THE GREEKS
Homer. Hesiod. Elegiac and Lyric Poets. Prose Writers. Philosophers and
Historians. Lyric Poets. Dramatic Poets. Comic Poets. Orators. Romancers.
HOMER.--The most ancient Greek writer known is Homer, and it cannot be
absolutely stated in what epoch he lived.
Since the seventeenth century it has even been asked if he ever existed
and if his poems are not collections of epic songs which had circulated
in ancient Greece and which at a very recent epoch, that of Pisistratus,
had been gathered into two grand consecutive poems, thanks to some
rearrangement and editing. At the commencement of the nineteenth century
the erudite were generally agreed that Homer had never existed. Now
they are reverting to the belief that there were only two Homers, one the
author of the _Iliad_ and the other of the _Odyssey_.
THE _ILIAD_.--The _Iliad_ is the story of the wrath of Achilles, of his
retreat far from his friends who were endeavouring to capture Troy and of
his return to them.
It is the poem of patriotism. It is filled with the spirit that when a
people is divided against itself, all misfortunes fall on and overwhelm
it. Achilles, unjustly offended, deprived his fellow-countrymen of his
support; they are all on the point of perishing; he returns to them in
order to avenge the death of his dearest friend and they are saved.
The _Iliad_ is almost entirely filled with battles, which are very
skillfully diversified. Some episodes, such as the farewell of Hector to
his wife Andromache when he quits her for the fight, or King Priam
coming, in tears, to ask Achilles for the corpse of his son Hector that
he may piously inter it, are among the most beautiful passages that ever
came from a human inspiration.
THE _ODYSSEY_.--The _Odyssey_ is also the poem of patriotism,
of the _little homeland_, of the native land. It is the story of
Ulysses, after the siege of Troy, reconquering Ithaca, the small island
of which he is king, and taking ten years to acquire it. What makes the
unity of the poem, what forms the backbone of the poem, is the smoke
which rises above the house of Ulysses, which he always perceives in the
dream of his hopes and desires, which invincibly attracts him, which he
desires to see again before he dies, and the thought of which sustains
him in his trials and causes him to scorn all joys on his road thither.
The thousand adventures of Ulysses, his sojourn with the nymph Calypso,
his terrible perils in the cave of the giant Polyphemus and near the isle
of the Sirens, the tempests which he survives, the hospitality he
receives from King Alcinoüs, the visit he pays to the dead--among whom is
Achilles regretting the earth and preferring to be a ploughman among the
living rather than king among the dead; these are vigorous, curious,
interesting, touching, picturesque scenes from which all subsequent
literatures have drawn inspiration and which still delight all races.
HESIOD.--Posterior, very probably, to Homer, Hesiod has left two great
poems, one on the families of the gods (_Theogenia_) and the other
on the works of man (_Works and Days_). The _Theogenia_ is very
valuable to us because we learn from it and it makes us understand how
the Greeks understood the divinity, its different manifestations, and, so
to say, its evolution through the world. _Works and Days_ is a poem
filled with both sadness and courage, the author finding the world wicked
and men unjust; but always concluding that with energy, perseverance, and
obstinacy it is possible to save oneself from anything, and that there is
only one real misfortune, which is to know despair.
ELEGIACAL AND LYRICAL POETS.--Almost from the most remote antiquity, from
the seventh century, perhaps the eighth century before the Christian era,
the Greeks possessed elegiacal and lyrical poets--that is to say, poets
who put into verse their personal sentiments, the joys and sorrows which
they felt as men. Such were Callinos, the satiric Archilochus, the
satiric Simonides of Amorgos, the martial Tyrtaeus. Then there were
the poets who made verses to be set to music: Alcaeus, Sappho, Anacreon,
Alcman. Alcaeus appears to have been the greatest lyrical Greek poet
judging by the fragments we possess by him and by the lyrical poems of
Horace, which there are reasons for believing were imitated from Alcaeus.
Of the poetess Sappho we have too little to enable us to judge her very
exactly; but throughout antiquity she enjoyed a glory equal to that of
the greatest. She specially sang of love and in such a manner as to lead
to the belief that she herself had not escaped the passion.
Anacreon sang after the same fashion and with a charm, a grace, a witty
ingenuity which are fascinating. He was the epicurean of poetry (before
the birth of Epicurus) and from him was born a type of literature known
as anacreonotic, which extended right through ancient times and has been
prolonged to modern times.
PROSE WRITERS.--Finally prose was born, in the sixth century before
Christ, with the philosophers Thales, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, and with
the historians, of whom only one of that epoch has remained famous,
namely Herodotus.
HERODOTUS.--Herodotus, in a general history of his own time and of that
immediately preceding it, is often not far from epic poetry. His style is
at once limpid and warm, he possesses a pleasing power of distinction,
the taste for and curiosity about the manners of foreign peoples, a
laughing and easy imagination without any pretence at the philosophy of
history or of moralising through history. He was, above all, a delightful
writer.
AESOP.--To this period (albeit somewhat at hazard) it is possible to
ascribe Aesop, about whom nothing is known except that he wrote the
fables which have been imitated from generation to generation. The
collection that we possess under his name is one of these imitations,
perpetrated long after his death, but as to which it is impossible to
assign a date.
PINDAR.--Pindar, the Theban, broadened and extended the lyrical type.
Under him it preserved its power, its high spirits, its verse and, so to
say, its fine fury; but he introduced into the epic the narration of
ancient legends, the acts and gestures of the ancient heroes, and
effected this so admirably that the most lyrical of Grecian lyricists is
an historian. Capable of sustained elevation, of sublime thoughts and
expressions, of a fine disorder which has been overpraised, and which on
close expression is found to be very careful, he has been regarded as the
very type of dignified and poetic style, and more or less to be imitated
by all ambitious poets commencing with Ronsard. The wise, like Horace,
have contented themselves with praising him. From fragments left to us he
is infinitely impassioned to read.
GREEK TRAGEDY.--Greek tragedy, which is one of the miracles of the human
brain, began in the sixth century B.C. It was born of the dithyramb. The
dithyramb is a chant in chorus in honour of a god or a hero. From this
chorus emerged a single actor who sang the praises of the god, and to
which the choir replied. When, instead of one actor, there were two who
addressed one another in dialogue and were answered by the choir, the
dramatic poem was founded. When there were three--and there were hardly
ever any more--tragedy, as the Greeks understood it, existed.
THESPIS; AESCHYLUS; SOPHOCLES.--Thespis was the earliest known to us who
took rudimentary tragedies from town to town in Attica. Then came
Aeschylus, whose tragedy, already rigid and hieratical, was very
powerful, imbued with terrible majesty; then came Sophocles, a religious
philosopher, having a feeling for the old religion and the art of giving
it a moral character, great lyrical poet, master of dialogue, eloquent,
moving, knowing how to construct and carry on a dramatic poem with
infinite skill, to whom, in fact, can be denied no quality of dramatic
poetry and who attains a conception of perfection.
EURIPIDES.--Euripides, less religious as a philosopher, sometimes
suggesting the sophist and a little the rhetorician, but full of ideas,
eloquent, affecting, "the most tragic" (that is, the most pathetic) of
all the acting dramatists, as Aristotle observed, the most modern, too,
and the one we best understand, has been the true source whence have been
freely drawn the tragedies of modern times, more particularly of our own.
The greatest works of Aeschylus are _Seven Against Thebes_ and
_Prometheus Bound_; the greatest of Sophocles: _Antigone_, _Oedipus
the Tyrant_ and _Oedipus at Colonos_; the greatest of Euripides:
_Hippolytus_ and _Iphigenia_.
After Euripides tragedy was exhausted and only produced very second-rate
works.
COMEDY.--Comedy enjoyed a longer existence. Very obscure in origin, no
doubt proceeding from the opprobrious jests exchanged by the lower
classes in mirthful hours, it was at first freely fantastical, composed
in dialogue, oratorical, lyrical, satirical, even epical at times. Like
tragedy, it possessed a chorus for which the lyrical part was specially
reserved. It was personal--that is, it directly attacked known
contemporaries, often by name and often by bringing them on the stage.
The celebrated authors of this "ancient comedy" were Eupolis, Cratinos,
of whom we have only fragments, and Aristophanes, whose work has come
down to us.
ARISTOPHANES.--Aristophanes was a great poet, with incisive humour and
also incomparable lyrical power, with voluntary vulgarity which is often
shocking and an elevation of ideas and language which frequently raise
him to the heights of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Here was one of the
grandest poetic minds that the world has produced. His most considerable
achievements are _The Frogs_, the earliest known work of literary
criticism, in dramatic form too, wherein he sets up a parallel between
Aeschylus and Euripides and cruelly jeers at the latter; _The
Clouds_, in which he mocks the sophists; _The Wasps_, wherein he
ridicules the Athenian mania for judging, and magnificently praises the
old Athenians of the time of Marathon.
MENANDER.--To this "ancient comedy," immediately succeeded the "middle
comedy," in which it was forbidden to introduce personalities and of
which Aristophanes gave an example and a model in his _Plutus_.
Later, in the fourth century before Christ, with the refined, witty, and
discreet Menander, the "new comedy" was analogous to that of Plautus, of
Terence, and that of our own of the seventeenth century.
THUCYDIDES.--To return to the time of Pericles; Attic prose developed in
the hands of historians, sages, and philosophers. Thucydides founded true
history, scientific, drawn from the sources, supported and strengthened
by all the information and corroboration that the skilled historian can
gather, examine, and control. As a writer, Thucydides was terse, bare,
limpid, and possessed an agreeable sober elegance. He introduced into his
history imaginary discourses between great historical personages which
allowed him to show the general state of Greece or of particular portions
of Greece at certain important times. It is not known why these
discourses were written in a style differing from that of the rest of the
work, wise, even beautiful, but so extremely concise and elliptic as, in
consequence, to be extremely difficult to understand.
HIPPOCRATES.--Hippocrates created scientific medicine, the medicine of
observation, denying prodigies, seeking natural causes for diseases, and
already setting up rational therapeutics. There are seventy-two works
called "Hippocratical," which belong to his school; some may be by
himself.
SOPHISTS AND ORATORS.--The language grew flexible in the hands of the
learned, subtle, and ingenious sophists (Gorgias, Protagoras) who
attacked Socrates by borrowing his weapons, as it were, and making them
perfect.
A new type of literature was created: the oratorical. Antiphon was the
earliest in date alike of the Athenian orators and of the professors of
eloquence. In a crowd after him came Isocrates, Andocides, Lysias,
Aeschines, Hyperides, and the master of them all, that astonishing
logician, that impassioned and terrible orator, Demosthenes.
THE PHILOSOPHERS: PLATO.--Contemporaneously the philosophers, quite as
much as the sophists, even confining the matter to the literary aspect,
cast immortal glory on Attica. Imbued with the spirit of Socrates, even
when more or less unfaithful to him, Plato, psychologist, moralist,
metaphysician, sociologist, marvellous poet in prose, seductive and
fascinating mythologist, really created philosophy in such fashion that
even the most modern systems, if not judged by how much they agree or
differ from him, at least invariably recall him, whether they seem a
distant echo of him or whether they challenge and combat him.
ARISTOTLE; XENOPHON; THEOPHRASTUS.--Aristotle, pre-eminently learned,
admirably cultivated naturalist, acquainted also with everything known in
his day, more prudent metaphysician than Plato but without his depth, a
precise and sure logician and the founder of scientific logic, a clear
and dexterous moralist, an ingenious and pure literary theorist;
Xenophon, who commanded the retreat of the ten thousand, moralist and
Intelligent pedagogue displaying much attractiveness in his
_Cyropoedia_, the sensible, refined, and delightful master of
familiar and practical life in his _Economics_; Theophrastus,
botanist, very witty satirical moralist, highly caustic and
realistic--these three established Greek wisdom for centuries, and
probably for ever, erecting a solid and elegant temple wherein humanity
has almost continuously sought salutary truths, and where some at least
of our descendants, and those not the least illustrious, will always
perform their devotions.
The chief works of Plato are the _Socratic Dialogues_, the
_Gorgias_, the _Timoeus_, the _Phaedo_ (immortality of the
soul), the _Republic_, and the _Laws_. The principal books of
Aristotle are his _Natural History_, _Metaphysics_, _Logic_, _Rhetoric_,
_Poetica_. The most notable volumes of Xenophon are the _Cyropoedia_,
the _Economics_ and the _Memorabilia of Plato_. The only work of
Theophrastus we possess is his _Characters_, which was translated
and _continued_ by La Bruyère.
STOICS AND EPICUREANS.--In the fourth and even the third century,
philosophy spoke to mankind through two principal schools: those of the
Stoics and of the Epicureans. The chief representatives of the Stoics
were Zeno and Cleanthes. Chrysippus taught an austere morality which may
be summed up in these words: "Abstain and endure." The Epicureans, whose
chief representatives were Epicurus and Aristippus, taught, when all was
taken into account, the same morality but starting from a different
principle, which was that happiness must be sought, and in pursuance of
this principle they advised less austerity, even in their precepts.
Although these are schools of philosophy, yet they must be taken into
account here because each of them has exercised much influence over
writers, the first on Seneca and much later on Corneille; the second on
Lucretius and Horace; both sometimes on the same man, one example being
Montaigne.
After Alexander, intellectual Greece extended and enlarged itself so that
Instead of having one centre, Athens, it possessed five or six: Athens,
Alexandria, Antioch, Pergamos, Syracuse. This was an admirable literary
efflorescence; the geniuses were less stupendous but the talents were
innumerable.
In the cities named, and in others, history, rhetoric, geography,
philosophy, history of philosophy, philology, were taught with ardour and
learnt with enthusiasm; the literary soil was rich and it was assiduously
cultivated.
ALEXANDRINE LITERATURE.--From this soil rose a fresh literature--more
erudite, less spontaneous, less rich in popular vigour, yet very
interesting. This is the literature known as _Alexandrine_. With
this literature first appeared the _romance_, unknown to the
ancients. The historical romance began with Hecataeus of Abdera, the
philosophical romance with Evemerus of Messenia, who pretended to have
found an ancient inscription proving that the gods of ancient Greece were
old-time kings of the land deified after death, an ingenious invention
from which was to come a whole school of criticism of ancient mythology.
THE ELEGY AND IDYLL: THEOCRITUS.--True and, at the same time, great poets
belonged to this period. One was Philetas of Cos, founder of the Grecian
elegy, celebrated and affectionately saluted centuries later by André
Chénier. Of his works only a few terse fragments remain. Another was
Asclepiades of Samos, both elegiac and lyric, of whose _epigrams_,
(short elegies) those preserved to us are charming. Yet another was the
sad and charming Leonidas of Tarentum. The two leaders of this choir were
Theocritus and Callimachus. Theocritus, a Sicilian, passes as the founder
of the idyll which he did not invent, but to which he gave the importance
of a type by marking it with his imprint. The idyll of Theocritus was
always a picture of popular customs and even a little drama of popular
morals; but at times it had its scene set in the country, at others in a
town, or again by the sea, and consequently there are rustic idylls
(properly _bucolics_), maritime idylls, popular urban idylls. An
astonishing sense of reality united to a personal poetic gift and a
highly alert sensitiveness made his little poems alike beautiful for
their truth and also for a certain ideal of ardent and profound passion.
It is curious without being astonishing that the idyll of Theocritus
often suggests the poetry of the Bible.
PUPILS OF THEOCRITUS.--Moschus and Bion were the immediate pupils of
Theocritus. He had more illustrious ones, commencing with Virgil in his
_Eclogues_, continuing with the numerous idylls of the Renaissance
in France and Italy, as well as with Segrais in the seventeenth century,
and ending, if it be desired, with André Chénier, though others more
modern can be traced.
CALLIMACHUS.--Callimachus, more erudite, more scholastic, was what is
termed a neoclassic, which is that he desired to treat in a new way the
same subjects that had been dealt with by the great men of ancient
Greece, and so far as possible to conceive them in the same spirit.
Therefore he wrote tragedies, comedies, "satiric dramas" (a kind of farce
in which secondary deities were characterised), lyric and elegiac poems
after the manner of Alcaeus or Sappho, a familiar epopee, a romance in
verse, which was perhaps a novel type, but more probably imitated from
certain poems of ancient Greece which we no longer possess. To us his
poetry seems cold and calculated, although clever and dexterous. It was
held in high esteem not only in his own day but to the close of
antiquity.
DIDACTIC POETRY: ARATUS; APOLLONIUS.--Didactic poetry, of the cultivation
of which there had been no trace since Hesiod, was destined to be revived
in this clever period; and, in fact, at this time Aratus wrote his
_Phoenomena_, which is a course of astronomy and meteorology in
conformity with the science of his era. More ambitious, and desirous not
only of writing an epic fragment like Callimachus, but also of restoring
the old-time grand epic poem after the manner of Homer (Callimachus and
he had a violent quarrel on the subject), Apollonius of Rhodes in his
_Argonautics_ narrated the expedition of Jason. It was a fine epic
poem and especially an astonishing psychological poem. The study of
passion and of the progress and catastrophe of the infatuation of Medea
form a masterpiece. Assuredly Virgil in his _Dido_, and perhaps
Racine in his _Phèdre_ remembered Apollonius.
LYCOPHRON.--Lycophron also belongs to this period. He left such an
admirable poem (_Alexandra_, that is Cassandra) that his
contemporaries themselves failed to understand it in spite of all their
efforts. He is the head and ancestor of that great school of inaccessible
or impenetrable poets who are most ardently admired. Maurice Scève in the
sixteenth century is the illustrious example.
THE EPIGRAMMATISTS: MELEAGER.--To these numerous men of great talent must
be added the epigrammatists--that is, those who wrote very short, very
concise, very limpid poems wherein they sought absolute perfection. They
were almost innumerable. The most illustrious was Meleager, in whom we
can yet appreciate delicate genius and exquisite sensibility.
POLYBIUS.--Reduced to Roman provinces (successively greater Greece,
Greece proper, Egypt, Syria), the Grecian world none the less continued
to be an admirable intellectual haven. As early as the Punic wars, the
Greek Polybius revealed he was an excellent historian, military,
political, and philosophical, inquisitive about facts, inquisitive, too,
about probable causes, constitutions, and social institutions, the
morals, character, and the underlying temperament of races. His principal
work is the _Histories_--that is, the history of the Graeco-Roman
world from the second Punic war until the capture of Corinth by the
Romans. He was an intellectual master; unfortunately he wrote very badly.
EPICTETUS; MARCUS AURELIUS.--It must, however, be recognised that in the
first century before Christ and in the first after, Greece--even
intellectually--was in a state of depression. But dating from the Emperor
Nerva--that is, from the commencement of the second century--there was a
remarkable Hellenic revival. Primarily, it was the most brilliant moment
since Plato in Grecian philosophy. Stoicism exerted complete sway over
the cultivated classes; Epictetus gave his _Enchiridion_ and
_Manual_, wherein are condensed the elevated and profound thoughts
most deeply realised of the doctrine of Zeno; later, the Emperor Marcus
Aurelius, in his solitary meditations entitled _For Myself_, depicts
his own soul, admirable, chaste, pure, severe to himself, indulgent to
others, pathetically resigned to the universal order of things and
adhering to them with a renunciation and a faith that are truly
religious. Less severe, even playful and smiling, Dion Chrysostom (that
is, mouth of gold, nickname given to him because of his eloquence) is
penetrated with the same spirit a little mingled with Platonism, which
makes him, therefore, perhaps, penetrate more easily than the
over-austere pure Stoics.
PLUTARCH.--Plutarch, as historian discreetly romantic, as philosophical
moralist decidedly dexterous, gently obstinate in conciliation and
concord, in a large portion of his _Parallel Lives_ narrated those
of illustrious Romans and Greeks to show how excellent they were and how
highly they ought to esteem one another; elsewhere, in his moral works,
he sought to conciliate philosophy and paganism, no doubt believing in a
single God, as did Plato, but also believing in a crowd of intermediary
spirits between God and man, which allowed him to regard the deities of
paganism as misunderstood beings and even in a certain sense to admit
their authority. Emphatically a man who observed the golden mean, he
opposed the Stoics for being too severe on human nature and the
Epicureans for being too easy or for too lightly risking the future. He
was an elegant writer--gracious, self-restraining; nearer, all said and
done, to eclecticism than to simplicity, and he must not be judged by the
geniality which was virtually imparted to him by Amyot in translating
him. Throughout Europe, since the Renaissance, of all the Grecian authors
he has perhaps been the most read, the most quoted, the best loved, and
the most carefully edited.
THE GREEK HISTORIANS.--Greek historians multiplied about this period. To
mention only the most notable: Arrian, philosopher, disciple of
Epictetus, and historian of the expedition of Alexander; Appian, who
wrote the history of the Roman people from their origin until the time of
Trajan; Dion Cassius, who also compiled Roman history in a sustained
manner full of elegance and nobility; Herodian, historian of the
successors of Marcus Aurelius, who would only narrate what he had himself
witnessed, a showy writer who seems over-polished and a little
artificial.
A historian of a highly individualistic character was Diogenes of
Laertius, who wrote the _Lives of Philosophers_, being very little
of a philosopher himself and too prone to drop into anecdotage, but
interesting and invaluable to us because of the scanty information we
possess about ancient philosophy.
LUCIAN.--Immeasurably superior to those just cited since Plutarch, Lucian
of Samosata (Syria) may be regarded as the Voltaire of antiquity--witty,
sceptical, amusing, even comic. He was primarily a lecturer, wandering
like a sophist from town to town, in order to talk in vivacious,
animated, nimble, and paradoxical fashion. Then he was a polygraphic
writer, producing treatises, satires, and pamphlets on the most diverse
subjects. He wrote against the Christians, the pagans, the philosophers,
the prejudiced, sometimes against common sense. Amongst his works were
_The Way to Write History_, partly serious, partly sarcastic; _The
Dialogues of the Dead_, moralising and satirical, imitated much later
in very superior fashion by Fontenelle; _The Dialogues of the Gods_,
against mythology; _True History_, a parody of the false or romantic
histories then so fashionable, more especially about Alexander. He
certainly possessed little depth, but his talent was incredible:
alertness, causticity, amusing logic, burlesque dialectics, an
astonishing instinct for caricature, the art of natural dialogue, gay
insolence, light but vivid psychological penetration, an almost profound
sense of the ridiculous, joyous fooling; above all, that first essential
of satire, to be himself amused by what he wrote to amuse others; all
these he possessed in a high degree. Rabelais has been called the Homeric
buffoon, Lucian is certainly the Socratic.
POETRY AND ROMANCE.--Greek poetry no longer existed at this period.
Hardly is it permissible to cite the didactic Oppian, with his poem on
sin, and the fabulist Babrius, imitator of Aesop in his fables. In
reparation, the romance was born and the scientific literature was
important. The romance claimed among its representatives Antonius
Diogenes, with his _Marvels Beyond Thule_; Heliodorus, with his
_Aethiopica_ or _Theagenes and Chariclea_, the love-story so
much admired by Racine in his youth; Longus, with his _Daphnis and
Chloe_, which still retains general approval and which possesses real,
though somewhat studied grace, and of which the ability of the style is
quite above the normal.
SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.--Scientific literature includes the highly
illustrious mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy, whose system obtained
respect and belief until the advent of Copernicus; the physician Galen;
the philosopher-physician Sextus Empiricus, who was a good historian,
highly sceptical, but well informed and intelligent about philosophical
ideas.
DECADENCE OF THE GREEK SPIRIT.--Vitality was slowly withdrawn from the
Grecian world, although not without revivals and highly interesting
semi-renaissances. In the fourth century, the sophist--that is, the
professor of philosophy and of rhetoric--Libanius left a vast number of
official or academic discourses and letters which were dissertations.
Like his friend the Emperor Julian, he was a convinced pagan, and with
kindly but firm spirit combated the Christian bishops, priests, and
particularly the monks, who were objects of veritable repulsion to him.
He possessed talent of a secondary but honourable rank.
THE EMPEROR JULIAN.--The Emperor Julian, a Christian in childhood, but
who on attaining manhood reverted to paganism, which earned him the title
of "the Apostate," was highly intelligent, pure in heart, and filled with
a spirit of tolerance; but he was a heathen and he wrote against
Christianity. He possessed satiric force and wit, even a measure of
eloquence. A pamphlet by him, the _Misopogon_, directed against the
inhabitants of Antioch, who had chaffed him about his beard, makes
amusing reading. He died quite young; he would, in all probability, have
become a very great man.
PROCOPIUS.--It is necessary to advance to the sixth century to mention
the historian Procopius, that double-visaged annalist who, in his
official histories, was lost in admiration of Justinian, and who, in his
_Secret History_, only published long after his death, related to us
the turpitude, real or imagined, of Theodora, wife of the Emperor
Justinian, and of Antonina, wife of Belisarius.
POETRY.--Greek poetry was not dead. Quintus of Smyrna, who was of the
fourth century, perhaps later, wrote a _Sequel to Homer_, without
much imagination, but with skill and dexterity; Nonnus wrote the
_Dionysiaca_, a poetic history of the expedition of Bacchus to
India, declamatory, copious, and powerful, full alike of faults and
talent; Musaeus (date absolutely unknown) has remained justly celebrated
for his delicious little poem _Hero and Leander_, countless times
translated both in prose and verse.
GRECIAN CHRISTIAN WRITERS.--It is necessary to revert to the fourth
century in order to enumerate Grecian Christian writers. As might be
expected these were almost all controversial orators. Saint Athanasius of
Alexandria was an admirable man of action, a fiery and impassioned
orator, the highly polemical historian of the Church, after the manner of
Bossuet in his _History of Variations_. Saint Basil, termed by his
admirers "the Great," without there being much hyperbole in the
qualification, was an incomparable orator. He, as it were, reigned over
Eastern Christianity, thanks to his word, his skill, and his courage.
Even to us his works possess charm. He intermingled the finest ideas of
Plato and of Christianity in the happiest and most orthodox manner. The
humanists held him in esteem for having rendered justice to antiquity in
his _Lecture on Profane Authors_ and having advised Christians to
study it with prudence but with esteem. Saint Gregory of Nazianzen, the
intimate friend of Saint Basil, was also a great orator, exalted, ardent,
and lyrical, whilst he was also as a poet, refined, gracious, and full of
charm. Saint Gregory of Nyssa, brother of Saint Basil, was essentially a
theologian and in his day a theological authority.
SAINT JOHN CHRYSOSTOM.--The most splendid figure of the Greek Church was
Saint John Chrysostom, celebrated in political history for his struggle
with the Emperor Arcadius and the Empress Eudoxia, and for the
persecutions he had in consequence to suffer. His heated, fiery, and
violent eloquence, which was altogether that of a tribune of the people,
can still profoundly affect us because therein can be felt a deeply
sincere ardour, a passion for justice, charity, and love. A bellicose
moralist, he was, like Bourdaloue, a realist and therefore an exact and
cruel delineator of the customs of his time, which were not good; and he
teaches us better than anyone else what was the sad state of Eastern
morality in his day. His widely varied genius, passing from the most
spiritually familiar of tones to the height of moving and imposing
eloquence, was one of the grandest of all antiquity.
EUSEBIUS.--Allusion should be made to that good historian Eusebius, who
narrated Christian history from its origins until the year 323.
THE BYZANTINE PERIOD.--What is termed the Byzantine period extended from
the close of the reign of Justinian to the definite fall of the Eastern
Empire (565-1453). This long epoch, practically corresponding to the
Middle Ages of the West, is very weak from the literary point of view,
but yet possessed a number of interesting and valuable historians (Joseph
of Byzantium, Comnenus, etc.) and skilled and learned grammarians, that
is professors of language and literature (Eustathius, Cephalon, Planudes,
Lascaris). It was the later of these grammarians, among them Lascaris,
who after the fall of Constantinople being welcomed in France and Italy,
brought the Greek writers to the West, commentated on them, made them
known, and thence came the Renaissance of Literature.