The ancient literature falls into three periods: (A) _The Early
Literature_, to about 475 B.C.; epic, elegiac, iambic and lyric poetry;
the beginnings of literary prose. (B) _The Attic Literature_ 475-300
B.C.; tragic and comic drama; historical, oratorical and philosophical
prose. (C) _The Literature of the Decadence_, 300 B.C. to A.D. 529;
which may again be divided into the Alexandrian period, 300-146 B.C.,
and the Graeco-Roman period, 146 B.C. to A.D. 529.
For details regarding particular works or the lives of their authors
reference should be made to the separate articles devoted to the
principal Greek writers. The object of the following pages is to sketch
the literary development as a whole, to show how its successive periods
were related to each other, and to mark the dominant characteristics of
each.
(A) _The Early Literature._--A process of natural growth may be traced
through all the best work of the Greek genius. The Greeks were not
literary imitators of foreign models; the forms of poetry and prose in
which they attained to such unequalled excellence were first developed
by themselves. Their literature had its roots in their political and
social life; it is the spontaneous expression of that life in youth,
maturity and decay; and the order in which its several fruits are
produced is not the result of accident or caprice. Further, the old
Greek literature has a striking completeness, due to the fact that each
great branch of the Hellenic race bore a characteristic part in its
development. Ionians, Aeolians, Dorians, in turn contributed their
share. Each dialect corresponded to a certain aspect of Hellenic life
and character. Each found its appropriate work.
The dialects.
The Ionians on the coast of Asia Minor--a lively and genial people,
delighting in adventure, and keenly sensitive to everything bright and
joyous--created artistic epic poetry out of the lays in which Aeolic
minstrels sang of the old Achaean wars. And among the Ionians arose
elegiac poetry, the first variation on the epic type. These found a
fitting instrument in the harmonious Ionic dialect, the flexible
utterance of a quick and versatile intelligence. The Aeolians of Lesbos
next created the lyric of personal passion, in which the traits of their
race--its chivalrous pride, its bold but sensuous fancy--found a fitting
voice in the fiery strength and tenderness of Aeolic speech. The Dorians
of the Peloponnesus, Sicily and Magna Graecia then perfected the choral
lyric for festivals and religious worship; and here again an earnest
faith, a strong pride in Dorian usage and renown had an apt interpreter
in the massive and sonorous Doric. Finally, the Attic branch of the
Ionian stock produced the drama, blending elements of all the other
kinds, and developed an artistic literary prose in history, oratory and
philosophy. It is in the Attic literature that the Greek mind receives
its most complete interpretation.
A natural affinity was felt to exist between each dialect and that
species of composition for which it had been specially used. Hence the
dialect of the Ionian epic poets would be adopted with more or less
thoroughness even by epic or elegiac poets who were not Ionians. Thus
the Aeolian Hesiod uses it in epos, the Dorian Theognis in elegy, though
not without alloy. Similarly, the Dorian Theocritus wrote love-songs in
Aeolic. All the faculties and tones of the language were thus gradually
brought out by the co-operation of the dialects. Old Greek literature
has an essential unity--the unity of a living organism; and this unity
comprehends a number of distinct types, each of which is complete in its
own kind.
Pre-Homeric poetry.
Songs of the seasons.
Hymns.
Extant Greek literature begins with the Homeric poems. These are works
of art which imply a long period of antecedent poetical cultivation. Of
the pre-Homeric poetry we have no remains, and very little knowledge.
Such glimpses as we get of it connect it with two different stages in
the religion of the prehistoric Hellenes. The first of these stages is
that in which the agencies or forms of external nature were personified
indeed, yet with the consciousness that the personal names were only
symbols. Some very ancient Greek songs of which mention is made may have
belonged to this stage--as the songs of Linus, Ialemus and Hylas. Linus,
the fair youth killed by dogs, seems to be the spring passing away
before Sirius. Such songs have been aptly called "songs of the seasons."
The second stage is that in which the Hellenes have now definitively
personified the powers which they worship. Apollo, Demeter, Dionysus,
Cybele, have now become to them beings with clearly conceived
attributes. To this second stage belong the hymns connected with the
names of the legendary bards, such as Orpheus, Musaeus, Eumolpus, who
are themselves associated with the worship of the Pierian Muses and the
Attic ritual of Demeter. The seats of this early sacred poetry are not
only "Thracian"--i.e. on the borders of northern Greece--but also
"Phrygian" and "Cretan." It belongs, that is, presumably to an age when
the ancestors of the Hellenes had left the Indo-European home in central
Asia, but had not yet taken full possession of the lands which were
afterwards Hellenic. Some of their tribes were still in Asia; others
were settling in the islands of the Aegean; others were passing through
the lands on its northern seaboard. If there was a period when the
Greeks possessed no poetry but hymns forming part of a religious ritual,
it may be conjectured that it was not of long duration. Already in the
_Iliad_ a secular character belongs to the marriage hymn and to the
dirge for the dead, which in ancient India were chanted by the priest.
The bent of the Greeks was to claim poetry and music as public joys;
they would not long have suffered them to remain sacerdotal mysteries.
And among the earliest themes on which the lay artist in poetry was
employed were probably war-ballads, sung by minstrels in the houses of
the chiefs whose ancestors they celebrated.
Epos.
Such war-ballads were the materials from which the earliest epic poetry
of Greece was constructed. By an "epic" poem the Greeks meant a
narrative of heroic action in hexameter verse. The term [Greek: epe]
meant at first simply "verses"; it acquired its special meaning only
when [Greek: mele], lyric songs set to music, came to be distinguished
from [Greek: epe] verses not set to music, but merely recited. Epic
poetry is the only kind of extant Greek poetry which is older than about
700 B.C. The early epos of Greece is represented by the _Iliad_ and the
_Odyssey_, Hesiod and the Homeric hymns; also by some fragments of the
"Cyclic" poets.