A modern writer says of the Greeks:
"All that could beautify the meagre, harmonize the incongruous, enliven
the dull, or convert the crude material of metaphysics into an elegant
department of literature, belongs to the Greeks themselves, for they
are preeminently the 'nation of beauty.' Endowed with profound
sensibility and a lively imagination, surrounded by all the
circumstances that could aid in perfecting the physical and
intellectual powers, the Greeks early acquired that essential literary
and artistic character which produced their art and literature."
Whatever the Greeks learned or borrowed from others, by the skill with
which they improved, and the purposes to which they applied it, became
henceforth altogether their own. If they were under any obligation to
those who had lived before them for some few ideas and hints, the great
whole of their intellectual refinement was undoubtedly the work of
their own genius; for the Greeks are the only people who may be said in
almost every instance to have given birth to their own literature.
Their creations stand almost entirely detached from the previous
culture of other nations. At the same time it is possible to trace a
thread running back to remote antiquity, to show that their first hints
of a literature came from Asia. Their oldest traditions and poems have
many points of resemblance to the most ancient remains of the Asiatic
nations. Some writers say that "this amounts to nothing more than a few
scattered hints or mutilated recollections, and may all be referred to
the common origin of mankind, and the necessary influence of that
district of the world in which mental improvement of our species was
first considered as an object of general concern." But this proves at
least that there was an older civilization and literature than the
Greeks, and that that civilization had its root in the East. According
to their own testimony the Greeks derived their alphabet from the
Phoenicians, and the first principles of architecture, mathematical
science, detached ideas of philosophy, as well as many of the useful
arts of life, they learned from the Egyptians, or from the earliest
inhabitants of Asia.
The essential characteristic of the Greeks as a nation was the
development of their own idea, their departure from whatever original
tradition they may have had, and their far-reaching influence on all
subsequent literature throughout the world. They differed in this from
all other nations; for to quote again:
"the literature of India, with its great antiquity, its language, which
is full of expression, sweetness of tone, and regularity of structure,
and which rivals the most perfect of those western tongues to which it
bears such a resemblance, with all its richness of imagery and its
treasures of thought, has hitherto been void of any influence on the
development of general literature. China contributed still less, Persia
and Arabia were alike isolated until they were brought in contact with
the European mind through the Crusaders, and the Moorish Empire in
Spain."
This independence and originality of Greek literature is due in some
measure to the freedom of their institutions from caste; but another
and more powerful cause was that, unlike the Oriental nations, the
Greeks for a long time kept no correct record of their transactions in
war or peace. This absence of authentic history made their literature
become what it is. By the purely imaginary character of its poetry, and
the freedom it enjoyed from the trammels of particular truths, it
acquired a quality which led Aristotle to consider poetry as more
philosophical than history.
The Homeric poems are in a great measure the fountainhead from which
the refinement of the Ancients was derived. The history of the Iliad
and the Odyssey represent a state of society warlike it is true, but
governed by intellectual, literary and artistic power. Philosophy was
early cultivated by the Greeks, who first among all nations
distinguished it from religion and mythology.
Socrates is the founder of the philosophy that is still recognized in
the civilized world. He left no writings behind him; but by means of
lectures, that included question and answer, his system, known as the
dialectics, has come down to us.
Aesop, who lived 572 B.C., was the author of some fables which have
been translated into nearly every language in the world, and have
served as a model for all subsequent writings of the same kind. In 322
B.C., the centre of learning owing to the conquests of Alexander the
Great, was moved to Egypt in the city that bears his name. Here the
first three Ptolemies founded a magnificent library where the literary
men of the age were supported by endowments. The second Ptolemy had the
native annals of Egypt and Judea translated into Greek, and he procured
from the Sanhedrim of Jerusalem the first part of the Sacred
Scriptures, which was later completed and published in Greek for the
use of the Jews at Alexandria. This translation was known as the
Septuagint, or version of the Seventy; and is said to have exercised a
more lasting influence on the civilized world than any book that has
ever appeared in a new language. We are indebted to the Ptolemies for
preserving to our times all the best specimens of Greek literature that
have come down to us.