it is in Philo- demos, who was contemporary with Cicero. The difference between the lines from the hymn to Apollo, as quoted by Thucydides and as they stand in our text, is considerable, and shows that the hymn had been transmitted orally and with the consequent variations for some time before it was com- mitted to writing. At the same time, the spelling shows that probably it was committed to writing before the completion of tin: alphabet in the archonship of Eudides ; whereas the other hymns were probably not written down until after that period. 1 1 K.ri., wlieii the hyrni correctly transliterated mistiik Ic.uks l;k'- ;i fulse transliteration iiciu i.s ;i coiTL-ctiuii (!) by ]j;inii EPIC POETRY : TFIE HOMERIC HYMNS. 7 5 Hero wo may appropriately mention some other poems which, as well as the hymns, were accounted Homeric in ancient times. The most famous is the Manjites. This poem, which unfortu- nately has not survived to our time, took its name from the hero. Marches was the very personification of folly. As we learn from a fragment, he knew many things, and knew them all equally badly. Being unable to count more than five, he set to work to enumerate the waves of the sea. From this we can infer to a certain extent the nature of the poem. In the first place, it was not a parody ; in the next, it was not a per- sonal attack upon any one. It was general in its character, and depended for its success in provoking mirth on the humour with which the author described the situations into which Margites was naturally brought, by his folly. Aristotle regarded it as standing in the same relation to comedy as the Iliad and Odyssey to tragedy ; and he regarded the Afarr/i'tea, as well as the Iliad and Udyssey, as the work of Homer. Its popu- larity was great in antiquity. The Stoic Zeno is said by IM'OII Chrysostoin (^3, 4) to have written a treatise on it. But it can be traced back safely farther than the time of Zeno, for Archilochus, whose date is about u.c. 700, was acquainted with it. Whether, however, the Manjiti'i* was the work of Homer, it is difficult to sav. The absence of any mention of it in the better scholia on Homer has been regarded as an indication that the Alexandrian critics did not rank it as Homeric. Further, Suidas l and Proclus attribute it to Pigres, the brother of Arte- misia, the queen of Halicarnassus, who distinguished herself in the Persian wars. But this seems to have been merely a con- jecture based on the inadequate ground that Pigres interpolated the Iliad with pentameters, and the MaryHi-.-t contained iambics mixed with hexameters. Further, the poem can be traced farther back than Pigres, as far as Archilochus. The mixture of iambics with hexameters docs indeed seem to show that the Marijiti'i* belongs to a time when iambic poetry was struggling into being, and the epic nge pa-sing away. Tin's would make tin 1 poem to be post Homeric ; but again.-t it we have to set the fact that ArMotle regarded Homer as the author. Other humorous oems attributed t<> Homer, and now lo-t. 76 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. Cercopes, like the Maryites, seems to have been the literary version of a popular tale ; and the tale, at least, was of some antiquity, since it afforded a subject for one of the metopes of Selinus. Besides these poems which have not survived, there is another humorous poem which has survived, the Butraclw- myomaclii'i, or Battle of the Frogs and Mice. This is not based on any popular tale ; it is a parody of warlike epics, and pre- supposes some literary cultivation for its appreciation. It possesses, however, no literary merit, and only occasional flashes of humour, e.g., the reappearance of a combatant after having been severely wounded or even killed a just parody on the disregard of Homeric heroes for wounds which should have put them Jtors de combat. The Batrachomyomacltia cannot be the work of Homer, and the only ground for allowing it any antiquity is the statement of Suidas that it was written by Pigres. But as he also attributes the Mnryites to the same author, it is probable he has confused the two poems. It may, indeed, be reasonably doubted whether the Batraclio- myomacliia, belongs to the classical period at all. Be tin's as it may, the parody was successful enough to lead to imitations, such as the Psaromachia, AracJmomachia, and Geranomachia. Parodies were in much favour in Athens during the Pelopon- nesian war, and were regularly recited at festivals, probably at the Panathensea. The most distinguished author of this kind was Hegemon of Thasos, a friend of Alcibiades, who composed a Giyantomachia, which may have contained, at least, refer- ences to the Sicilian expedition. In the next century Eubceus of Paros, and after him Bceotus of Syracuse and Matron, seem to have cultivated parody with success. Finally, a few Homeric epigrams have survived to our day. They are of various worth, and probably of different dates. Whether any go back to Homer'.s time, there is nothing to show. They include epitaphs and gnomes in hexameters, and, most in- teresting of all, the Eiresione. This poem gets its name from the olive or laurel twig wound round *ith threads of wool, which was not only carried by supplicants, but was also carried by boys in the country who went round begging from house to house, and singing the Kiri-tinn*', much iu the same way as buys in our o\vu country at Christmas-time. EPIC POETRY: HESIOD AND IIESIODIC POETRY. J "J CHAPTER VI. IIESIOD AND HKSIODIC POETRY. FROM Homer to Hesiod the step is a great one. To say that their only resemblance is that they are both in Greek and both in hexameters, would be an exaggeration, though not a great exaggeration. In subject, object, method, style, in the circum- stances under which they were produced, and the place and race to which they belong, they dill'er widely. "When Alex- ander the Great said that Homer was reading for kings, Ilesiod for peasants, he gave utterance to a criticism which has con- siderable truth in it. The contempt for Hesiod implied in the judgment is perhaps too strong, though in reading him we can- not but frequently feel that we are in the tracts of hexameters rather than in the realms of poetry. This is sometimes as- cribed to the nature of the subject. But the Gvoryics of Virgil suflice to show that it is po.-sible for a poet to impart at least as much interest to farming as to fighting ; and the fact re- mains, that excellent though Hesiod may have been as a man in all matters of life, he was not a great poet, hardly a poet at ail. If Alexander's criticism does but little injustice, to Hesiod's claims to be counted a poet, it is a yet more just expression of the dillerence in the circumstances under which and the audii nee for which the two authors composed. Homer was, as a matter of fact, a composer for kings, and Hesiod for peas- ants. Homer took for a subject the quarrel between the divine Achilles and Agamemnon, king of men. Ilesiod takes for his text the lawsuit between his brother and himself, poor fanners both, though not both hoiie-t. In Homer, kings are heroes, whoso prowess it is the poet's privilege, to sing of. In Hosiod, kings are th unjust judges who gave a verdict against the author, and an.- t be shown the error of their ways. From this dill'' Tence in the subject and its treatment we may fairly infer a dillerence in the audience to which tin.- two authors addressed themselves. Amongst, farmers, who had them-' from the injustice of kings, Ilrsiod's verses would 1 as was Homer's poetry in a palace; and Alexa 'pi ion which would have been ace _ ,-.' by roval readers, j [ere, ; toiy of cla.-sical Greek liieratui' on author, and the way in wn determined tne character ' >f tin- I 78 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. If Homer and Hesiod differ in their subjects, they differ quite as much in what is more important, their objects ; and this again is doubtless partly due to their difference in race and place. Homer's object is simply to tell his story in the best way. "Tell me. Muse, of that man so ready at need," is the prayer he puts up ; or, " Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles, Peleus' son." ]>ut Hesiod's object is not to tell a story, but to tell the truth. He informs us at the beginning of the Thco/jony that the Muses appeared to him by night, when he was with his flocks on the mountain Helicon, and said to him, ' "\Ve can tell many lies like unto the truth, but we can, when we wish, say what is true.'' From this it is clear that Hesiod regarded the fictions of Homer with the same moral condemnation as Solon felt for acting, which, being the telling of lies, was not to be allowed in the state. The Spartans im- plied the same view by the synonym which they invented for lying " Homerising ; " while even with us, to ''romance" is to "tell a story," in the uncomplimentary sense. The object of Hesiod, then, was to tell not a story, but the truth. Xow a poet may choose for his poem anything he likes to take, from a field-mouse to the fall of man; and, provided that he pro- duces work beautiful iu itself and in accordance with the laws of poetry, criticism which carps at his choice of subject has no value. He may choose to tell the truth, and that will not mar his poetry. Xor will it make mere verses poetry, any more than it will make a bad verse scan. A statement may be true, yet not beautifully or poetically expressed: witness the axioms of Knclid. And the inference is equally false whether we say this is true and therefore poetical, or this is not true and there- is not poetical. In tine, whatever the poet may wish to object is to produce poetry, while the object of poetry but to give instruction. The which is essential to the poetical Hcsiod evidentlv looked upon with like the truth '' indeed, but not 1 to give exact information about jut the pedigree of the gods. Ile-iod is the representative of didactic poetry, of the poetry which is designed to instruct. The popularity lie enjoyed in antiquity was due to tin; fact that lie fullilled his object. He did instruct, and lie was u.-ed largely for purposes of in.~truc- ti->ji. V>\\\ it is preci.-ely because th" aim of in.-tniction wholly filled his tiekl of vision to the exclusion of the poet's proper EPIC POKTKY : UESIOD AM) HKSIODIC POKTKY. 79 object the production of poetry that ho fails of being a poet. \\ r e have said that Ilesiod's didactic object was due to the place and race to which he belonged. He was an yKolian and a Boeotian. Ba-ot.ia did indeed produce isolated geniuses a poet, Pindar; a general, Epaminondas. But the dulness of the atmosphere was matched by, if it was not the cause of, the dul- ness of the population. The Athenians called their neighbours "Boeotian pigs;" and country and people alike were better fitted for cultivation than culture. The Homeric poems, on the other hand, belonged in their origin to Asia Minor and the Ionian race, a place and people much bettor adapted for the development of the sense of beauty and for the growth of works of the imagination. Here it should be noticed, that although didactic poetry was developed in Bceotia and epic in Ionia, the two kinds of literature were not the exclusive posses- sion, the one of the one people, the other of the other. As epic poetry has a history before Homer, so didactic poetry had a development before Hesiod. Poems as long as those of Ilesiod, and consisting of a string of precepts but loosely bound to- gether, could only have been built on the foundations laid by a long line of predecessors. As the Homeric poems are the literary and artistic version of various popular legends and myths and folk-lore woven together by the genius of the poet, so too tin! wise saws of which Hesiod's ICorA'x and Days is made up were drawn from the experience, and also from the superstitions of the people. Further, as popular legends had received poetic treatment before Homer's time, so before Hesiod ''the wisdom of many'' had been ,-hapod into form by "the wit of the ft-w." Precepts for the conduct pointed form both before and after I b the sayings of the Seven \Yi.-e M, n Athens, Ilipparchus, the .-on of l'i-i-t kind inscribed ot I 'idactie poetrv, 1 lily. Hesiodgivi well as the conduct "'' lit' 1 ', on marriage And so, too, we tind didactic passages in advice of Ne.-tor to his son on tin the lo-t epic Tii' /'/x. one of the n pii ce of didactic poetry. In tine, th tin.-' foim of conveying instriictio] Ilesiod, nor \\as it peculiar ! the .Knlian l'"i 'Hans. But 1 Ollf i>f tlu-M.- ILL- >>;n iM.ii.-C. I. Li. 1. 12. 8O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. nowhere else and from no other poet did it receive such cultiva- tion. The conditions in Boeotia were more favourable than else- where to the development of the seeds of didactic poetry. What were the conditions 1 A country adapted for farming, and a population more inclined to the realities of existence than to the realms of fancy. Hesiod was "a child of his time and people." His natural bent was to the giving of practical advice ; and his audience, being practical men. preferred hints on farming to "lies." even though they were "like the truth," about Troy. Under the title Works and Days there are comprised in all probability two works. There is the Works and Days proper, consisting of advice about farming and husbandry generally, and constituting the second half of the poem as it now stands. There is also another poem addressed to Hesiod's brother, and containing moral advice, which makes the first half of the poem in its present form. These two poems differ in character enough to make it probable that they were given to the public under different conditions. ISTow it is possible that the real Works and Days was first given to the public at some "musical " contest or literary competition. But it is not probable that Hesiod's warm reprobation of the corrupt and unjust kings was meant to compete for a prize. It would have great success with an audience of his neighbours gathered together to hear his wrds against an injustice from which they themselves had suffered or might suffer ; and we may conjecture that it was in this way the poem was diffused, much as the lampoons of Archilochus in later times were recited by the author at a ban- quet, and circulated through the city by those who heard them. Probably this was also the way in which the real Worlc.-> and Uai/s was made public. A single recitation in a public festival would give the hearers no opportunity of carrying away in their memories so long a poem. "\\'e must suppose, that Hesiod was frequently called upon to recite his poem in social gather- ings, and that thus it became difiusi-d. We have now to ask why the mutter of the Work* and Day*, which, like other didactic pot-try, is essentially prosaic, was thrown into tin- form of verse? TO this it has } -en jvplied that Hesiod had Very strong feelings about the. injustice of judges and tin; evil of idleness: and tin- strength of his feelings was so great, that his soul could not ivst until he had given the most beautiful and imposing expiession to his !' dings that he could. And this it is said is the explanation of didactic poetry in general. Poetry in itself is not the proper vehicle for in- struction and information : prose is the proper means. But EPIC POETRY : HESIOD AND HESIODIC POETRY. 8 I the attractive and enthralling beauty of what the author had to say appeared to him so great, that poetry was the only worthy expression for it; and into poetry he put it. 2s" ow we will not insist upon the fact that food for cattle and matters of manure cannot have, this overpowering beauty. The fallacy of the ex- planation is, that it assumes that Hesiod and other didactic poets had before them the choice whether to compose in verse or prose. Ikit in the seventh century B.C. no Greek author had any such choice. The very idea that it was possible to com- pose prose was unknown until the latter part of the sixth century, and then it was in Ionia that the discovery an important one was made. If a man had that within him which he felt he must give words to if his thoughts on the order of tilings, or his knowledge of the practical matters of life, seemed to him too precious to die within his own breast, lie had only one way of giving them extensive publicity, only one way of ensuring that they should live after him, and that was to put them into verse. A precept is useless if it can- not be remembered, and cannot be readily learnt by one person from another. Accordingly, amongst most peoples, rhyme, metre, or alliteration is used as an aid to memory. Rhyme and metre have indeed a beauty of their own, which doubt- less is the secret of their original cultivation. ]',ut they have also the practical recommendation of enabling the memory to carry a larger amount of facts than it otherwise could retain ; and so long as writing is unknown to or little used by a people, verse is not only a means of gratifying man's sense of beauty, but also bears the burdens which paper or parchment are sub- sequently made to carry. Kveii when prose literature has come into existence, and when the function of verse has been specialised down to the S"le purpose of udding to the beauty of expression, we s;iil tind that there survives, especially ann-ngst the un-ducat'-d, a lar_;e amount of fo'.k-lore in verse. Amongst this folk-Inn' there may p'licrallv be found rhymes about the weather, about the proper days for the discharge of certain domestic duties, NOW tli is i- pre- 11 '"//,.; i ni 'I 1) i >/.*. rations, the "days ' ale the davs which it i.- lucky t<> do or avoid certain things. reasonable i > suppo-e ilia! II".-;. i was but 'in, which alieady exi-t^l amng the people, of Hit 1 'rmat i' ui in \vrs'', beeau.-e it was ea.-iei 1 to remember than it would hive be'-n if put into pros*. It is true F 82 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. that a short maxim may have a long life, even in prose, if it is put in a pithy form, which by its point or its ring strikes the imagination and impresses itself on the memory. Such maxims are the proverbs of all peoples. They play an important part in the education of a nation, and constitute the principal edu- cation of many illiterate people. But although brief maxims may, even when expressed in prose, have a wide and long popu- lar existence, it is because they are brief. A dozen words in prose may be remembered if they are striking enough, but a dozen pages of prose not. Hesiod, therefore, who wrote a long work, had a very obvious reason for giving it the form of verse. His object was to give useful information : and however valu- able his precepts were in themselves, his object would have been defeated if they were not extensively circulated. Xow, if his sayings were to spread amongst the agricultural popula- tion of Boeotia, and be handed down from father to son, it was necessary that they should be in verse, for they were too long to be remembered or repeated otherwise ; for whatever the date at which writing came into use in Greece, we may reason- ably suppose that the tillers of the soil did no more reading in Greece than they did in England before the invention of the printing-press. It is from the Works and Days and the introduction to the TJtf-'-ogony that we learn all we know about Hesiod's life. His father 1 came from Cyme in yEolis and settled in Ascra, at the foot of Mount Helicon, in Boeotia. There, as far as we know, Ilesiod spent his life. After his father's death lie lost his share of hi.s father's property in a lawsuit brought again.- 1 him by his brother 1'erses, who obtained a verdict by bribing the judges. This, however, seems not to have prevented Hesiod from obtaining, by careful farming, a livelihood sufficient to enable him to give assistance to his brother subsequently, when Perses was in need of aid. Xor did the work which lie had to do as a fanner prevent him from composing didactic po.-try. The .Muses of Helicon inspired him to sing in the, Theoyonij of the origin of the world and the history of the. gods. His literary fame and triumphs were not limited to the audience that he found among his farmer neighbours, but on one occasion lie competed with a poem at the funeral of King 1 The nnme of his father is traditionally fivcn as Dies. This probably is due to a misunderstanding of Wnrkx umi J)ii;is, 299 IpydSiv \\tpa~ti oioc -)(C05. Unless we correct the reading into Aioc -,fi'os. EPIC POETRY: HESIOD AND HESIODIC POETRY. 83 Amphidatnus in Chalcis, and carried off the prize. The law- suit with his In-other WHS the occasion of Hesiod's composing tho poem which now forms the first part of the Work*; and l).'oyony being the work of Hesiod. And this mu-r decide the question uf its authorship. The 77" nyinuj ii"t only relate.?, as its name implies, the birth of the .U"(.l>, but is also a cosmogony describing the origin of the univ.-rs.-. The poem is not the invention of He.-io^l himself ; it is his connected version of the ft outing beliefs and myths of his time, in which he has incorporated, probably, verges, and .\x.\v. (.ols di-f0r]Kai> '<>'i.77pos 'HcrtoOuj Tf, 'Uff'ja Tra// avOpuiroiffLV <5lf(5fa Kttl I/-J",OS i(/(*, ^CLVTO tttUV dOfaiaTiO. (p'/Oi, KXfTTTi If fit<.\t'.t.i> ~(. \a; a\\v/ x oi'S aTraTtreci'. EPIC POETRY : IIESIOD AND IIESIOD1C POETRY. 8 5 even whole passages, of traditional religious poems. In tho beginning, according to his authorities, was Chaos. Out of Chaos came Earth, and Tartarus, and Love. From Chaos also sprung Erehos and Might. From Krebos and Night came Day and /Ether. From Earth was born the Sky and the Mountains. Then the union of Earth and Sky produced the Ocean, Kronos, the Cyclops, and the Titans. The Sun and Moon were Lorn from the Titans. The Sky (Uranus) was the first lord of tho gods : but he was killed by his son, Kronos, and from his body sprang the Erinnyes and Aphrodite. Kronos himself was de- pos-'d by his son Zeus. The history of the dynasty of Zeus follows, and the poem ends with a list of the goddesses who married mortals. Like the H'o/'/.v ami Days, the Tlifonoiuj, being a didactic poem, \\as usi-d in Civcce for educational purposes. From tiie orator .E-chines we learn that Creek boys were made to learn the former, and from the rhetorician Libanius that even in the fourth century after Christ the Thcoiju/ii/ was still taught. 1 Lut the Tin ii'i'iinj was not only used as a manual of mythology in schools ; as containing the oldest speculations of the race on the origin of the universe and of the gods, it was the subject of dis<;u-si"ii among philosophers. The story goes that Epicurus received his lirst impulse to philosophy from the Theoyuny ; and certainly the Stoic philosophers Zeno, Chry.-ippus. and Diogenes of I'.abylon wrote treatises on it, and endeavoured to interweave it with their physical philosophy. In earlier times philosophers treated it with less respect and more judgment, lleraclitus ob.-erved that it showed the dillereiice between learning and understanding.- The criticism is a sound one. llesiod heaped up all the 1 myths that he was acquainted with in tin; Tltt'ii'jniiii) and his mythological learning was wide : but in many cases he seems not to have understond them well enough even to relat" them intelligibly. Another philosopher, X"iio- phanes, criticised the work on moral grounds; every action that men consider immoral, theft, adultery, and deceit, lie-i"d attributed to the gods. This critici-m also is true; bu; the reproach all'ects He>;od but little, since he did not invent these tal'-s ; he. merely recorded th'-m. 1 he brutal stories found in the T//>'i>;>i>/, i'.ij. tho.-e in which Kronos ^-wallows his own 1 .V.srhint 1 ! in C'f-t. i;;. p. 7 ;, iT't.f'a? r'rrc.s thil'fil>, *LV IJJ'SpfS OlTtS ttl'"-0.5 k'.Jl'.i'Ccl. ( '!. 1. 2 7ro.\r_:uti'i7; vi,(iv (>' Hi~-;ii* mi. H(ji.QuOV K.T.\. xvi. I'd. 1'ywattT. 86 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. children and mutilates his father Uranus, are descended from times when the Aryans were no more advanced in civilisation than the South Sea Islanders. Such stories are found all over the world, as flint arrow-heads and stone implements are found, and show that the mind of primitive man was everywhere in- fluenced by the same analogies in the endeavour to solve the problem of the origin of things. We have now to mention the other works ascribed to Hesiod. Of these, the Shield of Hercules alone survives. It is obviously inspired by the description of the shield of Achilles in Homer, and the diction contains reminiscences of Homeric phraseology. As literature, it possesses no great merit. The narrative is life- less, the description of the shield inartistic. The introduction now prefixed to the poem does not belong to it, but to the Eove of Hesiod. It is said that Stesichorus. the lyric poet who lived about B.C. 600, expressly ascribed the Shield to Hesiod, but the critic Aristophanes of Byzantium (circa B.C. 200) declared it spurious, and his opinion has been unanimously accepted, on internal grounds, by modern writers. Other works, now lost, such as the Catalogue of Women, the Eoce, sEgimios, the Teaching of Chiron, the Welding of Kt'i/x, the Melampodia, were also ascribed to Hesiod, some perhaps justly, others because they were Hesiodic, i.e. didactic or genea- logical, or like him in style. The most important of these works is the Catalogue. It probably formed a continuation of the Tlicogony, as it contained the genealogy of heroes, related in much the same way as the genealogy of the gods is related in the Tlicixjony. It seems to have consisted of three books ; and as the Eow, consisting of two books and treating of the .same subject, was usually united with it in a work of five books altogether, it has sometimes been maintained that the Catalogue and the Eoce 1 are but different names for the same work. But the fragments of them seem to .show that the same myths were treated in a different way in the, two works, and as the Cata- logue was universally recognised in antiquity as the work of llesiod, while there were doubts about the genuineness of the 1 The title Eocc, ']Io?at, is a plural of the phrase 7; O'LTJ, and the poem <;<>t its name from the fact that the history of each heroine be^an wiih the -.voids T) 0177. For instance, the fragment of the Kat which has been prefixed to the Kkicld begins 7) or/; 7rpo\iTroiffa 56fJ.ovs Kal irar/iida yaiav ij\vOti> t's Qtj ; ias .... ' A\K/J.r/i>r;. The Eorc, then-fore, niu-;t have, bc^un with some such statement as: Never were there women so fair as those of antiquity or such as Alcinene ; and every heroine was introduced with the words "or such as." KPIC POKTRY : HF.SIOI) AND IIESIODIC POKTKY. 87 J:'ua', it is possible that not only were they different works, l)iit by different authors. Tlie references to Cyrene in tin; K,' ! which implies that, the poem began with some such phni-r as " Never was woman so fair, or such as," Alcmene, or whoever the heroine was. Genealogical poems took especial root in (Jreece, as epic proper owes its cultivation to the colonies in Asia Minor. These poems being of a semi-historical character, are valuable for the hi.-tory of (Jivek literature, as showing that prose, which is tin' proper vehicle for history, and which was, as a matter of fact, first used for history, was only brought into use after verse had been many times tried for the purpose of recording history. At the same time they show by what slow degrees history began to disengage itself from myth. Aniong>t the authors of these semi-historical genealogical poems, the name of Chersias of Orchomenus has eome down to us. lie is said to have been a contemporary of I'eriander and Chilon. To Kumelus of Corinth, who was said to have composed the Rifuni. were also ascribed the C<>riiithifin A'/"''"' ^"' /'''''"/"'"'". ami Kurujrin, which \ve may regard as semi historical poems. Argos also, a- well as (' ii'inth. produced poetry of thi> kind, the. l'li<>rniii,t an-i /Jtui'ii*, whose auth"ix aie unknown. In Sparta, Ciiuethon, a coiitem- jiorary of Munielu-. who liveii probably about B.C. 776. p ealogical poem. Athens had her representativ , who wrote the Attlii* ; and in later times in ti of Sams wrote a genealogical j-o-m amongst oi' Tlie ^F.'iintiti* and tin- ll'^A/'.v;/ i>J A"- //./. w'nicli wen to Ib'Hod. Wfi'i 1 narrative in character and were .-In Thev oriu'inat"d amoii" the I'xi'otians and l><>rian in, i> din 1 authority. 88 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. betray their origin by the fact that they, like the Shield of Heracles, took their subjects frm the myths in which Heracles figured. Finally, the Teaching of Chiron was a development of the didactic side of Hesiod's poetry, as were also the Great Works and the Astronomy, and, in later times, the Astroloyia of Cleostratus of Tenedos. CHAPTER VII. OTHER EPIC POETS AND OTHER WRITERS OF HEXAMETERS. BESIDES Homer and the poets whose works were incorporated in after-times into the Epic Cycle, we find that there were other epic poets, whose works have perished entirely, or are repre- sented by insignificant fragments only. "With the doubtful exception of Peisandcr, all these poets belong to post-epic times ; that is to say, they devoted themselves to epic composi- tion at a time when genius had abandoned epic poetry for the cultivation of other kinds of literature. The epic age is the period in which genius carried epic poetry to its greatest height, and in which epic constituted the main if not the sole literary food of the nation. Although epic poems continued to be ] 're- duced throughout the period of lyric poetry and of the drama, even until the rise of oratory, we may regard the epic age as ended and the lyric period inaugurated when, in B.C. 700, genius appeared for the first time in the field of lyric poetry in the person of Archilochus. The elements of lyric had existed long before this among the people, but the age of lyric only began with Ardiilochus. and when it began the epic age may be said to end. We have therefore now to deal with authors who composed epics at a time when popular attention, and consequently the encouragement which national fame can give, was bestowed on other kinds of literature. Some epics composed under these unfavourable conditions were incorporated in the Epic Cycle, and have already been mentioned. Amon^ the epic poets who remain to be mentioned, the most distinguished was the earliest, Peisander of Kamiros in Khodcs. Some authorities regarded him as belonging to the epic a ire ; others, with more probability, assign n. c. 650 as his dat". and he may be even ni"re modern than that. lie, like the other e pic authors of po.-t-epic times, EPIC POETRY: OTHER EPIC POETS. 89 finding the cycle of Trojan myths already worked out, turned elsewhere for a subject, which he found in the adventures of Heracles. The subject had indeed been treated of before in short Hesiodic poems, such as the Sliiflii of Jlcrai'lcs and the Mnrriaije of KI'IJJ: But these works, though epic in style, had only dealt with incidents in the life of the hero. It yet re- mained for some one to give in the epic style a systematic account of all the adventures of Heracles. This IVisander did in his Hertifli in. The epic consisted of two books, and, as far as we can judge, seems to have been a well-planned work, pos- sessing some claims to artistic unity and symmetry of detail, wherein it differed from tin; loose and unpoetical character of the genealogical poems attributed to Hesiod. Beyond this it is impossible for us to form for ourselves any independent judg- ment as to the literary Tiierit of IVisander. It is to be noticed that, as we should expect, we do not iind in classical authors any mention of iVisander. IVisander devoted himself to epic poetry at a time when no wide re; utation was to be gained from it. and the audience to which he addressed himself was probably the narrow one of his own circle of friends. On what grounds the Alexandrian critics, who classed him along with Homer and Hesiod in their canon of epic poets, did so class him, we do not know ; but a class which included Hesiod could not have been constituted simply on grounds of literary merit. An interesting figure among these later epic poets is that of 1'anyasis, the uncle of Herodotus. 1'anyasis, the son of Poly- archus of llaliearmissus, lived about B.C. 500, in the time of the Persian wars. He was not merely a learned archaeologist, a patient investigator, and a man of letters, but he was a poli- tician and a patriot, and died in the cause of freedom. His native city was under the rule, not of a government of the t-iti/eiis' own choice, lint of a dynasty of tyrants maintained in their power by the arms and wealth of Persia. The move- ment of the Persian war atl'orded the party of freedom an oppor- tunity to strike for liberty. Temporary success was followed by the return of the tyrants, and in the struggle Panva-is l-t his life. Pike IVisander, Panyasis took Heracles for the subject of his epic, and wrote a ll'rn'-l'in. IVi-ander had treated the subject at greater length than had his pivd-'iT^sor-. and Paiiya.-is far outstripped IVisander. The lli-rui-ti in of Peisander consisted of two books, that of Panva.-is of fourteen, and they numbered nine tii"ii-and verses. The fragments do not allow us to form an opin:'"ii on the liteiaiy W"i;h of Pan- yasis' epic; and the statem.-nt made by Suidas that he was 9O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ranked next to Homer is a testimonial of no great value, since we do not know by whom he was ranked next to Homer. An- other statement made by Suidas, that Panyasis gave a fresh impulse to epic, which was nearly extinct, confirms what we have said with regard to Peisander, that the epic age was over. The Hvradda of Panyasis seems to have owed its length mainly to the learning with which it was crammed. The author was indefatigable in collecting local legends ; and everything that diligent investigation could amass of this kind, Pauyasis seems to have incorporated into his poem on Heracles. His antiquarian instincts, however, found better room for exercise in his lonica. This was a semi historical poem, seven thousand verses long, in which was embodied all the tradition, myth, and legend which Panyasis could collect about the early history of the Ionic race. Finally, we should notice that Panyasis' services to literature must not be measured by these poems alone ; for Herodotus doubtless owed to his uncle much of his education and of his impulse to literature. Antimachus of Colophon belonged to the generation before Plato. He seems to have been but little in Athens, to have spent most of his life in Colophon, arid to have died at an advanced age. llesides an elegiac poem, Lyde,, he wrote a very long epic, a Theldis. His contemporaries paid no more atten- tion to him than to other epic poets of the post-epic age. It was only when criticism had declined that his epic was dragged by Hadrian from its merited obscurity, and ordered by the Emperor's decree thenceforth to take the place of Homer. A greater service rendered by Ancimachus to literature was his edition of Homer. Other epic poets, of whom we know scarcely anything but their names, but who lived probably in post-epic timc-s. were Zopyrus, Ihphilus, Antimachus of Teos. Phaedimus of liisanthe, who wrote a Heracleia and also elegiac poems, and L)iotimus. Choerilus of Snmos, a contemporary of Herodotus, deserves sepa- rate mention, though ho has shared the obscurity of Antimachus. Departing from the established custom, of epic poets, which was to take the subjects of their poems from mythology, Choerilus wrote a historical epic. The period he chose was the Persian war, and the title of his epic was Peru/I'd or Pa'S'/is. The idea was doubtless siiLr<_ r ested to him by the fact that Phrynichus and ^-Eschylus had found a subject for tragedy in the same period. But Cha-rilus seems not to have had the power to handle the theme properly. He was somewhat of a hack, and devoted himself to writing complimentary verses to distinguished EPIC POETKY : OTHER EPIC POETS. 9 1 men, such as Lysandor, the conqueror of Athens, and Archelaus, king of Macedonia. His Persica was impartially enough de- voted to the praise of Athens. Equally noteworthy as a departure from the ordinary round of epic subjects is the Aritnaapeia of Aristeas. The poem takes its name from the fabulous people of the one-eyed Arimaspes. Whereas other epic pouts, and the Tragedians as well, confined themselves to mythology, Aristeas of Proconnesus in the Pro- pontis seems to have drawn on his imagination for his subject, and to have had a great taste for the marvellous. As to the date of this port, some conjectured him to be older even than Homer, but all that we know is that he was older than Hero- dotus, from whom (iv. 13-15) what we know of Aristeas is drawn. Inasmuch as Aristeas laid the scene of his epic among the Hyperboreans, he maybe conjectured to have had some points in common with the mystic school of poets ; for the Hyperboreans were a people regarded as specially beloved by Apollo. To the mystic school also belonged Abaris, who pro- fessed, or was said in later times, to have come from the Hyper- boreans on a mission from Apollo. He brought with him an arrow as a sign that he was sent by Apollo, according to Hero- dotus (iv. 36) : but the visionaries of the Xeo-Platonic school in later times related that Abaris rode through the air on this arrow, and thus traversed the world. Oracles, hymns of puri- fication, and an epic were ascribed to him, but we have no means of judging whether the works ascribed to him were really his. About the works of the Cretan Epimenides we are equally ill-informed, though it admits of no doubt that he was a historical personage. He was summoned by the Athenians to purify their city fnnn the pollution brought upon it by Cyloii, about it . c. 610 : and according to Plato, \\-ho, however, lived two centuries later, he possessed a. profound insight into spiritual things. Tales of a wonderful character were told about him too. He was brought up by the Xymplia 1 and possessed tin) power of piojeeting his soul info space. Special mention mils' be made of the < M'phir poets. Whether there ever was sueii a per-on as Orpheus, "who with his luto made trees ]'.M\V them-elve- as he did please,'' is a point oil w'nieh, in the total absence of evidence, \\v are reduced to con- jecture. ( Mi the one hand, the etories whi'-h are told of hi- mar- vellous powers of music and of his descent to the nether world to brin?: back his wife, Eur\ diee, seem to elas< him amoni: legendary personage--. (Mi the other hand, tin-re seem to have exi-l'd religious hymns of great antiquity, univ<.r- div i''-gai'li-d as the 92 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. vrork of Orpheus, which may have been the production of some poet older even than Homer. At any rate, it is certain that in historic times associations of men calling themselves " fol- lowers of Orpheus " were devoted to the worship of Dionysos- Zagreus. Dionysos in this aspect was a different god from the god of wine, and the bacchanalia of the followers of Orpheus very different from other bacchanalian rites. Dionysos-Zagreus was a god of the nether world, and the followers of Orpheus led an ascetic life in search of purity and in hope of future blessed- ness. When they had partaken of the flesh offered as a sac- rifice at their initiation, they thenceforward renounced meat. Like Egyptian priests, they wore white raiment. Religious hymns bearing the name of Orpheus seem to have been current among the people from early times ; but an Orphic literature first arose about the time of the Persian wars. Even before then, Orphic views had made themselves felt in religious literature, as, for instance, in the Theorjomj of Pherecydes of Syros, fragments of which still survive. But at the beginning of the fifth century we find many Orphic poets, Persinus of Miletus, Timocles of Syracuse, Diognetus, Brontinus, and Cer- cops ; and a theogony entirely Orphic. The most celebrated of the Orphic poets of this period is Onomacritus, who was employed by the Pisistratidse to collect and arrange oracles affecting Athens, and was convicted by the poet Lasos of inter- polating forgeries. There seems little reason to doubt that in this age, though more extensively in Xeo-Platonic times, hymns and poems were composed which were not perhaps deliberate forgeries, but speedily came to be uncritically received as the works of Orpheus, or as possessing a much greater antiquity than was really theirs. The oracles which Onomacritus was employed by the Pisi- stratidee to collect were those of Musreus. Although regarded as the pupil of Orpheus, Musieus seems to have written poetry which was connected with the Eleusinian mysteries, and his prophecies related exclusively to Attica. Closely connected with Musams was Eumolpus. He was, according to the popular tradition, descended from Musams. It does not seem that he composed poetry himself, or, if he did, it perished early but he preserved and transmitted the verses of Mu-'us. Another name which occurs in connection with that of Mus-eus i.s Bacis. Some of his prophecies are quoted by Herodotus (viii. 20, 77, 96, ix. 43), and are regarded by the historian as a complete refutation of the sceptical views existing in his time with regard to prophecies. Another prophet quoted by Herodotus EPIC POETRY : OTHER EPIC POETS. 93 is an Athenian named Lysistratus. All these prophecies, as also those of the Delphian and other oracles, are in hexameter verse ; and in their diction they show the influence of Homer, and to u less extent of Hcsiod. To complete our enumeration of the less important writers of hexameters, we ought to mention the anonymous authors of epitaphs. When the pentameter was invented, elegiac couplets, consisting of a hexameter and a pentameter, became the uni- versal metre for epitaphs. But before the invention of the pentameter, hexameter was used. An example is preserved in the so-called Homeric Epigrams (iii.), which professes to have been inscribed on the- tomb of Midas. There are also found hexameter epitaphs amongst the oldest stone records which we possess. 1 Finally, this is the proper place for us to speak of the philo- sophers who wrote in hexameters, Xenophanes, Parmenidcs, and Empedocles. If it fell within the scope of this work to trace the filiation of philosophic systems, we should properly treat of these philosophers in connection with those who wrote in prose, since the form in which they expressed themselves would not justify us in separating them. JJut we are concerned with them only in their literary aspect, and have not to do with their philosophy. For the history of literature, the importance of Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Empedocles is that they show how diliicult a thing it was for a nation, which for centuries had composed in verse alone, to learn to write in prose. About the same time that Xenophanos in Elea was formulating his philosophy in hexameters, that is, about u.c. 570, Pherecydes, a nativi' of Sevres, one of the Cvclades, and a pupil of the famous Thaies, was making the earliest attempt to write in prose, Some few specimens of his work have come dosvn to us. In everything but metre they are poetry, not pro>e ; and whereas in poetry an author could compose artistic sentences of some complexity, in prose at this time he could only ejaculate short and simple expressions, in their baldness rather reseml a child's attempt at \\riting than a philosopher's. A little later than tin's, about li.c. 547, another philosopher. Anaxi- mander of Mdetus, again made an ell'oit to write prose, \vith more clearness but scarcely less awkwardness than his pre- deces-or. Half a century later, although the philosophers Anaxiiiienes and lleraclitus had carried on the work of e>tab- lishiiii: pi'o--e, and tke logographers ('admin. H.-cata-us. and Acusilaus, the predecessors of the hi.-t'iriaiis, had written 1 K.i 94 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. geographical, genealogical, and semi-historical works in prose, we find that Parmenides preferred poetry. Prose in the hands of Heraclitus was even less fitted for an intelligible exposition of philosophy than was poetr} 7 . Even as late as B.C. 444, the year in which Thurii was founded, a time when Herodotus had already composed and recited much of his history, the first great work in prose, Empedocles still wrote in verse. This last fact is instructive, because it directs our attention to the circumstance that, besides the difficulty of writing prose, there were difficulties in the way of reading prose. It is sometimes, if not generally, said that prose, or at least a prose literature, cannot be developed unless there exists a reading public, and the existence of a reading public depends upon the development of the means of multiplying and diffusing copies of a manuscript. But in the works of the Orators we have a prose literature which was not designed for a reading public. ]S T ay, more ; the development of prose as an artistic expres- sion of thought, possessing a beauty and a rhythm of its own, distinct from but as marked as those of poetry, is the work of the Orators, whose object was to produce, not a written litera- ture, but periods addressed to the ear of their audience. For this purpose, all that is necessary is that the writing should be easy enough for the author to put down his thoughts, without excessive and distracting labour. Xow, in B.C. 444 the art of writing was far enough developed for this, as the existence of the history of Herodotus shows ; and even in the time of Xenophanes, B.C. 570. this may have been the case; for writing had then been known in Greece for a hundred and thirty years. If, then, Empedocles, as late as B.C. 444, preferred to use poetry, we may reasonably conjecture that one reason at least for his preference was that the Greek public listened more readily to poetry, to which it was accustomed, than to inartistic prose. It was only about this time that Greek audiences were learning to listen to prose, whether the unaffected prose of Herodotus, or the artificial and florid rhetoric of (lor^ias. "NVlien we go back more than a century to the time of Xeno- phanes, the case is still clearer. The author who wrote in prose might indeed find a public in the private audience of pupils or friends whom lie collected together to listen to his writings; but the author who aimed at a wider publicity, and wi.-hed to gain the ear of the assembled population of the city, could only succeed in his purpose if he wrote in verso, and declaimed his verses at some public festival, the object of which was to afi'ord an opportunity fur the production of EPIC FOKTHY : OTI1EK EPIC PoETrf. ' 9 5 poetical compositions. The former method was that adopted by tlie philosophers who wrote in prose ; the latter that in which Xenophaues published hi.s works. 1 liut it must not be inferred that the connection between philosophy and poetry was accidental, or merely a matter of form, due solely and wholly to the difficulty of writing and diffusing prose. There is also an internal bond, and a reason in the nature of the two things for their connection. A subject of philosophy may be treated of by poetry, and philosophy may deal with its own subjects poetically ; but it is only in early times that the connection between them is maintained. With the development of knowledge philosophy breaks away from poetry, and each is specialised to its proper work and methods. This process of specialisation is not peculiar to poetry and philosophy, but is the law of the development of knowledge iu all its branches. In the earliest stages of a nation's intel- lectual history, not only philosophy, but all the nation's knowledge is comprised in poetry. The works of He.-iod, for instance, are an encyclopaedia of the knowledge of the Greeks i.i f his time. His Tlie(.> and Day* we have not only a manual of practical knowledge, but a treatise on moral philosophy in embryo. liut by degrees the various branches of knowledge comprised in the poetry of Hesiod began to break away from poetry and poetical treat- ment, and to gain a separate existence, an appropriate mode of expulsion and methods of their own. The genealogical poems. were fallowed by the prose genealogies of the logographers, which in their turn were displaced by the history of Herodotus. History, agiin, when it had iinally split oil' fn>m poetry, wa- found to eoiitain within it another department of knowledge, geography, which eventually, with the increase of knowledge, was developed out of history, as history had been evolvd out of poetry; and in the present day, physical geography and political geography are ea<'h receiving a special evolution. A .-i:::iiar process of specialisation to '.; pla e For lo;i_r, theology and philosophy were ins philosophy proper, physical philosophy had t and then moral philosophy had to win an existence of its ow ai'rus > /'/''' T' --""<' ~& ten Tui'. 96 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. independent of the philosophy which speculates on first prin- ciples and the nature of things. Eut it was only gradually that philosophy escaped from poetry, and we have here only to do with its first unsuccessful attempts. Although, as we have seen, the origin of things is a subject which may he dealt with by poetry, and was dealt with in the various theogonies, the me- thods by which a solution of the problem may be attempted are different, arid are not all equally capable of poetic expression or consistent with a poet's manner of thought. The method may be scientific, that is, may consist in the observation of facts experiment is a later discovery, unknown to the Greeks in recording them, drawing inductions from them, and so even- tually reaching the end in view. But this is an essentially prosaic process ; and the Ionic philosophers who employed it were naturally, we may almost say necessarily, driven to attempt to write in prose. On the other hand, there were philosophers who declared that the senses, our only means of observing facts, are wholly untrustworthy. They are all subject to illusions, and it is only by exercising our reason that we can detect the illusion and ascertain the truth. Instead, therefore, of trusting to the senses, which deceive us, we must rely solely upon reason, and excogitate the truth out of the mind. Xow this method of reaching conclusions is not inconsistent with the poet's way of viewing things. lie too draws upon his own internal stores, and creates out of his own genius what did not exist before. And it was Xenophanes, by nature a poet and the author of lyric poetry of considerable merit, and his follower Parmenides, also a poet, who invented this method and founded the Eleatic school of philosophy. It was therefore the method employed in philosophy which largely determined whether it should detach it.-elf from poetry, as in the case of Ionic philo- sophy, or remain in the pleasing fetters of verse, as in the case of Xenophanes, Parmcnides, and Kmpedocles. Xenophanes was born in Colophon, which was situated on the coa.'////, for this kind of literature was only invented tenturies after his date by Timon the Phliasian, surnamed the Hillographer. F.ustathius, the commentator of Homer, who lived about A.I). 1160, not only, following Strabo, ascribes ^illi to Xenophanes, but even traces their origin back to the. Iliad (ii. 212), thus showing that the only real ground for ascribing them to Xenophanes was the existence 1 of satiric passages in his poetry. The error seems to have had additional life given to it by the fact, that Timon the Sillographer in one of his >Y//i introduced Xenophanes making jest of Homer and other poets. Finally, the philosophy of Xenophanos was couched in hexa- A few verses are quoted by Greek authors of various 'lowover, would not have sutliced to -ive us much lilo-oiiiiy, did we not possess a par;ial i'i'.-mmf' in pi'o-e drawn from Tiieophrastus, tin 1 pupil of Ari>totle. by Sim- pliei::> ; and another, said., tir>u_ f h it is doubtful, to be ihe work of Aristotle. If Xenoplniies ever committed his works !o writing, they muija(us. EPIC POETRY : OTHER EPIC POETS. 99 after cheap originality of criticism and self-supposed superiority to the common view. Philosophy for generations, and through its most distinguished exponents, echoed the protests which he first made in the name of morality. Against the anthropo- morphism of his age and nation Xenophanes brought to bear all the varied resources of his many-sided ability. His philo- sophy was designed not for a chosen few, but for the general ear, as is shown by the fact that he delivered it in poetry ; and if, in the summaries of it which Theophrasttis and others have handed down to us, the reasoning seems close and subtle, the quotations which they make in the words of Xenophanes him- self show that he expressed pointed arguments in a manner that any of his audience could understand. Men think, he says with profound contempt, that the gods have birth, speak, have bodies, and wear clothes like themselves ! Why, if horses or cows could draw like men, they would represent the gods as cows or horses ! The theory of the transmigration of souls, which Pythagoras and his followers believed in, met with as little nieivy from Xenophanes as did the anthropomorphism of the people and the poets. According to the somewhat malicious invention of Xenophanes. Pythagoras checked a man who was beating a dog with the words, "Stay your hand ! in the dog is the soul of one dear to me ; i recognise his voice." If Xenophanes was the founder and the iirst of the Eleatic school, Piirinenides was the greatest of its philosophers. Par- nieuides. born at K!ea, belonged to a wealthy and distinguished family. He was a pupil of Xenophanes, and he also studied under Aminias and Diochojtes, Pythagorean philosophers. ]!ut from the latter, in accordance with the sysieiu of Pythagorean- ism, lie seems to have gained rather stimulation to tie- pursuit of philosophy than any body of d-'linite doctrine. Later in life, lie in his turn handed on the philosophy lie had elaborated to his pupils /eno and Melis.-us. Although a native of J-J.M, he seems to have been in communication with, or rather to have met ni"St of the philosi ipin-rs of his linn 1 , whether they belonged, like Kmpedocles, to Sicilv. or, like Hcraciitus, to so distant a place as Kphesus. The wealth of Paruieiiides doubtless all<>rded him the means to travel where he would: an have, in Plato the record of the fact t'nat ic and then- met Soerat'-s, then a VOUULT man. according to 1'iato, for the celebration of th festival, the 1'anal In-mea, at a time when h years and had alreadv achieved a reputation. interest for two reasons: it give.s us the da; IOO HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. and it shows how philosophy was diffused in Greece. As for the date, Socrates was born B.C. 468, and if we suppose that at the time of the meeting Socrates was sixteen years of age and we can hardly suppose that he was younger Parmenides visited Athens in B.C. 452 ; and he was between sixty and seventy years of age at the time. During the visit he met many Athe- nians, with whom he discussed points of philosophy. This method of diffusing his views was specially suited to Parme- nides, because the development of an argument by means of questioning the pupil or auditor the dialectic method was a characteristic of the school to which he belonged. By him, probably, for the first. time the young Socrates heard the method employed, which he was subsequently to develop to its full per- fection. But although Parmenides -travelled far, and learned, discussed, taught, ami wrote on philosophy, lie neither neglected his duties as a citizen nor performed them perfunctorily. He proposed laws which were adopted and perpetuated; and his public life redounded as much to his reputation as his philo- sophy. In his writings he declares that the study of philosophy and the successful pursuit of truth demand purity and piety in the student ; and his life confirmed what his theory taught. We possess fragments of Parmenides' poetry of considerable length. His sole work seems to have been a poem, the title of which, On Nature., as it goes back to Theophrastus, may be genuine, though, if it is, the word " nature " must be used in an exiended sense, for Parmenides was rather a metaphysician than a man of science. The contrast between reason and sense, and the superiority of the former, are the points implied in the philosophy of Xenophanes, which Parmenides developed and made into the foundation of his philosophy. The senses are subject to illusion, and are inferior to the reason. The latter alone can apprehend truth, the former can only lead to con- jecture. In the pursuit of knowledge we have to learn to distinguish between reality and appearances; and whereas all that we know by means of the senses is the appearances of tilings, it is by reason that we have to discover what they really are. Ideality is truth, and truth is reason; therefore reason is the only reality. The evidence of the, sen>es does imt go beyond mere appearances and conjecture. Thought and existence are tilt; same. On this distinction between truth, reason, and reality, on the one hand, and conjecture, sense, and appearance, on the other, is based the division of Parmenides' poem into the two parts (hi Truth and On (.'niiji'i-ft/re. They have been re_'aixl"d, but on insufficient grounds, as two distinct works. EPIC POETRY : OTHER EPIC POETS. I O I It is probable that Parmenides did not formally distinguish them. The mystic or allegorical character of Parmenides' writing in the part of his poem which dealt with Conjecture may be illus- trated by the interesting introduction to the poem, which is conceived in the same strain. He represents himself as con- veyed by steeds, as far as thought can reach, along the famous road by which is reached the goddess who initiates the learned into all secrets. The way to light was shown him by the Nymphs of the Sun, who led him to the gates where are the ways of darkness and light. There they besought admittance for him from the guardian of the gate of light, Justice, who bade him welcome, if it was that piety had brought him on this road so remote from those the vulgar frequent. She then warns him of the arduous task there is before him, to acquire the sum of knowledge and to distinguish truth from the conjecture of the vulgar : and the poem begins. The steeds which conveyed Parmenides aloft are the lofty impulses of the philosophic mind. The goddess to whom they conveyed him is Heavenly Truth, and the road which leads to her is philosophy. The two ways of light and darkness are the two kinds of knowledge, truth and conjecture. The nymphs are Xymphs of the Sun because truth is light ; and the guardian of the gate is Justice because only the just and pious can pursue philosophy and attain truth. The allegory is poetical, and testifies to the exalted conception Parmenides possessed of the position of philosophy and the attributes necessary in the philosopher. It helps us further to understand why Parmenides wrote in poetry, in two ways : first, it shows his poetic tenden- cies ; next, it was quite beyond the capacities of prose, as it existed in his time, to bear the burden of bodying forth so deep an allegory. The prose of Plato could and did do greater work than this, but Plato was not born for a generation after Par- menides had made his reputation. \Ve are fortunate in p,se-s- ing so long a fragment of the Kleatie philosopher's work, and we probably have to thank Plato fur it indirectly. Parmenides' visit to Athens created great intere.-t there in his philosophy. .It made a great impression on Socrates, and through him on Plato, who has added lustre, by his dialogue entitled 1'ani" n- ii/f.--, to the name. Plato himself studied Parmenides' writings, as did Plato's pupil Aristotle and his pupil Theophrastus ; and even as late a- the fifth century after ( 'hn.-t a copy of hi? works seems to have existed in the posseission of Proclus, the N co- Platonic philosopher. IO2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. Empedocles is a remarkable figure in the history of Greek literature, and a number of remarkable stories have collected round his name. Perhaps the most widely known is the fable alluded to by Horace, according to which Empedocles terminated an extraordinary career by leaping into the crater of ^Etna, in order that he might seem to have vanished like a god, as he pretended to be. and was only betrayed by the fact that an eruption shortly afterwards ejected one of his sandals. The story has as little truth in it as has the orthodox explanation, which is to the effect that Empedocles accidentally fell into the crater while studying volcanic phenomena. In the time, and for centuries after the time, of Empedocles, the very existence of a crater seems to have been unknown, from the simple fact that no one ventured to explore the volcano. The fable is a caricature, and independent of the testimony which it bears to the wit of the Sicilians who invented it, it is valuable because, being a good caricature, it departs but little from the real features of the character which it derides. Empedocles did study natural science, and he did give himself out to be of divine origin, but he was no impostor in science, and in his divine origin he at least firmly believed. His is a character full of apparent con- tradictions : he was an abstract thinker, but a practical poli- tician ; he was steeped in mysticism, but studied the material welfare, of his fellow-citizens ; though lie achieved wonders in natural science, he preferred to claim supernatural powers ; in him artistic prose, according to Aristotle, has its ultimate founder, yet he wrote in verse ; lie is the most poetical of philosophers, and yet his works differ from prose only in that they arc in metrical form. A little younger than the philosopher Anaxngoras, who was born B.C. 500. and a little older than the rhetorician Gorging, the date of whose birth was B.C. 480, Empedocles may be inferred to have, been born about B.C. 490. The place of his birth was Agrigentum in Sicily, a city which in splendour rivalled Syra- cuse, lie belonged to a wealthy family, for his grandfather, after whom he was named, won the chariot race at the Olympian games, and only kings and persons of great wealth could a fiord to breed or purchase horses capable of carrying off this prize. We, have no explicit information about his youth, but the educational influences which existed in Sicily and in Agri- gentum. and to which doubtless ho was subjected, explain his subsequent career. The mysticism of his philosophy was im- bibed by him from the Pythagoreans, who were scattered throu.nl) Sicily and South Italy. His natural science was pro- EPIC POETRY : OTHER EPIC POETS. I 03 bably derived from the celebrated physicians Acron and 1'au- sanias, who flourished in Sicily in his time. Finally, the elo- quence which served him in his political life was not his pecu- liar attribute, but distinguished the Sicilian race, to whom the germs of oratory developed later in Athens were due. The wealth and position which Empedocles by his birth enjoyed brought political duties with them ; and when Thero the- tyrant, whose rule had raised Agrigentum to the highest ele- vation it attained, had died, Empedocles, following the tradi- tions of his family, assisted in establishing the liberty which he subsequently did so much to preserve. He purged oligarchy from the city, and declined to accept the sole rule of the state, which the citizens offered him. IJut throughout he was some- what theatrical : he aimed at effect. When he appeared in public, it was with a dress and surroundings deliberately designed to create the impression that Empedocles must not be con- founded with other people. Yet this was not affectation ; it was the nature of the man. If ho posed, he had an unaffected admiration for the attitudes he struck. If he arrayed himself in theatrical costume, he also wrote an appreciative description of it in his philosophical works. When we find him in the Intric'i professing not only to heal all known diseases, but ready to undertake the cure of old age and to provide a remedy for death, we should be doing him an injustice to dismiss him as a quack. He, like a medicine-man among the negroes, also pro- f'ssed to bring or avert rain, and undoubtedly believed in his ability to do what he professed as much as any medicine-man, and with greater reason, since his acquirements in natural science were considerable, and his mysticism obscured the limits which Xature has placed on Science. His unequivocal statement in tlie Kaflinnii/ii that he is no mortal, but an immortal god, is it-eif u testimony to his good faith, bring but a piece of his faith in him.-elf. At the same time, as we .-hall shortly see, n loses something of its muleness when viewed haze "f }\\~ mystic philosophy, ssary to have some knowledge of the character of in order to appreciate his literary worth at it- proper IO4 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. mysticism was adapted for poetry j it lent itself to metaphorical expression and lofty diction ; and Aristotle, who denies that the medical works of Empedocles are poetry, although they are in verse, also calls attention to his poetical qualities elsewhere. 1 Empedocles speaks of himself as giving oracles to the multi- tude who thronged round him clamouring for his supernatural assistance, and his style is frequently oracular in character. He was grandiose in his writing as in his hearing. Artificiality is breathed in his verses, and was the breath of his life : the poetical devices and tricks of expression which marked the early rhetoricians are to be traced even in the fragments we possess ; they are alluded to by Aristotle, who seems to have regarded him, in spite of his writing in verse, as the first of the rhetoricians, 2 and were probably transmitted by Empedocles to his pupil Gorgias, who transplanted them to Athens. According to Diogenes Laertius, Aristotle ascribed to Empe- docles tragedies and other works, the Invasion of Xerxes, a hymn to Apollo, and a Politics. Jkit as no author quotes a single line from any of these works, and as a later poet named Empedocles seems to have certainly composed tragedies, it is not improbable that Diogenes, who was a somewhat careless compiler, has confounded the two authors named Empedocles, The works by the philosopher Empedocles of which we possess fragments are the Katliarmoi, latrica, Physics, and some epi- grams. In the Katharmof, or Song* of Purification, he pro- fesses, as the name indicates, to purify from sin or crime all who come to him, as in the latrica. or Songs of Healing, he professed to cure all diseases, old age, and death. His medical knowledge was indeed extensive for his age, and he is said to have effected some remarkable cures, restoring the apparently dead, and so on. IJut he professed also to have supernatural powers, and this profession is connected with the mysticism which found its exposition in the /'// //.-'/<>, or poem on Xature. Into the mixture of mysticism and scientific speculation which made up the philosophy of Empedocles it is beyond our pro- vince to go. We will only say that he reached the conception of four elements, earth, air, lire, and water, or, as lie preferred mystically to call them, Zeus. Hera, Ai'doneus, and Xesti.s (the last name seems to have been his own invention. These ele- EPIC POETRY : OTHER EPIC POETS. I O 5 nicnts are indestructible. They may be combined, and the compounds into which they combhie may be reduced by disso- lution to the four elements again. But for these processes two principles are required : the principle of combination, which he calls mystically Friendship, and which is tlwLove of Parruenides and the Pythagoreans; and the principle of dissolution, which he calls Discord. The tendency of Friendship operating on the four elements is to produce a Sphere, that is, to give to the universe a perfect shape ; but there exists the opposite tendency of Discord, and the history of the universe is the resultant of their conflict. The principle of Discord, however, is not limited to the material world in its action. It operates also in the moral world. It prompts a daemon to some crime, and then for thrice ten thousand years the daemon, in exile from heaven, has to inhabit the bodies of men and living creatures. The poem On Nature begins with a statement of this law, and the declaration that Empedocles is himself a daemon undergoing the punishment of a mortal body. After this exordium, the first book seems to have dealt with the four elements, the second with the nature and condition of man, the third with the gods and things divine. Somewhat late in life Empedocles is said to have commenced his travels. Ho journeyed to the Peloponnesus, attended the Olympian games, and there recited his Songs of Purification. How long a period elapsed before he returned to Sicily is un- known, but it is reported that he found it impossible to gain ad- mission into his native town when he did return, and he resumed his travels. lie is said to have visited Athens, and it is not improbable that, like most celebrated men of the age, he visited the intellectual centre of flreece. He died between sixty and seventy years of age. Many strange stories are told of his death, the mode of which remains unknown. BOOK II. LYRIC POETRY. CHAPTER I. THE ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POET3. EPIC poetry was succeeded in Greece by lyric poetry. The germs of lyric poetry already existed in the epic period, but for their development it was necessary that a change should occur in the conditions of social and political life. The poli- tical and social changes which developed the germs of lyric poetry were the overthrow of regal governments, the foundation of colonies, and the extension of commerce. The overthrow of royal government tended to the liberty of the citizens. The people ceased to live for the sake of supporting a king, and began to live for themselves and their country. This shift of material interests was followed by a corresponding shift in literary interest. So long as the king was the state, Priam's fortunes were necessarily the poet's materials ; but when the citizens became the state, their interests, their hopes, and their fears became the theme which interested them and inspired the poet. The tendency of colonisation worked to the same end. Hettlers are compelled to rely on their own exertions ; birth and position go for little in the new country ; it is the man of most capacity and energy -who comes to the. top. in a colony, the individual citizen gained an importance which was beyond his reach in the old country. It is hardly necessary to say that the extension of commerce had a similar result. As commerce grew, there opened before the individual citizen the possibility of attaining to Avealth and importance. The result of these changes was lyric poetry. Men's thoughts were fixed on the present, not mi the past. Politically and socially a break had been made. The ideal past, depicted in epic poetry, was no longer felt to have any relation to the LYKIC POETRY : ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETS. I O/ present, and was, therefore, no longer fitted to supply inspira- tion to the poet or to engage the attention of his hearers. The hour called not for a narrative of the fight round Troy, but for lays such as those of Callinus or Tyrtams, which could rouse a man to tight "for the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods." The first dill'erence between epic and lyric is that the former is narrative and the latter is the expression of emotion. ]>ut this difference implies another. In epic the poet never himself appears. He narrates everything, but never gives his own view as his own view of anything. The essence of lyric, on the other hand, is that in it the poet expresses his own personal emotions. Lyric is personal, epic impersonal ; or, as the same idea is sometimes expressed, the former is subjective, the latter objective. The, conditions under which lyric poetry was developed in Greece gave it some characteristics which distinguish it from, and are brought into relief by, the lyric poetry of other nations. Modern lyric comprises everything within its range; anything which touches the poet and moves him to song may provide a subject Chapman's Homer or the west wind, a nation or a skylark, the future or the past. Imt Greek lyric {XH.' try, born of a reaction from contemplation of the past to action in the present, had not this universal rang". It draws its themes from, and is always related to, the present. Solon addresses his fellow-citizens not on the past, but on the present condition of Attica. Theo^nis deals with the politics, Tyrttt'iis with the wars, of his own time. And although, in choral poetry, the theme is frequently mythical, such poetry always was eompo-ed for, and related to, a de- finite religious fe.-tival. In fact, it was "occasional poetry," as is dearly seen in those odes of I'imlar which were written to celebrate the occasion of some victory in the various national games of Greece. Greek lyric poetry is, then, distinguished trom other lyric poetry by always having reference to the present, and this is due to the conditions under which it was developed. It is also distinguished by the occasional presence of mythical element. This, as we have said, in choral lyrics written for some festival, and in honour gods. In this, too, -\ve have a trace of the conditions which Greek lyric was developed, for an inheritance from tin- epic peri. >d. also another distinctive feature of ( ire. did.ivtic element. This was apparent IOS HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. most markedly in Theognis, although it is not confined to him, but is present in all varieties of Greek lyric. We have considered the social and political conditions under which the germs of lyric poetry were developed, and we have seen how the characteristics peculiar to Greek lyric were due to the conditions of its development. "We may now proceed to consider the germs themselves. They were of two kinds religious chants and popular songs. No specimen of the former has come down to us, but we may reasonably conjecture that they had the same origin and were much the same in kind as the Saliaric hymns of the Romans. They were probably metrical invocations of the gods, of a simple and inartistic kind, addressing the god in all his various attributes and with his various names, containing much repetition and tautology, and doing the duty of liturgies. They were preserved by hereditary priesthoods, being transmitted from generation to generation, and receiving occa- sional additions. In Attica the Eumolpidae were a hereditary priesthood of this kind, connected with the worship of Demeter at Eleusis, whose hymns were traditionally referred to Pamphus as their author. But as Apollo was the god of song, it was with his cult that the most important of these religious chants were associated. The Psean which was the name of the form of hymn used in the worship of Apollo, seems to have been of two kinds, corresponding to two attributes of the god. He was the god of victory, and to him the Greeks in Homer sing praises and thanksgiving for victory. The hymn itself was probably sung by a single voice, and the worshippers sang as a chorus the refrain, " lo Psean ! lo Paean !" But Apollo was also the god who sent pestilence, and the people, when threatened or stricken with plague, prayed in chorus to him for deliverance. The Nome was another form of hymn with which Apollo was worshipped, and seems to be distinguished from the Pa?un by the fact that it was sung by a priest, and was not a special prayer for deliverance from pestilence or a special thanksgiving for victory, but praise of a more general character. Xaturally the songs in honour of Apollo flourished most at the two most important centres of his worship, Delos and Delphi. The origin of the Xome was traditionally ascribed to Delphi, and Chryso- tliemis and Philammon, mythical personages, were credited with its authorship. The hymns which for generations had been sung at Delos were connected with the name of Olen. The fact that Olen was said to have been a Lycian, taken in con- nection with the existence in Delos of a Phenician worship (imported from Lycia) before the Ionic worship, may nidi- LYRIC POETRY : ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETS. 1 09 cate that the hymns ascribed to him had a foreign element in them. A few inconsiderable fragments of songs of the people, quoted by Athenseus, Plutarch, Pollux, scholiasts and grammarians, have come down to us, and from the same sources we hear of other songs of which we have no specimens. Some of these fragments are certainly of comparatively late date, but as songs of the people change very little in the course of time, we may learn something even from the later fragments. The reason that so few of these songs have been preserved is that the literary lyric killed the popular song, and it is only in those parts of Greece which remained comparatively uncultured that the people's songs survived. Thus it was in Sparta that cradle- songs flourished most, and from Sparta come a couple of frag- ments of songs which accompanied dancing. In one of these fragments the dancers encourage each other to keep on dancing ; tin; other consists of three lines, one of which was uttered by the young men, the next by the old men. and the third by the boys. From LJottiiua we have a fragment "Away to Athens, hie ! " of the song which the women of Eottisea sang while dancing. Elsewhere also the custom of singing while dancing prevailed ; and about another fragment which runs, ' Where are my roses? where are my violets? where are my beautiful Howers? Here are your roses; here are your violets; here are your beautiful llowers," AthenaMis says that the accompany- ing dance was mimetic. It may be noticed incidentally that men and women do not seem to have danced together, (lames, as well as dancing, were accompanied by songs. Greek boys played a game, in which one boy, being blindfolded, sang a verse, "1 will hunt a lly of brass;" to which the other boys replied, "You may hunt, but you will not catch us;" and in- iiicted blows on him with straps, till he caught one of them. Greek girls also had a game of a less violent description, with que>tions and answers to be sung. Greek children invoked the appearance of the sun in much the same way as in the Knglish '' Jxain, rain, go away," Are. The most interesting of tne.-e children's songs is the Rhodian Swallow-song, which has been fortunately preservdl, apparently complete, by Aiheiia-us. the spring tin 1 hoys of Kho.ies went round from hou.-e to h singing this song, in which they announced the return of >waliow with the returning year, and lieiiiainic-d to be supp with cheese and wine. The Crow-song seems to have bee the same kind: the boys went about with (.TOWS in their hands, and making much the same ie.pie.~t as in the Swallow-sung. I I O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. In these songs the boys played at beggars, but real beggars also hud their songs, although we have no specimen of them. AVorking men, bakers, and rowers all had songs to accompany and lighten their labours. The women had their weaving- songs ; at Elis, their vintage-songs ; and they sang while wash- ing clothes and while working in the mill. The song of the reapers was called Lityerses, and as this was the name of the son of Midias, king of Phrygia, the song may have come from that country. The shepherds' songs, at any rate in some instances, seem to have been of a sentimental kind, and we have a fragment of one which told a story of unrequited love. Love-songs naturally formed an important part of the popular songs, and in Locris such songs were much cultivated ; but we have a fragment of one only. Drinking-songs can hardly be reckoned among the pre-lyric popular songs. They were intro- duced during the lyrical period by Terpander from Asia Minor, and eventually some, such as those celebrating the glorious deed of Harmodius and Aristogiton, attained great popularity, and were genuine songs of the people. More important, as the roots of lyrical poetry, than any of the songs of the people yet mentioned, were the wedding-songs and dirges. The dirge was known to Homer, and as all peoples seem to possess some- thing of the kind, it may well have been original with the Greeks, although indications are not wanting that some foreign Carian elements were introduced. This form of song was afterwards developed by Pindar, and came to be of much im- portance in the lyrical part of Greek tragedy. The wedding- song was also known to Homer, who calls it the Hymenseus. It became literary and lyrical in the hands of Pindar and Sappho, and, as the Epithalamion, it has passed into the lyric poetry of all European nations. Finally, amongst the songs of tin; people we have to notice an important class borrowed from the East. Their common feature is that they are laments for the untimely and undeserved death of some beauteous youth. In all cases they seem to have been of Oriental origin, to have originally lamented the departure or death of summer, and to have been amalgamated with some local (Ireek myth. Thus the Linos, of which we, have, a fragment (perhaps not in its original form), came from Phcnicia (where, as also in Cyprus and llithynia, Herodotus recognised it), and was connected with the story of the beauteous Linos, who was killed by Apollo for challenging him to a contest in song. The fragment that we have ascribes the invention of song to Linos, and relates the death of Linos and the lament of the Muses for him. The LYRIC POETRY : ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETS. I I I Linos was sung by a single voice, and the refrain " Ai Linon ! Ai Linon !" by a chorus. The derivation of Ai Linon may be the Semitic ai le mi, woe is us. In Tegea of Arcadia the (Greeks explained the lamentation as being for the death of Skephros, who was killed by his brother. Sterility fell on the land in consequence, and an oracle ordered a yearly festival, at which Skcphros was to be mourned for; and hence the song was called the Skephros. The Hyacinth song has the same origin ; it was localised in Sparta, and came there through the island of Cythera, a Pheniciau settlement of old. Most famous of all these lamentations was that for Adonis. The Phcnician origin of this song, and of the festival at which it was sung, is indi- cated by the mythological device of making Adonis the son of I'ho-nix ; by the obviously Semitic derivation of the word (wlnitui, lord), and by the fact that the song and festival can be traced back to Samos, and thence to Cyprus, whither they iirst spivad fmm Phenicia. Having seen what were the germs of lyric poetry, and what were the conditions under which they were developed, wo may no\v proceed to consider the various kinds of lyric poetry. They are three, the Elegiac, the Iambic, and the Lyric, in the narrower or specific sense, or, as it is sometimes called, Melic. They are alike in that they are all subjective, expressing the ] Kiel's own emotions as such, and that they were all designed for a musical accompaniment. They diil'er in metre; -and in that Klegy and Iambic poetry are more subjective than Melic ; and that choral odes belong to Melic. In dialect, Elegy and Iambic poetry, as they originated in Ionia, were Ionic : Melic poetry drew on the oilier dialects. Choruses, having originated both amongst the Itorians and tin; Civilians, contain both /Koiic, and I )oric, though the latter came in course of time to pre- di>minate. Melic songs, as oppo.-ed to choruses, had no lixed Tli meiits made in the ilute in 1 'hrvda. Klegv spread with th be regarded as a (iivek one, although whetiier it is derived from an Armenian wrd (< li-iju] meaning a tlute or reed. i,r from another Armenian word (jilariiknn) meaning ''mournful,' 1 is uncertain. The original meaning of tip' W"rd in (Ire.-k seems to liave iiiehiilcd lioth ideas, and to have been a funeral 112 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. distiches. It is only in Roman and late Greek times that elegies were written to be read. Before then, elegies, like all other poetry of the creative period of Greek literature, were composed for oral delivery, and were always sung or recited to a flute accompaniment. The history of Greek elegy falls into three periods. The first extends from the origin of elegy, ahout B.C. 700, to the rise of the drama. The next extends to Alexandrine times, which constitute the third period. The elegy originated in Ionia, always continued to be written in Ionic, and the best representatives of this division of lyric poetry were lonians, e g., Callinus and Mimnermus. During the first and most flourishing period of elegy, it was used for many other purposes than that of expressing lamentations and regret. Callinus used it for martial purposes. With Tyrtseus and Solon it served to convey political precepts. In the hands of Theognis it was largely gnomic or sententious. Mimnennus brought it back to its originally mournful character. In this period also it was used for lighter purposes, love, epigram, and the praise of wine. In the second period, elegy was over- shadowed by the drama, which absorbed the best lyric talent and grew at the expense of elegy. In the Alexandrine, the third period, it became, as we see from the specimens preserved in the Anthology, the vehicle for conveying the mythological learning and the love-songs of the literati of the time. The tirt elegiac poet, as far as we know, was Callinus of Ephesus. His date cannot be fixed with precision, but as it seems from iiis fragments that the town of Magnesia was still in existence in his time, and as from the fragments of Archi- lochus it seems that by his time Magnesia had been destroyed, Callinus was probably rather senior to Archilochus, and lived about B.C. 700. "Whether Callinus invented the pentameter and combined it with the hexameter, we do not know. His elegiacs are not rudimentary, but we have no reason to believe that any other poet had cultivated this form of verse before him, and there is nothing improbable in supposing that he may have invented them and yet brought them to the stage of development which we find them in with him. In point of metre, the, elegiac is not greatly difi'erent from the verse of epic poetry, for the pentameter is only a mutilated hexameter. In style, too, we see from the fragments of Call inns that Greek poetry only gradually developed from epic to lyric, and did not pass by a bound from the one stage to the other. The language of Callinus reminds us of Homer, and the spirit is much the same. For the fragments which we possess (one of twenty LYKIC POETRY : ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETS. I I 3 lines and three insignificant ones) we are indebted to Stobauis tlie anthologist and Strabo the geographer. Strabo probably knew little or nothing more of his works, and took these quota- tions from works by Demetrius of Skepsis (a pupil of Aristar- chus) and Callisthenes. That Callinus' elegies should have been lost so early is not astonishing, when we reflect that they were probably not committed to writing, and that having only an oral, not a literary existence, they would be peculiarly liable to perish as fast as other elegiac poets arose with competing verses. The long fragment which has come down to us is of a maitial kind, encouraging his fellow-citizens to advance against the foe by picturing the disgrace of a coward's death and the glory of falling nobly. For what occasion these verses were composed, whether for the war which was carried on between the poet's own city, Ephesus. and Magnesia, and which even- tually resulted in the victory of the former, or in ant cipation of an attack by the Cimmerians, who about this time invaded Lydia, defeated Midas, and threatened the Greek cities, is un- certain. But the verses themselves have a fine vigour, and ring out like a true call to battle. It has, indeed, been maintained that most of this fragment is not by Callinus, but by Tyrta-us ; but the weight of critical authority is against the supposition. About the same time as, but junior to, Callinus was Archilo- chus, who also wrote elegies, but whose fame is his iambics. As other poets also frequently wrote both iambics and elegiacs, wo shall find it convenient to treat the two classes of writers side by side; and this mode of proceeding has the further justifica- tion that, different in character as iambic originally was from elegiac poetry, the two kinds of poetry had certain important features in common, and they ran through much the same care-T. They resemble each other, in the first place, in be'ng of Ionian origin, being written in the Ionic dialect, and being peculiarly and di.-tinctively expressive of the qualities of the Ionic character. Their careers are alike in that both soon lust the character which they at first possessed; elegy, as we have seen, came, soon to be employed for many other purposes than the e.xpressi. n of lamentation, and iambic poetry, as we shall see, was at first the. means used by Aivhiloclms for conveving personal satire, but lost that character in the hands of Si. ion, although he u>ed iambic verse as a means of c^ini'at m-- his personal opponents. Eventually, as the v<-r. tragedy, it served to express every eiiMtioi Finally, as elegiac poetrv was uvttr.shadov the drama absorbed iambic poetry, which, I I 4 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. like elegy, revive again, except in the modified form of the choliambics used by late fable writers, such as Pabrius. Although Archilochus was the founder of iambic poetry, he can hardly be regarded as the inventor of the iambus, and the origin of the verse is uncertain. The usual account is that it originated in the worship of Demeter. At the festivals of this goddess a license was permitted which resembled that of the saturnalia at Rome. Every restraint at other times put upon the tongue was on these occasions removed ; abuse, jests, deri- sion, and satire might be cast by any man against any other ; and from this custom, and from a Greek word meaning " to cast," the word iambics and the abusive nature of the verse are usually derived. With this view further harmonises the fact that the worship of Demeter was in great favour in the isle of Faros, where Archilochus was born. P>ut the word iambus suggests, by its resemblance, a connection with the words dithy- rambus, thriambus. which are in all probability not of Greek origin ; and the only evidence for the connection of the iambus with Demeter is the story that it was the maid lambe who, by her jests, first brought a smile to the face of Demeter after the loss of her daughter. About the life of Archilochus we know little more than is to be inferred from the fragments of his works. These are unfor- tunately few; but his poetry is so subjective, the man is so open and frank on all that concerns him, that there is scarcely a frag- ment, however inconsiderable in size, which does not give us some information about his life and character. In estimating his character it is necessary always to bear in mind his complete innocence of disguise and his even reckless frankness, because the best known fact in his life- the vengeance which he took in his verses on Lycambes for first betrothing his daughter Xeobule to him and then refusing him her hand is liable to misinterpretation ; and the more so since the later Greeks, in order to enhance perhaps to comprehend the tremendous nature of his onslaught, added the story that in consequence of his versos both Lycambes and Xeobule committed suicide. This might lead us to infer that there was something underhand or even cowardly in this mode of vengeance that Archilochus' weapons were not only as keen but as venomous as Pope's. Put tliis would be to entirely misread his life and character. Archi- lochus was not only a poet of unsurpassed vigour, he was a man of energy and action who touched life at all points. Impetuous and daring, he led a life of adventure and romance. Porn in the island of Paros, a block of purest marble, whose perpendi- LYRIC POETRY : ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETS. I I 5 cular clilTs run up two thousand feet from the sea, and whose beauty he saw with a poet's eye (Fragment 51), Archilochus there became familiar with a sailor's life, and learned to love the sea, over which he was to wander often. When quite a youth, having his youthful and ardent imagination fired with fabulous reports of gold-mines in Tliasos, he sailed for that ancient seat of Phenician mining. His expectations were high, and his disappointment therefore profound. The vehe- mence of his expression marks the force of the impression which Thasos made on him ; it is as rough as a donkey's back, there is not one fine or lovely or beautiful place in it (Fr. 21). In this frame of mind he would be ready to believe that his El Dorado, if not situated in the island of Thasos, might be on the mainland over against it ; and, even if gold were no more to be found there than on the island, at least there would be lighting. Thither, therefore, he went, and there he was not disappointed in the fighting. After this, he must have returned to 1'aros, and there have met Xcobule. His love for her was as passionate as might be expected in a man of his poetical and impetuous temperament, and SOUK; of his fragments (84, 85) still breathe the flame with which he was consumed. That he was capable of deep feeling is shown by his elegy on the death of his sister's husband, and his capacity for suffering may be gauged by the fact that he could only find for it a remedy which is no remedy to endure and not whine like a woman (66). This capacity for the depths of snifering implies a corresponding capacity for the exaltation of joy, and it was with all the ardour and all the tenderness of this richly endowed nature that he loved Xeobule. He sighed "were it to touch but her hand" (71), and we have the fragments (29, 30) of a perfectly lovely picture of Xeobule (in which she was drawn with all her own beauty and the beauty lent to her by the eye of her artist- lover), with a myrtle branch and rose in her hand, and her tresses overshadowing her shoulders. As his love bad been great and beyond all measure, so when he was betrayed his furv knew no bounds. Every taunt which the violence of passion could suggest and the force of satiric genius could launch he directed against her who had deceived him. To us this attack on a woman has something cowardly in it ; but the standard of morality is a shifting one, and Archilochus, whether jud_vd by the standard of his own or of our time, was not a coward. This will lie best understood if we consider the famous verses (6 1 in which he relates his flight from a battle in Thrace, and of the loss of his shield. He tells th" story lightly. Some I 1 6 HISTORY OF GEEEK LITERATURE. Saian has the shield, and exults in the trophy. Archilochus did not abandon it willingly, but he only just escaped death; so he bids good-bye to the shield ; he can buy another. This view, that the cost of a shield was the only loss he suffered in running away, throws a light on the character of Archilochus. These verses are due neither to the effrontery of shamelessness nor to the self-torture of a morbid mind. For the former to be the case, Archilochus must have been a coward ; for the latter, he must have thought himself one. Horace, who abandoned his shield at Philippi (and imitated these verses of Archilochus), was no warrior, and consequently, being a man of the world, felt that he was not disgraced. Demosthenes, who fled from Chaeronea, was also no warrior, but had a higher nature, and felt, probably unreasonably, that he was disgraced. But Archi- lochus was a warrior ; he was a free-lance (24) ; he sailed from shore to shore, trusting, as he says (23), his life to the embrace of the wave ; he fought in many lands, and eventually, in Euboea, he fell in battle. If, then, he could jest over his flight, it was partly because his valour was tried and above suspicion ; partly because his frank nature scorned concealment ; and mainly because his fighting experience had taught him that victory does not always crown the brave, and that there are times when even the brave must fly or be killed uselessly. In other words, on this point his morality was that of the mercenary. Unfortunately, that was his morality on other matters also. There was, indeed, much chivalry in his nature, e.g., he will not insult a dead foe (69), nor be overweening in the hour of triumph, nor abject in defeat, and will take arms against his troubles (66) ; but supreme over all motives is ven- geance (65). "One thing I can requite with great ill the man who docs me ill." This limitation of his chivalry explains his attack on Keobule. As a poet, a warrior, a sea-rover, a colonist, a political par- tisan, an accepted suitor, a disappointed and infuriated lover, Archilochus touched life at all points, and there was no quar- ter of the activity into which citizen-life was then breaking which he did not throw himself into with all the force of hi.s vigorous nature. If from the poetry of Tyrtonis and Solon we learn much of the internal political condition of Sparta and Athens, from the poetry of Archilochus we get valuable light on the life, manners, and thought of the time. Thus we see that the position of women was one of much greater freedom, socially, than was the, case in Athens and among the Ionic Greeks generally at a later date ; and we find, rather LYRIC POETRY : ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETS. I 1 / to our surprise, that marriage was preceded by a term of love- making. At the same time we see (if 19 is really genuine) that the hetaera was already in the field, and that her position was as openly recognised then as later. The thought, too, of the time is reflected even in our scanty fragments to a certain extent. Archilochus no more propounds to himself or his audience the great problem of the meaning of life than did Homer. The Greeks had not yet, apparently, begun to think. The old gods still in appearance hold their old place. They aro still there to be prayed to ; but in one important respect they are not quite the same as they were in Epic, for in Archilochus, as in Greek lyric poetry generally, they have ceased to do any- thing. Motionless they remain, and Archilochus recognises them in a general way, especially when he is giving moral advice to a friend ; but he speaks with more confidence when he says fate and fortune settle everything. His enjoyment of the beauty and pleasures of life was marred by no speculative doubts on religion and morality. Suffering led him to no searchings of heart ; his comment was that weeping would not diminish, and enjoying himself would not increase the evil (13). The sunlight and open air of his life did not allow him to be haunted by such a question as, Why should we live ? He is even far from the stage at which the advice to eat, drink, and b" merry can be given ; for to him and to the Greeks of his time such a recommendation would have seemed superfluous. The only indication, and that is casual and indirect, of any reflec- tion on the deeper problems of life which is to be found in Archilochus is interesting, both as being characteristic of him and as showing that, although the old religion remained exter- nally much the same, there were at work beneath the surface tendencies of a destructive nature. In one of his fables (88) the fi>x prays, " () Zeus, Father Zeus, thine is power in heaven ; thoii seest the deeds of men that they are good and bad, and in beasts too thou vi.-itest insolence and justice." To thus say that the beasts are quite as moral as man, and that the gods take as much interest in rewarding and punishing the one class as the other, is a piecv- of cynical cleverness which required the genius and the recklessness tif Archilochus to conceive and to utter, as it also sliM\vs that, when thought was turned in this direction, it was not in support of the old creeds. FiMm Archilochus to Sinmnides of Amorgos what a falling off! Siinonides, like, Archilochus, was a colonist, and moved fiom his native, island Samos to tie' island Aniorg.is, t'r.i'u which he gets the epithet which .-erves to distii:_:ui.-h him I I 8 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. from the later and more famous Simonides. But Simonides of Ainorgos was a very different kind of colonist from Archilochus. Instead of the romance in which Archilochus, the poet-warrior, seemed to always move, we become conscious in Simonides of the principle of strict attention to business, which better suits grocery than poetry. "VVe have, indeed, in passing from Archi- lochus to Simonides, passed from the action of one set of the general conditions under which lyric poetry developed to that of another. The liberty of the individual citizen was fostered in its growth not only by the violent revolution of the sword, but also by the quiet revolution effected by the expansion of commerce. The wandering and reckless Archilochus, whose weapons were at the service of those who could pay fur them, but whose allegiance was rendered to none but the god of war and the Muses, represents the former set of conditions, while the prosaic, domestic, and querulous Simonides breathes the air of the latter. The only fragments of Simonides of importance are one (i) of 24 lines and another (7) of 118 lines, both in iambics. The former is good advice to a young man. Simonides explains (probably to his son) that one never knows what will happen; that some men fall ill and die ; others fight and get killed ; others, for the sake of a living, go to sea and get drowned, and others commit suicide : trouble is universal, and the moral is to avoid it as much as possible. It is sometimes said, we may remark, that the poetry of Simonides is sober, and it has at least the appearance of having been written in old age. The other fragment is in the same strain as this. It is a description of women, who are divided into ten classes: to the first class Heaven has given the qualities of the pig, to the second those of the fox, to the next those of the dog ; and so the poet plods on conscientiously through his 119 lines and his ten classes, each of which he dockets and puts by carefully labelled with its ticket; and, in conclusion, for fear any specimens of the race should be left unprovided for by his methodical treatment, he utters an anathema on women in general. To these two frag- ments should perhaps be added another, which is generally in- cluded amongst the remains of Simonides, the younger, of (Jos; it is an elegy, which quotes the famous line of Homer that com- pares the generations of men to the leaves of trees. "\Vith this line as a text, the author proceeds to remark that hope springs in the breast of young men, who think they will never die or be ill, in which they are very foolish. The first tiling that strikes us in reading the remains of Simonides is hew limited is his horizon ! "\Vh"ii in the first LYRIC POETRY : ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETS. I I 9 fragment his eye takes the widest sweep over human life and activity that it can, he comprehends precisely what is seen by the smug bourgeois. He knows that some men spend their lives on the sea, but when he goes beyond the fact, and presumes to divine their motive, the only one which his range of emotions and experience can suggest is that they do it to earn a living. Such people, he tells his young friend, get drowned. "With this, contrast the line in which Arehilochus (51) bids farewell to life on the sea. Simonides also knows that men fight (and get killed), but their motives for doing so he does not attempt even to conjecture. ]>ut when he returns from his excursion into those unfamiliar fields of human activity, and plants his foot within the domestic circle, and gets on the subject of that domestic grievance woman then what he says possesses, if not great depth, at any rate great length. The roving, fighting life of Arehilochus, chequered by victory and defeat, by the adventures of the gold-seeker, by the passion and disappointment of love, by the carouses of the cam]), and the strife of politics, afforded a rich variety of material to the artist's eye and the poet's mind ; but the dull weary round of daily work could a f lord Simonides no stimulus to poetry. It would, in fact, seem that commerce may have as Freytag shows in his novel "Soil und Haben " its romance, but its poetry hardly. The result of the conditions under which Simonides produced his work is that there is no joy, no sense of beauty, no play of fancy in it. He bids no farewell to the beauty of his native island. That life may be beautiful and joyous he does not seem to know. He knows, indeed, that if you are married, you can never have a whole day's peace (7. 99), but beyond this negative idea he cannot lift his thoughts. Of all vigour and eager activity he is quite innocent : the most energetic demonstration he seems to contemplate is not to dwell on one's misfortunes (i. 24). The public for whom Simonidos wrote indicates the difference between him and Arehilochus. The hitter wrote his verses to be sung over the wine to his boon-companions, amongst whom, we may be sine, were to be found all the wittiest and cleverest men of the place in which he hap] enod to bo, and with whom his reckless strokes of irony and satire, and his finest poetic fancv, would tind ready appreciation. Simonides' verses, as we have said, are advice to a young man. Touching the question of how much truth there is in Simon- ides' views on the women of his time: in view of the resem- blance then. 1 is between him and Ib-siod, both in the narrow, I 2O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. carking spirit of their verse and in their unfavourable esti- mate of women, we might at first be inclined to think that Simonides was not drawing on his own observation, but was simply working out in a spirit of literary conventionality and tradition a theme which he had borrowed from his epic prede- cessor. But towards the end of the fragment we find a couple of verses (112, 113) "Every man praises his own wife and depreciates his neighbour's : but we are all in the same plight without knowing it" which seem to show that, when Simon- ides and his friends met together for the recreation of quiet conversation, their wives were a frequent topic, and that Simon- ides in his verses is but giving expression to the views of the honest burghers of Amorgos. The last twenty verses, too, of the fragment, when the author has conscientiously discharged the task of labelling all the ten classes of women, and speaks with that burden off his mind, positively rise to a modilied warmth of feeling which in Simonides must be taken to repre- sent the fire of conviction. He even, when hinting at a scandal, ventures on an audacious aposiopesis, which the sympathetic reader at once understands to have been originally accompanied by a solemn motion of Simonides' head conveying much mean- ing. We may then regard what Simonides says on this subject as not a mere literary exercise, but as the result of his observation and experience ; and we have to estimate it. In the first place, we see from his other fragment (i), addressed probably to his son, that he took a gloomy view of life. He saw trouble every- where and no remedy for trouble. It is probable, therefore, that when, out of the ten classes into which he divides women, he only admits one the women to whom the qualities of the bee have been assigned by the gods to be good, he is colouring his observations with the same subjective and gloomy view which in the other fragment permits him to see nothing but miserable ends to human lives, and in the elegy, which is probably by him, and not by the other Simonides, permits him to see nothing in lift; but death. His condemnation of the women of his time contains then some falsity : how much truth it contains we cannot say. What we learn from Archilochus makes it improbable that the custom borrowed by the Tonians from the East --which certainly prevailed later, of shutting women up, was dominant at this time; and all we are in a position to say is, that if it was, there was probably a considerable amount of truth in his diatribe. One other reflection we have to make : the hctajra, we learn from Archilochus, had already made her appearance ; and it is when liaisons with such women are frequent among husbands that in literature we find complaints about wives. LYRIC POETRY : MELIC. I 2 I There remain three writers of elegiacs for us to mention, of whom one was a poet : Tyrtams, Mimnermus, and Solon. The fragments of Tyrtseus are, in accordance with the legend which represents him as inspiring the Spartans with courage, warlike in character. As poetry, they are but "the hoarse monotony of verse lowered to the level of a Spartan understanding." Their effect on the Spartans, however, was great. During a campaign his elegies were sung in camp after the evening meal. His Embateria or March-songs were sung before and during the o o o battle ; and as the custom was handed down from generation to generation of singing them before the king's tent, they became something in the nature of a national hymn, to which they are the only approach in Greek literature. Mimnermus of Colophon (or Smyrna) was indeed a poet, and the scanty remains of his elegies make us regret what we have lost of him. Sol' in wrote in verse because prose was not yet invented, and hi- fragments, valuable as they are to the historian, have little Lute rest for the student of literature. CHAPTER II. LYRIC TOETRY : MEMO. MELIC, the third division of lyric poetry, derives its name from the (.'reek word mclut, which originally means a member or p:irt. then a strophe- or part of a poem, and then vers< to music. Melic poetry was composed in strophes, and : ot the second meaning that Homes, which are certainly melic, are not writ- ten in ftrophes; on the other hand, although melic poetry was always accompanied by music, so too- in the creative period ( ( Ireek literature were the other divi-ions of lyric poetiv, ele-iac and iambic. It is, however, clear that niu.-ic took a much more prominent part in melic than in the other two kinds of lyric poetry. Elegies and iambics were pr ibably imt always sun_r, but mostly recited ; ami were nut accompanied by music throughout, but prefaced and followed by a prelude and symphony; and probably in the p;uinas and Thaletas and the genius of Alcman. In the second period the scene shifts from Sparta to Lesbos and to Sicilv ; and to the change in area there corresponds a dill'ereiice in the character of melic, for it \va- in Lesbos and in Sicily that the son_'s of the people were developed into lyric song ; and witii this branch of lyric poet ry t lie great names of Alcani- and Sappho are associated. In this period also flourished Stesichorus, who, in the quality of his genius and the nature of hi- ar;, was the foivi uiiiier ,,f Siiiionides and Pindar. In the third peri"d we leave the homed 124 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. of the people for the courts of tyrants, and return from song to chorus. This was the period of Simonides and of Anacreon, though not of the works which commonly pass under the name of Anacreon. The fourth was again a period of choral lyric, but it had ceased to be local, and in the hands of Pindar and Bacchylides became universal. In this period, too, the dithy- ramb reached its greatest importance. The part which Sparta during the first period played in the development of melic is remarkable and instructive. It is re- markable because, although it was in Sparta that melic grew, scarcely any of the melic poets were Spartans. It is instructive because it shows both how important is the function of the public in the history of art, and how dependent the growth of poetry, and of literature generally, is on non-poetical and non- literary conditions. If Sparta was the home and not the mother of lyric poets at this time if she produced no genius, but sup- plied the conditions necessary for its growth, it was because there existed in Sparta a sympathetic public, which by its education was capable of furnishing the ready and appreciative welcome which is the best atmosphere for the growth of art, and the best stimulus on the artist to excel himself. In the next place, it is no casual coincidence that the time when the greatest poets of the age invariably found their way to Sparta, as did Ter pander from Lesbos, Clonas from Thebes, and Thaletas from Crete, was precisely the time when, in power and reputa- tion, Sparta was the foremost state, without a rival in Greece. Doubtless each poet had an appreciative public in his native city, but the greatness of Sparta offered him the same superior field for achieving fame as that Athens gave later, and as at the present day Paris and London present to the provincials of France and England. With the musical reforms of Terpander the extension of the tetrachord of the cithara into an incomplete octave l we shall not deal. AVe have to speak of him as a poet. Unfortunately, the few and insignificant fragments which we possess of his poetry afford us no moans whatever of estimating his quality as a poet or his method. His place in the history of lyric poetry has to be inferred mainly from the not always satisfac- tory account given of him by Proclus. The species of reli- gious lyric to which Terpander's compositions belonged was the noine. Of the meaning of this word no more satisfactory LYRIC POETRY ! MELIC. I 2 5 nccount c"lphi, Terpander won the prize with his nomes in one of the musical contests then'. This would seem to point to the cultivation at helphi of such reli- gious lyric as existed at the time, and in this, as Terpander did not invent but developed the nome and gave it a place in lite- rature, there is nothing improbable. lUit the records, when relating to events of such great antiquity, are reasonably open 1 The names of tho four original divisions woro : d/i^d, \-arar,io7ra, 6u.a\6s and (TcVa-,t's : <>f Terpiuuler's seven divisions : ri/>_\\a. Aa-ar,.i>?rd t litTLLKaruTfiOTrd, o/oy-aXos, /ia-yt'j, <'rrt\o-,os. Tin 1 main hody of the liymii was. MS tii" word implies, tin- ou0:i,Vi5. Thr iTrf>/>a-,is \v;is tin' " seal " which stamped the conclusion. To tlv " MM! " Tel-pander add. d the ejnlo-ur ; to tho d.'\T. the ^era/i^a, mid to the KaraTfOira the ^i(7a\ararf>ojra. Set; J'ollux, iv. ot>. I 2 6 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. to doubt. From Delphi Terpander is said to have been sent by the oracle to Sparta. There he instituted the celebrated festival of the Carnea in honour of Apollo, and in the musical contests which were held regularly ever afterwards at the festi- val, the prize was for long carried off by the school of Terpander, the most famous member of which was Kapion. 1 The innovation which Clonas of Thebes made in melic was to compose nomes designed, not for a cithara, but a flute accom- paniment. In this ho was followed by Polymnestus of Colo- phon, and Sakadas of Argos, and Echembrotus of Arcadia. As we possess not even a fragment by any one of these composers of nomcs (except a dedication on an offering by Echembrotus), we need not say more of them. The development of the pa3an is ascribed to Thrdetas of Crete. Of his works we possess no fragment, and know nothing; but he seems to have exercised a decisive influence on the course of melic, for, after his time nomes gave way to the pcnpan, solo to chorus, and the cithara to the flute. It is interesting to note, too, that his connection with Sparta was set down to the action of the oracle of Delphi, as was also that of Terpander and of Tyrtseus. AVhatever may be the historical value of the incidents with which this connection is clothed in the case of these three important early lyric poets, the fact that they were said to have been sent by the oracle to Sparta shows the closeness of the relations between Delphi and Sparta, and that lyric poetry was associated with Delphi. The new path marked out for melic by Thaletas was followed by Xenodamos, who brought from Crete the hyporcheme, a species of melic in which the mimetic dancing was the most important element, and by Xenocritus, who took as the subject of his poems the adventures, not of the gods, but of heroes, thus paving the way for the dithyramb. In Alcman we at last come to a poet of whom, from his frag- ments, few and mutilated as they are, we can form at least some idea for ourselves. His date is uncertain, and of his life we only know two things that his poetry was performed and composed by him in Sparta and that he came from Sardis. Dionysius of Halicarnassus said, indeed, that Alcman was a Spartan by birth; but Stephanus of liyzantium quotes some 1 One of the ei_'ht nomes which Terpander was said to have composed was called Kapion, after this favourite, pupil. The others are said to have heeii called Ai'Aios and Houinos, after the musical .sealer-; or keys of tho.-e names ; ()[iUios and Tpoxa'os, after the metres, and '(Jus, Ttrpaoioios, TtpTra^o/jcios, for itasioiiH which cannot be discovered. LYRIC POETRY: MKLIC. 127 verses from Alcinan which explicitly state tliat he came from lofty Sanlis. Whether he was a slave, as Suidas, following Crates, allirms, and Dionysius denies, or a freeman ; whether he was a Lydiau or a Greek, and how he came from Sardis to Sparta, whether as a slave, or as an artist attracted by the chance of fame in Sparta ; and at what age, whether as a child or as a man these are all questions which cannot be satisfactorily settled. It seems improbable that, if he were a slave, he would ever have been permitted to obtain the rights of citizenship in Sparta, and take such an important part in the direction of public worship. About his nationality his name proves little, for though it is Greek, it may not have been his original name; nor do the two alternative names which Suidas gives his father, though both are Greek, prove, more ; for neither may be, genuine. Finally, whether he left Sanlis before he was old enough to have been materially influenced by Lydiau art, or im- jorted Lydian tendencies into Sparta, is a question to which the fragments we possess are insufficient to give an answer. Turning from these questions, let us try to see what were, his contributions to melic, and why the Alexandrine critics regarded him as a classic, and placed him in their canon of the nine great lyric poets. The direction in which Alcinan made his advance, and the nature of his work, were determined by the previous history of melic and the existing conditions in Sparta, That is to say, Alcman found melic exclusively de- voted to religious worship in Sparta, and accordingly it was to the lyric of worship that he directed his genius. Ho found that Tiialetas had diverted the current of lyric from nonies in solo to worship in chorus, and he followed out the channel thus opened, composing p;t>ans, hymns or processional hymns. Hut his eoiiiineil to meivly working out already existing. ,\lthouji he started from and developed the religious and choral elements of lyric, lie eonlined himself to neither. It is the function of Ivrie to give poetic form to all the emotions, not to that of worship only, and it is the essence of lyric to give more prominence to the subjectivity and the personality of the poet than choral poetry, at any rate in iN earlier ,-tages. permitted. As a true lyrie poet, then, Aleman felt the need to teach in song other feeling-; than the religions, and to -et forth his own experiences with more directness than the inn ersonal nature of choral poetry, as i; then existed, was compatible with. At the same time these tendencies were con- ditioned by the character o[ his public, which, being Spartan, 128 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. demanded religious and choral poetry. Alcman had, therefore, to seek for some variety of Dorian melic, which should satisfy Spartan' taste and yet admit of being developed into an instru- ment for conveying his feelings and his own views on life as his own. This he found in the Parthenia, or girls' choruses, which had long existed in Sparta. Such choruses, sung and danced by girls, imply that women were allowed to freely appear in public, and that they received some education in music and dancing. It is, therefore, interesting to note that the history of the condition of Greek women receives some light from the history of these Parthenia. In the oldest times they were pro- bably common to all the Greeks, for dances of this kind are mentioned in Homer and the Homeric hymns. 1 For some time they continued to be usual, not only among the Dorians and ^Eolians, but also among the lonians. Eventually, how- ever, the Athenian practice of secluding Avomen, of allowing them to leave the house only for religious worship, and of teaching them nothing but the most elementary household duties, caused the Parthenia to decay among the Athenians. In Sparta, however, where the state took the education of girls into its own hands with as much care as that of boys, and where women occupied a place of some independence by the side of man, the Parthenia long continued to flourish. Arion is not represented by a single fragment, for the hymn of thanksgiving commemorating his miraculous escape on the back of a dolphin from death at the hands of a treacherous crew, which /Elian (H. A. xii. 45) quotes as the work of Avion, is generally regarded now as the work of a later hand. It is the more to be regretted that we should possess nothing of his, because he not only wrote hexameters (to the number of 2000) and iiornes, but first gave a place in literature to the dithyramb, which was the seed out of which the drama was to grow ; and the early history of the dithyramb is a matter of some obscurity. The worship of Dionysus was probably of great antiquity in Greece, and may reasonably be supposed to date from before the composition of the Homeric hymn to Dionysus. The power of wine had excited by its mystery the wonder of man in Aryan times, for it is celebrated in the Vedns, where the virtues of sorna are the marvel of the poet. But as the worship of Dionysus was a different thing from the praise of soi/ia, so the dithyramb was not the same thing as the early hymns to 1 Iliad, xvi. 182; Hymns, x.xx. 14. The dance of Artemis and hrr train, Hymns, xxvii. 15, was probably suggested by the practice of ordinary life, a.s was also Hymns, v. 5. LYRIC POETRY : MELIC. I 2 9 Dionysus. The proper, and presumably the original, subject of the dithyramb was the birth of Dionysus, as we learn from Plato (Laws, iii. 700), though eventually any portion of his history came to be matter for dithyrambic poets. But it was less in the matter than in the manner of delivery that the dithyramb differed from the hymns. The dithyramb was orgiastic, and this, together with the name (for which no Greek etymology can be found), seems to point to a foreign origin. This view of the nature and origin of the dithyramb is strengthened by the fact that it was in Corinth, which en- couraged orgiastic rites and was specially connected with the wor- ship of Cotyto, that the dithyramb first found a home in Greece ; and that it was from Methymna in Lesbos, where phallic wor- ship flourished, that Anon brought the dithyramb to Corinth. The first mention of the dithyramb is in a time before Anon, in a fragment (yyn) of Archilochus, who says that he knows how, when he is smitten by wine as by a thunderbolt, to lead off the dithyramb. From this fragment, as well as from the general course of melic poetry, it probably follows that the dithyramb was, until the time of Arion (who was a contem- porary of Periander, B.C. 628-585), sung not in chorus, but in monody, as was the case with other melic poetry until Tha- letas, and still more ell'ectively Alcman, brought choral poetry into the position of importance which nomes originally occu- pied. At any rate, the singing of the dithyramb by an organised and trained chorus (as opposed to the extempore singing of a refrain, as in the case of the earliest preans and wedding-songs), was clue to Arion. The position of the chorus in the dithy- ramb, too, was new, and was due to Arion. Instead of being drawn up in a rectangular body, as was the case Avith all Dorian choruses, and moving from right to left, ami left to right, round the altar, the chorus was arranged in a circle round the altar, and hence was culled a Cyclic chorus. Another innovation made by Avion was to dress the chorus as satyrs ; the choreuta 1 , or members of the chorus, thus came to be called in Greek ira;/o/\ goats or satyrs, and their song was the goat- or satyr-song, trci'i-cedia. This, and not the offering of a goat as a prize, it is which is the origin of the word " tragedy." The number of choreuta? in Arion's time is not known. The first mention of the number fifty is later, an I occurs in a frag- ment of Simonides (147) ; whether this was the number of Arion's chorus there, is nothing to show. A further innova- tion ascribed to Arion is, that he gave a "tragic turn '" 1 to the 1 retry j.vos rpOTTo;. Hesychiu.s. I 30 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. dithyramb, and what this means is uncertain. It has been sup- posed to mean that Arion did not confine himself to the birth or the adventures of Dionysus for the subject of his dithyrambs, but substituted heroic myths. 1 But probably it refers to the- nature of the dancing with which the dithyramb was accom- panied. This was more lively and more extravagant than in the case of other choral poetry ; it was probably highly mimetic, and, as danced by the satyr-clad choreutse, dramatic. CHAPTER IIL MELIC POETRY : ALOEUS AND SAPPHO. WHILST the lonians had been developing elegiac and iambic poetry, and whilst in Sparta melic poets, attracted from all parts of the Greek world, had carried nomes as far as the simple nature of such poetry permitted, and then had begun to lay the foundations of choral poetry, in Lesbos the other division of melic poetry, which consisted of odes, individual and subjective in character, and which corresponded rather to what we under- stand at the present day by lyric poetry, was being quietly but steadily developed. Of the stages between the songs of the people in Lesbos and the poetry of Alcams absolutely no trace has come down to us ; we have neither a word nor the name of a single poet. It is indeed only inference, but it is a necessary inference from the developed character of Alcoeus' rhythm, that such stages occurred. At the beginning of the sixth century B.C., in the time of Alcaaus, who was a contemporary of Solon, Lesbos was in a state of political convulsion, the shocks of which threw down one form of government after another, oligarchical, tyrannic, and democratic, until the wisdom and power of Pittacus, the Solon of Lesbos, secured peace for his country. In these revolutions and counter-revolutions Alca'iis took an eager part. Born of a noble family, and reared in the political faith of his fathers, Alcaeus was by nature and by education an ardent partisan of the oligarchy, which in his earlier years ruled Avithout fear or check in Lesbos. But the good time of oligarchy was drawing to an end, and that in Lesbos was exploded in the usual way from within. Finding the position which he shared in common 1 A change of tLis kind was suppressed at Sicyon by Cleisthenes. Hclt. v. 67. LYRIC POETRY : ALGOUS AND SAPPHO. I 3 I with his fellow-oligarchs not of sufficient freedom, Melauchrus contrived to constitute himself tyrant; and this proceeding led to a complication of revolutions, tyrannicides, exiles, imprison- ments, usurpations, conspiracies, and insurrections, which at this distance of time it is almost impossible to disentangle. Melan- chrus was eventually assassinated, but the oligarchy was not to be restored. In the division, however, between, the oligarchs and the people, who had united to -verthrow the tyranny, but split on the question of oligarchy or democracy, another oligarch, Myrsilus, throwing over his own party, forced his way to the tyranny. Probably at this time Alcseus and his brothers were driven into exile ; and we may perhaps measure the force of this political eruption by the distance to which, and the divers directions in which, these exiles were ejected ; for Alceeus landed in Egypt, and took service under the Pharaoh Hofra, while his brother Antimenidas was projected east, and entered the army of Nebuchadnezzar. Myrsilus shared the fate of Melanchrus, and was assassinated, and after this a popular government was established by Pittacus. But AlcaHis was impartially opposed both to the usurpations of tyrants and the people's encroach- ments on the rights of the oligarchs, and he made war both with his sword and his verse on Pittacus and the popular govern- ment. The insurrection failed, however, and Alcaeus was thrown into prison. There he implored for release from Pittacus, whom he had despised and abused. Pittacus released him with the comment, " To forgive is better than to take vengeance." After this we know nothing more of Alcfeus' history. Alc;rns' compositions made at least ten books, and included hymns to the gods, as well as the odes for which he was more famous. The latter are sometimes divided into political (staxio- tika), drinking ($/,-< >'i'i), and love (iTotika) songs ; but it is hard to observe this division of classes, fur the wine seems to have got into all of them, and they were probably all delivered in the same way, to the same audience, and on the same sort of occa- sion. That is to say, they were probably sung by Alcfeus, to his own accompaniment, over the wine to his political and personal friends. Hence his songs, when they are something more than drinking-songs, would still naturally contain allusions to wine, and even those which began as drinking-songs might, without any inconsequence, turn to love or politics. The fragments of his works are disappointing reading, and this is not because time has, so far as we can judge, treated Alcaeus more hardlv than other lyric poets of the same or greater antiquity. Rela- tively, indeed, to the elegiac poets, Alca?us is not fortunate in I 3 2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. the size of the fragments from which we have to form our opinion of him, and we can assign a natural reason for this : the lines of cleavage are not the same in elegiac poetry as in odes of a more complex metrical formation. A large proportion of the fragments of Alcseus have reached us embedded in the works of grammarians, who quote Alcseus only to illustrate a metrical point or a peculiarity of dialect ; and such quotations, usually short, never necessarily contain a complete thought. Quotations from the elegiac poets, on the other hand, are made not for such purposes, but usually for the sake of the thought contained in them. Hence M r e have complete elegies by Solon, Tyrtam.s, or Mimnermus, but only fragments of Alcseus. Still, compared with Archilochus or Alcman, Alcseus is well represented ; but whereas in the little that survives of Alcman there are to be found two fragments which at once put him at least on a level with his reputation, in the more extensive fragments of Alcajus there is nothing which is worthy of the great name that Alcajus enjoys. The fragments of his hymns to the gods contain nothing which is above poetical commonplace ; and probably the hymns in their entirety were of no great merit, for Alcseus was not by inclination likely to excel in. nor was he in after-time famous for, religious and choral lyric. It is his political and martial verse which antiquity is unanimous in extolling as constituting his greatness as a lyric poet. Bionysius of Halicarnassus (2. 8), Athenseus (xiv. 62yA), Qumtilian (10. i. 63), and the epigram- matists in the Greek Anthology, all select his stasiotika as his distinctive excellence. Wo turn, therefore, with interest to the fragments of these odes, and lind that fortunately among them are seme of the most considerable and famous of his fragments. For instance, we have the original of Horace's " navis ! refe- rent in mare te" (C. i. 14), in which, under the metaphor of a ship, the distress of the state is pictured (18). "We have, again, the original of Horace's ''Xmic est bibendum," with the re- joicing over the murder of Myrsilus (20). And, as the expres- sion of Alcseus' martial spirit, we have a description (15) of his room decorated with helmets and greaves and bucklers, and all the appurtenances of war ; and also (33) his welcome to his brother, who had returned from his service under Nebuchad- nezzar with a beautiful ivory -hilted sword, which he had taken from a giant whom he had slain in fair and open tight. All these fragments arc good, and they con i inn what Biony- sius and Quintilian say, that he is not clifl'u.se. and that his style possesses grandeur; but they do not roach the level of LYRIC POETRY : ALCLEUS AND SAPPHO. 133 the highest poetry. The finest is the metaphor of the ship, with the waves rising against it on all sides, and its sails in rags. Compared with the diligent but lifeless work of Horace's imitation, the Greek has the merit of being sketched after nature ; but if we wish to see the difference between this and the best poetry, "to know the change and feel it," we have only to compare the lines in which Homer 1 describes, not a storm Alcaeus' stanzas are not very stormy ; he has to tell us that the weather is bad but the motion of a ship. Setting aside other differences, in the one case we feel that we are on the ship, and in the other we do not. In the description of his room, too, we are sensible of a somewhat similar deficiency ; but in this case the deficiency is in the spirit, not in the reality of the description. As a picture of an artistic interior, it would rank in literary merit with similar work in Theophile Gautier or Balzac, and have the advantage of brevity. When, how- ever, Athenseus (1. c.) asks us to admire in this the martial spirit of a man who was more than warlike enough, our atten- tion is at once drawn to the difference iu spirit between these verses, in which weapons play the part of aesthetic mural decora- tions, and those in winch Tyrtaeus describes the Spartan warrior, with teeth set, feet firmly planted on the ground, covered by his shield, holding his burly lance in his hand, learning in battle how to light. Thus, then, not only do the fragments which we happen to possess fail to bear out the high opinion which the ancients held of the ^tasiotika, but one of them is actually a passage which Athenseus quotes to prove his opinion. If Athenseus has thus misjudged the merit of Alcanis, it becomes worth while to examine the criticisms of Dionysiiis and Quintilian more closely, and with some independence of judgment. What J'ionysius singles out as above all excellent in Alc'_'ins to emerge. It is Himerius who reveals to us the existence of an appreciation of Aleajus' sympathy with nature, when hu says of some ode that the birds siug in it as you would expect birds to sing in Alcitms. LYRIC POKTHY : ALGOL'S AND SAPPHO. I 3 5 Greeks did not make the sharp severance between man and nature that we do in modern times. The Greeks were from two to three thousand years nearer than we to the time of those primitive stories in which the hero is addressed by and talks to a snake or a bird or a stream or a rock as familiarly as to any other of his acquaintances. In Greek literature, too, the relations of man and nature are the same : nature is always conceived of as sympathising with the sufferings of man or ministering to his joys. Nature was still the mother of the Greek, and he was old enough to sympathise with her, and to go to her to be comforted and consoled, but not old enough or self-conscious enough to know as well as feel that he loved her. A Greek might perhaps have felt, but could not have said, with {Shelley " I love snow and all the forms Of the radiant frost ; I love waves, and winds, and storms, Kvrrythin^ almost Which is Nature's, and may lye Untainted by man's misery." Still further was the Greek from discovering that nature is indiileivnt to man, with an indifference which Jiurns has given expression to "Ye hanks and braes o' bonnic Doun, How can ye bloom sau 1'ivsh an' fair ! How can y3 chant, ye little birds, And I sae weary, fu' o' care ! " It was, then, characteristic of Greek lyric, and not a peculiar de- ficiency in Alea-us, that he, could only treat nature as a back- ground to man, could not- work with his eye solely on nature to tiic exclusion of man, as Shelley did in his two verses beginning, " A widow bin! sate mourning for her love." lint within the limits between which Greek thought moved, Alcams does not in his pictures of nature attain the excellence of Alcman, or of /Kschylus in the /'rn//>/, or Sophode- in the Aja.r. Of the love-songs of Alc;eus nothing remains but fragments, which give us no idea of their worth ; and the names of the objects of his affection, ''.;/., Lycus, show that these odes would nut have been acceptable to modern ears. Having eon-iT'-d the hymns, the stasiotika, the skolia, and theerotika of Ah-eiis, we have now to r.-timate his work as a whole. To he_riu with his rhythms, not onlv was the lo^un-dic verse which b'-ars his name his invention, und still, by the name Alcaic, teslities to his excellence in this form of ,-ti'ophe. but sapphies also were 136 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. the product of his genius. The fragment which describes his room is in a metre peculiar to Alcseus, and he tried many other experiments in the combination of metres. In the next place, the qualities of his style are, as Dionysius said, and as even we at the present day can to some extent see, brevity and magnificence. His matter except in the hymns, which are not characteristic is personal, and, like his metre and his style, genuinely lyric. Occurring in the period of growth and creation in the history of Greek literature, he is original in his matter as in his metres ; and this gives to his work the note of reality which we miss in Horace. AVhen Alcasus shows us the ship of state in distress, he, at least, pictures himself as on board ; but to the Roman ship of state Horace in his ode stands in the attitude of an apostro- phising spectator on shore. The difference between an original and an adaptation comes out even more strongly in the ode, which in Alcaeus celebrates the assassination of Myrsilus, and in Horace is adapted to the suicide of Cleopatra. Alcaeus had indeed suffered at the hands of Myrsilus, had been perhaps exiled by him, certainly deprived of his oligarchical privileges. He, therefore, when Myrsilus was killed, could sing, " Xow must we drink," and mean it. But Cleopatra's existence had not been, as Horace would imply, a crushing weight which scarcely permitted him or any other Roman to breathe while it lasted. When, therefore, Horace whose digestion was a source of anxiety to him says, " X'ow must we drink," it is because the word of command has been uttered by Augustus. In the choice of his subjects Alc;rus is limited. He found his main inspiration in good wine and inferior politics. I>ut if his range is narrow, within its limits he shows considerable variety of treatment. Athenseus remarked that there was no circumstance or occasion which Alcseus could not convert into an excuse for drinking ; and summer and winter, joy and sorrow, love and politics, do all lead to the bowl with him. Lut this fact should not be interpreted to mean that he was solely de- voted to the worship of wine. Unfortunately this was not the (.use, or his drinking-songs would have been better. He never wrote anything so thorough as the lines in the Cyclops of Euripides " I would give All that the Cyclops feed upon their mountains And pitch into the hrinu off some white clilF, Having got once well dmnk and clortivd my brows. How mail is lie whom drinking makes not glad ! " * 1 Shelley's translation (with Swinburne's additions). LYRIC POETRY : ALC^EUS AND SAPPHO. I 3 / The wine, and that which Alcaeus mixes with it, both suffer in the mixing. The explanation of all things ending in wine with Alcieus is, as we have already said, the occasion and the audience to which he addressed himself. But if his treatment of his themes is varied, it is not profound ; he does not com- pensate fur the narrowness of his range by intensity of feeling. Herein he differs from Archilochus, with whom he has exter- nally points of resemblance. Both lived in unquiet times, both wandered far, and both spent much time in camp. Neither was troubled by the deeper problems of life, and neither found a better remedy or a better moral for suffering than " Let us drink." But here the resemblance ceases. When Archilochus used his iambics as weapons, he struck home. Alcseus only abused Pittacus ; and his verses on the death of Myrsilus, which are flown with wine and insolence, are marked by the impetu- osity of vouth, not bv the strength of genius. *f it . O O Contemporary with Alcsous, and a native of Lesbos, was Sappho, or, as the name is written in her own dialect, Psappha. Of her life we know remarkably little. Herodotus (2. 135) tells us that her father's name was Skamandronymos, and that her brother Charaxus wasted his money on the famous courtesan Khodopis (or Doricha), whom he brought home with him from L'gypt, for which Sappho ridiculed him much. From the Parian Marble (36) we learn that she went into exile to Sicily along with the other aristocrats of Lesbos, but as the inscription is much obliterated here, the date is matter of conjecture. From Aristotle (Rhd. i. 9), we learn that Alcseus addressed an ode (55) to Sappho, to the effect that he had something which he wished to say, but shame prevented him ; and that Sappho replied with an ode (28) saying that had his wish been for any- thing good and honourable, shame would not have prevented him from speaking. If to this scanty information about the life of Sapj-ho we, add the tradition, on which antiquity is agreed, and which the fragments of her works coniirm, that, in accordance with a practice not infrequent among the -Kolians and the I)orians, she collected round her a number of young<-r women, in much the same way as younger men collected round Socrates, then we shall have before us all tiiat is known about the life i if Sappho. Other and probably erroneous statements owe their existence to misunderstandings and uncertain infer- ences from her works and m<>dc of life. Thus, because niie frag- ment (S=5) says, "I. have a fair daughter, like, a g< Ideii b!"S- s. im, my beloved Kleis, whom 1 wovdd not part with fur all Lvdia," it has been inferred that Sappho was married and had a 138 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. child, Kleis ; which is as though we were to infer from a fragment of Campbell that the poet was " the chief of Ulva's isle " and married " Lord Ullin's daughter." It is probable that the story of her hopeless love for Phaon had its origin in a similar misunderstanding of some of Sappho's verses ; but it was the existence of her school, following, " fringe," coterie, or club none of the words will convey at once the idea both of the literary and artistic objects of these meetings and the personal affection which was the indispensable basis of the connection between the teacher and the pupil that afforded an application for the meaning of her verses, and gave to the coarsest imaginings of exhausted lasciviousness an opportunity and an appetite for stripping Passion of her poetry and violating her in the name of history. The process of outrage was be- gun by the comedians of Athens, and is carried on, openly and secretly, in the literature of to-day by writers whose knowledge of literature is profound enough only to enable them to misspell the name of Sappho. The amount of freedom which the ^Eolians and Dorians allowed their women was unintelligible to the Athenians, or at least to the Athenians of a later time than this, the beginning of the sixth century B.C. ; and though the ^Eolians or Dorians might think that such meetings as those of Sappho and her followers were for literature or art, the Athenians especially those who were separated by two centuries from the facts which they undertook to explain possessed much more discernment. Ameipsias, and then comedian after comedian, throughout the old, the middle, and the new comedy, took Sappho as the subject and the name of works, of whose refine- ment the Lysistrata, the ThesmopJioriaznsa;, and the Kcclesiazusce of Aristophanes may give us some faint idea. Then ancient historians of literature, c.rj. Chameleon, in their search for materials for a biography of Sappho, seized on these comedies as trustworthy sources of information thus proving, fur in- stance, that amon_; Sappho's lovers were Archilochus (who lived a century earlier), or Auacre-n (who lived about as much later) and thereby left future workers in the same field only their imagination to draw on for their facts. ]>ut so alarmingly luxuriant did this prove, that even the name of Sapph<> ; by- word of shame as it had become, was not regarded as capable of bearing all that was thus put upon it, and relief was afforded whence the burden came ; for a new and wholly imaginary Sappho was invented, who walks the pages of lexicographers like Suidas with the honour in dishonour of the name, she bears. LYRIC POETRY : ALGOL'S AND SAPPHO. 139 But none of these mcphitic exhalations from the bogs of per- verted imaginings availed to dim the glorious light of Sappho's poetry ; for ancient critics, at least, seem to have judged a work of art by the standard of art, and not by referring to the morality of the artist. Many, indeed, of the expressions of amazement at Sappho's work which are to be found in Greek writers are open to some suspicion, as being based on not wholly satisfactory grounds. "When Strabo (xiii. 617) calls Sappho "a marvellous phenomenon," he seems to do so because no other woman could approach her in merit ; and the same inadequate standard seems to be implied in the expressions "a Homer among women," "a tenth Muse," "a Pierian bee," and so on, which are fre- quently applied to her in Greek writers. If this were all that could be said of Sappho, that no other woman who wrote in Greek could rival her, her rank would not be high, for although a considerable number of women in Greece did write, they did not attain great excellence. It is a better testimony both to the criticism of ancient critics and to the value of Sappho that she was ranked among the nine great lyric poets by the Alexandrine school. But even this does not convey the full tribute to " that ineffable glory and grace as of present godhead, that subtle breath and bloom of very heaven itself, that dignity of divinity which informs the most passionate and piteous notes of the unapproachable poetess with such grandeur as would seem im- possible to such passion." 1 "The highest lyric work is either passionate or imaginative," Mr. Swinburne has said; 2 and as Coleridge is the greatest representative among lyric poets of imaginative poetry, so Sappho's poetry stands highest in the passionate lyric of all times and ages. Her work has no more variety than Coleridge's, and sutlers no more for want of it. But though it is one, it is not the same, as the sea is one but not the same. In one as in the other, the languid volup- t tii nis s\vcll, which reflects now the sun, now the midnight nn'oji (52), and the stars which by the moon ''pale their in- fll'eciual lires " (3), is ruflled into darkness by the winds, or Hashes with "the lightning <>f the noontide ocean." It is to the sea rather than to tire that Sajipho should be likened ; for although her verses are indeed, as ancient critics remarked, mixed with lire, and her pal S/inUcj. p. 90. 14O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. " And a tone Arises from its measured motion How sweet ! " Some of the fragments which we possess (e.g. 95 and 109) have been preserved expressly because of the beauty of their sound, and in all we hear " the echo of that unimaginable song, with its pauses and redoubled notes, and returns and falls of sound, as of honey dropping from heaven as of tears and fire and seed of life which, but though run over and repeated in thought, pervades the spirit with ; a sweet possessive pang.'" 1 Her grasp of the mechanism of verse, which is implied in this com- mand of melody, was greater, as is the number (15) of her metres, even in the fragments we have, than any other lyric poet possessed. Amongst the remains of Sappho's poetry are one complete ode to Aphrodite (i) and a considerable fragment four stanzas of another ode (2), imitated by Catullus (51). The passion of these odes is such as elsewhere is portrayed as only existing between a lover and his mistress ; but in these odes the object of Sappho's passion is a woman, and the fragments of the rest of the odes (as opposed to the epithalamia and hymns^ resemble these. This has driven many respectable commentators into taking refuge in a various reading, thereby making the first ode applicable (as they vainly imagine) to a man. The second ode cannot be thus remedied ; and commentators back abashed into a cloud of words all true about climate, social conditions, the difference between the modern and the Greek view of friendship, &c. First, however, the mystery of Sappho's pas- sion cannot be dispersed, or be anything hut aggravated, by various readings : next, it is not scientific demonstration which can make any man feel what is the real beauty of a thing ; and to set down to the heat of the climate or the conditions of life in Lesbos that passion which gives to Sappho's music "a value beyond thought and beyond price," is to do a very poor service to her poetry for the sake of arming her reputation with a treacherous and superfluous weapon. Lut this error, radical as it is, will do Sappho but little harm, for, as a critical estimate, it lacks even that grain of truth without which no error e;ui exist. More serious is the mistaken view of Sappho's quality as a poetess which is conveyed in Horace's phrase "muscuia Sappho;'' more serious because there is enough truth he-re to make the error current. It is perfectly true that the language of Sappho is that of a lover to his mistress : whoever can read 1 Swinburne, p. 92. LYRIC POETRY : ALGOL'S AND SAPPHO. 1 4 I Sappho can see that. It is the most obvious and the most superficial trait in her work. To take this characteristic, and oiler it to the world as the sum of Sappho's poetry, as though it were the inversion and not the intensity of passion which we are to admire, is a shallow misconception which serves to mark the standard of taste for lyric poetry in Rome in Horace's day. To discover the sex of Sappho's poetry and passion was reserved for Rome and for the curious in such matters. The author of the treatise on the Sublime, and Dionysius of Hali- carnassus. critics from whom we can learn how to understand tho beauty of Greek literature, were not thus misled, but, with un- erring instinct, at once seized on the perfection in delineation and colouring, and on the marvellous fidelity in her representa- tion of the, passion of love. The former critic says (10), "Tho feelings which result from the madness of love Sappho always draws after their symptoms and from reality itself. And where- in does she show her excellence? In that she is marvellous in selecting and combining the extremest and most violent of them." He then quotes the second of our fragments, and goes on to say, " Are you not amazed how she beats and drives into it soul, body, hearing, speech, sight, complexion, all things which are regarded as disconnected with each other; and how at one and the same moment she is both frozen with chill and consumed by fire, distraught of reason and perfectly logical, alarmed with fear and all but dead all that her feeling may seem to be, not a single thing but, a melfie. of passions?" Athenaeus (xv. CSjA.) calls Sappho a thorough woman, although a poetess, and this is a view which has been adopted by some modern critics. Hut although she expresses all a woman's con- tempt for a rival who cannot hold her dress properly (70), and say.- (68) to another, "When you die, no one will remember //"W, for you have no share in the mses of Pieria ; " still it is not these fragments bv which Sappho rises to the pre-eminence which she enjoys. Her love of flowers, however, of the rose, for which, .-ays I'hilostratus (Kp. 71), she always lias some new chaplet of praise ; her tender sympathy for the hyacinth which is crushed under the feet of the shepherds on the mountains and stains purple the ground (94), for the tender tlouvr of tho grass whieh is trodden down bv the dancers (;.}); her joy in "the sweet-voiced harbinger of spring, the nightingale '' (39) ; her pity for the doves which are shot by men, "and their l:f-j become^ cold and their wings fall " ( i<>) : all the-.' are emotions which are more common in women than in men, but in poetry 142 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. are not peculiar to or distinctive of poetesses. Wordsworth's heart " with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils." Shelley loves " The fresh Earth in new leaves drest," or " a rose embower'd In its own green leaves ; " and Keats "The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild," and "all little birds that are" fill English lyric "with their sweet jargoning." In point of style, Dionysius (de Comp. Verb. 23) takes Sappho as the greatest lyric representative of smoothness and polish of style, and in illustration of his meaning he quotes the ode which now stands first in Bergk's collection. He goes on to say that the grace and beauty of this style consists in the flow of its melody. To express the quality of Sappho's verse we must borrow a comparison from Sappho herself; it is "more delicate than water" (122). It makes a pleasant noise " A noise like of a hidden brook In the leafy month of June, That to the sleeping woods all night Singeth a quiet tune." Dionysius also says that it is flower-like ; not that beauties are woven into her style, as Demetrius (de Eloc. 166) says, but her verse is itself (again we must borrow from Sappho herself) "more delicate than the rose''' (123). For examples of her "redoubled notes and returns and falls 5 '' of song we thank Demetrius, although he does present them to us with the labels "anaphora," "anadiplosis," attached (ib. 141); but most grate- ful are we to a scholiast (Hcrmug. vii. 983) who has preserved us three lines ' ; more precious than gold '" (123), in which Sappho likens an unmarried girl to an apple which reddens "atop of the topmost twig," and the apple-gatherers have forgotten it no ! not forgotten it ; they were not able to reach it. Astronomers have calculated the law of the distance which separates the planets from each other, and have discovered thereby that in one region where, according to this law, there- should be a planet, there is no planet, but asteroids. These are the fragments of what once was a planet. Of Sappho's poetry we have only fragments, but they, like the asteroids, show where a planet was once. LYRIC POETRY : ALC^EUS AND SAPPHO. 143 Amongst the school of Sappho are usually placed Damophila and Krinna. No fragment by tlie former has come down to us, nnd with regard to her life we know nothing. About the latter more information is forthcoming, but on every matter concerned with her either our authorities are in hopeless conflict or grave doubts have been raised in modern times. Tenos, Telos, Rhodes, and Lesbos have been assigned as her birthplace, but the fact that the epigrams which go by her name are written in Dorian lias inclined most modern critics to regard Telos as the place of her birth. Still greater are the discrepancies with regard to her date. On the one hand, she is made to be a contemporary of Sappho, and a doubtful reading in one of Sappho's fragment (77) may conceal her name. On the other hand, Eusebius gives as her date u.c. 3^2, a difference of two centuries or more. This uncertainty as to her date makes it difficult to decide whether the story of her untimely death at the age of nineteen is pro- bably based on good authority, or is a misinterpretation of some- tiling in h'T own writings. She is said to have written a poem of 300 hexameters, which was entitled the l)i*tr he mav hav Hiniera : but the time is hi- birth, and all we can tir.-t half of tin- sixth century u.c. aU-lutely nothing, for the stury t 144 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. he was smitten with blindness by Helena because he had in b poem declared her to be the source of Troy's woes, cannot be made to yield any residuum of fact. Probably he did make some such statement in some poem, and he certainly in another poem, from which Plato quotes, declared that the story about Helen was untrue ; that she never crossed the sea to Troy (32). The contradictory nature of these two statements may have led to the second being regarded as a recantation, for Plato terms it " the so-called palinode." The next step would be to speculate on the poet's reason for recanting, and thus the story of his blindness would arise. The mode of expression which Plato uses, " the so-called palinode," suggests that the poem was not really a palinode or recantation, and the lines which he quotes rather imply that the story which Stesichorus was denying was one told by others, not one of his own telling which he was recanting. However, although the so-called palinode cannot be made to yield any information as to the life of Stesichorus, it has a value in the history of literature ; for in it the story which Euripides took for the plot of his Helena, and which was known to Herodotus, that Helena stayed in Egypt and her phantom went to Troy with Paris, made, so far as we know, its first appearance in literature. In connection with the life of Stesi- chorus another story is told, that he warned his fellow-citizens against the designs of a certain tyrant by the fable of the horse which, for the purposes of vengeance, obtained the assistance of man, and found that he had to pay for his vengeance by the loss of his liberty. The warning was disregarded, the tyrant was successful, and Stesichorus had to fly to Catana, where he is said to have died. The uncertainty as to Stesichorus' date makes it uncertain who the tyrant was, whether Gelon or Pha- laris, but we are most likely to be safe if we cling to the autho- rity of Aristotle (Rlict. 2. 20), who says it was Phalaris of Aeragas. This story too has its interest in the history of litera- ture, for it is one of the subjects treated of in the famous letters of Phalaris. Although Stesichorus was later in date than Alcnian, he is in no other sense his successor. Stesichorus did not take up choral lyric where Alcman left it, but made a fresh departure. Alcman had imported the subjective and personal element into choral poetry, and had thereby helped to purify it of the narrative character which is alien to lyric, and into which poetry cele- brating the deeds of the gods was peculiarly apt to fall. Stesi- chorus was not affected by the advance thus made by Alcman ; he started from and belonged to an earlier stage in the history LYRIC POETRY : ALCLEUS AND SAPPHO. 145 of choral lyric, although in time he was later than Alcinan. The epic element is even more visible in Stesichorus than tho subjective in Alcinan, for in the former poet the epic element is not qualified by any other. The poems of Stesichorus are sometimes spoken of as "epic lyric" or " melic epic." They seem to have been long narratives of the exploits of various heroes. Thus the Geryonis related the combat of Heracles with the triple-bodied Geryon ; the Cycnus, Heracles' combat with Cycnus, the son of Ares ; the Cerbenis told how Heracles fetched the dog Cerberus from the nether world ; the Scylla his adventures with Scylla. The Oresteia, as its name implies, was the story of Orestes, and the title of the Sack of Troy tells its own subject. These poems or ballads were as purely narrative as epic, but were -written in lyric metres, and were sung by a chorus. Thus they were lyrical in form but not in spirit, and yet their spirit, as far as we can judge, was not that of epic; for Ste.-iehorus abandoned the purely objective character of epic poetry without attaining the subjective character of lyric poetry. That is to say, he did not in his narratives confine himself to narrative, but developed the psychological interest, and is thus the forerunner of the earliest Greek novelists. But he was still further removed from the spirit of epic in that he was not in- clined to accept and hand on the old tales with implicit belief, but assumed an attitude of criticism historical and moral with regard to them, and altered them to suit his own rational- ism. It is diflicult to see how Stesichorus, being thus out of sympathy with his subject-matter, could have treated it success- fully, and (, v >uintilian (10. i. 62) implies that his treatment was not wholly successful. Quintilian, however, apparently thinks that, tins was because the subjects handled by Stesichorus were too great to admit of lyrical treatment; hut this only shows that Stesichorus had misconceived or failed to realise the proper province of his art. Vet, although Stesichorus was not pos- sessed by the spirit of either epic or lyric, and his -'epic lyric" was consequently neither epic nor lyric, he, still enjoyed con- siderable reputation both as a writer and as a pioneer in tho lield of lyric. How was this] As Stesichorus' poetry was lyrical only in form, it is to the form of lyric that we, must look for the innovations and im- provements which ln> made. The earliest form which melic took in literature was that of noines, .-ongs of wor.-hip and praise delivered a-s solos. This firm of melic was succeeded hy choral lyrics, and it was by giving to chrul lyric the distinctive form which it ever afterwards bore that Stesichorus acquired K 146 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. the place which he holds in the history of melic. The fact that the invention of hymns is ascribed to him conceals beneath its surface the real innovation which he introduced. Hymns had existed long before the time of Stesichorus and before the beginning of the history of lyric poetry. They also had existed even in the history of melic before Stesichorus, for the choral odes of Thaletas were hymns. But the division of the hymn into the three parts strophe, antistrophe, and epode, which corresponded to the movements of the chorus round the altar, was, even if not invented by Stesichorus, but borrowed by him from existing usage in Sicily, at any rate introduced and established in choral melic by him. In this tripartite division of the choral ode Stesichorus left his mark permanently on lyric. In another and minor point he also opened a path which his successors followed : he carried the length of the strophe and antistrophe much farther than had ever been done before, and by thus increasing the length gained additional room for varying and developing the metre. But in addition to the services he rendered to lyric, Stesi- chorus has the reputation of being a great writer. On this point we have to rely upon the opinion of Dionysius of Hali- carnassus, the author of the treatise on the Sublime, and Quin- tilian. Stesichorus' treatment of the subject-matter, as we have seen, Quintilian defends with little zeal and less discretion ; but both he and IHonysius (Script. Vet. Can?. 2. 7) say that Stesi- chorus excelled in character-drawing. There is nothing in the fragments which in the least degree enables us to check or con- firm this statement ; but this quality is the other and better side of that tendency to psychological analysis which marks Stesichorus as alien to the spirit of epic and allied to romance. In this connection we should mention that, as well as the hero- mvths which Stesichorus used in the poems we have already mentioned, the Geryms, C<-rlx>ru*, S<-ylIa, Cyctms, &c., love- stories and pastoral scenes were taken by him as themes. Thus Stesichorus was the forerunner of bucolic as well as of novel- writers. Whether his erotica and bucolica were of the same form, and were sung chorally as well as his other lyrics, is a point on which no evidence is forthcoming. The poems which celebrated the deeds of Heracles or other heroes would naturally be performed at some festival in honour of the hero ; but it is hard to imagine on what occasion such a poem as the Kalylia, which told how Kalyka fell in love with Euathlos, and having prayed in vain to Aphrodite that she might marry him, hanged herself, could be sung publicly as a chorus. On the other hand, LYRIC POETRY: ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC WRITERS. 147 to suppose that this and the Railina were composed for solo recitation or sinking in private has nothing positive in its sup- port. In connection with the subject of Stesichorus' character- drawing, we may note as interesting that Athensens (xiv. 6191)), from whom we get the sketch of the plot of the Kalyka, remarks with evident satisfaction that the character of Kalyka, as drawn by Stesichorus, was extremely moral. She desired the love of Euathlos, hut only on the condition of becoming his lawful wife. CHAPTER IV. ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC WRITERS (continued). UXDER the name of Theognis two hooks of elegiacs have come down to us. of which the lir.st consists of 1230 verses, and the second, which is preserved only in one manuscript the best, the Mutinensis, A of 159 verses. These books do not consti- tute one single poem, but contain a great number of aphorisms, gnomes, reflections, elegies, epigrams, parodies, and amatory verses, arranged on no uniform principle, though at times pieces seem to follow each other because of their resemblance ; at others, because of their contrast ; and at other times, again, the juxta- position of the pieces seems to be satirical ; while repetitions are not unfrequent, and have given rise to many hypotheses as to the original arrangement of the contents of the books. J)ut although all the manuscripts give the name of Theognis to their contents, these are not all by Theognis, nor was the collec- tion originally intended to be passed off as the work solelv of Theognis. It was rather intended as an anthology of the older elegiac writers, and as that part of its contents which is poli- tical is violently oligarchical, it was unless put together at a time when, or a place where, political feeling was extinct addiessed to aristocratic readers. In course of time the value for practical life of its shrewd maxims seems to have caused it to be regarded as eminently suited fur educational purposes ; and its adaption as part of a (ireek biy's education may have been helped by the feeling, which was growing up even in 1'lato's time, that the old system of confining a hoy to one or two authors, whom he learnt by heart, miu'ht with advantage be replaced by a cuiriculum of wider range, a u.>e to which this anthology would lend itself excellently. 148 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. As it is by reference to the life and times of Theognis that his works in the Theognidea are to be distinguished from the poems which are not by him, the question arises, what do we know of his life and times? And at the outset it must be confessed that it is unfortunately from this anthology, the Theognidea, which undoubtedly contains poems by Theognis, and also undoubtedly contains poems not by him, that we have to get our information. But suspicious as this circular mode of argument naturally makes us, we can reasonably accept the out- lines, if not the details, which it puts before us. Theognis was born in Megara the Megara in Greece, not in Sicily and, although his date is disputed, probably in the first half of the sixth century B.C., so that he flourished about the middle or in the latter half of that century. When Megara had thrown off the yoke of Corinth, she began to display great activity in colonisation, arid especially in planting colonies on the shores of the Black Sea. This activity was accompanied by a great extension of her commerce and by a considerable increase in her wealth. But the distribution of this wealth was unequal : riches grew, but poverty also grew, and the gap between the two widened until the social fabric split. An oligarch was, as always in these times, found to betray his fellow-oligarchs and to delude the people. Theagenes put himself at the head of the reform party, and utilised his position to make himself tyrant. Even- tually he was overthrown, and then oligarchy and democracy found themselves face to face. A time of confusion and strug- gling followed, in which sometimes oligarchy, sometimes demo- cracy, got the upper hand, and neither, when victor, showed mercy to the fallen. Each took from the other what was to be hail : the democrats confiscated the oligarchs' property, and the oligarchs, to use an expression of Theognis' own in this con- nection (3 14), "drank the blood " of the democrats. Weight tells in these encounters, and victory finally remained with the democracy. Thc.se were the political and social conditions under which Theognis lived. The part which he personally took in the struggles of his time we know little about, except that, fls is plain from the hatred which his verses show for the democrats, lie belonged to the- oligarchs. He probably lost his property (345) and went into exile, but afterwards returned to his native country. OIK; elegy (7X3) states that the author went to Sicily and to Eubo>a, and that he was received kindly, but that nothing could reconcile him to exile from his native country. .Another couplet (209) complains that an exile has no friends. LYRIC POETKY : ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC WRITERS. 149 It has been inferred (from 261, 257, and 1097) that the woman whom lie loved \vus given in marriage by her parents to some rotnrii'f because of his wealth, and that after marriage, as before, she preferred Theognis. J5ut although the frequent and bitter complaints of poverty which occur are probably by Theognis (e.g. 619 and 649), it is rash to draw such detailed inferences as the above solely on the strength of a combination of passages which may be by different authors and not contain even a word by Theognis. It is better to abandon the attempt to extract personal details, and to content ourselves with the picture which our collection gives of the morality, the society, and the poli- tical feeling of the time. The fierce savagery which seems to have been latent at all times among the Greeks, displayed itself in all its murderous cruelty when political conflicts neared or reached the stage of revolution. Theognis prayed " to drink the blood' 1 of the democrats. Elsewhere (847) he says, "Tram- ple on the people, smite them with the keen goad," and so on. It is, however, impossible to live at high pressure always, and Theognis cannot keep up to this level continually. In default, lie has a pair of " perpetual epithets," which serve to quietly mark the ever-present oligarchical feeling in his mind towards the mob. Whenever he speaks of "the good," it is understood that he does not mean chiefly men who are dis- tinguished for exemplary lives and morality of conduct, but those, who were of the same political views as himself. So when he speaks of "the base," "the craven," lie not only meant to connote all that is bad, but also to denote the people. There was one other class of men whom the oligarchs of the time hated as much as, perhaps more than, they did the mob: these were the oligarchs who betrayed their fellows and made themselves tyrants. Not only <1> >es Theognis decline to associate with tyrants or mourn over their tombs (1203), he even advo- cates tyrannicide ( i i S i ). 1'erhaps it was because he hated tyrant.- on the one side and the democracy on the other, and also because he had the wit to see that even oligarchical rulers did not always govern in the best possible manner (855), that he imagined he followed a n'a m?'.(ii;()\ for from them come irood a nd evil (171); they are to be prayed to in tribulation (5541, for lh"V can _'i.int our request- ( i i i z,*. Courage is not made so much of by him as we should have 152 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. expected from the high place which it took in antiquity among the virtues. The references to it and to war are singularly few. Theognis does not expressly enjoin courage anywhere, but he implies that cowardice is disgraceful (889), especially when the country is in danger (825). Against lying he speaks frequently and decidedly (85, 118, 875, 1071), on the ground that it does not do much good, to begin with, and always proves disgraceful (607). Children should honour their parents, because the days of those who do not are few in the land (821). Justice, too, is inculcated : give no man except what is his own (332), and do not yield to the temptations of lucre (465) ; in justice is comprised every virtue (147). But the golden rule for conduct is, Exceed in nothing; the mean is best in all things (335). This is the better side of the morality of the time ; the worse comes out in Theognis quite as nakedly as in any other Greek writer, perhaps more so. It is folly to treat the bad well ; you may as well sow the sea, for the good you will reap (105). There are two good reasons for doing no such thing : you waste your own things, and you get no gratitude (955). Theognis goes on a different principle : he prays to Zeus that he may get his ene- mies on the hip (338), and have revenge (345), plunder them of their property, and drink their blood (561). " Speak your enemy fair," he says (363) ; " then, when y u have him down, strike, and heed not his prayers." Invaluable as this collection of elegiacs is for the light which it throws on the manners, thought, politics, and morality of the time, it has little value from the point of view of art. There is from beginning to end scarcely a single beauty of thought, expression, or imagery, to be found in it. What apparently was the proem of Theognis' works (19-24), which is addressed by Theognis in name to his friend Cyrnus, rises above the other pieces in the confidence with which the anther promises Cyrnus and himself eternal and universal fame. There is also another elegy (667-682). comparing the condition of the state to a ship in a storm, which is of considerable beauty, and is far above anything else in the collection but it. is doubtful whether this is the work of Theognis. As a rule, these elegiacs are "lowered to the level of the Dorian understanding." Simple the poetry of Theognis is; sensuous scarcely ever, and never impassioned. Not only does it lack beauty, but it rarely shows any profundity of thought ; though, perhaps, this is the common defect of the age, for it is only when the drama and philosophy appear that the Greeks seem to have pondered much on the problems of life. There is no trace of any such speculations in LYRIC POETRY: ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC WRITERS. 153 ihe early iambic writers or the niclic poets, whether writers of choral poetry, as Alcinan or Stesichorus, or of personal lyric, as Sappho and Alrixnis. Among the elegiac writers we find melo- dious plaints on the necessity of death in Mimncrnuis, and querulous fretfulness about the miseries of life in Simonides ; hut it is not till we come to Solon that we see signs of earnest thought. In Theognis we find that the poet marvels at Zeus, who possesses honour and might, and yet treats the just and the unjust alike (373) : how do the gods expect any one to worship them if they continue this course? (743). The conclusion is that the will of 1 leaven is not plain, nor the way in which a man should walk to please the immortals (743)- To the middle of the sixth century B.C. also belong Demo- docns of I.eros and Phocylides of Miletus. About the former we know nothing, except that he wrote iambics and epigrams, of which latter one served to suggest to Person his verses on Hermann. iVinodoeus said, "The Chians are bad; not one here and one there, but all, except Procies, and Procles is a Chian." With similar wit he attacked the Milesians, of whom he said that they were not stupid, but they acted stupidly. Am on '4 the elegiacs of Phocylides we find a couplet which, with the substitution of Lerian for Chian, is word for word the same as that of Demodocus. From this it is inferred that the two poets engaged in a warfare of wit, and that in these two couplets we have the attack and retort. But for the credit of Greek humour it is to be hoped that the inference, which has no basis except the existence, of the two couplets, is erroneous. Phoeylides, of whose life nothing is known, wrote in hexa- meters as well as in elegiacs. Usually his utterances in hexa- meters were brief and gnomic ; but we have a longer poem, which was a satin 1 on women, conceived in the same strain and form as that of Simonides. Phocylides, however, instead of ten, has four classes of women, one of which is derived by extraction from the do'.:, another from the bee. another from the sow, and the fourth from the mare. The shorter utterances are good, practical common sense, and as far removed from being poetry as possible. A MII ill city well governed, he says, is better than a "Nineveh (:;). Piirth is no good if a man can speak neither pleasantly nor sensibly (4). First get a living, then think about improving yourself (10). Under the name of Phocylides there pas ed, until the six- teenth century, a lon;_j poem in hexameters of jco verses, con- taining a string of moral precepts. ''The useful poetry "f Phoeylides/' as it is entitled in some manuscripts, is arranged 154 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. in a very disorderly and disconnected manner, is not unfre- quently ungrammatieal, is mixed in its vocabulary, and contains many sentiments quite foreign to Greek thought and ethics. It was this last fact which aroused the suspicions of Sylburg in the sixteenth century, who, however, only ventured to point out that some lines were probably not the work of Phocylides, but of a Christian Avriter. Joseph Scaliger declared the whole poem to be a forgery and the work of some Christian or Jewish writer, but, after contenting himself with throwing out the hint, left it for some one else to work out. This Jacob Bernays did (Ueber das phoJcylideisclie Gediclit, Berlin, 1856), and showed that although there are many traces of Jewish beliefs (e.g. 84, 139, 140, 147, 207), there is none of any acquaintance with the New Testa- ment. The poem, then, may be set down as the work of a Greek- speaking Jew, who lived probably not before the second century B.c. The place of its origin seems likely to have been Alexandria, for it was there that the Jews came most in contact with Greek learning. The object of the author does not seem to have been a literary forgery, such a^ have been famous in modern times, for there is no attempt to imitate the style of Phocylides or the brevity of his utterances. Rather the writer seems to have been so concerned with winning acceptance for the morality he preached as to be willing to sacrifice the fame of authorship, if only the name of Phocylides would gain a hearing for him. The decline of the Alexandrine school removed an effectual check on the circulation of forgeries of this and other kinds, and we may thus probably date the pseudo-Phocylidea. The claim of Hipponax to fame is based on the invention of a new kind of metre, the choliambus or scazon. It is in reality the iambic line with the substitution of a spondee or trochee for an iambus in the last foot. This change gives the line a limping effect whence the name choliambus or scazon and deprives it of all beauty, thus making it the appropriate vehicle for the unlovely contents with which Hipponax charged it. Appropriate as the metre was to the use lie put it to, its essential deformity prevented it from becoming a favourite or common form of verse, except among fable writers such as Babrius. Hipponax nourished about B.C, 540 as we learn from the Parian Marble (42). He was born at Ephesus, and seems to have been expelled thence. Possibly he may have attacked the governor of the city in his verses, and have therefore been turned out ; but we have nothing but conjecture to rely on fur this. From Ephesus he wont to Clazomenae, and there he seems to have spent the rest of his life, with no very pleasant feelings towards his old home. LYRIC POETRY : MKLIC AT COURT. I 5 5 From Clazomenje ho was not expelled, but he spent a largo part of his tinio in writing and declaiming defamatory verses against most people he came in contact with. His person seems to have been remarkably ugly : this, which is hard at all times, was par- ticularly so for a Greek, for whom nothing intellect, virtue, or wealth could redeem this defect. In the case of Hipponax it was doubly unfortunate, for it gave the enemies he made by his verses an invaluable means of attack, and one which a sculptor, such as ]!upalns, could turn to great account. The merits of this encounter between scax.ons and sculptors are unknown to us, as also is the result. "Whether the poverty which Hipponax complains of was much, exaggerated by him or not is uncertain, and we are equally ignorant of the date and manner of his death. In addition to the scazon, parody is put down to his invention, but before him Asius had written parodies. As Archilochus wmte iambics and used them against his enemies, it is usual to compare Hipponax with him. I5ut Archilochus was a man of education, refinement, and genius, and he was a poet ; whereas Hipponax possessed none of these qualities. His language is that of the gutter when it is not that of the brothel; his vitu- peration is noisy and not effective ; his parodies, such as we have, possess no humour. Of Ananius. a writer of parodies in iambics, scarcely anything is known. He is said to have been less personal than llipponax ; but there seems to have been some difficulty in deciding whether the works ascribed to him were by him or by Hipponax. Amongst other writers of elegiacs or iambics in later times may be mentioned the tragedian Ion of Chios; Evenus of Faros, the sophist : Critias. one of tin; thirty tyrants; Hermesianax of Colo- phcn; Hennippus, Herodas, and Kerkidas of Megalopolis. CHAITF.R V. ME LIC AT COURT. IN the verses of Theognis and Aleoeus we have seen how oli- garchy and tyranny fell oin, and democracy such as it w.;s in ancient times came by its own 1 lemocracy having triumphed, did not prohibit freedom of sp-ech, and the oligarch.- <_'ave vent in their verges to the feeling,- which exile, confiscation, and loss of power roused in their breasts. It is only from .Solon's verses I 56 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. that we see the other side of the shield, and learn to understand how under oligarchy the people were robbed of their land, driven from their native country, and sold into slavery. But demo- cracy did not triumph everywhere ; in various cities tyrants established themselves and their dynasties with more or less per- manence. The iirst use to which they put the wealth that came into their hands by usurpation, was to fortify their position by means of mercenaries ; the next, to surround themselves with all the splendour which art and literature could lend to their bad eminence. Thus nielic poetry, which had been originally attracted by the fame which Sparta could extend to genius, now left Sparta " in gilded courts to dwell." Some tyrants, as the Pisistratidae at Athens, turned the resources of art to the adornment of the city over which they exercised their unlawful rule. But most tyrants, as those of Samos and of Syracuse, required artists to celebrate, whether in marble or in poetry, their own virtues, magnificence, exploits, and victories in the national games of Hellas. In both cases, however, what melic poetry now shows us is no longer the spirit animating a nation, as in Tyrtseus, but the luxury of court. The tyrant was now the state ; the sufferings or the aspirations of the people could find no voice, and naturally tyrannicidal verses, such as those of Theognis or Alcseus, no hearing. We may form some idea of the force which the attractions of court exercised when, remembering the difficulties and dangers of ancient travelling, we learn that Ibycus was drawn from his native town in Italy, Rhegium, across land and sea to Samos. Beyond this fact we know little of the life of Ibycus. He seems to have spent some time in Himera and Catana, and may, as is conjectured, have gone to Samos on the invitation of the tyrant /Eaces, for the purpose of educating the young Poly- crates. But to decide this we ought to know the date of Ibycus, which cannot be given more precisely than that he lived in the latter half of the sixth century B.C. The story of his death, according to Suidas, is that he was plundered and killed by robbers. "While, dying he pointed to some cranes flying over- head, and declared that they would be his avengers. The robbers returned to the neighbouring town, the name of which Suidas does not give, and were sitting in the theatre, when one of them, seeing a crane, remarked jeeringly to his fellows, "There is one of Ibycus' avengers." This was overheard, and, as Ibycus had disappeared in a remarkable manner, the men were seized, made to confess, and executed. This account lias an air of improbability about it, the more so because it is a type LYRIC POETKY : MELIC AT COURT. I 57 of story not uncommon in folk-lore. When, further, wo find that the earliest authority for it is an epigram by Anti pater of Sidon, who lived about a hundred years B.C., i.e. four hundred years after the fact which he professes to relate, we have very good reason for doubting the accuracy of the story. The origin of the tale, as applied to Ibycus we are not in a position to trace ; but the name of the poet bears sufficient resemblance to the Greek word ibylces, which means birds of some kind, to make it probable that a false etymology attracted this floating story to the name of Ibycus. We have very few fragments by Ibycus, and very little in- formation about his work in ancient authors. Consequently there is considerable doubt as to the character of his poems and the occasions on which they were delivered. That some of his work must have been of the same nature as the "epic lyric" of Stesichorus seems to be shown by the fact that ancient critics were doubtful whether certain fragments were by Ibycus or Stesichorus. Further, the metre, the length of the strophes, and the large number of mythical allusions in the fragments of Ibvcus, show that in method Ibycus followed Stesichorus. Hut .-ide, by .-ide with these pieces of evidence we find in the fragments indications of a wide difference between the two poets. Jt seems reasonable, therefore, to conclude, that whilst Ibycns was in Sicily he was influenced by Stesichorus, and wrote " epic lyric " such as his master wrote, and as the Sicilians had been accustomed to hear from Stesichorus. But to endea- vour, on the hints afforded by casual and doubtful mention of mythical names, to determine the subject and the titles of poems of which we have only the most inconsiderable fragments, and which only conje.cturally come under the head of "epic lyric," is an attempt which not even Welcker or Flach can induce us to share in. hi Sainos Ibycus sterns to have modelled himself on Anacreon, who had come, to the court of Polycrates before him. as in Sicily on Stesichorus. Love and wine were the themes which the luxnri' nis surroundings and the native taste of Anacreon pr anpted him to .-ing of; and though we have no reason to believe that. Ibyeus sang of wine, love was the never-ending burden of his mdo iics. In the ardour and violence of his passion. Ibycus, according to Cicero (7'.-r. iv. 33. 71'), far outstripped Anacreon. Siesichorus had treated of love in his poems, but in his poetry it had either been subordinate to the epic interest of his lyric, or. if it, had formed the main .-ubject of some of his p-cms, as it probably did in the Itaduia and the Calyca, it \\as treated I 5 8 HISTORY OF GKEEK LITERATURE. of by him in narrative form, and he related the hopeless love of some imaginary hero or heroine. But Ibycus treated of love, not in a narrative, but in a lyric strain. It Avas his own feeling which he was pouring forth in his verses ; and although he sought for parallels in ancient story, and interwove mythological incidents into his odes in the fashion of Pindar, the source and the subject of his s^rig were his own emotions. In short, in passing from Sicily to Samos, he left behind the somewhat cold and artificial mode f conception which characterised Stesi- chorus, and entered the glowing atmosphere which developed ^Eolian lyric. In one important point, however, the melic of Ibycus differed from that of Lesbos ; his odes were choral, whereas those of Alcreus and Sappho were for solo delivery ; and this raises the difficult question, how did Ibycus reconcile his subject witli the occasions and manner of choral execution 1 In his attempt to fuse the expression of the personal feelings of the lyric poet with that of the sentiments associated with a public festival or ceremonial, Ibycus reminds us of Alcman, who in Sparta attempted the same experiment, and it is natural to conjecture that Ibycus set to work in the same way as Alcman. But there are no traces in the few fragments we possess of any such addresses of the poet to the chorus or individual members of the chorus as are found in Alcman's odes, and nothing in any ancient authority to support the conjecture. The suggestion that these choral odes were composed and sung in honour of the victors in contests of personal beauty, such as were indeed held in various Greek cities, seems to be rebutted by the con- sideration that there is no evidence to show the existence of such contests in Samos, and that such contests were for female beauty only. The solution of the difficulty must be sought elsewhere. The fact that the odes of Ibycus were, as is shown by their metre, choral, and therefore performed in public, shows that the young men who were thus celebrated had achieved some success which called for public congratulation ; and it seems easiest to suppose that this success was in the public games, and that the odes thus resembled the encomia and epi- nikia which Pindar wrote. Few as the fragments by Ibycus are, they give us a high opinion of his poetical merit ; and small as most of them are, they bear the mark of grace and beauty. In reading them we are transported into a region of sweet sounds and beautiful fights. We are surrounded by roses, violets, and myrtles (6) ; there are kingfishers (8) in the flowing streams which run LYRIC POETRY : MELIC AT COURT. I 59 through maidens' gardens (i) ; tlie nightingales (7) sing as the stars shine the long night through (3); all breathes spring, nnd joy, and peace, except the poet's heart, where a blast as of Boreas rages beneath the lightning (i). Among the literary consequences of the introduction of tyranny into the system of Greek politics was not only the crystallisation of choral poetry round tyrants' courts, but also the attraction thither of poets such as Anacreon, who wrote Ivric songs after the fashion of the JEoYuin ode. To assign this centripetal force as the sole cause of this phenomenon would, however, be an inadequate explanation ; we must consider the negative as well as the positive conditions, that is, why lyric song did not survive; under democracies on the fall of oligarchy, as well as why it migrated to tyrannies. That department of melic poetry of which the greatest representatives were Sappho and Alcu'ii-, and which, to di.-tinguish it from choral melic, we will call lyric song, although its roots are to be found in the songs of the. people, attained to literary form and merit only in oligarchies. It was only among the ruling classes of oligarchi- c-ally governed states that there existed the literary and musical cultivation necessary for the, production of high work, and for the intelligent appreciation and encouragement of it when produced. The public to which the lyric poet thus addressed himself was narrow, but it contained all whose criticism was worth obtaining, and whose praise the poet cured for. Further, the very narrowness of the poet's circle, in which all were ac- quaintances and most were friends, was the most favourable condition under which a kind of poetry, whose essence is the expression of the poet's personal emotions, could possibly bo developed : for the poet's mode of life was that of his hearers, his feelings were their feelings, his prejudices their prejudices, his polities, when he touched on them, his beliefs and his mo- rality, the same as theirs. All this, when oligarchy was over- thrown, was changed. At first sight it might appear as though there were no reason why, when democracy succeeded oligarchy, lyric song should not have continued to flourish, if only the poet would address himself to the new public which was grow- ing, and seek his inspiration in the wider circle of emotions and beliefs which all Greeks felt in common. Hut this is to overlook an important condition which regulated the development of (ireek literature, and was the cause of the difference in iorm between the literature of (iivek and of mudeni times. \Vithoiit a public, ait and literature cannot exist. The manner, therefore, in which an artist is brought into contact with his public is a matter of I6O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. the greatest importance in its effects on the course and form of literature. Until the time of Isocrates, a Greek author obtained publicity, not by means of the multiplication and circulation of copies of his works, but by means of the oral delivery of his productions. In the case of choral poetry, the performance by the chorus constituted this oral delivery ; and as choruses were performed in public and on public occasions, the audience con- sisted of all the citizens of the state, and was the largest to which an author could address himself. In the case of lyric song the poet was his own performer; the occasion was private, not public, being some banquet at which the author's friends were gathered together, and his public was consequently con- siderably smaller. It is this fact which mainly explains the decay of lyric song under democracy. Under an oligarchy the poet's public was small, but it was practically in intelligence and power the state. When democracy supervened, the oligar- chical classes no longer had the monopoly of government and culture ; they sank into the subordinate position of a party, and of a party out of joint with the times. The audience of the poet thus became narrow in all senses of the word : and although Theognis was an elegiac and not a melic poet, he shows in the confined and lifeless flight of his verse how evilly a clique reacts on an artist. Within the area, then, of democracy, lyric song disappeared, and in tyrannies it survived, for there the court formed a centre of art and cultuie, and provided a public whose appreciation was for some poets as powerful an allure- ment as were the more material rewards offered by the tyrant to others. I5ut before proceeding to consider the effect which the change from oligarchy to tyranny had on lyric song, we have to notice a fact which confirms and completes our theory of the disappearance of lyric song under democracy. It is this, that as soon as in democracy occasions and means were found by which the lyric poet could reach the great public, i.e. the whole body of citizens, then great poets were forthcoming to give expression to emotions and beliefs which all their fellow- citi/ens, and not merely a clique, could feel and understand. The contrivance which, under democracy, put the poet into direct relation with the great public, was the theatre : lyric si.ng, choral poetry, and iambics were fused and transmuted into drama; and in the melic parts of tragedy we hear the lyric poet uttering, to an audience greater than that which he ad- dre.-sed, hi meditations on the meaning of life. Anacreon, who was born of good family and connected with Solon, was a native of the island of Teos. When the tide of LYRIC POETRY : MELIC AT COURT. I 6 I Persian invasion swept over Teos as over other islands off the coast of Asia Minor, Anacreon seems to have emigrated with his fellow-citizens to Abdera in Thrace. How long he remained there we do not know, but thence he proceeded to Samos. probably a few years before Ibycus arrived there. From the time that Polycrates was a boy until the time when ho was treacherously murdered by the Persian satrap Oroetes. Anacreon enjoyed the friendship an 1 confidence of the tyrant of Samos. Doubtless it was as a minister to the pleasures and as an ornament to the court of Polyrrates that Anacreon chiefly figured in Samos, but he also exercised an occasional influence over the greedy and cruel policy of the despot. After the assassination of Polycrates Anacreon went to Athens, though whether he went straight there or fir.-t went to Asia Minor or to Abdera, is uncertain. In any case, his reputation a- a poet was so well established that Hipparehus. the t\ rant of Athens, invited him to his court, and sent a vessel to convey him thither. It was at Athens probably that Anacreon died, in his eighty-fifth year, in the enjoyment of a fresh and green old age. Anacreou wrote some short hymns to the gods, but his chief work, and that on which his reputation was based, comprised five books of elegies, iambics, and lyric song. He did not open up any new field in lyric, lint contented himself in following with less genius and less earnestness the paths which Archilochus and the Lesbian poets had made before him. At the same time he availed himself of all the technical improvements in metro and music with which successive generations of poets had en- riched their art, to a degree and with a skill in which Sappho alone surpassed him. It is in finish, not force, in workmanship, not genius, in the lightness of his touch, not earnestness of feeling, that the merit of Anacreon lies. Dionysins (. Verb. 23) select- him, after Sappho, as representative of the " smooth" style or harmony. < >n this authority we may take it that in the Dualities of melody Anacreon excelled. Unfortu- nately the few notes which are left are so scattered that we can- not reconstruct the melody, lint in perfect music there is, as well as melody, harmony; and in th" fragments of a perfect poet, although time may obliterate much, harmony is left, tie >U'_rh the melody b" past reconstruction. Tims Sappho .-truck chords which still vibrate, but in Anacreon the melody has perished ; harmonies there never were. Thi- want of depth in Anaereon's poetry corresponds to and is the ivsnh of a want of depth in his nature. ]'>y this \ve do not mean m-Tely the absence of any reflection on the more serious problems and a>p<-cts of l.le. 1 62 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. There is no obligation on the poet to treat of such subjects, and the absence of such reflections does not constitute a poetical delinquency. iSo subject is forbidden the artist which he can make matter of art; but having chosen his subject, he must treat it as art. He must deal with morality, if he chooses the sub- ject, or politics, not as a moralist or a politician, but as an artist ; and whether his work be good moral or political philosophy, or whether it be bad, are considerations which, when settled, obviously do not in the least help us to decide whether his work is or is not good poetry. It is therefore, on the terms of art, no charge against Anacreon that he did not philosophise on life, and did sing " the praise of love and wine ; " but it does detract from his worth as a poet that his notes are not full, and that his song lacks expression. Of the three qualities necessary to poetry, that it should be "simple, sensuous, and impassioned," Anacreou's work possesses the first only in any eminent degree; and it is in the compara- tive failure of the other two that his weakness consists. Images are rare in Anacreon, and in this rarity we have a partial expla- nation of his inferiority to Sappho, who also sang the praise of love, anil whose smallest fragments may contain a picture, a vision, and a thing of beauty. The most serious defect, however, is that Anacix-on wrote of love and wine, the sources of violent emotions, and his poetry is inadequately impassioned. As there are things to the beauty of which a certain magnitude is neces- sary, so for the emotions a certain intensity is requisite ; and this intensity Anacreon failed of. There is no impetuosity in his drinking-songs, and no irresistible enchantment in his love- songs. Love and wine are amusements with him, and the amusements of a man who has nothing to do but amuse himself. They aroused only superficial feelings in him there was nothing more to arouse and his expression of them is superficial. His touch was light, but nut tender. Anacreou's defects as a poet made for his success as a court bard. In a court in which ministers of pleasure of both sexes were collected from all parts of Europe and Asia Minor for the entertainment of the tyrant, Anacreon naturally attained a high position. His verse? were not too high for the intelligence, or too deep for the feelings, of his patron and his audience. His character, too. was equally well suited to his surroundings. While avoiding all excess he lived to be eighty-live he is described (Critias in Afh. xiii. 6ooi>) as charming in manner, a deceiver of women, and the life of a drinking-party. His con- que.-ts wcire as facile as his verses, and his potations as deep LYRIC POETRY : MELIC AT COURT. 163 as his poetry. Anacreon reflects life at court as faithfully as Alcanis docs the life of an oligarch. But the difference between the latter, who wrote " because the numbers came," and the court poet, who celebrated in lyric verse the reigning beauty of either sex from time to time, was great. In Alcaeus or Sappho we have a poet singing songs unbidden " Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not." In Anacreon we have a poet who wrote, not to command, in- deed, but on all occasions ; and the poet who writes indifferently on any occasion is in danger of writing indifferently on all. However, the poetry of Anacreon marks the highest point to which the atmosphere of tyranny would allow lyric song to grow ; and that, it grew so hi'_di and so shap.'ly was because the temperament of Anacreon harmonised so well with the demands of his post and his patron. The passion of a Sappho would have found little sympathy, or the pride of an Alcanis little room, in such a court as that of Poly crates. Anacrcon's nature, less deep and less lofty, was adapted to the environment, and was further endowed with the gift of a finished literary stvle. lint this conjunction of qualities did not occur afterwards or elsewhere, and tyranny, though it promised to support lyric song, proved more barn-n of substance than did democracy. Sinioiiides, as we learn from an inscription (Fr. 1471!) which he wrote to commemorate the victory, in a choral contest at Athens, of the tribe Antiochis with a poem of his composing, was the son of Leopivdes, and was eighty years of age at the time of this victory. AS he mentions the archnship of Adei- mantus as the date of this event, it follows that he was born in the year H.c. ^o. The place of ins birth was a >m ill island, Ceos, one of the Cyda les. The inhabitants of the i-land were Ionian-, but the neighbourhood of the Peloponnesus all'ected the ('can.- in various ways, and, what is important for our purpose, famiiiari.-ed them wi'h the choral worship of Apollo, and with the custom of purtlieiiiu or choruses sun;': by girls. The culti- vation in Ceos of choral ] try decide, 1 the line which Simon ides' impulse to poetry \\as to take. At an earlv age he was con- cern, d in the production of choruses, and fuliided the duti.-s of choir-master. Although, unlike Anaciv"!). he posses.-ed some patriotism, and celebrated his country in his song (^-^), h" was not content to remain for ever a choir-master in Ceos, out w is attracted, by vi-i"iis ,.f fame, fortune, and themes greater than Ceo- could atlord, to travel tar and wide to bnlliani courts au 1 1 64 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. centres of cultivation. In Athens the tyrant Pisistratus had been succeeded l>y his sons Hippias and Hipparchus, and they were carrying on the work, which their father had begun, of decorating Athens and educating the Athenians by means of everything which art, literature, and learning could supply. In pursuit of this policy the Pisistratidaa freely lavished money, and Simonides received large sums from them. The form of choral poetry which at this time was chiefly cul- tivated at Athens was the dithyramb. This, which at once \vns a religious service, a form of literature, and an entertainment for the people, was not in its origin, nature, or object specially sul> servient to tyranny. It was not performed for the gratification or the honour of the tyrant ; nor was it merely an entertain- ment for the people, to keep them in good-humour with the tyranny ; it was also an entertainment by the people. As in later times dramatists competed for a prize at the festivals of Dionysus, and each poet applied to the state for a choregu* to put his play upon the stage, and the chorus which performed in the play was furnished by one of the tribes ; so in the times of the Pisistratidce and of the dithyramb, the author of a dithy- ramb applied for a choregus and a tribe which should supply a chorus to learn, rehearse, and finally perform his dithyramb in the contests at the festivals of L>ionysus. When the drama developed out of the dithyramb, this manner of procedure con- tinued ; and this explains how it was that in th ' time of the drama the choregus, although he bore all the expenses entailed by the maintaining, teaching, and dressing of those members of his tribe who formed the dramatic chorus, had not to bear any part of the rest of the expense incurred in the production of the play. The prize which the successful poet in a dithyramb con- test won WHS not any pecuniary benefit to the victor, for it Avas dedicated by him as a votive offering to the god. The gold which Simonides carried off from Athens came to him as gifts, either from tin; tyrant, who was gratified to have so good a poet compete in his city, or possibly from rich citizens for whom Simonides had specially composed poems in celebration of some victory they had achieved in the public games or in the memory of snme relative they had lost. The epinikia which he thus composed remained popular in Athens for generations, and were in the months of thu Athenians in the time; of Aristophanes. 1 "\Yith his competitors, amongst whom at Athens was Lasus, Simonides never seems to have got on well. He was a formid- able rival not only in the exercise of his art, but even more 1 EH. 407 ; Nub. 1356. LYRIC POETRY : MKLIG AT COURT. I 65 so in the tact, the worldly wisdom, anil the courtly deference which won him so much success in dealing with the great. In Thcssuly, as well as in Athens, Simonides was the truest of tyrants. We still have almost complete (5) an encomium or eulogy written l>y Simonides in honour of Scopus on his death. Scopas was a tyrant whose rule does not seem to have been light nor his character amiable. l>ut Simonides, having to eulogise him professionally, adroitly and artistically steers between the risk of oil'ending the Scopada3 and the danger of exciting ridi- cule by lauding virtues which the deceased had not. lie con- iines himself to generalities : perfectly virtuous men do not occur; practically we have to take the good with the evil. Pit- tacus, the sage, much understated the fact when he said that it was hard to be good that is an attribute of God, not man ; the man wiio does iidt voluntarily do anything disgraceful is much to bo praised, but against destiny, of course no one can iii:ht. The skiil of this cannot be denied ; and although Simonides takes up the di-ad Scopas very tenderly and delicately, he cannot be accused of servility. To only hint that Scopas had his failings may have been gross adulation. We do not know. Hut having to write an encomium and to write it for gold, Simonides could not have well sold less of his conscience. Other poets with less sense of artistic propriety would have sold more. AVe know little about the Scopadce. It seems probable that the whole dynasty perished suddenly and together; and this is perhaps the, only kernel of fact which is contained in the story that Sconas u'ave Simonides half the reward he expected for a eulogy, and bade him apply to the ])ioscuri, whom Simonides had also praised in the eulogy, for tin; other half. At this moment Simonides was summoned fr-m tin 1 hall to sin-ak with two strangers, and no sooner was he in the open air than the build- ing fell with a cra.-h, killing Scopas and all his family. The 1 >;o-curi had paid their debt. The Scopada 1 , were not the only tyrants in Thossaly that Siiiioiudes visited. He, al-o went to I.ans-a. and placed Ins services at the disposal of the Aleuad;e, who were maintaining secret and treacherous relations with the 1 Vivian kim:. and were, otleiinj; to as.-i-L him in his invasion of Greece. From tn:s court Simonides went au'ain to the city which was the MHI! and the centre of the Greek resistance to IVr.-ia -Athens -there to celebrate by the epigrams, on which hi- fan.e principally rests, the delYat i.if the iVr-ians at Marathon, at Salami-, and at 1'iataM. In Athens the democracy had triumphed over the tyranny; Ilipparchus had been slain, liippias had ll d tolVrsin; I 66 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. and Simonides became as much at home under the democracy as he had been under the tyranny. He was as intimate with Themistocles as with the Pisistratidse, and he glorified the assassins of Hipparchus as readily and as artistically as he had honoured Hipparchus himself. His former relations with the tyrants did not prevent the Athenians from intrusting him with the honour of celebrating in verse their victories over the Persians, nor induce them to prefer the epigram on Marathon by their own ^schylus to that written by Simonides. In Corinth and in Sparta he was welcomed as much as in Athens, and he made himself the friend of the haughty Pausanias as successfully as he had won the friendship of the astute Themi- stocles. But- at this time art, literature, and culture found their best field and their most munificent reward in Sicily, at the court of Syracuse. Not only was Epicharmus performing his comedies there, but .^Eschylus voyaged thither, and there wrote and put on the stage tragedies, of which some were inspired by his visit, as the Women of ^Etna, some had been already performed in Athens. To Syracuse, also, Bacchylides, the nephew of Simo- nides, was drawn, and, greater than either, Pindar, now only a young man, but great enough already to defeat Simonides. Between Simonides and Pindar there existed the same rivalry, embittered by personal feelings, as at Athens had intervened be- tween Simonides and Lasus ; and, though the fragments of Simo- nides show no traces of this rivalry, it appears in passages of Pindar. With ]Iiero, however, the tyrant of Syracuse, Simo- nides was on the best of terms, and we find him assuring Hiero's wife, with the courtier-like suavity which characterised him, that wealth is before wisdom. It would not be altogether fair to condemn Simonides of insincerity in saying this, for he was the first poet who wrote for gold. This shocked the Greeks, as teaching for p'iy also shocked them. Art and learn- ing were sacred tilings. .It was as disgraceful to traffic in them as in beauty. This feeling is probably largely re.-pon.-iblc for the accusations of avarice which were made against Simonides, though there, was also much in his conduct to give countenance to the charge. Sicily he mu.-t have found a fertile field, for com- missions wen; not forthcoming from Syracuse and Hiero alone, but from Agrigentum, Khegium, and Croton as well. Up to the latest year of his life he seems to have worked, and his command over the technical resources of his art. his tact, skill, and adroitness in managing his subject-matter, seem to have gained more and more as he gained more experience, LYUIG I'OKTKY : MELIC AT COURT. 1 67 until he died B.C. 467, in Syracuse, at the age of eighty- ninc. Simonides was a writer of choral poetry, not of lyric song, and in his long life lie attained a mastery over every form of choral nil-lie, lie composed hymns to the gods, pagans to Apollo, dithyrambs in honour of Dionysus, hyporchemes with tlu-ir accompaniment of dancing, prosodia or processional hymns, and parthenia ; hut his poetry was not confined to the worship of the gods, he applied it also to honouring and commemorating men, both for their public achievements and their private virtues, and with this object he composed en- comia, epinikia, and threni or dirges, and in addition to these choral forms of poetry also skolia or drinking songs, elegies, and epigrams. In the domain of religious poetry Simonides did not atiain such celebrity as in the rest of choral melic. His com- mand of language, his exquisite diction, the smoothness and sweetness of his style, his mastery over all the technical re- sources of his art, raised even his religious poetry to a high staml-ml ; but this formal excellence could not compensate for shallowness of fei-ling and the, want of profound conviction, lint even here, where his natural defects were most conspicuous and most damaging, his grasp was so firm that he set dithyramb on the path it was to follow, though he wrested it from the special service of the god whom it was originally intended to honour. We have nothing left of his dithyrambs except the titles of two, the MiTunon and the Rnjip of tinn^a. and although we have no conception of the way in which he con- trived to harmonise these subjects with the form and the tradi- tions of the dithyramb, the titles are enough to show that Sinionides abandoned the custom of taking the adventures of J>ionvsus as the Mibjeet (.f the dithvrainb. Tins was a step of great importance, for it determined the subsequent history of this form of choral poetry. Thus even on religious nielic Simonides left hi on the rest of choral lyric he exercised even gn He elevated the thlviloS or dirge from the leVi the dignity of choral performance, lie gave public celebration of a victory in the national games, which they were destined to ivtain. Kin 1 >mia. wine to the same genus as epinikia, but were laudations private character, were the work- of hi not choral, epigram, though its funct by his predecessors, SinionidfS exalted t literature to winch no other puet cuuld 1 68 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. was to these forms of poetry that Simonides gave their make and shape in literature, it was in them that lie attained his highest excellence. In epiuikia, smooth and finished as his work was, and high as he ranked, he could not be compared with Pindar. Setting aside the difference between the inspired and the unin- spired poet, w r e find that even in respect of style and excellence of form Pindar was superior, though in a different way, to Simo- nides ; for \\hereasSimonides shares with Anacreon the honour of the second place in representing the "smooth "style of lyric, Pindar occupies without rival the highest position in the "severe" style. In encomia, which were a lower form of art, Simonides achieved greater excellence. These eulogies on people who frequently had but little worthy of eulogy afforded admir- able opportunities for the exercise of the tact, courteousness, and knowledge of the world which Simonides possessed in an eminent degree, and which explain both his invention and his successful cultivation of encomia. In dirges or threni his repu- tation stood even higher: in these poems not only was the style excellent, as always with Simonides, but that which it clothed was also excellent. Simonides' poetry rarely soared with the bold flight of genius, but in the threni it did affect the emotions. It was pathetic and extremely moving. This form of poetry Simonides must have cultivated with affection with the affection which comes of and to successful work ; for he did not content himself with composing dirges for real persons, as, e.ij. on the Scopadse, but took mythical heroes and heroines as subjects. Tbis gave him more room to work in, and he accordingly produced better work. It fortunately happens that we still have a fragment of his threnos on L>anae (37), amongst the most beautiful of the bequests from Greek literature which time has allowed to come down to us. Acrisius having been Avarned by an oracle that he would meet his death at the bands of a child born of his daughter L'anae, committed her and her child Perseus to the waves in a chest to perish. The fragment by Simonides pictures Danae and Perseus in the darkness of the coffer driven by the wind over the stormy sea. ]>anae, with her arm round her sleeping child and his faee against hers, talks to him : he sleeps and she is so full of care ; lie would not .-leep if he knew their dai.uer. Then she says to him, " ])ut sleep, baby; and sleep, sea and trouble too. Zeus! grant us respite and forgive my prayer." This fragment enables us to see for our.-elve.s the two inialiti's which ancient critics recognised as existing to a high degree in Simonides 1 poetry his clearness and his pathos. 15y clearness is meant the poet's LYRIC POETRY ; MELIC AT COURT. I 69 power of convoying to the reader's or hearer's mind the very picture which the poet himself sees with his mind's eye. In this fragment the pathos consists partly in the picture of the child sleeping " avec 1'ignonince de 1'ange, ' and of the, mother talking to the child of the danger which he does not under- stand. Pathetic, however, as Simonides, by the testimony of this fragment, was, he was probably inferior even in this quality to I'imlar. \vho stood to him in the same relation as /lischylus to .Kuripides. Pathos has been considered the special province of Kuripides as of Simonides, but the strength of ^Eschylus enabled him on fitting occasions to excel Euripides in intensity of pathos, as probably Pindar's strength gave him pathetic powers greater, if more, rarely used, than those of Simonides. The department of poetry in which Simonides stands without a rival is that of epigram. The glorious victories which the (Ireeks achieved over the Persians were celebrated by offerings to the gods, and these offerings required some inscription worthy of the deeds commemorated, as did also the graves of the warriors who fell nobly for their country. In Simonides was found the poet capable of composing the epigrams thus called for. ilis sticces- in this form of completion was due to the quality of self-restraint that is the chief merit of all his poetry. The defeat of the Persian was a theme on which a contemporary would find it difficult to be anything but expansive. It fur- nished Phrynichus and /Kschylus with the material for monu- ments of genius in the shape of tragedies depicting the down- fail of tiie innumerable ho.-t of the barbarians. The tribute of tragedy to the heroes of Hellas was properly monumental, hut in epigrams, whieh wen; themselves to be but inscriptions on monuments, whether to the gods or to the fallen patriots, qualities of another kind were required. .Description, such as was appropriate in tragedv, was excluded bv the brevity that the form of epigram necessitated. Prai.-e, in any direct foim. would be su[ errluoiis, and even otl'en.-ive, on memorials, and for deeds which were themselves their own praise. Many words were to be avoided ; self-re.-traint was above all necessary, and, considering the pride of patriotism, above ail difficult. The tact that could select precisely what should be >aid, and, saying little, ceuld yet .-ay all, was the prerogative of Simonides. It was not to much LTenius as arti-tic feelinir, the .-en-e of propriety and perfeet workman.-hip, that epigram called for; and the.-e quali- ties were precis. 'ly those in which ihe < xce'deiice of Simoiii'les consisted, Ami this may stand for "tir judgment on the poe'ry of Simonides in general. Tho piai.-e which we have accorded I/O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. to him all will admit to be deserved, and for adjudicating hia claims to genius we have the authority of Pindar (01. ii. 86), who, although he was a rival of Simonides and spoke with somewhat of the acerbity of rivalry, was likely, even if he struck harder than a more impartial critic, not to strike at the wrong place, but to detect more surely than any modern critic the weak point in Simonides. The low estimate formed by Pindar of Bacchylides has been generally accepted. Bacchylides was the nephew of Simonides, who probably initiated him into the service of the Muses. Like Simonides, Bacchylides cultivated all kinds of lyric poetry, and in all cases Bacchylides seems to have faithfully followed in the footsteps of Simonides. Other choral lyric poets of this period were Lasus of Hermione, who was cultivated by Hipparchus, was devoted especially to the composition of dithyrambs, and was said to have given instruction to Pindar; Melanippid.es the elder, Apollodorus of Athens, Tynnichus of Chalcis, Lam- prokles, Kydias, Hybrias, and Diagoras. CHAPTER VL PINDAR. PINDAR was born B.C. 521 (less probably B.C. 5 17) in Cynos- cephalae, a suburb of Thebes, and, appropriately enough in one who was to sing of victories achieved in the national games of Hellas, he was born in the month Munychion, during the cele- bration of the Pythian games, lie belonged to tin; illustrious family of the /Kgidoi (J'l/th. v. 72), who traced their pedigree to the time of Cadmus, and counted distinguished branches in ])orian lands as well as in Thebes. Tims by descent Pindar wus inclined to sympathise with .Dorian and aristocratic ten- dencies, while the connection of the ^gidjc with the temples and oracles of Greece may partly account for his cultivation of the choral poetry that was devoted mainly to the worship of the L r oils. In spite of the contempt which the Athenians had f6r the IVrothns ' l'>o"itian swine" was one of the expressions in which this contempt found vent the Boeotians were neither whollv excluded f I'oin refining influences by their depressing climate, nor wholly destitute of native art.i>ts. The music of tin- flute was cultivated with much success, and Pindar, though by far the greatest, was not the only poet whom Ikcotia pro- LYRIC POETRY: PINDAR. 171 duced. The existence of Pindar would of itself point to the cultivation of music and choral poetry in l>ceotia, if we knew nothing more, as the knowledge of the position of some of the stars possessed hy some ancient nations proves their acquaintance with a certain amount of mathematics, though these have left no other trace. ]!ut we are not reduced to conjecture of this sort in the present case. The earliest instruction given to Pindar, and the earliest artists who lired his poetic instincts, Avere Ikeotian. His knowledge of the flute was derived from iScopelinus, who is sometimes stated to have been his father, sometimes his stepfather ; and from the poetesses Myrtis and Corinna, Pindar learned something, though whether in the way of instruction or rivalry is uncertain ; probalily they affected him in both ways. There is a story that Corinna criticised his early etlort- adversely, on the ground that they displayed a poverty of mythological content. This is a charge which can- not justly be brought against those odes of his that we. possess ; and Corinna herself seems to have recognised this, for later .-die warned him ''to sow \\ith the hand and not with the sack." The earliest fact that we know with certainty in Pindar's literary career is the composition of the tenth Pythian Ode, which lie wrote at the early age of twenty. The Pythian games, which were one of the four national games of Hellas the Olympian, the Pythian, the Nemean. and the Isthmian derived their name from Pythius. an epithet of Apollo, given him in com- memoration <'f his slaving the dragon Pvtho. They weie held on tin; Crissa'an plain in tin' neighbourhood of Delphi, the oraeie of Apolio. Originally the contests at this festival were mu-ical, and the subject of the nomes that were composed for the contest was the praise of Apollo. In Course of time athletic game- were added, in imitation of the < Mympian sanies ; but at all times the musical, literary, and arti.-tic competitions were the distinguishing feature of the Pythian, and excelled even tho>e of the. Olympian game-. Although athletic games were added in imitation ,.f the Olympian f.-.-tival. the Amphictyons, who had the management of the Pytiiia. did not slavishly con- hen i selves to the pr< gramme of the Olvmpia, but introduced - which the Olvmpians subsequently borrowed. Among th I 7 2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. importance of the victory celebrated. That is to say, chariot or horse races are rankeil first, and then come hoxing and wrestling matches, the pancratia, and finally the foot races. Odes com- posed in honour of a victor in the national games were sometimes sung on the spot, but more frequently they were performed by his friends on his return home. The celebration of the victory was not merely a public, but also a religious ceremony, for thanks were publicly paid to the gods for the honour which by their favour the victor had won for the city. A solemn procession was made to the temple, thanks and a sacrifice were offered to the gods, and the proceedings closed with a banquet. During some part of the ceremony the triumphal ode, which some friend of the victor engaged a poet to compose, was sung by a chorus trained for the occasion. Sometimes the ode was sung during the procession to the temple, but more frequently at the banquet. The tenth Pythian Ode, which was composed by Pindar at the request of Thorax, one of the Aleuadse, who reigned at Larissa, was probably sung at the banquet. The subjects which Pindar had to treat of in this ode were, as we can see, pretty well defined beforehand. Hippoclea?, the victor, and Thorax would naturally be mentioned : and as they both belonged to the family of the Aleuadae. some myth connected with that family would naturally suggest itself. Again, as the father of Hippocleas had himself won victories in the national games, the fact would appropriately be referred to in a triumphal ode honour- ing his son. Finally, the god Apollo, at whose festival the victory had been won, would claim some verses from the poet. To these necessary topics Pindar confines himself; but in this, the first of his triumphal odes, he already shows complete skill in inter- weaving his subjects in such a manner that they seem to rise as a series of pictures spontaneously to the poet's mind, and not to be the ingenious mosaic of a professional writer of occasional verse. The Aleuadse claimed to be descended from Heracles, whose descendants ruled also in Lacedaemnn ; and with an allusion to this connection between the two states -a connection of which Thessaly would be proud to be reminded Pindar opens the ode, justifying this compliment to Thessaly on the ground that it is of one of the Aleuada?, Hippocleas, the winner of the J)iaulos, that he is about to sing. To Apollo is due the praise for this victory, as fur the victories of Hippocleas' father at Olympia and at the Pylhia. Father and son have, thus attained the greatest hai'pines- and pride which are possible for mortals : to do more, to afhieve such an exploit as to penetrate to the. mysterious land of the Hyperboreans, is only for the gods, or for such a hero aa LYRIC POETRY : PINDAR. 1/3 Perseus (an ancestor of Heracles and therefore of the Aleuad;* 1 ) aided by a god. Pindar then describes the happy race of Hyper- boreans, who know neither sickness nor death, labour nor war, but laugh, sing, dance, and carouse "with golden bay-leaves in their hair." From this story of Perseus Pindar recalls himself suddenly fur ''his song of praise flitteth like a honey-bee from tale to tale " J as though he had been carried away by his verse ; and, with a compliment to Thorax and the Alcuadse, who govern the Thessaliuns well, he concludes. Although Pindar received his earliest instruction in Thebes from Scopelinus, Myrtis, and Corinna, he went to Athens to learn more. There he found Apollodorus. Agathocles. and Lasus of Hermione at work, and them he took as his masters. At this early period of his life was laid the foundation of that friendship which ever after existed between him and the Athenian people, in spite of Pindar's Theban birth. This visit to Athens probably had its influence on Pindar's style, as it certainly had on his vocabulary, though we cannot trace it very precisely. The next fact which is known to us in Pindar's literary career is the composition of the sixth Pythian Ode, at the age of twenty-eight (B.C. 349). This ode commemorates the victory of a chariot driven by Thrasybulus, to whose father, Xenocrates, the brother of Theron, tyrant of Agrigentum, the chariot and horses belonged, and who was consequently proclaimed as victor. The ode is short, is addressed to Thrasybulus, and was probably sung at Delphi ; for this ode, like the tenth, celebrates a Pythian victory, it is indeed probable, seeing that the four earliest odes by Pindar celebrate victories at the Pythia, the festival of the Ljod of Delphi, that Pindar's family connection with Delphi determined the direction of his iir>t efforts to the. celebration of Pvthi.m victories. The sixth Pythian Ode is short and simple aiik' j in style and composition : this victory in th chariot race has earned for Xenocrates a treasure of song which >; neither wind nor wintry rain-storm coining from strange lands, as a fierce host born of the thunderous cloud, shall cany into the hiding-places of the sea." Thrasyhnins, the son, and also the charioteer of Xi-noeratos, ha- honoured his father; and in his 1'lial piety he is like Antilochus, who. when his father's horses were killed in the battle by Paris, and his iatlnT, NYstor. was being attacked by Mcmnon, boiiirhl hi< father's lit'.- by his own. "These things are of the past," I'indar admits, "but of men 1 Tliroiuhoiit thii cliMi'tt-r tin- 1 ipidt. it-Mi,-. ;uv fnun th.' mhniniblt; traaala- tinii uf I'imlar Uv Mr. Kniest Mvcrs 'M.icim 1/4 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. that now are, Thrasybulus hath come nearest to our fathers' gauge." In the same year (B.C. 494) that Xenocrates won the chariot race at the Pythian games, Midas of Akragas, for whom the twelfth Pythian Ode was -written, won the flute-playing match. The same player was winner in the same contest in B.C. 490, and it is uncertain for which victory the ode was composed. The twelfth ode is shorter, and even more simple in structure, than the sixth. It was probably sung during the procession to the temple, for it contains only strophes and antistrophes ; whereas those odes which contain also epodes were probably sung at the banquet ; for it was customary for the chorus to stand still during the singing of the epodes, a fact which would seem to point to the conclusion that odes containing epodes could hardly well be sung during a procession. The ode opens with an appeal to the fair city of Akragas to welcome Midas, who has beaten all Hellas " in the art which once on a time Pallas Athene devised, when she made music of the fierce Gorgon's death-lament." By means of this transition Pindar is carried on to tell the story of Perseus, who penetrated to tho dim mysterious country of the three Grey Sisters, robbed them of the one eye which they possessed in common, and slew the Gorgon Medusa, whose head even in death possessed the power of changing to stone whatever it was turned on. Armed with the Medusa's head, Perseus took vengeance on Polydectes, his mother's oppressor. Tims Perseus, like Midas, achieved a victory ; but (and, with this implied warning to Midas not to exult overmuch in the moment of triumph, the ode closes) there, shall be a time that shall lay hold on a man unaware, and shall give him one thing beyond his hope, but- another it shall bestow not yet. In B.C. 490 Pindar wrote the seventh Pythian Ode to com- memorate th<- victory of Megacles, the Athenian, in the chariot- race. The ode is short, which is not strange, as it was sung at Delphi on the evening of the victory ; and it is perfunctory. Megacles belonged to the distinguished family of the Alcmaeo- nidif, who had contributed large sums to the rebuilding of the. temple of .Delphi. He had himself won many victories in tin: various national games, and had been banished from Athens twice. Pindar touches very briefly on these topics, and dis- misses the whole matter in a score of lines. The year B.C. 490, the thirty-second of Pindar's life, was the date of something more important even than victories in chariot-racing. It was the year in which the Athenians defeated the Pcr.-ian? at Mara- thon. On this great victory, however, Pindar at the time looked LYKIC POETRY : PINDAR. 1/5 with the same eyes as his fellow-Thebans. Liter, indeed, lie came to understand the value of the services which Athens at this time and in the second Persian \var rendered to all Hellas ; but at first he probably, like, his fellow-citizens, only saw in the battle of Marathon a victory for the .-tate with which Thebes was frequently at war, and for which she always entertained feelings of hostility. AVith any victory won by the democracy of Athens the aristocrats of Thebes could have but little sym- pathy. Between the battle of Marathon, B.C. 490, and the battle of Salamis, B.C. 480, there are only three odes written by Pindar that are preserved. The tenth Olympian Ode was written in honour of the victory of Agesidamus, an Epizephy- rian Locrian in the boys' boxing-match, B.C. 484. The ode is one of those which were composed and sung on the spot. It is brief, and consists mainly of a promise to compose a more elaborate work in the future. The promise was, after an un- certain interval, and probably not before B.C. 476, redeemed in the eleventh Olympian Odo. In the latter ode Pindar acknow- ledges his debt, praises Agesidamus and his trainer, and says (86-90), " Even as a son by his lawful wife is welcome to a father, who hath now travelled to the other side of youth, and maketh his soul warm with love for wealth that must fall to a strange owner from without is most hateful to a dying man - so also, Agesidamus, when a man who hath done honourable deeds goeth unsung to the house of Hades, this man hath spent vain breath and won but brief gladness for his toil.'' Hut Pindar's song is washed along as the rolling pebble is by the wave, as he himself says (10), and from the victor in the Olym- pian games tlie poet turns to the games thems- -Ives and tells the mythieal story of their institution. Accoiding to this account, Hi.-racles havim,' been cheated of the reward promised him by Au_ r eas for clean-in,;' his stables, proceeded to tike vengeance, and Augeas " saw his rich native land, his own city, beneath tierce lire and iron Mows .-ink down into the deep moat of calamity," Augeas liim.-elf was slain. "(if stnfe against. stronger powers." says Pindar in one of the gnomes that he is famous for, ' it is hard to be rid." After his victory, I ["melt s gathered together his host at Pisa, made ollerings fiom the spoil and h The third ode. \\]i;ch falls betw and Salamis, is the tiftli Neincan. of Pyth'-as of .Egina. winner in Neiu'-.-m games. Tne kernel of the gods showed to the -Eacuhe. the patron her 176 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. Having thus brought the victor into connection with the heroes who before him brought glory to JEgh\a, Pindar proceeds to select from the myths connected with the ^Eacidre one which was told of Peleus, the eldest of the sons of ^iacus, and which conveyed the moral lesson which is to be found in most of Pin- dar's odes. The moral value of athletic training is the self- control which it necessitates; and the story which Pindar relates of the continence of Peleus. and his reward in gaining Thetis for his wife, evidently means that the self-control which Pytheas had exercised as a boy, with the glorious reward of victory, was equally necessary throughout life,. and equally certain to meet with a fitting return. Apart, however, from the myth and the moral winch constitute the substance of the ode, the introduc- tion is interesting as showing the function of odes of victory in Greek life. A triumph in the national games not only brought honour and joy to the victor and to his city; it was also a mark of the favour of the gods, for it was by their goodwill alone so great a glory could be bestowed. The commemoration, there- fore, of this act of divine favour was a religious duty, and claimed the services of the arts. Sculpture and poetry vied in giving expression to this sentiment of obligation to the gods and of public rejoicing. But poetry, Pindar says in the introduction to this ode, has a wider range than sculpture, for poetry travels everywhere. "No statuary I, that I should fashion images to rest idly on their pedestals ; nay, but by every trading ship and plying boat forth from ./Egina fare, sweet song of mine, and bear abroad the news, how that Lainpon's son, the strong- limbed Pytheas, hath won at Xemea the pankratiast's crown, while on his cheeks he showeth not as yet the vine-bloom's mother, mellowing midsummer." In the odes composed between the battles of Marathon and Salamis no mention occurs of the services of Athens to Greece in the Persian wars ; and it is probable that Pindar's Theban feeling prevented him from recognising -what perhaps was not then generally recognised- how great these services were, lint pome time after the ]>ntt lc of Salamis how long after, it is dilli- cult to say he did realise the magnitude of the danger which had been averted from Greece, and the pity of it that Thebes had had no share in the glory of patriotic self-sacrifice. In the seventh Isthmian Ode he alludes to the grief thus caused to him: "I, albeit heavy at heart, am bidden to call upon the golden Muse. Yea, since we are come forth from our sore troubles, let us not fall into the desolation of crownlessness, neither nurse our griefs ; but having ease from our ills that are LYIilC rOKTRY: PINDAR. I 77 past mending, we will sot some pleasant thing before the people, though it follow hard on pain : inasmuch as some god hath put away from us the Tantalus-stone that hung above our heads, a curse intolerable to Hellas." At the time of the battle of Salamis, Pindar was about forty years of age. He was then entering on the second period of his literary career, and his reputation was spreading beyond the seas to the farthest colonies of ( 1 recce. Even before this he had received commissions from Sicily, and his name, and to a certain extent his works, must have been known there. But now we tind him writing odes for the king of Gyrene, and for other in- habitants of that distant colony. Indeed, it is inferred from these odes that Pindar himself travelled to Gyrene. However this may be, it seems beyond reasonable doubt that Pindar visited Sicily, and stayed for a long time in the island. Of the forty- four odes of victory which have come down to us, fourteen were composed for Sicilian victors. With Iliero, tyrant of Syracuse, Pindar seems to have been on terms of some intimacy. The odes in his honour (< >. i, P. i, 2, 3) reveal a close acquaintance with the private affairs as well as the public policy of the tyrant. But Pindar's acquaintance with Sicily was not confined to the court of Syracuse- ; beseems to have been known in Akragas (O. 2. 3, P. 6. 12, I. 2), Gamarina (0. 4. 5), and Himera(O. 12). Next to Sicily, ^-"Kgina tills the most important pla<-e in Pindar's epinikia or odes of victory. One fourth of the odes have to do with /Kginetan victors ; and Pindar seems to have had an especial atl'ection for the place. He calls it "the com- mon li.x'ht of all, which aideth the stranger with justice;" the place "where saviour Themis, who sitteth in judgment by Zeus, the >t ranger's Miccour, is honoured more than anywhere else ani'ing men." ''From the beginning is her fame perfect, for she is .-ung of as the nurse of heroes, foremost in many games and in violent tights : and in her mortal men also is >he pre-eminent." AVe tind Pindar's odes also in Ar-os, I.orris, Corinth, Orcho- nieiius, Athens, and Thessaly : and we may reasonably suppose that the poet himself visited these places. is that Grene \vas said to have been coio 178 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. clants of Euphemus, one of the Argonauts. The ode appears to have had another object than the ostensible one of celebrating the victory of Arkesilns : it seems to have been designed either to reconcile or to mark the reconciliation of Arkesilas with his kinsman Demophilus. who had taken part in an unsuccessful aristocratical rebellion, and had been exiled in consequence. The ode is on a larger scale than is usual with Pindar; the myth is much longer, and the introduction is proportionately increased. The work is consequently not so close ; and as the parts are exhibited in greater magnitude, their relation is more easily discerned than in odes of greater condensation. The narrative is exquisitely beautiful ; the scenes which succeed each other in the history of the expedition are painted with all the brilliancy of Pindar's opulent vocabulary, and with a dis- tinctness and reality not surpassed by any other poet. The simplicity of this ode is much assisted by the fact that Pindar devotes himself purely to the business of narrating the myth ; whereas in ether odes he seeks to cast light on some central idea from all points of view, and to do this he shifts his ground with a rapidity which is dazzling, and before one myth has had time to die away from the retina, as it w r ere, of the mind's eye, he throws on it another and yet another. The greater sim- plicity of the ode, it should be remarked, is not confined to the clearness of the narrative merely ; the metre is not of the highly elaborate character to be found elsewhere in Pindar. It approaches to the hexameter, as the tone of the narrative ap- proaches the style of epic: and we may conjecture with proba- bility that the greater clearness of the narrative and the greater simplicity of the metre point to a much less elaborate musical accompaniment than was designed for the other odes. The third period of Pindar's literary career extends from the time when he was sixty-live years of age to the date of his death. "When he died is uncertain. The tradition usually accepted makes him to be eighty years of age at his death. All that we know is that the fourth Olympian Ode was in all pro- bability composted in I! c. 452, and we cannot be certain that any of the odes we posse:-s belong to a later date, although the, eighth Olympian is sometimes considered as having been com- posed in Ji.c. 450. To the third period belong, in addition to the two odes ju.-t mentioned, the tifth and ninth Olympian Odes and the sixth Isthmian. A decline <>f power is traced in the odes of this period by some critics, but it is only to a slight extent that Pindar falls below himself. In addition to the collection of od>-s of victory that have sur LYRIC POETRY: PINDAR. 179 vived to our time, Pindar also wrote pseans, parthenia, prosodia or processional songs, hymns, hyporchemata, encomia, drinking- songs, dirges, and dithyrambs ; but although we possess frag- ments of some of these, the fragments are inconsiderable. It is, however, fortunate for the history of Greek literature that we should have specimens of choral lyric such as the odes of victory which have been preserved. They serve to show us the connection of choral lyric with previous genres of poetry, and its difference from the chorus of tragedy, and thus they ex- hibit a link in the development of Greek literature which other- wise would have been lost. As regards the connection with earlier kinds of poetry, we may notice that choral lyric shows that its roots are in epic poetry, not only by the epic words which we find in Pindar, and by the myths and legends which he borrows from the epic poets, but essentially by the fact that it possesses the element of narrative, which constitutes epic pot-try and is absent from personal lyrics. Put under the term "epic" poetry is included not only narratives such as those of Homer and the Cyclic poets, but also the didactic poetry of Hesiod and his school. With this class of epic also the choral lyric of Pindar has points in common. As a rule, Pindar has a moral lesson to teach even in his odes of victory, and thus he reproduces the spirit and the characteristic of Hesiodic poetry. The epic of Homer and of Hesiod was followed by the personal lyrics of the ^Kolian poets, Alcams and Sappho, and in the choral lyric of Pindar we iind comprised the leading qualities of personal lyrics as well as of epic and of didactic poetry. Choral docs indeed ditler from personal lyric in the occa.-ion of its composition and production. The lyric poets of Lesbos were not b.und down by times and seasons, hm gave expression to their emotions as their emotions prompted them, whereas the composer of ch"i';d lyiic had to \va;t t<>r a commis.-ii'ii. Put the two kinds of lyric poetry have this in common, that in both the poet appears in peison, whereas in the liiad or the Odyssey the i t never brings hini>df before the reader. In Pindar t'n is self consciousness is extreme. In virtue of his genius and hi- divine gift of >ong, lie feds him.-elf the and di the victor, ^reat as victory makes him, will can confer a boon second only to victory it.- til" ch"ial lyric of Pindar sums up in itsdf before in (I reek poetry. .Ve have now to sec and why, choral lyii'- chanyvd wh.-n it bci th" drama. In the lii>t plac", the. dement of narrative ;n this kind of Ivric was reuuced to a minimum in the drama. Mvths I 8O HISTORY OF GEEEK LITERATURE. are alluded to rather than narrated in the chorus of tragedy; and the reason is obvious. Narrative in the drama found its place in the speeches of the messengers or other subordinate characters, who in all, or nearly all Greek tragedies, relate the events which, for one reason or another, could not be performed upon the stage. In the next place, choral lyric in becoming the chorus of tragedy lost its personal character. We cannot look to the chorus for the personal views of a Greek tragedian on the moral or other problems raised in his play. The drama- tist holds up these problems for investigation in all kinds of lights, from the point of view first of one character, then of another. But his own personal view need never find direct expression ; and frequently the chorus simply sums up the action of the play, so far as it has proceeded, and does not express any opinion thereon, or at the most reflects the feel- ings which the audience may be expected to experience. In fine, the difference between choral lyric and the chorus of tragedy is partly of degree, partly of kind. In degree, because narrative is minimised; in kind, because the opinions expressed are not professedly the poet's. In one respect, however, choral lyric underwent no change when incorporated into the drama. It still remained highly musical. In the tragic chorus, as in choral lyric, the musical accompaniment was at least as impor- tant as the words. In both, the function of the words seems to have been, not so much to present a logical series of definite ideas, as to evoke a .series of emotions, and to pass before the mind's eye bright and beautiful or impressive images, which succeeded each other too rapidly for analysis, but not too rapidly to produce the feeling designed by the poet. If, now. in conclusion, we must say a word of Pindar's quality as a poet, it will be to point out that it is in the special func- tion, as just described, of choral lyric that his special excellence consists. Image after image is presented by him to our eyes : from this point and from that, and from yet another, light of the brightest is thrown on the point which lie wishes to illumine. To endeavour to discriminate between the effects which thus rapidly succeed each other is to lose, the total impression which the whole is intended to convey. Doubtless there always was a thread running through all the ideas contained in an ode; and in many cases the thread by diligent study can even now be distinguished ; but it seems improbable that the audience, whose attention was claimed by the music as well as the words, either were able or were expected by Pindar to analyse logically the ode as they heard it. The ideas and emotions aroused in LYRIC POETRY : PINDAR. I 8 I the audience were as satisfactory, but probably not more definite, than those aroused by music. The two chief qualities of Pin- dar's poetry art; rapidity and radiance. In his desire to illus- trate his thought from every point of view, he not only Hashes from one illustration to another before the mind of the hearer has wholly taken in the force of the first; but within a single sentence lie fuses two conceptions, whose joint eii'ect is more rapid and more dazzling than that which would be produced by their separate enunciation. As for the radiance of his poetry, it is seen not only in his fondness for epithets of brightness and effulgence, but in the vividness and persistency with which the images of the persons and things described by him remain on the mind's eye ; and we cannot conclude better than by quoting from the fourth Pythian as an illustration the description of Jason: ''So in the fulness of time he came, wielding two spears, a wondrous man ; and the vesture that was upon him was twofold, the garb of the Magnetos' country close fitting to his splendid limbs, but above he wore leopard->kin to turn the hissing showers ; nor were the bright locks of his hair shorn from him, but over all his back ran rippling down. Swiftly he went straight on, and took his stand, making trial of his daunt- less soul, in the market-place when the multitude was full." Connected with Pindar are the names of Myrtis and Corinna. The former is said to have been born at Anthedon in P>u?otia. We should not even know that she composed lyric poetry, were it not that Corinna has recorded the fact that she competed against Pindar. Corinna, born in Tanagra, is said, like Pindar, to have been taught by Myrtis. She too competed against Pindar, and is said to have live, times defeated him for the pri/c--a result which Pausanias conjectures to havi to the fact that she composed in the local dialect, whilt employed .1 >oric. Here we may mention the name other poetesses. Tele-ilia of Argos, who lived at the sixth century B.C., not only composed verses, but took up arms again-t the Spartans when they invaded Ar_ r ' is under Cleomenes. Pnixiila of Sicyon. who flourished about !',.<'. 4^0, composed dithyrambs, lyric poetry, a >mall epic, gave her name to two kinds of metre, and was especially dis'.ingui>iied for h r drink- ing-.-oiigs or >ko';ia. which we re extremely popular in Athens. Chtagora tluri-hed between i;.r. vo and H r. ;.:;, and wa- famous for a .-kolion she composed. ( Mla-r p >etes-cs, whose dates ai 1 ' 1 unknown, and who mav or mav not ln-loni: to the, classical period, are Charixena, Kriphanis, Saip", Mvia. Ciito, Leaivhis, Meiuiivhis, Teiaivlii.-, Mvst;.-. Praxigoris. and Ari_ r ii"te. I 82 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. "With Pindar choral lyric reached its highest development ; after him not only was there no poet, except Bacchylides, who cultivated all kinds of lyric poetry, but many kinds, e.g. par- thcnia, prosodia, hyporchemata, ceased to be cultivated at all, while others, such as paeans and hymns, were comparatively neglected. Dithyrambs alone continued to be cultivated, but in such a way as shows that the period of choral lyric is past. Pindar had allowed the musical accompaniment quite its full importance, but the dithyrambic poets of the next generation made the music of more importance than the words. The clearest sign of the decay of chcral lyric is the fact that the dithyramb was no longer true to its type, but sought to produce effects by means properly peculiar to a distinct branch of art, the drama ; just as the decay of the drama was indicated by the tendency to oratorical effects in the plays of Euripides. The symptoms of decay in the dithyramb were first noticeable in Melanippides of Melos, in Democritus of Chios and Crexus, contemporaries of Pindar. During the Peloponnesian war, the most celebrated composer of dithyrambs was the younger Mela- nippides, who bought Philoxenus of Cythera as a slave, taught him lyric, and saw him achieve success in dithyrambs. Con- temporary with the younger Melanippides was Phrynis of Myti- lene in Lesbos, who gained victories in the dithyramb contests at the Panathensea. After Melanippides, Cinesias became the favourite dithyramb writer at Athens, and was much attacked by the comedians. Cinesias was succeeded by Timotheus of Miletus, who visited the court of Archelaus in Macedonia, but spent most of his time in Athens. He seems to have possessed greater talent than any of these later dithyrambic poets. To Athens also were attracted Polyeidus, Kekeides, Licymnius of Chios, Telestes of Sclinus, Ariphron of Sicyon, Anaxandridea of Kaneiros, Theodoridas of Syracuse and Argas, who all com- peted at various times for the dithyramb prize. BOOK III. THE DRAMA. CHATTER I. EARLY TRAGEDY. " "Bom tragedy and comedy wore originally improvisations. The former had its origin with the choir-masters of the dithy- ramb, the latter with those of the phallic hymns, which even now in many cities remain in use. Tragedy gradually advanced by such successive improvements as were most obvious, and, after many changes, reposed at length when it had acquired its pmpor form. The number of actors /Kschylus first advanced from one to two ; lie abridged the chorus, and gave the dialogue the principal role. Sophocles introduced three actors and stage decorations. Further, the originally short fables acquired a proper magnitude, and the number of episodes was increase. 1. As tragedy developed from the safyric drama, it was late before it threw oil' comic lang'ia _e and assumed its proper dignity. Iambics displa>vd trochaic tetrameters; for originally live ha ic.s Avere u>ed because tra.edy, like tin,- .sityric drama, was com- posed for dancing. Hut when dialogue was introduced, natur" pointed out th' 1 appropriate metre; for ol all metres the iambic is tip- most coll' '(filial. " This is what Ari.-l"tl" says 1 of the origin and earlv h:-t'>rv of tiie drama, and it is almost all W" know on the subject. From this it would seem that in tin. 1 earlie.-t stage of tia^edy, the a'lthor of th" dhnyramb, who was ai.-o th" c'n ir-ma.-t'T, duriu,' a pans be i ween one part of th" dithyramb and th" next, came forward and improvise, i a sin>:1 story, relating probably to s .me adventure "f th" ir"d I >ioiiy-i; . in \vhos" honour the dithyramb \\ as beim: p..-rf, : ;:i".i. Tin- st> TV was t. 'Li in tio 'haie veise, contained much thai was comic, involved a good deal "f 184 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. danctng, and was accompanied by music. At first the choir- master appeared only once during the dithyramb in his charac- ter of improvisatore, but in course of time such " episodes " became more numerous. At first, too, the poet simply recited his story, probably to the accompaniment of sympathetic and explanatory gestures, and dancing ou the part of the satyr- chorus, which had come to be associated with the dithyramb. Even thus the actor might, by retiring during the dithyramb and changing his dress, appear at several times in various cha- racters, e.f). as a hero reciting what he had done, or as a mes- senger reciting what had been done, and thus produce an effect not unlike that of a Avhole play. Jkit it could not have been long before the poet conceived the idea of addressing himself to and provoking replies from the chorus ; thus dialogue naturally arose, and when it did, the metre naturally changed from tro- chaics to iambics. It will be noticed thnt Aristotle in his account of the origin of tragedy does not mention Thespis, to whom the introduction of an actor, and consequently the "invention" of tragedy, is usually ascribed. 1 Whether Aristotle was acquainted with this view and (as in that case his silence would show) tacitly rejected it, or whether the view only originated after Aristotle's time, is hard to say. The earliest reference to it that we have is in the pseudo-Platonic JUinot*, which was not composed until after the death of Aristotle. There 2 we have the statement that " tra- gedy did not, as people think, originate with Thespis or Phry- nichus," Avhieh implies that some people at the time of the writing of the Minus ascribed the invention of tragedy to Thespis. But if the evidence in the possession of Aristotle did not lead him to ascribe the introduction of an actor, and subsequently of dialogue, to Thespis, we may infer that the claims made for Thespis had no strong basis; in which inference we are confirmed by a passage in the grammarian Pollux, 3 which expres.-ly mentions the existence of dialogue before Thespis. The ascription of the "invention"' of tragedy to Thespis was 1 Horace, A. P. 285 : 4i lu'iK'tuin ti'airicje jrcims invenisse Canine-rue JHdtur, ft ]>!;iustris vexisse poeniata Thespis, Qua; ciiiierent agtriMitqun peruncti f.'ecilms era." The '' wascons " ticlong to the early history <>f comedy, which Horace mixei up with that, of tragedy. - 52 i. \, 77 ot rpayifloia iffri Tra\at(jv ivOadf, oi : x us oiovrai dwo QiffiriOos cl/>- ^aufi'ij, ovS O.TTO <&pvvixov. '' iv. 123, f'Xfos 5' ^v rpdtrefa dpxo-ia tip' ty ir[>a Ge'crTriOi.s eis TIS dramas rols ^opfiTaTs air tKpiva.ro. THE DRAMA : EARLY TRAGEDY. I 8 5 probably due to the difficulty which the Greeks had in under- standing the action of a process, and their consequent tendency to ascribe all things to the intentional action of persons. All good laws were at Athens ascribed to Solon ; the constitution of Sparta, the result of a process of external pressure operating during many generations, was ascribed to Lycurgus ; and so the invention of tragedy was ascribed to Thespis. Thespis must have rendered considerable services to tragedy to have been credited with its invention, but what these services were we do not know. The orator Themistius 1 (who lived at Constan- tinople and flourished about A.D. 360) refers to Aristotle as say- ing that Thespis invented prologue ami rhesis; but no such passage occurs in the I'oefuv, and although possibly Themistius may be referring to some now lost work of Aristotle. 1), Oil IT pOCTt \OU(V ' \/>LffTOTt\ti UTl . leal pf;cr' i^fC'fifv. - Tin- f:n t, imurv.-v, that 1'ratinas is said tn ha il ran ia may iiu]ily tli.it Tin 'sj'is -avu U[> tin 1 chorus of ivuitloi'uicrcl t In !ii. :i I'.iMir'i y ( iif.iiti-ii/.t, 2-0 t'.nUL'l:' otherwise. I'.ut tin- vi.-vv i;iveti in the S'!. . Jao.'h \Qi.-ted of Phenician 1 Inasmuch, Imw.'ver ,is oi r^ d ; )\v;! Ta/)'.'"f.!U ]iro'>aMy iipi c:inM in this play, it has 1). 'I'll inf.-nvil ti:;.t I'iiiymchus su'miivid, .1 tin' i-iiiirii-i, :ii:ni>'ii, t iir other nf IVr>:an rhirm. Tint t'hc ciiorus I'onsisli'ii. in 1'iiry niclm^ tiiiif. nf tiny rlnn'i-init 1 nhr i.nin- brr i 'f Arimi'.s cyciiiin ciit n \ i :infi>ic ciim n> i is inf'-rr. .1 fivtn ti.f f.,rt rtut m u of iiis i i;iys \viii uititlrii ti.i' Ji.unt't '.-, \vhd-f 1 1 ;! i i t i<>t,;i 1 i IIIU'KI r \v;i< !if-y. I'l'Dlll tilfSe t\V(> illfi'l'l'lH-CS Wi' lli:iV fll!'! luT L;itl;(!' lllMt It U,> til tills >.UIl- division that tln> ri'ihh-tiiin of tin' num!T ,,f tiif cl;tiri'iit;i' t" twdvi- it'ne jnnnher in ^F.M'liyhis) w;:s iiuo. It im^ ;ilso in m c- ( i] ; j,-c: u i nl tinit tin 1 riYmo- tion is coMii-i-tfil with tiic inrrnnic: ion nf the tft i u.t'jy . the ciiorus of tifiy bt-ii::.' ilivi.icii I'l.'twuen tiiu four {'lay.-. I 88 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. had probably been present, while he invested those events with the poetry and interest attaching to a representation conceived from a new and impressive point of vie\v. By introducing the news of the Persian defeat at an early period in the play, he lost the interest of expectation which might have pervaded the tragedy ; but this was due rather to the undeveloped state of the drama in his time than to any fault of the author. Removed as he was so little from the dithyrambic origin of tragedy, it was natural that Phrynichus should display more command of the lyric element than of the economy of the drama. Accordingly the Plienician Jl'omen consisted mainly of lamentations over the Persian defeat, uttered probably by Atossa and Xerxes. The audience were agreeably and delicately nat- tered, and the poet gained an opportunity of displaying his pecu- liar powers. It is a tribute to the genius of Phrynichus that ^Eschylus, when he subsequently took up the same subject in his Persians, adhered in several important points to the treatment of his predecessor. It is also interesting to notice that in the Phe- nidnn Women we observe the counter-influence of /Eschylus on Phrynichus. The elder poet in this play avails himself of his junior's innovation by introducing a second actor. This must have conduced to freedom in the action of the play, though precisely to what extent it did so we are not in a position to infer. But Phrynichus not only availed himself of the innovations of others, he was himself an innovator. He not only developed the music and the dances 1 of the drama, but also introduced for the iirst time female characters on the stage. He did this not only in the Pl-nician Women, but also (as is indicated by the titles of the plays) in the Women of I'leuron, the Daughters of Dani'uii*, and the Alccstis. After B. c. 476 \ve hear no more of Phrynichus, and the earli- est date at which he is mentioned as winning the tragic prize is r,.c. 511. His contemporary, Chcerilus, is suid to have appeared before the public as early as u.c. 524, and to have lived to a great age. AVe are not able, however, to assign to him any share in the development of tragedy (though he is suid to have done something for the costumes of the actors),- or to form any opinion of his merits as a dramatist. 3 1 Thus in the Ih'/j/j/xcu the chorus jirobably danced an intricate sort of sword-dance, - Kara rims TO?S Trpoffwirtiois Kal rrj aKcvri ril'V &TO\WV t'7rex e '/ )7 ?< re ' Suidus .t. r. X. ' J I'hotius (Patriarch of Constantinople about A.O. 850) quotes a verso THE DRAMA : EARLY TRAGEDY. APPENDIX TO CHAPTER I. METRE, DIALECT, AND DIVISIONS OF TRAGEDY. ni the dra^ia had its origin in tin' choral songs in honour of Dionysus, the essence of drama is the dialogue. In that early stage of the drama, when tragedy and the satyric drama were not yet diffe- rentiated, and when consequently tragedy proper was not yet marked by the statelincss which after- wards characterised it, the metre of the dialogue was the trochaic tetra- meter. With the separation, how- ever, of the satyric element from tragedy there came a change in the metre of the dialogue. Troehaics were probably still the form into which the lively dialogue of the satyrs was thrown ; but for the dialogue of tragedy the iambic tri- meter was perceived to be the ap- propriate expression. Iambics are the verses into which the conver- sation of real life most frequently unintentionally fall, and iambics were the versus into which the con- versation of tragedy was instinc- tively thrown. The tendency to model the dialogue of tragedy on that of life, which displayed itself thus early, continued to develop steadily throughout the hi>t<>ry of tragt-dy. It shows itself partly in the metrical constitution of the verse, and partly in the disposition of tiie verses. Of ail the tragedians, J-'.schylus observed the strictest rules of versification, and his suc- cessors worked with irreuter free- dom, udmittinir, ' .'/., with increas- ing livquency divisions wldeh lie avoided. The iambic verse thus, although it grew laxer. came to pos- sess more variety and more move- ment, and to reflect more diivctlv the emotions of the speakers. The disposition of the verses shows the same growing tendency to lightness and rapidity ol action. Set speeches of any considerable length must re- tard the movement of a play ; but the conflict of wills, which is the basis of all tragedy, demands for its adequate representation a duel of words, in which the thrust and parry of argument follow on each other with the rapidity of foils in a fencing-match. Hence the prac- tice, common to all the tragedians but less frequent in .Kschylus than in his predecessors, of stichomuthia, or dialogues in which each speech consists of one line only. Hence, too, the further process (of which only two instances are to be found in -Kschylus, Sept. 217 and /'. T. 980) of dividing a single line be- tween two or even three characters (the portions of a line thus divided received, by a metaphor from wrest- ling, the name dvTtXa/ioi). Finally may be here mentioned the recur- rence of interjections outside the verse altogether, a device adapted for the expression of outbursts of feeling, which is more frequent in Kuripides than in Sophocles, and ill Sophocles than in .Kschylus. \ ivaeity and rapidity were not all that was aimed at in the dispo- sition of the iambics of tragedy. Symmetry also was sought after; and as the antistrophe of a chorus corresponds to the strophe, so the iambics which stand connected wi: h the chorus not unfrequently corre- spond in number. 1 Icii.v t h, prac- tice of symmetrical iii~!" >-!!i"ll eX- t^nded to speeches which stand in t, /,'rivn u.(f .iarnXfes 'i>' XoiniXo! e 'jarivois ii:i. 3"), s taken to mean tiiat Chii-rilus excelled in satyric .iraina. ibscure. ami, if it were intelligible, not kliuwing wlio was the author, we should Uot know what value to put on the verse as evidence. HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. r-o connection with the chorus ; and, especially in Euripides, we find that in the set speeches of two contend- ing persons, the number of lines in the reply corresponds exactly to that of the speech to which it is an answer. The dialect of the chorus is not real but conventional Doric, because the choral odes were originally Doric dithyrambs, and the various kinds of literary composition tended in Greece to adhere to the dialect in which they were first composed. It is in the history of the chorus that we find the explanation of its dialect ; and there, too, we find the explanation of its metres. The chorus originated in the worship of Dionysus, and thus it inherited and transmitted to tragedy the nume- rous kinds of metre which the in- genuity of poets and the approval of the people had stamped as pecu- liarly adapted for expressing the various emotions roused by the worship of the wine-god. Hymns of praise, processional songs, strains of exaltation or lamentation, had provided for tragedy various metri- cal systems, the dactylic, anapfes- tic, trochaic, iambic, iambo-troehaie, choriambic, logacedic, and cretic. These metres tragedy worked out in its own way, developing some and neglecting others. Trochaic strophes, simple in structure and profound in their ell'ect upon the feelings, gave way, as tragedy de- velops! its own style, before iambic strophes, which adapt themselves more speedilv to sudden changes of feeling. A still further result of the tendency thus shown was the in- troductionprobably by Euripides of iambo-trochaics, and the culti- vation of logatedie versos larjvly to the exeiusion of other metres. ]>ut although some metres were thus specially cultivated by the tragedians the chorus was all the time declining in importance- and giving way before the development of the ess'-ntially dramatic elements of the drama. Thus the lyrics of the chorus became not only re- duced in length, but less carefully composed and less wealthy in variety of metres. The ode which the chorus sang when it first entered was called the Parodos ( Pollux, iv. 108, ij ntv efoodot TOV %opou Trctpooo? KciXf ITCH). Origi- nally it was prefaced by some ana- ptests delivered by the Coryphneus or leader of the chorus as it marched in. Then the melic part was sung by the whole chorus grouped round the altar or thymele in the middle of the orchestra. After that, the chorus took its proper place between the thymele and the stage. This dated from the time before tragedy, when the dithyramb was sung round the altar of Dionysus in honour of the god. lint in course of time the anapaests were dropped, and a piece of music substituted in their place. The chorus marched straight to its place in the orchestra, and there not round the altar sang the strophe and antistrophe of which the melic was composed. In the Persians, the Suppliants, and the Rlte^is. the play opens with the parodos ; but in all the other plays we possess, the parodos is preceded by a speech or speeches from one or more of the actors, which speech or speeches are called the Prologue.. The introduction of a prologue is ascribed to Thespis in a passage professing to be quoted from Aris- totle (Themistius. xxvi. p. 382. 17, oi> Trf>offi~oi.i.ev TUI 'ApiffTOTf\ei on r6 fj.iv TTpCiirov 6 xopos eidul'v ffOtv ei'r TOL>S 6(oi' i s, Qfiriris Of irp6\oyov re /ecu pTJa'tf fif i ,ofj / ). In the Ajar, the Alctftiy, and the lit Una, the chorus leaves the theatre in the middle of the play If.;/, in older that Ajax may kill himself) ; its re-entry was called Epiparo'ios (Pollux, iv. Iu,S, TI o( K r J.-a Xjitiu.v eo<3o? d'j wdXif iLGivVTw /.'.fTairra- <7iS, 7] 06 p-tTO. Tai'TIJV ffuOOOS tTTLTTa.- pooos i. The other songs of the chorus were called Sta.-rima, because they were sung Lv the, chorus, not THE DRAMA : EARLY TRAGEDY. whilst entering or at the altar, but when standing in its usual place in the orchestra. The number of stasima was usually four, thus dividing the play into five parts. Three of these parts were called Episodes, i.f. the three which were both preceded and followed by a stasimon, for the prologue and the exodos were not called episodes. The name "episode" goes bick to the time when an netor was intro- duced to give the chorus breathing- time. The chorus first made its entrance, efcroSoj, sang its dithy- ramb, ami then the actor made his appearance, (weiffoOLov. Thence the name episode was extended to all that occurred between two fetasima. Normally the stasim.on summarises and comments on that part of the action of the play which precedes it, but in Euripides it frequently bears no relation to it: the chorus has become as foreign to the drama as the actor originally was to the dithyramb. "We have considered those parts of a Oreek tragedy which are pecu- liar to the chorus, and those which are peculiar lo the actors : we now have to examine those which arise from communication between the chorus and the actors. With re- spect to ordinary dialogue between an actor and the l-ader of the chorus, there is nothing to add to what we have said as to dialogue between the actors: it is in iambics and in conventional oid. Attic. Hut wh< n the ac tors enter into the melic (i.f. the | art sun,') of the tragedy, there arise new divisions of the play, First we have the ('ommos : the commos is a Ivric of laineiitatinii. In metre and dialect U resembles tiie nilier lyrics of the chi'i us, but it iiiit'i-rs from thi-m in that, a.- the a 'tors take part in it, it is dr.iiintie. Tie- si.isima ac- company, the coiunii partake in the action of the play. Next we have the s >lii;s !rm the sta^eiro. tnrb TT)S ffKvi>is\. When once the dramatic element had been allowed in the coinmos to have a share in the lyrics, it was inevitable that it should encroach ; and the result was the songs from the stage, which were lyrics sung by the actors alone, either by several (TO d/j.o3ala) or by one, solo (fj.ov^Sia.). Eventu- ally the songs from the stage be- came, as lyrics, more important even than the chorus, and Euri- pides carried the composition of monodies to its greatest height. The musical instrument used in the theatre was the flute; not so much, as is sometimes said, because the penetrating notes oi this instru- ment were needed if the music was to be heard all over the theatre, but probably because of the tradi- tional connection of the flute with ecstatic worship, such. e.t stately o; trie/ dances in trugeuv, to the indecent HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. cordax of comedy. To associate by the movements and the grouping dancing with tragedy is hard for of the choreutae, would naturally us at the present time ; but we among the Greeks tend to take may understand it if we reflect that harmonious and recurring forms, the chorus during the action of the and thus be "dancing." In this play could not stand cold and im- respect, as in others, less and less passive, but must by some byplay attention was paid to the chorus as have expressed the feelings sup- the drama developed. Pratinasand posed to be aroused by the events Phrynichus made much more of of the drama ; and this expression the dances of the chorus than did, of feeling by gesture aud attitude, Sophocles and Euripides. CHAPTER II. AESCHYLUS. THE facts of .^Eschylus' life which are known to us are unfor- tunately insignificant, alike in number and in meaning. They tell us little of his mental growth or of his artistic development. He was born B.C. 525 and died B.C. 456. These dates imply that the whole of the mature life of ^Eschylus fell in the period of the Persian wars, and so came under the influence of all the feelings which the great events of that period caused or inten- sified among the Greeks. Before these wars the Greeks were conscious that they were one people. Their community of language, customs, and religion was an internal force and co- hesion which resulted in a Pan-Hellenic sentiment. But the consciousness of unity thus generated might have remained sterile had not hostile pressure by the Persian power brought it into operation, and converted the mere barren consciousness into a sentiment of Pan-Hellenism fruitful both in the world of action and the world of thought. In later times, as the fear of the Persian passed away, the feeling of Pan-Hellenism again ceased to be operative. But ^Esehylus was exposed to the full strength of the sentiment, and his view of tilings w r as much influenced by it. He was exposed to it not merely as a Greek, but as a citi/en of that state in which the feeling was deepest. Athens profited by the sentiment of nationality among the Greeks at this time, not because she was looked upon, as was Sparta, as the head of the Greeks, but in that she made sacrifices for the common interests and the liberty of Hellas unparalleled in (5 reek history. Also /Kschylus' interest in the public events of his lime was not merely that of a spectator philosophical or political or that of a historian, but that of an actor. He fought THE DRAMA : ^SCIIYLUS. 193 with conspicuous courage at Marathon, at Platsea, and at Salaniis. As one of those Athenians who were said (inaccurately) to be the first Greeks that dared to even look upon the Persians, he had risked his life at Marathon and had sacrificed his home before Salamis, and had thereby shown that he, like his fellow-citizens, felt and was proud of his nationality as a Hellene. And he shows in his poetry the effect which the overthrow of the Persian had upon his religious views. To all Greeks the hand of the gods was clearly visible in the Persian defeat. To Herodotus it was only the greatest of many instances of the Xemesis which visited the too-powerful. To ./Kschylus it was a confirmation of the awful might of the gods and the nothingness of the mightiest of men. That the gods showed their strength at Marathon and at Salamis was a national conviction, of which ./Kschylus, least of all men, could escape the effects. Horn at Kleusis, he must from his earliest years have been moved by the mysterious processions he beheld there, and still more by the mystery of the rites which he was not yet permitted to see. Sprung, too, of a noble family which was connected with the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries, he must have felt the effect of family traditions fitted to develop his speculations on the might and majesty of the gods. That his family was noble and had taken an energetic part in politics, and that his brother met a glorious death at Marathon, are facts which go to account for the bold and powerful character of the poet, but otherwise throw no light on his life or work. /Eschylus died in Sicily, hut whether he paid only one visit or more to that island, there is no evidence to show. If, as is assumed with some probability, he went there at the invitation of Iliero, this must have happened before Iliero's death in n.o. 467. J'.ut as he lived eleven years ionger, and during this period several of his plays were produced on the Athenian stage, it has been supposed that he made at least two, perhaps three, journeys to Sicily. We do not know, however, that it was at Iliero's invitation he went to Sicily; while, if Aristophanes could L r et his comedies produced by friends, perhaps the tra- gedies of .E.-chvlus rouid also be put on the Mage in the author's absence. That .Eschylus composed a play, the 1C A'llint, in celebration of. or su^Lf-Med by, the foundatii town .Etna in H c. 476, leave,- ii quite unsettled was in Sicily immediately after that, date; nor .nili<>r'i ,and the Eumeiiidi-8, requires three actors : and although the Prometheus H is the conflict of Xerxes with the Greeks ; hut no attempt is made to put this on the stage : it is brought In-fore the audience, not as a dramatist would now be expected to bring it, but as an epic poet would have done, i.i'. it is simply related by a Messenger. The third point in which the turity of the drama at this time second actor is put. What dia mainly carried on between tin- ( not between the two actors ; and although he uses two actors in hi.- them than could have been efl As to the date of the Su-jiji/itaifs, there is no external evidence, 198 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. and its composition and style do not enable us to settle its date relatively to the Persians and the Seven against Theses. The action of a story may be said to consist of the attempt of a central figure to do something, and of the opposition encoun- tered by, and the consequences following on, this effort. In an epic this action is related ; in the drama it should be acted before the audience. Now in this respect the Suppliants as a work of art is in advance of both the other plays. In the Persians the formal influence of the epic is still so strong, that the action of the play is related, not acted. In the Seven against Thebes the action of the play is partly carried on before the spectator, inasmuch as the central figure, Kteocles. appears on the stage, although the opposing figure, Polynices, does not appear, but is only heard of. In the Suppliants, both the central figures, the chorus and the herald, the representative of the sons of -^Egyptus, come upon the stage, and thus the attempt of the chorus to obtain protection in Argos is made, and opposed, and carried out before the eyes of the spectator. On the other hand, the Suppliants is in some respects less mature than the Seven. The latter play requires a supernumerary in addition to the two actor?, while the Suppliants contains only three char- acters and needs only two actors. More important is it that in the Suppliants the chorus, both in the number of lines assigned to it and in its importance for the plot, occupies the greater part of the play. On the ground, then, that the advance of the drama may in some degree be measured by the decline of the chorus, the Seven might be put later than the Suppliants. lint the Eumenide* may serve to show us that logical develop- ment and chronological succession are not always identical, for the chorus plays a more important part in the Eumenides than in the Seven, yet the Eum v\ e see the f.>ive of tradition. When only one actor appeared in a tragedy, he ap 2OO HISTORY OK GREEK LITERATURE. peared successively in different parts, changing his costume during a choral ode, and although, with the introduction of a second and a third actor, the necessity for this severe distribu- tion of the play ceased, the distribution was not at once cast aside. Even in the Agamemnon, the greatest of the works of vEschylus. this tripartite division of the play is observed. Yet not only is the Agamemnon the grandest of the plays of ^Eschy- lus, but the command which it shows of the advances then being made in the management of the drama by Sophocles indicates that it must be one of the latest. A third actor is required, and the chorus is increased to fifteen choreutre. The character of Clytemestra is drawn in such detail as shows the influence of Sophocles on his rival. Pathos appears, fur the first time, in the treatment of Cassandra, and the irony which is distinctive of Sophocles is clearly to be discovered in the Agamemnon. The Choepltori is but little connected with the Agamemnon. Each drama is independent of the other. The connection of the Choephori ; ^]i the EuYii<:nis is closer. The latter drama takes up the s*^ry of the former immediately, and the scene of the Eumenides (Delphi) is, as it were, formally announced at the end of the C/ioephori. The characters of yEschylus are not drawn with minute detail, but in majestic outline. There is little of the psychological analysis which is the result of a developed art. His figures are commanding or terrible, and their very silence is such as to inspire awe. 1 In the Persians, the queen-mother, Atossa, listens in long and painful silence to the news of the Persian disaster. 2 In the Prometheus JJound, Prometheus endures in impressive silence all the taunts of his mocking torturers. In the Af/a- memnon, Cassandra is present but speechless, whilst Clytemestra receives with over-acted affection the husband she is about to murder. ^Eschylus' employment of the eloquence of silence is interesting:, not merely because of its effect in his hands, but because it illustrates vividly the art with which he turns to advantage the very obstacles which the rudimentary state of the drama in his time threw in his way. AVhen the dramatist had only two actors to perform a play, he might, by means of supernumeraries, have on the stage m< re than two characters at once, as in the I'roiiT'tlums Bne is /Eschvlus pathetic. AVhenthe spirit of prophecy leaves her she becomes a thorough woman, and a woman whose mis- fortunes and impending death unite to touch us with a pity whieh /Eschvlus does not at other times appeal to. In the delineation of Clvtemestra we have detailed work such as is not to be found eL-ewhere in /Eschylus. In the quiet contempt with which, in almost her first words, she receives the chorus' suggestion that she has learnt the news of Troy's fall by means of a dream, she reveal- her impiety. Her unwomanly self- reliance is shown in tiie disdain with which throughout she ignores the Argive elders. To appreciate this, we should com- pare her with Atossa in the I'^r^iai'i^, /Eschylus' type of a womanly woman. Atossa, in the same situation as Clytemestra, puts a belief, fully justified by the event, in the dreams sent bv Heaven, consults the chorus of a-jed Persians, and follows their adviee \vitii the most implieit reliance. In the welcome with wiiieh ( '1 vtemeMra receives Agami-mnon, the unreality of IIT words i- d"l:eal<-'.v revealed by the rhetorie witn whieh sue s'.uhlly overacts h-r pait, and by the self-consciousness with which she ha-!''iis to assure Agamemnon tnat she i~ not deceiv- ing him. l";> t" tiiH point of the play, any indications of h"r r>-al fei'lin ;< which have escaped her have been invohintaiv. When, however, Agamemnon is safely in h^r toils an>i she is left alone with ( 'a-sandra, then Ciytemestra, parlly in ICT S'-cu- ^ . '--' o-,-s a little of h.-r a bad woman's -- with be:ng a slave. To all ClytiMiiestra's attempt < to extort a wont from her, ( 'a-sandi'a r''pli'-s with a silence more powerful :n a wo:nan above ail than words. ( ';ytem"-tra then enters the pua< p eto comnrit lier crime, and when afterwards she i.- r'Ve.dod in th>) 2O2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. triumph of her deed, she glories in what she has done with an intensity of passion terrible even for /Eschylus. This speech, which is soaked with blood, is the culmination of the violence of Clytemestra's character. The reaction now slowly begins. Hitherto, absorbed in the excitement of entrapping her prey, she has had no thought for aught else. Xow she begins to justify her work, and her self-justification and her self-reliance are of so little avail that she must openly declare that she looks for her "great shield of courage" to /Egisthus, who even yet has not mustered spirit enough to crawl from his hiding-place. The chorus in the /Eschylean drama has a double function. As the representative of the lyrical element of the drama, it is the means by which ^schylus conveys speculations on moral and religious problems, a belief in the justice of the gods, and above all in the righteousness of Zeus. 1 On the other hand, the chorus takes a part in the action of the play. The actors represent gods or heroes ; the chorus represents averngo humanity. 2 Accordingly we find in ^Eschylus the character of the chorus drawn in firm outlines. In the Aga?nemno?i, the chorus is composed of old men, and, as is natural in old men, they like to dwell on old memories, 3 they prefer the gloomy view of things, 4 are doubtful and cautions, 5 and are* reliant on oracles and dark sayings. 6 At the same time, old and weak as they are, under the spur of a crime so revolting to humanity as that of Clytemestra, they speak out in open condemnation " and brave vEgistluis' threats. 8 In the Prometheus, as in the Eumt>nim the time of Aristophanes' at least, the choric odes of ^-lv-chylus have been accused of excessive length, and their length is one of the conseijiiences of the original predominance of the chorus and the rudimentary state of the drama in his time. Although by the introduction of a second actor he made the dialogue the most important part of the drama, 10 Mi 11. like the spee-ches of the actors, the odes of the chorus for some time retained an inordinate length. Those long speeches and odes are, from a modern point of view, a drag upon the action of the THE DRAMA: AESCHYLUS. 203 play, and contribute largely to the immobility of the vE-chylean drama. On the, other hand, the variety of emotions depicted in an ode gave an amount of light and shade which, to a people accustomed to recitations and new to the drama, doubtless, compensated greatly for the absence of dramatic action. In the style of /Eschylus we see the man. His indepen- dence and force of character are shown in the words he coined, 1 in his martial expressions, 2 in his fondness for imagery drawn from the action of the more pugnacious or dangerous animals, 3 from the chase, 4 from Held or river sports, 5 and his naval metaphors. 1 ' His metaphors and similes are usually bold, and sometimes startling ; thus Iphiirenia is described as having, not a fair face, but a fair prow ; 7 the sea covered with floating corpses after a storm is likened to a Held spotted over with flowers ; and Clytemestra compares herself, drenched with the blood of her husband, to a field wet with rain from heaven. To claim simplicity for /Eschylus' style may sound para- doxical, but his type of sentence is simple. He prefers co- ordinate to subordinate sentences, ami asyndeton and anacolu- thon by their frequent occurrence mark an early simplicity of syntax. His obscurity is largely due to his abundant meta- phors ; these are based on close observation of nature, 8 but are too luxuriant. He suffers from a plethora of ideas and a pleo- nasm of imagery, and hence becomes obscure. 15ut this is throughout the spontaneous overflow of a poet's mind, and not the overcrowded decoration of artificial and laboured rhetoric. The seven plays by /K>chylus which we have were certainly far frrm being the only plays he wrote. The rest have, how- ever, perished, and all we know about them is what is to be in- ferred from the quotations made from them by various ancient writers. These ([notations, when gathered together and placed under the names of the plays from which they were quoted, are 1 /.'.'/. in tho Annm'-rmiiin : SffJ,yior^p7j^, yvio.SapTjs, \ayooalrri^, Kti>a.- l yri<;, 8?;uio7r\?if')js. 7ra\iu i UT/\'77S. aii'oXa.uTTTjs, /uf \ctu7ra-, 7)5. jT\r7ipfC"/s, oaoicfrpf TT/;?, iiH'oua.f.'!S, \u(u('j'7;s, iouTfH.-jijS, 5i]U.oppl(j)l]S, :md I()1 ' others ;;.*, 7>~'8. - A'.;/. xui'bs fK 5opiird\Tov, ''on the upear-throwini; h;uul," for the right hand, A;i. 115: or -, i rcu/roi cu'x'/j?} for "u \v<>ni:in's disposition." 3 /-.'..'/. Mitnnvs. A' 40; ,>. 239; lions, Ay. 696; Wolves, (.'if. 413; vij>. s, Clui. 240 ; slinks, J'crs. 8t. * /.'.;/. A'/. 12-. 840, n';2, ii v>, 1347 ; ('fin. 5^17; I'ITS. 97. 8 E.'i. Ail. 340, 67-. 0:5, 10^0, ic" i, IT;;. 134'"', itoor. 6 /.".'/. A i. 775. 97'! i .-<'./.. 1500 ; C/iii. ^i. ' crrouaroj Ka\\LTrpupov, Ay. 227. 8 For this cf. Aft. 548, ?65, 887. 2O4 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. called the " Fragments " of ^Eschylus. Tlie play from which more quotations happen to have been made by ancient writers than from any other is the Prometheus Unbound. The reason is that in the Prometheus Unbound ^Eschylus inserted some geographical descriptions dealing with remote nations, which proved to be useful to later writers on geography, such as Strabo (born B.C. 66, died A.D. 24) or Arrian (born about B c. 100), who quoted from them. Many of the citations from -^Eschylus occur in lexicographers, such as Hcsychius (who lived about A.D. 400), who inserted in their lexicons strange or remarkable words found in the tra- gedians, and explained them, appending the name of the play in which they occurred. Many quotations, also, consisting of single words, occur in the grammarians of various periods, who quote to prove the usage of Attic writers. From such quota- tations as these we can learn little more than the names of the lost plays, and we find the names of altogether eighty-two. Many of these plays were on the same subjects, and some have the same names, as those of later tragedians. Thus yEschylus as well as Euripides wrote an Iphigenia and a Ileracluhe. The Bastarides and Eni were on the same subject as the Bacchae of Euripide>. The Women of sEina was probably an outcome of the tragedian's visit to Sicily. The Psyrhostasia or Weighing of the Souls seems, according to the description of it given by Plutarch, to have been very characteristic of ^Eschylus. In the first place, the author had the daring to lay the scene in heaven (this we learn from Pollux, iv. 130, a grammarian who lived about A.D. i So). This was probably the only time in the Greek drama that Zeus was brought before the eyes of the spectators. Xext, he took the subject from Homer ; third, as in the Kume,- niifi is based to ridicule Homer. Both ,/E-chylus and thn Homfromastix sei-m to have been ignorant of the specific difference between dramatic and narrative poetry. THE DRAMA : AESCHYLUS. 2O5 stage, high in the air, on which lie made Zeus and the other gods appear. Finally, there are a number of quotations from the lost plays of /Kschylus in an anthology made by Stobosus (about A.D. 520), which .-hows that, even then, many plays survived which have since been lost. These quotations were apparently chosen by Stoba-us on account of their general applicability to life and human affairs, rather than because they surpassed in poetic merit the rest of the play from which they were taken, e.g. " useful, not extensive, knowledge makes the sage," or "bad men successful arc not to be borne." " I!rass is the mirror of the body, wine of the mind," may remind us that water and brass were what the (/.recks used as looking glasses. Late learning, which provoked the mirth of Plato and Theophrastus, is not always matter for raillery. '' To learn wisdom is an honour even to the aged." Until Christianity taught us otherwise, men la-Id that "death is preferable to a hard life, and to never be, better than to have been born to suffer." Again, /Kschylus said, "An oath is no pledge for a man ; the man is the pledge for the oath." If "a fool fortunate is a grievous burden,'' yet there is a word of hope for us in " Heaven helps the man who works." The si ins of /Esehylus, and his descendants for some genera- tions, appear to have followed the dramatic profession, as also did those of Sophocles and Euripides; and it is accordingly u>ual to speak of the family or school of .-"Kschylus, or Sophocles, or Kuripides. Then 1 is. however, no evidence to show that such a sell, i, 4 worked on a common arti.-tic method, whether inherited from their illuMrious ancestor or peculiar to tiiem- selves : nor is there evidence to show that they had any bond of community beyond that of th>-ir common a:ice.-try. The, ti.at they alone bad the right to produce tln'ir lays, 01 iin the case of the school of /K-chylus) that . irked by an adherem 1 - to the tril_ r y. arc di.-pi.ivrd. ons containing the < Hicial didascalia 1 . The-e in- how t'nat certainly in n.c. 340 three i lays were not igy of ^Kschylu. not by the sch prota-_ f oni; to us with Pericles in conducting the naval war n_ainst Sanios. His duties t",ik ly we hav wiio met him there tuohiijjs lie s.. excited ulioul an unknown cnini'iv titni ': i.;l 1 he Ar 'imn liuil i.o I..AVIT TO reject tin- lewdly appointed ju.i^-s. " lint it is uniy a (Inillitf ill c'onjert urefi niii I'hn. N. II. xvia ':'. (\ I. .\ i. 2,^7: ilo^MvXf/s Ko\wi'j'}^fv'K\.\7;i'0-auia? ? r .-. s Al'istojihulH'S nf l!y/:uitintii. wiin \vu!>! in 1 an aut horit v. i'..n-s Hot guarantee til" st at eiin^nt , in tin- \r_niiiri.t to tin' An'ii ;!. that Sonhoolrs eleiaidii wa-; due to tiie An*iiii'i/e, not u\v;il or military ciiiiiin.ui'l, \va.s awar.l.-a to ;i vi':torious jioL-t. 2O8 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. in his Epidemic l (a record, of the visits of celebrated men to Chios) says : " I met the poet Sophocles in Chios at the time when he came as strategus to Lesbos. He is a playful man over his wine and witty. He was entertained by the Athenian consul, Hermesilaus. a friend of his. In the course of conver- sation, Sophocles happened to quote the line of Phrynichus, ' In purple cheeks there shines the light of love.' Whereupon a schoolmaster from Eretria or Erythrae remarked, ' You are a great poet, Sophocles, but, for all that, it was inaccurate of Phrynichus to speak of purple cheek?. If an artist were to put purple cheeks in a picture, they would not look beautiful. It is utterly wrong to compare what is beautiful to something which is not.' Sophocles replied with a laugh, ' Then, sir. in opposition to universal opinion, you do not approve of Simonides' line, " A maid who speaks with purple lips," nor of the poet who speaks of golden-haired Apollo 1 ? for if a painter made the god's hair gold and not black, the painting would be a bad one. is or of the poet who talks of rosy-fingered Dawn 1 for an artist who used paint of a rose-colour would give her the hands of a dyer, not of a pretty woman 1 ' " A roar of laughter extinguished the schoolmaster, ami Ion goes on to say that Sophocles, having cheated a pretty child into giving him a kiss, explained to the company, ' Pericles says I am a poet, not a general ; so I am practising generalship. Do not you think my stratagem suc- ceeded very well?" Ion adds, ''Public business he did not know or care much about, except as belitted a decent Athenian." The story is equally creditable to the discernment of Pericles and the good temper of Sophocles. Pericles, moreover, seems to have acted on his opinion. Ucing the chief stratogus, Peri- cles directed the movements of the other generals, ami accord- ingly, so far as possible, engaged Sophocles with fetching up reinforcements and such work. In fact, it \vas because he was sent to Lesbos for reinforcements and supplies that Sophocles got an opportunity for the stiatagem which Ion describes. It was the most succc-.-sful stratagem of the war, so far as Sopho- cles was concerned, for when Pericles had to leave him to con- duct the siege of Sainos, he at dice contrived to get defeated. Few other facts are known with regard to his life. Whether the Sophocles whom Aristotle mentions- as having been one of the ten Probuli who consented to establish the tyranny of the Four Hundred in I! c. 4 13 is the poet is uncertain. The story of bis being accused by his son loplion of madness, and of his vindicating his sanity by reading the CZ',V//<,s, is full of dilli- 1 Aiiii-n;i.-us, xiii. 6o4E. - Hint. iii. 18. 6. THE DRAMA: SOPHOCLES. 2O9 culties. 1 Sophocles died about B.C. 405, and there are various supernatural stories as to the manner of his death. 2 Before proceeding to consider the tragedies of Sophocles, we may say that the -supposition as to Herodotus and Sophocles having been acquainted is extremely probable. There are simi- larities in certain passages of the two authors, 3 though too much weight must not be as-igned to these similarities. We have the beginning of an elegy by Sophocles dedicated to Hero- dotus, 4 and Herodotus spent so much time in Athens that it is almost impossible that he should not have met Sophocles. It has been imagined that there are in Herodotus' history traces of views and information which would naturally come only from Pericles ; but at any rate, it is not unreasonable to imagine that Herodotus may have met Sophocles at the house of Peri- cles. Wherever they met, they would sympathise. Their way of looking at the world, their views of Fate and Xemesis, were the same. P>y bringing down philosophy from the skies to the earth, Socrates gave a ne\v directii.m to philosophy, which philosophy 1 It is not impossible that the story is bnsed on a misunderstanding of a scene in some comedy in which Sophocles and lophon m;iy have, been made fun of. At any rate, a charge of madness could not have been brought before the Phratores, as the story lias it, for such cases were brought before the Archon only. Lex. Se>/. 199. 10, and Poll. viii. 89. The story that he was choked by a grape originates in a stupid misun- derstanding of the younger Simonides' epigram (Anth. Pal. vii. 20) 'E e'peTrro/xero?. These linos, which mean that Sophocles died whilst engaired on a tragedy, which, being a tragedy, was dedicated to Uacehus, were taken lift/rail v. 3 A'.'/, the dream of ( 'ly temest ra. El. 417, and of Astyages. Ildt. i. i )8, the reference in Tr}. the description of the Egyptians in <>. ('. 5157. Tno passage in Antii. 905 (,15 is almost identical with Hilt. 3. 1 1 j. In both cases tiie argument is that a sister, when her parents are dead, is bound to sacrifice everything to her brother, because lie cannot i.e replaced. As to the Anti /in', hou.-ver. it has I.eeii sai.l that this ar^uim-nt is inconsistent, sophistic il. i.-nohic. and mist. laced. Fiotn this s.-:iie liave i'lfi-rred that Sophocles has iiorrowed from Herodotus, or that the passage in the Antii>nii the other hand, it is >aid tiiat Sophocleti >iio\vs his truth to nature in making Aiitigone'.-, fi-.'lini;-. befm e ami at" NT 'her de.-d liili'erei.t . an 1 that tii" ar^'.im-'iit is not sophistical or misplaced, but primitive, and appro- priate in drt'ek. tii"U_;ii not :n modem times. 1'lut. .l/'.r. 70515; - 2IO HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. has retained to this day. In a different sense, Sophocles brought down the drama from the skies to the earth, and the drama still follows the course which Sophocles first marked out for it. It was on the gods, the struggles of the gods, and on destiny that zEschylus dwelt ; it is with man that Sophocles is con- cerned. From this difference flow all the differences between the two poets, and herein consists the advance which Sophocles made in the development of the drama. Such action as the plays of ^Eschylus possess they derive from the force of destiny. "What is done by a character in the /Eschylean drama is, it is true, consistent with that character. The murder of Agamem- non could be expected from Clytemcstra alone. But although she is suited to the deed and the deed to her, if we ask icliy she murdered Agamemnon, we shall find that the reason lies, not in her character nor in her circumstances but, in her destiny. This conclusion is confirmed by the fact that one critic attributes her act to wounded maternal feelings, another to her adultery, and each critic rejects the reason alleged by the other; whereas Clytemestra herself says it was not she who killed Agamemnon, but the evil " destiny of the Atridae" taking her form. In Sophocles, on the other hand, the motive force of the drama is always to be found in the passions of men, and not in the external action of destiny. The Ajax of Sophocles commits suicide, not because he is fated to do so, but because to him, after his disgrace, life is not merely distasteful, but impossible. The force at work here is internal, and consists in the feelings of Ajax. On the contrary, the Orestes of /Eschylus has no proper motion of his own. He is simply the channel through which the action of the gods flows. "What he does is not his own doing, but what Apollo bids. The force is from without, not from within. Contrast this with Sophocles. Every action of (Edipus is the natural necessary outcome of his character and his circumstances, and vh'-n peace does come to him. it is from within ; whereas, in the case of Ore.-tes, there is a purely external conflict between Apollo and the Erinyes, and Orestes' absolution comes not from within, but from without. In /Eschylus we have symbolism, in Sophocles poetic truth. Although, in Sophocles, the mainspring of man's actions is men's passions, we ^till find fatalism in Sophocles, but not the fatalism of /Eschyius. "With /Esclnlus, Atreus commits a crime, and the punishment falls upon his children for genera- tions in the shape of a destiny compelling them to crimes. With Sophocles, the house of the Labdacidse is indeed under a THE DRAMA : SOPHOCLES. 2 I I similar curse, but the cause of CEdipus' deeds is not destiny, but circumstances and himself. The fatalism of Sophocles is that of Hero lotus, and probably of the ordinary Greek of the time. It may be, illustrated from Herodotus. According to the his- torian, (Jra-sus. the father of Atys, learning from an oracle that his son was destined to perish by an iron weapon, confined him to the house with the purpose of evading the doom foretold by the oracle. The son, however, persuaded Croesus to allow him to go to the chase, and then was accidentally killed by the very person to whose care Croasus, in his dread of the oracle, had intru.-ted him. This is the worst kind of fatalism, for it teaches that man cannot avoid his fate, whatever he may do, and thus encourages helpless and indolent resignation to an imaginary necessity. 1 This was the fatalism which Sophocles found and accepted. But if lie adopted this and other common beliefs, lie, as a poet, by adopting them elevated and refined them. It is probably impossible to discuss Sophocles' attitude to- wards fatalism without reading into him at least some ideas which could not be present to the mind of any Greek. It is difficult to always realise that Sophocles knew nothing of the free-will controversy, and consequently felt no alarm at fatalism. Remembering, however, this fact, we shall not consider it a paradox to say that Sophocles shows how men run on their fate of their own free-will. (Edipus is warned by Apollo of his doon:, and he fulfils his doom ; but all his acts are his own ; neither man nor God can be blamed. The lesson as well as the art of Sophocles is that man's fate, though determined by the gods, depends on his actions, and his actions on himself and his circumstances. The contradiction which to us is involvi d in this did not exist for Sophocles. If Sophocles did n-t find out any incompatibility between fiee \\i.l and fatalism, neither did he see in fatalism any imputation ou the justice of thesis. lnd"-d, the contrary is tin- case. Tin' action of the gods in foretelling to (Kdipus and to Atys their fate j s open t > a double con.-;ructi"ii. It is possible to regard it as mere cruel deception (for the parents of whom (Kdipus wa- told were not the parents that he supposed to be meant, nor w;is the weapon that actually proved fatal the weapon which Atys supposed). I'.nt if this vi"\v of the god-; was held by others, it wa< not the view of Sophoele-;. ]n him we find IM complaint of the inju.-tice of tin L.'"ds. On the coiitrarv, the gods warn man, a::d vet man doe.- what they have, tried to save him f:o:a. The heavens 1 Auti j.,<; 2j'3. Cf. Jiseh. S. C. Th. 203. Plat,) (G-jr<). SUE) calls il a 2 I 2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. speak to man, but he understands them not. If CEdipus is not to be blamed, neither certainly are the gods. For Sophocles, fatalism was consistent both with free-will and with the justice of the gods ; on neither subject had he any doubts to solve. Kor does his tragedy concern itself to give an answer to the question, why do the innocent suffer 1 ? The innocent do sufl'er, and that fact is the tragedy of life. His plays are not works of theology ; their object is not to solve problems. The sufferings of the innocent cause pity and fear, and thus serve in tragedy to redeem the crudity of fatalism. When Deianira in her love for her husband innocently causes his death, we feel the pity Avhich it is the part of tragedy to excite ; and when we read of CEdipus and his undeserved sufferings, we feel so much fear as is implied in obeying the utterance "Judge not." In this connection w r e may consider the ''irony of Sophocles." In argument irony has many forms. That which best illus- trates the irony of Sophocles is the method by which the ironical man. putting apparently innocent questions or sugges- tions, leads some person from one preposterous statement to another, until, perhaps, the subject of the irony realises his situation and discovers that when he thought he was most brilliant or impressive, then he was really most absurd. There are, or may be, three persons who assist at an ironical argu- ment the ironical man, the subject, and the spectator ; and they appreciate the irony at different times, the subject retro- spectively, the ironical man prospect ively, and the spectator contemporaneously. Their feelings will vary according to cir- cumstances. The spectator may sympathise with the ironical man or with the victim, and his feelings will be accordingly those of enjoyment or of compassion. What the ironical man feels will depend largely on his motive. He may feel amuse- ment simply or triumph, or his object may be that of Socrates, whose irony was intended to rouse men to a sense of their ignorance and to a real desire for knowledge. In the case of Socrah . successful irony must have been accompanied by the consciousness of having rendered a service to philosophy, to the person with whom he conversed, and to tho.-e who li.-iened. We are no\\- in a position to si e how the term irony mav be extended from its use as applied to argument, and be also applied to human action. When (Kdipu.swas told by Apollo that he would kill his father and commit incest with his im>ther. he at once fled from his home at Corinth, and found his way to Thebes. There he married the queen, became king, was bie=t with children and a <'Ioriuus reign. When the TIIK DRAMA : SOPHOCLES. 2 I 3 revelation comes, lie looks Lack upon his life only to see that the flight from Corinth, which \\as to take him far from his parents, led him to meet and kill his father and to wed his mother ; that the children in whom he thought himself blest are the fruit of incest, and that the glory of his reign was a revolting horror. I>ut if his glance was retrospective, that of the gods was prospective. Jlis feelings are such as no one can help him to Lour the burden of : ' what, are those of the gods'? That is a question to which Sophocles never gives an answer. Perhaps he thought it inscrutable. But as ihere is a third party to the irony of argument, so there is to the irony of life, that is, the spectator. His feelings are not inscrutable. Pity he will feel, and if the irony of Socrates could teach the bystander a lesson against intellectual pride, the irony of Sopho- cles may teach the spectator a lesson against moral pride. For the full appreciation of the irony of Sophocles, and of its artistic value in heightening the interest of the drama, it must be remembered that whereas the torturing contrast between the condition of (Kdipus. as he fancies it, and as it really is, is only discovered by (Kdipus at the last moment, this contrast is perpetually present from the beginning to the spectator. The artistic value of this is double. In the lirst place, the spectator having known the real state of things from, the first, has all along been in the state of mind in which CEdipus finds himself when the revelation has come ; and the consequence is that the spectator needs no explanation from CKdipus of his slate of mind, but comprehends and sympathises at once with (Kdipus when lie blinds himself. Thus the action of the drama is enabled to proceed with a directness and rap;di'y which would be impossible if (Kdipus had to explain the motive- of his self-niutiiation. In the second place, the jimtra.-t between (Kdipus' fancied height of glory and his really - position is piv-ent to the mind of the spectator through- Thus every word in the drama has a doubled effect upon lings. drama owes its origin to nTr_'i"ii and its development It is but another way of staling this fact to >ay that of t'ne growth of the (ireek diaina was the diminution religious significance. This is partly illustrated by the dimiiii-hing importance of the ehoru-. It is ;uso illu-ti.it -d in that di>plaeemen1 of de.-tinv by character as the motive force. The characters of Sophocles arc bound up with his plots in such an aiti-f.c and harmonious whole, ti.ut to attempt to cuu- 1 (.. T. 1414. 2 I 4 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. sider his characters apart is an unsatisfactory proceeding His plots depend upon his characters, for the plot of a play consists of the actions of the dramatis persona', and it is part of the excellence of Sophocles that the actions of his dramatis personal are motived, not by stage necessity or by an external destiny, but by the character ascribed to them. On the other hand, it is equally true that his characters depend upon his plots. The frequent revolutions and the catastrophes of the Sophoclean drama do not by themselves constitute the interest of the play, as neither does the painting of character constitute the whole or the most important part of his tragedies. The plot has its intrinsic interest, but it also develops the characters. For in- stance, unless Electra were deceived into believing that Orestes was dead, the spectator would witness neither her despair, nor the bold resolve which that despair serves only to create. If Philoctetes were not first exalted to hope and then reduced to helplessness, his pertinacity in abiding by his resolution would not be brought into relief. Sophocles shows us not oidy the action and outward bearing of a King (Edipus, but also the inner struggles of feeling which result in action and outward bearing. The spectator of the Agamemnon knows little more of Clytemestra's character than does the chorus, or perhaps it is that there is little more to know. The spectator of the Ajax, on the contrary, knows of Ajax' inward struggles what no other character but Ajax knows. The criticism 1 that Euripides drew men as they are, Sophocles as he ought, must not be understood to mean that Euripides drew them with greater truth. Euripides' characters have not unfrequently that worst of faults, faultlessness ; whereas Sophocles never makes that mistake. Oedipus is proud and hasty ; Kleetra is hard; Neoptolemus consents to practise a deception against which his better feelings protest ; Antigone, when the moment of action is over, becomes a thorough woman. Finally, the truth with which Sophocles makes Antigone and Ajax regret the life they are about to lose is apt to escape modern notice. Christianity has so familiarised us with man's immortality that we forget he is also mortal. But no (!reck writer forgot it, least of all did Sophocles, and to this unforget fulness we owe passages in Sonhocles of the grcatc-t beauty. If we now proceed to examine the position and functions of the chorus in the Soplioclean drama, we shall find its func- tions much the same as in ./Kschylus, but its position much less prominent. There are choral odes in Sophocles as in^'Eschylus, 1 Aristotle, Potties, 25, gives it as Sophocles' own criticism. THE DRAMA : SOPHOCLES. 2 I 5 but they are much shorter. The chorus takes a ]>nrt in the action of the play, but it is unimportant. In /Eschylus the chorus is sometimes, e.g. in the I'C/'MC or the Eumenides, the chief character of the play. In Sophocles the chorus is, as it were, enclitic ; it always depends on one of the principal characters, 1 in sympathy with whom it grieves 2 or rejoices 3 or prays t> the gods. 4 In harmony with these duties, the chorus always consi>ts of free people (not of slaves, as in the Choepliori of /Eschylus), cither in a humble position, as the sailors in the Pkilodetes ami the Ajax. or of an age or sex from which action would not be expected, e.ij. the old men of the Kinrj Qtdipux, the (Eut sometimes, ;i ; ; in the I'/iilnctclcs or in th" .1 nii : !, in,', on the cln.raeler opposed to the hero or heroine. - K.(i Aj. r^i i. (i. i'-^-i'7; El. 121-123. 130, 137 ti 1 ^'/., i^^etsuf., 173 tt fi'i/. ; Ti'itfii. ITS. 125 tt ni'i- , ij'-> it Sit/. 3 /.'..','. Ant. icx) 154. 4 I-'..'!. <>. T. 1^1, 187, 202, 2o.i, 2-/> ; Trnch. 04 ; FJ. 162. 17^. 5 Stv Aj. 165, 22 ,,'245. SOo, 925. 1185-1223; J'lti/vf 16.-)," 708-718, 721, 8v\ 85;. v'\;-^"5, n-'fi, i-K'v- <' <-' ^by--~o, 82^, ct ?t>j., 1054 cf .vi^., 1211 it .-',.' ' /.'.' -ilu:i- tioii. tii. i? is, tin- [liairue. At't.-r tlie .^oer.e with Teiroi.is. in hieii (lv i;inu is hiinself iicmiscii of hcinu' the i-iiusc of the phe^iie, ( 'reoii is excect'-i to foine :tinl ilefeiici iiiiiisi-lf f i "in ( EC 1 i j -U s" ch .1 1 u'e ''f eol'iiision witii '['ii\'>:;is. The interv.il ol w.iitii:^' is filled up by an ude, exi'ivs.Miig the lioiibt :c tu w;,,j is tiie L,'iii!ty in. in ; and so on. 7 As .E>cuylus einiiloys thret? actors in the Orcstcia, this innovation must Lave beirii n;:ide by Sophocles before B.C. 400. 2 I 6 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. The real change effected by Sophocles was not that he intro- duced a greater number of interlocutors, but that he transferred the burden of the piece almost entirely to the actors. At the same time that he practically excluded the chorus from the development of the action of the play, he developed the func- tions of the chorus in the sphere to which it was now confined. He raised the number of the choreutae from twelve to fifteen, and it is reasonable to suppose that, as a consequence of this change, he introduced the Tritostates by the side of the Para- o 7 v states and Coryplueus. So long as the chorus numbered only twelve, the movements of the Coryplueus were to a certain extent limited. For instance, when it was necessary for the chorus to divide into two Hemiehoria, the Coryphaeus was bound to range himself with one of the Hemiehoria, and so far for the time abdicate his position as leader of the whole chorus. When, however, the chorus numbered fifteen, it might divide into two Hemichoria of seven choreutae each. Then the two Hemiehoria would l)e under the command of the Parastates and the Tritos- tate?, while the Coryphaeus would be at liberty to attend wholly to those parts of the dialogue in which he had a share, and to leave the evolution of the chorus to the care of his two subordi- nate oflicers. the Parastates and the Tritostates. The style, like the character-drawing, of Sophocles bears a closer relation to life than does that of /Esehylus. The work of each poet has beauty and truth, but the means by which they obtain the same end are different. The structure of the /Esehylcan sentence resembles that of Cyclopean masonry. It consists of huge words roughly thrown together. The con- struction of Sophocles' sentences resembles that of his plays. Under an appearance of simplicity is concealed an amount of thought almost inexhaustible. In this respect, and in the ductility of his sentence, Sophocles may be compared with Thucydides. Though the words of Sophocles have become simpler, his syntax is more complex than that of yEschylus. The hearer may be set thinking by Sophocles' expression?, but he is not startled by them. The harmony with which Sophocles combines the most various elements of the drama is equally characteii.-tic of his style. He borrows wi nls fiom /Kschyhis ; IK; invents -words of his own : he naturally, from the study of tin; founders of iambic verse, brings away Ionic words ; and on him, as on ^Eschvlus, the study of Homer has its t-liect. Yet the whole is marked by a predominant Attic colouring, and by a sweetness which is distinctive of Sophocles. Of lo.-t plays of Sophocles we have fragments and the titled THE DRAMA : SOPHOCLES. 2 I / of about one hundred. Of these, nearly one-fourth apparently drew their subjects from the- tale of Troy: and it is .signifi- cant, both for the temper of the time and for Sophocles' tendency to psychological analysis, that Odysseus frequently appeared in the.-e plays. Of the character of Odysseus as conceived by Sophocles we can fortunately form an idea from the sketch in the surviving play, P/ti/ocfetf-f*. Several of the lost plays were on subjects also treated of by Euripides, e.rj. the Women of Colrlns, the Kryth*, and the RJiiwimni (or Witches), which all dealt with the tale of Medea; and the Pl/'t'/lrn, Iphif/f/iut, Alfiitron, and Alexander. Some of the lost plays, such as the Ti-i/>fii/ennis, Oniihuia, Nwbe, and Thamyra*, may have treated of their subjects in the yEschylean way. and may thus belong to the first period of Sophocles' style, while he was yet under the influence of /Kschylus. 1 Finally, we may notice the names of a considerable number of satyric dramas, such as the Relation (a gn >me whose story, as we have said above, was connected witn L'olonus), l'li>r, M"/mi.i, I<-lni''uii.c, ll< r'icl>^ at r l\enr)>/f!i$, Jl'li'h'ti W<:d/, Amiihinrcos, Syinlt ij>ni, Dio- iit/xtni-it.-*, AT. Among the fragments which are too long to quote, we may refer to two beautiful descriptions of love;- two i assag'-s, one on the changes, the other on the injustice, of fortune: 3 two others on money and poverty ; 4 another on the discoveries of Paiamedes ; 5 and finally, a tender, graceful, and sympathetic description of the hard lot of women, 6 conceived in the spirit of til-- Trufltiiiin'. To the latter we may add the ni'-t:u>hor, quoted from the J'/i-nint, by winch Sophocles s:>eaks of children chin's of a mother's life: 7 and contrast a line from the nd)odyii;'_' tiie current view that silence is a woman's Amoiiu' the shorter fragments, the nio-t inter. -sting in which tin- psy.-hoL igjeal penetration of Sophocl>-s seen, as when in the CrtHxil he says that a lost oppor- 1 rint:in'li bus jirosorveil sy I'iutai-fii, still o>li\ry .-"ini 1 liit('|-]];.iti"ti wiiirii Wf >h"iiM e'i..-iwise i'iir |iess.'~s. Sti|ihK'U"! (li>tiii^uislir(l tiii-.-f >t:...-s in i'is..u: ; il. vi-i.ijiini-tit. ! ii >t Sdj'iiipclfs \\a- irtlu.'iiri' i i.y tiir- ina_'!a;i. > ii'-c nf .KM-':I\ his' style ; thfti In 1 l'-_';in i i'iiiinu' iinii--'! f i if iiii>ciu ity ami :irtitiria!ity ; ai,.i t'.n.illv h' t nriifil liU :ittfiiti.'M UP tin- i-xiii'i-s^ioii i.f i-hiiuii'ti'l-. (if ttio !::>t nf tli.--- t'hii'O stasis u.' iiavi' iii. tiiiu;; loft : Ii' tip 1 tiiiia, th: n A i,t',,j-,n>: ;iinl ti.u tA'u'u'iij' at C< I" /'.- nui.-t, ah.i all tin' sur\a\in_' dr. .inas ma\ , in i"iu'. - N:nj,-k. 15} jili.i cv-, ' /i'. 1 , i 4. oco, 3^7. '" 521. " 619. ? 61. 2 I 8 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. painful of things. 1 From the Laocoon 2 we have an anticipation of Virgil's reflection, "Forsan et base olim meminisse juvabit;" and from the Mi/si a poetical expression of the psychological law that contrast heightens pleasure, 3 another exemplification of which may be found in a fragment of the Tympanista}, which dwells on the pleasure after a voyage of being under a good roof and listening to the ruin with drowsy mind. 4 The con- nection between mental and bodily illness had not escaped Sophocles' fine observation. 5 His wisdom comes out in his reflections in the Aletes that justice and kindliness profit more than sophistry: 6 in the Alcadoe that the right always has great might : 7 in the Acrisius that a lie cannot flourish long; 8 iu the Aleadce on the beauty of silence. 9 Finally, it is con- sonant with the amiability of Sophocles' character that there is a limit to the questions which a man with consideration for others' feelings can put. 10 As belonging to the "school" of Sophocles, there are men- tioned his son lophon and his grandson Sophocles. lophon won the second tragic prize in B.C. 429. and seems to have been suspected of receiving assistance from his father. In spite, however, of this, he is criticised as being frigid and tedious. The grandson, if, as is reported, lie won the tragic prize twelve times, was a more successful, if not a better tragedian than lophon, and won the prize oftener than did any one of the three great tragedians. Sophocles, the grandson, produced the (L'dijma at Colonus after his grandfathers death, but whether the play had or had not been produced before, and what share the grandson had in the play, are uncertain points. An interesting figure among the tragedians contemporary with Sophocles is that of Ion. IJorn in Chios and possessed of considerable wealth, he travelled much in Greece, and met all the distinguished Greeks of his time, lie is, perhaps, the earliest recorded instance of an universal genius. His works included not only tragedies, but elegies, dithyrambs, epigrams, skolia, the "'antiquities of Chios," and personal reminiscences, from tin: last of which a specimen was quoted at the beginning of this chapter. He first produced plays on the Athenian stage in li.c. 452, and we know that, in B.C. 428, when Euripides and lophon carried off the first and second prizes, Lin won the third. He died some time before B.C. 4 i S, the year in which the Peace of Aristophanes was produced : for his death is alluded to in that comedy (835). The subjects of his tragedies were largely 323. z 344- 3 372. < 574- '" The T>/r<>, 597. 98. ^ 7 3. 8 59 . 9 79 . in Ilx 8l THE DRAMA : SOPHOCLES. 2 I 9 taken from Homer ; but in other cases his plots departed widely from the ordinary form of the myths piwalent among the (> reeks. For instance, he makes Antigone and Ismene in bo burnt in the temple of Hera by the son of Eteoeles. His plays, though correct and careful, lacked the vigour and origi- nality which mark a tragedian of genius. In point of style, he was at times forcible, and his figures were bold, but he was apt to become pompous, and occasionally obscure. His vocabulary differs from that of Athenian tragedies; he uses words of his own invention, retains many lonicisms, and borrows a large proportion of word-' from epic writers. The age of Neophron of Sicyon is doubtful ; but if it is true that he first introduced a PaBdagogus on the stage, he must date from before the Kledra of Sophocles. It is, however, more interesting that Neophron wrote a KL-dt'a, to which Euripides' play of the same name was indebted. The fragments of Neo- phron's drama show that he was a poet of no small merit, and also point to the conclusion that Euripides, if indebted to his predecessor, borrowed in the treatment of the plot rather than from the style of Neophron. Yet in one point, even in the economy of the play, Euripides seems to have departed from Neophron's treatment; for whereas the latter makes ./Egeus come expressly to consult Medea, the former makes him come to consult I'ittheus, and thus what is essential to the plot is left by Euripides, as it was not left by Neophron, to chance. Among the older contemporaries of Sophocles must be placed Carcinus of Agrigentum. His plays were of an antiquated description, and choral songs and dances predominated in them. He is better known as a founder of a '-school " than as a poet. His son XeiiocK-s defeated Euripides in B.C. 41^, and Carcinus, tin- son of Xenocles, is distinguished by Aristotle's references to him in the P/ntn's and the Jili'tut i<\ lie seems to have been careless in th" treatment of his plays, anil at times artificial. Amongst other plays of his are mentioned an (Eiiiiiii*, a M/'ft, and an O/v.s-//>'. His style was flowing, he was inclined to he sententious, and had a tendency to philosophy. His ver-iticuliun is lax and somewhat conversational. 22O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CHAPTER IV. EURIPIDES. EURIPIDES was born B.C 485, in the island of Salamis, where his parent?, with the rest of the Athenians, had taken refuge on the approach of the Persians. We have the express statement of Philochorus (who lived about B.C. 300) for the fact that his mother, Clito, was of good family ; and his father, Mnesarchus, must have been possessed of some wealth, for Euripides led the chorus of boys at the Thargelia, and later in life attended the lectures of Prodicus, whose fees are well known to have been exceedingly high. It is said that Euripides was at first trained as an athlete, and that he subsequently became a painter. The latter statement is somewhat confirmed by the numerous allusions in his plays to painting and to art generally, and by the fact that his situations were so arranged that they became the subjects of many works of art. In his marital relations he is said to have been unhappy, though on this point we are treated to much scandal, but to no facts. Some, at least, of these stories * were invented to account for a misogynism which does not exist in his tragedies. If he says many severe things against women, he draws pure, affectionate, self-sacrificing women with a grace and tenderness unsurpassed. It is not strange that a poet who could conceive such characters should find in the women of Athens much that came short of his ideal. Under the system of seclusion which then prevailed in Athens, theiv is littie reason to hesitate in accepting Aristutle's opinion, 2 that women might be good, but were generally inferior. If Euripides spares not the faults of women, he at least sees, what most other Greeks did not see, that the system under which they lived was to hlame. :! He is said to have been married twice, and to have had by his first wife three sons, the younger Euripides and two others. At the age of twenty-five he brought out his first play, the lost r<'lin c. 420. The next four pl-iys whose dates an; known to us are, the Troa^c.-t, B.C. 41^ ; the I/t'h.'ita, B.C. 4 1 2 ; the I'/nnt/x^i', B.C. 411 : and the (tr','*, B.C. 408. When the Ion, the //('/'////> l-'urrns, the //t>. the only surviving specimen of the satyric drama. In B.C. 409 Euripidrs went, for what reason we do not know, to the court of Archelaus, king of Macedonia. Th-Te he pro- duivd the Archelaus in honour of his royal host ; and there too 1 Ho represents Athens as (_'r<>\%ini; irreiit liv her cliivnlnni^ d.'ffi;re of the weak in the Xtif-pli-nitx ;md the //' r-/ihi i> -oph y of her i^ruwtii i" the wonls h' ro. : s 7r< rodTd' CU";TCU. >i///v. 323. The ii.tro- diKMicin of Tlu.-.eiis into the Mfim. th"ii.yth of uim-'n h;.s no coinifctupii \viih Ati.i'iis, the conclusion of the On ./!,, Far, ,,,<. ;ire other ii'.>l;iiicrs of Mniipiiios' p:itrioti>u,. ( /. also //"'. 4' .) . 'I'r- . 210, 216. 220, 980; Greet. 1666; Hiracli. 183; Aui, 192, 272, 281, 683 ; Ha;-, fur. 477, 1409. 222 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. he wrote the Bacchce. The subject of this play, which is a celebration of the power of Dionysus, was doubtless suggested to Euripides by his visit to a country in which the worship of the god greatly flourished. The Bacclice is not only interesting as the only surviving play which has the cult of Dionysus for its subject, but is also, from the point of view of art, one of the finest of Greek tragedies. It further has an interest as showing, that although Euripides felt deeply the inconsistencies and the frequent immorality of polytheism, 1 he never so utterly aban- doned the religion of his country as to find it impossible to acquiesce in at least some part of traditional religion. In this respect, as in others, Euripides faithfully mirrors the life ot Athens. The difficulties which he felt with regard to poly- theism were not felt by him alone; and although, as might be expected from a friend of Socrates, he occasionally attained to higher conceptions, 2 still in not finally or wholly renouncing polytheism he is again the faithful exponent of his age. The Bao'hce and the Ipliirjenia at Aulis, were only put upon tho Athenian stage after his death, which took place in Macedonia in B.C. 406. The popularity of Euripides was in ancient times very great. His plays were performed even in Parthia, and many of the Athenians who became prisoners in Sicily after the disastrous termination of the Sicilian expedition, regained their liberty if they were able to recite from Euripides' works. He is referred to and quoted frequently by ancient writers ; and although the fact that he is much quoted by composers of anthologies and such works tends to show that his popularity was partly due to the ease with which general reflections, aphorisms, &c., might be detached from his works, still, on the other hand, the 1 E.g. Here. Fur. 344, 1341 ; /on, 444 ; Iph. T. 380. There are many such passages; but to imagine that Kuripides is always covertly ridiculing the myths which were almost necessarily the subjects of his plays, and that Euripides' plays were designed for twoaudiences for the ignorant crowd, who did not see any of th<- poet's mockery, and for the author's fellow-sceptics in the audience, who enjoyed the mockery is going too far. It is the logical consequence of .such criticism that a German writer maintains that the ]iacchfj> is a burlesqin a pi.ro ly on the poet's enemy, Aristophanes, and a travesty of the worship of Dionysus. - E.I/. .Frag. 960 (Nauck) : Qfbv 5 iroiov ilirl /JLOI vor\riov rbv TrdvO' bpCcvra K airov ofy opi&fltvop. Or Frag. 968 : TTCHOS 5' av oiA.'or TCKTUVUV Tr\aa6(is I'TTO 5('/ias rb Bflov irtplj3e. TinioTiiachus painted subjects from the Ffilii'tmia in /'((>/.< and J/V'(Y<7. Scopas M-itiptured a I.a.vhunte from t'ne description in the I',i<-,-i,a', and the Fariiese hull rei>res'iits a sci'iie from tin'! Atitinpr. Tweiitv-thrci' of Euripides' play-; furnish ^uhjects for painting or sculpture to our knowledge, and probably the nuini'er would be increased if we knew more abt'Ut the lost jiiiiys. 6 Ar. Pol. \. c. 3. p. 12^ ",b, 14 and 20. " S.. c Ai,il. 313 ; /", '-74, 854; (h;ft. i;-:j ; //,v. 291, 54 ! &/.. 358; Tf'1'l. 302. .;, L \) ?>/. ; J/t . I"; \ ~~"', 74-1 : Alt'. I v-f, i>lo. He >rrs pi;. inly that slave> h.i\e f.tuit>, 1'iU that is due to their ^lavery. /-'/. o^ ; drift. I i I ", i S- 1 - I In, i.S 5 ; and 1'rity. 40, 5", 5J. 2^3, (90, i,')6. 8 Not oniy docs he. maintain that :t slave may oc the eipiul of ids master in point of worth, and frequently show that it was du>' ~olely to the cruel acci- dents of war that men and wom-n were pnshtved, but hi 1 is m-vi r weary of dwelling on the horrors or' war, and of dt'monstrutini: to his audience that a man or woman need not he a (inek to siillYr an i tod. ^er\e sy nip.itby. /:.'/. t'ne Hecuba and the Mtdia. In the latter play, not only lioes Euripides, the 224 HISTOKY OF GREEK LITERATURE. But if, on the one hand, Euripides owes some of his success to his anticipation of the spirit of the age, on the other hand, it is to this very cause that most of his faults must be attri- buted. He exhibits all the awkwardness and defects of a transition stage. If Sophocles laid his scenes in " a past which never was present," he at any rate adhered to his imaginary period with fidelity. But Euripides lays his scenes in a time which is neither past nor present, hut an incongruous and impossible epoch, in which Theseus defends the republican in- stitutions of Athens, 1 and Hecuba regrets the high price of Sophists' lectures. 2 Euripides was impelled towards reality by a true instinct and by dramatic feeling, but it was impossible for him to discard myths as the subjects of his plays, and on no other condition could the reality he wished to depict be attained. At the same time, if the history of tragedy and of art drove him in the direction of real life, comedy already fully occupied the field on which he wished to enter. If now, commencing with the plot, we proceed to examine the elements of the Euripidean drama, we shall find that throughout Euripides is hampered, and is conscious that he is hampered, by a tradition which he fuels is antiquated, but has not the power entirely to abandon. The two most obvious changes or additions which Euripides introduced with regard to the plot are the prologue 3 and the " dc/i* ex ma<-hina" to assist the denoument. 4 The prologue is generally spoken by one of the characters taking part in the play, although occasionally, as. for instance, in the Hecuba, by woman-hater, show that the woman is ri^ht and the man wrong (a paradox which he insists on in the chorus of 41'-). but lie also chains sympathy for the " barbarian "' woman against her Greek lover. 1 Sn/ip. 415 ct tiiq. '- II, c. bv,. 3 A 71-^6X0705 iti the Greek sense (Arist. Pott. xii. Zan 5^ 7r,iiXo7os /JLV /if'pos 6\oi> Tpay(ji5ias TO irpb ^onou Trafioooi') is to bo found in jEschylus and Sophocles, and in both p"et-> the irpoXo-, os includes an exposition of thoo natural or necessary to tin; action of the play as not to hav- the appearance of hein_- devised for the benefit of the audience. (Tnis. however, cannot be said of the two eaiiie.-,! plays of ./Ivchylu*. the I'criiCK and the >>//<;// nuts, which have no 717)6X0705, and a very artificial exposition.) Euripides, however, inves up all attempt at dramatic illusion, and puts into the moir.h of an actor a j.anathe, tin; avowed object of which ig the enlightenment of the audience. 4 The P/tilfji-t(tfs is terminated by means of a ' drus t.x machina," but here Sophocles was possibly taking a hint from Euripides. THE DUAMA : EURIPIDES. 22 5 a character who does not again appear. Frequently the pro- logue is something considerably more than what we understand by a prologue, that is to say, it not only includes a narration of those events of which a knowledge is requisite for the apprecia- tion of the play, but also gives a sketch of the plot of the play. Sometimes, however, as in the Electra or the Ipliigenia in Taiiri*, the prologue contains no foreshadowing of the play, and gives no information which could not, in the absence of the prologue, be inferred from the play as it proceeds. The object with which the deus ex machina is made to intervene is tolerably apparent. The poet thus gains much time which would otherwise be spent in unravelling the plot. This on the whole is probably also the object with which the prologue, is written. Even when the prologue sketches the play which is to follow, Euripides only gives the myth as it was generally known. The particular means by which the various events notified by the prologue are to be brought about are, of course, not alluded to. In both cases the motive seems to have been to give as little time as possible to the myth as traditionally related, in order to concentrate attention on the incidents and situations of Euripides' own making. Euripides could not throw oil' the myths altogether, but got rid of them as much as possible by relegating them to the prologue and to the daw ex machina. Whatever the motive with which these two devices were used, they are none the less bad art; 1 and although historically they may have been demanded by circum- stances, this is a consideration which explains but hardly justi- fies them. Setting aside the prologue and this form of denou- ment, we cannot but be ama/ed at the interest which Euripides contrives to put into his plots. There is an excitement about them which is not to be found in Sophoeles, nor to be looked for in .Eschylus. The inventiveness and fertility of Euripides in this respect shows hi< technical skill as a playwright. These remarks, it muu ,'h they do apply to tho-e whi-h are chara -teii-tie of him. It is almost impossible to make anv one assertion whieh shall be true of all his plays, so mudi does lie vary. Not being separated by time from the form ,,f the, drama which ['recedes his own, but seeing it year aft'-r year put 226 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. on the stage by Sophocles, Euripides did not experience the difficulty which would be felt by an author endeavouring to go back to a style of composition which had ceased to be practised. On the contrary, in the drama of Sophocles Euripides saw a method of composition living with success, which it was com- petent for him to try, and which he did try. Hence it is that we have from Euripides plays such as the Heradidoi, the Supplices, the Hecuba, &c., which do not rely upon exciting the spectator's curiosity, but depend for their interest on the pity, or, in the case of the Bacclue, on the religious sentiment which they evoke. But his powers are not limited to any one or to some few resources; they extend to all the resources of tragic art. Exciting plots, as in the Iphiyenia in Tauris, terror, as in the Hercules Fur ens or the Medea, pathos of the purest and most simple kind, as in the Iphigcnia at Aulis, the Alcestis, and many other plays, constitute the excellence of Euripides. His character-drawing is in some cases of the highest kind, but he frequently sacrifices consistency in the delineation of character to the temptation of producing a strik- ing situation ; or perhaps it is more accurate to say that he did not possess the power which marks Sophocles of conceiving a character whose actions naturally and necessarily result in impressive situations. Euripides possesses the technical skill of the playwright to a much greater extent than he possesses the genius of the dramatist. There are plays of Euripides in which the chorus discharges the functions of sympathy and comment in the same way, and with as little awkwardness, as in Sophocles. Such plays are the Uacchce, the Heradidu:, and the Hecuba. In the luti, indeed, the chorus is made to take an important share in the action of the drama by revealing Xuthus' intentions with regard to Ion, and thus the central event of the play, the attempted murder of Ion by his mother, is brought about. Lut in spite of these ex- ceptions, it is characteristic of Euripides that he feels (and makes little attempt to conceal) that the chorus is a clog on the develop- ment of a play. Even Sophocles had found that the continual presence of the chorus throughout a tragedy was inconsistent with ends and eii'ects which a poet may legitimately endeavour to attain, and in the Aja.r Sophocles boldly dismisses the chorus from the stage;, in order that Ajax may deliver his famous soli- loquy. It is strange that alt in nigh Euripides himself repeats this experiment in the A/r/ntfig and the llt'lma, he never de- veloped it into a regular practice. The strength of tradition was so great in this case, that Euripides, rather than break THE DRAMA : EURIPIDES. 22/ through it, retained the chorus even when its presence produced etlects tlie most inartistic. There are many occurrences in real life which are lit subjects fur dramatic representation, but are not such as are conducted in the presence of twelve or iifteen comparative strangers. Although even the private life of an Athenian was considerably more public than i.s modern private life, Kuripides, whose strength lies in domestic scenes, was likely to tind the chorus a greater difficulty than did Sophocles. At the same time, the surprises and complications which he aimed at producing by the construction of his plots were, by the con- tinual presence of the chorus, rendered difficult to obtain. Thus, in the lli/']>nia at Anils Euripides aban- dons all attempt at dramatic iilu.-ion. and allows the chorus to be present at a secret interview between Agamemnon and Mene- laus, without reference to the fact that the chorus would natu- rally reveal what it knew to Clytemestra and Iphi'_ r "nia. In Si.; liocli-s the continual presence of the rh< ru> is rendered plausible, because the chorus is placed in relations of symi'athy or confidence with M>me leading character (with the heroine in the AY" //-,/. "i- witli the character opposed to the heroine in the Aiiti'j/nii'), who occupies the.-ta'_re almost continually. 1 Owing to tiie more intricate plots of Euripides it is almost impo.-sible for one character to remain perpetually present on the stage; plans and events have to be revealed \o the spectator which mu.-t. be concealed from the hero, and thus the chorus, winch still in Euripides continues to .-land in a closer r> lation to the hero than to any other character, is frequently left, by the neces- sary absences of the hero, in an i.-"laled and .-omewhat false position, as is the case in the //;///;/ nin t .-I //.>. 228 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. As the presence of the chorus is without effect on the action of the play, so the odes assigned to it have usually in Euripides little to do with the subject of the play. They often bear no special relation to the scene which has preceded, and occasion- ally have no reference to anything in the play. Euripides thus closely approaches the practice of later dramatists, whose choral odes might be with equal propriety sung in any play, and were merely designed to afford the spectator that relief which is given in modern times by an interval between the acts. 1 In Euri- pides the choral odes are poems, which rely on their intrinsic beauty as poetry rather than on the interest which attaches to expressions of the poet's own opinions on religious and moral questions. ^Eschylus frequently conveyed his opinions on such subjects through the odes of the chorus, but Euripides dis- tributes the duty of expressing his views among all his charac- ters impartially ; and hence we have slaves, kings, and heroines, all uttering sentiments admirable in themselves, although some- what frigid and unnatural under the circumstances. The constraints of a transition period which cramp Euripides elsewhere have left their mark upon his character-drawing also. Compelled by the tradition of the tragic art to take his subjects from mythology, Euripides was impelled by his instinct as an artist to draw his characters from real life ; and to present the heroes of mythology acting from everyday motives and with everyday feelings, was to attempt in most cases an impossible fusion. The slaying of Clytcmestra by Orestes is a proper sub- ject for the art of Sophocles or ^Eschylus, but is wholly unsuited to the new form of art which Euripides was making for. To the Greeks, accustomed to the figures of Sophocles or ^Eschylus, it must have seemed, as it seemed to Aristotle, that the dramatis 2y>rsoi>m of Euripides often had characters unnecessarily bad. In his endeavours to substitute truth to nature for truth to lite- rary tradition, Euripides had to work upon materials and with tools not designed for the effects which he wished to produce. It is, then, striking proof of his power that he rose above all these obstacles, and gave to the world such triumphs of charac- ter-drawing as his Alcestis, Medea, or Iphigenia. He depicts the madness of Hercules and the passion of I'hnedra with the force and intensity of a master ; and it is true that, great as Euripides is in the anatomy, he is still greater in the pathology 1 "Tiio ]>oi foi mors in the orchestra of a modern theatre are little, I heli'-vi', awaie that they occupy the place, aiul rnay consider thein-elv.-s as the- lineal descendants, of the ancient chorus." Twining's Aristotle. p. 103 n. THE DRAMA: EURIPIDES. 22Q of the soul. But love and madness are not the only emotions which lie is capable of representing, and if Phaedra is a subject which is "neither morally nor artistically pure," 1 Alcestis may be quoted to prove the power and the purity of Euripides both morally and artistically. It remains true, however, that Euri- pides is in artistic purity, as in character-drawing, inferior to Sophocles, and in genius inferior to both Sophocles and /Eschy- lus. The discords which exist in Euripides' plays between his character-drawing and his situations, between his sentiments and his mythical subjects, between the necessities of his plots and the presence of the chorus, are discords which Sophocles avoided and Euripides could not or would not convert into har- monies. Euripides' style is characterised by a smoothness and pli>h which imply much hard work. In point of vocabulary, Euri- pides made a greater advance 1 towards the ordinary Attic of the day than Sophocles had done. In respect also of expression and imagery, Euripides adopts a style far less exalted than that of Sophocles or yEschylus. This difference in style between Euripides and the two older tragedians is quite in keeping with the difference between their art and the newer form for which Euripides was preparing the way. If there are truths which demand lofty language for their proper expression, there are also truths which require more precise enunciation; and there are few elnotions for which the simplest words are not the best utterance. In the pleadings of an Iphigenia, the self-sacrifice of a Macaria. the sorrows of an Andromache, we want no wealth of words or luxury of ideas to stand between us and the beaiitv of the character. Euripides, being an artist, appreciated the worth of simplicity. The metaphors and similes of .'E-chylus an* drawn mo.-tiv from nature from pugnacious nature. Tnose peaceful aspect. In Euripidi phor~ from art,- showing at once the. poet's susce;i;ii,ili;y, and the etlect which the Athens of I'ericles made upon the citizens of Athens. Tlr.' frairir.eiits of Eui ii'ides' lost plays which are to lie found in various anthologists, grammarians, lexicographers, ami others are m<>re numerous than those either of .E-ciivlus or Sot'hocies. 1 Moimmrii, HUt. of n.>nn>, ii. 4-1. - /,'; from iiivhitn'tmv. . I'V. qri. 4:7, .I/"/. ~ x\ "/. 1207, < '!/!. ^52, 353, 477, Tr.>. 480, l>i,ai,. 84, //('. 14, ' ?, If,/,'. T,iur. i ; '.:, Km-. ~'v. 77.1; I'roin sculpture. Hec. 561, Fr.i^. i- 1 ;; fiviu painun.;, Ht.1. -5, Jhc. 807. 230 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. The best known is " Evil communications corrupt good man- ners." 1 The knowledge of human nature which is shown in this famous fragment appears again in a fragment of the Alcmene, which declares the need of wisdom in the hour of prosperity, 2 and in another which says that ' most evils are of men's own doing." 3 The same knowledge takes a somewhat cynical turn when he says in the Cretan Women 4 that "all men are friendly to the wealthy." But the poet's own heart was sound, for in the Dicfi/s b he notices that the poor are oftener wiser than the wealthy, and often more pious with their scanty offerings than the rich with their offerings of hulls. His faith in the right shines out often in the fragments. " Gold and silver are not the only currency," he says in the CEdipus ; 6 " Virtue is current everywhere." Justice may limp " claudo pede " but she overtakes the wrong-doer ; " and all evil deeds must out. he says in the Melanippe? This faith in morality could not fail to have its effect on his religious beliefs, and we find in the (Enornaus? " "When I see the wicked fall, then I say there are gods." And although he does formulate the some- what transcendental ist tenet that " the god in each man is his inind," 10 at other times in a more ordinary strain he says, " Without God there is no prosperity for man," u and " the Avays of Heaven are mysterious." J - Among the fragments are many relating to women ; and although we find such state- ments in the CKdij/us as that "every wife is worse' than her husband, should the worst man marry the best," 13 and in the A/ope that educating women is a mistake, because "the well-educated deceive us more than the neglected;" 14 still else- where, in the Melanippe, he says that "though there is nothing worse than a bad woman, there is nothing better than a good one." 15 With sound common sense he declares in the Protesilans that a man who classes all women together is a fool ; some are _ f ood and some bad : 10 and el.-e\vhere that all men are not unlucky in marriage any more tln-n all men are lucky ; it depends on the wife a man gets; 1 " and in the M<'lani)>pe that "bad women hav-- givt-n a bad name to the \vh"]c M-X.'' IS What Euripides thought of marrinc."' with a good wife we may see from such passages as this from the Antifjone,^ ''A man's best possession is a sympathetic wife/' and "A loving husband, is 1 Niiuck, T. G. F. JOTS. - It>. 100. 3 Ib. 1015. 4 I],. 4 6 S . '> Ib. 329, 940. Ib. ^46. 7 Ib. 969. 8 Jb. 509. Ib. 581. 10 Ib. 1007. 11 Ib. 1014. i- Ib. 941. 1:i Jb. 550. " Ib. 112. 38 Ib. 497. i 6 Ib. 658. i? Ib. ^042. ] 8 ib. 49 6. 19 !).,. 164. THE DRAMA : EURIPIDES. 231 a woman's wealth." 1 In the Fhrixus,- too, he dwells on the charms of a wife's ministrations in times of sickness and dis- tress, and elsewhere :i on the influence of a good wife in saving the home which a dissolute husband would otherwise ruin. In the Dh'ti/** he has verses on the happiness of paternal, and in the Ewlitltws* of maternal love. It is consistent with his just remarks on marriage that both in the Anfiojie 6 and in the (En, u ' "Whoso trusts a slave is a fool." The problems of heredity seem to have exercised his mind: good men have good sous, 1 - and a good child cannot come of a bad father. 15 On the other hand, you may have a fine child from inferior parents, he says in the Meleagcr.^ ( iuod birth he thinks inferior to good acts; 15 and in the Alaw.ne 1S we have a partial Greek translation for noltlvste olliije. The only member of the "school" of Kuripides who is men- tioned to us is the nephew Kuripides, who, after his uncle's death, brought out the IplnijQnin at Auli,-*, the Ali'Wir-on, and the Jiacchit', and won the pri/e with them. He is said also to have written tragedies himself, but we know nothing of them, and, indeed, are uncertain whether this Kuripides was the nephew or the son of the famous poet. Knir years older than Kuripides. and a rival of Kuripides and Sophocles, was Ach;eu- of Kn-tria. Of his life we know nothing except that he once won the tragic prize ; and since he is not men- tioned by Ari-tophanes in the /'/"/.-as among the survivors of Sophocles, it has. been inferred that he had died before the pro- duction of that comedy. His satyric dramas, the titles of seven me down to us. are said to have been in the ts. of P( . >f - II'. 810. ;; I'). iajl. 4 Il\ ^3. '' II) . 211. " ]i>. S~>2. 8 11). '-"3. " II). (-V. 10 II'. 8=3 ' ''". jlj. " I'". 7. 1: H>. 76. * IK 344- "Ib. 531. ' : 111. 9. '"' Ib. 99. 232 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. obscure, his diction is ornate and sometimes artificial, his de- scriptions minute, and pushed rather too far. The greatest, however, of Euripides' rivals was the Athenian Agathon. Born probably about B.C. 447, Agathon was a man of education and refinement. His natural abilities at an early age impressed Socrates, and the charm of his character secured him the friendship of Plato, whose Symposium was written to celebrate Agathon's victory in the tragic contest of B.C. 416. The time of his death is uncertain, but fell about B.C. 400. Placed by the Alexandrine grammarians in their canon amongst the first tragedians, he probably ranked next to the Three. Aristotle not only mentions him several times in the Poetics, but testifies practically to his merit, and shows his own fondness for this tragedian by the frequency with which he quotes him in the Ethics and the Rhetoric. Agathon's power as a tragedian is shown by the freedom with which he treated the chorus, the music, and the subjects of the drama. The musical inno- vations which he made it is impossible for us to appreciate, though the songs which Aristophanes makes him sing in the Tliesmophoriazusce exemplified his changes in the music of the drama. With regard to the chorus, we know that he first com- posed odes capable of being sung with equal appropriateness in any drama whatever, and thus these choruses 1 came to serve only the same purpose as the music of the orchestra between the acts in a modern theatre. In his selection of subjects he had the courage to execute what Emipides had only the power to conceive. That is. he. at any rate in the Aiit/ms (if this was the name of the piece), abandoned the domains of myth and history entirely, and composed a tragedy which was original in its subject as well as in its treatment. In this proceeding he .shows the influence of the circumstances in which he found himself. All that could be made out of the my.hs suitable for the stage had already been drawn from them by his predecessors, and he was thus compelled either to have recourse to his own imagination for a subject, as he did with success in the case of the Ajtf/ifi.-', or to crowd into on<- play mythical incidents enough to have furnished forth half-a-dozen dran.as in earlier times, - a proceeding whii-h, according to Aristotle, proved fatal to one play ("unnamed) of Agathon's, otherwise' not unworthy of success. Agathon's style also, as was natural in an admirer of Gorging shows traces of th" fatal induei.ee which rhetoric, was beginning to at-s'-it over the drama. Antithfses and plays upon thoughts and words, for instance, are frequent. 1 l(JL3j\lfM. THE DRAMA: EURIPIDES. 233 Amongst other contemporaries of Euripides may be mentioned Aristarchus, who is said to have lived a hundred years, to have written a hundred tragedies, and to have won the prize twice ; Morychus, Acestor, Gnesippus, Hieronymus, Xothippus, Stliene- lus, Spintharus, Cleophon, Theognis, Nicomachus, who defeated Euripides once, Pythangelus, Pantacles, and, finally, Critias, the chief of the Thirty Tyrants. We have a long fragment of the Si*>/}>h>is of Critias, which in ancient times was attributed doubtfully to Euripides. The grounds for this seem to have been an inadequate appreciation of Euripides' religious opinions, and an erroneous assumption that no tragedian but Euripides could have doubts on religion. The passage in question makes the gods to be an invention of state-craft, designed for the prevention of offences which elude the law. That such a dis- sertation could have any artistic appropriateness in a tragedy is impossible, and it serves to show the value of the drama of the time. The style of the fragment is clear, but scarcely poetical ; the metre is exceedingly lax. The tragedians of the fourth century are little more than names to us, as, for instance, Mameieus. Apollodoms, Timoi- theu<, and Diceogenes. The elder L)ionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, devoted himself with much zeal to the drama, and had some of his tragedies put upon the Athenian stage in a manner regard- less of expense, to the great amusement of the Athenians. 1 (If more merit as a tragedian was Antiphon (not the orator), who is quoted, as though generally known, by Ari-totie. Rheto- ricians, such as Aphareus and Theodectes, continued to lie im- ported into the ranks of the tragedians. Both Theodectes and Aphareus were pupils of Isocrates. The style of the former was Convet and elegant, and his metre exceedingly five. As was to be expected, he developed the rhetorical element in tragedy to a considerable extent, and being throughout an orator rather than a poet, he not unnaturally conceived numerous ,-cenes in the spirit rathr of the law court than of the stage. Ari.-tolle seems to have been well acquainted with his works, for at different times lie mentions seven of his tiagedies. Finally, we mu-t mention Chaprciuon, one of the "Reading Tragedians."- Among the symptoms of the decline of tra.edy is over : n.ent and a striving after literarv (.'fleets which canno! le HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. legitimately obtained on the stage. At Athens the result was seen in the composition of plays not intended for the stage, but for reading. The disease showed itself not only in tragedy, but in the dithyramb; and pcets whose works were not written to be acted or sung by the dithyrambic chorus, but by their fineness and detail were designed for a smaller and more critical audience, were called Readers. It seems, however, that Cha?remon also wrote acting plays. Indeed, he seems not to have confined himself to any one kind of poetry, and, further, to have invented a kind of his own, for his Centaur, which was a medley of all kinds of metre, is sometimes called a tragedy, sometimes a rhapsody, and sometimes an epic, and so may be inferred to have comprised features peculiar to each of those forms of composition. The forces of disintegration were at work on the drama in the time of Euripides, as we have seen above. He felt them and recognised them, but the power and genius with which he controlled them would be much better appreciated if we only had a complete work of one of his successors to show us the contrast between Euripides and the dramatists who followed him. Rhetoric invaded tragedy with more and more success, and culminated in the work of Theodectes, who combined the pathos of Euripides with the finish of Isocrates. Learning and philo- sophy replace creative power and technical knowledge. In- capacity for the real work of tragedy led to the insertion of what was good, and even beautiful, but not appropriate. Indi- viduality and distinctive characteristics are wanting, for political exhaustion was accompanied by a tendency to mechanical and routine work. Because the strength to deal with a tragedy as a whole was lacking, attention was paid more and more to detail, much labour was bestowed on trivialities of thought and of expres- sion, ami as a result work became liner but feebler. When genius ceases, ingenuity begins. CHAPTER V. COMEDY : ORIGIN AND GROWTH. THE Creeks were not much given to the scientific investigation of the early history of institutiuiis, anil it is matter rather for rogret than for surprise that Aristotle should complain that little THE DRAMA : COMEDY. 235 or nothing was known about the early history of comedy. Even in liis lime, however, as may be inferred from the I'octi*-*, the. " invention " of comedy was claimed both by the Athenians and the Megarians, and the dispute renders it still further necessary to exercise reserve in accepting the various statements on this subject made by ancient authorities. If we proceed to investi- gate the growth, and renounce the investigation of the "inven- tion " of comedy, we shall see that the germs of comedy are of two kinds, and that these germs may be found amongst various members of the Greek race. As tragedy sprang from the serious side of the worship of Dionysus, so comedy has its root in the joyous aspect of that ritual. "When or how the phallus became associated with the feasts of Dionysus is uncertain ; but, at least in Graeco-Italian times, the Ithyphalli were to be found associated with the wor- shippers of Dionysus, and phallic songs were amongst the modes by which they expressed the joy of their worship. In later times this rude worship, practically dropped by the inhabitants of towns, survived only in the villages Kminii and hence the name of comedy. With regard to the phallic .songs we know nothing. 1'robably they were sung in strophes by a double chorus, and in matter and style were appropriate to the subject. As Aristotle says that comedy was the creation of the leaders of these phallic choruses, it is not improbable that the choruses were originally followed by a monody from the leader of the chorus. Tin's monody was derisive and abusive in character, and was directed against anv person, whether unpopular or merely conspicuous, who was regarded as a subject likely to excite the laughter of the crowd. The other root of comedy is to be found in the mimetic (1 im-.'s which were practised by many of the Ciivcks. These (1-inee-;, though nt confined to the f. <;ival> of Pioiiysus. were particularly characteristic of th"in. The Spartans developed the-e performances to a con.-iderable extent, and took LTivat ' oil'-nder and his behaviour und>T the ci in-e[Ueii! penalties. The~e ; er- formanees were not alwavs limited to dumb show, for the p. r- fonners ' represented also f, ,;v:gn (piaek-doctors. and in this rase the humour eon-i-ted in the j'a -\ that they were supposed to ecause th- 236 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. Such were the germs of comedy that were to be found in various parts of Greece. For their development two conditions were necessary. The first was, that there should be enough political freedom to allow the trivial and personal abuse of the Phallica to take on a political interest. The second condition was, that the country worship of Dionysus should be taken in hand and celebrated under the guidance of the state. The first state apparently to realise the former condition was Megara, and the expulsion of the tyrant Theagenes in the sixth century was followed by a rapid development of comedy. The monody of the leader of the chorus was developed into a dialogue between the chorus and its leader, and eventually this dialogue was invested with some dramatic form. The precise nature of these short farces it is impossible to ascertain. Their literary value cannot have been great, for Megarian comedy has left no traces of any literary representative. Maeson of Megara is said to have invented two masks, that of a slave and that of a cook. This indicates, not only the nature of the figures out of which the fun of these farces was obtained, but that the characters were of fixed and traditional types. Although the Athenians affected to despise the stupidity of Megarian farces, Athenian comedy was influenced by them to no small extent in its origin. Susarion, to whom the "inven- tion" of Attic comedy was ascribed by the Greeks, was a Megarian, and probably transferred to Attic soil the comedy of his native slate. To what stage of development Megarian comedy had attained in the time of Susarion is uncertain. The plays of Susarion were never committed to writing, and there is no good authority for supposing even that they were in verse. They wen; not wholly extempore : Susarion probably communi- cated beforehand to his actors the, general outline, and arranged with them the principal situations. The rest would lie left mainly to the, inspiration of the moment. The result would lie a concatenation of loosely connected scenes of a broad and burlesque description. The conditions, however, in Athens at this time were, not favourable for the, development of comedy. The rule of the I'isistratidie did not admit of that political interest; which, as the subsequent history of comedy at Athens showed, was necessary to produce the action ami reaction of poet and public indispensable for the growth of art. I Miring this period of (for comedy) depression at Athens, we must look to Sicily for the next stage of development. The, Sicilians seem at all times to have been a merry people. TIIE DRAMA: COMEDY. 237 In later times even the grinding weight of Roman government and the oppressions of a Verres could not rob the light-hearted Sicilians of their enjoyment of, and capacity for, a joke. Here, as elsewhere in Hellas, mimetic dances existed, and the names though little more - of an immense number of them have come down to us. Indeed, Theophrastus ascribed the invention of dancing to a Sicilian. There was, however, if the evidence of vases is rightly interpreted, existing in Sicily and par- ticularly at Tarentnm in Lower Italy another source of comedy, and that was the practice of parodying myths. In later times the actors of these parodies attained great celebrity, and were much patronised at the courts of Alexander and the Diadochte. The best known name is that of Rhinthon. He was a Tarentine of the time of the lir.-t Ptolemy, and composed thirty-eight of these parodies. Bia>,.sus, Sciras, and Sopater also were famous for this kind of performance. 1 But it is supposed that not only in these, later days, but before the time of comedy, mythology was travestied. This interpretation of the evidence afforded by painted vases is, however, not beyond dispute. If it is correct, its importance is considerable, for in such travesties we have what is conspicuous by its absence in the early efforts of comedy that is, a real dramatic element. The development of comedy in Sicily was assisted not only by the disposition of a people naturally inclined to see the comic side of things, and by their dances and possibly travesties of myths, but also by the existence of a cultured and literary court in Syracuse. It was under these conditions that Sicilian comedy originated. The three comedians of this island known to us. Dinolochus, Phormus, and Kpicharmus, were, probably not the only come- dians to whom Sicily gave birth, but it is certain that all others were eclip-ed by the last-mentioned, Kpicharmus. Phonnus, who is ranked by Aristotle with Kpicharmus for his services to comedy, was tutor to the children of (Jelon. tyrant of Syracuse, wrote, seven comedies, probably mythological travesties, and contributed some improvements to the costume of the actors and the decoration of the stage. Dinolochus is represented only by a lew t raiments. Kpicharmus was born in Cos n.c. 532. When a few m iiitlis old I lelot hales, to .Me^'ara in Sicily, youth, and there' the boy mu>L ha meutary farces which the Me_:aiian 1 Caik-d tXa.ior, 238 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. them from their mother country. It is also extremely probahle that Megara was the scene of Epicharmus' own first attempts at comedy, though we only have direct evidence that he worked in Syracuse. Some time before this, however, he must have visited Magna Grsecia, for he was a disciple of Pythagoras. Whether he attained to the esoteric circle of the famous philo- sopher or not, we cannot say. but the influence of Pythagoras on Epicharmus was considerable in extent, and lasting in its effects. Pythagoras died probably before no. 510, and, there- fore, Epicharmus' acquaintance with him cannot be placed after that date. Megara was destroyed B c. 485, and Epicharmus probably proceeded before then to Syracuse. There he worked, and there at an advanced age he died, probably shortly after the death of Hiero, B.C. 467. The points in which the comedy of Epicharmus constitutes an advance on the rude farces of the Megarians are clear and of easy comprehension. The Megarian farces were not com- mitted to writing. The comedy of Epicharmus has a permanent literary value. It is not certain, as already mentioned, that the former were even in verse, and at all times they were un- doubtedly little more than improvisations. Epicharmus, on the other hand, was a poet, and his comedies were invested with literary form. Megarian comedy was extravagant, and its situations were connected in but the flimsiest manner. Epi- charmus was possessed of psychological penetration, and he endued comedy with a pint and imparted unity to it. Finally, he did not coniine himself merely to the absurd side of human nature, but gave expression to his reflections on life in the shape of moral sentiments. Epicharmus did not attain to these high results immediately. His early efforts were probably in the spirit of the farces which, as a boy, he had witnessed in Sicilian Megara, and to this period must be assigned many of his parodies on mythology. Hepluestus is a comic iigure even in Homer, and the C'n/'t((t:rnrl>_>x with Pliohm was distinguished rather by humour of a rough-and- ready description than by character-drawing or artistic plot. In this rude stage of comedy, however. Epicharmus was not di-stined to remain long. His poetical instinct, his powers of observation, and his aesthetic feelings, urged him to work of a THE DRAMA : COMEDY. 239 more refined kind, and his removal front Megara to Syracuse must liavi' contrilmtt'il to this result. The action of Syracuse on Kpicharmus was twofold. It gave liim a better public, and it introduced him to the literary circle of the court of Syracuse. The large population of this wealthy city probably possessed at this time the same generous appreciation for genius as it did in the time of Euripides. The literary circle of the court embraced all the most cultured men of Syracuse, as it also comprised all other (Ireeks of distinction whom I Hero could attract to Sicily. Under these favouring conditions Epicharmus proceeded to those comedies of character in which his real strength lay. All that was refined in his work, careful in its finish, and witty in conception and expression, was developed. ]>ut although studies of character, which, as the names of the plays indicate, were contained in his Jionr 1 or his Mi/tjnrian }\'iiia/i. necessarily fall within Epicharmus' later and Syracu.-an period, when his observations of life had borne fruit, still they do nut complete the sum of his activity at this period. Mytho- logical travesties also give scope for artistic work. The figures in such plays are indeed gods, but their absurdities are those of men. In the heroes and gods of these parodies were parodied the Sicilians of Epicharmus' own time. This is obvious in the case of his play //*7>*>'x Wc7/<-'x \\'i '/'/in'/ a chorus, that is, re-em'hlmj- much more that uf a modern comic opera than that of a (Jivk play. Such a chorus would lie require, i. fur the wedding-song in //e cases, as. t-o. in the i'/ii'<-Kurtt'.-<, such a chorus would naturally dauce. Hut there are no traces that the chorus ever took part in the dialogue of any of Epieharmus 1 Thi- ch iracteristie ubsr-nee of a ch-rus. in the technical sense, from Sicilian comedy seems to show that th- connection of ;ho drama with I'mnysus was not. M. >ti'on_;iy tVit in Sicily as in Athens. The presene.e of th'' chorus in Attic drama would, in tin- ab-ctice of all other evidence, lie enough to >'m>w the origin of the drama. Alongside of this absence of a chorus fioni 242 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. Sicilian comedy we may place our ignorance of the occasions on which, and the persons by whom, plays were performed at Syracuse. As we do not know at what, if any, festivals they were produced, nor whether they were, as at Athens, under the direct and avowed control of the state, and as we do know that the mimetic dances, to which comedy was at least in part due, were by no means confined to, or distinctive of, the festivals of Dionysus, it is merely conjecture supported, indeed, by the analogy of Attic drama that Sicilian comedy is derived from the Dionysia. It is probable that more than three actors wen; required, but how many pieces were produced at a time, how many poets competed, or. indeed, whether there was any com- petition between the poets, are all points on which we have no information. The Syracusans must, however, have learned much from ^Eschylus, who, having done so much for the theatre and in the way of stage-management at Athens, would probably be helpful also to the Syracusan stage. A? for the influence of Epicharnms on his successors, it is probable that before Old Comedy definitely and finally assumed a political cast, some of the older poets- Crates is especially mentioned were influenced by Epicharmus. In the case of the Middle and Xew Comedy, the traces of his influence are clear. lie was the inventor of many types of character which persisted in later Attic Comedy. Thus the drunkard, the gourmand, the gourmet, and above all the parasite, are all types which, by their persistence, testify to the influence of Epicharmus. Hen; we must say something of Sophron, if it is only to state that we know little, almost nothing, about him. He was a Syracusan who lived about B.C. 420. lie composed Mimes, which were introduced into Athens by Plato. lie did not invent Mimes, but lie iiivt gave them a place in literature, and his literary powers must have been considerable, for Plato is said to have slept with the works of Sophron by his pillow, and to have been influenced by them in tin' composition of his Dialo<_ r i;es. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that Sophron composed in prose : that Aristotle classed the Dialogues of Plato and the Mimes of Sophmn as belonging to the same form of art ; and that there are traces in Plato's language of Syracu.-an idioms and expression?. Ik-yond this, we have no information about Sophron, and can only endeavour to form some idea of his work from the Ailniti(t::uxM Comedy, whose limits may rou_rhiv be considered to be nc. 460-390, was a public and a political in>tituti"ii. The choregus was appointed by the state; the choregia was a public duiy: and the comedian who obtained a ch'iivgu^ from tic- state thereby and so far obtained the state sanction fur his satire. Although the Old Coinedv ridieuled every in-titution and evervthing out of which a lanu'n c^ul i be raised, it was above all pi-r-oi:al. Laws to restrain thi- per- sonal abuse were made at various times, in u.c. 443 and i: r. 410. and it i.- prohabl" that in B.C. .\\2 and H.C. 40;, when the democracy was LMu'-^'-d. cmni'dv wa- gagged al>'>: but it was only when comedy ceased to lie a state institutin thit it ceased to be personal, and it was only \vh-n Ath'-ns io pr>'iid con.-ciousiu'Ss of political independence that e.'inedy ceased I.P be j-upportcd by state au'.horilv. Krom u.r. 3^0 t-> u.i'. 320, the Miiidie Comply, in whieh the chorus di-apirars, relied for it- humour on its re: re-en: at: <\\ of so.-ial life aii'i iU 244 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. caricatures of philosophy and literature. Finally, from B.C. 320 to B.C. 250 Ave have the New Comedy, which is the comedy of character and manners. Between the time of Susarion and the period in which comedy became a state institution at Athens, there fall the names of some Attic comedians of whom we practically know nothing. Euetes, whose very existence is doubtful, and Euexe- nides are mentioned only by Suidas. Myllus figures in a pro- verb, 1 which has given rise to various attempted explanations, none satisfactory. Chionides wrote a Persians in imitation of a play of the same name by Epicharmus. We have now reached a time when Athens, having recovered from the danger and the losses of the Persian wars, was reaping the fruit of her disin- terested action in those wars. The powers, of which she had become conscious then, she was now putting forth in all direc- tions, and her political, social, and aesthetic life was showing in all fields of action the quickening it had received in the great struggle with the Persian. It is at this time, about B.C. 460, that we find Magnes flourishing, the lirst comedian known to us as having won a prize in a dramatic contest. He is said to have won the comic prize eleven times, but to have lost his popularity in his old age. Magnes is an interesting figure in comedy, for in him we have a link between the mimetic dances (which, as we saw in the last chapter, formed one of the sources of comedy) and Aristophanes. One favourite form of dance consisted in the imitation of all sorts of animals, and in this dunce we must sue the direct ancestor of the Birdx and the /><-}'/.>' of Magnes ; while these again rob Aristophanes of the credit df originality, so far as the idea of making a chorus of birds or other creatures is concerned. Indeed, these comedies of Magnes had many descendants, such as the Uoatti of Eupolis, the /-Vx/f/'x of Archippus, the Snakes of Mcnippus, the Nightin- gales of Cantharus, the Ants of Plato, &c. These plays are lost, and Aristophanes is left solitary and lofiy ; whether hi.s height would be to us the same could his former rivals lie now .-een by hi.s side, is an insoluble problem ; but at any rate, in a history of comedy it must not be forgotten that, in the organic development of literature, phenomena which to our fragmentary knowledge, appear isolated were never actually solitary, bur, were always connected in an unbroken line with what, preceded them. Passing over Ecphantides, the '''cloudy,"-' we find in Crates another link which might easily have been lost in the chain of development leading up to Aristophanes. The con- 1 Mi'XXos Trdir cU'oi'a. - KaTrj/t'as. THE DRAMA: THE OLD COMEDY. 245 trast which in the Clouds of Aristophanes the Just and tin; Unjust Keason are mad*! to draw between the actual and the old-fashioned mode of life, seems to have been anticipated in the B>'a*ts of Crates. This piece is further interesting as con- taining a very early plea for vegetarianism. The beasts who formed the chorus urged on man that lie should give up meat ; and we still have a fragment of the play in which one character expresses comic dismay at the idea of giving up the sausages so dear to heroes of Aristophanic comedy. Crates also produced the earliest preserved specimen of nonsense verses verses, that is, which are strung together with the intention of producing only the semblance of sense. More serious services, however, than these were rendered to comedy by Crates, according to Aristotle. True to the tradition of its oriirin, comedy hitherto at Athens seems to have consisted mainly of that personal abuse which was characteristic of the country Phallica. Crates lint only abandoned this, but is ranked by Aristotle along with Epieharmus, and is credited with having iirst produced in Attica comedies with a claim to real dramatic action. His subjects, whether taken from his own imagination or from real life, were transmuted by the poet's power into plays possessing general, natural, and necessary truth, and were no longer bald reproduc- tions of events which did happen, or might at least have hap- pened, but would not strike one as probable in themselves. Not only was the line followed by Crates analogous to that of Epieharmus, but in some instances he directly borrowed from the Sicilian comedian. Thus the character of the drunkard was transferred by Crates from the comedy of Epieharmus to the Athenian stage. His style was elegant and simp!", and if, as Aristophanes alleges, his plays were somewhat thin, they were ensured success at Athens by their fertility in ingenious thoughts. About the same time as Crates lived Cratinus, tl.ough whether C rat inns i, to be considered as a predecessor or as a succeor of Crates is a point on which our evidence scarcely allows us to decide. It may, however, lie asserted with some eerlai::ty that the .Cervices of Cratiniis (o Attic comedy were of a much more decided and etl'ec; ive ch-iraeter than those of ( 'rate-. Tne boisterous and reckless tendencies <.f Attic comedy found a faithful exponent in Cia Inn.-. Ari.-tophanes, in the panhasis of the J\ //i-i/, f.-t, t'-ils us on the be>; anthoritv for we stiii 'nave extant Cratinus' own word- for i; -that the torrent of Cratinus' words was so impetuous as to bear down everything before it. His audacity of attack was considered bv th" ancient.- to exceed 246 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. even that of Aristophanes himself. He earned the title of " the people's lash," and he certainly applied the lash all round. Few things or men seem to have escaped him. Pericles he pelted with abusive epithets unsparingly ; and he seems to have Ijeen never weary of jesting at the peculiarly-shaped head of the Zeus of Athens. That there was some reason for this seems shown by the fact that artists found it uniformly neces- sary to provide the statues of Pericles with a helmet to relieve the fault of nature. Personalities and politics do not exhaust the subjects of Cratinus' comedies. Philosophy is derided in the Tarantini and elsewhere. In his Thracian Womrn he attacks the worship of Bendis, which seems to have been then establish- ing itself in Athens. In his KlcobulinfK he ridicules the fashion, to which Athenian ladies were then devoted, of composing riddles. Innovations in music were met with conservative deri- sion in the Eunidie. The Nomoi demonstrated the superiority of the old-fashioned ignorance of reading and writing to the new- fangled education in such unnecessary acquirements, and the Solon exalted the good old times as compared with modern degeneracy. In all these sallies, the humour must have had a great deal that was good-natured ; for so impartial is Cratinus in the objects of his comedies, that he does not even exempt himself. His affection for wine pointed the jokes of many contemporary comedians. 1 Cratinus went farther, and made his own failing the subject of a comedy, the F/a*k. When Aristophanes in the Kni'jJifs treated him as a played-out old man. Cratinus waited for the year to come round, and then at the next contest of comedians defeated a piece of Aristophanes' with the Fla*k. In this comedy Cratinus represents himself as wedded to Comaedia, but unfortunately yielding to the charms of Methe. Consequently his lawful wife proceeds to institute an action for divorce and cruelty. 2 Mutual friends do their best to dis- suade Cnm'i'ilin from this course, but she persists. Eventually Cratinus abandons his mistress, and devotes himself entirely to Comedy. In addition to these plays, which are in the true spirit of the Old Comedy. Cratinus wrote, probably during the action of one of the gagging laws. 3 mythological travesties after the fashion of Kpicharmus. In the face of the statement of Aristotle that it was unknown who determined the number of actors in comedy, it will not do to accept the assertion that Cratinus generally accepted THE DRAMA : THE OLD COMEDY. 2^J rendered this service. In Cratinus we may see the /Kschylu.s of comedy ; Init it is in the force of the impression which the personality of Cratinus made on comedy that we must seek to justify the comparison. Both poets possessed the audacity of genius, and in each case the boldness of the man revealed itself in both conception and expression. About the justice of the criticism that Cratinus was happier in the conception than in the carrying out of his plots, the fragments that are left do not enable ns to judge. The purity and ' Atticity " of his style, however, are shown by his fragments, and by the fact that Aristophanes did not disdain to borrow verses occasionally from him. Although the Old Comedy is, on the whole, characterised by the fact that it based itself on the amusement which was to be made out of contemporary events, still there was always present a tendency to mythological travesties, which did not depend for their success on local or political allusions. Sometimes this latter tendency received external aid, as when personalities were forbidden by law ; but at other times the genius of a comedian of itself turned him rather to the parody of myths than to the ridicule of tho present. < >i such a comedian we have an instance in Pherecrates. A contemporary and rival of Cratinus and Crates, lie is said to have, start< d life as one of Crates' actors. If this lie true, it is easy to under.-tand that Pherecrates fol- lowed in the steps of Crates, who himself, as we have seen, followed at Athens the line of direction originally traced by Kpicharrnus at Syracuse. Gluttony, which atl'irded so much material for Fpicharmus, was utilised as subject-matter by Phercerates in his i;<><1 M< >/. Fixed types of character, such as the parasite in the 'J'/in/df/n, or the helaira in the Cnrinnno or the S';<-!i i*, <\.\ once .-how that his literary ancestor is Fpiehar- nd demonstrate that the Middle and New Comedy were r even i.e\v departure, but .-imply the per.-i.-teiice of 'inedy which had always existed, and which, in the str.iLT'-'le for exigence, only needed the extinction of its formid- able competitor in order to reach its full development. It must not, howi-ver. be imagined that 1 'hen-crates cultivated nothing but the F.picharmian tendency in comedy. As Ciatinus at times turned to the trave.-ty of myths, so Pherecrates oeca-ioii- aiiy made attacks, as on Alcibiades, of a political nature, or, as ('ii Melantbius, of a literary kind. Nor i> it merely as a preiie- cessur of the New Comedv that he mu.-t be regarded, for Aris- tophanes owes something to him. Pheiecrate.^ \\as cied'.led U) 248 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. antiquity with much, originality and power of invention, ana although it is little more than conjecture that the Tijrannis had for its subject the rule of woman, and, therefore, so fur anti- cipated Aristophanes, it is certain that the i'lea of laying the scene of a comedy in the nether world, as in the Froys, did not originate Avitli Aristophanes, but must be placed to the credit of Pherecrates. It is interesting to note that in this piay the Crapatali ^Eschylus is brought on the stage, and is drawn witli the same touches as is the character in the Frogs. Indeed, from the fragment of a speech of ^schylus, 1 it would appear that in the Crapatali, as well as in the Fro'js, the merits of ^Eschylus as a poet were in question. Teleclid.es seems to have been a political partisan, who sup- ported Xicias, and was joined by another comedian, Hermippus, in virulent attacks on Pericles. Hermippus availed himself particularly of the feeling in Athens at the time of the first Peloponnesian invasion to abuse Pericles for not risking an en- gagement with the enemy. Pericles, however, has been treated with more kindness by fortune than Cleon, for the attacks upon Pericles have perished, whereas those of Aristophanes on Cleon remain. Pericles was not the only victim of Hermippus ; Hyperbolus and Hyperbolus' mother were also favourite sub- jects for abuse, which, perhaps, had as little truth in it as Aris- tophanes' slanders with regard to Euripides' mother. In Her- mippus, again, we find the two tendencies of the Old Comedy struggling with each other. !!< was not entirely devoted to political comedy, but, in his Birth of Athene, he set the example of a species of mythological travesty which found frequent imitators among the poets of the Middle Comedy. About Myrtiius. the brother of Hermippus, and about Alcimenes we know nothing. Philonides was tin- friend and senior of Aristo- phanes, whose Banqueters Philonides brought out. possibly because Aristophanes was not of the ago required by law in a comic poet. 2 Philoiiides also brought out the Frof/s on behalf of Aristophanes. "With regard to the writings of Philonides himself we can say little. His Coil/rrnti or '1'nrncoats may have been written about the time when Theramenes earned the epithet of Cothurnus, though it is going beyond our evidence to imagine any causal connection between the two events. In antiquity, Knpoiis. Cratinus. and Aristophanes were re- garded as forming a triad among comedians comparable tc ^Lschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides among tragedians. The 1 'Ocrris -/ aiVoij trapfSwKa Tfxvrjv (Ue-yaArjp t!-oiKO$o/4Jiffa.t, * But see below, chap. vii. THE DRAMA : THE OLD COMEDY. 249 first comedy of Kupolis was produced upon the stage in B.C. 429, and it is said that he was at the time a mere boy of seven- teen. The date and manner of his death, which have been the subject of various absurd and impossible stories, cannot bo decided : all that can be said is that he was not dead in B.C. 412. His relations with Aristophanes were originally of an intimate kind, but eventually such as led to recrimination, and our knowledge with regard to them is derived mainly from the mutual abuse of the two comedians. That lines 1288-1312 of the Knifjhtu of Aristophanes are the work of Kupolis was the universal opinion of antiquity, and seems to be based on unim- peachable tradition. Whether, however, this was a case of literary piracy is another question. Cratinus in his Flush had no hesitation in accusing Aristophanes of literary theft. It is, however, safer to take Kupolis' own statement in the Jl'tpfa-^ from which it would seem that Kupolis collaborated with Aris- tophanes in the production of the Kni was at once artistic anil inventive. The vein of persona! abuse was strong in him: C'eon and Alcibiade-, jioiiticians ]! fligates. and jihilo.-ophers. w.-n partiality, Socrates was the object of a i< a- can scarce. y be discovered in Ari.-topham chief otlence, acc'irdin'.; to Kupolis. wa- hi- po haps in con-equence of. certainly in accordance \\ i; loe'n:an vein that Kup"ii> produced i.o myth"! _::< With t'ne excejition of id- Cit/>ni, which, as f,r wa> not of a di-tiiictivciv political tendencv, all 25O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. were probably concerned with events of the day. In his frag- ments, as in the fragments of a shattered mirror, we may see reflected imperfectly the history of his time, and that is largely the history of the Peloponnesian war. As in Euripides and Sophocles, the Spartans, when introduced in a tragedy, are made to play invidious parts, so in the Helots of Eupolis we may be sure that that institution, the most dangerous to Sparta of all Spartan institutions, was not represented under its most favourable light. In the TcKriarchi, Athens' naval hero, Phor- mio, was introduced upon the stage. At the time of this comedy, Athens was fighting with a light heart, and the hard- ships of war were presented on their comic side, in the ludicrous complaints of the effeminate Dionysus, who found in the Taxi- archi military service as unpleasant as in the Froys he finds rowing. Later in the war, service was more of a duty than a jest, and in the Malingerer we have Eupolis directing his talents to scorn of the young men who had not the stuff of soldiers in them. Perhaps in no respect does Eupolis show more clearly 3iis claims to be considered a comedian of the Old Attic Comedy than in his relations to the politicians of his time. His literary activity begins after the death of Pericles, but not after the clenth of Cleon or Hyperbolus, and hence the difference in his attitude towards these statesmen respectively. Pericles, whom Cratinus, Teleclides, Hermippus, and doubtless all real come- dians, derided unceasingly, had now been elevated on the pedes- tal of the " good old times/' and it is from comedy that Pericles obtains his best known eulogy. Cleon and Hyperbolus, how- ever, were guilty of the unpardonable fault of being yet alive, and this fault is visited with condign punishment in the Mari- cn* and the Golden Aye. "Maricils" is a foreign word, and is used as an insulting epithet for Hyperbolus ; the G<>l.3, from which comes a celebrated tribute 252 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. to Sophocles. 1 From it, and from the title of the comedy, it has been conjectured that in this play, as in the Frogs of Aristophanes, there was a criticism of the dramatic merits of Sophocles and Euripides. The Muses was put on the stage at the same time as the Fro avrip KO.L 6f|t6s, TroXXas Troujcras KO.L xa.Xus Tpa.-,(j}Cia.s' /caXiis 5' trtXf iTTjo 1 ', oroec iVouaVas KaKiiV. 2 J.-S 7/5 1' T'I]V OdXarrai.' airit rf/s 7/}i opdv, til fjLr/Tf'p, tern fj.Tj TrXfoyra fjtf]8afJ.ov, 8 A. ri orj en' 1 ar/j.io'i Ko.1 0//oi'f?s ot ; ra,' /j.eya ; B. f^fffTl y

f a slave, and wrote comedies intended to bo read, not acted ; Strut tis, whose jokes were weak, and who parodied plays of Euripides; Alc;eus, Eunicus, Cantharus. Diocles, one of wiiose fragments shows that he was a writer of some elegance and reflection; Nicocharos, Nicophron. Philyllius, Polyzelus, Sunnyrio, Demetrius, Apollophanes, Cephisodorus, Kpilycus, and Euthycles. As to those writers, who, us was said above. were placed among the writers of the Old Comedy by the Alexandrine critics, we can say nothing more than that, to judge from the names of their plays, they must have inclined much more to the Middle than to the Old Comedy. CHAPTER VII. ARISTOPHANES. ARISTOPHANES, son of Philippus, of the deme of Cydathenaion, was born about B.r. 444. and died about li.r. 380. What littie. we know about his life is mainly derived from the scanty and u.-uaily ambiguous hints to be found in his own plays. The fact that In' could be charged with being an uiieti, and, per- haps, the complaint of Eupolis that the Athenians showed more favour to foreign than to native comedians, show that there was foiii'-thing which at least had the appearance of irregularity in An.-t' 'phuiie.-' ext ru'-tioii. ' For u-, the life of Ari.-tophuties i- his works. These may 1 e divide.! into two groups that which precedes and that widen f. .llow< t'ne Sicilian expedition. In both groups there a:v. comedies primarily political, but those of ti.e earlier group an: di>; in_'!:i>hed by greater freedom of attack and nioi-.- umv- strained personalities than those of the secor.il. In both tie-re are C"inedies dealing with ihilosoi.hy ur literatuie, bui t'ne eurher lines treat those subjects in their relation t < and eii'ect 1 Attempts have Wen made to cnniliiiit' ;iiis\vj;ii Ac'i. '>'?, :unl tn ii-fi-r t'n it An^t.'p'n. ([:<> er 'n:-. t'.itlirr oicninr'l a \\?;i.'ii \,a ill .M^i:,:i : "inn it i-; un- ctThiin wh.-tli.-r ti o ]>;ir;i!i;i^i-i n\ t i . e Ai'hiirni'tnt ri-f.-rs tn Ari.-tii|.ii:iii.-s lun,- scl: cr In C.iii'.--tratus, in win. so n:iii-,e tin? j.ii-c.- w.i> i.n>u,'ht out, uinl cuus-.-- ij-.t ntly little ri-iiiu.co v-:m i.o 1'lacr.i en t'n. coiuhiiiution. 254 HISTOKY OF GREEK LITERATURE. on the life of the nation, while the later ones treat them apart from any such relation. The attitude Aristophanes assumed towards the new tendencies of his time was at first that of un- compromising hostility, subsequently that of qualified opposi- tion, and later still that of his early years. But of this change of attitude Aristophanes himself was hardly conscious, and it does not correspond to the division into two groups which we have laid down. It is, however, only in the Liter group that we find such plays as the Plutus or Aeolosicon, which are of a purely mythological cast, and belong to the Middle rather than to the Old Comedy. Before composing comedies of his own, Aristophanes seems to have done something in the way of comic writing, assisting his friends. 1 When he took to composing independently, he brought out his first three plays not in his own name, but under that of Callistratus, and perhaps Philonides. The reason for this lias been supposed, on the authority of a scholiast, to have been that the law forbade any poet of less than forty years of age to re- ceive a chorus from the Archon. As, however, in all probability, ./Kschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Eupolis produced plays in their own names before attaining that age, and as Aristophanes himself was not even thirty years uLl when he personally brought out the Kniijlits, it seems probable that the law in question owes its existence to confusion with a law, which cer- tainly did exist though disregarded, that no person under that age should be choregus to the chorus of boys. It is reasonable to suppose, however, that the Archon would decline to give a mere boy of eighteen or twenty years of age a chorus. If to this we add that, as Aristophanes himself gives us to understand in the parabasis of the Kin : ilifsj- the training of the chorus and the production of a comedy required much practical experience, which Aristophanes at that age did not possess, we have a sullicient explanation of his course of procedure. The JJn-ta!t>/'.t or Itart^m'ters. B.C. 427, was the first comedy produced by Aristophanes, 3 and it obtained the second prize. Like the i'l>iwl*, this piece dealt with education, and represented the older methods as exclusively productive of morality, and the new tendency as making for the dishonest quibbles of superficial rhetoric. In the following year Callistratus brought 1 Vesi>. 1018 : oi> . ^254 ; \\liL-tiier iu the name of I'liilmiiJus or Cullistratus is un- CL-I tain. THE DRAMA: ARISTOPHANES. 255 out the Babylonians on behalf of Aristophanes. The date we know from the parabasis of the Acharniana, 1 which shows that the Babylonians contained some allusions to the embassy of Gorgias, who had been sent by the Lcontini the previous year to obtain the assistance of Athens against Syracuse. The title of the play seems to have been a word used at Athens in a general sense for foreign slaves, and the chorus consisted accord- ingly of slaves branded on the forehead with the mark of the owl. indicating that they were the property of Athens a view of tilings which could hardly have been fi It as complimentary by the allied states, whom this chorus of branded slaves was intended to represent. As, moreover, this comedy was per- formed in the spring, when large; numbers of the allies we're present in Athens - for the purpose of paying their tribute, tin; audacity of thus representing the oppression and extortion to which these very allies were, according to Aristophanes, sub- jected, amounted to recklessness. The consequence was a pro- secution instituted by Cleon, 3 probably against Callistratus, who would be legally responsible for the play, though every- body would know that Aristophanes was the person really im- plicated. In H.C. 425, the next year, Callistratus produced another comedy for Aristophanes, the Acharniaiist. This, the earliest of the eleven plays which have survived to our times, obtained the first prize. It may be regarded as a type of Aristophanie comedy. Its object is simple : to set before tin; Athenians the desirability of peace. Its machinery is equally simple and direct. Dicscopolis concludes a private peace with the Lace- d.Tinonians, and then there follows a series of scenes in which the charms of peace ;nv presented, not by description, to the minds of the spectators, but sensuously and concretely to the eyes of all beholders. This trick of materiali.-in_ p an idea, of drama! i>ing a Mmile, is at the base of Ari.-tophanic comedy. Aristophanes does not call the allied .-tales "slaves" of Athens; he brings them on the stage dressed an i branded as " Ilaby- lonians." In swarm of pe similitude of walking,'' 4 to describe the pur-uits su-peiided in a hanging ba.-ket. obviously can only be attained at th often of possibility. At the festiva *Ach.3T7- 256 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. rules and conventions were conventionally and as a rule sup- posed not to hold, and the comedian's freedom of treatment was shown by, and allowed in, not only his mode of dealing with real events and persons, but also in his disregard for the limits of time and space. Thus, in the Acharnians, the scene, originally laid in Athens, shifts without warning or apology to the country. The seasons are equally accommodating, and spring succeeds to autumn at command. The moment Dicseopolis concludes his peace with the Peloponnesians, the Boeotians and Megarians, who have evidently been waiting behind the scenes so as to appear without a second's delay, appear as if by magic to trade with him. Xot only are the external and mechanical categories of space and time treated thus cavalierly, 1 but the bonds of in- ternal probability of connection between one scene or character and another are equally despised. Of the twenty characters or more that belong to the play, most appear upon the scene for no other reason than that the author needs them, and, having raised a laugh, depart, passing over the stage with as little con- nection between each other as have the people who pass one in a busy street or the victims who defile by the clown in a harle- quinade. But the incidents in a comedy of Aristophanes, though linked by no internal chain of causation or probability, all subserve the main purpose of the play in the case of the Acharnians that of proving the attractions of peace : and more than this is nut expected from the primitive stage in which the Old Comedy was. Moreover, each of the incidents is comic in its own way. The variety thus gained precludes any danger of monotony, and the absence of motive in the incidents is con- cealed by the rapidity and force with which Aristophanes' tide of humour carries his comedy along. In the next year, B.C. 424, Aristophanes appeared before the public of Athens for the first time in his own name with the Kii'njlitx. In this comedy Aristophanes concentrates himself again on one simple object, that of attacking Cleon. Whether 1 It 7MUst, however, always be remembered that as the Clott'ls and the M'a.ifiti which have come down to us are probably not The f'foiii/s and tin; Wat/n which wt-ro performed on the Athenian stai;e, but amalgamations or "contaminations " of, in each case, two distinct comedies at least, so too possibly the changes of place and time in the Achnrtiiniis are due to a " con- tamination." ]!ut, on the other hand, the changes itt any rate of place in the />".'/>' 'ire quite parallel to those of the Arliafniititx, and are above MIS- I'icion. C.enerallv, too. we may say that these changes of place and time are characteristic of the early sta^e. of drama (H}, and may be readily distinguished from inconsistencies such as, in the Clinnig, making the play turn first upon the stupidity and then on the cleverness of Strepsiades. THE DRAMA : ARISTOPHANES. 257 Cleon had been subjected to similar attentions on the part of Aristophanes in the Balijloitiaus, we cannot say. It is, there- fore, hard to decide whether the prosecution which Cleon then instituted was due to personal motives, or was really prompted by desire for the public good. It is, however, impossible to deny that from the time of that prosecution the matter became one of personal enmity between Aristophanes and Cleon. For a year Aristophanes allowed the matter to rest, possibly not caring to involve Callistratus in any further lawsuits ; when, however, he came before the world in his own name he made such an onslaught, in the Kitis :i is to be taken literally to mean that Cleon thrashed Aristophanes, or caused him to be thrashed, is uncertain. Only one thing is clear, and that i.Sj that Aristophanes learned prudence, and for the rest of his life did not allow his muse or his feelings to carry him into danger again. The knights who are represented by the chorus of Aristo- phanes' comedy, are not to lie confused with the division of citizens made by Solon into Pentacosioinedimni, Kniirhts, Zeu- git;v, and T'netes. In the time of Aristophanes the knights were chosen 4 from each tribe by the two hipparchs ; and as their service was not limited to the dnn'_''TS of war, but brought much distinction in peace, volunteers were always forthcoming. In many festivals, and particularly in the I'anatheiuva, the knights rode in the proces.-ions in full array. At all times the cavalry lias 1 eeii the branch of the service whiVh the wealthy classes have aileetcd, and Athens wa- no exception to the rule. ]'.- tween this class and the lamp-sellers and tanners, who aspired to rule the .-tate, then? were, in at amuse could not be a good comedy, though it sent you away with the most patriotic aspirations or the most virtuous resolves. Further, it may bo questioned whether Aristophanes himself wmild have claimed that his vocation was that of patriot rather than poet. It is true that, in the Fraut Aristophanes would not be the only man whose; practice was better than his theory. The passages - \vhieh have' been quoted to show that he regarded him.-elf as having rendered great services to, and as having shown great courage on behalf of, the state, need only be examined to show th''ir real nature. AVhen, for in>tanee. in the AfJifii'in'itnn, Aristophanes says that the (Jreat Kim.: pio- phe>ied that the Athenians were sure to defeat the Spartans, because they had Ari-tophaises to guide them, Spartans claimed .Egina ,-olely because they thr deprive Athen> of their patriot comedian, it n humour to appreciate the joke, and to see ridicule spared nothing, not even hinnelf. If it wer 26O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. direction imparted to it until the time of Aristophanes, if it were true, as the passages in the Clouds and the Peace seem to imply, that Aristophanes \vas the first comedian to attack public men or, at least, the prominent statesmen of the day, then there would be some reasonable ground for believing that Aristophanes was a comedian because he was a politician. But comedy was political long before Aristophanes wrote comedies, and, from Pericles downwards, the greatest men of Athens were attacked by the comedians of their day. If proof were needed that Aristophanes Avas a politician because he was a comedian, and did not become a comedian because he Avas a politician, it would be afforded by the mere fact that when comedy ceased to be political Aristophanes stiil continued to write comedies. That Aristophanes wrote poetry because he was a poet, and not be- cause he was a patriot, is proved by the lyrical passages, Avhose pure and intrinsic beauty places him by the side of Shakspere. That he Avas urged to comedy by the instinct of the comedian, and not by the aims of the politician, would be shown by the early age at which the instinct manifested itself, if it Avere not sufficiently demonstrated by the irresistible flood of comic pOAver Avhich carries off the loosely and inartistically connected scenes of his comedies. Finally, Avhen in the Kiiii'ilt* Aristophanes talks of his victory over Cleon, his own wurds show that the triumph in which he gloried did not consist in the political annihilation of Cleon, for Cleon flourished more than ever, but in the Comic prize awarded to his play. It is only those Avho do not understand that poetry and humour can have merits of their own, and must be judged by standards of their own, who will think that the fame, of Aris- tophanes is impaired by recognising that oarnest'.i'-ss was not always or primarily the object of Aristophanes' jests. Hut although the que.-tion of Aristophanes' patriotism and his politics has nothing to do with his literary rank, in considering his character as a man they have to be taken into account. In tii'- small city-states of (Ireeec, and owing to the very fact of their smallness, tie- demands of the state up"ii the citizen weie, much more considerable than in the iuiti"n-states of modern day-. To the mind of Aristotle, indeed, it had occurred that there Avert; other duties than those of citizenship, and that it was possible to be a irr a better state of things, saw it in the past. They looked before, not after, and pined for what was not. Plato, Thucydides, l>oeiates, and Aristophanes, were all aristocrats. Euripides, in whom, indeed, were concen- trated all the new tendencies of his time, had no faith in the future, and was as much estranged from the mass of the citizens as the most reactionary of oligarchs. In his general political views then, and especially in his longing for peace, Aristophanes was undoubtedly sincere. In some cases, as in that of Cleon, it is idle to deny that personal feeling had more to do with his views than had anv other emotion, and in no case is it reason- able to imagine- that the particular charges or epithets have necessarily or probably any ground other than the humour attaching to abuse. In his aristocratical sympathies and his op; osition to the war, however, we may, as we have said, recog- nise Aristophanes' sincerity, and. whether .-ueh views were or were not adn.irable in themselves, he is at I'li-t entitled to ail the m.-ri; ih.it is due to a man who tights an up-hill battle, and who holds to the r-triiui'-rlc his life through. Throughout his life, Aristophams was oppo>ed in polities to the majority of the I'lM/'-Ils before whom his. comedies Were presented, and tids r.iis.-s tin- ouestion as to the political influence of Aristophanes' comedies. In the lirst place, it is hard to imagine that a comedian would have vi inured to attack so unsparing! v the views of ti^ m.ijority of his audience, if the attack were to be taken seriouslv. In tills IVSpeet We lllaV Consi if the ndieule loured upon IHonys; the audience in jest, and was not serious argument aLTainst the woivhi 262 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. cule poured upon the politician they believed in. It was excel- lent fooling, but did not prevent the Athenians from bestowing offerings on Dionysus, or office on Cleon. It may, however, Lo said that the ridicule of the gods, though not intended by Aris- tophanes so to operate, yet did act as a solvent on the national religion. This is true, but it does not follow that Aristophanes' ridicule had a similar effect on the democratical party. It is much more probable that in this case, too, the solvent operated in a manner unexpected by Aristophanes, and that it destroyed, not the faith of the democrats in democracy, but the faith of the Athenians in the honour of their public men. In the next place, if we look at history and endeavour to trace the effect of comedy on politics, we see that whatever its effect may have been, it was too minute to be visible at this distance of time. Pericles, as we have already seen, if abuse could have effected it, would have governed Athens but a brief time. The effect of the Balnjlonians on the political fortunes of Cleon is to be inferred from the fact, that it was only after that play that Cleon reached the height of his power. Again, the Athenians hear and crown the Kniyhts, and immediately de- spatch Cleon to Thrace with full powers of command. Of all the lesser leaders of the people, Eucrates, Lysicles, Hyperbulus, &c. . not one, so far as we know, was prevented by the attacks of the comedians from attaining and exercising influence over the people. Aristophanes had nearly twenty-seven years in which to persuade the people to make peace, but his efforts "were not crowned with success. To these considerations we may add what we have said above, lhat even in the parabascs Aristophanes does not take himself too seriously. lie puts forward his claims to have done sober service to the state with such comic exaggeration, that it would be quite open to his hearers to believe either that he did or did not mean his words seriously ; and, as the majority of his audi- ence would not have relished his words if they thought them serious, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the majority enjoyed them as a joke merely. Lastly, to dismiss the question of the political influence of comedy, it must be acknowledged that for a poet to select comedy as the means for doing service to the state, would be a somewhat stupid choice. The very nature of comedy is its negative character. As a weapon of de- struction it may be elleetive, but as a tool for construction it must be a failure. To understand this, we have only to ask how many practical suggestions the political comedies of Aris- tnnhanes contain for brin< r incr about the state of things which THE DRAMA : ARISTOPHANES. 263 the autlior desired to see, and the very question is ridiculous. In such comedies as those of Aristophanes, where every situa- tion, character, idea, and allusion, depends for success on its absurdity, we can expect, as we get, no more practical sugges- tion for concluding the Peloponnesian War than that an ambas- sador should hire a beetle to convey him aloft to interview Zeus on the subject. In respect of only one thing does it seem necessary to modify this view of the essentially negative char- acter of comedy. The lyrical passages of comedy did give Aristophanes an opportunity of dwelling with true poetic power on the, charms of peace, and of this opportunity he does not fail to avail himself. 1 But in all other respects, comedy is politi- cally sterile. The comedies of Aristophanes, however, are by no means all or exclusively political, as the duii'l*, produced the year (B.C. 4^5) after the Kn ///// /.>, may serve to remind us. Kvery person or thing which for any reason occupied the public atten- tion, was thereby potentially, and as a rule actually, a subject for the ( )ld Comedy of Athens. The object of the Clr t by his seeing the c >f things, and by the fact that his fund faction as an artist consist in giving a:>propi that perception. Philosophers j n general, and a pinlo.-oph'T ill 1 Pa.r. -'.'. ;8r. 264 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. particular possessing the personal appearance of Socrates, offer a fair field for the exercise of the comic faculty, and this itself will account for Aristophanes writing the Clouds ; we are not compelled to assume that the comedy could only be prompted by the fervour of moral passion or philosophical conviction. Certainly Plato, and therefore, probably, Socrates, did not regard the Clouds in any such serious light. But although a consuming zeal for his country's good was not the sole or a dominant motive in Aristophanes' mind, it is quite probable that his sober opinions on philosophy coincided with his instincts as a comedian, nor is it any objection to this view that he knew nothing about philosophy. A man may be earnest in his opposition to what he does not understand. On the other hand, the fact that Aristophanes ridicules philosophy would not by itself prove that he did not believe in philosophy. Such a line of argument would prove that he did not believe in the religion of his fathers, in himself, or in anything. There can, however, be no doubt that in respect of philosophy, as of every- thing else, Aristophanes was opposed to the changes which he saw going on around him. But although the general tendency of his comedies is unmistakably this, it must not be ignored that, living in a time of transition, Aristophanes, though oppos- ing the new movements, is yet carried along by them to an extent of which he was perhaps himself unconscious. Based originally on family ties, the small states of antiquity exacted from their members a subordination to the state as much in excess of our notions of what is right, as the Konian jiatria potwtax exceeded what we regard as the limits of paternal power. But the intellectual growth of the sons of Athens was too great to be restrained by any such bonds, and Aristophanes lived at a time when these bonds were cracking in all directions. With this intellectual growth Aristophanes had no sympathy indeed, it may be doubted whether lie even understood that it was growth. He only saw that the, bonds which had held Athens together were breaking, and his intellectual rank was not high enough to enable him to dimly look into the. future, and see that these bonds must break before Athens could take her proud and rightful place in the march of mind and the history of the world. The Sophists, in declaiing that man was the, measure of all things, were I Hit giving expression to the struggle of individual genius with the bondage, of tradition ; and Aristophanes himself, though in the Clouds he declares for bondage, yet had outgrown the limits which he desired to impose on growth. Though he THE DRAMA : ARISTOPHANES. 265 fights against the future, lie is none the more in harmony with the present. '1 he discord which exists 1 et .ween him and the citizen community has the same root as that between I'lato or F.uripides and the Athenians. They have outgrown the old state of things. Hence the contradiction and inconsistencies in Aristophanes. Socrates in the Clowlx is not more a satire on the movement Aristophanes is attacking, than is Strepsiades on the .-state of things which he is defending. The new-fangled gods of the (7/oW.s- are not more ridiculous, or more ridiculed, than the gods of his fathers. While abusing his political oppo- nents for playing upon the greedy and mercenaiy instincts of the people, Aristophanes relies for victory on outbidding the demagogues in appeals to the very same feelings. At the same time, he betrays his own estimate of his fellow-citizens by basing his arguments for peace with the exception of some beau- tiful lyrics in the J'a.r on the pleasures of eating and drinking and on sensual enjoyments of a lower order. In short, discon- tented without knowing that the cause of his discontent lay in himself, he turns longing looks to an imaginary past the crea- tion of his own romantic and poetic spirit and iinds in his di- satisfaction with the present a suiiicient proof of the superi- ority of the " good old times." <)ur text of the ('hunts is in such an unsatisfactory condition that to endeavour to draw any conclusions from it is dillicult, and perhaps rash. We know that originally the play was pro- duced in H.C. 423. and was unsuccessful. Whether it was again put on tin.' ."tage. with the alterations necessitated by such a re- is doubtful. In any case, the Cl<>u< en taking or are about t" take the tivp-iad"s and Socrates, to change their ma-k- and dresses. This difficulty might indeed be explained by as.-umin^ that the p'ay, as we have it. was i;ot intended to be acted, but to be read. This hypothesis, however, would i;ot exiiain the numerous other inconsistencies and pieces of bad workman-hit'. For example, it would not explain how it is that Strep.-iades is at tirst represented so incapable of taking <>n s>> h;-tie culture that lie L, r ives ii up in ile pair, a: d then subsequently is n: :de to appear a.- having been .-o completely successful in this so;-t credit >rs. Nor would 266 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. this hypothesis give any satisfactory explanation of the parabasis (518-562) being thrust into the middle of a scene, instead of coining, as it ought to do, where there is some sort of pause in the action. These are only two of the many crudities which demonstrate that the Clouds cannot have been given to the world by Aris- tophanes as we have the play. Indeed, probably even in Alex- andrine times, the grammarians stated that Aristophanes com- menced not merely a revision x but re- writing the play, 2 and that we have the play only half re-written. Incomplete the re-writ- ing 3 certainly is, if it is by Aristophanes: but it is also so bungling that even sober criticism may be allowed to wonder whether we have before us Aristophanes' attempt to re-write the Clouds, and not really two comedies of Aristophanes jumbled into one by some would-be improver. If now we recognise that it is unsafe to judge of Aristophanes' attack upon Socrates solely by the Clouds as we have the piece, we must look elsewhere for materials to correct false con- clusions drawn on this subject from the Clouds. Fortunately we find such material in Plato's Apology. Plato distinguishes between the misrepresentations of Aristophanes and the charges formally laid against Socrates by his accusers Anytus, Mele- tus, and Lycon. Aristophanes, Plato says (19 B.C.), represented Socrates as engaged in physical investigations, and walking in the air and other such absurdities, whereas Anytus accused him of corrupting the youth (243). From this it is. on the whole, fair to infer that Aristophanes had not accused Socrates of per- verting the youth, and hence that the " education " of Phidip- pides, which makes a large part of our Clouds, was no part of the Clouds as acted. It seems also to follow that the scene of the Just and the Unjust Reason did not occur in the Clouds of B.C. 423. If these deductions are made from the Clouds as we have it, most of the sting is taken out of the attack on Socrates. The picture of the philosopher still remains something more than a caricature, for there arc points in it which are distinctly Ullhistorical. Socrates did not. though the, Sophists did, accept money, and Socrates was too practical a man to be guilty of the extravagant asceticism put down to his teaching in the Clouds. P>ut these details prevented neither Plato nor Socrates from enjoying the picture ; and, apart from this, what remains of the Cloud* was as much a satire on the people who imagined that the Sophist* could impart the secret of fraud with impunity, as it was on the new philosophy itself. THE DRAMA: ARISTOPHANES. 267 Viewing the Clouds as a work of ait, we arc obviously hound to bear in mind that -we have not hefore us what Aristophanes would have wished u.s to have, and this will give us a hetter appreciation of what is really admirahle in the work. The manner in which the subject of the Clowls was worked out in the original version can he fur us only a matter of speculation, not of admiration. But we are still free to enjoy the poetry of Aristophanes' conception of making the clouds of the sky to he his chorus ; although some choral odes are lost, those that remain are of exquisite beauty; and above all, in the speech of the Just Reason, descriptive of the older education, we have work that for its intrinsic literary merit would of itself establish Aristo- phanes among the great poets of the world. In the following year, u.c. 422, the Wasps gained the second prize. This comedy is badly constructed. It is mainly based on the absurdities of the Athenian jury system as linally shaped by JVrides. Any Athenian citizen of the legal age who chose to attend the law courts, nnd act as dikast or juror, received a trilling sum in payment of his services. This payment was in- tended to compensate the poorer citizens who otherwise could not have all'onled the time, and would have been practically excluded from discharging this part of the duties of an Athe- nian citizen. But Aristophanes represents the mass of the citizens as attending the law courts, not from a feeling of duty, but for the purpose of getting a clay's wages without doing a day's work. A further result was that the habit of attending the law courts became a positive mania, according to Aristo- phanes, with the citizens, who, in their capacity of jurors with a tendency to convict, are represented in the chorus as wasps. 1'hilocleon. suffering from the mania, is confined to the house by his son Bdelycleon, and calls to his assi.-tance the chorus, who. however, together with l'hildcon himself, are eventually r.'iivii'.c.'d by IMdydeon's arguments. I'hilodeon is induced to forego attendance at court by being allowed to hold mock trials at home, and here the character of the play suddenly changes, and a set of totally diti'erent motives, ha\ing no neces- sary or probable connection \vi;h the hitherto dominant idea of <;_; in to work 1'idelycleon, it seems, as indeed his >rts, belongs to the young and fashionable oligarchs, the greatest enmity tii the lnw-caste leaders of tho party. Bdelvdeon. having rescued hi- father from poiit ical defilement, now pivct I'a.-liion. But 1'iiilocleon, on 268 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. gets drunk, and the piece concludes with the comic situations which result from this unsuccessful attempt at culture. Judged by no higher standard than that of Aristophanes him- self, the construction of the Waxps is faulty In the other plays of Aristophanes there is only one central idea, and that is of such simplicity and so dominates everything else, that un- mistakahle and satisfactory unity is thereby given to the piece. In the Watps we have nothing of the kind. The absurdities of the dikasteria are at first the subject of the comedy, and the fact that the chorus is related to this idea is enough to establish its claim to being the central idea of the play. But the latter part of the piece throws all the emphasis on the social and poli- tical antithesis implied in the contrasted names, Philocleon and Bdelycleon. In other comedies of Aristophanes the various scenes have, indeed, no connection with each other, but they gain all necessary unity by being all related to and exponent of the central idea. But in the Wasps the latter part of the play, if it is not co-ordinate in importance with what has hitherto been considered the leading idea, cannot as a subordinate con- ception be regarded as having any connection either with the other scenes or with the leading idea. [See Xote A.] Apart from the faults of construction the Wasps is amusing. Except when Philocleon and his son are arguing for and against the dikast system and then the piece conies to rather a stand- still the comedy is full of life, movement, and business. The trial of the two dogs has won a place for itself in the history of literature which is not much threatened by the imitation in the Plaidcnrs of Racine. The concluding scenes are in the bois- terous humour of the Old Comedy, and are highly amusing. Turning from the literary and comic side of the piece, we find that the W'iKpt is of much importance for the history of Aristo- phanes. At the beginning of his public life he threw in his lot with tin' reactionary party in politics, and lent that party all the fire of his youthful genius. Conspicuously in B.C. 424 in the Knt'ilit* did he identify himself with the Cleon haters, the Bdelycleon.*. But in B.C. 423 he temporarily left politics, and applied his attention to the other forces which were growing, and which by their expansion threatened to break up the old slate of thing-. In is.c. 422 he returns to politics, in the Wii; ical or per.-' dial, it would be forth con: in in the fact that thi 270 HISTORY OF GKEEK LITERATURE. produced at a time when the psephism. of Syracosius l was in operation. The motive and the keynote of the whole comedy are given in the first two lines of the epirrhema of the parabasis. 2 The poet will leave Athens, its war, its party strife, its plague of dikasts, its false philosophy, and seek a home in the realms of poetry. His soul takes to itself the wings of a dove, and seeks rest. And it is just because he is no longer tied down by the necessity of writing for a purpose however good as a bird is tied by a string, that Aristophanes in the Uirds soars to a height of poetry, to which he nowhere else attains. Here he rises on the wings of song abovje earth-born care. Mounting with the lark, he ascends to pure and peaceful upper air, and takes pattern by the birds who know no politics. " Come hither," he says to his fellow-citizens, " come hither, come hither, here shall ye see no enemy but winter and rough weather.' 1 The whole comedy, delightfully simple and straightforward in its construction, flows right on as sweetly and joyously as a bird's song, and with precisely the same moral and purpose. It is beautiful, as a poet's midsummer night's dream should be, and nothing more. There is no bitterness in the play, and if the mockery, from which in Aristophanes nothing escapes, occa- sionally breaks out, it disappears again as suddenly as it came, and by its gloom only serves to enhance the joyous beauty of the whole. Unique in ancient comedy, there is only one other work in all the literature of antiquity that the litrrfs can be compared with for pure play of fancy, and for sympathy with the beauty of nature ; and that other work is the B<.u'chii'fls with our own Midsmnnu r Ni/jhfs JJ/'f-am. In both, there is the same lightness of treatment, the same absence of ivferenco to the realities of life, and. above all, in both the pmvly poetic treatment of a purely poetic con- ception. The birds themselves are drawn with a delightful tenderness and love, which could only come of intimate and affec- tionate acquaintance with their nature and their way*. Above all, though for the good of us mortals they talk in human lan- guage, the birds, remain birds. They are quite different from those of Rabelais in his description of /'/>/*' */n(r/tf>, which were, indeed birds, "///a/* l>i>'/i res^uibl'ijits an./' Jt>r/.-, was a literary comedy, directed mainly again.-t F.uripides. The title means a preliminary dramatic performance of some kind. The A>/t)>?/i- (//'/., pr-dueed in the same year as the ////'/>. was, like the on political character, and probably turned upon a d to be, but not really eflect^d by. the miiaciilous deceased hero, Amphiaraus. Possi period the Lf much discussion. I'.oth the opinions of Euripides terary form in which he fxpiv.-s'-d them are unspar- iiinced by Aristophanes. In ids opinions Kuripides ed with the intellectual and forward m 'Veui'-nts of Aristophanus neither svmpathi-ed with nor under- entirely iv\v pl:>v, \\ i,i<-'n, li 274 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. stood these intellectual movements. In order to take her place in the intellectual history of the world, Athens had to lose her importance in the political history of Greece. But Aristophanes did not understand this. He only saw that if the new ten- dencies were victorious. Athens, glorious in the past, could no longer be what she once had been. From his own point of view Aristophanes may have been right, but for us his point of view is wrong. The Persian wars once over, the destinies of mankind depended on the philosophers, not on the hoplites, of Athens. Aristophanes, however, thought more of the hoplites than of the philosophers. Before proceeding to consider Aristophanes' criticisms on Euri- pides as a poet, we ought to say one word on the immorality with which the comedian charges the tragedian. On this point we have in the plays of Euripides a good deal of evidence before us, and there is consequently little excuse for a hesitating deci- sion on the question. It is, however, necessary to remember that in polemic?, as in other things, the standard of decency is a shifting one. Terms which one age would hesitate to apply to the most abandoned villain are in another century of such frequent use as practically to be meaningless. Bearing this in mind, and remembering the extremely excitable nature of the Greeks, we shall not think it extravagant to say that the charges of immorality which Aristophanes brings against Euripides and his plays are simply Aristophanes' way of saying that on various points lie totally disagrees with Euripides. In Ins literary criti- cism Aristophanes is more fortunate. Living at a time when the old was giving place to the new. Euripides shows in his work all the inconsistencies of methods and uncertainty of object which necessarily characterise a transition period. This gives Aristophanes a great field for criticism, which, though often one-sided, is often just. Aristophanes, not only as a poet, and a great poet, possessed taste, but he also enjoyed the comic power necessary for the most telling expression of his critici-m, and a better poet than Euripides would have escaped scarcely better from such a slashing attack. Indeed, oven /Eschylus, the poet of Aristophanes' own choice, dues nut by any means come off scot-free After a long interval comes, in B.C. 393, th" next of the sur- viving comedies, the Kci'lexinzni'CE, This, on the whole, is infe- rior to the rest of Aristophanes' plays. Like many of them, the J-'.cclf'S/u'i/i-ot reallv consists of a series of scones illustrating a simple theme. Inasmuch, however, as in this case the theme (that community of property and women is practically imnos- TIIHDKAMA: ARISTOPHANES. 275 Bible) is of an abstract nature, the Erdcsiar.usa; lacks concentra- tion and admits of no plot, even in the sense in which we, may speak of Aristophanes' plots. The women of Athens disguise themselves as men, attend the ecclesia, and by a snatch-vote decree that the state shall henceforth be governed by women. The women then institute communism, and a series of scenes, most of them amusing, follows. Eventually the play stops, not because any catastrophe has supervened, or because any appro- priate period in the development of the subject has been reached, but solely because the play must stop somewhere j and this is the more unsatisfactory because, although the scenes chosen to illustrate the practical consequences of communism show clearly that the object of the piece is to demonstrate the, impossibility of communism, yet when the play ends, communism is appa- rently left ill possession of the field. The 7vvAwVc>/xoe bears no reference to contemporary political (.-vents or personages, hut simply enjoys itself at the expense of a philosophical theory, which is stated also in the Republic of Plato. In conclusion, the ehoric odes are of no great merit; there is no parodos, pro- perly speaking, and there are no parabases or stasima. In the Phil it*, as in the Ecdnttiazuxie, there is neither plot nor that heightening of the interest towards the end of the, play which, in the Ai'/xt)'>ti<()i*\ for instance, takes the place of catas- trophe and denoument in a plot properly so called. Further, the PI uf it.-*, like the /vv/cx/V/.-.v/xT, consists of a series of scenes illustrating an abstract theme. The theme of the Pltttu* is the desirability of the good being rich. This is the purpose for which, ar.ii th" ph-a on which, (..'lin-mes, who has been fortunate <-tio;:^h to catch the blind god of riches, persuades him to all i\v himself to be cured ,,f his blindness. The god must have his siu'iit to see who are e;ood, lint aithough this is the avowed p:;r;>ose of the play, there is much in the piece that is not merely inciinsistent, b;:t irreconcilable with this Piutus has recovered his sight, \\'e ii;;d at one ninment seem to sh>>\v that th made rich and th" bad poor, and at am stood on the assumption that everybo been made rich. In fac;, Pnverty, aftei banished from tin- earth, and the _"!- a need, because, a< ail men have bee- mil motive fur making ollerim,'- 1 t<> tie- g. unity of purp"^ 1 in tin- /'////'/.-. and it' came 1 1 1 ' iin t he hands i if An-i< 'tbai lost his certainty of t>;ich, anil be:;;_' nn r 276 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. his own purpose, wavered between two inconsistent ends with- out realising their incompatibility. 1 The Pining is sometimes said to belong to the Middle Comedy, and sometimes to be a transition stage between the Old and the Middle. If we look merely at the scenes which illustrate the desirability of the good being made rich, we see that they have the moral tendency which is a feature of the Middle Comedy. If, however, we look at the scenes which illustrate the conse- quences of all men being rich, we are reminded of the Ecclc- siaziisa 1 , which illustrates the consequences of communism, and of the Clouds, which illustrates the consequences of philosophy; or again, looking at the distress of the gods when their sup- plies are stopped, we are reminded of the Birds. There is, then, in the Plutns a strain of the Old as well as of the Middle Comedy. 2 To this period of Aristophanes' literary career, finally, must be referred those lost plays whose titles show that they dealt with mythological subjects, and therefore do not belong to the earlier time when comedy was political in its nature. Such plays are the Daughters of Dani'ius, the PJienlcian Women, the Centaur p in which Aristophanes, like Epicharmus, made fun of the tremendous appetite of Heracles; the Diedahis. 4 in which Le^la appeared with her egg like a hen. There probably also belong to this period the I/orcv, the Telmessenses, anil the Polyi- (hts, which were directed against the new religions now creeping into Athens. Polyidus, according to the story, recalled Glaucus 1 It characterises the tnste of the r.yzttntine scholars that the PI ut us was their favourite comedy. - Indeed, so distinct are the two strains, that it has been maintained that in the Plutns, as in the Clunilx and the Wit*/**, we have an amalgamation or "contamination" of two distinct comedies, and that, at least in the case of the Plutns, one of these two comedies belongs to the Middle, and not to Aristophanic comedy. Traditionally, however, our . Pint UK is regarded as hav- ing been pioduced in B.C. 388, and as beinj; a revi.sion {OiOfit'tixris rather than Staff Ktvj]) of an earlier form of t\ieP/iitiis produced in B.C. 408. Thus Phttits I. possessed the choral odes which are wanting in I 'hit us II. F>ut the tradi- ional view lias diiliculties of its own ; for instance, a scholiast commenting in one passage s.iys this passage is taken from J'/utus II., as though lie had lot -ot P/Htii* Il.'before him. ; This comedy had an alternative title, lirainatn, which was also appa- vntiy an alternative title for another cmnedy, the Jii,>liu.i. Hut it is nncer- ain whet he i- there was any diliVr -e between t 'he ( '> nlur and the Xi'-l-.nx, xcept that one was a later \eision of the other. It is not even certain tiiat tlie A'iofnis was by Aristophanes ; and unless Nh'biis w;.s :. male and comic. Isioho, tin; subject of tiie play cannot lie guessed. 4 Tlif conn dian I 'la to al.-o wrote a comedy under this title, and there eem tn liave b"eu recriininatioTis between the two poets on the subject of pla^i- ai i-m. The >ame charge was brought by Aristophanes against Eu])olis( C/o in in, 55s), and against some unknown i net (1'r. loof tiie Aitiiifi/ritx), and by I'lato a.an^t some poet, possibly Aristophanes (l'"rag. of the Plldurio). THE DRAMA I ARISTOPHANES. 2/7 to life ; Telmessns, we learn from Cicero, 1 was famous for its augury ; and in the, fragments of the Hvr- men. giMW more critical in culi- nary matters as they grow old'T, probably this tendency was the object of Aristophanes' satin.'. JJoth the (.'ncdlii-^ and the ../,'"/".-vVott, according to the author of the Greek life of A list o- ]ih i::es, belonged in character to the comply of Menander an I J'hileinoii. They had no chorus or parabasis, and they had plots. APPENDICES TO C11A1TER VIL A. ---' TIM: \VASP.S.'' Tnr ii i s Ivtw.'''!! tin 1 two lon^inc: to a liistinctly lii^'bor d'i-.- j' i: :s of th'' \\''i<, ,- 1, iv>' Lrivi'ii ri-i' of sni-i.'ty. Air;iin. I'liil'i-'icon , i -, In tif LMiiji'i'tiiri 1 ;K.: lii-ro t"'i. MS into ail sorts of (iitti"ultii's, ;unl tin in th" IMS.' (' !:; ' i'li/ii.-i, \\-.' ii.-ivi' ]il:iv li-:i\'rs iiini in tii.'in. Fnrtlii-v. 11:1 :niiMl_::i!ii i:i":i o! t\v>> ili>tiin't tin 1 ciinnis is , i ii;i'ni;itcly ivi'irsi'iiti'il rulil'-iii.--. 'I'l.l^ \\-\\ i-; 'lull-Hi' (ill! us li:!vi:;_r til" I'llerirv al. i viu'"U:' l>v ;L r.M-.-p t'xainiiritiiiti et' t::'' cf ymin_ f \\M>]IS an i us ciii'iH-'ni. il cein -,iy. I'iiiliM-l'-'iii i- at \\r>\ iv- by ulii M:>-. ^'untrasr io"o-ii't) ]'! -.:::'! :is i ai.iiL'ili,' 1" t'ii'- I'hi-s \\i:i: it>7' ION\ IOMI i it i \vi:'a ni' |i'i'ir iliki.-t-i. in \\iii.ni tin 1 [My iii.ii- 1 1 j i ; so tn'i ia 4:1 4=;" li:- 1 w.i> o; iiuj'urtMiii'' . M]M 1 i. n M.- !.'- rl:"ru> utirr'.y aa>i ii; ' 'injiivlii'ii- /' h r. i. 41 : Ti-liin:ii^ in C'.iri.i e-t, qua in ur'ne i-xi'i-il;! h.iru.-pioum d i- 'ii'lina. - Tin- wuivhiii of S.i'n.i/iii-i. tt:i -ki 1 i '\ \\ > 'i-i: i ii-'s. ini'i liv<.nii' quite fiiMiiniiaiil-.' in tiir tiiiif uf Tn'-uniira-: n~. fur tin' lutc-lciirii'T (viii. ) '' wiien initial. [ into th.' liti's of Sa'h,i/.u^, will bo u.i^L-r 10 auijuit iiiin-elf best in the cyi.'.- uf the iTicst " (Ji-'oi/H trin^. i 278 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. sibly belies the activity which it displays immediately before and im- mediately after). This lends colour to the conjecture that the tirst half of the Wasps is mainly taken from the original comedy of that name ; whereas parts of the first half and most of the second half are taken from some other comedy possibly the Cicras or Old A'je, in which, as in the Was^s (1333 f. and 1351 ('.), an old man is made young again. Other passages which are probably inter- polated are the very inartistic pro- logue scene, 8-135 '> the scenes with the supernumerary chorus of boys, 248-272 and 290-317, who are not wanted to carry the wasps' lanterns, for the wasps carry them themselves, 218 and 246 ; the financial scene, 686697, in which the cost to the state of the dikast system, 150 talents, is absurdly high, and has probably been transferred from some context in which the sum repre- sents the expenditure not on the dikasts, but on the ecclesia, the Boule, theorica, kc. B. THE PARABASIS. The divisions into which a comedy falls were the same as those of tra- gedy, with one exception. In a comedy, as in a tragedy, the ode which the chorus sang when it first entered was called the Parodos ; those which it sang when stand- ing in its usual place between the altar and the stage were called Stasima ; the parts between two stasima were called Episodes ; and that before the first stasimon was the Prologue ; and that following the last stasimon the Exoilos. lint the Parabasis was peculiar to com- edy. The point at which the Para- basis occurred was not fixed by any definite considerations, but was inserted by the poet wherever ho thought the ad inn of the comedy rendered it most convenient. What characterises the Parabasis is that it bears no relation, as do the stasima, to the, action <;f the play, but ex- pounds the author's views, as the views of the author, on any mutter of interest on whieh he thinks lit to directly addrc-s the audieiiee. It is thus not only characteristic of coined}', but is p'robably the oldest clement of comedy. It seems to lie a survival from the time before, comedy, when, nt the conclusion of the choral ode to ]")ioiiy.-us, the lender of the chorus, who was also tip- poet, calm' lotward and made his jests and comments on the topics and persons of the time. Possibly the name Parabasis is a survival from this stage in the origin of comedy, and refers to the " coming forward " of the poet to deliver his views ; but the name is generally referred to the "march by" of the chorus, when it left its post between the altar and the stage and marched round the orchestra by the specta- tors. A complete Parabasis (in the widest sense of the word) consisted of seven parts. First came the Kommation, a few lines delivered by the Coryphseus dismissing the actors i who at this point left the stage), and notifying the audience that the Parabasis was about to be- gin. Next came the Parabasis pro- per (in the strict sense of the word), delivered by the Coryplueus, who, on behalf of the poet, stated the poet's defence of himself or his plays, or criticised his rivals, or otherwise glorified or justified him- self. The Parabasis is generally in anapiests or trochaics. and is con- cluded by the Pnigos or Makivn, ver.-es still spoken by the L'ory- pha-us on the same subject, as the 1'aralia^is, and gaining their name because they had to be rattled out in one breath, and thus left tho Coryplueus hrcat bless and the audi- ence laughing. These three parts, tin: Kommation. the 1'arabasis. and the Pnigos. convtitutt.-d the first half of the Parabasis; and lu-re it should be- noticed that the Komma- THE DRAMA I MIDDLE COMEDY. 2/9 tion and the Pnigos were sometimes dispensed with. The second half of the Parabasis coinmciKvd with tlie Strophe, which was Minij by the chorus, and was generally an ode- to sonic god. This was followed by the Kpirrhema, delivered by a single cliorentrs, probably the Coryphrcus, and ridiculing some public event or person. Then, continuing the, same subject, came the Antistrophe, sung by tin 1 chorus, and correspond- ing in metre and music to the strophe. Finally came the Antc- pirrhema, delivered by a single choreutes and corresponding, as the name implies, to the epir- rliema: this concluded the 1'arabasis. "Whether the strophe and anti- strophe were sung each by the whole chorus or by the two hemi- choria respectively is uncertain. If by the whole chorus, then probably the epirrhema and tho antepir- rhema were delivered by the C'ory- pha-us ; if by tho hemichoria, then probably the leaders of the hemi- choria delivered tho epirrhema and antepirrhema. Sometimes there are two I'ara bases in one play. Tliis seems to be a survival from the time when the chorus was the domi- nant element in the worship of Dionysus, and the actors were only relicts to the chorus. '\ he 1'arabasis of the Acharnitins is divided as follows : First Parabasis : Kommation, 626-627. Parabasis, 628-658. 1'ui- gos, 659-664. Strophe, 665-675. Epirrhema, 676-691. Antistrophe, 692-701. Antepirrhema, 702-718. Second Parabasis : Kommation, 1143-1149. Strophe, 1150-1161. Antistrophe, 1162-1173. Those of the Kn'ujhts as follows : First Parabasis : Kommation, 4'jS ^.'6. Parabasis, 507-546. 1'ni- s . 547-55- Stn.phe, 551-564. Epirrhema, 565-580. Antistrophe, 581-594. Antepirrhema, 595-610. Second Parabasis : Strophe, 126^-1273. Epirrhema, 1274-1289. Antistrophe, 1290-1299. Antepir- rhema, 1300-1315. CHAPTER VIII. MIDIH.E COMKUY. Tx order- to understand how the Middle C'liiedy differ?, on (he one haiul. fi'iiiu O'.il (.'niii-'dy, ami, <>n tin. 1 cili.r, lV"in the X<-w, it is iu'fcs-h ;liev iiccnr. I; is triir that tin- ci'inedy nf Arisl"|'haiic-s doe? net rdl'-ct lh' pliilosut'iiy i if Socrates or the policy nf I'ienn with histnrii-al aci-tiracy, lnit it dues wliat is as valuable i; n-fliu-t- tin-ni as Aristopliaiie.s saw them: and th"ir_'h tii'> Mi-i-il'- and NI-W Cnniedy are inirrnrs of their time. l:n-y at 1 -- >]ialt--r'd mirr'T-. f"f \ve pMssr-'rJ no rninplcti' play 1 H-'H in_ ; ;: _: \ lin-sr stages ..f An ie C'l iiia-i'iv, lint only fra^iin'iits. Tie 1 thn-i 1 sta^'-'S of ccim-dy, tli'-n, are alike, nia.-much as itu-y ali tellect the Athens of tiiu-ir time: tin- later forms developed '">nt nf the oarli-'-r, and they 2 So HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. differ because Athens differed at these three periods. This is not the sole cause of difference, but it is the one which we will first consider. Koughly speaking, the Old Comedy ends at the battle of ^Egos- potami, and the Middle Comedy at the battle of Chseronea,. From the end of the Peloponnesian War to the battle of Chae- ronea. Athens was still free, although she was no longer the first among the cities of Greece. After " that dishonest vic- tory, at Chseronea, fatal to liberty," she, with the rest of Greece, was no longer free. The period, then, between ^Egospotami and Chseronea is politically and socially much more akin to the time preceding than to the time following it. The period between JEgospotami and Chseronea is the last period of the creative power of Attic literature ; after Chseronea begins the imitative age. The Middle Comedy, then, bears more resem- blance to the Old than to the Xew. The comedy of Aristo- phanes drew its material from everything which had an interest for the citizens of Athens, politics, philosophy, religion, science, literature, art. and scandal. The Xew Comedy drew its material from that which most interested every Athenian of the time, his private life : it was a comedy of manners, and its subject was practically love only. Between those two well-defined stages came the Middle Comedy, which, like the period it re- fleets, was a stage of transition. Like the New Comedy, it had its love-plays, but its subjects were mostly the same as those of the Old Comedy. Plato and the Academy took the place of Socrates ; Euripides was still attacked, although by that time there were to be found also comedians to defend him ; mytho- logy was still a fertile source of parody and ridicule ; but from politics tin; Middle Comedy drew but scantily or not at all. For this difference between the Old and the Middle Comedy, the reason always given is that after the Peloponnesian war Athens was politically played out. Aristophanes, it is said, wr^te political comedies because politics interested his audi- ence; the writers of the Middle Comedy, like those of the New, did not write political comedies, fur the reason that their hearers did not take an interest in politics, lint this would not seem to be the case: never was the Assembly better at- tended, and never had the oratory of its speakers attained to the level which it reached in the period that culminates in Demosthenes. Some other reason must be sought why politics were not reflected in the Middle Comedy, and the same reason must explain why the litigious tendencies of the Athenians, ttronger at this time than when Aristophanes wrote the Wasps, THE DRAMA : MIDDLE COMEDY. 28 I furnished no more matter for the Middle Comedy than did poli- tics. The explanation is that the Assembly and the Law Courts were not less, but more interesting than ever, and this was the result of the growth of oratory. The first of the Ten Attic Orators was Antiphon, whose name is associated with the esta- blishment of the Thirty Tyrants towards the end of the Pelo- ponnesiaii war; and we may well say that the period of the Middle Comedy is the time of the Orators. For the develop- ment of oratory it is nece.-sary that the audience should be critical. ladly educated hearers demand speeches not beyond their own powers of comprehension and appreciation. Tiie growth, therefore, of oratory in the period between the Pelo- ponnesian war and the battle of Chteronea would of itself prove that politics deeply engaged the attention of the Athenian^ of that time. ]>ut in order to understand fully how much they engaged tiie attention of the Athenians, it is neces.-ary to re- meiuber that the Athenians were not a nation of readers : they took in their literature through their ears, and not through their eyes. Further, the largest audience which a writer could get was the A-sembly or the Law Courts. Again, at this time, with the exception of Plato, the literary genius of Athens was all directed to oratory. From these considerations it follows that the Athenians, who all the year got their iiteiary food from the Law Courts and the Assembly, reipuiied a change of diet at the festivals of Dionysus j and the writers of comedy again, doubtle.-.-, felt not only that tiiis change was demanded from them, if they wished to be successful, but also that they were unable to rival tiie sj cakers in the Assembly and the Courts on their o\vn ground. They had before them the warn- ing of tragedy. Writers of tragedy had indeed entered on the. contest; Kuripides had imported into trag-dy much that was only appropriate in law.-uits, hut the measure of his ill succe.-s mav.-howus how little- likely it i.- that hi> .-uece.-sors. in tragedy, lacking his u'enir.s, were successful wheie he failed. The main I'ea-on then that, in not reflecting politics, the Middle Coim dy liili'efi-d from the Oul was that politics engaged tiie attention of the Athenians more than ever, but engaged them only in tne A-seinlih. and when treated oratoricaliy. lUit the iVloooniiesian war had biuken the spirit of the Athenians thus far; they would talk in i'ne A.--embly but not. act minefield; and this fact is of importance as explaining why. although tiie Middle Comedy ceased to be i optical, it yet did not become the coined v of private life, as aid the New. In the time of the Old Comedy, the public duties of a citizen uccu 282 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. pied most of his life, for he had not only to take in the Assem- bly his share of governing the country, but he had at all times to be prepared to fight for his country. There was, however, a tendency to differentiate these functions, which was worked out in the time of the ]^ew Comedy. Pericles was both a general and the leader of the Assembly. By the time of Demosthenes, it was impossible to combine these two functions ; Demosthenes was an orator, but not a general. The same tendency was at work amongst the body of Athenian citizens as amongst its leaders ; and in the time of Demosthenes the military duties of the citizens were frequently delegated to paid mercenaries. But although the Athenian citizen of the time of the Middle Comedy was putting off his military duties, he had not yet become, as after Chseronea when the employment of mercenaries had re- sulted in the loss of freedom he did become, wholly absorbed in the relations of private life. Although he did not go in per- son abroad on foreign service, and consequently took but little interest in what was going on in Olynthus or in Thrace, he still had a vote and a voice in determining the destinies of his country, and this is the reason why at that time comedy could not exclusively devote itself to private life. "We began by saying that the difference in the ages they reflect is not the only difference between the three stages of comedy. One obvious distinction is, that the chorus is practi- cally absent from the Xew and the Middle Comedy. Originally the duty of providing and paying for a chorus fell upon some rich citizen chosen by the "inspectors" 1 of the tribe to repre- sent his tribe. The Peloponnesian war impoverished Athens, and in consequence sometimes, even in the time of the Old Comedy, no choregus and no chorus were appointed for comedy. What was the custom between the end of the Peloponnesian war and the battle of Cha-ronea we do not know, but the diffi- culty which was experienced in providing a chorus for tragedy the expense was thrown on two members of the same tribe or of two tribes makes it probable that a chorus was only rarely provided during the period of the Middle Comedy. From i;.c. 306 the evidence of inscriptions shows that it was no longer the custom to elect a choregus from a single tribe or from two tribi-s, but to elect an agonothetes, win;) took (or might decline to take) the duty of producing both the tragedy and the comedy, sometimes furnishing a chorus and sometimes not. SOUK,' years no agonothetes probably was elected, and some years he would furnish no chorus either tragic or comic, but simply produce a THE DRAMA : MIDDLE COMEDY. 283 tragedy and a comedy without a chorus ; and sometimes, wo may conjecture, lie would furnish a chorus for tragedy but not for comedy. On the whole, then, it would seem that it was rather the exception than the rule for plays of the Middle and IS'ew (..'"medics, to have a ch<>nis. As to the cause of this. Horace has given wide currency to the idea that the chorus was suspended by law on account of the license of the poets of the Old Comedy. P>ut there is 710 warrant for this; nor is the reason wholly to be found in the impoverishment of the citizens; for although the Pcloponnesian war mav have produced some distress, in the time of the New Comedy Athens seems to have enjoyed considerable material prosperity. The reason is that the growth of the drama pushed the chorus on one side. The. drama at Athens had reached the point at which further development was impossible, if the chorus was still to be retained. Euripides, in his attempt to show " the very age and body of the time hi.-? form and pressure," was perpetually hampered by the chorus lie wished to take the forward step which afterwards was taken by the drama, but it was made impossible for him to do so by the restrictions under which tragedy as it was conceived at Athens lay. The development of modern drama, could only come alter those restrictions had been removed. From some of them comedy at Athens had at all times been free. The tragic poet was hound, the comic poet was not, to adhere to myths. Tragedy had always to remember that it was a religious function, but comedy was apt to forget its religious functions. To reflect the life of the time was almost as essential to comedy as it was incon-i.-;,-;.t with tragedy. Science, rhetoric, and philosophy, when intro- duced by Kuripides are felt to jar with the mythical scenes in which they are placed; but in comedy no such discrepancy is felt. The characters which Kuripides drew after average Athe- nian- are ill at ease when appear: ir_ r under the garb and title of heroes of mvth"lo'_ r but in the c"iii"dof Menander such character The one ( it undert chorus. who woul ;c_'' 'in itiiet tie 1 ,,t her wit iiout a an ag<>n vi led. th 284 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. there was not much inducement for a wealthy citizen again to furnish comedy with a chorus. "What the ditl'erence between Middle and New Comedy was with regard to the chorus, we have no direct evidence 1 to show ; we are reduced to conjecture, and it seems probable that in this, as in other respects, the Middle Comedy was transitional, and tli at the chorus gradually decreased in importance, being much less frequent in Middle than in Old Comedy, and practically disappearing in the New. "We do not know certainly that there was no chorus in the Xew Comedy ; indeed, one authority speaks of Menander as finally abandoning the chorus, which would imply that until his time the chorus .-till survived, though with little practical importance. This is what might have been expected, and is illuminating for the history of the Greek drama. Euripides, in his attempt to develop tragedy in direc- tions untrodden by his predecessors, devoted much labour to the production of more complex plots, and to the working out of domestic scenes as a subject for tragedy. In both these experi- ments he was clogged by the chorus. It remained for Menander to throw off this clog altogether. If any confirmation were needed of the fact that Memmder took up the struggle where Euripides left it, it would be found in the similarity of the circumstances of the two poets ; for the, comedian, like the tragedian, was impelled to put the chorus on one side by the development of his drama in the direction of domestic scenes and complexity of plot. Greek drama originated in the chorus, and finally threw it aside altogether. Horace, is also responsible for the idea that the Middle and Xew Comedy differ from the Old in being less abusive, and that this fact was due to the action of the law. It is not, how- ever, exactly true that personalities were wanting in the Middle Comedy, though they wcie in the Xew: nor is it true that covert attacks were made upon individuals, who were pilloried under fictitious name-; on the sta'_ r e. We have the titles of fifty or sixty plays of the Middle Comedy which take their names from real persons, and although doubtless not ail of these were- attacked, s^rne probablv were, lint then; was a diU'en-nce bet \veeii tli" Old and Middle Comedy in the mode of attack, as we learn from Aristotle: that of the Old ( Yunedy was abuse; that of tin- Middle, raillery; and thus in this respect also the Middle ('I'lnedy wa- but the stage which Attic Comedy passed through in its transition from the 1 (I'd to the Xew. In point of plot, the difference between the Old and the Xew Comedy is unmistakable; but uith regard tu the Middle Comedy THE DRAMA : MIDDLE COMEDY. 285 it is harder to form an opinion. A play of the Old Comedy consisted of a series of scenes having no connection with each other, but deriving their unity from their connection with the central idea of the piece, which was some such simple theme as that " peace is desirable." The plays of Menander, on the other hand, had an intrigue and a plot ; the scenes developed out of each other and ended in a denoument. This is indeed alnio.-t implied in the statement that his were generally love-comedies, which naturally result in a marriage after the obstacles to the course of true love have been removed. In two respects Men- ander's treatment of the plot reminds us of Euripides ; he em- ployed a prologue, and. if not a daus ex macliina, at any rate artificial means of proving at the last that, for instance, the heroine, hitherto supposed to be a hetoera, is really a free-born Athenian a discovery which was the, indispensable condition of the marriages with which his plays ended. So far as our scanty information extends, there seems to be no evidence that prologues were common, if used at all, in Middle Comedy, though " recognitions " certainly occurred ; and as the subjects of the Middle Comedy more frequently resembled those of the Old than those of the Xew, it seems probable that the treatment also rather resembled that of the Old. Many of the Middle Comedies do indeed take their name from he'aera? ; but thev se<'in to have been treated of in those plays in their capacity of public characters rather than, as in the Xew. in connection with private life. A further consideration tending to show that the plots of the Xew Comedy were superior in interest and illusion to those of the Middle is the fact that by the time of the Xew dy Aristotle's works on the drama were beginning to have ell'ect. The period after Cha-ronea was one of study of the diamatists. of retl-ction on their methods, and of ronscl yment < >f t he knowledge thus in the /'r/Ycx that tue plot of a piay, and Menander is ivportei ca-ion that his play was ail but r>-a iv and Ind only tin.' verses to wi ite. of the characters put MI the stage hv ;h<- Middle iinedy. tin-re s>-rms (.> have be>'ii little diii'-'r-'i^-c. emhlance to Sicilian comedy, which mL'ht he tie similarity of the ciicum-tanees under which in coni'-dv and tint of Ki>ichannus wt-re p;o- luded ir<>iii taking political .-u';>- \\ his characters from tiie society TU Oedrpois, tv 5ia.TpL3a.~is, fv avfiiroffiois, dvd~,vucTn.a. Ka.1 /^dOrj^a Kal d~filvi.fffj.it KOiv6ra.TOV &v rj 'EXXdj ivt)vo\t KaXuv irape-wv TTJV Troirjcni>, ib. 1040. So, too, p. 867 and De I'i:. Pud. xvi. THE DRAMA: MIDDLE COMEDY. 289 that Antiphanes was a graceful and perspicuous writer. The subjects of his plays, so far as they are indicated by the titles, were the ordinary subjects of Middle Comedy. The number of burlesques on mythology was considerable among his plays, e.g. the Adonis, Deucalion, Omphale, Orpheus, c. Parodies of the tragedians were also numerous, to judge from the titles, e.g. the Alcextis, iJacchte, Mudea, Philoctetes, Athamas, &c. The frag- ments, again, contain allusions to and parodies on Euripides 1 and Sophocles.- The titles of some plays also indicate clearly that they contained literary criticism, e.g. Poetry, Scqtyhof &c. From the Poetry there survives a fragment 4 of considerable in- terest for the history of the drama, in which Antiphanes com- plains that whereas the tragedian takes for the subject of his plays myths known to all the audience, and consequently has not to go to the trouble of explaining the situation at the be- ginning of his play, or of narrating the antecedents of his char- acters, the hard-worked comedian has to rely for everything on liis own powers of invention and of conveying the necessary information to his audience. Another feature of the Middle Comedy, inherited from the Old, and distinguishing it from the New, which occurs in the plays of Antiphanes, is the ridi- cule of philosophy. Plato and his school come in for the, satire which was levelled by the Old Comedy at Socrates, Ex- ternals still catch the comedian's attention ; but it is the neatness, no longer the negligence, of philosophers' attire which furnishes matter for jest a fact which harmonises with the stories told of the greatest of Plato's pupils, Aristotle, to the ell'ect that he was foppish in dress, and carried hi- "fads" so far as to cause it to be undcrsiood that he experts! people who dined with him to come wa-ie-d. Thus Antiphanes describes an old gentleman wearing a white mantl". beautiful brown tunic, s<>ft cap. elegantly balanced can-- in till", the Acad'-my in Per- son. It is ii"t, however, solely ill" philosopher's uttir" which is mad" fun of ; his philosophy also is satirised. Oth'T point.- in wnirh Antiphanes shows the common stamp of the Middle Comedy are that he has some mild political ailu- sions ; that h" is sarcastic on the matter of mania^e, >\'. \Yhat! married! and I left hi:n \\alk!:u r about alive;" he is snva.-iic also on W"in"n in general : yon n: ay as well, he says, proclaim a secret by the town-crii-r as tell u to 29O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. a woman. The practice of asking riddles, which is ridiculed frequently in Middle Comedy, is also illustrated in Antiphanes. The Parasite is drawn in some of the fragments that remain to us with much care ; he requires no more invitation to dinner than does a fly, and it is as hard to get him away as to get him out of a well ; resentment he cannot feel ; his amiability is in- exhaustible, his appreciation for your jokes unlimited ; he wishes his friends nothing but prosperity. The Parasite's own view of the matter is that he renders innumerable services to his friends, is a regular earthquake at forcing doors, a thunderbolt in fight, a slip-knot for strangling inconvenient people, arid ready with his sworn testimony on any matter for the service of his friend. True, some people laugh at him ; but they are only young men, and he has the consciousness of his own good services. What life is so happy as his, whose most arduous occupation is to smile, to joke, and drink deep? The Parasite himself, at any rate, ranks it next to being wealthy. To dine well without having to think of the bill is the life of the gods. Although Antiphanes resembles the other comedians of his time in his philosophy of life, and advises men, being mortal, to limit themselves to things mortal ; and although he holds that if you take away the pleasures from life there is nothing left except to die, still this is outweighed (at any rate in the fragments we possess) by his moral aphorisms ; e.f/. base gains bring little pleasure and much pain : the consciousness of a just life is the best of pleasures ; since man must die, it is folly to die for nothing; adorn not your body with bright colours, but your heart with clean works ; honourable poverty is better than base wealth. Antiphanes' humour peeps out in the fragment in which he says that it is not on the perjurer, but on the man who trusts him that divine vengeance descends, He was a man of the worM, as is shown by his maxim that one should do at Siarta as Sparta does; and he anticipated the expression that the dead are not dead but ''gone before." Finally, we may notice that in some re.-pects Antiphanns foreshadows the New Comedy, and thus gives addil ioiial proof that the Middle Comedy Ava.- but a tian-ition .-tage ; for the titles of .-nine of his comedies, seem to show that their plots wen' of the more developed kind Avhich were characteristic of the New Comedy. Such are the J\lnrrta''/f, the 'J'trhiu. the Uiifurf'iit'.ife Lor* /;<, the Ih'.irdu, the Lwt M'nnty, Arc. 1 The n-xt poet of the Middle Comedy of whom we possess 1 Add, iiTnongst others, l}ie'Ai>affu6/j.evot., which was ]t;rf'jrmed in B.C. 556, according to the DidasciJia jire.-erved to us in a stone record. 6'. /. 67. i. 35,4. THE DRAMA : MIDDLE COMEDY. 2 9 I any considerable fragments is Anaxandrides ; and as Aristotle several times quotes him, it is probable that he was a comedian of some, merit. Anaxandrides, too, like Alexis and Antiphanes, was not by birth an Athenian. He seems to have commenced his career as a comedian about B.C. 376, and to have continued until about B.C. 345 or B.C. 340. He did write dithyrambs, but was best known as a comedian. Of his thirty-six comedies whose titles we are acquainted with, one-third were mythological burlesques ; and in respect of his subjects, literature, philosophy, heta?ra3, Occ,, he seems to have been in accord with the other poets of the Middle Comedy. Suidas says that he was the first comedian to introduce love plots, but the author of the Greek life of Aristophanes says that it was Aristophanes who first in- troduced them in the lost play Cocalu*. Although in Anax- andrides we find the usual attacks on marriage, we also find him opposed to divorce. 15ut perhaps the two most remarkable fragments are that in which he declares his agnosticism, 1 and that in which he insists on the relativity of religions. 2 Thus the Egyptians worship cows, the Greeks eat them ; the former adore dogs, the latter thrash them ; and a similar variation of the religious sentiment is to be observed in the treatment by the two peoples of cats. In Eubuius at last we come to a comedian of Athenian birth. According to Suidas, he lived about B.C. 376, but his life must have been prolonged for some time later, as he was contem- porary with Demosthenes and Hyperides. "We possess frag- ments and the titles of about fifty comedies; and from these it would seem that Eubuius particularly affected mythological burlesque. Allied with this is a fondue-.- for parodying the tia- gedinn.-, particularly Euripides, and, with more, justice, Diony- siu.-, the tyrant of Syracuse, whose traced bad. Indiciiuii. Euluiiu-, from his Ira-ii been terse and elegant. ( >f the other thirty poets of the Middle Comedy we have not space to speak in detail. What remains of Amphis makes us regret the loss of his plays. He had discovered that the iie.-t solace for mi-fortune is work ; that one dislikes the scenes of one'.- misfortunes ; that solitude is golden : that ,-ilence is invalu- able, and that death is everlasting. A >till greater loss is that of the plavs of Tim-cles. who si',,], is to have possessed an excel- 1 The Cl f >.< \\-. ('. M. i; i). 292 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. lent style, considerable power, and much audacity. Several of his fragments contain political allusions, and in them he shows that he belonged to the Macedonian party ; for in the Delos, where he alludes to the Harpalus affair, he not only, in accordance with the general suspicion of the time, accuses Demosthenes of having been bribed by Harpalus, but also makes the same charge against Hyperides. Elsewhere also he attacks these, the most prominent orators of the anti-Macedonian party. We also have an interesting fragment of nineteen lines by Timocles expounding the theory of tragedy, to the effect that men find consolation for their own misfortunes in seeing represented the greater misfortunes which the heroes of tragedy bear. Ephippus gives an amusing sketch of a foppisli young follower of Plato, about to make a speech, and posed in a beautiful attitude, with one foot (toe on the ground, heel in the air) crossing the other ankle, displaying his carefully arranged straps and elegant sandals, mantle aesthetically draped, and him- self majestically leaning on his cane. The followers of Plato also furnish the subject of a long fragment by Epic-rates, who represents them as much exercised as to the definition of colo- cynth, whether it is animal, vegetable, or mineral ; for, says Epicrates, they spent their time in defining things. In the frag- ments of Anaxilas we find a long diatribe against another class in Athenian society, the hetserse ; it is illuminating for the social sanction of the time to notice tint Anaxilas does not complain that hetjrrse are immcr.d, but that they are expensive. Elsewhere he complains that some people are as suspicious as snails, who carry their very house- about with them. Dionysios in a long fragment gives us an amusing picture of a cook, who treats his art with the respect which its importance in the time of the Middle Comedy entitled it to : it is above definition ; any man may roast or boil, but t< be a cook is another thine:. This cook seems to have been an Aristotelian, for the Stagirite about this, time was drawing exactly the same, distinction ; any man may do a just act, bin to be a just man is a different thing. Aristophon draws a Para.-ite in a way which reminds us of the Parasite of Antiphanes ; he is an Argive at ejecting drunken guc-ts. a ram at hie iking open doors, and he is so regular in appearing at dinner that he lias earned the nickname " Soil])." 1 Axionicus and Ijiodorus also draw the character of the Parasite, but do not add any fre.sh traits to th-.- character. Theophilus 1 &v rts fOTiq., irapei/jti TrpcDros, (bar f/oi] irdXcu . . . fw/i6s Ka.\ovfJ.rj.i. THE DRAMA: MIDDLE COMEDY. 293 call- music a groat treasure ; ] and Mnesimachus has a beautiful compan>on of sloop to death, for which there is no English equivalent.' 2 The other poets of whose ]>lays we have frag- ments and titles do not call for special mention. They are: Araros and Nk-ostratus, sons of Aristophanes; Antidotus, Cra- tinus (the younger), Dromo, Epigones, Eriphus, Eubulides, Heniochns, lleraclides, Heraclitus, Orphelio, Philetserus, Phi- liscus, Sophilus, Sotades, Timotheus, and Xenarchus. 1 In the Citharcedus (F. C. M. 628) : /ie'7aj 6^ffa.vp6s fan Kal fiffiaios u ovcriicr/, * Incert (F. C. M. 579) : "frvos TO. fiiKpa TOV 6a.va.Tov /jLvar^pitk part HISTORY, ORATORY, AND PHILOSOPHY. BOOK I. HISTORY. CHAPTER I. THE BEGINNINGS OF PIIOSE. POETRY precedes prose composition generally in the history of a nation's literature, partly because poetry can be more easily composed and transmitted without the aid of writing than can prose, and partly because the charm of verse or rhythm appeals more powerfully and more directly than that of prose. Further, prose requires that the means of writing should be developed to a certain extent ; and in the case of the Greeks, we mu.-t add that a reading public only came into existence late and gradu- ally. The Greek lived more in the open air than in his own hou-e ; transacted bu-ine-s. private and political, orally more titan by means of writing ; ami, by the con-ti;u;:o;i of the society he lived in. li-tened lo rather than read hi.- lib rature. The Gr>'i>k aver.-i'Mi to the solitary anil unsociable mode of acquir- ing information by reading is illustrated in the I*li't-i* of Plato. 1 wher' So. 'rates .-ays of written works: ''You would imauiii" t'na; they had intelligence : but if you want tokn->w inn t'nin^ an.! put a que-tion to one of them, tlie speaker always pve- one unvarying iiiiswfi 1 . And when they have been once written d'>wn, tiiey are tumliled about anywhere, aiming th"se, who do, and amoii'_: tho-e who do not understand them. And they have no reticences or proprieties towards ditl> of persons ; and, if they are unju.-i Iv a-.-aiied parent is ne"d>'d t> protect his oli'sprin^, f"r th or defend them-elves/' This passage siiows that people did read book Ln; in the sixth centur B.C., wh^n rose lit 298 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. reading public, and prose authors composed their works rather to be delivered as lectures than to be circulated as books. Writing at the time seems to have been developed enough to aid composition, but not enough to diffuse literature. As was to be expected in a new art, the art of composing prose was one which only gradually attained freedom and grace. Indeed, the very idea of prose literary composition was one which only occurred to the Greek mind when poetry had made several unsuccessful attempts to narrate history and ex- pound philosophy two functions which do not properly belong to poetry. Laws and treaties between states had, doubtless, been expressed in prose and inscribed on stone or metal before the sixth century, but they are no more literature than are the lists of Olympian victors, which also existed probably before the sixth century. If, then, setting aside laws, treaties, lists of officials, &c., as not belonging to our subject, we turn to the earliest prose literature of Greece, we find that history and philosophy are the two subjects which, having been de- veloped in poetry, at least as far as was compatible with the laws of poetry, were the iirst to burst the bonds of rhythm and find expression in prose. Prose, like other forms of Greek literature, although carried to its highest pitch in the mother-land, originated in the colo- nies ; and it is to Miletus especially that the honour of invent- ing prose belongs. The earliest pvse writers, Hecataeus, Phere- cydes the historian, Dionysius, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, were either born in Miletus, or, like liion, Deiochus, and Charon, in colonies founded by Miletus. Pherecydes of Syros, who disputes with Cadmus of Miletus the honour of being the first Greek prose writer, did not indeed belong to Miletus, but to the colonies. The very existence of Cadmus has, however, been disputed. Ac'jording to the ordinary account, he, lived about L.C. 550 and wrote an account of the Foundation or Colonisation of Miletus, which, according to Suidas, consisted of four hooks. It seems, however, extremely improbable that the works which in the time of Augustus went under tiio name of Cadmus were genuine ; and although there may have been a writer named Cadmus who lived in the middle of the sixth rentnrv B.C., it must be .-aid that he is not even men- tioned by any classical writer, or, indeed, by any author before- Str;jbo. Tne existence, on the oilier hand, of a genuine work by 1'liererydes of j^yros On 2\(ttur<: seems to bo generally accepted ; but ti;e evidence as to his date is conflicting, and it i> only C"iij'-cturaliy that he is placed in the middle of the HISTORY: THE BEGINNINGS OF PROSE. 299 sixth century B.c , though the conjecture is confirmed by both the language and the style of the few fragments which have come down to us. The language is Old Ionic, and the style has the "jerkiness" and abruptness characteristic of the earliest attempts to write prose. It is in favour of the antiquity of Pherecydes and the genuineness of the fragments that he is mentioned by Aristotle. 1 From Pherecydes of Syros who wrote a poem On Mature it is necessary to distinguish Pherecydes of Leros, who lived about the time of the Persian wars, and wrote on the Antiquities of Attica in ten books, beginning with the beginning of the world and coming down to the Ionic coloni- sation of Asia Minor. With regard to Dion of Proconnesus, another early prose writer, who wrote on the early history of Ionia, it is uncertain at what period ho lived. He is said to have been contemporary with Phereeydes, but with which Phereeydes is doubtful. Acusikus of Argos is said to have lived shortly after Cadmus ; but, like Cadmus, his existence lacks the satisfactory support of a mention in classical writers, and we cannot, therefore, feel any great confidence in what is told us about him. He is said to have composed a genealogical work, which began with Chaos and came down to the Trojan war, and which resembled in everything but metre the genea- logical poems of the Hesiouic school. Even in the time of Hadrian this work existed, but, as in the case of the works of Cadmus, it seems more probable that we have to do with a forgery than with a genuine work. The very nature of the work is inconsistent with the idea involved in the term " logo- grapher," which is applied to the early prose writers who paved tin- way for history, wh'-n it at length appeared in the work of Herodotus. I'.y the name " lo^ographer " is meant a person who collects and commits to writing fact-, in contradistinction to one who collects myths ; whereas, if the work which went in Hadrian's time under the, name of Aeu-ilaus were genuine. Acu.-ilaus would merely have paraphrased i:: r rose the myth- of Ilesiod. I'efore proceeding to those logo_;raphers of whom we know something, we will briefly mention those of whom know little but their names. ]>ei to have written an account of the The most distinuished of the loo^rahers was Hecataeus of H. 109215 30O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. Miletus, a man who figures in the history of his country as well as in the history of literature, and for whom we conceive a dis- tinct admiration. The date of his birth and death there is nothing to fix, but the time at which he nourished fortunately admits of no doubt. Herodotus not only frequently refers to him and quotes from him, but gives us valuable information about his life. In the time of the Ionic revolt, Hecatseus was a man of position, influence, and character. He was among the leading men whom Aristagoras consulted when about to insti- gate Ionia to revolt, and he showed iiis insight and his compre- hension of the enormous power of the Persian empire by endea- vouring to dissuade his countrymen from attempting to match themselves against their powerful masters. This was from no sympathy with the Persians, from no want of patriotism or of love of freedom, on the part of Hecataeus, but because he, with a cool head and with the knowledge he had acquired of the resources of the Persian empire, foresaw the hopelessness of the struggle. The revolt once decided on, Hecataeus showed the same cool perception of the advantages possessed by the lonians, and advised them, if they undertook the struggle, to eini.'lov everv means to bring it to a successful issue. The trea- 1 i- v O sures of the great Apollo temples at Branchidae would fall into the hands of the Persians if left alone, and he therefore advised the lonians to employ these temple, treasures for the purposes of the revolt rather than leave them to be used by the enemy. This advice, however, shared the same fate as his previous pro- posal. A third time Hecatseus showed his practical wisdom, and a third time his advice was rejected, when, just before the battle of Lade, he proposed that the inhabitants of Miletus should leave their city, withdraw to the island of Lcros. and there, awaiting the issue of event-, watch for a favourable mo- ment for establishing themselves firmly once more in Miletus. Hecata-us was a man of good birth; he traced his descent to a god, and must have been j ossessed of some wealth to make the extensive travels, the fruits of which he embodied in his Description of Hie World. This work consisted apparently of two parts, one describing Europe, the other A>ia the Litter in- cluding Egvpt and Libya. There are several points of interest in connection with this work. In the fir.-t place, we lind that iu it geography is hardly yet distinguished from history. The plan of the work is indeed topographical, but the description of the places mentioned in it included a history of the places as wed. In the next place, it has been maintained, both in ancient and in recent times, that Herodotus nut only quotes from this HISTORY: THE BEGINNINGS OF PROSE. 301 work with acknowledgment, but has also " stolen " passages from his predecessor's Description of lhf World, and tried to pass tin m off as his own. Of this point, as far as it affects the cha- actor of Herodotus, we shall have to speak subsequently. In thi- pi ice we have to consider the question only so far as it may tl.rovv light on the authenticity of the works ascribed to Hecatnms. Whether Hecatoeus gave names to the two parts of Irs work, or even gave a title to the whole work, may, perhaps, be doubted. 1 It may, however, be regarded as a certain inference from the quotations in Herodotus that he did write a descrip- tion of places in Europe and Asia In Alexandrine tini'-s and later, there was in circulation a Description of the, Worlil pro- fessing to be by Hecatoeus, and divided into two parts a Description of Europe and a Description of Asia J'.ut Eratos- thenes (horn B.C. 276) seems to have had great doubt whether the latter part was genuine. Instances of literary forgery we have already seen, in all probability, in the works which passed, under the names of Cadmus and Ac.usilaus ; and it seems pro- bable, that here too we have the w.irk of a forger, who, knowing that Heeutanis had written a description of Asia which had perished, proceeded to reconstruct the work, and in doing so borrowed many passages, almost verbatim, from Herodotus' de- scription of Egypt. 2 Then, in later times, there aro-e among uncritical and not impartial men the belief that, since Herodotus was later in date than llecatteus, these passages must have been stolen by the later from the earlier writer. Whether the Da- scrti ti'in of Knrnj,!'. the first part of the work, was accepted as genuine by the critics of Alexandria, we do nut know. \Ve have no express!, ui of their opinion for or a'^in-t it. T>ut the spuri'Hisnc-s of the one part throws suspicion on the other. Einailv, a work entitled the (/<<;[/<;_'cat;i'us. I'.ut tiio mvthical character of the work is not much in accoid wi'h what little we know of UeeaUe;is' writings; and frequently, as 1 Herodotus does not quote the work by name. lie s:\ys, e.;j. vi. 137, E/vciTt:os uif o ' ll^ijcrafSfiov t('n;cr( ir rv.ai \ir ; fu.-;ik:!i_; \vi:ii rff'Tt-nci 1 t i ti.t- for- pery, :is is siiown by tin- wonis with \viiii-:i in- l.c;ii:-i his criticisTii. !> ','//. Itii'didi, ii. i -', KAraTaFoj oe o 31iX?;o"'.oj, Tra.j oi 1 o.; ^dXiijTa ti'pt \7jrat 6 'U,i)6ooros. although the debt of Ilurouotus is by some taken to nicuu indebted- ness in stvle, not in matter. 302 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. Herodotus refers to him, he never cites him in such a way as to countenance the belief that he wrote more than one work. Contemporary with Hecataeus seems to have been Dionysius of Miletus, who wrote probably a Persian History, and Charon of Lampsacus, who seems to have been nothing more than an annalist. A man of far different powers was Hellanicus of Mitylene, who wrote numerous prose works of various kinds. His date cannot be fixed precisely, but he was a contemporary of Herodotus, and lived long enough to bring his History of Attica down to the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, as we learn from Thucydides (i. 97). His works may be divided into three classes genealogical, topographical, and chronological The genealogical \\orks included the Deucalioneia, which, fol- lowing the Thessalian myth, began with L)eucaiion after the flood, and probably dealt with Thessalian traditions; and the Tioii-a, which not only related many new r facts about the Trojan war, but followed the history of the Trojan colonies founded after the fall of Troy. The topographical works included much history, as well as the description of places; for instance, the Att/ris, or History of Attica, included a sketch of Attic history from the time of Cecrops to the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. The Perxica comprised a history not only of the Persians, but also of the Medes and Assyrians from the time of Xinus to the time of Hellanicus. The Silica or L^i'.-a al>o probably included the history as well as a description of Lesbos. The chronological works or annals, the Pr'!este*sfs <">i the Aryive Hern and the Carneonicce, were based on oilicial lists, in the one case of the priestesses, in the other of the winners at the Carnean gan:es ; but tin-y were something more than bare lists. It is probable that even the official lists comprised something more than nn-re names, and that important events were also briefly noted down. Hellanicus, again, may have collected together and synchronised information drawn from various data; for theie was at this time no mode of reckoning the years common to all the Greek--. Finally, among the logographers earlii-r than or contemporary with Herodotus, wo mu.-t mention Xanthus of Lydia, who coin- p'.-ed an account of his native country. It is doubtful whether he wrote before Herodotus or not. hi -horns, a later historian, however, affirms that the work of Herodotus was indebted to Xanthus, and the authority for making Xanthus later than Herodotus is not string enon_ r 'n to outweigh the evidence of -Kphorus. 1 before leaving the logographers, w<- may say, on the authority of Lu'onysius of llalicarnas.-us, which is confirmed by HISTORY: THE BEGINNINGS OF PROSE. 303 the fragments that we possess and by knowledge derived from other sources, that the logograpliers bore a close likeness to each other both in their methods and in their style. Their object was to give publicity to traditions which had only an oral cur- rency, and to tiie events of the past recorded in the lists and other documents preserved in temples or other public places. In the arrangement of the material which they collected tin-v showed no skill. They .simply heaped together all the informa- tion they could get, and classed it .solely by the nation or town to which it related. As poetry is fitted for works of the ima- gination, so is prose for precision ; and although the logogra- phers had little or no notion of historical criticism, their inten- tion was to collect facts, as their name implies, not myths. Finally, as regards their style, it was clear, simple, correct, brief, and free from rhetorical decoration. The earliest of them evidently find pro>e a difficult instrument to handle. Tlii-v eject short sentences with a sharp etl'ort. The movement of their writing is jt-rky. Their vocabulary and metaphors are those of poetry rather than of prose; ami periods which even in Homer have attained a certain development and complexity are unknown in the earliest prose. Contemporary with, but junior to. Herodotus was the celebrated physician Hippocrates. He was born b 'tween B.C. 470 and B.C. 460 in the island of Cos, and belonged to the family of the Asclepiada', who traced their origin to the fabulous /Esculapius. In his youth lie became familiar with the theory and prac- tice of medicine by his connection with the Asclepion of Cos, and he was specially instructed by Ileri.dicus. who lirst intro- uuci'd the use of gymnastics as a part of medicine. He then m, id" extensive travels, as may be infi-nvd from his works. In v.hat order lie vi-ited the places \vhicii he mentions, we cannot, sav : but he seems to have been acquainted with I h-los, Thasos, Abdera, and oth'T places in Thrace and Thessdy. In Athens hr mu< have spent miieh time, and although there is no satis- f act orv evidence for the storv that he rendered important services IVloponneMan war, there i :ing of Ma he declined an invit itinn to attend !h-' lias this story any improbability in it.-i Hippo. Talc- a (liv.-k physician, 1 ' ; to the IVr.-ian court, and in Hipp " 304 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. Ctesias was the Persian court-physician. But there is no good evidence for the story. Hippocrates died at Larissa some time between B.C. 380 and B.C. 360, at an advanced age. The works of Hippocrates are the earliest treatises on medi- cine known to us in Greek, but they are in themselves proof that the art must have been cultivated in Greece long before his time. Considerable as the genius of " the great Hippo- crates " undoubtedly is, and vast as was his own observation, he was to some extent indebted to his predecessors. But the amount and nature of the debt are hard to determine. The Asclepia, or temples of /Esculapins, which were established in various parts of Greece, corresponded in many respects to the hospitals of the present day. Patients went there to be treated, and there physicians acquired practical knowledge and skill. In many points the treatment usual in the Asclepia was far from scientific, but the facts that they were usually situated near thermal springs, that attention was paid to diet, that the imagination of the patient was worked upon, help us to under- stand the character of the treatment pursued. On the other hand, though the art was cultivated, the science was not ne- glected. The physicians carefully noted down the symptoms presented by the patient when first brought, and then with equal care noted the course of the disease and the results con- sequent upon the exhibition of various kinds of medicine. Hippocrates shows his greatness in the way in which he rejects what was unsound in the medical methods of his day, and carries forward all that was scientific. Viewing him, there- fore, in connection with the medicine of his time, we have to notice first his break with it, next his connection with it. With all quackery, with " amulets and complicated machines to impose on the credulity of the ignorant multitude," { lie broke once and for all. At the same time, his early practice in the hospital of Cos saved him from indulging in the useless speculations and quasi-philosophical theories of medicine, which wore popular among the intellectual men of the day, and must have been particularly seductive to a man of the mental power of Hippocrates. While ho thus broke with the errors of the multitude on the one band, and of the cultivated on the other, Hippocrates adhered to and developed the scientific tendencies present in Greek medicines. As we have said, the course of diseases was studied carefully in the Asclepia of Greece ; this implies patient observation, and results in considerable .-kill in prognosis. Now, it is in prognosis that Hippocrates excels. 1 The Genuine Wt.rks of Ilippocraics, i. 18. HISTOKY: THE BEGINNINGS OF PROSE. 3 PC while throughout his works the basis of all his investigation?: and conclusions is observation and experience. His theory of symptoms lias been the marvel and the model of all succeeding generations of physicians ; while his conspectus of the remoter causes of disease, e.g. atmosphere, seasons of the year, local conditions, &c., is a remarkable example of insight and accu- rate observation. It is sometimes said that in Greece specu- lation reigned to the exclusion of observation ; but the works of Hippocrates are an everlasting proof to the contrary. Expe- riment, with all that it may be made to reveal, was unknown to the Greeks ; nor had they the accumulated observations of thousands of years, which modern men of science possess, to work upon ; but they were not lacking in the power of obser- vation. The boldness and success of Hippocrates in surgical operations shows how fully he availed himself of the oppor- tunities of observation aiforded him by the frequent accidents in the national games of Greece ; though in anatomy and gen- eral pathology he is now, of course, obsolete. But, much as Hippocrates trusts to experience, he is no mere empiric. He employed reason on the results of observation, and the first of his Aphori>ms is justly famous. It runs, ' Life is short and the Art long : the occasion fleeting, experience fallacious. and judgment difficult." l The dialect in which Hippocrates wrote is Ionic. Prose had not yet been adopted by the Athenians as their own : but the Ionic of Hippocrates differs somewhat from that of Herodotus in the greater number of Atticisms which it includes. In style Hip- pocrates is compared by Ihonysius to Thurydides ; and in his desire to crowd a- much thought into cine sentence as possible, he is apt to become obscure. Hut his brevity is the terseness of a vigorous thinker, not the inadequacy resulting from poverty of d regarded as by Hippocrates. To give merely a li.-t of the other treatises, of which some in all probabilitv are bv Hippo- crates, would take, more spare than can be here afl'orded. A commentary on the works of Hippo-rate- was written bv a celebrated piiv.-ieiun. Herophiius of L'halcedon in Llithynia, who flourished about i;.c. 300. Tins, however, has perished along with the other works uf Herophiius. 1 Hii'p'jcra.'iS. ii. 697. 3 GO H1STOKY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CHAPTER II. HERODOTUS. HALICARXASSUS, the birthplace of Herodotus, was situated on the south-west coast of Asia Minor, and was originally occupied by Carians. Dorian emigrants from Troezene l then settled there, and for some time the place belonged to a confederation con- sisting of six Dorian cities, but eventually was excluded or withdrew from the alliance. 2 Like the other Greek colonies on the coast of Asia Minor, Halicarnassus became subject first to the Lydian power, 3 and then, when Cyrus conquered the Lydian kingdom, to the Persian empire. 4 In pursuance of the policy which they employed elsewhere, the Persians did not directly govern Halicarnassus, but established or confirmed the rule of a native Tyrant, who was a vassal of the great king, and was responsible for the payment to the local satrap of a fixed tribute, and tor raising troops when required. During the boyhood of Herodotus, Halicarnassus was ruled by a queen, Artemi-ia, who took, as Herodotus tells us 5 with evident pride, high position for her courage and sagacity in the counsels and esteem of Xerxes during the second Persian invasion. The best evidence that we have of the date of Herodotus is afforded by the historian himself when lie tells us that he had a conversation with Thersander of Orchomenus, who had been present at a banquet given by Mardonius during the second Persian war. and to whom on that occasion a Persian had con- fided his presentiment destined to be fulfilled that shortly the Persian host would be destroyed, and but few would survive. Tiiis is good though indefinite evidence. It shows that Hero- dotus was not old enough to tell the tale of the Persian wars from his own experience, but yet was old enough to meet people who hud taken ] art in them. Thus, although we cannot regard Pamphila's ~ statement, which would make Herodotus to have been born B.C. 484, as anything more than a conjecture, we may take it as approximately correct, for the supposition that he was born some time i etween the iir.-t and the second Persian wars (i.e. between B.C. 490 and 480) accords with tradition, and with what iittie we know of his life. s i. 23. > i. 174. HISTORY: IIKRODOTUS. 307 According to Suidas, 1 Herodotus belonged to a good Ilalicar- nassian family. His most distinguished relative was Panyasis. a literary man, who must be supposed to have exercised some influence on his literary and mental development. Herodotus was doubtless by nature inclined to put much belief in omens, portents, and prodigies of all kinds ; and an acquaintance with the epic poets was part of the. education of his time ; but it could not have been wholly without effect upon Herodotus that Panyasis applied the method of observation to portents, &c., and obtained some distinction as an epic writer. We know, further, that 1'anyasis wrote a poem on the adventures of Hera- cles, a Heracleiad ; and Herodotus himself took so much interest in the myths connected with Heracles, that he voyaged to Tyre solely in order to investigate one of them. Finally, we find that Herodotus' taste for the antiquities of history, and probably to some extent his knowledge of the subject, were forestalled in a work by Panyasis on the colonisation of Ionia. Of the life of Herodotus, all that we know practically is, that he undertook extensive travels over all the world then known. The result of these travels was the History of Herodotus which we now pussess. divided by the grammarians of Alexandria into nine books, named after the nine Muses. Whether Herodotus from the beginning of his explorations entertained the design of writing the history of the. long struggle between the Greeks and the barbarians which resulted in the Persian wars, there is no direct evidence to show. There is, however, nothing impro- bable in making the assumption, and the whole tone of the work is much more in harmony with the feelings which ani- mated Hellas in the time of Herodotus' youth, than with those which were life Nvli'^n. in his d< to form at Thurii the materials lected. The history uf Herodotus is throughout national. It is the .-lory, not of the Mrng^le and success of some one (!:v;k Kate, but of all tiie lbli"n and S'.-ar'.a in th I'eio; oniioiau 1 Suidas. who^o da to is unknown, hut is I oc ->, composed a l".\i<.:"ii in which lie draws scholiasts, grammarians, lexio"_:ra:>iiei>. H it is hard to distinguish the gm>d in 'in thv sources sometimes are, and sometitiies arc no 3O8 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. war. Further, the defeat of the barbarians is treated of by Herodotus as an historical verification of the religious theory that no mortal power can become exceeding great without incur- ring the disfavour of the gods, and eventually meeting destruc- tion from them. This sentiment, again, is one which was much more dominant in the early than the late years of Hero- dotus, and was likely to influence his conception of his History from the time when he first thought of writing it. and not to have grown up during the writing of it. Finally, the history of his own native place, which, as we have already seen, went through every phase of the national conflict with tiie barbarian, was the thread round which all his later knowledge crystallised, and naturally determined the way in which he would regard the Persian Avars, i.e. as the result of a long series of collisions between the Greek and the barbarian worlds. In other words, the view which Herodotus takes is that of the Greeks who lived on the eastern side of the JEgsean. This view he learned in his youth before he left Halicarnassus, not when he settled in Thurii ; and it was this view which determined the informa- tion he would collect, not the information which he collected thnt determined his point of view. Herodotus begins his History by declaring that his purpose is to tell the causes of the wars between the (."1 reeks and the bar- barians. The wrongs and reprisals on both sides, which belong to the domain of myth, he sets aside without giving an opinion on them ; he prefers to begin with what he knows, and the first thing he can vouch for is, that Croesus, the king of Lydia, attacked and subjugated the Greek cities on the coast of Asia Minor. This leads him to give a history of the Lydian kings - including the wonderful story of Gyges and his magical ring, and the famous interview of Solon with Croesus and a descrip- tion of the country of Lydia and its most noteworthy sights. The wrong Crcjesus did to the Asiatic Greeks and the exce.-sive wealth which he acquired brought down on him the wrath of Heaven, and he was overthrown by the Persian Cyrus. Then follows an account of the Medcs and their hi-toiy to the time ot A-tyages, of the birth and exposure of his grandson Cyrus, and of tiic way in which Cyrus at the head of the Persians overthrew the Median kingdom. We arc thus brought into the domain of Persian history, and the growth of the IVr.-ian king- dom until it collided with Greece i.s the main subject of the iir.-t six books of Herodotus. He describes the customs of the Persians, their conquest under Cyrus, of the Asiatic Greeks, of Labylon, and of the Massagetae -in each case giving a dessrip- HISTORY: HERODOTUS. 309 tion of the country and an account of the history of the con- quered people. Cyrus Avas succeeded by Cambyscs, who under- took the invasion of Fgypt, and this gives Herodotus an opportunity for introducing his Avonderful description of the. land of Fgypt, of the strange customs of its peoples, of its marvellous hi.-tory and its astounding monuments. This fills tin 1 whole of the Second book, which is to us, as it was to the Greeks, the most enthralling of all the nine books. In the Third book, lie returns to the invasion of Ejypt and its conquest by Cambyses. The death of Cambyses was followed by the appearance of a pretender to the throne, the pseudo- Smerdis. Herodotus relates his dethronement and the trick by Avhich Uarius contrived to obtain the crown for himself. At this point Herodotus introduces the history of the celebrated tyrant of Samos, 1'olycrates ; the tale of his unsuccessful attempt to avert the Nemesis of the gods which his over-great prosperity was doomed to living upon his head, and his fall. J>arius organised the government of the now vast kingdom of Persia with a broad statesmanship and minute attention to detail which stamp him as the greatest of the Persian monarchs ; and the review of the Persian kingdom and its resources thus introduced serves to impress the reader with the magnitude of the danger threaten- ing (I recce, and to heighten the interest of Herodotus' tale. The Fourth book is occupied by Darius' attempt against the Scyths, which was unsuccessful, and by an account of their country and the countries bordering on it. The history of Gyrene is aNo introduced in this book, on the ground, which we may dnbt, that harms meditated an invasion in this direction al>->. I'i;t the jil.-a serves as an excuse for the development of all the information about the tribe- on the north coast of Africa between Cy rene and Kgypt, which Herodotus had picked up from the traders along that, const. The invasion of Scythia, though unsuccessful, and all but the destruction of I>ariusand his army, paved the way for the invasion of (Irecee under much as it incidentally iv-uil'-d ;n the conquest of of Ti.ra -e. thr"Ui:h which Xerxes' army eventually m Accordingly the Fifth bonk opens Avith a description of n we come to the roximate causes of t .' tyrant of Miletus, Avho had once s but was regarded by that monarch a< to... clever t entire liberty, was n"minaliy a u'ucst, and ivalh an prisoner at the Per-ian court. ( Rowing weary of this, he instigated the Ionian cities to revolt, in order that he mijht be> 3 I O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. sent to quell the insurrection and thus gain his liberty. In this revolt the lonians were supported by the Athenians, but not by the Spartans, to "whom they first applied for help. The revolt failed, and the attention of Darius was drawn to the necessity of crushing Greece. The first expedition which he sent for this purpose failed, and the second resulted in the glorious Athenian victory at Marathon, a victory which owes not a little of its immortal fame to the History of Herodotus. This closes the Sixth book. The Seventh book opens with the preparations of Darius to take condign vengeance on Athens, and the opportune revolt of Egypt, which, by delaying the invasion of Greece until the death of Darius, left it in the hands of his unworthy successor, Xerxes, and thus probably saved Greece. The inception of the second Persian Avar is conceived by Herodotus in an epic spirit. Xerxes is loth to undertake the invasion of Greece, but the time is come for the wrath of the gods, provoked by the over- weening greatness of the Persians, to descend upon this mighty empire, and false dreams are sent to Xerxes to drive him on destruction. War once resolved on, preparations of astounding magnitude were made. Magazines were prepared altus. and the advance of this army, numbering, according to Herodotus, over live millions altogether, and probably the greatest the world has ever seen, traced from Sardis on. This prepares the reader to realise the dismay of the Greeks, the despair of their very oracles, which Herodotus pictures, and the valour of the handful of Greeks who, under Leonidas, waited for death and glorv at Thermopylae. The main incidents of the Eighth book are the battle of Salamis and the flight of Xerxes, as are the battle of Plata;a and the flight of the Persian army of the Ninth book. Herodotus is such simple and delightful real ing. he is so unafiL'Ct>-d and entertaining, his story flows so naturally and with such ease, that we have a dilh'culty in bearing in mind that, over and above the hard writing which goes to make easy reading, there is a perpetual marvel in the work of Herodotus. It is the first artistic work in prose that Greek liteiatuie pro- HISTORY : HERODOTUS. 3 I I dueed. This prose work, which for pure literary merit no sub- sequent work has surpassed, than which later generations, after using the pen for centuries, have produced no prose more easy or more readable, this was the first of histories and of literary prose. AVithout attempting to analyse the literary merit of Hero- dotus, it will be enough here to point out one or two of its constituent elements, a comprehension of which will throw light on the development of Greek literature and the position of Herodotus in that development. In the contemplation of any work of art. after the first period of enjoyment, the thought usually travels with reverence to the artist what manner of man was he to whom it was granted to conceive; and execute tins'? And whereas a picture or a statue conveys but little defi- nite information about the artist as a man, and the imagination has to draw on its own stores for a likeness which may have but little resemblance to the original, it is the privilege of literature to convey information much more definite in kind and more extensive in range. The extent to which we tints become acquainted with the man through his writing may vary, from the marked and deliberate way in which Thucydides with- draws himself and his own views from the reader's gaze, to the delightful intimacy which in reading Charles Lamb we come to feel with the man. But even with Thucydides we come to be acquainted, for his very withdrawal from us gives us the man's character. IIerod"tus, however, belongs to the type, not of Thucydides, but of Charles Lamb. liven if the tale of how the Greeks fought well for liberty, and thus bequeathed to us the heritage of their art and literature, we:e not of interest to us, we still should read it for the sake of nnkiiiLT the acquaintance of Herodotus, by likening to him as he tells the tail?. ( )i- a-ain. if, forgetting the sack of Sardis. Herod says that th" Athenians at Marathon were the first Greeks who daied t > IIHI'K the Persians in the face, or makes the tot ,1 < f Xerxes' army ton great, bv a miiii'>n, or some other conjec- tural sum, this lessens our afi'ecti.'ii f,.r Herod"tus as little < it lessens our admiration for the Greeks. They f, ,i;--ht well, and he tells tin- tale well, and we are th" better for the light and for the tale. />///>> r-t ih-fjrum <.-'/. The charm of Hero- dotus is. then, that in him we are listening t" one wh' seen many ctes an nwn many a book, but telling in his fresh old age the brave deeds were done in the days l>i-f >ie him. and describing the ma of the strange lands which in his v<_>uth he had himself 3 I 2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. That Herodotus' narrative has the characteristics of a tale told rather than of a book written is no accident, nor is it to ho explained solely by reference to the temper of the man. It is due to the fact that Herodotus wrote his work for oral delivery, and not for a reading public. The Greeks of his time were not in the habit of perusing literature, each man in the privacy of his own home. Epic poetry they were accustomed to hear recited in public. Lyric poetry they became acquainted with either by hearing choruses perform it at some sacred festival, or as in the case of triumphal odes on some public occasion, or by listening to some friend reciting an ode of Alcaeus or Theognis after a banquet. Dramatic literature reached the Greek not in the form of books, but by being performed before him on the stage. A reading public can scarcely be said to have existed at this time ; for although some public libraries were to be found, Euripides was the first private man who possessed a library. It was not, therefore, by spreading written copies of his work that an author could hope to gain much publicity. The prose writer at first naturally adopted the same means as the poet for bringing his work before the notice of the public; that is, lie sought for some opportunity when large numbers of his fellow-countrymen were gathered together, and he would be able to read to them his productions. 1 Such an opportunity was fuund in such a festival as the Panathengea at Athens, or the national games of Greece. At the latter we know prose works were regularly read, and special provision made for their recita- tion. This, then, was the way in which Herodotus had to gain the ear of the public. The idea is so alien to the notions of the present day, with its printing-press, that at first we are inclined to doubt the possibility of any considerable portion of a prose work to say nothing of the whole of Herodotus being thus recited. Uut when we reflect that a speech such as that of Demosthenes On the Crotcn, or that On the Embassy, is longer than the longest hook of Herodotus, and that the Greeks (like the Japanese of the present day) were accustomed to listen for a whole day to the performance of play after play, we shall have little difficulty in believing that Herodotus might easily read at a sitting, say, the whole of the Second hook, describing the land, the manners and customs, and the history of Egypt. More than this we are not called upon to believe, for what evidence there i.s on the point seems to indicate that these reci- HISTORY : HERODOTUS. 3 I 3 tat ions or lectures of Herodotus extended not to the whole, but only to parts of his work. The, well known story that Thucydides, as a hoy, being pre- sent at one of these recitations, hurst into tears, and that Hero- dotus thereupon declared the hoy's nature was ripening towards learning, has the appearance of being an invention due to the desire of grammarians to bring the two great historians into connection with each other, and, further, is hard to believe lie- cause of the chronological diiliculties. If we suppose that the recitation took place when Thucydides was fifteen years old, B.C. 456, Herodotus can scarcely have been thirty years of age then, had probably not yet visited Kgypt, and could hardly have composed any of his work. But although we may reject this story, there is no reason to doubt that Lucian : is right in say- ing that Herodotus gave recitations at the Ulympia, in Athens, Corinth, Argus, and Sparta. As far us Athens is concerned, the testimony of Lucian is amply continued by Kusebius,'-' and by the author of the attack on Herodotus ( DC Malitjnitate IIcro by the lioule of the Athenians for reciting his works to them. These statements may be regarded as referring to the same cir- cumstance, and as proving a recitation at Athens at least. Taking it as proved that Herodotus did give readings of his Ili.-tory, we shall see that the work is not complete, and that therefore his iv;idiir_ r s were probably of selections from, and not the whole of his hi.-tory. In the lir.-l place, the la.-t chapt'-r of the la-; book was presumably not meant to conclude the work. li contains no indication that it is the last chapter, does ma it present anything ;inninu' "f the hist not comprise the la.-t and the barbarians, 1 T.ui'irm tloui'iMifd ai'oiit A. n. r ; n, was a Syrian hy liirth, a lawyrr iy profes-ioil ', was Jil'ni'Ul ;l! or I'f KjVj't Uli<|!T Maivus Alll'CiillS, and "i'l 1 i nil'. IT ( 'iiMiini'dus. ll<- wmto, ill (ii-'i-k, a lar_;e iain.l>iT uf :ilnu>il '_' \voij<. 'J'ii.' l'a>sa_i j to which i'i t-i <]!(; is iiiinii' in the |i-\l mnaii's in [aK'i;in'.s // , '/ /./.< "T ./.'('/', a Imiit and iinni'ir.irs iiii]i':ii to :]ii- t-duc.itcd imniic cr Ma.-' iluiii.i to irivi 1 l.lli'iaii ' Wulk.-. a I'av.iurai,;,- iVi'i'|(tion. - See.,/,.'., p. roil. ' Hut, "I, tin' ot'i'T hand, it should ii" iinsi-rveil tiuit HiTodntlls may havi- n"_ r al'dfi tiic 1'rrsiaii w;ii-s as t'nc i'"i. -niii mat :oii (if tiir snil.'uiij in-t i-t'ii Grot-k and harl'arian, ai.ii may invc fnii-oii r>-d ::,<. i rim', -< o; ! ii,- !;it ter n uia Gi'tjucu as the natural conclusion uf the liuiit for h'hcrtv. In that ca (.iLiXii'.tiyxr]), i>Pt !l>-~ioi nitlnT tli:m tiic liistori:iii Ilrm- ilotu-i pics fur iitti". huri.ui ux'.s tin 1 \voi-, i (i.'u'i- of 1 l.'roiiot iis. ']'::. i' ('t"-Ms ur ti'in or.i"f '<> rxpli'iie I Irp "i"! u-' A"ViMii history ti;.-re is i:d r\ iiiriK'.- to >h"\v. I'.ut it" Hi roiiotus 'liii \vi it i' .ui -V.~-.yri, iii hist cry, u e iniu'ii: roiiji'!-!uie th.it ("U'.-i.-x' oiij.-.-r w;is in uttark iiini. ' i. 1-4 s-.'iiis to slum tli:it llc:o.i"ti:s ii.trinli'.i tu ii.'-'-rponit' 1 it. ;n r \vniilil K.- tin' naniiui pijii-f. 'l"::;it the M. '.<<. a) ii hut til'' IVr.-i . s:r"Vrii i in' .\-~yi-i;iM imwi-r ( l'.arii"f. h'li ck' if n'a J'lin'bnch. icjfj \MI 1'i'i-vi'ht Hi-ri'ii.itus ('ruin inilisiii. iii> A^^\ riiiii i."t.'s. - S'rin (hiti-Mi. a^i 1,-ivrs t'.,- fiiliiiwiiiu ells- i-..s v. lat'T : v. 77. in-' i. fn 'U of tin' IVoii\ !;i.','i, tiiiisiic'i in r..c of l'i.it;v:i' ny tin' 'J'i.i-ii;i; ; -.. ];.c. .;;: ; \i. .:. i-\i nUioi 4 ;t ; v;i. l_;~, fX'Ttr inn of t . . < Sjn.rtaii :.ni ! . ~-.i.i i - ix. 7.; ;iihl vi ...-I, r-lVivM-.', t., ti.i' I'clii! n; ::t--i ,!i u.ir. T'hiini w..s fo-.;i.,;,-, B C. .(4 j, ,uid. t-vcii if H, r.:iintu> ii'i not _" 1 1 i in t i...t yt-;ir L' ]'i-:'.ii-'.y \V: s til.'!.' fl-olll li.C. 4.^2 0)1. S. o .Stt'iu und ^\"^JL1 (Cdtuul C''ai^iC"/'ti/u> mi i. .,-'. ii. i".'. 3 I 6 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. unpopular the opinion may be, lie is convinced that the Athe- nians, when they abandoned Athens and took to their " wooden walls" in accordance with the oracle, saved Hellas. The demo- cratic government of Athens also pleased him. He disapproved of tyranny and of oligarchy, and believed in equality ; and he ascribes the rise of Athens to her escape from tyranny. 1 But this liking for Athens does not make him a blind partisan. He has praise for Athens' great rival, Sparta, 2 and even for the courage of the Boeotians, 3 although they were traitors, and for the Corinthians. 4 Herodotus' breadth of view and his sentiment of nationality is due in part to his extensive travels, which tended to make him cosmopolitan, and fed his kinship with all Hellenes where- soever planted ; but it is still more due to his being an Asiatic Greek. The natural boundary of the Persian kingdom towards the west was the ./Egsean, and farther than this Persian states- men would have had little temptation to extend their rule but for the Greeks on the coast of Asia Minor. The relation of Greece to the Persian empire was in the time of Darius much like that of Britain to the Roman empire. The Channel might have remained the boundary of Roman rule but for the fact that the tribes of Gaul found a perpetual refuge and an ever- ready assistance from their kinsfolk in Britain, and therefore peace could not be lasting in Gaul until Britain also was sub- dued. The Greek cities in Asia Minor, in the same way, could not be expected to become contented subjects of the great king so long as their brethren across the ^Kga?an remained free. It was to the Greeks in Greece, without distinction, that the Greeks in Asia Minor looked for assistance in their struggles against the barbarians, whether Persian or Lydian, and this of itself served to make the Asiatic Greeks think little of minor divi- sion- and much of their common nationality. A strung national feeling, then, running all through Hero- dotus' work, is one thing which gives unity to his Hi.-tory. Another is the predominance of the religious feeling of Nemesis, a theory which the overthrow of the enormous power of Persia bv a handful of Greeks is regarded by Herodotus as verifying. 5 Neme.-i-. the visitation which lights from heaven on over-great prosperity, as the lightning strikes the tallest trees and the Vll. IO2, 22O. HISTORY : HERODOTUS. 3 I / loftiest houses, 1 does not appear in Homer, 2 hut is to bo found in Hesiod, 3 in Pindar, 4 /Eschylus, 5 Sophocles, 6 and Euripides. 7 The workings of Nemesis are seen by Herodotus not only in the defeat of Persia, but in the fall of Ocesus 8 and of Apries, 9 and in the tales of Polycrates (iii. 40), Orostcs (iii. 128), Ary- andes (iv. 1 66), Pheretime (iv. 205), Cleomeiies (vi. 84), Talthy- hius (vii. 137), and the death of Mardoiiius (ix. 64) ; in the result of Cyrus' expedition against the Massagetae, that of Cainl)yscs against the Ethiopians, and of Darius against the Scyths (vii. 18). Xemesis is incurred by conspicuous pros- perity, but the absence of such prosperity is no safeguard. 10 for no one may escape from the "envy"' or "jealousy" of the gods. Short as life is, Herodotus says. 11 there never yet was or will be a man who does not wish more than once that he were dead : Heaven gives man a ta>te, but grudges him more of the pleasure of life. Thus Nemesis and jealousy, together cover- ing the whole of human experience, aii'ord a universally appli- cable explanation of the vicissitudes through which indivi- duals and countries go ; and these vicissitudes it is the business of tiie historian to record. This is Herodotus' philosophy of history. His God is not only a jealous God, but one. who visits tin; sins of the. fathers on the children. That Heaven punished offenders in their own persons and iv\\arded the ri-hteou-, Herodotus lirmly believed, and he records many instance- in which tin's happened. 1 " l>ut there remained cases which Hio- dotus, like Solon and .Eschylus. seemed to think found a satis- factory explanation in ancestral guilt. Thus (Jru'-u- paid the penalty f<>r Gyres' crime. 1:! Pi'iythei.-m Herodotus practically abandons. lie prefers not 3 O,,. ro 3 : '/'/,. 223. 4 P/ith. \. 65; rt'. vi;i. u.,. 6 .v. c. Th. 4 if, ;in.l 430 ft f.rj. ; P. V. 936. Ai. 758 ; I'hi'. 776. " l-'r. O'")|. - H i. i.(. 9 in. 40. 1(1 ll.To'ionis -lvr<. tin- small cause 'him ni irritation. l',\i- tiiis jiro- bai'iy shoulii in' rc.nsl.i--i cii nii'ivly an Jintithutic.il way ef eillpilasi/.in^ i ,' doc! I'iiH' of Nemesis, ;nni not as inconsistt'iit with the pu^sa.,'', 1 r-'fei ri. ii to 1:1 th>> ne\t mite. l \ vii. 4 ->, 1J F,.'i. i. 10, 22. 34. 8'i, 87, 01, 130. 150, i'>7 : ii. iir, n;. 120; iii. u'i ; iv. I ;'?, 25; v. 5'i. C'3, -2, 7'j. 7 ,. So; vi. 72, ir" }, ->; v;ii. ;>, 37, 67, 12-.,', ix. 93- 4- ' ;i See i. 8, 13, 91. Other instances, iv. 14^ ; vii. 1^7, 197. 3 I 8 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. to commit himself, 1 and, though he tells mnny stories of the gods, is careful not to guarantee them, 2 when he does not deny them. 3 In the spirit of toleration he allows that the effects of an earthquake might be regarded as the work of Poseidon. 4 Strange to say, he speaks of the sun as a god. 5 Perhaps this is a mere and natural inconsistency, or he may have deliberately used the expression to guard himself from the charge of atheism, which a denial of the sun : s divinity brought on Anaxagoras, witli whom he may have been, and with whose works he pro- bably was, acquainted. 6 But, although not a polytheist, Hero- dotus was not an atheist. lie believes in a God and in fate. 7 From fate neither man 8 nor even god can escape. 9 It is thus that many things, otherwise hard to understand, are to be ex- plained ; 10 and Herodotus is never weary of pointing out how everything was ordained by Providence. 11 Consistently with this belief in fate, Herodotus believes in oracles as a means of finding out what is fated. 12 Instances of non-fulfilment of an oracle are, of course, explained away ; either the inquirer was guilty in some way, 13 or the oracle was a forgery, 14 or due to bribery. 15 It further harmonises with this belief in fate and oracles that Herodotus believed also in omens. 1 * 3 I ix - 65> E.'j. i. 122 : ii. 44, 50, 53, 57. 122, 123 ; iii. 7, 16, in ; iv. 15, 179 ; v. 86 ; vi. 69, 80. 105, 117 : vii. 129, 152. 3 K.n. i. 102 ; ii. 57. 4 vii. 129. 5 ii. 24. 6 Cf. his derivation, ii. 52, of Sees KOUJJ.US Sevres with Anaxagoras" account of creation (Kitter and Prellcr, 521, irdvra ~x_pr)ij.a.-a, fy O/J.QV. tiro. 7 o 0(bs. 6 oai/juav, ~b oa.iU'jvioi', TO XP 1 '- V , p.o^pa, ireirpuu.^.^. Cf. the ex- pressions e'oee. e'ueXXf, x_prjva.i. Ka~a KfKpiUL&vov, i. 8, 91 ; ii. 153, 161 ; iii. I ;o. 1:3 ; iv. 02 ; vi. 64 : vii. HM, 146 ; viii. 54 ; ix. 93. loy. 8 i. 01 ; iii. 44, 65 ; vii. 17 ; viii. 6, 13 ; ix. 16. 9 i. 91-. ] '' I;';;, i. 45. 86, 87, 90, 129. 155. 162 ; ii. 120, 133, 139. 161 : iii. 21, 30. 43, HO ; iv. 79 ; v. 33, 92 ; vi. 64, 135 ; vii. 10. 12, 16 ; ix. 91. 1' i 4;. 53-55. 62, 87. 91, 118. 120. 155, 150 ; ii. no, 133, 139, 161 ; iii. 77, ic8, 142 ; iv. ''>. 79, 150-159, 164; v. 92; vii. 170; viii. 6-13, 94, 100, 101 ; ix. 91. '- The chief inMiiiii'ps of oracles are : i. 7, 13. ."6. 53, ", 65 ,i. (iiiiucus, \i. 86, or CHJUMIS, i. 91. !i vii. 6. r > }'.-} f,-!:i:i11y in tlif 1 r.ise of the I'vthia. r.;i. ii. 49 ; v. 63 ; vi. 66. '' i. 23, =o. 78. 87. 150, 167, 17^ ; ii. JO, 46. 82 ; iii. 76, 86, 153 ; iv. 64, 79, 203 ; v. 0.0 ; vi. 27, 82, 98, 107, 117 ; vii. 37. 57 ?'<}.. 219 .sry. ; viii. 2O. 37 S' f /., 41. 64 f"j. ; ix. 91. With this helief in ii'-stiny :nid ' ruch^ ilero'lottis nutu- r.ily I'lx-eut." us with ex;iin'>h'S of the iiony of fortmie. c.'i. tiie Tale of A'ira^tus, \vlmse very ein'iPHVour to save is the ineiuis <;l his killing Croesus' tun A!%. u iiost, deatii i>y a sjimr haa heen I retold to and guarded titjuin-i; by Cio;~u~ ii. 34-451. It is inteie.-ting to observe that the irony of fortune, HISTORY: HERODOTUS. 319 The belief of Herodotus in Nemesis and fate gives unity to his work, for the history which he relates is regarded by him as but the working out of a divine plan preordained from all time. Imt a theory is dangerous for a historian, who may un- consciously be drawn into adapting facts to suit his theory, and it thus becomes necessary to examine the credibility of Jlero- dotus. The credibility of a writer depends on his capacity, his honesty, and his means of information. Under the head of capacity we have to distinguish between the capacity of a writer for stating the results of his own observation and his capacity for estimating the evidence of others : and in the case of Hero- dotus it is the more necessary to observe this distinction, be- cause, in conformity with the custom of logographers, lie regarded it quite as much part of his task to describe the land, monu- ments habit.-, and customs of the peoples whose history In. 1 was writing, as to write their history. The historical events which Herodotus recorded happened before his time, and came to him from the lips of others ; but the descriptions of countries and peoples are, to a great extent, the result of his own travels. With regard, then, to his capacity for this portion of his work, the essential conditions are that lie should have been an accu- rate ol iserver, and that he should be able to distinguish in his statements between what he himself observed and what lie \\as told by others. jiut in forming our opinion we should be on our guard against applying the standard of modern times to an ancient author. Tims, naturalists <>f the present day owing partly to the modern taste for sport anil to m >dern weap"iis of precision are accustomed to much closer study, ho; h of speci- mens and of the. habits of th>' living animal, inan anv Greek naturali-ts. We an- not. therefore, surprised to iind that the acquaintance of IIerd"tus with crocodiles and hippopotami was a distant one.; that h" has no accurate measurements of the latter, and little knowledge of the conformation of the jaws of the former; that he is avt to conf" witn the eoualiy venomous horned viper takes ubuui pisciculture ; and accepts wi;h what In; was told by the natives. In this which, though it is not, as li.is snmc'invs limi Mippnsc-d, :\ p. ciili:ir]y >v>ph'>- c'u .111 cm ptioti, is thoroughly nmTril ;n <.i.'k lireraf lire ': : .1 11 ui'-r on- N\ ;ii (is, is 11. it liy ;u iv n 1 1 .ins peculiar id. IM r i> i's carli' st ii .-;n ct> found in, Uiot'k in.'i:itui-i>. Scvfiiti-cu iiun.ii.il yc .)> i.. i'..i v ( '. i -i ;i story, "iiicuis IHVXTVOI! in tin' J Ian is p:n.ynis (500, t:;m! itt-ii ui t'.. /,' } /.> ,'< /''-', li. l5j-l' ; .Q|. \\-a-, told in 1'^'vpt of a M :: ;'i wi;o-e dratii. ; r- ii and !i>; tMi.'.d, wii^. in acc'ir.i.inct with the prniicti(i:i, lirou^iit ubour i>y his d. _'. wi.icii tried to save him. 32O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. Herodotus falls below the modern, but not below the ancient, standard, and will compare favourably with Aristotle, who wrote on zoology. If we set aside this special department of inquiry, and consider him not as a naturalist, but as a general observer, we find, in the first place, that he recognises the dif- ference between the evidence of his own eyes and hearsay, 1 and that he is generally careful to inform us to which kind of testimony a statement belongs. 2 In the next place, it is gene- rally admitted that " what he saw himself he may be supposed to describe with fair accuracy." 3 Everything, of course, he did not observe. He does not state, for instance, that the Egyptians used gold and glass as well as bronze for drinking vessels ; that they ate wheaten as well as other bread ; 4 that women as well as men plied the loom in Egypt, 5 and that they drove the woof upwards as well as do\vnwards. But, nevertheless, he gives us a picture of Egypt as he saw it, the charm of which is in- disputable, and which is as valuable as it is charming. As an observer, then, Herodotus may be credited with capa- city. In the historical portions of his work we must look for other qualities to establish his capacity. To begin with, lie has the first great quality of a historian : he distinguishes between facts and his inferences from them. "What was told to him he tells to us, and gives us his authority : he draws his own infer- ences, but also gives his reader the opportunity to draw other inferences. 6 Further, he does not present us with that version alone of an event which he considers most likely, but lays before the reader all the versions with which he is acquainted, choosing one himself, but also leaving the reader liberty of choice. 7 Again, he is free from the error of infallibility ; if he cannot test the truth of a story, he admits his ignorance. 8 As Hero iotus is so careful to distinguish between what he has heard and what lie infers therefrom, and to give his autho- rities, his capacity for estimating evidence becomes a matter of 1 ii. 99. - E.'j. ii. 99; i. 184 ; ii. 120, 29. 53, 113 ; iii. 45 ; iv. 173, 179, 187. 3 Prof. Sayce's Hero/lot us, p. xxxu. 4 ii. 37. ' ii 36. 6 vii. 152 ; ii. 123, 146 ; iii. 9 ; iv. 10; ; v. 45 ; vii. 230. 7 K.(i. he ^ives two accounts of ( 'ambyses' murder of his sister, of the origin of Cambyses' war against Euypt (i:i. i), 'if the fate of the Samians sent to Oambyses by Polycrates liii. 451, of the motives of certain Spait:mH in supporting the insurgents against J'oHvnues ;iii. 461, of the loss of t'n-3 Spartan howl sent to ('yrus (i. 70 , of the story of lo (i. 3), of the motives of Orestes in assassinating Polyerates, of the origin of the Scyths, avid of the feud between Athens and Egina. ' OVK fx w aTpfKewt (lirtiv ia a perpetually recurring formula with him. HISTORY : HERODOTUS. 3 2 I loss consequence. Tut he is fully aware of the importance of getting evidence at first hand, if possible, 1 and naturally prefers that version of an event which has the best evidence to support it. It is, however, at this point, that his theory of Nemesis and fate affects his credibility as a historian. AVhen the evidence for two versions of an event was about equal, Herodotus cannot be blamed for choosing that version which accords with his theory. In such a case it is perfectly legitimate to take into account the tendency of a general law, and to give; weight to general considerations. What is not legitimate is for the his- torian to imagine that conformity with his theory dispenses him from the necessity of further investigation: ami there can be little doubt that his theory frequently led Herodotus into taking a sir erlieial view of history, accepting fate as a sufficient explana- tion of an event, about the causes of whi<-h he might have found out and told us more. On the other hand, there is not the leat reason to believe that he ever rejected the better-attested ver- sion bt-cau-e i: did i\ only personal uis for causes. Thus, h,. ascribes l'r> 'in th Medes to personal motive-; lawgiver, and also believed 322 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. be brought about elsewhere by the mere command of a philo- sophical king. Another defect which Herodotus shared in common with other Greek writers, and which, though in a different way, marred the philosophy as well as the history of Greek Avriters, Avas ignorance of foreign languages. In the course of his travels he picked up about a score of foreign words; 1 but when lie says - that Persiaii proper names express always some bodily or mental excellence, and that they invariably end in .9, he betrays his ignorance of the language, tio, too, his remark that the language of the Troglodytes, 3 of the Egyptians, and of foreigners generally 4 was like the chirping of birds, shows that he had learnt no language but his own. The result of this ignorance of foreign languages was that Herodotus had to depend for much of his information about the foreign countries he visited on interpreters : and this brings us to the second point we have to consider in connection with the credibility of Herodotus his means of information. In the case of public monuments or documents, of which there existed authentic translations from the original into Greek, Herodotus' linguistic ignorance would not vitiate his statements, and it is probable that it was on such translations that his accounts of Darius' cadastral system, 5 the itinerary to Sardis, 6 and the description of Xerxes' army ' rested. But in the case of inscriptions which he had to get translated by his interpret'']', e.fj. the inscriptions about the amount of onions consumed dur- ing the building of a pyramid, 8 or about the method of buii iing a pyramid, 9 or the pillars in Pale.-tine commemorating the con- quests, whether of Sesostris or Rameses II. or the Hittites. i0 obviously the translation depended on the capacity of the trans- lator, not of Herodotus, and is of uncertain value. Considera- tions of this sort api'ly to the whole of Herodotus' Persian and Kgyptian history. He depended entirely on his interpreter or dragoman, and tin; result is that we have rather folk-lore than hi.-tory, the tale of Rhampsinitus, and not the ival history of the Egyptian dynasties; and we are the gainers. The monuments will reveal to us in course of time the history of the kings of Egypt, but Herodotus has given us what the monuments cannot 1 Tli> y will b'- fouii'l in i. 105, no, \y>, \~2, 107, i ,2 ; ii. 2, 30, 46, fa, 77, 'f i. (,.4, 1*05, 14^ : iii- H . ^ ; ' v - -3' 2 7> 5 2 > 5''- J10 ' J1 7> J 55> J 9 2 ! v - 9 '< y i- '/^> 1 1 < ; viii. 85, ij'<-j ; ix. no. - i. 140. ;; iv. 183. 4 ii. ". 5 iii. !-'-. <; v. =2. 7 vii. - o ;-"/. 8 ii. 125. 8 ii. 136. '" ii. 102, is'">. f'ommt'iitatot.s differ vi-i j' mu- ii uii tlit'.se jiu>s;iges. Other iriunioutly U'uiihhutU iiisci ipuons, i. 107 ; iii. bo. HISTORY: HERODOTUS. 323 reveal, and what would have otherwise utterly perished a faith- ful and charming version of the popular stories current in the streets of Memphis in his day. "\Vith Herodotus' (ircek history the case is diilerent. Some of the inscriptions which he consulted were undoubtedly for- geries, a.tj. the Cadmeian inscriptions at Thebes, 1 and were known by himself to be forgeries, n.rj. the offerings of Croesus at Delphi falsely inscribed as offerings from Sparta. 2 But many were genuine and valuable, c.ij. those on the Held of Thermo- pylae, 3 the list at Delphi of the ( I reeks at Salamis 4 and Plata^e. 5 and that of Mandrocics in the temple of Here ai Samos. The value of his accounts of the various ancient works of art which he saw is less than that of the inscriptions. Thus what Hero- dotus tells us of Cru-sus, Alyattes, and I -yges may possibly have been the tales which clung lo the oll'erings sent by those rulers to Delphi." l!ut the myth which was told about Arion in con- nection with the erection on T;cnarum, 8 and that about Ladike and her oll'ering at (.'yrene,'-' suffice to show that little confidence can be placed in this kind of evidence. .IJy far the larger part of Herodotus' information, however, was nece.-sarily drawn from the lips of the people with whom he became acquainted. The history of the Persian wars had not been committed to writing, and Herodotus had, therefore, to rely on oral testimony. This is for the purposes of history generally inferior evidence, but its value is materially affected by the number of persons throuvh whom it is transmitted. Mexttn the evidence of eye-witnesses, that of contemporaries rank-, and Herodotus could and did get information from both elates. This miarantees the substantial truth of hi- historv, but lines imt allow us to put much laitu in his statistics, or in any point in which minute accuracy i.- Herded. Hut all h"U-h llerod"tus depends mainly mi \< hr i> not unacquainted with i'm- litcnuure of his H'iiti'd man, possesses familial -.'"' the ( 'yclic poems. 11 ar,' 5 < Mrii .'" Alca'us, 1 ' ; -" but he has ivfere-nci issibiv A nax inlander." 1 ' 324 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. because we know so little of them. Hellanicus was later than, and therefore unknown to Herodotus, as was Damastes. the pupil of Hellanicus. Bion, Deiochus, Hippyas, Eugeon, Eude- mus, Democles, Melesagoras, and Xenomedes are mere names to us, and there is no hint to be found anywhere that Herodotus either used or kne\v their works. The few fragments that go under the name of Dionysius are probably spurious, and the celebrated voyager Scylax probably did not write any account of his travels, certainly was not known as an author to Hero- dotus. 1 What little we know about Charon seems to show that Herodotus was unacquainted with his works. 2 Xanthus was said by the historian Ephorus to have given Herodotus the starting-point, 3 but the few fragments left of Xanthus throw no light on the meaning of this statement. With Cadmus, Acusilaus, and Pherecydes, Herodotus may have been acquainted, but there is nothing to show that he was. With Hecataeus the case is different. We have the best of authority that of Hero- dotus himself for believing that he knew the works of Heca- tsetis. In two places he refers to him by name, and quotes his genealogies. 4 Elsewhere he refers, in all probability, to him, but does not mention his name ; as when he ridicules people who draw maps of the world and put a mathematically circular Oceanus round it, without knowing anything about it; 6 or when he condemns the theory of the Kile flowing out of the Oceanus, as having no basis in facts. 6 From these passages it seems clear that Herodotus had only a poor opinion of Heeat;i?us. Hut according to Porphyry, Herodotus was indebted to Ileca- ta?us for a good deal of his book on Egypt ; and this leads us to the third point which we have to consider in connection with the credibility of Herodotus his honesty. If Herodotus borrowed without acknowledgment from Heca- tfeus, he was, according to modern notions, guiity of literary dishonesty : and if he tried to pass oil' the matter thus borrowed as the result of his own observation or inquiry, lie is an untrust- worthy historian. The passages specified by Porphyry as bor- rowed are those about the phoenix, the hippopotamus, and the i iv - 44- - Had Herodons read Charon's pot Aa.fJL^aKrfVuH', lie would have understood the threat of ( Yif-us that lie records in vi. 37. \Yhether Charon wrote about Sparta is extremely d >ui>tful ; anyhow, tin-re is no reason to suspect a covert reference to him in vi. 54. 3 At/i. xii. 515, 'Ilporturw rds a(pof>/J.as SfOuKoros. 4 vi. 137; ii. 143. ' iv. 36. 15 ii. 20 ffq. T'i these mny he added iv. 20 (rf. Fracj. 154). i. 201 (Fr. 168), ii i-n (Fr. 284"!, ii. iq s. 270. and Pollio probably was very little earlier than Porphyry. In the next pia-'e, in the time of Athemrus, about A.M. 180, and of Arrian. about A. n. roo, there were spurious works in circulation under the name of HecatiTiis." Further, we learn from Athenrvus that in the time of Cailimachus, about B.O. 2^0, these spurious works were already in circulation. It becomes therefore probable that Pollio, like Arrian and Athena-ns, had the .-purious works of llecata-us before him, and we may suppose that between Hero- dotus and the spurious Ilecat;eus there was sufiicient resem- blance to make it probable that the later author copied from his predecessor: but we have no ground for believing that the spurious Ilecat.'eus is the earlier author. On the contrary, it seems more probable that the spurious I[erat;e",s was partly made out of materials taken from Herodotus. We may, there- fore, reasonably on th" whole say, although lhry t>-.-t iiiiony. Tie 1 spee<-h"s. >-.S'' of Ar:abanu< and Xerxes, or of the Persian conspirators, are not hi~;orieailv true : but r.o one would think of aec'ising [li-i'ndot us ///>?' >"< /<' oi dishonesty in inserting them. I; wa- natural to tin- (ir>ek lo throw into the livdv form of di dgue or debate the considerations which moved, or 1 T ; rs U thi' Ti:irur:il irif'T-'iict' from ii. oo. ~ \\"i\ .r Sui. ; :i< (>'. r. HccMr.-fiio ,:iys ciMiic-i fr,.m I'^ri'iiyry. I'f >' v.lns ..''. !'(,;( vi ')')? lia ii 05 :ii:il .<. r. ^> , .1 \. ' A "-'; ; ; ' \ -i ' . i -'" /.' ' '' " . I/'" xxxiii. III. NS ii:U lit nim^clli's iTTf.'illl. II. 12) S:i_VS I'rf'-l'S tt> !:," s r vli', jt li.tj matt.-v : st'o iliiliittniur, J > ll^-'itu'' lt>s,-,-ii,t <>. ,, !', 1.1, i i. I'ra-p. /:>: \. 2. 4 1'on'hyry \v.is n Syri:in. His i aim- i^ ;i tr iii-lariuli of tii" Syi'i.in M'.h'k. ami in' w:is :i pupil << I'i.'tiiius. tin' Ni-'i-l'liiti'iii-t. * A 'ii. ii. -o; Arrian. AV/.. ..'...-. \ '' 'I'h's is suppurtetl by tin 1 comp:i! i-"ii of /I,r> 1. ii. 77 \vi:h A'Ji. iii. ,0, x. |4;r., 4iSic. 326 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. were supposed to have moved, the agents in historical events ; and it was as unnecessary for the historian to warn his feliow- Greeks that the speeches were his own inferences from what facts lie knew, as it is for a modern historian to give a similar warning as to the motives which in the confidence of know- ledge he feels justified in ascribing, though they are but infe- rences, to historical personages. And when Herodotus repeats with asseveration that the speech he ascribed to Otunes was, whatever some Greeks might think, actually delivered, he means that the grounds lie has for inferring the delivery of some such speech were quite convincing to his mind. In one or two places in the book on Egypt. 1 Herodotus says that lie went to Thebes, and even as far as Elephantine. Hut it seems quite clear that in reality he never went to either place. As, therefore, in one passage the MS. authority for the statement in question is doubtful,'-' and in the other the statement, seems to have little connection with the context ;" and as both state- ments are in ludicrous contradiction to what Herodotus himself says, 4 we seem justified in following Professor Sayce in striking them out. To sum up, then, the argument fur the credibility of Hero- dotus : his impartiality and honesty in the matter of Greek history seem beyond doubt. With regard to his journeys, a suspicion has been cast upon him, but not successfully, that he was more, than liable to the infirmity which is often imputed to travellers when telling their tales. In capacity he was rather above than below the standard of his a_'e. J'.ut his means of information were poor. In the case of his Greek history, his information, though the best at his command, was only oral te-timony. In the case of hi- Oriental history, even when he met trustworthy informants, as the priest of -Neith at Sals, or Z'pynis the son of Megaby/.tis, he was entirely at the ni'-rey of 1 ii. 3 : ii. 20. -' ii. 20. a ii. 3. 1'iof. Jviyef says (xxvi. n. 2): "I li:ivt> l>rriel;t'tr- r"i i>y ;i fni>yM. 1 [cliopoiis ai<>n'-. ;ii..l not Th'-h. s. was 7i>-:ir ei'oiiL'li fur Herodotus in 'turn inr.o,' in or.ii-r to test \vli;it was to!d iiini at Memphis. Hi- iva-mi f->r lining si> \vus tii t 'th" ]icci],](; ,.f li. liii|)(i',j.-, wi-ix- coii>iiii-ix''l ti,u hot iiuthoj-itiL->.' Tin-re 1- 1:0 Irfcn-I.Ci; In II. i- '1'iii'i ililis." 4 It i- u>nv:isr itlone to inf'-r that Jl.-nidotins ha.'l iii-t-n to Tiifcljos, lili.i would Ita.'i o);lv aii'.ii.er coinir.i'iitator to infer th.it Herodutus wroti- to li^teive. HISTORY: TFIUCYDIDKS. 327 his interpreter, and his Oriental history therefore is that of the dragoman, not of the monuments. CHAPTER III. THUCYDIDES. "THUCYDIDES, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war in which the, Peloponnesians and the Athenians fought against one another. He began to write when they first took up arms, believing that it, would he great and memorable above any pre- vious war. For he argued that both states wen? then at the full height of their military power, and he saw the rest of the Hellenes either siding or intending to side with one or other <>f them. No movement ever stiried Hellas more deeply than this ; it was shared by many of the barbarians, and might be said even to affect the world at large/' 1 These, are the words with which Thueydides begins his history. lie was horn in the Athenian deme llalimus, belonging to the tribe Leontis, on the coast between Phalernm and Colias. His father, Olorus.- was related, though in what decree we do not know, to the Thracian (Horns, who-e daughter married the famous Miltiades, 3 and was mother of Cimon. At the outbreak of the Pelopon- nesiau war in i;.c. 432, when Thuevdidcs. as he himself says, heiran to write, he was probably about forty years of a_ r e. The lir.-t twenty years of his life were spent under the administra- tion of his great relative Cimon. and the nrxt twenty under that of the man f< >r whom Thu.-ydides had such admiration, 1'erides. Abou! Thucydide.s' early life and education we have no direct information. "\\ e may, however, fairly assume that he nn-t and learm-d h'>m all tie 1 gival m> n who at this time, lived in or found their way to Athens. Tie- philosopher Auaxa- goras. who has left traces of his influence even on 1 I^r d >;i:s, maybe credited with having contributed to tie- formiti->n <>f the mind of Thucydi les. whose views "ii natural science and on religion are more closely connected with those of Anaxa- goras than are even th"-e of Herodotus T'ne orator Antiphoii. whose style resembles that of Tlnicydides b-:h are das-ed by In'onvsiusas helon^ing to tlie > -\vr .-tvle" -mav have been 328 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. Thucydides' literary model, and was certainly in other relations known to and studied by Thucydides, as is shown by the man- ner in which he speaks of Antiphon. 1 The sophist Protagoras, Gorgias the rhetorician, and Prodicus, have all left marks of their influence on the style of Thucydides. At Athens, though not at Olympia, he in all probability, when about twenty-five years of age, heard Herodotus read portions of his history. ^Eschylus he may well have seen ; Sophocles. Euripides, Aristo- phanes, and Phidias he must have met. Poetry, architecture, science, philosophy, and rhetoric all found in Athens, or sent there their best exponents ; all helped to shape the citizens of Athens, and to make it right for one of her sons to say, "We are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cul- tivate the mind without loss of manliness. Wealth we employ, not for talk and ostentation, but when there is a real use for it. To avow poverty with us is no disgrace ; the true disgrace is in doing nothing to avoid it. An Athenian citizen does not neglect the state because he takes care of his own household; and even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fail- idea of politics. We alone regard a man who takes no inteiv>t in public affairs, not as a harmless, but a useless character; and if few of us are originators, we are all sound judges of a policy." ' 2 With these convictions Thucydidc> could not but " fix his eyes upon the greatness of Athens, until he became filled with the love of her, and impressed with the spectacle of her glory."" Educated in this city and by the-e means, and endowed with an originality and energy of mind which have elevated him to the level of the greatest minds the world has produced, Thucy- dides began in u.c. 432 to write the history of the Peloponnesian war. then commencing. Possessing extensive property ami the right of working g<>id-mines in Thiaee, and being consequently one of the leading men in Thrace, 1 Thucydides mu.-t have sp"iit a certain part of every year there. I'.ut the larger part of his time he passed in Athens. The ,-peeches uf Pericles he certainly heard: his admiration for Pericles' statesmanship is shown bv Avliat he >ays of it ; "' and he may have been among the per.-*>nal fi Sends of iVricles. in i>,c. 430 tne plague. Vihich wi-.rght great harm to Athens, nearly deprived the world of Thucydidi V history. lie Avas, he says, himself attacked, and witnes-ed the sufl'eriiig< of I'ther.-. 6 The celebrated del ;ite> on the fate of the Mitylena-ans in u.c. 4^7. and the Spartan propo.-als fur peace in r..c. 425, in consequence of the all'air of 1'ylos, he was piv.-ent 1 Thm\ viii. 63. 2 ii. 40. 3 ii. 43. 4 iv. 105. B ii. 65. 6 ii. 4.8. HISTORY: THUCYDIDES. 329 at ; and he may have taken part in some of the military opera- tions of the earlier years of the war. At any rate, in B.C. 424 he acted as strategus. being one of the two Athenian generals intrusted with the protection of Thrace. 1 lie allowed, how- ever, the Spartan Brasilia* to occupy Amphipolis, the key to the whole of that country : the result of this serious disaster being that Thucydides was an exile from Athens for twenty years. That this was a heavy punishment to him it is impos- sible to doubt : but so far from its injuring the prosecution of his work, it had the opposite effect. It set him fiee from other claims on his time and attention ; his work probably became the sole palliative to the exile's grief ; and his enforced absence from Athens gave him the opportunity he could not have otherwise enjoyed of visiting the Feloponnese, and seeing the war from both sides. He says,'-' " For twenty years [ was banished from my country after I held the command at Amphipolis, and asso- ciating with both .-ide~, with the 1 Yloponnesians quite as much as the Athenians, because of my exile, L was thus enabled to watch quietly the course of events." He seems to have visited the places allected by the war not only in Greece, but, as his acquaintance with the. topography and early history of Sicily shows, 3 in Sicily and Italy ; and everywhere he sought out eye- witnesses, ' of whom," he says. 4 " 1 made the most careful and particular inquiry.'' At length, in B.C. 404. he returned after his protracted exile to his country, six months after the de>true- tion of the walls of Athens liv Lvsander. 3 How long he lived after this is uncertain. He perhaps died before B.C. 306. for he says, 6 when mentioning the erup:iou of Ktna, which took place in B.C. 421'', that only three eruptions were kn iwn to have taken place "since the Hellenes tir-t settled in Sirilv." and this statement was not true after the erupt; <:\ of no. 300. I Jut he may have lived after i;.c. 3 implv that Archidama- at the time of writing was dead, hear much piessin_ r . In line, we do not km>\\- wh'-n he died, r where or how, though tradition says he wa^ kille i by a rubber 1 IV. !0(. - V. 2'~\ ' vi. j n. IVof. Juwott s i\ s vol. ii. n. ; ( I ' : " 'I'llaf ):< in tv ii iv.- }i :-:,>,, I soriiitii'ii is thr n'Miit of his own tr.ivc.s nr iii'iui; it 1 -. "'':- . . > .',,' : iriT-s i'f hrti^iMuo nr --t:r t m.'iit \viiicii :!!' t'ouinl in tin 1 fr:i^Mn-nr of \ n; :n ici -. wholl coinpaivil with Thui-'vili.ii's, mv 'i'y m> HUMUS sutlu-irn' :> ^'Jl'Mirt t:.o hypcti.rsis. first siiu'^i'^ti'tl hv Xifluihr. ami iMi.riii> n'ly in tint. tit .! i y Lit.-r vM'itiTs. that thy accLaint - coiiteia- ]>orury." 4 i. 22. 6 i. 93. ^ lii. no. 7 ii. 100. 33O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. in Thrace. He lived long enough after the end of the war to put into shape most of the history which he began to write at the beginning of the war, as is shown by various passages, such as the reference in the first book l to the destruction of the walls of Athens by Lysander, or the analysis in the second book 2 of the causes which led to the final defeat of Athens, passages which can only have been written at the cud of the war. On the other hand, he did not live long enough to com- plete his history, for the last book does not seem to have received the author's final revision, and instead of coining down to the end of the war, brings us only down to B.C. 411, the twenty- first year of this seven and-t\venty years' Avar. Thucydides began to write the history of the Peloponnesian war, " believing that it would be great and memorable above any previous war." " 2s o movement," he says, " stirred Hellas more deeply than this.''' The importance of the war, long as it was, and great as the sufferings it caused, is not to be measured by its length or destructiveness. It was, on the whole, a strug- gle between the two great Greek races, the loiiians and the ])orian;v ! and between oligarchy and democracy. 4 On the issue of the war it depended whether Athens, which was in possession of the- intellectual supremacy of Greece, was also to hold the political: or whether the Spartans, who knew how to light but not how to live, were to be at liberty to plant rapacious and irresponsible oligarchies in the cities that they conquered. These issues, and they were momentous enough, Thucydides saw ; one other consequence, and that an inevitable one, Thucy- dides must have seen, though he could not know how soon it 1 i. 03. The words are /ecu uKoo6[j.7)ffai> rfj tKeivov yvdifj,T] TO Traces TOL! rei'x " 5 iJTrep vvv tTL oijXov tcrri irc/il rbv Ilfipcua. '' Tliis width may still bo traced ;it the l'eir;eus" (Jowett), which seems to imply that elsewhere- in consequence of the destruction by Lvsander it could not he traced. .Strange to say, the next words of the sentence, oi'o ^ap a/ma^ai tvavriai. dXX?;Xcus TOi'S X('#oi r y tTTrjyoi'. are considered by Prof. Jowett, in his notes, to lie paro- died in Ari.-t. Jlii'iix, 112'). If Thucydides is parodied by Aristophanes, this book of Thucydides must have been published before !(.('. 415, the date of t he Jiirt/x. l!ut sotri\ial an expression contains hardly enough material for a parody. The passage in the JUr'/xi* also claimed (with equal reason) as a, parody of Herodotus i. 17 >, and the inference from the fust part of Tiiuey- dides' sentence is much the .stronger, and, if correct, fatal to the supposed parody. " ii. '>5. a See vi. 70. fi. 82, and for the exceptions vii. 57. 4 iii. 82. The Lacedaemonians planted oligarchies amongst their allies, i. 19, 76; v. 81. The oligarchs in various cities favoured Sparta, the democrats Athens, iii. 47, 8j ; viii. 6j. jr. Kevolts from Athens were not the people's duiiiL', iv. tl.i, inj, lo'i. iio.vry.. u;;viii. o, 14, .( t ; iii. -'/ The Four 1 Inn- tired at once tiled for peace with and submission to Sparta, viii. 70, 90. qi. HISTORY : TIJUCYDIDES. 331 was to become in its turn a cause and produce other conse- quences the necessary exhaustion of Greece, after so long a struggle, that led to the ruin of Greece. Two generations after the end of the Peloponncsian war, Greece lost her political liberty, and with it her literary genius, for want of the strength which had been wasted in the war of which Thucy- dides wrote. Jf these, (lie political, results were all that is to be learnt from the story of the IVloponnesian war. it would have perhaps an interest for the students of history only. Jiut for those who view the history of Greece from the standpoint of Athens ami erroneous as, for the. purposes of history, this view may be, it is the view which gratitu ie for the art and literature we have in- herited from Athejis inclines most of us to take the, tale of this war must have, independent of its consequences, something of the fas. 'iiiation which the war itself had for such an onlooker as Thucydides. The hopes and fears with which such a specta- tor witnessed the successes and disasters of Athens as they fol- lowed on one another we who read of them do not feel, for we know from the lie-inning the result. JJut notwithstanding, as we read, our hearts are stirred by admhatiou for the courage with \\hieh the Athenians rose above each new disaster, anil by regret that so much courage should be doomed only to aggra- vate their sntierin ( _r. Stiil. as we read of each new chance, of peace offering itself, now after the success at 1'ylos, now at the one year's truce, now when Cleon and Ura-idas. the two ob- Macii'S to peace, are gone, we sigh that the opportunity should le lost, that Athens should persist in treading or be forced alii'j; the path of destruction. We watch her with a re-ict i:io;e inten-e than that with which we watch, ;::.: :< Mt to 332 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. bravely borne by the Athenian people, but Athens' moral fall. That the Athenians, who abandoned hearth and home to the Persian invader for the common good, whose self-sacrificing devotion to the national cause of Hellas put them far above, not merely the craven Greeks who joined the Persians, but far above the selfish indifference of the Peloponnesians to anything but the safety of the Peloponnese ; that the Athenians who saved Hellas should have grasped at empire, should have become a menace to Greece, and brought about the war which two gene- rations after gave the independence of Hellas over into the hands of the Macedonian conqueror this we feel is "the pity of it." As we trace in the pages of Thucydides the course and causes of this falling off, we begin to understand that the fi-ar and pity which it is the function of tragedy to inspire may be excited by the historian as well as the poet, by the actual events of history when told by a great historian, as well as by the creations of a poet's mind. The story of G-Mipus. as Sophocles, the contemporary of Thucydides, tells it. tills us with pity for the man " more sinned against than sinning,'' and with fear for ourselves when, seeing how every step which (Edipus takes to avoid the crimes he is fated to commit only leads him inevit- ably to commit them, we become possessed with a sense of the ruthless power of Heaven, and the fearful catastrophes to which the slightest deviations from the paths of righteousness may lead. The same sentiments are aroused by the history of the Peloponnesian war as Thucydides tells it. It was her very patriotism and self-sacrifice which led to the moral fall f Athens. Xot only of our vices, but of our virtues do the gods make whips to scourge us. The services of Athens to the national cause made the Greeks look up to her as their leader: sin- was placed by them at the head of the confederacy of J)c-!os ; her energy in prosecuting the war, and the indolence of the allies who allowed her to do the fi'-hting against the IVr.-ians, converted her lead' ivhi:> practically into empire. 1 " That em- pire," as the Athenians said to the Lacedaemonians in B.C. 432, shortly before the uutbrenk of the war. "was not acouired l>y force ; but you Ohe Laeedi'enioniar.s) would nt, stay and make an end of the bar'har.ans. and thealiie- r.ame of their own accord and asked u~ to lie their leaders. The >ul,-seipient development of our power was originally forced upon us by circumstances." - And the Athenians go on to .-ay, "An empire was ofl'eivd t > us; can yu wonder that, acting as human nature alwavs will, we accepted it. and refused to give, it up again?'' ' 6 The excu.-e 1 i. 96-100. 3 i. 75. 3 i. 76. U I STORY : THUCYDIDES. 333 may be accepted, but excuses, even when accepted, cannot pre- vent our actions from producing their consequences; and the consequence of the Athenian acceptance of empire was the Pelo- ponnesian war. Thucydides says, 1 ' The real though unavowed cause [of the war] 1 believe to have been the growth of the, Athenian power, which terrified the Lacedaemonians and forced them into war.''' The war once begun, the next result of empire was the impossibility of withdrawing from the war. When the Athenians, overwhelmed by the unexpected disaster of tiie plague, were inclined to peace, Pericles put before them, in I3.o. 430, the simple truth, which admitted of no reply: 2 "Once more, you are bound to maintain the imperial dignity of your city, in which you all take pride, for you should not covet the glory unless you will endure the toil. And do not imagine that you are lighting about a simple issue, freedom or slavery ; you have an empire to lose, and there is the danger to which tiie hatred of your imperial rule has exposed yon. ^"either can you resign your power, if, at this crisis, any timorous or inactive spirit is for thus playing the honest man. For by this time your empire has become a tyranny which, in the opinion of mankind, may have been unju.-tiy gained, but which cannot be safely surrendered. The men of whom 1 was speaking, if they could find followers, would soon ruin a city, and if they were to go and found a state of their own, would equally ruin that." The principle which 1'ericles thus laid down, Cleon, in B.C. 427, proceeded to put into application. The Mitylena>ans, who had originally joined the confederacy of 1 )elos, and now found them- selves beionm'm_ r to t'ne Athenian empire, withdrew. They wen-, hwrver, attacked as rebels, and conquered by the Athenians; and the Athenians decreed that every man in Mitylene .-hould be killed and the women and ehiidren enslaved. As Cleon -aid t<> the Athenians/' 1 If they \\ere ri_ht in revolting, you must he wrong in maintaining your empire. l!ut if, right or wrong. y<>u are resolved to rule, then riVlitiy or wrongly they must be chastised for your good. Otherwise, v<>u mn.-t uive up your empire, and, when virtue is no le. '' The -ame year as that in which th" Mi; vl'-means sulieivd was to show that the consequences of our actions can- not In 1 limited to our.-elves. and that the inn cent pay tiie penalty as well as the authors of a mi>deed ; f.>r in t'ni- year the Plata ans, who had >tood a rigorous s;e_v wi;h remarkable, bravery, succumbed, ami thus the war brought it abnt that the iSpartans, who had defeated tiie Persians at P.at.ea with the aid 1 i. 23. - ii. 63. 1 iii. 40. 334 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. of the Platceans, were about to slaughter the Platffians, and raze to the ground their city, memorable for the defeat of the com- mon foe of Hellas. The pity of it is summed up in one sen- tence of the Platseans' appeal to the Spartans. 1 " The Platteans, who were zealous in the cause of Hellas even beyond their strength, are now friendless, spurned, and rejected by all. Xone of our old allies will help us. and we fear that you, O Lacedaemonians, our only hope, are not to be depended upon." The imperial position of Athens, which in this year necessitated the slaughter of a thousand Mitylenfeans, whose offence was struggling for their freedom, produced more fruit eleven years later ; for as the necessities of empire made it impossible for Athens to retire, so they offered her every inducement to ad- vance. "The Melians," says Thucydides,- " were colonists of the Lacedaemonians, who would not submit to Athens like the other islanders. At first they were neutral, and would take no part ; but when the Athenians tried to coerce them by ravaging their lands, they were driven into open hostilities." The Melians, therefore, being weak, were to be crushed, and the conscience of Athens, having adapted itself to its imperial position, felt no need of excuses. "We Athenians," said they 3 to the Melians, '" will use no line words : we will not go out of our way to prove at length that we have a riu'ht to rule because w r e over- throw the Persian, or that we attack you now because we are sulVering any injury at your hands. We should not convince you if we did. , . . You and we should say what we really think", and aim only at what is possible, for we both alike know that into the discussion of human affairs the qtte.-tion of justice only enters where the pressure of necessity is equal, and that the powerful exact what they can. and the weak grant what they must.'' Melos was annexed, and Athens coniinued to advance, whereby she not merely left the question of ju.-tico, behind, but also neglected the advice which Policies had given h"i' twenty years before, "Mot to seek to enlarge her dominion while the war was going on.''' 4 Sicily was next attacked. ' They virtuously prof.-sed that they were going to assist- their own kinsmen and their newly-acquired allies, but the simple truth was that they a-piied to the ennire of Sicily/' says Thueydidcs, 5 an Athenian. The Sicilian expedition f.dled di.-a.-troi;>lv. and contributed more than any other error on the part of Athens to her fail. And it. too, was recommended by arguments drawn frm the imperial po.-i;ion of Athens. " We cannot." said Alcibiades.' 1 '' cut down an empire as we 1 iii. 54. " v. 84. a v. 8,,. 4 i. 65. vi. 5. ij vi. 18. HISTORY : TIIUCYDIDES. 335 might a household ; but having once gained our present posi- tion, we must keep a firm hold upon some, and contrive occasion against others ; for if we are not rulers, we shall be subjects.' It is this tale t<>M in detail, with no striving after effect, but will; a calm and cold veracity which imprint-: the story with painful distinctness on the imagination and the mind, that makes Thucydides as interesting as Sophocles, and the fate of Athens a moral study as absorbing as that of (Kdipus. One difference, however, will strike those who read both authors. J 'estiny, which is the eventual source of all CEdipus' actions, plays no part in Thucydides. How universally useful destiny might be to the historian, Herodotus had already shown. It was ;i kev t which no lock could fail to open. If a storm wivckrd IVr.-ian s'niix-, tins was " in order that " the J'cr.-ian 1l''et might not be larger than the (ircek fleet. If Xerxes made a mi-take in his campaign, this was because; destiny had de- creed iiis defeat. ]'>ut this crude use of destiny could have as little attraction fur Thucydides when applied to the solution of historical problems, as for Sophocles when applied to moral pro- blems. Sophocles uses it more sparingly and more eU'ectively. As far as (Kdipus is concerned, fate only interposes directly once : in the oracle warning him of the crimes he will com- mit- and gianted but tin- one interposition, ail the action.-; of (Kdipus How naturally and inevitably. I'.ut Thucydides knows not even this refined form of destiny. TO Thucydides, a man's own actions are his fate ; they are a mans destiny, winch decrees what lie shall do and what h>- shall be. The a: of any other kind of de.-tinv from the history of Thucydides. does not prove that Thucydidi - i ad no 1 eiiei in de-tinv. Its alis.. nee is sati-factnnly accoiin'.ed fur by its 1 t in,- no pait of Thucydides' design to entertain t ie ,: i! coii-i ,, : it inns. 1 lis obi'.-ct was to sH down only facts, winch idmii : c. ,,-r proof than destiny is susceptible of. It win help t" th" i I ing of tin- a in! other point- to r<\a 1 ins own woid- : '< if the events of the war I have no; ventured to -peak fioni any chance information, im: 1 a cording to an\ i I have described nothing bin what 1 either saw ;;.v-<-!;' > r irarnt f ;' an ' itiieis, < if wiii 'in I made th-- i:. o,'.:irv. The ta-k was a laborious one, brc,;u.-c eye w;;i - - of tii' 1 same occurrences ^'ave ihfl : tn a iint- ot t:.' m, a- tiiey remembeivil or were interested in th< j a>-t: >;:- of one -M,. , , r tin; otlii-r. .\ibl verv iik>'i\ th- 1 stri-'tiy in-lo:-;cd cha'a ;:' of mv narrativi- mav be di.-ai't"'intinL' to the L-ar. I'.ul if h-- w';.u d' 1 - 336 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. sires to have before his eyes a true picture of the events which have happened, and of the like events which may be expected to happen hereafter in the order of human things, shall pro- nounce what I have written to be useful, then I shall be satis- fied. My history is an everlasting possession, not a prize com- position which is heard and forgotten." 1 The object of Thucydides, then, was to give a strict and faithful account of facts. He had no preconceived theory to prove, no f- notion of his own" which his history was to estab- lish. The actual facts, free from the distortions of inaccurate memories or of prejudiced eyes, once established, his history would be an everlasting possession for the guidance of future generations. To the actual facts, then, he confines himself, without moralising and without theorising. For instance, in his great description of the plague he says: 2 " Xo human art was of any avail, and as to supplications in temples, inquiries of oracles, and the like, they were utterly useless, and at last men were overpowered by the calamity and gave them all up." What he himself thinks on the objective utility of prayer he does not say ; he simply notes the fact that in this case suppli- cations were useless, with the same abstention from theorising as he notes, in the next chapter, that the disease after attacking the throat moved down to the chest. Moral disorders he treats in the same positive way as he describes the plague ; he notes that a symptom of extreme demoralisation is disregard of la\v, human and divine. In the same way he records 3 both that Brasidas thought that he captured Lecythus by supernatural aid, and that when Lecythus was attacked the walls happened to be accidentally deserted. So, too, he notes 4 that the Spartans celebrated their religious festivals regardless of the military situation, and that their enemies profited by the fact. The Lai ediejnonians, in accordance with their tradition, consulted oracles, but did not iruide their policy by them < j .es of policy ; s as they and other Greeks regularly api caled to the nods rather from wont than conviction. y Among>t the Athenians the religion of 1 i. 22. - ii. .17. 3 iv. IT;, 116. 6 i. 123. 7 i. 120. 8 i. 126. HISTORY: TIIUCYDIDES. 337 their forefathers was held in no better esteem. They purified Ik'los 1 conventionally. The celebrated affair of the Hermse was a religious olleiice, but was converU.'d into political capital. Kven for their unjustifiable attack on the Melians, the Athenians count on the approval of the gods. And Thucydides recounts all these things with no comment and no expression of his own opinion : he gives the facts. "\Yith regard to oracles and por- tents he is equally reserved. He observes - that in times of ex- citement everything of the nature of a portent is curiously noted; 3 and he records that after the failure of the Sicilian expedition the Athenians were furious " with the soothsayers and prophets, and all who by the influence of religion had at the time inspired them with the belief that tli-v would conquer Sicily." lie is aware that ambiguity is of much virtue in an oracle : he says 4 of the Athenians during the plague, " In their troubles they naturally called to mind a verse which the elder men among them declared to have been curient long ago : 'A Dorian war will come and a plague with it.' Then; was a dispute about the precise expression ; ,-oiue saying that /inius, a famine, and not Inima^ a plague, was the original word. .Nevertheless, as might have been expected fr men's memories reflected their sufferings the argument in favour of lu/ntn.-t pre- vailed at the tune. Uut if ever in future years another Dorian war arises which happens to be accompanied by a famine, they will probably repeat the verse, in the other form.'' The vague- ness of another oracle " I'.elter the IViasgian giound left wu>te" allows him to say fi ! it, 5 'The oracle, wit hunt men- tioniii'_: the war, for. --aw that the place would be inhabited .-"mo day for no good.'' ThoU'_'ii whether the foresight of the oracle is to be re_ar ied as human or divine, he does ii"t say. When, an oracle i> fultiiled he no;, ; the fact ; in e.-timating the length of l he war iie .-avs, 1 ' ''lie \\ ho re -kons up the actual periods of tune will find that I have rightly given tin 1 exact number of years. lie wi',1 also tind that this was the Military in-tar.co in wh'.eu those wno p event. For 1 w end of the war. there \\as tnat it was to la--t thrice' nine of it. and was of mature year pai;.- to make or.t the ex mans i:a ; grounds theref nient of thi- solitary or 1 iii. io.|. - -, i. s. * 11. 54. : ' n. 17. 335 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. advising the Melians not to have recourse "to prophecies and oracles and the like, which ruin men by the hopes which they inspire in them." l In the same way as he thus prefers to record historical facts without having recourse to any theory, whether of destiny or divine intervention, he records such natural phenomena as were considered portentous, and what was known about thorn. Thus he duly narrates - how when the Athenians were about to leave Sicily, the occurrence of an eclipse of the moon terrified them into delaying their departure, and thus brought about the de- struction of them all. Jiut he also notes elsewhere, 3 with regain! to solar eclipses, that it is apparently only at the beginning of the lunar month that they are possible. In one place 4 he observes that during a battle in Sicily, " as is often the case in the fall of the year, there came on a storm of rain and thunder, whereby the Athenians were yet more disheartened, for they thought that everything was conspiring' to their destruction." Of another engagement he says, 6 " During the battle there came on thunder and lightning and a deluge, of rain ; these added to the terror of the inexperienced who were fighting for the iirst time, but experienced soldiers ascribed the storm to the time of the year, and were much more alarmed at the stubborn resistance of the enemy. :; The plague was considered by many people to be a f- Itdment of the prmi~c of Apollo to assist the Spartans. Thnrydide.s says. ''The disease certainly did set in immediately after the invasion of the Peloponnesians, and did not spread into the Peloponnesus in any degree worth speaking of, while Athens felt its ravages most severely, and next to Athens the places which were most populous.'' Jiut he had a few chapters before" said, "The disease is said to have b>-Lruii south of Kgyiil in yKthiopia : thence it descended into 1'gvpt and Libya, and after spreading over the greater part of tho Persian empire, suddenly fell upon Athens/ 1 He records all the facts, but does not express ''any notion of his own." Tin: determined re.-olution of Thucydides to adhere to the facts of the war has materially influenced the form of his \vork. Having no piveonri-i v<-d theory of id- own. no philosophy of hi.-lory from which to deduce the facts of the war a 'iiriori, Thucydides follow.-, not a logical, but a strictly chronological order. The events "f each year are jaiiL'ed under that year. The story of a siege, [" instance. -U'-h a- that of Plat tea. which lasted Ihree vears. is not told in one continuous section, but 11- 54- HI.STOKY : TIIUCYDinKS. 3 ;, 9 what happened in each year is told under the head of that year, and thus the story of the siege is twice dropped and twice picked up again. The adoption of this annalistic method by Thucydides is the nion: noteworthy because tliere were no annalists in (ireece. The materials out of which annals sprang in the Middle Ages, lists of magistrates, festivals, Arc., and familv records, existed in (Ireeee; but before annals could he developed out of them, Thucydides produced history. To us this chronological method of Thucydides seems, as it is, some- what clumsy. It fetters the historian without apparently afford- ing any compensation. But it must he remembered that, in the time of Thucydides there was no uniform system of chronology current throughout (1 recce. Later, the method of reckoning years by olympiads, i.e. by the recurrence of the Olympic games every four years, was universally adopted by the (iiveks. lint in the time of Thucydides each >tate had its own mode of ivck- onimr. and commenced its civil year, not on the same day as a:iv other state, but when its own chief magistrate entered on office, or on some other Mich principle. This latter dilliculty Thucy- dides evaded by disregarding the civil year and following the natural year, which he divides into summer and winter. Tin's procedure had lids advantage, that it suited admirably a record of military operations, which, in the ca-e of tin; Greeks, ceased in the winter and were carried on only in the summer. The other dilliculty which arose in the absence of a uniform chrono- logy, that of specifying the year, Timeydides gut over as h- -t lie could by counting from the date of some weil-ki own event, and by reference to the chronological system of various states. Tnis. f..r instance, is hi< way of sin cifyiiiL; the year in which ihe IVloponne-ian war began: 1 ''For fourteen years the thirty Years' peace which Was Concluded aft'T the recovery of Kllbiei remained unbroken; but in the lift-entli vear, when ('hrys:s tne hiuh-pi'iestess of Arifn-; was in tin 1 forty-eighth vear of her iooil, /Kuesjas helm:' the K:>horat Sparta, and at A: lorus having twu ni.in;'ns of his ;\ivh'>nship to \ sixth month after the engagement at I'otH . ud at ;.. n ing of 34O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. fetter the historian, but it secured his chronology, which other wise might have fluctuated. Beyond this division into summers, winters, and years, no other seems to have been designed by Thucydides. The divi- sion into eight books, as we have his work, though made early, 1 was not made by Thucydides. There are traces in the scholiasts of a division into thirteen books, 2 and Diodorus mentions a division into nine books. 3 But these divisions are probably later even than the one we have. Thucydides, however, does sometimes speak of " the first war " or " the ten rears' war," and of "the Sicilian war." and the "Ionic war;'' 4 and so it has been conjectured that he intended a division into live parts the introduction. 6 the ten years' war, 6 the period before the Sicilian expedition." the Sicilian war, 8 and the Ionic war. 9 But the narrative flows on without regard to the subdivisions; 10 the references which Thucydides makes to them are few, and they exercise no influence on the form or matter of his work. In- deed, he seems to have neglected any attempt to break up his work into sections possessing balance, symmetry, proportion, or form, with as much contempt as he disclaims any design of making his history pleasing to the ear. The division into years is "stiictiy historical." Xuthing more is aimed at. At any rate, the notion that Thucydides' history is composed on the analogy of a drama, and is arranged in a prologue and five acts, is purely fanciful, and as grotesquely incongruous with Thucy- dides' concept ion of the functions of the historian as any piece of "subjectivity'' 1 could be. Of all manifestations of power, self-restraint impresses men most, partly because it is the form which power least often takes ; and there is scarcely a page of Thucydides that doe.- not exemplify his strength in this respect. AY here strong expression seems justifiable, where even it seems demanded, Thucydides contents himself with a sober statement. Events winch call aloud for some expression of pity or of hi.rror he leaves to speak for themselves, without a word from him. "\Yliere the temptation to any other writer to comment or to moralise would be irresistible, Thucydides resists it. lie places 1 It was known to Piony;-v. tt6. b vi. i \;i. 87. & MIL i auJiH. " E.v ei-t :it v. 26. HISTORY: TITUCYDIDES. 341 before the reader the nannies of a nation, as in his account of the Sicilian expedition, or the presence of death, as in his description of the plaice, with grave silence. Problems of political morality, which he had studied for years and in which his keen intellect took the profoundest interest, he states so far as they were debated or exemplified in the war; but he is not betrayed into speculation; he confines himself to facts. On the great problems of life, it is sometimes said that it is impossible for a man to hold his judgment in perpetual suspense ; but Thucydides seems to have had them perpetually present to his mind, and to have perpetually regarded the material before him as inadequate for the formation of a decision. It is this habit of never going beyond his facts, of never losing sight of his purpose to ascertain and record facts, this self-restraint which never relaxes, that makes the, reader respect and marvel at the power of Thucydides. It creates absolute confi leiice in him. in his will and his power to record the plain truth. It makes bis very silence eloquent, and his least word weighty bevond the superlatives, the exclamations, or asseverations of other writers. This, however, is only the nega- tive side of his power. His silent self-restraint prepares r.s to be impressed by his words, but his words also impress us. His facts are more valuable than others' comments, and for this then 1 is a reason. In Thucydides' history we have the facts of the war as Thucydides saw them ; and the dilleivnce between his work and that, say, of Xenophon. who continued Thucy- dides' incomplete work, is much the same as that between what a g--i>liig:st and a navvy SIM' in a railway cutt in.', or a botanist and a plou/hboy see in a hed^e-liottom. or between what Shelley and a farm labourer hear in a skylark's song. That is to say, Tiiueydidi-s had a knowle Igo .it' \\ h it happened in the war com- parable to the geologist's or b"tanis;'s knowl- dge ,,{ hi- >eience, and he further had, like Shelley, the genius to transmute what us than gold. >ssihie to go far. with the IVlo proof of the clearness and gra-p wi:h which he realised all the detail- and the whole signitieanc" of the war : but to ask how this clear >ight was acquired or conveyed i- fully. It is better to try and profit by than spy into genius. The genius of Tiiucydide-; i- seen in the way in whi"h he not only conveys to the reader his own clear perception of the facts and the course of the war, but also arouse- in the reader the emotions with which he him-eif followed the various incidents 342 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. of the struggle. In other words, Thucydides' literary genius is as great as his historical genius. Over the literary as well as the historical difficulties involved by his chronological method of relating facts he rides triumphant. It is said that his work is without a plan, and this is true ; there is no more plot or plan in his annals than there would he in a diary of the war. But this defect is rather apparent than real. Every incident is viewed by Thucydides in the light thrown on it by the whole war, and thus its importance and position is assigned to it as unerringly and as clearly as though all the other events narrated by Thucydides had been grouped with the purpose of giving this one incident its proper literary value. But although Thucydides disdains to strive after the external balance and harmony which he mi.trht have obtained by articulating his his- tory, and by grouping his facts so as to reach the consum- mation of a culmination, still this is. from a literary point of view, even more than compensated for by the internal proportions of his work, in virtue of which each incident receives its proper amount of attention and receive? li'jht from and throws li-jht OTI every other incident and the whole course of the war. But although everything which belongs to the narrative of the war fits in with the narrative harmoniously, there are various digres- sions having nothing to do with the war, <'. lie found in lli-rodotus and the ]o hi^h," and Gray, "Is it or is it not tin; finest thin^ you ever read in vmir life ] :! Macaulav speaks of the "intense interest," the magnificent. IL'ht and the terrible shade of Thucvdides ; " 4 and these words apply not only to the Sicilian expedition, but to the whole narrative. In some instances they apply also to the speeches. The speeches are not in all instances devoted wholly to political wi-dom. Characters are drawn, as. >,,/. in the .-peechos of Alcibiades, Mieias, Archidamus, and IVricles. While in oilier speeches, c.if. liie funeral oration, the appeal of the 1'latieans. the final spi h of Nieia> to his men. the ii-ht is as ma^niticetit and tin- sna'le as terril'le as in anv part of the narrative. Inucydn les i- oilet! CollSl.lel ed ol 'Scure and in tii" - ' -i i ~e thai lie i (oi'S i he ctT'.ainiy is nut. lot i | \Y '.lite K llo W ilii regard his' ,;vi, , it i- ne.-es^iry to draw a di.-tinc- irral i ir_r events, iiis st \ je i - -; . p. iwernij. len ill- b Chilis ! ' I'hll :>hi'-e and t' ' _'elli'I'a- 1 L-f- ."' I. >< U.;.-./ - : ./;,. AIM., ' *>..,, L'ft ,..' ' M,i<.Mw''j>/, i. 44... 344 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. does attain form, he as signally fails -when ho is faithless to 1m principle of not seeking after effect. Doubtless, in throwing Lis own recollections or the reports of others into the form of direct speeches, Thucydides was practically obeying necessity. To the Greek, in whose life, from the time of Homer, public speaking occupied a large place, to the Athenian above all, whose main occupation in time of peace was the making and hearing of political speeches, a history which contained no speeches would have been no faithful reflection of political life. Thus Tiiucydides felt himself to a certain extent con- strained by his desire to write a faithful history to introduce direct oration ; and thus he was constrained to strive after form ; for to merely reproduce by an act of memory the original form in which the speeches wen; delivered was, as lie tells us, impossible. In this attempt at form Tiiucydides allowed him- self to be guided by the precept and the example of the early rhetoricians, who, though they helped to lay the foundations of Greek oratory, were immeasurably removed from even the natu- ral ease and grace of Lysias. much more from the perfection of Demosthenes. Thus the mistakes of Tiiucydides are the mistakes of his masters, not his own, and their mistakes were incidental to a:id inevitable in the earliest attempts to form artistic prose. The florid rhetoric of Gorgias appears in bad taste to us, but to the Athenians of his time it was a revelation. It showed that beauty was possible in prose as well as in verse. Its principal defect that it ignored the difference between poetry and prose we. who have great prose-writings to compare with it, can readily see. lint Tiiucydides, who had to create prose, may be excused for joining the rest of Athens in admiration of the rhetoricians. Thus the conceit-; of Tiiucydides, to which his difficulty is partly due, are <<-\vin^ to the early stage of develop- ment to whii-li prose and ora;< ry in his time h id reached. A second cau.-e is to be found in the undeveloped sta-je of the language. Although there seems no reason to doubt that thought is to a limited extent possible without language, no considerable or contiiir.oiH advance (if thought is so possible. An idea, once ca;>tuie i and imprisoned, so to >peak. in a word, is thenceforward available in .-uccerding generations. Tims the child in learning the meanings of words is >torim., r its. mind with ideas. By means of laiuua^e tin; child, as with sevcn- leagu^d boots, traverses lar_ r " spaces in the realm of thought, which its ancestors took years to subjugate by means of lan- L'uaue, and which are still firmly ln-id by the words th"V planted there. We at the present day inherit a language the HISTORY: THUCYDIDES. 345 total number of whose words is several times greater than the number any single one of us uses ; while though there are many words technical ones which the majority of us do not even know the meaning of, we can, when necessary, acquire that knowledge by a reference to a dictionary. It is, therefore, hard for us to realist 1 a stage of language in which there wen; more ideas than there were words to express them, and in which there was not only no dictionary to explain the mean- ing of words, but the very idea that it was possible to define the meaning of a word was a new and startling conception, which was used by Socrates, the originator thereof, as long as he had a monopoly of it, to the utter discomfiture of all who came in argument against him. Yet this was the state of the language by means of which Thucydides had to convey ideas that the world had yet never conceived of. Further, at the present (lay our linguistic conscience permits us to take a word wherever we find it if we want it, or. indeed, if we do not much want it. From naked savages on opposite sides of the world we take the words "palaver''' and "taboo," as readily as we appropriate a technicality from languages that are dead, lint Thucydidcs borrowed neither ideas nor the words to clothe them in. He writes pure Attic. Hitherto we have spoken as though the lack of a vocabulary were the oiil v di liicit; t y with which Thucydidcs had to contend ; but a still more serious dilliculty was that the lair_ r uai:e had as yet no settled or recognised grammar, lly this is meant not nine centuries h id vet to elapse befon Ihrax was to make the tir.-t attempt to throw together a body m a v ami m u s I a time when ] 346 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. It has been the custom to institute comparisons between Thucydides and other historians, mainly, one would suppose, because Thucydides is by far the greatest of historians. Be- tween him and Herodotus or Xenophon the comparison must be one of contrast, and is one which the reader may be left to draw ont for himself ; but on the comparison between him and Roman historians a word must be said. In the first place, in any such comparison it should be noticed that Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, whatever the differences between them, all belong to a literature which is essentially original and creative ; whereas the Koman historians belong to a literature which is not original or creative. In the next place, the three Greek historians belong to the best period of Greek literature, but the Roman historians do not belong to the golden age of Latin literature. As to the comparison between Thucydides and Sallust, what resemblance imitation could produce there is ; but genius cannot certainly that of Thucydides cannot be imitated. Between Thucydides and Tacitus there are some points of resemblance. Both are great historians ; both have a profound knowledge of human nature ; and both take some- what pessimistic views of human nature and of life. As to style, both possess great power ; both are difficult at times to understand, and brevity is one of the characteristics of each. But to imagine that to Thucydides in his own line it is possible to compare Tacitus, great as lie is, is a mistake. The iir.-t quality demanded of a historian is credibility ; and whatever conclusion we may come to about the credibility of Tacitus, it is impossible to maintain that his reputation stands as high as that of Tinicydidcs in this respect. Thucydides laid the foun- dations of scientific history, but Tacitus has built elsewhere. Both historians draw largely' on oral testimony: but whereas Thucydides understood that the historian should go only to witnesses of the events he wi.-hed to record, and that their evidence, and even his own recollection of what he has him-elf seen, require testing and corroborating, Tacitus was content with hearsay evidence at third or fourth hand. When Tiiucy- dides had recourse to documentary evidence, it was, as far as we can discover, to official documents that he went; or, if he has occasion to refer to other histories, it is in a way which shows that he criticised them rlnseiy. Tacitus, on the other hand, has as little notion of critici.-ing documentary as oral testimony, and relies on partisan memoirs as though they were wholly true. We expect in a historian not only capacity to ascertain facts, HISTORY : THUCYDIDES. 347 but impartiality in stating them ; and this quality no historian possesses so eminently as Thucydides. He writes an impartial history of a struggle in which he himself was one of the com- batants. Tacitus writes a partial history of events from which he was so far removed in time that we might have reasonably expected from him an unbiassed history. Thucydides' love for his native country and it was great never leads him to exag- gerate the successes or minimise the defeats or the defects of Athens. Tacitus shares the weak amiability of Livy in never admitting a Roman defeat if it is possible to close his eyes to it. In politics there is the same distance between the two historians. Thucydides had political views, but he was a mode- rate politician, and his views were such that they rather assisted him than prevented him from comprehending the standpoint of others. Tacitus, on the other hand, shared the yearning of his order after a state of things which it was impossible to restore yearnings which the nobility of Rome expressed the more virulently because they were conscious that they had not the energy or the courage to do anything to get what they sighed for. Tacitus was, on the whole, hostile to the political regime which he undertook to portray. Let us now consider Tacitus and Thucydides, not as histo- rians, but from the literary point of view. Both suffer from the inconveniences entailed by their following the annalistic method ; but these inconveniences are felt much more strongly in Tacitus than in Thucydides. It is no depreciation of Tacitus to say that, great as i.s the interest with which we road him, it is not the, intense interest which Thucydides inspires. The power of Tacitus as a writer is great and undeniable, and he is a master of li^ht and shade, hut it is not the magnificent li^ht and the terrible shade of Thucvdides. 1 Both writers have the power of brevity, and this is frequently considered to constitute a great resemblance between them ; but there is no difference between them so e'reat an ,i ?o characteristic as this supposed point of resemblance. ^Yheie the sentences of Thucydid-s are brief, it is because they are surcharged with thought : they are weighty with wisdom, and they sink into the mind. The sentences of Tacitus are brief because ejaculat<>ry. exclamatory, objurgatory. The, one is the brevity of condensation, the other of amputation. Thucvdides' is the brevity of dignity, Tacitus' the brevity of broathles.-nos?. In fine, Tacitus is a "stylist," Thucydides is none. Tiiucydides is a perpetual 1 See Macaul.-iv, 'nc. cit. 348 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. demonstration that there is a higher art than that of concealing art -the art of dispensing with it. CHAPTER IT. XENorno-N. XENOPHON, an Athenian, was probably born about B.C. 429, for at the time of the expedition of the Ten Thousand Greeks under Cyrus, which, took place in B.C. 401, he seems to have been under thirty years of age. 1 Yet he cannot have been much under that age, for he was already married, 2 and had come to be on intimate terms with Socrates, whose advice he asked whether lie should j >in the expedition or not. On the other hand, there is a story that Xenophon took part in the battle of Delium, B.C. 424, and was saved in the flight of the Athenians by Socrates. If this were true, then Xenophon must have been about twenty years old in B.C. 424. But the story seems to be of late origin. It receives no confirmation cither from Plato, who mentions a similar story about Socrates saving Laches in the flight at Delium, 3 or from Xenophon himself; while the passages in the AtHtJ/am's which bear on Xenophon's age at the time of the expedition are inconsistent Avith the story. About the early life of Xenophon we have no information. He belonged to the order of the knights, for his son Grylius served as a knight in the battle of Mantinea ; and the knights, by the support they rendered to the Thirty Tyrants, were so unpopular at Athens that we can readily understand why Xenophon should be inclined to leave his native city for service abroad. "What we know about Xenophon's life is derived from his writings, and the iirst fact that we thus have knowledge of is that his friend Proxenus, a Boeotian, who had taken service under Cyrus, wrote to him from Sardis inviting him to join the Greek contingent. The offer seems to have been a tempting one. Xenophon savs that the reputation of Cyrus attracted numbers, not of poor and broken-down Greeks, but of well-to-do men of all ages. Some abandoned wife and children, others 1 Ann!), yj. jv. 2^ he Riiys, 6 Eei'o$<2i'. . . . (Joqdft Kal ol &\\oi ol rmaKovra, which is supported by Anub. III. i. 14, -Cie. tie Tin; (. i. 31. '^^innjivti. 22 1 A. HISTORY: XEXOPIIOX. 349 ran away from home ; and others not only embarked in the adventure themselves, but lent their friends the money where- with to do likewise. Although Xenophon consulted Socrates on the advisability of joining the expedition, his own desire to go was too strong to admit of his staying in Athens. AVhen Socrates, who probably saw that to join Cyrus would render Xenophon unpopular in Athens, advised him to consult the gods, Xenophoii complied indeed, but instead of asking the oracle at Delphi whether he should or should not go, he a-ked to what god he should offer sacrifice in order to be successful in his adventure. For an account of the attempt of Cyrus to dethrone his In-other Artaxerxos, the death of Cyrus, the perils and hazards through which the Ten Thousand Creeks went in their strug'-:lc to return home, the reader must be referred to the Creek historian. It is enough to say here that it was mainly due to the imperturbable presence of mind and cool generalship of Xeuophoti that the Ten Thousand owed their safety. One incident in the return must also be mentioned. It is that when the Creeks had at last forced their way to the coast of the Kuxine, Xenophon conceived the idea of founding a great Creek city on that shore. His project was undermined by intrigue, and was not wholly acceptable to the Ten Thousand themselves ; but it illustrates the boldness of Xenophon's con- ceptions and the looseness of the ties which bound him to his native city. Circumstances were, indeed, destined to show clearlv the weakness, or rather the want, of patriotism in Xenophon. Shortiv after the return of the. Ten Thou-and, Athens found lier.2wdia, which is romance rather than history ; while, although it is difficult to find any other term than philosophical to comprehend those works in which Socrates figures, the term is misleading if it is taken to imply that Xenophon was a philosopher. The work on which the reputation of Xenophon as an author must always rest, and which justly causes him to rank high, though not amongst the highest, in Greek literature, is his account of the expedition of Cyrus the Anabasis. The dates at which this work was composed and when it was published are some- what uncertain. It seems necessary to suppose that he must have made notes during the expedition, for he not only gives minute topographical descriptions, but states the distance of each halting-place from the previous one; and the fact that he accompanied the expedition, in the first, instance, us a friend of Proxenus. and not as an odiccr in ihe contingent, seems to show that he had at least the leisure to make notes, if he did not from the first intend to -write an account of the campaign. But as he describes his residence in Skillus in the Anabanis (V. iii. 7), it would seem as though he could not have given the work its final form before he hud been for some little time in Skillus. HISTORY : xENomox. 3 5 1 "Whether we are to place the composition of the work still later, after n.c. 371, when Xi'iiophon removed to Corinth, depends upon the interpretation we put upon the tenses of some of the verbs used in describing his residence at, Skillus; and the weight of aulhorilv is rather in favour of regard i JILT the passage as describing a place in which at the time of writing Xenophon had ceased to live. "With regard to tlie authorship of the Aiial/asf*, dilTiculty has been felt in consequence of a passage in the Hellenics (III. i. 2), in which Xenophon refers to an account of the expedition of Cyrus written hy one. Themistogeiies of Syracuse. It has been supposed that Xenophon is referring to his own work, and, for PI une reason or other, instead of calling it his own, prefers to ascribe it to an imaginary person. On the other hand, it has lieeii supposed that he is referring to a work distinct from his own. and really hy Themistogeiies, of whom and of whose work we know nothing more. A third view is that Themistogeiies collaborated with Xenophon to some extent in producing the Anx/i'iti*. In favour of this last view there is nothing. As for the second view, we know that other members, or another member, of the expedition, SophivMetus, wrote an account of it under the same title as Xenophon's work. "While for the iirst view it may be said that there is some reason for conjecturing that in the U^;,i/howed beyond the possibility of doubt that it was inflicted by Heaven. The very people to whom the Spartans had especially perjured themselves the Thebaiis had unassisted brought vengeance on Sparta (Hall. V. iv. i ). Further, there are internal indica- tions that the first part of the. //te- inatic design of d-'pn-ciating his native country and extolling the country of his atiectioiis by means of tin- S///Y*/'- .Wu r> ri. The omissions can by no means all be accounted for on this hypothesis, nor can the redundancies. It lias therefore been suggested that the key to the mispro;iortiuiiato treatment of events in the //'//>///<> is Xenophon's lik<-s and d;-iikes gene- rally, nut merely his political tendencies. This, like th" pre- vious hypo; he-is, accounts for some of the facts, but i'ad> to account for the majority. lYr.-oii.- in win m Xi-nopin-n for one 354 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. reason or another took a special interest he naturally described at length ; and yet military matters in which he took a special interest are in many cases dismissed with surprising brevity. A third hypothesis supposes that Xenophon's information varied in amount. Places he had visited, events he had witnessed, and persons lie had himself met, he would have a good deal of information about ; whereas he would know less of others. And it is true that many places and events which lie had himself been present at are described very fully, but many are dismissed very briefly; and he also possesses full information derived from other sources than personal observation. The three hypotheses each contribute something towards the explanation of the very considerable blemishes which mar the first two books of the Hellenics. But though they explain them, they do not in the least excuse them. It is the business of the historian to allow neither political feeling nor private prejudice to influence him. and it is also his business to obtain informa- tion of events which he did not himself witness. If Xenophon suppressed the truth and neglected to acquaint himself with the facts he ought to have narrated, he was a bad. and a very bad historian. The only possible way of saving his credit is to sup- pose that the first two books are an incomplete work, and then further to suppose that Xenophon would have corrected the deficiencies in his work if he had completed it. But these are suppositions which admit of no proof, and find but little sup- port. The first two bonks were probably composed before Xenophon joined the expedition, of Cyrus, and as lie lived forty or more years after that, it cannot be alleged he had not time to revise and complete the work. "We may indeed add to con- jecture conjecture, and conjecture that other literary projects the Aaulj'ifi.-t. the Ci/ropcedia, iVc. drove the revision of the fir.-t part of the JI'* out of his head; and then we may further conjecture, that although Xenophon took up the history of Give'.-e. and wrote, and perhaps published, the two other pails of the J/'-/l'-/tii'fi, the fii>t part was never revi.-ed by him, and only published after his death. Hut if we bear in mind that Xenophon was a young man at the time when he probably wrote the fir.-t part of the ll'-llrnic*. and that he was a Greek and belonged to the party which supported the Thirty Tyrants, we shall not have much diliicuity in believing that he was to some extent influenced by i olitical fueling ; that he was not exempt from private prejudice ; and that the interval between the death of ThucydideS (before which the Hellenics could not well have been begun) and the expedition of Cyius was short HISTORY: XKXOPIIOX. 355 enough to prevent Xonophon from obtaining full information on all points treated of in the first two hooks. Two other attempts have indeed heen made to save Xeno- phon's credit as an historian. It has heen maintained that wo have not ids work as he wrote it, hut an epitome ; and in sup- port of this view it has heen pointed out that Plutarch, in his lives of Alcibiados, Agesilaus, and Lysander, while frequently agrecim: with Xenophon, frequently has full information where the Hi'lli-nic* is silent. The inference drawn from this is that Plutarch had hefore him the original Hellenic, while we have only extracts or an epitome. Lut it is difficult to believe that any one endeavouring to summarise the Hellnnics would have produced such an uneven and disproportioned work as tiie lid- li'nics ; while the argument drawn from Plutarch only shows that Plutarch had other sources besides Xenophon to draw upon. The I!/ //''/ii .- in nowi-e resembles an epitome, and there is no reason t> believe tiiat Plutarch possessed the lli'llfnicx in any form dit!'ere:it to the one in which we have the. work. The other attempt is ha.-ed upon ihe fad that Xenophon takes v.p the liistory of (lieece uhere Thucvdides stepped. It assumes that the materials which Thucydides had collected for the liistory of the end of the Peloponnesian war. hut which he did not live to work into shap, came into the hands of Xeno- ph'>n, who was intrusted with the duty or conceived the idea of completing Tinicydides' history. Tnese materials, it i- fur- ther assumed, wen; of varvin_ r character : lience the d 'ficieneies and redundancies of the //'//'/rk to t i 1 : 1 1 Xenophon cei I .inly take - u: TllUevdides stop -. but it i~ Ulli'i \vi 'i'k a.- t ':.' com [i',et:o|l of Tir.; M'i-hin _' t' ' write a liisti 'rv ' '1 ' i .; over _T i;;i; I \\'}[\ ii tile u'i'e t Chi t lie one hand , the //'// '/ 1 I i ' >' 356 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. the histories of Herodotus and Thucydidcs have, Imt opens with a sentence and in a way which are only intelligible if the reader has the concluding words of Thucydides in his mind. Further, there seems some reason to suppose that for a time the iirst two books of the Hellenics commonly made part of the same manuscript as contained the work of Thucydides, and were even regarded as forming a ninth book to Thucydides. Finally, in the first two books, Xenophon adopts Thucydides' method of relating events according to the years in which they occurred, while in the rest of the Hellenics he adopts a less con- strained system. On the other hand, it is said that Theopom- pus also began his history of Greece at the point where Thucy- dides' work ceases, as also did Cratippus ; and in the case of Theopompus there seems reason to believe that lie prefixed a general introduction to his work, thus showing that, although the point at which he began was determined by the extent of Thucydides' history, he did not intend his work merely to supply the gap which death made in Thucydides' design. The absence of an introduction to the Hellenics has been used as an argument to show that the work is incomplete, but several other of Xenophon's works lack an introduction, and, whatever may be the reason of this, the fact suffices to rebut the inference. As for Xenophon's use of the annalistic method, it is said the reason why he employs it in the iirst two books and not in the rest of the Hellenics is thai it is specially adapted for narrating the course of a war, and is not adapted for the more general hi.-tory in the later books. This argument, however, is not conclusive, for if the annalistic method is awkward for general history, it is also very awkward fur the history of a war; and if Xenophon abandoned it in the one case and not in the other, he probably had some, reason for his proceeding. ]t seems, on the whole, probable that the desire to complete what Thucy- d ides' death left incomplete was the motive which first induced Xenophon to undertake the //r/AWfx ; and that when he had carried the history to the end of the struggle, between Athens and Sparta, i />. written the iirst two books. IK; had no intention of writing more. lie may even have given those hooks to the world before lie conceived the idea of continuing the history of (lieece. At any rate, a loii g time probably elap.-ed before he began the second part of the lliA!< n ./'#, which was followed at an interval by the third part. The Ili-llntii 1 * and t lie .-I //ttli<(. nil's. He is seen at his best in the Anaf/axis. The places which he has himself visited, the events in which he himself took part, he gives an excellent account of. He writes simply, clearly, and eifectively. AVe feel that he is stating truthfully the results of keen observation. .Further, the subject being military, is one in which he was versed practi- cally and on which he wrote authoritatively. ]5ut other qualities are needed in a historian than the power to describe a military expedition or to narrate clearly his own experiences ; and when \ve come to the Hellenic*, we find that Xenophon was wanting in those qualities. He has not the intellectual power to grasp the whole, of his subject and the general tendency of ditl'erent sets of events. Consequently he fails to give the proper pro- portions to the various parts of his work. Nor has he the moral qualities which go to the making of a great historian. Admir- able, as Xenophon was in all matters of private life, he lacked the power to subordinate his prejudices to the desiie of stating the whole truth. He was indeed free from the bias of patriot- ism, but he was incapable of holding the scale between Athens and Sparta, or of taking the impersonal view of history which honourably distinguishes Thucydides. The Ciirnpifilia or Ktln<-n <>/ ('>irn* relate? not merely the education bin the life of Cvrus, and the fruits of his education as shown in his life. Tin- work is biographical in character, but it is not a biography designed as a contribution to history. It is a biography with a purpose. Xenophon eho.-e Cyrus for the Mibject of a biography because in him he saw the model of a k iiiL', and in a de.-cript i' 'ii or til-Mil nitrating t'n 1 h>- < '/// '/ill IS, t herel'i 'ft 1* urt her, t lie i in iai'i ic : ir.rp char.-'cier of ( ' vn is shouli to discover bv (-ireful in ( 'yrus' life \v.-re. liul to i be. ( i ranted, as Xeu, ,pj t king ; ali that ! t king. For tin.- d iidhct ing t rai nt 1' 'iis a_'; invest :g nil .MS in! > tiui" as tiiat of the X'-iu 'pin HI should draw Teal kin_ 358 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. do. Accordingly we find that in the Cyropaedia are reproduced the favourite convictions of Xenophon on political and ethical matters ; and we can see clearly that the}', and not historical evidence, are the sources of the Cyropcedia, For Xenophon the model of a state was Sparta; accordingly we find him attri- buting to the Persians Spartan customs. Xenophon' s teacher in morals was Socrates, and accordingly we find the Cyropcedici imLuod with Socratic ideas. For the younger Cyrus, whose expedition he joined, Xenophon had a great admiration, and it is not accidental that the great Cyrus in the Cyropcudia has many qualities in common with his descendant. The Cyropaedia is frequently called a political or philoso- phical novel. It is written, as we have said, with a political and a philosophical purpose ; but it is hardly a novel. A novel must have a plot, while the Ct/ropOKdia is a biography and has not a plot. At the same time there is much in it which has no claim to historical truth, and some things which are in contra- diction with the truth of history : while the scenes, and to some extent the characters, are shadowy, and have no claim to be regarded as real or historical. It is, therefore, fiction to a certain point, although there is in it a residuum of historical truth, which Xenophon may have picked up partly from the works of Ctoias, and partly during his travels with the Ten Thousand. The work, therefore, seems better described as an idealised biography with a didactic; purpose. We must not therefore criticise it as history or as fiction, but rather from the point of view of the author, that is, as a didactic work. From this point of view it fully deserves the high position which has at all times been assigned to it. Judged from the strictly literary point of view, it ranks highest among all Xenophon's Works. The lucidity, ease, and grace which are characteristic of his style' are here conspicuous. To apply the test of history to it is false criticism, and to criticise it as fiction is perhaps iinfair, since the author had no intention of writing fiction. Yet it is impossible not to note the weakness of the character-drawing in the O//'"y ""//'/. In this reject there is the same dillerence between the A >/l>(i.--i* and the ( 1 ijr<>i'U dia as in general p/'tIt.<},* and the //?//- )ii<:. Keen obser- vati"ii Xciiophon possessed, as the Afi'ibacift shows; but con- structive power he pos.-e->sed only in an inferior degree, as is sho-\\n by the //arta, an undi.-s- criminating oniony of tlio institutions popularly ascribed to Lycurgus ; On llewnues, the proposal of a policy designed to increase the revenues of Athens ; the Constitution <>j Atkvns, tlie production of an oligarch, composed probuhly hefore B.G. 413. and not h\- Xciiophon ; and the I/i<:ro, a fictitious dialogue represented as having taken place between Hiero the tyrant of Syracuse, and Simouiiios the lyric poet, on the vulgar fallacy that monarchy brings happiness to the monarch. Tne mi.-cel- lam-ous --TO up of Xenopliou's work-, wliich may here bo men- tioned before we proceed to the philosophical works, consists of the treati.-os (hi. lliilittij. tin- l>nti>,< <>f a C'tC'dnj U> /frai, and the interesting work (Jn Ilmtlimj. Tne ]i'niiosiipiiii.'al works consist of the J/"///."ur:n_r tin- life of So -rates the Athenians were generally in cap \\ le nf understaiuli;;^ him, as we may fairly infer fr 'in tin- ludicrous misivpresentati us i,f A: '.- ']' .ane- ; ami after liis death misre;ires"ntations still c f irward, even },\ persons having, or |iro'.-s-iii'j; to hive, s >me tincture of philosMjihy : as, for in>t me", th- 1 So;,hi-t ! ' !, i Xenoph >n, tiierefnre, wiio ha i lieeii int: :n:it''i' : :.' I '.v. ;'n Socrates, and in whom So 'rate- h id in : 1 the _-: i'e-i all'ec- tion aii'i aiimirati-n. undertook to _-;\e to tiie \\'orl i a title image of tne man and t teaeli- iir_r an>i the nubility of hi- c'narac; r. \\'i;ii this pur- o~,- he wrote memoirs of So 'iMti-. ;. .'/ - . ... : Cird-.-d conversations between S : / ya:io-;> Athenian- on various subjects. Most of thusr c ';:ve: -.;t: .ns Xenohon him- 360 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. self seems to Lave heard ; some, he says, he is reporting at second-hand. In all cases, however, the object of Xenophon is to defend Socrates' memory by simply showing what Socrates was ; and his conviction rightly was that Socrates' life was his best defence. In artistic merit the three philosophical works of Xenophon differ considerably. The dialogues which make up the Memo- rabilia are disjointed ; they have no unity beyond the fact that Socrates figures in all, and they do not give a complete repre- sentation of the character of Socrates. On the other hand, the CEconomicus, which is a treatise on the duties of a house- holder, possesses all the unity which the subject admits of, and shows signs of a plan designed with clearness and coherency, which, allowing for corruptions and interpolations, is satisfactorily carried out. It is further justly celebrated as containing the brightest picture of the relations between man and wife in Greece to be found in Greek literature. Put in artistic merit both the Memorabilia and the (Economicus fall short of the excellence of the Symposium. The scene of the dialogue in. this work is laid at an entertainment whence the, name given by Callias in celebration of the victory of Autolycus in the Pancratium ; and while the description of the scene is remark- ably graceful, the manner in which the dialogue is introduced and the entertainment at length brought to a close, affords an example of dramatic unity not to be found in the other works. The resemblance of this dialogue to that of Plato's of the same name, and the differences, have given rise to much diliiculty and many conjectures. Pirst there is the difficulty of determining which work was written first, and then determining with what object the later work was composed. Jt has been supposed that Xenophon first wrote his work and then Plato composed his Symposium as a criticism of Xcnophon's and an attack on its author. Hut as there are, no other traces of hostility between these t\vo pupils of one master, this theory may be rejected. If we suppose that Xonophon's work was the earlier, we may indeed say that Plato in his Symposium stated his views with- out any intention of implying a criticism on those of Xenophon, but this we can only do by closing our eyes to many of tho points of difference. Further, there still remains the question whether Xenophon's work was the earlier; and, in the absence of external data for dating tho two compositions, we arc thrown on to internal evidence, which seems to point loan acquaintance on Xenophon's part not only with the Symposium of Plato, but also with the 1'lmcdrua. It is, however, hard to believe that HISTORY : XENornox. 361 Xcnophon (lid possess this acquaintance with Plato's works, ami the susjiicion is therefore aroused that the Symposium which goes under the name of Xenouhon is not a genuine work. Finally, the two Symposiumslcad. to a question which, though it scarcely properly belongs to the sphere of this book, may on account of its interest lie briefly alluded to here. It is whether 1'lato or Xenophon reproduces Socrates the more faithfully. ();i the one hand, Xenophon was no philosopher, and therefore, it is argued, was incapable of fully understanding Socrates ; while 1'lato's genius was in accord with that of Socrates and capable of reflecting it. On the other hand, it is said that Xenophon's very want of philosophical genius is a guarantee that he has transmitted to us a faithful imago of Socrates; while Plato has necessarily invested the teaching of Socrates wi'.h the hues of his own genius. On these conflicting views we may remark, that if the. Memnrulrilia were reports of Socrates' conversation made, at the, time by Xenophon, we might credit Xenophon's account of Socrates with greater accuracy than that of i'iato. ] f even Xenophon, corn pi ising his phi I isophical works many years after the. death of Socrates, had relied purely on his memory for tin' conversations which he professes to report, wo might believe that, the- ti'eacherou.-ness of memory was the only impediment to our believing in the superior accuracy of Xeno- phon. Hut the (Ki-oitnmirii* sullices to show that in Xenophon we have, not to do merely with a wiiter striving' to give an exact account of what lie has heard, but with a wr.ter who is giving ih' 1 general impression ma/i//'-/if! we lind dissertations on IVr-ian matters put if Socrates, which are much more i robahly the lion's o\\ n experience than the utterance of the fact that in the same woik X<-nph to have heard a con versa! ion bet whieh lie can scaieely have been pre ed h;ni.-elf considerable, li f Socrates. In line, if w t'ne iniprc.-Mon made on Xenophon bv Socrat">' lif t'-r was or \\a< not more like the reality than that 1'lato, th'^re eall be little doubt that We Illllst plefer 1 J'lato \\ e iiave indeed something more than irfociate 362 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CHAPTER V. OTHER HISTORIANS. CTESIAS of Cnidus in Caria was a contemporary of Xenophon. He was a physician by profession, and belonged to the family of the Asclepiadse. In B.C. 315 he became attached as court-phy- sician to the Persian king Artaxerxes Mnemon, and remained in that capacity for seventeen years in Persia, when he returned to Greece and settled in Sparta. His long residence in Persia inspired him with the idea and afforded him the opportunity of writing a history of Persia. This work, the Persica, consisted of twenty-three books. The first three books dealt with the Assyrian monarchy ; the next three with the Medes ; the next seven related the foundation of the Persian empire down to the time of Xerxes, whilst the remaining books brought down the history to the time of Ctesias himself. This work has not sur- vived to our times, but IJiodorus Siculus has preserved the substance of much of the Assyrian and Median portion of the history ; while other quotations from the Persica have been made by Photius, Athenseus, and Plutarch. In addition to the Persica, Ctesias also wrote an Indica, in which he gathered together all the legends and information he could obtain in Persia about India. This work survived certainly till the time of Xero, but has only come down to us in an abridgment. The historical credibility of Ctesias has an interest for us, even th nigh we do not possess his work-, because not only did his statements conflict with those of Herodotus, but lie very emphatically accused Herodotus of falsity. There can be little doubt that, Ctesias had much better materials for an Oriental history than had Herodotus. He- not only lived for seventeen years among the, Persians, but lie spoke th-ir language' and had access to the. r >yul archives. Even with our fragmentary ac- quaintance with his works, we can see that, in consequence of his superior opportunities, his work was, as history, in one respect superior to that of Herodotus. AVhereas Herodotus conceives Oriental history from a wh-lly Greek point of view, assigning Greek customs, modes of thought, and motives to the .Medes and Persians : Ctc-sias on the other hand, owing to his acqnaint- anei; with Persian life and his access to Persian documents, thoroughly reali-ed the Persian view of life, and was at least fr-e fr 'in the err< r of ascribing manners and motives to the Persians which were quite alien to them. I5ut credibility in a HISTORY: OTHER HISTORIANS. 363 historian requires something more than tb.e opportunity of using good materials. The historian must be honest and capable. Whether Ctesias was capable, we have no direct means of ascer- taining, but it is not probable that he was in advance of his age in the investigation of historical truth, or that he could distin- guish between good and bid evidence for events of remote anti- quity. His honesty is open to more serious doubts. His In'lica was generally regarded in antiquity as abounding in falsehoods; and, further, he seems to have represented himself as engaged in a diplomatic character after the battle of Cunaxa, which, as far as we can judge, was not the case. This inclination to ex- aggerate his own importance at the expense of the truth pro- bably receives another exemplification in his eagerness to attract attention to himself by loudly calling Herodotus a liar. A loss much more to be regretted than the disappearance of Ctesias' works is that of Theopompus' histories. Theopompus was born of L. f ood family in Chios about B.C. 380. At an early a, r e he shared the exile, of his father, who was banished from Chios because of his sympathy or his intrigues with the Lace- da?nionians. This, however, had no ill ell'ect upon the educa- tion of Theopompus, who became the most distinguished pupil of the celebrated orator Isocrates at Athens. After this Theo- pompus made extensive travels, and he himself said that there was no Pan- Hellenic festival and no important town in which lie had not delivered a speech and left behind him a reputation. About IU'. 350 he won the pri/e which was offer. by the Carian queen Artemisia in honour of her band Mau.-olus. He wa- eventually rest 'red to his thanks to Alexander of Mac party. When. IP 'Wever, tin upp'T hand he wa- f> Teed \< vain i;i vari< 'U- ( IP date. ])]ae... a! id man: Theopomp PT'ide'ie! |C spl aii'i a I'ii Hi)' tin- period fp cease., to the was a h:-t >ry < B.C ace 364 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. Philippica only sixteen were left relating to Philip. This helps us to understand the remark made by Isocrates with regard to his two pupils Theopompus and Ephorus, that the latter needed the spur, the former the rein. The historical work of Theo- pompus seems to have been marked by great impartiality and considerable power. He was not blind either to the merits or the faults of Philip, and he brought both into strong relief. His criticism of the Athenians of his time is severe : the young men devoted themselves to lietarae and flute-players, the older men to dicing, and the whole population to festivals and feast- ing rather than to the affairs of the state. He seems to have had the power of psychological analysis and of divining motives, especially of the less creditable kind. He had strong aristo- cratical tendencies, but was not prevented by them from doing justice to the greatness of Pericles; and although in some cases personal prejudice seems to liave had undue but not unnatural weight with him, he seems to have been honourably distin- guished both by the desire and the capacity to tell the truth. Erom Thucydides he differed in two important respects; he wrote much more in quantity, and consequently much less care- fully ; and he was a purely literary, not a practical man, as was shown by his descriptions of battles, which not unfrequently, when compared with the localities in which the battles actually took place, were seen to lie quite impossible. Ephorus, the pupil of Isocrates who needed the spur, also wrote a history in thirty books, from the return of the Hera- clidae to the siege of Perinthus, B.C. 341, which was continued by his son Demophilus. Kphorus was born in the little town of Cyme in ,/Iv>l;s, probably about B.C. 380. He was sent by his father to Athens to be educated as an orator and a practical statesman under l.-ocratcs ; but when he had gone through the ordinary course of Isociv.tes, he had made such little way that his father paid a second fee of a thousand drachma?, and had him put through the course again. Even then he was none the, bi-nei- lilted for practical life, although he had made advance enou-h to win the crown which Isocrates offered every month to his most successful pupil. Accordingly, being possessed of independent means, he devoted himself, on tin; advice of Iso- crates, to writ iir.: history. Although he M-CIIIS to have been ju>tly ranked in antiquity as inferior to Thcopompus, his con- ception of history and of the methods of historical investiga- tion ,-hows a distinct advance on his predecessors who had devoted themselves to the history of rein >te times. He was the Iir.- 1 author to compose a universal history. He seems to HISTORY : OTHER HISTORIANS. 365 have recognised in theory the distinction between mythical and historical times, though in practice lie failed always to observe the distinction, much as in the same way lie wrote on style, though not in good style. ]n selecting his authorities for ancient history, he seems to have recognised the necessity of obtaining contemporary evidence wherever possible, and with this object he quoted verses of Tyrtreus and Alcman, and utilised inscriptions. But even here he failed in discretion. 1'or the time of J'ericles he took as his authorities the comic poets, who were, indeed, contemporary, but not trustworthy. Finally, we seem to find the measure of the man an amiable man indeed in what Strabo tells us : his affection for his little native town was unbounded, and at the close of each section of his history he always remarks, "during this period the Cymseans remained quiet." Simonides of Cos. according to Suidas, lived before the Pelo- ponnesian war, and wrote a Geiicaluijij, apparently mythical, in four books. Herodorus of Heraclea was a contemporary of Socrates. He seems to have endeavoured to extract hi.-tory ffoiu epic poems which have not survived to our time, and to have written works on Heracles and the Argonauts, in which he treated geographical and chronological questions at length. Ion, tlii> dramatic poet, is said to have written, in addition to the /,'/, a woik on the colonisation of Cliio-. Stesim- brotus of Thasos, a contemporary ( ,f Pericles, lived and taught at Athens. He spent much labour on explaining Homer aile- gorically, and one of his pupils, Antimachus, s> cms to have hern urged by iiis example to undertake the task of editing rk on Theinistoeies, Thucydides. and IVrielcs, een not .-u much hi>t<>ry as a violent political c polii icians, and quite devoiii of any value fi.r 366 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. History of Africa. A History of Sicily was written by Hermias of Methymna ; histories of Greece by Dionysodorus, a Boeotian, and by Anaxis, also a Boeotian ; a History of Amphipolis and of Greece from the earliest times to the death of Philip by Zoilus the Homeromastix ; a History of the Sacred War by Cephiso- dorus ; a History of Africa by Theochrestus ; histories of Persia by Heraclides of Cyme and by Dino ; u History of Egypt by Aristagoras of Miletus, who is not to be confounded with either the author of the Ionic revolt or the comic poet of that name ; while Dionysius the elder, tyrant of Syracuse, and Theocritus of Chios, a Sophist, are also mentioned as historians. A rela- tion by marriage of Dionysius the elder was Philistus of Syra- cuse. Although an adherent of tyranny, he was banished by Dionysius, and in exile he composed his History of Sicily in seven books, which began a century before the Trojan war, and came down to the capture of Agrigentum in B.C. 406, thus including the reign of the elder Dionysius. He was recalled from exile by the younger Dionysius, and began a history of his reign, which, however, he did not live to complete. The opinion of antiquity was adverse to Philistus, who is spoken of as a petty sycophant, who wrote his history to natter Dionysius and obtain a revocation of his sentence of exile. But, in accept- ing this verdict. AVO must allow for the fact that its unfavourable character was probably due in part to the exaggerations of Timseus, a later historian. Philistus seems to have imitated Thucydides according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus he carried his imitation so far as to leave his work incomplete ! and to have plagiarised from his account of the Sicilian expedition. The uncompleted history of Phiiistus was continued by Athanis (or Athanas) of Syracuse. Oilier writers of Syracusan history were Antandros and Pallias. Here, finally, we may mention ./Eneas, surnamed the Tactician, who wrote on Strategics, a work in several books, of which one only, on si'"_ r e defence, has come down to us. Its literary worth is of the slightest. The devia- tions from the best Attic, which are a feature of Xenophou's style, are carried by ^line-as to the point of barbarism. BOOK II. ORATORY. CHAPTER I. THE BEGINNINGS OF RHETORIC AND THE FIRST LOGOGRAniERS. ELOQUENCE at all times existed among the Greeks, but of oratory we lind no traces until the time of the Peloponnesian war. In Homer eloquence ranks as high as doughty deeds j 1 Kestor,- Odysseus, 3 and Menelaus have each his own style, dis- tingui.-lu'd and characterised in a manner which shows the existence and appreciation of eloquence in the earliest times.* Most of the tyrants in the various cities of Greece owed the power they u.-urped in no small degree to the eloquence which enabled them to gain ascendancy over the people, and the exist- ence of such proper names as Pythagoras, Kiuigoras, Protagoras, iVc. all implying abilities in speakinu' .-hows the value' com- monly set upon a quality so useful in political life. Kven with- out tin 1 express testimonv of Thucydides, 1 ' we .-hoiiul have no he-ita;i< >n in a.-cribim: the achievements of Themistoe.es to his powers of eloquence; and the thunders of Pericle.-, though their echoes reach our ears only in a few phrases which Aristotle has preserved, are te.-tilied to by boih the hi.-torian and the comedians b of his time. In all these cases, however, the triumphs of eloquent were due rather to mailer than manner. It was the five ,,f Tiiemis- ti teles' genius and the comprehensive i;rasp of Pericles' mind that influenced their audience : whatever of charm there was in th>';r speeches, though nut without, etl'-et upon their hearers, waj 1 If. ix. 44-5. - I', i. = (- 4 ]'<>! ;ui t'xniicit recognition of the puwi * i. 133 : hai a uev fj.> ra \ftp:is e\0i KO.L i r ' Ari>t. Ai'h. ^50 : Ilfft.siXcTjs orXi^.Trios 'EXXaoa. 368 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. probably not premeditated or deliberately aimed at by tbe speakers. Speech is an instrument for the communication of ideas and feelings, which lias to be used for some considerable time before the instrument itself becomes an object of attention, and before its capacities are realised, improvements added or beauty consciously imparted to it. It is only when men have come to recognise that ihe end at which eloquence aims can be better attained when aided by art, that native and untutored eloquence becomes finished oratory. For the development of eloquence the first requisite is freedom of speech. Under an Asiatic despotism there is no public speaking : in a Homeric aristocracy there was lacking the reaction of audience on speaker, which is essential to eloquence. It is only when a free citizen must rely on words to influence or to guide his fellow-citizens that eloquence can grow. In the next place, when the eloquence which is the fruit of political freedom has been called into existence, its further development is conditioned by the general culture of the time. The lower the level of education in the audience, the lower the quality of eloquence capable of being used with effect. "When, however, in consequence of the spread of culture, the general body of citizens becomes more critical, eloquence, to eiT--ct its object, must rise in quality. The third condition on which the rife of oratory depends is the conception of the possibilities of prose composition. Poetry is tin- first form which a literature takes, and, owing to the action of ' the cake of custom," it is only when poetry has run most of its course that the possibility dawns on men of investing prose with literary merit. We now are in a po.-it.iou to recognise that, although previ- ously eloquence had existed in many Ureeks as a faculty and a gilt, it was not until the concurrence nf the conditions \vt have (.numerated that oratory was possible as an art. At Athens ihe political freedom of speech which is the first requisite f>r the growth of eloquence followed the. IVr.-iaii wars; and the Ath'-nian-; had not l"iig enjoyed this condition before the >S>p'nist:s bv their encyclopaedic knowledge and their systematic instruction bi - "U_ht about the second requisite, that of an elevation of the standard of general culture. At the same time, too. and indirectly owing \<> the labours of the Sophists, history, in the shape of Herodotus' work, demonstrated by example, the possibility of literary prose. Among the Sophists mention must be made of Protagoras, who specially exercised some influence on the development of ORATORY: THE BEGINNINGS OF RHETORIC. 369 oratory. Protagoras of Abdera (B.C. 485-415) offered the youth of Athens an education of a general description which should fit them for all the requirements of life ; and public speaking, being one of the chief requirements of life at Athens, was naturally included in this education. ]>y means of his dialectic lie professed to enable his pupils, without being geometers, to defeat a geometer in argument, and generally to make the weaker argument victorious. 1 It is important also to notice that Protagoras composed " common-places" 2 of general applica- bility, which he made his pupils learn and introduce into their speeches. P.ut while the Sophists from the East were either directly, as Protagoras, or indirectly, as Prodicus and Jlippias, preparing the ground at Athens, the seeds of oratory were being sown in the West ; for although Athens was the eventual home of Hellenic oratory, she was in the earlier stages of the art out- stripped by the colonies. The eloquence of Themistocle- was practised and that of Pericles was prepare.!, while the pupils of the Sophists committed portions of th"ir speech to memory before proceeding to deliver it, but in all these cases method was wanting and theory was unknown. It was in Sicily that the iirst attempts were made to provide a theory of rhetoric. The Sicilians had the reputation of being a controversial people, 3 and it was from the practical needs of the time that the theory of rhetoric was wrought out. 4 ^'iien the tyrant Thrasybulus was overthrown in Syracuse and a democracy was estahl;-hed, innumerable law.-uits for the restitution of pro- perty, alleged to have been violently taken by the tyrant and his creatures from the lawful owners, weiv instituted, and the practical necessity of defcmiin.: or regain I'IILT on< speaking before a democratic court of law mineiice the advantage of kiMwin. how t and effective speech. were or might 'he ion theor of rhetoric/' rt(Mii et praecepta Coracem et T:siam 37O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. argument from probability. 1 This argument, which was still further developed by Tisias, the pupil of Corax, whether used to supplement or to take the place of evidence, consisted, as its name implies, in demonstrating how probable, a priori, it was that what the speaker alleged really happened. The law-courts of Athens, though for different reasons, were as busy as those of Syracuse, and thus, as the conditions of the two places were similar, it is easy to see how readily the rhetoric of Sicily was transferred to the soil of Attica. This transfer- rence was not effected by Gorgias, as is sometimes said, although the way for it was prepared by him. Sent in B.C. 427 by his native city, Leontini, to implore the aid of Athens against Syra- cuse, Gorgias made a deep impression on the Athenians by the brilliance of his oratory. Gorgias' oratory, however, was not based on the theory of Corax or Tisias, nor did it owe its success to this. It was not by method or arrangement, but by the mere beauty (as it was then considered) of his diction that Gorgias gained his fame and roused the Athenians to a sense of what was possible in oratory. Tested by the standard of later oratory, Gorgias cannot be ranked high. As was natural at a time when prose was only beginning to exist, Gorgias con- ceived but inadequately the difference between it and poetry, and consequently foisted into his prose expressions suited only to poetry. His fragments (for the two speeches, the Encomium, and the speech for Palamedes ascribed to him are of doubtful authenticity) show much extravagance of antithesis and paral- lelism, and suffer from a plethora of words. The theory of rhetoric Gorgias did not teach, and in point of style, in his endeavour to compensate by poetry of expression for the loss of the metre of verse, he exercised more influence on the prose of Thucydides than on Athenian forensic, oratory. At Athens, as at Syracuse, many a man found himself in the, position of having to appear in a law-court without being able to make a speech. This gave rise at Athens to the practice of procuring some one else to write the needful speech, and then committing it to memory. The men who wrote these speeches, and thus developed the idea suggested by the common-places of Protagoras and Gorgias, were called logugraphers.- Their im- portance is twofold. In the iirst place, they raised oratory to an ' CIKOS. Scliol. I'lat. I'h'nlr. p. ^17, Bfkk : \ayoypdovs yap eraXow cZ ira^aiol 71 1's nr't. iual>L) Xo-,01-5 ypdTas avrovs etill more ,-erious fault : for the practice' of employing a logographer, though much adopted, was not con- i-r.'d very creditable. :i and consequently it would be a pra-ti- dnty of the logographer to suit the, speech to the character lositioii of the speaker as much as possible, in order to arousing suspicion. Accordingly, in Ly.-ias we tind that speech has its individual ethos. so immaturities are naturally found with the create s in the Tetralogies. The.-e speeches were eompo- m a< common loims ami it has b.-cn conjecture, irt ol a work bv him . tii'- existence of such a w 374 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. merely conjecture, the conjecture can hardly be adopted. The Tetralogies, as the name implies, consisted each of four speeches, for they treat of charges of homicide ; and at Athens in such cases the prosecution spoke first, the defence replied, the prose- cution then rejoined, and, finally, the defence concluded with another speech. The First Tetralogy is based on the suppojition that an Athe- nian citizen has been found killed, and that another Athenian, against whom the deceased was about to bring a lawsuit, is accused of murdering him. The first speech for the prosecution commences with a warning that the defendant's cunning is so great as to make it difficult to prove a case against him. How- ever, in the first place, the death must have been the result of deliberate murder, for the facts of the case exclude any other supposition. Thieves would have taken the deceased's clothes; time and place show that it could not have been the result of a quarrel : if it had been a drunken fray, his fellow-drinkers would have come forward ; and the deceased could not have been killed in mistake for some one else, for his slave also was killed. In the second place, the general probabilities point to the defendant smarting under previous defeats and dreading still further disgrace in a pending lawsuit as the man who committed the murder. Finally, the murdered slave recognised him, and before dying stated the fact. The defendant replies : If he is so cunning, would ho commit a murder of which he was sure to be immediately suspected '< However, in the first place, the prosecution has failed to show deliberate murder, for thieves might have been frightened oil' before they could strip the deceased. Hut granted it was a case of murder, what could be more probable than that some other enemy of the murdered man committed the murder, knowing suspicion would fall at once on the defen- dant? In the next place, as to the slave's evidence, the slave might easily be mistaken ; and if it is said that the slave was probably not mistaken, against that probability must be set the probability that if the. defendant planned the murder he would not run the risk of detection by being present in person. As for the impending lawsuit, the danger from it would be as nothing compared with the danger of committing such a murder. Finallv, the defendant appeals to his services to the state. In its rejoi-idi-r, the prosecution reiterates that the case is one of d'-liijerati: murder. If ihe thieves were frightened off, where are the people who frightened them '( The attempt, moreover, to inculpate some other enemy of the murdered man, ORATORY : THE BEGINNINGS OF RHETORIC. 375 less endangered and therefore less open to suspicion, fails, be- cause those less in danger would have less motive. In the next place, the slave's evidence remains unshaken ; for the proba- bility is that the defendant was alone present, as he thereby made sure that the deed was done, and avoided the danger of being betrayed by an accomplice. As for the danger of com- mitting murder being greater than that from the impending lawsuit, tiu! opposite is the case. The defendant had no chance of evading the lawsuit, but he had a chance of not being brought to trial for the murder. Again, the defendant says that the knowledge, that he would be at once suspected was enough to prevent his committing such a murder, .lint if the fear of being suspected was sullicient to divert him from the attempt, how much more would it deter people with less motive for murder? Finally, his services to the state show his wealth, not his innocence. The defendant replies, first, that the hypothesis of thieves still holds good, for the passers-by, whose coming frightened oil* the thieves, would themselves be afraid of being found with two dead bodies. Secondly, the slave's evidence cannot lie admitted : he was not tortured, and as his approaching death assured him that he could not be tortured for falsehood, he naturally gave the answer his owners wanted. Finally, the defendant can prove, an alibi. (This decisive point is reserved till now. be- cause now the prosecution cannot reply.) In the Tetralogies, although the case is framed rather to suit the argument.- than the arguments the ease, Antiphon show.-; his subtlety and keenness in arguni"nt to the best advantage; but these speeches also show forensic orators' in the process of development. Intended as models, they present to our eyes the intermediate step between theory and practice. They naturally contain no exposition of the facts of th" case, f. ,] they are meant not fr a jury, but f'r the education nf Antiph >n's pupil-, and, strip!>ed of everything" which they lay lie fore us the meth skilful advocate. Al the sam they mark an immatui It is, however. n>'t <>ni; matter that the Tetra'.ogie inferior to tin 1 level attaint ti iais. Antiph m is traditi of the severe stvle of uratm HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. istic dignity and majesty, not life and movement, and it is not periodic. These qualities of the severe style are found to excess in the Tetralogies. In the real speeches, Antiphon. for prac- tical purposes, modified the elevated but stiff style which he felt at liberty to employ iu the Tetralogies. Antiphon is classed by Dionysius of Halicarnassus with .ZEschylus and Pindar as representative of the " severe " style generally; and Antiphon may be called the ^Eschylus of Ora- tory, for the changes which came over oratory subsequently are analogous to those experienced by Tragedy in the hands of Sophocles and Euripides. Moreover, the religious views of Antiphon, being of the same old-fashioned stamp as those of .iEschylus, naturally find expression in terms which, appropriate as they were to the ideas intended to be conveyed, were inevit- ably disappearing from common use in proportion as these ideas themselves were being left behind by the movement of thought. In this preference, partly instinctive and partly deliberate, for archaisms of language we have one of the elements which go to make up the elevation and dignity of the "severe" style. Amongst other elements may be noticed, so far as the vocabu- lary of Antiphon is concerned, the use of poetical expressions. This, doubtless, was inevitable while prose was young and the position of poetry was dominant in literature ; but in the em- ployment of words and expressions, which, without being poeti- cal, were yet not usual in ordinary life, we have the indication of a conscious endeavour to exalt the language of oratory above that of ordinary of life. Stiil more unmistakable in this respect is the evidence afforded by the use of words and of stiff combi- nations of words peculiar to Antiphon himself. The traditional and still powerful influence of poetry, on the < ther hand, is responsible for the ornate epithets, the accumulation of syno- nym?, and the use of periphrases. Leaving the vocabulary of Antiphon, we find that the severe style is conventionally said in be not " periodic-,'' but ' running," 1 being thus opposed to the smooth style,- of which Isocrates is the representative. In the '' running " style, the principal word or words of the sentence come first, and ti.ni there follow tin: attributes or qualifications of the principal woid in a string. Any or all of th".-<: dependent segments may be cut oil', but the head (so to .-peak) will ,-tiii retain its vitality unimpaired. The traditional example of such a style is to iibie. It is this irregularity, and the absem eonn'M'iir.i; partiele-, that iriv and delih'-rate move more i 'Ken impressiv Finally, the early stag development of oratory is mar the " li.ru res of si <-h ' I'nder the figures of ;; : ani" HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. (parechesis) or of the ends of words (homoioteleuton), questions supposed to be put by the opposite side (hypophora), &c. The " figures of thought " include irony, aposiopesis-, feigned per- plexity (aporesis), &c. In this respect, as well as in point of style generally and in the treatment of his subject-matter, Antiphon not only presents to us an early stage of prose and of oratory, but also allows us to see, even in those few works of his which have come down to us, the process of development going on. In the speech "Against a Step-mother on a Charge of Poisoning," if it is genuine, we have Antiphon's style and powers of argument in their most primitive and least developed form. The speech " On the Murder of Herodes " shows him at his best. Though not periodic in style, the speech is strengthened throughout by the antitheses and parallelisms which, as we have said, result in a periodic arrangement. The language is not so archaic or so highly coloured as in the Tetralogies, for in his real speeches Antiphon feels the necessity laid on the orator of being readily intelligible to his hearers. The arguments are lively, and in general we may say, that while the " Herodes " presents to us the points peculiar to Antiphon and distinctive of the "severe" style in a manner which makes the speech sufficiently characteristic of the author, these points are yet so modified as to meet the practical demands made on an orator. The speech " On the Choreutes," though inferior in merit to the "Herodes," is later in development. The language approaches more nearly to that of ordinary life, and the speech possesses more life and fire than do the rest. But although the more sparing use of antitheses makes the "Choreutes" less artificial, we miss to a large extent in this speech the stateliness of Antiphon. In conclusion, the merits of Antiphon must be tested, not by comparison with the, orators of later times, but by the standard of his own age. This standard we have given to us in the words of Thucvdiiies, a contemporary and himself the represen- tative in history, as was Antiphon in oratory, of the severe style. Thucydidos says of Antiphon that his two merits lay in the power of his ideas and the clearness of his expression. A ivacious or natural his ~tyle d'X.-.n not pretend to be, but to the clear and dignified expression of clever arguments he did attain ; and it is in the success with which he realised the end which he proposed to himself that the merit of Antiphon as an artist consists. ORATORY: ANDOCIDES AND LYSIAS. 379 CHAPTER II. PRACTICAL ORATORY : ANDOCIDES AND LYSIA8. THE name of Andocides is associated with the mutilation of the llernue. In B.C. 415, when the Sicilian expedition was on the. point of sailing, Athens was thrown into a state of indescribable alarm by the mutilation of all the images of Hermes throughout the city. Such a deed could only have been executed by an organised body of men, and must therefore have been the work of one of those secret oligarchical clubs whose object was the overthrow of the democracy. Further, as these oligarchs habi- tually maintained relations with the enemies of Athens, a con- certed attack from without was momentarily expected, though from what quarter no man knew. To the anticipation of these, practical and immediate dangers were, added in the minds of the Athenians the yet greater calamities to be expected from the A\ rath of the oflended gods. From the age of Homer to the latest times of the Koman Empire, the belief belt that if the gods of a city were tempted or driven to go over to the enemy, defeat was inevitable ; and it must have been regarded as the }>urpi>.se of the nmtilators to ensure by this insult to the gods the defeat of the Sicilian expedition and the ultimate victory of the IVloponnesian enemy. The state of suspense in which the Athenians were thus plunged furnished the conditions favourable to the appearance of aspi- rants aftt-r notoriety, and the demand for information created the supply. Informers of various kinds were soon foit iicoming with tales calculated to exaggerate the existing alarm, and manv innocent person.- were inculpated. At length Andocides, when ino-t of the real authors of the mutilation had eseap.-d, and when his fath'T and other innocent relatives were along with hims'-lf in danger of death, was prevailed on to reveal the truth. Aecording to in's account, the mutilation -wu- th' 1 wild exploit of a club of youn j; men the ''Mohocks " of the time to whi'-h he belonged. AYhetll'T Alldoeidt in the proei edin_' is iiillieult the ail'air to its proper p and thus for the time deft other oligarchs, who for pr.rp ing the i anic. For t'nu- interfering with tie- plans of IVis:ind>'r, And< soon raid the penaltv : for he was bani.-h'-d bv the act! 380 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. a decree of Isotimidos, ostensibly directed generally against those who had committed and confessed impiety, but really against Andocides solely. Having spent some time in Cyprus as a merchant, and having there rendered services to the democracy of Athens, in 411, unaware of the overthrow of the democracy by the Four Hundred, he returned to Athens, and was lucky to escape from the hands of the tyrants with his life. In 410, having rendered fresh services to Athens, he made another attempt to establish himself in his native city. The speech which lie at this time made "on his return" is still extant. It was. however, unsuccessful, and Andocides returned to exile once more, until the amnesty of B.C. 403 restored him to his country. For some time Andocides lived in peace, discharging expen- sive "liturgies" and otherwise serving his country; but in B.C. 399, his enemies, reviving the old tales against him, charged him with impiety and with breaking the decree of Isotimides, by which he had originally been banished. In his defence he delivered the speech on the Mysteries, and was acquitted. In the fourth year of the Corinthian war, B.C. 390, he appears again, and for the last time, to our view. Sent by the Athenians with full powers to negotiate peace with Sparta, he returned nevertheless to Athens, and laid before the people the terms of the Spartans in the extant speech " On the Peace." Andocides was nut a rhetorician, but an orator. He received no technical instruction in rhetoric and hud no acquaintance with the theory of speaking. His knowledge of oratory was perfectly empirical, and such as could be picked up by attend- ance 1 at the Keciesia. He is generally acknowledged to be the least worthy of the ten orators of the canon ; but the fact that he is included at all points to some good qualities in him, and he has at lea.-t the interest attaching to an orator who shows the level to which at that time an Athenian of natural but uncultivated eloquence could attain. Perhaps the most obvious indication of his ignorance of the theorv of sDcaking is his inability to arrange his subject-matter. Tin: distinction between facts and inferences or arguments from facts is an important on'-, and is marked by such writers as Antiphon or Lysias by assigning distinct, parts of the speech to the narrative and to the argument. J!ut of any such distinction Andocides is quite, innocent. His facts and his arguments pour o:.'t just as they come to mind. Moreover, they continue to pour out as long as any are left. To distinguish between the Csceijtiul and the nou essential facts of a tale imp.ies professional ORATORY: ANDOCIDES AND LYSIAS. 381 skill quite as much as does discrimination in the arrangement of the subject-matter; and the lack of this professional skill has for its result that Antiphon lets his facts run away with him. Parentheses of great length are frequent, and lead to many repetitions and much disorder. Teise Andocides cannot be, and his want of brevity entails want of clearness. Again, while in the case of Antiphon we saw that the tendency of the technical orator was to develop strength in argument, in Andocides we see that the orator without technical cultivation is unaccustomed to deal with general propositions and arguments. Particulars, however, he can grasp, and thus he is naturally led to convert everything into narrative. But, on the other hand, this tendency to particulars and to copious narrative, though distinct from the arti.-tic brevity and clearness of a Lysias, has by a law of compensation a strength of its own. In the !ir>t place, the tendency is natural and leads to a natural arrangement of the topics of the speech. ^Sext, and this is more important, the details in which Andocides delights give a reality and vividi.ess to his descriptions which constitute ids chief claim to rank as an orator. This graphic power is considerably assisted by his practice of introducing dialogue into iiis speeches. This practice is indeed only another charac- teristic of the type of mind, or rather of the level of oratory, which luxuriates in particulars and details. But what it lacks in artistic repression it compensates fur in vivacitvand natural- ness. Further, in Andocides, as in nu st cases, tin- mind which finds a dilliciuty in generali?ations but deiiVnts in the parti- cular has a keen appreciation uf the per.-unai. Accordingly we find that Andocide.s supplements ids |><>\versof setting a scene vividly before cur eyes witii the power, eqtia.ly graphic, of ,-trik- ing character-drawing. In the lan_;u:i_'e of Andoeide-; we find the same qualities as in the uvuim-nt of id- subject-matter. His laneuau'e is that of 382 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. of language is lofty enough to admit of poetical expressions being used without any great discord, and the vocabulary of Andocides is such that these words act as a purple patch. The style of Andocides is even more loose and sprawling than might have been expected. The absence of a distinctly periodic style in his predecessor, Antiphon, is remedied to a large extent by his frequent use of antitheses and parallelisms ; but as Andocides does not make any systematic or regular use even of this form of composition, he is delivered over without hope to clumsiness and long-windedness. Not only do his fact?, but his words run away with him. The want of artistic expression and the lack of technical instruction are even more obvious in the style than in the subject-matter of Andocides. Of the four speeches which have come down to us under the name of Andocides, one. the speech against Alcibiades, is cer- tainly not genuine. Of the other three, the greatest is that " On the Mysteries." In spite of its technical defects, this is a good speech, not merely because it possesses all the good qualities of Andocides which we have mentioned above, but because we feel that the speaker kept touch throughout with his audience. Giving us this impression, the speech possesses a reality which many more artistic productions fail to produce. Specially notice- able, in this speech is the ethos. It was the speaker's object to produce a good impression of himself among his hearers, and he poses with great success. In this la.st respect the speech " On his Return " is a great con- trast to that " On the Mysteries." The ethos is equally marked, but it is of a dill'civnt kind. The impression produced in the speech "On his lit- turn " is not that of a man whose good con- science assures him that he has nothing to fear, but of a man who depends, and whose hopes are based, on admitting that he relies purely on the good-will of his hearers. In other respects, too, the speech "On his Return " is both less pleasing and less good than that "On the Mysteries.''' The former is much more artificial than the latter, and for that very reason inferior to it. Andocides is only god when he is naturai. The "Return'" is brief, and consequently th: sentences are more compact, but in other respect^ the condensation is that of amputation; and An- docides deprived of his details is shorn of his strength. The, circumstances Tinder which the speech "On his Return" was delivered did not ail'ord Andocides much hope of success, and lie is consequently throughout chilled and depressed. He never reaches the comfortable warmth which is th'j condition of a good aii'-cuote and is never sufficientl at his ease to fall into a ORATORY: ANDOCIDES AND LYSTAS. 383 reminiscence or quotation from the poets. This does indeed render his style more even, but it deprives it of variety. 11 10 speech "On the Peace,'' unjustly suspected of not being genuine, is inferior to that "On the Mysteries/'' but presents all the characteristics of Andocides. It possesses no order or method in the treatment of the subject-matter ; it runs mainly to narra- tive, and abounds in parentheses and ill-constructed sentences. It is vivid and natural, and presents instances of dialogue in the Andocidean manner. It is patched with reminiscences from the poets, and is generally inartistic. Moreover, and this is charac- teristic of Andocides, the references to history are thoroughly untrustworthy. Lysias was the son of the Syracusan Cephalos, who had settled as a resident alien at Athens, and in whose house Plato lays the scene of his Republic. Lysias himself, although born at Athens and in character wholly Attic, remained always a metic. The year of his birth is uncertain. On the one hand, as lit- went to Thurii at the age of iii'teen, and Ihurii was onlv founded in i;.c. 4.14. he cannot have been born at the earliest before DA'. 459. On thi,' other hand, he \vas senior to Isocrates, and therefore was born lie fore 13.0. 436. l-"rni Thurii he was driven out in B.C. 412 by the anti-Athenian party on the failure of the Sicilian expedition. He returned to Athens, and there lived in peace until the time of the Thirty Tyrants. In B.C. 404 the Thirty, veiling their real motive of plunder under poli- tical accusations, attacked various wealthy inetics. among whom were Ly.-ias and his In-other Polemarchos. The latter was exe- cute,!, but Lysias managed to escape from Athens to Mi-^ara. There he rendered ,ur-ut services to the cause of the Athenian democracy, and on tie' overthrow of the Thirty in B.C. 403 the citizenship was accordingly conferred on him, but the decree, owing to some informality, was. on tie- motion of a political opponent, nullitied. The tir-t tiling Lysias did on his return to Athens was t<> appeal to the la\v for vengeance for the death of his broth, r. Tie- speech which lie made on thi- occasion has, in addition to its intrinsic merits, the inteiv.-t of being the earliest of his extant speeches, arid is. further, the onlv speech ivcorded *o have been delivered by Ly.-ias hini-.-If. \'\ :;! this time on lie mu-t have worked hard as a logographer, for over two hundred speeches by him Were kii"\vn to an;i>iui;y. although only th iriy-fotir speeches, whole or fragmentary, have comedown tons. 'Ihis activity as a lo-'ojrapinT was probably r-ndciv,! necessary for him by the povi-rtv to wi.i :i the Thirty redtii'Vil him. lie died at the age of eL'htv, and of the later Vc-ars. uf 384 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. his life nothing is known. But no work of his, so far as wa know, can be dated after B.C. 380. Of the thirty- four speeches which we possess, the speech for Polystratus (xx.), that against Andocides (vi.), that " To his Companions" (viii.), that " For the Soldier" (ix.), and the Funeral Oration (ii.), must be rejected as spurious. The remainder may be divided into epideictic, deliberative, and forensic speeches. The epideictic speeches are represented by a fragment (quoted by Dionysius of Halicar- nassus, 1 Lysias, c. 29) of the Olympic oration. An epideictic speech is one delivered neither in debate nor in a court of law, but, as its name implies, for the sake of showing off the oratori- cal skill of the speaker. The existence of this class of speeches is an indication of the fact that the literature of Greece was oval. The early Sophists, as Hippias and Gorgias, when they wished to display their skill in the new accomplishment of prose composition, did not attempt to do so by publishing their compositions, but attended the great festivals of Greece and there recited their work. The choice of a subject on which to hang their display was determined by the character of the festi- vals, and as these were mostly pan-Hellenic, so was the subject of " Olympic," and other speeches of the same kind. Gorgias achieved much fame by his Olympic oration, in which he ex- horted the Greeks to unity, and in B.C. 388 Lysias delivered his Olympic oration on the same subject, and with special reference to the need of common Greek action, under the leadership of Sparta, to release Sicily from the tyranny of Dionysius. The deliberative speeches of Lysias are represented by a fragment of one only, entitled a " Plea for the Constitution." This was writ- ten by Lysias for some citizen to deliver on an < ccasion when a proposal was made that only those citizens who were landowners should have the right of voting. The rest of his speeches ar forensic. Like Antiphon, Lysias was a logographer, but, unlike Anti- phon, Lysias adapted the character of his speeches to the cha- racter of the persons who were to deliver them, and from this difference logically flow the distinctions which differentiate Ly.-ias from his predecessor. The considerations which influ- 1 Dionysius of Halicarnassus (to be distinguished from Dionysius Thrax, who wrote the first <;ramni;ir, Dionvsius the elder, tyrant of Syracuse, who wrote tr:i<_'eiii<.-s. and Dionysius of Sainos. who wrote an epic poem in four books entitled l',aaffapiKa}, born in llaiicarnassus B.C. 70, came to Koine about B.C. 30, and there taujht rhetoric. Died n.C. 3. His largest work was his 'Pauai'/CTj 'ApxaioXoyia, in twenty books (of which nine remain), on tlie l:i>t< iv of Rome to the beginning of the Punic wars. He also wrote a num- ber of works on rhetoric. ORATORY: ANDOCIDES AND LYSIAS. 385 encccl Lysias in the direction of ethos and character drawing are not hard to conjecture. In the tir.st place, he. was an emi- nently practical man, and his speeches had the business-like object of winning the cause in which they were delivered. The Tories of his marvellous success, if not true, yet show the reputation which he had for success, and this success would have been much compromised if he had adhered to the fashion of composing orations which might bring much literary fame to the composer who wrote them, but could not be mistaken for the words of the client who delivered them. To avoid rousing a suspicion that the speaker had consulted a logographer was the iirst duty of a practical speech-writer. Lut, in the next place. Lysia.s was an artist, and his feeling of proportion and harmony would make him instinctively .-brink from the jarring discrepancies winch mu.-t regularly arise when a logograph'T delivered to speakers varying in character speeches which never varied in s;yie. Lastly, Lysias was a student of human nature, and. good as lie was in argument, he knew per- fectly well that men are influenced by oilier means than reason. ]le acted implicitly on what Menaiuier formulates explicitly in the words : " It is the character of a speaker, not his speech, which persuades us." Subtly delineating in a favourable IL'ht liis client's character by means of strokes, individually too line to arouse the suspicion of his hearers, l.y.-ias succeeds in the result in producing a strong feeling in favour of his client. This ethos it is which gained him his practical success and has estab- lished his literary lame. Inasmuch as the ordinary man does imt talk in lofty language, and as it was the, ordinary man who sought Ly.-ias' services, it is obvious that in the speeches which Lysias puts into his 2 B 386 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. practice of duplicating a word or idea by means of synonyms, not xmfrequently employed for decorative purposes by Antiphon, is used by Lysias only for purposes of pathos. Artistic orna- ment is unknown, with the exception of antithesis of the vari- ous kinds : but antithesis was too firmly ingrained in the oratory of the day for Lysias to escape from it. The few figures of speech and thought which lie uses, as asyndeton, polysyndeton, and hypophora. are rather natural than rhetorical ; while paromoia l (i.e. assonances), so far from being artistic, are of essentially popular origin, and characteristic of a rude stage of literature. In expression Lysias is brief, concise, and clear. His sentences are pregnant, and he contrives to say in a few words what in other people would need many words. As all ornament and splendour is excluded from the plain style, so. .too, pathos in the strict sense 2 is not to be attained by it ; and partly for the same reason. The cases put into Lysias' hands did not admit either of magnificent language or much appeal to the emotions. Partly, also, the renunciation of mag- nificence in language involves the renunciation of pathos. The man who either can only or will only use everyday language is thereby precluded from an oratorical appeal to the emotions. On the other hand, so far as a simple recital of the bare facts can touch the feelings, the plain style is capable of pathos, and in Lysias we find this the pathos of facts. In this respect he is much aided by his power of setting before our eyes the sc'-ne which he describes. 3 This is eff'-cted not unfrequently by tin; introduction of some trivial detail, which it is not below the dignity of the plain style to record. Thus in the speech against Eratosthenes, the scene of the agents of the Thirty plundering the house of Polemarchus is brought clearly before us by the r"inark that they took the very ear-rings f rum his wife's ears. To another speech, that on the murder of Eratosthenes, we may refer fora picture of an Athenian interior, which, in its simplicity, reality, and intere.-t. is as vivid as anything in Greek literature. The power of vividness implies not only observation but truth to nature, and in this Lysias is unsurpassed. It is f. quality imperatively d'-manded by the end at which lie is per- petually aiming, vi/.. to harmonise- the speech with the speaker. Ly.-ias studied the character of his clients and had the power of r-pioducing that character in his speech. Furthermore, the ORATOKY: ANDOCIDKS AND LYSIAS. 387 speech is not only one that the man might have delivered, hut one tliat is inspired hy tlie situation. Along with this truth to nature there' goes in Lysias an exquisite literary truth. His words are a simple and faithful translation of his thoughts. There is nothing false, ambitious, or vulgar in his plain style. Figurative language and metaphors lie avoids, and thus the clearness of his meaning and the transparency of his argument are secured. He is thus also saved from the danger of false taste, to which figurative lan'_ r uaL, r e is apt to lead. There is nothing strained or over-wrought in his style. For Lysia.s the right word is quite strong enough. It is in this lucidity of style that Lysias' highest claim to rank as an orator consists. The most important element in the modern conception <>f oratory is passion ami lire, and it is hv outbursts of such a kind that the great oratorical reputations of modern times have been made. Fire is indeed inseparable from, though it is not the whole of the best oratory, and in lire Lvnas is wanting. The qualities which go to make the plain style are, in fact, incompatible with passimi and fire. For argument vigo- rous and sober. Lysias' style is adapted, but it is by its very nature excluded from those higher levels and more daring ilL'hts of language t<> which the impassioned orator ascends. The end, however, which Lysias does propose to himself he secures. In clear argument and description he is unsurpassed, and this is a great merit in an orator; for an orator's first dutv is to be in- telligible. Tiie more difiicult a speaker is to fallow, the sooner his audience's power of attention is exhausted and the more of his speech is wa-ted. AS in diction, so too in composition the plain sly]" has its tical speeches of Lysia- speeches, ami in tlie same speech the argument will dbfer from the narrative. Tiie political speeches and the ai^umen* are more rounded and rhythmi'-al tiian tin 1 priva'.e specche- the narrative. In the political speeches particular! v. two or three periods are united into a lar_ r >T rhythmic;' whole, and the larger periods thus formed recur with a iv^iilaritv w'ln-h u'ive- a poniewhat -till' air to the speccli. and are ap! t" 'dec ,me iii"nn;.?]- tenccs are lo;:^,>r and looser, while the nanative of piivatt; sp h'-s is deciiled'.y " running '' in character, th 'iijh tli-- u'la---: which characterises it is sucli as could oiilv come from a writer 388 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. who had also composed in periods. In tb argument of private speeches there is a certain resemblance to the composition of the political speeches. Two or three periods in the narrower sense are united into a larger whole, but these wholes are relieved by the interposition of more freely constructed clauses. The apparent irregularity thus gained is calculated to allay any suspicion that the speech is not the work of the speaker him- self. Hut, although this subtle art is one of Lysias' characteristic excellences, the end of a sentence, on examination, generally shows to a reader, what perhaps would escape the hearer, that tin; whole sentence lias a unity and an art which the sentence in its earlier development would scarcely lead you to expect. Jf we now turn to Lysias' treatment of the subject-matter, his arrangement and division, we shall find that as he lavishes his subtlest art on the composition of the narrative, so too it is in the substance of the narrative that Lysias is strongest. Me has the art of telling a story so simply and frankly, and of making his own point of view so intelligible and satisfactory, that when lie comes to the argument his work is done. He has won over the judges already without their knowing it. The character of his client has incidentally been painted in siu:h favourable colours that imperceptibly the hearer has been in- duced to accept it as a strong proof that the cause Lysias pleads is good. In the argument it is generally accepted that Lysias is not so strong as in the narrative, even though his logical mind and his powers of penetration made him excellent in '' invention,'' tech- nically so termed. It is a eritici>m as old as Plato l that Lysias' arguments are not organically united, but merely agglomerated together. But, in the first place, we see, especially in such a speech as that for Mantitheus, that, viewed as the outcome of the speaker's character, the. arguments have an artistic propriety in their relation to each uther which approaches to the unity of an organism ; and in the next place, when the arguments are really disjointed, this very want of connection, like the looser foim of composition, adopted in the narrative of the private speeches, is calculated to accord with the professedly inartistic but really artistic character of the speech. Finally, among the i-hanifteri.-tics of Lysias is the grace of his style, \vhieh both ;nicieiit commentators and modern have recog- n:--d as b"]"iist characteristic of Lysias' power of drawing character is the speech for Mantitheus (xvi.) Mantitheu-. an Al'ibiades without his faults, is one of the most sympathetic ami charming pieces of character-drawiiiL,' in all Greek literature. Tin- Miir.'lu self-confidence which led Mantitheus to volunteer for dangerous service in the field, and m>w piv.-~es him t<> di-charge his duties of a citi/en in the a.-M'inbly, his frank contempt for what some pe- 'pie think, and his boyish desire to con: in and the good opinion of oth"rs, are ail drawn with a genuine delight, in youth win :i is truly ('.reek. The .-p. -cell on the murder nf Krut< >thenes we have a'r-adv mentioned as being a vivid picture even for .-uch a ma-ter as Lysias. As a sketch of manners, a- a source of information about Athenian household-:, and for dramatie interest as wcLi as literary m.-rit, it is equally striking. 39O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. On the so-called defence on a charge of seeking to abolish the democracy (xxv.), which is really a speech on behalf of some one undergoing the scrutiny for some public office, critics are divided. Dobree and Reiske ranked it extremely high ; Mr. Jebb l is inclined to think it was written in irony. "What the speech amounts to is that in politics no man has convictions, but only interests. This view the speaker advances with an air of quiet pity for people who, from no fault of their own, have not the knowledge of the world and the brain-power requisite for grasping this great generalisation. It would seem that those critics rank the speech high who believe that this discovery exhausts the science of politics. But recognising that this axiom is only a half-truth, and a misleading half-truth, we may be content to say nothing more of it than that it was an excellent line of defence, and would W 7 in many votes at the present day, as having "no humbug" about it. The speech against Philon (xxxi.) should be read as a com- panion piece to the last mentioned. Both speeches were de- livered on the occasion of a scrutiny. In both cases the chief objection to the candidate seems to have been that he had done little for, if nothing against, the democracy; and in the two speeches we have Lysias' way of dealing with both sides of the question. It is hard to conceive that Lysias believed in tho interest-theory of politics ; it is equally hard to conceive that lie thought as badly of Philon as he says ; and in neither case are we compelled to conceive any such thing. In the speech for the invalid (xxiv. ) we have an illustration < f the humour which in a more suppressed form is to be found elsewhere in Lysias. In this speech not only are various passages humorous, but the whole treatment of the subject is comic. In conclusion, the speech on tho property of Aristophanes (xix.) is deservedly famous for the extreme skill with which in it Lysias fights a case full of difficulties. It is an admirable, indeed the best, example of the subtlety with which he ap- ] r. aches a deep-seated prejudice in the minds of the judges and the delicacy with which lie handles or rather avoids it. Lysias, in point of style, steered a middle course between the ordinary everyday language of Andocides and the florid semi- pf'etical prose of (Jorgias. It must not, however, be supposed thai this middle style was attained without any intermediate link- in the evolution. Lysias had his predecessors in his own particular course. One of these predecessors was Thrasymachus, ORATORY: ANDOCIDES AND LYSIAS. 391 the Sophist, who has gained unenviable notoriety from the sketcli uf his diameter given by Plato in the first book of the ItejrtMic. He is there represented as a mercenary and some- what brutal Sophist, who openly avows that the whole of morality is based on the axiom that might is right. He is defeated in argument by Socrates, and even comes to do, what Socrates says he had never seen him do before blush. 1 Whatever the value of his teaching as a Sophist may have been, he rendered services to Greek prose as a rhetorician. Lorn probably about B.C. 457, he came to Athens about B.c. 412 and there taught rhetoric a means of gaining a living apparently not pleasant enough to prevent him from committing suicide, if we may believe Juvenal. 2 For the instruction of his pupils he wrote common-places, proems, Are., and also pattern speeches. It is in the latter rather than in his contributions to the technic of rhetoric that his services to Attic prose lie. "VVe have nothing but insignificant fragments of his speeches left, but ancient critics, such as Aristotle and his pupil Theophiastus, who had his speeches before them, give us suilicient information to enable us to form an idea of the nature of his contributions to the development of Attic oratory. As Gorgias had endeavoured to write in a style intermediate between everyday language and poetry, with the result of keeping too closely to the side of poetry, so Thrasymachus endeavoured to form a style between the prose of Gorgias and the language of ordinary life, with the result of paving the way to a more successful attempt on the part of Lysias. Thra>y- machus also first framed periods of a kind adapted to practical oratory, and employed a prose rhythm based on the pa-an suitable fur an orator. In these two respects, as in his avoid- ance of hiatus, we sec that Thrasymachus had before his mind the needs of a speaker, nut merely of a writer. Theodoras and Kuenus are two other Sophists who receive from I'lato, in the I'/taJm*, treatment little more complimentary than dues Thrasymachus in the I>>'/>>//>lic. I'.th seem to have contributed something to the theory of rhetoric, but of the style of Kuenus we know nothing, while that of Thcodonis se.-ms to have been closer to tint of Gorgias than of Tnra-yma<:luis. 1 TliiM.syiiw'inis is further ch:iv:irtrrisril i'V thu ronuirk inu',lrn\ si.'ut Thr;isy- niachi protiat exinis." To which tin' S<-.i,ui;;i>t ;nl<;> : " Kiirtoris ;ipud AtheiKis. ijui suspt'inlio periit.'' Atiicii.i u-, x. -( ; |K., iiiv^s ,in rp;taph uu him iu which in- n;unt> is iii_'i>iiinusiy inrn>,iu.-. itj. 392 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. Further, Critias, the infamous member of the Thirty, irmst be mentioned among the predecessors in his own line of Lysias. We have already mentioned Critias among the dramatists of the decline : his literary activity seems to have been wide, and in oratory he was much more successful than he was in poetry. We have nothing left of his speeches whereby to judge him, but the value set on him by such critics as Phrynichus l and Philos- tratus 2 is so high that he can have been but little inferior to Lysias. Critias is an interesting example of how at this time the condi- tions of intellectual life at Athens favoured the development of oratory at the expense of the drama. If the attractions of the new world of prose were not. as in his case, strong enough to Avithdraw a man of ability entirely from poetical composition, still the openings in the field of prose were so much more numerous that he had much greater chance of distinguishing himself there. CHAPTER III. EPIDEICTIC RHETORIC AND THE TRANSITION, ON Isocrates critics have passed the most opposite opinions, from Milton, who pays a passing tribute to "the old man elo- quent/'' to Nicbuhr, who calls him "a thoroughly miserable and despicable writer." who did indeed create an art, but one which consisted solely of words without a single idea. If, then, we wish to arrive at the truth of the matter, we must first recog- nise that Isocrates, like most writers, cannot be dismissed in a single sentence. There were various ends at which Isocrates aimed, and consequently there are different standards by which we must test him. The result of one of tln.se tests must not blind us to the result of the rest. Disposed by his natural inclinations to take part in politics, Isoerates had neither the voice nor the. nerve to make a speech in public. Impelled, however, by his facility for composition to write speeches, even if he could not deliver them, he wrote and circulated political orations. These were in eii'ect political pamphlets, and, to a certain extent, the practice of issuing such pamphlets may be compared to the journali.-m of the present clay. Thus, in the first place, Isocrates appears as a politician, 1 GrammnriiUi of second century A. 15. and a purist in Attic Greek. - Sophist of third century A.D., author of "Lives of the Sophists" and other works. ORATORY: EFIDEICTIC RHETORIC. 393 and judged as a politician he cannot be valued very highly. Political life is concerned more with details than with prin- ciples, but for details Isocrates had much the same feeling as philosophy at certain times has had for particulars. Universals in the one case and abstract political propositions in the other had such a lofty and mysterious dignity about them, that no politician or philosopher of this stamp would defile himself by touching details or particulars. A man who imagined that votes could be secured in the assembly or the business of government carried on by means of irrelevant dissertations on the desirability of freedom for the cities of Ionia, was also capable, as was Isocrates. of persuading himself that words could influence a Philip or a Dionysius. It may be said, however, that, although government is largely a matter of detail, great and leading ideas are indispensable fur statesmanship, and that it is precisely in favour of these great conceptions that Isocrates renounces petty details. To a certain extent this is true; but, in the first place, it must be noticed that a statesman must n<>t only possess great ideas, but mu.-t also have some notion of how to realise them ; and it is just because Isocrates never even puts the question to himself whether his ideals are in any way practicable that he is no statesman. It is not, however, solely as a political pamphleteer tint Isocrates appears before us. nor is the test of statesmanship the only one that has to be applied to him. Although in the earlier years of his life (n.c. 403-3931 he was a logographer, and we have still extant .-ix of his speeches thus written, he subse- quently entirely repudiated forensic rhetoric, spoke with much contempt of it, and earned his living l>y teaching. lie was, in fact, a Snphi.-t, much as he di-l:ked u> lie ranked with that use- ful class of men. (In hi- own showing his object was th" same, as theirs, althi>!.;-_yh, according to his own perhaps not ton im- partial verdict. In- wa- as superior to them as, to us" a compa- rison of his own. a I'hidia- ! >a doll maker. lie gave to his pup:is, lie .-ays. a more th iior.-h education, and imparted to them mnch noMcr S'-n'nne::t-. A- far as we are in a posit: to ch< ck his statements, it would seem that the gave was more timr, oiu'h th ; ii that of other Sophi as he proceeded "n ;h,. Fuiind plan of making hi- th'-ni-elvs in>tt'ad "f contenting him-elf with : them hi- own lini.-lied si (';::.:.- of c ':::]" -i; i r superficial acquaintance with moral philosophy, and perhap.- his 394 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. claim has its real basis in the pan-Hellenic views which coloured his work. Isocrates was a fashionable teacher. He takes a pride in having wealthy pupils, and pan-Hellenism was the fashion. The causes which led to this are tolerably clear. The tendency to autonomy, always strong in dividing the Greeks, was in the time of Isocrates gaining fatal strength. At the same time the solvent effects of a higher culture, which had at first worked only on the greater minds consciously on Euripides, for in- stance, unconsciously on Aristophanes were now sinking deeper, and were dissolving the old conceptions of a citizen's duties, even in the minds of those who merely possessed culture and not genius. On the other hand, the more a man of educa- tion felt the impossibility of complying with the exacting demands made of old by the state upon its citizens, the more closely lie was drawn to the educated men of other states, with Avhom he had the tie of a common culture. Ineffectual as were Isocrates' pamphlets from a political point of view, they yet circulated amongst the literary classes of every city in Greece. Thus, pan-Hellenism became a mark of culture, and Isocrates puts it well forward as one of the advantages which his method of education offered. it is a testimony, at any rate, to the success of Tsocrates as a teacher, that amonif his pupils may be found rhetoricians and politicians of distinction. Unfortunately, however, of the his- torians who were his pupils, Kphorus and Theopompus, and Avlio might have been valuable proofs of his power as a teacher, we do not know enouiih to affect our estimate of Isocrates in ibis capacity. Leaving this side of Isocratcs' character, iu \\hich he appears to greater advantage than lie doc? as a politi- cian, we have now to coii.-ider him in his true light as a man of liteiary style. Unfortunately for our appreciation of 1-oerates' lit'-rary nvrit, we at the present day regard prose composition not as an end iu if -'!(', but as ;i means fur r-nveying ideas, and we are apt to judge a writer by the worth of what he has to say rather than by the way in which he says it. The privilege of paying atten- tion solely to form, with little regard to matter, is now re.-trieted to writers of verso. The idea that a prose writer may rely on the intrin.-ic beauty of his expression, without any cart; to con- vey information or impart conviction, is foreign to our practical modi; of thought. Kven in that form of modern literature the novc] wh;<-h ha> its end in itself, and has not, as a rule, any uaeiior and practical end, the tendency is more and more to lay ORATORY: EH DEICTIC RHETOIUC. 395 stress on the plot or the character-drawing, instead of aiming, as might be expected, at affording the pleasure which results directly from beauty of expression. Without passing any opinion on the character of this tendency which might be fur- ther illustrated by the fact that prose dramas are driving out dramas in verse we must, to obtain a fair appreciation of Iso- crates, insist that he ought not to be judged exclusively from the modern point of view, but should be tested by the success with which he effected what lie strove after, and by the services which he rendered to prose literature. As Antiphon and Lysias had each his own theory of oratory Antiphon magnificence and Lysias simplicity the realisation of which constitutes his claim to celebrity, so Isocrates must be judged by the success with which he developed the florid stylo of rhetoric originated by Gorgias. The rhetoric of Gorgias and Isocrates is cpideictic ; it aims not at instruction or conviction, but at the display of beautiful prose. Accordingly, we see that when Cicero 1 says of Isocrates' style that it is " pom pa; quam pugua- aptius," or when Quintilian 2 says Isocrates is "pal rest KB quam pugna> ma-is accommodakis," or, in Mr. Sandy's 3 words, " At the end of our perusal we feel that it is the graceful rheto- rician and not the vehement orator, the dexterous fencer and not the bold man of battle, that has engaged our attention," these criticisms are indeed true, but they are not condemnatory of Isocrates. Just as the plain style of Lysias is in its nature and by its definition precluded from stirring appeals to the, emotions, so too epideictic oratory aims confessedly at pomp and not at ding battle, at a di-pl-iy of dexterous fencing, and not at. hold deeds of arms. It is no con I'lnnaii n of Lysias or of Isocrates that they do not attain qualities which wnv incom- patible with the theory of oratory which each wa- concerned in developing. If now we inquire whether Tsocrates realised his id'-al. we find that he was success ful in his the. TV "f his art. ( lorgias in his endeavours to create beautiful prose fell into the mistake of transplanting into pro>e the beauties of p ci.'v. a, stead ol devel- oping the beauties of prose itself'. This is seen in two things; iir.-t, he decorated prose with pur; le patches of poetical expres- sions, and next he imported into prose the rhythms ,,f p,,etry. These two sins (if taste Isoerate-; avoided. His diction is pure Attic, in the same sense as is that of Lysias. His vocabulary excludes unusual and poetical words, wuile at the same time, 1 Orat. 42. - In.*f. Or. X. i. 49. 3 Isocrates (Rivin^mn^. p. xvii. HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. although using almost exclusively the vocabulary of everyday life, he yet, by his manipulation of it, raises it to a literary level above that of ordinary conversation In the next place, instead of borrowing the rhythms of poetry, Isocrates perfected prose rhythm. It is his rhythm which is at once Isocrates' chief characteristic and his great contribution to the prose of all later times and literatures. If to these excellences of Isocrates we add that his full and rounded periods, though massed together in sentences of great volume, are balanced so perfectly and con- structed so regularly that the sentence is thoroughly transparent in spite of its luxuriant growth, we then shall have enumerated the qualities which make up the success of Isocrates' style. Before going on to state what may be said on the other side, we must here notice a remarkable element in the smoothness of Isocrates' composition. Isocrates is the first prose writer who systematically avoids the hiatus which arises when a word end- ing in a vowel is followed by another beginning with a vowel. Throughout the history of Greek poetry the tendency to avoid hiatus is present. It may be seen in epic and lyric poetry ; it becomes stronger in tragedy, and strongest of all in comedy. Its importance for us is that it is an indication, which cannot be mistaken, that Greek poetry was intended for the ears of hearers, not for the eyes of readers. It was because hiatus was unpleasant in speaking that the poets were at pains to avoid it. A Ye now find that when Greek prose was on the point of attain- ing perfection the same systematic avoidance of hiatus appears; and it is instructive that it is precisely Isocrates, who might be thought to inaugurate a literature designed for a reading public, who pays the greatest attention to a point which appeals only to an audience and not to a reader. The explanation is that, according to the custom of the time, works such as those of Isor-rates were read aloud by one critic to a company of others, and Is .crates addressed himself to the most critical and culti- vated audiences in Greece. This consideration also explains t he- at lent ion paid by Isocrates to rhythm, which is of greater im- portance in a work intended for oral delivery than in one in- tended for reading. lint Isocrates has the defects of his qualities. The essence of epidcictic oratory is the development of the form to the neglect of the matter of a speech, and this neglect is a mistake which inevitably entails its wn punishment. The rotundity of Iso- crates is often procured only by padding, his regularity becomes mere tautology, his luxuriant sentences identical propositions. Thus padded and bolstered with periphrases and synonyms, his ORATORY: EPIDEJCTIC RHETORIC. 397 thought, never vigorous, succumbs altogether. Of his antithesis, his parallel sentences of equal length or similar sound, Mr. Jebb l has profoundly said, ''The idea of all these three 'figures' is the same that idea of mechanical balance in which the craving for symmetry is apt to take refuge when it is not guided by a really flexible instinct or by a spiritual sense of fitness and measure." On the other hand, his arrangement can be praised without the reserve which it is necessary to observe in speaking of his style, and between his arrangement and his style a parallel may to a certain extent be drawn. In both there is the same smooth regularity. The component parts of a speech, as of a sentence, are woven together by him with the greatest skill, and in both the thought is so set before the reader that it may be followed with the greatest ease. The transitions from one part of the speech to the next are effected imperceptibly, whether by means of the antithesis or of the similaiity between the concluding thought of the one. part and the introductory thought of the next part, or by the logical coherence of the two parts. Again, as in the period, the important word which gives the colour to the period is kept to the end, so the main thesis of the speech, though continually kept in sight, is reserved to the last in such a manner that the interest of the reader, who is kept in a state of expecta- tion throughout, is maintained to the end. Finally, the unity of the speech, attained by this tension and by the skilful way in which the various divisions of the speech are woven together, is diversified by the introduction of digressions which save the uniformity of the speech from degenerating into monotony. Viewing Isoeratos, then, as the representative of epideictie, rhetoric,- we see that he carried his theory of oratory to its greate.-t development, and achieved the success which is due to the artist who accomplishes the end at which he aims. At the same time, he does not escape from the defects inherent in the rhetoric of display. But these defects do nut constitute the worst charge which can be brought against Isocratcs. His want 1 A.O.2f.5. 2 Ail the works of Isoerates are essentially et'ideietic. l>ut flu-re are only five of his speeches which are avowedly ejiideietic in tlu-ir ohjeet or in th-j circumstances under which they were supposed to 'he d>-livered. Of these, we may specially mention the Panegyric : the others are the Panathenaic oration 'intended, as its n:ilii'- implies, to he ivcitfd at the l':n:a; in-n:t-:i ', which contains the prai.-e* of Athens ; the Kv;i'_;ora<, a funend oration ; at. i the Busiris and Encomium of Helen. Tie- la>t two an- ciitiei^ms int. !:.; i to show how these hackneyed Milije-'ts oll^iit to he treated for epidei.-ti-; purposes. (liusirU was a kin.; of K_:ypr, who-e services to mankind w, re mixed with crimes, and were thus supposed to make a good th-me fur show oi ations. i 398 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. of " a spiritual sense of fitness and measure " betrays itself not only in the mechanical balance of his sentences and in the looseness of his translation of thoughts into words, but also reveals itself in the fact that he did not consistently adhere to his proper sphere of rhetoric. He is essentially epideictic in his rhetoric, but he was not content to be avowedly what he was in reality. With an affectation thoroughly characteristic of the man, he pretends that his speeches have a practical object. Thus he professes to aim at an end which his rhetoric by its very nature is precluded from attaining, and which lie obviously cares very little about. What he really hoped to do was not to persuade Sparta to renounce her supremacy in Greece, or Athens to dismiss her subject states even Isocrates must have known more about practical politics than to hope for that but he did hope to establish his fame as a prose writer and to write something worthy of that fame. Yet nothing could have done more to defeat his object or to bring into prominence the inherent weaknesses of epideictic rhetoric than this renun- ciation of simplicity and directness. Any attempt to estimate Isocrates as a writer and to strike the balance between the conflicting views which have been held with regard to his merits would be incomplete if it omitted to notice the influence which he exercised on succeeding genera- tions of orators. If Isocrates himself did not read) the highest level of oratory, lie at least paved the way for Demosthenes. And although probably, if Demosthenes had had no Isocrates, we should have had a very different Demosthenes, the influence of Isocrates is not to be seen merely in the speeches of Demos- thenes. It is in Cicero that Isocrates lives again. In the speeches of Cicero the rhetoric of Isocrates appears with a vigour and a practical pun-ose which it lacked in Isocrates, and through Cicero Isocrates has influenced the oratory of the world. The influence of Isocrates, however, was not deferred, but took immediate effect. It is visible in his contemporaries, and even in the rival Sophists of his time. Anti.-theiies, Alcida- mas, Polyerates, Xoihis, and Anaximenes ail show the effect which Isorrates' style immediately produced, in the regularity of their sentences and in their avoidance of hiatus, figure.-, and poetical decoration. Antisthencs was the son of an Athenian citi/en by a Thracian slave. He seems to have possessed a wide Hinge of learning, but Aristotle implies that he was 1111- ediicated, 1 and 1'lato,- with some raillery, calls him a ' late- 1 Metapht \\. 3 : oi 'AvrtaOevftot /ecu oi oi-rws dTraiSevroi. Sop/t. 25115, ORATORY: EPIDEICTIC RHETORIC. 399 learner." l From tins it would seem that at Athens, at least, the self-educated man played the same part in the intellectual world as the self-made man in the social world. Even the fragmen- tary state of our knowledge, however, with regard to Antis- thenes cannot conceal the vigour and energy of his character. At first he became a pupil of Gorgias. Thou he associated much witli such Sophists as Prodictis and Hippias. Then he attached himself with the whole force of his character to Socrates, and hccame as strongly opposed to his earlier master, (lorgias, as he was now devoted to Socrates. Finally, he became the founder of the Cynic school and author of the tradition that it is necessary to be disagreeable to be good, lie attacked Plato fiercely the slave-woman's son and the Athenian aristocrat would be iittlt; likely to agree and was probably at variance with Aristotle. Tiieoplirastus. however, the pupil of Aristotle, Xem'i'hon, and Theopompus. the historian, all greatly respected his character, in spite of the vanity with which lie a Heeled the garb of ostentatious poverty. Possibly, there wa< also a certain kind of vanity in the acquisition and display of the learning which he. tlii- uneducated man, the son of the slave-woman, had obtained by his own exertions, as also in his scathing de- nunciations of Aleibiades, the brilliant representative of the aristocracy. The same feeling prompted his choice of a place in which to expound philosophy. A philosopher, who was also an Athenian citi/en, might teach in a gymnasium, the Academy, or the Lyeeion, where pure-bred Athenians alone had the right of t'.aim'ng. Antisthencs would trarh in the gymnasium, the which Athenian pride had set aside for the exer- :. Hence the name of the Cynic philosophy, lines false etvmolo'j;v referred to the " doLfiike :> o 1 'I'n apptvriato this tho '' his ' Ciiaract, !>." slnmM ho so '' Latc-loarning \\ouni so-m to i is too oM. Tin' hito-loarm r is i whon ho is sixty, ami hivak iio\\ a ooiijiifor'-- i" r'onnamv ho wiil loarn tiio s"ii_> Ky In-ari ; ami wi ho will ho oa-or to a.'quil hnii-t-l tl:o oountry on aiiothor's luirso, way, ami falling. " I'll hroak iii~ \vitii Ills tootlnari : ami will hav \vi'!l iljs oiliiciri'll's iltiflllillllt. W from/,/. 1 ', as if (4i- otlii-r kin-w noti.in- will \vri__h 1 fi't .['.lontly, as if wro>i iim_'. in nini whrn wi.mon arc htiir, ho will jiiaoti acooii'.j a iiimciit." 40O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. logic, grammar, the criticism of the Homeric poem?, and various polemical writings. There has come down to us a pair of speeches, the Ajax and Odysseus, only. These are speeches only in name ; the two heroes state their claims to the arms of the dead Achilles, and the object of the composition is to set forth the superiority of intellectual puwer, which Odysseus is the type of. over stupid strength, of which Ajax is the type. Thus Antisthenes does not profess to set an example of style, as did the rhetoricians, or such a Sophist as Isocrates, nor did he compose these speeches as models of sophistical ingenuity in argument. They rather belong to his moral philosophy, as did his dialogue " Heracles or Midas," in which lie expounded his theory of strength and sobriety of character. Alcidamas, born in Klsea of ^Eolis, was. like Antisthenes, a pupil of Gorgias, and, like Antisthenes. possessed an encyclo- paedic knowledge. Unlike Antisthenes, however, he gave in- struction in the way usual amoi g the Sophists, and did not achieve any distinction as a philosopher. From other Sophists of his time he was distinguished by giving instruction, not in the thcon, but in the art of speaking. His works may have been numerous, but. exclusive of the two speeches which have come down to us under his name, we have only fragments of a few. One of these fragments is imp >rtant. It occurred in the so-called Messenian speech. This must have funned a pendant to the Archidamus of Isocrates. The latter represents the Spartan, the former the Mes.-euian view of the enfranchisement of the Messcnians from the Spartan yoke. In the speech of Alci- danius occurred the words, " Freedom God granted all men ; no man has Xature made a slave." This shows that already men of a daring mind were denying the assumptions on which the defence of .shivery was based, and is a credit to the Sophist for ever. The two speeches which have C'>me down to us under his name are the Odysseus (in which Odysseus accuses Palumedes of treason) and that on the Sophists. Most modern critic- are of opinion that 'lie two speeches are not by the same author, and if either is by Alcidamas. it is that on the Sophists. This speech is a polemic against those Sophists (particularly Isocrates.) who teach their pupils only to write speeches, instead of prac- tising them incxteinporo speeches. Alcidamas brings forward various arguments in support, of his attack", such as that a man who is evidently delivering from memory a prepared speech becomes an object of suspicion to his audience ; written speeches cannot be remembered entirely ; hence improvisation on some- points, and consequently uneveniu'ss in the total eti'ect ; the- ORATORY: EPIDEICTIC RHETORIC. 401 memory of the speaker, further, is likely to betray him ; and a prepared speech cannot adapt itself to the sudden needs of tho moment : it has no more movement than a statue. The opinion of ancient critics was not favourable to the oratory of Alcidamas, and this speech is open to criticism on several points. It has no systematic development iu its argument. The style is not that cf a practical speech, nor is the expression. The periods, however, are shaped with regularity, and not much below those of Isocrates. The adverse criticism, too, which Aristotle 1 passes on the metaphors of Alcidamas is such as to illustrate the difference between modern la-te and that of Aristotle rather than to secure our assent. Thus Aristotle condemns Alcidamas for terming the Odys.-ey " a mirror of human life." "Wet sweat," however, and similar redundancies, Aristotle justly blames. The speech of Odysseus against Pahuncdes for treason is weak in matter, but there is nothing in its style to show that it may not have belonged to the time, if it was not the work of Alcidamas. Polycrates, an Athenian, was al-o a contemporary of, but a younger man than, Isocrates. Like Alcidamas, he, as a Sophist, professed to give an education in practical speaking. He pro- bably devoted more attention to the matter than the style of his speeches ; and his choice of subjects, such as a laudation of Clytemestra, shows the ingenuity and paradoxical nature of his arguments. Other works were laudations of Agamemnon, of a Mouse, of Voting-pebbles, 2 Arc. None of his works have been preserved. Mo-t of our knowledge about him comes from tho JJutiirix of Isocrates, in which l.-nerates criticises the way in which Polycrates treats tho story of iV.'.-iris. The critici.-ui is severe, and probably deserved. Zilus, the famous Homeromastix, who was brn B.C. 400, and died B.C. JIG, was a punil of 1'olverates. Like Aiiti.-thenes, he 4O2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. each ship six." 1 "As though at word of command," says Zoilus. In the same strain lie wrote a eulogy of Polyphemus. His most serious work was a history from the origin of the gods to the time of Philip. He made no contributions to the advance of style. Anaximenes, who was born at Lampsacus in B.C. 380, and died B.C. 320. was a pupil of Zoilus. Like his master, he was a Sophist and a rhetorician, and he composed a history of the same period as Zoilus. Amongst his writings we hear of a work on Homer, an encomium of Helen, deliberative speeches, and we have fragments apparently of some work on philosophy. ]\Iost interesting, however, is his work on the theory of speak- ing, the ''Rhetoric to Alexander." The Alexander is Alexander the Great, who was a pupil of Anaximenes. The work, doubtless, owes its preservation to the mistake that it was the work of Aristotle. It is, however, unscientific in spirit, and confirms the adverse verdict of ancient critics on Anaximenes. In his ocean of words .the drops of sense are few. Compared, however, with the Rhetoric of Aristotle it has the advantage of being a distinctly practical work. Before proceeding to a consideration of the greatest of orators, we must say a few words on Is;eus. The widening rift between the interests of the citizen and the interests of the man, which was at once the condition and the consequence of the approach of Athens' intellectual empire of the world, aU'eclcd Is;eus as it affected Isocrates. That is to say, it enabled both to pursue their vocation without taking part in politics. In the case of Isocrates, indeed, this fact is concealed from us by his pan- Hellenism. But the pan-Hellenism of Isocrates, so far from being a genuine political factor, was merely a literary cloak, which served to conceal his political insignificance. Isoms, on the other hand, had no connection, and did not pretend to have any connection, with politics ; and as his speeches, being com- posed on behalf of others, give us no information with regard to himself, we know nothing about his life. It is uncertain whether he was an Athenian or a metic, and there arc: stories of his per- sonal connection Avith Isocrates and Demosthenes. Roughly, his literary career may be dated H.<:. 390-350. The intere-t of Jseus for us is that he earri''S on the tradi- tion of practical oratory whereas Isoerates represents literary rhetoric - and constitutes the transition from Lysias to Denios- th'-nes. Jn point of diction Isa.'iis resembles Lysias. He avoids ttrunge or poetical words, or words not in ordinary Attic use; ' O<1. x. 60. ORATORY: EPIDEICTIC RHETORIC. 403 though, so far as there is any difference between the two writer?, Lysias writes the purer Attic. The same relation exists between them with respect to the brevity which is regarded as one of Lysias' merits. With regard to composition, we have seen that although Lysias frequently relieves his periods by the in.-ertion of more loosely constructed sentences, still his char- acteristic combination of two or three periods into a greater whole recurs with a persistence that imparts a certain air of stillness to his style. Isanis is much more free in his com- position, and this difference between the two logographcrs is important, because it implies something deeper and beyond the mere difference in style. Well-rounded periods and formal sentences are beautiful, but they are not business-like, and Iscens was a much more thoroughly professional man than Lysias. Those speeches of Isanis which have come down to us relate entirely to testa- mentary cases. This is partly due to the habit ancient com- mentators had of arranging the speeches of an orator according to their subject-matter, and partly to the fact that that depart- ment in which an orator excelled was most likely to survive, as was the case also with Antiphon. whose extant speeches all relate to cases of homicide. iNo\v, Athenian testamentary law was of a complex nature, and the mere knowledge that Isams was strong in this branch of the law would be sufficient, even if we had not the speeches themselves to confirm it, to show that Isauis possessed a thorough knowledge, of the law generally. In tin 1 practical and professional power resulting from this knowledge of the law lies tin 1 difference between Isa^us and Lysias. Lysias tells his story with such winning simplicity, that the mere statement of his case is enough to win over the judges to his side. ls;eus. although he, ton, like Lysias, pays much attention t > ethos, continually appeals to the int"lligence of his hearers with the confidence of a man who-e force of mind and professional knowledge enable him to comp one who will foli.iw his argument. This ch appears in Isanis side by sid" with th , not only makes tin 1 diife] >nt al '> m.ikcs I-a"as th " figures of tip iii_rht " f pricmosthenes we have the nobility and grandeur which a share in the struggle that saved, if no( ties, at any rate the honour of his country was aUt to the orali >ry of ih" patriot. 'pmeiit of (ireek rhetoric, and the external and political, at this t ime. i\ 'run-'" to ihi- growth of tile hL'h'-st ; I everything. It m s< >m>'thing we mu-t lonhous care \ dy sei-n sunn we must adt 408 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. pliers \vere impressed by the strength of his iron will. To cure himself of an awkward trick of shrugging up one shoulder, he practised speaking with a sword so suspended that the peccant shoulder when moved was pierced by it. To gain presence of mind in the face of a tumult he matched his voice against the sea-waves, and to gain clearness of articulation he practised speaking with his mouth full of pebbles. For the purposes of his studies in declamation he constructed an underground cham- ber, which was still pointed out in Plutarch's time; and in order that he might not be tempted to desert these studies, he would shave half his head. He remained for a month at a time in the underground chamber. The importance which he attached to a good delivery is illustrated by his saying, that of the three things necessary for an orator, the first was delivery, the second delivery, and the third delivery. To a man who complained to him of having been assaulted, lie calmly said, " You have not been assaulted." "What!" shrieked the man, ' not assaulted.'" " Ah !" said Demosthenes, "now you speak like a man who has been assaulted." That the best teacher of rhetoric is the pen was a fact with which Demosthenes seems to have been acquainted, for he was assiduous in committing to writing any conversation he had heard, or anything else which was likely to be of use. He worked far into the night, and for longer hours than any work- man in Athens. It was said that more oil than wine went to the composition of his speeches, for he was a water-drinker. A life of this studious description stems incompatible with the unsupported aspersions sometimes made on his morality. It is true that he committed the crime of wearing comfoitable clothing, but our views on luxury are so different from those of the ancient world, that we can scarcely in the present day regard iii.e linen as a good and suih'cient reason for taking character. lowing pages it will be impossible to deal with the political side of Demo.-thenes' life, a;:d yet to abstract the politics fi'Din Demosthenes' speeches is more unsatisfactory even than are n:-t attempts To consider the form apart from the matter. Deni".~thcnes is above all things intensely practical; he never sinks into the mere liteiary artist. He never writ'-s f<>r di.-play : he lias only one p:e occii: ation, and that is his subject. As Fu-neloii said of him, ''Tout est dit pour le .-alut coinniiin, aucun mt n'est pour 1'orateur." J5ut we must endea- vour to put our.-elves at the same purely literary standpoint which ^H.-chines must have occupied when, in his banishment, ORATORY : DEMOSTHENES. 409 he could first read out to his pupils, with the appreciation of an artist, the very speech in which Demosthenes covered him with infamy, and could then remark, "Ah! but you should have heard the beast himself." Demosthenes, the son of Demosthenes, of the dome Preania, was born about B.C. 383. His father, who was a weapon manu- facturer and possessed considerable wealth, died when Demos- thenes was only seven years old. Demosthenes was a weakly child, with an aversion to outdoor sports, and was permitted by his mother to indulge this aversion, so that ho grew up in entire ignorance of the gymnasium and the hunting which constituted a large portion of the education of the ordinary young Athenian. This fact is doubly important, as showing both that Demos- thenes' want of physical courage was innate, and that he did not even go through the ordinary physical training which might to some extent have remedied the defect. Demosthenes' guardians, if they were nut guilty of fraud, were at least extremely negligent in the discharge of their duties, and Demosthenes, wneii quite a boy, probably discovered that his inheritance would be much smaller than it ought to have been \\heii it reached him. From this dates the determi- nation, which he stuck to with ail the pertinacity of his deter- mined nature, to b-comc an orator in order to se*'k for hiiiis-lf, and by himself, redress fr. m the law. That he had any lessens from I.-ocrates is improbable, ahtioiigh it is (dear that he must have studied Isocra',os ; publi-hed speeches with care. From Isvus however, he did receive instruction. IsaMis was a profound and practised lawyer, and Deiii".-iii nes was well advised in becoming his pupil; for the prolonged litigation iu which he became inv<-lved with ir.s guaidians w.is such as to require, tin De'.i;o-;hencs' part, a more than ordinary acquainr- ance \\itli tne law. The powr which Demosthenes caught fi'i'in I.-a.-u- "f thoroughly _Ta-ping a subject, a: d of th'-n treat- ing it with a freedom \\ hich disregarded b"tn technical divi>i!is and artiticial deduction, is one which is as con.-picitous in his l>oh: ical as in hi- t'< iivn.-i( areer mav 4 I O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. compelled, in B.C. 359, to resort to logography in order to gain a living. The speeches for the Naval Crown and against Callicles and Spudias, together with the speeches delivered in his litigation with his guardians, make up the total composed by Demos- thenes in the first period of his literary career. This period is distinguished from his later style by the characteristics of youth. Demosthenes was only twenty years of age when he delivered his first speech against his guardians, and only twenty-four when he became a logographer. Most characteristic of youth is a tendency to exaggeration. This shows itself to a certain extent in his language, which is sometimes too strong, but more unmistakably in his avoidance of hiatus. In the later periods, although he normally avoids hiatus between two words in the same sentence, he allows it at the end of a colon, just as in tragedy hiatus may be allowed between the end of one line and the beginning of the next. It is, however, the peculiar charac- teristic of the period, B.C. 363-359, that not even this exception is allowed to occur. Akin to exaggeration is want of self-control. Demosthenes' nature was excitable even beyond the excitability of the ordi- nary Southern temperament. The ardour with which he threw himself into everything, and the enthusiasm by which he was liable to be carried away in speaking, are instances of one extreme, that of exaltation ; while the other extreme to which his imagination bore him is at any rate illustrated, if it is not proved, by the story that in his flight from the field of C'luero- nea he roared out "Mercy!" when lie was cauirht by a bramble- bu,-h. This was the nature which he had to keep, and did keep, under control by the force of wiil. I5ut this control, even in matters artistic, did not come at first or without eilbrt ; and whereas in his later speeches he makes extremely sparing use of appeals for compassion, in the speeches against Aphobus there is a marked absence of such self-control. If exaggeration and want of self-control are youthful faults, imitation is equally characteristic of the immature writer, who, because his own style is as yet unformed, has not the courage his own way, but guides himself by the- example of a This is what happeii'-d in the case of Demosthenes a I'd to Isii-us. The speeches against Aphobus were on the speech of Jsfi-us on the inheritance of Chon. v are the common-places oft'-n id-ntical in both cases, treatment of Istuus is imitated by Ik-mosthcnes. Ho does not relegate the narrative into a distinct part of the speech, ORATORY: DEMOSTHENES. 411 but interweaves it with the argument and proofs, and even (in the second speech) with the epilogue. Moreover, he shows the same freedom in recapitulation as his master, and even a greater skill in weaving the various parts of the speech together. The diffidence, which leads to imitation further shows itself in Demosthenes' language. A writer who is not confident in his own powers will not call a trivial thing by its trivial name, and hesitates to quit the safe paths of respectability so far as to use a familiar expression or a vivacious exclamation. In this respect the difference between the first period of Demosthenes and his later styles is marked. In his earlier style he does not know the capacities of his art in this direction, and is so far cut oil' from the variety, the life and movement of his mature style. Another concomitant of immaturity is the fact that the feel- ing of artistic propriety has not yet, had sufficient exercise to become a second nature. The feeling is there, for Demosthenes was from the beginning an artist, but it is not yet sufficiently developed. This is most, obvious in his inability to resist the temptations of the epideictic style. The' stringency of his rules on hiatus in this period, which we have already noticed, is < ne sure indication of the influence of Isocrates. Another in.-tance is to be seen in his use of epideietic figures, a.-sunance, paraliel- i>ms, and antithesis of ail kinds. This kind of writing, nn- suited as it is to practical deliberate speeches, is still more out of harmony with forensic oratory ; and that Demosthenes should have u>ed it in the speeches against A phobus. although very natural in a young writer, is proof that he was not yet in full possession of the fine feeling which subsequently enabled him to adapt his style to his subject with perfect artistic p:o;>riety. It is, however, instructive to notice how soon Demosthenes developed this power. Kveli the speech on tiie .Navai L'l'oWll sh' >ws a great advance. The same mistake and the same early discoverv of the mis- take is obvious in the structure of the peiiods of tlii- I the speeches again-1 Apliobus, the sentences have the ant length, the regularity, and the balam e of I>ncra; an- consequently un>r,ited t<> the Mactua; purpose-: court of law. Jim even in the speech against (Me improvement is visible; the speech is lighter and ;1 portion better runMed. In tnis sp> ech, too, I)ei he-ins to free himself fiom the influence of Thucydides which is visible in the speeches aguin.-t Aphohu-; in a cert r.n and want ' >i smoothness. A perfect a : ju-t ir.ent of 4 I 2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. perience, and the lack of this adjustment is further evident in the absence of ethos in the speeches against Aphobus. These speeches are very far from leaving, or attempting to leave, the impression of an inexperienced youth making his first untutored attempts at oratory. A character of this kind imparted to the speeches would have been excellently adapted to secure success, but Demosthenes relies on pathos rather than ethos. So, too, the arguments of these speeches, though excellent in themselves, have not the directness of attack which goes straight to the vulnerable points of the adversary's case, while there is con- siderable scorn and trampling on the opponent, which is not much to the point. Finally, in this period we see the seeds of much that was to appear in its complete form only later. Thus, for instance, the rhythm of his later style depends largely on his rule of not allowing three short syllables to occur together. The iirst opera- tions of his rule are observable in the speeches against Aphobus and Onetor, and are still more visible in the speech, on the Xaval Crown, hut perfection only conies later. The same remark applies to oilier qualities his grace and his power, which are present, if not perfect and we may say of Demosthenes, in tin's period, his faults were merely those of immaturity. They left him as he grew. CHAPTER V. DEMOSTHENES : SECOND PERIOD. BETWEEN the first period of Demosthenes' literary career, ending u.r. 359, and the second perind, commencing r,.c. 355, is a space of four years, represented by no speeches, which Demosthenes probably spent in preparing himself, in his characteristically di't''nnined and assiduous manner, for his profession. His object in life was political oratory, and logography was for him, hevoud a means of living, only a means to his final object. For this reason, and because his private, speeches are inferior to his political or.it ion-*, it is advisable to consider the private speeches first. \Vilhregard to these speeches, it is to be noticed thai int only do ihey cease altogether as soon as Demosthenes becomes for the first time a politician of weight, about B.o. 345, hut for some time before that thev li^gin to fall oil' in merit. T:ie more aciivelv he came to participate in politics the, less ORATORY: DEMOSTHENES. 413 time and work he could bestow upon private speeches. Another effect of the same cause is to be seen in the tendency of these later private speeches to grow more and more rhetorical in quality and less and less forensic. Between deliberative and forensic oratory the difference in subject is one that necessarily finds expression in a difference of style. In the one case the interests of an individual, in the other case the interests of a nation, are at stake, and to the more important subject a more exalted style and loftier flights of language are adapted. On Demosthenes this difference tells with marked effect. His earnestness and single-minded pat- riotism tiud their proper field in political oratory, and give it the irresistible force which is his greatest characteristic. But this very force is too irresistible and too excessive a strain for forensic oratory to bear. Being unable to find an outlet in those higher regions of oratory which are the province of deli- berative rhetoric, this force is diverted into the channel of argument. Demosthenes' earnestness does not allow him to be easy unless lie is arguing, and here again the difference between deliberative and forensic oratory contributed to exaggerate this fault. The political problems with which an Athenian states- man had to deal were of comparatively simple nature, and neither demanded nor admitted of complex argument. Athenian law, however, was of a much more complicated nature, and gave full scope to Demosthenes' tendency to argumentation. From the literary point of view this tendency is a mistake, because the perpetual argument is too great a strain on the reader's power of attention ; and. from a practical po:nt of view it is also a fault, because it inspires the di.-tru.-t which exces.-ive clever:ie.-s anuses. Demosthenes' conclusions may be right, but if he had been employed on the other side he would pro- bably have proved his ca.-e tpiite as conclusively. It is tins over-anxiety to prove hi- point which compels u- to rank Deino-thcne- a- a log,'_!-apher below Lv.-ias or Hyp": ides. J t is not that Demosthenes is incapable of simple and easy narra- tive. The tir.-t of the private speeches of this period, that again-l ( '< 'ii ou, is proof to the contrary. The speech in its -imp! c statement of the assault and battery which gave ri-e to the action i.- ouite as effective a- anytinnu' in Ly.-ias, while the language i.- not niy as graeei'.ii a.- that o! Lvsias. but is powerful to a degree a only by Demo.-thenes. Moreover, the ethos is good. Tl p'unant. ArisP'ii, leaves on one tic- impre-,-ion of i tho!-ou-_:hlv inoll'en.-ive citi/en, so ir.otfensive. indeed. 4 1 4 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. bare supposition that lie could possibly have commenced a fight which had for its results that he was carried home, and his " mother rushed out and the women set up such a crying and wailing that some of the neighbours sent to ask what was the matter." l All this is more than worthy of Lysias. But it is isolated among the speeches of Demosthenes. It is not, indeed, the only instance which shows that Demosthenes' touch could be light. In his political orations, certainly, his irony takes its colour from the dominant tone of these speeches, and becomes somewhat grim ; but in the private speeches it sometimes becom -s bright and quite delightful. One speech, the first again.-:; Bcjeotus (the second is pseudo-Demosthenic), is, as a whole, cast in a lighter vein than is usual with Demosthenes. This speech involves a point of Attic law which has only lately been properly understood. 2 It seems that for a child at Athens to be legitimate, and to exercise the rights of citizenship, it was only necessary that the parents, both being Athenian citizens, should have been formally affianced, and this even if the father was already fully married. In the present case, the complainant, Mantitheus, was the son of the full wife, and the defendant, Boeotus, the son of the half wife. The latter, however, had assumed, in lieu of his proper name, Boeotus, the name Manti- theus, and this forms the subject of the action. A real griev- ance was involved, for at Athens a man's full legal title consisted of his own name, his father's, and the name of his township. As, then, the titles of the real and the false Mantitheus would in all legal and other documents be precisely the same, inextricable, confusion would be the result. "Mantitheus, sun of Mantias of Thoricus," is condemned to a fine, and each legal owner of the title says it is the oilier man who is fined. "Mantitheus, s-'ii of Mantias of Thoricus,'-' is appointed by lot to office, and each man says it is he who is appointed, with tin.- result, as the com- plainant says. 1 that "we shall abuse each other, and the success- ful talker will get the office." The difficulties of this kind which might ensue are, developed in a tone of subdued humour by Demosthenes, and with a fertility of imagination, which is really due to his legal knowledge, but is worthy of the "Comedy of Errors," and the concluding appeal to "you tiresome Boeotus" is conceived in the same light strain. But if the~<; two speeches, against Conon and against Boeotus, show that I (emosthenes was capable of simple narrative, effective 1 Kennedy's Trans., v. 174. - .See IJuer's " Drei Studien." 2 Kennedy, 258. ORATORY : DEMOSTHENES. 4 I 5 el-Los, and delightful humour, his other speeches show equally clearly that he did not often allow himself to give rein to this capacity. The latest of the private orations, that against Fubu- lides, has not received the orator's finishing touches, and the two which chronologically immediately precede it, those against Paiita-netus and Natisimachus, suffer from the fact that the author's heart was in political speaking whilst he was writing them. Tin; speech for Phonnio, which is considered to be Demos- thenes' best private oration, shows how completely he trusted to argument rather than to any other means of producing con- viction. Humour there is none. Narrative has no independent footing, but is chopped into bits and served up solely for the sake of the, argument, and the argument goes on with a mechanical precision which is somewhat deadening. The, seriousness of the speech darkens into scorn at times, but never brightens into light or gracefulness. Finally, this argumenta- tion ruins the ethos of the speech. Phonnio is made out to be good and Apollodorus bad; but Demosthenes is not content to convey these, impressions in the most effective way that is, in- directly : his technical power, 1 which in this speech is developed to the utmost, is too strong to permit him to do that. He has the case so thoroughly in his own hands, and the law so com- pletely at his finger-end?, that he can come into court and simply demonstrate that Conon is an honourable man and Apollodorus a treacherous and insolent villain. Unfortunately, however, mathematical demonstrations do not appeal to one's emotions, and so the ethos of this speech fails of its object. It is possible that but for two faets the unsatisfactory natuiv of tl, First, I ' i , ' > ! am is th, thi-iie (o.,e, jury. sudden change < if fr, nit on the so strange that in antiquity i; stories not to the credit of Demo>ihein-s. So i-troiiu'ly ha been fell by modern students of heinosthenes to reflect ,,11 hon-ur of 1 lemosthenes that the -peerh has 1 :, on iliis _; ,1 rejected as not genuine. I'.ut th- 1 .-pe-.-cli is both marked by the 1 6fi!-oT?;s. 4 I 6 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. power of Demosthenes and r?ponds to the finer test of the law of rhythm, so that it must be accepted as genuine. Nor, if we class the other speeches for Apollodorus amongst the pseudo- Demosthenic group, to which, they helong, can we accept the explanation that Demosthenes formed an early and lasting con- nection with Apollodorus, composed many speeches for him, but quarrelled with him, and so delivered the speech for Phormio against him, and then finally became reconciled with him, and again composed a speech, the present one, for him. Demosthenes, however, was always anxious to divert the theoric fund to military purposes, and it happened that at the time when he composed this speech for Apollodorus, Apollodorus succeeded in persuading the senate that the assembly should have the power of deciding whether the surplus revenues of the state should be devoted to the theoricon or to the war depart- ment. From this coincidence it has been conjectured that the speech for Apollodorus against Stephanus was the price Demos- thenes paid in order to obtain Apollodorus' support ior his political scheme. Whether this explanation be accepted or not, the evidence as we have it is not enough to warrant us in condemning Demosthenes. Further, to return to the purely literary aspect of the question, we may conclude that it was because neither Phormio nor Apollodorus deserved the strung characters which Demosthenes gives them in the speech for Phormio, that in that speech he found it advisable to trust entirely to the technical power of which he was so consummate a master, and which is there developed to the detriment of the ethos. We now come to the. political orations of Demosthenes. These fall naturally into two classes. There are first the deliberative speeches properly so called, the demegories, which comprise both groups of the Philippics, and by which Demosthenes is best known : next the speeches composed by 1 >emosthenes, and some- times delivered by him, as syncgorus for other people. "With the latter class, consisting of the speeches against Androtion, Leptincs. Timocra'es. and Aristocrates, we wiii begin. These three speeches, together with that against the law of Leptines, which we shall consider separately, are differentiated from the demegories by the fact that they are not purely political, but are mainly concerned with points of constitutional law. They thus forma genus of speech intermediate in nature between ihe purely h'gal character of the private orations and the purely p/litical character of the di-megories; and at the same time they nuke the stepping-stone by which Demosthenes passed f ORATORY : DEMOSTHENES. 4 I / logography to politics. Marking as they do a period when Demosthenes had as yet established no independent footing in politics, they naturally cease when Demosthenes becomes estab- lished as a statesman (i.e. at the time of the second group of Philippics). The ditl'ereiiee between these speeches and the demegories does not rest merely on these external differences. There is also a difference of style between them analogous to tin; difference between the political and the private orations. On the one hand, they do not, j:ke the demegories, treat of the highest subjects of oratory. On the other hand, the orator has the power to appeal to patriotic and allied sentiments, which to the purely forensic orator is comparatively denied. This difference of subject produces, or ought to produce, a corresponding dif- ference in style, and it is one of the great merits of Demosthenes as an artist tiiat In; can and does invest each kind of subject with the style which is artistically proper to it. The range of power which enabled Demosthenes to vary his style so com- pletely in this manner is in it-elf proof that he possessed many excellences. Examination will show that, as a constitutional lawyer, as well as in his private speeches, he attains the highest excellence. Typical of Demosthenes' constitutional speeches at their best is the speech against the law of Leptines. Aphepsion and Ctesippus wishing to repeal this law, employed respectively 1'hormio and Demosthenes to speak for them. Phormio opened the ca-e. and Demosthenes, who thus appeared as ,-ynegoiais in olilical case for the lir.-t time (lie. 355). followed with this ech, which is accordingly technically called a deutcrology. 1 aw of Leptines abolished omv and for ever the exemptions iy various Athenian- fr >m the expen.-ive and hurd"ii- dutie> of the chorcgia and other "liturgies/ 1 A .-ubj.-ct of limit of the impassioned llL'hts of eloquence. of a national calamity wonld demand. On ies permit t he orator to appeal to t he noiioiir, the _' 'od name . 4 the count rv. a; >f nL-gardly parsinii ny t on 'ir.able t at r\> >t i-m an the si di all through and sent im.en! wlr./n has _ i : hi_h rcK.tatiom The la 4 I 8 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. these sentiments, is like them, quiet and unexaggerated through- out. When the moment comes for praising the merits of those who have enjoyed the exemptions in question in the past, his style appropriately becomes somewhat epideictic ; but elsewhere his language is never bolder or stronger than the treatment of the subject requires. Although, however, the ethos is thus successfully developed, the reasoning is by no means neglected. On the contrary, it is close and effective, but it is not thrust unduly forward. The desire to prove his point does not mislead him into reducing everything to an argument ; and the same absence of constraint is visible in his freedom of arrangement and his looseness, per- haps even carelessness, of connection. The ease and grace of the speech lias caused it to be compared to the work of Lysias in style. But although the similarity is undoubtedly great, the points of difference are important. The art of Lysias con- sists in writing in a simple easy style, which apparently anybody, certainly the man in whose mouth the speech is put, might use. In the speech of Demosthenes, however, there is no pretence of this kind. The work is a work of art, and is, without attempt at disguise, the work of a practised and skilful orator. Moreover, the style of Lysias is always graceful, but it is always slender. The oratory of Demosthenes has more l!<-sh on his bones; its forms are fuller and rounder. This is the case even with the speech against the law of Leptines, which in this respect is less developed 'than the remainder of the set of speeches to which it belongs. Variety of expression, wealth of words, and the use of metaphors all help to give more substance to the speeches against Timocrates (B.C. 353) and Aristocrates (B.C. 352), while in the latter the professional skill of Demos- thenes iias been employed in further smoothing the transitions from <>ne part of the speech to another. The d<-]iiegories fall into two groups those delivered by De- mosthenes before B.C. 349, while he was yet bidding for power, and those delivered when he had become a p Jitieian of some consequence (i.f. after B.C. 346). The speeches on the Navy Boards (a o. 354). for the Mega- lopolitans (B.C. 353), and on the liberty of the Khodians (B.C. 350) are the speeches of a young politician trying to bring himself into notice. The speech on the Xavy Boards, delivered when Demosthenes was thirty years of age, is practical and sensible. The other t \vo speeches display considerable courage in advocating unpopular views. In style, these three speeches are verv similar, though the last is perhaps the most inferior. ORATORY : DEMOSTHENES. 4 I 9 Tlieir common feature is their Thucydidean character. They arc, in passages artificial, harsh, difliculf, and even obscure. 1 Doubtless tlie imitation of Thucydides was intentional on the part of Demosthenes, who wished to transfer to his own speeches the brevity, the compression, the force, and the sting of the historian, but had not yet learnt that it is possible to 'be im- pressive without being obscure. In later times the influence of Isocrates counteracted that of Thucydides on Demosthenes, and the result is that, while these speeches are more forcible than the speech against the law of Leptines, they are more clumsy than the later de memories. In one respect, however, the influence of Thucydides, which here is so plain, persisted throughout the oratory of Demosthenes. The severe style, of which Tiiucy- dides and Antiphon are representatives, trusted much more to the effect of single words than of the sentence ; and, that these cardinal words may have the more effect, they are thrown into un- usual and emphatic positions. This means of gaining emphasis was one which Demosthenes would never forego : and herein he differs from Lysias, who sacrifices less to emphasis. ; and still more from Isocrates. whose dominant motive is a clearness and trans- parency of sentence against which abnormal disposition of words would militate. Th" first group of the Philippics further includes the First Philippic (B.C. 351) and the Olynthiacs 2 (B.C. 349). These speeches were designed to waken the Athenians to the danger which Philip's growing power threatened them with, and to arouse them to a sense of the necessity of active measures to meet the < lander. 3 Demosthenes, however, was still far from rivailinu' Kubulu-, who then directed the fortunes of Athens, and these orations consequently, like the earlier demegories, shared the fate of the speeches of an unsupported speaker. The first impression left by thechylus. In this respect the great Athenian orator and the .ureat Athenian dramatist may well be compared. The work of each is of simple structure as compared with the com- plexity of corresponding modern work, and is suffused, or rather overshadowed, by the gloom of impending calamity. In both case's the only relief to this oppressive apprehension is an occa- sional gleam of humour (o.r/. the Xurse, in/Eschylus), which, how- ever, it.-eif is apt to become somewhat grim ; as, for instance, when Demosthenes assures the Philippising orators that they are really much indebted to him : if there \vere no opposition tr Philip, they would have nobody to protect them from Philip ORATORY: DEMOSTHENES. 421 Irony, 1 sarcasm, satire, and parody arc the forms in which his surcharged feeling.- find relief. Even thus ho often relapses into a bitterness which harmonises, indeed, with the tone of the speech, hut evidently troubles instead of relieving the orator himself, and only intensifies instead of lightening the prevailing gloom. Tin'- ''< la-lies the Athenian craving for news. "Xews! "Why, could there he greater news than a man of Mace. Ionia subduing Athenians and directing the affairs of Greece?" 2 Of their carpet-knights, who were fonder of conducting pro- cessions in the market-place at home than war abroad, he says with scorn, " Like puppet-makers, you elect your infantry and cavalry otlicers for the market-place, not for war." 3 So, too, where he cuttingly remarks that their generals' courage was shown in rather facing the extreme! penalty of the law than die in battle-. 4 Scorn, indignation, anger, and disdain are the. feelings which he evokes to diversifv and to give point to his forebodings. Equally consonant is it with his earnestness that petty graces or ambitious ornament lie alike despises. His oratory is clothed in its strength alone. As Eenelon says, ' C'est le bon sens qui paiie, sans autre ornement (pie sa force." Without grace his oratory distil. ctly is not ; but it is not the grace of Lysias' slim and slender beauty ; it is the grace which accompanies the exer- cise of perfect strength. iVnio-thenes has grace, though scarcely graces. His forms, though rounder and fuller, as we have said, than those of Lysias. are made so by the addition of muscle, not of useless flesh. That is to say, his style includes every "figure' 1 known to oratory, and! these figures art' u.-ed never idly or for show, but always to contribute to the fn'.ve nf the speech. Thus he is vrrv fond of antitheses ; not in the sen-e that IK; Timufl'-s 422 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. syndeton, drawing out and prolonging the effect of an enumera- tion, renders it all the more impressive ; while paralipsis, i.e. the omission of what might Le taken into account, gives the impression of fairness and reserved power. 1 Characteristic of Demosthenes, as compared Avith earlier orators, is his use of anadiplosis, i.e. the repetition of a \vord for emphasis, as. e.g. in Shakespeare, " Oh, horrible ! oh, horrible ! most horrible ! " 2 Anaphora 3 and antistrophe 4 the repetition of a word at the beginning or at the end of successive clauses asyndeton, 5 apostrophe, feigned objections, questions, exclamations, and aposiopesis are all brought into play by Demosthenes when anything is to be gained by using them. Before proceeding to consider the second group of Philippics, we must deal with the speech against Midias (written B.C. 349). Demosthenes while discharging his duties as choregus was in- sulted and assaulted in the theatre by Midias, an ancient enemy. The assembly, which was held in the theatre immediately after the plays to give a preliminary decision on such disputes as might arise out of the plays, decided in Demosthenes' favour, and it was now for Demosthenes to take further legal proceed- ings. .As Demosthenes was at this time just succeeding in his long endeavour to rise into notice as a statesman, it Avas natural that he should feel it impossible to quietly submit to the affront BO publicly and outrageously put upon him. But Midias was a man of Avealth, and therefore of power. It was consequently no easy matter, as Demosthenes found, to bring him to justice. Midias managed to delay the trial by instigating various vexa- tious suits against Demosthenes, and succeeded so far that he gained a delay, Avhich Avas long enough to make it exceedingly probable that the popular indignation against him had subsided into indifference. The result w;is that Demosthenes, who for long strenuously refused to accept any mediation, at length saw that, as far as rehabilitating his dignity Avas concerned, to push the matter to a trial would be quite ineffectual. At the same - /.'.;/. (Jl'i it. ii. 10 ; ou yap t avopes AOyvatOl. 3 ]'.(]. (~)1. ii. 31 : \{yd\aio>'. Trcivras ttjfiipetv d(p tJcruv ?/cacrros ex 6 ' TO taov' Trdi'ras f^ievat Kara. ,u.(pos K.T.\. 4 E.n. 1'iiV. i. 27 : Taia.'xovs Trap' v.u.u.-v, iinrdpx 01 ^ 7ra P > {'uZv. s Tin- breathless asvmlutoii, wliicii li:>s no time for conjunctions, is best known by Cesar's " VLMI!, vidi. vici." It may also be used, as by Julian, to point a piece of wit : Zyvti)i>, avtyvuv, Kari'/vwv. ORATORY: DEMOSTHENES. 423 time the fall of Olynthus necessitated peace, and Demosthenes could not refuse to co-operate for this object with Eubulus, who, moreover, was active in mediating between Demosthenes and Midias. Doubtless, also, tin; prospect of public employment in negotiating the peace, as well as his patriotism, had sume effect in inducing Demosthenes to accept the compromise. Thus the speech against Midias. though written, was never delivered, and there seem to be no grounds, from the facts of tilt; case, for the more or less absurd imputations which have been cast upon Demosthenes in connection with it. The speech, as we have it, is unfinished in many places, but its power is nevertheless undeniable. Written by Demosthenes while he was yet smarting throughout his sensitive nature under the insult put upon him, this speech is the blow which he returns to his assailant. Every means which his eloquence suggests, which his skill affords him, which his experience had accumu- lated, is brought into play to give force and weight to his strokes. Although the matter was essentially a personal one, the assault was also an outiage upon the people whose repre- sentative Demosthenes was as chorogus. This aspect of the case was naturally the. one which Demosthenes chose to put upon it, and in hi.- endeavour to do so he assumes the stvle which in its weight and dignity is characteristic of the deme- gories. Jt was not in the eyes of Athenians, and according to the usage of the law-courts of Athens, inconsistent with tin's object or with this style that Demosthenes should launch forth into a long invective against the life and manners of Midias. ]'.ut to no orator, however great, is it given to descend to per- sonalities without paying the penalty thereof by degradation to tiie level of hi- subject. Therefore, to all times, as to us, the speech again.-! Midias mu.-t seem, great as it technically is, bel >u the reputation of Demosthenes At the age "f foity, Demosthenes, supported by the war party, co-opeiating with Hyperide-:, 1 le jvsippu-, and others. w,is u;.c. -vt4) i" 1 ' the iirst time in a position of power, and for irst ti in" a statesman of acknowledged rank. To this perio [ Lelon.s the second group of Philippics, consi.-ting of the- .-peech on the Peace (n.c. 346); the Second J'ir.iippic (B.C. 3441: tic.- speech on the Chersonese (r..c. 34:.'' : and the Third Phtiippic, ( r..c. 34 \ }. ( >f tic lippu- htt ie nee to this i-eriod. Th> 424 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. elsewhere in this respect is in part doubtless due to his defi- ciency in method. The earlier orators secured a certain amount of clearness and organisation by means of a formal and artificial division of a speech into such parts as introduction, narrative, argument, and conclusion. These divisions Isseus broke up, or, more strictly speaking, he broke down the division between narrative and argument. Demosthenes followed the example of his master, and left only the introduction and the conclusion untouched, liut although he deserted the old arrangement, he introduced nothing to take its place. If lie announces a plan at the beginning of a speech, he does not adhere to it ; and more often he announces no plan at all. He thus is at liberty to interrupt his argument and then resume it, repeat himself, or fail to resume the argument thus interrupted. That is to say, he has abandoned the artificial method without attaining to a logical arrangement. Partly also in his want of conclusiveness we see the limits on the intellectual side which were imposed on him by his ear- nestness. On the emotional side we have seen that his earnest- ness confines him to scorn, indignation, and other stormy displays appropriate to the presage of calamity. On the intellectual side the concentration which his earnestness leads to gives him a much clearer apprehension of what he wants than of the objec- tions which might be conceivably brought forward against it. He sees tilings from his own side with perfect distinctness, but he makes little attempt to place himself at the opposite point of view and work from that. On the other hand, concentration gives force. He does not weaken his attack by dividing it, but throws his whole force into pressing his one point. Jf he sees only his own side of the matter, he sees that all the more clearly : and if he does not render his own position absolutely impreg- nable, lie at least succeeds in making his ideas and his feelings clear to his hearers beyond the possibility of misconception. Finally, from the artistic standpoint, his earnest ness and con- centration give to his speeches the unity they possess, while his freedom from the restraints of either a logical or an artificial arrangement leaves him at liberty to arrange his matter in accord- ance with the dictates of his instinct as an artist. In connection with the subject of arrangement, it may be observed that an oration, like a tragedy, at Athens usually ter- minated in the simplest and quietest of strains. This practice, which is observed by Demosthenes, is noted as unpractical by Lord Lrougham ;* and undoubtedly, for the purposes of raising 1 Works, vii. 25, 184. ORATORY : DEMOSTHENES. 425 enthusiastic cheering, something more in the nature of a bravura note is required. I'>ut to see clearly how utterly impossible any such ending is for Demosthenes, we have only to l->ok at the Third Philippic. This is the greatest and the noblest of all Demosthenes' demegories. It contains passages of the very grandest oratorical power. 1 It is throughout sad and solemn, with the majesty and grandeur of a funeral march. It is the music with which Greek freedom went down into the grave. Could such a speech conclude amid cheers? Nothing more self conscious and unlike Demosthenes, nothing in wor.-e taste or more vulgar could be suggested. There was only one way to worthily end such a speech, and that is the simple way in which Demosthenes ended it.- The speech on the Kmhassy (R.C. 344) largely resembles the speech against Midias. As a display of technical power, and as a move in the game of politics, it possesses all the merit which Demosthenes, when personally touched, might be expected to show ; but otherwise it does not increase our respect for him. 3 CHAPTER VI. DEMOSTHEN'ES : THIRD 1'ERIuD SPEECH OX THE CKoWN*. THE interval (B.C. 341-330; between the second an 1 third periods of Demosthenes' literary career is not repiv.-ented by any of the orations that have come down to us. This is n<>t. of course, because Demosthenes delivered no sj ..... ches at that time. (in the contrary, he was probably more active as a .-late-man and an omtor a t this than at any other tine- of his life. It \\-as the time of the linal ,-t niggle \\hich ended on the fatal ti'dd of Cha-roiii'ii (H.C. 338), tin- death of Philip (U.C. 330 , and the nn.-uee''s>ful attempt of the Spaitan Agis to throw oil' the Macedonian yoke. The iva.-on :ve hav'- none of ;he mai.v speeches which Demosthenes made at such a time of activity n-ists of tiifsc fi-w -..i'.'i.cu \ai n r in tirai i o^^a. < "j}:o cir ra 7Tt)a-,ua-a roiTcji 1 -, i->ri ILI . fu.-r. d r -15 t\-i Ti.i'ru.-!' .^t\ri.,r. \f-. luostiii'i i-s ^l;^k^ out in tl.u J.' T7.;;-rfS t'tot. 3 SOUK; notice of the *ui'j<.et-u:u!ter will i.i: foiu.d in ti.e chapter ou jEschincs 426 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. is that his very activity left him no time to publish the speeches which he delivered. Further, as a statesman of established position, he was no longer under the necessity of publishing for the sake of gaining a political footing. The third period of Demosthenes' style (B.C. 330-323), although the second and third letters, if genuine, belong to this period, is practically represented by the speech on the Crown. In B.C. 336 Ctesiphon proposed in the IJoule that a golden crown should be publicly presented to Demosthenes in the theatre at the great Dionysia, in recognition of his services to the state. This would have been in effect a condemnation of the Macedonian party at Athens. If Demosthenes' policy was deserving of the public approval, that of the Macedonian party was therein* publicly condemned. Opposition to the proposal of Ctesiphon was therefore forthcoming from this quarter, and at the head of it was /Eschines the second orator of Athens who had already come into frequent and violent collision with Demosthenes. For reasons which are unknown to us, the matter did net come to a trial until B.C. 330, when /Eschines indicted Ctesiphon for illegality on three grounds that to con for a reward on a man whose accounts as a public officer hail not been audited was illegal; that to proclaim the reward in the theativ at the Dionysia was illegal ; and that it was illegal to make false statements in public documents. As to these thive point*, ti.e hist was undoubtedly perfectly good in law. At the time of the proposal Demosthenes was a treasurer of the Theoricon and a conservator of the walls, and had not rendered account of his office. The second point was probably not good in law. But the most important was the third point. It raised the whole question whether the policy of Demosthenes in encouraging Athens to stand forth as the champion of Greece against Mace- donia was a ri'_ r ht and good policy or not. The strength of ./K.-chinirS lay in the iirst point of his indictment, and in the purely leu'al aspect of the case ; and it is in this part of his speech ai:ain>t Ctesiphon that his argument shows to most advantage. In reply Ctesiphon said probably very little, but gave way to Demo-thenes, who followed with the (so-called) speech on thi; Crown. "Whether we have the speech as Demosthenes delivered it, is a que.-tion harder to answer with regard to the speech on the Crown than with regard to any other of Demo-thenes' speeches. Hi.- d'.-lihcrative speeche- he wrote out before delivering them his aver-ion to improvisation is known and if he chose to OKATORY : DEMOSTHENES. 427 circulate, or merely indeed to retain without destroying his copy, \ve ca i understand its coining down to us. His forensic speeches are all speeches for the prosecution, and consequently could be composed before going into court. There is, accordingly, no dilliculty in understanding how it is tliat in the case of these speeches also wo have the words as Demosthenes littered them allowing, that is, for his subsequent erasures, additions, and corrections. l!ut the case of the speech on the Crown is dif- ferent. It could not have been taken into court ready written out, for it is a reply, and a pretty close reply, to the speech of yYschines, which Demosthenes would not hear until he got into court. It is evident, then, that at least some of the speech was not written out beforehand. The question arises, how much 1 In the first place, all the documents, of what -vcr kind, quoted, and they are in this case pretty numerous, had to be produced at the preliminary investigation (anacrisis;. This shows that the main lines of the speech had been resolved on by Demos- thenes before the actual trial, otherwise he would not have known what documents to put in at tin; anacrisis. In the n-xt place, the very beginning of the speech shows that it was already planned, and that Demosthenes adhered to the plan. -Eschine.s had in his speech 1 demanded that Demosthenes should follow the order in which he had treated the various topics of the trial. Demosthenes having arranged his speech beforehand, naturally says- to the court, " You must allow the parties to adopt such order and course of defence' as they severally choose and prefer." Agun, a little farther on in the speech there occurs a passage which at tirst sight looks as though the speech were going to be largely extempore, but which really is merely a rhetorical device for concealing (lie fact that the s: eech was previously prepared. Demosthenes says, :; "I shall take the charges in the .-ame order as my advt r-ary. and discu-s them all one by one without a single intentional omission/'' Hut a< a matter of fa^t, . had no choice ;;s to ;he ord>-r "f the charges, and the o known to Demosthenes bef his opponent. Equally rhetoried is th" that in 1 enters on a justification of Ids stat ./F~clmies first in;r"d:;erd the which was at trial, an parts of (Ireee hung fire, and Demosth think out his defence. 428 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. his speech shows have known the weak points of his own case as well as yEschines did, and must have known very fairly where to expect each blow. Indeed, he anticipated one blow which .rFlschines did not deliver. He made sure that, amongst other terms of abuse. /Eschines" would bring up his nickname. Bat tains, and accordingly prepared an effective reply. But ^Eschines never alluded to the nickname ; and accordingly Demosthenes' words now run not " I, whom you call Battalus," but " I, whom you would call Battalus." 1 On the whole, then, it seems that the differences between the speech as Demosthenes took it prepared into court, and as he delivered it after hearing and in reply to ,/Eschines' speech, were probably not very considerable, and that there is no diffi- culty in understanding how it is that we have the speech as delivered by Demosthenes. Undoubtedly both he and /Eschines went home and made such additions to or corrections in their arguments as their mutual criticism seemed to them to necessi- tate. /Eschines certainly introduced several such alterations. 2 One of these passages is extremely instructive. /Eschines says 3 that he hears Demosthenes is going to compare him, in an uncomplimentary sense, to the Sirens, and retorts on Demos- thenes with a In quoyiif. This of course means that Demosthenes did in his speech on the Crown compare ^Eschines to the Sirens, and that /Eschines when the trial was over inserted this retort. .But in our copy of the speech on the Crown no such comparison is to be found. Evidently, therefore, Demosthenes, in making the final copy of his speech for circulation, omitted this passage ; but of this omission ^Eschines, who was replying to the speech as spoken in court, was unaware. If vEschines had been answer- ing the circulated copy of the /> Con ma. there would have been no need for him to reply to a passage which did not occur in it. From this it would seem, then, that theother passages of .Eschines which imply acquaintance with Demosthenes' speech are good evidence that the sections of Demosthenes against which they are directed were really delivered in court. Jt has been said 4 that the sources of Demosthenes' power as an orator are three : his lofty morality, his intellectual .-upe- riority, and the magical power of his language. "\Ve will begin, therefore, our criticism of the speech on the Crown with an examination of the language. The vaiicly of effects which De- mosthenes is capable of producing is due, in the first place, to his extensive command of language. In this re.-pect, even in ORATORY: DEMOSTHENES. 429 his other speeches, the range of Demosthenes is much wider than that of any previous orator ; and in this, his greatest speech, lie shows a fertility and copiousness which even he had never before displayed. Antiphon, writing in the severe style, was limited in his choice of words and expressions by the limited object which he had in view, namely, to produce an effect nf magnificence and grandeur. Lysias, writing in the plain style, was equally limited in his resources, although his theory of the art that it should confine itself to such modes of expression as were within the reach of the ordinary man directed his labours to a totally different part of the field to that which Antiphon had been labouring. Isoerates, again, who was no practical orator, indulged in an academic fastidiousness of diction which limited his vocabulary in a distinctly artificial manner. Demosthenes, however, fills all these fields. He not only avails himself freely of the magnificence of Antiphon, the sim- plicity of Lysias, or the precision of Isocrates, as occasion requires ; but he has no hesitation in borrowing the "by Zeus '." l of ordinary, not to say vulgar life. Xor has he any prudery to prevent him calling a plain tiling by its plain name. His in- nat'- sense of power enabled him to deal freely with what others touched timidly. The level of culture at which a stock of proverbs constitutes a man's education is that of Saneho 1'anza : and consequently, proverbs, however apt, are frequently avoided by writers as wanting in dignity. Hut Demosthenes, if he wants a proverb, uses it.'-' 80, too, if comedy can be laid under con- tribution to yi'-ld a means of ridicule, Demosthenes goes un- hesitatingly to comedy. :i If the language as it is dues not afford 1 Demosthenes uses not only /?; rAr Aici. hut tin* form i'?'/ A:iir>' li:nl worn it down in. An ei|iiaiiy Ihely ami vulgar exp 1 es.-ion is rat'. This expression \v;is originally respectable (/. & ira, Alc;eus in A'lu'ii. 4' J i.\K Sophocles puts it into :i mes-en:j>-r'> niout'i!. <>. /'. 114;. An interesting indication that Demosthenes did not fonfine himself \vi;'n al>>o- lute sliietmss to "pin i 1 " Attii 1 is to i>e fi.uiiii in iiis n>e of t'nc pivposi- tion iTi'i'. In Xeiinphoii, who h.ts no claims to '"purity,* en v is u>i-d nic'ie fri'ipi-'iitly tiian ufTci dii' 1 ]u-.i]'ortion i^ cri-t' u-od ;>'' times, tiird -~^. tiiiu^i. In Homer uiio:us a>r:i Ifmns t M-rii.u-ly i'i\.il pvv (ai'v 7-, turd ti;i. In A'tic (ireek tht' "law of ]iari-unoi,y. ' ui.i.'ii, as i^Ir. UiitinTfoid in iiis " N"f\v I'iirynii-hus " ha- .shown, \voiihi no' toil-rate if it coii'.d not dili'i'rt-ntiute synoi,\m-, pra.-: u-aily kii'.e.i IT IT. In 1'iato e liave (Ti'c 07, Uf-d ?S6 in 1 ifinost ii'-ie > ffri' u (l.- 1 , it era .? ;' ; in Lysias ff\'i' ~, U' TO. 102; and in Isocrares, Lycni_u-, aiiii Hyperiiies tf v Id. N\ i,y tura k:ik-d jiv wr do no; know. Scr T. Moniins, n. I'r.iirr. Krankfin t, i )7. - I 1 ! '' '. J.).. 7^,2's. In ti.i: den;e.roi ies, iiowevcr. i.e never dues more tlinn a!'nu'i" to piovi-i IK. :; Ih. J-;j. 21.11 : the d.niimrives are from con. fly. 43O PIISTORY OF GKEEK LITERATURE. anything strong enough to express his feelings of contempt, he coins a word which shall be strong enough. 1 In the* other direc- tion, for the expression of lofty and solemn sentiments he has at command adequate words. Thus he employs adjurations, 2 unusual words, ?> and stately phrases of a tragic cast. 4 Isocrates purposely avoided metaphors, ami Lysias instinc- tively shunned figurative language. In hoth cases clearness of thought was thus gained. Demosthenes, however, is a thinker powerful enough to master his language, and is never mastered by it ; and he accordingly adds to the variety and charm of his style by a free use of similes and metaphors. His similes have the widest range, and are taken with equal freedom from com- merce, 5 building. 6 war and athletics, 7 and disease. 8 More seld< m and more poetical are those from sea and sky. 9 His metaphors are partly nautical 10 (as might be expected from the orator of a maritime nation), but stiil more largely from that which gave a young Athenian much of his education and occupied a good deal of the thoughts of all Athenians, the gymnasium. And within this range we have metaphors from running, 11 wrestling, 12 and boxing, 13 as well as from the decision of the judges 14 and the offering of prizes. 15 The power of Demosthenes' language, however, cannot be accounted for solely by the wealth of his vocabulary or his variety of expression. "Words appeal as well to the ear as tu the mind, and, abuve all, in oratory a sentence must have its melody as well as its meaning. As, however, in music, no more precise definition of melody can be found than that it is a pleasing combination of musical sounds, so of the melody of prose we can say little more than that it is the pleasing combi- nation of spoken sounds, and the ultimate test of melody must be made by the ear. This, in the case of Demosthenes, is for us, with our defective knowledge of the pronunciation of Greek, I Ib. 130, 209, 242 ; the compounds are Demosthenes' coinage. - Adjurations are unknown to I=;uus and Andocides, and are rare in other orators, Imt numerous in Demosthenes. ANY hav< , c.;t. the Homeric j>q rov Aid Kai rbv 'AirdXXw mi rr t v 'AGijuav ; iilso vy T'W 'Ilpa.K\ed, vr; rr,v Av;,u7;r/ya. For other forms .-ee ] >i Cur. i, 8, 141, 158. ICG. 201, 2')i, 29), 307, 324, 305. 3 !>' dr. io-, ]'/o. 2-4. 2^7, -i Ii>. 141, 270. 5 F.II. Ohm. i. ii, 15 : l'/'/)>. iii. 17 ; 1'nit. iii. 17, i. 40. 8 /,'..'/. <>l. ii. 21. iii. 33 ; 1'hil. iii. 20 ; 1>< d-ir. 243. !) /;..'/. I'hll. iii. 69, 7A Cm: 153 lc"lel.nitl). 194. 214, 308 (these and the followi: .x references from Kuhdautz). ;u L\ipx tTal ! D C ^" r - 7- la E- f J- i'ifOffKe\iftiv, ih. 138. '" D.jvelojied into a simile, Phil. i. 40. 14 E.n may be made to resemble the metre of the verse.- istlienes shows an advance on previous orators in rest ect rhythm. Jle systematically avoid- more than two short : at a tin)'', and in the rhythmical teiiuinati"n he di-play> nrich variety. Asa ru short o:u s ha< a diminuendo ( owed bv Ion-.; ones have a crescen 1 A '.-re:**: imiiiK-r <>f iam'i'ics itiiiy 1^ fmni'l in I t>'n;<''s ; }>;jr inas- much a~ ti.i" iaml'ic decs not in any rasr ci'ini'iiir nit:, tn<' c 'l"ii, i.i;t i.s (livi.ii-il iiriwi-i n t<> cola, it is r<'..l.\ l'r<'kr;i nil 1 'V ti.c IMM-C i't't i-t/n t'nu two cola, and is thus no vi"l:ition of tin. 1 1'V.ic thai vt-l';f should Hut occur i:i pros.-. - E.'j. the anapaestic dinieifi 1 or a lo^aa'dic. 432 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ever, without lessening the impressive effect of a termination of this kind, avoids the monotony of too many long syllables. 1 Further, there are to be found in Demosthenes traces of recur- rent rhythm, i.e. cases in which the cola of a period correspond metrically to each other. Such cases of rhythm naturally do not pervade a speech, but are to be looked for only in passages which, for some reason or other, are carefully and deliberately elaborated in this respect. Demosthenes' intellectual superiority, the second source of his oratorical power, is most manifest when he is compared with any other man of his own day. He saw the danger with which Macedon threatened Greece before any other Athenian citizen, and when the news with regard to Elatea wakened Athens to the truth, there is no doubt that Demosthenes was. as lie him- self says, the only man who had any reasoned ideas on the mea- sures which it was necessary to take. Again, the intellectual power of Demosthenes as an orator is shown by the skill with which, at the age of twenty, he carried on the complicated liti- gation against his guardians. This continued throughout his career, and is strongly illustrated by the speech on the Crown, which illustrates the mental grasp which enabled him to suc- cessfully handle a large mass of facts ; and still more clearly do we see from the speeches for Phorrnio and against Stephanur. (I.), arguing, as they practically do, the same case from opposite sides, how thoroughly Demosthenes could understand a case. The restless energy of the man may be seen in almost any of his speeches, for in all the stream of argument is all-pervading and perpetual. Whether, however, the intellectual superiority of Demosthenes is equally great when he is compared with modern orators is another question. It is said on the one hand, that modern statesmen, having to deal with problems of much greater complexity than any which were propounded to ihe orators of Athens, are educated into treating these complex problems with corresponding thoroughness in their speeches ; while Athenian orators for want of this education attained to less power of treatment. On the other hand, it is said that Demos- thenes, if he did not attain certainty of demonstration, at least succeeds in conveying to the minds of his hearers the conclu- 1 The epitritic ending of the Second Olynthiac is a favourite one /3^\nov T&V o\ui> Trpa.yfj.aTwv vulv t-)(i>vTuv. Demosthenes, indeed, uses every pos- sible mode of termination, but the choriuinbus and the fourth psuon """ ) are most frequent. ORATORY: DEMOSTHENES. 433 sions he wished them to adopt and the reasons for adopting them, with a clearness not to be gainsaid or surpassed. He attacks in column and not in linn. Jjoth views may he true. His attack is irresistible at the. point on which he directs it; hut lie does not defeat the whole of the enemy's line. There remain difficulties and objections which lie has not overthrown, because he ha> not attacked them. In this respect therefore as compared with the comprehensive power shown in modern expositions of policy the intellectual superiority of Demos- thenes needs qualification. As to the morality of Demosthenes there can he no doubt; indeed the tendency is to make too much of it. Demosthenes was not the only just man in the Athens of his day. We are apt to be so much impressed by his gloomy pictures of Athens as a city full of people who set their hearts on unworthy objects and gave themselves up to those wicked orators who lulled them into false security and ignoble ease, that we come to think of Demosthenes as a voice crying in the wilderness of selfishness and corruption. Pmt although it is true that there was an increasing dearth of earnest patriotism at Athens, it is equally true that there were many other public men besides Demos- thenes who scorned Philip's gold and Alexander's threats. Premising, then, that Demosthenes had not a monopoly of patriotism and was not the sole purveyor of political morality to the Athenians of his time, we may fully recognise that his speeches are uniformly inspire 1 with a conviction of the para- mount duty of d"ing what is riirht. Many of the finest passages of the Philippics contain the sentiment that the wieked cannot prosper, expres.-M-d in accents of iv-ul feeling, and with a force of conviction that cannot be resisted. Above ail, and most appropriately, the speech on the Crown is marked by the p'-ace of mind whi'-h belongs to the man who has known the right and done it. This >pc was mainly engaged in telling the people, from whose approval alone he could expect any reward, unpleasant truths. Finally, there remains the charge of corruption. He was said to have accepted secret presents of gold from the great king ; but a charge of that kind was easily made, and, if believed at all, was likely to be damaging, though hard or impossible to prove or disprove, and may be disregarded. Demosthenes is more seriously implicated in the Harpaius affair. "When, in B.C. 324, Harpulus. Alexander's treasurer, having absconded with 700 talents of his master's money, had received refuge in Athens, the Athenians were alarmed by an imperative demand for his surrender. Ilarpalus certainly made a free use of bribes, and Dcnio.-thenes' (Mi.dr.c; gave rise- to a suspicion that he too had been bribed. In the iir.~t place, he spoke against surrendering ]Iarp;dus. In the next, he connived ar th" escape of H;m>alu- li. when at this time Alexander de- ng-t the god., of the Athenians, compliance with the somewhat impious of this suspicions behaviour was a pre- ORATORY: DEMOSTHENES. 435 thenes as one of the orators bribed by Harpalus. The prosecution which followed was conducted by Hyperides. and ended in the condemnation of Demosthenes, who thereupon lied into exile. In disi.-u-sing the Harpalus affair, it is advisable to begin by stating that the decision of the Areopagus and the result of the trial cannot be regarded as proving anything. The people were in a state of panic, such that their only idea was to con- demn somebody, while the Areopagus, if not incapable, was not adapted to ascertaining the truth. We are then reduced to examining the conduct of Demosthenes, to see whether it is capable of being explained on no better hypothesis than that of bribery. His behaviour was certainly tortiuus ; but it is clear that he had no intention from the first of fighting Alexander, else he would not have taken the steps he did for making Har- palus' money the very nerves of war unavailable by making the state responsible for it. On the other hand, it is equally clear that he had no intention of surrendering Harpalus, else he would not have connived at his escape. It seems, therefore, that, with the wiliness supposed to be characteristic of the (.ireek, he endeavoured to steer a middle course between the danger of affronting AL-xander and the national disgrace of surrendering Harpalus. This he miidit think he could succeed in if Ilar- palus happened to escape and leave his money behind. The Athenians would have the sufficient reason that Harpalus was no longer in their hands to allege for not surrendering him ; while they might hope to soothe any resentment on the part of Alexander by returning the money. If so. the plan was spoiled by the deficiency in Harpalus' accounts. 'Ihe Athenians found, they had neither the money nor the person of Harpaius where- with to sati.-fy Aii-xander. Hdi-.-e came tie- necessity of .-nb- mitting -and to Demosthenes it was probably a hard iu-v.-es.-ity to Alexander's di-mand to be worshipped as a god. The coiiduet of De!i;o~;i:,-ie-s is tin-:; ip;ite;i:t ihgible w SUpi'o.-img that he was hrihi.>d by ] larp d;:s. Tiii- i- say. In all probability, however. I)emo\v:i. doubtediy a profligate. It is he of whn when pleading f"r Phryne. and de.- pairing < bv anv other means, he revealed tin- charm- 4 3 8 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. scandal goes so far as to allege that he carried on liaisons with as many as three of these ladies at once. But whereas the scan- dals connected with Demosthenes make us think of Tiberius, Hyperides reminds us of, and we can be no more angry with him than we are with Charles Surface. The same wit, polish, and good breeding characterise both. In the history of Greek oratory Hyperides is a second Lysias. When we come to Hyperides, we miss the intense and mar- vellous earnestness of Demosthenes, which is apt to become 1 monotonous, and we are no longer exposed to his powerful, and indeed overpowering, command of oratory. On the other hand, and in compensation, wo get back to the grace, the ease, and the simplicity of Lysias. There is nothing stilted or studied about Hyperides. His speeches read as though they were thrown off by the author without the least effort or even premeditation. They nre none the less effective. Easy and imconcerned as Hyperides is, he lias an iron grasp. Although in his longer sentences he lets his words fall from his lips in the most natural manner, just as they occur to him, he brings the sentence to a graceful close, which is the more effective because unexpected. Like most other authors, lie has his anacolutha. and lie is in particular liable to a careless yet not offensive repetition of words. Again, although he generally allows the course of the sentence to wander about in this \uiconcerned way, only recall- ing it when it has to be brought to a conclusion, he can, when, lie cares to rouse himself for a moment from his often languid attitude (which one suspects is not languid at all in reality, but assumed to avoid making a display of his strength), rap out sharp, short sentences, which show anything but weakness. In fact. Hyperides has all the grace and charm of Lysias with the further advantage, which Lysias did not enjoy, of living after Lysias. Hyperides has before him the example of Lysias and of another generation in oratory. lie has power as well as grace of expression ; nor is lie so limited in the range of his vocabu- lary as was Lysias. Hyperides is even less constrained and more, easy in his choice of words than Demosthenes. He speaks in a distinctly conversational style, and uses words which might pa>s in conversation or in comedy, but were usually avoided in compositions as wanting in dignity. 2 But still more is he supe- 1 AH the writer rrf/il I'viovs even seems to have felt, c. 34, ot; iravra i^rjs KO.L jj.oi' or uv us u;s o A'7oc7^f ;'?/; \iyri. - I:'.'!. K/'JJOS, ill the sense of ";in old fo<>l"; KOKKi'^av = "to cock -n-doodle- doo," whereas it was jirojicr to talk of the cock's song (aSru-) yn\fdypa (a cat-trnp) for " ynisoii ; '' and the comic superlative and diminutives, p.ov- ORATORY: CONTEMPORARIES OF DEMOSTHENES. 439 rim 1 to Lysias in the arrangement of his subject-matter. Tlio arguments of Lysias arc, brought forward one after another in a disjointed manner with no pretence of connection or unity. Hut llyperides, who had Isoerates before him, effects the transition from one argument to another in tin; smoothest and neatest of ways. Above all, and most characteristic of Hyperides is it that he is throughout a gentleman. His politeness, especially when lie is making a crushing retort, is scrupulous. Emotion probably, the display of ("motion certainly, he, regarded as bad form. Accordingly, he not only avoids anything tragic or ex- aggerated himself, but he io especially happy in the quiet irony with which he treats any .-uch display from the opMisite side. lie met a solemn appeal to and a dreadful picture of the terrors of the next world by the simple query, "And if a sword does hang over the neck of Tantalus, how is the defendant to blame ? " It will, however perhaps be better to study llyperides in the concrete, and for this purpose, we will take the speech for I'.uxenippus. This speech was delivered under these circum- stances. \Vhen the common land of Oropus, which was given to the Athenians by Philip after the. battle of Clueronea, had been divided by lot among the tribes of Athens, it was dis- covered that the portion which fell to the lot of two of the tribes had been previously dedicated to the hero Amphiaraus ; and, in order to discover whether to occupy this land would provoke the liei-i j's wrath, Kuxenippus was commissioned to sleep in the temple of Amphiaraus and report his dreams- which not unnaturally were iti favour of occupying the land. AVheivr.pon. a certain 1'olyeuctus proposed that, notwithstanding, the land should be appropriated to the hero and not to the tribes. His prop, .sal was rej-c'ed and he was fined. 1'olyeuctus then proceeds to hrin'_ r an impeachment ' against Euxenippus, in that, being an orator - (which Kuxenippus wa-ii"t), he had not advi.-ed peoi-le f .r the best. Ath'-nian law. although it iir-i-'ed that the puties to any ,-uir sh"Uld theinselve.- speak, permitted a man's friends to also speak for him. One of the supporters 3 of Kuxenii'pus <-i\ this occa- sion, doubtle-s ; aid, as wen; .-uch supporters u-ually, wa~ llyj.e- riiles. He did not deliver the leading speech, but f-','. wei with a deuterolog. Acenrdinglv he has not to .<.-; i-vAi ;h.- fart- of Aiiil K . ;; (:i HKii.li.-nl ''. ' \rIi.,W-1,.,vs." J- 44O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. the case, but to say what he can to make a favourable impres- sion on behalf of Euxenippus, and this is the delightfully casual way in which he begins : "Well, gentlemen, I, as 1 was just saying to those sitting near me, am astonished you are not sick of impeachments of this kind." Formerly men were im- peached for betraying ships or towns. "But now what happens is quite absurd. Diognides and Antidorus. the metic, are im- peached for paying more than the law allows fur flute-players ; and Euxenippus for the dreams he says he has had," neither of which offences makes a man liable to be impeached accord- ing to the law of impeachment.. But Polyeuctus says, Do not look at what the law says. Whereas, this is just what I indeed should have said was the first thing to do. In a democracy (note the adroit appeal to the jury's patriotism) we act accord- ing to the law. " A man commits sacrilege : indict him before the king-archon ! is undutiful to his parents : the archon tries the case ! a man proposes illegal motions : there is the college of the Thesmotheta3 ! merits summary proceedings : the Eleven are in existence," and so on. Every offence has its law, and every law lias its offences against which it is directed. The law of impeachment is expressly limited to ' orators," and very sensibly too. else orators \\ould get all the profits of their pro- fession, and run no risks. However. Polyeuctus says that to this law, in virtue of which he is bringing this charge, you must pay no attention ! Other complainants, indeed, insist on your keeping the defendant to the law, but you (turning politely to Polyeuctus) say, Do not let him rest his defence on the law. Moreover, he says that the defendant, inexperienced as he is in speaking, ought not to be allowed to have any friends to assist him ; whereas this has always been allowed. Did you (again turning to Polyeuctus, and more politely than before) never avail yourself of this custom 1 Why, when you were put on your defence by Alexander of Oios, you applied f<>r leu sup- porters to assist you, and I was one of them. Need more be said] except that on the piv.<;>nt trial y<>u have Eycurgus, whom we all respect, and who is the best orator of our day. to render you assistance. Then, whether defendant or plaintiff, you, who can speak well enough to bother a whole city, are to have assistance, and Kuxenippus, who is old and not accustomed to Mib'.ic spiai.ii.g, is to have none'' But, of course, you wiil say lie has committed such dreadful crimes. Let us there- fore see. If he spoke the truth about his dream, where is his crime 1 if not. you ought to have gone to Delphi and inquired the tiutli. But instead, you brought forward a pro] osal (which ORATORY: CONTEMPORARIES OF DEMOSTHENES. 441 was not only unju.4, hut contradicted itself), and got fined, and so Kuxenippus mu.~t sutler, and not !> even buried in Attic ground, because (tins bridges over the transition to tin; next charge alleged against Kuxenippus) lie allowed Olympias to dedicate an oliering to Hy;_ r ieia, therehy showing his Maee- donian tendencies. Hut the very hoys from school know who takes Macedonian g"Id, and nobody imagines Kuxenippus ever thought of such a thing. l!ut there seems to me. lAjlyeuctus, nothing you cannot convert into an accusation. Yet, with your power (> oratorv (ajain notice Ilyporidos' politeness), you ought to prosecute men who really can injure the country, not men like Kuxenippus or any of the .jury (note the dexterous identification). That is what 1 did when I impeached Aristo- phoii and 1 liophhes and rhilocrates, and I quoted the very word-; in which they failed to advise the city for the hest, whereas you can quote no such words uttered hy Kuxenippus (Kuxenippus, of course, had heen commissioned to dream, and he dreamed, hu; he never offered any advice of any description to the city). And then you try to rouse ill feeling against him hv accusing him of being rich. " "\ ou do not seem to know, I'olyeucius. that there is no democracy in the whole world, no monarch nor nation, more noble than the democracy of Athens," and that consequently sycophants (here he gives instances) are righteouslv ; unis'ned here. u In-fore sitting down, I will make one short remark more about the, vote you are goim_r to uive. When, gentiem>-n <>f the jury, you are abou: to con.-ider your verdict, bid the rlerk r id to you the inip.eachnient. the law of impeach- ment, and tin- jurors oath. 1'ut on om- side all our speeches. Kook at tie' imi eaehmeiit and the law. ami what you think j'ust ami true, ;". ^ive a- y-ur verdict. Now. Kux' nippus, I have done niv lie.-t f>.'r you. T'ne ncxi ;hin_ r is to get le ive from the jury. a;.d call ym'.r friends, and brim: up ymir ciiiidren." Tiii- >i;ni!inry :. : iy uive a faint :ayin _' ' t iiat "no one e\-i ; i- .; t : !_h' en-.; when : . ; :,_ 1 1 vi'erides." I'ut I'olyeuctus mu ; have ;-,; a c :' ,:: im 11 ; of ala: m when h>' r-aw i 1 et u:> fi ::: ; - '.!.. i ; .'<- in^ oil' a conversation wi;li lii- n -. and h-'_r:n in iiis calm ini'-oni-i-rH'-il manner to o'.;. '.y : v . lie ; ,,.;. p-i.l i; p-j-c.-s. 'J'iie powr of Hyperid-'- i- r.-nd'-r^d all tie : : : :-; : .l.\ in the tir.-t place, bveatise he make< no di~pla\ of i;'- - : n_: :i. On the contrary, he is so strong thai he ft- eld no n-.x-d to pur 44 2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. forth his strength, but treats everybody with consideration and inbred politeness. Thus at the end of the speech for Euxenippus he modestly says, " Xow, Euxenippus, I have done my best for you. The next thing is," &c. With this we may compare the end of the speech for Lycophron. "If you will allow me, gentlemen, I will ask some one to support me. Come here, Theophilus. and say what you can for me. The jury give you permission." In the next place, the power of Hyperides is rendered the more forcible by the attitude which he assumes. Demosthenes, even in his deuterologies, always takes up a some- what hostile attitude towards the jury. He uses his technical power and his irresistible force of argument as though the jury were not with him. Lysias, on the other hand, does not rely on his arguments; he seeks to bring over the jury by his winning and artless manner of stating his case. But Hyperides in the speech for Euxenippus does not seem to be speaking as an advocate at all. His attitude is rather that of a bystander a bystander, however, who, as he casually allows it to be seen, knows a good deal about the matter in hand, and who merely gets up to see fair play. "Xevcr mind what the advocates pay, but judge of the law for yourselves/'' is what he says to the jury. "With all this gentleness of manner, however, and apparent impartiality, he was capable of making some very sharp thrusts, as when he disposed of the rhetoric of Demeas (son of iJemades by a flute-player) with the quiet criticism, "Pray cease! you make more noise than your mother." The speech fur Lycophron, delivered some time before B.C. 338, is like the speech for Euxenippus, an instance of how the law of impeachment might be abused. One section of this law provided that any man might be impeached who, ''being an orator, advised the people nut for the best/' It was, however, a considerable strain on the law. as Hyperides points out. to bring it against Euxenippus, who was not an orator (in this sens-: of the term), and had not oU'ered any advice of any kind, hut only had a divam. as required by the state. So too Lycophron. if guilty, was guilty of adultery, but he was accused by Lycurgus ur.d> j r the section of the law directed against attempts to ''subvert the democracy,'' the argument being that attacks on private morality shook the foundations of govern- ment. Of Hypi-rides' speech on behalf of Lycophron we possess only fragments, but the hi.-try of these and of the other throe speeches of Hypi.-rides which we pos.-ess is extremely interesting. As late as the sixteenth century there was n considerable number of Jlyperides' speeches extant in MS. in :ho King's Library at ORATORY: CONTEMPORARIES OF DEMOSTHENES. 443 Buda, but after the capture of that city by the Turks in 1526, this copy of Hyperides disappeared. From that time, con- sequently, for more than three centuries, beyond the descriptions of Hyperides' ,-tyle to be found in ancient literary critics, such as Dionysius of Halicarnassus (n.f. 7o-n.r. 8) or Longinus (A.D. 213-273), the only knowledge nf Hyprrid'-s was what mi.dit be obtained from words of his quoted by lexicographers, such as Julius I'ollux (who flourished about A.D. 180, and wrote an Onomasticon), or Harp* oration (who lived in the third or fourth century after Christ, and wrote a ' Lexicon of the Ten Orators ;: ), and from passages (especially the peroration of the Funeral Oration) quoted by Stobaeus (flourished about A.D. ^20) in his 'Selections or Anthology of Apophthegms and Precepts." But in 1847 Mr. A. (.'. Harris purchased at Thebes in Ku'vpt from an Italian dealer in antiquities some rolls of pa!>yrus, which proved to contain fragments of Hyperides' speech against J )e- mosthenes, and of the heuiiniiuir of that for Lycophron. .In the Fame \var and at the same place, Mr Jn.-eph Arden was ofl'ered by the Arab- of the neighbourhood a papyrus volume which he, 1 might, and which \vas discovered to contain the latter part of the speech for Lycophron, and the whole of that for Luxcnippus. 2S"iue years later, in 1856, Mr. H. Stobart purchased at Thebes a papyrus volume which tun ud out to he the Funeral Oration bv liyper'des. The papyri of Mr. Harris and Mr. Arden originally consti- tuted mie volume, which was torn up by the Arabs in order to for each of the parts. As to the age of this o great an authoiitv as the present Bish"p of Jhirhum d it. on pahro_'ruphic grounds, not later than tin 1 mid- .-ee< r.d century bef re ' 'hri.-t : bur. while ii'i'-eut inini:i' are .-tat' 1 , it dors n t han pi , the T:ul>:.ir. i ;.-":. 444 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. calculations may be relied on, and the volume containing the Funeral Oration (although much more carelessly written) belong:?, ns is probable, to the same date as the other volume, then we have another reason for not dating the volume containing the law speeches before Christ, at all events. The speech against Demosthenes 1 we have already alluded to in connection with the Harpalus affair. The leading speech for the prosecution in this trial was made by Stratocles, who was probably followed by several other speakers before it came to the turn of Ilyperides to deliver his speech. The text has unfortunately sull'ered at the hands of the Arabs who tore up this papyrus before selling it, but the outline of the speech can be made out still. As, like the speech for Euxenippus, this is a deuterology, Hyperides has not to set forth the facts of the case, but to make as damaging an impression as possible. This he does without any heat and without any vulgaiity. He lie- gins in the same easy manner as in the speech for Euxenippus : " "Well, gentlemen, I am astonished so much ceremony should be made about Demosthenes." The accusation lie treats as re- quiring no proof the investigation by the Areopagus has settled the matter. Moreover. Demosthenes had not attempted to de- fend himself, but instead, "you go about challenging the senate to say where you got the money, who gave it you, and when. Perhaps you will proceed to also a.-k what you did with the money when you got it. as though the senate kept your banking account." The admissions of Demosthenes' friends were equally damaging, for they hinted that the money had indeed gone, but gone to remedy a deficit in the public treasury. Then Hyper- ides, having done his best to prove that Demosthenes was bribed by Harpalus, goes on to prove that he had also been for a long time in the habit of taking bribes from Alexander. Alter this the speech becomes very fragmentary, and we will not attempt any further analysis. We will only say, that if even Hyperides could not satisfactorily explain the behaviour of Demo.-thene-s on the hypothesis that he was bribed by Har- palus, but had to resort to the further (and very improbable) hypothesis that he was also bribed by Alexander, we may con- clude that the case against Demosthenes, so far as being bribed by Harpalus is concerned, is not very strong. lly far the most important discovery, however, among the papyii. indeed the nio.-i important for a century back, was that of the Funeral Oration. For more than a century ami a half it was the custom at Athens for a funeral oration to be publicly 1 KO.-O. \rip.oGdf.vws inrep rtliv 'Apira\fiuv. OKATOKY: CONTEMPORARIES OF DEMOSTHENES. 445 delivered at the public funeral of those nidi who had mot their death while lighting for the country. In tin: famous Funeral Oration of Pericles, as given by Thucydides, we doubtless have most of tlie ideas expressed by Pericles in that speech, but the, language and the form are unmistakably the work of Thucy- dides. In addition to this, we have a Funeral Oration falsely ascribed to Lysias, and another equally falsely ascribed to Demosthenes. l'ut up to the time of Mr. Stobart's purchase there, was no funeral oration known which had really been delivered at Athens over the dead ; for the orations ascribed to Lysias and Demosthenes are mere exercises, and Gorgias' speech, of which we have a fragment, could not have been delivered in any official capacity by him, as he was not an Athenian. The appointment of an orator to discharge this function was a matter of serious deliberation on the part of the senate, and a mark of great popularity on the part of the orator ch< sen. The appoint- ment of Hyperides, theivf<>re, in B.C. 322, to deliver this oration marks the po-ition of importance which he occurred during the Lamian war, of which he had been in lar.'O measure the pro- moter, and in which the dead over whom he was to speak had fallen! The orator on these occasions was allowed little latitude in the choice of his subjects or in the. form of his speech. It was ordained by custom that, tin. 1 orator, afier a f w opening word-, the proem, should dwell upon the glorious history of Athens, then praise the dead warriors, then speak sme words of advice, and consolation to their relatives, and end hybi'idinj; his hearers raise the funera; cry. 1 AS the orator \vas hunted to these topics, and the speeches were made dur:n_ r a centurv and a ha;f, the funeral oration is a marked example of the diil'ereiice which we and the Athenians make in tie- value - t upon the treatment of a subject. \\ith the Ath' niaiis the treatment wa- every- thing. With us the .-uhj'"-;-mat; T is everything. The .same diti'ereiice is to be observed with iv_':ird to tlie drama. At At:;en- mythological subjects, perfectly well kii"\vn ;-> ail the audience. Mlpplied tile plot which, ColiSei jlU'lltlv. had Ho sUI 1 - pi:-e in s'.ore for the .-peetat' TS- and als > supviied the !i_ r ures, \vhi'-h. a~ a rule. p!v.-iTVed ih 1 ' characters convent:. maliv as- .-igi.i-d t ' them. The Athenian-. ; . !'.-:' 're. wre aiiv. t" tii-s tiiie-t vaiiation- i:i li.e lietails of the ; ; a;:: . :.' whi ii a mvt'u or a character ivee-yed at the hand- of vaii ;;- iiramat :-;-. 446 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. Moreover, their familiarity with the myth, and their opportuni- ties of comparing the different modes of working on the same myth, must have given them, as critics, almost the same advan- tage as a man would have who had tried himself to write a play. This familiarity with the dramatist's materials had the further result of making it indispensable at Athens that a play should be written in verse and not in prose. The modern ten- dency, on the other hand, is to judge a play by the plot, pay little attention to treatment, and write in prose ; so that in no remote future we may wonder as much at the Athenian custom of writing plays in verse as we now do at their having covered their marble buildings and statuary with paint. A funeral oration could not indeed be written in verse, but it essentially belonged to that class of orations the epideictic which Isocrates says have the same functions to discharge and aim at the same effect as poetry or music. Tiie topics of a funeral oration, like the plot of a play, were fully known to the audience beforehand. The Athenians listened, not in order to satisfy the cravings of a restless intellect, but to gratify their v O C i/ artistic instincts. In the treatise " On the Sublime," Hyperides' Funeral Oration is ranked as the highest effort of panegyric oratory, and we may accept this judgment. Finally, it must not be overlooked that in one important and significant respect Hyperides transgresses the lines laid down by custom for the orator on these occasions to follow. It was inconsistent with the practice of democratic Athens that any of the dead should be mentioned by name : in Athens equality did not end, as neither did it be:, r in, at the grave. The violation of this equality and the decline of the democracy are signalised by Ilyperides' trangression of this practice in the last funeral oration delivered while Athens was free. Lycurgus, the next orator of the patriotic party whom we have to consider, we have already incidentally mentioned as taking the opposite side to Ilyperides in the ca-es of Fuxenippus and Lycophron. As an orator he was distinctly inferior to Hyperidos. He had no natural gift for orat":'y. but w ..irked at the subject with gnat determination and perseverance. His education under Isocrates, moreover, was not the most suitable f'>r his ijbji-ct, as Isoerates is purely an r-pideiriic orator, while Lyeurgns needed oratory only for practical purposes. Even tiiiis. with the education he had received an d the hard work he bestowed upon the art of speaking, lie seems only co have spoken when circumstances compelled him : for, as far as our ORATORY: CONTEMPORARIES OF DEMOSTHENES. 447 knowledge goes, all his speeches date from between the battle of Ch;croiiea and his death in B.C. 322. In other respects than his oratory lie was a complete contrast to Hyperides. Porn about B.C. 390, some few years before Hyperides and Demos- thenes, Lycurgus was the only politician of good family among the orators of his day ; and the character of the man through- out his life showed the ell'ect of the family traditions under which he was born and educated. As was usual in a man of aristocratic extraction, he had a certain leaning to Sparta and to the Spartan mode of life, politics, and thought. The quota- tions he makes from the poets bear witness to the fact that his family clung to the traditional mode of education ; while his religions views remained unaffected by the growing tendency to sceptical investigation. Although a true patriot and a loyal son of democratic Athens, he always preserved the attitude of superiority to the ordinary citizen which came naturally to a man of good descent and old-fashioned severity of life. He was accordingly respected by the Athenians to an extent almost indistinguishable from fear, and whatever Lycurgus said the Athenians accepted as true. The service which he rendered to his country, beyond that of the example of his life, lay in his finance. His powers in this respect were quite unequalled in the hi.-tory of (Ireece. and r.oeekh T calls him almost the only real financier that antiquity produced. In the history of litera- ture, al.-o, Lycurgus deserves an honourable name, for it was on his proposal that an authorised text of tin- work- of xT'schylu?, Soi'hocles. and Euripides was drawn up and deposited in the state archives, so that the alt -rat ion-, interpolations, and "' gags ' introdueed bv the actors miidit hen (--forth be rendere 1 impossible. ; 448 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. oratory is thus distinct in quality both from the technical power of Demosthenes and the easy authority of Hyperides. His hard work, not being supplemented by any great natural capacity for oratory, betrays itself in the monotony which makes the speech against Leocrates somewhat tedious. Hegesippus, who belonged to the extreme section of the patri- otic party, was probably a little older than Demosthenes, and died about B.C. 324. The most important fact that we know with regard to his life is that he was at the head of an embassy sent in B. c. 343 from Athens to Philip to negotiate ab ait the restoration of the island of Halonnesus and other matters. Philip rejected the terms of the Athenians, but in the following year sent an embassy and a letter, offering, among other things, to present the island to Athens. During the debate on this offer was delivered the speech on the Halonnesus, which is in- cluded among Demosthenes' works, but is really the composition of Hegesippus. The political tone and sentiments of the speech are exactly in therein of Demosthenes. The distinction between " giving " and " giving back " the island is expressly ascribed to Demos- thenes by JE-chines ; l and, lastly, Demosthenes did deliver a speech on this occasion on this subject. On the other hand, if the political tone is that of Demosthenes, the literary style is certainly not. In the periods of Demosthenes the colon which gives the keynote to the sentence is reserved to the end. As thus the dependent thoughts come first, and the weight of the sentence is thrown forward, the hearer's attention is. kept on the alert to the end, and consequently highly complex sen- tences are possible, which resemble an organism, in that the parts are not separable and independent, but are conditioned by, and only have a meaning in connection with, the whole. This rhetorical structure 1 of the period is not presented by the speech on the Halonnesus, which in the structure 1 of its sentences is neither rhetorical nor epideictic, but rather resembles Hyperides in the somewhat chance .sequence of its cola, ahhniigh the easy flow of Hvperides' sentences is missile,'. More, ver, not onlv is there no attemi't in the speech to limit the occurrence of hiatus in accordance with the rules observed by Demosthenes, but theie is no attempt to avoid hiatus at all.- As Do the distinction be- tween " 'nviiiLj " and " giving back " the island, tins was doubt- - Tin.' cxi'!e-si(,n with which the sru ueh concludes has been taken to be too Cuai*e for l.'L-iiio.--tLencs, but such an argument is worthless. ORATORY : CONTEMPORARIES OF DEMOSTHENES. 449 less a party cry, and used by every orator who got up to speak on that side : and against this argument for ascribing the speech to Demosthenes we may fairly set a passage * which probably implies that the speaker was a member (if the embassy sent to Philip, as indeed Hegesippus was, although Demosthenes was not. Finally, the fact that I >emosthene~ delivered a speech on this occasion, and on this subject, is probably the reason why, in the absence of Demosthenes' speech, the speech of Hegesippus, whose oratory shows the influence of Demosthenes, came to be inserted among the great orator's speeches. The speech on the Treaty with Alexander 2 which is usually published among the works of Demosthenes, is not by Demos- thenes, but by some contemp irary speaker of the anti-Macedonian party. The date of the speech is about H.c. 335. and its object is to I'ouse the Athenians to shake oft' Alexander's yoke, on the ground that lie had broken the treaty which constituted him protector of the Greeks. The speech is in places illogical and olis -lire. Thi re i- imie tire about it ; the language is not always pure Attic, and there ,-eem to be no grounds for attributing the .-peech, as has been done, either to Ile-e-ippus or Jlyperides. I'oiveucUH of Sphettus is spoken of iiighlv by Demosthenes, to whose section of the anti-Macedonian party he seems to have belonged, for we iind that in the Harpalus a Hair, he, unlike Hy.'crides, took the side of Demosthenes. .None of his speeches have come down to our time, but we know that he supported Lycur-ius in accusing Cephisodotus ,,f illegality, in that he pro- po-ed to erect in the market-]. lace a statue of Demades, who by means of his relations with Macedonia had been able to save Athens Mom being de.-troyed by Alexander. A fragment ,.f ch has been preserved/'' which shows that he had .-oinu |iiiet power of Hyperides. lie inijuires what S'-rl of a. statue they \vere to put tin to Demades: they could not have him represented with a shield, for he threw it away at Cha-roiiea : if h" was represented resting on the <_;un\vaie ,,f a shi:>, the (j':e>tiy Sophocles), J'Hsrhines had to give chase to 1'elops. The buskins, the bol.-ters, the mask and the topknot, the padding and gloves, however, in which he was arrayed were not adapted for such active exerci-c. _Kschines fell, and had to he igno- miniously set up again by the leader of the chorus. He returned to his earlier profession of clerk, and this time attached himself to two distinguished state-men. Aristophon and Kulmlus, by wlio-e assistance he mulit hope to gain political distinction. /Machines' experience in life up to this point had been varied, and. had u'iven him various qualifications for superficial success as a politician. A- an actor he learnt to manage his voice, \\hicii was tin", to declaim, and to poso. He also acquired a more than usually au-iirate acquaintance with the dramatists, and this was a large portion of Athenian education. With the routine oi otlicial life, hi- ex; erience a- clerk had made him familiar, and his com m ind of the : i.nicalit; - . f the phi ise Jogy of law- and decrees woedd give him the air of a politician with a knowied-v of the constitution. < >n the other hand, h- had had no sy ' in pn .:::.' : ie, a - I >e- ni' ist henes or I lyperide- ha 1 h . . ; my family traditions such as, in the case of I.ycur_"is. introduce men to >' iiiii' 1 - n ver became m< :v than 452 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. a second-rate politician. He did not speak with, much regularity in the Assembly, and the embassies on which he was sent were not of the first importance, as the one in B.C. 348 to the Peloponnese : or if, as in the case of those to Philip in 346, or after Chaeronea in 338, they were of importance, the part assigned to him was subordinate. It is to his collisions with Demosthenes on the subject of the embassy to Philip, of which they were both members, that ^Eschines owes in great part the celebrity which attaches to his name. Once more .Eschines ventured to attack Demosthenes, in the matter of the crown, and this brought about his own extinction ; for, having failed to obtain one-fifth of the votes in this trial, he, rather than p;iy the fine and submit to the disgrace consequent on his failure, left Athens and never returned. "Whither he went and how he died are matters of uncertainty. He is said to have gone to Rhodes, and to have set up a school of rhetoric there. ^Eschines seems to have committed but few of his speeches to writing, and only three of those have come down to us, that against Timarehus, that on the Embassy, and the one against Ctesiphon. These three speeches were published by .Eschines to justify his personal and political character. Other motives fo'r publication he had none, as he was neither a logographer, to wish to advertise himself, nor a great statesman, to wish to publish his policy as widely as possible, nor a teacher of style. As in the history of Attic oratory we have in 1 Type-rides a reversion to the type of oratory displayed by Lysias, so in Eschines we have a reversion to the type of Andocides. Be- tween -Eschines and Andocides, however, there are great differ- ences. JEschines had a natural talent, which Andocides did not possess; was swayed by better oratorical traditions, and had before him better models in oratory than was the case with Andocides. Neither .Eschines nor Andocides sp >ke regu- larly in public; neither was a logographer, and neither had received a technical education in oratory. Making allowance for the difference in talent and in time between the two orators, the results of this want of practice anil education on each are the same. To bring this out in detail we shall have to compare with .Eschines Demosthenes, the practised and educated orator. "The comparison is the more ncd-ssaiy as ^Esrhii.rs undoubtedly ranks next to Demosthenes as an orator, and it is imp-rtant to see. why and how the-e orators diil'er. Tli'' Irglu-st excellence of ^Eschines lies in his power of -ion. The lirst quality demanded of an orator is that he express himself clearly, and a certain amount of edttca- ORATORY : jESCIIIXES. 453 tion and practice will enable a man to be intelligible when he especially strives to be so. lint to be always clear and intel- ligible demands fuither education and practice. The habit of clear expression must be exercised until it becomes a second nature : and it is just this further education and practice which Demosthenes had and .Kschines had not. .T'.schines is intel- ligible when he has a particular motive; to be, so, but is ii"t clear always. The same defect also betrays itself in his awk- ward repetition of words. Clearness of expression, however, is not the only quality demanded of an orator : his expressions must also be felicitous. For this end a man must obviously have a wide range of words at his command, in order to lit each thought with the words which will appropriately and happilv express it. Like Demosthenes, JKsrhines possesses this necessary command of language, and it is his highest and a verv high excellence. So far as the two orators dilier to the prejudice 1 of .K -chines the difference mainly consists in the way in whi'-h they employ their resources. An expression may be e'xcellentiy calculated to conve-y a given thought, and yet from want of dignity, from the; association of ideas, or from some other reason, be in a given case not appropriate. In other words, an Attie 1 orator had to limit the brilliance or grandeur of ,ni:ige by considerations of correctness and of purity of The perfect exercise; of these limitations is always the -pe-cial education and of practice, reinforced by mutual 'o illustrate the superiority of Demosthenes, in this ie Brainier passages of the two orators should be colli- sion of lofty ser.timents lofty words are r >rdiiiary life te >\var is the; ; ne of oratorv this was done' bv Ando- 454 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. oratory. He takes his tone and not his words from tragedy. "What he borrows from the tragedians he gives out again in a shape which is all his own, and consequently does not jar with the rest of the passage. "We have seen in the chapter on Demosthenes that one source of his strength is his complete command of all the figures of speech and of thought, and that in this respect he far outstrips any previous orator. In this he has a close rival in ^Eschines, whose wide range of language is also supplemented by a wide and varied command of figures. Here, also, such superiority as Demosthenes may possess is due to his greater experience in oratory. The result of this experience is that Demosthenes has command of language ; on the other hand, ^Eschines' words are apt to run away with him, as was also the case with the loss experienced Andocides. This is in part due to the copious vocabulary and facile flow of language which in other respects constitutes the strength of /Eschines. He finds it so easy to talk that he is apt to degenerate into mere talk. Assonances of words, or of the ends of words, are sometimes sought solely for their own sake, not for the sake of giving force and weight to his words : and this is the abr.se of figure- of speech. The expe- rience of Demosthenes and his sense of limit enabled him to exer- cise due restraint in the use of figures of all kinds, but ylisehines weakens their effect by using them to excess. 1 Xot only does this want of restraint sometimes weaken the effect of ^Kschines' words and figures, it sometimes also betrays him into sentences of extreme clumsiness. The sentences of isocrates are long, but they are always constructed with such perfect regularity that they are quite trans; ar-'iit. Demosthenes lias sentences of great length, but there is always so much obvious design in them, and they are penetrated by such unity of thought, that their lenir'.h is not feit. Hyperides wanders through long sentences ap: an-ntly of the most casual structure, or want of structure, but his native grace and his concealed power always enable him to brin L his sentences to a happy and effective clo.-e. ^Kschines, on the other hand, when oil' his guard, drifts into a sentence of 1 An example (if cfiVctivf: use of the fmuro antisrroj.he, i.e. the repetition of a wonl ;it the end of successive clauses, is the famous passai.''- in ('(fit. 202, fj.'ij'i iv 6if,(T'ij ro'ilJ i'y.u.'i' /txijotts KaraXo", if e'fftfat, c's u.v tTrai'fpouu'ov KTTJCTI- (fi^'VTos, ft Ka.\i Tr,v i j /j.r(pav Trapai^firai IcTis o iv ~(f TTf'&TLf \6yu T : i]v '^rj/frov aLTft, vbfj.ov atret, uv oCre atTTJffa.1 ci'.tv otjtoi' oiofi'i ovr' arrjO'-vTa e~f, a ooirat. ORATORY: jEscniNKs. 455 which '' you see no reason in its structure why it should ever come to an end, and you accept the conclusion as an arrange- ment i >f Providence rather than of the author." There are three end- at which, roughly speaking, we may say an orator has to aim : to express himself clearly and felicitously ; to Convince his hearers ; nnd to inspire them with his own feelings. With regard to the tirst of these we have now seen that so good are the natural gifts nf /K-clunes that it is only because of Demosthenes' superior experience and practice as a public speaker and a logographer that he just manages to outstrip him. When, however, we conn.' to the second of the three objects an oraior has to aim at. we find the difference between the two orators is great. In dealing with Andoeides we saw that his lack of experience in arguing cases male him vastly inferior in argu- ment when compared witli Antiphon. '.I he same ditl'erenee is visible between .K-chines and Demosthenes, and is made still greater by the superior intellectual power of Demosthenes. In the arrangement of his subject-matter, indeed. /Kschines is clever enough. This, however, is a power easily acquired by imitation, and in it we may clearly see the advance which the general level of oratory made between the time of Andocides and of Jvsehines. Thi> p iwers of ,-Kschines seem to have been reten- tive rather than original. Hi- speeches contain a large amount of information usually inaccurate' but like his loans from tragedy it has not been assimilated. His want of mental power is seen again when he undertakes to expound the law. He, expends many words on explaining the laws he quotes, and ends by not explaining them. His arguments, mor unfreqiiently ill 'gical, and he gladly takes refug 456 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. cantly enough, the only motive which yEschines can imagine it is because he has no argument. Not only, however, is ho destitute of any constructive idea, but his criticism is weak. He can only say that Demosthenes' policy failed. And of all criticisms the cheapest and the most worthless is criticism by results. It is not, however, an orator's business to merely demonstrate a theorem. He has also to command the feelings of his audi- ence. Now there are certain sentiments to which yEschines frequently, and Demosthenes rarely appeals. They are the sentiments which cluster round the family hearth, the worship of the gods, and the history of the past. Again, Demosthenes is not, strictly speaking, pathetic. Some of his speeches do indeed appear to us pathetic, but that is not because they were designed for pathos, but because we know and read them in the light of the subsequent history of Greece. yEschines, on the other hand, as, for instance, in the peroration of the speech on the Embassy, aims at pathos. And in the peroration of the speech against Ctesiphon, YEschines challenges comparison with Demosthenes, even in the power of raising patriotic indignation. In fine, /Eschines works on a larger number of more varied emotions than Demos: hone?, and yet, by general consent, yEschines is less effective than Demosthenes. Undoubtedly the earnestness of Demosthenes is intense to a greater degree than is that of yEschines or any other orator, and, consequently, he works on our feelings more powerfully than yEsehincs. But it is also true that the superiority of Demosthenes has been exalted at the expense of yEschines by means of extraneous considerations. In the case of the speeches on the Crown this is clear. Public opinion was on the side of Demosthenes, and Demosthenes had the better cause. Demosthenes has our sym- pathies before we open yEschines. lint this, which is itself an explanation partly why yKschines take? less hold of our feel- ings, may be pushed too far, and the unfair inference be drawn that, because yEschines failed to prove Demosthenes a traitor, therefore yEschines was a traitor himself. Hence it is said that yEs'-hines fails to make us believe in him, because he did not believe in himself, and that his oratory is pervaded with the taint of insincerity. lie p"ses as a religious citizen and adnr.r- able father of a family for the sake of respectability. He assumes patriotism thugh he has it not, and he trades on pathetic passages because he was an actor by training and by nature theatrical. The truth, however, seems to be that yEschines was in morals ORATORY: JESCIIINKS. 457 as in intellect not above the average level of his time, whereas Demosthenes was distinctly above it. /Eschines is accused by Demosthenes of having rendered no services to the state; and I >emosthenes is always accusing llie citizens of Athens generally with reluctance to make any sacrifice for their country. ^Ksehines apparently thought resistance to Philip impossible, and saw no wav for Athens to remain great and free, a view in which he was supported by so good a man as Phocion. Bribery, ^Kschines as a practical man regarded as admitting of extenuating circum- stances. 1 As a practical man also he discountenanced the ex- travagant indulgence of the desires, and, as was the case with many other people, respectability exhausted the sum of his morality. This is not a flattering character of J>chines, and it is unnecessary to go beyond our evidence and accuse him of hypocrisy. JKschines has himself challenged comparison with Demosthenes, and by an optical illusion, to which the mind's eye is liable, /H-chines seems below th" ordinary level of morality, because Demosthenes is so much above it. In discussing Demosthenes we said that the three sources of his power as an orator were the magic of his language, the force of his intellect, and his lofty morality. In the present chapter, in order to show how jEsehincs is inferior to his rival, we have compared the two orators, and we have seen that while in the fir.-t of the three points mentioned .Ksehim-s is little below Demosthenes, in the remaining two points he is much below him. In order nw to mark the fact that ^K-rhiiies, th'iuu'h inferior to Demosthenes, could yet contest priority with him, we must contrast the t\\-o orator?. In the first place, a< we have already seen, Demosthenes is the trained and practised orator, while .Technics is a man with a natural gift i>f eloquence. And as .Eschines represents nature. D'-nioo- th'-m-s art, \ve tind that the f-rnier usually .-poke extempore, whil" th" latter rarely spoke wi;h"t:t preparation. A further conseuence of this difference between the two orators is that has reater caacit fu ' i, . P. 1'uvi riy aii.l i i i ;,_'' hi 1 V''_Mnis us exr,-iiU:itiiiL,' : tVt.Yc/i uiv e ol TfiXctiTCt'. o. or Si'i'ciu 1 i-(M "/ :'.. a<; ana K:LL 7T'."ia: r i ?r- i t- v .!'. ra -..'- ~^r iv di'''i'-7Ti'ii k '.K^'.'. '1'iii.- \v.i< nut a vii-w iii'^nii:!! 1 to. ;iti>i tin rrfuif .-in/'Mnilv CMIP , fin :...t. .iy nf .K-i-i. !:>. i'lir li.i 1 IMII.IIIUII uin'. 1'inii"-!'--. ,. ]>' .-, ;i!l uiiin.: '.. i j.,. 1 1,,ri ;iin-, i.li'aii : A. /.\- ,;, .,.;. A ;.,) - Kzi K,(\\i-''ti7; f . 4 5 8 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. for narrative, with yEschines the reverse is the case. As, how- ever, argument makes greater demands on the attention of the hearer than does narrative, a speech by Demosthenes is harder to follow than is one by yEschines ; and as argument gives less scope than narrative for the graces of oratory, the speeches of yEschines, apart from considerations as to the matter, are more pleasing than those of Demosthenes. As regards the emotions. yEschines relied chiefly on pathos, whereas Demos- thenes appealed to the indignation of his hearers. yEschines looked by preference to the glorious past, Demosthenes to the calls of honour in the present. /Eschines was satisfied if lie complied with the observances of religion, Demosthenes was possessed with the necessity of morality. These points of con- trast may suffice to indicate that, although between Demos- thenes and ^Eschines there is a difference in degree, there is also an equally important diversity in genius. yEschines has not and does not deserve our sympathies ; but more closely than any other orator he approached the merit of Demosthenes. Amongst the orators of the Macedonian party Demades 1 is next in importance to /E-chines. Demades seems to have been about the .sane age as and to have died two years later than Demosthenes, i.e.. B.C. 320. He first appears to our notice after the battle of Chseronea. He had no shame in avowing that Philip had bought 1dm, and, in spite of that fact, he continued until Alexander's death the most important man in Athens, with the exception of Demosthenes. After the destruction of Thebes, Demades saved Athens from the wrath of Alexander ; and the Athenian-, in return, erected a statue of D (i mades in the market-place. In natural power Demades was said to exceed Demosthenes, and the judgment of Theo- phrastus 2 is well known, that as an orator Demosthenes was worthy of Athene Demades above it. Unlike Demosthenes, lie spoke extempore, and consequently none of his speeches have come dwn to us. A.s he himself said, his master in rhetoric was the platform; his speech''?, therefore, probably lacked art both in the tr-a: meiit of the subject-matter and the arrangement of liN >peedi (In th" oth>-r hand, he hadl the reputation in antiquity 3 of being the mo-t witty of Attics orators; and from this it would seem that the power of his 1 A^ytorys is contracted ir<>m Aijuedoijs. - ThuopliniKtus, :i pupil of Ari.-,to;Ir, w: B C. 2=13. Of lli>' two imiidrni or mop- work-; w '' f 'hiiivictf-rs,'' '' Scii-ii'-.. ,,f l'i:uits, : ' " >,";iiur;il '' Oi\ Firi.'," nior>; or le-s coinjili-tc. a " Duinudus piaster cutcrus fc-rtur (facetus)." Cicero, Orat. 90. ORATORY: ^SCIIINES. 459 oratory resembled that of .Pericles in consisting of pointed and striking expressions. Tin- impression which these made on his hearers may he inferred from the fact of some of them having floated down to our own time. Thus, Macedonia, he said, after the loss of Alexander, was a blinded Cyclops. The theatre-money which the Athenians receive 1 was the glue of the democracy. The herald of the city was the public cock. Demosthenes was like the swallows, who will neither let you sleep nor wake yon. He defended his policy on the ground that lie was .-teering the wreck of Athens. When the Athe- nians objected to worship Alexander as a god, he told them to mind that, in their anxiety to defend heaven, they did not lose the earth. When a report came to Athens that Alexander was dead, and the Athenians wen; much delighted. ])emades said, "Alexander is not dead. If he were, the whole world would smell his corpse. ' Aristogiton, against whom the second speech of Dinarchus is directed, was probably born about B.C. 370. He was most ai'tive after the battle of Cha?ronea, when he opposed the measures of Hyperides. The names of some of his si-ecches are given by Suidas and Photius. and ([notations from him occur in Ilarpocration. 1 Athena-us. Tsetzes,- and elsewhere. He seems to have employed much abuse and to have set himself up as the u watch-d"g of the democracy." Pytheas. horn about n.r. 350, began hi.- political life as an anti-Macedonian, but went over on the occasion of the Ilarpalus ail'air and became a wealthy man. On tin- death of Alexander, he. like others of the Macedonian party at Athens, suil'ered. His end is not known to n-. We have nil. -tat ions fr- >m him in Kutiiins 1 ,i;pu-. ;i His speeches .-eeiu to have been, accord MIL; to Suidas. 4 inso- lent and di.-jointed. '1'ne quotations .-how an atl'ection fur antithesis. Meiiosii-dunus sueeee ied l.yenrj'u- in the adminis- tratioii of (inaiice at Athens, but whether he was an opponent of or belonged to th" extreme -i ctii n of the patriotic partv is unknown. We have nothin b him, and he seems to have 460 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. been watery and weak. 1 To Callicrates, the Pergamum school ascribed a speech accusing Demosthenes of illegality ; and Philinus' name has come down to us because he opposed the proposal of Lycurgus that statues should be erected of the three great tragedians. Eubulus, the political patron of JEs- chines, at first opposed to and then a supporter of Philip, 2 is mentioned by Aristotle 3 as quoting Plato in one of his speeches to the effect that many people admitted they were bad. Of Philocrates, one of the ambassadors sent to treat for peace with Philip, who openly boasted of having been bribed, we have not the least fragment left. Hagnonides accused Theophrastus of impiety unsuccessfully, 4 and Phocion of treason successfully, and wrote an Accusation of Oratory. 5 Stratocles, "the most persuasive and pernicious of men," 6 was conspicuous for the vileness of his servility to Philip and his shameless joy at the disasters of his country. One or two sentences alone of his have survived. 7 and Cicero credits him with being the inventor of the story that Themistocles poisoned himself with the blood of a bull. 8 Of Androtion, against whom a speech of Demos- thenes is directed, we have a simile preserved by Aristotle. 9 Cydias mad (3 a speech on the colonisation of Samos. 10 yE*ioii was a fellow-pupil with Demosthenes, and is praised by Aris- totle for his metaphors, although to us they appear worn out. 11 To these may be added the names of Democles (or Democlides), 1 Dionysius, Dinarchus n, i>5apr;s /ecu /cexi'/ifVos Kal i/'t'xpo's. - I Jem. 19, 292. Kai e'c iJ-tv TOJ ovj/aw Kar?;/)u; 4>iXi7r7ra> Kal /caret TUIV Traiouv djiua-es T) fj.rjv aTroXwXfVtu 4 ) iXi7T7ro>' av fioi i \cffOai. Cf. ])< Cur. 21. J Rhet. i. 15. oluv EWoi'Xos tv rots otKacrrripioLS c'xpTJcraro Kara Xd/57jros ia lI\aTwi> tlire Trpos 'Apxiftiov, OTL (TTLOtouKtv ev ry TroXft TO bp.o\oytlv irovr)- poi r s flva.i. 4 'I his \ve Ifiirn from tlie "Lives of the Philosophers," by Diogenes L;ier- tin^ ( i~), who lived si'oout A.I), -'do, ami c:i7iie from I^icrtia in Cilicia. ' ( t )uii;tili!in, ii. 17. i ; : '' AJJMO (|iiiclein cietraxit si'ni inscriptione ipsa fidi'in. quit rh'-toriros jiccusationem prot'cssu.s est." '' iJrin. adv. J'aut. 9940. ~TfjaTGK\tl TW Tri.0a.v or UT^ iravr&v ai'Opd'Truv 8 I'niuis, ii : " Stnitoelt'in, ut Thrmistoclis mortem rhetorice ct t Oman- jio>-et. finxisM- iiiiiin cum tauium immolavisset, cxcepisse saim j'ntcra ct cu ]mii> nioriiium c.om-idisse.' 1 I'l'nis impossilile stoi)-, lio' gin's back to tin- time of Aristophanes.) If Stratocl-vs thought this met (ic.-nii tr^L-'ic his tii-tc was as defective as his knowledge. '' Hiict. iii. 4: OTL onoios [*ISntei)j rjv] TOIS c'/c TU:V 5ecr/j.it>v Kvvifiioi 11 Ib. iii. 10. E.'j. " Greece cries 11 a^co inem ever, od of ORATORY : JESCHINES 46 I a pupil of Theophrastus ; and probably Archon, in B.C. 316 ; T Leo-tiienes, a sycophant;- Charisins ; a Ivithias, the accuser of 1'hryne ; 4 and I.acritus, of whom mention is made in the speech of [Demosthenes] against I.acritus."' In conclusion it remains for us to say a few words with regard to the causes of the decline of oratory after the death of .Demos- thenes. They are two: the loss of political freedom and tin? cessation of tin; reaction of the public on the artist. The effect of the loss of political freedom on political oratory is readily understood. When the fate of the country was at stake, and when the Assembly had the power of deciding that fate, an orator and a patriot like Demosthenes had the highest incentive to put forth all his powers of oratory in order to move the Assembly to the proper and honourable course of action. When, on the other hand, the Assembly lost its power of deciding what the action of the country should be, and when consequently political debates could have no practical result, then patriotism could supply no incentive to the orator, and deliberative oratory so far as it survived was unreal. Thus the loss of political freedom resulted in the decline of deliberative, the highest kind of oratory. It also brought about tin 1 decline of forensic oratory. Its action in this case is not quite so obvious, but it was equally effective. Matter for decision was not withdrawn from tin; law courts so entirely as it was practically from the Assembly ; but all that important part of Attic law which dealt with con- stitutional, and therefore political points, naturally shared the fate of political debate: and in dealing with the remaining cases tin"' citi/ens of Athens had in the iirst place to do only with petty matters, m.t lilted to develop the in iral and intel- lectual qualiti"S of an orator: and in tin- second place, even in dealing with these trivia! cases they were not acting as a ire'.; people giving judgment in accordance with their "wn free laws. In analysing the superiority of Demosthenes as an orator, wn found that it consisted of his moral and intellectual lower and the beauty of his language: and tb three elements are indis- peiisabie for oratorv of the highe-t kind. Applying this test to the oratory of the decline, we see then that forensic oratory never had for its subject issues adm!;;:n_: of fervour, righteous indignation, or self-.-aerilice : and thai the matters il d-ait with were not momentous en<>ugh to call for or develop the powers of a iri'eat mind. It was only tne third el'-ment of oratory which admitted of cultivation, and this. >-parat-d from the others, ran 462 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. to rank luxuriance. This excessive attention to form resulting from the negligence of matter is partly what is meant by "Asianism." What we have said with regard to the decline of oratory applies to all Greek oratory, wherever cultivated, until about B.C. 150. As, however, it was in Asia Minor that oratory during this period was principally cultivated, the qualities of the oratory of the decline have come to be grouped together under the term Asianism. After B.C. 150, a reaction in favour of the oratory of Demosthenes set in and was termed " Atticism." It would, however, be a mistake to imagine that "Asianism" was confined to Asia Minor. The seeds of it were sown in Athens even before the time of Demosthenes, for Iterates cultivated form to the exclusion of matter; and its results are plainly visible in Dinarchus, the last of the ten Attic orators. The first characteristic then of Asianism, excessive attention to the mere language of a speech, is only the development of a tendency already existing in Attic oratory. But although A>iani>m may thus be traced back to Isocrates. it is very dif- ferent from him, and it is this difference which constitutes the second characteristic of Asianism. Isocrates worked on a method and with a theory : Asianism had none. Here airain Asianism was but the development of a bad tendency already existing in Attic oratory. yEschines, like Isocrates, was lacking in the intellectual and moral elements of oratory, and therefore achieves his greatest success in the domain of mere language. But he differs from Isocrates in the fact that he had no theory, no culture, and but rarely wrote a speech beforehand, while Isocrates would spend ten years in writing an oration. -Eschines was a native orator, Isocrates a trained rhetorician. In this respect then ^Eschines is, rather than Isocrates, the direct ancestor of Asiani.-m. But although Asiatic oratory resembles that of /Eschinos in beinct based on no meth"d, there is this difference between them, that the one is successful, the other ii"t. Doubt- less the reason partly is that -Eschines possessed natural gifts which the Asiatic orators did not: but this does not wholly account for the extravagances of Asianism, and for a full ex- plana'ioii we must turn to the second main cause of tin- decline of oratory after the death of Demosthenes the cessation of the reaction of public on artist. In the case of oratory oven more than in any other branch of literature or art is it dear that the artist is rcacte 1 on by his public: fir tin? practical object of speaking is conviction, and in order to convince his audience a speaker must neither ri-e above their comprehension nor fink below their expectations. ORATORY: yESCIIINES. 463 The success which spurs to further and higher exertion comes more directly to the orator than to any other artist, as does also the failure which teaches a lesson for the future. The function then (if the public in the development of art or literature is to encouiage merit and cheek extravagance. Kemove the check, and extravagance develops without restraint. In the period of Asiani-m the check was removed and the extravagance was developed which was characteristic of Asianisni. In order to understand how and why this check was removed, we must call to mind tirst the difference in size between the city-states of Greece and the countries or nation-states of modern Europe; and secondly, the different means of reaching the public in the two cases. The modern public reads, the ancient public listened. All the citizens of Athens could be gathered to- gether in the theatre to hear a drama: (-very ci:i/en might be present at the Assembly : great festivals drew a lar_ r e concourse of people together in whom the essayist or the historian could find an audience. I Miring the creative period of Greek lite- rati; re the normal way of reaching the public was through their ears, not, as is the case in modern times, through their eyes; for even if most. Athenians were able to decipher the letters of the ah habef, they were not in the habit of ivadii.g. Hut every Athenian was in the habi: of hearing the oratory of the law courts an t the As-embly, the epic and lyrical poetry recited by dists, the' essays and histories <>r portions there and th 'quenee the in the best ion, even w; ::g pro: (llv i asseni ans 464 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. come to be called " Readers." The comedies of Menander were, many of them, written not to be performed, but to be read in this manner at social gatherings. The consequence of this was that an author's works did not become known to the whole or to the larger part of the public, as before and after this time, but only to small groups. That is to say, the chock which the great public puts on extravagance was almost entirely taken cff ; the general recognition of the public was not to be obtained, and thus the artist's greatest incentive was removed. From this point of view it is important to notice that the improvement in taste which brought Atticism into favour and drove out Asianism dates from the time when the systematic employment of slave labour by the Romans for multiplying manuscripts reinstated the general public to its critical function. The decline of Greek oratory was then due to the develop- ment by appropriate conditions of bad tendencies already exist- ing in the oratory of Athens. These tendencies were : to neglect matter for form, as in the case of Isocratos : to dispense with the theory and training necessary for an orator, as in the case of ^Eschines ; and to deviate, when unchecked, from the standard of taste and propriety. The conditions which developed these tendencies were : the decrease, due to the loss of political free- dom, in the demand on the moral and intellectual qualities of the orator; and the cessation of the reaction of public ou artist, due to the difficulty of publication at that time. BOOK III. PHILOSOPHY. CIIAPTEE I. PLATO AND Till; rmi.OSOl'HEKS BKFOUI-: HIM. "\ViTii tlio history of philosophy we have nothing here to do. AVi- are concerned "with tin' philosophers only so far as they affected tin 1 history uf Greek literature, and consequently it will In- found that many names of philosophical intere.-t an' omitted. In the tirst place, philosophers like Tnales, Socrates, and 1'ytha- s, f oras, who iefi nothing in writing, lind no place in ;) ],jst , r y uf literature. In the next place, philosophers like Xenophanes and L'annenides, \vlio e >mp >-ed in verse, have indeed a place in a history of literature, hut ii"! in the section ol it dealing \vith tiie lii>t'.ry of pmse. \\'liiie. finally. Si.phi>ts like Aniistheiics, vdio were en^a^ed in philosop'nieal pursuits, l>ut were pro- fes>rd.v rlietorii'ians, find then 1 natural pla^e in the hi^t^rv of pro>e ; hut lie-y are link- in the ehain of oratorical, not phil".~o- piiii'al [U'ose, and are not, therefore, dealt with in tin's -rcti.>)i. The fnvt piMse [ihilo-ophef if we set a>ide IMnTecydi'S (,f Svrus, ahi'Ul \\'liom. a- we have >ei'ii. tii^rc is >o]m ,';- / ; - \\-aj A naxin lander oi Miletus, who l;\v.i a out the I ie^'i lining ot the six'ii century H.e.. and MM-IUS \>' hi\'" i n a person cf snine ini{iortance in ii;> native town. II;- j : \va- of a pliv.-i- cal description, and he wrote a woi'k to which i pruhably in later times i the coiiin on title it,, \ ,,-, \va- .. ;\ n. The diale -t wli:ch h" em ployed \\- is i |i>ii!c. and t 'ne intlu :. '-.\ r- ci>eil tiv ] trv <-\-<-n on th ~e wh < r-ti'ove t ' write pro-e, was to he traced in the poetical c is! of his writ in.;.-. Ahoiit the f-ame time as Anaxitnan ier lived Airiximeues, al-o . f Miletus. He prohahly was aci|Uainied with Anaxim.uider : hi- phil' ->; 'hy 466 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. was physical, his work was entitled On Nature, his dialect was Ionic, and his style was bald. As followers of Anaximenes are mentioned Diogenes of Apollonia and Idseus of Hiinera. More interesting is Heraclitus of Ephesus, who flourished about B.C. 500. He was of royal descent, and is said to have been offered the supreme magistracy of the town, and to have refused it. "Whether this is or is not actually true and we have no trust- worthy information about the facts of his life it accords with the character of the man. as it shows itself in the fragments of his work On Nature. He, if not a misanthrope, certainly had a strong contempt for most men. He dedicated his work to Diana, for he did not expect men to appreciate it. He played with children, and asked whether that was not a better occupa- tion than politics. Poets, historians, and philosophers he had no high opinion of. Learning was not the same thing as intelli- gence, he said, as may be seen in the case of Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hecatanis. As for Homer and Archiiochus, they deserved public scourging. Heraclitus was surnamed " the obscure." and although there is no doubt that his obscurity was in its nature and causes much akin, to that of Tlmcydides, and would have characterised him to a large extent even if he had lived at a later stage in the development of prose, still the immaturity of prose composition doubtless added to the difficulty which Heraclitus found in ex- pressing himself. The simple narration of events is a task which prose naturally first comes to perform with ease and success. The exposition of an argument is a matter of more difficulty, and requires time. Even Herodotus shows this, for the speeches which occur in his history are considerably more complicated in syntax and less easy of apprehension than his narrative ; while in Thuoydides the same thing is even more apparent. His nar- rative is very clear, but the speeches are difficult. Philosophy is, again, mure difficult to express clearly than is an oratorical argument. It contains an argument, like a speech, but il deals niueh less with concrete ideas, and much more with what is vague, as well as abstract, than oratory does ; and consequently in the history of divek prose literature we find that philo- sophical prose, is later and longer in developing than even oratorical pt'oso, while both philosophy and oratory required 7nn''h more labour than history to bring them to perfection. /i 'iio of Klea was born about n.r. ^oo, and became the pupil of I'armenides, and one of the greatest' of the Klealic school of philosophers. Most of his life he spent at Klea by preference, though he visited Athens occasionally ; he was heard by Socrates, PHILOSOPHY : PLATO. 467 and instructed. Pericles. His life was patriotic, and he rendered great services to his native city. Finally, when he returned from Athens to Elea, he found it in the power of a tyrant, against whom lie conspired. The conspiracy was, however, detected ; and when he was questioned as to his fellow-con- spirators, lie, liy a bold stroke, named all the adherents of the tyrant. It is said that, availing themselves of the dismay thus caused in the tyrant, the people rose and killed him. The manner of Zeno's death is unknown. Zeno took up the system of Parmenides, and endeavoured to establish it, not directly and positively, but negatively, by refuting the arguments brought against it. For this purpose, or rather in this endeavour, he was led to the use of the dialectical method. This method had, indeed, been used, to a certain extent, before Zeno by Parme- nides. Probably the same circumstances compelled Zeno as compelled Parmenides to use it, i.e., the necessity of meeting the arguments brought against the Kleatic philosophy by tho keen reasoning powers of the Athenians, whom both Parmenides and Zi'iio endeavoured to win over to their philosophy. The essence of the dialectical method was to convict an opponent of the falsity of his opinions by reducing them to an absurdity. Thus Zeno endeavoured to show that ('pinion was untrust- worthy by the absurdities which it led to, and for this purpose he invented his four arguments against the possibility of Motion Motion being testified to by Opinion. I ut disapproved by Reason. Of these four arguments, the be-t known is that known as "Achilles and the Tortoise.''' A simpler one, howevr. is the first : " Motion is impossible, because before that which is in motion can reach the end, it must reach tin- middle point ; but this middle point then becomes the end. and the same objection applies to it, since to meet it the object in motion nn:~t traverse, a middle point ; and so on a, seeing that matter is inlinit'dv divisible." : Anaxa^oras was horn in ( da/oinenre in T"iua about n.r. ^oo. no art 468 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. this opinion he did not conceal. But to the Athenians, who believed that Helios, the sun, was a god, Anaxagoras' declaration was blasphemy and atheism of an unmitigated character ; and Anaxagoras, who had long enjoyed the intimacy of Pericles and the acquaintance of all the many men of genius to be met at Athens, was banished. He consoled himself in Lumpsacus with the reflection that it was not he who had lost Athens, but Athens that had lost him. He died in Lampsacus at the age of seventy-three. Finally, we can only make brief mention of some other philosophers. Hippo of Samos lived at Athens in the time of Pericles and belonged to the school of Thales. Aristotle 1 speaks contemptuously of him, and seems to think lie hardly deserves the name of philosopher. Cratylus followed the doc- trines of Heraclitus and was a tutor of Plato's. Philolaus, a contemporary of Socrates, was the first Pythagorean to com- mit the tenets of the school to writing, though it is doubtful whether the fragments which have come down to us under his name are genuine. Belissus of Samos continued the teaching of the Eleatic school after Zeno. Hermotimus, Archelaus, and Metrodorns were pupils or followers of Anaxagoras. Demo- critus of Abdera was born about B.C. 460. He travelled more widely, he boasted, than any other man, and was received when he returned to Abdera with the greatest respect fur his travels and his learning. The distinction of founding the philosophy which regards all things as ultimately consisting of atoms is shared between him and Leucippus, whose birthplace is variously given as Abdera, Miletus, or Elea. Amongst, the Sophists, in addition to the most famous. Protagoras, Prodicus, Gorgins, Thrasymachns, and Ilippias, who have been mentioned elsewhere, we must here give the names of Polus, Euthydemus, and l)ionysodorus. Amongst the followers of Socrates must be mentioned Kuclides (not tin; mathematician nor the archon) of !Mcgara. who was present at the death of Socrates: Phopdo of El is and his pupil Menedemus ; Antisthenes. who has been mentioned elsewhere ; Aristippus, the founder of the Cyrenaic school ; while to this school belonged Theodoras, Bion, and Kuemerus, who invented a means of explaining mythology as containing the exploits of famous men who after death came to lie regarded as g<>ds, which is only now dying out. Plato, whose real name was Aristocles, but who came to bo called Plato because of either the breadth of his brow or the breadth of his shoulders, was born, according to one account, in 3 De Aiiima, i. 2 ; Met. i. 3. PHILOSOPHY : PLATO. 469 yEgina, where his father held a colonial allotment, or, according to another more probable account, in Athens. The year of his birth was either B.C. 4?S or B.C. 427 ; and the seventh day of the 7iionth Thargelion was celebrated for centuries by his dis- ciples as the. day of his birth. On his mother's side he was said tu be connected with Solon, while his father was descended from Codrus. Oitias, the leader of the Thirty Tyrants, and Charmides were closely related to Plato ; and thus he was born and bred in the midst of aristocratic conditions. He owed his introduction into political life to Critias and Charmides, and he seems to have been conscious and proud of his illustrious de- scent. 1 lie had two brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus (who cannot be the Glaucon and Adeimantus of t\\e HP public ^ because the dialogue is supposed to have taken place before his brothers Were born), and a sister named Potone. lie wa- fully educated in the three brandies of Greek educa- tion- -letters, music, and athletics. Dionysius, a grammarian, taught him to read and write; Pracon and Metellus of Agri- geiitum taught him music ; Arist<>n of Argos gymnastics, in whirh he is said to have become so proficient as to carry off jirix.es at the Isthmian and < ilympian games. In his youth he is said to have made essays in ail kinds of literatim <'pie, tragedy, dithyramb, and lyric, and in painting as well as in jioetry. Tt is uncertain at what age 1'lato was instructed in j>hilosophy by Cratylus, the follower of Heraclitus, but perhaps we may regard it as previous to the time when I'lato made the acquaintance of Socrates. This event, imjiortant in the \\\.- ,,f I'lato and the history of philosophy, took plaee probably al>.->;;t B.C. 407. when Plato was twentv years of a_v ; and the ac- quaintance, formed p. i-.-i'hly through Critias H.-ted until the time of Somites' drath in u.c. 399. '' I'm." says Mr. (irte, "thou_h Plato may have commenced at the age of twenty his an juamtaiiee witii Surrales, he canii'>t have 1 ceil exclusively al pi;r-u:t.- betw lis age thai is, i> his o\v 47 O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. posts throughout Attica for the defence of the country. But the six years from 409-403 B.C. were years of an extraordinary character. They included the most strenuous public efforts, the severest suffering, and the gravest political revolution that had ever occurred at Athens. Every Athenian citizen was of neces- sity put upon constant (almost daily) military service, either abroad or in Attica, against the Lacedaemonian garrison estab- lished in the permanent fortified post of Dekeleia, within sight of the Athenian Acropolis. So habitually were the citizens obliged to be on guard, that Athens, according to Thucydides, became a military post rather than a city. It is probable that Plato, by his family and its place on the census, belonged to the Athenian Hippeis or horsemen, who were in constant em- ployment for the defence of the territory. But at any rate, either on horseback, or on foot, or on shipboard, a robust young citizen like Plato, whose military age commenced in 409, must have borne his fair share in this hard but indispensable duty. . . . From the dangers, fatigues, and sufferings of such an his- torical decade no Athenian citizen could escape, whatever might be his feeling towards the existing democracy, or however averse he mi-lit be to public employment by natural temper. But Plato was not thus averse during the earlier years of his adult life. A\'e know from his own letters that he then felt strongly the impulse of political ambition usual with young Athenians of good i'amiiy. . . . Whether Plato ever spoke with success in the public assembly we do not know : he is said to have been shy by nature, and his voice was thin and feeble, ill adapted fur the Pnyx. However, when the oligarchy of Thirty was established, after the capture and subjugation of Athens. Plato was not only relieved from the necessity of addressing the assembled people, but also obtained additional facilities for rising into political influence through Kritias (his near relative) and Charmides, leading men among the new oligarchy. Plato aflirms that he had always disapproved of the antecedent demo- cracy, and that he entered on the new scheme: of government with the full hope of seeing justice and wi.-dom predominant. He was soon undeceived. The government of the Thirty proved a sanguinary and rapacious tyranny, lining him with disappoint- ment and disgust, lie was especially revolted by their treat- ment of Socrates. \\ hum they not only interdicted from continuing liis habitual colloquy with young men, but even tried to impli- cate in nefarious murders, by ordering him, along with others, to arrest L'-on the Salamiiiian, one of th'-ir intended victim/; an order which Socrates at the peril of his life disobeyed. Thus PHILOSOPHY: PLATO. 471 mortified and disappointed, Plato withdrew from public functions. . . . His repugnance was aggravated to the highest pitch of grief and indignation by the trial and condemnation of Socrates (399 B.C.) four years after the renewal of the democracy." 1 After the death of Socrates, Plato commenced his travels by going to Megara, where he associated with Euclides, one of the followers of Socrates, and where also lie probably met Hermo- genes, one of the Eleatic school. How long a time he spent at Megara is unknown, but from Megara he went to Cyrene on a visit to the mathematician Theodorus, whom he probably had known at Athens, for in the Tke<*tetn.s Plato represents Tiieo- dorus as conversing with Socrates. From Cyrene he went to F.'-Tvpt. Jt has been disputed that Plato ever really visited Egypt. Our earliest authority for tin' visit is Cicero; 2 and although Plato's works contain nothing which necessitates the belief that he did visit Egypt, there is nothing improbable in his being tempted when in Cyrene. to extend his travels to the Nile. lie next visited the South of Italy, where he is said at Taivntum to have met Aivhytas. and at Locri Timajus, and to have purchased the works of Philolaus at the high price of a hundred mime. Prom Italy he went to Sicily, where in Syra- cu-e he was introduced by I >ion to the elder Dionysius, brother- in-law of 1 'ion and tyrant of Syracuse. Put Plato eventually otl'ended the tyrant, who spared his life indeed at the request of ]>ioii, hut handed him over to I'dllis, the Spartan ambassador, who sold him as a slave in ,lv_'ina, whence the Athenians had been driven out, and where they were especiallv detested. He was, however, set at lib>-rty by Anni.vris, whom he had known at Cyrene. and who purchased him f r twenty or thirty mina 1 , a price which contrasts suspiciouslv, or, if it be true, instructiveiv 472 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. and only once left Athens, so in liis mode of teaching he differed from him. Socrates conversed in the streets and the market-place with any one and every one. Plato discoursed in the Academy, a mile from Athens, to a small number only. He did not indeed demand fees, but he accepted presents ; and, if payment was not required for permission to hear his dis- courses, other conditions were probably exacted for admission. Here, for some ten years, Plato continued to teach philosophy, until he went, the elder Dionysius being dead, to Sicily for a second time, in B.C. 367, on the invitation of Dion. The object of his visit was that he might exert his influence over the younger Dionysius, who had succeeded to the tyranny of Syracuse, and produce a philosopher-king. Uut Dionysius exiled Dion, and Plato had much ado to return to Athens. Some years later, when he was sixty-nine years of age, Plato voyaged a third time to Sicily, in the hope of reconciling Dion and Dionysius ; but the attempt failed, and it was fortunate that Plato succeeded in returning once more to Athens. Of the last ten years of his life we know nothing. He died at the age of eighty in B.C. 346, bequeathing his house and garden at the Academia to his nephew Spcusippus, and to the Academy an undying name. The life of Plain is, it must be confessed, less instructive and more disappointing than that of any other great Greek author. The fact that it throws little light on his intellectual deveiop- mcnt may be in part at least due to defective tradition ; what we know of his life is little and lacks the best evidence. This may also account for there being nothing in his life, as we know it, which at all corresponds to or explains his charm as a man of letters. It may also account for the anecdotes, which in late times became numerous, and which represent Plato in a very unfavourable light. In the absence of facts, fictions were invented, and their unfavourable character, if it had no basis in fact, must be ascribed to the heated feelings of partisanship in philosophy. l>ut defective tradition wiii not account for the fact that, however nobly Plato wrote, he did nothing, as far as wo know, great or noble ; and it seems probable that, if his life had impressed his contemporaries as being as exalted as his philosophy, or as charming as his literary style, succeeding generations would, in his case, as in others, have invented anec- dote-, in default of facts, to give pointed expression to the general love and respect for him. Anecdotes and lictions of various kinds were indeed invented, but they were either malevolent, or else silly inventions of weak minds, which cuiild PHILOSOPHY: PLATO. 473 only express their admiration for his philosophy by feigning that his father was a god and his mother a virgin. How different the impression made by his philosophy and by his life is may be seen from what Croethe says of the former : " Plato's relation to the world is that of a superior spirit, whose good pleasure it is to dwell in it for a time. It is no: so much his concern to become acquainted with it for the world and its nature are things which he presupposes as kindly to communicate to it that which he brings with him. and of which it stands in so groat need. He penetrates into its depths more that he may replenish them from the fulness of his own nature 1 than that he may fathom their mysteries, lie scales its heights as one yearning after renewed participa- tion in the source of his being. All that he utters has reference to something eternally complete, good, true, beautiful, whose furtherance he strives to promote in every bosom." 1 With this divine spirit Plato yet was neither patriotic as Demosthenes, nor amiable as Sophocles. Philosophy has indeed gained more than Athenian politics lost; but whether th<- gain to philosophy is gain to the world we may doubt when we reflect, that Socrates, though great as a philosopher, was greater as a man. The reasons why Plato withdrew from tolitical life are tolerably evident. P>y birth and education he was at discord with de- mocracy, whih; experience of the Thirty Tyrants had shown him the base a-pect of oligarchy. Plato, therefore, withdrew from political life. Socrates, we may remark, discharged his dutie- as a ciu/en re^ardle-s of democracy or oligarchy, and did what was rivrht undaunted by either. The temperament of von as shown in his philosophy, was untitted >r practical life some steady and abiding -ary. Plato had none even in his plnlo- he atliims in one dialogue may be i by him in another. Tins was partly due i " is the j t < >r maker < >f want- of his own a_'o. providing the in- nerati' 'tis. 1 [e i, K,, dieair.er, sti'ULTirling wit' ;e under which respiin.-i . : Ari>t.'.tl.- f< and premisses; consequence. We (^U 4/4 HISTORY OF GKEKK LITERATURE. this continual change, in part at least, to the temperament of the individual philosopher, as well as to the condition of philo- sophy at the time. " Plato was not wanting in dogmatic im- pulse, but he was unable to patiently think out a system ; and the vacillating lights which shifted constantly before him, the very scepticism which gave such dramatic flexibility to his genius, made him aware that any affirmation he could make was liable to be perplexed by cross-lights, or would admit of unanswerable objections.'"' : Setting aside the Lttters of Plato, the authenticity of which is doubtful, his works consist of Dialogues, except tne Apology and the Menexenus, which are speeches. The first question, then, which we have to consider is, why did Plato cast his philosophical work into the form of dialogues ? For this there seem to be several reasons. The most obvious answer to our question is afforded by the fact that in all the Dialogues Soc- rates is the central and most important figure. Plato himself never figures in any of the Dialogues, and is only even referred to twice. Obviously, therefore, it is Socrates and his philosophy as Plato conceived it which he set himself to work to re- produce ; and as Socrates never expounded his philosophy, but confined himself to questioning others, professing that he him- self knew nothing, Plato, in giving even an idealised picture of Socrates, was compelled, as much as was Xenophon, to adhere to historical truth, at least so far as to represent Socrates as con- versing, and thus was compelled to write dialogues. In the next place, the form of dialogue was essentially appropriate to Plato's philosophy, since Plato was rather searching for truth than expounding a system. In the third place, Plato was conscious of the inferiority of books to the living word for the investigation of truth. The reader of a book lias to make the best of it that he can, and often is in a difficulty which a simple question addressed to the writer would solve. It is impossible to argue with a book ; and a matter is rarely fully understood by any one until he has argued it out. To remedy this defect, inherent in the communication of ideas by means of a book, Plato seems to have resolved to throw his philosophy into dialogue form, and thus argue out every question from as many points of view as possible or necessary. Again, whether Plato intended to derive any advantage for the views he put forward from the likes and dislikes of his readers or not, it is a fact that by the way in which he sketches the characters in his Dialogues, he enlists our sympathies for Socrates and very decidedly against his opponents. 1 Lewes, i. 222. PHILOSOPHY: PLATO. 475 This lends us to the last reason which we shall assign for the dialogue form of Plato's works. It is that Plato was an artist. lit: wrote philosophy and he also wrote literature. He had a keen perception for character, ami a satirical power as great as that of Archilochus. As an artist, therefore, he was naturally led to select the most artistic form for his work provided by literatim 1 : and dialogue had the same, advantages over other exi.-ting forms of prose as the drama had over other forms of poetry. We have compared the position of dialogue in prose to that of the drama in poetry, and the comparison is not merely a superficial one, as we shall see if we con.-ider what antecedents dialogue, as written l>y Plato, had, and what place dialogue takes in the history of (livek literature. ~\Yo not only lind it said several times by ancient authors that Plato had the greatest affection for the Mimes of Sopliron. and that it was he who iirs.t brought them from Sicily to Athens, but we iind that Aristotle classes the Mimes of Sopliron and the Dialogues of Plato together as belonging essentially to the same branch of literature. The excellence of Sophron's Mimes consisted in the success, with which he depicted character ; and we may form some idea at second-hand of his power in this line from the A//i>/tt'iai"_iies with the drama is not merely the superlicial resem- blance consisting in the fact that tin-re arc interlocutors in cadi of these forms of literature, hut i< ha-ed on a similarity of aim in b"th. and tn a .-imilarity in the artistic means by which that aim is ell'ccted. In the next place, if we compare the development of prose and [mi-try ;n (I reek literature, \ve .-hall sec that the two f.'ims r.in parallel, and that dialogue occupies in the one the place of the lira;;. a in the other. Ti..' in.-; tWin which po-try took in liivek literature was ti.a; of epic, \\hich is r.-si ntiallv narrative. of both in a l'"im of j;s own. So too in pro.-., the t.;.-i f ria whicii literature tn.-k wa.- thai of In.-;, ry. wh.ch. like cp:c i "etry, i- e-.-'-ntiaiiy narrative in character. The i,i-xl !::.; \va^ I'laU'iv, \\ h: -h i- individual, and : - < \ : --: Ye of th" >peakc-r's . iwn \ iews. Fin illy, tin , ; nanath L hi-: rv WJt'a ti.e - 4/6 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. its own. Dialogue has over the other forms of prose the same advantages as drama over other forms of poetry : it possesses a greater multiplicity of elements, a greater variety of effects, and a greater wealth of resources. Let us therefore see what light is thrown on Plato's style when it is viewed from the stand- point of the development of Greek prose, and as the highest level attained by Greek prose. If the Dialogues of Alexamenus of Teos, who wrote before Plato, had been preserved, it would have been possible for us to discuss the characteristics of dialogue generally as a form of Greek prose ; but as they are lost, Greek dialogue is for us Plato. Under the head of style are comprised three things at least : the choice and range of words over which the writer has com- mand, that is to say, diction ; the structure of his sentences, which differs in complexity, regularity, and clearness, not only in different writers according to their individual capacities, but is also affected by the nature of the subject on which the author- is writing ; and, finally, the rhythm of the period, which may flow harmoniously or may offend the ear, and which is aided by the subtle repetition of such sounds as are pleasing, or by the harmonious blending of contrasted sound. .Now in all three points the style of Plato is neither that of the historians nor that of the orators, but a union of tin; two. The difference between the historian and the orator in point of style is most obvious in the structure of their sentences. The full and well- rounded periods of the orator are much longer, more full of subordinate clauses, and more impressive in their effect than are the simple sentences in which the historian tells his tale. It is only necessary to compare the artless conversational tone of Herodotus witli the sounding periods of Demosthenes' orations to perceive the difference. Each style has its charm, but each runs the danger of monotony. Herodotus, however, is preserved by his complete freedom from artificiality and by the natural beauty of his style. Demosthenes was aware of the danger he ran, and to avoid it he deliberately introduces sentences irregular in their construction anacolutha which may relieve the regular succession of elaborate periods. Plato commits himself to neither style, but blonds the two. Irregularly constructed sentences are too frequent in his writing to be suspected of being introduced as artificial foils, while there is a tin;_e of oratory throughout which lifts him above the. merely conversational style. This happy blending of the essence of both styles characterises his writing throughout. Sett ing aside such pieces of work as the Alvit'.'Witus, which is of deliberate design oratorical, we may say PHILOSOPHY: PLATO. 477 that it is not true that Plato is conversational in some parts of a dialogue and oratorical in others. Kvcn whon lie passes from dialogue; to a long speech hy one, of tin; characters, he does not drop the conversational and assume tlie oratorical style, but he retains the same structure of .sentence, the same happy mean between the t\vo styles, as elsewhere. In rhythm 1'lato unites the excellences of historical and philosophical prose as in the structure of his sentences. He neither writes regardless of rhythm, leaving it to chance whe- ther the sentence happens to be pleasing in sound, nor does lie rush into the opposite extreme of producing sentences which, like those, of Isocrates, balance each other clause fur. clause and word for word. Hiatus, which was especially abhorred by Iso- erates, Plato admits less freely than do the historians, but more freely '.ban do the orators, "What is true of the rhvthm and the structure of Plato's sentences is also true of his diction : he neither limits himself to the vocabulary of ordinary conversa- tion, nor does he concern himself to avoid it. P>ut diction is a particularly sensitive element in ,-tvle ; it is affected not only by the rhythm and the structural necessities of a sentence, which perpetually determine whether this or that of two words nearly synonymous is to be used, but it retlects the mood of the writer, is exalted when he is exalted, precise, when his thought is exact, and vague when his ideas are dreamy. NOW Plato has many moods : he "was sceptic, dogmatist, religious mystic and in- quisitor, mathematician, philosopher. ],,>et (erotic as well as satirical', rhetor, arti>t all in one, oral lea-t all in succession, throughout the lil'ty years of bis philosophical life. At one tune his exuberant dialectical impulse claims satisfaction, mani- fc.-tii: _: itself in a .-t:iiiL. r of in_'eni >us doubts and unsolved con- tradictions ; at another time he is full of theol. .gical antipathy again.-t those who libel Helios and Selene, or who deny the universal providence of the gods; here we have uii'iualitied confessions of ignorance, and protestations against the false per.-ua.-ion of knowledge, as alike wide-spread and deplora' le there, we Mid a description of the process of building up the k'l.-nios from the beginniuir. as if the author had beeu privy to the ii;::io>; purposes of t'ne I 'emiurcus " (ilrote. : j i ; . !'- foiv, ihr:i. we can c imp'.ete our account of his die;;, n. we mu>t pr. eee.i to o'ii>ider tip- portie elni'.ei;; in P. at''. Accoii'tin-; to Ari.-totle, w'nose eonii.et.'iu'e as a li'-rirv critic is above doubt, Plato's works were a mean b> tween po,-;ry an I pi'osp. l',y this ;i is not meant th '. in some pa>sa^/, his diction is iiurdv } e;ieal and in others rr.re ]<: - -- ,at:.'.':;_;i 4/8 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. within certain limits the diction of a passage may vary in this respect according to the nature of the subject-matter but that throughout a dialogue Plato unites the qualities of prose and poetry, just as the structure of his sentences is throughout half conversational, half oratorical. Xow this, which is the charac- teristic of Plato's diction, is not mere accident or caprice, but has a definite connection with the literary form into which Plato threw his philosophy. That form, according to Aristotle, is the same as that of Sophron's Mimes. In other word?, the Dialogues of Plato, although in point of matter philosophical, are works of the imagination in the same way as were the Mimes of Sophron. Xot only are the circumstances and scene in which a dialogue is represented as taking place probably due to Plato's invention, but the characters which he gives to the interlocutors, though, like the figures in Sophron's Mimes, to a certain extent suggested by life, are in their artistic shape the creation of the author. But with the exception of Sophron's Mimes, the only works of the imagination known to the Greeks were written in poetry. Prose fiction was unknown. It was then almost in- evitable that the first prose works of the imagination should be influenced to a considerable extent by the poetical works on which they were largely modelled and by which they were partly inspired. In fine, the style of Plato is a union of prose and poetry, because his Dialogues were a form of literature uniting the imaginative qualities of the drama with the philosophical purposes of dialectic. Here it is necessary to point out what poetry it is with which the Dialogues have points of community. Obviously it is witli the drama ; but the drama includes tragedy and comedy, and the question arises whether it is with comedy or with tragedy that the Dialogues have a resemblance, or whether the resem- blance is to the drama generally and not to either tragedy or comedy especially? The Alexandrian grammarians apparently considered that the Dialogues were more like tragedy, for they divided them into trilogies. But in this they committed the error of allowing the matter, which is serious, to influer.e<> as to the form of the Dialogues. 1 The truth by Aristotle, who. in grouping the Dialogues 1 On the other hand, ''the ]'h;edo is the tragedy of which Socrates is the ]>ri>t!igoiii>t, and Simmies ai.d Cel>es the secondary performers. X<> dialogue has :i ;_'! atrr unity of suhjcct and feeling. Plato has certainly fulfilled the condition of Greek, or ratin-r of all art, which requires that scenes of death ;u,d Mifi'eiing should he clothed in h-auty. . . . Theie is nothing in all tragedians, ancient or modern, nothing in poetry or history 'with cue excep- tion), like the last hours of Socrates in 1'lato " i Jowett, i. 427). PHILOSOPHY : PLATO. 479 with the Mimes, which wore a species of comedy, signifies the connection between the Dialogues and comedy. This is in harmony with the tradition that makes Sophron and Aristo- phanes the favourite authors of Plato. Plato attacks the Sophists, for instance, with all the force that humour can give, as Aristophanes attacked the leather-sellers and lanipmakers who figured in the political world. ]!ut Plato's satire has an exquisite finish which Aristophanes rarely equals. For instance, take this side-blow at the Sophists. It occurs at the beginning of the Protagoras. Socrates and Hippocrates were going to make a call on Callias in order to see Protagoras, and Socrates, describing it afterwards, said : ' We proceeded on our way until we reached the vestibule of the house, and there we stopped in order to conclude a dispute which had arisen as we were going along; and we stood talking in the vestibule until we had finished and come to an understanding. And 1 think that the doorkeeper, who was a eunuch, and who was probably annoyed at the great inroad of the Sophists, must have heard us talking. At any rate, when we knocked at the door, and lie opened and saw us, he grumbled, 'They are Sophists he is not at home ;' and instantly gave the door a hearty bang with both his hands. Again we knocked, and he answered without opening, ' 1 >id you not hear me say that he is not at home, fellows : l ' ' lUit, my friend,' 1 said, ' you need not be alarmed, for we are not Sophists, and wo are not come to see C'allias, but we want to see Protagoras; and I must request you to announce us.' At last, after a good deal of difliculty, the man was per- suaded to open the door." 1 This passage, ami still more the way in which Plato draws the character of Thra.-ymachus. the Sophj-t. in the 11, /. ;/////<, compels us to admit the ju>tice of s' cri;:c;.-.m when he spoke of Plato as a tcrriiile satirist a new Arehitochus. < >ther conspicuous instances of his owers mav lie found in the tine parody in the 7V>n in the ises, and dialectic u.-cd f T pur: n-es o The advantages of this new form of eom'.'osition with any pre-existing form are obvious in its vivacity 1 r>\it:i:>. 384 (..l.iwvtt's tr.ths.) 480 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. But it also labours under defects. " With regard to the dramatic power exhibited, there has perhaps been little exaggeration in the praise of critics ; but there has been an oversight in regard to the sudden cessation of the dramatic ventriloquence (so to speak), which, having animated the mise en scene of the characters, disappears as soon as the business of the dialogues begins. In the introduction the characters speak ; in the argument it is Plato who speaks just what the needs of his argument require, and the debaters, instead of debating, assent, inquire, and ex- pound, but rarely speak dramatically." l Tins criticism is true of the Republic, for instance, and some of the longer Dialogues, but by no means of all. In the Protagoras, for example, the interlocutors maintain their character throughout. But the fact remains that frequently Plato sinks the artist in the philosopher, and. in order to make his writing fill as satisfactorily as possible the place of the living word, he loads his work with vain repetitions, and justifies the criticism of Montaigne, who found the Dialogues of Plato drag, thought he stifled his subject too much, and complained " of the time spent in vain inter- rogatories by a man who had such far better things to say." The form of the Dialogues and their diction are intermediate between prose and poetry : the structure and harmony of the sentences are intermediate between those of oratory and those of ordinary conversation. These, then, are the characteristics of the Dialogues considered as a branch of Greek literature ; but we must also endeavour to form some idea of the literary qualities of Plato himself. Here, again, we shall base our remarks upon Aristotle. According to him (Pul, II. iii. 3), four qualities distinguish the Dialogues : elevation, finish, originality, and the spirit of inquiry. The first quality, so far as it refers to style, implies that the Dialogues, though conversational, are not vulgar; that the structure of the sentences, though not artificial, is not slipshod; that in both respects the Dialogues are above the common. As regards the matter of the Dialogues, they are elevated in tone, and are marked by what (Jreek critics called <"///, that is, their tone is such as to excite to virtue and turn from vice. The finish which Plato's work shows is to be, seen in the polish of his satire (Plato imi ales his victims "as though In; loved them'") : in his exquisite drawing of character (contrast his Socrates with the incomplete and inartistic picture given by Xenophon) ; in the ease and grace with which the philosophical subject of a dialogue 1 Lewes, i. 198. PHILOSOPHY : PLATO. 481 is introduced ; : in the harmonious proportions of such a dialogue. as the S>/)ii}ii*i>tii>, with its Greek purity of form ; or in the grouping and contrast of the characters of the First Book of the Hi-public. Plato's originality shows itself alike in furni and matter. The Dialogues of Alexamenus have perished so com- pletely that we may safely conjecture, that they can have im- pair, d hut little Plato's claim to have invented philosophical dialogue. The merit of this original service to mankind, though Lrreat, is apt to he overlooked. It <, r ave philosophy as hi^h a, rank in literature as it occupies in knowledge, and it ,t, r ave to philosophical discussion a literary interest serviceable alike to philosophy and to literature. The same creative power shows itself elsewhere in the additions which 1'iato made both to the, technical phraseology of metaphysics and to the general vora- hulary of the (Ireek laii^ua^e. As regard- the matter of his works, Plato's originality consists not so much in any positive addition of permanent value that he made to the sum of human knowledge, as in the fact that he was ' a maker of ideas" and provided "the instruments of thought for future generations.'' Thi> fourth quality ascribed to Pinto by Aristotle, the spirit of inquiry, is one exhibited in the matter of the Dialogues, though their form was appropriate to it. and was doubtless partly determined by it. The spirit which examines all things and investigates each tiling from every point of view; which is dissatisfied, not with negative, re.-ults. but only if it leaves any argument or any method of search untouched- this is Plato's spirit of inquiry, and is a mode of philosophy for which, employ- ing, or rather consisting of, dialectic, as it does. dialogue i< tin; appropriate f. :m. The I >iaiou f ues of Plato wen- divid-d bv Thra-yilu-. a rhetorician of the t ime of Tib<'i in-. in' o two da>ses, dialogues of seareh and exositor dialogues. Tin-.-e classes ialogues, but of those whieh pro; 482 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ceeds on internal and subjective grounds), and is rejected by other students of Plato, who bring forward each a scheme of his own. Another theory, equally subjective, but more gene- rally intelligible, is that of Munk. who conceives that Plato intended in the Dialogues " to depict the life and working of a philosopher, in successive dramatic exhibitions, from youth to old age. The different moments in the life of Socrates, indi- cated in each dialogue, mark the place which Plato intended it to occupy in the series" (Grote, i. 181). But with the classi- fications based on philosophical grounds we have nothing to do. External proof as to the date of composition does not exist in the case of a single dialogue ; and the historical events men- tioned in a dialogue give us no information, as sometimes the same dialogue is represented in one passage as having been held in one year, and in another passage as having been held at a wholly different time. So far as the purely literary study of the Dialogues throws any light on their relative order, we may notice that in some dialogues Plato is at pains to avoid hiatus, in others not; and that in the Laics, which, on other grounds, are generally admitted to be amongst the latest of Plato's works, the hiatus is most carefully avoided. Other dialogues which show the same avoidance of hiatus, and are therefore probably among the later works, are the Plnlebus, Timivus, Critiats, iSopltittcs, Puliticm, and P/taxlrus. 1 Finally, we must speak briefly of the question as to the authenticity of the works that go under Plato's name. In the reign of Tiberius, Thrasyllus drew up a list of the works which, according to him, were universally regarded as genuine in anti- quity. This list may be identical with that of the works recognised as genuine in the library at Alexandria, and the library list may have been obtained from the Platonic school at the Academy. liut although an authentic canon may have been thus transmitted to the time of Thrasyllus, it is more likely that spurious works came to be regarded as genuine, and were incorporated in the list of Thrasyllus. This probability is considerably strengthened when we find that even Thrasyllus himself doubts the genuineness of one of the works included in his list. ]iut if we reject the list of Thrasyllus, the question remains, what works of those ascribed to Plato are genuine? and no completely satisfactory answer is forthcoming. Aristotle 1 It should perhaps lie slated that, Thrasyllus arranged the Dialogues in groups <>f four, which IK; called Tetralogies, and that Aristophanes of Jiyzan- ihiinUho librarian of Alexandri.-i. who lived between 260-184 B.C. ) is said by I Mo^eiies Laritius to have arranged them into Tl'ilogittS. -But both arrangements wcru purely fanciful. PHILOSOPHY: PLATO. 483 mentions many of Plato's works, and those which lie mentions may safely lie regarded as genuine. But lie does not mention all, and we cannot infer anything from his silence. lie never expressly mentions the Protat/fsras, yet there is no douht that the Proiatjoraa is genuine. Again, he sometimes mentions or quotes from some of the dialogues that we possess, hut does not ex- pressly say that they are the work of Plato : these dialogues, then, may or may not he genuine. They may contain the teaching of Plato, and he the work of some memhers of the Platonic school. Finally, there are some dialogue's which, hoth in antiquity and in modern times, have heen universally re- jected. Such are the Axiodiuft, Dvmodocus, Xi.*>/)>/t'/i*, Eri/j'ian, JIal''i/on, Alii/on, I'l/a-aceu, Clicliilon, llcltlo )/>>', and E)>iin> /'/<>.. J >ialogues whicii may or may not he genuine are the J./^/r 1/,'j,- fiias. /'//.-/ Ali'iliiaih ,-; and the M< //-./- nun. The A/VArx, althougii defended hy (ii'ote, ar<; rejected hy every one else. They con- tain gross historical errors and many plagiarisms. 484 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CONCLUSION. THE history of Greek literature is the proper introduction to the study of literature in general, not merely because of the excellence of Greek literature in itself, and because it has influenced both directly and indirectly all subsequent Euro- pean literatures, but because the causes which determine the development of literature in Greece are more easily discernible and more obvious in their operation than is the case in any other country. If many a village Hampden, because his lot forbids, withstands no greater foe than " the little tyrant of his fields," many a, Milton also remains mute and inglorious, or, if he finds a voice, achieves glory in some other branch of literature than epic poetry. Of all men of genius, the man of letters might seem to be the least fettered by external condi- tions. The range of thought is limited neither by time nor space. It is the peculiar power of the imagination to transport us out of the age and country, nay, out of the very world to which we belong. Given the power, which genius possesses, of expressing his thought or fancy, the poet might seem to be beyond any control save his own. and consequently produce any kind of poetry in any age or in any country. Yet, even here, where the mind of man has a freedom to which it is hard to conceive limits, law and order rule. "When a cannon is levelled horizontally, the shot, whether gently dropped from the muzzle or discharged with the full force of the most powerful explosive, takes precisely the same time to roach the ground. Gravity, according to its law, acts no more and no less on the rushing shot than on the shot which is dropped from the cannon's mouth. So, too, however far thought or the imagination is projected, it never escapes beyond the bounds of its laws. Land and language, race and place, the community to which the author addresses himself ;md for whose approbation he looks, the means by which he addresses it, the literature which existed before him all these things help to determine, the direction which genius takes; and the, operation of these and other causes on the literary genius of a nation con- stitutes the history of its literature. lint the more complex civilisation grows, and the longer the past which anv generation is heir to, the more difficult it is to distinguish the causes which CONCLUSION. 485 substantially affect the evolution of literature from those which do not. .It is, therefore, an advantage to study a literature in which the factors of the problem are simpler and less obscured ; and such a literature is that of Greece in classical times. The course of Greek literature did not sutler perturbations from the influence of any other nation's literature ; the civilisation of Greece was in the main its own. It is to Greece and to Greek literature alone that we must look for the. causes which determined its nature and regulated its development. .First among these causes we will consider the country in which the Greeks lived. The effects of the physical conditions of a land on its inhabitants did note-scape the Greeks' line sense of observation. 2s" ot only did men of science like the physi- cian Hippocrates systematically work out the (.'fleets of the physical environment on the organism of the nation, not, only did philosophers like f'lato take into account the surroundings of youth as a factor in education, but Herodotus calls special attention to the effect of favourable physical conditions on the mlonies in Asia Minor. And the exhilarating influence of the atmosphere of Athens, the depressing influence of the heavy air of Hu'otia on the inhabitants of the two countries, were a com- mon-place among the dramatic poets. The physical character of a country acts on literature directly and indirectly : directh by its beauty, which is reflected in the literature ; indirectly by its influence on the social, political, and moral development of the community to which the author belongs. The direct influence of nature on Greek poets 1ms been sometimes over- looked and sometimes denied. Hut the sense of beauty winch the Greeks po-se.-scd to a greater extent than any other people could not fail to be caught by the exceptionally beautiful natural .-urroui:diii'-:s in \\iiich they lived : and tie-ir literature, at anv rate their ] try, bears abundant tc-tim n\ to the tact. Small though Greece i-. it contains a greater \ u harmony and contrast, of natural beauty than ni' it- mountain- al.ow of the ;_T'W more nr;ii-Tii clime.--. Within degrees of tran-itioti from stn>\v-t' tains. An I the j> iv \vit ii filled the Greek, 1 b .mer we mrd Alcim 'its and t In natuie tiir"U_'h< >ut. or of Aicmaii, we 486 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. inanimate, and a power of expressing that sympathy, which is not surpassed in modern literature. In tragedy, what need to refer to Sophocles' description of his native Colonus ? in comedy, to the Birds of Aristophanes ? The attitude of the Greek to nature was not that of modern times ; the contrast between nature and the corruptions of civilisation only came into litera- ture when civilisation had become corrupt. The classical Greek did not regard himself as something apart from nature, but appeals to her as Prometheus appeals, or took leave of her as Ajax bids farewell as one of her children. The two leading facts in the physical aspect of Greece are the sea and the mountains. As Europe is the most indented and has relatively the longest coast-line of all the continents of the world, so of all the countries of Europe the land of Greece is the most interpenetrated with arms of the sea. "We have now to consider how these distinctive features acted indirectly on Greek literature through their effects on the moral, political, and social condition of the Greek people. " Two voices are there : one is of the Sea, One of the Mountains ; each a mighty voice : In both from age to age thou didst rejoice ; They were thy chosen music, Liberty ! " Loth voices spoke impressively to Greece, and her literature echoes their tones. So long as Greece was free and the spirit of freedom animated the Greeks, so long their literature was creative and genius marked it. When liberty perished, litera- ture declined. The field of Chaeronea was fatal alike to the political liberty and to the literature of Greece. The love of liberty was indeed pushed even to an extreme in Greece ; and this also was due to the physical configura- tion of the country. Mountains, it has been said, divide ; seas unite. The rise and the long continuance in so small a country of so many cities, having their own laws, constitution, separate history, and independent existence, can only be explained by the fact that in their early growth they were protected, each by the mountains which surrounded it, so effectually, and the love of liberty in this time was developed to such an extent, that no single city was able to establish its dominion over the others, as Koine did in Italy, and create a Greek empire. With the political eiVrcN of tin- mountains of Greece we have, however, only to do so far as they all'ectod the literature ; and their effect on it was very great. Every one of the numerous states, whose separate political existence was guaranteed by the mountains, CONCLUSION. 487 was actually or potentially a separate centre of civilisation and of literature. In some one of these states each kind of literature could iind the conditions appropriate or necessary to its develop- ment, liven a state which produced no men of literary genius itself might become the centre at which poets collected and encourage the literature it could not produce, as was the case with Sparta, to which Greece owed the development of choral lyric. lint the service which Sparta, for instance, rendered to litera- ture by attracting lyric poets to herself and encouraging the growth of choral lyric, would have been, if not impossible, at least materially diminished, had not the sea afforded an ea/v'a was composed, and at the beginning of the sixth century it was on the ena.-t of Africa in the colony of Cyrene. The rapid spread of elegiac poetry is even more strikingly illustrated, for we find Solon in Athens quoting from his contemporary Mimnermus of Colophon. Choral Ivric, which originated in A.-ia Min >:. was conveyed to Sparta by Aldnan. and by Simoliides of Ceos all ov-r the Greek world. ]',;;; although in earlv times we . I 488 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. which was brought by Arion from Lesbos to Greece, was adopted in Attica, and there developed into tragedy. Choral lyric, which grew under the hands of Simonides of Ceos, and of Alcman before him, was recalled from the circumference of the Greek world, where it had been at the service of tyrants, to add to the beauty of Attic drama and to the enjoyment of the Athenian demo- cracy. Comedy, which Epicharmus had developed in Sicily, deserted that island for Athens. Prose, which the Ionian logo- graphers had painfully pioneered ; history, which has Herodotus of Halicarnassus for father ; rhetoric, the seeds of which were sown, on the one hand in Sicily, on the other in Ionia ; philo- sophy, which germinated in Sicily, Ionia, and Elea on the west coast of Italy all found their way to Athens, there to be carried to a height of perfection impossible in their places of origin. But this was the beginning of the end. As long as literature had many centres, there was no danger of all falling by a single stroke ; but when it was centralised in Athens, and the blow delivered by Philip at Crutronea had fallen on Athens, classical Greek literature perished in a generation. It is somewhat diflicult to distinguish race-qualities from the characteristics impressed on a people by the conditions under which it lives, since the latter by accumulation and transmission from generation to generation eventually become race-qualities. Thus the Spartans possessed qualities common to them and the Dorians, of whom they were a branch, and also qualities peculiar to themselves, which distinguish them from other Dorians. But the latter qualities, at any rate, so far as they affect the relation of Sparta to literature, seem to be the, work <>f the peculiar con- ditions under which the Spartans lived. When the Dorians in- vaded Greece cannot he accurately determined. The invasion belongs to prehistoric time's. It seems to have been subsequent, if )i"t to Homer, at least to the state of tilings depicted in the wi/. AVhen, however, it did take place, those dged them>elves in Sparta, and became known or Laccda'inonians, found themselves sur- popula; i< >n, to whose attacks fur an uncer- period they were perpetually exposed, ii fur generations, not only nece.-sarily made the Spartans a military p--opl ( it made them a military people and nothing else. The ordinary life of a Spartan citi/en was that of a .-oidier in camp or garii-<>n. rath'T than that of a member of a political community, and this system of life was highly unfavourable to literature. It crushed out individuality ; for obedience, not independent action, is the quality needed in CONCLUSION. 489 a soldier ; and it inculcated silence, not discusssion. Spartan - "laconic'' brevity is proverbial, and its reason is obvious. The word of command is short and sharp, and must be received with the briefest indication that the subordinate understands his superior. At first, the connection between Spartan brevity and Spartan sterility in literature is not obvious, for with us a man may achieve literary success and speak but little. But in Greece literature was oral. Not only the orator, but the epic poet, the lyric poet, the historian, and the philosopher themselves delivered their words to the audience, not on paper, but with their own voices. Where, therefore, as in Sparta, the oppor- tunities of speech were reduced to a minimum, and speedi itself was necessarily and deliberately discouraged, there could be but little chance for literary genius to struggle into light. l!ut if Sparta thus debarred herself from producing literature, she at least encouraged it to a certain extent ; and the extent to which she could encourag'' it was strictly defined by her exclu- sively military and one-sided growth. An individual existence the Spartan was not allowed to have ; eolleijtivelv the citi/ens might assent to the legislative proposals, of the senate, and take the field under the king's command. Any kind of literature, therefore, which was to flourish in Sparta must be such as could be participated in by a large body acting under the word of com- mand ; and such a kind of literature was forthcoming in the lyric poetry, which was performed by choruses. Other Dorians, not hemmed in by such unfavourable con- ditions as the Spartans, did provide some contributions to the literature of (iivece. and in the nature of their contributions we may detect the qualities of the race. The Dorians in Sicily sowed the seeds of rhetoric and carried comedy t c nsi li-rabln perfection. Of imagination the race seems d produce poets. On tiie other hand, the race tical as well as pro-aic, and their huni"ur wa- corresponded to th-'-e qua them as comic, and pract it mt-nt. The highe.-t ultiti amoiig.-t them wa.- ception, within it- quick. llepartee the law-court- inl pairy, which wa< inherent in : practical application in the : forensic oratory which origin planted to Attica a;u 49 O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. it could take its place among the branches of the national literature. The /Eolians form a contrast both to the Spartans and to the Athenians. The development of individuality is as characteris- tic of the ^Eolians as its absence is of the Spartans. Dut the /Eolians, first of all Greeks, possessed a cavalry, and this means that they were wealthy and aristocratic ; for in Greece, as in the early periods of every nation's history, the advantage in combat ensured to the class wealthy enough to have horses to fight on resulted in the elevation of that class above others and the formation of an aristocracy. This gives us the dis- tinction between the ^Eolians and the Athenians : among the former, individuality was developed in the aristocracy alone ; among the latter, in all the citizens. The /Eolians added to the crown of Greek literature one of the brightest of its jewels lyric poetry, as we understand lyric in modern times, that is, the expression of the poet's feelings, on any subject whatever, as his individual feeling. It is further to the honour of the yEolian aristocracy that its social constitution assigned woman a rank and allowed her a freedom which she enjoyed in no other Greek race ; and the merited reward of this enlightenment was not wanting, for to the ^Eolian race belongs the woman who in poetry ranks above all women, in lyric poetry above all poets, Sappho. Lut it was the lonians who rendered the greatest services to Greek literature. They were a quick-witted race, full of enter- prise, full of resources. In them we see reflected the character of the sea, as in the Dorians the character of the mountains. The latter partook of the narrowness and exclusiveness of their own homes, hemmed in by mountains, and by them protected from the incursion of strangers and strange innovations. The lonians, on the other hand, were open as the sea, and had as many moods. They were eminently susceptible to beauty in all its forms, to the charm of change and to novelty. They were ever ready to put any belief or institution to the test of discussion, ami were governed as much by ideas as by sentiments. Keen- ness of intellect, taste in all matters of literature and art. grace in expression, and measure in everything distinguished them above ail Greeks. The development of (-pic poetry, the origin of prose, the cultivation of philosophy, are the proud distinction of the Ionian race. In Athens we have the qualities of the Ionian race in their iine-t flower. liihatjhing a city by the sea, the Athenians were in open communication with all the eastern colonies of Greece, CONCLUSION. 49 1 while the main routes to the colonies of the west converged at Athens. The capacities of the sea were developed fully by the Athenians. Their empire was a maritime empire, and their commercial supremacy was established by the sea. It was the naval victory of Salamis which made democracy inevitable, and gave to everv citizen of Athens the right to help in governing the city which he had helped in saving. The eiti/ens into whose hands was thus given the. government of this great city were essentially an enlightened people. iXo seed of science, art, or literature was .sown among them in vain ; no attempt to improve or embellish lift; was rejected by them because it was unknown to their fathers or foreign to their prejudices. So far as the Athenians differ from the lonians, of whom they were a branch, the diii'crence is the same, as that between Greece and the ri.lt inies generally. The Athenians were less original but more receptive than the lonians on the coast of Asia Minor. If they were less ready at striking out a new line, they were nion- persistent in working out an old one. If they invented no instrument, they added new strings to the instrument- in- vented b\- others, and extracted tones of beauty unsuspected by the inventors. Eminently enlightened, they not only appreciated and welcomed every form of literature which existed in (ireece, but they extracted the essence, from epic, iambic, and lyric po<-trv. and. by uniting them in the drama, gave them a form which gratified the eye as well as the car, and marked th.> culminating point of (I reck poetry. In prose their ta-te was eijiiaily catholic, anil their services to literature equally great. They furni-hed Herodotus with his most appreciative audiences ; their citv was the centre to whieh rhetoricians ;l nd philosophers, congregated from all quarters of Clreece. lli-tory was L'iven a profound and scientific ba-is by Thucydides : philosophy was given by Socrates the direction which it has since ever followed, bv 1'lato a literary f-i'iu which it ha- since never surpassed ; and series of artists in words, readied 49 2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. writing was even known in Greece much before B.C. 700. It is probable that for a century and a half after that date it was only used for purposes of commerce and correspondence. For a century after that it seems as though the only use it was to literature was to enable an author to write out a single copy of his works. It is only about B.C. 430 or 420 that we find copies of manuscripts multiplied and diffused, and for a century after that time it was not to the reading public that authors addressed themselves. In other words, writing seems not to have been known during the period of epic poetry, not to have been used for literary purposes during the age of lyric (except towards the end), to have been used by the early historians, philosophers, and dramatists only as an aid to composition, and not to have been needed as a means of publication by the orators, with whom classical Greek literature ends. Greek literature, then, was communicated to the public orally, not by means of the multiplication and diffusion of manuscripts. But oral communication implies the collection of an audience to whom the author can address his words ; and the occasion on which, the purposes for which, the place in which, and the fre- quency with which the audience is collected, exercise a consider- able influence on the literary form of the work presented to it. Further, the reaction of the audience on the author being more immediate, was more effectual than it is even in these days of the printing-press. Let us then see the nature of the audiences to whose approval the various kinds of Greek literature Avere submitted, and their influence on the development of that litera- ture. In the earliest times, the period of epic poetry, it was to the kings and chieftains that the poets looked for patronage, and it was in a chieftain's hall that the minstrel found an audi- ence to appreciate his poetry and reward his efforts. It Avas not unnatural, therefore, that the minstrel chose for his theme the exploits and adventures of famous heroes in whom his patrons saw the mythical reflection of themselves, and to whom, in many cases, they traditionally traced their origin. "When this state of things passed away, literary genius found the most favourable conditions for its development in another race and another place. The culture of the /Kolians and the natural beauties of Lesbos fostered the growth of lyric poetry. ]Sut the audience to whom this kind of poetry was addressed was more exclusive than were; the audiences who listened to epic poetry. The latter consisted of all the household of the chief- tain, which was addressed by a wandering minstrel. The audi- ence of lyric poetry consisted of the yEolian aristocracy exclu- CONCLUSION. 493 sively, who were addressed by a member of their own order, possessing the same general views of life and society as them- selves. Hence the personal and intimate character of lyric poetry, which was the outpouring of the poet's heart to those on whose sympathy he could confidently rely. ]Jut in other countries, both at the same time as, and later than, the dcve]oj>- ment of personal lyrics in Lesbos, the social and political con- ditions were different, produced a different kind of audience, and resulted in a different kind of lyric. In Sparta, for in- stance, as we have seen, the citizens were, by the bonds of their condition, only allowed to participate in literature collectively. For them something was required, in the production of which a large body could partake, and to which the whole body of citi/ens could listen at once. These conditions resulted in the development of choral lyric. The rise of democracy at Athens, and the consequent demand for a form of literary entertainment which the whole population of the great city could simulta- lieou.-dy be present at, were conditions whieh forced the growth of the drama. I'.ut dramas were only produced in Athens at stated and somewhat long intervals, while the people became more and more ca, r cr for literary food, and the result was that the assembly and the law-courts, in which tli" people found themselves gathered with great frequency, became the means of gratifying the literary instincts of the' Athenians. Orators sought to impart to prose an artistic beauty of its own which should rival that of pm-try ; and, under the sound and watchful criticism of their audience, the Athenian ] pie, they at last succeed Thu, and tin inateria causes uf ( ire. wh' '1>' ; 111"!''' .-' ej'l'ati' 494 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. the assembly and the theatre without also hearing great drama- tists and fine orators ; whereas, at the present day, a man may read and read, and not read the masterpieces which alone cul- tivate the mind. Further, the literature which is read costs money; the literature to which the Athenians listened was free. Finally, the value we have here put upon oral communication is confirmed by the decline literature underwent when it ceased to be communicated orally. The narrowness of the reading public, to whom authors of the Alexandrian times addressed themselves, is reflected in the narrowness of their point of view, and the incapacity of this narrow public to discharge its literary and critical functions seems indicated by the fact that it did not succeed in developing any writer of genius. Bearing in mind that classical Greek literature was designed o o to be uttered aloud, and was necessarily tested by the ears of the audience, whose sense of beauty its sound had to gratify, we can estimate the importance of the chief characteristics of the language to the literature. In the changes which all languages, not dead, undergo, one of the most important causes is man's desire to express himself with the least amount of trouble. Some words are found to be as intelligible when docked of a letter as when they are pronounced in full ; and gradually the letter is dropped. Some sounds are hard, some easy to repeat in quick succession, and. accordingly, when such combinations occur in a word, one of the sounds, if hard to repeat, is altered, <: dissimilated, or a sound easy to repeat is substituted for sonic other sound, which is thus '" assimilated " to the other. The result in all cases is a word easier to pro- nounce in the new than in the old form, liut although the unc"ii>cious striving after ease in pronunciation is at the bottom of many changes, there is also at work a tendency to gratify the ear by making changes which result in producing sounds pleasant in themselves to listen to, and by avoiding sounds of the opposite, description. 1 On the strength of this latter in- stinct mainly depends the beauty of a language as judged by the ear; and the instinct was strung in the Greeks and potent 1 Ultimately, the conception of beauty in sound m:iy. perhaps, lie traced hack t ease of pronunciation. Movements are graceful which an- pro- duci'd with tin; Minimum of effort, l-'luwin^ lines are mm''- ^raeeiul than ; ii'.'ies l>ecau>i' they surest the idea tint tln-y have heeii produced with I lore ea-e. So, tno. the reason why some sounds are ploasant t<> the eai may 1 e that tin-y MiL'-.'>->t the idea that they lluw without eti'ort. Of course, tins would only apply, or apply mainly only, to spoken sounds. Sinzin^ and 7 IUMC ivijiiite otin-r explanations, though the difference in effort hetween s iuin_'. which is pleasant, aud screaming, which is not, points in the same direction. CONCLUSION. 495 in the formation of their language. Whether the disappearance of the ir sound of the digamma and the // sound of the iota was determined by a proper exercise of instinct or only by a capricious repugnance, the aversion to the hissing sound of a succession of sibilants was certainly a gain to the beauty of the language. 1 Even dearer cases of gain are the systematic avoidance of a congeries of consonants, and the repugnance to ending a word with a consonant, and thus bringing it up with a jerk at the end. Assimilation and dissimilation both of con- sonants ami vowels were n.-ed also with a sense of the beauty to be got out of them. The vowel system was so developed as to irive variety and lightness to the language. In a word of several syllables, instead of rev-eating the same vowel sound in syllable after syllable, so that the sound of the word was dull and monotonous, the vowels were varied. Wli'-n once this variation of vowels had established itself in certain words, the influence of analogy reinforced tii>' strength of the original tendency, and the dissimilation of vowel* became the recog- nised principle regulating the addition of terminations (such as those of the comparative and superlative of adjectives) and the process of word-formation. The two principles which underlie the production of things beautiful, whether in painting, mu-ic, or literature, are variety in harmony and variety in contrast. Thesi- two qualities are conspicuous in the (Ireek language, judgi-d by the ear: and to them must be added the quality which charactfri-ed (iivek art generally measure in all things. The (iivek> allowed play to tlu 1 t'-ndency to express themselves with possiMe, but tiH'v did not allow it to i>ro'-< tate against intelligibility. They ivj. were hard to i r- -M* >unce or disauri stopped in this j-ro'-i have been imp' issihle to the va: iety of contrast be systems. Th>'v ininTUi of c' intra>t exi>t'-d. am the hr ad s> uiid ' >f the n as to add variety iu vhich ( ip'i-k autln '!': vitli whii'li thi'V i:ad to e; ii w..:;ld sati-fv t'ne ear > \ nr .1 l'in_''!:i_'". ^ i. at lli' 1 in r tie' words of tie- laiiu'ua,'i 49 6 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. literary men in their turn did for the sentence and the period. The sentence, and then the period, first in poetry and after- wards in prose, were, as regards the beauty of their sound, gradually invested with the same variety of harmony and con- trast, the same balance, ease of pronunciation, and gratification to the sense of hearing, as already marked the separate words of the language. This constitutes one of the beauties of Greek literature, and is a beauty intimately connected with its oral communication. Modern literature is taken in by the eyes rather than the ears ; and modern readers so rarely hoar litera- ture, that it is sometimes even necessary to explain that prose quite as much as poetry has its own rhythms, and that in the mere sound of a sentence beauty may reside. But although art may take Avords as its material and create beauty out of them as well as out of musical sounds, the prac- tical object of language is to express our thoughts. We have therefore to consider how the Greek language performed this its main function. The first and greatest quality of the language from this point of view is its clearness. Both in the formation of words and in the structure of its sentences it is transparent. As regards the former, a word in Greek at once shows by its form what other words it is by derivation connected with, what is the root of the word, how it is formed from the root, and what modification in meaning the root has undergone along with its modification in form or with its extension by the addi- tion of a termination. The structure of the sentence is also transparent. In common with other inflectional languages, it possessed the advantage of stamping each word as it proceeded from the mouth of the speaker with the inflectional mark which indicated its position and function in the sentence. But it is not in all inflectional languages that the structure of the sentence can be thus readily seen through and the superior transparency of Greek, as we have it in the literature preserved to us, is due to the oral character of the literature. In works that are de- signed to be read, clearness is not so imperatively demanded as it is in works that reach an audience through its ears only. A reader, if he fails to catch the author's meaning at first, can read through the sentence again and again until he puzzles the meaning out. But an audience listening to an orator, a drama, or the recitation of any work, whether in prose or poetry, has no such opportunity. Consequently, the author's first business, if lie wishes to retain the attention of the audience whose ap- proval he is seeking, is to write in such a manner that he who listens can readily 'understand. Hence the rareness of paren- CONCLUSION. 497 theses in Greek, and the aversion to heaping up relative clauses, which necessarily have a looseness of connection, in which both author and audience have a tendency, which is diliicult to obviate, to lose sight of the point of view from which the sen- tence started. Terseness, too, was demanded of the Greek author, and was largely obtained by the use of participles. What with us becomes a causal, concessive, temporal, or hypo- thetical clause, was expressed in Greek by a participle. A marked feature of the ( Jreek language is its extensive use of anti- thesis ; the value of which for an oral literature is considerable. ]t substitutes for complex sentences simple ones; for a pro- longed strain a short and easy appeal to the hearer's attention. To the general clearness of Greek literature there are two classes of exceptions. The tirst is constituted by the few authors who, like Thucydides. wrote to be studied in private, and not to be produced before the assembled public. The second consists of poetry, such as the choruses of plays and the lyric poetry of I'indar, which was destined to be produced with the most elaborate musical accompaniment known to the (! reeks, and in which, accordingly, clearness of thought seems to have been subordinated to beauty of sound. The second great ijualitv of the Greek language is its life, Tiie apparatus of terminations and inllecti>>ns with which the language was extensively provided, and which culd only b" worked by means of a considerable attention to regularity, was never allowed to reduce- the formation either of words or sentences to a merely mechanical process. In Latin literature the observance of the laws of the. language was in.-i-tcd on before everything. The 1 ( ! reeks pushed nothing to excess : nor did they sacriiice to monotonous regularity and dull formality the ad- vantage which an independent exereise of reason might secure in the way of ease, grace, and vurictv. H"iice \\- t > not only lind that Herodotus frequently and unintentionally wanders oil' in a sentence which is perfectly transparent and intelligible, but which never conies to a strictly grammatical eoiiclu.-ion. AVi- also lind that anacolutlia of this kind are deliberately introduced by I teiiiostheiies to atlord relief to perfect periods and artisti- cally rounded Sentences. The same tendency to set the spirit above tiie law of the language is >eeii in the (livi-k fndness f, >r construct;. 'iis in which greater regard i- IMI I to the sen,- thin to the grammatical s; uriure of the sentence. Tiie language' i.s instinct with life : ir never tolerates a mere automatic attention, it is tran.-p i:vnt to those who will take the trouble t Vok through it, but it requires always. " a seeing eye : " it is the pro- 2 I HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. duct of an intelligent people, and requires intelligence therefore to follow it. Greek thought played like lightning over the sentence while it was in course of formation, and frequently fused two sentences into one pregnant whole. Hence the attrac- tion of the antecedent into the clause of the relative, the attraction of the relative to agree in case with the demonstrative pronoun, and in certain cases the disappearance of the demonstrative altogether. 1 But the life there is in the Greek language must not be supposed to consist merely in violations of strict and formal grammar. The linguistic instinct of the Greeks allowed them only to pursue the somewhat dangerous path of departing from grammar so far as it led to increased vividness and ease without incurring the risk of unintelligibility. The most triumphant display of the quality we are considering occurs within the range of strict grammar : it consists in the development of the Greek particles. They are essentially the work of an intelligent people, and they require for their proper use an insight into tho language which Aristotle remarked was not in his day usually possessed by foreigners. In reading a modern writer, it is very rarely that we find his words of themselves indicating 011 what part of the sentence lie intended the stress to be laid ; and the absence of such indication frequently leaves us, not perhaps in doubt as to his precise meaning, but in ignorance of the importance which a certain word is intended to have. The " forcible feeble " device of italics may in such a printed sen- tence as " He said so" be made to convey an imputation on the speaker's accuracy ; but it ought to be possible to express this imputation by as slight a modification in the sentence as we make in the tone with which the sentence is pronounced. In Greek it can be done by tke insertion of a particle of two letters. Nothing can testify more plainly to the habitual liveliness with which the Greeks spoke and thought than the fact that it modified their language so completely that every significant inflection of the voice could be reflected in the words of the sentence. Hitherto we have considered tho Greek language as a whole, but it was divided into dialects, and they played an important part in the literature of Greece. There were three main dialects, Doric, Ionic, and Azotic . and many varieties and sub-varieties of these. Indeed, each locality seems to have had peculiarities of speech, doubtless minute, distinguishing it from other localities i Hence, too, the fusion of two strictly speaking incompatible poiuts o^ view in sueli sentences as oloB' 8 opa.nov. CONCLUSION. 499 in which the same main dialect was spoken. The three main dialects were probably sprung from one common ancestor, but when the differentiation took place is unknown. The germs of the difference may have been in existence before Greek was a language by itself : the rise of the three dialects is certainly pre-liistoric. On the differences between them this is not the place to speak. It is sufficient for our purpose to say that Doric retained more of the old sounds belonging to the original language than the other dialects, and that changes and innova- tions were most frequent in Ionic. The difference corresponds with the difference in character between the conservative Dorians and the more progressive lonians. The Dorians spoke, as in matters political and social they moved, slowly and deliberated. The lonians, especially the Athenians, spoke rapidly and volubly. Accordingly, in Doric we lind that the vowel sounds arc broader and fuller, and the combinations of consonants require more effort to pronounce : while in Ionic the attrition of perpetual usage has worn down both classes of sound into greater flexibility. Lmic was therefore naturally the dialect for prose, as it was the dialect of the race in which discussion was most free and most frequent. Doric, on the other hand, seems to have been spe- cially suited for musical accompaniment, and was the dialect in which lyric poetry was written. With regard to the functions of the dialects in literature, it is generally said that each kind of literature continued to lie composed in the dialect of the race which invented it. This witli considerable modifications is true. The conditions which determined what kind of literature each race should produce would to a very large extent be the same as those which deter- mined the dialect of the race ; and consequently between the literature and the dialect of any place there would be an atlinity and harmony which was not likely to escape the fine perception of the (J-reeks, nor to be violated by them. The best example is afforded by choral lyric, which, whether th who took it up came from llu-otia or from I it was incorporated into the Attic drama, st composed in Poric. Hut even this examp factory, for although Sparta was the place received its earliest development, choral lyric was in no measure the work of Spartan poets. And in the next place, in the drama at least, the Doric of the choruses is not precisely Ddc as it was ever spoken, but a conventional literary dialect, in which words were inserted borrowed from other dialects or inveiU'-d by the poet himself. The dialect in which the Homeric, porius 5OO HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. were composed was indeed followed, as being the proper dialect for epic poetry ; but it probably also is a conventional dialect, used for literary purposes, and not anywhere used as the lan- guage of ordinary life. Of the three remaining kinds of litera- ture, iambic poetry, personal lyrics, and prose, none retained its original dialect throughout its history. Personal lyric originated among the ^Eolians. but when transplanted to any other people, naturally took the dialect of the poet whose individual feelings it was employed to convey. Iambic poetry may be regarded as having originated in Paros through the genius of Archi- lochus, and fur long it retained its native dialect. liut when it was adopted by the Athenians for the dialogue of drama, it took the dialect used in ordinary life by the audience who heard it, and became Attic. In the same way, and for the same rea- sons, prose, which was the work of the lonians in Asia Minor originally, and which for some time retained its native Ionic, was no sooner adopted by the Athenians than it became Attic itself. The chief instrument in the development of artistic prose was Athenian oratory ; and it was impossible that the Athenians should transact their political discussions and cases at law in a dialect not their own. lint in these cases, where a branch of literature was linally invested with a dialect other than that of the race which invented it, the change was amply justified by the result. If the tinal elaboration of prose and of the iambic took place in Attic, it was partly because iambics and prose found the same conditions favourable to their development as favoured the de- velopment of the Attic dialect. What were these conditions? Mainly the native tendency of the Athenians to speak much and discuss everything. Perpetual use gave the polish, per- petual care the keenness, which, as an instrument of thought, their language possessed. These conditions are also obviously suitable to the development of prose in literature, and to the development of iambic poetry. Iambics are in poetry what prose is in literature. They are the vehicle for dialogue and discussion. They have the nm.-t affinity, as Aristotle pointed out, with the rhythm of ordinary conversation. They are framed by nature fur pointed, terse, and telling iilows, such as might be given by orators in debate. It is, therefore, by no accident that iambics were, developed amongst a people who delighted in discussion, and no casual coincidence that the period of the drama was flowed by that of the orators. The iambics of the stage had prepared the language, literature, and people for the oratory of the law-courts and the assembly. CONCLUSION. 5OI Finally, as regards the language, its decay is instructive for the history of the literature. As the centralisation of literature in Athens facilitated its sudden fall, so the decay of the lan- guage was accelerated by the fact that Attic drove the other dialects out of the field. When Attic succumbed the other dialects had no recuperative forces to supply to the language, because Attic had already drained them of their vitality. .Lan- guage and literature did indeed continue to exist for many cen- turies after the death of J tcniosthenes ; hut the literature was cosmopolitan, not specifically Creek, the language Hellenistic, not classical. For language and literature alike the price of dissemination was decay. The conditions which were indispen- sable, if the language and literature of Greece were to become universal, were fatal to their further development as pmvly Greek. The literature of Greece could only become the pro- perty of the whole civilised world when literature ceased to be ditl'used orally, and came to be .spread by the multiplication of manuscripts ; and, as we have seen already, the written com- munication of literature was inconsistent with that collective criticism of the people, who.-e function was to foster what was good and weed out what was bad. So, too, the language of Greece, or rather Attic, could only become universal in the ancient world by being in everybody's lips ; and the language could not be u.-od by foreigners of all kind-, and by people inferior in culture and intelligence to the Athenians without .-ult'ei'in^. 1 Its two great qualities, clearness and life, are essen- tially due to the powers of reason which the Greeks pre-emi- nently possessed, developed by the continual contact of mind with mind. ' Nothing but constant communion with his con- temporaries could have produced [in an Athenian] that marvel- lous precision of language which is observable in Aristophanes, 1'lato. and the Orators." - This constant communion was im- possible to foreigners, even when they possessed the natural ct which might have benefited tin ivhy. and natives who, like Xeiiophon, .-pent much of 5O2 HISTOKY OF GREEK LITERATURE. together with the means adopted for addressing it, determined the form of the matter addressed to it. To the successive changes in the former correspond the successive forms of the literature epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry, historical, oratorical, and philosophical prose. That is the history of Greek litera- ture. I XI) EX. ABARTS, 91 Arotor, 233 Achseus, 231 Aehilleis. 37 A cron, 103 Actors, KIO, 197, 198 Aensilaus. 84, 299, 301, 324 ^E'l'iininf, 8b .Klian, 20, 128 .Kneas, the tactician, 366 ./Kolians, their place in Ureek litera- ture. 490 .-Kschines, 8:5. 406, 4^0 iL .Ksehylus, 67, 135. loo, 1 60, 183, 187, iSS, 189, io2 If., 210, 215, ^223. 247, 273, 370, 450 If. .-T'-ii'ii. 400 J-t/,1"/,;.-; 56, 60, 62, 68 A:, r ath"ele>. 173 A_rath"ii. 232 A-ias. 59 Alcious, 12,. i^olF. , 1^6, 163 AleaMis, the O'UHilian, 253 Alc-iiiiUiiii-:, ^o^, 400 tf. Alcinn-ui-s, 2 ;8 AlfliK'ntli*, 01 Aleinaii, 12?. 12(> il'.. 144, I ;5f. 485. 4 X 7. 4 S ' S Al' xaiii'-liiH. 47(1 An.axilas, 292 A u ax inlander, philosopher, 93, 465 Anaxiinander, historian, 365 Anaxinii.-nt's, 93, 298, 398, 465 Anaxiniein-s, the orator, 402 Anaxis, 300 Andocides, 379 ff., 390, 452, 454 AnJrotion, 460 Annalists, 339 Antajidros, 366 Antidiitns, 293 Antimaclms, 365 Antiinaclius of Colophon, 39, 90 Antiniachns of Teos, 90 Antiochus of Syracuse, 329 n. AntipJianes, 287 Antipli'in, the traLT'-dian. 233 Antinhon, the orator, 327, 371 If., J S 5^ 405 Antisthenes, 398 ff., 465 Al'liarells, 2 ^ ; Aj'ollodonis, ivrist, 173 Apollodonis. tragedian, 233 Arehii'i'iis, 244. 252 .\rr:iii';s. v>, >S, 01 Ar-as. 182 Ariirnote, 181 Arii 'ii, I2<. 488 Arii'hnm. 1^2 Ari^tau'ora-i, the historian, 3^.6 Ari-taivlm-:, 2; Ari-tare':.n>, the tragedian, 233 Aristi-a<, oi Ari?:ias, 187 504 INDEX. Aristippus, 365, 468 Aristocles, 468 Aristogiton, 459 Aristomenes, 253 Aristonicus, 436 Aristonymus, 253 Aristophanes of Byzantium, 86 Aristophanes, 241, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 253 ff., 330 n., 394, 479, 486 Aristophon, the comedian, 292 Aristophon, the orator. 436 Aristotle, 17, 30. 39, 75 Asianism, 462 ff. Asios. 87 Assyrian writing, 41 ; libraries, 47 Astroloyia, 8S Astronomy, 88 Astydanias. 206 Athanis, 366 Athenosus, 286 Athens, her services to Greek litera- ture, 491 Atthis, 6 1, 87 Audiences, for epic poems, 49 ; for lyric, 50 ff. ; reaction oil authors, 406 Axionicus, 292 BACCHYLIDES, 166, 170, 182 Bacis, 92 Background of Euripides' plays, 8, of the /Eneid, 8 Basques, 19 Jlatrackoint/omachia, 76 Belissus, 468 Bion, 298 ff., 468 Bhcsus, 237 Bceotus, 76 Books, trade in, 45 ff, JBour/onia, 87 Brontinus, 92 Bucolics, 146 By/antine learning, 30 n. CADMTS, 42, 298 ff., 301, 324 Cci;sar, ^i Callias, 252 Callicrates, 460 Calliuus, 60, 107, 112 ff. Calli>thenes, 436 Cantharus, 244, 2^3 Carcinus of Naupaetus, 87 Carcinus, tragedian, 219 Catalogue of women, 86 Cephisodorus, the comedian, 253 Cephisodorus, the historian, 366 Cer copes, 75 Cercops, 92 Chreremon, 233, 234 Charisius, 461 Charixena, 181 Charon, 298, 302, 324 Chersias, 87 Chionides, 244 Chios, Homeridae in, 53 Chcerilus, epic poet, 90 Choerilus, the dramatist, 187, 1 88, and n. Choral lyric, 179 ff., 182 Chorizontes, 25, 84 Chorus of Greek drama, 179 ff., 186, 187 n., 190, 196, 200, 202, 214, 226, 282 ff. Chronology, Greek, 339 Chrysippus, 85 Chrysothemis, 108 Cicero, 29, 30, 31, 74 ; and Isocrates, 39^ Cinesias, 182 Cinajthon, 57, 60, 87 Classical Greek literature, its na- ture, I ; proper introduction to literature generally, I, 484 Cleophon, 233 Cleostratus, 88 Clitagora, I Si Clito, 181 Clitomachus, 436 Clonas, 123, 124, 125, 126 Clytemestra, 18 n., 19 n. Comedy, 234 ff. ; Sicilian, 241 ; old, 24 } ; political influence, 262 ; middle, 279 ff, ; new, ib. Comnios, the, 191 Communication, rapid, of early Greek literature, 487 "Contamination," 277 Corax. 369 Cortnthian Epic, 87 Corinna. 171, 173. iSl Cosmopolitan character of later Greek literature, i Crates of Mallos, 32 Crates, the comedian, 244 ff. Cratinus, 245 ff., 249 Cratinus, the younger, 293 LS'DEX. 505 Cratisspus, 365 Cnitylus, 468 OeophylllS, 6l Civxus, 182 Critias, 155, 233, 365, 392 Crow-song, the, 109 Ctesias, 362 if. Cyelie, chorus, i 29 C\ die Oiivf-sev, 63 Cycle. epic. 54 if., 6 1 ff. Cydias, 400 <-'>/l>ri'nnii.t, 87 Deiochus, 20S ff.. Deiniuies, 449, 458 ff. Demetrius, 2> } ] 'eniochares, 436 Demoeles, the logographer, 299 Democles, the orator, 400 Democlides, 4()O Democracy, its inilueiice on (Jrcek litcnitiin-, I ^0 Deiuocrates, 4 ^61 Deiaocritus of Cln'os, lyric poet, 182 Democritus, the philosopher, 408 ]>i-iinnl(iciis of Tcros, 153 IV-mon, 436 Dt'inostlienep, 282, 40', 404 ff., 450, 453, 455 ff., 470 Development of Greek literature, 4<;2 IF. Diatoms, 170 ])ial. ii^ies, 478 l)i:iskt-i::i.-ts, 20 ff., 34 ff. ] )ici;icti 'try, 77, So ff. in. 466 Dionysoclonis, philosopher, 468 Dionysus-Zagreua, 92 Diophantus, 436 Diophilus, 90 Diotimus, 90 Dithyramb, 128 ff., 164, 167, 182, 183 ff., 234, 487 Divisions of Greek literature, 2 Doloiieia, 13 Dorians, their services to Greek literature, 489 Drama, 2 Dromo, 293 S, 125 Kcphantides, 244 J:'irt.'iiiikia, 172, 176 Ej'isoiles. lul Eriniia, 14 ; l-'.npliains, iSl Vliiliulides. 203 I'iiil-.iilus, thi- c-i'iiii'.iian, 291 Eulinlu^. orat. ], 41 'O Kucliili s. ti.i' aivhoit, 7.) J-luc-lidefi. philosopher, .\oS J-i'ld'-lIli]-. 2O ) I'lll' IH--1 US. 408 K,l' !1'!~. ^ II Ku- tt -, 2.14 5o6 INDEX. Euexinides, 244 Eugamon. 59 Eugon, 299 Euioelus, 61, 87 Eumolpus, 92 Eunicus, 253 Euphorion, 205 Eupolis. 244, 248 ff., 251 Euripides' epilogues, 15 ; back- ground, 8; 136, 144, 169, 182, luo, 191, 214, 219, 220 ff., 273, 281, 283, 394 Euripides, the younger, 231 Europia, 87 Eusebius, 69 and n. Eustathius, 59, 97 Euthias, 461 Euthycles, 253 Euthydemns, 468 Evenus of Paros, 155 Evolution of Greek literature, 404 ; of Greek oratory and of the drama, 405 FABLES, 117 Fairytales, 17, 19, 24 Folk-lore, Si Forgeries, literary, 154, 299 GENEALOGICAL poems, 87 Geranomackia, 76 Giyctntomachict, 76 Gnesippus, 233 Gorgias, 328, 370, 385, 300, 391 HAGNONIDES, 460 Harpocration, 459 n. Hecatteus, 298. 300 ff., 324. 325 Hegemon, writer of parodies, 76, 97, 253 HeLresander, 436 Hrgosias, 5; He;.', sinus. 87 Hegesippus, 448 ff. Heirias 59 Hellaiiieus, 25, 57, 302, 325 Heniochus, 2*13 Heraolidf.s, ci'ini-diai). 293 Heraelides, hi>turian. 366 Heraclitus, philosopher, 84, 85, 93, 46(3 Heraclitus. comedian, 293 H- nne~ianax, 155 Hermias, 366 Hermippus, 155, 248 Hermotimus, 468 Herodas, 155 Herodorus, 365 Herodotus, 84, 209 and n., 300, 301, 306 ff., 328, 335, 342, 346, 368. 476, 488 Herophilus, 305 Hesiod, 77 ff., 314 Hiatus, avoidance of, 396, 410 Hieroiiymus, the tragedian, 233 Hieronymus, 69 and n. Himerseus, 436 Hipparchus, 79 Hippias, 365, 369 Hippo, 468 Hippocrates, 303 ff. Hipponax, 154 Hippys, 299 Historical dramas, 197 History, 2, 297 ff. Hitopadeca, 19 Homer, 3, 26 ff. ; date of, 48, 65 : the tragedian, 66 ; parodied, 97, 485 Homeric epigrams, 93 Homeric hymns. 69 ff. Homeric poems, origin, 27 ff. Homeridfc, 51, 52 ff. Hyacinth song, 110 Hybrias, 170 Hvmn, meaning of, 69 Hyperid.es, 436 ff., 449, 452, 454 IAMBIC. 113. 114 Ibycus, 156 tf. Idseus, 466 Iliad, background, 7, 9 ; plot, I T ; Ilk. xxiv., 14 ; false conception of, 17 ; ai;e of, 26 Inscriptions, 42 ff. ; at Abu Simbel, 42 tf. Ion, 155, 218, 365 lonians. their place in Greek litera- ture. 400 lophon, 209 n., 218 lsa-us, 402 ff. , 407, 409 Isocrates, 32, 160, 201, 392 ff., 405, 407 Kl,H-la, 34 Kapinll. 126 K'k,:i(Ks, lS2 Kerkidas, 155 Kydias, 170 INDEX. 507 LAO-KITTS, 461 Laniproklt*!*, 170 Lasus, 92, 1(14, 173 Learchis, I Si Leosthcnes, 461 Lesches, 57 Leucippus, 468 Lrueo, 253 Libanius, 85 Licynuiius, 182 L.m-t, 1 10 Litcrarv classes, 2 I. Ml- fiwl, 57, 62, 68 Loirographers, in history, 93, 303 ; in oratory, 371, 407 Luciaii, ,13 Lycis, 253 Tjycurjjus, 32 Lycurirns. orator, .146 ff. Lyric pot-try, lot) tF. Lysias, 383 if., 403, 405, 452 Lysinpus, 252 M.KSOV, 2 ',6 Magics, 244 tf. Mamercus, 233 Manuscripts, 492 Mirnitct, 75 Matron, 7'> M,/-tmp<*(ia,S6 M' ianipirai' s. 170, lS2 Mt,'lani}>i>iili's, thf voun^t-r. 18 Mrli-saiforas, 2 ; )Q M< lie, ill. 121 IF. ; at court, 1 M- lir fpil-, 145 Mr'.issIlS, (,<) M''iiaii'i'-r. _'S^, 2^4, 2S;, 325 M. nairiii-, 181 M- Ili-lirlllll-. 4' S M-ii> sa'clnnus, 4 v^ M. nil.i'iis, 244 Mi-tiii'tiurat-ti i 'Nation, 74 n. M.'ta-. ii.-s, 25; M. tro,lorn>. 41. S Mini, s 2:2. 175. 478 Mni.n- nun.-, 112, 121, 487 Minvas. oi 299, Mvllus, 244 M>rtilu., 248 Mvrtis, 171, 173, iSi Mystis, iSi Mythology, 26 Ncojiliroii, 219 Xibilun;fcnlietl, 28, 33 Xichochares, 253 Nicoinachus, the tragedian, 233 Xic"[>liron, 253 ^s icostratus, 293 Xonu s, 108, 125 and n. Xstoi, 59 Xothipnus, 233 Ociopfs, 19 Cliiyssry, popularity, 17 ; unity. 17 ; argument, 17 ; exposition, 1 y ; "kernel" of. KJ; climax, 22; " oriirinul Odvssey," 23, 24 : unity of design, 23 ; au'e of, 26 ; ^,'eo- rrrapliical knowledge of, 27 (Kdipod-.-ia, (jo Ogres, 17 Ol'-n. K 8 (>li'_'areliy, its intl literature, I'xi ( >!\ in j'!i. - i iratii 'Us, ^84 < lllo;n;icritu-. 2'), ?O, ^ I 11. Oral character of (ireek literature, 48: transini>.-;on, .t'> ; delivery, 49 tf., l v). ;<)0 ; its intl , :; , 4<}2 IF. ; of pro>e, 3^4 ( Irator-, 2 i Iratory, 31.7 tF. : it- decline, 461 tf. ' ' on (!r>--k 1 n., 92 5oS INDEX. Parodos, the, 190 Parthenia, 128 Parthenon, 7 Pausanias, 29, 84 Pausanias, physician, 103 Peisander, 88 ff. Pergainurn, 31, 32 Pericles, 367 " Periodic " style, 376 Perigonius, 27 n. Perses, 82 Persinus, 92 Phsedimus, 90 Phffido, 468 Pherecrates, 247 Pherecvdes of Syros, 92, 93, 298 ff., 465 Pherecvdes, historian, 298 ff., 324 Philammon, 108 Philistus, 366 Philetserus, 293 Philinus, 460 Phiiiscus, 293 Philocles, 206 Philocrates, 460 Philodemos, 74 Philolaus, 468 Philonides, 2.18 Philosophy, 2, 465 Philoxenus, 182 Philyllius, 253 Phocuis, 6 1 Phocylides, 153 Phonnus, 237 Phoronis, 87 Photius, 25 Phrynichus, tragedian, 187 ff. , 192 Phrynichus, comedian, 251 Phrynis. li>2 Pigres, 75 Pindar, 39, 6;, 72, 107, 123, 170 .if., 376 Pisistratus, commission of, 29 fT. '' Vlain .-tyli-,'' 385 Plato, philosoph-r, 101. 261, 266, 275, 281, 297, 360, 468 if. Plato, the comedian, 244, 252 Pollio, 325 Poius. 468 P< ilycrates, 308, 401 PoKcidus. 182 Polyeuctus, 430, 449 Polynmestus, 126 1'olyzeeus, 253 Porphyry, 39, 324, 325 Posidonius, 32 Pratinas, 185 ff., 192 Praxigoris, 181 Praxilla, 181 Proclus. 54 ff., 61 ff., 75, IOI, 124 Prodicus, 61, 328, 369 Prologue, of tragedy. 190, 224, 225 Prose, discovery of, Si ; beginning of, 93, 297 ff." Protagoras, 48, 328, 368 ff. Psaromachia, 76 Publication, 28 Pythagoras, 465 Pythangelus, 233 Pytheas, 459 "READING tragedians," 233 ff. Recitation, 29 ; of Homer, 40, 312 Return, the, 59, 60, 63, 67, 68 Rhapsodists, 51 ff. Rhinthon, 237 " Running style," 376 Sack of Troy, 58, 60, .62 Sakadas, 126 Salpe, 181 Sannyrio, 253 Sappho, 123, 137 ff., 161, 163, 485 Satire, 479 Satyric drama, 1 86 " School " of ^Eschylus, 205 Schools, in B.C. 500, 45 Sciras. 237 Separatists. 25 Septuagint, 30 n. Setting Sail, the, 63 Shield of Jln-cuhs, 86 Sicilian rhetoric, 369 Silli, 97 SiinnniilfcS of Ainurcros, 117 ff., 153 Simonides of Ceus, 123, 163, 487, 48 S. Siiiionides fif Cos, historian, 365 tiiio, the, 63 Skalds, 36 >'/.( jJn-'/s, I IO Skytak'-, 44 ff.. 48 Socrat'-S, 99. 100, 200, 212, 222, 223 ; and Aristophanes, 263, 359, 465 Sdon. 107, 112, no, 155, 156, 487 frjiitfirli.i-a. 19 Songs, popular, 109 ff. INDKX. 509 So pater, 237 Sdphioiietus, 365 Si-philus. 203 Sophists, 204, 368, 465 Sophocles, 135, 183, "189, 207 fT., ^ 22;,, 227, 352, 335. 486. Sophocles, the younger, 2l8 S..phnm, 242, 475, 478 Sotuues, 2<>3 Sparta, her servkvs to lit-Tatnre, 487 ; rare ([iKilitic.s, 488 IF. Sphettus. 430 Spintharus, 2 ^3 Sta.-iina, mo IF. Staminas. 55 Stfsichurus, Si',, 123, 143 if., 157 Stesimbrutiis, 305 Stllelle L -US, 233 Stral ti.-, 25 ; StraTiu-les, .)()O Sui'ias, 75 anil n., So, 90, 127, 307 Suxinoii. 2 }i', 2 ;4 S\v:iil.,\v.. -i. iiu', the, 109 Syracuse, loo T.\i I'l'rs, conipaivcl with Thucv- (iiilt-s, U" tr - T'l"jinn, 50. 03, ("17 T'ltni'ifhvi, 1 8, 08 T. ;.-ii:ia, i s i Trl, >t- S. 182 '!' rpaiult r, 72. l in. 123 ff. rheophilus, 292 Thropninpns 325, 3^,3 fT. Th.-spis, 184 IF. Thcsturidrs, <,: Thrasyinachus, ^^o fF. s, 201, 313, 327 IF., ;;5, Tragedians aii'l Hniner, 65 IF. Tra-.-cly. ij... 183 IF. Traifii- t'lrn. th.-. I 2j r l'r:til>fi'nnat ;. ti. 24 Tril..-v, if)-,. 2 15, 478 Tr. 'jail taiiir, (13 Tviiiiichus, I ~(j Tvr.iiinv. it< iiiflu- nco on (ir.- literature. I >') Tyrta-us, 107, 112, I It',, 126 T/.i-t/.i.'S, 30. 4v.i n. ]]',, !,!;,./ -/ A'- ,r. 8., \v..if. 27 tr. \\ .iii.- ii, tln-ir p -:' i"ii, 120, 128 \\"riun_ r , -: N ; : .-in. \-.. .; I iF. ; in il-.H.- r. 42 : .iat- :. in ' IIX-L-O- 4 ; ; mat' rial-. : .r, 40, ,; . I MANUAL OF MYTHOLOGY FOH TUB USE OF Schools, Art Students & General Readers, FOUNDED ON THE WOMKS OF PETISCUS, PRELLER >\ND WELCKEH. BIJ ALi:\AXJ)i:ii S. ML' Jilt AY, Department (if i. e'i nd Rom.in Anti^uttie, British Muwjm. With 45 Plates on tmted paper, representing- more than 90 Mythological Subjects. One volume, crown 8vo, - .... $2.25. There has l.n,,; b, rn n.-i-.li-.l a compaet. manaKeaMe Manual of M;, thi/ojry, which nhimlil bo a :;tii.li' to tin; Art st'i.l.-tit MI.) the f:i-nn:a! p-rnliT, nn-! ftt th faun 1 time iu:-v.cr the ]Mir|n^e- of a M-hmp! t ..': !;. T!: : .H vol'.itue wl; h hai tX'eii ure]'uv.i 1.;, the iKivi-tur of the 1 >,; ^r: ::..:.: i,f Urti-k .:i.i !;'::. (k-. .'.::: i'j'iitie* in the I'.ritlsh .Minimi!, i:|-n l!:o I .-.i t.f the wor^" of IVtifU-u*, rr.-'.'.er, and W.-:.-k.-r, l.iis had so i-Mi-n-ivt! a sale in the KiiL'1 -'. '- ; .- '. n- to |,rov.' that II I'lviM''.}- -;ii'i'!ir.^ tin- want. This American Miiti'm I..L- Ix-rn ':' ''' fr ra (he la:'-t lii'.L'.^h r.'.i'ion. r\T:>l eoniair.- ail the ilUisUMtio:., f t Utter, - \:'.r i.\4 c!ni)>irr ii)>"" K'Htfn M^:\'^i't/i/ /. e CHARLES SCRIBNKR'S SONS, PL-RUSHERS, 743 ANIJ 745 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 11478 A 001 450382