_GOLDEN AGE OF GRECIAN LITERATURE._
(480-330 B.C.)
=The Attic Period.=—In their wars with the Persians (492-479 B.C.),
the Hellenic people fully demonstrated their military superiority,
vindicating their manhood on the fields of Marathon and Platæa, and
in the sea-fight with Xerxes at Salamis. Under the stimulus of these
national triumphs, conducing to national unity, as well as of the free
institutions now generally established, the Greek mind was awakened to
renewed action; literature made unprecedented growth, and in the fifth
century B.C. matured its choicest products.
Athens, the laurel-crowned saviour of Greece, hitherto but an
indifferent contributor to art and poetry, now became the centre of
letters, aspiring through her statesman Pericles (469-429 B.C.) to
both literary and political supremacy. Her Attic dialect, nervous but
not rough, harmonious without a too effeminate softness—the perfection
of the Greek language—materially helped to make her the “mother of
eloquence,” the home of poets and philosophers, the school of the
nations; while Pericles extended her imperial dominion over many
cities and islands, and filled her coffers with their tribute. Her
sculptor Phidias devoted his genius to the erection and decoration of
public edifices; his grand creations in marble adorned her fanes; and
the Parthenon, whose classic beauty has passed into a proverb, owed
to him its graceful embellishments as well as its renowned statue of
Minerva. Another colossal image of the goddess surmounted the Athenian
Acropolis, which was crowned with noble temples; and votaries of the
sister art added to the attractions of the city with their brush and
colors.
It was at this noonday of Attic glory that Grecian literature reached
its meridian. Then lyric verse climbed to heights before unattained;
and dramatic poetry, tragic and comic, held its listeners spell-bound.
History found distinguished representatives in Herodotus the Ionian,
and later in Thucydides and Xenophon, the Athenians. Philosophy, in no
other age or clime, has had worthier teachers than Socrates, Plato,
and Aristotle; while the art of persuasion seemed to be impersonated
in Pericles, Isoc’rates, Æschines (_es’ke-neez_), Demosthenes—all true
sons of Attica.
LYRIC POETRY.
=Pindar.=—Lyric poetry culminated in the sublime odes of Pindar, who
ushered in the golden age. Pindar was born of noble parents about 520
B.C., near Thebes, a city of Bœotia. The celestials are fabled to have
danced at his birth, and the dropping of honey on his infant lips by a
swarm of bees was interpreted as an omen of a brilliant literary career.
An early display of poetical talent led his father to yield to the
boy’s desire and send him to Athens for instruction; thence he returned
to Thebes, to study under the direction of the Bœotian poetesses,
Myrtis and Corinna, who gave the finishing touches to his education. At
the age of twenty, he composed an ode which established his reputation
throughout Greece, and brought him into great request with princes and
heroes who craved immortality for victories at the national games.
Corinna was the rival of his youth; though she reproached Myrtis for
entering the lists against Pindar, she was herself tempted to contend
with her former pupil, and five times bore away from him the fillet of
victory.
Pindar made choral poetry his profession, and was handsomely paid out
of the treasuries of the Greek princes and free cities for laudatory
odes written to their order. But he never descended to flattery or
falsehood; on the contrary, he leavened his panegyrics with salutary
advice, and fearlessly denounced pride, cupidity, and tyranny, even
in monarchs. To the king of Cyrene, for example, whose tyranny
afterward cost him his throne, he said: “It is easy for a fool to
shake the stability of a city, but it is hard to place it again on its
foundations.”
Pindar’s home was at Thebes, near Dirce’s fountain;[28] but he
travelled much in Greece. For a time he was the honored guest of
the Athenians; and no wonder, for when his native city sided with
Persia in the deadly struggle with that empire, the poet condemned so
pusillanimous a course and upheld Athens in her resistance, styling her
“the Pillar of Greece.” It is told that he received from the Athenians
a gift of 10,000 drachmas ($1,800), and that when the Thebans mulcted
him for the bold expression of his views, the former generously paid
the fine. At Delphi, which Pindar often visited, the people contributed
their finest fruits for his entertainment by order of the priestess;
and an iron chair was set apart for his use in the temple, where he was
wont to sit and sing the praises of Apollo, god of poetry. He lived
four years with Hiero, and doubtless sojourned with others of his
patrons. But Pindar was no boon companion of kings like Simonides, and
while he accepted their costly presents he never forfeited the respect
of his countrymen.
Pindar died at the age of eighty, in the theatre, it is related, amid
the acclamations of the audience. He had been taking part as usual, and
overcome with weariness, rested his head on the knees of a favorite
pupil, and fell into a slumber from which his friends vainly strove
to wake him. A tradition, more in accordance with the Greek love of
the marvellous, informs us that a few days before he died Proserpine
(goddess of the lower world) appeared to him, and having reproached him
for slighting her in his odes, announced that he should soon compose
a song in her honor within the confines of her own kingdom. Shortly
after, Pindar’s death occurred; and on the following day, Thebes
resounded with a hymn to Proserpine sung by an old woman, who declared
the poet’s ghost had dictated it to her in a dream.
Statues were erected to Pindar at Athens and in the hippodrome of
Thebes; a hundred years after, when Alexander the Great destroyed the
latter city in consequence of its rebellion, he bade his soldiers
spare the house hallowed by having once been the residence of the
Theban bard. Statues and dwelling have since passed away, and the only
surviving monument of Pindar is that reared by himself in the deathless
odes he has left us.
THE PINDARIC ODE.—Pindar’s fertile pen enriched every department of
lyric poetry; but all his compositions are lost except a few fragments
of pæans and dirges, with forty-five Triumphal Odes (which we have
entire) written to commemorate victories at the Great Games of Greece.
These games were celebrated at Olympia, Delphi, Neme’a, and on the
Corinthian Isthmus: they consisted of athletic sports, races, literary
and musical contests. All Greece was represented at them. Peasant and
prince, trader and priest, poet and historian, painter and sculptor,
hurried to the exciting scene as contestants or spectators; and the
simple crown of olive or laurel, pine or parsley, that was placed on
the conqueror’s brow, was valued beyond price. All that was needed to
complete the triumph was an ode in its honor from the Great Lyrist.
This, when obtained, was sung at an honorary banquet or solemn
procession, amid great rejoicings; and was annually rehearsed in the
victor’s native town to the accompaniment of soul-stirring music—for
his family, town, and state, participated in the victor’s glory.
PINDAR’S STYLE is original, chaste, full of splendor and majestic
energy. The Theban eagle, as he has often been called, soaring to the
sun, seems to disdain the commonplace in his solitary flight. His
style, however, is not faultless. The over-boldness of his metaphors
confuses; his massing of magnificent images and high-sounding epithets
wearies; his Doric condensation obscures his meaning; his metre is too
complicated for the uneducated ear, and his transitions are so abrupt
that the reader has difficulty in finding the connection. His subjects
were hard to treat; but Pindar found material and lent variety to his
odes by skilfully interweaving legendary lore, history, and fragments
of mythology. This was by Corinna’s advice; but her young pupil carried
it to such excess in his first attempt that his fair teacher warned
him, “One should sow with the hand, not with the whole sack.”
Pindar’s tone is everywhere moral. He merits indeed the title of
“Sacerdotal Poet;” for he upheld the religion of Greece in its purity,
rejecting all sensual notions of “the blessed ones,” and asserting
his faith in their holiness and justice. He taught the immortality
of the soul; “things of a day” are men, but after death there is in
store “a gladsome life.” His belief in an existence beyond the grave
is indicated in the following lines from one of his dirges. And here
be it observed that no translation can do justice to Pindar; the Doric
diamonds cease to flash when removed from their Doric setting.
“Shines for them the sun’s warm glow,
When ’tis darkness here below;
And the ground before their towers,
Meadow-land with purple flowers,
Teems with incense-bearing treen,
Teems with fruit of golden sheen.
Some in steed and wrestling feat,
Some in dice take pleasure sweet,
Some in harping: at their side
Blooms the spring in all her pride.
Fragrance all about is blown
O’er that country of desire,
Ever as rich gifts are thrown
Freely on the far-seen fire,
Blazing from the altar-stone.
But the souls of the profane
Far from heaven removed below,
Flit on earth in murderous pain,
’Neath the unyielding yoke of woe;
While pious spirits tenanting the sky
Chant praises to the mighty one on high.”
CONINGTON.
The more characteristic extract given below consists of portions
of the Seventh Olympic Ode, in which the poet sings the praises of
Diag’oras of Rhodes for having gained a victory with the cestus (made
of leather thongs and worn round the hands in boxing). This ode was
so much admired by the Rhodians that they wrote it in golden letters
on the wall of Minerva’s temple at Lindus. It relates the birth of
their patron goddess and the story of their own origin, closing with
an invocation to Jupiter, who was worshipped on Ataby’ris, a mountain
of the island. Here stood a temple, dedicated to him, containing the
fabulous brazen bulls that bellowed when any calamity threatened.
ODE TO DIAGORAS.
“As when a sire the golden bowl,
All foaming with the dew of wine,
Takes with a liberal hand and soul,
Chief gem where all his treasures shine—
Then tends the beverage (hallowed first
By prayers to all the powers above)
To slake the youthful bridegroom’s thirst,
In honor of connubial love;
The social pledge he bears on high,
And, homeward as his course he bends,
Blesses the fond connubial tie,
Admired by all his circling friends;
E’en thus I bring the nectared strain,
The Muses’ gift, to those who gain
The Pythian and Olympic crown;
Thrice blest, to whom ’tis given to share
The arduous fruit of mental care,
Cheered by the voice of high renown!
Full many a victor in the fray
My life-inspiring strains survey—
Which bid the sweet-toned lyre its music raise,
And wake the sounding flutes through all their notes of praise.
And now, Diagoras, to thee
They breathe united melody.
When Rhodes, the warlike isle, is sung,
Apollo’s bride from Venus sprung;
He too, the hero brave and bold,
With hardy frame of giant mould,
Who, by Alphe´us’ sacred tide,
And where Castalia’s waters glide,
First in the cestus’ manly fray,
Bore the triumphant prize away.
Let Damage’tus next, his sire,
To justice dear, the strain inspire.
Fixed on that isle which three fair cities grace,
Where Embolus protects wide Asia’s coast,
They dwell united with the Argive host.
In that blest isle secure at last,
’Twas thine, Tlepolemus, to meet
For each afflictive trial past
A recompense and respite sweet.
Chief of Tirynthian hosts, to thee,
As to a present deity,
The fumes of slaughtered sheep arise
In all the pomp of sacrifice:
Awarded by thy just decree,
The victor gains his verdant prize—
That crown whose double honors glow,
Diagoras, around thy brow;
On which four times the Isthmian pine,
And twice the Nemean olive shine:
While Athens on her rocky throne
Made her illustrious wreath his own.
Trophies of many a well-fought field
He won in glory’s sacred cause,
The Theban tripod, brazen shield
At Argos, and Arcadia’s vase.
Her palms Bœotia’s genuine contests yield;
Six times Ægina’s prize he gained,
As oft Pellene’s robe obtained,
And graved in characters of fame,
Thy column, Megara, records his name.
Great sire of all, immortal Jove!
On Atabyris’ mount enshrined,
Oh! still may thy propitious mind
The encomiastic hymn approve,
Which celebrates in lawful strain
The victor on Olympia’s plain,
Whose valorous arm the cestus knows to wield.
Protected by thy constant care,
In citizens’ and strangers’ eyes
Still more exalted shall he rise
Whose virtuous deeds thy favor share:
Since he, to violence and fraud unknown,
Treads the straight paths of equity alone;
His fathers’ counsels mindful to pursue,
And keep their bright example still in view.
Then let not inactivity disgrace
The well-earned fame of thine illustrious race,
Who sprang from great Calli’anax, and crown
The Erat’idæ with splendor all their own.
With joy and festal hymns the streets resound—
But soon, as shifts the ever-varying gale,
The storms of adverse fortune may assail—
Then, Rhodians, be your mirth with sober
temperance crowned.”—WHEELWRIGHT.
=Antimachus.=—An elegiac poet of the golden age was Amtim’achus
of Col’ophon, whose “Ly’de,” an elegy on his lost love, enjoyed
considerable celebrity. When, however, Antim’achus undertook to read
his long “Theba’is” to an audience, their patience became exhausted and
one after another departed, until finally he had but a single listener
left,—the young Plato.
‘
DRAMATIC POETRY.
=Rise of the Attic Drama.=—The Greek drama, like the Hindoo, had a
religious origin. In the festivals of Bacchus, the wine-god, which
consisted of licentious dances and songs round his altar by persons
disguised in goat-skins as fauns and satyrs (beings half-man and
half-goat), we must look for its earliest phase. From the dress of
those who composed the chorus, or because a goat was sacrificed, or a
goat-skin of wine awarded to the poet who wrote the best ode for the
occasion, such ode was called a _tragedy_ (_goat-song_); and the name
was afterward extended to the entire department of dramatic poetry to
which these rude hymns gave rise.
Comedy, on the contrary, was elaborated from the _village-songs_ rife
during the gala-days of the vintage, when companies of noisy revellers
(in Greek, _kōmoi_), their cheeks stained with wine-lees, went about
from town to town, plunging into all kinds of excesses, and garnishing
their songs with jokes at the expense of the spectators.
The Father of Greek tragedy was THESPIS, the Icarian,[29] who
refined the coarse Bacchanalian orgies, and introduced a single actor
(generally sustaining the part himself), to alternate with the chorus
or enter into a dialogue with its leaders (536 B.C.). Between the
hymns, the poet, having smeared his face with paint, would mount a
table and recite with copious gestures some mythological legend,
perhaps relating to Bacchus.
With a trained chorus, Thespis strolled about Greece, stopping at
the towns to give his exhibitions on the wagon which carried his
machinery and skin-clad troupe. Dancing was a prominent feature of
his entertainments. His pupil Phryn’icus improved the performance by
exchanging myths for real events and introducing female characters; but
the recitations were still disconnected and the plays lacked method;
albeit Phryn’icus was fined by the Athenians for moving their feelings
too deeply by one of his pieces.
=Birth of Tragedy.=—Out of these rude materials, Æschylus, who was
born about ten years after the first Thespian exhibition, constructed
genuine tragedy. He added a second actor and remodelled the chorus,
making it secondary to the dialogue, and instituting a connection
between its songs and the events represented on the stage. Appropriate
theatrical costumes, stationary scenery, painted masks, and thick-soled
buskins to increase the height of the performers, complete the list of
his innovations. Thus the goat-song of early days developed into the
true drama (_action_), the crowning effort of Greek genius. Athens had
the honor of creating and perfecting it; while in other departments of
verse she fell behind her neighbors, in dramatic poetry she eclipsed
them all.
The love of the theatre grew into a passion at Athens. When the first
rude structure of boards gave way under the weight of the audience, her
citizens erected a permanent edifice of semicircular form, whose seats,
rising in tiers, were hewn in the rocky side of the Acropolis. This new
theatre accommodated thirty thousand persons, who sat under the shadow
of Athens’ patron-goddess, and with reverent gaze watched actors and
chorus go through their parts round the altar of Bacchus.
The performances took place by day, and in the open air, the theatre
not being roofed. They began immediately after the morning meal, and on
great occasions seats were secured and occupied during the preceding
night. It was the custom of those who desired a comfortable sitting
to bring their own cushions. Tickets of admission at first cost one
drachma (18 cents); but Pericles reduced the price to six cents, and
thus placed dramatic entertainments within the reach of the poorest
citizens. The audience sometimes remained in the theatre twelve hours,
gossiping during the intervals, and refreshing themselves with cake,
wine, and sweetmeats.—In ancient Greece, the actor’s profession was
lucrative and honorable; dramatic authors not unfrequently performed
parts in their own plays. (_Read Donaldson’s “Theatre of the Greeks.”_)
Under the favoring skies of Athens the drama advanced to perfection
with marvellous rapidity. In the hands of Æschylus it was all grandeur;
Sophocles invested it with beauty, and Euripides with pathos. These
three tragic poets, almost contemporaries, were the brightest ornaments
of the Attic capital, where there were many bright. Their triumphs
cover a period of seventy-eight years (484-406 B.C.), including the
proud age of Pericles, but extending beyond it till the Peloponnesian
War had deprived Athens of her supremacy. Simultaneously with Sophocles
and Euripides flourished Aristophanes, under whom comedy reached its
climax.
It has been computed that during the golden age 250 dramatic poets
flourished, who produced more than 3,400 plays. Out of this vast
number, only 44 have survived to our time.
=Æschylus= (525-456 B.C.).—Eleusis, a hamlet of Attica, was the
birthplace of Æschylus. It is related that in his youth he was charged
with watching grapes, and overcome by slumber, saw Bacchus in his
dreams, who bade him devote himself to tragedy. The boy forgot not
the injunction; he applied himself diligently to study, and in his
twenty-fifth year contended, though unsuccessfully, for the chaplet of
ivy.
Ten years afterward, he acquitted himself so bravely in the battle of
Marathon as to receive a special prize, and have his deeds immortalized
in a painting which was hung in the theatre at Athens. He also won
distinction at Salamis and Platæa; and the name of one of his brothers
was long remembered in connection with the sinking of the Persian
admiral’s galley. During the flourishing period of Athenian history
that followed, the literary reputation of Æschylus became as great as
his military renown. He was the hero of thirteen poetical victories.
In 468 B.C. Æschylus left Athens for the court of Hiero, the Syracusan
prince, round which so many great men clustered. According to some, the
unjust award of the tragic prize to Sophocles, for political reasons,
was the cause of his going. The more probable account is that his
exile followed a public accusation of impiety, for disclosing certain
religious mysteries in one of his plays. The popular excitement ran
high; the poet was attacked with stones, when his brother happily
averted the fury of the mob by uncovering before them the stump of his
own arm, which had been mutilated at Salamis in defence of his country.
Hiero received our author hospitably; and the poet made return by
writing for him a drama called “the Women of Etna.” Æschylus may have
visited Athens after this; but if so, he returned to Sicily to die,
in the sixty-ninth year of his age. While he sat in a field near Gela
absorbed in thought, so the fable goes, an eagle, hovering over the
spot with a tortoise in its talons, let the tortoise fall on his bald
crown, which it mistook for a shining cobble-stone, for the purpose of
breaking the shell. The bird’s aim was true; and the blow fractured the
poet’s skull. Thus, in fulfilment of an oracular prediction, Æschylus
received his death-stroke from heaven.
In sublimity and power of dealing with the terrible, Æschylus is
unequalled. Even the resources of the versatile Greek tongue were
hardly adequate to the expression of his conceptions. He found
congenial subjects only among the gods and demigods of mythology or the
tragical events of the heroic period. His genius enabled him to give
life and shape to the vast and the supernatural, as few others have
done—and most effectively, though his plot is always simple.
Sir Walter Scott thus speaks of Æschylus in his Essay on the Drama:—“At
his summons, the mysterious and tremendous volume of destiny, in
which are inscribed the dooms of gods and men, seemed to display its
leaves of iron before the appalled spectators; the more than mortal
voices of deities, Titans, and departed heroes, were heard in awful
conference; Olympus bowed, and its divinities descended; earth yawned,
and gave up the pale spectres of the dead; and the yet more undefined
and grisly forms of those infernal deities who struck horror into the
gods themselves. All this could only be dared and done by a poet of the
highest order.”
But seven of the seventy-five tragedies of Æschylus are extant. Of
these, “Prometheus Chained” is considered the greatest, and from it
we have selected our extracts. The opening scene is laid on the grim
ocean’s shore near frowning Caucasus, to which, in obedience to Jove’s
command, the giant Prometheus is to be chained. For thirty thousand
years a vulture is to tear his vitals, constantly growing out afresh,
as a punishment for his having given fire to mortals, and taught
them useful arts in opposition to the will of heaven. Strength and
Force, grandly personified, drag the victim to the place of torture;
and Vulcan, the god of fire, rivets his fetters to the rock. The
chorus is composed of sea-nymphs, who come to offer their sympathy
to the sufferer and advise him to submit; but Prometheus, who is the
embodiment of stern independence, fortitude, and decision, endures
unyieldingly to the last. Even amid “the thunder’s deepening roar,
blazing wreaths of lightning, and eddying sands whirled on high,”
while the earth rocks to its centre, and “boisterous billows rise,
confounding sea and sky,” he hurls a proud defiance at his oppressors.
SCENE FROM PROMETHEUS CHAINED.
_STROPHE._
“Thy dire disasters, unexampled wrongs,
I weep, Prometheus.
From its soft founts distilled, the flowing tear
My cheek bedashes.
’Tis hard, most hard! By self-made laws Jove rules,
And ’gainst the host of primal gods he points
The lordly spear.
_ANTISTROPHE._
With echoing groans the ambient waste bewails
Thy fate, Prometheus;
The neighboring tribes of holy Asia weep
For thee, Prometheus.
For thee and thine! names mighty and revered
Of yore, now shamed, dishonored, and cast down,
And chained with thee.
_STROPHE._
And Colchis, with her belted daughters, weeps
For thee, Prometheus;
And Scythian tribes, on earth’s remotest verge,
Where lone Mæotis[30] spreads her wintry waters,
Do weep for thee.
_ANTISTROPHE._
The flower of Araby’s wandering warriors weep
For thee, Prometheus;
And they who high their airy holds have perched
On Caucasus’ ridge, with pointed lances bristling,
Do weep for thee.
_EPODE._
One only vexed like thee, and even as thou
In adamant bound,
A Titan, and a god scorned by the gods,
Atlas I knew.
He on his shoulders the surpassing weight
Of the celestial pole stoutly upbore,
And groaned beneath.
Roars billowy Ocean, and the Deep sucks back
Its waters when he sobs; from earth’s dark caves
Deep hell resounds;
The fountains of the holy-streaming rivers
Do moan with him.
PROMETHEUS.—Deem me not self-willed nor with pride high-strung,
That I am dumb; my heart is gnawed to see
Myself thus mocked and jeered. These gods, to whom
Owe they their green advancement but to me?
But this ye know; and, not to teach the taught,
I’ll speak of it no more. Of human kind,
My great offence in aiding them, in teaching
The babe to speak, and rousing torpid mind
To take the grasp of itself—of this I’ll talk;
Meaning to mortal men no blame, but only
The true recital of mine own deserts.
For, soothly, having eyes to see they saw not,
And hearing heard not; but, like dreamy phantoms,
A random life they led from year to year,
All blindly floundering on. No craft they knew
With woven brick or jointed beam to pile
The sunward porch; but in the dark earth burrowed
And housed, like tiny ants in sunless caves.
No signs they knew to mark the wintry year:
The flower-strewn Spring, and the fruit-laden Summer,
Uncalendared, unregistered, returned—
Till I the difficult art of the stars revealed,
Their risings and their settings. Numbers, too,
I taught them (a most choice device), and how
By marshalled signs to fix their shifting thoughts,
That Memory, mother of Muses, might achieve
Her wondrous works. I first slaved to the yoke
Both ox and ass. I, the rein-loving steeds
(Of wealth’s gay-flaunting pomp the chiefest pride)
Joined to the car; and bade them ease the toils
Of laboring men vicarious. I the first
Upon the lint-winged car of mariner
Was launched, sea-wandering. Such wise arts I found,
To soothe the ills of man’s ephemeral life;
But for myself, plunged in this depth of woe,
No prop I find.
CHORUS.—Sad chance! Thy wit hath slipt
From its firm footing then when needed most,
Like some unlearned leech who many healed,
But being sick himself, from all his store,
Cannot cull out one medicinal drug.
PROMETHEUS.—Hear me yet further; and in hearing marvel
What arts and curious shifts my wit devised.
Chiefest of all, the cure of dire disease
Men owe to me. Nor healing food, nor drink,
Nor unguent knew they, but did slowly wither
And waste away for lack of pharmacy,
Till taught by me to mix the soothing drug
And check corruption’s march. I fixed the art
Of divination with its various phase
Of dim revealings, making dreams speak truth,
Stray voices, and encounters by the way
Significant; the flight of taloned birds
On right and left I marked—these fraught with ban,
With blissful augury those. I first did wrap
In the smooth fat the thighs; first burnt the loins,
And from the flickering flame taught men to spell
No easy lore, and cleared the fire-faced signs[31]
Obscure before. Yet more: I probed the earth,
To yield its hidden wealth to help man’s weakness—
Iron, copper, silver, gold. None but a fool,
A prating fool, will stint me of this praise.
And thus, with one short word to sum the tale,
Prometheus taught all arts to mortal men.”
JOHN STUART BLACKIE.
Prometheus may be regarded as typifying the spirit of progress, bound
by the shackles of inevitable destiny, chafing under its enslavement,
but enduring contumely and suffering rather than yield to tyranny.
The weird wail of Io on leaving Prometheus, wrung from her by the
persecution of Juno, is thus rendered by Mrs. Browning, with all the
wildness and fire of the original:—
“Io.—Eleleu! Eleleu!
How the spasm and the pain,
And the fire on the brain,
Strike me burning through!
How the sting of the curse, all aflame as it flew,
Pricks me onward again!
How my heart, in its terror, is spurning my breast!
And my eyes, like the wheels of a chariot, roll round;
I am whirled from my course, to the east and the west,
In the whirlwind of frenzy all madly inwound—
And my mouth is unbridled for anguish and hate,
And my words beat in vain, in wild storms of unrest,
On the sea of desolate fate.”
EXTANT PLAYS OF ÆSCHYLUS.
PROMETHEUS CHAINED.
SEVEN AGAINST THEBES. Founded on the siege of Thebes by seven Argive
chiefs, who espouse the cause of Polyni’ces against his brother
Ete’ocles, the latter having seized the crown contrary to agreement. A
great favorite, and the poet’s special pride.
THE PERSIANS. Subject, the overthrow of Xerxes: thought to be the
oldest Greek drama extant.
THE SUPPLIANTS. Danaus and his fifty daughters solicit of the king of
Argos protection from their enemies. The weakest of the seven.
AGAMEMNON. The murder of Agamemnon, on his return from Troy, by his
wife Clytemnestra and her paramour Ægisthus, is the material part of
the plot.
CHOËPHORÆ (libation-bearers). Based on the avenging of the crime by
Orestes, Agamemnon’s son, who slays his mother and her guilty partner.
THE FURIES. Here we have the pursuit of the parricide by the
Furies.—Clytemnestra, the Lady Macbeth of the Greek stage; her
deep-laid plan, her cunning welcome of her husband, the fatal
strokes dealt by her own hand, her fiendish glorying in the deed of
blood,—touched with masterly skill.
The three tragedies last named constitute what is called a _trilogy_,
or group of three dramas founded upon one story. “Prometheus Chained”
was one of a trilogy, of which the other two members are lost.
=Sophocles= (495-405 B.C.), the rival of Æschylus, was born at
Colo’nus, an Attic borough a short mile from the capital. He was
fortunate in having a father able to give him a liberal education, and
entered the service of the Muses at an early age. His skill in music
and the exercises of the gymnasium won him many a garland; and when
hardly sixteen, unrobed and crowned, he led the choir of boys with his
ivory lyre in the chant of triumph which the Athenians poured forth
round the trophy raised at Salamis.
Sophocles made his début as a tragic writer in that successful contest
with Æschylus which, some think, cost Athens her grand old dramatist.
Fame spread the news, and Greece looked to Sophocles as the coming
man. A succession of plays extended his popularity. He added nineteen
prizes to the one wrested from Æschylus in 468 B.C. In the year 440 he
completed the drama of “Antig’one,” the oldest of his seven surviving
tragedies, which secured for him an important official position. The
“Antigone” ushered in the most active portion of its author’s literary
life, during which eighty-one of his pieces were written. Although
history throws little light on this period of his career, we know that,
unlike his great contemporaries, he never left his native city to enjoy
the munificence of foreign patrons. The Greek theatre was indebted
to him for a third actor, improvements in scenery, and a further
modification of the chorus, which no longer took an active part in the
play.
In his eightieth year, Sophocles was charged with imbecility by an
ungrateful son, who regarded with jealous eyes his partiality for a
favorite grandchild, and hoped in this way to obtain control of his
property. The defence of the alleged dotard was to read before his
judges a choral song from a play which he had just finished—“Œdipus
at Colonus” (p. 206). The vindication was complete; the judges at
once rendered a decision in the old poet’s favor, and in a burst of
enthusiasm bore him home in triumph. He died at the age of ninety.
Some tell us that while he was repeating the pathetic plaints of his
“Antigone,” his breath suddenly ceased; others, that after gaining a
tragic victory, he died of excessive joy as the crown was placed on his
brow. He left the Athenians 113 dramas.
STYLE OF SOPHOCLES.—As Æschylus is the impersonation of grandeur,
so is Sophocles of beauty and harmony. He descends from the sublime
heights Æschylus loved to tread, and, appealing to our sympathy with
humanity, finds his way into the secret chambers of the heart. His
language is pure; his style, elegant, dignified, vivacious—faultless;
in allusion to his sweet diction, he was called by the ancients _the
Bee of Attica_. The type of manly beauty and intellectual power,
æsthetic culture and lofty morality, it seems as if Sophocles had been
“specially created to represent Greek art in its most refined and
exquisitely balanced perfection.”
THE MASTERPIECE OF SOPHOCLES is “King Œdipus.” Laïus, a Theban
monarch, told by an oracle (such was the legend) that his children
would be the cause of his death, had his infant son Œdipus exposed on
Mount Cithæron, hoping thus to escape his destiny. But the boy was
discovered by some herdsmen and carried to Corinth, where he grew to
man’s estate as the adopted son and heir of the king.
Warned at the Delphic shrine to beware of his native land lest he
should imbrue his hands in his father’s blood, and believing Corinth
to be his birthplace, he withdrew to Thebes; but on the way he met
Laïus, and, not knowing who he was, killed him in a quarrel. Arrived at
Thebes, he won the hand of the widow Jocasta, his own mother, who bore
him four children. All went well for a time. At length, however, an
epidemic broke out; and the oracle assigned as its cause the presence
of the late king’s murderer. Œdipus strained every nerve to discover
the offender, and at last, to his horror, fastened the crime, and the
more terrible guilt of parricide, upon himself. Unhappy Jocasta hanged
herself in the palace, and Œdipus in his frenzy beat out his eyes with
her gold-embossed buckles.
The play opens at Thebes, during the plague. Œdipus, in conversation
with a priest and Creon, Jocasta’s brother, is informed of Apollo’s
will,—that, to avert the evil, the land must be purified by the
punishment of the assassin. After the catastrophe above related,
blinded Œdipus bemoans his lot in heart-rending utterances, but finally
accepts his fate with resignation. We give the
CLOSING SCENE OF KING ŒDIPUS.
[_Enter Creon._]
“CREON.—I have not come, O Œdipus, to scorn,
Nor to reproach thee for thy former crimes;
But ye, if ye have lost your sense of shame
For mortal men, yet reverence the light
Of him, our King, the Sun-god, source of life,
Nor sight so foul expose unveiled to view,
Which neither earth, nor shower from heaven, nor light,
Can see and welcome. But with utmost speed
Convey him in; for nearest kin alone
Can meetly see and hear their kindred’s ills.
ŒDIPUS.—Oh! by the gods! since thou, beyond my hopes,
Dost come all noble unto me all base,
In one thing hearken. For thy good I ask.
CREON.—And what request seek’st thou so wistfully?
ŒDIPUS.—Cast me with all thy speed from out this land,
Where never more a man may look on me!
CREON.—Be sure I would have done so, but I wished
To learn what now the God will bid us do.
ŒDIPUS.—The oracle was surely clear enough
That I, the parricide, the pest, should die.
CREON.—So ran the words. But in our present need
’Tis better to learn surely what to do.
ŒDIPUS.—And will ye ask for one so vile as I?
CREON.—Yea, now thou too would’st trust the voice of God.
ŒDIPUS.—And this I charge thee, yea, and supplicate:
For her within, provide what tomb thou wilt,
For for thine own most meetly thou wilt care.
But never let this city of my fathers
Be sentenced to receive me as its guest;
But suffer me on yon lone hills to dwell,
Where stands Cithæron, chosen as my tomb
While still I lived, by mother and by sire,
That I may die by those who sought to kill.
And for my boys, O Creon, lay no charge
Of them upon me. They are grown, nor need,
Where’er they be, feel lack of means to live.
But for my two poor girls, all desolate,
To whom their table never brought a meal
Without my presence, but whate’er I touched
They still partook of with me—these I care for.
Yea, let me touch them with my hands, and weep
To them my sorrows. Grant it, O my prince!
O born of noble nature!
Could I but touch them with my hands, I feel
Still I should have them mine, as when I saw.
[_Enter Antigone and Ismene._]
What say I? What is this?
Do I not hear, ye gods! their dear, loved tones,
Broken with sobs, and Creon, pitying me,
Hath sent the dearest of my children to me?
Is it not so?
CREON.—It is so. I am he who gives thee this,
Knowing the joy thou hadst in them of old.
ŒDIPUS.—Good luck have thou! And may the Powers on high
Guard thy path better than they guarded mine!
Where are ye, O my children? Come, oh! come
To these your brother’s hands, which but now tore
Your father’s eyes, that once were bright to see,
Who, O my children, blind and knowing naught,
Became your father—how, I may not tell.
I weep for you, though sight is mine no more,
Picturing in mind the sad and dreary life
Which waits you in the world in years to come;
For to what friendly gatherings will ye go,
Or festive joys, from whence, for stately show,
Once yours, ye shall not home return in tears?
Who is there, O my children, rash enough
To make his own the shame that then will fall
On those who bore me, and on you as well?
What evil fails us here? Such shame as this
Will men lay on you, and who then will dare
To make you his in marriage? None, not one,
My children! but ye needs must waste away,
Unwedded, childless. Thou, Menœceus’ son,
Since thou alone art left a father to them,
Suffer them not to wander husbandless,
Nor let thy kindred beg their daily bread;
But look on them with pity, seeing them
At their age, but for thee, deprived of all.
O noble soul, I pray thee, touch my hand
In token of consent. And ye, my girls,
Had ye the minds to hearken, I would fain
Give ye much counsel. As it is, pray for me
To live where’er is meet; and for yourselves
A brighter life than his ye call your sire.
CREON.—Enough of tears and words. Go thou within.
ŒDIPUS.—I needs must yield, however hard it be.
CREON.—In their right season, all things prosper best.
ŒDIPUS.—Know’st thou my wish?
CREON.—Speak, and I then shall hear.
ŒDIPUS.—That thou should’st send me far away from home?
CREON.—Thou askest what the gods alone can give.
ŒDIPUS.—And yet I go most hated of the gods.
CREON.—And therefore it may chance thou gain’st thy wish.
ŒDIPUS.—And dost thou promise, then, to grant it me?
CREON.—I am not wont to utter idle words.
ŒDIPUS.—Lead me then hence.
CREON.—Go thou, but leave the girls.
ŒDIPUS.—Ah! take them not from me.
CREON.—Thou must not think
To have thy way in all things all thy life.
Thou hadst it once, yet went it ill with thee.
CHORUS.—Ye men of Thebes, behold this Œdipus,
Who knew the famous riddle[32] and was noblest,
Who envied no one’s fortune and success:
And lo! in what a sea of direst woe
He now is plunged. From hence the lesson draw,
To reckon no man happy till ye see
The closing day; until lie pass the bourn
Which severs life from death, unscathed by woe.”—PLUMPTRE.
Œdipus ended his days in exile at Colonus, where he was received by
Theseus, the hero of Attica, and attended to the last by his faithful
daughter Antigone. His death is the subject of the play “Œdipus at
Colonus,” written at the close of the poet’s life and reflecting the
gentleness and serenity of his last days. It contains one of the gems
of Sophocles—that chorus which has immortalized the lovely scenery
about Colonus—which the old poet recited before the Athenian judges to
prove his sanity. Bulwer furnishes us a spirited version of this famous
passage:—The chorus informs the outcast Œdipus that he has come to
Colonus,
“Where ever and aye, through the greenest vale,
Gush the wailing notes of the nightingale,
From her home where the dark-hued ivy weaves
With the grove of the god a night of leaves;
And the vines blossom out from the lonely glade,
And the suns of the summer are dim in the shade,
And the storms of the winter have never a breeze,
That can shiver a leaf from the charmèd trees;
For there, oh! ever there
With that fair mountain throng,
Who his sweet nurses were,
Wild Bacchus holds his court, the conscious woods among!
Daintily, ever there,
Crown of the mighty goddesses of old,
Clustering Narcissus with his glorious hues
Springs from his bath of heaven’s delicious dews,
And the gay crocus sheds his rays of gold.
And wandering there forever
The fountains are at play,
And Cephissus feeds his river
From their sweet urns, day by day;
The river knows no dearth;
Adown the vale the lapsing waters glide,
And the pure rain of that pellucid tide
Calls the rife beauty from the heart of earth;
While by the banks the Muses’ choral train
Are duly heard—and there Love checks her golden rein.”
EXTANT PLAYS OF SOPHOCLES.
KING ŒDIPUS: this and the next two tragedies form a trilogy.
ŒDIPUS AT COLONUS: well adapted to flatter the local pride of the
Athenians.
ANTIGONE: based on the story of “the Seven against Thebes.” Antigone
was the daughter of Œdipus. Her uncle, King Creon, forbids the burial
of her brother Polyni’ces, the instigator of the war and one of its
victims. Sisterly affection proves stronger than fear of the royal
decree; Antigone performs the last sad offices for her brother, and is
entombed alive for her disobedience.
THE TRACHINIAN WOMEN: subject, the poisoning of Hercules by his wife
Deïanira.
ELECTRA: called from the heroine, Electra, daughter of Agamemnon, who
is overpowered by hatred for her unnatural mother and Ægisthus. The
plot culminates with the slaughter of the guilty pair by Orestes the
avenger. Finest passage, the meeting between Orestes and his sister.
AJAX: founded upon the madness of Ajax in consequence of the bestowal
of Achilles’ arms on Ulysses in preference to himself; his suicide and
funeral.
PHILOCTE’TES: the hero was a Thessalian prince, whom the Greeks
treacherously abandoned on the island of Lemnos. Afterward, when
informed by the oracle that Troy would not fall until the arrows
of Hercules, which Philoctetes had, were brought to bear on its
defenders, they induced him to take part in the war.
=Euripides.=—In 480 B.C., on the island of Salamis, while the battle
that was to decide the future of Greece raged in the neighboring
waters, Euripides first saw the light. Æschylus, in his prime, was at
the time bravely fighting on an Athenian galley; while Sophocles, but
fifteen years of age, stood ready, should the gods grant his countrymen
success, to celebrate the victory with the arts in which he excelled.
The third of the illustrious tragic trio was carefully trained;
painting, rhetoric, and philosophy, besides the customary gymnastic
exercises, engaged his attention; and he had not attained his
eighteenth year when he finished his first drama. Not, however, until
441 B.C. did he, by winning the tragic prize, verify a prediction made
before his birth that he would be crowned with sacred chaplets.
His reputation was now secure; and though he was exposed to bitter
partisan attacks, his plays became widely popular. The philosopher
Socrates always went to see them performed, and is even suspected of
having had a hand in their composition. So great was the estimation
in which they were held at Syracuse, that, after the surrender of the
Athenian armies which had attempted the reduction of that city (413
B.C.), such of the soldiers as could teach their captors verses of
Euripides were exempted from the cruelties inflicted on their fellows,
and sent home to thank the author for their liberty. Athens itself is
said to have been saved nine years later, when the Spartan general
Lysander was minded to lay it in ashes, by the singing of a chorus of
Euripides at the triumphal banquet; who could raise his hand against
the city of one that had discoursed poetry so sweet?
Like his brother tragedians, Euripides drew his subjects from the
mythical history of his country. His plays numbered seventy-five, some
say ninety-two; and the best of them rank with the best pieces on the
roll of dramatic literature. He composed slowly and with care. On one
occasion, it is related, when he had completed only four verses in
three days, Euripides was told by a poetaster that in the same time
_he_ had produced a hundred. “And yours,” replied the great man, “will
live for three days; mine, forever.”
Euripides spent the last two years of his life at the Macedonian court,
then the abode of many illustrious men. He went there in search of
rest, but found that he had only exchanged persecution at home for
jealousy abroad. The honors heaped upon him by the Macedonian prince,
together with his own superior genius, raised him up enemies. In the
king’s savage hounds, if we may credit the legend, they saw the means
of removing an obnoxious rival; and while Euripides was walking in his
patron’s garden, he was attacked and fatally mangled by the fierce
brutes (406 B.C.).
Athens felt the loss, and went into mourning at news of his death;
vainly she supplicated the Macedonian king for his ashes. They were
magnificently interred at Pella; while his country was forced to remain
content with a statue, and a cenotaph on which was inscribed, “All
Greece is the monument of Euripides.” His verses, as he predicted, were
immortal; admiration of them led an epigrammatist to write:
“If it be true that in the grave the dead
Have sense and knowledge, as some men have said,
I’d hang myself to see Euripides.”
With Euripides, the glory of the Athenian stage descended into
the tomb; and Tragedy found no one worthy to fill his place till
Shakespeare’s day.
STYLE OF EURIPIDES.—Sophocles once remarked that he represented men
as they ought to be, Euripides as they are. This holding of the mirror
up to nature was what Athenian taste began to demand; Euripides had
the tact to see what was wanted, and the genius to make the innovation
successfully. His heroes and heroines talked and acted like men and
women of the day; hence he has been accused of degrading his art by
introducing the commonplace into his dramas, of lowering Greek tragedy
to the level of every-day life.
A more serious charge also was laid at his door—that of impiety.
Euripides rejected the faith of his fathers; we need not, therefore,
look in his plays for the religious fervor of Æschylus, or even for
the high moral tone of Sophocles. In one of his lines the doctrine of
mental reservation appears,
“My tongue took an oath, but my mind is unsworn”—
a sentiment which led to his prosecution for justifying perjury.
While Euripides was inferior to Æschylus in majesty, to Sophocles
in symmetry and finish, he surpassed both in delineating character,
and particularly in representing the human passions. He was the most
pathetic of the three, and in the portraiture of woman stands second to
no poet, ancient or modern. His heroines are his master-figures. Traces
of art are sometimes apparent in his writings, and occasionally he
verges on the sensational.
THE MEDE’A is the _chef d’œuvre_ of this author. Its plot is derived
from the story of Medea, a Colchian princess proficient in sorcery. She
won the love of the Greek prince Jason, who came to Colchis in the ship
Argo to obtain possession of the Golden Fleece, helped him to secure
the object of his search, and eloped with him to Greece. But when Jason
beheld the fair Glaucè, daughter of the King of Corinth, he resolved
to thrust aside Medea in favor of his new love, forgetful of the dark
power of the enchantress.
The opening scene is laid at Corinth, after the nuptials of Jason and
Glaucè. The infidelity of her husband has transformed Medea into a
tigress, whose conflicting passions the poet touches with consummate
skill—the anger of the dishonored wife, the love of the tender mother,
the steeling of the woman’s heart against its deep affection, the
all-absorbing thirst for vengeance.
The play ends with Medea’s terrible revenge. Banished by the king from
Corinth, she begs for one day of preparation, in which she sends to the
bride a costly robe and golden wreath poisoned by her fell arts. The
unsuspecting Glaucè smilingly arrays herself in these presents; but her
smiles give place to shrieks of agony as the enchanted garments burn
into her flesh and the chaplet blazes in her hair. Her father tries
to save her, and perishes in her flaming embrace. Medea completes her
work by the murder of her two children—Jason’s sons—and after jeering
at her husband’s grief disappears with the corpses in a chariot whirled
through the air by dragons.
One of the most affecting passages in Euripides is found in
MEDEA’S LAST WORDS TO HER SONS.
“O children, children! you have still a city,
A home, where, lost to me and all my woe,
You will live out your lives without a mother!
But I—lo! I am for another land,
Leaving the joy of you: to see you happy,
To deck your marriage-bed, to greet your bride,
To light your wedding-torch, shall not be mine!
O me! thrice wretched in my own self-will!
In vain then, dear my children! did I rear you;
In vain I travailed, and with wearing sorrow
Bore bitter anguish in the hour of childbirth!
Yea, of a sooth, I had great hope of you,
That you should cherish my old age, and deck
My corpse with loving hands, and make me blessed
’Mid women in my death. But now, ah me!
Hath perished that sweet dream. For long without you
I shall drag out a dreary doleful age.
And you shall never see your mother more
With your dear eyes: for all your life is changed.
Woe! woe!
Why gaze you at me with your eyes, my children?
Why smile your last sweet smile? Ah me! ah me!
What shall I do? My heart dissolves within me,
Friends, when I see the glad eyes of my sons!
I cannot. No: my will that was so steady,
Farewell to it. They too shall go with me:
Why should I wound their sire with what wounds them,
Heaping tenfold his woes on my own head?
No, no, I shall not. Perish my proud will.
Yet whence this weakness? Do I wish to reap
The scorn that springs from enemies unpunished?
Dare it I must. What craven fool am I,
To let soft thoughts flow trickling from my soul!
Go, boys, into the house: and he who may not
Be present at my solemn sacrifice—
Let him see to it. My hand shall not falter.
Ah! ah!
Nay, do not, O my heart! do not this thing!
Suffer them, O poor fool; yea, spare thy children!
There in thy exile they will gladden thee.
Not so: by all the plagues of nethermost hell
It shall not be that I, that I should suffer
My foes to triumph and insult my sons!
Die must they: this must be, and since it must,
I, I myself will slay them, I who bore them.
So is it fixed, and there is no escape.
Even as I speak, the crown is on her head,
The bride is dying in her robes, I know it.
But since this path most piteous I tread,
Sending them forth on paths more piteous far,
I will embrace my children. O my sons!
Give, give your mother your dear hands to kiss.
O dearest hands, and mouths most dear to me,
And forms and noble faces of my sons!
Be happy even there: what here was yours,
Your father robs you of. O delicate scent!
O tender touch and sweet breath of my boys!
Go, go, go—leave me! Lo, I cannot bear
To look on you: my woes have overwhelmed me.”
SYMONDS.
EXTANT PLAYS OF EURIPIDES.
ALCESTIS, first represented 438 B.C.
MEDEA, ” 431 ”
HIPPOL’YTUS, ” 428 ”
HECUBA, ” 423 ”
HERACLI’DÆ, ” 421 ”
THE SUPPLIANTS.
ION.
THE RAGING HERCULES.
ANDROMACHE.
THE TROJAN WOMEN, 415 B.C.: pathetic by reason of the plaints of the
captive women.
ELECTRA, first represented 413 B.C.
HELEN, ” 412 ”
IPHIGENI’A AT TAURIS.
ORESTES, 408 B.C.: demoralizing in its portraiture of crime.
THE PHŒNICIAN WOMEN.
THE FEMALE BACCHANALIANS: produced at the Macedonian court.
IPHIGENIA AT AULIS: not acted till after the author’s death.
CYCLOPS: a satyric drama (chorus of satyrs).
=Lost Tragedies.=—Dramatic literature has sustained an irreparable
loss, not only in the missing plays of the three great masters, but
also in those numberless works of their contemporaries and occasionally
successful competitors now buried in oblivion. From the allusions of
two or three Greek authors, a few meagre particulars may be gleaned,
now of one, now of another—but they only serve to make us more
painfully conscious of our loss.
=Greek Comedy.=—Comedy was older than tragedy in Greece. Thirty years
before the time of Thespis, Susa’rion of Meg’ara, in his burlesque
exhibitions, improved somewhat on the extempore jests and village-songs
of the Bacchic revellers, and hence has been called the inventor of
comedy. Susarion was no great lover of the fair sex, if we may judge
by an ungallant sentiment of his which has been preserved: “Woman is a
curse, but we cannot conduct our household affairs without this curse;
therefore to marry is an evil, and not to marry is an evil.” Perhaps he
had taken to wife a Xantippe.
The poet Epicharmus, also of Megara, but the Sicilian city of that
name, first committed his effusions to writing; he was the author of
thirty-five comedies, some of them on subjects not mythological.
The development of comedy, however, was interrupted. The Tragic Muse
enforced her claims at the expense of her elder sister, and the latter
was for a season neglected. But the flourishing era of republican
Athens, when the poet was free to lash whom he chose, saw comedy
restored to the favor of the satire-loving people. It may be said to
have been perfected by Aristophanes. He not only ridiculed the follies
and vices of the day, laid bare family secrets on the stage, and
edified his audiences by caricaturing the rich and great with masks and
costumes which reproduced their peculiarities, but fearlessly assailed
the government. When all others shrunk from playing so dangerous
a rôle, he himself performed the part of the insolent demagogue
Cleon (originally a leather-dresser), whom he mercilessly “cut into
sandal-strips” in his “Knights.”
Even the gods were not slighted by the comic poets. The gourmand
Hercules devours as fast as the cook can prepare victuals; Prometheus
is protected from the elements by an umbrella; Bacchus swaggers
as a fop and coward. Comedy in the hands of Aristophanes and his
contemporaries was to the Athenians what our press is to us, but
went still further. Always personal and sometimes scurrilous in its
attacks, too often coarse and licentious in its tone, it yet doubtless
accomplished much good in restraining political ambition, checking
public corruption, and modifying the prevailing faults of society.
=Aristophanes.=—The oldest comedies extant are those of Aristophanes,
a citizen of Athens by birth or adoption, born about the middle of the
fifth century B.C. If he was an adopted son, Athens had good reason
to be proud of her protégé. His society was sought by the learned and
great. He became the idol of the people, who fined such as brought
libelsuits against him, and voted him an olive crown for exposing the
misconduct of their rulers.
Nor was his fame confined to Athens. All Greece, and Sicily too,
laughed at his humorous sallies. The Persian king enjoyed his pungent
satires, and regarded him as such a power in Greece that when Spartan
ambassadors sought an alliance with Persia against their Athenian
rivals, the king asked on which side the comic poet was arrayed; for,
said he, “the party whose cause Aristophanes espouses will certainly
win.”
Aristophanes was loyal to the true interests of his country, and
declined the flattering invitations of Dionysius to dwell in ease
at Syracuse with the luminaries of his age. He longed for the
glorious Athens of the past, and attacked whatever conflicted with
his conservative ideas. None escaped his well-aimed shafts. He was
specially severe on the Sophists, a new class of teachers at Athens,
whose forte lay in chopping logic and splitting hairs, and who taught
the tricks of rhetoric rather than practical morality. In his “Clouds”
he derides their sharp practices and unsound system of education,
striking them over the head of Socrates, the exponent of true
philosophy, whose life was devoted to combating the false teachings of
these very pretenders.
That Socrates was merely the scape-goat is plain, for he and
Aristophanes were intimate friends. When the play was first exhibited,
the philosopher, who was in the audience, took it all in good part,
and even rose that the people might compare him with the caricature
presented, which exaggerated his eccentricities of dress and figure—his
pug-nose, thick lips, shabby garments, and absent-minded stare. The
chorus of changing clouds symbolized the meretricious charms of
sophistry.
“THE CLOUDS” opens in the sleeping-apartment of Strepsi’ades, an
Athenian citizen, his son Pheidippides occupying a pallet near him. The
slaves of the household are abed in an adjoining room. Strepsiades,
oppressed by debt incurred through the extravagance of his “precious
son,” a fast young man addicted to fast horses, is disturbed by the
recollection of numerous outstanding bills and notes about to mature.
He wakes before daylight and calls a slave:—
“Boy! light a lamp;
Bring me my pocket-book, that I may see
How my accounts stand, and just cast them up. [_Slave obeys._]
Let’s see now. First, here’s Prasias, fifty pounds.
Now, what’s that for? When did I borrow that?
Ah! when I bought that gray. O dear! O dear!
I shall grow gray enough, if this goes on.
PHEIDIPPIDES [_talking in his sleep_].—That’s not fair,
Philo! Keep your own side of the course!
STREPSIADES.—Ay, there he goes! that’s what is ruining me;
He’s always racing, even in his dreams.
PHEIDIPPIDES [_awaking_].—Good heavens! my dear father,
What makes you groan and toss so all night long?
STREPSIADES.—There’s a sheriff’s officer at me—in the bedclothes.
PHEIDIPPIDES.—Lie quiet, sir, do pray, and let me sleep.
STREPSIADES.—Sleep, if you like; but these debts, I can tell you,
Will fall on your own head some day, young man.
Heugh! may those match-makers come to an evil end
Who drew me into marrying your good mother!
There I was, living a quiet life in the country,—
Shaved once a week, maybe, wore my old clothes—
Full of my sheep, and goats, and bees, and vineyards,
And I must marry the fine niece of Megacles.
Marry a fine town-belle, all airs and graces!
A pretty pair we were to come together—
I smelling of the vineyard and sheep-shearing,
She with her scents, and essences, and cosmetics,
And all the deviltries of modern fashion.
Not a bad housekeeper though, I will say that—
SLAVE [_examining the lamp, which is going out_].—This lamp has
got no oil in it.
STREPSIADES.—Deuce take you,
Why did you light that thirsty beast of a lamp?
Come here, and you shall catch it.
SLAVE.—Catch it—why?
STREPSIADES [_boxes his ears_].—For putting such a thick wick in,
to be sure.
Well, in due time, this boy of ours was born
To me and my grand lady. First of all,
We got to loggerheads about his name;
She would have something that had got a _horse_ in it—
Xanthippus—or Charippus—or Philippides;
I was for his grandfather’s name—Pheidonides.[33]
Well, for some time we squabbled; then at last
We came to a compromise upon Pheidippides.
This boy—she’d take him in her lap and fondle him,
And say,‘Ah! when it grows up to be a man,
It shall drive horses, like its uncle Megacles,
And wear a red cloak, it shall.’ Then I would say,
‘He shall wear a good sheep-skin coat, like his own father,
And drive his goats to market from the farm.’”
Strepsiades finally bethinks him of a plan for paying his debts. He
will have his son trained by the Sophists; and when the creditors
bring the case into court, Pheidippides shall plead his cause, and
defeat them with fallacious arguments even in the face of a thousand
witnesses. Father and son at once arise, dress, and walk out in the
direction of the Sophists’ school. Arrived in front of it, Strepsiades
remarks:—
“That’s the great Thinking-school of our new philosophers;
There live the men who teach that heaven around us
Is a vast oven, and we the charcoal in it.
And they teach too—for a consideration, mind—
To plead a cause and win it, right or wrong.
PHEIDIPPIDES [_carelessly_].—Who are these fellows?
STREPSIADES.—I don’t quite remember
The name they call themselves, it’s such a long one;
Very hard thinkers—but they’re first-rate men.
PHEIDIPPIDES.—Faugh! vulgar fellows—I know ’em.
Dirty vagabonds,
Like Socrates there and Chærephon; a low set.
STREPSIADES.—Pray hold your tongue—don’t show your ignorance,
But, if you care at all for your old father,
Be one of them; now do, and cut the turf.
PHEIDIPPIDES.—Not I, by Bacchus! not if you would give me
That team of Arabs which Leogoras drives.
STREPSIADES.—Do, my dear boy, I beg you—go and be taught.
PHEIDIPPIDES.—What shall I learn there?
STREPSIADES.—Learn? Why, they do say
That these men have the secret of both Arguments,
The honest Argument (if there be such a thing) and the other;
Now this last—this false Argument, you understand—
Will make the veriest rascal win his cause.
So if you’ll go and learn for us this glorious art,
The debts I owe for you will all be cleared;
For I shan’t pay a single man a farthing.
PHEIDIPPIDES.—No—I can’t do it. Studying hard, you see,
Spoils the complexion. How could I show my face
Among the knights, looking a beast, like those fellows?
STREPSIADES.—Then, sir, henceforth I swear, so help me Ceres,
I won’t maintain you—you, nor your bays, nor your chestnuts.
Go to the dogs—or anywhere—out of my house!”
Failing to induce his son to enter the Thinking-school, Strepsiades
resolves himself to master the fashionable Argument that “pays no
bills;” he has an interview with Socrates, and is introduced to the
Clouds, the new goddesses of this misty philosophy.
One of the most beautiful passages of the play—having the ring of
the true metal—is the chorus of Clouds responding to the call of
Socrates—first, behind the scenes, in the distance; then nearer; then
rising from the lips of twenty-four gauze-clad nymphs, who descend upon
the stage as personifications of the ethereal deities.
CHORUS OF CLOUDS (_in the distance_).
“Eternal clouds!
Rise we to mortal view,
Embodied in bright shapes of dewy sheen,
Leaving the depths serene
Where our loud-sounding Father Ocean dwells,
For the wood-crownèd summits of the hills:
Thence shall our glance command
The beetling crags which sentinel the land,
The teeming earth,
The crops we bring to birth;
Thence shall we hear
The music of the ever-flowing streams,
The low deep thunders of the booming sea.
Lo, the bright Eye of Day unwearied beams!
Shedding our veil of storms
From our immortal forms,
We scan with keen-eyed gaze this nether sphere.”
CHORUS OF CLOUDS (_nearer_).
“Sisters who bring the showers,
Let us arise and greet
This glorious land, for Pallas’ dwelling meet,
Rich in brave men, beloved of Cecrops old;
Where Faith and Reverence reign,
Where comes no foot profane,
When for the mystic rites the Holy Doors unfold.
There gifts are duly paid
To the great gods, and pious prayers are said;
Tall temples rise, and statues heavenly fair.
There at each holy tide,
With coronals and song,
The glad processions to the altars throng;
There in the jocund spring,
Great Bacchus, festive king,
With dance and tuneful flute his Chorus leads along.”
W. L. COLLINS.
But though the Clouds assist Socrates in teaching Strepsiades, the
pupil proves an utter dunce. Finally, in a moment of impatience,
Socrates kicks him out of the school.
At last Pheidippides is prevailed upon to study with the Sophists. He
proves an apt scholar, rapidly developing into an unprincipled scamp.
When his education as a sharper is completed, he brings to bear his
specious arguments against the creditors, and cheats them out of their
dues. So far, so good; but his notions of filial duty have also been
greatly modified by the instructions of Socrates. A quarrel arising in
the family, he hesitates not to fall upon his father with a cudgel, and
threatens to do the same by his mother if she provokes him.
With a curse upon Socrates, the outraged old gentleman calls his
slaves, hurries to the Thinking-school, and sets fire to the building.
Thus the play ends.
* * * * *
Beneath the pleasantry of Aristophanes is a substratum of solid
sense; as is apparent in “the Birds,” an ingenious play in which the
woodland songsters take characters. It was produced at a time when the
Athenians, puffed up with vanity, confidently looked for the reduction
of Sicily and the dominion of Greece. Aristophanes alone, at this
critical period, ventured to raise the note of warning, and satirize
their foolish ambition. The choruses in this drama ring with the sweet
music of the wild woods; they were rendered by twenty-four performers
plumed so as to represent as many different kinds of birds. The Hoopoe
thus calls his fellows to a mass-meeting:—
“Hoop! hoop!
Come in a troop,
Come at a call
One and all,
Birds of a feather,
All together.
Birds of an humble gentle bill
Smooth and shrill,
Dieted on seeds and grain,
Rioting on the furrowed plain,
Pecking, hopping,
Picking, popping,
Among the barley newly sown.
Birds of bolder, louder tone,
Lodging in the shrubs and bushes,
Mavises and Thrushes.
On the summer berries browsing,
On the garden fruits carousing,
All the grubs and vermin smouzing.
You that in an humbler station,
With an active occupation,
Haunt the lowly watery mead,
Warring against the native breed,
The gnats and flies, your enemies;
In the level marshy plain
Of Marathon pursued and slain.
You that in a squadron driving
From the seas are seen arriving,
With the Cormorants and Mews,
Haste to land and hear the news!
All the feathered airy nation,
Birds of every size and station,
Are convened in convocation.
For an envoy, queer and shrewd,
Means to address the multitude,
And submit to their decision
A surprising proposition,
For the welfare of the state.
Come in a flurry,
With a hurry, scurry,
Hurry to the meeting and attend to the debate.”
FRERE.
STYLE OF ARISTOPHANES.—In weighing the merits of Aristophanes, it must
be remembered that many of his peculiar beauties cannot be translated,
and that we lose his local hits from our inability to see things from
an Athenian standpoint. He is often indelicate in his allusions; he
is as ready with town slang and the cant of the shop as with the most
elegant phrase. But Attic salt seasons the whole, and none ever handled
the versatile Greek tongue more deftly. In his command of language,
he is equalled only by Plato, who felt the comic poet’s power when he
said that in the soul of Aristophanes the Graces sought an imperishable
shrine. Amid all his humor and buffoonery sparkles genius of the
highest order. His aim seems to have been to elevate his art. Some of
the improvements he claimed to have introduced, are thus set forth in
an address which he puts into the mouth of the leader of the chorus in
his “Peace:”—
“It was he that indignantly swept from the stage the paltry ignoble
device
Of a Hercules needy and seedy and greedy, a vagabond sturdy and
stout,
Now baking his bread, now swindling instead, now beaten and battered
about.
And freedom he gave to the lacrimose slave who was wont with a howl
to rush in,
And all for the sake of a joke which they make on the wounds which
disfigure his skin.
Such vulgar contemptible lumber at once he bade from the drama
depart,
And then, like an edifice stately and grand, he raised and ennobled
the art.”
THOROLD ROGERS.
Aristophanes outlived the license of the old comedy, which died with
liberty. When in 404 B.C. the popular government was overthrown, and
Thirty Tyrants, supported by Sparta, lorded it over Athens, a statute
was passed making personal attacks on the stage capital offences; an
actor who defied the law was actually starved to death. Thenceforth the
comic poet dared not individualize the object of his satire; he tilted
against vice and folly in general, or thrust at his intended victims
indirectly under assumed names.
Aristophanes died about 380 B.C. No other comic poet could vie with him
during his lifetime; none worthy to be his successor arose after his
death, for “Nature broke the mould in which he was cast.” Of fifty-four
comedies from his pen, eleven remain entire.
THE ACHARNIANS 425 B.C.
THE KNIGHTS 424 ”
THE CLOUDS 423 ”
THE WASPS 422 ”
The persons constituting the chorus were girt in tightly about the
waist, to make them as wasp-like as possible in appearance; skewers
did service as stings.
PEACE 421 ”
THE BIRDS 414 ”
LYSISTRATA 411 ”
THE WOMEN CELEBRATING
THE FEAST OF CERES 411 ”
Ridicule of Euripides is the staple of this play.
THE FROGS 405 ”
Here again Euripides is the butt. The chorus was made up to represent
frogs, whose croakings were imitated.
THE WOMEN MET IN
ASSEMBLY 392 ”
Certain strong-minded female communists, advocates of women’s rights,
seize on the government and undertake the reformation of public
abuses. This play contains the longest word known, made up of 77
syllables and 169 letters.
PLUTUS 388 ”
HISTORY.
During this halcyon age of Greek poetry, prose also was cultivated, and
in the century following the Persian Wars it was brought to maturity.
After the victories that secured her freedom, Greece felt the need of a
national historian to record the story of her struggles and triumphs.
The earliest narrators, as has been shown, confined themselves to
mythology and tradition: the times now demanded an artist who could
paint with faithful pencil on living canvas those scenes that were the
glory of Hellas—and in Herodotus of Halicarnassus that artist appeared.
=Herodotus= (born 484 B.C.).—Halicarnassus was the capital of a Dorian
confederacy of states in southern Asia Minor. Its queen Artemisia
supported Xerxes in his quarrel with Greece; and although the
Athenians, provoked that a woman should take the field against them,
offered an immense reward for her capture, she escaped the perils of
war, and carried her kingdom safely through the political troubles of
the time.
The parents of Herodotus were persons of rank and property. His
writings prove him to have been well read in the literature of his
country. Though not an Ionian born, he adopted the Ionic dialect—the
dress in which Greek prose first appeared.
Herodotus spent the best twenty years of his life in travelling over
the greater part of the known world, studying the history, geography,
and customs of the countries he visited. Thebes and Memphis, Tyre
and Jerusalem, Babylon and Ecbat’ana—with all he made personal
acquaintance, extending his tour as far west as the Greek settlements
in Italy, and as far south as the first cataract of the Nile.