CHAPTER LXVII.

THE DRAMA.—RHETORIC AND DIALECTICS.—THE SOPHISTS.

Respecting the political history of Athens during the few years

immediately succeeding the restoration of the democracy, we have

unfortunately little or no information. But in the spring of 399

B.C., between three and four years after the beginning of the

archonship of Eukleidês, an event happened of paramount interest to

the intellectual public of Greece as well as to philosophy generally,

the trial, condemnation, and execution of Sokratês. Before I recount

that memorable incident, it will be proper to say a few words on

the literary and philosophical character of the age in which it

happened. Though literature and philosophy are now becoming separate

departments in Greece, each exercises a marked influence on the

other, and the state of dramatic literature will be seen to be one of

the causes directly contributing to the fate of Sokratês.

During the century of the Athenian democracy between Kleisthenês and

Eukleidês, there had been produced a development of dramatic genius,

tragic and comic, never paralleled before or afterwards. Æschylus,

the creator of the tragic drama, or at least the first composer who

rendered it illustrious, had been a combatant both at Marathon and

Salamis; while Sophoklês and Euripidês, his two eminent followers,

the former one of the generals of the Athenian armament against

Samos in 440 B.C., expired both of them only a year before the

battle of Ægospotami, just in time to escape the bitter humiliation

and suffering of that mournful period. Out of the once numerous

compositions of these poets we possess only a few, yet sufficient

to enable us to appreciate in some degree the grandeur of Athenian

tragedy; and when we learn that they were frequently beaten, even

with the best of their dramas now remaining, in fair competition

for the prize against other poets whose names only have reached us,

we are warranted in presuming that the best productions of these

successful competitors, if not intrinsically finer, could hardly have

been inferior in merit to theirs.[508]

[508] The Œdipus Tyrannus of Sophoklês was surpassed by the rival

composition of Philoklês. The Medea of Euripidês stood only

third for the prize; Euphorion, son of Æschylus, being first,

Sophoklês second. Yet these two tragedies are the masterpieces

now remaining of Sophoklês and Euripidês.

The tragic drama belonged essentially to the festivals in honor of

the god Dionysus; being originally a chorus sung in his honor, to

which were successively superadded, first, an Iambic monologue;

next, a dialogue with two actors; lastly, a regular plot with

three actors, and the chorus itself interwoven into the scene.

Its subjects were from the beginning, and always continued to be,

persons either divine or heroic, above the level of historical life,

and borrowed from what was called the mythical past: the Persæ of

Æschylus forms a splendid exception; but the two analogous dramas

of his contemporary, Phrynichus, the Phœnissæ and the capture of

Milêtus, were not successful enough to invite subsequent tragedians

to meddle with contemporary events. To three serious dramas, or a

trilogy, at first connected together by sequence of subject more or

less loose, but afterwards unconnected and on distinct subjects,

through an innovation introduced by Sophoklês, if not before, the

tragic poet added a fourth or satyrical drama; the characters of

which were satyrs, the companions of the god Dionysus, and other

heroic or mythical persons exhibited in farce. He thus made up a

total of four dramas, or a tetralogy, which he got up and brought

forward to contend for the prize at the festival. The expense of

training the chorus and actors was chiefly furnished by the chorêgi,

wealthy citizens, of whom one was named for each of the ten tribes,

and whose honor and vanity were greatly interested in obtaining the

prize. At first, these exhibitions took place on a temporary stage,

with nothing but wooden supports and scaffolding; but shortly after

the year 500 B.C., on an occasion when the poets Æschylus and

Pratinas were contending for the prize, this stage gave way during

the ceremony, and lamentable mischief was the result. After that

misfortune, a permanent theatre of stone was provided. To what extent

the project was realized before the invasion of Xerxes, we do not

accurately know; but after his destructive occupation of Athens,

the theatre, if any existed previously, would have to be rebuilt or

renovated along with other injured portions of the city.

It was under that great development of the power of Athens which

followed the expulsion of Xerxes, that the theatre with its

appurtenances attained full magnitude and elaboration, and Attic

tragedy its maximum of excellence. Sophoklês gained his first

victory over Æschylus in 468 B.C.: the first exhibition of Euripidês

was in 455 B.C. The names, though unhappily the names alone, of

many other competitors have reached us: Philoklês, who gained the

prize even over the Œdipus Tyrannus of Sophoklês; Euphorion son of

Æschylus, Xenoklês, and Nikomachus, all known to have triumphed

over Euripidês; Neophron, Achæus, Ion, Agathon, and many more. The

continuous stream of new tragedy, poured out year after year, was

something new in the history of the Greek mind. If we could suppose

all the ten tribes contending for the prize every year, there would

be ten tetralogies—or sets of four dramas each, three tragedies and

one satyrical farce—at the Dionysiac festival, and as many at the

Lenæan. So great a number as sixty new tragedies composed every

year,[509] is not to be thought of; yet we do not know what was the

usual number of competing tetralogies: it was at least three; since

the first, second, and third are specified in the didaskalies, or

theatrical records, and probably greater than three. It was rare

to repeat the same drama a second time unless after considerable

alterations; nor would it be creditable to the liberality of a

chorêgus to decline the full cost of getting up a new tetralogy.

Without pretending to determine with numerical accuracy how many

dramas were composed in each year, the general fact of unexampled

abundance in the productions of the tragic muse is both authentic and

interesting.

[509] The careful examination of Welcker (Griech. Tragödie. vol.

i, p. 76) makes out the titles of eighty tragedies unquestionably

belonging to Sophoklês, over and above the satyrical dramas in

his tetralogies. Welcker has considerably cut down the number

admitted by previous authors, carried by Fabricius as high as one

hundred and seventy-eight, and even, by Boeckh, as high as one

hundred and nine (Welcker, _ut sup._ p. 62).

The number of dramas ascribed to Euripidês is sometimes

ninety-two, sometimes seventy-five. Elmsley, in his remarks on

the Argument to the Medea, p. 72, thinks that even the larger of

these numbers is smaller than what Euripidês probably composed;

since the poet continued composing for fifty years, from 455 to

405 B.C., and was likely during each year to have composed one,

if not two, tetralogies; if he could prevail upon the archon to

grant him a chorus, that is, the opportunity of representing.

The didaskalies took no account of any except such as gained the

first, second, or third prize. Welcker gives the titles, and an

approximative guess at the contents, of fifty-one lost tragedies

of the poet, besides the seventeen remaining (p. 443).

Aristarchus the tragedian is affirmed by Suidas to have composed

seventy tragedies, of which only two gained the prize. As many

as a hundred and twenty compositions are ascribed to Neophron,

forty-four to Achæus, forty to Ion (Welcker, ib. p. 889).

Moreover, what is not less important to notice, all this abundance

found its way to the minds of the great body of the citizens,

not excepting even the poorest. For the theatre is said to have

accommodated thirty thousand persons:[510] here again it is unsafe

to rely upon numerical accuracy, but we cannot doubt that it was

sufficiently capacious to give to most of the citizens, poor as

well as rich, ample opportunity of profiting by these beautiful

compositions. At first, the admission to the theatre was gratuitous;

but as the crowd of strangers as well as freemen, was found both

excessive and disorderly, the system was adopted of asking a price,

seemingly at the time when the permanent theatre was put in complete

order after the destruction caused by Xerxes. The theatre was let

by contract to a manager, who engaged to defray, either in whole or

part, the habitual cost incurred by the state in the representation,

and who was allowed to sell tickets of admission. At first, it

appears that the price of tickets was not fixed, so that the poor

citizens were overbid, and could not get places. Accordingly,

Periklês introduced a new system, fixing the price of places at three

oboli, or half a drachma, for the better, and one obolus for the less

good. As there were two days of representation, tickets covering both

days were sold respectively for a drachma and two oboli. But in order

that the poor citizens might be enabled to attend, two oboli were

given out from the public treasure to each citizen—rich as well as

poor, if they chose to receive it—on the occasion of the festival.

A poor man was thus furnished with the means of purchasing his place

and going to the theatre without cost, on both days, if he chose; or,

if he preferred it, he might go on one day only; or might even stay

away altogether, and spend both the two oboli in any other manner.

The higher price obtained for the better seats purchased by the

richer citizens, is here to be set against the sum disbursed to the

poorer; but we have no data before us for striking the balance, nor

can we tell how the finances of the state were affected by it.[511]

[510] Plato, Symposion, c. 3, p. 175.

[511] For these particulars, see chiefly a learned and valuable

compilation—G. C. Schneider, _Das Attische Theater-Wesen_,

Weimar, 1835—furnished with copious notes; though I do not fully

concur in all his details, and have differed from him on some

points. I cannot think that more than two oboli were given to

any one citizen at the same festival; at least, not until the

distribution became extended, in times posterior to the Thirty;

see M. Schneider’s book, p. 17; also Notes, 29-196.

Such was the original theôrikon, or festival-pay, introduced by

Periklês at Athens; a system of distributing the public money,

gradually extended to other festivals in which there was no

theatrical representation, and which in later times reached a

mischievous excess; having begun at a time when Athens was full of

money from foreign tribute, and continuing, with increased demand

at a subsequent time, when she was comparatively poor and without

extraneous resources. It is to be remembered that all these festivals

were portions of the ancient religion, and that, according to the

feelings of that time, cheerful and multitudinous assemblages were

essential to the satisfaction of the god in whose honor the festival

was celebrated. Such disbursements were a portion of the religious,

even more than of the civil establishment. Of the abusive excess

which they afterwards reached, however, I shall speak in a future

volume: at present, I deal with the theôrikon only in its primitive

function and effect, of enabling all Athenians indiscriminately to

witness the representation of the tragedies.

We cannot doubt that the effect of these compositions upon the public

sympathies, as well as upon the public judgment and intelligence,

must have been beneficial and moralizing in a high degree. Though

the subjects and persons are legendary, the relations between them

are all human and simple, exalted above the level of humanity only

in such measure as to present a stronger claim to the hearer’s

admiration or pity. So powerful a body of poetical influence has

probably never been brought to act upon the emotions of any other

population; and when we consider the extraordinary beauty of these

immortal compositions, which first stamped tragedy as a separate

department of poetry, and gave to it a dignity never since reached,

we shall be satisfied that the tastes, the sentiments, and the

intellectual standard, of the Athenian multitude, must have been

sensibly improved and exalted by such lessons. The reception of

such pleasures through the eye and the ear, as well as amidst a

sympathizing crowd, was a fact of no small importance in the mental

history of Athens. It contributed to exalt their imagination, like

the grand edifices and ornaments added during the same period to

their acropolis. Like them, too, and even more than they, tragedy was

the monopoly of Athens; for while tragic composers came thither from

other parts of Greece—Achæus from Eretria, and Ion from Chios, at a

time when the Athenian empire comprised both those places—to exhibit

their genius, nowhere else were original tragedies composed and

acted, though hardly any considerable city was without a theatre.[512]

[512] See Plato, Lachês, c. 6, p. 183, B.; and Welcker, Griech.

Tragöd. p. 930.

The three great tragedians—Æschylus, Sophoklês, and

Euripidês—distinguished above all their competitors, as well by

contemporaries as by subsequent critics, are interesting to us,

not merely from the positive beauties of each, but also from the

differences between them in handling, style, and sentiment, and from

the manner in which these differences illustrate the insensible

modification of the Athenian mind. Though the subjects, persons, and

events of tragedy always continued to be borrowed from the legendary

world, and were thus kept above the level of contemporaneous

life,[513] yet the dramatic manner of handling them is sensibly

modified, even in Sophoklês as compared with Æschylus; and still more

in Euripidês, by the atmosphere of democracy, political and judicial

contention, and philosophy, encompassing and acting upon the poet.

[513] Upon the point, compare Welcker, Griech. Tragöd. vol. ii,

p. 1102.

In Æschylus, the ideality belongs to the handling not less than

to the subjects: the passions appealed to are the masculine and

violent, to the exclusion of Aphroditê and her inspirations:[514]

the figures are vast and majestic, but exhibited only in half-light

and in shadowy outline: the speech is replete with bold metaphor and

abrupt transition, “grandiloquent even to a fault,” as Quintilian

remarks, and often approaching nearer to Oriental vagueness than

to Grecian perspicuity. In Sophoklês, there is evidently a closer

approach to reality and common life: the range of emotions is more

varied, the figures are more distinctly seen, and the action more

fully and conspicuously worked out. Not only we have a more elaborate

dramatic structure, but a more expanded dialogue, and a comparative

simplicity of speech like that of living Greeks: and we find too a

certain admixture of rhetorical declamation, amidst the greatest

poetical beauty which the Grecian drama ever attained. But when we

advance to Euripidês, this rhetorical element becomes still more

prominent and developed. The ultra-natural sublimity of the legendary

characters disappears: love and compassion are invoked to a degree

which Æschylus would have deemed inconsistent with the dignity of

the heroic person: moreover, there are appeals to the reason, and

argumentative controversies, which that grandiloquent poet would have

despised as petty and forensic cavils. And—what was worse still,

judging from the Æschylean point of view—there was a certain novelty

of speculation, an intimation of doubt on reigning opinions, and an

air of scientific refinement, often spoiling the poetical effect.

[514] See Aristophan. Ran. 1046. The Antigonê (780, _seq._) and

the Trachiniæ (498) are sufficient evidence that Sophoklês did

not agree with Æschylus in this renunciation of Aphroditê.

Such differences between these three great poets are doubtless

referable to the working of Athenian politics and Athenian philosophy

on the minds of the two later. In Sophoklês, we may trace the

companion of Herodotus;[515] in Euripidês, the hearer of Anaxagoras,

Sokratês, and Prodikus;[516] in both, the familiarity with that

wide-spread popularity of speech, and real, serious debate of

politicians and competitors before the dikastery, which both had ever

before their eyes, but which the genius of Sophoklês knew how to keep

in due subordination to his grand poetical purpose.

[515] The comparison of Herodot. iii, 119 with Soph. Antig. 905,

proves a community of thought which seems to me hardly explicable

in any other way. Which of the two obtained the thought from the

other, we cannot determine.

The reason given, by a woman whose father and mother were dead,

for preferring a brother either to husband or child,—that she

might find another husband and have another child, but could

not possibly have another brother,—is certainly not a little

far-fetched.

[516] See Valckenaer, Diatribe in Eurip. Frag. c. 23. Quintilian,

who had before him many more tragedies than those which we now

possess, remarks how much more useful was the study of Euripidês,

than that of Æschylus or Sophoklês, to a young man preparing

himself for forensic oratory:—

“Illud quidem nemo non fateatur, iis qui se ad agendum

comparaverint, utiliorem longe Euripidem fore. Namque is et vi

et sermone (quo ipsum reprehendunt quibus gravitas et cothurnus

et sonus Sophoclis videtur esse sublimior) magis accedit

oratorio generi: et sententiis densus, et rebus ipsis; et in iis

quæ a sapientibus tradita sunt, pæne ipsis par; et in dicendo

et respondendo cuilibet eorum, qui fuerunt in foro diserti,

comparandus. In affectibus vero tum omnibus mirus, tum in iis qui

miseratione constant, facile præcipuus.” (Quintil. Inst. Orat. x,

1.)

The transformation of the tragic muse from Æschylus to Euripidês

is the more deserving of notice, as it shows us how Attic tragedy

served as the natural prelude and encouragement to the rhetorical

and dialectical age which was approaching. But the democracy, which

thus insensibly modified the tragic drama, imparted a new life and

ampler proportions to the comic; both the one and the other being

stimulated by the increasing prosperity and power of Athens during

the half century following 480 B.C. Not only was the affluence of

strangers and visitors to Athens continually augmenting, but wealthy

men were easily found to incur the expense of training the chorus

and actors. There was no manner of employing wealth which seemed so

appropriate to procure influence and popularity to its possessors, as

that of contributing to enhance the magnificence of the national and

religious festivals.[517] This was the general sentiment both among

rich and among poor; nor is there any criticism more unfounded than

that which represents such an obligation as hard and oppressive upon

rich men. Most of them spent more than they were legally compelled

to spend in this way, from the desire of exalting their popularity.

The only real sufferers were the people, considered as interested in

a just administration of law; since it was a practice which enabled

many rich men to acquire importance who had no personal qualities to

deserve it, and which provided them with a stock of factitious merits

to be pleaded before the dikastery, as a set-off against substantive

accusations.

[517] Aristophan. Plutus, 1160:—

Πλούτῳ γὰρ ἐστὶ τοῦτο συμφορώτατον,

Ποιεῖν ἀγῶνας γυμνικοὺς καὶ μουσικούς.

Compare the speech of Alkibiadês, Thuc. vi, 16, and Theophrastus

ap. Cic. de Officiis, ii, 16.

The full splendor of the comic muse was considerably later than that

of the tragic. Even down to 460 B.C. (about the time when Periklês

and Ephialtês introduced their constitutional reforms), there was not

a single comic poet of eminence at Athens; nor was there apparently

a single undisputed Athenian comedy before that date, which survived

to the times of the Alexandrine critics. Magnês, Kratês, and

Kratinus—probably also Chionidês and Ekphantidês[518]—all belong to

the period beginning about (Olympiad 80 or) 460 B.C.; that is, the

generation preceding Aristophanês, whose first composition dates

in 427 B.C. The condition and growth of Attic comedy before this

period seems to have been unknown even to Aristotle, who intimates

that the archon did not begin to grant a chorus for comedy, or to

number it among the authoritative solemnities of the festival, until

long after the practice had been established for tragedy. Thus the

comic chorus in that early time consisted of volunteers, without

any chorêgus publicly assigned to bear the expense of teaching

them or getting up the piece; so that there was little motive for

authors to bestow care or genius in the preparation of their song,

dance, and scurrilous monody, or dialogue. The exuberant revelry of

the phallic festival and procession, with full license of scoffing

at any one present, which the god Dionysus was supposed to enjoy,

and with the most plain-spoken grossness as well in language as

in ideas, formed the primitive germ, which under Athenian genius

ripened into the old comedy.[519] It resembled in many respects the

satyric drama of the tragedians, but was distinguished from it by

dealing not merely with the ancient mythical stories and persons, but

chiefly with contemporary men and subjects of common life; dealing

with them often, too, under their real names, and with ridicule

the most direct, poignant, and scornful. We see clearly how fair a

field Athens would offer for this species of composition, at a time

when the bitterness of political contention ran high,—when the city

had become a centre for novelties from every part of Greece,—when

tragedians, rhetors, and philosophers, were acquiring celebrity and

incurring odium,—and when the democratical constitution laid open all

the details of political and judicial business, as well as all the

first men of the state, not merely to universal criticism, but also

to unmeasured libel.

[518] See Meineke, Hist. Critic. Comicor. Græcor. vol. i, p. 26,

_seq._

Grysar and Mr. Clinton, following Suidas, place Chionidês

before the Persian invasion; but the words of Aristotle rather

countenance the later date (Poetic. c. 3).

[519] See respecting these licentious processions, in connection

with the iambus and Archilochus, vol. iv, of this History, ch.

xxix, p. 81.

Aristotle (Poetic, c. 4) tells us that these phallic processions,

with liberty to the leaders (οἱ ἐξάρχοντες) of scoffing at every

one, still continued in many cities of Greece in his time: see

Herod. v, 83, and Sêmus apud Athenæum, xiv, p. 622; also the

striking description of the rural Dionysia in the Acharneis of

Aristophanês, 235, 255, 1115. The scoffing was a part of the

festival, and supposed to be agreeable to Dionysus: ἐν τοῖς

Διονυσίοις ἐφειμένον αὐτὸ δρᾷν· καὶ τὸ σκῶμμα μέρος τι ἐδόκει

τῆς ἑορτῆς· καὶ ὁ θεὸς ἴσως χαίρει, φιλογέλως τις ὤν (Lucian,

Piscator. c. 25). Compare Aristophanês, Ranæ, 367, where the

poet seems to imply that no one has a right to complain of being

ridiculed in the πατρίοις τελεταῖς Διονύσου.

The Greek word for comedy—κωμῳδία, τὸ κωμῳδεῖν—at least in its

early sense, had reference to a bitter, insulting, criminative

ridicule: κωμῳδεῖν καὶ κακῶς λέγειν (Xenophon, Repub. Ath. ii,

23)—κακηγοροῦντάς τε καὶ κωμῳδοῦντας ἀλλήλους καὶ αἰσχρολογοῦντας

(Plato de Repub. iii, 8, p. 332). A remarkable definition of

κωμῳδία appears in Bekker’s Anecdota Græca, ii, 747, 10: Κωμῳδία

ἐστιν ἡ ἐν μέσῳ λάου κατηγορία, ἤγουν δημοσίευσις; “public

exposure to scorn before the assembled people:” and this idea of

it as a penal visitation of evil-doers is preserved in Platonius

and the anonymous writers on comedy, prefixed to Aristophanês.

The definition which Aristotle (Poetic. c. 11) gives of it,

is too mild for the primitive comedy: for he tells us himself

that Kratês, immediately preceding Aristophanês, was the first

author who departed from the ἰαμβικὴ ἰδέα: this “iambic vein”

was originally the common character. It doubtless included every

variety of ridicule, from innocent mirth to scornful contempt

and odium; but the predominant character tended decidedly to the

latter.

Compare Will. Schneider, Attisches Theater-Wesen, Notes, pp.

22-25; Bernhardy, Griechische Litteratur, sect. 67, p. 292.

Out of all the once abundant compositions of Attic comedy, nothing

has reached us except eleven plays of Aristophanês. That poet himself

singles out Magnês, Kratês, and Kratinus, among predecessors whom

he describes as numerous, for honorable mention; as having been

frequently, though not uniformly, successful. Kratinus appears to

have been not only the most copious, but also the most distinguished,

among all those who preceded Aristophanês, a list comprising

Hermippus, Telekleidês, and the other bitter assailants of Periklês.

It was Kratinus who first extended and systematized the license of

the phallic festival, and the “careless laughter of the festive

crowd,”[520] into a drama of regular structure, with actors three

in number, according to the analogy of tragedy. Standing forward,

against particular persons exhibited or denounced by their names,

with a malignity of personal slander not inferior to the iambist

Archilochus, and with an abrupt and dithyrambic style somewhat

resembling Æschylus, Kratinus made an epoch in comedy as the latter

had made in tragedy; but was surpassed by Aristophanês, as much

as Æschylus had been surpassed by Sophoklês. We are told that his

compositions were not only more rudely bitter and extensively

libellous than those of Aristophanês,[521] but also destitute of that

richness of illustration and felicity of expression which pervades

all the wit of the latter, whether good-natured or malignant. In

Kratinus, too, comedy first made herself felt as a substantive

agent and partisan in the political warfare of Athens. He espoused

the cause of Kimon against Periklês;[522] eulogizing the former,

while he bitterly derided and vituperated the latter Hermippus,

Telekleidês, and most of the contemporary comic writers followed

the same political line in assailing that great man, together with

those personally connected with him, Aspasia and Anaxagoras: indeed,

Hermippus was the person who indicted Aspasia for impiety before

the dikastery. But the testimony of Aristophanês[523] shows that no

comic writer, of the time of Periklês, equalled Kratinus, either in

vehemence of libel or in popularity.

[520]

Χαῖρ᾽, ὦ μέγ᾽ ἀρχειογέλως ὅμιλε ταῖς ἐπίβδαις,

Τῆς ἡμετέρας σοφίας κριτὴς ἄριστε πάντων, etc.

Kratini Fragm. Incert. 51; Meineke, Fr. Com. Græcor. ii, p. 193.

[521] Respecting Kratinus, see Platonius and the other writers on

the Attic comedy, prefixed to Aristophanês in Bekker’s edition,

pp. vi, ix, xi, xiii, etc.; also Meineke, Historia Comic. Græc.

vol. i, p. 50, _seq._

... Οὐ γὰρ, ὥσπερ Ἀριστοφάνης, ἐπιτρέχειν τὴν χάριν τοῖς σκώμμασι

ποιεῖ (Κρατῖνος), ἀλλ᾽ ~ἁπλῶς~, καὶ, κατὰ τὴν παροιμίαν, ~γυμνῇ

τῇ κεφαλῇ τίθησι τᾶς βλασφημίας~ κατὰ τῶν ἀμαρτανόντων.

[522] See Kratinus—Ἀρχίλοχοι—Frag. 1, and Plutarch, Kimon, 10, Ἡ

κωμῳδία πολιτεύεται ἐν τοῖς δράμασι καὶ φιλοσοφεῖ, ἡ τῶν περὶ τὸν

Κρατῖνον καὶ Ἀριστοφάνην καὶ Εὔπολιν, etc. (Dionys. Halikarn. Ars

Rhetoric. c. 11.)

[523] Aristophan. Equit. 525. _seq._

It is remarkable that, in 440 B.C., a law was passed forbidding comic

authors to ridicule any citizen by name in their compositions; which

prohibition, however, was rescinded after two years, an interval

marked by the rare phenomenon of a lenient comedy from Kratinus.[524]

Such enactment denotes a struggle in the Athenian mind, even at

that time, against the mischief of making the Dionysiac festival

an occasion for unmeasured libel against citizens publicly named

and probably themselves present. And there was another style of

comedy taken up by Kratês, distinct from the iambic or Archilochian

vein worked by Kratinus, in which comic incident was attached to

fictitious characters and woven into a story, without recourse to

real individual names or direct personality. This species of comedy,

analogous to that which Epicharmus had before exhibited at Syracuse,

was continued by Pherekratês as the successor of Kratês. Though for a

long time less popular and successful than the poignant food served

up by Kratinus and others, it became finally predominant after the

close of the Peloponnesian war, by the gradual transition of what is

called the Old Comedy into the Middle and New Comedy.

[524] A comedy called Ὀδυσσεῖς (plur. numb. corresponding to the

title of another of his comedies, Ἀρχίλοχοι). It had a chorus, as

one of the Fragments shows, but few or no choric songs; nor any

parabasis, or address by the chorus, assuming the person of the

poet, to the spectators.

See Bergk, De Reliquiis Comœd. Antiq. p. 142, _seq._; Meineke,

Frag. Cratini, vol. ii, p. 93, Ὀδυσσεῖς: compare also the first

volume of the same work, p. 43: also Runkel, Cratini Fragm. p. 38

(Leips. 1827).

But it is in Aristophanês that the genius of the old libellous comedy

appears in its culminating perfection. At least we have before us

enough of his works to enable us to appreciate his merits; though

perhaps Eupolis, Ameipsias, Phrynichus, Plato (Comicus), and others,

who contended against him at the festivals with alternate victory and

defeat, would be found to deserve similar praise, if we possessed

their compositions. Never probably will the full and unshackled force

of comedy be so exhibited again. Without having Aristophanês actually

before us, it would have been impossible to imagine the unmeasured

and unsparing license of attack assumed by the old comedy upon

the gods, the institutions, the politicians, philosophers, poets,

private citizens specially named, and even the women, whose life was

entirely domestic, of Athens. With this universal liberty in respect

of subject, there is combined a poignancy of derision and satire,

a fecundity of imagination and variety of turns, and a richness of

poetical expression, such as cannot be surpassed, and such as fully

explains the admiration expressed for him by the philosopher Plato,

who in other respects must have regarded him with unquestionable

disapprobation. His comedies are popular in the largest sense of

the word, addressed to the entire body of male citizens on a day

consecrated to festivity, and providing for them amusement or

derision with a sort of drunken abundance, out of all persons or

things standing in any way prominent before the public eye. The

earliest comedy of Aristophanês was exhibited in 427 B.C., and his

muse continued for a long time prolific, since two of the dramas now

remaining belong to an epoch eleven years after the Thirty and the

renovation of the democracy, about 392 B.C. After that renovation,

however, as I have before remarked, the unmeasured sweep and

libellous personality of the old comedy was gradually discontinued:

the comic chorus was first cut down, and afterwards suppressed, so as

to usher in what is commonly termed the Middle Comedy, without any

chorus at all. The “Plutus” of Aristophanês indicates some approach

to this new phase; but his earlier and more numerous comedies, from

the “Acharneis,” in 425 B.C. to the “Frogs,” in 405 B.C., only a few

months before the fatal battle of Ægospotami, exhibit the continuous,

unexhausted, untempered flow of the stream first opened by Kratinus.

Such abundance both of tragic and comic poetry, each of first-rate

excellence, formed one of the marked features of Athenian life, and

became a powerful instrument in popularizing new combinations of

thought with variety and elegance of expression. While the tragic

muse presented the still higher advantage of inspiring elevated and

benevolent sympathies, more was probably lost than gained by the

lessons of the comic muse; not only bringing out keenly all that was

really ludicrous or contemptible in the phenomena of the day, but

manufacturing scornful laughter, quite as often, out of that which

was innocent or even meritorious, as well as out of boundless private

slander. The “Knights” and the “Wasps” of Aristophanês, however, not

to mention other plays, are a standing evidence of one good point in

the Athenian character; that they bore with good-natured indulgence

the full outpouring of ridicule and even of calumny interwoven with

it, upon those democratical institutions to which they were sincerely

attached. The democracy was strong enough to tolerate unfriendly

tongues either in earnest or in jest: the reputations of men who

stood conspicuously forward in politics, on whatever side, might

also be considered as a fair mark for attacks; inasmuch as that

measure of aggressive criticism which is tutelary and indispensable,

cannot be permitted without the accompanying evil, comparatively

much smaller, of excess and injustice;[525] though even here we

may remark that excess of bitter personality is among the most

conspicuous sins of Athenian literature generally. But the warfare of

comedy, in the persons of Aristophanês and other composers, against

philosophy, literature, and eloquence, in the name of those good

old times of ignorance, “when an Athenian seaman knew nothing more

than how to call for his barley-cake, and cry, Yo-ho;”[526] and

the retrograde spirit which induces them to exhibit moral turpitude

as the natural consequence of the intellectual progress of the age,

are circumstances going far to prove an unfavorable and degrading

influence of comedy on the Athenian mind.

[525] Aristophanês boasts that _he_ was the first comic composer

who selected great and powerful men for his objects of attack:

his predecessors, he affirms, had meddled only with small

vermin and rags: ἐς τὰ ῥάκια σκώπτοντας ἀεὶ, καὶ τοῖς φθειρσὶν

πολεμοῦντας (Pac. 724-736; Vesp. 1030).

But this cannot be true in point of fact, since we know that no

man was more bitterly assailed by the comic authors of his day

than Periklês. It ought to be added, that though Aristophanês

doubtless attacked the powerful men, he did not leave the smaller

persons unmolested.

[526] Aristoph. Ran. 1067; also Vesp. 1095. Æschylus reproaches

Euripidês:—

Εἶτ᾽ αὖ λαλίαν ἐπιτηδεῦσαι καὶ στωμυλίαν ἐδίδαξας,

Ἣ ᾽ξεκένωσεν τάς τε παλαίστρας, καὶ τὰς πυγὰς ἐνέτριψε

Τῶν μειρακίων στωμυλλομένων, καὶ τοὺς παράλους ἀνέπεισεν

Ἀνταγορεύειν τοῖς ἄρχουσιν. Καίτοι τότε γ᾽, ἡνίκ᾽ ἐγὼ ᾽ζων,

~Οὐκ ἠπίσταντ᾽ ἀλλ᾽ ἢ μᾶζαν καλέσαι καὶ ῥυππαπαὶ εἰπεῖν~.

Τὸ ~ῥυππαπαὶ~ seems to have been the peculiar cry or chorus of

the seamen on shipboard, probably when some joint pull or effort

of force was required: compare Vespæ, 909.

In reference to individual men, and to Sokratês[527] especially, the

Athenians seem to have been unfavorably biased by the misapplied

wit and genius of Aristophanês, in “The Clouds,” aided by other

comedies of Eupolis, and Ameipsias and Eupolis; but on the general

march of politics, philosophy, or letters, these composers had

little influence. Nor were they ever regarded at Athens in the

light in which they are presented to us by modern criticism; as

men of exalted morality, stern patriotism, and genuine discernment

of the true interests of their country; as animated by large and

steady views of improving their fellow-citizens, but compelled, in

consequence of prejudice or opposition, to disguise a far-sighted

political philosophy under the veil of satire; as good judges of

the most debatable questions, such as the prudence of making war or

peace, and excellent authority to guide us in appreciating the merits

or demerits of their contemporaries, insomuch that the victims of

their lampoons are habitually set down as worthless men.[528] There

cannot be a greater misconception of the old comedy than to regard

it in this point of view; yet it is astonishing how many subsequent

writers, from Diodorus and Plutarch down to the present day, have

thought themselves entitled to deduce their facts of Grecian history,

and their estimate of Grecian men, events, and institutions, from the

comedies of Aristophanês. Standing pre-eminent as the latter does in

comic genius, his point of view is only so much the more determined

by the ludicrous associations suggested to his fancy, so that he thus

departs the more widely from the conditions of a faithful witness or

candid critic. He presents himself to provoke the laugh, mirthful or

spiteful, of the festival crowd, assembled for the gratification of

these emotions, and not with any expectation of serious or reasonable

impressions.[529] Nor does he at all conceal how much he is mortified

by failure; like the professional jester, or “laughter-maker,” at the

banquets of rich Athenian citizens;[530] the parallel of Aristophanês

as to purpose, however unworthy of comparison in every other respect.

[527] See about the effect on the estimation of Sokratês, Ranke,

Commentat. de Vitâ Aristophanis, p. cdxli.

Compare also the remarks of Cicero (De Repub. iv, 11; vol.

iv, p. 476, ed. Orell.) upon the old Athenian comedy and its

unrestrained license. The laws of the Twelve Tables at Rome

condemned to death any one who composed and published libellous

verses against the reputation of another citizen.

Among the constant butts of Aristophanês and the other comic

composers, was the dithyrambic poet Kinesias, upon whom they

discharged their wit and bitterness, not simply as an indifferent

poet, but also on the ground of his alleged impiety, his thin

and feeble bodily frame, and his wretched health. We see the

effect of such denunciations in a speech of the orator Lysias;

composed on behalf of Phanias, against whom Kinesias had brought

an indictment, or graphê paranomôn. Phanias treats these abundant

lampoons as if they were good evidence against the character of

Kinesias: Θαυμάζω δ᾽ εἰ μὴ βαρέως φέρετε ὅτι Κινησίας ἐστιν ὁ

τοῖς νόμοις βοηθὸς, ὃν ὑμεῖς πάντες ἐπίστασθε ἀσεβέστατον ἁπάντων

καὶ παρανομώτατον γεγονέναι. Οὐχ οὖτός ἐστὶν ὁ τοιαῦτα περὶ θεοὺς

ἐξαμαρτάνων, ἃ τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις αἰσχρόν ἐστι καὶ λέγειν, τῶν

~κωμῳδιδασκάλον δ᾽ ἀκούετε καθ᾽ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτόν~; see Lysias,

Fragm. 31, ed. Bekker; Athenæus, xii, p. 551.

Dr. Thirlwall estimates more lightly than I do the effect of

these abundant libels of the old comedy: see his review of the

Attic tragedy and comedy, in a very excellent chapter of his

History of Greece, ch. xviii, vol. iii, p. 42.

[528] The view which I am here combating, is very general among

the German writers; in proof of which, I may point to three of

the ablest recent critics on the old comedy, Bergk, Meineke,

and Ranke; all most useful writers for the understanding of

Aristophanês.

Respecting Kratinus, Bergk observes: “Erat enim Cratinus,

_pariter atque ceteri principes antiquæ comœdiæ, vir egregie

moratus_, idemque antiqui moris tenax.... Cum Cratinus _quasi

divinitus videret_ ex hac libertate mox tanquam ex stirpe aliquâ

nimiam licentiam existere et nasci, statim his initiis graviter

adversatus est, videturque Cimonem tanquam exemplum boni et

honesti civis proposuisse,” etc.

“Nam Cratinus cum esset magno ingenio et _eximiâ morum

gravitate_, ægerrime tulit rem publicam præceps in perniciem

ruere: omnem igitur operam atque omne studium eo contulit, ut

_imagine ipsius vitæ ante oculos positâ omnes et res divinæ et

humanæ emendarentur, hominumque animi ad honestatem colendam

incenderentur_. Hoc sibi primus et proposuit Cratinus, et

propositum strenue persecutus est. _Sed si ipsam Veritatem,

cujus imago oculis obversabatur, oculis subjecisset, verendum

erat ne tædio obrueret eos qui spectarent_, nihilque prorsus

eorum, quæ summo studio persequebatur, obtineret. Quare eximiâ

quâdam arte pulchram effigiem hilaremque formam finxit, ita

tamen ut ad veritatem sublimemque ejus speciem referret omnia:

sic cum ludicris miscet seria, ut et vulgus haberet quî

delectaretur; et qui plus ingenio valerent, ipsam veritatem, quæ

ex omnibus fabularum partibus perluceret, mente et cogitatione

comprehenderent.” ... “Jam vero Cratinum in fabulis componendis

id _unice spectavisse quod esset verum_, ne veteres quidem

latuit.... Aristophanes autem _idem et secutus semper est_ et

sæpe professus.” (Bergk, De Reliquiis Comœd. Antiq. pp. 1, 10,

20, 233, etc.)

The criticism of Ranke (Commentatio de Vitâ Aristophanis, pp.

ccxli, cccxiv, cccxlii, ccclxix, ccclxxiii, cdxxxiv, etc.) adopts

the same strain of eulogy as to the lofty and virtuous purposes

of Aristophanês. Compare also the eulogy bestowed by Meineke on

the monitorial value of the old comedy (Historia Comic. Græc. pp.

39, 50, 165, etc.), and similar praises by Westermann; Geschichte

der Beredsamkeit in Griechenland und Rom. sect. 36.

In one of the arguments prefixed to the “Pax” of Aristophanês,

the author is so full of the conception of these poets as public

instructors or advisers, that he tells us, absurdly enough, they

were for that reason called ~διδάσκαλοι~: οὐδὲν γὰρ συμβούλων

διέφερον· ὅθεν αὐτοὺς καὶ ~διδασκάλους~ ὠνόμαζον· ὅτι πάντα τὰ

~πρόσφορα διὰ δραμάτων αὐτοὺς ἐδίδασκον~ (p. 244, ed. Bekk.).

“Eupolis, atque Cratinus, Aristophanesque poetæ,

Atque alii, quorum Comœdia prisca virorum est,

Si quis erat dignus describi, quod malus, aut fur,

Aut mœchus foret, aut sicarius, aut alioqui

Famosus, multâ cum libertate notabant.”

This is the early judgment of Horace (Serm. i, 4, 1): his

later opinion on the _Fescennina licentia_, which was the same

in spirit as the old Grecian comedy, is much more judicious

(Epistol. ii, 1, 145): compare Art. Poetic. 224. To assume that

the persons derided or vilified by these comic authors must

always have deserved what was said of them, is indeed a striking

evidence of the value of the maxim: “Fortiter calumniare;

semper aliquid restat.” Without doubt, their indiscriminate

libel sometimes wounded a suitable subject; in what proportion

of cases, we have no means of determining: but the perusal of

Aristophanês tends to justify the epithets which Lucian puts into

the mouth of _Dialogus_ respecting Aristophanês and Eupolis—not

to favor the opinions of the authors whom I have cited above

(Lucian, Jov. Accus. vol. ii, p. 832). He calls Eupolis and

Aristophanês δεινοὺς ἄνδρας ἐπικερτομῆσαι τὰ σεμνὰ καὶ χλευάσαι

τὰ καλῶς ἔχοντα.

When we notice what Aristophanês himself says respecting the

other comic poets, his predecessors and contemporaries, we shall

find it far from countenancing the exalted censorial function

which Bergk and others ascribe to them (see the Parabasis in the

Nubes, 530, _seq._, and in the Pax, 723). It seems especially

preposterous to conceive Kratinus in that character; of whom what

we chiefly know, is his habit of drunkenness, and the downright,

unadorned vituperation in which he indulged: see the Fragments

and story of his last play, Πυτίνη (in Meineke, vol. ii, p. 116;

also Meineke, vol. i, p. 48, _seq._).

Meineke copies (p. 46) from Suidas a statement (v. Ἐπείου

δειλότερος) to the effect that Kratinus was ~ταξίαρχος τῆς

Οἰνηΐδος φυλῆς~. He construes this as a real fact: but there can

hardly be a doubt that it is only a joke made by his contemporary

comedians upon his fondness for wine; and not one of the worst

among the many such jests which seem to have been then current.

Runkel also, another editor of the Fragments of Kratinus (Cratini

Fragment., Leips. 1827, p. 2, M. M. Runkel), construes this

ταξίαρχος τῆς Οἰνηΐδος φυλῆς, as if it were a serious function;

though he tells us about the general character of Kratinus: “De

vitâ ipsâ et moribus pæne nihil dicere possumus: _hoc solum

constat, Cratinum poculis et puerorum amori valde deditum

fuisse_.”

Great numbers of Aristophanic jests have been transcribed as

serious matter-of-fact, and have found their way into Grecian

history. Whoever follows chapter vii of K. F. Hermann’s

Griechische Staats-Alterthümer, containing the _Innere

Geschichte_ of the Athenian democracy, will see the most sweeping

assertions made against the democratical institutions, on the

authority of passages of Aristophanês: the same is the case with

several of the other most learned German manuals of Grecian

affairs.

[529] Horat. de Art. Poetic. 212-224.

“Indoctus quid enim saperet, liberque laborum,

Rusticus urbano confusus, turpis honesto?...

Illecebris erat et gratâ novitate morandus

Spectator, functusque sacris, et potus, et exlex.”

[530] See the Parabasis of Aristophanês in the Nubes (535,

_seq._) and in the Vespæ (1015-1045).

Compare also the description of Philippus the γελωτοποῖος, or

Jester, in the Symposion of Xenophon; most of which is extremely

Aristophanic, ii, 10, 14. The comic point of view is assumed

throughout that piece; and Sokratês is introduced on one occasion

as apologizing for the intrusion of a serious reflection (τὸ

σπουδαιολογεῖν, viii, 41). The same is the case throughout much

of the Symposion of Plato; though the scheme and purpose of this

latter are very difficult to follow.

This rise and development of dramatic poetry in Greece—so abundant,

so varied, and so rich in genius—belongs to the fifth century B.C. It

had been in the preceding century nothing more than an unpretending

graft upon the primitive chorus, and was then even denounced by

Solon, or in the dictum ascribed to Solon, as a vicious novelty,

tending—by its simulation of a false character, and by its effusion

of sentiments not genuine or sincere—to corrupt the integrity of

human dealings;[531] a charge of corruption, not unlike that which

Aristophanês worked up, a century afterwards, in his “Clouds,”

against physics, rhetoric, and dialectics, in the person of Sokratês.

But the properties of the graft had overpowered and subordinated

those of the original stem; so that dramatic poetry was now a

distinct form, subject to laws of its own, and shining with splendor

equal, if not superior, to the elegiac, choric, lyric, and epic

poetry which constituted the previous stock of the Grecian world.

[531] Plutarch, Solon, c. 29. See the previous volumes of this

History, ch. xxi, vol. ii, p. 145; ch. xxix, vol. iv, pp. 83, 84.

Such transformations in the poetry, or, to speak more justly, in the

literature—for before the year 500 B.C. the two expressions were

equivalent—of Greece, were at once products, marks, and auxiliaries,

in the expansion of the national mind. Our minds have now become

familiar with dramatic combinations, which have ceased to be peculiar

to any special form or conditions of political society. But if we

compare the fifth century B.C. with that which preceded it, the

recently born drama will be seen to have been a most important and

impressive novelty: and so assuredly it would have been regarded by

Solon, the largest mind of his own age, if he could have risen again,

a century and a quarter after his death, to witness the Antigonê of

Sophoklês, the Medea of Euripidês, or the Acharneis of Aristophanês.

Its novelty does not consist merely in the high order of imagination

and judgment required for the construction of a drama at once regular

and effective. This, indeed, is no small addition to Grecian poetical

celebrity as it stood in the days of Solon, Alkæus, Sappho, and

Stesichorus: but we must remember that the epical structure of the

Odyssey, so ancient and long acquired to the Hellenic world, implies

a reach of architectonic talent quite equal to that exhibited in

the most symmetrical drama of Sophoklês. The great innovation of

the dramatists consisted in the rhetorical, the dialectical, and

the ethical spirit which they breathed into their poetry. Of all

this, the undeveloped germ doubtless existed in the previous epic,

lyric, and gnomic composition; but the drama stood distinguished

from all three by bringing it out into conspicuous amplitude, and

making it the substantive means of effect. Instead of recounting

exploits achieved, or sufferings undergone by the heroes,—instead

of pouring out his own single-minded impressions in reference to

some given event or juncture,—the tragic poet produces the mythical

persons themselves to talk, discuss, accuse, defend, confute, lament,

threaten, advise, persuade, or appease; among one another, but

before the audience. In the _drama_, a singular misnomer, nothing is

actually done: all is talk; assuming what is done, as passing, or as

having passed, elsewhere. The dramatic poet, speaking continually,

but at each moment through a different character, carries on the

purpose of each of his characters by words calculated to influence

the other characters, and appropriate to each successive juncture.

Here are rhetorical exigencies from beginning to end:[532] while,

since the whole interest of the piece turns upon some contention

or struggle carried on by speech; since debate, consultation, and

retort, never cease; since every character, good or evil, temperate

or violent, must be supplied with suitable language to defend his

proceedings, to attack or repel opponents, and generally to make good

the relative importance assigned to him, here again dialectical skill

in no small degree is indispensable.

[532] Respecting the rhetorical cast of tragedy, see Plato,

Gorgias, c. 57, p. 502, D.

Plato disapproves of tragedy on the same grounds as of rhetoric.

Lastly, the strength and variety of ethical sentiment infused into

the Grecian tragedy, is among the most remarkable characteristics

which distinguish it from the anterior forms of poetry. “To do or

suffer terrible things,” is pronounced by Aristotle to be its proper

subject-matter; and the internal mind and motives of the doer or

sufferer, on which the ethical interest fastens, are laid open by

the Greek tragedians with an impressive minuteness which neither the

epic nor the lyric could possibly parallel. Moreover, the appropriate

subject-matter of tragedy is pregnant not only with ethical sympathy,

but also with ethical debate and speculation. Characters of mixed

good and evil; distinct rules of duty, one conflicting with the

other; wrong done, and justified to the conscience of the doer, if

not to that of the spectator, by previous wrong suffered, all these

are the favorite themes of Æschylus and his two great successors.

Klytæmnestra kills her husband Agamemnôn on his return from Troy:

her defence is, that he had deserved this treatment at her hands

for having sacrificed his own and her daughter, Iphigeneia. Her son

Orestês kills her, under a full conviction of the duty of avenging

his father, and even under the sanction of Apollo. The retributive

Eumenides pursue him for the deed, and Æschylus brings all the

parties before the court of Areopagus, with Athênê as president,

where the case is fairly argued, with the Eumenides as accusers,

and Apollo as counsel for the prisoner, and ends by an equality of

votes in the court: upon which Athênê gives her casting-vote to

absolve Orestês. Again; let any man note the conflicting obligations

which Sophoklês so forcibly brings out in his beautiful drama of the

Antigonê. Kreon directs that the body of Polyneikês, as a traitor

and recent invader of the country, shall remain unburied: Antigonê,

sister of Polyneikês, denounces such interdict as impious, and

violates it, under an overruling persuasion of fraternal duty. Kreon

having ordered her to be buried alive, his youthful son Hæmon, her

betrothed lover, is plunged into a heart-rending conflict between

abhorrence of such cruelty on the one side, and submission to his

father on the other. Sophoklês sets forth both these contending rules

of duty in an elaborate scene of dialogue between the father and the

son. Here are two rules both sacred and respectable, but the one of

which cannot be observed without violating the other. Since a choice

must be made, which of the two ought a good man to obey? This is a

point which the great poet is well pleased to leave undetermined.

But if there be any among the audience in whom the least impulse of

intellectual speculation is alive, he will by no means leave it so,

without some mental effort to solve the problem, and to discover

some grand and comprehensive principle from whence all the moral

rules emanate; a principle such as may instruct his conscience in

those cases generally, of not unfrequent occurrence, wherein two

obligations conflict with each other. The tragedian not only appeals

more powerfully to the ethical sentiment than poetry had ever done

before, but also, by raising these grave and touching questions,

addresses a stimulus and challenge to the intellect, spurring it on

to ethical speculation.

Putting all these points together, we see how much wider was the

intellectual range of tragedy, and how considerable is the mental

progress which it betokens, as compared with the lyric and gnomic

poetry, or with the Seven Wise Men and their authoritative aphorisms,

which formed the glory, and marked the limit, of the preceding

century. In place of unexpanded results, or the mere communication

of single-minded sentiment, we have even in Æschylus, the earliest

of the great tragedians, a large latitude of dissent and debate, a

shifting point of view, a case better or worse, made out for distinct

and contending parties, and a divination of the future advent of

sovereign and instructed reason. It was through the intermediate

stage of tragedy that Grecian literature passed into the rhetoric,

dialectics, and ethical speculation, which marked the fifth century

B.C.

Other simultaneous causes, arising directly out of the business of

real life, contributed to the generation of these same capacities and

studies. The fifth century B.C. is the first century of democracy

at Athens, in Sicily, and elsewhere: moreover, at that period,

beginning from the Ionic revolt and the Persian invasions of Greece,

the political relations between one Grecian city and another became

more complicated, as well as more continuous; requiring a greater

measure of talent in the public men who managed them. Without some

power of persuading or confuting,—of defending himself against

accusation, or in case of need, accusing others,—no man could

possibly hold an ascendent position. He had probably not less need

of this talent for private, informal, conversations to satisfy his

own political partisans, than for addressing the public assembly

formally convoked. Even as commanding an army or a fleet, without

any laws of war or habits of professional discipline, his power of

keeping up the good-humor, confidence, and prompt obedience of his

men, depended not a little on his command of speech.[533] Nor was it

only to the leaders in political life that such an accomplishment

was indispensable. In all the democracies,—and probably in several

governments which were not democracies, but oligarchies of an

open character,—the courts of justice were more or less numerous,

and the procedure oral and public: in Athens, especially, the

dikasteries—whose constitution has been explained in a former

chapter—were both very numerous, and paid for attendance. Every

citizen had to go before them in person, without being able to send

a paid advocate in his place, if he either required redress for

wrong offered to himself, or was accused of wrong by another.[534]

There was no man, therefore, who might not be cast or condemned,

or fail in his own suit, even with right on his side, unless he

possessed some powers of speech to unfold his case to the dikasts,

as well as to confute the falsehoods, and disentangle the sophistry,

of an opponent. Moreover, to any man of known family and station,

it would be a humiliation hardly less painful than the loss of the

cause, to stand before the dikastery with friends and enemies around

him, and find himself unable to carry on the thread of a discourse

without halting or confusion. To meet such liabilities, from which

no citizen, rich or poor, was exempt, a certain training in speech

became not less essential than a certain training in arms. Without

the latter, he could not do his duty as an hoplite in the ranks for

the defence of his country; without the former, he could not escape

danger to his fortune or honor, and humiliation in the eyes of his

friends, if called before a dikastery, nor lend assistance to any of

those friends who might be placed under the like necessity.

[533] See the discourse of Sokratês, insisting upon this point,

as part of the duties of a commander (Xen. Mem. iii, 3, 11).

[534] This necessity of some rhetorical accomplishments, is

enforced not less emphatically by Aristotle (Rhetoric. i, 1, 3)

than by Kalliklês in the Gorgias of Plato, c. 91, p. 486, B.

Here then were ample motives, arising out of practical prudence not

less than from the stimulus of ambition, to cultivate the power

both of continuous harangue, and of concise argumentation, or

interrogation and reply:[535] motives for all, to acquire a certain

moderate aptitude in the use of these weapons; for the ambitious few,

to devote much labor and to shine as accomplished orators.

[535] See the description which Cicero gives, of his own

laborious oratorical training:—

“Ego hoc tempore omni, noctes et dies, in omnium doctrinarum

meditatione versabar. Eram cum Stoico Diodoto, qui cum

habitavisset apud me mecumque vixisset, nuper est domi meæ

mortuus. A quo quum in aliis rebus, tum studiosissime in

dialecticâ versabar; _quæ quasi contracta et astricta eloquentia

putanda est_; sine quâ etiam tu, Brute, judicavisti, te illam

justam eloquentiam, quam _dialecticam dilatatam_ esse putant,

consequi non posse. Huic ego doctori, et ejus artibus variis et

multis, ita eram tamen deditus, ut ab exercitationibus oratoriis

nullus dies vacaret.” (Cicero, Brutus, 90, 309.)

Such political and social motives, it is to be remembered, though

acting very forcibly at Athens, were by no means peculiar to Athens,

but prevailed more or less throughout a large portion of the Grecian

cities, especially in Sicily, when all the governments became

popularized after the overthrow of the Gelonian dynasty. And it was

in Sicily and Italy, that the first individuals arose, who acquired

permanent name both in rhetoric and dialectics: Empedoklês of

Agrigentum in the former; Zeno of Elea, in Italy, in the latter.[536]

[536] Aristotel. ap. Diog. Laërt. viii, 57.

Both these distinguished men bore a conspicuous part in politics,

and both on the popular side; Empedoklês against an oligarchy,

Zeno against a despot. But both also were yet more distinguished

as philosophers, and the dialectical impulse in Zeno, if not the

rhetorical impulse in Empedoklês, came more from his philosophy than

from his politics. Empedoklês (about 470-440 B.C.) appears to have

held intercourse at least, if not partial communion of doctrine,

with the dispersed philosophers of the Pythagorean league; the

violent subversion of which, at Kroton and elsewhere, I have related

in a previous chapter.[537] He constructed a system of physics and

cosmogony, distinguished for first broaching the doctrine of the

Four elements, and set forth in a poem composed by himself: besides

which he seems to have had much of the mystical tone and miraculous

pretensions of Pythagoras; professing not only to cure pestilence

and other distempers, but to teach how old age might be averted and

the dead raised from Hades; to prophesy, and to raise and calm the

winds at his pleasure. Gorgias, his pupil, deposed to having been

present at the magical ceremonies of Empedoklês.[538] The impressive

character of his poem is sufficiently attested by the admiration of

Lucretius,[539] and the rhetoric ascribed to him may have consisted

mainly in oral teaching or exposition of the same doctrines. Tisias

and Korax of Syracuse, who are also mentioned as the first teachers

of rhetoric, and the first who made known any precepts about the

rhetorical practice, were his contemporaries; and the celebrated

Gorgias was his pupil.

[537] See my preceding vol. iv, ch. xxxvii.

[538] Diogen. Laërt. viii, 58, 59, who gives a remarkable extract

from the poem of Empedoklês, attesting these large pretensions.

See Brandis, Handbuch der Gr. Röm. Philos. part i. sects. 47, 48,

p. 192; Sturz. ad Empedoclis Frag. p. 36.

[539] De Rerum Naturâ, i, 719.

The dialectical movement emanated at the same time from the Eleatic

school of philosophers,—Zeno, and his contemporary the Samian

Melissus, 460-440,—if not from their common teacher Parmenidês.

Melissus also, as well as Zeno and Empedoklês, was a distinguished

citizen as well as a philosopher; having been in command of the

Samian fleet at the time of the revolt from Athens, and having in

that capacity gained a victory over the Athenians.

All the philosophers of the fifth century B.C., prior to Sokratês,

inheriting from their earliest poetical predecessors the vast and

unmeasured problems which had once been solved by the supposition

of divine or superhuman agents, contemplated the world, physical

and moral, all in a mass, and applied their minds to find

some hypothesis which would give them an explanation of this

totality,[540] or at least appease curiosity by something which

looked like an explanation. What were the elements out of which

sensible things were made? What was the initial cause or principle

of those changes which appeared to our senses? What was change?—was

it generation of something integrally new and destruction of

something preëxistent,—or was it a decomposition and recombination

of elements still continuing. The theories of the various Ionic

philosophers, and of Empedoklês after them, admitting one, two, or

four elementary substances, with Friendship and Enmity to serve as

causes of motion or change; the Homœomeries of Anaxagoras, with

Nous, or Intelligence, as the stirring and regularizing agent; the

atoms and void of Leukippus and Demokritus, all these were different

hypotheses answering to a similar vein of thought. All of them,

though assuming that the sensible appearances of things were delusive

and perplexing, nevertheless, were borrowed more or less directly

from some of these appearances, which were employed to explain and

illustrate the whole theory, and served to render it plausible when

stated as well as to defend it against attack. But the philosophers

of the Eleatic school—first Xenophanês, and after him Parmenidês—took

a distinct path of their own. To find that which was real, and which

lay as it were concealed behind or under the delusive phenomena of

sense, they had recourse only to mental abstractions. They supposed a

Substance or Something not perceivable by sense, but only cogitable

or conceivable by reason; a One and All, continuous and finite,

which was not only real and self-existent, but was the only reality;

eternal, immovable, and unchangeable, and the only matter knowable.

The phenomena of sense, which began and ended one after the other,

they thought, were essentially delusive, uncertain, contradictory

among themselves, and open to endless diversity of opinion.[541]

Upon these, nevertheless, they announced an opinion; adopting two

elements, heat and cold, or light and darkness.

[540] Some striking lines of Empedoklês are preserved by

Sextus Empiricus, adv. Mathemat. vii, 115; to the effect that

every individual man gets through his short life, with no more

knowledge than is comprised in his own slender fraction of

observation and experience: he struggles in vain to find out and

explain the totality; but neither eye, nor ear, nor reason can

assist him:—

Παῦρον δὲ ζωῆς ἀβίον μέρος ἀθρήσαντες,

Ὠκύμοροι, καπνοῖο δίκην ἀρθέντες, ἀπέπταν

Αὐτὸ μόνον πεισθέντες, ὅτῳ προσέκυρσεν ἕκαστος

Πάντοσ᾽ ἐλαυνόμενοι. Τὸ δὲ οὖλον ἐπεύχεται εὑρεῖν

Αὔτως· οὔτ᾽ ἐπιδερκτὰ τάδ᾽ ἀνδράσιν, οὔτ᾽ ἐπακουστὰ,

Οὔτε νόῳ περιληπτά.

[541] See Parmenidis Fragmenta, ed. Karsten, v, 30, 55, 60: also

the Dissertation annexed by Karsten, sects. 3, 4, p. 148, _seq._;

sect. 19, p. 221, _seq._

Compare also Mullach’s edition of the same Fragments, annexed to

his edition of the Aristotelian treatise, De Melisso, Xenophane,

et Gorgiâ, p. 144.

Parmenidês set forth this doctrine of the One and All in a poem,

of which but a few fragments now remain, so that we understand

very imperfectly the positive arguments employed to recommend it.

The matter of truth and knowledge, such as he alone admitted,

was altogether removed from the senses and divested of sensible

properties, so as to be conceived only as an Ens Rationis, and

described and discussed only in the most general words of the

language. The exposition given by Parmenidês in his poem,[542] though

complimented by Plato, was vehemently controverted by others, who

deduced from it many contradictions and absurdities. As a part of his

reply, and doubtless the strongest part, Parmenidês retorted upon his

adversaries; an example followed by his pupil Zeno with still greater

acuteness and success. Those who controverted his ontological theory,

that the real, ultra-phenomenal substance was One, affirmed it to be

not One, but Many; divisible, movable, changeable, etc. Zeno attacked

this latter theory, and proved that it led to contradictions and

absurdities still greater than those involved in the proposition of

Parmenidês.[543] He impugned the testimony of sense, affirming that

it furnished premises for conclusions which contradicted each other,

and that it was unworthy of trust.[544] Parmenidês[545] had denied

that there was any such thing as real change either of place or

color: Zeno maintained change of place, or motion, to be impossible

and self-contradictory; propounding many logical difficulties,

derived from the infinite divisibility of matter, against some of the

most obvious affirmations respecting sensible phenomena. Melissus

appears to have argued in a vein similar to that of Zeno, though

with much less acuteness; demonstrating indirectly the doctrine of

Parmenidês, by deducing impossible inferences from the contrary

hypothesis.[546]

[542] Plato, Parmenidês, p. 128, B. σὺ μὲν (Parmenidês) γὰρ ἐν

τοῖς ποιήμασιν ἓν φῂς εἶναι τὸ πᾶν, καὶ τούτων τεκμήρια παρέχεις

καλῶς τε καὶ εὖ, etc.

[543] See the remarkable passage in the Parmenidês of Plato, p.

128, B, C, D.

Ἐστὶ δὲ τό γε ἀληθὲς βοήθειά τις ταῦτα τὰ γράμματα τῷ Παρμενίδου

λόγῳ πρὸς τοὺς ἐπιχειροῦντας αὐτὸν κωμῳδεῖν, ὡς εἰ ἕν ἐστι,

πολλὰ καὶ γελοῖα συμβαίνει πάσχειν τῷ λόγῳ καὶ ἐναντία αὑτῷ.

Ἀντιλέγει δὴ οὖν τοῦτο τὸ γράμμα πρὸς τοὺς τὰ πολλὰ λέγοντας,

~καὶ ἀνταποδίδωσι ταῦτα καὶ πλείω~, τοῦτο βουλόμενον δηλοῦν, ὡς

~ἔτι γελοιότερα πάσχοι ἂν αὐτῶν ἡ ὑπόθεσις—ἡ εἰ πολλὰ ἐστίν—ἢ ἡ

τοῦ ἓν εἶναι, εἴ τις ἱκανῶς ἐπεξίοι~.

[544] Plato, Phædrus, c. 44, p. 261, D. See the citations in

Brandis, Gesch. der Gr. Röm. Philosophie, part i, p. 417, _seq._

[545] Parmenid. Fragm. v, 101, ed. Mullach.

[546] See the Fragments of Melissus collected by Mullach, in his

publication cited in a previous note, p. 81. _seq._

Zeno published a treatise to maintain the thesis above described,

which he also upheld by personal conversations and discussions,

in a manner doubtless far more efficacious than his writing; the

oral teaching of these early philosophers being their really

impressive manifestation. His subtle dialectic arguments were not

only sufficient to occupy all the philosophers of antiquity, in

confuting them more or less successfully, but have even descended to

modern times as a fire not yet extinguished.[547] The great effect

produced among the speculative minds of Greece by his writing and

conversation, is attested both by Plato and Aristotle. He visited

Athens, gave instruction to some eminent Athenians, for high pay,

and is said to have conversed both with Periklês and with Sokratês,

at a time when the latter was very young; probably between 450-440

B.C.[548]

[547] The reader will see this in Bayle’s Dictionary, article,

Zeno of Elea.

Simplicius (in his commentary on Aristot. Physic. p. 255) says

that Zeno first composed written dialogues, which cannot be

believed without more certain evidence. He also particularizes a

puzzling question addressed by Zeno to Protagoras. See Brandis,

Gesch. der Griech. Röm. Philos. i, p. 409. Zeno ἴδιον μὲν οὐδὲν

ἐξέθετο (sc. περὶ τῶν πάντων·), διηπόρησε δὲ περὶ τούτων ἐπὶ

πλεῖον. Plutarch. ap. Eusebium, Præpar. Evangel. i, 23, D.

[548] Compare Plutarch, Periklês, c. 3; Plato, Parmenidês, pp.

126, 127; Plato, Alkibiad. i. ch. 14, p. 119, A.

That Sokratês had in his youth conversed with Parmenidês, when

the latter was an old man, is stated by Plato more than once,

over and above his dialogue called Parmenidês, which professes

to give a conversation between the two, as well as with Zeno. I

agree with Mr. Fynes Clinton, Brandis, and Karsten, in thinking

that this is better evidence, about the date of Parmenidês than

any of the vague indications which appear to contradict it, in

Diogenes Laërtius and elsewhere. But it will be hardly proper to

place the conversation between Parmenidês and Sokratês—as Mr.

Clinton places it, Fast. H. vol. ii, App. c. 21, p. 364—at a time

when Sokratês was only fifteen years of age. The ideas which the

ancients had about youthful propriety, would not permit him to

take part in conversation with an eminent philosopher at so early

an age as fifteen, when he would not yet be entered on the roll

of citizens, or be qualified for the smallest function, military

or civil. I cannot but think that Sokratês must have been more

than twenty years of age when he thus conversed with Parmenidês.

Sokratês was born in 469 B.C. (perhaps 468 B.C.); he would

therefore be twenty years of age in 449: assuming the visit of

Parmenidês to Athens to have been in 448 B.C., since he was then

sixty-five years of age, he would be born in 513 B.C. It is

objected that, if this date be admitted, Parmenidês could not

have been a pupil of Xenophanês: we should thus he compelled to

admit, which perhaps is the truth, that he learned the doctrine

of Xenophanês at second-hand.

His appearance constitutes a remarkable era in Grecian philosophy,

because he first brought out the extraordinary aggressive or negative

force of the dialectic method. In this discussion respecting the One

and the Many, positive grounds on either side were alike scanty: each

party had to set forth the contradictions deducible from the opposite

hypothesis, and Zeno professed to show that those of his opponents

were the more flagrant. We thus see that, along with the methodized

question and answer, or dialectic method, employed from henceforward

more and more in philosophical inquiries, comes out at the same time

the negative tendency, the probing, testing, and scrutinizing force,

of Grecian speculation. The negative side of Grecian speculation

stands quite as prominently marked, and occupies as large a measure

of the intellectual force of their philosophers, as the positive

side. It is not simply to arrive at a conclusion, sustained by a

certain measure of plausible premise,—and then to proclaim it as an

authoritative dogma, silencing or disparaging all objectors,—that

Grecian speculation aspires. To unmask not only positive falsehood,

but even affirmation without evidence, exaggerated confidence in what

was only doubtful, and show of knowledge without the reality; to

look at a problem on all sides, and set forth all the difficulties

attending its solution, to take account of deductions from the

affirmative evidence, even in the case of conclusions accepted as

true upon the balance, all this will be found pervading the march

of their greatest thinkers. As a condition of all progressive

philosophy, it is not less essential that the grounds of negation

should be freely exposed, than the grounds of affirmation. We shall

find the two going hand in hand, and the negative vein, indeed, the

more impressive and characteristic of the two, from Zeno downwards in

our history. In one of the earliest memoranda illustrative of Grecian

dialectics,—the sentences in which Plato represents Parmenidês and

Zeno as bequeathing their mantle to the youthful Sokratês, and giving

him precepts for successfully prosecuting those researches which his

marked inquisitive impulse promised,—this large and comprehensive

point of view is emphatically inculcated. He is admonished to set

before him both sides of every hypothesis, and to follow out both

the negative and the affirmative chains of argument with equal

perseverance and equal freedom of scrutiny; neither daunted by the

adverse opinions around him, nor deterred by sneers against wasting

time in fruitless talk; since the multitude are ignorant that

without thus travelling round all sides of a question, no assured

comprehension of the truth is attainable.[549]

[549] Plato, Parmenid. pp. 135, 136.

Parmenidês speaks to Sokratês: Καλὴ μὲν οὖν καὶ θεία, εὖ ἴσθι, ἡ

ὁρμὴ, ἣν ὁρμᾷς ἐπὶ τοὺς λόγους· ἕλκυσον δὲ σαυτὸν καὶ γυμνάσαι

μᾶλλον διὰ τῆς δοκούσης ἀχρήστου εἶναι καὶ καλουμένης ὑπὸ τῶν

πολλῶν ἀδολεσχίας, ἕως ἔτι νέος εἶ· εἰ δὲ μὴ, σὲ διαφεύξεται ἡ

ἀλήθεια. Τίς οὖν ὁ τρόπος, φάναι (τὸν Σωκράτη), ὦ Παρμενίδη,

τῆς γυμνασίας; Οὗτος, εἰπεῖν (τὸν Παρμενίδην) ὅνπερ ἤκουσας

Ζήνωνος.... Χρὴ δὲ καὶ τόδε ἔτι πρὸς τούτῳ σκοπεῖν, ~μὴ μόνον,

εἰ ἔστιν ἕκαστον, ὑποτιθέμενον, σκοπεῖν τὰ ξυμβαίνοντα ἐκ τῆς

ὑποθέσεως—ἀλλὰ καὶ, εἰ μή ἐστι τὸ αὐτὸ τοῦτο, ὑποτίθεσθαι~—εἰ

βούλει μᾶλλον γυμνασθῆναι.... Ἀγνοοῦσι γὰρ οἱ πολλοὶ ὅτι ἄνευ

ταύτης τῆς διὰ πάντων διεξόδου καὶ πλάνης, ἀδύνατον ἐντυχόντα

τῷ ἀληθεῖ νοῦν σχεῖν. See also Plato’s Kratylus, p. 428, E,

about the necessity of the investigator looking both before and

behind—ἅμα πρόσσω καὶ ὀπίσσω.

See also the Parmenidês, p. 130, E,—in which Sokratês is warned

respecting the ἀνθρώπων δόξας, against enslaving himself to the

opinions of men: compare Plato, Sophistes, p. 227, B, C.

We thus find ourselves, from the year 450 B.C., downwards, in

presence of two important classes of men in Greece, unknown to Solon

or even to Kleisthenês, the Rhetoricians, and the Dialecticians;

for whom, as has been shown, the ground had been gradually prepared

by the politics, the poetry, and the speculation, of the preceding

period.

Both these two novelties—like the poetry and other accomplishments

of this memorable race—grew up from rude indigenous beginnings,

under native stimulus unborrowed and unassisted from without. The

rhetorical teaching was an attempt to assist and improve men in the

power of continuous speech as addressed to assembled numbers, such as

the public assembly or the dikastery; it was therefore a species of

training sought for by men of active pursuits and ambition, either

that they might succeed in public life, or that they might maintain

their rights and dignity if called before the court of justice. On

the other hand, the dialectic business had no direct reference to

public life, to the judicial pleading, or to any assembled large

number. It was a dialogue carried on by two disputants, usually

before a few hearers, to unravel some obscurity, to reduce the

respondent to silence and contradiction, to exercise both parties

in mastery of the subject, or to sift the consequences of some

problematical assumption. It was spontaneous conversation[550]

systematized and turned into some predetermined channel; furnishing

a stimulus to thought, and a means of improvement not attainable in

any other manner; furnishing to some, also, a source of profit or

display. It opened a line of serious intellectual pursuit to men of

a speculative or inquisitive turn, who were deficient in voice, in

boldness, in continuous memory, for public speaking; or who desired

to keep themselves apart from the political and judicial animosities

of the moment.

[550] See Aristotel. De Sophist. Elenchis, c. 11, p. 172, ed.

Bekker; and his Topica, ix, 5, p. 154; where the different

purposes of dialogue are enumerated and distinguished.

Although there were numerous Athenians, who combined, in various

proportions, speculative with practical study, yet generally

speaking, the two veins of intellectual movement—one towards

active public business, the other towards enlarged opinions and

greater command of speculative truth, with its evidences—continued

simultaneous and separate. There subsisted between them a standing

polemical controversy and a spirit of mutual detraction. If Plato

despised the sophists and the rhetors, Isokratês thinks himself not

less entitled to disparage those who employed their time in debating

upon the unity or plurality of virtue.[551] Even among different

teachers, in the same intellectual walk, also, there prevailed but

too often an acrimonious feeling of personal rivalry, which laid

them all so much the more open to assault from the common enemy of

all mental progress; a feeling of jealous ignorance, stationary or

wistfully retrospective, of no mean force at Athens, as in every

other society, and of course blended at Athens with the indigenous

democratical sentiment. This latter sentiment[552] of antipathy to

new ideas, and new mental accomplishments, has been raised into

factitious importance by the comic genius of Aristophanês, whose

point of view modern authors have too often accepted; thus allowing

some of the worst feelings of Grecian antiquity to influence their

manner of conceiving the facts. Moreover, they have rarely made any

allowance for that force of literary and philosophical antipathy,

which was no less real and constant at Athens than the political; and

which made the different literary classes or individuals perpetually

unjust one towards another.[553] It was the blessing and the glory

of Athens, that every man could speak out his sentiments and his

criticisms with a freedom unparalleled in the ancient world, and

hardly paralleled even in the modern, in which a vast body of dissent

both is, and always has been, condemned to absolute silence. But this

known latitude of censure ought to have imposed on modern authors

a peremptory necessity of not accepting implicitly the censure of

any one, where the party inculpated has left no defence; at the

very least, of construing the censure strictly, and allowing for

the point of view from which it proceeds. From inattention to this

necessity, almost all the things and persons of Grecian history are

presented to us on their bad side; the libels of Aristophanês, the

sneers of Plato and Xenophon, even the interested generalities of a

plaintiff or defendant before the dikastery, are received with little

cross-examination as authentic materials for history.

[551] See Isokratês, Orat. x; Helenæ Encomium, sects. 2-7;

compare Orat. xv, De Permutatione, of the same author, s. 90.

I hold it for certain, that the first of these passages is

intended as a criticism upon the Platonic dialogues (as in Or. v,

ad Philip. s. 84), probably the second passage also. Isokratês,

evidently a cautious and timid man, avoids mentioning the names

of contemporaries, that he may provoke the less animosity.

[552] Isokratês alludes much to this sentiment, and to the men

who looked upon gymnastic training with greater favor than upon

philosophy, in the Orat. xv, De Permutatione, s. 267, _et seq._ A

large portion of this oration is in fact a reply to accusations,

the same as those preferred against mental cultivation by the

Δίκαιος Λόγος in the Nubes of Aristophanês, 947, _seq._; favorite

topics in the mouths of the pugilists “with smashed ears.”

(Plato, Gorgias, c. 71, p. 515, E; τῶν τὰ ὦτα κατεαγότων.)

[553] There is but too much evidence of the abundance of such

jealousies and antipathies during the times of Plato, Aristotle,

and Isokratês; see Stahr’s Aristotelia, ch. iii, vol. i, pp. 37,

68.

Aristotle was extremely jealous of the success of Isokratês, and

was himself much assailed by pupils of the latter, Kephisodôrus

and others, as well as by Dikæarchus, Eubulidês, and a numerous

host of writers in the same tone: στρατὸν ὅλον τῶν ἐπιθεμένων

Ἀριστοτέλει; see the Fragments of Dikæarchus, vol. ii, p. 225,

ed. Didot. “De ingenio ejus (observes Cicero, in reference to

Epicurus, de Finibus, ii, 25, 80) in his disputationibus, non de

moribus, quæritur. Sit ista in Græcorum levitate perversitas, qui

maledictis insectantur eos, a quibus de veritate dissentiunt.”

This is a taint no way peculiar to _Grecian_ philosophical

controversy; but it has nowhere been more infectious than among

the Greeks, and modern historians cannot be too much on their

guard against it.

If ever there was need to invoke this rare sentiment of candor, it is

when we come to discuss the history of the persons called sophists,

who now for the first time appear as of note; the practical teachers

of Athens and of Greece, misconceived as well as misesteemed.

The primitive education at Athens consisted of two branches;

gymnastics, for the body; music, for the mind. The word _music_

is not to be judged according to the limited signification which

it now bears. It comprehended, from the beginning, everything

appertaining to the province of the Nine Muses; not merely learning

the use of the lyre, or how to bear part in a chorus; but also the

hearing, learning, and repeating, of poetical compositions, as well

as the practice of exact and elegant pronunciation; which latter

accomplishment, in a language like the Greek, with long words,

measured syllables, and great diversity of accentuation between

one word and another, must have been far more difficult to acquire

than it is in any modern European language. As the range of ideas

enlarged, so the words _music_ and musical teachers acquired an

expanded meaning, so as to comprehend matter of instruction at once

ampler and more diversified. During the middle of the fifth century

B.C., at Athens, there came thus to be found, among the musical

teachers, men of the most distinguished abilities and eminence;

masters of all the learning and accomplishments of the age, teaching

what was known of astronomy, geography, and physics, and capable

of holding dialectical discussions with their pupils, upon all

the various problems then afloat among intellectual men. Of this

character were Lamprus, Agathoklês, Pythokleidês, Damon, etc. The

two latter were instructors of Periklês; and Damon was even rendered

so unpopular at Athens, partly by his large and free speculations,

partly through the political enemies of his great pupil, that he was

ostracized, or at least sentenced to banishment.[554] Such men were

competent companions for Anaxagoras and Zeno, and employed in part

on the same studies; the field of acquired knowledge being not then

large enough to be divided into separate, exclusive compartments.

While Euripidês frequented the company, and acquainted himself with

the opinions, of Anaxagoras, Ion of Chios, his rival as a tragic

poet, as well as the friend of Kimon, bestowed so much thought upon

physical subjects, as then conceived, that he set up a theory of his

own, propounding the doctrine of three elements in nature;[555] air,

fire, and earth.

[554] See Plato (Protagoras, c. 8, p. 316, D.; Lachês, c. 3, p.

180, D.; Menexenus, c. 3, p. 236, A; Alkibiad. i, c. 14, p. 118,

C); Plutarch, Periklês, c. 4.

Periklês had gone through dialectic practice in his youth

(Xenoph. Memor. i, 2, 46).

[555] Isokratês, Or. xv, De Permutat. sect. 287.

Compare Brandis, Gesch. der Gr. Röm. Philosophie, part i, sect.

48, p. 196.

Now such musical teachers as Damon and the others above mentioned,

were sophists, not merely in the natural and proper Greek sense

of that word, but, to a certain extent, even in the special and

restricted meaning which Plato afterwards thought proper to confer

upon it.[556] A sophist, in the genuine sense of the word, was a

wise man, a clever man; one who stood prominently before the public

as distinguished for intellect or talent of some kind. Thus Solon

and Pythagoras are both called sophists; Thamyras the skilful bard,

is called a sophist:[557] Sokratês is so denominated, not merely

by Aristophanês, but by Æschinês:[558] Aristotle himself calls

Aristippus, and Xenophon calls Antisthenês, both of them disciples

of Sokratês, by that name:[559] Xenophon,[560] in describing a

collection of instructive books, calls them “the writings of the

old poets and sophists,” meaning by the latter word prose-writers

generally: Plato is alluded to as a sophist, even by Isokratês:[561]

Isokratês himself was harshly criticized as a sophist, and defends

both himself and his profession: lastly, Timon, the friend and

admirer of Pyrrho, about 300-280 B.C., who bitterly satirized all the

philosophers, designated them all, including Plato and Aristotle, by

the general name of sophists.[562] In this large and comprehensive

sense the word was originally used, and always continued to be so

understood among the general public. But along with this idea, the

title sophist also carried with it or connoted a certain invidious

feeling. The natural temper of a people generally ignorant towards

superior intellect,—the same temper which led to those charges of

magic so frequent in the Middle Ages,—appears to be a union of

admiration with something of an unfavorable sentiment;[563] dislike,

or apprehension, as the case may be, unless where the latter element

has become neutralized by habitual respect for an established

profession or station: at any rate, the unfriendly sentiment is so

often intended, that a substantive word, in which it is implied

without the necessity of any annexed predicate, is soon found

convenient. Timon, who hated the philosophers, thus found the word

sophist exactly suitable, in sentiment as well as meaning, to his

purpose in addressing them.

[556] Isokratês calls both Anaxagoras and Damon, sophists (Or.

xv, De Perm. sect. 251), Plutarch, Periklês, c. 4. Ὁ δὲ Δάμων

ἐοικεν, ἄκρος ὢν σοφιστὴς, καταδύεσθαι μὲν εἰς τὸ τῆς μουσικῆς

ὄνομα, ἐπικρυπτόμενος πρὸς τοὺς πολλοὺς τὴν δεινότητα.

So Protagoras too (in the speech put into his mouth by Plato,

Protag. c. 8, p. 316) says, very truly, that there had been

sophists from the earliest times of Greece. But he says also,

what Plutarch says in the citation just above, that these earlier

men refused, intentionally and deliberately, to call themselves

sophists, for fear of the odium attached to the name; and that

he, Protagoras, was the first person to call himself openly a

sophist.

The denomination by which a man is known, however, seldom depends

upon himself, but upon the general public, and upon his critics,

friendly or hostile. The unfriendly spirit of Plato did much more

to attach the title of sophists specially to these teachers, than

any assumption of their own.

[557] Herodot. i, 29; ii, 49; iv, 95. Diogenês of Apollonia,

contemporary of Herodotus, called the Ionic philosophers or

physiologists by the name sophists: see Brandis, Geschich. der

Griech. Röm. Philosoph. c. lvii, note _O_. About Thamyras, see

Welcker, Griech. Tragöd., Sophoklês, p. 421:—

Εἰτ᾽ οὖν σοφιστὴς καλὰ παραπαίων χέλυν, etc.

The comic poet Kratinus called all the poets, including Homer and

Hesiod, σοφισταί: see the Fragments of his drama Ἀρχίλοχοι in

Meineke, Fragm. Comicor. Græcor. vol. ii, p. 16.

[558] Æschinês cont. Timarch. c. 34. Æschinês calls Demosthenês

also a sophist, c. 27.

We see plainly from the terms in Plato’s Politicus, c. 38, p.

299 B, μετεωρολόγον, ἀδολεσχήν τινα σοφιστὴν, that both Sokratês

and Plato himself were designated as sophists by the Athenian

public.

[559] Aristotel. Metaphysic. iii, 2, p. 996; Xenophon, Sympos.

iv, 1.

Aristippus is said to have been the first of the disciples of

Sokratês who took money for instruction (Diogen. Laërt. ii, 65).

[560] Xenoph. Memor. iv, 2, 1. γράμματα πολλὰ συνειλεγμένον

ποιητῶν τε καὶ σοφιστῶν τῶν εὐδοκιμωτάτων....

The word σοφιστῶν is here used just in the same sense as τοὺς

θησαυροὺς ~τῶν πάλαι σοφῶν ἀνδρῶν~, οὓς ἐκεῖνοι κατέλιπον ἐν

βιβλίοις γράψαντες, etc. (Memor. i, 6, 14.) It is used in a

different sense in another passage (i, 1, 11), to signify

teachers who gave instruction on physical and astronomical

subjects, which Sokratês and Xenophon both disapproved.

[561] Isokratês, Orat. v, ad Philipp. sect. 14: see Heindorf’s

note on the Euthydemus of Plato, p. 305, C. sect. 79.

[562] Diogen. Laërt. ix, 65. Ἔσπετε νῦν μοι, ὅσοι πολυπράγμονές

ἐστε σοφισταί (Diogen. Laërt. viii, 74).

Demetrius of Trœzen numbered Empedoklês as a sophist. Isokratês

speaks of Empedoklês, Ion, Alkmæon, Parmenidês, Melissus,

Gorgias, all as οἱ παλαιοὶ σοφισταί; all as having taught

different περιττολογίας about the elements of the physical world

(Isok. de Permut. sect. 288).

[563] Eurip. Med. 289:—

Χρὴ δ᾽ οὔποθ᾽ ὅστις ἀρτίφρων πέφυκ᾽ ἀνὴρ,

Παῖδας περισσῶς ἐκδιδάσκεσθαι σοφούς.

Χωρὶς γὰρ ἄλλης, ἧς ἔχουσιν, ἀργίας,

Φθόνον πρὸς ἀστῶν ἀλφάνουσι δυσμενῆ.

The words ὁ περισσῶς σοφὸς seem to convey the same unfriendly

sentiment as the word σοφιστής.

Now when (in the period succeeding 450 B.C.) the rhetorical and

musical teachers came to stand before the public at Athens in

such increased eminence, they of course, as well as other men

intellectually celebrated, became designated by the appropriate name

of sophists. But there was one characteristic peculiar to themselves,

whereby they drew upon themselves a double measure of that invidious

sentiment which lay wrapped up in the name. They taught for pay: of

course, therefore, the most eminent among them taught only the rich,

and earned large sums; a fact naturally provocative of envy, to some

extent, among the many who benefited nothing by them, but still

more among the inferior members of their own profession. But even

great minds, like Sokratês and Plato, though much superior to any

such envy, cherished in that age a genuine and vehement repugnance

against receiving pay for teaching. We read in Xenophon,[564] that

Sokratês considered such a bargain as nothing less than servitude,

robbing the teacher of all free choice as to persons or proceeding;

and that he assimilated the relation between teacher and pupil to

that between two lovers or two intimate friends; which was thoroughly

dishonored, robbed of its charm and reciprocity, and prevented from

bringing about its legitimate reward of attachment and devotion,

by the intervention of money payment. However little in harmony

with modern ideas, such was the conscientious sentiment of Sokratês

and Plato; who therefore considered the name sophists, denoting

intellectual celebrity combined with an odious association, as

preëminently suitable to the leading teachers for pay. The splendid

genius, the lasting influence, and the reiterated polemics, of Plato,

have stamped it upon the men against whom he wrote as if it were

their recognized, legitimate, and peculiar designation: though it

is certain, that if, in the middle of the Peloponnesian war, any

Athenian had been asked, “Who are the principal sophists in your

city?” he would have named Sokratês among the first; for Sokratês

was at once eminent as an intellectual teacher and personally

unpopular, not because he received pay, but on other grounds, which

will be hereafter noticed: and this was the precise combination

of qualities which the general public naturally expressed by a

sophist. Moreover, Plato not only stole the name out of general

circulation, in order to fasten it specially upon his opponents,

the paid teachers, but also connected with it express discreditable

attributes, which formed no part of its primitive and recognized

meaning, and were altogether distinct from, though grafted upon, the

vague sentiment of dislike associated with it. Aristotle, following

the example of his master, gave to the word sophist a definition

substantially the same as that which it bears in the modern

languages:[565] “an impostrous pretender to knowledge; a man who

employs what he knows to be fallacy, for the purpose of deceit and of

getting money.” And he did this at a time when he himself, with his

estimable contemporary Isokratês, were considered at Athens to come

under the designation of sophists, and were called so by every one

who disliked either their profession or their persons.[566]

[564] Xenoph. Memor. i, 2, 6. In another passage, the sophist

Antiphon—whether this is the celebrated Antiphon of the deme

Rhamnus, is uncertain; the commentators lean to the negative—is

described as conversing with Sokratês, and saying that Sokratês

of course must imagine his own conversation to be worth nothing,

since he asked no price from his scholars. To which Sokratês

replies:—

Ὦ Ἀντιφῶν, παρ᾽ ἡμῖν νομίζεται, τὴν ὥραν καὶ τὴν σοφίαν ὁμοίως

μὲν καλὸν, ὁμοίως δὲ αἰσχρὸν, διατίθεσθαι εἶναι. Τήν τε γὰρ ὥραν,

ἐὰν μέν τις ἀργυρίου πωλῇ τῷ βουλομένῳ, πόρνον αὐτὸν ἀποκαλοῦσιν·

ἐὰν δέ τις, ὃν ἂν γνῷ καλόν τε κἀγαθὸν ἐραστὴν ὄντα, τοῦτον φίλον

ἑαυτῷ ποιῆται, σώφρονα νομίζομεν. Καὶ ~τὴν σοφίαν~ ὡσαύτως τοὺς

μὲν ~ἀργυρίου τῷ βουλομένῳ πωλοῦντας, σοφιστὰς ὥσπερ πόρνους~

ἀποκαλοῦσιν· ὅστις δὲ, ὃν ἂν γνῷ εὐφυᾶ ὄντα, διδάσκων ὅ,τι ἂν ἔχῃ

ἀγαθὸν, φίλον ποιεῖται, τοῦτον νομίζομεν, ἃ τῷ καλῷ κἀγαθῷ πολίτῃ

προσήκει, ταῦτα ποιεῖν (Xenoph. Memor. i, 6, 13).

As an evidence of the manners and sentiment of the age, this

passage is extremely remarkable. Various parts of the oration of

Æschinês against Timarchus, and the Symposion of Plato, pp. 217,

218, both receive and give light to it.

Among the numerous passages in which Plato expresses his dislike

and contempt of teaching for money, see his Sophistes, c. 9, p.

223. Plato, indeed, thought that it was unworthy of a virtuous

man to accept salary for the discharge of any public duty: see

the Republic, i, 19, p. 347.

[565] Aristot. Rhetoric. i, 1, 4; where he explains the sophist

to be a person who has the same powers as the dialectician,

but abuses them for a bad purpose: ἡ γὰρ σοφιστικὴ, οὐκ ἐν τῇ

δυνάμει, ἀλλ᾽ ἐν τῇ προαιρέσει.... Ἐκεῖ δὲ, σοφιστὴς μὲν, κατὰ

τὴν προαίρεσιν, διαλεκτικὸς δὲ, οὐ κατὰ τὴν προαίρεσιν ἀλλὰ

κατὰ τὴν δύναμιν. Again, in the first chapter of the treatise

de Sophisticis Elenchis: ὁ σοφιστὴς, χρηματιστὴς ἀπὸ φαινομένης

σοφίας, ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ οὔσης, etc.

[566] Respecting Isokratês, see his Orat. xv, De Permutatione,

wherein it is evident that he was not only ranked as a sophist

by others, but also considered himself as such, though the

appellation was one which he did not like. He considers himself

as such, as well as Gorgias: οἱ καλούμενοι σοφισταί; sects. 166,

169, 213, 231.

Respecting Aristotle, we have only to read not merely the passage

of Timon cited in a previous note, but also the bitter slander

of Timæus (Frag. 70. ed. Didot, Polybius, xii, 8), who called

him ~σοφιστὴν ὀψιμαθῆ καὶ μισητὸν ὑπάρχοντα~, καὶ τὸ πολυτίμητον

ἰατρεῖον ἀρτίως ἀποκεκλεικότα, πρὸς δὲ τούτοις, εἰς πᾶσαν αὐλὴν

καὶ σκήνην ἐμπεπηδηκότα· πρὸς δὲ, γαστρίμαργον, ὀψαρτύτην, ἐπὶ

στόμα φερόμενον ἐν πᾶσι.

Great thinkers and writers, like Plato and Aristotle, have full right

to define and employ words in a sense of their own, provided they

give due notice. But it is essential that the reader should keep in

mind the consequences of such change, and not mistake a word used in

a new sense for a new fact or phenomenon. The age with which we are

now dealing, the last half of the fifth century B.C., is commonly

distinguished in the history of philosophy as the age of Sokratês and

the sophists. The sophists are spoken of as a new class of men, or

sometimes in language which implies a new doctrinal sect, or school,

as if they then sprang up in Greece for the first time; ostentatious

imposters, flattering and duping the rich youth for their own

personal gain; undermining the morality of Athens, public and

private, and encouraging their pupils to the unscrupulous prosecution

of ambition and cupidity. They are even affirmed to have succeeded in

corrupting the general morality, so that Athens had become miserably

degenerated and vicious in the latter years of the Peloponnesian

war, as compared with what she was in the time of Miltiadês and

Aristeidês. Sokratês, on the contrary, is usually described as a

holy man combating and exposing these false prophets, standing up as

the champion of morality against their insidious artifices.[567] Now

though the appearance of a man so very original as Sokratês was a new

fact of unspeakable importance, the appearance of the sophists was

no new fact; what was new was the peculiar use of an old word, which

Plato took out of its usual meaning, and fastened upon the eminent

paid teachers of the Sokratic age.

[567] In the general point of view here described, the sophists

are presented by _Ritter_, Geschichte der Griech. Philosophie,

vol. i, book vi, chaps. 1-3, p. 577, _seq._, 629, _seq._; by

_Brandis_, Gesch. der Gr. Röm. Philos. sects, lxxxiv-lxxxvii,

vol. i, p. 516, _seq._; by _Zeller_, Geschichte der Philosoph.

ii. pp. 65, 69, 165, etc.: and, indeed, by almost all who treat

of the sophists.

The paid teachers, with whom, under the name of The Sophists, he

brings Sokratês into controversy, were Protagoras of Abdêra, Gorgias

of Leontini, Polus of Agrigentum, Hippias of Elis, Prodikus of Keos,

Thrasymachus of Chalkêdon, Euthydêmus and Dionysodorus of Chios; to

whom Xenophon adds Antiphon of Athens. These men—whom modern writers

set down as the sophists, and denounce as the moral pestilence of

their age—were not distinguished in any marked or generic way from

their predecessors. Their vocation was to train up youth for the

duties, the pursuits, and the successes, of active life, both private

and public. Others had done this before; but these teachers brought

to the task a larger range of knowledge with a greater multiplicity

of scientific and other topics; not only more impressive powers of

composition and speech, serving as a personal example to the pupil,

but also a comprehension of the elements of good speaking, so as to

be able to give him precepts conducive to that accomplishment;[568] a

considerable treasure of accumulated thought on moral and political

subjects, calculated to make their conversation very instructive,

and discourse ready prepared, on general heads or _common places_,

for their pupils to learn by heart.[569] But this, though a very

important extension, was nothing more than an extension, differing

merely in degree of that which Damon and others had done before

them. It arose from the increased demand which had grown up among

the Athenian youth, for a larger measure of education and other

accomplishments; from an elevation in the standard of what was

required from every man who aspired to occupy a place in the eyes

of his fellow-citizens. Protagoras, Gorgias, and the rest, supplied

this demand with an ability and success unknown before their time;

hence they gained a distinction such as none of their predecessors

had attained, were prized all over Greece, travelled from city to

city with general admiration, and obtained considerable pay. While

such success, among men personally strangers to them, attests

unequivocally their talent and personal dignity, of course it also

laid them open to increased jealousy, as well from inferior teachers

as from the lovers of ignorance generally: such jealousy manifesting

itself, as I have before explained, by a greater readiness to stamp

them with the obnoxious title of sophists.

[568] Compare Isokratês, Orat. xiii. cont. Sophistas, sects.

19-21.

[569] Aristot. Sophist. Elench. c. 33; Cicero, Brut. c. 12.

The hostility of Plato against these teachers,—for it is he, and

not Sokratês, who was peculiarly hostile to them, as may be seen

by the absence of any such marked antithesis in the Memorabilia

of Xenophon,—may be explained without at all supposing in them

that corruption which modern writers have been so ready not only

to admit but to magnify. It arose from the radical difference

between his point of view and theirs. He was a great reformer and

theorist; they undertook to qualify young men for doing themselves

credit, and rendering service to others, in active Athenian life.

Not only is there room for the concurrent operation of both these

veins of thought and action, in every progressive society, but the

intellectual outfit of the society can never be complete without

the one as well as the other. It was the glory of Athens that both

were there adequately represented, at the period which we have now

reached. Whoever peruses Plato’s immortal work, “The Republic,”

will see that he dissented from society, both democratical and

oligarchical, on some of the most fundamental points of public and

private morality; and throughout most of his dialogues his quarrel

is not less with the statesmen, past as well as present, than with

the paid teachers of Athens. Besides this ardent desire for radical

reform of the state, on principles of his own, distinct from every

recognized political party or creed, Plato was also unrivalled as a

speculative genius and as a dialectician; both which capacities he

put forth, to amplify and illustrate the ethical theory and method

first struck out by Sokratês, as well as to establish comprehensive

generalities of his own.

Now his reforming, as well as his theorizing tendencies, brought

him into polemical controversy with all the leading agents by whom

the business of practical life at Athens was carried on. In so

far as Protagoras or Gorgias talked the language of theory, they

were doubtless much inferior to Plato, nor would their doctrines

be likely to hold against his acute dialectics. But it was neither

their duty, nor their engagement, to reform the state, or discover

and vindicate the best theory on ethics. They professed to qualify

young Athenians for an active and honorable life, private as well as

public, _in Athens_, or in any other given city; they taught them “to

think, speak, and act,” _in Athens_; they of course accepted, as the

basis of their teaching, that type of character which estimable men

exhibited and which the public approved, _in Athens_; not undertaking

to recast the type, but to arm it with new capacities and adorn it

with fresh accomplishments. Their direct business was with ethical

precept, not with ethical theory; all that was required of them, as

to the latter, was, that their theory should be sufficiently sound

to lead to such practical precepts as were accounted virtuous

by the most estimable society _in Athens_. It ought never to be

forgotten, that those who taught for active life were bound, by the

very conditions of their profession, to adapt themselves to the place

and the society as it stood. With the theorist Plato, not only there

was no such obligation, but the grandeur and instructiveness of his

speculations were realized only by his departing from it, and placing

himself on a loftier pinnacle of vision; and he himself[570] not only

admits, but even exaggerates, the unfitness and repugnance of men,

taught in his school, for practical life and duties.

[570] See a striking passage in Plato, Theætet. c. 24, pp. 173,

174.