_RISE OF GREEK PROSE._
=Earliest Prose Writings.=—For several centuries, the literature of
Greece was confined to poetry. In Hellas, as elsewhere, verse for a
time at first so charmingly and completely filled the popular ear that
there was no desire, no room, for prose. But, as new necessities arose,
poetry could not suffice for Greece; not with epic and lyric voice
alone were her men of genius to gain a hearing from the world. National
achievements must be recorded; the people must be appealed to in the
agora; the curtain of metaphysics must be raised; and so History,
Oratory, and Philosophy appeared upon the stage. To these practical
new-comers, the plain garb of prose was found more appropriate than the
broidery of verse.
Moreover, the introduction of facilities for writing favored the
development of prose literature; for, unlike poetry, it needed a
written form to give it permanence. When the art of writing became
familiar, and men with its help could rapidly inscribe their thoughts
for others still more rapidly to read, prose, as a distinct branch of
composition, was born; and its birth marked an era in the intellectual
growth of the Greeks.
Ever since the introduction of letters, prose had doubtless been used
more or less in despatches, records, laws, and official documents.
Pherecy’des of Sy’ros and Cadmus of Miletus (about 550 B.C.) were the
first to secure its recognition as a department of polite literature,
the one embodying in it his philosophical doctrines, the other the
fabulous history of his native land—with homely strength, if not with
artistic finish.
=Era of the Sages.=—In the period during which prose gained its
first foothold flourished the Seven Sages of Greece (665-540
B.C.). Revolutions were then the order of the day, the people were
beginning actively to assert their rights, and political questions
of vital interest absorbed the attention of thinkers. The flights of
fancy became fewer, as these grave problems presented themselves.
Philosophers strove to solve them at home; patriots went abroad to
study foreign institutions; and all awoke to the discovery that
“knowledge is power.”
The Seven Sages were gnomic poets, as well as philosophers and
statesmen. Their moral and political maxims they usually threw into
verse; but those inscribed on plates of metal and deposited in the
temple of Apollo at Delphi, were in prose. In their proverbs, whether
prose or poetry, we discern the dawn of moral philosophy.
SOLON.—The greatest of the Seven Sages were Solon and Thales. Solon
of Athens was born about 638 B.C. After extensive travels and studies,
he drew up for the Athenians (594 B.C.) the famous code called by his
name, which reformed many abuses and secured to the people a liberal
government. His laws were written in prose on the polished faces of
triangular wooden prisms. These were set in frames, and turned on
pivots by persons who wished to consult them. The state copy was carved
on four-sided blocks of brass, and kept in the Acropolis.
[Illustration: SOLON’S TABLETS.]
After Solon’s code was adopted, that it might be the better enforced,
its author is said to have absented himself from Athens for ten years,
visiting among other courts that of Crœsus, King of Lydia. To this
visit, Crœsus owed his life; for afterward, when chained to the stake
by Cyrus the Persian, the truth of one of Solon’s remarks,—that no man
can be accounted happy while he still lives,—flashed upon his mind, and
he thrice called upon the name of the Athenian sage. Cyrus demanded an
explanation of his words, and, struck with the truth of Solon’s saying,
revoked the order of execution and made Crœsus his friend.
THALES, of Miletus in Ionia (640-550 B.C.), was the founder of Greek
philosophy. Water, according to his theory, was the source of all
things; without this element, he truly said, his own body would fall
into dust. This doctrine he is supposed to have derived from the
Egyptians, who worshipped the Nile as a god, being dependent on its
annual inundations for their crops.
In mathematical science and astronomy, Thales was an adept. His
knowledge of the latter enabled him to predict a solar eclipse, which
took place 610 B.C., and to divide the year into three hundred and
sixty-five days. If he was an author, not a line of what he wrote has
survived.
=Fable.=—An outgrowth of these practical times was the Fable, or
Allegory, in which the lower animals were introduced as speakers, with
the object of satirizing the follies of mankind, or of conveying some
useful moral more pointedly than by means of dry argument.
Destitute of the outward form of poetry, while in a measure retaining
its imagery, fable may be regarded as a stepping-stone from the early
lyrics to the stately prose of a later period. It at once became
popular, as did also a kindred class of humorous tales, the characters
of which were inanimate objects endowed with the power of speech. An
earthen pot, for example, is represented as clamoring loudly against
the woman who broke it; and she, as bidding it “cease its plaints and
show its wisdom by buying a copper ring to bind itself together.”
ÆSOP.—The great fabulist of Greece, and indeed of all time, was Æsop.
Born a Phrygian slave about 620 B.C., he passed from one master to
another till at last his wit gained him freedom. Thus left to choose
his own course, he became a student in foreign lands. Athens was his
home for a number of years; and there, in his well-known fable of “the
Frogs asking Jupiter for a King,” he read a lesson both to Pisistratus
the Tyrant and to the people who imagined themselves oppressed under
his government.
By special invitation, Æsop spent some time at the court of Crœsus.
Here he made the acquaintance of Solon, who had incurred that monarch’s
displeasure by speaking lightly of his vaunted wealth; and he is said
to have admonished the Athenian sage that a wise man should resolve
either not to converse with kings at all, or to converse with them
agreeably.”—“Nay,” replied Solon, “he should either not converse with
them at all, or converse with them usefully.”
Crœsus commissioned Æsop to go to Delphi for the purpose of sacrificing
to Apollo and distributing a sum of money among the citizens. But Æsop
quarrelled with the Delphians, and taking it upon himself to withhold
from them the Lydian gold, was seized by the enraged people and
hurled from a precipice. Legend says that the murderers brought upon
themselves the vengeance of heaven in the form of mysterious plagues.
While these particulars of Æsop’s life rest on rather dubious
authority, it is certain that as a fable-writer he was deservedly
appreciated in ancient Greece. At Athens, Æsop’s Fables became
indispensable to a polite education. Their author does not appear to
have committed them to writing; they passed from mouth to mouth for
generations, undergoing more or less change. Hence we have left only
the substance of those pointed stories over which the Athenians went
into transports, and which Socrates amused himself by turning into
verse during his imprisonment. The young folks of every age, with
whom Æsop has always been a favorite, would applaud the Athenians for
placing the statue of the world’s great fabulist before those of their
Seven Sages.
When the people of Samos were on the point of executing a public
officer who had robbed the treasury, they were induced to spare the
offender by Æsop’s spicy fable of
THE FOX AND THE HEDGEHOG.
A Fox, while crossing a river, was driven by the stream into a narrow
gorge, and lay there for a long time unable to get out, covered with
myriads of horse-flies that had fastened upon him. A Hedgehog, who was
wandering in that direction, saw him, and taking compassion on him,
asked if he should drive away the flies that were so tormenting him.
But the Fox begged him to do nothing of the sort.
“Why not?” asked the Hedgehog.
“Because,” replied the Fox, “these flies that are upon me now are
already full, and draw but little blood; but should you remove them, a
swarm of fresh and hungry ones will come, who will not leave a drop of
blood in my body.”—JAMES.
=Progress of Greek Prose.=—An impetus was given to the development of
Greek prose by the praiseworthy efforts of Pisistratus (537-527 B.C.),
who gathered the first library in Greece, collected and edited the
poems of Homer, and imitated his kinsman Solon in laboring to elevate
the literary taste of the people. During his administration and that
of his sons Hippias and Hipparchus, also patrons of letters, prose
literature took deep root throughout the Ionian colonies, where history
and philosophy had many representatives.
The style of these early writers was for the most part fragmentary,
dry, and inelegant. It soon improved, however, grew into favor, and in
the hands of the profound thinkers, fluent historians, and persuasive
orators of Greece, was wrought into models which are still the
admiration of the world.
EARLY PROSE WRITERS.
PHILOSOPHERS.
ANAXIMANDER (born 610 B.C.), first map-drawer, and introducer of the
sundial. He represented the earth as cylindrical, and as the centre
about which the stars and planets revolved; its inhabitants as the
result of fermentation caused by the action of the sun’s rays on
its marshes. His “Treatise on Nature” (547 B.C.), the first work on
biology and the earliest philosophical essay written in Greek.
ANAXIM’ENES (born 556 B.C.) made the earth a leaf-shaped mass
floating in the air; the sun and moon flat circular bodies; _air_ the
elementary principle from which all things were made and to which they
returned: the soul, air.
HERACLI’TUS of Ephesus (505 B.C.) rejected the nature-worship of his
countrymen, and believed in an all-wise, omnipresent Power. He is
recorded to have wept continually over the sins of men; hence called
the weeping philosopher. _Fire_ the first principle. “No man,” said he
in allusion to the never-ceasing changes in the world, “can wade twice
in the same stream.”
HISTORIANS.
CADMUS of Miletus (540 B.C.): “Primeval History of Miletus and Ionia.”
ACUSILA’US the Argive (525 B.C.): “Genealogies,” a prose translation
of Hesiod’s “Theogony,” altered in parts to suit the theories of the
author.
HECATÆUS the Milesian (520-479 B.C.), “the far-travelled man:”
“Genealogies,” a history of the mythical heroes of Greece; and a
“Description of the Earth,” containing a summary of his own travels
and explorations.
CHARON of Lampsacus (500-450 B.C.), the first historian to record
authentic events: “History of the Persian War,” “Annals of Lampsacus,”
“Chronicles of the Spartan Kings.”
HELLANI’CUS of Mytilene, a noted compiler.
XANTHUS the Lydian: “The Lydiaca,” a history of Lydia in four volumes.
SEVEN SAGES AND THEIR MOTTOES.
SOLON of Athens: “Know thyself.”
CHI’LO of Sparta: “Consider the end.”
THALES of Miletus: “Who hateth suretyship is sure.”
BIAS of Priene: “Most men are bad.”
CLEOBU’LUS of Lindus: “Avoid extremes.”
PIT’TACUS of Mytilene: “Seize time by the forelock.”
PERIANDER of Corinth: “Nothing is impossible to industry.”