1. LITERARY PREDOMINANCE OF ATHENS.--Among the Greeks a national
literature was early formed. Every literary work in the Greek language, in
whatever dialect it might be composed, was enjoyed by the whole nation,
and the fame of remarkable writers soon spread throughout Greece. Certain
cities were considered almost as theatres, where the poets and sages could
bring their powers and acquirements into public notice. Among these,
Sparta stood highest down to the time of the Persian war. But when Athens,
raised by her political power and the mental qualities of her citizens,
acquired the rank of the capital of Greece, literature assumed a different
form, and there is no more important epoch in the history of the Greek
intellect than the time when she obtained this pre-eminence over her
sister states. The character of the Athenians peculiarly fitted them to
take this lead; they were Ionians, and the boundless resources and
mobility of the Ionian spirit are shown by their astonishing productions
in Asia Minor and in the islands, in the two centuries previous to the
Persian war; in their iambic and elegiac poetry, and in the germs of
philosophic inquiry and historical composition. The literature of those
who remained in Attica seemed poor and meagre when compared with that
luxuriant outburst; nor did it appear, till a later period, that the
progress of the Athenian intellect was the more sound and lasting. The
Ionians of Asia Minor, becoming at length enfeebled and corrupted by the
luxuries of the East, passed easily under the power of the Persians, while
the inhabitants of Attica, encompassed and oppressed by the manly tribes
of Greece, and forced to keep the sword constantly in their hands, exerted
all their talents and thus developed all their extraordinary powers.
Solon, the great lawgiver, arose to combine moral strictness and order
with freedom of action. After Solon came the dominion of the
Pisistratidae, which lasted from about 560 to 510 B.C. They showed a
fondness for art, diffused a taste for poetry among the Athenians, and
naturalized at Athens the best literary productions of Greece. They were
unquestionably the first to introduce the entire recital of the Iliad and
Odyssey; they also brought to Athens the most distinguished lyric poets of
the time, Anacreon, Simonides, and others. But, notwithstanding their
patronage of literature and art, it was not till after the fall of their
dynasty that Athens shot up with a vigor that can only be derived from the
consciousness of every citizen that he has a share in the common weal.
It is a remarkable fact that Athens produced her most excellent works in
literature and art in the midst of the greatest political convulsions, and
of her utmost efforts for conquest and self-preservation. The long
dominion of the Pisistratids produced nothing more important than the
first rudiments of the tragic drama, for the origin of comedy at the
country festivals of Bacchus falls in the time before Pisistratus. On the
other hand, the thirty years between the expulsion of Hippias, the last of
the Pisistratids, and the battle of Salamis (510-480 B.C.), was a period
marked by great events both in politics and literature. Athens contended
with success against her warlike neighbors, supported the Ionians in their
revolt against Persia, and warded off the first powerful attack of the
Persians upon Greece. During the same period, the pathetic tragedies of
Phrynichus and the lofty tragedies of Aeschylus appeared on the stage,
political eloquence was awakened in Themistocles, and everything seemed to
give promise of future greatness.
The political events which followed the Persian war gradually gave to
Athens the dominion over her allies, so that she became the sovereign of a
large and flourishing empire, comprehending the islands and coasts of the
Aegean and a part of the Euxine sea. In this manner was gained a wide
basis for the lofty edifice of political glory, which was raised by her
statesmen. The completion of this splendid structure was due to Pericles
(500-429 B.C.). Through his influence Athens became a dominant community,
whose chief business it was to administer the affairs of an extensive
empire, flourishing in agriculture, industry, and commerce. Pericles,
however, did not make the acquisition of power the highest object of his
exertions; his aim was to realize in Athens the idea which he had
conceived of human greatness, that great and noble thoughts should pervade
the whole mass of the ruling people; and this was, in fact, the case as
long as his influence lasted, to a greater degree than has occurred in any
other period of history. The objects to which Pericles directed the
people, and for which he accumulated so much power and wealth at Athens,
may be best seen in the still extant works of architecture and sculpture
which originated under his administration. He induced the Athenian people
to expend on the decoration of Athens a larger part of its ample revenues
than was ever applied to this purpose in any other state, either
republican or monarchical. Of the surpassing skill with which he collected
into one focus the rays of artistic genius at Athens, no stronger proof
can be afforded, than the fact that no subsequent period, through the
patronage of Macedonian or Roman princes, produced works of equal
excellence, Indeed, it may be said that the creations of the age of
Pericles are the only works of art which completely satisfy the most
refined and cultivated taste.
But this brilliant exhibition of human excellence was not without its dark
side, nor the flourishing state of Athenian civilization exempt from the
elements of decay. The political position of Athens soon led to a conflict
between the patriotism and moderation of her citizens, and their interests
and passions. From the earliest times, this city had stood in an
unfriendly relation to the rest of Greece, and her policy of compelling so
many cities to contribute their wealth in order to make her the focus of
art and civilization was accompanied with offensive pride and selfish
patriotism. The energy in action, which distinguished the Athenians,
degenerated into a restless love of adventure; and that dexterity in the
use of words, which they cultivated more than the other Greeks, induced
them to subject everything to discussion, and destroyed the habits founded
on unreasoning faith. The principles of the policy of Pericles were
closely connected with the demoralization which followed his
administration. By founding the power of the Athenians on the dominion of
the sea, he led them to abandon land war and the military exercises
requisite for it, which had hardened the old warriors at Marathon. As he
made them a dominant people, whose time was chiefly devoted to the
business of governing their widely-extended empire, it was necessary for
him to provide that the common citizens of Athens should be able to gain a
livelihood by their attention to public business, and accordingly, a large
revenue was distributed among them in the form of wages for attendance in
the courts of justice and other public assemblies. These payments to
citizens for their share in the public business were quite new in Greece,
and many considered the sitting and listening in these assemblies as an
idle life in comparison with the labor of the plowman and vine-grower in
the country, and for a long time the industrious cultivators, the brave
warriors, and the men of old-fashioned morality were opposed, among the
citizens of Athens, to the loquacious, luxurious, and dissolute generation
who passed their whole time in the market-place and courts of justice. The
contests between these two parties are the main subject of the early Attic
comedy.
Literature and art, however, were not, during the Peloponnesian war,
affected by the corruption of morals. The works of this period exhibit not
only a perfection of form but also an elevation of soul and a grandeur of
conception, which fill us with admiration not only for those who produced
them, but for those who could enjoy such works of art. A step farther, and
the love of genuine beauty gave place to a desire for evil pleasures, and
the love of wisdom degenerated into an idle use of words.
2. THE DRAMA.--The spirit of an age is more completely represented by its
poetry than by its prose composition, and accordingly we may best trace
the character of the three different stages of civilization among the
Greeks in the three grand divisions of their poetry. The epic belongs to
their monarchical period, when the minds of the people were impregnated
and swayed by legends handed down from antiquity. Elegiac, iambic, and
lyric poetry arose in the more stirring and agitated times which
accompanied the development of republican governments, times in which each
individual gave vent to his personal aims and wishes, and all the depths
of the human breast were unlocked by the inspirations of poetry. And now,
when at the summit of Greek civilization, in the very prime of Athenian
power and freedom, we see dramatic poetry spring up as the organ of the
prevailing thoughts and feelings of the time, we are naturally led to ask
how it comes that this style of poetry agreed so well with the spirit of
the age, and so far outstripped its competitors in the contest for public
favor.
Dramatic poetry, as its name implies, represents _actions_, which are not,
as in the epos, merely narrated, but seem to take place before the eyes of
the spectator. The epic poet appears to regard the events, which he
relates from afar, as objects of calm contemplation and admiration, and is
always conscious of the great interval between him and them, while the
dramatist plunges with his entire soul into the scenes of human life, and
seems himself to experience the events which he exhibits to our view. The
drama comprehends and develops the events of human life with a force and
depth which no other style of poetry can reach.
If we carry ourselves in imagination back to a time when dramatic
composition was unknown, we must acknowledge that its creation required
great boldness of mind. Hitherto the bard had only sung of gods and
heroes; it was, therefore, a great change for the poet himself to come
forward all at once in the character of the god or hero, in a nation
which, even in its amusements, had always adhered closely to established
usages. It is true that there is much in human nature which impels it to
dramatic representations, such as the universal love of imitating other
persons, and the child-like liveliness with which a narrator, strongly
impressed with his subject, delivers a speech which he has heard or
perhaps only imagined. Yet there is a wide step from these disjointed
elements to the genuine drama, and it seems that no nation, except the
Greeks, ever made this step. The dramatic poetry of the Hindus belongs to
a time when there had been much intercourse between Greece and India; even
in ancient Greece and Italy, dramatic poetry, and especially tragedy,
attained to perfection only in Athens, and here it was exhibited only at a
few festivals of a single god, Dionysus, while epic rhapsodies and lyric
odes were recited on various occasions. All this is incomprehensible, if
we suppose dramatic poetry to have originated in causes independent of the
peculiar circumstances of time and place. If a love of imitation and a
delight in disguising the real person under a mask were the basis upon
which this style of poetry was raised, the drama would have been as
natural and as universal among men as these qualities are common to their
nature.
A more satisfactory explanation of the origin of the Greek drama may be
found in its connection with the worship of the gods, and particularly
that of Bacchus. The gods were supposed to dwell in their temples and to
participate in their festivals, and it was not considered presumptuous or
unbecoming to represent them as acting like human beings, as was
frequently done by mimic representations. The worship of Bacchus had one
quality which was more than any other calculated to give birth to the
drama, and particularly to tragedy, namely, the enthusiasm which formed an
essential part of it, and which proceeded from an impassioned sympathy
with the events of nature in connection with the course of the seasons.
The original participators in these festivals believed that they perceived
the god to be really affected by the changes of nature, killed or dying,
flying and rescued, or reanimated, victorious, and dominant. Although the
great changes, which took place in the religion and cultivation of the
Greeks, banished from their minds the conviction that these events really
occurred, yet an enthusiastic sympathy with the god and his fortunes, as
with real events, always remained. The swarm of subordinate beings by whom
Bacchus was surrounded--satyrs, nymphs, and a variety of beautiful and
grotesque forms--were ever present to the fancy of the Greeks, and it was
not necessary to depart very widely from the ordinary course of ideas to
imagine them visible to human eyes among the solitary woods and rocks. The
custom, so prevalent at the festivals of Bacchus, of taking the disguise
of satyrs, doubtless originated in the desire to approach more nearly to
the presence of their divinity. The desire of escaping from self into
something new and strange, of living in an imaginary world, broke forth in
a thousand instances in those festivals. It was seen in the coloring of
the body, the wearing of skins and masks of wood or bark, and in the
complete costume belonging to the character.
The learned writers of antiquity agree in stating that tragedy, as well as
comedy, was originally a choral song. The action, the adventures of the
gods, was presupposed or only symbolically indicated; the chorus expressed
their feelings upon it. This choral song belonged to the class of the
_dithyramb_, an enthusiastic ode to Bacchus, capable of expressing every
variety of feeling excited by the worship of that god. It was first sung
by revelers at convivial meetings, afterwards it was regularly executed by
a chorus. The subject of these tragic choruses sometimes changed from
Bacchus to other heroes distinguished for their misfortunes and suffering.
The reason why the dithyramb and afterwards tragedy was transferred from
that god to heroes and not to other gods of the Greek Olympus, was that
the latter were elevated above the chances of fortune and the alternations
of joy and grief to which both Bacchus and the heroes were subject.
It is stated by Aristotle, that tragedy originated with the chief singers
of the dithyramb. It is probable that they represented Bacchus himself or
his messengers, that they came forward and narrated his perils and
escapes, and that the chorus then expressed their feeling, as at passing
events. The chorus thus naturally assumed the character of satellites of
Bacchus, whence they easily fell into the parts of satyrs, who were his
companions in sportive adventures, as well as in combats and misfortunes.
The name of tragedy, or goat's song, was derived from the resemblance of
the singers, in their character of satyrs, to goats.
Thus far tragedy had advanced among the Dorians, who, therefore,
considered themselves the inventors of it. All its further development
belongs to the Athenians. In the time of Pisistratus, Thespis (506 B.C.)
first caused tragedy to become a drama, though a very simple one. He
connected with the choral representation a regular dialogue, by joining
one person to the chorus who was the _first actor_. He introduced linen
masks, and thus the one actor might appear in several characters. In the
drama of Thespis we find the satyric drama confounded with tragedy, and
the persons of the chorus frequently representing satyrs. The dances of
the chorus were still a principal part of the performance; the ancient
tragedians, in general, were teachers of dancing, as well as poets and
musicians.
In Phrynichus (fl. 512 B.C.) the lyric predominated over the dramatic
element. Like Thespis, he had only one actor, but he used this actor for
different characters, and he was the first who brought female parts upon
the stage, which, according to the manners of the ancients, could be acted
only by men. In several instances it is remarkable that Phrynichus
deviated from mythical subjects to those taken from contemporary history.
3. TRAGEDY.--The tragedy of antiquity was entirely different from that
which, in progress of time, arose among other nations; a picture of human
life, agitated by the passions, and corresponding as accurately as
possible to its original in all its features. Ancient tragedy departs
entirely from ordinary life; its character is in the highest degree ideal,
and its development necessary, and essentially directed by the fate to
which gods and men were subjected. As tragedy and dramatic exhibitions,
generally, were seen only at the festivals of Bacchus, they retained a
sort of Bacchic coloring, and the extraordinary excitement of all minds at
these festivals, by raising them above the tone of every-day existence,
gave both to the tragic and comic muse unwonted energy and fire.
The Bacchic festal costume, which the actors wore, consisted of long
striped garments reaching to the ground, over which were thrown upper
garments of some brilliant color, with gay trimmings and gold ornaments.
The choruses also vied with each other in the splendor of their dress, as
well as in the excellence of their singing and dancing. The chorus, which
always bore a subordinate part in the action of the tragedy, was in no
respect distinguished from the stature and appearance of ordinary men,
while the actor, who represented the god or hero, required to be raised
above the usual dimensions of mortals. A tragic actor was a strange, and,
according to the taste of the ancients themselves at a later period, a
very monstrous being. His person was lengthened out considerably beyond
the proportions of the human figure by the very high soles of the tragic
shoe, and by the length of the tragic mask, and the chest, body, legs, and
arms were stuffed and padded to a corresponding size; the body thus lost
much of its natural flexibility, and the gesticulation consisted of stiff,
angular movements, in which little was left to the emotion or the
inspiration of the moment. Masks, which had originated in the taste for
mumming and disguises of all sorts, prevalent at the Bacchic festivals,
were an indispensable accompaniment to tragedy. They not only concealed
the individual features of well-known actors, and enabled the spectators
entirely to forget the performer in his part, but gave to his whole aspect
that ideal character which the tragedy of antiquity demanded. The tragic
mask was not intentionally ugly and caricatured like the comic, but the
half-open mouth, the large eye-sockets, and sharply-defined features, in
which every characteristic was presented in its utmost strength, and the
bright and hard coloring were calculated to make the impression of a being
agitated by the emotions and passions of human nature in a degree far
above the standard of common life. The masks could, however, be changed
between the acts, so as to represent the necessary changes in the state or
emotions of the persons.
The ancient theatres were stone buildings of enormous size, calculated to
accommodate the whole free and adult population of a great city at the
spectacles and festal games. These theatres were not designed exclusively
for dramatic poetry; choral dances, processions, revels, and all sorts of
representations were held in them. We find theatres in every part of
Greece, though dramatic poetry was the peculiar growth of Athens.
The whole structure of the theatre, as well as the drama itself, may be
traced to the chorus, whose station was the original centre of the whole
performance. The orchestra, which occupied a circular level space in the
centre of the building, grew out of the chorus or dancing-place of the
Homeric times. The altar of Bacchus, around which the dithyrambic chorus
danced in a circle, had given rise to a sort of raised platform in the
centre of the orchestra, which served as a resting-place for the chorus.
The chorus sang alone when the actors had quitted the stage, or
alternately with the persons of the drama, and sometimes entered into
dialogues with them. These persons represented heroes of the mythical
world, whose whole aspect bespoke something mightier and more sublime than
ordinary humanity, and it was the part of the chorus to show the
impression made by the incidents of the drama on lower and feebler minds,
and thus, as it were, to interpret them to the audience, with whom they
owned a more kindred nature. The ancient stage was remarkably long, and of
little depth; it was called the _proscenium_, because it was in front of
the _scene_. _Scene_ properly means _tent_ or _hut_, such as originally
marked the dwelling of the principal person. This hut at length gave place
to a stately scene, enriched with architectural decorations, yet its
purpose remained the same.
We have seen how a single actor was added to the chorus by Thespis, who
caused him to represent in succession all the persons of the drama.
Aeschylus added a second actor in order to obtain the contrast of two
acting persons on the stage; even Sophocles did not venture beyond the
introduction of a third. But the ancients laid more stress upon the
precise number and mutual relations of these actors than can here be
explained.
4. THE TRAGIC POETS.--Aeschylus (525-477 B.C.), like almost all the great
masters of poetry in ancient Greece, was a poet by profession, and from
the great improvements which he introduced into tragedy he was regarded by
the Athenians as its founder. Of the seventy tragedies which he is said to
have written, only seven are extant. Of these, the "Prometheus" is beyond
all question his greatest work. The genius of Aeschylus inclined rather to
the awful and sublime, than to the tender and pathetic. He excels in
representing the superhuman, in depicting demigods and heroes, and in
tracing the irresistible march of fate. The depth of poetical feeling in
him is accompanied with intense and philosophical thought; he does not
merely represent individual tragical events, but he recurs to the greater
elements of tragedy--the subjection of the gods and Titans, and the
original dignity and greatness of nature and of man. He delights to
portray this gigantic strength, as in his Prometheus chained and tortured,
but invincible; and these representations have a moral sublimity far above
mere poetic beauty. His tragedies were at once political, patriotic, and
religious.
Sophocles (495-406 B.C.), as a poet, is universally allowed to have
brought the drama to the highest degree of perfection of which it was
susceptible. Indeed, the Greek mind may be said to have culminated in him;
his writings overflow with that indescribable charm which only flashes
through those of other poets. His plots are worked up with more skill and
care than those of either of his great rivals, Aeschylus or Euripides, and
he added the last improvement to the form of the drama by the introduction
of a third actor,--a change which greatly enlarged the scope of the
action. Of the many tragedies which he is said to have written, only seven
are extant. Of these, the "Oedipus Tyrannus" is particularly remarkable
for its skillful development, and for the manner in which the interest of
the piece increases through each succeeding act. Of all the poets of
antiquity, Sophocles has penetrated most deeply into the recesses of the
human heart. His tragedies appear to us as pictures of the mind, as
poetical developments of the secrets of our souls, and of the laws to
which their nature makes them amenable.
In Euripides (480-407 B.C.) we discover the first traces of decline in the
Greek tragedy. He diminished its dignity by depriving it of its ideal
character, and by bringing it down to the level of every-day life. All the
characters of Euripides have that loquacity and dexterity in the use of
words which distinguished the Athenians of his day; yet in spite of all
these faults he has many beauties, and is particularly remarkable for
pathos, so that Aristotle calls him the most tragic of poets. Eighteen of
his tragedies are still extant.
The contemporaries of the three great tragic poets, Aeschylus, Sophocles,
and Euripides, must be regarded for the most part as far from
insignificant, since they maintained their place on the stage beside them,
and not unfrequently gained the tragic prize in competition with them; yet
the general character of these poets must have been deficient in that
depth and peculiar force of genius by which these great tragedians were
distinguished. If this had not been the case, their works would assuredly
have attracted greater attention, and would have been read mere frequently
in later times.
5. COMEDY.--Greek comedy was distinguished as the Old, the Middle, and the
New. As tragedy arose from the winter feast of Bacchus, which fostered an
enthusiastic sympathy with the apparent sorrows of the god of nature,
comedy arose from the concluding feast of the vintage, at which an
exulting joy over the inexhaustible riches of nature manifested itself in
wantonness of every kind. In such a feast, the Comus, or Bacchanalian
procession, was a principal ingredient. This was a tumultuous mixture of
the wild carouse, the noisy song, and the drunken dance; and the meaning
of the word comedy is a comus _song_. It was from this lyric comedy that
the dramatic comedy was gradually produced. It received its full
development from Cratinus, who lived in the age of Pericles. Cratinus and
his younger contemporaries, Eupolis (431 B.C.) and Aristophanes (452-380
B.C.), were the great poets of the old Attic comedy. Of their works, only
eleven dramas of Aristophanes are extant. The chief object of these
comedies was to excite laughter by the boldest and most ludicrous
caricature, and, provided that end was obtained, the poet seems to have
cared little about the justice of the picture. It is scarcely possible to
imagine the unmeasured and unsparing license of attack assumed by these
comedies upon the gods, the institutions, the politicians, philosophers,
poets, private citizens, and women of Athens. With this universal liberty
of subject there is combined a poignancy of derision and satire, a
fecundity of imagination, and a richness of poetical expression such as
cannot be surpassed. Towards the end of the career of Aristophanes,
however, this unrestricted license of the comedy began gradually to
disappear.
The Old comedy was succeeded by the Middle Attic comedy, in which the
satire was no longer directed against the influential men or rulers of the
people, but was rich in ridicule of the Platonic Academy, of the newly
revived sect of the Pythagoreans, and of the orators, rhetoricians, and
poets of the day. In this transition from the Old to the Middle comedy, we
may discern at once the great revolution that had taken place in the
domestic history of Athens, when the Athenians, from a nation of
politicians, became a nation of literary men; when it was no longer the
opposition of political ideas, but the contest of opposing schools of
philosophers and rhetoricians, which set all heads in motion. The poets of
this comedy were very numerous.
The last poets of the Middle comedy were contemporaries of the writers of
the New, who rose up as their rivals, and who were only distinguished from
them by following the new tendency more decidedly and exclusively.
Menander (342-293 B.C.) was one of the first of these poets, and he is
also the most perfect of them. The Athens of his day differed from that of
the time of Pericles, in the same way that an old man, weak in body but
fond of life, good-humored and self-indulgent, differs from the vigorous,
middle-aged man at the summit of his mental strength and bodily energy.
Since there was so little in politics to interest or to employ the mind,
the Athenians found an object in the occurrences of social life and the
charm of dissolute enjoyment. Dramatic poetry now, for the first time,
centred in love, as it has since done among all nations to whom the Greek
cultivation has descended. But it certainly was not love in those nobler
forms to which it has since elevated itself. Menander painted truly the
degenerate world in which he lived, actuated by no mighty impulses, no
noble aspirations. He was contemporary with Epicurus, and their characters
had much in common; both were deficient in the inspiration of high moral
ideas.
The comedy of Menander and his contemporaries completed what Euripides had
begun on the tragic stage a hundred years before their time. They deprived
their characters of that ideal grandeur which had been most conspicuous in
the creations of Aeschylus and the earlier poets, and thus tragedy and
comedy, which had started from such different beginnings, here met as at
the same point. The comedies of Menander may be considered as almost the
conclusion of Attic literature; he was the last original poet of Athens;
those who arose at a later period were but gleaners after the rich harvest
of Greek poetry had been gathered.
6. ORATORY, RHETORIC, AND HISTORY.--We may distinguish three epochs in the
history of Attic prose from Pericles to Alexander the Great: first, that
of Pericles and Thucydides; second, that of Lysias, Socrates, and Plato;
and, third, that of Demosthenes and Aeschines. Public speaking had been
common in Greece from the earliest times, but as the works of Athenian
orators alone have come down to us, we may conclude that oratory was
cultivated in a much higher degree at Athens than elsewhere. No speech of
Pericles has been preserved in writing; only a few of his emphatic and
nervous expressions were kept in remembrance; but a general impression of
the grandeur of his oratory long prevailed among the Greeks, from which we
may form a clear conception of his style. The sole object of the oratory
of Pericles was to produce conviction; he did not aim to excite any sudden
or transient burst of passion by working on the emotions of the heart; nor
did he use any of those means employed by the orators of a later age to
set in motion the unruly impulses of the multitude. His manner was
tranquil, with hardly any change of feature; his garments were undisturbed
by any oratorical gesticulations, and his voice was equable and sustained.
He never condescended to flatter the people, and his dignity never stooped
to merriment. Although there was more of reasoning than imagination in his
speeches, he gave a vivid and impressive coloring to his language by the
use of striking metaphors and comparisons, as when, at the funeral of a
number of young persons who had fallen in battle, he used the beautiful
figure, that "the year had lost its spring."
The cultivation of the art of oratory among the Athenians was due to a
combination of the natural eloquence displayed by the Athenian statesmen,
and especially by Pericles, with the rhetorical studies of the sophists,
who exercised a greater influence on the culture of the Greek mind than
any other class of men, the poets excepted. The sophists, as their name
indicates, were persons who made knowledge their profession, and undertook
to impart it to every one who was willing to place himself under their
guidance; they were reproached with being the first to sell knowledge for
money, for they not only demanded pay from those who came to hear their
lectures, but they undertook, for a certain sum, to give young men a
complete sophistical education. Pupils flocked to them in crowds, and they
acquired such riches as neither art nor science had ever before earned
among the Greeks. If we consider their doctrines philosophically, they
amounted to a denial or renunciation of all true science. They were able
to speak with equal plausibility for and against the same position; not in
order to discover the truth, but to show the nothingness of truth. In the
improvement of written composition, however, a high value must be set on
their services. They made language the object of their study; they aimed
at correctness and beauty of style, and they laid the foundation for the
polished diction of Plato and Demosthenes. They taught that the sole aim
of the orator is to turn the minds of his hearers into such a train as may
best suit his own interest; that, consequently, rhetoric is the agent of
persuasion, the art of all arts, because the rhetorician is able to speak
well and convincingly on every subject, though he may have no accurate
knowledge respecting it.
The Peloponnesian war, which terminated in the downfall of Athens, was
succeeded by a period of exhaustion and repose. The fine arts were checked
in their progress, and poetry degenerated into empty bombast. Yet at this
very time prose literature began a new career, which led to its fairest
development.
Lysias and Isocrates gave an entirely new form to oratory by the happy
alterations which they in different ways introduced into the old prose
style. Lysias (fl. 359 B.C.), in the fiftieth year of his age, began to
follow the trade of writing speeches for such private individuals as could
not trust their own skill in addressing a court; for this object, a plain,
unartificial style was best suited, because citizens who called in the aid
of the speech-writer had no knowledge of rhetoric, and thus Lysias was
obliged to originate a style, which became more and more confirmed by
habit. The consequence was, that for his contemporaries and for all ages
he stands forth as the first and in many respects the perfect pattern of a
plain style. The narrative part of the speech, for which he was
particularly famous, is always natural, interesting, and lively, and often
relieved by mimic touches which give it a wonderful air of reality. The
proofs and confutations are distinguished by a clearness of reasoning and
a boldness of argument which leave no room for doubt; in a word, the
speeches are just what they ought to be in order to obtain a favorable
decision, an object in which, it seems, he often succeeded. Of his many
orations, thirty-five have come down to us.
Isocrates (fl. 338 B.C.) established a school for political oratory, which
became the first and most flourishing in Greece. His orations were mostly
destined for this school. Though neither a great statesman nor philosopher
in himself, Isocrates constitutes an epoch as a rhetorician or artist of
language. His influence extended far beyond the limits of his own school,
and without his reconstruction of the style of Attic oratory we could have
had no Demosthenes and no Cicero; through these, the school of Isocrates
has extended its influence even to the oratory of our own day.
The verdict of his contemporaries, ratified by posterity, has pronounced
Demosthenes (380-322 B.C.) the greatest orator that has ever lived, yet he
had no natural advantages for oratory. A feeble frame and a weak voice, a
shy and awkward manner, the ungraceful gesticulations of one whose limbs
had never been duly exercised, and a defective articulation, would have
deterred most men from even attempting to address an Athenian assembly;
but the ambition and perseverance of Demosthenes enabled him to triumph
over every disadvantage. He improved his bodily powers by running, his
voice by speaking aloud as he walked up hill, or declaimed against the
roar of the sea; he practiced graceful delivery before a looking-glass,
and controlled his unruly articulation by speaking with pebbles in his
mouth. His want of fluency he remedied by diligent composition, and by
copying and committing to memory the works of the best authors. By these
means he came forth as the acknowledged leader of the assembly, and, even
by the confession of his deadliest enemies, the first orator of Greece.
His harangues to the people, and his speeches on public and private
causes, which have been preserved, form a collection of sixty-one
orations. The most important efforts of Demosthenes, however, were the
series of public speeches referring to Philip of Macedon, and known as the
twelve Philippics, a name which has become a general designation for
spirited invectives. The main characteristic of his eloquence consisted in
the use of the common language of his age and country. He took great pains
in the choice and arrangement of his words, and aimed at the utmost
conciseness, making epithets, even common adjectives, do the work of a
whole sentence, and thus, by his perfect delivery and action, a sentence
composed of ordinary terms sometimes smote with the weight of a sledge-
hammer. In his orations there is not any long or close train of reasoning,
still less any profound observations or remote and ingenious allusions,
but a constant succession of remarks, bearing immediately on the matter in
hand, perfectly plain, and as readily admitted as easily understood. These
are intermingled with the most striking appeals either to feelings which
all were conscious of, and deeply agitated by, though ashamed to own, or
to sentiments which every man was panting to utter and delighted to hear
thundered forth,--bursts of oratory, which either overwhelmed or relieved
the audience. Such characteristics constituted the principal glory of the
great orator.
The most eminent of the contemporaries of Demosthenes were Isaeus (420-348
B.C.), an artificial and elaborate orator; Lycurgus (393-328 B.C.), a
celebrated civil reformer of Athens; Hypereides, contemporary of Lycurgus;
and, above all, Aeschines (389-314 B.C.), the great rival of Demosthenes,
of whose numerous speeches only three have been preserved. At a later
period we find two schools of rhetoric, the Attic, founded by Aeschines,
and the Asiatic, established by Hegesias of Magnesia. The former proposed
as models of oratory the great Athenian orators, the latter depended on
artificial manners, and produced speeches distinguished rather by
rhetorical ornaments and a rapid flow of diction than by weight and force
of style.
In the historical department, Thucydides (471-391 B.C.) began an entirely
new class of historical writing. While Herodotus aimed at giving a vivid
picture of all that fell under the cognizance of the senses, and
endeavored to represent a superior power ruling over the destinies of
princes and people, the attention of Thucydides was directed to human
action, as it is developed from the character and situation of the
individual. His history, from its unity of action, may be considered as a
historical drama, the subject being the Athenian domination over Greece,
and the parties the belligerent republics. Clearness in the narrative,
harmony and consistency of the details with the general history, are the
characteristics of his work; and in his style he combines the concise and
pregnant oratory of Pericles with the vigorous but artificial style of the
rhetoricians. Demosthenes was so diligent a student of Thucydides that he
copied out his history eight times.
Xenophon (445-391 B.C.) may also be classed among the great historians,
his name being most favorably known from the "Anabasis," in which he
describes the retreat of the ten thousand Greek mercenaries in the service
of Cyrus, the Persian king, among whom he himself played a prominent part.
The minuteness of detail, the picturesque simplicity of the style, and the
air of reality which pervades it, have made it a favorite with every age.
In his memorials of Socrates, he records the conversations of a man whom
he had admired and listened to, but whom he did not understand. In the
language of Xenophon we find the first approximation to the common
dialect, which became afterwards the universal language of Greece. He
wrote several other works, in which, however, no development of one great
and pervading idea can be found; but in all of them there is a singular
clearness and beauty of description.
7. SOCRATES AND THE SOCRATIC SCHOOLS.--Although Socrates (468-399 B.C.)
left no writings behind him, yet the intellect of Greece was powerfully
affected by the principles of his philosophy, and the greatest literary
genius that ever appeared in Hellas owed most of his mental training to
his early intercourse with him. It was by means of conversation, by a
searching process of question and answer, that Socrates endeavored to lead
his pupils to a consciousness of their own ignorance, and thus to awaken
in their minds an anxiety to obtain more exact views. This method of
questioning he reduced to a scientific process, and "dialectics" became a
name for the art of reasoning and the science of logic. The subject-matter
of this method was moral science considered with special reference to
politics. To him may be justly attributed induction and general
definitions, and he applied this practical logic to a common-sense
estimate of the duties of man both as a moral being and as a member of a
community, and thus he first treated moral philosophy according to
scientific principles. No less than ten schools of philosophers claimed
him as their head, though the majority of them imperfectly represented his
doctrines. By his influence on Plato, and through him on Aristotle, he
constituted himself the founder of the philosophy which is still
recognized in the civilized world.
From the doctrine held by Socrates, that virtue was dependent on
knowledge, Eucleides of Megara (fl. 398 B.C.), the founder of the Megaric
school, submitted moral philosophy to dialectical reasoning and logical
refinements; and from the Socratic principle of the union between virtue
and happiness, Aristippus of Cyrene (fl. 396 B.C.) deduced the doctrine
which became the characteristic of the Cyrenian school, affirming that
pleasure was the ultimate end of life and the higher good; while
Antisthenes (fl. 396 B.C.) constructed the Cynic philosophy, which placed
the ideal of virtue in the absence of every need, and hence in the
disregarding of every interest, wealth, honor, and enjoyment, and in the
independence of any restraints of life and society. Diogenes of Sinope
(fl. 300 B.C.) was one of the most prominent followers of this school. He,
like his master, Antisthenes, always appeared in the most beggarly
clothing, with the staff and wallet of mendicancy; and this ostentation of
self-denial drew from Socrates the exclamation, that he saw the vanity of
Antisthenes through the holes in his garments.
Plato (429-348 B.C.) was the only--one of the disciples of Socrates who
represented the whole doctrines of his teacher. We owe to him that the
ideas which Socrates awakened have been made the germ of one of the
grandest systems of speculation that the world has ever seen, and that it
has been conveyed to us in literary compositions which are unequaled in
refinement of conception, or in vigor and gracefulness of style. At the
age of nineteen he became one of the pupils and associates of Socrates,
and did not leave him until that martyr of intellectual freedom drank the
fatal cup of hemlock. He afterwards traveled in Asia Minor, in Egypt, in
Italy, and Sicily, and made himself acquainted with all contemporary
philosophy. During the latter part of his life he was engaged as a public
lecturer on philosophy. His lectures were delivered in the gardens of the
Academia, and they have left proof of their celebrity in the structure of
language, which has derived from them a term now common to all places of
instruction. Of the importance of the Socratic and Pythagorean elements in
Plato's philosophy there can be no doubt; but he transmuted all he touched
into his own forms of thought and language, and there was no branch of
speculative literature which he had not mastered. By adopting the form of
dialogue, in which all his extant works have come down to us, he was
enabled to criticise the various systems of philosophy then current in
Greece, and also to gratify his own dramatic genius, and his almost
unrivaled power of keeping up an assumed character. The works of Plato
have been divided into three classes: first, the elementary dialogues, or
those which contain the germs of all that follows, of logic as the
instrument of philosophy, and of ideas as its proper object; second,
progressive dialogues, which treat of the distinction between
philosophical and common knowledge, in their united application to the
proposed and real sciences, ethics, and physics; third, the constructive
dialogues, in which the practical is completely united with the
speculative, with an appendix containing laws, epistles, etc.
The fundamental principle of Plato's philosophy is the belief in an
eternal and self-existent cause, the origin of all things. From this
divine Being emanate not only the souls of men, which are immortal, but
that of the universe itself, which is supposed to be animated by a divine
spirit. The material objects of our sight, and other senses, are mere
fleeting emanations of the divine idea; it is only this idea itself that
is really existent; the objects of sensuous perception are mere
appearances, taking their forms by participation in the idea; hence it
follows, that in Plato's philosophy all knowledge is innate, and acquired
by the soul before birth, when it was able to contemplate real existences,
and all our ideas of this world are mere reminiscences of their true and
eternal patterns. The belief of Plato in the immortality of the soul
naturally led him to establish a high standard of moral excellence, and,
like his great teacher, he constantly inculcates temperance, justice, and
purity of life. His political views are developed in the "Republic" and in
the "Laws," in which the main feature of his system is the subordination,
or rather the entire sacrifice of the individual to the state.
The style of Plato is in every way worthy of his position in universal
literature, and modern scholars have confirmed the encomium of Aristotle,
that all his dialogues exhibit extraordinary acuteness, elaborate
elegance, bold originality, and curious speculation. In Plato, the powers
of imagination were just as conspicuous as those of reasoning and
reflection; he had all the chief characteristics of a poet, especially of
a dramatic poet, and if his rank as a philosopher had been lower than it
is, he would still have ranked high among dramatic writers for his life-
like representations of the personages whose opinions he wished to combat
or to defend.
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) occupies a position among the leaders of human
thought not inferior to that of his teacher, Plato. He was a native of
Stagyra, in Macedonia, and is hence often called the Stagyrite. He early
repaired to Athens, and became a pupil of Plato, who called him the soul
of his school. He was afterwards invited by Philip of Macedon to undertake
the literary education of Alexander, at that time thirteen years old. This
charge continued about three years. He afterwards returned to Athens,
where he opened his school in a gymnasium called the Lyceum, delivering
his lessons as he walked to and fro, and from these saunters his scholars
were called Peripatetics, or saunterers. During this period he composed
most of his extant works. Alexander placed at his disposal a large sum for
his collections in natural history, and employed some thousands of men in
procuring specimens for his museum. After the death of Alexander, he was
accused of blasphemy to the gods, and, warned by the fate of Socrates, he
withdrew from Athens to Chalcis, where he afterwards died.
In looking at the mere catalogue of the works of Aristotle, we are struck
with his vast range of knowledge. He aimed at nothing less than the
completion of a general encyclopedia of philosophy. He was the author of
the first scientific cultivation of each science, and there was hardly any
quality distinguishing a philosopher as such, which he did not possess in
an eminent degree. Of all the philosophical systems of antiquity, that of
Aristotle was the best adapted to the physical wants of mankind. His works
consisted of treatises on natural, moral, and political philosophy,
history, rhetoric, criticism,--indeed, there was scarcely a branch of
knowledge which his vast and comprehensive genius did not embrace. His
greatest claim to our admiration is as a logician. He perfected and
brought into form those elements of the dialectic art which had been
struck out by Socrates and Plato, and wrought them, by his additions, into
so complete a system, that he may be regarded as, at once, the founder and
perfecter of logic as an art, which has since, even down to our own days,
been but very little improved. The style of Aristotle has nothing to
attract those who prefer the embellishments of a work to its subject-
matter and the scientific results which it presents.