The historian, if asked to name the country and the period in which
literary men--not popular novelists, but men whose incentive to
labour is the love of literature, science, research--were in the
most enviable position, would go very far back from the present time,
and point to Egypt as the country, and the three centuries before
Christ as the period. 'The history of literature,' it has been said,
'is hardly anything but a martyrology, as though there were a
conspiracy of ingratitude among men:' but the respect, honour and
support accorded to literary genius under the Ptolemies form a
striking contrast to its fate in other lands and epochs.
When, on the death of Alexander the Great, in 323 B.C., his vast
empire was divided amongst his generals, one of them, Ptolemy Soter,
became king of Egypt. Once established in his kingdom, he soon proved
that he was very much more than a mere soldier. He was a man of
brains, with a taste for literature, and a love for those who pursued
it. His successors were worthy of him: the Ptolemies created an era in
the history of literature; they made learning the fashion, and
scholars, poets and men of science honourable.
Ptolemy I. (Soter) built at Alexandria a magnificent palace of
learning, the Museum. This 'Temple of the Muses' was such in a
very literal sense, and so was very much more than a museum in the
restricted sense now commonly understood. It was a Residential Royal
Academy of Literature, the Resident Fellows of which were literary
men. The first great annexe to the Museum was a Library, which the
king spared no expense to make complete, and thus he attracted
scholars from all Greek-speaking countries. His successor further
enlarged the library, and added galleries of pictures and statues, and
commenced a natural history museum. So it went on: Ptolemy after
Ptolemy added to the completeness and magnificence of the now
world-famous library, and amassed wealth of art-treasures and
curiosities from all parts of the world. The foundation was richly
endowed, so that the poets, scholars and scientists who dwelt there
lived without a care, in sheltered comfort (Timon the Phliasian
satirically called it 'the coop'), with every advantage for the
prosecution of their labours, and (after the days of Ptolemy V.
204-181 B.C.) the prospect of a pension. There was a hall where they
all dined, the king himself being sometimes of the company. Through
generation after generation this institution was the hobby of the
kings of Egypt, some of whom were themselves proud to be of the
brotherhood of authors, and who vied with each other in fostering
genius, talent and plodding industry, with a splendour, lavishness and
zeal unapproached in any other age or country. It was Ptolemy II.
(Philadelphus) under whose auspices was produced the great translation
of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, known as the Septuagint, from which
the authors of the New Testament quote. When Egypt passed under the
dominion of Rome, the Museum and its endowments did not suffer. Livy
speaks of it as a noble monument of the wealth of the Egyptian kings;
and Ammianus Marcellinus says that till the time of Aurelian (A.D.
270-275), the Museum 'continued to be the habitation of scholars.'
The College, or Royal Society of Literature, so nobly housed, was
under the government of a President, nominated first by the Ptolemies,
afterwards by the Roman Emperors.
Of course, patronage cannot create genius, though it can provide
conditions favourable to its development; and but few men of genius
appeared during this long period of the establishment and endowment of
literature. But the general level of culture was raised, and the
amount of literary work done was immense. A great deal of learned
labour was expended upon the interpretation of Homer. 'It may indeed
be said,' remarks Prof. Mahaffy, 'that all philology among the Greeks,
all textual and grammatical criticism, arose from the desire to
purify and to understand the text of Homer, and then of other old
poets.' At the same time, however, while nothing was more
meritorious than the _rôle_ of the commentator on Homer, nothing was
less so than any attempt to imitate him, or to revive, in any shape or
form, epic poetry. It was settled as an axiom beyond controversy that
the age of great sustained poems was past, that the age of literary
gem-work, of perfect finish in minute details, 'of art for art's
sake,' had come to stay. So poets were to restrict themselves to
'short swallow-flights of song,' fables, hymns to various deities
and sacred places, elegies, epigrams, the one thing needful being that
every line should be a model of polished brilliance, and that each
poem should be a mine of learned allusion. Of this literary faith and
practice the great champion and exponent was Callimachus.[1] He was,
in the days of Ptolemy Philadelphus {285-247 B.C.), President of the
Museum, and, in Prof. Murray's words, 'was perhaps the most
influential personality in literature between Plato and Cicero.'
Philologist, archaeologist, historian, dramatist, poet,
critic--there was scarcely a department of literature in which he
did not, in the view of his contemporaries, excel; and his industry
was enormous. As an example of the scale on which he worked, it is
sufficient to mention just one of his many productions--an
Encyclopædia of Literature, biographical, bibliographical and
critical, in one hundred and twenty books. The prestige of his
official position, coupled with his exact interpretation of the
demands and capacities of his age, made him the autocrat of letters.
He carved with incisive criticism, and lashed with merciless ridicule,
the _Thebaid_, an epic written by Antimachus of Colophon in imitation
of Homer, a work which the Emperor Hadrian, long afterwards,
pronounced superior to Homer's--from which fact we learn more
perhaps of Hadrian than of the _Thebaid_. We can faintly imagine,
then, with what scornful indignation Callimachus heard that a pupil of
his own, a young inmate of the Museum, who owed all his literary
culture to its head, had revolted from the cardinal principles of the
one literary faith, had actually written an epic!
Apollonius, son of Illeus (or Silleus), born, about 270 B.C., at
Naucratis (or, according to other accounts, at Alexandria), was
kindled by his studies in Homer to attempt a theme never yet worthily
sung--the story of the Quest of the Golden Fleece by heroes who
were the fathers of those whose exploits Homer sang. He can hardly
have been ignorant of his master's views on the subject of modern
epics; but he may well have felt some confidence that he could do that
which would prove them wrong, and may have given Callimachus credit
for magnanimity enough to confess himself mistaken when confronted
with the actual achievement of that which he had pronounced
impossible.
He completed his task, and gave a public reading of his epic, probably
in the lecture-hall of the Museum. Its reception was a bitter
disappointment for him. The audience took its cue from the
all-powerful President; and before the storm of impatient
interruptions, angry disapproval and contemptuous laughter the poor
lad--he was not twenty--broke down, 'flushing crimson with
mortification,' as the old Greek biographer graphically records. He
recognised only too clearly who had taken the lead in crushing him,
and tried to retaliate in satirical verse and stinging epigram. But it
is given to few to be as effective with this weapon as Dryden or
Byron, and Apollonius found that his enemy's artillery, discharged
as it was from the vantage-ground of social influence and official
authority, overmatched his own. Callimachus was not ashamed to put
forth all his strength against his young and friendless opponent; and
his bitter satire, _The Ibis_,[2] seems to have displayed no little
ability and power of invective. It long survived the occasion for
which it was written, and must have been, in its kind, of some merit,
since, personal and local though it was, its celebrity lasted till the
Augustan age of Rome. Ovid took it as his model in his satirical poem
of the same name.
The young poet found literary life in Alexandria made impossible for
him, and (invited perhaps by sympathisers) he sailed thence to Rhodes.
He there produced a revised version of his epic, and was comforted by
the applause with which the Rhodians received it. Honoured by all, and
presented with the freedom of the city, he gratefully took for his
country the land where he was appreciated, and was proud to be known
as 'Apollonius of Rhodes.' He lived there many years, a renowned
poet, and a popular professor of rhetoric. Meanwhile at Alexandria his
old enemy died: the old literary cliques were no more: the fame of the
prophet who had been without honour in his own country had recrossed
the sea: men longed to atone for the neglect which was a discredit to
themselves; and Apollonius was given to understand that a warm welcome
was prepared for him in the land of his birth. The temptation to
triumph on the scene of his humiliation was irresistible. He returned
to Egypt: he read his poem to enthusiastic audiences: the opportune
death of Eratosthenes, who had succeeded Callimachus as President and
Chief Librarian, created a vacancy for which Apollonius was acclaimed
the only possible successor. So, installed as the head of the culture
and learning of the Greek world, he lived days of peaceful industry
and satisfied ambition, till, full of years and honours, he passed
away, and, as though to symbolise forgiveness and oblivion of old
feuds, was buried beside his old master, Callimachus.
Like all the Alexandrian scholars, he was busy with his pen to the
last. His most important works, besides the 'Tale of the Argonauts,'
were the 'Foundations,' poems embodying the stories or legends of the
origin or foundation of famous cities, such as Rhodes, Cnidus,
Alexandria. But of them all only nine and a half lines survive, and
it is on the _Argonautica_ that his fame must rest. The poem is, like
the epics of Vergil, Tasso, Tennyson, the work of a student, and not,
like those of Homer, the work of a man who had been a part of the
life he described. Apollonius connected the Argonauts with all the
legends or myths belonging to the places they might be supposed to
have visited, gathering materials for this part of his work from the
rich libraries in which he wrote. Hence we find traces of his having
more matter than he quite knew what to do with; and his digressions
on the origins of cities, names, rites, and so forth, are occasionally
such as the average reader will skip. Still, all together, they do not
occupy proportionally as much space as the similarly little-read
Catalogue of the Ships in the _Iliad_.
There can be no doubt that the _Argonautica_ was for the ancients the
one great epic between Homer and Vergil. Even contemporaries wrote
commentaries on it. It was popular among the Romans. P. T. Varro
earned fame by his translation of it, and Val. Flaccus wrote a Latin
Argonautica, which was but a free translation of the Greek original.
But his noblest eulogy will be found in the pages of Vergil, who drew
no small part of his inspiration from him, transferring to his
_Æneid_ at least a score of episodes, similes, or picturesque
touches.
On the other hand, Apollonius is very far from being an imitator of
Homer. He is, indeed, considering the atmosphere in which his genius
was trained, amazingly original; and it is not the least proof of his
genius that he recognised that his strength lay in the very things
which were either neglected, or lightly touched on, by Homer. The
elaborate picturesqueness and unfailing _verve_ with which he
describes the coasting voyages, the weird desolation of the Libyan
sands, the gauntlet-fight, the battle with the giants, the passage of
the Clashing Crags, and that of the Wandering Rocks, the ploughing
with the brazen bulls, and many other such incidents, are examples of
work of which Homer gives but slight and occasional examples: while
the great and crowning achievement of the poem, the story of Medea's
passion, with its fierce fervour, its thrilling pathos, its lovely
tenderness and virginal purity, its strangely modern introspectiveness
and analysis of motives, is absolutely without parallel, not in Homer
alone, but in any Greek poet whose works have come down to us. Even
Vergil, with all his human sympathy, with all the advantage of having
such a model before him, cannot rise to the same height: the love of
Dido is a pale reflex of that of Medea. It is curious, too, to note
that, even in the minor matter of similes, Apollonius remains
original. In only one (Bk. II. 541-548, where he somewhat expands
Homer's thought) can he be charged with imitation.
The argument has been well summed up by Prof. R. Ellis:--'For
Apollonius the problem was how to write an epic which should be
modelled on the Homeric epics, yet be so completely different as to
suggest, not resemblance, but contrast. We think no one who has read
even a hundred lines of the poem can fail to be struck by this. It is
in fact the reason why it is a success. The _Argonautica_ could not
have been written without the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, but it is in no
sense an echo of either. Nay, we believe that a minute examination of
Apollonius' language and rhythm would show that he placed himself
under the most rigid laws of _intentional dissimilarity_. Not that
this is more than one element of his success. His genius is quite as
real an element; and no one will deny this who has studied the
successive phases of Medea's passion in Book III. If, indeed,
greatness could be tested by the extent of influence after death, the
poem of Apollonius can rank only with the best works of Greek
literature.'