LYRIC POETRY. — THE SEVEN WISE MEN.
The interval between 776-560 B. C. presents to us a remarkable
expansion of Grecian genius in the creation of their elegiac, iambic,
lyric, choric, and gnomic poetry, which was diversified in a great
many ways and improved by many separate masters. The creators of
all these different styles—from Kallinus and Archilochus down to
Stesichorus—fall within the two centuries here included; though
Pindar and Simonidês, “the proud and high-crested bards,”[143]
who carried lyric and choric poetry to the maximum of elaboration
consistent with full poetical effect, lived in the succeeding
century, and were contemporary with the tragedian Æschylus. The
Grecian drama, comic as well as tragic, of the fifth century B.
C., combined the lyric and choric song with the living action of
iambic dialogue,—thus constituting the last ascending movement in the
poetical genius of the race. Reserving this for a future time, and
for the history of Athens, to which it more particularly belongs, I
now propose to speak only of the poetical movement of the two earlier
centuries, wherein Athens had little or no part. So scanty are the
remnants, unfortunately, of these earlier poets, that we can offer
little except criticisms borrowed at second-hand, and a few general
considerations on their workings and tendency.[144]
[143] Himerius, Orat. iii, p. 426, Wernsdorf—ἀγέρωχοι καὶ
ὑψαυχένες.
[144] For the whole subject of this chapter, the eleventh,
twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth chapters of O. Müller’s
History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, wherein the lyric
poets are handled with greater length than consists with the
limits of this work, will be found highly valuable,—chapters
abounding in erudition and ingenuity, but not always within the
limits of the evidence.
The learned work of Ulrici (Geschichte der Griechischen
Poesie—_Lyrik_) is still more open to the same remark.
Archilochus and Kallinus both appear to fall about the middle of
the seventh century B. C., and it is with them that the innovations
in Grecian poetry commence. Before them, we are told, there existed
nothing but the epos, or daktylic hexameter poetry, of which much
has been said in my former volume,—being legendary stories or
adventures narrated, together with addresses or hymns to the gods.
We must recollect, too, that this was not only the whole poetry, but
the whole literature of the age: prose composition was altogether
unknown, and writing, if beginning to be employed as an aid to a few
superior men, was at any rate generally unused, and found no reading
public. The voice was the only communicant, and the ear the only
recipient, of all those ideas and feelings which productive minds in
the community found themselves impelled to pour out; both voice and
ear being accustomed to a musical recitation, or chant, apparently
something between song and speech, with simple rhythm and a still
simpler occasional accompaniment from the primitive four-stringed
harp. Such habits and requirements of the voice and ear were, at
that time, inseparably associated with the success and popularity
of the poet, and contributed doubtless to restrict the range of
subjects with which he could deal. The type was to a certain extent
consecrated, like the primitive statues of the gods, from which
men only ventured to deviate by gradual and almost unconscious
innovations. Moreover, in the first half of the seventh century B.
C., that genius which had once created an Iliad and an Odyssey was no
longer to be found, and the work of hexameter narrative had come to
be prosecuted by less gifted persons,—by those Cyclic poets of whom I
have spoken in the preceding volumes.
Such, as far as we can make it out amidst very uncertain evidence,
was the state of the Greek mind immediately before elegiac and lyric
poets appeared; while at the same time its experience was enlarging
by the formation of new colonies, and the communion among its various
states tended to increase by the freer reciprocity of religious games
and festivals. There arose a demand for turning the literature of the
age—I use this word as synonymous with the poetry—to new feelings and
purposes, and for applying the rich, plastic, and musical language of
the old epic, to present passion and circumstance, social as well as
individual. Such a tendency had become obvious in Hesiod, even within
the range of hexameter verse; but the same causes which led to an
enlargement of the subjects of poetry inclined men also to vary the
metre.
In regard to this latter point, there is reason to believe that the
expansion of Greek music was the immediate determining cause; for
it has been already stated that the musical scale and instruments
of the Greeks, originally very narrow, were materially enlarged
by borrowing from Phrygia and Lydia, and these acquisitions seem
to have been first realized about the beginning of the seventh
century B. C., through the Lesbian harper Terpander,—the Phrygian
(or Greco-Phrygian) flute-player Olympus,—and the Arkadian or
Bœotian flute-player Klonas. Terpander made the important advance of
exchanging the original four-stringed harp for one of seven strings,
embracing the compass of one octave or two Greek tetrachords, and
Olympus as well as Klonas taught many new nomes, or tunes, on the
flute, to which the Greeks had before been strangers,—probably also
the use of a flute of more varied musical compass. Terpander is
said to have gained the prize at the first recorded celebration of
the Lacedæmonian festival of the Karneia, in 676 B. C.: this is
one of the best-ascertained points among the obscure chronology of
the seventh century; and there seem grounds for assigning Olympus
and Klonas to nearly the same period, a little before Archilochus
and Kallinus.[145] To Terpander, Olympus, and Klonas, are ascribed
the formation of the earliest musical nomes known to the inquiring
Greeks of later times: to the first, nomes on the harp; to the two
latter, on the flute,—every nome being the general scheme, or basis,
of which the airs actually performed constituted so many variations,
within certain defined limits.[146] Terpander employed his enlarged
instrumental power as a new accompaniment to the Homeric poems, as
well as to certain epic proœmia or hymns to the gods of his own
composition. But he does not seem to have departed from the hexameter
verse and the daktylic rhythm, to which the new accompaniment
was probably not quite suitable; and the idea may thus have been
suggested of combining the words also according to new rhythmical and
metrical laws.
[145] These early innovators in Grecian music, rhythm, metre,
and poetry, belonging to the seventh century B. C., were very
imperfectly known, even to those contemporaries of Plato and
Aristotle who tried to get together facts for a consecutive
history of music. The treatise of Plutarch, De Musicâ, shows
what very contradictory statements he found. He quotes from
four different authors,—Herakleidês, Glaukus, Alexander, and
Aristoxenus, who by no means agreed in their series of names
and facts. The first three of them blend together mythe and
history; while even the Anagraphê or inscription at Sikyon, which
professed to give a continuous list of such poets and musicians
as had contended at the Sikyonian games, began with a large stock
of mythical names,—Amphion, Linus, Pierius, etc. (Plutarch,
Music. p. 1132.) Some authors, according to Plutarch (p. 1133),
made the great chronological mistake of placing Terpander as
contemporary with Hippônax; a proof how little of chronological
evidence was then accessible.
That Terpander was victor at the Spartan festival of the Karneia,
in 676 B. C., may well have been derived by Hellanikus from the
Spartan registers: the name of the Lesbian harper Perikleitas, as
having gained the same prize at some subsequent period (Plutarch,
De Mus. p. 1133), probably rests on the same authority. That
Archilochus was rather later than Terpander, and Thalêtas rather
later than Archilochus, was the statement of Glaukus (Plutarch,
De Mus. p. 1134). Klonas and Polymnêstus are placed later than
Terpander; Archilochus later than Klonas: Alkman is said to have
mentioned Polymnêstus in one of his songs (pp. 1133-1135). It
can hardly be true that Terpander gained _four_ Pythian prizes,
if the festival was octennial prior to its reconstitution by
the Amphiktyons (p. 1132). Sakadas gained three Pythian prizes
_after_ that period, when the festival was quadrennial (p. 1134).
Compare the confused indications in Pollux, iv, 65-66, 78-79. The
abstract given by Photius of certain parts of the Chrestomathia
of Proclus (published in Gaisford’s edition of Hephæstion, pp.
375-389), is also extremely valuable, in spite of its brevity and
obscurity, about the lyric and choric poetry of Greece.
[146] The difference between Νόμος and Μέλος appears in Plutarch,
De Musicâ, p. 1132—Καὶ τὸν Τέρπανδρον, κιθαρῳδικῶν ποιητὴν ὄντα
νόμων, κατὰ νόμον ἕκαστον τοῖς ἔπεσι τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τοῖς Ὁμήρου
μέλη περιτιθέντα, ᾅδειν ἐν τοῖς ἀγῶσι· ἀποφῆναι δὲ τοῦτον λέγει
ὀνόματα πρῶτον τοῖς κιθαρῳδικοῖς νόμοις.
The nomes were not many in number; they went by special names;
and there was a disagreement of opinion as to the persons who had
composed them (Plutarch, Music. p. 1133). They were monodic, not
choric,—intended to be sung by one person (Aristot. Problem. xix,
15). Herodot. i, 23, about Arion and the Nomus Orthius.
It is certain, at least, that the age (670-600) immediately
succeeding Terpander,—comprising Archilochus, Kallinus, Tyrtæus, and
Alkman, whose relations of time one to another we have no certain
means of determining,[147] though Alkman seems to have been the
latest,—presents a remarkable variety both of new metres and of new
rhythms, superinduced upon the previous daktylic hexameter. The
first departure from this latter is found in the elegiac verse,
employed seemingly more or less by all the four above-mentioned
poets, but chiefly by the first two, and even ascribed by some to
the invention of Kallinus. Tyrtæus in his military march-songs
employed the anapæstic metre, but in Archilochus as well as in Alkman
we find traces of a much larger range of metrical variety,—iambic,
trochaic, anapæstic, ionic, etc.,—sometimes even asynartetic or
compound metres, anapæstic or daktylic, blended with trochaic or
iambic. What we have remaining from Mimnermus, who comes about the
close of the preceding four, is elegiac; his contemporaries Alkæus
and Sappho, besides employing most of those metres which they found
existing, invented each a peculiar stanza of their own, which is
familiarly known under a name derived from each. In Solon, the
younger contemporary of Mimnermus, we have the elegiac, iambic, and
trochaic: in Theognis, yet later, the elegiac only. But both Arion
and Stesichorus appear to have been innovators in this department,
the former by his improvement in the dithyrambic chorus or circular
song and dance in honor of Dionysus,—the latter by his more elaborate
choric compositions, containing not only a strophê and antistrophê,
but also a third division or epode succeeding them, pronounced by the
chorus standing still. Both Anakreon and Ibykus likewise added to the
stock of existing metrical varieties. And we thus see that, within
the century and a half succeeding Terpander, Greek poetry (or Greek
literature, which was then the same thing) became greatly enriched in
matter as well as diversified in form.
[147] Mr. Clinton (Fasti Hellen. ad ann. 671, 665, 644) appears
to me noway satisfactory in his chronological arrangements of
the poets of this century. I agree with O. Müller (Hist. of
Literat. of Ancient Greece, ch. xii, 9) in thinking that he makes
Terpander too recent, and Thalêtas too ancient; I also believe
both Kallinus and Alkman to have been more recent than the place
which Mr. Clinton assigns to them; the epoch of Tyrtæus will
depend upon the date which we assign to the second Messenian war.
How very imperfectly the chronology of the poetical names even
of the sixth century B. C.—Sappho, Anakreon, Hippônax—was known
even to writers of the beginning of the Ptolemaic age (or
shortly after 300 B. C.), we may see by the mistakes noted in
Athenæus, xiii, p. 599. Hermesianax of Kolophon, the elegiac
poet, represented Anakreon as the lover of Sappho; this might
perhaps be not absolutely impossible, if we supposed in Sappho an
old age like that of Ninon de l’Enclos; but others (even earlier
than Hermesianax, since they are quoted by Chamæleon) represented
Anakreon, when in old age, as addressing verses to Sappho,
still young. Again, the comic writer Diphilus introduced both
Archilochus and Hippônax as the lovers of Sappho.
To a certain extent there seems to have been a real connection
between the two: new forms were essential for the expression of
new wants and feelings,—though the assertion that elegiac metre is
especially adapted for one set of feelings,[148] trochaic for a
second, and iambic for a third, if true at all, can only be admitted
with great latitude of exception, when we find so many of them
employed by the poets for very different subjects,—gay or melancholy,
bitter or complaining, earnest or sprightly,—seemingly with little
discrimination.
[148] The Latin poets and the Alexandrine critics seem to have
both insisted on the natural mournfulness of the elegiac metre
(Ovid, Heroid. xv, 7; Horat. Art. Poet. 75): see also the
fanciful explanation given by Didymus in the Etymologicon Magnum,
v. Ἔλεγος.
We learn from Hephæstion (c. viii, p. 45, Gaisf.) that the
anapæstic march-metre of Tyrtæus was employed by the comic
writers also, for a totally different vein of feeling. See the
Dissertation of Franck, Callinus, pp. 37-48 (Leips. 1816).
Of the remarks made by O. Müller respecting the metres of these
early poets (History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch.
xi, s. 8-12, etc.; ch. xii, s. 1-2, etc.), many appear to be
uncertified and disputable.
For some good remarks on the fallibility of men’s impressions
respecting the natural and inherent ἦθος of particular metres,
see Adam Smith (Theory of Moral Sentiment, part v, ch. i, p.
329), in the edition of his works by Dugald Stewart.
But the adoption of some new metre, different from the perpetual
series of hexameters, was required when the poet desired to do
something more than recount a long story or fragment of heroic
legend,—when he sought to bring himself, his friends, his enemies,
his city, his hopes and fears with regard to matters recent or
impending, all before the notice of the hearer, and that, too, at
once with brevity and animation. The Greek hexameter, like our blank
verse, has all its limiting conditions bearing upon each separate
line, and presents to the hearer no predetermined resting-place or
natural pause beyond.[149] In reference to any long composition,
either epic or dramatic, such unrestrained license is found
convenient, and the case was similar for Greek epos and drama,—the
single-lined iambic trimeter being generally used for the dialogue
of tragedy and comedy, just as the daktylic hexameter had been
used for the epic. The metrical changes introduced by Archilochus
and his contemporaries may be compared to a change from our blank
verse to the rhymed couplet and quatrain: the verse was thrown into
little systems of two, three, or four lines, with a pause at the
end of each; and the halt thus assured to, as well as expected and
relished by, the ear, was generally coincident with a close, entire
or partial, in the sense, which thus came to be distributed with
greater point and effect. The elegiac verse, or common hexameter and
pentameter (this second line being an hexameter with the third and
sixth thesis,[150] or the last half of the third and sixth foot,
suppressed, and a pause left in place of it), as well as the epode
(or iambic trimeter followed by an iambic dimeter) and some other
binary combinations of verse which we trace among the fragments of
Archilochus, are conceived with a view to such increase of effect
both on the ear and the mind, not less than to the direct pleasures
of novelty and variety.
[149] See the observations in Aristotle (Rhetor. iii, 9) on
the λέξις εἰρομένη as compared with λέξις κατεστραμμένη·—λέξις
εἰρομένη, ἣ οὐδὲν ἔχει τέλος αὐτὴ καθ᾽ αὑτὴν, ἂν μὴ τὸ πρᾶγμα τὸ
λεγόμενον τελειώθη·—κατεστραμμένη δὲ, ἡ ἐν περιόδοις· λέγω δὲ
περίοδον, λέξιν ἔχουσαν ἀρχὴν καὶ τελευτὴν αὐτὴν καθ᾽ αὑτὴν καὶ
μέγεθος εὐσύνοπτον.
[150] I employ, however unwillingly, the word _thesis_ here
(arsis and thesis) in the sense in which it is used by G. Hermann
(“Illud tempus, in quo ictus est, _arsin_; ea tempora, quæ carent
ictu, _thesin_ vocamus,” Element. Doctr. Metr. sect. 15), and
followed by Boeckh, in his Dissertation on the Metres of Pindar
(i, 4), though I agree with Dr. Barham (in the valuable Preface
to his edition of Hephæstion, Cambridge, 1843, pp. 5-8) that the
opposite sense of the words would be the preferable one, just as
it was the original sense in which they were used by the best
Greek musical writers: Dr. Barham’s Preface is very instructive
on the difficult subject of ancient rhythm generally.
The iambic metre, built upon the primitive iambus, or coarse and
licentious jesting,[151] which formed a part of some Grecian
festivals (especially of the festivals of Dêmêtêr as well in
Attica as in Paros, the native country of the poet), is only one
amongst many new paths struck out by his inventive genius; whose
exuberance astonishes us, when we consider that he takes his start
from little more than the simple hexameter,[152] in which, too, he
was a distinguished composer,—for even of the elegiac verse he is
as likely to have been the inventor as Kallinus, just as he was
the earliest popular and successful composer of table-songs, or
Skolia, though Terpander may have originated some such before him.
The entire loss of his poems, excepting some few fragments, enables
us to recognize little more than one characteristic,—the intense
personality which pervaded them, as well as that coarse, direct,
and out-spoken license, which afterwards lent such terrible effect
to the old comedy at Athens. His lampoons are said to have driven
Lykambês, the father of Neobulê, to hang himself: the latter had been
promised to Archilochus in marriage, but that promise was broken,
and the poet assailed both father and daughter with every species of
calumny.[153] In addition to this disappointment, he was poor, the
son of a slave-mother, and an exile from his country, Paros, to the
unpromising colony of Thasos. The desultory notices respecting him
betray a state of suffering combined with loose conduct which vented
itself sometimes in complaint, sometimes in libellous assault; and
he was at last slain by some whom his muse had thus exasperated.
His extraordinary poetical genius finds but one voice of encomium
throughout antiquity. His triumphal song to Hêraklês was still
popularly sung by the victors at Olympia, near two centuries after
his death, in the days of Pindar; but that majestic and complimentary
poet at once denounces the malignity, and attests the retributive
suffering, of the great Parian iambist.[154]
[151] Homer, Hymn. ad Cererem. 202; Hesychius, v. Γεφυρὶς;
Herodot. v, 83; Diodor. v, 4. There were various gods at whose
festivals scurrility (τωθασμὸς) was a consecrated practice,
seemingly different festivals in different places (Aristot.
Politic. vii, 15, 8).
The reader will understand better what this consecrated
scurrility means by comparing the description of a modern
traveller in the kingdom of Naples (Tour through the Southern
Provinces of the Kingdom of Naples, by Mr. Keppel Craven, London,
1821, ch. xv, p. 287):—
“I returned to Gerace (the site of the ancient Epizephyrian
Lokri) by one of those moonlights which are known only in these
latitudes, and which no pen or pencil can portray. My path lay
along some cornfields, in which the natives were employed in the
last labors of the harvest, and I was not a little surprised to
find myself saluted with a volley of opprobrious epithets and
abusive language, uttered in the most threatening voice, and
accompanied with the most insulting gestures. This extraordinary
custom is of the most remote antiquity, and is observed towards
all strangers during the harvest and vintage seasons; those
who are apprized of it will keep their temper as well as their
presence of mind, as the loss of either would only serve as a
signal for still louder invectives, and prolong a contest in
which success would be as hopeless as undesirable.”
[152] The chief evidence for the rhythmical and metrical changes
introduced by Archilochus is to be found in the 28th chapter of
Plutarch, De Musicâ, pp. 1140-1141, in words very difficult to
understand completely. See Ulrici, Geschichte der Hellenisch.
Poesie, vol. ii, p. 381.
The epigram ascribed to Theokritus (No. 18 in Gaisford’s
Poetæ Minores) shows that the poet had before him hexameter
compositions of Archilochus, as well as lyric:—
ὡς ἐμμελὴς τ᾽ ἔγεντο κἀπιδέξιος
ἐπεά τε ποιεῖν, πρὸς λύραν τ᾽ ἀείδειν
See the article on Archilochus in Welcker’s Kleine Schriften,
pp. 71-82, which has the merit of showing that iambic bitterness
is far from being the only marked feature in his character and
genius.
[153] See Meleager, Epigram. cxix, 3; Horat. Epist. 19, 23, and
Epod. vi, 13 with the Scholiast; Ælian. V. H. x, 13.
[154] Pindar, Pyth. ii, 55; Olymp. ix, 1, with the Scholia;
Euripid. Hercul. Furens, 583-683. The eighteenth epigram of
Theokritus (above alluded to) conveys a striking tribute of
admiration to Archilochus: compare Quintilian, x, 1, and Liebel.
ad Archilochi Fragmenta, sects. 5, 6, 7.
Amidst the multifarious veins in which Archilochus displayed his
genius, moralizing or gnomic poetry is not wanting, while his
contemporary Simonides, of Amorgos, devotes the iambic metre
especially to this destination, afterwards followed out by Solon and
Theognis. But Kallinus, the earliest celebrated elegiac poet, so far
as we can judge from his few fragments, employed the elegiac metre
for exhortations of warlike patriotism; and the more ample remains
which we possess of Tyrtæus are sermons in the same strain, preaching
to the Spartans bravery against the foe, and unanimity as well as
obedience to the law at home. They are patriotic effusions, called
forth by the circumstances of the time, and sung by single voice,
with accompaniment of the flute,[155] to those in whose bosoms the
flame of courage was to be kindled. For though what we peruse is in
verse, we are still in the tide of real and present life, and we
must suppose ourselves rather listening to an orator addressing the
citizens when danger or dissension is actually impending. It is only
in the hands of Mimnermus that elegiac verse comes to be devoted
to soft and amatory subjects. His few fragments present a vein of
passive and tender sentiment, illustrated by appropriate matter of
legend, such as would be cast into poetry in all ages, and quite
different from the rhetoric of Kallinus and Tyrtæus.
[155] Athenæus, xiv, p. 630.
The poetical career of Alkman is again distinct from that of any
of his above-mentioned contemporaries. Their compositions, besides
hymns to the gods, were principally expressions of feeling intended
to be sung by individuals, though sometimes also suited for the
kômus, or band of festive volunteers, assembled on some occasion of
common interest: those of Alkman were principally choric, intended
for the song and accompanying dance of the chorus. He was a native
of Sardis in Lydia, or at least his family were so; and he appears
to have come in early life to Sparta, though his genius and mastery
of the Greek language discountenance the story that he was brought
over to Sparta as a slave. The most ancient arrangement of music at
Sparta, generally ascribed to Terpander,[156] underwent considerable
alteration, not only through the elegiac and anapæstic measures of
Tyrtæus, but also through the Kretan Thalêtas and the Lydian Alkman.
The harp, the instrument of Terpander, was rivalled and in part
superseded by the flute or pipe, which had been recently rendered
more effective in the hands of Olympus, Klonas, and Polymnêstus, and
which gradually became, for compositions intended to raise strong
emotion, the favorite instrument of the two,—being employed as
accompaniment both to the elegies of Tyrtæus, and to the hyporchemata
(songs, or hymns, combined with dancing) of Thalêtas; also, as the
stimulus and regulator to the Spartan military march.[157]
[156] Plutarch, De Musicâ, pp. 1134, 1135; Aristotle, De
Lacedæmon. Republicâ, Fragm. xi, p. 132, ed. Neumann; Plutarch,
De Serâ Numin. Vindict. c. 13, p. 558.
[157] Thucyd. v, 69-70, with the Scholia,—μετὰ τῶν πολεμικῶν
νόμων ... Λακεδαιμόνιοι δὲ βραδέως καὶ ὑπὸ αὐλητῶν πολλῶν νόμῳ
ἐγκαθεστώτων, οὐ τοῦ θείου χάριν, ἀλλ᾽ ἵνα ὁμαλῶς μετὰ ῥυθμοῦ
βαίνοιεν, καὶ μὴ διασπασθείη αὐτοῖς ἡ τάξις.
Cicero, Tuscul. Qu. ii, 16. “Spartiatarum quorum procedit Mora ad
tibiam, neque adhibetur ulla sine anapæstis pedibus hortatio.”
The flute was also the instrument appropriated to Kômus, or the
excited movement of half-intoxicated revellers (Hesiod. Scut.
Hercul. 280; Athenæ. xiv, pp. 617-618).
These elegies (as has been just remarked) were sung by one person,
in the midst of an assembly of listeners, and there were doubtless
other compositions intended for the individual voice. But in general
such was not the character of music and poetry at Sparta; everything
done there, both serious and recreative, was public and collective,
so that the chorus and its performances received extraordinary
development. It has been already stated, that the chorus usually,
with song and dance combined, constituted an important part of
divine service throughout all Greece, and was originally a public
manifestation of the citizens generally,—a large proportion of
them being actively engaged in it,[158] and receiving some training
for the purpose as an ordinary branch of education. Neither the
song nor the dance, under such conditions, could be otherwise than
extremely simple. But in process of time, the performance at the
chief festivals tended to become more elaborate, and to fall into
the hands of persons expressly and professionally trained,—the mass
of the citizens gradually ceasing to take active part, and being
present merely as spectators. Such was the practice which grew up in
most parts of Greece, and especially at Athens, where the dramatic
chorus acquired its highest perfection. But the drama never found
admission at Sparta, and the peculiarity of Spartan life tended much
to keep up the popular chorus on its ancient footing. It formed, in
fact, one element in that never-ceasing drill to which the Spartans
were subject from their boyhood, and it served a purpose analogous
to their military training, in accustoming them to simultaneous and
regulated movement,—insomuch that the comparison between the chorus,
especially in its Pyrrhic, or war-dances, and the military enomoty,
seems to have been often dwelt upon.[159] In the singing of the
solemn pæan in honor of Apollo, at the festival of the Hyakinthia,
king Agesilaus was under the orders of the chorus-master, and sang
in the place allotted to him;[160] while the whole body of Spartans
without exception,—the old, the middle-aged, and the youth, the
matrons, and the virgins,—were distributed in various choric
companies,[161] and trained to harmony both of voice and motion,
which was publicly exhibited at the solemnities of the Gymnopædiæ.
The word _dancing_ must be understood in a larger sense than that
in which it is now employed, and as comprising every variety of
rhythmical, accentuated, conspiring movements, or gesticulations,
or postures of the body, from the slowest to the quickest;[162]
cheironomy, or the decorous and expressive movement of the hands,
being especially practised.
[158] Plato, Legg. vii, p. 803. θύοντα καὶ ᾅδοντα καὶ ὀρχούμενον,
ὥστε τοὺς μὲν θεοὺς ἱλέως αὑτῷ παρασκευάζειν δυνατὸν εἶναι,
etc.: compare p. 799; Maximus Tyr. Diss. xxxvii, 4: Aristophan.
Ran. 950-975; Athenæus, xiv, p. 626; Polyb. iv, 30; Lucian, De
Saltatione, c. 10, 11, 16, 31.
Compare Aristotle (Problem xix, 15) about the primitive character
and subsequent change of the chorus; and the last chapter of the
eighth book of his Politica: also, a striking passage in Plutarch
(De Cupidine Divitiarum, c. 8, p. 527) about the transformation
of the Dionysiac festival at Chæroneia from simplicity to
costliness.
[159] Athenæus, xiv, p. 628; Suidas, vol. iii, p. 715, ed.
Kuster; Plutarch, Instituta Laconica, c. 32,—κωμῳδίας καὶ
τραγῳδίας οὐκ ἠκρόωντο, ὅπως μήτε ἐν σπουδῇ, μήτε ἐν παιδίᾳ,
ἀκούωσι τῶν ἀντιλεγόντων τοῖς νόμοις,—which exactly corresponds
with the ethical view implied in the alleged conversation between
Solon and Thespis (Plutarch, Solon, c. 29: see above, ch. xi,
vol. ii, p. 195), and with Plato, Legg. vii, p. 817.
[160] Xenophon, Agesilaus ii, 17. οἴκαδε ἀπελθὼν εἰς τὰ Ὑακίνθια,
ὅπου ἐτάχθη ὑπὸ τοῦ χοροποιοῦ, τὸν παιᾶνα τῷ θεῷ συνεπετέλει.
[161] Plutarch, Lykurg. c. 14, 16, 21: Athenæus, xiv, pp.
631-632, xv, p. 678; Xenophon, Hellen. vi, 4, 15; De Republic.
Lacedæm. ix, 5; Pindar, Hyporchemata, Fragm. 78, ed. Bergk.
Λάκαινα μὲν παρθένων ἀγέλα.
Also, Alkman, Fragm. 13, ed. Bergk; Antigon. Caryst. Hist. Mirab.
c. 27.
[162] How extensively pantomimic the ancient orchêsis was, may be
seen by the example in Xenophon, Symposion, vii, 5, ix, 3-6, and
Plutarch, Symposion, ix, 15, 2: see K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der
gottesdienstlichen Alterthümer der Griechen, ch. 29.
“Sane ut in religionibus saltaretur, hæc ratio est: quod nullam
majores nostri partem corporis esse voluerunt, quæ non sentiret
religionem: nam cantus ad animum, saltatio ad mobilitatem
corporis pertinet.” (Servius ad Virgil. Eclog. v, 73.)
We see thus that both at Sparta and in Krête (which approached in
respect to publicity of individual life most nearly to Sparta),
the choric aptitudes and manifestations occupied a larger space
than in any other Grecian city. And as a certain degree of musical
and rhythmical variety was essential to meet this want,[163] while
music was never taught to Spartan citizens individually,—we farther
understand how strangers like Terpander, Polymnêstus, Thalêtas,
Tyrtæus, Alkman, etc., were not only received, but acquired great
influence at Sparta, in spite of the preponderant spirit of jealous
seclusion in the Spartan character. All these masters appear to
have been effective in their own special vocation,—the training of
the chorus,—to which they imparted new rhythmical action, and for
which they composed new music. But Alkman did this, and something
more; he possessed the genius of a poet, and his compositions were
read afterwards with pleasure by those who could not hear them
sung or see them danced. In the little of his poems which remains,
we recognize that variety of rhythm and metre for which he was
celebrated. In this respect he (together with the Kretan Thalêtas,
who is said to have introduced a more vehement style both of music
and dance, with the Kretic and Pæonic rhythm, into Sparta[164])
surpassed Archilochus, and prepared the way for the complicated
choric movements of Stesichorus and Pindar: some of the fragments,
too, manifest that fresh outpouring of individual sentiment and
emotion which constitutes so much of the charm of popular poetry.
Besides his touching address in old age to the Spartan virgins, over
whose song and dance he had been accustomed to preside.—he is not
afraid to speak of his hearty appetite, satisfied with simple food
and relishing a bowl of warm broth at the winter tropic.[165] And
he has attached to the spring an epithet, which comes home to the
real feelings of a poor country more than those captivating pictures
which abound in verse, ancient as well as modern: he calls it “the
season of short fare,”—the crop of the previous year being then
nearly consumed, the husbandman is compelled to pinch himself until
his new harvest comes in.[166] Those who recollect that in earlier
periods of our history, and in all countries where there is little
accumulated stock, an exorbitant difference is often experienced in
the price of corn before and after the harvest, will feel the justice
of Alkman’s description.
[163] Aristot. Politic. viii, 4, 6. Οἱ Λάκωνες—~οὐ μανθάνοντες
ὅμως~ δύνανται κρίνειν ὀρθῶς, ὥς φασι, τὰ χρηστὰ καὶ τὰ μὴ τῶν
μέλων.
[164] Homer. Hymn. Apoll. 340. Οἷοί τε Κρητῶν παιήονες, etc.: see
Boeckh. De Metris Pindari, ii, 7, p. 143; Ephorus ap. Strabo, x,
p. 480: Plutarch, De Musicâ, p. 1142.
Respecting Thalêtas, and the gradual alterations in the character
of music at Sparta. Hoeckh has given much instructive matter
(Kreta. vol. iii, pp. 340-377). Respecting Nymphæus of Kydonia,
whom Ælian (V. II. xii, 50) puts in juxtaposition with Thalêtas
and Terpander, nothing is known.
After what is called the second fashion of music (κατάστασις)
had thus been introduced by Thalêtas and his contemporaries.—the
first fashion being that of Terpander,—no farther innovations
were allowed. The ephors employed violent means to prohibit the
intended innovations of Phrynis and Timotheus, after the Persian
war: see Plutarch Agis, c. 10.
[165] Alkman. Fragm. 13-17. ed. Bergk, ὁ πάμφαγος Ἀλκμάν:
compare Fr. 63. Aristides calls him ὁ τῶν παρθένων ἐπαινέτης καὶ
σύμβουλος (Or. xlv, vol. ii, p. 40. Dindorf).
Of the Partneneia of Alkman (songs, hymns, and dances, composed
for a chorus of maidens) there were at least two books (Stephanus
Byzant. v. Ἐρυσίχη). He was the earliest poet who acquired renown
in this species of composition, afterwards much pursued by
Pindar, Bacchylidês, and Simonidês of Keôs: see Welcker, Alkman.
Fragment. p. 10.
[166] Alkman, Frag. 64, ed. Bergk.
Ὥρας δ᾽ ἐσῆκε τρεῖς, θέρος
Καὶ χεῖμα κ᾽ ὠπώραν τρίταν·
Καὶ τέτρατον τὸ ἦρ, ὅκα
Σάλλει μὲν, ἐσθίειν δ᾽ ἄδαν
Οὐκ ἐστί.
Judging from these and from a few other fragments of this poet,
Alkman appears to have combined the life and exciting vigor of
Archilochus in the song properly so called, sung by himself
individually,—with a larger knowledge of musical and rhythmical
effect in regard to the choric performance. He composed in the
Laconian dialect,—a variety of the Doric with some intermixture of
Æolisms. And it was from him, jointly with those other composers who
figured at Sparta during the century after Terpander, as well as
from the simultaneous development of the choric muse[167] in Argos,
Sikyôn, Arcadia, and other parts of Peloponnesus, that the Doric
dialect acquired permanent footing in Greece, as the only proper
dialect for choric compositions. Continued by Stesichorus and Pindar,
this habit passed even to the Attic dramatists, whose choric songs
are thus in a great measure Doric, while their dialogue is Attic. At
Sparta, as well as in other parts of Peloponnesus,[168] the musical
and rhythmical style appears to have been fixed by Alkman and his
contemporaries, and to have been tenaciously maintained, for two or
three centuries, with little or no innovation; the more so, as the
flute-players at Sparta formed an hereditary profession, who followed
the routine of their fathers.[169]
[167] Plutarch, De Musicâ, c. 9, p. 1134. About the dialect of
Alkman, see Ahrens, De Dialecto Æolicâ, sects. 2, 4; about his
different metres, Welcker, Alkman. Fragm. pp. 10-12.
[168] Plutarch, De Musicâ, c. 32, p. 1142, c. 37, p. 1144;
Athenæus, xiv, p. 632. In Krête, also, the popularity of the
primitive musical composers was maintained, though along with the
innovator Timotheus: see Inscription No. 3053, ap. Boeckh, Corp.
Ins.
[169] Herodot. vi, 60. They were probably a γένος with an heroic
progenitor, like the heralds, to whom the historian compares
them.
Alkman was the last poet who addressed himself to the popular chorus.
Both Arion and Stesichorus composed for a body of trained men, with
a degree of variety and involution such as could not be attained
by a mere fraction of the people. The primitive dithyrambus was a
round choric dance and song in honor of Dionysus,[170] common to
Naxos, Thebes, and seemingly to many other places, at the Dionysiac
festival,—a spontaneous effusion of drunken men in the hour of
revelry, wherein the poet Archilochus, “with the thunder of wine full
upon his mind,” had often taken the chief part.[171] Its exciting
character approached to the worship of the Great Mother in Asia,
and stood in contrast with the solemn and stately pæan addressed to
Apollo. Arion introduced into it an alteration such as Archilochus
had himself brought about in the scurrilous iambus. He converted it
into an elaborate composition in honor of the god, sung and danced
by a chorus of fifty persons, not only sober, but trained with great
strictness; though its rhythm and movements, and its equipment in
the character of satyrs, presented more or less an imitation of
the primitive license. Born at Methymna in Lesbos, Arion appears
as a harper, singer, and composer, much favored by Periander at
Corinth, in which city he first “composed, denominated, and taught
the dithyramb,” earlier than any one known to Herodotus.[172] He did
not, however, remain permanently there, but travelled from city to
city, exhibiting at the festivals for money,—especially to Sicilian
and Italian Greece, where he acquired large gains. We may here again
remark how the poets as well as the festivals served to promote a
sentiment of unity among the dispersed Greeks. Such transfer of the
dithyramb, from the field of spontaneous nature into the garden of
art,[173] constitutes the first stage in the refinement of Dionysiac
worship; which will hereafter be found still farther exalted in the
form of the Attic drama.
[170] Pindar, Fragm. 44, ed. Bergk: Schol. ad Pindar. Olymp.
xiii, 25; Proclus, Chrestomathia, c. 12-14. ad calc. Hephæst.
Gaisf. p. 382: compare W. M. Schmidt, In Dithyrambum Poetarumque
Dithyrambicorum Reliquias, pp. 171-183 (Berlin, 1845).
[171] Archiloch. Fragm. 72, ed. Bergk.
Ὡς Διωνύσου ἄνακτος καλὸν ἐξάρξαι μέλος
Οἶδα διθύραμβον, οἴνῳ ξυγκεραυνωθεὶς φρένας.
The old oracle quoted in Demosthen. cont. Meidiam, about the
Dionysia at Athens, enjoins—Διονύσῳ δημοτελῆ ἱερὰ τελεῖν, ~καὶ
κρατῆρα κεράσαι~, καὶ χοροὺς ἱστάναι.
[172] Herodot. i, 23; Suidas, v. Ἀρίων; Pindar, Olymp. xiii, 25.
[173] Aristot. Poetic. c. 6, ἐγέννησαν τὴν ποίησιν ἐκ τῶν
αὐτοσχεδιασμάτων; again, to the same effect, _ibid._ c. 9.
The date of Arion seems about 600 B. C., shortly after Alkman:
that of Stesichorus is a few years later. To the latter the Greek
chorus owed a high degree of improvement, and in particular the
last finished distribution of its performance into the strophê, the
antistrophê, and the epôdus: the turn, the return, and the rest,—the
rhythm and metre of the song during each strophê corresponded with
that during the antistrophê, but was varied during the epôdus,
and again varied during the following strophês. Until this time
the song had been monostrophic, consisting of nothing more than
one uniform stanza, repeated from the beginning to the end of the
composition;[174] so that we may easily see how vast was the new
complication and difficulty introduced by Stesichorus,—not less
for the performers than for the composer, himself at that time
the teacher and trainer of performers. Both this poet and his
contemporary the flute-player Sakadas of Argos,—who gained the prize
at the first three Pythian games founded after the Sacred War,—seem
to have surpassed their predecessors in the breadth of subject which
they embraced, borrowing from the inexhaustible province of ancient
legend, and expanding the choric song into a well-sustained epical
narrative.[175] Indeed, these Pythian games opened a new career to
musical composers just at the time when Sparta began to be closed
against musical novelties.
[174] Alkman slightly departed from this rule: in one of his
compositions of fourteen strophês, the last seven were in a
different metre from the first seven (Hephæstion, c. xv, p. 134,
Gaisf.; Hermann, Elementa Doctrin. Metricæ, c. xvii, sect. 595).
Ἀλκμανικὴ καινοτομία καὶ Στησιχόρειος (Plutarch, De Musicâ, p.
1135).
[175] Pausanias, vi, 14, 4; x, 7, 3. Sakadas, as well as
Stesichorus, composed an Ἰλίου πέρσις (Athenæus, xiii, p. 609).
“Stesichorum (observes Quintilian, x, 1) quam sit ingenio
validus, materiæ quoque ostendunt, maxima bella et clarissimos
canentem duces, et epici carminis onera lyrâ sustinentem. Reddit
enim personis in agendo simul loquendoque debitam dignitatem: ac
si tenuisset modum, videtur æmulari proximus Homerum potuisse:
sed redundat, atque effunditur: quod, ut est reprehendendum, ita
copiæ vitium est.”
Simonidês of Keôs (Frag. 19. ed. Bergk) puts Homer and
Stesichorus together: see the epigram of Antipater in the
Anthologia, t. i, p. 328, ed. Jacobs, and Dio Chrysostom. Or. 55,
vol. ii, p. 284, Reisk. Compare Kleine, Stesichori Fragment. pp.
30-34 (Berlin 1828), and O. Müller, History of the Literature of
Ancient Greece, ch. xiv, sect. 5.
The musical composers of Argos are affirmed by Herodotus to have
been the most renowned in Greece, half a century after Sakadas
(Her. iii, 131).
Alkæus and Sappho, both natives of Lesbos, appear about
contemporaries with Arion, B. C. 610-580. Of their once celebrated
lyric compositions, scarcely anything remains. But the criticisms
which are preserved on both of them place them in strong contrast
with Alkman, who lived and composed under the more restrictive
atmosphere of Sparta,—and in considerable analogy with the turbulent
vehemence of Archilochus,[176] though without his intense private
malignity. Both composed for their own local audience, and in their
own Lesbian Æolic dialect; not because there was any peculiar fitness
in that dialect to express their vein of sentiment, but because
it was more familiar to their hearers. Sappho herself boasts of
the preëminence of the Lesbian bards;[177] and the celebrity of
Terpander, Perikleitas, and Arion, permits us to suppose that there
may have been before her many popular bards in the island who did
not attain to Hellenic celebrity. Alkæus included in his songs the
fiercest bursts of political feeling, the stirring alternations of
war and exile, and all the ardent relish of a susceptible man for
wine and love.[178] The love-song seems to have formed the principal
theme of Sappho, who, however, also composed odes or songs[179] on
a great variety of other subjects, serious as well as satirical,
and is said farther to have first employed the Mixolydian mode
in music. It displays the tendency of the age to metrical and
rhythmical novelty, that Alkæus and Sappho are said to have each
invented the peculiar stanza, well-known under their respective
names,—combinations of the dactyl, trochee, and iambus, analogous
to the asynartetic verses of Archilochus; they by no means confined
themselves, however, to Alkaic and Sapphic metre. Both the one
and the other composed hymns to the gods; indeed, this is a theme
common to all the lyric and choric poets, whatever may be their
peculiarities in other ways. Most of their compositions were songs
for the single voice, not for the chorus. The poetry of Alkæus is the
more worthy of note, as it is the earliest instance of the employment
of the Muse in actual political warfare, and shows the increased hold
which that motive was acquiring on the Grecian mind.
[176] Horat. Epistol. i, 19, 23.
[177] Sappho, Fragm. 93, ed. Bergk. See also Plehn, Lesbiaca,
pp. 145-165. Respecting the poetesses, two or three of whom were
noted, contemporary with Sappho, see Ulrici, Gesch. der Hellen.
Poesie, vol. ii, p. 370.
[178] Dionys. Hal. Ant. Rom. v, 82; Horat. Od. i, 32, ii, 13;
Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i, 28; the striking passage in Plutarch,
Symposion iii, 1, 3, ap. Bergk. Fragm. 42. In the view of
Dionysius, the Æolic dialect of Alkæus and Sappho diminished the
value of their compositions: the Æolic accent, analogous to the
Latin, and acknowledging scarcely any oxyton words, must have
rendered them much less agreeable in recitation or song.
[179] See Plutarch, De Music. p. 1136; Dionys. Hal. de Comp.
Verb. c. 23, p. 173, Reisk, and some striking passages of
Himerius, in respect to Sappho (i, 4, 16, 19; Maximus Tyrius,
Dissert. xxiv, 7-9), and the encomium of the critical Dionysius
(De Compos. Verborum, c. 23, p. 173).
The author of the Parian marble adopts, as one of his
chronological epochs (Epoch 37), the flight of Sappho, or exile,
from Mitylênê to Sicily somewhere between 604-596 B. C. There
probably was something remarkable which induced him to single out
this event; but we do not know what, nor can we trust the hints
suggested by Ovid (Heroid. xv, 51).
Nine books of Sappho’s songs were collected by the later literary
Greeks, arranged chiefly according to the metres (C. F. Neue,
Sapphonis Fragm. p. 11, Berlin 1827). There were ten books of the
songs of Alkæus (Athenæus, xi, p. 481), and both Aristophanês
(Grammaticus) and Aristarchus published editions of them.
(Hephæstion, c. xv, p. 134, Gaisf.) Dikæarchus wrote a commentary
upon his songs (Athenæus, xi, p. 461).
The gnomic poets, or moralists in verse, approach by the tone of
their sentiments more to the nature of prose. They begin with
Simonidês of Amorgos or of Samos, the contemporary of Archilochus:
indeed, the latter himself devoted some compositions to the
illustrative fable, which had not been unknown even to Hesiod. In
the remains of Simonidês of Amorgos we trace nothing relative to the
man personally, though he too, like Archilochus, is said to have had
an individual enemy, Orodœkidês, whose character was aspersed by his
muse.[180] His only considerable poem extant is devoted to a survey
of the characters of women, in iambic verse, and by way of comparison
with various animals,—the mare, the ass, the bee, etc. It follows
out the Hesiodic vein respecting the social and economical mischief
usually caused by women, with some few honorable exceptions; but the
poet shows a much larger range of observation and illustration, if we
compare him with his predecessor Hesiod; moreover, his illustrations
come fresh from life and reality. We find in this early iambist the
same sympathy with industry and its due rewards which are observable
in Hesiod, together with a still more melancholy sense of the
uncertainty of human events.
[180] Welcker, Simonidis Amorgini Iambi qui supersunt, p. 9.
Of Solon and Theognis I have spoken in former chapters. They
reproduce in part the moralizing vein of Simonidês, though with
a strong admixture of personal feeling and a direct application
to passing events. The mixture of political with social morality,
which we find in both, marks their more advanced age: Solon bears
in this respect the same relation to Simonidês, as his contemporary
Alkæus bears to Archilochus. His poems, as far as we can judge
by the fragments remaining, appear to have been short occasional
effusions,—with the exception of the epic poem respecting the
submerged island of Atlantis; which he began towards the close of
his life, but never finished. They are elegiac, trimeter iambic, and
trochaic tetrameter: in his hands certainly neither of these metres
can be said to have any special or separate character. If the poems
of Solon are short, those of Theognis are much shorter, and are
indeed so much broken (as they stand in our present collection), as
to read like separate epigrams or bursts of feeling, which the poet
had not taken the trouble to incorporate in any definite scheme or
series. They form a singular mixture of maxim and passion,—of general
precept with personal affection towards the youth Kyrnus,—which
surprises us if tried by the standard of literary composition, but
which seems a very genuine manifestation of an impoverished exile’s
complaints and restlessness. What remains to us of Phokylidês,
another of the gnomic poets nearly contemporary with Solon, is
nothing more than a few maxims in verse,—couplets, with the name of
the author in several cases embodied in them.
Amidst all the variety of rhythmical and metrical innovations which
have been enumerated, the ancient epic continued to be recited by the
rhapsodes as before, and some new epical compositions were added to
the existing stock: Eugammon of Kyrênê, about the 50th Olympiad, (580
B. C.) appears to be the last of the series. At Athens, especially,
both Solon and Peisistratus manifested great solicitude as well
for the recitation as for the correct preservation of the Iliad.
Perhaps its popularity may have been diminished by the competition
of so much lyric and choric poetry, more showy and striking in
its accompaniments, as well as more changeful in its rhythmical
character. Whatever secondary effect, however, this newer species
of poetry may have derived from such helps, its primary effect
was produced by real intellectual or poetical excellence,—by the
thoughts, sentiment, and expression, not by the accompaniment. For
a long time the musical composer and the poet continued generally
to be one and the same person; and besides those who have acquired
sufficient distinction to reach posterity, we cannot doubt that there
were many known only to their own contemporaries. But with all of
them the instrument and the melody constituted only the inferior part
of that which was known by the name of music,—altogether subordinate
to the “thoughts that breathe and words that burn.”[181] Exactness
and variety of rhythmical pronunciation gave to the latter their
full effect upon a delicate ear; but such pleasure of the ear was
ancillary to the emotion of mind arising out of the sense conveyed.
Complaints are made by the poets, even so early as 500 B. C., that
the accompaniment was becoming too prominent. But it was not until
the age of the comic poet Aristophanês, towards the end of the fifth
century B. C., that the primitive relation between the instrumental
accompaniment and the words was really reversed,—and loud were the
complaints to which it gave rise;[182] the performance of the flute
or harp then became more elaborate, showy, and overpowering, while
the words were so put together as to show off the player’s execution.
I notice briefly this subsequent revolution for the purpose of
setting forth, by contrast, the truly intellectual character of the
original lyric and choric poetry of Greece; and of showing how much
the vague sentiment arising from mere musical sound was lost in the
more definite emotion, and in the more lasting and reproductive
combinations, generated by poetical meaning.
[181] Aristophan. Nubes, 536.
Ἀλλ᾽ αὑτῇ καὶ τοῖς ἔπεσιν πιστεύουσ᾽ ἐλήλυθεν.
[182] See Pratinas ap. Athenæum, xiv, p. 617, also p. 636, and
the striking fragment of the lost comic poet Pherekratês, in
Plutarch, De Musicâ, p. 1141, containing the bitter remonstrance
of _Music_ (Μουσικὴ) against the wrong which she had suffered
from the dithyrambist Melanippidês: compare also Aristophanês,
Nubes, 951-972; Athenæus, xiv, p. 617; Horat. Art. Poetic. 205;
and W. M. Schmidt, Diatribê in Dithyrambum, ch. viii, pp. 250-265.
Τὸ σοβαρὸν καὶ περιττὸν—the character of the newer music
(Plutarch, Agis, c. 10)—as contrasted with τὸ σεμνὸν καὶ
ἀπερίεργον of the old music (Plutarch, De Musicâ, _ut sup._):
ostentation and affected display, against seriousness and
simplicity. It is by no means certain that these reproaches
against the more recent music of the Greeks were well founded;
we may well be rendered mistrustful of their accuracy when we
hear similar remarks and contrasts advanced with regard to the
music of our last three centuries. The character of Greek poetry
certainly tended to degenerate after Euripidês.
The name and poetry of Solon, and the short maxims, or sayings,
of Phokylidês, conduct us to the mention of the Seven Wise Men of
Greece. Solon was himself one of the seven, and most if not all
of them were poets, or composers in verse.[183] To most of them
is ascribed also an abundance of pithy repartees, together with
one short saying, or maxim, peculiar to each, serving as a sort of
distinctive motto;[184] indeed, the test of an accomplished man
about this time was his talent for singing or reciting poetry, and
for making smart and ready answers. Respecting this constellation
of wise men,—who in the next century of Grecian history, when
philosophy came to be a matter of discussion and argumentation,
were spoken of with great eulogy,—all the statements are confused,
in part even contradictory. Neither the number, nor the names, are
given by all authors alike. Dikæarchus numbered ten, Hermippus
seventeen: the names of Solon the Athenian, Thalês the Milesian,
Pittakus the Mitylenean, and Bias the Prienean, were comprised in
all the lists,—and the remaining names as given by Plato[185] were,
Kleobulus of Lindus in Rhodes, Myson of Chênæ, and Cheilon of Sparta.
By others, however, the names are differently stated: nor can we
certainly distribute among them the sayings, or mottoes, upon which
in later days the Amphiktyons conferred the honor of inscription
in the Delphian temple: Know thyself,—Nothing too much,—Know thy
opportunity,—Suretyship is the precursor of ruin. Bias is praised
as an excellent judge, and Myson was declared by the Delphian
oracle to be the most discreet man among the Greeks, according to
the testimony of the satirical poet Hippônax. This is the oldest
testimony (540 B. C.) which can be produced in favor of any of the
seven; but Kleobulus of Lindus, far from being universally extolled,
is pronounced by the poet Simonidês to be a fool.[186] Dikæarchus,
however, justly observed, that these seven or ten persons were not
wise men, or philosophers, in the sense which those words bore in his
day, but persons of practical discernment in reference to man and
society,[187]—of the same turn of mind as their contemporary the
fabulist Æsop, though not employing the same mode of illustration.
Their appearance forms an epoch in Grecian history, inasmuch as
they are the first persons who ever acquired an Hellenic reputation
grounded on mental competency apart from poetical genius or effect,—a
proof that political and social prudence was beginning to be
appreciated and admired on its own account. Solon, Pittakus, Bias,
and Thalês, were all men of influence—the first two even men of
ascendency,[188]—in their respective cities. Kleobulus was despot
of Lindus, and Periander (by some numbered among the seven) of
Corinth. Thalês stands distinguished as the earliest name in physical
philosophy, with which the other contemporary wise men are not said
to have meddled; their celebrity rests upon moral, social, and
political wisdom exclusively, which came into greater honor as the
ethical feeling of the Greeks improved and as their experience became
enlarged.
[183] Bias of Priênê composed a poem of two thousand verses,
on the condition of Ionia (Diogen. Laërt. i, 85), from which,
perhaps, Herodotus may have derived, either directly or
indirectly, the judicious advice which he ascribes to that
philosopher on the occasion of the first Persian conquest of
Ionia (Herod. i, 170).
Not merely Xenophanês the philosopher (Diogen. Laërt. viii, 36,
ix, 20), but long after him Parmenidês and Empedoklês, composed
in verse.
[184] See the account given by Herodotus (vi, 128-129) of the
way in which Kleisthenês of Sikyon tested the comparative
education (παίδευσις) of the various suitors who came to woo
his daughter,—οἱ δὲ μνήστηρες ἔριν εἶχον ἀμφί τε μουσικῇ καὶ τῷ
λεγομένῳ ἐς τὸ μέσον.
[185] Plato, Protagoras, c. 28, p. 343.
[186] Hippônax, Fragm. 77, 34, ed. Bergk—καὶ δικάσσασθαι Βίαντος
τοῦ Πριηνέος κρείττων.
... Καὶ Μύσων, ὃν ὡς πολλὼν
Ἀνεῖπεν ἀνδρῶν σωφρονέστατον πάντων.
Simonidês. Fr. 6, ed. Bergk—μωροῦ φωτὸς ἅδε βουλά. Diogen. Laërt.
i, 6, 2.
Simonidês treats Pittakus with more respect, though questioning
an opinion delivered by him (Fragm. 8, ed. Bergk; Plato,
Protagoras, c. 26, p. 339).
[187] Dikæarchus ap. Diogen. Laërt. i. 40. συνετοὺς καὶ
νομοθετικοὺς δεινότητα πολιτικὴν καὶ δραστήριον σύνεσιν.
Plutarch, Themistoklês, c. 2.
About the story of the tripod, which is said to have gone the
round of these Seven Wise Men, see Menage ad Diogen. Laërt. i,
28, p. 17.
[188] Cicero, De Republ. i, 7; Plutarch, in Delph. p. 385;
Bernhardy, Grundriss der Griechischen Litteratur, vol. i, sect.
66, not. 3.
In these celebrated names we have social philosophy in its early
and infantine state,—in the shape of homely sayings or admonitions,
either supposed to be self-evident, or to rest upon some great
authority divine or human, but neither accompanied by reasons nor
recognizing any appeal to inquiry and discussion as the proper
test of their rectitude. From such unsuspecting acquiescence,
the sentiment to which these admonitions owe their force, we are
partially liberated even in the poet Simonidês of Keôs, who (as
before alluded to) severely criticizes the song of Kleobulus as well
as its author. The half-century which followed the age of Simonidês
(the interval between about 480-430 B. C.) broke down that sentiment
more and more, by familiarizing the public with argumentative
controversy in the public assembly, the popular judicature, and even
on the dramatic stage. And the increased self-working of the Grecian
mind, thus created, manifested itself in Sokratês, who laid open all
ethical and social doctrines to the scrutiny of reason, and who first
awakened among his countrymen that love of dialectics which never
left them,—an analytical interest in the mental process of inquiring
out, verifying, proving, and expounding truth. To this capital item
of human progress, secured through the Greeks—and through them
only—to mankind generally, our attention will be called at a later
period of the history; at present, it is only mentioned in contrast
with the naked, dogmatical laconism of the Seven Wise Men, and with
the simple enforcement of the early poets: a state in which morality
has a certain place in the feelings,—but no root, even among the
superior minds, in the conscious exercise of reason.
The interval between Archilochus and Solon (660-580 B. C.) seems,
as has been remarked in my former volume, to be the period in which
writing first came to be applied to Greek poems,—to the Homeric poems
among the number; and shortly after the end of that period, commences
the era of compositions without metre or prose. The philosopher
Pherekydês of Syros, about 550 B. C., is called by some the earliest
prose-writer; but no prose-writer for a considerable time afterwards
acquired any celebrity,—seemingly none earlier than Hekatæus of
Milêtus,[189] about 510-490 B. C.,—prose being a subordinate and
ineffective species of composition, not always even perspicuous,
but requiring no small practice before the power was acquired of
rendering it interesting.[190] Down to the generation preceding
Sokratês, the poets continued to be the grand leaders of the Greek
mind: until then, nothing was taught to youth except to read, to
remember, to recite musically and rhythmically, and to comprehend
poetical composition. The comments of preceptors, addressed to their
pupils, may probably have become fuller and more instructive, but the
text still continued to be epic or lyric poetry. We must recollect
also that these poets, so enunciated, were the best masters for
acquiring a full command of the complicated accent and rhythm of
the Greek language,—essential to an educated man in ancient times,
and sure to be detected if not properly acquired. Not to mention
the Choliambist Hippônax, who seems to have been possessed with the
devil of Archilochus, and in part also with his genius,—Anakreon,
Ibykus, Pindar, Bacchylidês, Simonidês, and the dramatists of Athens,
continue the line of eminent poets without intermission. After the
Persian war, the requirements of public speaking created a class of
rhetorical teachers, while the gradual spread of physical philosophy
widened the range of instruction: so that prose composition, for
speech or for writing, occupied a larger and larger share of the
attention of men, and was gradually wrought up to high perfection,
such as we see for the first time in Herodotus. But before it became
thus improved, and acquired that style which was the condition of
wide-spread popularity, we may be sure that it had been silently
used as a means of recording information; and that neither the large
mass of geographical matter contained in the Periegêsis of Hekatæus,
nor the map first prepared by his contemporary, Anaximander, could
have been presented to the world, without the previous labors of
unpretending prose writers, who set down the mere results of their
own experience. The acquisition of prose-writing, commencing as it
does about the age of Peisistratus, is not less remarkable as an
evidence of past, than as a means of future, progress.
[189] Pliny, H. N. vii, 57. Suidas v. Ἑκαταῖος.
[190] H. Ritter (Geschichte der Philosophie, ch. vi, p. 243) has
some good remarks on the difficulty and obscurity of the early
Greek prose-writers, in reference to the darkness of expression
and meaning universally charged upon the philosopher Herakleitus.
Of that splendid genius in sculpture and architecture, which shone
forth in Greece after the Persian invasion, the first lineaments
only are discoverable between 600-560 B. C., in Corinth, Ægina,
Samos, Chios, Ephesus, etc.,—enough, however, to give evidence
of improvement and progress. Glaukus of Chios is said to have
discovered the art of welding iron, and Rhœkus, or his son Theodôrus
of Samos, the art of casting copper or brass in a mould: both these
discoveries, as far as can be made out, appear to date a little
before 600 B. C.[191] The primitive memorial, erected in honor of
a god, did not even pretend to be an image, but was often nothing
more than a pillar, a board, a shapeless stone, a post, etc., fixed
so as to mark and consecrate the locality, and receiving from the
neighborhood respectful care and decoration, as well as worship.
Sometimes there was a real statue, though of the rudest character,
carved in wood; and the families of carvers,—who, from father to
son, exercised this profession, represented in Attica by the name of
Dædalus, and in the Ægina by the name of Smilis,—adhered long, with
strict exactness, to the consecrated type of each particular god.
Gradually, the wish grew up to change the material, as well as to
correct the rudeness, of such primitive idols; sometimes the original
wood was retained as the material, but covered in part with ivory
or gold,—in other cases, marble or metal was substituted. Dipœnos
and Skyllis of Krête acquired renown as workers in marble, about
the 50th Olympiad (580 B. C.), and from them downwards a series of
names may be traced, more or less distinguished; moreover, it seems
about the same period that the earliest temple-offerings, in works
of art, properly so called, commence,—the golden statue of Zeus, and
the large carved chest, dedicated by the Kypselids of Corinth at
Olympia.[192] The pious associations, however, connected with the
old type were so strong, that the hand of the artist was greatly
restrained in dealing with statues of the gods. It was in statues of
men, especially in those of the victors at Olympia and other sacred
games, that genuine ideas of beauty were first aimed at and in part
attained, from whence they passed afterwards to the statues of the
gods. Such statues of the athletes seem to commence somewhere between
Olympiad 53-58, (568-548 B. C.).
[191] See O. Müller, Archäologie der Kunst, sect. 61; Sillig.
Catalogus Artificium,—under Theodôrus and Teleklês.
Thiersch (Epochen der Bildenden Kunst, pp. 182-190, 2nd edit.)
places Rhœkus near the beginning of the recorded Olympiads;
and supposes two artists named Theodôrus, one the grandson of
the other; but this seems to me not sustained by any adequate
authority (for the loose chronology of Pliny about the Samian
school of artists is not more trustworthy than about the
Chian school,—compare xxxv, 12, and xxxvi, 3), and, moreover,
intrinsically improbable. Herodotus (i, 51) speaks of “_the_
Samian Theodôrus,” and seems to have known only one person so
called: Diodôrus (i, 98) and Pausanias (x, 38, 3) give different
accounts of Theodôrus, but the positive evidence does not enable
us to verify the genealogies either of Thiersch or O. Müller.
Herodotus (iv, 152) mentions the Ἡραῖον at Samos in connection
with events near Olymp. 37; but this does not prove that the
great temple which he himself saw, a century and a half later,
had been begun before Olymp. 37, as Thiersch would infer. The
statement of O. Müller, that this temple was begun in Olymp. 35,
is not authenticated (Arch. der Kunst. sect. 53).
[192] Pausanias tells us distinctly that this chest was dedicated
at Olympia by the Kypselids, descendants of Kypselus; and this
seems credible enough. But he also tells us that this was the
identical chest in which the infant Kypselus had been concealed,
believing the story as told in Herodotus (v, 92). In this latter
belief I cannot go along with him, nor do I think that there is
any evidence for believing the chest to have been of more ancient
date than the persons who dedicated it,—in spite of the opinions
of O. Müller and Thiersch to the contrary (O. Müller, Archäol.
der Kunst, sect. 57; Thiersch, Epochen der Griechischen Kunst, p.
169, 2nd edit.: Pausan. v, 17, 2).
Nor is it until the same interval of time (between 600-550 B.
C.) that we find any traces of these architectural monuments, by
which the more important cities in Greece afterwards attracted
to themselves so much renown. The two greatest temples in Greece
known to Herodotus were, the Artemision at Ephesus, and the Heræon
at Samos: the former of these seems to have been commenced, by
the Samian Theodorus, about 600 B. C.,—the latter, begun by the
Samian Rhœkus, can hardly be traced to any higher antiquity. The
first attempts to decorate Athens by such additions proceeded from
Peisistratus and his sons, near the same time. As far as we can
judge, too, in the absence of all direct evidence, the temples of
Pæstum in Italy and Selinus in Sicily seem to fall in this same
century. Of painting, during these early centuries, nothing can
be affirmed; it never at any time reached the same perfection as
sculpture, and we may presume that its years of infancy were at least
equally rude.
The immense development of Grecian art subsequently, and the great
perfection of Grecian artists, are facts of great importance in the
history of the human race. And in regard to the Greeks themselves,
they not only acted powerfully on the taste of the people, but were
also valuable indirectly as the common boast of Hellenism, and
as supplying one bond of fraternal sympathy as well as of mutual
pride, among its widely-dispersed sections. It is the paucity and
weakness of these bonds which renders the history of Greece, prior
to 560 B. C., little better than a series of parallel, but isolated
threads, each attached to a separate city; and that increased range
of joint Hellenic feeling and action, upon which we shall presently
enter, though arising doubtless in great measure from new and common
dangers threatening many cities at once,—also springs in part from
those other causes which have been enumerated in this chapter as
acting on the Grecian mind. It proceeds from the stimulus applied to
all the common feelings in religion, art, and recreation,—from the
gradual formation of national festivals, appealing in various ways
to tastes and sentiments which animated every Hellenic bosom,—from
the inspirations of men of genius, poets, musicians, sculptors,
architects, who supplied more or less in every Grecian city,
education for the youth, training for the chorus, and ornament for
the locality,—from the gradual expansion of science, philosophy, and
rhetoric, during the coming period of this history, which rendered
one city the intellectual capital of Greece, and brought to Isokratês
and Plato pupils from the most distant parts of the Grecian world.
It was this fund of common tastes, tendencies, and aptitudes, which
caused the social atoms of Hellas to gravitate towards each other,
and which enabled the Greeks to become something better and greater
than an aggregate of petty disunited communities like the Thracians
or Phrygians. And the creation of such common, extra-political
Hellenism, is the most interesting phenomenon which the historian has
to point out in the early period now under our notice. He is called
upon to dwell upon it the more forcibly, because the modern reader
has generally no idea of national union without political union,—an
association foreign to the Greek mind. Strange as it may seem to find
a song-writer put forward as an active instrument of union among
his fellow-Hellens, it is not the less true, that those poets, whom
we have briefly passed in review, by enriching the common language,
and by circulating from town to town either in person or in their
compositions, contributed to fan the flame of Pan-Hellenic patriotism
at a time when there were few circumstances to coöperate with them,
and when the causes tending to perpetuate isolation seemed in the
ascendant.