1. ANTE-HOMERIC SONGS AND BARDS.--Many centuries must have elapsed before
the poetical language of the Greeks could have attained the splendor,
copiousness, and fluency found in the poems of Homer. The first
outpourings of poetical enthusiasm were, doubtless, songs describing, in
few and simple verses, events which powerfully affected the feelings of
the hearers. It is probable that the earliest were those that referred to
the seasons and their phenomena, and that they were sung by the peasants
at their corn and wine harvests, and had their origin in times of ancient
rural simplicity. Songs of this kind had often a plaintive and melancholy
character. Such was the song "Linus" mentioned by Homer, which was
frequently sung at the grape-picking. This Linus evidently belongs to a
class of heroes or demi-gods, of which many instances occur in the
religions of Asia Minor. Boys of extraordinary beauty and in the flower of
youth were supposed to have been drowned, or devoured by raging dogs, and
their death was lamented at the harvests and other periods of the hot
season. According to the tradition, Linus sprang from a divine origin,
grew up with the shepherds among the lambs, and was torn in pieces by wild
dogs, whence arose the festival of the lambs, at which many dogs were
slain. The real object of lamentation was the tender beauty of spring,
destroyed by the summer heat, and other phenomena of the same kind which
the imagination of those times invested with a personal form, and
represented as beings of a divine nature. Of similar meaning are many
other songs, which were sung at the time of the summer heat or at the
cutting of the corn. Such was the song called "Bormus" from its subject, a
beautiful boy of that name, who, having gone to fetch water for the
reapers, was, while drawing it, borne down by the nymphs of the stream.
Such were the cries for the youth Hylas, swallowed up by the waters of a
fountain, and the lament for Adonis, whose untimely death was celebrated
by Sappho.
The Paeans were songs originally dedicated to Apollo, and afterwards to
other gods; their tune and words expressed hope and confidence to
overcome, by the help of the god, great and imminent danger, or gratitude
and thanksgiving for victory and safety. To this class belonged the vernal
Paeans, which were sung at the termination of winter, and those sung in
war before the attack on the enemy. The Threnos, or lamentations for the
dead, were songs containing vehement expressions of grief, sung by
professional singers standing near the bed upon which the body was laid,
and accompanied by the cries and groans of women. The Hymenaeos was the
joyful bridal song of the wedding festivals, in which there were
ordinarily two choruses, one of boys bearing burning torches and singing
the hymenaeos to the clear sound of the pipe, and another of young girls
dancing to the notes of the harp. The Chorus originally referred chiefly
to dancing. The most ancient sense of the word is a _place for dancing_,
and in these choruses young persons of both sexes danced together in rows,
holding one another by the hand, while the citharist, or the player on the
lyre, sitting in their midst, accompanied the sound of his instrument with
songs, which took their name from the choruses in which they were sung.
Besides these popular songs, there were the religious and heroic poems of
the bards, who were, for the most part, natives of that portion of the
country which surrounds the mountains of Helicon and Parnassus,
distinguished as the home of the Muses. Among the bards devoted to the
worship of Apollo and other deities, were Marsyas, the inventor of the
flute, Musaeus and Orpheus. Many names of these ancient poets are
recorded, but of their poetry, previous to Homer, not even a fragment
remains.
The bards or chanters of epic poetry were called Rhapsodists, from the
manner in which they delivered their compositions; this name was applied
equally to the minstrel who recited his own poems, and to him who
declaimed anew songs that had been heard a thousand times before. The form
of these heroic songs, probably settled and fixed by tradition, was the
hexameter, as this metre gave to the epic poetry repose, majesty, a lofty
and solemn tone, and rendered it equally adapted to the pythoness who
announced the decrees of the deity, and to the rhapsodist who recited the
battles of heroes. The bards held an important post in the festal
banquets, where they flattered the pride of the princes by singing the
exploits of their forefathers.
2. POEMS OF HOMER.--Although seven cities contended for the honor of
giving birth to Homer, it was the prevalent belief, in the flourishing
times of Greece, that he was a native of Smyrna. He was probably born in
that city about 1000 B.C. Little is known of his life, but the power of
his transcendent genius is deeply impressed upon his works. He was called
by the Greeks themselves, _the poet_; and the Iliad and the Odyssey were
with them the ultimate standard of appeal on all matters of religious
doctrine and early history. They were learned by boys at school, and
became the study of men in their riper years, and in the time of Socrates
there were Athenians who could repeat both poems by heart. In whatever
part of the world a Greek settled, he carried with him a love for the
great poet, and long after the Greek people had lost their independence,
the Iliad and the Odyssey continued to maintain an undiminished hold upon
their affections. The peculiar excellence of these poems lies in their
sublimity and pathos, in their tenderness and simplicity, and they show in
their author an inexhaustible vigor, that seems to revel in an endless
display of prodigious energies. The universality of the powers of Homer is
their most astonishing attribute. He is not great in any one thing; he is
greatest in all things. He imagines with equal ease the terrible, the
beautiful, the mean, the loathsome, and he paints them all with equal
force. In his descriptions of external nature, in his exhibitions of human
character and passion, no matter what the subject, he exhausts its
capabilities. His pictures are true to the minutest touch; his men and
women are made of flesh and blood. They lose nothing of their humanity for
being cast in a heroic mould. He transfers himself into the identity of
those whom he brings into action; masters the interior springs of their
spiritual mechanism; and makes them move, look, speak, and do exactly as
they would in real life.
In the legends connected with the Trojan war, the _anger of Achilles_ and
the _return of Ulysses_, Homer found the subjects of the Iliad and
Odyssey. The former relates that Agamemnon had stolen from Achilles,
Briseis, his beloved slave, and describes the fatal consequences which the
subsequent anger of Achilles brought upon the Greeks; and how the loss of
his dearest friend, Patroclus, suddenly changed his hostile attitude, and
brought about the destruction of Troy and of Hector, its magnanimous
defender. The Odyssey is composed on a more artificial and complicated
plan than the Iliad. The subject is the return of Ulysses from a land
beyond the range of human knowledge to a home invaded by bands of insolent
intruders, who seek to kill his son and rob him of his wife. The poem
begins at that point where the hero is considered to be farthest from his
home, in the central portion of the sea, where the nymph Calypso has kept
him hidden from all mankind for seven years. Having by the help of the
gods passed through innumerable dangers, after many adventures he reaches
Ithaca, and is finally introduced into his own house as a beggar, where he
is made to suffer the harshest treatment from the suitors of his wife, in
order that he may afterwards appear with the stronger right as a terrible
avenger. In this simple story a second was interwoven by the poet, which
renders it richer and more complete, though more intricate and less
natural. It is probable that Homer, after having sung the Iliad in the
vigor of his youthful years, either composed the Odyssey in his old age,
or communicated to some devoted disciple the plan of this poem.
In the age immediately succeeding Homer, his great poems were doubtless
recited as complete wholes, at the festivals of the princes; but when the
contests of the rhapsodists became more animated, and more weight was laid
on the art of the reciter than on the beauty of the poem he recited, and
when other musical and poetical performances claimed a place, then they
were permitted to repeat separate parts of poems, and the Iliad and
Odyssey, as they had not yet been reduced to writing, existed for a time
only as scattered and unconnected fragments; and we are still indebted to
the regulator of the poetical contests (either Solon or Pisistratus) for
having compelled the rhapsodists to follow one another according to the
order of 'the poem, and for having thus restored these great works to
their pristine integrity. The poets, who either recited the poems of Homer
or imitated him in their compositions, were called Homerides.
3. THE CYCLIC POETS AND THE HOMERIC HYMNS.--The poems of Homer, as they
became the foundation of all Grecian literature, are likewise the central
point of the epic poetry of Greece. All that is most excellent in this
line originated from them, and was connected with them in the way of
completion or continuation. After the time of Homer, a class of poets
arose who, from their constant endeavor to connect their poems with those
of this master, so that they might form a great cycle, were called the
Cyclic Poets. They were probably Homeric rhapsodists by profession, to
whom the constant recitation of the ancient Homeric poems would naturally
suggest the idea of continuing them by essays of their own. The poems
known as Homeric hymns formed an essential part of the epic style. They
were hymns to the gods, bearing an epic character, and were called
_proemia_, or preludes, and served the rhapsodists either as introductory
strains for their recitation, or as a transition from the festivals of the
gods to the competition of the singers of heroic poetry.
4. POEMS OF HESIOD.--Nothing certain can be affirmed respecting the date
of Hesiod; a Boeotian by birth, he is considered by some ancient
authorities as contemporary with Homer, while others suppose him to have
flourished two or three generations later. The poetry of Hesiod is a
faithful transcript of the whole condition of Boeotian life. It has
nothing of that youthful and inexhaustible fancy of Homer which lights up
the sublime images of a heroic age and moulds them into forms of
surpassing beauty. The poetry of Hesiod appears struggling to emerge out
of the narrow bounds of common life, which he strives to ennoble and to
render more endurable. It is purely didactic, and its object is to
disseminate knowledge, by which life may be improved, or to diffuse
certain religious notions as to the influence of a superior destiny. His
poem entitled "Works and Days" is so entirely occupied with the events of
common life, that the author would not seem to have been a poet by
profession, but some Boeotian husbandman whose mind had been moved by
circumstances to give a poetical tone to the course of his thoughts and
feelings. The unjust claim of Perses, the brother of Hesiod, to the small
portion of their father's land which had been allotted to him, called
forth this poem, in which he seeks to improve the character and habits of
Perses, to deter him from acquiring riches by litigation, and to incite
him to a life of labor, as the only source of permanent prosperity. He
points out the succession in which his labors must follow if he determines
to lead a life of industry, and gives wise rules of economy for the
management of a family; and to illustrate and enforce the principal idea,
he ingeniously combines with his precepts mythical narratives, fables, and
descriptions. The "Theogony" of Hesiod is a production of the highest
importance, as it contains the religious faith of Greece. It was through
it that Greece first obtained a religious code, which, although without
external sanction or priestly guardians and interpreters, must have
produced the greatest influence on the religious condition of the Greeks.
5. ELEGY AND EPIGRAM.--Until the beginning of the seventh century B.C.,
the epic was the only kind of poetry cultivated in Greece, with the
exception of the early songs and hymns, and the hexameter the only metre
used by the poets. This exclusive prevalence of epic poetry was doubtless
connected with the political state of the country. The ordinary subjects
of these poems must have been highly acceptable to the princes who derived
their race from the heroes, as was the case with all the royal families of
early times. The republican movements, which deprived these families of
their privileges, were favorable to the stronger development of each man's
individuality, and the poet, who in the most perfect form of the epos was
completely lost in his subject, now came before the people as a man with
thoughts and objects of his own, and gave free vent to the emotions of his
soul in elegiac and iambic strains. The word _elegeion_ means nothing more
than the combination of a hexameter and a pentameter, making together a
distich, and an elegy is a poem of such verses. It was usually sung at the
Symposia or literary festivals of the Greeks; in most cases its main
subject was political; it afterwards assumed a plaintive or amatory tone.
The elegy is the first regularly cultivated branch of Greek poetry, in
which the flute alone and neither the cithara nor lyre was employed. It
was not necessary that lamentations should form the subject of it, but
emotion was essential, and excited by events or circumstances of the time
or place the poet poured forth his heart in the unreserved expression of
his fears and hopes.
Tyrtaeus (fl. 694 B.C.), who went from Athens to Sparta, composed the most
celebrated of his elegies on the occasion of the Messenian war, and when
the Spartans were on a campaign, it was their custom after the evening
meal, when the paean had been sung in honor of the gods, to recite these
poems. From this time we find a union between the elegiac and iambic
poetry; the same poet, who employs the elegy to express his joyous and
melancholy emotions, has recourse to the iambus when his cool sense
prompts him to censure the follies of mankind. The relation between these
two metres is observable in Archilochus (fl. 688 B.C.) and Simonides (fl.
664 B.C.). The elegies of Archilochus, of which many fragments are extant
(while of Simonides we only know that he composed elegies), had nothing of
that spirit of which his iambics were full, but they contain the frank
expression of a mind powerfully affected by outward circumstances. With
the Spartans, wine and the pleasures of the feast became the subject of
the elegy, and it was also recited at the solemnities held in honor of all
who had fallen for their country. The elegies of Solon (592-559 B.C.) were
pure expressions of his political feelings. Simonides of Scios, the
renowned lyric poet, the contemporary of Pindar and Aeschylus, was one of
the great masters of elegiac song.
The epigram was originally an inscription on a tombstone, or a votive
offering in a temple, or on any other thing which required explanation.
The unexpected turn of thought and pointedness of expression, which the
moderns consider the essence of this species of composition, were not
required in the ancient Greek epigram, where nothing was wanted but that
the entire thought should be conveyed within the limit of a few distichs,
and thus, in the hands of the early poets, the epigram was remarkable for
the conciseness and expressiveness of its language and differed in this
respect from the elegy, in which full expression was given to the feelings
of the poet.
It was Simonides who first gave to the epigram all the perfection of which
it was capable, and he was frequently employed by the states which fought
against the Persians to adorn with inscriptions the tombs of their fallen
warriors. The most celebrated of these is the inimitable inscription on
the Spartans who died at Thermopylae: "Foreigner, tell the Lacedaemonians
that we are lying here in obedience to their laws." On the Rhodian lyric
poet, Timocreon, an opponent of Simonides in his art, he wrote the
following in the form of an epitaph: "Having eaten much and drank much and
said much evil of other men, here I lie, Timocreon the Rhodian."
6. IAMBIC POETRY, THE FABLE AND PARODY.--The kind of poetry known by the
ancients as Iambic was created among the Athenians by Archilochus at the
same time as the elegy. It arose at a period when the Greeks, accustomed
only to the calm, unimpassioned tone of the epos, had but just found a
temperate expression of lively emotion in the elegy. It was a light,
tripping measure, sometimes loosely constructed, or purposely halting and
broken, well adapted to vituperation, unrestrained by any regard to
morality and decency. At the public tables of Sparta keen and pointed
raillery was permitted, and some of the most venerable and sacred of their
religious rites afforded occasion for their unsparing and audacious jests.
This raillery was so ancient and inveterate a custom, that it had given
rise to a peculiar word, which originally denoted nothing but the jests
and banter used at these festivals, namely, _Iambus_. All the wanton
extravagance which was elsewhere repressed by law or custom, here, under
the protection of religion, burst forth with boundless license, and these
scurrilous effusions were at length reduced by Archilochus into the
systematic form of iambic metre.
Akin to the iambic are two sorts of poetry, the fable and the parody,
which, though differing widely from each other, have both their source in
the turn for the delineation of the ludicrous, and both stand in close
historical relation to the iambic. The fable in Greece originated in an
intentional travesty of human affairs. It is probable that the taste for
fables of beasts and numerous similar inventions found its way from the
East, since this sort of symbolical narrative is more in accordance with
the Oriental than with the Greek character. Aesop (fl. 572 B.C.) was very
far from being regarded by the Greeks as one of their poets, and still
less as a writer. They considered him merely as an ingenious fabulist, to
whom, at a later period, nearly all fables, that were invented or derived
from any other source, were attributed. He was a slave, whose wit and
pleasantry procured him his freedom, and who finally perished in Delphi,
where the people, exasperated by his sarcastic fables, put him to death on
a charge of robbing the temple. No metrical versions of these fables are
known to have existed in early times.
The word "parody" means an adoption of the form of some celebrated poem
with such changes as to produce a totally different effect, and generally
to substitute mean and ridiculous for elevated and poetical sentiments.
"The Battle of the Frogs and Mice," attributed to Homer, but bearing
evident traces of a later age, belongs to this species of poetry.
7. GREEK MUSIC AND LYRIC POETRY.--It was not until the minds of the Greeks
had been elevated by the productions of the epic muse, that the genius of
original poets broke loose from the dominion of the epic style, and
invented new forms for expressing the emotions of a mind profoundly
agitated by passing events; with few innovations in the elegy, but with
greater boldness in the iambic metre. In these two forms, Greek poetry
entered the domain of real life. The elegy and iambus contain the germ of
the lyric style, though they do not themselves come under that head. The
Greek lyric poetry was characterized by the expression of deeper and more
impassioned feeling, and a more impetuous tone than the elegy and iambus,
and at the same time the effect was heightened by appropriate vocal and
instrumental music, and often by the figures of the dance. In this union
of the sister arts, poetry was indeed predominant, yet music, in its turn,
exercised a reciprocal influence on poetry, so that as it became more
cultivated, the choice of the musical measure decided the tone of the
whole poem.
The history of Greek music begins with Terpander the Lesbian (fl. 670
B.C.), who was many times the victor in the musical contests at the
Pythian temple of Delphi. He added three new strings to the cithara, which
had consisted only of four, and this heptachord was employed by Pindar,
and remained long in high repute; he was also the first who marked the
different tones in music. With other musicians, he united the music of
Asia Minor with that of the ancient Greeks, and founded on it a system in
which each style had its appropriate character. By the efforts of
Terpander and one or two other masters, music was brought to a high degree
of excellence, and adapted to express any feeling to which the poet could
give a more definite character and meaning, and thus they had solved the
great problem of their art. It was in Greece the constant endeavor of the
great poets, thinkers, and statesmen who interested themselves in the
education of youth, to give a good direction to this art; they all dreaded
the increasing prevalence of a luxuriant style of instrumental music and
an unrestricted flight into the boundless realms of harmony.
The lyric poetry of the Greeks was of two kinds, and cultivated by two
different schools of poets. One, called the Aeolic, flourished among the
Aeolians of Asia Minor, and particularly in the island of Lesbos; the
other, the Doric, which, although diffused over the whole of Greece, was
at first principally cultivated by the Dorians. These two schools differed
essentially in the subjects, as in the form and style of their poems. The
Doric was intended to be executed by choruses', and to be sung to choral
dances; while the Aeolic was recited by a single person, who accompanied
his recitation with a stringed instrument, generally the lyre.
8. AEOLIC LYRIC POETS.--Alcaeus (fl. 611 B.C.), born in Mytilene in the
island of Lesbos, being driven out of his native city for political
reasons, wandered about the world, and, in the midst of troubles and
perils, struck the lyre and gave utterance to the passionate emotions of
his mind. His war-songs express a stirring, martial spirit; and a noble
nature, accompanied with strong passions, appears in all his poems,
especially in those in which he sings the praises of love and wine, though
little of his erotic poetry has reached our time. It is evident that
poetry was not with him a mere pastime or exercise of skill, but a means
of pouring out the inmost feelings of the soul. Sappho (fl. 600 B.C.) the
other leader of the Aeolic school of poetry, was the object of the
admiration of all antiquity. She was contemporary with Alcaeus, and in her
verses to him we plainly discern the feeling of unimpeached honor proper
to a free-born and well-educated maiden. Alcaeus testifies that the
attractions and loveliness of Sappho did not derogate from her moral worth
when he calls her "violet-crowned, pure, sweetly smiling Sappho." This
testimony is, indeed, opposed to the accounts of later writers, but the
probable cause of the false imputations in reference to Sappho seems to be
that the refined Athenians were incapable of appreciating the frank
simplicity with which she poured forth her feelings, and therefore they
confounded them with unblushing immodesty. While the men of Athens were
distinguished for their perfection in every branch of art, none of their
women emerged from the obscurity of domestic life. "That woman is the
best," says Pericles, "of whom the least is said among men, whether for
good or for evil." But the Aeolians had in some degree preserved the
ancient Greek manners, and their women enjoyed a distinct individual
existence and moral character. They doubtless participated in the general
high state of civilization, which not only fostered poetical talents of a
high order among women, but produced in them a turn for philosophical
reflection. This was so utterly inconsistent with Athenian manners, that
we cannot wonder that women, who had in any degree overstepped the bounds
prescribed to their sex at Athens, should be represented by the licentious
pen of Athenian comic writers as lost to every sense of shame and decency.
Sappho, in her odes, made frequent mention of a youth to whom she gave her
whole heart, while he requited her love with cold indifference; but there
is no trace of her having named the object of her passion. She may have
celebrated the beautiful and mythical Phaon in such a manner that the
verses were supposed to refer to a lover of her own. The account of her
leap from the Leucadian rock is rather a poetical image, than a real event
in the life of the poetess. The true conception of the erotic poetry of
Sappho can only be drawn from the fragments of her odes, which, though
numerous, are for the most part very short. Among them, we must
distinguish the Epithalamia or hymeneals, which were peculiarly adapted to
the genius of the poetess from the exquisite perception she seems to have
had of whatever was attractive in either sex. From the numerous fragments
that remain, these poems appear to have had great beauty and much of that
expression which the simple and natural manners of the times allowed, and
the warm and sensitive heart of the poetess suggested. That Sappho's fame
was spread throughout Greece, may be seen from the history of Solon, who
was her contemporary. Hearing his nephew recite one of her poems, he said
that he would not willingly die until he had learned it by heart. And,
doubtless, from that circle of accomplished women, of whom she formed the
brilliant centre, a flood of poetic light was poured forth on every side.
Among them may be mentioned the names of Damophila and Erinna, whose poem,
"The Spindle," was highly esteemed by the ancients.
The genius of Anacreon (fl. 540 B.C.), though akin to that of Alcaeus and
Sappho, had an entirely different bent. He seems to consider life as
valuable only so far as it can be spent in wine, love, and social
enjoyment. The Ionic softness and departure from strict rule may also be
perceived in his versification. The different odes preserved under his
name are the productions of poets of a much later date. With Anacreon
ceased the species of lyric poetry in which he excelled; indeed, he stands
alone in it, and the tender softness of his song was soon drowned by the
louder tones of the choral poetry.
The Scolia were a kind of lyric songs sung at social meals, when the
spirit was raised by wine and conversation to a lyrical pitch. The lyre or
a sprig of myrtle was handed round the table and presented to any one who
could amuse the company by a song or even a good sentence in a lyrical
form.
9. DORIC, OR CHORAL LYRIC POETS.--The chorus was in general use in Greece
before the time of Homer, and nearly every variety of the choral poetry,
which was afterwards so brilliantly developed, existed at that remote
period in a rude, unfinished state. After the improvements made by
Terpander and others in musical art, choral poetry rapidly progressed
towards perfection. The poets during the period of progress were Alcman
and Stesichorus, while finished lyric poetry is represented by Ibycus,
Simonides, his disciple Bacchylides and Pindar. These great poets were
only the representatives of the fervor with which the religious festivals
inspired all classes. Choral dances were performed by the whole people
with great ardor and enthusiasm; every considerable town had its poet, who
devoted his whole life to the training and exhibition of choruses.
Alcman (b. 660 B.C.) was a Lydian of Sardis, and an emancipated slave. His
poems exhibit a great variety of metre, of dialect, and of poetic tone. He
is regarded as having overcome the difficulties presented by the rough
dialect of Sparta, and as having succeeded in investing it with a certain
grace. He is one of the poets whose image is most effaced by time, and of
whom we can obtain little accurate knowledge. The admiration awarded him
by antiquity is scarcely justified by the extant remains of his poems.
Stesichorus (fl. 611 B.C.) lived at a time when the predominant tendency
of the Greek mind was towards lyric poetry. His special business was the
training and direction of the choruses, and he assumed the name of
Stesichorus, or leader of choruses, his real name being Tesias. His metres
approach more nearly to the epos than those of Aleman. As Quintilian says,
he sustained the weight of epic poetry with the lyre. His language
accorded with the tone of his poetry, and he is not less remarkable in
himself, than as the precursor of the perfect lyric poetry of Pindar.
Arion (625-585 B.C.) was chiefly known in Greece as the perfecter of the
"Dithyramb," a song of Bacchanalian festivals, doubtless of great
antiquity. Its character, like the worship to which it belonged, was
always impassioned and enthusiastic; the extremes of feeling, rapturous
pleasure, and wild lamentation were both expressed in it.
Ibycus (b. 528 B.C.) was a wandering poet, as is attested by the story of
his death having been avenged by the cranes. His poetical style resembles
that of Stesichorus, as also his subjects. The erotic poetry of Ibycus is
most celebrated, and breathes a fervor of passion far exceeding that of
any similar production of Greek literature.
Simonides (556-468 B.C.) has already been described as one of the great
masters of the elegy and epigram. In depth and novelty of ideas, and in
the fervor of poetic feeling, he was far inferior to his contemporary
Pindar, but he was probably the most prolific lyric poet of Greece.
According to the frequent reproach of the ancients, he was the first that
sold his poems for money. His style was not as lofty as that of Pindar,
hut what he lost in sublimity he gained in pathos.
Bacchylides (fl. 450 B.C.), the nephew of Simonides, devoted his genius
chiefly to the pleasures of private life, love, and wine, and his
productions, when compared with those of Simonides, are marked by less
moral elevation.
Timocreon the Rhodian (fl. 471 B.C.) owes his chief celebrity among the
ancients to the hate he bore to Themistocles in political life, and to
Simonides on the field of poetry.
Pindar (522-435 B.C.) was the contemporary of Aeschylus, but as the causes
which determined his poetical character are to be sought in an earlier
age, and in the Doric and Aeolic parts of Greece, he may properly be
placed at the close of the early period, while Aeschylus stands at the
head of the new epoch of literature. Like Hesiod, Pindar was a native of
Boeotia, and that there was still much love for music and poetry there is
proved by the fact that two women, Myrtis and Corinna, had obtained great
celebrity in these arts during the youth of this poet. Myrtis (fl. 490
B.C.) strove with him for the prize at the public games, and Corinna (fl.
490 B.C.) is said to have gained the victory over him five times. Too
little of the poetry of Corinna has been preserved to allow a judgment on
her style of composition. Pindar made the arts of poetry and music the
business of his life, and his fame soon spread throughout Greece and the
neighboring countries. He excelled in all the known varieties of choral
poetry, but the only class of poems that enable us to judge of his general
style is his triumphal odes. When a victory was gained in a contest at a
festival by the speed of horses, the strength and dexterity of the human
body, or by skill in music, such a victory, which shed honor not only on
the victor, but also on his family, and even on his native city, demanded
a public celebration. An occasion of this kind had always a religious
character, and often began with a procession to an altar or temple, where
a sacrifice was offered, followed by a banquet, and the solemnity
concluded with a merry and boisterous revel. At this sacred and at the
same time joyous festival, the chorus appeared and recited the triumphal
hymn, which was considered the fairest ornament of the triumph. Such an
occasion, a victory in the sacred games and its end, the ennobling of a
ceremony connected with the worship of the gods, required that the ode
should be composed in a lofty and dignified style. Pindar does not content
himself with celebrating the bodily prowess of the victor alone, but he
usually adds some moral virtue which he has shown, and which he recommends
and extols. Sometimes this virtue is moderation, wisdom, or filial love,
more often piety to the gods, and he expounds to the victor his destiny,
by showing him the dependence of his exploits on the higher order of
things. Mythical narratives occupy much space in these odes, for in the
time of Pindar the mythical past was invested with a splendor and
sublimity, of which even the faint reflection was sufficient to embellish
the present.
10. ORPHIC DOCTRINES AND POEMS.--The interval between Homer and Pindar is
an important period in the history of Greek civilization. In Homer we
perceive that infancy of the mind which lives in seeing and imagining, and
whose moral judgments are determined by impulses of feeling rather than by
rules of conduct, while with Pindar the chief effort of his genius is to
discover the true standard of moral government. This great change of
opinion must have been affected by the efforts of many sages and poets.
All the Greek religious poetry, treating of death and of the world beyond
the grave, refers to the deities whose influence was supposed to be
exercised in the dark regions at the centre of the earth, and who had
little connection with the political and social relations of human life.
They formed a class apart from the gods of Olympus; the mysteries of the
Greeks were connected with their worship alone, and the love of
immortality first found support in a belief in these deities. The
mysteries of Demeter, especially those celebrated at Eleusis, inspired the
most animating hopes with regard to the soul after death. These mysteries,
however, had little influence on the literature of the nation; but there
was a society of persons called the followers of Orpheus, who published
their notions and committed them to literary works. Under the guidance of
the ancient mystical poet, Orpheus, they dedicated themselves to the
worship of Bacchus or Dionysus, in which they sought satisfaction for an
ardent longing after the soothing and elevating influences of religion,
and upon the worship of this deity they founded their hopes of an ultimate
immortality of the soul. Unlike the popular worshipers of Bacchus, they
did not indulge in unrestrained pleasure or frantic enthusiasm, but rather
aimed at an ascetic purity of life and manners. It is difficult to tell
when this association was formed in Greece, but we find in Hesiod
something of the Orphic spirit, and the beginning of higher and more
hopeful views of death.
The endeavor to obtain a knowledge of divine and human things was in
Greece slowly and with difficulty evolved from their religious notions,
and it was for a long time confined to the refining and rationalizing of
their mythology. An extensive Orphic literature first appeared at the time
of the Persian war, when the remains of the Pythagorean order in Magna
Graecia united themselves to the Orphic associations. The philosophy of
Pythagoras, however, had no analogy with the spirit of the Orphic
mysteries, in which the worship of Dionysus was the centre of all
religious ideas, while the Pythagorean philosophers preferred the worship
of Apollo and the Muses. In the Orphic theogony we find, for the first
time, the idea of creation. Another difference between the notions of the
Orphic poets and those of the early Greeks was that the former did not
limit their views to the present state of mankind, still less did they
acquiesce in Hesiod's melancholy doctrine of successive ages, each one
worse than the preceding; but they looked for a cessation of strife, a
state of happiness and beatitude at the end of all things. Their hopes of
this result were founded on Dionysus, from the worship of whom all their
peculiar religious ideas were derived. This god, the son of Zeus, is to
succeed him in the government of the world, to restore the Golden Age, and
to liberate human souls, who, according to an Orphic notion, are punished
by being confined in the body as in a prison. The sufferings of the soul
in its prison, the steps and transitions by which it passes to a higher
state of existence, and its gradual purification and enlightenment, were
all fully described in these poems. Thus, in the poetry of the first five
centuries of Greek literature, especially at the close of this period, we
find, instead of the calm enjoyment of outward nature which characterized
the early epic poetry, a profound sense of the misery of human life, and
an ardent longing for a condition of greater happiness. This feeling,
indeed, was not so extended as to become common to the whole Greek nation,
but it took deep root in individual minds, and was connected with more
serious and spiritual views of human nature.
11. PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY.--Philosophy was early cultivated by the
Greeks, who first among all nations distinguished it from religion and
mythology. For some time, however, after its origin, it was as far removed
from the ordinary thoughts and occupations of the people as poetry was
intimately connected with them. Poetry idealizes all that is most
characteristic of a nation; its religion, mythology, political and social
institutions, and manners. Philosophy, on the other hand, begins by
detaching the mind from the opinions and habits in which it has been bred
up, from the national conceptions of the gods and the universe, and from
traditionary maxims of ethics and politics. The philosophy of Greece,
antecedent to the time of Socrates, is contained in the doctrines of the
Ionic, Eleatic, and Pythagorean. schools. Thales of Miletus (639-548
B.C.) was the first in the series of the Ionic philosophers. He was one of
the Seven Sages, who by their practical wisdom nobly contributed to the
flourishing condition of Greece. Thales, Solon, Bion (fl. 570 B.C.),
Cleobulus (fl. 542 B.C.), Periander (fl. 598 B.C.), Pittacus of Mytilene
(579 B.C.), and Chilon (fl. 542 B.C.), were the seven philosophers called
the seven sages by their countrymen. Thales is said to have foretold an
eclipse of the sun, for which he doubtless employed astronomical formulae,
which he had obtained from the Chaldeans. His tendency was practical, and
where his own knowledge was insufficient, he applied the discoveries of
other nations more advanced than his own. He considered all nature as
endowed with life, and sought to discover the principles of external forms
in the powers which lie beneath; he taught that water was the principle of
things. Anaximander (fl. 547 B.C.), and Anaximenes (fl. 548 B.C.) were the
other two most distinguished representatives of the Ionic school. The
former believed that chaotic matter was the principle of all things, the
latter taught that it was air. The Eleatic school is represented by
Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Zeno. As the philosophers of the first school
were called Ionians from the country in which they resided, so these were
named from Elea, a Greek colony of Italy. Xenophanes (fl. 538 B.C.), the
founder of this school, adopted a different principle from that of the
Ionic philosophers, and proceeded upon an ideal system, while that of the
latter was exclusively founded upon experience. He began with the idea of
the godhead, and showed the necessity of considering it as an eternal and
unchanging existence, and represented the anthropomorphic conceptions of
the Greeks concerning their gods as mere prejudices. In his works he
retained the poetic form of composition, some fragments of which he
himself recited at public festivals, after the manner of the rhapsodists.
Parmenides flourished 504 years B.C. His philosophy rested upon the idea
of existence which excluded the idea of creation, and thus fell into
pantheism. His poem on "Nature" was composed in the epic metre, and in it
he expressed in beautiful forms the most abstract ideas. Zeno of Elea (fl.
500 B.C.) was a pupil of Parmenides, and the earliest prose writer among
the Greek philosophers. He developed the doctrines of his master by
showing the absurdities involved in the ideas of variety and of creation,
as opposed to one and universal substance. Other philosophers belonging to
Iona or Elea may be referred to these schools, as Heraclitus, Empedocles,
Democritus, and Anaxagoras, whose doctrines, however, vary from those of
the representatives of the philosophical systems above named. Heraclitus
(fl. 505 B.C.) dealt rather in intimations of important truths than in
popular exposition of them; his cardinal doctrine seems to have been that
everything is in perpetual motion, that nothing has any permanent
existence, and that everything is assuming a new form or perishing: the
principle of this perpetual motion he supposed to be _fixe_, though
probably he did not mean material fire, but some higher and more universal
agent. Like nearly all the philosophers, he despised the popular religion.
Empedocles (fl. 440 B.C.) wrote a doctrinal poem concerning nature,
fragments of which have been preserved. He denied the possibility of
creation, and held the doctrine of an eternal and imperishable existence;
but he considered this existence as having different natures, and admitted
that fire, earth, air, and water were the four elements of all things.
These elements he supposed to be governed by two principles, one positive
and one negative, that is to say, connecting love and dissolving discord.
Democritus (fl. 460 B.C.) embodied his extensive knowledge in a series of
writings, of which only a few fragments have been preserved. Cicero
compared him with Plato for rhythm and elegance of language. He derived
the manifold phenomena of the world from the different form, disposition,
and arrangement of the innumerable elements or atoms as they become
united. He is the founder of the atomic doctrine. Anaxagoras (fl. 456
B.C.) rejected all popular notions of religion, excluded the idea of
creation and destruction, and taught that atoms were unchangeable and
imperishable; that spirit, the purest and subtlest of all things, gave to
these atoms the impulse by which they took the forms of individual things
and beings; and that this impulse was given in circular motion, which kept
the heavenly bodies in their courses. But none of his doctrines gave so
much offence or was considered so clear a proof of his atheism as his
opinion that the sun, the bountiful god Helios, who shines both upon
mortals and immortals, was a mass of red-hot iron. His doctrines tended
powerfully by their rapid diffusion to undermine the principles on which
the worship of the ancient gods rested, and they therefore prepared the
way for the subsequent triumph of Christianity.
The Pythagorean or Italic School was founded by Pythagoras, who is said to
have flourished between 540 and 500 B.C. Pythagoras was probably an Ionian
who emigrated to Italy, and there established his school. His principal
efforts were directed to practical life, especially to the regulation of
political institutions, and his influence was exercised by means of
lectures, or sayings, or by the establishment and direction of the
Pythagorean associations. He encouraged the study of mathematics and
music, and considered singing to the cithara as best fitted to produce
that mental repose and harmony of soul which he regarded as the highest
object of education.
12. HISTORY.--It is remarkable that a people so cultivated as the Greeks
should have been so long without feeling the want of a correct record of
their transactions in war and peace. The difference between this nation
and the Orientals, in this respect, is very great. But the division of the
country into numerous small states, and the republican form of the
governments, prevented a concentration of interest on particular events
and persons, and owing to the dissensions between the republics, their
historical traditions could not but offend some while they flattered
others; it was not until a late period that the Greeks considered
contemporary events as worthy of being thought or written of. But for this
absence of authentic history, Greek literature could never have become
what it was. By the purely fictitious character of its poetry, and its
freedom from the shackles of particular truths, it acquired that general
probability which led Aristotle to consider poetry as more philosophical
than history. Greek art, likewise, from the lateness of the period at
which it descended from the representation of gods and heroes to the
portraits of real men, acquired a nobleness and beauty of form which it
could not otherwise have obtained. This poetical basis gave the literature
of the Greeks a noble and liberal turn.
Writing was probably known in Greece some centuries before the time of
Cadmus of Miletus (fl. 522 B.C.), but it had not been employed for the
purpose of preserving any detailed historical record, and even when,
towards the end of the age of the Seven Sages (550 B.C.), some writers of
historical narratives began to appear, they did not select recent
historical events, but those of distant times and countries; so entirely
did they believe that oral tradition and the daily discussions of common
life were sufficient records of the events of their own time and country.
Cadmus of Miletus is mentioned as the first historian, but his works seem
to have been early lost. To him, and other Greek historians before the
time of Herodotus, scholars have given the name of Logographers, from
Logos, signifying any discourse in prose.
The first Greek to whom it occurred that a narrative of facts might be
made intensely interesting was Herodotus (484-432 B.C.), a native of
Halicarnassus in Asia Minor, the Homer of Greek history. Obliged, for
political reasons, to leave his native land, he visited many countries,
such as Egypt, Babylon, and Persia, and spent the latter years of his life
in one of the Grecian settlements in Italy, where he devoted himself to
the composition of his work. His travels were undertaken from the pure
spirit of inquiry, and for that age they were very extensive and
important. It is probable that his great and intricate plan, hitherto
unknown in the historical writings of the Greeks, did not at first occur
to him, and that it was only in his later years that he conceived the
complete idea of a work so far beyond those of his predecessors and
contemporaries. It is stated that he recited his history at different
festivals, which is quite credible, though there is little authority for
the story that at one of these Thucydides was present as a boy, and shed
tears, drawn forth by his own desire for knowledge and his intense
interest in the narrative. His work comprehends a history of nearly all
the nations of the world at that time known. It has an epic character, not
only from the equable and uninterrupted flow of the narrative, but also
from certain pervading ideas which give a tone to the whole. The principal
of these is the idea of a fixed destiny, of a wise arrangement of the
world, which has prescribed to every being his path, and which allots ruin
and destruction not only to crime and violence, but to excessive power and
riches and the overweening pride which is their companion. In this
consists the envy of the gods so often mentioned by Herodotus, and usually
called by the other Greeks the divine Nemesis. He constantly adverts in
his narrative to the influence of this divine power, the Daemonion, as he
calls it. He shows how the Deity visits the sins of the ancestors upon
their descendants, how man rushes, as it were, wilfully upon his own
destruction, and how oracles mislead by their ambiguity, when interpreted
by blind passion. He shows his awe of the divine Nemesis by his moderation
and the firmness with which he keeps down the ebullitions of national
pride. He points out traits of greatness of character in the hostile kings
of Persia, and shows his countrymen how often they owed their successes to
Providence and external advantages rather than to their own valor and
ability. Since Herodotus saw the working of a divine agency in all human
events, and considered the exhibition of it as the main object of his
history, his aim is totally different from that of a historian who regards
the events of life merely with reference to men. He is, in truth, a
theologian and a poet as well as a historian. It is, however, vain to deny
that when Herodotus did not see himself the events which he describes, he
is often deceived by the misrepresentations of others; yet, without his
single-hearted simplicity, his disposition to listen to every remarkable
account, and his admiration for the wonders of the Eastern world,
Herodotus would never have imparted to us many valuable accounts. Modern
travelers, naturalists, and geographers have often had occasion to admire
the truth, and correctness of the information contained in his simple and
marvelous narratives. But no dissertation on this writer can convey any
idea of the impression made by reading his work; his language closely
approximates to oral narration; it is like hearing a person speak who has
seen and lived through a variety of remarkable things, and whose greatest
delight consists in recalling these images of the past. Though a Dorian by
birth, he adopted the Ionic dialect, with its uncontracted terminations,
its accumulated vowels, and its soft forms. These various elements
conspire to render the work of Herodotus a production as perfect in its
kind as any human work can be.