1. ORIGIN OF THE ALEXANDRIAN LITERATURE.--As the literary predominance of
Athens was due mainly to the political importance of Attica, the downfall
of Athenian independence brought with it a deterioration, and ultimately
an extinction of that intellectual centralization which for more than a
century had fostered and developed the highest efforts of the genius and
culture of the Greeks. While the living literature of Greece was thus
dying away, the conquests of Alexander prepared a new home for the muses
on the coast of that wonderful country, to which all the nations of
antiquity had owed a part of their science and religious belief. In Egypt,
as in other regions, Alexander gave directions for the foundation of a
city to be called after his own name, which became the magnificent
metropolis of the Hellenic world. This capital was the residence of a
family who attracted to their court all the living representatives of the
literature of Greece, and stored up in their enormous library all the best
works of the classical period. It was chiefly during the reigns of the
first three Ptolemies that Alexandria was made the new home of Greek
literature. Ptolemy Soter (306-285 B.C.) laid the foundations of the
library, and instituted the museum, or temple of the muses, where the
literary men of the age were maintained by endowments. This encouragement
of literature was continued by Ptolemy Philadelphus (285-247 B.C.). He had
the celebrated Callimachus for his librarian, who bought up not only the
whole of Aristotle's great collection of works, but transferred the native
annals of Egypt and Judea to the domain of Greek literature by employing
the priest Manetho to translate the hieroglyphics of his own temple-
archives into the language of the court, and by procuring from the
Sanhedrim of Jerusalem the first part of that celebrated version of the
Hebrew sacred books, which was afterwards completed and known as the
Septuagint, or version of the Seventy. Ptolemy Euergetes (247-222 B.C.)
increased the library by depriving the Athenians of their authentic
editions of the great dramatists. In the course of time the library
founded at Pergamos was transferred to Egypt, and thus we are indebted to
the Ptolemies for preserving to our times all the best specimens of Greek
literature which have come down to us. This encouragement of letters,
however, called forth no great original genius; but a few eminent men of
science, many second-rate and artificial poets, and a host of grammarians
and literary pedants.
2. THE ALEXANDRIAN POETS.--Among the poets of the period, Philetas,
Callimachus, Lycophron, Apollonius, and the writers of idyls, Theocritus,
Bion, and Moschus are the most eminent. The founder of a school of poetry
at Alexandria, and the model for imitation with the Roman writers of
elegiac poetry, was Philetas of Cos (fl. 260 B. C), whose extreme
emaciation of person exposed him to the imputation of wearing lead in the
soles of his shoes, lest he should be blown away. He was chiefly
celebrated as an elegiac poet, in whom ingenious, elegant, and harmonious
versification took the place of higher poetry. Callimachus (fl. 260 B.C.)
was the type of an Alexandrian man of letters, distinguished by skill
rather than genius, the most finished specimen of what might be effected
by talent, learning, and ambition, backed by the patronage of a court. He
was a living representative of the great library over which he presided;
he was not only a writer of all kinds of poetry, but a critic, grammarian,
historian, and geographer. Of his writings, a few poems only are extant.
Next to Callimachus, as a representative of the learned poetry of
Alexandria, stands the dramatist Lycophron (fl. 250 B.C.). All his works
are lost, with the exception of the oracular poem called the "Alexandra,"
or "'Cassandra," on the merits of which very opposite opinions are
entertained. Apollonius, known as the Rhodian (fl. 240 B.C.), was a native
of Alexandria, and a pupil of Callimachus, through whose influence he was
driven from his native city, when he established himself in the island of
Rhodes, where he was so honored and distinguished that he took the name of
the Rhodian. On the death of Callimachus, he was appointed to succeed him
as librarian at Alexandria. His reputation depends on his epic poem, the
"Argonautic Expedition."
Of all the writers of the Alexandrian period, the bucolic poets have
enjoyed the most popularity. Their pastoral poems were called Idyls, from
their pictorial and descriptive character, that is, little pictures of
common life, a name for which the later writers have sometimes substituted
the term Eclogues, that is, _selections_, which is applicable to any short
poem, whether complete and original, or appearing as an extract. The name
of Idyls, however, was afterwards applicable to pastoral poems. Theocritus
(fl. 272 B.C.) gives his name to the most important of these extant
bucolics. He had an original genius for poetry of the highest kind; the
absence of the usual affectation of the Alexandrian school, constant
appeals to nature, a fine perception of character, and a keen sense of
both the beautiful and the ludicrous, indicate the high order of his
literary talent, and account for his universal and undiminished
popularity. The two other bucolic poets of the Alexandrian school were
Bion (fl. 275 B.C.), born near Smyrna, and his pupil Moschus of Syracuse
(fl. 273 B.C.). It appears, from an elegy by Moschus, that Bion migrated
from Asia Minor to Sicily, where he was poisoned. He wrote harmonious
verses with a good deal of pathos and tenderness, but he is as inferior to
Theocritus as he is superior to Moschus, whose artificial style
characterizes him rather as a learned versifier than a true poet.
3. PROSE WRITERS OF ALEXANDRIA.--Many of the most eminent poets were also
prose writers, and they exhibited their versatility by writing on almost
every subject of literary interest. The progress of prose writing
manifested itself from grammar and criticism to the more elaborate and
learned treatment of history and chronology, and to observations and
speculations in pure and mixed mathematics. Demetrius the Phalerian (fl.
295 B.C.), Zenodotus (fl. 279 B.C.), Aristophanes (fl. 200 B.C.), and
Aristarchus (fl. 156 B.C.), the three last of whom were successively
intrusted with the management of the Library, were the representatives of
the Alexandrian school of grammar and criticism. They devoted themselves
chiefly to the revision of the text of Homer, which was finally
established by Aristarchus.
In the historical department may be mentioned Ptolemy Soter, who wrote the
history of the wars of Alexander the Great; Apollodorus (fl. 200 B.C.),
whose "Bibliotheca" contains a general sketch of the mystic legends of the
Greeks; Eratosthenes (fl. 235 B.C.), the founder of scientific chronology
in Greek history; Manetho (fl. 280 B.C.), who introduced the Greeks to a
knowledge of the Egyptian religion and annals; and Berosus of Babylon, his
contemporary, whose work, fragments of which were preserved by Josephus,
was known as the "Babylonian Annals." While the Greeks of Alexandria thus
gained a knowledge of the religious books of the nations conquered by
Alexander, the same curiosity, combined with the necessities of the Jews
of Alexandria, gave birth to the translation of the Bible into Greek,
known under the name of Septuagint, which has exercised a more lasting
influence on the civilized world than that of any book that has ever
appeared in a new tongue. The beginning of that translation was probably
made in the reigns of the first Ptolemies (320-249 B.C.), while the
remainder was completed at a later period.
The wonderful advance, which took place in pure and applied mathematics,
is chiefly due to the learned men who settled in Alexandria; the greatest
mathematicians and the most eminent founders of scientific geography were
all either immediately or indirectly connected with the school of
Alexandria. Euclid (fl. 300 B.C.) founded a famous school of geometry in
that city, in the reign of the first Ptolemy. Almost the only incident of
his life which is known to us is a conversation between him and that king,
who, having asked if there was no easier method of learning the science,
is said to have been told by Euclid, that "there was no royal path to
geometry." His most famous work is his "Elements of Pure Mathematics," at
the present time a manual of instruction and the foundation of all
geometrical treatises. Archimedes (287-212 B.C.) was a native of Syracuse,
in Sicily, but he traveled to Egypt at an early age, and studied
mathematics there in the school of Euclid. He not only distinguished
himself as a pure mathematician and astronomer, and as the founder of the
theory of statics, but he discovered the law of specific gravity, and
constructed some of the most useful machines in the mechanic arts, such as
the pulley and the hydraulic screw. His works are written in the Doric
dialect. Apollonius of Perga (221-204 B.C.) distinguished himself in the
mathematical department by his work on "Conic Elements." Eratosthenes was
not only prominent in the science of chronology, but was also the founder
of astronomical geography, and the author of many valuable works in
various branches of philosophy. Hipparchus (fl. 150 B.C.) is considered
the founder of the science of exact astronomy, from his great work, the
"Catalogue of the Fixed Stars," his discovery of the precession of the
equinoxes, and many other valuable astronomical observations and
calculations.
4. ALEXANDRIAN PHILOSOPHY.--Athens, which had been the centre of Greek
literature during the second or classical period of its development, had
now, in all respects but one, resigned the intellectual leadership to the
city of the Ptolemies. While Alexandria was producing a series of learned
poets, scholars, and discoverers in science, Athenian literature was
mainly represented by the establishment of certain forms of mental and
moral philosophy founded on the various Socratic schools. Two schools of
philosophy were established at Athens at the time of the death of
Aristotle: that of the Academy, in which he himself had studied, and that
of the Lyceum, which he had founded, as the seat of his peripatetic
system. But the older schools soon reappeared under new names: the
Megarics, with an infusion of the doctrines of Democritus, revived in the
skeptic philosophy of Pyrrhon (375-285 B.C.). Epicurus (342-370 B.C.)
founded the school to which he gave his name, by a similar combination of
Democritean philosophy with the doctrines of the Cyrenaics; the Cynics
were developed into Stoics by Zeno (341-260 B.C.), who borrowed much from
the Megaric school and from the Old Academy; and, finally, the Middle and
New Academy arose from a combination of doctrines which were peculiar to
many of these sects.
Though these different schools, which flourished at Athens, had early
representatives in Alexandria, their different doctrines, coming in
contact with the ancient religious systems of the Persians, Jews, and
Hindus, underwent essential modifications, and gave birth to a kind of
electicism, which became later an important element in the development of
Christian history. The rationalism of the Platonic school and the
supernaturalism of the Jewish Scriptures were chiefly mingled together,
and from this amalgamation sprang the system of Neo-Platonism. When the
early teachers of Christianity at Alexandria strove to show the harmony of
the Gospel with the great principles of the Greco-Jewish philosophy, it
underwent new modifications, and the Neo-Platonic school, which sprang up
in Alexandria three centuries B.C., was completed in the first and second
centuries of the Christian era. The common characteristic of the Neo-
Platonists was a tendency to mysticism. Some of them believed that they
were the subjects of divine inspiration and illumination; able to look
into the future and to work miracles. Philo-Judaeus (fl. 20 B.C.),
Numenius (fl. 150 A.D.), Ammonius Saccas (fl. 200 A.D.), Plotinus (fl, 260
A.D.), Porphyry (fl. 260 A.D.), and several fathers of the Greek Church
are among the principal disciples of this school.
5. ANTI-NEO-PLATONIC TENDENCIES.--While the Neo-Platonism of Alexandria
introduced into Greek philosophy Oriental ideas and tendencies, other
positive and practical doctrines also prevailed, founded on common sense
and conscience. First among these were the tenets of the Stoics, who owed
their system mainly and immediately to the teaching of Epictetus (fl. 60
A.D.), who opposed the Oriental enthusiasm of the Neo-Platonists. He was
originally a slave, and became a prominent teacher of philosophy in Rome,
in the reign of Domitian. He left nothing in writing, and we are indebted
for a knowledge of his doctrines to Arrian, who compiled his lectures or
philosophical dissertations in eight books, of which only four are
preserved, and the "Manual of Epictetus," a valuable compendium of the
doctrines of the Stoics. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius not only lectured at
Rome on the principles of Epictetus, but he left us his private
meditations, composed in the midst of a camp, and exhibiting the serenity
of a mind which had made itself independent of outward actions and warring
passions within. Lucian (fl. 150 A.D.) may be compared to Voltaire, whom
he equaled in his powers both of rhetoric and ridicule, and surpassed in
his more conscientious and courageous love of truth. Though the results of
his efforts against heathenism were merely negative, he prepared the way
for Christianity by giving the death-blow to declining idolatry. Lucian,
as a man of letters, is on many accounts interesting, and in reference to
his own age and to the literature of Greece he is entitled to an important
position both with regard to the religious and philosophical results of
his works, and to the introduction of a purer Greek style, which he taught
and exemplified. Longinus (fl. 230 A.D.), both as an opponent of Neo-
Platonism and as a sound and sensible critic, occupies a position similar
to that of Lucian, in the declining period of Greek literary history.
During a visit to the East, he became known to Zenobia, queen of Palmyra,
who adopted the celebrated scholar as her instructor in the language and
literature of Greece, her adviser and chief minister; and when Palmyra
fell before the Roman power he was put to death by the Roman emperor. To
his treatise on "The Sublime" he is chiefly indebted for his fame. When
France, in the reign of Louis XIV., gave a tone to the literary judgments
of Europe, this work was translated by Boileau, and received by the wits
of Paris as an established manual in all that related to the sublime and
beautiful.
6. GREEK LITERATURE IN ROME.--After the subjugation of Greece by the
Romans, Greek authors wrote in their own language and published their
works in Rome; illustrious Romans chose the idiom of Plato as the best
medium for the expression of their own thoughts; dramatic poets gained a
reputation by imitating the tragedies and comedies of Athens, and every
versifier felt compelled by fashion to revive the metres of ancient
Greece. This naturalization of Greek literature at Rome was due to the
rudeness and poverty of the national literature of Italy, to the influence
exerted by the Greek colonies, and to the political subjugation of Greece.
In Rome, Greek libraries were established by the Emperor Augustus and his
successors; and the knowledge of the Greek language was considered a
necessary accomplishment. Cicero made his countrymen acquainted with the
philosophical schools of Athens, and Rome became more and more the rival
of Alexandria, both as a receptacle for the best Greek writings and as a
seat of learning, where Greek authors found appreciation and patronage.
The Greek poets, who were fostered and encouraged at Rome, were chiefly
writers of epigrams, and their poems are preserved in the collections
called "Anthologies." The growing demand for forensic eloquence naturally
led the Roman orators to find their examples in those of Athens, and to
the study of rhetoric in the Grecian writers.
Among the writers on rhetoric whose works seem to have produced the,
greatest effect at the beginning of the Roman period, we mention Dionysius
of Halicarnassus (fl. 7 B.C.). As a critic, he occupies the first rank
among the ancients. Besides his rhetorical treatises, he wrote a work on
"Roman Archaeology," the object of which was to show that the Romans were
not, after all, barbarians, as was generally supposed, but a pure Greek
race, whose institutions, religion, and manners were traceable to an
identity with those of the noblest Hellenes.
What Dionysius endeavored to do for the gratification of his own
countrymen, by giving them a Greek version of Roman history, an
accomplished Jew, who lived about a century later, attempted, from the
opposite point of view, for his own fallen race, in a work which was a
direct imitation of that just described. Flavius Josephus (fl. 60 A.D.)
wrote the "Jewish Archaeology" in order to show the Roman conquerors of
Jerusalem that the Jews did not deserve the contempt with which they were
universally regarded. His "History of the Jewish Wars" is an able and
valuable work.
At an earlier period, Polybius (204-122 B.C.) wrote to explain to the
Greeks how the power of the Romans had established itself in Greece. His
great work was a universal history, but of the forty books of which it
consisted only five have been preserved; perhaps no historical work has
ever been written with such definiteness of purpose or unity of plan, or
with such self-consciousness on the part of the writer. The object to
which he directs attention is the manner in which fortune or providence
uses the ability and energy of man as instruments in carrying out what is
predetermined, and specially the exemplification of these principles in
the wonderful growth of the Roman power during the fifty-three years of
which he treats. Taking his history as a whole, it is hardly possible to
speak in too high terms of it, though the style has many blemishes, such
as endless digressions, wearisome repetition of his own principles and
colloquial vulgarisms.
Diodorus, a native of Sicily, generally known as the Sicilian (Siculus),
flourished in the time of the first two Caesars. In his great work, the
"Historical Library," it was his object to write a history of the world
down to the commencement of Caesar's Gallic wars. He is content to give a
bare recital of the facts, which crowded upon him and left him no time to
be diffuse or ornamental.
The geography of Strabo (fl. 10 A.D.), which has made his name familiar to
modern scholars, has come down to us very nearly complete. Its merits are
literary rather than scientific. His object was to give an instructive and
readable account of the known world, from the point of view taken by a
Greek man of letters. His style is simple, unadorned, and unaffected.
Plutarch (40-120 A.D.) may be classed among the philosophers as well as
among the historians. Though he has left many essays and works on
different subjects, he is best known as a biographer. His lives of
celebrated Greeks and Romans have made his name familiar to the readers of
every country. The universal popularity of his biographies is due to the
fact that they are dramatic pictures, in which each personage is
represented as acting according to his leading characteristics.
Pausanias (fl. 184 A.D.), a professed describer of countries and of their
antiquities and works of art, in his "Gazetteer of Hellas" has left the
best repertory of information for the topography, local history, religious
observances, architecture, and sculpture of the different states of
Greece.
Among the scientific men of this period we find Ptolemy, whose name for
more than a thousand years was coextensive with the sciences of astronomy
and geography. He was a native of Alexandria, and flourished about the
latter part of the second century. The best known of his works is his
"Great Construction of Astronomy." He was the first to indicate the true
shape of Spain, Gaul, and Ireland; as a writer, he deserves to be held in
high estimation. Galen (fl. 130 A.D.) was a writer on philosophy and
medicine, with whom few could vie in productiveness. It was his object to
combine philosophy with medical science, and his works for fifteen
centuries were received as oracular authorities throughout the civilized
world.
7. CONTINUED DECLINE OF GREEK LITERATURE.--The adoption of the Christian
religion by Constantine, and his establishment of the seat of government
in his new city of Constantinople, concurred in causing the rapid decline
of Greek literature in the fourth and following centuries. Christianity,
no longer the object of persecution, became the dominant religion of the
state, and the profession of its tenets was the shortest road to influence
and honor. The old literature, with its mythological allusions, became
less and less fashionable, and the Greek poets, philosophers, and orators
of the better periods gradually lost their attractions. Greek, the
official language of Constantinople, was spoken there, with different
degrees of corruption, by Syrians, Bulgarians, and Goths; and thus, as
Christianity undermined the old classical literature, the political
condition of the capital deteriorated the language itself. Other causes
accelerated the decadence of Greek learning: the great library at
Alexandria, and the school which had been established in connection with
it, were destroyed at the end of the fourth century by the edict of
Theodosius, and the conquest of Egypt by the Saracens in the seventh
century only completed the work of destruction. Justinian closed the
schools of Athens, and prohibited the teaching of philosophy; the Arabs
overthrew those established elsewhere, and there remained only the
institutions of Constantinople. But long before the establishment of the
Turks on the ruins of the Byzantine empire, Greek literature had ceased to
claim any original or independent existence. The opposition between the
literary spirit of heathen Greece and the Christian scholarship of the
time of Constantine and his immediate successors, which grew up very
gradually, was the result of the Oriental superstitions which distorted
Christianity and disturbed the old philosophy. The abortive attempt of the
Emperor Julian to create a reaction in favor of heathenism was the cause
of the open antagonism between the classical and Christian forms of
literature. The church, however, was soon enabled not only to dictate its
own rules of literary criticism, but to destroy the writings of its most
formidable antagonists. The last rays of heathen cultivation in Italy were
extinguished in the gloomy dungeon of Boethius, and the period so justly
designated as the Dark Ages began both in eastern and western Europe.
8. LAST ECHOES OF THE OLD LITERATURE--From the time when Christianity
placed itself in opposition to the old culture of heathen Greece and Rome,
down to the period of the revival of classical literature in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, the classical spirit was nearly extinct both in
eastern and western Europe. In Italy, the triumph of barbarism was more
sudden and complete. In the eastern empire there was a certain literary
activity, and in the department of history, Byzantine literature was
conspicuously prolific.
The imperial family of the Comneni, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries,
and the Palaeologi, who reigned from the thirteenth century to the end of
the eastern empire, endeavored to revive the taste for literature and
learning. But the echoes of the past became fainter and fainter, and when
Constantinople fell into the hands of the Turks, 1453 A.D., the wandering
Greeks who found their way into Italy could only serve as language-masters
to a race of scholars, who thus recovered the learning that had ceased to
exist among the Greeks themselves.
The last manifestations of the old classical learning by the Alexandrian
school, which had done so much in the second and first centuries before
our era, may he divided into three classes. In the first are placed the
mathematical and geographical studies, which had been brought to such
perfection by Euclid, his successors, and after them by Ptolemy. In the
second class we have the substitution of prose romances for the bucolic
and erotic poetry of the Alexandrian and Sicilian writers. In the third
class the revival, by Nonnus and his followers, of a learned epos, of much
the same kind as the poems of Callimachus. Among the representatives of
the mathematical school of Alexandria was Theon, whose celebrity is
obscured by that of his daughter Hypatia (fl. 415 A.D.), whose sex, youth,
beauty, and cruel fate have made her a most interesting martyr of
philosophy. She presided in the public school at Alexandria, where she
taught mathematics and the philosophy of Ammonius and Plotinus. Her
influence over the educated classes of that city excited the jealousy of
the archbishop. She was given up to the violence of a superstitious and
brutal mob, attacked as she was passing through the streets in her
chariot, torn in pieces, and her mutilated body thrown to the flames.
When rhetorical prose superseded composition in verse, the greater
facility of style naturally led to more detailed narratives, and the
sophist who would have been a poet in the time of Callimachus, became a
writer of prose romances in the final period of Greek literature. The
first ascertained beginning of this style of light reading, which occupies
so large a space in the catalogues of modern libraries, was in the time of
the Emperor Trajan, when a Syrian or Babylonian freedman, named
Iamblichus, published a love story called the "Babylonian Adventures."
Among his successors is Longus, of whose work, "The Lesbian Adventure," it
is sufficient to say, that it was the model of the "Diana" of Montemayor,
the "Aminta" of Tasso, the "Pastor Fido" of Guarini, and the "Gentle
Shepherd" of Allan Ramsay.
While the sophists were amusing themselves by clothing erotic and bucolic
subjects in rhetorical prose, an Egyptian boldly revived the epos which
had been cultivated at Alexandria in the earliest days of the Museum.
Nonnus probably flourished at the commencement of the fifth century A.D.
His epic poem, which, in accordance with the terminology of the age, is
called "Dionysian Adventures," is an enormous farrago of learning on the
well-worked subject of Bacchus. The most interesting of the epic
productions of the school of Nonnus is the story of "Hero and Leander," in
340 verses, which bears the name of Musaeus. For grace of diction,
metrical elegance, and simple pathos, this little canto stands far before
the other poems of the same age. The Hero and Leander of Musaeus is the
dying swan-note of Greek poetry, the last distinct note of the old music
of Hellas.
In the Byzantine literature, there are works which claim no originality,
but have a higher value than their contemporaries, because they give
extracts or fragments of the lost writings of the best days of Greece.
Next in value follow the lexicographers, the grammarians, and
commentators. The most voluminous department, however, of Byzantine
literature, was that of the historians, annalists, chroniclers,
biographers, and antiquarians, whose works form a continuous series of
Byzantine annals from the time of Constantine the Great to the taking of
the capital by the Turks. This literature was also enlivened by several
poets, and enriched by some writers on natural history and medicine.
9. THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE GREEK FATHERS.--The history of Greek
literature would be imperfect without some allusion to a class of writings
not usually included in the range of classical studies. The first of these
works, the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, before mentioned, and
the Greek Apocrypha, may properly be termed Hebrew-Grecian. Their spirit
is wholly at variance with that of pagan literature, and it cannot be
doubted that they exerted great influence when made known to the pagans of
Alexandria. Many of the books termed the Apocrypha were originally written
in Greek, and mostly before the Christian era. Many of them contain
authentic narratives, and are valuable as illustrating the circumstances
of the age to which they refer. The other class of writings alluded to
comprehends the works of the Christian authors. As the influence of
Christianity became more diffused during the first and second centuries,
its regenerating power became visible. After the time of Christ, there
appeared, in both the Greek and Latin tongues, works wholly different in
their spirit and character from all that is found in pagan literature. The
collection of sacred writings contained in the New Testament and the works
of the early fathers constitute a distinct and interesting feature in the
literature of the age in which they appeared. The writings of the New
Testament, considered simply in their literary aspect, are distinguished
by a simplicity, earnestness, naturalness, and beauty that find no
parallel in the literature of the world. But the consideration must not be
overlooked, that they were the work of those men who wrote as they were
moved of the Holy Ghost, that they contain the life and the teachings of
the great Founder of our faith, and that they come to us invested with
divine authority. Their influence upon the ages which have succeeded them
is incalculable, and it is still widening as the knowledge of Christianity
increases. The composition of the New Testament is historical, epistolary,
and prophetic. The first five books, or the historical division, contain
an account of the life and death of our Saviour, and some account of the
first movements of the Apostles. The epistolary division consists of
letters addressed by the Apostles to the different churches or to
individuals. The last, the book of Revelation, the only part that is
considered prophetic, differs from the others in its use of that
symbolical language which had been common to the Hebrew prophets, in the
sublimity and majesty of its imagery, and in its prediction of the final
and universal triumph of Christianity.
The writings of the Apostolic Fathers, or the immediate successors of the
Apostles, were held in high estimation by the primitive Christians. Of
those who wrote under this denomination, the venerable Polycarp and
Ignatius, after they had both attained the age of eighty years, sealed
their faith in the blood of martyrdom. The former was burned at the stake
in Smyrna, and the latter devoured by lions in the amphitheatre of Rome,
In the second and third centuries, Christianity numbered among its
advocates many distinguished scholars and philosophers, particularly among
the Greeks. Their productions may be classed under the heads of biblical,
controversial, doctrinal, historical, and homiletical. Among the most
distinguished of the Greek fathers were Justin Martyr (fl. 89 A.D.), an
eminent Christian philosopher and speculative thinker; Clement of
Alexandria (fl. 190 A.D.), who has left us a collection of works, which,
for learning and literary talent, stand unrivaled among the writings of
the early Christian fathers; Origen (184-253 A.D.), who, in his numerous
works, attempted to reconcile philosophy with Christianity; Eusebius (fl.
325 A.D.), whose ecclesiastical history is ranked among the most valuable
remains of Christian antiquity; Athanasius, famous for his controversy
with Arius; Gregory Nazianzen (329-390 A.D.), distinguished for his rare
union of eloquence and piety, a great orator and theologian; Basil (329-
379 A.D.) whose works, mostly of a purely theological character, exhibit
occasionally decided proofs of his strong feeling for the beauties of
nature; and John Chrysostom (347-407 A.D.), the founder of the art of
preaching, whose extant homilies breathe a spirit of sincere earnestness
and of true genius. To these may be added Nemesius (fl. 400 A.D.), whose
work on the "Nature of Man" is distinguished by the purity of its style
and by the traces of a careful study of classical authors, and Synesius
(378-430 A.D.), who maintained the parallel importance of pagan and
Christian literature, and who has always been held in high estimation for
his epistles, hymns, and dramas.