After the Dorian conquest of the Peloponnesus, the Aeolian emigrants who
settled in the north-west of Asia Minor brought with them the warlike
legends of their chiefs, the Achaean princes of old. These legends lived
in the ballads of the Aeolic minstrels, and from them passed southward
into Ionia, where the Ionian poets gradually shaped them into higher
artistic forms. Among the seven places which claimed to be the
birthplace of Homer, that which has the best title is Smyrna. Homer
himself is called "son of Meles"--the stream which flowed through old
Smyrna, on the border between Aeolia and Ionia. The tradition is
significant in regard to the origin and character of the _Iliad_, for in
the _Iliad_ we have Achaean ballads worked up by Ionian art. A
preponderance of evidence is in favour of the view that the _Odyssey_
also, at least in its earliest form, was composed on the Ionian coast of
Asia Minor. According to the Spartan account, Lycurgus was the first to
bring to Greece a complete copy of the Homeric poems, which he had
obtained from the Creophylidae, a clan or gild of poets in Samos. A
better authenticated tradition connects Athens with early attempts to
preserve the chief poetical treasure of the nation. Peisistratus is said
to have charged some learned men with the task of collecting all "the
poems of Homer"; but it is difficult to decide how much was comprehended
under this last phrase, or whether the province of the commission went
beyond the mere task of collecting. Nor can it be determined what
exactly it was that Solon and Hipparchus respectively did for the
Homeric poems. Solon, it has been thought, enacted that the poems should
be recited from an authorized text ([Greek: ex hypoboles]); Hipparchus,
that they should be recited in a regular order ([Greek: ex
hypolepseos]). At any rate, we know that in the 6th century B.C. a
recitation of the poems of Homer was one of the established competitions
at the Panathenaea, held once in four years. The reciter was called a
_rhapsodist_--properly one who weaves a long, smoothly-flowing chant,
then an epic poet who chants his own or another's poem. The rhapsodist
did not, like the early minstrel, use the accompaniment of the harp; he
gave the verses in a flowing recitative, bearing in his hand a branch of
laurel, the symbol of Apollo's inspiration. In the 5th century B.C. we
find that various Greek cities had their own editions ([Greek: hai
politikai, kata poleis] or [Greek: ek poleon ekdoseis]) of the poems,
for recitation at their festivals. Among these were the editions of
Massilia, of Chios and of Argolis. There were also editions bearing the
name of the individual editor ([Greek: hai kat' andra])--the best known
being that which Aristotle prepared for Alexander. The recension of the
poems by Aristarchus (156 B.C.) became the standard one, and is probably
that on which the existing text is based. The oldest Homeric MS. extant,
Venetus A of the _Iliad_, is of the 10th century; the first printed
edition of Homer was that edited by the Byzantine Demetrius Chalcondyles
(Florence, 1488).
The Homeric question.
The ancient Greeks were almost unanimous in believing the _Iliad_ and
the _Odyssey_ to be the work of one man, Homer, to whom they also
ascribed some extant hymns, and probably much more besides. Aristotle
and Aristarchus seem to have put Homer's date about 1044 B.C., Herodotus
about 850 B.C. It is not till about 170 B.C. that the grammarians
Hellanicus and Xenon put forward the view that Homer was the author of
the _Iliad_, but not of the _Odyssey_. Those who followed them in
assigning different authors to the two poems were called the Separators
(_Chorizontes_). Aristarchus combated "the paradox of Xenon," and it
does not seem to have had much acceptance in antiquity. Giovanni
Battista Vico, a Neapolitan (1668-1744), seems to have been the first
modern to suggest the composite authorship and oral tradition of the
Homeric poems; but this was a pure conjecture in support of his theory
that the names of ancient lawgivers and poets are often mere symbols. F.
A. Wolf, in the _Prolegomena_ to his edition (1795), was the founder of
a scientific scepticism. The _Iliad_, he said (for he recognized the
comparative unity and consistency of the _Odyssey_), was pieced together
from many small unwritten poems by various hands, and was first
committed to writing in the time of Peisistratus. This view was in
harmony with the tone of German criticism at the time; it was welcomed
as a new testimony to the superiority of popular poetry, springing from
fresh natural sources, to elaborate works of art; and it at once found
enthusiastic adherents. For the course of Homeric controversy since Wolf
the reader is referred to the article HOMER.
Cyclic poems.
The Ionian school of epos produced a number of poems founded on the
legends of the Trojan war, and intended as introductions or
continuations to the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. The grammarian Proclus
(A.D. 140) has preserved the names and subjects of some of these; but
the fragments are very scanty. The _Nostoi_ or _Homeward Voyages_, by
Agias (or Hagias) of Troezen, filled up the gap of ten years between
the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_; the _Lay of Telegonus_, by Eugammon of
Cyrene, continued the story of the Odyssey to the death of Odysseus by
the hand of Telegonus, the son whom Circe bore to him. Similarly the
_Cyprian Lays_ by Stasinus of Cyprus, ascribed by others to Hegesias (or
Hegesinus) of Salamis or Halicarnassus, was introductory to the _Iliad_;
the _Aethiopis_ and the _Sack of Troy_, by Arctinus of Miletus, and the
_Little Iliad_, by Lesches of Mytilene, were supplementary to it. These
and many other names of lost epics--some taken also from the Theban
myths (_Thebais_, _Epigoni_, _Oedipodea_)--serve to show how prolific
was that epic school of which only two great examples remain. The name
of _epic cycle_ was properly applied to a prose compilation of abstracts
from these epics, pieced together in the order of the events. The
compilers were called "cyclic" writers; and the term has now been
transferred to the epic poets whom they used.[1]
Hesiodic epos.
The epic poetry of Ionia celebrated the great deeds of heroes in the old
wars. But in Greece proper there arose another school of epos, which
busied itself with religious lore and ethical precepts, especially in
relation to the rural life of Boeotia. This school is represented by the
name of Hesiod. The legend spoke of him as vanquishing Homer in a
poetical contest of Chalcis in Euboea; and it expresses the fact that,
to the old Greek mind, these two names stood for two contrasted epic
types. Nothing is certainly known of his date, except that it must have
been subsequent to the maturity of Ionian epos. He is conjecturally
placed about 850-800 B.C.; but some would refer him to the early part of
the 7th century B.C. His home was at Ascra, a village in a valley under
Helicon, whither his father had migrated from Cyme in Aeolis on the
coast of Asia Minor. In Hesiod's _Works and Days_ we have the earliest
example of a didactic poem. The seasons and the labours of the Boeotian
farmer's year are followed by a list of the days which are lucky or
unlucky for work. The _Theogony_, or "Origin of the Gods," describes
first how the visible order of nature arose out of chaos; next, how the
gods were born. Though it never possessed the character of a sacred
book, it remained a standard authority on the genealogies of the gods.
So far as a corrupt and confused text warrants a judgment, the poet was
piecing together--not always intelligently--the fragments of a very old
cosmogonic system, using for this purpose both the hymns preserved in
the temples and the myths which lived in folklore. The epic lay in 480
lines called the _Shield of Heracles_--partly imitated from the 18th
book of the _Iliad_--is the work of an author or authors later than
Hesiod. In the Hesiodic poetry, as represented by the _Works and Days_
and the _Theogony_, we see the influence of the temple at Delphi. Hesiod
recognizes the existence of [Greek: daimones]--spirits of the departed
who haunt the earth as the invisible guardians of justice; and he
connects the office of the poet with that of the prophet. The poet is
one whom the gods have authorized to impress doctrine and practical
duties on men. A religious purpose was essentially characteristic of the
Hesiodic school. Its poets treated the old legends as relics of a sacred
history, and not merely, in the Ionian manner, as subjects of idealizing
art. Such titles as the _Maxims of Cheiron_ and the _Lay of Melampus_,
the seer--lost poems of the Hesiodic school--illustrate its ethical and
its mystic tendencies.
The Homeric hymns.
The _Homeric Hymns_ are a collection of pieces, some of them very short,
in hexameter verse. Their traditional title is--_Hymns_ or _Preludes of
Homer and the Homeridae_. The second of the alternative designations is
the true one. The pieces are not "hymns" used in formal worship, but
"preludes" or prefatory addresses ([Greek: prooimia]) with which the
rhapsodists ushered in their recitations of epic poetry. The "prelude"
might be addressed to the presiding god of the festival, or to any local
deity whom the reciter wished to honour. The pieces (of which there are
33) range in date perhaps from 750 to 500 B.C. (though some authorities
assign dates as late as the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D.; see ed. by Sikes
and Allen, e.g. p. 228), and it is probable that the collection was
formed in Attica, for the use of rhapsodists. The style is that of the
Ionian or Homeric epos; but there are also several traces of the
Hesiodic or Boeotian school. The principal "hymns" are (1) to Apollo
(generally treated as two or more hymns combined in one); (2) to Hermes;
(3) to Aphrodite; and (4) to Demeter. The hymn to Apollo, quoted by
Thucydides (iii. 104) as Homer's, is of peculiar interest on account of
the lines describing the Ionian festival at Delos. Two celebrated pieces
of a sportive kind passed under Homer's name. The _Margites_--a comic
poem on one "who knew many things but knew them all badly"--is regarded
by Aristotle as the earliest germ of comedy, and was possibly as old as
700 B.C. Only a few lines remain. The _Batracho(myo)machia_, or _Battle
of the Frogs and Mice_ probably belongs to the decline of Greek
literature, perhaps to the 2nd century B.C.[2] About 300 verses of it
are extant.
Transition from epos to elegy.
In the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ the personal opinions or sympathies of
the poet may sometimes be conjectured, but they are not declared or even
hinted. Hesiod, indeed, sometimes gives us a glimpse of his own troubles
or views. Yet Hesiod is, on the whole, essentially a prophet. The
message which he delivers is not from himself; the truths which he
imparts have not been discovered by his own search. He is the mouthpiece
of the Delphian Apollo. Personal opinion and feeling may tinge his
utterance, but they do not determine its general complexion. The egotism
is a single thread; it is not the basis of the texture. Epic poetry was
in Greece the foundation of all other poetry; for many centuries no
other kind was generally cultivated, no other could speak to the whole
people. Politically, the age was monarchical or aristocratic;
intellectually, it was too simple for the analysis of thought or
emotion. Kings and princes loved to hear of the great deeds of their
ancestors; common men loved to hear of them too, for they had no other
interest. The mind of Greece found no subject of contemplation so
attractive as the warlike past of the race, or so useful as that lore
which experience and tradition had bequeathed. But in the course of the
8th century B.C. the rule of hereditary princes began to disappear.
Monarchy gave place to oligarchy, and this--often after the intermediate
phase of a tyrannis--to democracy. Such a change was necessarily
favourable to the growth of reflection. The private citizen is no longer
a mere cipher, the Homeric [Greek: tis], a unit in the dim multitude of
the king-ruled folk; he gains more power of independent action, his
mental horizon is widened, his life becomes fuller and more interesting.
He begins to feel the need of expressing the thoughts and feelings that
are stirred in him. But as yet a prose literature does not exist; the
new thoughts, like the old heroic stories, must still be told in verse.
The forms of verse created by this need were the Elegiac and the Iambic.
Elegy.
The elegiac metre is, in form, a simple variation on the epic metre,
obtained by docking the second of two hexameters so as to make it a
verse of five feet or measures. But the poetical capabilities of the
elegiac couplet are of a wholly different kind from those of heroic
verse. [Greek: elegos] seems to be the Greek form of a name given by the
Carians and Lydians to a lament for the dead. This was accompanied by
the soft music of the Lydian flute, which continued to be associated
with Greek elegy. The non-Hellenic origin of elegy is indicated by this
very fact. The flute was to the Greeks an Asiatic instrument--string
instruments were those which they made their own--and it would hardly
have been wedded by them to a species of poetry which had arisen among
themselves. The early elegiac poetry of Greece was by no means confined
to mourning for the dead. War, love, politics, proverbial philosophy,
were in turn its themes; it dealt, in fact, with the chief interest of
the poet and his friends, whatever that might be at the time. It is the
direct expression of the poet's own thoughts, addressed to a
sympathizing society. This is its first characteristic. The second is
that, even when most pathetic or most spirited, it still preserves, on
the whole, the tone of conversation or of narrative. Greek elegy stops
short of lyric passion. English elegy, whether funereal as in Dryden and
Pope, or reflective as in Gray, is usually true to the same normal type.
Roman elegy is not equally true to it, but sometimes tends to trench on
the lyric province. For Roman elegy is mainly amatory or sentimental;
and its masters imitated, as a rule, not the early Greek elegists, not
Tyrtaeus or Theognis, but the later Alexandrian elegists, such as
Callimachus or Philetas. Catullus introduced the metre to Latin
literature, and used it with more fidelity than his followers to its
genuine Greek inspiration.
Iambic verse.
Elegy, as we have seen, was the first slight deviation from epos. But
almost at the same time another species arose which had nothing in
common with epos, either in form or in spirit. This was the iambic. The
word [Greek: iambos], _iambus_ ([Greek: iaptein], to dart or shoot) was
used in reference to the licensed raillery at the festivals of Demeter;
it was the maiden Iambe, the myth said, who drew the first smile from
the mourning goddess. The iambic metre was at first used for satire; and
it was in this strain that it was chiefly employed by its earliest
master of note, Archilochus of Paros (670 B.C.). But it was adapted to
the expression generally of any pointed thought. Thus it was suitable to
fables. Elegiac and iambic poetry both belong to the borderland between
epic and lyric. While, however, elegy stands nearer to epos, iambic
stands nearer to the lyric. Iambic poetry can express the personal
feeling of the poet with greater intensity than elegy does; on the other
hand, it has not the lyric flexibility, self-abandonment or glow. As we
see in the case of Solon, iambic verse could serve for the expression of
that deeper thought, that more inward self-communing, for which the
elegiac form would have been inappropriate.
But these two forms of poetry, both Ionian, the elegiac and the iambic,
belong essentially to the same stage of the literature. They stand
between the Ionian epos and the lyric poetry of the Aeolians and
Dorians. The earliest of the Greek elegists, Callinus and Tyrtaeus, use
elegy to rouse a warlike spirit in sinking hearts. Archilochus too wrote
warlike elegy, but used it also in other strains, as in lament for the
dead. The elegy of Mimnermus of Smyrna or Colophon is the plaintive
farewell of an ease-loving Ionian to the days of Ionian freedom. In
Solon elegy takes a higher range; it becomes political and ethical.[3]
Theognis represents the maturer union of politics with a proverbial
philosophy. Another gnomic poet was Phocylides of Miletus; an admonitory
poem extant under his name is probably the work of an Alexandrine Jewish
Christian. Xenophanes gives a philosophic strain to elegy. With
Simonides of Ceos it reverts, in an exquisite form, to its earliest
destination, and becomes the vehicle of epitaph on those who fell in the
Persian Wars. Iambic verse was used by Simonides (or Semonides) of
Amorgus, as by Archilochus, for satire--but satire directed against
classes rather than persons. Solon's iambics so far preserve the old
associations of the metre that they represent the polemical or
controversial side of his political poetry. Hipponax of Ephesus was
another iambic satirist--using the [Greek: skazon] ("limping") or
choliambic verse, produced by substituting a spondee for an iambus in
the last place. But it was not until the rise of the Attic drama that
the full capabilities of iambic verse were seen.
Lyric poetry.
The lyric poetry of early Greece may be regarded as the final form of
that effort at self-expression which in the elegiac and iambic is still
incomplete. The lyric expression is deeper and more impassioned. Its
intimate union with music and with the rhythmical movement of the dance
gives to it more of an ideal character. At the same time the continuity
of the music permits pauses to the voice--pauses necessary as reliefs
after a climax. Before lyric poetry could be effective, it was necessary
that some progress should have been made in the art of music. The
instrument used by the Greeks to accompany the voice was the
four-stringed lyre, and the first great epoch in Greek music was when
Terpander of Lesbos (660 B.C.), by adding three strings, gave the lyre
the compass of the octave. Further improvements are ascribed to Olympus
and Thaletas. By 500 B.C. Greek music had probably acquired all the
powers of expression which the lyric poet could demand. The period of
Greek lyric poetry may be roughly defined as from 670 to 440 B.C. Two
different parts in its development were taken by the Aeolians and the
Dorians.
Aeolian school.
The lyric poetry of the Aeolians--especially of Lesbos--was essentially
the utterance of personal feeling, and was usually intended for a single
voice, not for a chorus. Lesbos, in the 7th century B.C., had attained
some naval and commercial importance. But the strife of oligarchy and
democracy was active; the Lesbian nobles were often driven by revolution
to exchange their luxurious home-life for the hardships of exile. It is
such a life of contrasts and excitements, working on a sensuous and
fiery temperament, that is reflected in the fragments of Alcaeus. In
these glimpses of war and love, of anxiety for the storm-tossed state
and of careless festivity, there is much of the cavalier spirit; if
Archilochus is in certain aspects a Greek Byron, Alcaeus might be
compared to Lovelace. The other great representative of the Aeolian
lyric is Sappho, the only woman of Greek race who is known to have
possessed poetical genius of the first order. Intensity and melody are
the characteristics of the fragments that remain to us.[4] Probably no
poet ever surpassed Sappho as an interpreter of passion in exquisitely
subtle harmonies of form and sound. Anacreon of Teos, in Ionia, may be
classed with the Aeolian lyrists in so far as the matter and form of his
work resembled theirs, though the dialect in which he wrote was mainly
the Ionian. A few fragments remain from his hymns to the gods, from
love-poems and festive songs. The collection of sixty short pieces which
passes current under his name date only from the 10th century. The short
poems which it comprises are of various age and authorship, probably
ranging in date from c. 200 B.C. to A.D. 400 or 500. They have not the
pure style, the flexible grace, or the sweetness of the classical
fragments; but the verses, though somewhat mechanical, are often pretty.
Dorian school.
The Dorian lyric poetry, in contrast with the Aeolian, had more of a
public than of a personal character, and was for the most part choral.
Hymns or choruses for the public worship of the gods, and odes to be
sung at festivals on occasions of public interest, were its
characteristic forms. Its central inspiration was the pride of the
Dorians in the Dorian past, in their traditions of worship, government
and social usage. The history of the Dorian lyric poetry does not
present us with vivid expressions of personal character, like those of
Alcaeus and Sappho, but rather with a series of artists whose names are
associated with improvements of form. Thus Alcman (the Doric form of
Alcmaeon; 660 B.C.) is said to have introduced the balanced movement of
strophe and antistrophe. Stesichorus, of Himera in Sicily, added the
epode, sung by the chorus while stationary after these movements; Arion
of Methymna in Lesbos gave a finished form to the choral hymn
("dithyramb") in honour of Dionysus, and organized the "cyclic" or
circular chorus which sang it at the altar. Ibycus of Rhegium (c. 540)
wrote choral lyrics after Stesichorus and glowing love-songs in the
Aeolic style.
Simonides and Pindar.
The culmination of the lyric poetry is marked by two great names,
Simonides and Pindar. Simonides (556-468) was an Ionian of the island of
Ceos, but his lyrics belonged by form to the choral Dorian school. Many
of his subjects were taken from the events of the Persian wars: his
epitaphs on those who fell at Thermopylae and Salamis were celebrated.
In him the lyric art of the Dorians is interpreted by Ionian genius, and
Athens--where part of his life was passed--is the point at which they
meet. Simonides is the first Greek lyrist whose significance is not
merely Aeolian or Dorian but Panhellenic. The same character belongs
even more completely to his younger contemporary. Pindar (518-c. 443)
was born in Boeotia of a Dorian stock; thus, as Ionian and Dorian
elements meet in Simonides, so Dorian and Aeolian elements meet in
Pindar. Simonides was perhaps the most tender and most exquisite of the
lyric poets. Pindar was the boldest, the most fervid and the most
sublime. His extant fragments[5] represent almost every branch of the
lyric art. But he is known to us mainly by forty-four _Epinicia_, or
odes of victory, for the Olympian, Pythian, Nemean and Isthmian
festivals. The general characteristic of the treatment is that the
particular victory is made the occasion of introducing heroic legends
connected with the family or city of the victor, and of inculcating the
moral lessons which they teach. No Greek lyric poetry can be completely
appreciated apart from the music, now lost, to which it was set.
Pindar's odes were, further, essentially occasional poems; they abound
in allusions of which the effect is partly or wholly lost on us; and the
glories which they celebrate belong to a life which we can but
imperfectly realize. Of all the great Greek poets, Pindar is perhaps the
one to whom it is hardest for us to do justice; yet we can at least
recognize his splendour of imagination, his strong rapidity and his
soaring flight.
Bacchylides of Ceos (c. 504-430), the youngest of the three great lyric
poets and nephew of Simonides, was known only by scanty fragments until
the discovery of nineteen poems on an Egyptian papyrus in 1896. They
consist of thirteen (or fourteen) epinicia, two of which celebrate the
same victories as two odes of Pindar. The papyrus also contains six odes
for the festivals of gods or heroes. The poems contain valuable
information on the court life of the time and legendary history.
Bacchylides, the little "Cean nightingale," is inferior to his great
rival Pindar, "the Swan of Dirce," in originality and splendour of
language, but he writes simply and elegantly, while his excellent
[Greek: gnomai] attracted readers of a philosophical turn of mind,
amongst them the emperor Julian.
Similarly, the scanty fragments of Timotheus of Miletus (d. 357),
musical composer and poet, and inventor of the eleven-stringed lyre,
were increased by the discovery in 1902 of some 250 lines of his "nome"
the _Persae_, written after the manner of Terpander. The beginning is
lost; the middle describes the battle of Salamis; the end is of a
personal nature. The papyrus is the oldest Greek MS. and belongs to the
age of Alexander the Great. The language is frequently very obscure, and
the whole is a specimen of lyric poetry in its decline.
(B) _The Attic Literature._--The Ionians of Asia Minor, the Aeolians and
the Dorians had now performed their special parts in the development of
Greek literature. Epic poetry had interpreted the heroic legends of
warlike deeds done by Zeus-nourished kings and chiefs. Then, as the
individual life became more and more elegiac and iambic poetry had
become the social expression of that life in all its varied interests
and feelings. Lastly, lyric poetry had arisen to satisfy a twofold
need--to be the more intense utterance of personal emotion, or to give
choral voice, at stirring moments, to the faith or fame, the triumph or
the sorrow, of a city or a race. A new form of poetry was now to be
created, with elements borrowed from all the rest. And this was to be
achieved by the people of Attica, in whose character and language the
distinctive traits of an Ionian descent were tempered with some of the
best qualities of the Dorian stock.
Origin of drama.
Tragedy.
The drama (q.v.) arose from the festivals of Dionysus, the god of wine,
which were held at intervals from the beginning of winter to the
beginning of spring. A troop of rustic worshippers would gather around
the altar of the god, and sing a hymn in his honour, telling of his
victories or sufferings in his progress over the earth. "Tragedy" meant
"the goat-song," a goat ([Greek: tragos]) being sacrificed to Dionysus
before the hymn was sung. "Comedy," "the village-song," is the same hymn
regarded as an occasion for rustic jest. Then the leader of the chorus
would assume the part of a messenger from Dionysus, or even that of the
god himself, and recite an adventure to the worshippers, who made choral
response. The next step was to arrange a dialogue between the leader
([Greek: koryphaios], _coryphaeus_) and one chosen member of the chorus,
hence called "the answerer" ([Greek: hypokrites], _hypocrites_,
afterwards the ordinary word for "actor"). This last improvement is
ascribed to the Attic Thespis (about 536 B.C.). The elements of drama
were now ready. The choral hymn to Dionysus (the "dithyramb") had
received an artistic form from the Dorians; dialogue, though only
between the leader of the chorus and a single actor, had been introduced
in Attica. Phrynichus, an Athenian, celebrated in this manner some
events of the Persian Wars; but in his "drama" there was still only one
actor. Choerilus of Athens and Pratinas of Phlius, who belonged to the
same period, developed the satyric drama; Pratinas also wrote tragedies,
dithyrambs, and _hyporchemata_ (lively choral odes chiefly in honour of
Apollo).
Aeschylus.
Sophocles.
Euripides.
Aeschylus (born 525 B.C.) became the real founder of tragedy by
introducing a second actor, and thus rendering the dialogue independent
of the chorus. At the same time the choral song--hitherto the principal
part of the performance--became subordinate to the dialogue; and drama
was mature. Aeschylus is also said to have made various improvements of
detail in costume and the like; and it was early in his career that the
theatre of Dionysus under the acropolis was commenced--the first
permanent home of Greek drama, in place of the temporary wooden
platforms which had hitherto been used. The system of the "trilogy" and
the "tetralogy" is further ascribed to Aeschylus,--the "trilogy" being
properly a series of three tragedies connected in subject, such as the
_Agamemnon_, _Choephori_, _Eumenides_, which together form the
_Oresteia_, or Story of Orestes. The "tetralogy" is such a triad with a
"satyric drama" added--that is, a drama in which "satyrs," the grotesque
woodland beings who attended on Dionysus, formed the chorus, as in the
earlier dithyramb from which drama sprang. The _Cyclops_ of Euripides is
the only extant specimen of a satyric drama. In the seven tragedies
which alone remain of the seventy which Aeschylus is said to have
composed, the forms of kings and heroes have a grandeur which is truly
Homeric; there is a spirit of Panhellenic patriotism such as the Persian
Wars in which he fought might well quicken in a soldier-poet; and,
pervading all, there is a strain of speculative thought which seeks to
reconcile the apparent conflicts between the gods of heaven and of the
underworld by the doctrine that both alike, constrained by necessity,
are working out the law of righteousness. Sophocles, who was born thirty
years after Aeschylus (495 B.C.), is the most perfect artist of the
ancient drama. No one before or after him gave to Greek tragedy so high
a degree of ideal beauty, or appreciated so finely the possibilities and
the limitations of its sphere. He excels especially in drawing
character; his _Antigone_, his _Ajax_, his _Oedipus_--indeed, all the
chief persons of his dramas--are typical studies in the great primary
emotions of human nature. He gave a freer scope to tragic dialogue by
adding a third actor; and in one of his later plays, the _Oedipus at
Colonus_, a fourth actor is required. From the time when he won the
tragic prize against Aeschylus in 468 to his death in 405 B.C. he was
the favourite dramatist of Athens; and for us he is not only a great
dramatist, but also the most spiritual representative of the age of
Pericles. The distinctive interest of Euripides is of another kind. He
was only fifteen years younger than Sophocles; but when he entered on
his poetical career, the old inspirations of tragedy were already
failing. Euripides marks a period of transition in the tragic art, and
is, in fact, the mediator between the classical and the romantic drama.
The myths and traditions with which the elder dramatists had dealt no
longer commanded an unquestioning faith. Euripides himself was imbued
with the new intellectual scepticism of the day; and the speculative
views which were conflicting in his own mind are reflected in his plays.
He had much picturesque and pathetic power; he was a master of
expression; and he shows ingenuity in devising fresh resources for
tragedy--especially in his management of the choral songs. Aeschylus is
Panhellenic, Sophocles is Athenian, Euripides is cosmopolitan. He stands
nearer to the modern world than either of his predecessors; and though
with him Attic tragedy loses its highest beauty, it acquires new
elements of familiar human interest.
In Attica, as in England, a period of rather less than fifty years
sufficed for the complete development of the tragic art. The two
distinctive characteristics of Athenian drama are its originality and
its abundance. The Greeks of Attica were not the only inventors of
drama, but they were the first people who made drama a complete work of
art. And the great tragic poets of Attica were remarkably prolific.
Aeschylus was the reputed author of 70 tragedies, Sophocles of 113,
Euripides of 92; and there were others whose productiveness was equally
great.
Comedy.
Aristophanes.
Comedy represented the lighter side, as tragedy the graver side, of the
Dionysiac worship; it was the joy of spring following the gloom of
winter. The process of growth was nearly the same as in tragedy; but the
Dorians, not the Ionians of Attica, were the first who added dialogue to
the comic chorus. Susarion, a Dorian of Megara, exhibited, about 580
B.C., pieces of the kind known as "Megarian farces." Epicharmus of Cos
(who settled at Syracuse) gave literary form to the Doric farce, and
treated in burlesque style the stories of gods and heroes, and subjects
taken from everyday life. His Syracusan contemporary Sophron (c. 450)
was a famous writer of mimes, chiefly scenes from low-class life. The
most artistic form of comedy seems, however, to have been developed in
Attica. The greatest names before Aristophanes are those of Cratinus and
Eupolis; but from about 470 B.C. there seems to have been a continuous
succession of comic dramatists, amongst them Plato Comicus, the author
of 28 comedies, political satires and parodies after the style of the
Middle Comedy. Aristophanes came forward as a comic poet in 427 B.C.,
and retained his popularity for about forty years. He presents a perhaps
unique union of bold fancy, exquisite humour, critical acumen and
lyrical power. His eleven extant comedies may be divided into three
groups, according as the licence of political satire becomes more and
more restricted. In the _Acharnians_, _Knights_, _Clouds_, _Wasps_ and
_Peace_ (425-421) the poet uses unrestrained freedom. In the _Birds_,
_Lysistrata_, _Thesmophoriazusae_ and _Frogs_ (414-405) a greater
reserve may be perceived. Lastly, in the _Ecclesiazusae_ and the
_Plutus_ (392-388) personal satire is almost wholly avoided. The same
general tendency continued. The so-called "Middle Comedy" (390-320)
represents the transition from the Old Comedy, or political satire, to
satire of a literary or social nature; its chief writers were Antiphanes
of Athens and Alexis of Thurii. The "New Comedy" (320-250) resembled the
modern "comedy of manners."
Its chief representative was Menander (342-291), the author of 105
comedies. Fragments have been discovered of seven of these, of
sufficient length to give an idea of their dramatic action. His plays
were produced on the stage as late as the time of Plutarch, and his
[Greek: gnomai], distinguished by worldly wisdom, were issued in the
form of anthologies, which enjoyed great popularity. Other prominent
writers of this class were Diphilus, Philemon, Posidippus and
Apollodorus of Carystus. About 330 B.C. Rhinthon of Tarentum revived the
old Doric farce in his _Hilarotragoediae_ or travesties of tragic
stories. These successive periods cannot be sharply or precisely marked
off. The change which gradually passed over the comic drama was simply
the reflection of the change which passed over the political and social
life of Athens. The Old Comedy, as we see it in the earlier plays of
Aristophanes, was probably the most powerful engine of public criticism
that has ever existed in any community. Unsparing personality was its
essence. The comic poet used this recognized right on an occasion at
once festive and sacred, in a society where every man of any note was
known by name and sight to the rest. The same thousands who heard a
policy or a character denounced or lauded in the theatre might be
required to pass sentence on it in the popular assembly or in the courts
of law.
Literary prose.
The development of Greek poetry had been completed before a prose
literature had begun to exist. The earliest name in extant Greek prose
literature is that of Herodotus; and, when he wrote, the Attic drama had
already passed its prime. There had been, indeed, writers of prose
before Herodotus; but there had not been, in the proper sense of the
term, a prose literature. The causes of this comparatively late origin
of Greek literary prose are independent of the question as to the time
at which the art of writing began to be generally used for literary
purposes. Epic poetry exercised for a very long period a sovereign spell
over the Greek mind. In it was deposited all that the race possessed of
history, theology, philosophy, oratory. Even after an age of reflection
had begun, elegiac poetry, the first offshoot of epic, was, with iambic
verse, the vehicle of much which among other races would have been
committed to prose. The basis of Greek culture was essentially poetical.
A political cause worked in the same direction. In the Eastern
monarchies the king was the centre of all, and the royal records
afforded the elements of history from a remote date. The Greek nation
was broken up into small states, each busied with its own affairs and
its own men. It was the collision between the Greek and the barbarian
world which first provided a national subject for a Greek historian. The
work of Herodotus, in its relation to Greek prose, is so far analogous
to the _Iliad_ in its relation to Greek poetry, that it is the earliest
work of art, and that it bears a Panhellenic stamp.
Early prose writers.
The sense and the degree in which Herodotus was original may be inferred
from what is known of earlier prose-writers. For about a century before
Herodotus there had been a series of writers in philosophy, mythology,
geography and history. The earliest, or among the earliest, of the
philosophical writers were Pherecydes of Syros (550 B.C.) and the Ionian
Anaximenes and Anaximander. It is doubtful whether Cadmus of Miletus,
supposed to have been the first prose writer, was an historical
personage. The Ionian writers, especially called [Greek: logographoi],
"narrators in prose" (as distinguished from [Greek: epopoioi], makers of
verse), were those who compiled the myths, especially in genealogies, or
who described foreign countries, their physical features, usages and
traditions. Hecataeus of Miletus (500 B.C.) is the best-known
representative of the _logographi_ in both these branches. Hellanicus of
Mytilene (450 B.C.), among whose works was a history of Attica, appears
to have made a nearer approach to the character of a systematic
historian. Other logographi were Charon of Lampsacus; Pherecydes of
Leros, who wrote on the myths of early Attica; Hippys of Rhegium, the
oldest writer on Italy and Sicily; and Acusilaus of Argos in Boeotia,
author of genealogies (see LOGOGRAPHI, and GREECE: _Ancient History_,
"Authorities").
Herodotus.
Herodotus was born in 484 B.C.; and his history was probably not
completed before the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (431 B.C.). His
subject is the struggle between Greece and Asia, which he deduces from
the legendary rape of the Argive Io by Phoenicians, and traces down to
the final victory of the Greeks over the invading host of Xerxes. His
literary kinship with the historical or geographical writers who had
preceded him is seen mainly in two things. First, though he draws a line
between the mythological and the historical age, he still holds that
myths, as such, are worthy to be reported, and that in certain cases it
is part of his duty to report them. Secondly, he follows the example of
such writers as Hecataeus in describing the natural and social features
of countries. He seeks to combine the part of the geographer or
intelligent traveller with his proper part as historian. But when we
turn from these minor traits to the larger aspects of his work,
Herodotus stands forth as an artist whose conception and whose method
were his own. His history has an epic unity. Various as are the
subordinate parts, the action narrated is one, great and complete; and
the unity is due to this, that Herodotus refers all events of human
history to the principle of divine Nemesis. If Sophocles had told the
story of Oedipus in the _Oedipus Tyrannus_ alone, and had not added to
it the _Oedipus at Colonus_, it would have been comparable to the story
of Xerxes as told by Herodotus. Great as an artist, great too in the
largeness of his historical conception, Herodotus fails chiefly by lack
of insight into political cause and effect, and by a general silence in
regard to the history of political institutions. Both his strength and
his weakness are seen most clearly when he is contrasted with that other
historian who was strictly his contemporary and who yet seems divided
from him by centuries.
Thucydides.
Thucydides was only thirteen years younger than Herodotus; but the
intellectual space between the men is so great that they seem to belong
to different ages. Herodotus is the first artist in historical writing;
Thucydides is the first thinker. Herodotus interweaves two threads of
causation--human agency, represented by the good or bad qualities of
men, and divine agency, represented by the vigilance of the gods on
behalf of justice. Thucydides concentrates his attention on the human
agency (without, however, denying the other), and strives to trace its
exact course. The subject of Thucydides is the Peloponnesian War. In
resolving to write its history, he was moved, he says, by these
considerations. It was probably the greatest movement which had ever
affected Hellas collectively. It was possible for him as a contemporary
to record it with approximate accuracy. And this record was likely to
have a general value, over and above its particular interest as a
record, seeing that the political future was likely to resemble the
political past. This is what Thucydides means when he calls his work "a
possession for ever." The speeches which he ascribes to the persons of
the history are, as regards form, his own essays in rhetoric of the
school to which Antiphon belongs. As regards matter, they are always so
far dramatic that the thoughts and sentiments are such as he conceived
possible for the supposed speaker. Thucydides abstains, as a rule, from
moral comment; but he tells his story as no one could have told it who
did not profoundly feel its tragic force; and his general claim to the
merit of impartiality is not invalidated by the possible
exceptions--difficult to estimate--in the cases of Cleon and Hyperbolus.
Xenophon.
Strong as is the contrast between Herodotus and Thucydides, their works
have yet a character which distinguish both alike from the historical
work of Xenophon in the _Anabasis_ and the _Hellenica_. Herodotus gives
us a vivid drama with the unity of an epic. Thucydides takes a great
chapter of contemporary history and traces the causes which are at work
throughout it, so as to give the whole a scientific unity. Xenophon has
not the grasp either of the dramatist or of the philosopher. His work
does not possess the higher unity either of art or of science. The true
distinction of Xenophon consists in his thorough combination of the
practical with the literary character. He was an accomplished soldier,
who had done and seen much. He was also a good writer, who could make a
story both clear and lively. But the several parts of the story are not
grouped around any central idea, such as a divine Nemesis is for
Herodotus, or such as Thucydides finds in the nature of political man.
The seven books of the _Hellenica_ form a supplement to the history of
Thucydides, beginning in 411 and going down to 362 B.C. The chief blot
on the _Hellenica_ is the author's partiality to Sparta, and in
particular to Agesilaus. Some of the greatest achievements of
Epaminondas and Pelopidas are passed over in silence. On the whole,
Xenophon is perhaps seen at his best in his narrative of the _Retreat of
the Ten Thousand_--a subject which exactly suits him. The _Cyropaedeia_
is a romance of little historical worth, but with many good passages.
_The Recollections of Socrates_, on the other hand, derive their
principal value from being uniformly matter-of-fact. In his minor pieces
on various subjects Xenophon appears as the earliest essayist. It may be
noted that one of the essays erroneously ascribed to him--that _On the
Athenian Polity_--is probably the oldest specimen in existence of
literary Attic prose.
His contemporaries Ctesias of Cnidus and Philistus of Syracuse wrote
histories of Persia and Sicily. In the second half of the 4th century a
number of histories were compiled by literary men of little practical
knowledge, who had been trained in the rhetorical schools. Such were
Ephorus of Cyme and Theopompus of Chios, both pupils of Isocrates; and
the writers of _Atthides_ (chronicles of Attic history), the chief of
whom were Androtion and Philochorus. Timaeus of Tauromenium was the
author of a great work on Sicily, and introduced the system of reckoning
by Olympiads.
Oratory.
The steps by which an Attic prose style was developed, and the principal
forms which it assumed, can be traced most clearly in the Attic orators.
Every Athenian citizen who aspired to take part in the affairs of the
city, or even to be qualified for self-defence before a law-court,
required to have some degree of skill in public speaking; and an
Athenian audience looked upon public debate, whether political or
forensic, as a competitive trial of proficiency in a fine art. Hence the
speaker, no less than the writer, was necessarily a student of finished
expression; and oratory had a more direct influence on the general
structure of literary prose than has ever perhaps been the case
elsewhere. A systematic rhetoric took its rise in Sicily, where Corax of
Syracuse (466 B.C.) devised his _Art of Words_ to assist those who were
pleading before the law-courts; and it was brought to Athens by his
disciple Tisias. The teaching of the Sophists, again, directed
attention, though in a superficial and imperfect way, to the elements of
grammar and logic; and Gorgias of Leontini--whose declamation, however
turgid, must have been striking--gave an impulse at Athens to the taste
for elaborate rhetorical brilliancy.
The Attic orators.
Demosthenes.
Antiphon represents the earliest, and what has been called the grand,
style of Attic prose; its chief characteristics are a grave, dignified
movement, a frequent emphasis on verbal contrasts, and a certain austere
elevation. The interest of Andocides is mainly historical; but he has
graphic power. Lysias, the representative of the "plain style," breaks
through the rigid mannerism of the elder school, and uses the language
of daily life with an ease and grace which, though the result of study,
do not betray their art. He is, in his own way, the canon of an Attic
style; and his speeches, written for others, exhibit also a high degree
of dramatic skill. Isocrates, whose manner may be regarded as
intermediate between that of Antiphon and that of Lysias, wrote for
readers rather than for hearers. The type of literary prose which he
founded is distinguished by ample periods, by studied smoothness and by
the temperate use of rhetorical ornament. From the middle of the 4th
century B.C. the Isocratic style of prose became general in Greek
literature. From the school of Rhodes, in which it became more florid,
it passed to Cicero, and through him it has helped to shape the literary
prose of the modern world. The speeches of Isaeus in will-cases are
interesting,--apart from their bearing on Attic life,--because in them
we see, as Dionysius says, "the seeds and the beginnings" of that
technical mastery in rhetorical argument which Demosthenes carries to
perfection. Isaeus has also, in a degree, some of the qualities of
Lysias. Demosthenes excels all other masters of Greek prose not only in
power but in variety; his political speeches, his orations in public or
private causes, show his consummate and versatile command over all the
resources of the language. In him the development of Attic prose is
completed, and the best elements in each of its earlier phases are
united. The modern world can more easily appreciate Demosthenes as a
great natural orator than as an elaborate artist. But, in order to
apprehend his place in the history of Attic prose, we must remember that
the ancients felt him to be both; and that he was even reproached by
detractors with excessive study of effect. Aeschines is the most
theatrical of the Greek orators; he is vehement, and often brilliant,
but seldom persuasive. Hypereides was, after Demosthenes, probably the
most effective; he had much of the grace of Lysias, but also a wit, a
fire and a pathos which were his own. Portions of six of his speeches,
found in Egypt between 1847 and 1890, are extant. The one oration of
Lycurgus which remains to us is earnest and stately, reminding us both
of Antiphon and of Isocrates. Dinarchus was merely a bad imitator of
Demosthenes. There seems more reason to regret that Demades is not
represented by larger fragments. The decline of Attic oratory may be
dated from Demetrius of Phalerum (318 B.C.), the pupil of Aristotle, and
the first to introduce the custom of making speeches on imaginary
subjects as practised in the rhetorical schools. Cicero names him as the
first who impaired the vigour of the earlier eloquence, "preferring his
own sweetness to the weight and dignity of his predecessors." He forms a
connecting link between Athens and Alexandria, where he found refuge
after his downfall and promoted the foundation of the famous library.
In later times oratory chiefly flourished in the coast and island
settlements of Asia Minor, especially Rhodes. Here a new, florid style
of oration arose, called the "Asiatic," which owed its origin to
Hegesias of Magnesia (c. 250 B.C.).
Philosophical prose--Plato and Aristotle.
The place of Plato in the history of Greek literature is as unique as
his place in the history of Greek thought. The literary genius shown in
the dialogues is many-sided: it includes dramatic power, remarkable
skill in parody, a subtle faculty of satire, and, generally, a command
over the finer tones of language. In passages of continuous exposition,
where the argument rises into the higher regions of discussion, Plato's
prose takes a more decidedly poetical colouring--never florid or
sentimental, however, but lofty and austere. In Plato's later
works--such, for instance, as the _Laws_, _Timaeus_, _Critias_--we can
perceive that his style did not remain unaffected by the smooth literary
prose which contemporary writers had developed. Aristotle's influence on
the form of Attic prose literature would probably have been considerable
if his _Rhetoric_ had been published while Attic oratory had still a
vigorous life before it. But in this, as in other departments of mental
effort, it was Aristotle's lot to set in order what the Greek intellect
had done in that creative period which had now come to an end. His own
chief contribution to the original achievements of the race was the most
fitting one that could have been made by him in whose lifetime they were
closed. He bequeathed an instrument by which analysis could be carried
further, he founded a science of reasoning, and left those who followed
him to apply it in all those provinces of knowledge which he had mapped
out.[6] Theophrastus, his pupil and his successor in the Lyceum, opens
the new age of research and scientific classification with his extant
works on botany, but is better known to modern readers by his lively
_Characters_, the prototypes of such sketches in English literature as
those of Hall, Overbury and Earle.
Character of the creative age.
(C) _The Literature of the Decadence._--The period of decadence in Greek
literature begins with the extinction of free political life in the
Greek cities. So long as the Greek commonwealths were independent and
vigorous, Greek life rested on the identity of the man with the citizen.
The city state was the highest unit of social organization; the whole
training and character of the man were viewed relatively to his
membership of the city. The market-place, the assembly, the theatre were
places of frequent meeting, where the sense of citizenship was
quickened, where common standards of opinion or feeling were formed.
Poetry, music, sculpture, literature, art, in all their forms, were
matters of public interest. Every citizen had some degree of
acquaintance with them, and was in some measure capable of judging them.
The poet and the musician, the historian and the sculptor, did not live
a life of studious seclusion or engrossing professional work. They were,
as a rule, in full sympathy with the practical interests of their time.
Their art, whatever its form might be, was the concentrated and ennobled
expression of their political existence. Aeschylus breathed into tragedy
the inspiration of one who had himself fought the great fight of
national liberation. Sophocles was the colleague of Pericles in a high
military command. Thucydides describes the operations of the
Peloponnesian War with the practical knowledge of one who had been in
charge of a fleet. Ictinus and Pheidias gave shape in stone, not to mere
visions of the studio, but to the more glorious, because more real and
vivid, perceptions which had been quickened in them by a living
communion with the Athenian spirit, by a daily contemplation of Athenian
greatness, in the theatre where tragic poets idealized the legends of
the past, in the ecclesia where every citizen had his vote on the policy
of the state, or in that free and gracious society, full of beauty, yet
exempt from vexatious constraint, which belonged to the age of Pericles.
The tribunal which judged these works of literature or art was such as
was best fitted to preserve the favourable conditions under which they
arose. Criticism was not in the hands of a literary clique or of a
social caste. The influence of jealousy or malevolence, and the more
fatal influence of affectation, had little power to affect the verdict.
The verdict was pronounced by the whole body of the citizens. The
success or failure of a tragedy was decided, not by the minor
circumstance that it gained the first or second prize, but by the
collective opinion of the citizens assembled in the theatre of Dionysus.
A work of architecture or sculpture was approved or condemned, not by
the sentence of a few whom the multitude blindly followed, but by the
general judgment of some twenty thousand persons, each of whom was in
some degree qualified by education and by habit to form an independent
estimate. The artist worked for all his fellow-citizens, and knew that
he would be judged by all. The soul of his work was the fresh and living
inspiration of nature; it was the ennobled expression of his own life;
and the public opinion before which it came was free, intelligent and
sincere.
The transition to Hellenism.
Philip of Macedon did not take away the municipal independence of the
Greek cities, but he dealt a death-blow to the old political life. The
Athenian poet, historian, artist might still do good work, but he could
never again have that which used to be the very mainspring of all such
activity--the daily experience and consciousness of participation in the
affairs of an independent state. He could no longer breathe the
invigorating air of constitutional freedom, or of the social intercourse
to which that freedom lent dignity as well as grace. Then came
Alexander's conquests; Greek civilization was diffused over Asia and the
East by means of Greek colonies in which Asiatic and Greek elements were
mingled. The life of such settlements, under the monarchies into which
Alexander's empire broke up, could not be animated by the spirit of the
Greek commonwealths in the old days of political freedom. But the
externals of Greek life were there--the temples, the statues, the
theatres, the porticos. Ceremonies and festivals were conducted in the
Greek manner. In private life Greek usages prevailed. Greek was the
language most used; Greek books were in demand. The mixture of races
would always in some measure distinguish even the outward life of such a
community from that of a pure Greek state; and the facility with which
Greek civilization was adopted would vary in different places. Syria,
for example, was rapidly and completely Hellenized. Judaea resisted the
process to the last. In Egypt a Greek aristocracy of office, birth and
intellect existed side by side with a distinct native life. But, viewed
in its broadest aspect, this new civilization may be called Hellenism.
Hellenism (q.v.) means the adoption of Hellenic ways; and it is properly
applied to a civilization, generally Hellenic in external things,
pervading people not necessarily or exclusively Hellenic by race. What
the Hellenic literature was to Hellas, that the Hellenistic literature
was to Hellenism. The literature of Hellenism has the Hellenic form
without the Hellenic soul. The literature of Hellas was creative; the
literature of Hellenism is derivative.
The Alexandrian period.
Poetry.
Erudition and science.
Summary.
Alexandria was the centre of Greek intellectual activity from Alexander
to Augustus. Its "Museum," or college, and its library, both founded by
the first Ptolemy (Soter), gave it such attractions for learned men as
no other city could rival. The labours of research or arrangement are
those which characterize the Alexandrian period. Even in its poetry
spontaneous motive was replaced by erudite skill, as in the hymns,
epigrams and elegies of Callimachus, in the enigmatic verses of
Lycophron, in the highly finished epic of Apollonius Rhodius, and in the
versified lore, astronomical or medical, of Aratus and Nicander. The
mimes of Herodas (or Herondas) of Cos (c. 200 B.C.), written in the
Ionic dialect and choliambic verse, represent scenes from everyday life.
The papyrus (published in 1891) contains seven complete poems and
fragments of an eighth. They are remarkably witty and full of shrewd
observations, but at times coarse. The pastoral poetry of the
age--Dorian by origin--was the most pleasing; for this, if it is to
please at all, must have its spring in the contemplation of nature.
Theocritus is not exempt from the artificialism of the Hellenizing
literature; but his true sense of natural beauty entitles him to a place
in the first rank of pastoral poets. Bion of Ionia and Moschus of
Syracuse also charm by the music and often by the pathos of their
bucolic verse. Excavations on the site of the temple of Asclepius at
Epidaurus have brought to light two hexameter poems and a paean (in
Ionic metre) on Apollo and Asclepius by a local poet named Isyllus, who
flourished about 280. Tragedy was represented by the poets known as the
Alexandrian _Pleiad_. But it is not for its poetry of any kind that this
period of Greek literature is memorable. Its true work was in erudition
and science. Aristarchus (156 B.C.), the greatest in a long line of
Alexandrian critics, set the example of a more thorough method in
revising and interpreting the ancient texts, and may in this sense be
said to have become the founder of scientific scholarship. The critical
studies of Alexandria, carried on by the followers of Aristarchus,
gradually formed the basis for a science of grammar. The earliest Greek
grammar is that of Dionysius Thrax (born c. 166), a pupil of
Aristarchus. Translation was another province of work which employed the
learned of Alexandria--where the Septuagint version of the Old Testament
was begun, probably about 300-250 B.C. Chronology was treated
scientifically by Eratosthenes, and was combined with history by Manetho
in his chronicles of Egypt, and by Berossus in his chronicles of
Chaldaea. Euclid was at Alexandria in the reign of Ptolemy Soter.
Herophilus and Erasistratus were distinguished physicians and
anatomists, and the authors of several medical works. The general
results of the Alexandrian period might perhaps be stated thus.
Alexandria produced a few eminent men of science, some learned poets (in
a few cases, of great literary merit) and many able scholars. The
preservation of the best Greek literature was due chiefly to the
unremitting care of the Alexandrian critics, whose appreciation of it
partly compensated for the decay of the old Greek perceptions in
literature and art, and who did their utmost to hand it down in a form
as free as possible from the errors of copyists. On the whole, the
patronage of letters by the Ptolemies had probably as large a measure of
success as was possible under the existing conditions; and it was
afforded at a time when there was special danger that a true literary
tradition might die out of the world.
The Graeco-Roman period.
The Graeco-Roman period in the literature of Hellenism may be dated from
the Roman subjugation of Greece. "Greece made a captive of the rough
conqueror," but it did not follow from this intellectual conquest that
Athens became once more the intellectual centre of the world. Under the
empire, indeed, the university of Athens long enjoyed a pre-eminent
reputation. But Rome gradually became the point to which the greatest
workers in every kind were drawn. Greek literature had already made a
home there before the close of the 2nd century B.C. Sulla brought a
Greek library from Athens to Rome. Such men as Cicero and Atticus were
indefatigable collectors and readers of Greek books. The power of
speaking and writing the Greek language became an indispensable
accomplishment for highly educated Romans. The library planned by Julius
Caesar and founded by Augustus had two principal departments, one for
Latin, the other for Greek works. Tiberius, Vespasian, Domitian and
Trajan contributed to enlarge the collection. Rome became more and more
the rival of Alexandria, not only as possessing great libraries, but
also as a seat of learning at which Greek men of letters found
appreciation and encouragement. Greek poetry, especially in its higher
forms, rhetoric and literary criticism, history and philosophy, were all
cultivated by Greek writers at Rome.
First part: 146-30 B.C.
The first part of the Graeco-Roman period may be defined as extending
from 146 B.C. to the close of the Roman republic. At its commencement
stands the name of one who had more real affinity than any of his
contemporaries with the great writers of old Athens, and who, at the
same time, saw most clearly how the empire of the world was passing to
Rome. The subject of Polybius (c. 205-120) was the history of Roman
conquest from 264 to 146 B.C. His style, plain and straightforward, is
free from the florid rhetoric of the time. But the distinction of
Polybius is that he is the last Greek writer who in some measure retains
the spirit of the old citizen-life. He chose his subject, not because it
gave scope to learning or literary skill, but with a motive akin to that
which prompted the history of Thucydides--namely, because, as a Greek
citizen, he felt intensely the political importance of those wars which
had given Rome the mastery of the world. The chief historical work which
the following century produced--the _Universal History_ of Diodorus
Siculus (fl. c. 50 B.C.)--resembled that of Polybius in recognizing Rome
as the political centre of the earth, as the point on which all earlier
series of events converged. In all else Diodorus represents the new age
in which the Greek historian had no longer the practical knowledge and
insight of a traveller, a soldier or a statesman, but only the
diligence, and usually the dullness, of a laborious compiler.
Second part: 30 B.C.-A.D. 529.
The Greek literature of the Roman empire, from Augustus to Justinian,
was enormously prolific. The area over which the Greek language was
diffused--either as a medium of intercourse or as an established branch
of the higher education--was co-extensive with the empire itself. An
immense store of materials had now been accumulated, on which critics,
commentators, compilers, imitators, were employed with incessant
industry. In very many of its forms, the work of composition or
adaptation had been reduced to a mechanical knack. If there is any one
characteristic which broadly distinguishes the Greek literature of these
five centuries, it is the absence of originality either in form or in
matter. Lucian is, in his way, a rare exception; and his great
popularity--he is the only Greek writer of this period, except Plutarch,
who has been widely popular--illustrates the flatness of the arid level
above which he stands out. The sustained abundance of literary
production under the empire was partly due to the fact that there was no
open political career. Never, probably, was literature so important as a
resource for educated men; and the habit of reciting before friendly or
obsequious audiences swelled the number of writers whose taste had been
cultivated to a point just short of perceiving that they ought not to
write.
Departments of prose literature.
In the manifold prose work of this period, four principal departments
may be distinguished. (1) _History_, with _Biography_, and _Geography_.
History is represented by Dionysius of Halicarnassus--also memorable for
his criticisms on the orators and his effort to revive a true standard
of Attic prose--by Cassius Dio, Josephus, Arrian, Appian, Herodian,
Eusebius and Zosimus. In biography, the foremost names are Plutarch,
Diogenes Laertius and Philostratus; in geography, Hipparchus of Nicaea,
Strabo, Ptolemy and Pausanias. (2) _Erudition_ and _Science_. The
learned labours of the Alexandrian schools were continued in all their
various fields. Under this head may be mentioned such works as the
lexicons of Julius Pollux, Harpocration and Hesychius, Hephaestion's
treatise on metre, and Herodian's system of accentuation; the
commentaries of Galen on Plato and on Hippocrates; the learned
miscellanies of Athenaeus, Aelian and Stobaeus; and the _Stratagems_ of
Polyaenus. (3) _Rhetoric_ and _Belles-Lettres_. The most popular writers
on the theory of rhetoric were Hermagoras, Hermogenes, Aphthonius and
Cassius Longinus--the last the reputed author of the essay _On
Sublimity_. Among the most renowned teachers of rhetoric--now
distinctively called "Sophists," or rhetoricians--were Dio Chrysostom,
Aelius Aristides, Themistius, Himerius, Libanius and Herodes Atticus.
Akin to the rhetorical exercises were various forms of ornamental or
imaginative prose--dialogues, letters, essays or novels. Lucian, in his
dialogues, exhibits more of the classical style and of the classical
spirit than any writer of the later age; he has also a remarkable
affinity with the tone of modern satire, as in Swift or Voltaire. His
Attic prose, though necessarily artificial, was at least the best that
had been written for four centuries. The emperor Julian was the author
both of orations and of satirical pieces. The chief of the Greek
novelists (the forerunner of whom was Aristides of Miletus, c. 100 B.C.,
in his _Milesian Tales_) are Xenophon of Ephesus and Longus,
representing a purely Greek type of romance, and Heliodorus--with his
imitators Achilles Tatius and Chariton--representing a school influenced
by Oriental fiction. There were also many Christian romances in Greek,
usually of a religious tendency. Alciphron's fictitious
_Letters_--founded largely on the New Comedy of Athens--represent the
same kind of industry which produced the letters of Phalaris,
Aristaenetus and similar collections. (4) _Philosophy_ is represented
chiefly by Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, in both of whom the Stoic
element is the prevailing one; by the Neoplatonists, such as Plotinus,
Porphyry, Iamblichus; and by Proclus, of that eclectic school which
arose at Athens in the 5th century A.D.
Verse.
The Anthology.
The Greek poetry of this period presents no work of high merit. Babrius
versified the Aesopic _Fables_; Oppian (or two poets of this name) wrote
didactic poems on fishing and hunting; Nonnus and Quintus Smyrnaeus made
elaborate essays in epic verse; and the Orphic lore inspired some poems
and hymns of a mystic character. The so-called _Sibylline Oracles_, in
hexameter verse, range in date from about 170 B.C. to A.D. 700, and are
partly the expression of the Jewish longings for the restoration of
Israel, partly predictions of the triumph of Christianity. By far the
most pleasing compositions in verse which have come to us from this age
are some of the short poems in the Greek Anthology, which includes some
pieces as early as the beginning of the 5th century B.C. and some as
late as the 6th century of the Christian era.
The 4th century may be said to mark the beginning of the last stage in
the decay of literary Hellenism. From that point the decline was rapid
and nearly continuous. The attitude of the church towards it was no
longer that which had been held by Clement of Alexandria, by Justin
Martyr or by Origen. There was now a Christian Greek literature, and a
Christian Greek eloquence of extraordinary power. The laity became more
and more estranged from the Greek literature--however intrinsically pure
and noble--of the pagan past. At the same time the Greek language--which
had maintained its purity in Italian seats--was becoming corrupted in
the new Greek Rome of the East. In A.D. 529 Justinian put forth an edict
by which the schools of heathen philosophy were formally closed. The act
had at least a symbolical meaning. It is necessary to guard against the
supposition that such assumed landmarks in political or literary history
always mark a definite transition from one order of things to another.
But it is practically convenient, or necessary, to use such landmarks.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The first attempt at a connected history of Greek
literature was the monumental and still indispensable work of J. A.
Fabricius (14 vols., 1705-1728; new ed. in 12 vols. by G. C. Harless,
1790-1809); this was followed by F. Scholl's _Hist. de la litterature
grecque_ (1813). Both these works begin with the earliest times and go
down to the latest period of the Byzantine empire. Of more modern and
recent works the following may be mentioned: G. Bernhardy, _Grundriss
der griechischen Literatur_ (1836-1845; 4th ed., 1876-1880; 5th ed. of
vol. i., by R. Volkmann, 1892), chiefly confined to the poets; C. O.
Muller, _History of Greek Literature_ (unfinished), written for the
London Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and published in
English in 1840, the translation being by G. Cornewall Lewis and J. W.
Donaldson (the latter completed the work to the end of the Byzantine
period for the edition of 1858; the German text was published by E.
Muller in 1841; 4th ed. by E. Heitz, 1882-1884); W. Mure, _Critical
History of the Language and Literature of Ancient Greece_ (1850-1857);
T. Bergk, _Griechische Literaturgeschichte_ (1872-1894, vols. 2, 3,
ed. G. Hinrichs, vol. 4 by R. Peppmuller) containing epos, lyric,
drama down to Euripides, and the beginnings of prose; R. Nicolai,
_Griechische Literaturgeschichte_ (2nd ed., 1873-1878), useful for
bibliography, but in other respects unsatisfactory; J. P. Mahaffy,
_Hist. of Classical Greek Literature_ (4th ed., 1903); A. and M.
Croiset, _Hist. de la litterature grecque_ (1887-1899, 2nd ed. 1896);
W. Christ, _Geschichte der griechischen Literatur bis auf die Zeit
Justinians_ (4th ed., 1905; 5th ed., pt. i., by O. Stahlin and W.
Schmid, 1908), by far the most serviceable handbook for the student.
F. Susemihl's _Geschichte der griechischen Literatur in der
Alexandrinerzeit_ (1891-1892) is especially valuable for its notes. Of
smaller manuals the following will be found most useful: G. G. Murray,
_History of Ancient Greek Literature_ (1897); F. B. Jevons, _History
of Greek Literature_ (3rd ed., 1900) down to the time of Demosthenes;
A. and M. Croiset, _Manuel d'hist. de la litterature grecque_ (1900;
Eng. trans., by G. F. Heffelbower, N.Y., 1904); also the general
sketches by U. von Wilamowitz-Mollendorff in _Die Kultur der
Gegenwart_, i. 8 (1905), by A. Gercke in the _Sammlung Goschen_
(Leipzig, 2nd ed., 1905), and by R. C. Jebb in _Companion to Greek
Studies_ (Cambridge, 1905). Other works generally connected with the
subject are: E. Hubner, _Bibliographie der klassischen
Altertumswissenschaft_ (2nd ed., 1889), pp. 161-17l; W. Engelmann,
_Bibliotheca scriptorum classicorum_ (8th ed., by E. Preuss, 1880); J.
B. Mayor, _Guide to the Choice of Classical Books_ (1896), p. 86; W.
Kroll, _Die Altertumswissenschaft im letzten Vierteljahrhundert_
1875-1900 (1905), p. 465 foll.; J. E. Sandys, _History of Classical
Scholarship_ (1906-1908); "Bibliotheca philologica classica," in C.
Bursian's _Jahresbericht uber die Fortschritte der klassischen
Altertumswissenschaft_; articles in Pauly-Wissowa's _Realencyclopadie
der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft_ (1894--). (R. C. J.; X.)