That good Rinaldo she had loved of yore;
And that to look so low she had consented,
(As by such choice dishonored) grieved her sore.
Love, hearing this, such arrogance resented,
And would the damsel's pride endure no more.
Where young Medoro lay he took his stand,
And waited her, with bow and shaft in hand.
When fair Angelica the stripling spies,
Nigh hurt to death in that disastrous fray,
Who for his king, that there unsheltered lies,
More sad than for his own misfortune lay,
She feels new pity in her bosom rise,
Which makes its entry in unwonted way.
Touched was her naughty heart, once hard and curst,
And more when he his piteous tale rehearsed.
And calling back to memory her art,
For she in Ind had learned chirurgery,
(Since it appears such studies in that part
Worthy of praise and fame are held to be,
And, as an heirloom, sires to sons impart,
With little aid of books, the mystery,)
Disposed herself to work with simples' juice,
Till she in him should healthier life produce.
And recollects an herb had caught her sight
In passing thither, on a pleasant plain:
What (whether dittany or pancy hight)
I know not; fraught with virtue to restrain
The crimson blood forth-welling, and of might
To sheathe each perilous and piercing pain.
She found it near, and having pulled the weed,
Returned to seek Medoro on the mead.
Returning, she upon a swain did light,
Who was on horseback passing through the wood.
Strayed from the lowing herd, the rustic wight
A heifer missing for two days pursued.
Him she with her conducted, where the might
Of the faint youth was ebbing with his blood:
Which had the ground about so deeply dyed
Life was nigh wasted with the gushing tide.
Angelica alights upon the ground,
And he, her rustic comrade, at her best.
She hastened 'twixt two stones the herb to pound,
Then took it, and the healing juice exprest:
With this did she foment the stripling's wound,
And even to the hips, his waist and breast;
And (with such virtue was the salve endued)
It stanched his life-blood, and his strength renewed.
And into him infused such force again,
That he could mount the horse the swain conveyed;
But good Medoro would not leave the plain
Till he in earth had seen his master laid.
He, with the monarch, buried Cloridane,
And after followed whither pleased the maid.
Who was to stay with him, by pity led,
Beneath the courteous shepherd's humble shed.
Nor would the damsel quit the lowly pile
(So she esteemed the youth) till he was sound;
Such pity first she felt, when him erewhile
She saw outstretched and bleeding on the ground.
Touched by his mien and manners next, a file
She felt corrode her heart with secret wound;
She felt corrode her heart, and with desire,
By little and by little warmed, took fire.
The shepherd dwelt between two mountains hoar,
In goodly cabin, in the greenwood shade,
With wife and children; in short time before,
The brand-new shed had builded in the glade.
Here of his grisly wound the youthful Moor
Was briefly healed by the Catayan maid;
But who in briefer space, a sorer smart
Than young Medoro's, suffered at her heart.
[She pines for love of him, and at length makes her love known. They
solemnize their marriage, and remain a month there with great happiness.]
Amid such pleasures, where, with tree o'ergrown,
Ran stream, or bubbling fountain's wave did spin,
On bark or rock, if yielding were the stone,
The knife was straight at work, or ready pin.
And there, without, in thousand places lone,
And in as many places graved, within,
Medoro and Angelica were traced,
In divers ciphers quaintly interlaced.
When she believed they had prolonged their stay
More than enow, the damsel made design
In India to revisit her Catay,
And with its crown Medoro's head entwine.
She had upon her wrist an armlet, gay
With costly gems, in witness and in sign
Of love to her by Count Orlando borne,
And which the damsel for long time had worn.
No love which to the paladin she bears,
But that it costly is and wrought with care,
This to Angelica so much endears,
That never more esteemed was matter rare;
This she was suffered, in the isle of tears,
I know not by what privilege, to wear,
When, naked, to the whale exposed for food
By that inhospitable race and rude.
She, not possessing wherewithal to pay
The kindly couple's hospitality,--
Served by them in their cabin, from the day
She there was lodged, with such fidelity,--
Unfastened from her arm the bracelet gay,
And bade them keep it for her memory.
Departing hence, the lovers climb the side
Of hills, which fertile France from Spain divide.
THE MADNESS OF ORLANDO
From 'Orlando Furioso,' Canto 23
The course in pathless woods, which without rein
The Tartar's charger had pursued astray,
Made Roland for two days, with fruitless pain,
Follow him, without tidings of his way.
Orlando reached a rill of crystal vein,
On either bank of which a meadow lay;
Which, stained with native hues and rich, he sees,
And dotted o'er with fair and many trees.
The mid-day fervor made the shelter sweet
To hardy herd as well as naked swain:
So that Orlando well beneath the heat
Some deal might wince, opprest with plate and chain.
He entered for repose the cool retreat,
And found it the abode of grief and pain;
And place of sojourn more accursed and fell
On that unhappy day, than tongue can tell.
Turning him round, he there on many a tree
Beheld engraved, upon the woody shore,
What as the writing of his deity
He knew, as soon as he had marked the lore.
This was a place of those described by me,
Whither oft-times, attended by Medore,
From the near shepherd's cot had wont to stray
The beauteous lady, sovereign of Catay.
In a hundred knots, amid these green abodes,
In a hundred parts, their ciphered names are dight;
Whose many letters are so many goads,
Which Love has in his bleeding heart-core pight.
He would discredit in a thousand modes,
That which he credits in his own despite;
And would perforce persuade himself, _that_ rind
Other Angelica than his had signed.
"And yet I know these characters," he cried,
"Of which I have so many read and seen;
By her may this Medoro be belied,
And me, she, figured in the name, may mean."
Feeding on such like phantasies, beside
The real truth, did sad Orlando lean
Upon the empty hope, though ill contented,
Which he by self-illusions had fomented.
But stirred and aye rekindled it, the more
That he to quench the ill suspicion wrought,
Like the incautious bird, by fowler's lore,
Hampered in net or lime; which, in the thought
To free its tangled pinions and to soar,
By struggling is but more securely caught.
Orlando passes thither, where a mountain
O'erhangs in guise of arch the crystal fountain.
* * * * *
Here from his horse the sorrowing county lit,
And at the entrance of the grot surveyed
A cloud of words, which seemed but newly writ,
And which the young Medoro's hand had made.
On the great pleasure he had known in it,
This sentence he in verses had arrayed;
Which to his tongue, I deem, might make pretense
To polished phrase; and such in ours the sense:--
"Gay plants, green herbage, rill of limpid vein,
And, grateful with cool shade, thou gloomy cave,
Where oft, by many wooed with fruitless pain,
Beauteous Angelica, the child of grave
King Galaphron, within my arms has lain;
For the convenient harborage you gave,
I, poor Medoro, can but in my lays,
As recompense, forever sing your praise.
"And any loving lord devoutly pray,
Damsel and cavalier, and every one,
Whom choice or fortune hither shall convey,
Stranger or native,--to this crystal run,
Shade, caverned rock, and grass, and plants, to say,
'Benignant be to you the fostering sun
And moon, and may the choir of nymphs provide,
That never swain his flock may hither guide.'"
In Arabic was writ the blessing said,
Known to Orlando like the Latin tongue,
Who, versed in many languages, best read
Was in this speech; which oftentimes from wrong
And injury and shame had saved his head,
What time he roved the Saracens among.
But let him boast not of its former boot,
O'erbalanced by the present bitter fruit.
Three times, and four, and six, the lines impressed
Upon the stone that wretch perused, in vain
Seeking another sense than was expressed,
And ever saw the thing more clear and plain;
And all the while, within his troubled breast,
He felt an icy hand his heart-core strain.
With mind and eyes close fastened on the block,
At length he stood, not differing from the rock.
Then well-nigh lost all feeling; so a prey
Wholly was he to that o'ermastering woe.
This is a pang, believe the experienced say
Of him who speaks, which does all griefs outgo.
His pride had from his forehead passed away,
His chin had fallen upon his breast below;
Nor found he, so grief-barred each natural vent,
Moisture for tears, or utterance for lament.
Stifled within, the impetuous sorrow stays,
Which would too quickly issue; so to abide
Water is seen, imprisoned in the vase,
Whose neck is narrow and whose swell is wide;
What time, when one turns up the inverted base,
Toward the mouth, so hastes the hurrying tide,
And in the strait encounters such a stop,
It scarcely works a passage, drop by drop.
He somewhat to himself returned, and thought
How possibly the thing might be untrue:
That some one (so he hoped, desired, and sought
To think) his lady would with shame pursue;
Or with such weight of jealousy had wrought
To whelm _his_ reason, as should him undo;
And that he, whosoe'er the thing had planned,
Had counterfeited passing well her hand.
With such vain hope he sought himself to cheat,
And manned some deal his spirits and awoke;
Then prest the faithful Brigliadoro's seat,
As on the sun's retreat his sister broke.
Not far the warrior had pursued his beat,
Ere eddying from a roof he saw the smoke;
Heard noise of dog and kine, a farm espied,
And thitherward in quest of lodging hied.
Languid, he lit, and left his Brigliador
To a discreet attendant; one undrest
His limbs, one doffed the golden spurs he wore,
And one bore off, to clean, his iron vest.
This was the homestead where the young Medore
Lay wounded, and was here supremely blest.
Orlando here, with other food unfed,
Having supt full of sorrow, sought his bed.
* * * * *
Little availed the count his self-deceit;
For there was one who spake of it unsought:
The shepherd-swain, who to allay the heat
With which he saw his guest so troubled, thought
The tale which he was wonted to repeat--
Of the two lovers--to each listener taught;
A history which many loved to hear,
He now, without reserve, 'gan tell the peer.
"How at Angelica's persuasive prayer,
He to his farm had carried young Medore,
Grievously wounded with an arrow; where
In little space she healed the angry sore.
But while she exercised this pious care,
Love in her heart the lady wounded more,
And kindled from small spark so fierce a fire,
She burnt all over, restless with desire;
"Nor thinking she of mightiest king was born,
Who ruled in the East, nor of her heritage,
Forced by too puissant love, had thought no scorn
To be the consort of a poor foot-page."
His story done, to them in proof was borne
The gem, which, in reward for harborage,
To her extended in that kind abode,
Angelica, at parting, had bestowed.
* * * * *
In him, forthwith, such deadly hatred breed
That bed, that house, that swain, he will not stay
Till the morn break, or till the dawn succeed,
Whose twilight goes before approaching day.
In haste, Orlando takes his arms and steed,
And to the deepest greenwood wends his way.
And when assured that he is there alone,
Gives utterance to his grief in shriek and groan.
Never from tears, never from sorrowing,
He paused; nor found he peace by night or day;
He fled from town, in forest harboring,
And in the open air on hard earth lay.
He marveled at himself, how such a spring
Of water from his eyes could stream away,
And breath was for so many sobs supplied;
And thus oft-times, amid his mourning, cried:--
* * * * *
"I am not--am not what I seem to sight:
What Roland was, is dead and under ground,
Slain by that most ungrateful lady's spite,
Whose faithlessness inflicted such a wound.
Divided from the flesh, I am his sprite,
Which in this hell, tormented, walks its round,
To be, but in its shadow left above,
A warning to all such as trust in love."
All night about the forest roved the count,
And, at the break of daily light, was brought
By his unhappy fortune to the fount,
Where his inscription young Medoro wrought.
To see his wrongs inscribed upon that mount
Inflamed his fury so, in him was naught
But turned to hatred, frenzy, rage, and spite;
Nor paused he more, but bared his falchion bright,
Cleft through the writing; and the solid block,
Into the sky, in tiny fragments sped.
Woe worth each sapling and that caverned rock
Where Medore and Angelica were read!
So scathed, that they to shepherd or to flock
Thenceforth shall never furnish shade or bed.
And that sweet fountain, late so clear and pure,
From such tempestous wrath was ill secure.
* * * * *
So fierce his rage, so fierce his fury grew,
That all obscured remained the warrior's sprite;
Nor, for forgetfulness, his sword he drew,
Or wondrous deeds, I trow, had wrought the knight;
But neither this, nor bill, nor axe to hew,
Was needed by Orlando's peerless might.
He of his prowess gave high proofs and full,
Who a tall pine uprooted at a pull.
He many others, with as little let
As fennel, wall-wort-stem, or dill uptore;
And ilex, knotted oak, and fir upset,
And beech and mountain ash, and elm-tree hoar.
He did what fowler, ere he spreads his net,
Does, to prepare the champaign for his lore,
By stubble, rush, and nettle stalk; and broke,
Like these, old sturdy trees and stems of oak.
The shepherd swains, who hear the tumult nigh,
Leaving their flocks beneath the greenwood tree,
Some here, some there, across the forest hie,
And hurry thither, all, the cause to see.
But I have reached such point, my history,
If I o'erpass this bound, may irksome be.
And I my story will delay to end
Rather than by my tediousness offend.
ARISTOPHANES
(B.C. 448-380?)
BY PAUL SHOREY
The birth-year of Aristophanes is placed about 448 B.C., on the ground
that he is said to have been almost a boy when his first comedy was
presented in 427. His last play, the 'Plutus,' was produced in 388, and
there is no evidence that he long survived this date. Little is known of
his life beyond the allusions, in the Parabases of the 'Acharnians,'
'Knights,' and 'Wasps,' to his prosecution by Cleon, to his own or his
father's estate at Aegina, and to his premature baldness. He left three
sons who also wrote comedies.
Aristophanes is the sole extant representative of the so-called Old
Comedy of Athens; a form of dramatic art which developed obscurely under
the shadow of Attic Tragedy in the first half of the fifth century B.C.,
out of the rustic revelry of the Phallic procession and Comus song of
Dionysus, perhaps with some outside suggestions from the Megarian farce
and its Sicilian offshoot, the mythological court comedy of Epicharmus.
The chief note of this older comedy for the ancient critics was its
unbridled license of direct personal satire and invective. Eupolis,
Cratinus, and Aristophanes, says Horace, assailed with the utmost
freedom any one who deserved to be branded with infamy. This old
political Comedy was succeeded in the calmer times that followed the
Peloponnesian War by the so-called Middle Comedy (390-320) of Alexis,
Antiphanes, Strattis, and some minor men; which insensibly passed into
the New Comedy (320-250) of Menander and Philemon, known to us in the
reproductions of Terence. And this new comedy, which portrayed types of
private life instead of satirizing noted persons by name, and which, as
Aristotle says, produced laughter by innuendo rather than by scurrility,
was preferred to the "terrible graces" of her elder sister by the gentle
and refined Plutarch, or the critic who has usurped his name in the
'Comparison of Aristophanes and Menander.' The old Attic Comedy has been
variously compared to Charivari, Punch, the comic opera of Offenbach,
and a Parisian 'revue de fin d'année.' There is no good modern analogue.
It is not our comedy of manners, plot, and situation; nor yet is it mere
buffoonery. It is a peculiar mixture of broad political, social, and
literary satire, and polemical discussion of large ideas, with the
burlesque and licentious extravagances that were deemed the most
acceptable service at the festival of the laughter-loving,
tongue-loosening god of the vine.
[Illustration: ARISTOPHANES]
The typical plan of an Aristophanic comedy is very simple. The
protagonist undertakes in all apparent seriousness to give a local
habitation and a body to some ingenious fancy, airy speculation, or bold
metaphor: as for example, the procuring of a private peace for a citizen
who is weary of the privations of war; or the establishment of a city in
Cloud-Cuckoo-Land where the birds shall regulate things better than the
featherless biped, man; or the restoration of the eyesight of the
proverbially blind god of Wealth. The attention of the audience is at
once enlisted for the semblance of a plot by which the scheme is put
into execution. The design once effected, the remainder of the play is
given over to a series of loosely connected scenes, ascending to a
climax of absurdity, in which the consequences of the original happy
thought are followed out with a Swiftian verisimilitude of piquant
detail and a Rabelaisian license of uproarious mirth. It rests with the
audience to take the whole as pure extravaganza, or as a _reductio ad
absurdum_ or playful defense of the conception underlying the original
idea. In the intervals between the scenes, the chorus sing rollicking
topical songs or bits of exquisite lyric, or in the name of the poet
directly exhort and admonish the audience in the so-called Parabasis.
Of Aristophanes's first two plays, the 'Banqueters of Hercules' (427),
and the 'Babylonians' (426), only fragments remain. The impolitic
representation in the latter of the Athenian allies as branded
Babylonian slaves was the ground of Cleon's attack in the courts upon
Aristophanes, or Callistratus in whose name the play was produced.
The extant plays are the following:--
'The Acharnians,' B.C. 425, shortly after the Athenian defeat
at Delium. The worthy countryman, Dicæopolis, weary of being
cooped up within the Long Walls, and disgusted with the
shameless jobbery of the politicians, sends to Sparta for
samples of peace (the Greek word means also libations) of
different vintages. The Thirty Years' brand smells of nectar
and ambrosia. He accepts it, concludes a private treaty for
himself and friends, and proceeds to celebrate the rural
Dionysia with wife and child, soothing, by an eloquent plea
pronounced in tattered tragic vestments borrowed from
Euripides, the anger of the chorus of choleric Acharnian
charcoal burners, exasperated at the repeated devastation of
their deme by the Spartans. He then opens a market, to which
a jolly Boeotian brings the long-lost, thrice-desired Copaic
eel; while a starveling Megarian, to the huge delight of the
Athenian groundlings, sells his little daughters, disguised
as pigs, for a peck of salt. Finally Dicæopolis goes forth to
a wedding banquet, from which he returns very mellow in the
company of two flute girls; while Lamachus, the head of the
war party, issues forth to do battle with the Boeotians in
the snow, and comes back with a bloody coxcomb. This play was
successfully given in Greek by the students of the University
of Pennsylvania in the spring of 1886, and interestingly
discussed in the Nation of May 6th by Professor Gildersleeve.
'The Knights,' B.C. 424: named from the chorus of young Athenian
cavaliers who abet the sausage-seller, Agoracritus, egged on by the
discontented family servants (the generals), Nicias and Demosthenes, to
outbid with shameless flattery the rascally Paphlagonian steward, Cleon,
and supplant him in the favor of their testy bean-fed old master, Demos
(or People). At the close, Demos recovers his wits and his youth, and is
revealed sitting enthroned in his glory in the good old Marathonian
Athens of the Violet Crown. The prolongation of the billingsgate in the
contest between Cleon and the sausage-seller grows wearisome to modern
taste; but the portrait of the Demagogue is for all time.
'The Clouds,' B.C. 423: an attack on Socrates, unfairly taken as an
embodiment of the deleterious and unsettling "new learning," both in the
form of Sophistical rhetoric and "meteorological" speculation. Worthy
Strepsiades, eager to find a new way to pay the debts in which the
extravagance of his horse-racing son Pheidippides has involved him,
seeks to enter the youth as a student in the Thinking-shop or Reflectory
of Socrates, that he may learn to make the worse appear the better
reason, and so baffle his creditors before a jury. The young man, after
much demur and the ludicrous failure of his father, who at first
matriculates in his stead, consents. He listens to the pleas of the just
and unjust argument in behalf of the old and new education, and becomes
himself such a proficient that he demonstrates, in flawless reasoning,
that Euripides is a better poet than Aeschylus, and that a boy is
justified in beating his father for affirming the contrary. Strepsiades
thereupon, cured of his folly, undertakes a subtle investigation into
the timbers of the roof of the Reflectory, with a view to smoking out
the corrupters of youth. Many of the songs sung by or to the clouds, the
patron deities of Socrates's misty lore, are extremely beautiful.
Socrates is made to allude to these attacks of comedy by Plato in the
'Apology,' and, on his last day in prison, in the 'Phædo.' In the
'Symposium' or 'Banquet' of Plato, Aristophanes bursts in upon a company
of friends with whom Socrates is feasting, and drinks with them till
morning; while Socrates forces him and the tragic poet Agathon, both of
them very sleepy, to admit that the true dramatic artist will excel in
both tragedy and comedy.
'The Wasps,' B.C. 422: a _jeu d'esprit_ turning on the Athenian passion
for litigation. Young Bdelucleon (hate-Cleon) can keep his old father
Philocleon (love-Cleon) out of the courts only by instituting a private
court in his own house. The first culprit, the house-dog, is tried for
stealing a Sicilian cheese, and acquitted by Philocleon's mistaking the
urn of acquittal for that of condemnation. The old man is inconsolable
at the first escape of a victim from his clutches; but finally,
renouncing his folly, takes lessons from his exquisite of a son in the
manners and deportment of a fine gentleman. He then attends a dinner
party, where he betters his instructions with comic exaggeration and
returns home in high feather, singing tipsy catches and assaulting the
watch on his way. The chorus of Wasps, the visible embodiment of a
metaphor found also in Plato's 'Republic,' symbolizes the sting used by
the Athenian jurymen to make the rich disgorge a portion of their
gathered honey. The 'Plaideurs' of Racine is an imitation of this play;
and the _motif_ of the committal of the dog is borrowed by Ben Jonson in
the 'Staple of News.'
'The Peace,' B.C. 421: in support of the Peace of Nicias, ratified soon
afterward (Grote's 'History of Greece,' Vol. vi., page 492). Trygæus, an
honest vine-dresser yearning for his farm, in parody of the Bellerophon
of Euripides, ascends to heaven on a dung-beetle. He there hauls Peace
from the bottom of the well into which she had been cast by Ares, and
brings her home in triumph to Greece, when she inaugurates a reign of
plenty and uproarious jollity, and celebrates the nuptials of Trygæus
and her handmaid Opora (Harvest-home).
'The Birds,' B.C. 414. Peisthetærus (Plausible) and Euelpides (Hopeful),
whose names and deeds are perhaps a satire on the unbounded ambition
that brought ruin on Athens at Syracuse, journey to Birdland and
persuade King Hoopoe to induce the birds to build Nephelococcygia or
Cloud-Cuckoo-Burgh in the air between the gods and men, starve out the
gods with a "Melian famine," and rule the world themselves. The gods,
their supplies of incense cut off, are forced to treat, and Peisthetærus
receives in marriage Basileia (Sovereignty), the daughter of Zeus. The
_mise en scène_, with the gorgeous plumage of the bird-chorus, must have
been very impressive, and many of the choric songs are exceedingly
beautiful. There is an interesting account by Professor Jebb in the
Fortnightly Review (Vol. xli.) of a performance of 'The Birds' at
Cambridge in 1884.
Two plays, B.C. 411: (1) at the Lenæa, 'The Lysistrata,' in which the
women of Athens and Sparta by a secession from bed and board compel
their husbands to end the war; (2) The 'Thesmophoriazusæ' or Women's
Festival of Demeter, a licentious but irresistibly funny assault upon
Euripides. The tragedian, learning that the women in council assembled
are debating on the punishment due to his misogyny, implores the
effeminate poet Agathon to intercede for him. That failing, he
dispatches his kinsman Mnesilochus, disguised with singed beard and
woman's robes, a sight to shake the midriff of despair with laughter, to
plead his cause. The advocate's excess of zeal betrays him; he is
arrested: and the remainder of the play is occupied by the ludicrous
devices, borrowed or parodied from well-known Euripidean tragedies, by
which the poet endeavors to rescue his intercessor.
'The Frogs,' B.C. 405, in the brief respite of hope between the victory
of Arginusæ and the final overthrow of Athens at Ægospotami. Aeschylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides are dead. The minor bards are a puny folk, and
Dionysus is resolved to descend to Hades in quest of a truly creative
poet, one capable of a figure like "my star god's glow-worm," or "His
honor rooted in dishonor stood." After many surprising adventures by the
way, and in the outer precincts of the underworld, accompanied by his
Sancho Panza, Xanthias, he arrives at the court of Pluto just in time to
be chosen arbitrator of the great contest between Aeschylus and
Euripides for the tragic throne in Hades. The comparisons and parodies
of the styles of Aeschylus and Euripides that follow, constitute, in
spite of their comic exaggeration, one of the most entertaining and
discriminating chapters of literary criticism extant, and give us an
exalted idea of the intelligence of the audience that appreciated them.
Dionysus decides for Æschylus, and leads him back in triumph to the
upper world.
The 'Ecclesiazusæ' or 'Ladies in Parliament,' B.C. 393: apparently a
satire on the communistic theories which must have been current in the
discussions of the schools before they found definite expression in
Plato's 'Republic.' The ladies of Athens rise betimes, purloin their
husbands' hats and canes, pack the Assembly, and pass a measure to
intrust the reins of government to women. An extravagant and licentious
communism is the result.
The 'Plutus,' B.C. 388: a second and much altered edition of a play
represented for the first time in 408. With the 'Ecclesiazusæ' it marks
the transition to the Middle Comedy, there being no parabasis, and
little of the exuberant _verve_ of the older pieces. The blind god of
Wealth recovers his eyesight by sleeping in the temple of Æsculapius,
and proceeds to distribute the gifts of fortune more equitably.
The assignment of the dates and restoration of the plots of the
thirty-two lost plays, of which a few not very interesting fragments
remain, belong to the domain of conjectural erudition.
Aristophanes has been regarded by some critics as a grave moral censor,
veiling his high purpose behind the grinning mask of comedy; by others
as a buffoon of genius, whose only object was to raise a laugh. Both
sides of the question are ingeniously and copiously argued in Browning's
'Aristophanes' Apology'; and there is a judicious summing up of the case
of Aristophanes _vs_. Euripides in Professor Jebb's lectures on Greek
poetry. The soberer view seems to be that while predominantly a comic
artist, obeying the instincts of his genius, he did frequently make his
comedy the vehicle of an earnest conservative polemic against the new
spirit of the age in Literature, Philosophy, and Politics. He pursued
Euripides with relentless ridicule because his dramatic motives lent
themselves to parody, and his lines were on the lips of every
theatre-goer; but also because he believed that Euripides had spoiled
the old, stately, heroic art of Aeschylus and Sophocles by incongruous
infusions of realism and sentimentalism, and had debased the "large
utterance of the early gods" by an unhallowed mixture of colloquialism,
dialectic, and chicane.
Aristophanes travestied the teachings of Socrates because his ungainly
figure, and the oddity (_atopia_) attributed to him even by Plato, made
him an excellent butt; yet also because he felt strongly that it was
better for the young Athenian to spend his days in the Palæstra, or
"where the elm-tree whispers to the plane," than in filing a
contentious tongue on barren logomachies. That Socrates in fact
discussed only ethical problems, and disclaimed all sympathy with
speculations about things above our heads, made no difference: he was
the best human embodiment of a hateful educational error. And similarly
the assault upon Cleon, the "pun-pelleting of demagogues from Pnux," was
partly due to the young aristocrat's instinctive aversion to the coarse
popular leader, and to the broad mark which the latter presented to the
shafts of satire, but equally, perhaps, to a genuine patriotic revolt at
the degradation of Athenian politics in the hands of the successors
of Pericles.
But Aristophanes's ideas interest us less than his art and humor. We
have seen the nature of his plots. In such a topsy-turvy world there is
little opportunity for nice delineation of character. His personages are
mainly symbols or caricatures. Yet they are vividly if broadly sketched,
and genuine touches of human nature lend verisimilitude to their most
improbable actions. One or two traditional comic types appear for the
first time, apparently, on his stage: the alternately cringing and
familiar slave or valet of comedy, in his Xanthias and Karion; and in
Dicæopolis, Strepsiades, Demos, Trygæus, and Dionysus, the sensual,
jovial, shrewd, yet naïve and credulous middle-aged _bourgeois
gentilhomme_ or 'Sganarelle,' who is not ashamed to avow his
poltroonery, and yet can, on occasion, maintain his rights with sturdy
independence.
But the chief attraction of Aristophanes is the abounding comic force
and _verve_ of his style. It resembles an impetuous torrent, whose swift
rush purifies in its flow the grossness and obscenity inseparable from
the origin of comedy, and buoys up and sweeps along on the current of
fancy and improvisation the chaff and dross of vulgar jests, puns,
scurrilous personalities, and cheap "gags," allowing no time for
chilling reflections or criticism. Jests which are singly feeble combine
to induce a mood of extravagant hilarity when huddled upon us with such
"impossible conveyance." This _vivida vis animi_ can hardly be
reproduced in a translation, and disappears altogether in an attempt at
an abstract enumeration of the poet's inexhaustible devices for comic
effect. He himself repeatedly boasts of the fertility of his invention,
and claims to have discarded the coarse farce of his predecessors for
something more worthy of the refined intelligence of his clever
audience. Yet it must be acknowledged that much even of his wit is the
mere filth-throwing of a naughty boy; or at best the underbred
jocularity of the "funny column," the topical song, or the minstrel
show. There are puns on the names of notable personages; a grotesque,
fantastic, punning fauna, flora, and geography of Greece; a constant
succession of surprises effected by the sudden substitution of low or
incongruous terms in proverbs, quotations, and legal or religious
formulas; scenes in dialect, scenes of excellent fooling in the vein of
Uncle Toby and the Clown, girds at the audience, personalities that for
us have lost their point,--about Cleonymus the caster-away of shields,
or Euripides's herb-selling mother,--and everywhere unstinted service to
the great gods Priapus and Cloacina.
A finer instrument of comic effect is the parody. The countless parodies
of the lyric and dramatic literature of Greece are perhaps the most
remarkable testimony extant to the intelligence of an Athenian audience.
Did they infallibly catch the allusion when Dicæopolis welcomed back to
the Athenian fish-market the long-lost Copaic eel in high
Æschylean strain,--
"Of fifty nymphs Copaic alderliefest queen,"
and then, his voice breaking with the intolerable pathos of Admetus's
farewell to the dying Alcestis, added,
"Yea, even in death
Thou'lt bide with me, embalmed and beet-bestewed"?
Did they recognize the blasphemous Pindaric pun in "Helle's holy
straits," for a tight place, and appreciate all the niceties of diction,
metre, and dramatic art discriminated in the comparison between
Aeschylus and Euripides in the 'Frogs'? At any rate, no Athenian could
miss the fun of Dicæopolis (like Hector's baby) "scared at the dazzling
plume and nodding crest" of the swashbuckler Lamachus, of Philocleon,
clinging to his ass's belly like Odysseus escaping under the ram from
the Cyclops's cave; of the baby in the Thesmophoriazusæ seized as a
Euripidean hostage, and turning out a wine bottle in swaddling-clothes;
of light-foot Iris in the rôle of a saucy, frightened soubrette; of the
heaven-defying Æschylean Prometheus hiding under an umbrella from the
thunderbolts of Zeus. And they must have felt instinctively what only a
laborious erudition reveals to us, the sudden subtle modulations of the
colloquial comic verse into mock-heroic travesty of high tragedy
or lyric.
Euripides, the chief victim of Aristophanes's genius for parody, was so
burlesqued that his best known lines became by-words, and his most
ardent admirers, the very Balaustions and Euthukleses, must have grinned
when they heard them, like a pair of augurs. If we conceive five or six
Shakespearean comedies filled from end to end with ancient Pistols
hallooing to "pampered jades of Asia," and Dr. Caiuses chanting of "a
thousand vagrom posies," we may form some idea of Aristophanes's
handling of the notorious lines--
"The tongue has sworn, the mind remains unsworn."
"Thou lovest life, thy sire loves it too."
"Who knows if life and death be truly one?"
But the charm of Aristophanes does not lie in any of these things
singly, but in the combination of ingenious and paradoxical fancy with
an inexhaustible flow of apt language by which they are held up and
borne out. His personages are ready to make believe anything. Nothing
surprises them long. They enter into the spirit of each new conceit, and
can always discover fresh analogies to bear it out. The very plots of
his plays are realized metaphors or embodied conceits. And the same
concrete vividness of imagination is displayed in single scenes and
episodes. The Better and the Worse Reason plead the causes of the old
and new education in person. Cleon and Brasidas are the pestles with
which War proposes to bray Greece in a mortar; the triremes of Athens in
council assembled declare that they will rot in the docks sooner than
yield their virginity to musty, fusty Hyperbolus. The fair cities of
Greece stand about waiting for the recovery of Peace from her Well, with
dreadful black eyes, poor things; Armisticia and Harvest-Home tread the
stage in the flesh, and Nincompoop and Defraudation are among the gods.
The special metaphor or conceit of each play attracts appropriate words
and images, and creates a distinct atmosphere of its own. In the
'Knights' the air fairly reeks with the smell of leather and the
tanyard. The 'Birds' transport us to a world of trillings and pipings,
and beaks and feathers. There is a buzzing and a humming and a stinging
throughout the 'Wasps.' The 'Clouds' drip with mist, and are dim with
aërial vaporous effects.
Aristophanes was the original inventor of Bob Acres's style of oath--the
so-called referential or sentimental swearing. Dicæopolis invokes
Ecbatana when Shamartabas struts upon the stage. Socrates in the
'Clouds' swears by the everlasting vapors. King Hoopoe's favorite oath
is "Odds nets and birdlime." And the vein of humor that lies in
over-ingenious, elaborate, and sustained metaphor was first worked in
these comedies. All these excellences are summed up in the incomparable
wealth and flexibility of his vocabulary. He has a Shakespearean mastery
of the technicalities of every art and mystery, an appalling command of
billingsgate and of the language of the cuisine, and would tire Falstaff
and Prince Hal with base comparisons. And not content with the existing
resources of the Greek vocabulary, he coins grotesque or beautiful
compounds,--exquisite epithets like "Botruodöré" (bestower of the
vine), "heliomanes" (drunk-with-sunlight), "myriad-flagoned
phrases," untranslatable "port-manteaus" like "plouthugieia"
(health-and-wealthfulness), and Gargantuan agglomerations of syllables
like the portentous _olla podrida_ at the end of the 'Ecclesiazusæ.'
The great comic writer, as the example of Molière proves, need not be a
poet. But the mere overflow of careless poetic power which is
manifested by Aristophanes would have sufficed to set up any ordinary
tragedian or lyrist. In plastic mastery of language only two Greek
writers can vie with him, Plato and Homer. In the easy grace and native
harmony of his verse he outsings all the tragedians, even that Aeschylus
whom he praised as the man who had written the most exquisite songs of
any poet of the time. In his blank verse he easily strikes every note,
from that of the urbane, unaffected, colloquial Attic, to parody of high
or subtle tragic diction hardly distinguishable from its model. He can
adapt his metres to the expression of every shade of feeling. He has
short, snapping, fiery trochees, like sparks from their own holm oak, to
represent the choler of the Acharnians; eager, joyous glyconics to
bundle up a sycophant and hustle him off the stage, or for the young
knights of Athens celebrating Phormio's sea fights, and chanting,
horse-taming Poseidon, Pallas, guardian of the State, and Victory,
companion of the dance; the quickstep march of the trochaic tetrameter
to tell how the Attic wasps, true children of the soil, charged the
Persians at Marathon; and above all--the chosen vehicle of his wildest
conceits, his most audacious fancies, and his strongest appeals to the
better judgment of the citizens--the anapæstic tetrameter, that
"resonant and triumphant" metre of which even Mr. Swinburne's anapæsts
can reproduce only a faint and far-off echo.
But he has more than the opulent diction and the singing voice of the
poet. He has the key to fairy-land, a feeling for nature which we
thought romantic and modern, and in his lyrics the native wood-notes
wild of his own 'Mousa lochmaia' (the muse of the coppice). The chorus
of the Mystæ in the 'Frogs,' the rustic idyl of the 'Peace,' the songs
of the girls in the 'Lysistrata,' the call of the nightingale, the hymns
of the 'Clouds,' the speech of the "Just Reason," and the grand chorus
of birds, reveal Aristophanes as not only the first comic writer of
Greece, but as one of the very greatest of her poets.
Among the many editions of Aristophanes, those most useful to the
student and the general reader are doubtless the text edited by Bergk (2
vols., 1867), and the translations of the five most famous plays by John
Hookham Frere, to be found in his complete works.
[Illustration: Signature: PAUL SHOREY]
THE ORIGIN OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
From 'The Acharnians': Frere's Translation
DICÆOPOLIS
Be not surprised, most excellent spectators,
If I that am a beggar have presumed
To claim an audience upon public matters,
Even in a comedy; for comedy
Is conversant in all the rules of justice,
And can distinguish betwixt right and wrong.
The words I speak are bold, but just and true.
Cleon at least cannot accuse me now,
That I defame the city before strangers,
For this is the Lenæan festival,
And here we meet, all by ourselves alone;
No deputies are arrived as yet with tribute,
No strangers or allies: but here we sit
A chosen sample, clean as sifted corn,
With our own denizens as a kind of chaff.
First, I detest the Spartans most extremely;
And wish that Neptune, the Tænarian deity,
Would bury them in their houses with his earthquakes.
For I've had losses--losses, let me tell ye,
Like other people; vines cut down and injured.
But among friends (for only friends are here),
Why should we blame the Spartans for all this?
For people of ours, some people of our own,--
Some people from among us here, I mean:
But not the People (pray, remember that);
I never said the People, but a pack
Of paltry people, mere pretended citizens,
Base counterfeits,--went laying informations,
And making a confiscation of the jerkins
Imported here from Megara; pigs, moreover,
Pumpkins, and pecks of salt, and ropes of onions,
Were voted to be merchandise from Megara,
Denounced, and seized, and sold upon the spot.
Well, these might pass, as petty local matters.
But now, behold, some doughty drunken youths
Kidnap, and carry away from Megara,
The courtesan, Simætha. Those of Megara,
In hot retaliation, seize a brace
Of equal strumpets, hurried forth perforce
From Dame Aspasia's house of recreation.
So this was the beginning of the war,
All over Greece, owing to these three strumpets.
For Pericles, like an Olympian Jove,
With all his thunder and his thunderbolts,
Began to storm and lighten dreadfully,
Alarming all the neighborhood of Greece;
And made decrees, drawn up like drinking songs,
In which it was enacted and concluded
That the Megarians should remain excluded
From every place where commerce was transacted,
With all their ware--like "old Care" in the ballad:
And this decree, by land and sea, was valid.
Then the Megarians, being all half starved,
Desired the Spartans to desire of us
Just to repeal those laws: the laws I mentioned,
Occasioned by the stealing of those strumpets.
And so they begged and prayed us several times;
And we refused: and so they went to war.
THE POET'S APOLOGY
From 'The Acharnians': Frere's Translation.
Our poet has never as yet
Esteemed it proper or fit
To detain you with a long
Encomiastic song
On his own superior wit;
But being abused and accused,
And attacked of late
As a foe of the State,
He makes an appeal in his proper defense,
To your voluble humor and temper and sense,
With the following plea:
Namely, that he
Never attempted or ever meant
To scandalize
In any wise
Your mighty imperial government.
Moreover he says,
That in various ways
He presumes to have merited honor and praise;
Exhorting you still to stick to your rights,
And no more to be fooled with rhetorical flights;
Such as of late each envoy tries
On the behalf of your allies,
That come to plead their cause before ye,
With fulsome phrase, and a foolish story
Of "violet crowns" and "Athenian glory,"
With "sumptuous Athens" at every word:
"Sumptuous Athens" is always heard;
"Sumptuous" ever, a suitable phrase
For a dish of meat or a beast at graze.
He therefore affirms
In confident terms,
That his active courage and earnest zeal
Have usefully served your common weal:
He has openly shown
The style and tone
Of your democracy ruling abroad,
He has placed its practices on record;
The tyrannical arts, the knavish tricks,
That poison all your politics.
Therefore shall we see, this year,
The allies with tribute arriving here,
Eager and anxious all to behold
Their steady protector, the bard so bold;
The bard, they say, that has dared to speak,
To attack the strong, to defend the weak.
His fame in foreign climes is heard,
And a singular instance lately occurred.
It occurred in the case of the Persian king,
Sifting and cross-examining
The Spartan envoys. He demanded
Which of the rival States commanded
The Grecian seas? He asked them next
(Wishing to see them more perplexed)
Which of the two contending powers
Was chiefly abused by this bard of ours?
For he said, "Such a bold, so profound an adviser
By dint of abuse would render them wiser,
More active and able; and briefly that they
Must finally prosper and carry the day."
Now mark the Lacedæmonian guile!
Demanding an insignificant isle!
"Ægina," they say, "for a pledge of peace,
As a means to make all jealousy cease."
Meanwhile their privy design and plan
Is solely to gain this marvelous man--
Knowing his influence on your fate--
By obtaining a hold on his estate
Situate in the isle aforesaid.
Therefore there needs to be no more said.
You know their intention, and know that you know it:
You'll keep to your island, and stick to the poet.
And he for his part
Will practice his art
With a patriot heart,
With the honest views
That he now pursues,
And fair buffoonery and abuse:
Not rashly bespattering, or basely beflattering,
Not pimping, or puffing, or acting the ruffian;
Not sneaking or fawning;
But openly scorning
All menace and warning,
All bribes and suborning:
He will do his endeavor on your behalf;
He will teach you to think, he will teach you to laugh.
So Cleon again and again may try;
I value him not, nor fear him, I!
His rage and rhetoric I defy.
His impudence, his politics,
His dirty designs, his rascally tricks,
No stain of abuse on me shall fix.
Justice and right, in his despite,
Shall aid and attend me, and do me right:
With these to friend, I ne'er will bend,
Nor descend
To a humble tone
(Like his own),
As a sneaking loon,
A knavish, slavish, poor poltroon.
THE APPEAL OF THE CHORUS
From 'The Knights': Frere's Translation.
If A veteran author had wished to engage
Our assistance to-day, for a speech from the stage,
We scarce should have granted so bold a request:
But this author of ours, as the bravest and best,
Deserves an indulgence denied to the rest,
For the courage and vigor, the scorn and the hate,
With which he encounters the pests of the State;
A thoroughbred seaman, intrepid and warm,
Steering outright, in the face of the storm.
But now for the gentle reproaches he bore
On the part of his friends, for refraining before
To embrace the profession, embarking for life
In theatrical storms and poetical strife.
He begs us to state that for reasons of weight
He has lingered so long and determined so late.
For he deemed the achievements of comedy hard,
The boldest attempt of a desperate bard!
The Muse he perceived was capricious and coy;
Though many were courting her, few could enjoy.
And he saw without reason, from season to season,
Your humor would shift, and turn poets adrift,
Requiting old friends with unkindness and treason,
Discarded in scorn as exhausted and worn.
Seeing Magnes's fate, who was reckoned of late
For the conduct of comedy captain and head;
That so oft on the stage, in the flower of his age,
Had defeated the Chorus his rivals had led;
With his sounds of all sort, that were uttered in sport,
With whims and vagaries unheard of before,
With feathers and wings, and a thousand gay things,
That in frolicsome fancies his Choruses wore--
When his humor was spent, did your temper relent,
To requite the delight that he gave you before?
We beheld him displaced, and expelled and disgraced,
When his hair and his wit were grown aged and hoar.
Then he saw, for a sample, the dismal example
Of noble Cratinus so splendid and ample,
Full of spirit and blood, and enlarged like a flood;
Whose copious current tore down with its torrent,
Oaks, ashes, and yew, with the ground where they grew,
And his rivals to boot, wrenched up by the root;
And his personal foes, who presumed to oppose,
All drowned and abolished, dispersed and demolished,
And drifted headlong, with a deluge of song.
And his airs and his tunes, and his songs and lampoons,
Were recited and sung by the old and the young:
At our feasts and carousals, what poet but he?
And "The fair Amphibribe" and "The Sycophant Tree,"
"Masters and masons and builders of verse!"
Those were the tunes that all tongues could rehearse;
But since in decay you have cast him away,
Stript of his stops and his musical strings,
Battered and shattered, a broken old instrument,
Shoved out of sight among rubbishy things.
His garlands are faded, and what he deems worst,
His tongue and his palate are parching with thirst.
And now you may meet him alone in the street,
Wearied and worn, tattered and torn,
All decayed and forlorn, in his person and dress,
Whom his former success should exempt from distress,
With subsistence at large at the general charge,
And a seat with the great at the table of State,
There to feast every day and preside at the play
In splendid apparel, triumphant and gay.
Seeing Crates, the next, always teased and perplexed,
With your tyrannous temper tormented and vexed;
That with taste and good sense, without waste or expense,
From his snug little hoard, provided your board
With a delicate treat, economic and neat.
Thus hitting or missing, with crowns or with hissing,
Year after year he pursued his career,
For better or worse, till he finished his course.
These precedents held him in long hesitation;
He replied to his friends, with a just observation,
"That a seaman in regular order is bred
To the oar, to the helm, and to look out ahead;
With diligent practice has fixed in his mind
The signs of the weather, and changes of wind.
And when every point of the service is known,
Undertakes the command of a ship of his own."
For reasons like these,
If your judgment agrees
That he did not embark
Like an ignorant spark,
Or a troublesome lout,
To puzzle and bother, and blunder about,
Give him a shout,
At his first setting out!
And all pull away
With a hearty huzza
For success to the play!
Send him away,
Smiling and gay,
Shining and florid,
With his bald forehead!
THE CLOUD CHORUS
From 'The Clouds': Andrew Lang's Translation
SOCRATES SPEAKS
Hither, come hither, ye Clouds renowned, and unveil yourselves
here;
Come, though ye dwell on the sacred crests of Olympian snow,
Or whether ye dance with the Nereid Choir in the gardens clear,
Or whether your golden urns are dipped in Nile's overflow,
Or whether you dwell by Mæotis mere
Or the snows of Mimas, arise! appear!
And hearken to us, and accept our gifts ere ye rise and go.
THE CLOUDS SING
Immortal Clouds from the echoing shore
Of the father of streams from the sounding sea,
Dewy and fleet, let us rise and soar;
Dewy and gleaming and fleet are we!
Let us look on the tree-clad mountain-crest,
On the sacred earth where the fruits rejoice,
On the waters that murmur east and west,
On the tumbling sea with his moaning voice.
For unwearied glitters the Eye of the Air,
And the bright rays gleam;
Then cast we our shadows of mist, and fare
In our deathless shapes to glance everywhere
From the height of the heaven, on the land and air,
And the Ocean Stream.
Let us on, ye Maidens that bring the Rain,
Let us gaze on Pallas's citadel,
In the country of Cecrops fair and dear,
The mystic land of the holy cell,
Where the Rites unspoken securely dwell,
And the gifts of the gods that know not stain,
And a people of mortals that know not fear.
For the temples tall and the statues fair,
And the feasts of the gods are holiest there;
The feasts of Immortals, the chaplets of flowers,
And the Bromian mirth at the coming of spring,
And the musical voices that fill the hours,
And the dancing feet of the maids that sing!
GRAND CHORUS OF BIRDS
From 'The Birds': Swinburne's Translation
Come on then, ye dwellers by nature in darkness, and like to the
leaves' generations,
That are little of might, that are molded of mire, unenduring
and shadowlike nations,
Poor plumeless ephemerals, comfortless mortals, as visions of
shadows fast fleeing,
Lift up your mind unto us that are deathless, and dateless the date
of our being;
Us, children of heaven, us, ageless for aye, us, all of whose thoughts
are eternal:
That ye may from henceforth, having heard of us all things aright
as to matters supernal,
Of the being of birds, and beginning of gods, and of streams, and
the dark beyond reaching,
Trustfully knowing aright, in my name bid Prodicus pack with his
preaching!
It was Chaos and Night at the first, and the blackness of darkness,
and Hell's broad border,
Earth was not, nor air, neither heaven; when in depths of the womb
of the dark without order
First thing, first-born of the black-plumed Night, was a wind-egg
hatched in her bosom,
Whence timely with seasons revolving again sweet Love burst out as
a blossom,
Gold wings glittering forth of his back, like whirlwinds gustily
turning.
He, after his wedlock with Chaos, whose wings are of darkness, in
Hell broad-burning,
For his nestlings begat him the race of us first, and upraised us to
light new-lighted.
And before this was not the race of the gods, until all things by Love
were united:
And of kind united in kind with communion of nature the sky and
the sea are
Brought forth, and the earth, and the race of the gods everlasting and
blest. So that we are
Far away the most ancient of all things blest. And that we are of
Love's generation
There are manifest manifold signs. We have wings, and with us have
the Loves habitation;
And manifold fair young folk that forswore love once, ere the bloom
of them ended,
Have the men that pursued and desired them subdued by the help of
us only befriended,
With such baits as a quail, a flamingo, a goose, or a cock's comb
staring and splendid.
All best good things that befall men come from us birds, as is plain
to all reason:
For first we proclaim and make known to them spring, and the
winter and autumn in season;
Bid sow, when the crane starts clanging for Afric in shrill-voiced
emigrant number,
And calls to the pilot to hang up his rudder again for the season and
slumber;
And then weave a cloak for Orestes the thief, lest he strip men of
theirs if it freezes.
And again thereafter the kite reappearing announces a change in
the breezes.
And that here is the season for shearing your sheep of their spring
wool. Then does the swallow
Give you notice to sell your great-coat, and provide something light
for the heat that's to follow.
Thus are we as Ammon or Delphi unto you. Dodona, nay, Phoebus
Apollo.
For, as first ye come all to get auguries of birds, even such is in
all things your carriage,
Be the matter a matter of trade, or of earning your bread, or of any
one's marriage.
And all things ye lay to the charge of a bird that belong to
discerning prediction:
Winged fame is a bird, as you reckon; you sneeze, and the sign's as
a bird for conviction;
All tokens are "birds" with you--sounds, too, and lackeys and donkeys.
Then must it not follow
That we are to you all as the manifest godhead that speaks in
prophetic Apollo?
A RAINY DAY ON THE FARM
From 'The Peace': Frere's Translation
How sweet it is to see the new-sown cornfield fresh and even,
With blades just springing from the soil that only ask a shower
from heaven.
Then, while kindly rains are falling, indolently to rejoice,
Till some worthy neighbor calling, cheers you with his hearty voice.
Well, with weather such as this, let us hear, Trygæus tell us
What should you and I be doing? You're the king of us good fellows.
Since it pleases heaven to prosper your endeavors, friend, and mine,
Let us have a merry meeting, with some friendly talk and wine.
In the vineyard there's your lout, hoeing in the slop and mud--
Send the wench and call him out, this weather he can do no good.
Dame, take down two pints of meal, and do some fritters in your way;
Boil some grain and stir it in, and let us have those figs, I say.
Send a servant to my house,--any one that you can spare,--
Let him fetch a beestings pudding, two gherkins, and the pies of hare:
There should be four of them in all, if the cat has left them right;
We heard her racketing and tearing round the larder all last night,
Boy, bring three of them to us,--take the other to my father:
Cut some myrtle for our garlands, sprigs in flower or blossoms rather.
Give a shout upon the way to Charinades our neighbor,
To join our drinking bout to-day, since heaven is pleased to bless our
labor.
THE HARVEST
From 'The Peace': Translation in the Quarterly Review
Oh, 'tis sweet, when fields are ringing
With the merry cricket's singing,
Oft to mark with curious eye
If the vine-tree's time be nigh:
Here is now the fruit whose birth
Cost a throe to Mother Earth.
Sweet it is, too, to be telling,
How the luscious figs are swelling;
Then to riot without measure
In the rich, nectareous treasure,
While our grateful voices chime,--
Happy season! blessed time.
THE CALL TO THE NIGHTINGALE
From 'The Birds ': Frere's Translation
Awake! awake!
Sleep no more, my gentle mate!
With your tiny tawny bill,
Wake the tuneful echo shrill,
On vale or hill;
Or in her airy rocky seat,
Let her listen and repeat
The tender ditty that you tell,
The sad lament,
The dire event,
To luckless Itys that befell.
Thence the strain
Shall rise again,
And soar amain,
Up to the lofty palace gate
Where mighty Apollo sits in state
In Jove's abode, with his ivory lyre,
Hymning aloud to the heavenly choir,
While all the gods shall join with thee
In a celestial symphony.
THE BUILDING OF CLOUD-CUCKOO-TOWN
From 'The Birds ': Frere's Translation
[_Enter Messenger, quite out of breath, and speaking in short
snatches_.]
_Messenger_--Where is he? Where? Where is he? Where? Where
is he?--The president Peisthetairus?
_Peisthetairus [coolly_]--Here am I.
_Mess. [in a gasp of breath_]--Your fortification's finished.
_Peis_.--Well! that's well.
_Mess_.--A most amazing, astonishing work it is!
So that Theagenes and Proxenides
Might flourish and gasconade and prance away
Quite at their ease, both of them four-in-hand,
Driving abreast upon the breadth of wall,
Each in his own new chariot.
_Peis_.--You surprise me.
_Mess_.--And the height (for I made the measurement myself)
Is exactly a hundred fathoms.
_Peis_.--Heaven and earth!
How could it be? such a mass! who could have built it?
_Mess_.--The Birds; no creature else, no foreigners,
Egyptian bricklayers, workmen or masons.
But they themselves, alone, by their own efforts,--
(Even to my surprise, as an eye-witness)
The Birds, I say, completed everything:
There came a body of thirty thousand cranes,
(I won't be positive, there might be more)
With stones from Africa in their craws and gizzards,
Which the stone-curlews and stone-chatterers
Worked into shape and finished. The sand-martens
And mud-larks, too, were busy in their department,
Mixing the mortar, while the water-birds,
As fast as it was wanted, brought the water
To temper and work it.
_Peis. [in a fidget_]--But who served the masons
Who did you get to carry it?
_Mess_.--To carry it?
Of course, the carrion crows and carrying pigeons.
_Peis. [in a fuss, which he endeavors to conceal_]--
Yes! yes! but after all, to load your hods,
How did you manage that?
_Mess_.--Oh, capitally,
I promise you. There were the geese, all barefoot
Trampling the mortar, and when all was ready
They handed it into the hods, so cleverly,
With their flat feet!
_Peis. [a bad joke, as a vent for irritation_]--
They footed it, you mean--
Come; it was handily done though, I confess.
_Mess_.--Indeed, I assure you, it was a sight to see them;
And trains of ducks there were, clambering the ladders
With their duck legs, like bricklayers' 'prentices,
All dapper and handy, with their little trowels.
_Peis_.--In fact, then, it's no use engaging foreigners;
Mere folly and waste, we've all within ourselves.
Ah, well now, come! But about the woodwork? Heh!
Who were the carpenters? Answer me that!
_Mess_.--The woodpeckers, of course: and there they were,
Laboring upon the gates, driving and banging,
With their hard hatchet-beaks, and such a din,
Such a clatter, as they made, hammering and hacking,
In a perpetual peal, pelting away
Like shipwrights, hard at work in the arsenal.
And now their work is finished, gates and all,
Staples and bolts, and bars and everything;
The sentries at their posts; patrols appointed;
The watchman in the barbican; the beacons
Ready prepared for lighting; all their signals
Arranged--but I'll step out, just for a moment,
To wash my hands. You'll settle all the rest.
CHORUS OF WOMEN
From the 'Thesmophoriazusæ': Collins's Translation
They're always abusing the women,
As a terrible plague to men:
They say we're the root of all evil,
And repeat it again and again;
Of war, and quarrels, and bloodshed,
All mischief, be what it may!
And pray, then, why do you marry us,
If we're all the plagues you say?
And why do you take such care of us,
And keep us so safe at home,
And are never easy a moment
If ever we chance to roam?
When you ought to be thanking heaven
That your Plague is out of the way,
You all keep fussing and fretting--
"Where is _my_ Plague to-day?"
If a Plague peeps out of the window,
Up go the eyes of men;
If she hides, then they all keep staring
Until she looks out again.
CHORUS OF MYSTÆ IN HADES
From 'The Frogs': Frere's Translation
CHORUS [_shouting and singing_']
Iacchus! Iacchus! Ho!
Iacchus! Iacchus! Ho!
_Xanthias_--There, master, there they are, the initiated
All sporting about as he told us we should find 'em.
They're singing in praise of Bacchus like Diagoras.
_Bacchus_--Indeed, and so they are; but we'll keep quiet
Till we make them out a little more distinctly.
CHORUS _[song]_
Mighty Bacchus! Holy Power!
Hither at the wonted hour
Come away,
Come away,
With the wanton holiday,
Where the revel uproar leads
To the mystic holy meads,
Where the frolic votaries fly,
With a tipsy shout and cry;
Flourishing the Thyrsus high,
Flinging forth, alert and airy,
To the sacred old vagary,
The tumultuous dance and song,
Sacred from the vulgar throng;
Mystic orgies that are known
To the votaries alone--
To the mystic chorus solely--
Secret unrevealed--and holy.
_Xan_.--O glorious virgin, daughter of the Goddess!
What a scent of roasted griskin reached my senses!
_Bac_.--Keep quiet--and watch for a chance of a piece of the haslets.
CHORUS _[song]_
Raise the fiery torches high!
Bacchus is approaching nigh,
Like the planet of the morn
Breaking with the hoary dawn
On the dark solemnity--
There they flash upon the sight;
All the plain is blazing bright,
Flushed and overflown with light:
Age has cast his years away,
And the cares of many a day,
Sporting to the lively lay--
Mighty Bacchus! march and lead
(Torch in hand toward the mead)
Thy devoted humble Chorus;
Mighty Bacchus--move before us!
Keep silence--keep peace--and let all the profane
From our holy solemnity duly refrain;
Whose souls, unenlightened by taste, are obscure;
Whose poetical notions are dark and impure;
Whose theatrical conscience
Is sullied by nonsense;
Who never were trained by the mighty Cratinus
In mystical orgies, poetic and vinous;
Who delight in buffooning and jests out of season;
Who promote the designs of oppression and treason;
Who foster sedition and strife and debate;
All traitors, in short, to the Stage and the State:
Who surrender a fort, or in private export
To places and harbors of hostile resort
Clandestine consignments of cables and pitch,--
In the way that Thorycion grew to be rich
From a scoundrelly dirty collector of tribute:
All such we reject and severely prohibit;
All statesmen retrenching the fees and the salaries
Of theatrical bards, in revenge for the railleries
And jests and lampoons of this holy solemnity,
Profanely pursuing their personal enmity,
For having been flouted and scoffed and scorned--
All such are admonished and heartily warned;
We warn them once,
We warn them twice,
We warn and admonish--we warn them thrice,
To conform to the law,
To retire and withdraw;
While the Chorus again with the formal saw,
(Fixt and assign'd to the festive day)
Move to the measure and march away.
SEMI-CHORUS
March! march! lead forth,
Lead forth manfully,
March in order all;
Bustling, hustling, justling,
As it may befall;
Flocking, shouting, laughing,
Mocking, flouting, quaffing,
One and all;
All have had a belly-full
Of breakfast brave and plentiful;
Therefore
Evermore
With your voices and your bodies
Serve the goddess,
And raise
Songs of praise;
She shall save the country still,
And save it against the traitor's will;
So she says.
SEMI-CHORUS
Now let us raise in a different strain
The praise of the goddess, the giver of grain;
Imploring her favor
With other behavior,
In measures more sober, submissive, and graver.
SEMI-CHORUS
Ceres, holy patroness,
Condescend to mark and bless,
With benevolent regard,
Both the Chorus and the Bard;
Grant them for the present day
Many things to sing and say,
Follies intermixed with sense;
Folly, but without offense.
Grant them with the present play
To bear the prize of verse away.
SEMI-CHORUS
Now call again, and with a different measure,
The power of mirth and pleasure;
The florid, active Bacchus, bright and gay,
To journey forth and join us on the way.
SEMI-CHORUS
O Bacchus, attend! the customary patron of every lively lay;
Go forth without delay
Thy wonted annual way,
To meet the ceremonious holy matron:
Her grave procession gracing,
Thine airy footsteps tracing
With unlaborious, light, celestial motion;
And here at thy devotion
Behold thy faithful choir
In pitiful attire:
All overworn and ragged,
This jerkin old and jagged,
These buskins torn and burst,
Though sufferers in the fray,
May serve us at the worst
To sport throughout the day;
And then within the shades
I spy some lovely maids
With whom we romped and reveled,
Dismantled and disheveled,
With their bosoms open,--
With whom we might be coping.
_Xan_.--Well, I was always hearty,
Disposed to mirth and ease:
I'm ready to join the party.
_Bac_.--And I will if you please.
A PARODY OF EURIPIDES'S LYRIC VERSE
From 'The Frogs'
Halcyons ye by the flowing sea
Waves that warble twitteringly,
Circling over the tumbling blue,
Dipping your down in its briny dew,
Spi-i-iders in corners dim
Spi-spi-spinning your fairy film,
Shuttles echoing round the room
Silver notes of the whistling loom,
Where the light-footed dolphin skips
Down the wake of the dark-prowed ships,
Over the course of the racing steed
Where the clustering tendrils breed
Grapes to drown dull care in delight,
Oh! mother make me a child again just for to-night!
I don't exactly see how that last line is to scan,
But that's a consideration I leave to our musical man.
THE PROLOGUES OF EURIPIDES
From 'The Frogs'
[The point of the following selection lies in the monotony of
both narrative style and metre in Euripides's prologues, and
especially his regular cæsura after the fifth syllable of a
line. The burlesque tag used by Aristophanes to demonstrate
this effect could not be applied in the same way to any of
the fourteen extant plays of Sophocles and Æschylus.]
_Æschylus_--And by Jove, I'll not stop to cut up your verses
word by word, but if the gods are propitious I'll spoil
all your prologues with a little flask of smelling-salts.
_Euripides_--With a flask of smelling-salts?
_Æsch_.--With a single one. For you build your verses so that
anything will fit into the metre,--a leathern sack,
or eider-down, or smelling-salts. I'll show you.
_Eur_.--So, you'll show me, will you?
_Æsch_.--I will that.
_Dionysus_--Pronounce.
_Eur_. [_declaiming_]--
Ægyptus, as broad-bruited fame reports,
With fifty children voyaging the main
To Argos came, and
_Æsch_.--lost his smelling-salts.
_Dion_.--What the mischief have the smelling-salts got to do with
it? Recite another prologue to him and let me see.
_Eur_.--
Dionysus, thyrsus-armed and faun-skin-clad,
Amid the torchlights on Parnassus's slope
Dancing and prancing
_Æsch_.--lost his smelling-salts.
_Dion_.--Caught out again by the smelling-salts.
_Eur_.--No matter. Here's a prologue that he can't fit 'em to.
No lot of mortal man is wholly blest:
The high-born youth hath lacked the means of life,
The lowly lout hath
_Æsch_.--lost his smelling-salts.
_Dion_.--Euripides--
_Eur_.--Well, what?
_Dion_.--Best take in sail.
These smelling-salts, methinks, will blow a gale.
_Eur_.--What do I care? I'll fix him next time.
_Dion_.--Well, recite another, and steer clear of the smelling-salts.
_Eur_.--
Cadmus departing from the town of Tyre,
Son of Agenor
_Æsch_.--lost his smelling-salts.
_Dion_.--My dear fellow, buy those smelling-salts, or there won't
be a rag left of all your prologues.
_Eur_.--What? I buy 'em of him?
_Dion_.--If you'll be advised by me.
_Eur_.--Not a bit of it. I've lots of prologues where he can't
work 'em in.
Pelops the Tantalid to Pisa coming
With speedy coursers
_Æsch_.--lost his smelling-salts.
_Dion_.--There they are again, you see. Do let him have 'em,
my good Æschylus. You can replace 'em for a
nickel.
_Eur_.--Never. I've not run out yet.
Oeneus from broad fields
_Æsch_.--lost his smelling-salts.
_Eur_.--Let me say the whole verse, won't you?
Oeneus from broad fields reaped a mighty crop
And offering first-fruits
_Æsch_.--lost his smelling-salts.
_Dion_.--While sacrificing? Who filched them?
_Eur_.--Oh, never mind him. Let him try it on this verse:--
Zeus, as the word of sooth declared of old--
_Dion_.--It's no use, he'll say Zeus lost his smelling-salts. For
those smelling-salts fit your prologues like a kid
glove. But go on and turn your attention to his
lyrics.
ARISTOTLE
(B.C. 384-322)
BY THOMAS DAVIDSON
The "Stagirite," called by Eusebius "Nature's private secretary," and by
Dante "the master of those that know,"--the greatest thinker of the
ancient world, and the most influential of all time,--was born of Greek
parents at Stagira, in the mountains of Macedonia, in B.C. 384. Of his
mother, Phæstis, almost nothing is known. His father, Nicomachus,
belonged to a medical family, and acted as private physician to Amyntas,
grandfather of Alexander the Great; whence it is probable that
Aristotle's boyhood was passed at or near the Macedonian court. Losing
both his parents while a mere boy, he was taken charge of by a relative,
Proxenus Atarneus, and sent, at the age of seventeen, to Athens to
study. Here he entered the school of Plato, where he remained twenty
years, as pupil and as teacher. During this time he made the
acquaintance of the leading contemporary thinkers, read omnivorously,
amassed an amount of knowledge that seems almost fabulous, schooled
himself in systematic thought, and (being well off) collected a library,
perhaps the first considerable private library in the world. Having
toward the end felt obliged to assume an independent attitude in
thought, he was not at the death of Plato (347) appointed his successor
in the Academy, as might have been expected. Not wishing at that time to
set up a rival school, he retired to the court of a former fellow-pupil,
Hermias, then king of Assos and Atarneus, whom he greatly respected, and
whose adopted daughter, Pythias, he later married. Here he remained,
pursuing his studies, for three years; and left only when his patron was
treacherously murdered by the Persians.
Having retired to Mitylene, he soon afterward received an invitation
from Philip of Macedonia to undertake the education of his son
Alexander, then thirteen years old. Aristotle willingly obeyed this
summons; and retiring with his royal pupil to Mieza, a town southwest of
Pella, imparted his instruction in the Nymphæum, which he had arranged
in imitation of Plato's garden school. Alexander remained with him three
years, and was then called by his father to assume important State
duties. Whether Aristotle's instruction continued after that is
uncertain; but the two men remained fast friends, and there can be no
doubt that much of the nobility, self-control, largeness of purpose, and
enthusiasm for culture, which characterized Alexander's subsequent
career, were due to the teaching of the philosopher. What Aristotle was
in the world of thought, Alexander became in the world of action.
[Illustration: ARISTOTLE.]
Aristotle remained in Macedonia ten years, giving instruction to young
Macedonians and continuing his own studies. He then returned to Athens,
and opened a school in the _peripatos_, or promenade, of the Lyceum, the
gymnasium of the foreign residents, a school which from its location was
called the Peripatetic. Here he developed a manifold activity. He
pursued all kinds of studies, logical, rhetorical, physical,
metaphysical, ethical, political, and aesthetic, gave public (exoteric)
and private (esoteric) instruction, and composed the bulk of the
treatises which have made his name famous. These treatises were composed
slowly, in connection with his lectures, and subjected to frequent
revision. He likewise endeavored to lead an ideal social life with his
friends and pupils, whom he gathered under a common roof to share meals
and elevated converse in common.
Thus affairs went on for twelve fruitful years, and might have gone on
longer, but for the sudden death of Alexander, his friend and patron.
Then the hatred of the Athenians to the conqueror showed itself in
hostility to his old master, and sought for means to put him out of the
way. How hard it was to find a pretext for so doing is shown by the fact
that they had to fix upon the poem which he had written on the death of
his friend Hermias many years before, and base upon it--as having the
form of the paean, sacred to Apollo--a charge of impiety. Aristotle,
recognizing the utter flimsiness of the charge, and being unwilling, as
he said, to allow the Athenians to sin a second time against philosophy,
retired beyond their reach to his villa at Chalcis in Euboea, where he
died of stomach disease the year after (322). In the later years of his
life, the friendship between him and his illustrious pupil had, owing to
certain outward circumstances, become somewhat cooled; but there never
was any serious breach. His body was carried to Stagira, which he had
induced Philip to restore after it had been destroyed, and whose
inhabitants therefore looked upon him as the founder of the city. As
such he received the religious honors accorded to heroes: an altar was
erected to him, at which an annual festival was celebrated in the month
named after him.
We may sum up the character of Aristotle by saying that he was one of
the sanest and most rounded men that ever lived. As a philosopher, he
stands in the front rank. "No time," says Hegel, "has a man to place by
his side." Nor was his moral character inferior to his intellect. No one
can read his 'Ethics,' or his will (the text of which is extant),
without feeling the nobleness, simplicity, purity, and modernness of
his nature. In his family relations, especially, he seems to have stood
far above his contemporaries. The depth of his aesthetic perception is
attested by his poems and his 'Poetics.'
The unsatisfactory and fragmentary condition in which Aristotle's works
have come down to us makes it difficult to judge of his style. Many of
them seem mere collections of notes and jottings for lectures, without
any attempt at style. The rest are distinguished by brevity, terseness,
and scientific precision. No other man ever enriched philosophic
language with so many original expressions. We know, from the testimony
of most competent judges, such as Cicero, that his popular writings,
dialogues, etc., were written in an elegant style, casting even that of
Plato into the shade; and this is borne fully out by some extant
fragments.
Greek philosophy culminates in Aristotle. Setting out with a naïve
acceptance of the world as being what it seemed, and trying to reduce
this Being to some material principle, such as water, air, etc., it was
gradually driven, by force of logic, to distinguish Being from Seeming,
and to see that while the latter was dependent on the thinking subject,
the former could not be anything material. This result was reached by
both the materialistic and spiritualistic schools, and was only carried
one step further by the Sophists, who maintained that even the being of
things depended on the thinker. This necessarily led to skepticism,
individualism, and disruption of the old social and religious order.
Then arose Socrates, greatest of the Sophists, who, seeing that the
outer world had been shown to depend on the inner, adopted as his motto,
"Know Thyself," and devoted himself to the study of mind. By his
dialectic method he showed that skepticism and individualism, so far as
anarchic, can be overcome by carrying out thought to its implications;
when it proves to be the same for all, and to bring with it an authority
binding on all, and replacing that of the old external gods. Thus
Socrates discovered the principle of human liberty, a principle
necessarily hostile to the ancient State, which absorbed the man in the
citizen. Socrates was accordingly put to death as an atheist; and then
Plato, with good intentions but prejudiced insight, set to work to
restore the old tyranny of the State. This he did by placing truth, or
reality (which Socrates had found in complete thought, internal to the
mind), outside of both thought and nature, and making it consist of a
group of eternal schemes, or forms, of which natural things are merely
transient phantoms, and which can be reached by only a few aristocratic
souls, born to rule the rest. On the basis of this distortion he
constructed his Republic, in which complete despotism is exercised by
the philosophers through the military; man is reduced to a machine, his
affections and will being disregarded; community of women and of
property is the law; and science is scouted.
Aristotle's philosophy may be said to be a protest against this view,
and an attempt to show that reality is embodied in nature, which depends
on a supreme intelligence, and may be realized in other intelligences,
or thought-centres, such as the human mind. In other words, according to
Aristotle, truth is actual in the world and potential in all minds,
which may by experience put on its forms. Thus the individualism of the
Sophists and the despotism of Plato are overcome, while an important
place is made for experience, or science.
Aristotle, accepting the world of common-sense, tried to rationalize it;
that is, to realize it in himself. First among the Greeks he believed it
to be unique, uncreated, and eternal, and gave his reasons. Recognizing
that the phenomenal world exists in change, he investigated the
principle and method of this. Change he conceives as a transition from
potentiality to actuality, and as always due to something actualized,
communicating its form to something potential. Looking at the "world" as
a whole, and picturing it as limited, globular, and constructed like an
onion, with the earth in the centre, and round about it nine concentric
spheres carrying the planets and stars, he concludes that there must be
at one end something purely actual and therefore unchanging,--that is,
pure form or energy; and at the other, something purely potential and
therefore changing,--that is, pure matter or latency. The pure actuality
is at the circumference, pure matter at the centre. Matter, however,
never exists without some form. Thus, nature is an eternal circular
process between the actual and the potential. The supreme Intelligence,
God, being pure energy, changelessly thinks himself, and through the
love inspired by his perfection moves the outmost sphere; which would
move all the rest were it not for inferior intelligences, fifty-six in
number, who, by giving them different directions, diversify the divine
action and produce the variety of the world. The celestial world is
composed of eternal matter, or aether, whose only change is circular
motion; the sublunary world is composed of changing matter, in four
different but mutually transmutable forms--fire, air, water,
earth--movable in two opposite directions, in straight lines, under the
ever-varying influence of the celestial spheres.
Thus the world is an organism, making no progress as a whole, but
continually changing in its various parts. In it all real things are
individuals, not universals, as Plato thought. And forms pass from
individual to individual only. Peleus, not humanity, is the parent of
Achilles; the learned man only can teach the ignorant. In the
world-process there are several distinct stages, to each of which
Aristotle devotes a special work, or series of works. Beginning with the
"four elements" and their changes, he works up through the mineral,
vegetable, and animal worlds, to man, and thence through the spheral
intelligences to the supreme, divine intelligence, on which the Whole
depends. Man stands on the dividing line between the temporal and the
eternal; belonging with his animal part to the former, with his
intelligence (which "enters from without") to the latter. He is an
intelligence, of the same nature as the sphere-movers, but individuated
by mutable matter in the form of a body, matter being in all cases the
principle of individuation. As intelligence, he becomes free; takes the
guidance of his life into his own hand; and, first through ethics,
politics, and aesthetics, the forms of his sensible or practical
activity, and second through logic, science, and philosophy, the forms
of his intellectual activity, he rises to divine heights and "plays the
immortal." His supreme activity is contemplation. This, the eternal
energy of God, is possible for man only at rare intervals.
Aristotle, by placing his eternal forms in sensible things as their
meaning, made science possible and necessary. Not only is he the father
of scientific method, inductive and deductive, but his actual
contributions to science place him in the front rank of scientists. His
Zoölogy, Psychology, Logic, Metaphysics, Ethics, Politics, and
Aesthetics, are still highly esteemed and extensively studied. At the
same time, by failing to overcome the dualism and supernaturalism of
Plato, by adopting the popular notions about spheres and sphere-movers,
by separating intelligence from sense, by conceiving matter as
independent and the principle of individuation, and by making science
relate only to the universal, he paved the way for astrology, alchemy,
magic, and all the forms of superstition, retarding the advance of
several sciences, as for example astronomy and chemistry, for many
hundred years.
After Aristotle's death, his school was continued by a succession of
studious and learned men, but did not for many centuries deeply affect
contemporary life. At last, in the fifth century A.D., his thought found
its way into the Christian schools, giving birth to rationalism and
historical criticism. At various times its adherents were condemned as
heretics and banished, mostly to Syria. Here, at Edessa and Nisibis,
they established schools of learning which for several centuries were
the most famous in the world. The entire works of Aristotle were turned
into Syriac; among them several spurious ones of Neo-Platonic origin,
notably the famous 'Liber de Causis' and the 'Theology of Aristotle.'
Thus a Neo-Platonic Aristotle came to rule Eastern learning. On the rise
of Islâm, this Aristotle was borrowed by the Muslims, and became ruler
of their schools at Bagdad, Basra, and other places,--schools which
produced many remarkable men. On the decay of these, he passed in the
twelfth century into the schools of Spain, and here ruled supreme until
Arab philosophy was suppressed, shortly before 1200. From the Arabs he
passed into the Christian Church about this date; and though at first
resisted, was finally accepted, and became "the philosopher" of the
schools, and the inspirer of Dante. The Reformers, though decrying him,
were forced to have recourse to him; but his credit was not
re-established until the present century, when, thanks to Hegel,
Trendelenburg, Brandis, and the Berlin Academy, his true value was
recognized and his permanent influence insured.
The extant works of Aristotle, covering the whole field of science, may
be classified as follows:--
A. _Logical or Formal_, dealing with the form rather than the matter of
science:--'Categories,' treating of Being and its determination, which,
being regarded ontologically, bring the work into the metaphysical
sphere; 'On Interpretation,' dealing with the proposition; 'Former
Analytics,' theory of the syllogism; 'Later Analytics,' theory of proof;
'Topics,' probable proofs; 'Sophistical proofs,' fallacies. These works
were later united by the Stoics under the title 'Organon,' or Instrument
(of science).
B. _Scientific or Philosophical_, dealing with the matter of science.
These may be subdivided into three classes: (_a_) Theoretical, (_b_)
Practical, (_c_) Creative.
(_a_) The _Theoretical_ has further subdivisions: (_a_) Metaphysical,
(_b_) Physical, (_c_) Mathematical.--(_a_) The Metaphysical works
include the incomplete collection under the name 'Metaphysics,'--(_b_)
The Physical works include 'Physics,' 'On the Heavens,' 'On Generation
and Decay,' 'On the Soul,' with eight supplementary tracts on actions of
the soul as combined with the body; viz., 'On Sense and Sensibles,' 'On
Memory and Reminiscence,' 'On Sleep and Waking,' 'On Dreams,' 'On
Divination from Dreams,' 'On Length and Shortness of Life,' 'On Life and
Death,' 'On Respiration,' 'Meteorologics,' 'Histories of Animals'
(Zoögraphy). 'On the Parts of Animals,' 'On the Generation of Animals,'
'On the Motion of Animals,' 'Problems' (largely spurious). 'On the
Cosmos,' 'Physiognomies,' 'On Wonderful Auditions,' 'On Colors.'--The
Mathematical works include 'On Indivisible Lines,' 'Mechanics.'
(_b_) The _Practical_ works are 'Nicomachean Ethics,' 'Endemean Ethics,'
'Great Ethics' ('Magna Moralia'), really different forms of the same
work; 'Politics,' 'Constitutions' (originally one hundred and
fifty-eight in number; now represented only by the recently discovered
'Constitution of Athens'), 'On Virtues and Vices,' 'Rhetoric to
Alexander,' 'Oeconomics.'
(_c_) Of _Creative_ works we have only the fragmentary 'Poetics.' To
these may be added a few poems, one of which is given here.
Besides the extant works of Aristotle, we have titles, fragments, and
some knowledge of the contents of a large number more. Among these are
the whole of the "exoteric" works, including nineteen Dialogues. A list
of his works, as arranged in the Alexandrian Library (apparently), is
given by Diogenes Laërtius in his 'Life of Aristotle' (printed in the
Berlin and Paris editions of 'Aristotle'); a list in which it is not
easy to identify the whole of the extant works. The 'Fragments' appear
in both the editions just named. Some of the works named above are
almost certainly spurious; _e.g._, the 'Rhetoric to Alexander,' the
'Oeconomics,' etc.
The chief editions of Aristotle's works, exclusive of the 'Constitution
of Athens,' are that of the Berlin Academy (Im. Bekker), containing
text, scholia, Latin translation, and Index in Greek (5 vols., square
4to); and the Paris or Didot (Dübner, Bussemaker, Heitz), containing
text, Latin translation, and very complete Index in Latin (5 vols.,
4to). Of the chief works the best editions are:--'Organon,' Waitz;
'Metaphysics,' Schwegler, Bonitz; 'Physics,' Prantl; 'Meteorologies,'
Ideler; 'On the Generation of Animals,' Aubert and Wimmer; 'Psychology,'
Trendelenburg, Torstrik, Wallace (with English translation);
'Nicomachean Ethics,' Grant, Ramsauer, Susemihl; 'Politics,' Stahr,
Susemihl; 'Constitution of Athens,' Kenyon, Sandys; 'Poetics,' Susemihl,
Vahlen, Butcher (with English translation). There are few good English
translations of Aristotle's works; but among these may be mentioned
Peter's 'Nicomachean Ethics,' Jowett's and Welldon's 'Politics,' and
Poste's 'Constitution of Athens.' There is a fair French translation of
the principal works by Barthélemy St.-Hilaire. The Berlin Academy is now
(1896) publishing the ancient Greek commentaries on Aristotle in
thirty-five quarto volumes. The best work on Aristotle is that by E.
Zeller, in Vol. iii. of his 'Philosophie der Griechen.' The English
works by Lewes and Grote are inferior. For Bibliography, the student may
consult Ueberweg, 'Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophic,' Vol. i.,
pages 196 _seq_.
[Illustration: Signature: THOMAS DAVIDSON]
THE NATURE OF THE SOUL
From 'On the Soul,' Book iii., Chapter 6
Concerning that part of the soul, however, by which the soul knows (and
is prudentially wise) whether it is separable or not separable,
according to magnitude, but according to reason, it must be considered
what difference it possesses, and how intellectual perception is
produced. If, therefore, to perceive intellectually is the same thing as
to perceive sensibly, it will either be to suffer something from the
intelligible, or something else of this kind. It is necessary, however,
that it should be impassive, but capable of receiving form; and in
capacity a thing of this kind, but not this; and also, that as the
sensitive power is to sensibles, so should intellect be to
intelligibles. It is necessary, therefore, since it understands all
things, that it should be unmingled, as Anaxagoras says, that it may
predominate: but this is that it may know; for that which is foreign at
the same time presenting itself to the view, impedes and obstructs.
Hence, neither is there any other nature of it than this, that it is
possible. That, therefore, which is called the intellect of soul (I mean
the intellect by which the soul energizes dianoetically and
hypoleptically), is nothing in energy of beings before it intellectually
perceives them. Hence, neither is it reasonable that it should be
mingled with body; for thus it would become a thing with certain
quality, would be hot or cold, and would have a certain organ in the
same manner as the sensitive power. Now, however, there is no organ of
it. In a proper manner, therefore, do they speak, who say that the soul
is the place of forms; except that this is not true of the whole soul,
but of that which is intellective; nor is it forms in entelecheia, but
in capacity. But that the impassivity of the sensitive and intellective
power is not similar, is evident in the sensoria and in sense. For sense
cannot perceive from a vehement sensible object (as for instance, sounds
from very loud sounds; nor from strong odors and colors can it either
see or smell): but intellect, when it understands anything very
intelligible, does not less understand inferior concerns, but even
understands them in a greater degree; for the sensitive power is not
without body, but intellect is separate from body.
When however it becomes particulars, in such a manner as he is said to
possess scientific knowledge who scientifically knows in energy (and
this happens when it is able to energize through itself), then also it
is similarly in a certain respect in capacity, yet not after the same
manner as before it learnt or discovered; and it is then itself able to
understand itself. By the sensitive power, therefore, it distinguishes
the hot and the cold, and those things of which flesh is a certain
reason; but by another power, either separate, or as an inflected line
subsists with reference to itself when it is extended, it distinguishes
the essence of flesh. Further still, in those things which consist in
ablation, the straight is as the flat nose; for it subsists with the
continued.
Some one, however, may question, if intellect is simple and impassive
and has nothing in common with anything, as Anaxagoras says, how it can
perceive intellectually, if to perceive intellectually is to suffer
something; for so far as something is common to both, the one appears to
act, but the other to suffer. Again, it may also be doubted whether
intellect is itself intelligible. For either intellect will also be
present with other things, if it is not intelligible according to
another thing, but the intelligible is one certain thing in species; or
it will have something mingled, which will make it to be intelligible in
the same manner as other things. Or shall we say that to suffer subsists
according to something common? On which account, it was before observed
that intellect is in capacity, in a certain respect, intelligibles, but
is no one of them in entelecheia, before it understands or perceives
intellectually. But it is necessary to conceive of it as of a table in
which nothing is written in entelecheia; which happens to be the case in
intellect. But in those things which have matter, each of the
intelligibles is in capacity only. Hence, intellect will not be present
with them; for the intellect of such things is capacity without matter.
But with intellect the intelligible will be present.
* * * * *
Since, however, in every nature there is something which is matter to
each genus (and this because it is all those in capacity), and something
which is the cause and affective, because it produces all things (in
such a manner as art is affected with respect to matter), it is
necessary that these differences should also be inherent in the soul.
And the one is an intellect of this kind because it becomes all things;
but the other because it produces all things as a certain habit, such
for instance as light. For in a certain respect, light also causes
colors which are in capacity to be colors in energy. And this intellect
is separate, unmingled, and impassive, since it is in its essence
energy; for the efficient is always more honorable than the patient, and
the principle than matter. Science, also, in energy is the same as the
thing [which is scientifically known]. But science which is in capacity
is prior in time in the one [to science in energy]; though, in short,
neither [is capacity prior to energy] in time. It does not, however,
perceive intellectually at one time and at another time not, but
separate intellect is alone this very thing which it is; and this alone
is immortal and eternal. We do not, however, remember because this is
impassive; but the passive intellect is corruptible, and without this
the separate intellect understands nothing.
ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HISTORY AND POETRY, AND
HOW HISTORICAL MATTER SHOULD BE USED IN POETRY
From the 'Poetics,' Chapter 9
But it is evident from what has been said that it is not the province of
a poet to relate things which have happened, but such as might have
happened, and such things as are possible according to probability, or
which would necessarily have happened. For a historian and a poet do not
differ from each other because the one writes in verse and the other in
prose; for the history of Herodotus might be written in verse, and yet
it would be no less a history with metre than without metre. But they
differ in this, that the one speaks of things which have happened, and
the other of such as might have happened. Hence, poetry is more
philosophic, and more deserving of attention, than history. For poetry
speaks more of universals, but history of particulars. But universal
consists, indeed, in relating or performing certain things which happen
to a man of a certain description, either probably or necessarily [to
which the aim of poetry is directed in giving names]; but particular
consists in narrating what [for example] Alcibiades did, or what he
suffered. In comedy, therefore, this is now become evident. For comic
poets having composed a fable through things of a probable nature, they
thus give whatever names they please to their characters, and do not,
like iambic poets, write poems about particular persons. But in tragedy
they cling to real names. The cause, however, of this is, that the
possible is credible. Things therefore which have not yet been done, we
do not yet believe to be possible: but it is evident that things which
have been done are possible, for they would not have been done if they
were impossible.
Not indeed but that in some tragedies there are one or two known names,
and the rest are feigned; but in others there is no known name, as for
instance in 'The Flower of Agatho.' For in this tragedy the things and
the names are alike feigned, and yet it delights no less. Hence, one
must not seek to adhere entirely to traditional fables, which are the
subjects of tragedy. For it is ridiculous to make this the object of
search, because even known subjects are known but to a few, though at
the same time they delight all men. From these things, therefore, it is
evident that a poet ought rather to be the author of fables than of
metres, inasmuch as he is a poet from imitation, and he imitates
actions. Hence, though it should happen that he relates things which
have happened, he is no less a poet. For nothing hinders but that some
actions which have happened are such as might both probably and possibly
have happened, and by [the narration of] such he is a poet.
But of simple plots and actions, the episodic are the worst. But I call
the plot episodic, in which it is neither probable nor necessary that
the episodes follow each other. Such plots, however, are composed by bad
poets, indeed, through their own want of ability; but by good poets, on
account of the players. For, introducing [dramatic] contests, and
extending the plot beyond its capabilities, they are frequently
compelled to distort the connection of the parts. But tragedy is not
only an imitation of a perfect action, but also of actions which are
terrible and piteous, and actions principally become such (and in a
greater degree when they happen contrary to opinion) on account of each
other. For thus they will possess more of the marvelous than if they
happened from chance and fortune; since also of things which are from
fortune, those appear to be most admirable which seem to happen as it
were by design. Thus the statue of Mityus at Argos killed him who was
the cause of the death of Mityus by falling as he was surveying it. For
such events as these seem not to take place casually. Hence it is
necessary that fables of this kind should be more beautiful.
ON PHILOSOPHY
Quoted in Cicero's 'Nature of the Gods'
If there were men whose habitations had been always under ground, in
great and commodious houses, adorned with statues and pictures,
furnished with everything which they who are reputed happy abound with:
and if, without stirring from thence, they should be informed of a
certain divine power and majesty, and after some time the earth should
open and they should quit their dark abode to come to us, where they
should immediately behold the earth, the seas, the heavens; should
consider the vast extent of the clouds and force of the winds; should
see the sun and observe his grandeur and beauty, and perceive that day
is occasioned by the diffusion of his light through the sky; and when
night has obscured the earth they should contemplate the heavens,
bespangled and adorned with stars, the surprising variety of the moon in
her increase and wane, the rising and setting of all the stars and the
inviolable regularity of their courses,--when, says he, "they should see
these things, they would undoubtedly conclude that there are gods, and
that these are their mighty works."
ON ESSENCES
From 'The Metaphysics,' Book xi., Chapter I
The subject of theory (or speculative science) is _essence_. In it are
investigated the principles and causes of essences. The truth is, if the
All be regarded as a whole, essence is its first (or highest) part.
Also, if we consider the natural order of the categories, essence stands
at the head of the list; then comes quality; then quantity. It is true
that the other categories, such as qualities and movements, are not in
any absolute sense at all, and the same is true of [negatives, such as]
not-white or not-straight. Nevertheless, we use such expressions as
"Not-white is."
Moreover, no one of the other categories is separable [or independent].
This is attested by the procedure of the older philosophers; for it was
the principles, elements, and causes of essence that were the objects of
their investigations. The thinkers of the present day, to be sure, are
rather inclined to consider universals as essence. For genera are
universals, and these they hold to be principles and essences, mainly
because their mode of investigation is a logical one. The older
philosophers, on the other hand, considered particular things to be
essences; _e.g.,_ fire and earth, not body in general.
There are three essences. Two of these are sensible, one being eternal
and the other transient. The latter is obvious to all, in the form of
plants and animals; with regard to the former, there is room for
discussion, as to whether its elements are one or many. The third,
differing from the other two, is immutable and is maintained by certain
persons to be separable. Some make two divisions of it, whereas others
class together, as of one nature, ideas and mathematical entities; and
others again admit only the latter. The first two essences belong to
physical science, for they are subject to change; the last belongs to
another science, if there is no principle common to all.
ON COMMUNITY OF STUDIES
From 'The Politics,' Book 8
No one, therefore, can doubt that the legislator ought principally to
attend to the education of youth. For in cities where this is neglected,
the politics are injured. For every State ought to be governed according
to its nature; since the appropriate manners of each polity usually
preserve the polity, and establish it from the beginning. Thus,
appropriate democratic manners preserve and establish a democracy, and
oligarchic an oligarchy. Always, however, the best manners are the cause
of the best polity. Further still, in all professions and arts, there
are some things which ought previously to be learnt, and to which it is
requisite to be previously accustomed, in order to the performance of
their several works,; so that it is evident that it is also necessary in
the practice of virtue.
Since, however, there is one purpose to every city, it is evident that
the education must necessarily be one and the same in all cities; and
that the attention paid to this should be common. At the same time,
also, no one ought to think that any person takes care of the education
of his children separately, and privately teaches them that particular
discipline which appears to him to be proper. But it is necessary that
the studies of the public should be common. At the same time, also, no
one ought to think that any citizen belongs to him in particular, but
that all the citizens belong to the city; for each individual is a part
of the city. The care and attention, however, which are paid to each of
the parts, naturally look to the care and attention of the whole. And
for this, some one may praise the Lacedaemonians; for they pay very
great attention to their children, and this in common. It is evident,
therefore, that laws should be established concerning education, and
that it should be made common.
HYMN TO VIRTUE
Virtue, to men thou bringest care and toil;
Yet art thou life's best, fairest spoil!
O virgin goddess, for thy beauty's sake
To die is delicate in this our Greece,
Or to endure of pain the stern strong ache.
Such fruit for our soul's ease
Of joys undying, dearer far than gold
Or home or soft-eyed sleep, dost thou unfold!
It was for thee the seed of Zeus,
Stout Herakles, and Leda's twins, did choose
Strength-draining deeds, to spread abroad thy name:
Smit with the love of thee
Aias and Achilleus went smilingly
Down to Death's portal, crowned with deathless fame.
Now, since thou art so fair,
Leaving the lightsome air.
Atarneus' hero hath died gloriously.
Wherefore immortal praise shall be his guerdon:
His goodness and his deeds are made the burden
Of songs divine
Sung by Memory's daughters nine,
Hymning of hospitable Zeus the might
And friendship firm as fate in fate's despite.
Translation of J. A. Symonds.
JÓN ARNASON
(1819-1888)
Jón Arnason was born in 1819, at Hof. Akàgaströnd, in Iceland, where his
father, Arm Illugason, was clergyman. After completing the course at the
Bessastad Latin School, at that time the most famous school in Iceland,
he took his first position as librarian of the so-called Stiptbókasafn
Islands (since 1881 called the National Library), which office he held
till 1887, when he asked to be relieved from his official duties. During
this period he had been also the first librarian of the Reykjavik branch
of the Icelandic Literary Society; a teacher and the custodian of the
library at the Latin School, which in the mean time had been moved from
Bessastad to Reykjavik; secretary of the bishop, Helgi Thordersen, and
custodian of the growing collection of Icelandic antiquities which has
formed the nucleus of a national museum. He had found time, besides,
during these years, for considerable literary work; and apart from
several valuable bibliographies had, alone and in collaboration, made
important contributions to his native literature. He died at
Reykjavik in 1888.
His principal literary work, and that by which alone he is known outside
of Iceland, is the collection of folk-tales that appeared in Iceland in
1862-64, in two volumes, with the title 'Islenzkar Thoosögur og
Æfintyri' (Icelandic Popular Legends and Tales). A small preliminary
collection, called 'Islenzk Æfintyri' (Icelandic Tales), made in
collaboration with Magnus Grimsson, had been published in 1852.
Subsequently, Jón Arnason went to work single-handed to make an
exhaustive collection of the folk-tales of the country, which by
traveling and correspondence he drew from every nook and corner of
Iceland. No effort was spared to make the collection complete, and many
years were spent in this undertaking. The results were in every way
valuable. No more important collection of folk-tales exists in the
literature of any nation, and the work has become both a classic at home
and a most suggestive link in the comparative study of folk-lore
elsewhere. Arnason thus performed for his native land what the Grimms
did for Germany, and what Asbjörnsen and Moe did for Norway. He has
frequently been called the "Grimm of Iceland." The stories of the
collection have since found their way all over the world, many of them
having been translated into English, German, French, and Danish.
In his transcription of the tales, Arnason has followed, even more
conscientiously, the plan of the Grimms in adhering to the local or
individual form in which the story had come to him in writing or by
oral transmission. We get in this way a perfect picture of the national
spirit, and a better knowledge of life and environment in Iceland than
from any other source. In these stories there is much to say of elves
and trolls, of ghosts and "fetches," of outlaws and the devil. Magic
plays an important part, and there is the usual lore of beasts and
plants. Many of them are but variants of folk-tales that belong to the
race. Others, however, are as plainly local evolutions, which in their
whole conception are as weird and mysterious as the environment that has
produced them.
All the stories are from 'Icelandic Legends': Translation of Powell
and Magnusson.
THE MERMAN
Long ago a farmer lived at Vogar, who was a mighty fisherman; and of all
the farms about, not one was so well situated with regard to the
fisheries as his.
One day, according to custom, he had gone out fishing; and having cast
down his line from the boat and waited awhile, found it very hard to
pull up again, as if there were something very heavy at the end of it.
Imagine his astonishment when he found that what he had caught was a
great fish, with a man's head and body! When he saw that this creature
was alive, he addressed it and said, "Who and whence are you?"
"A merman from the bottom of the sea," was the reply.
The farmer then asked him what he had been doing when the hook caught
his flesh.
The other replied, "I was turning the cowl of my mother's chimney-pot,
to suit it to the wind. So let me go again, will you?"
"Not for the present," said the fisherman. "You shall serve me awhile
first." So without more words he dragged him into the boat and rowed to
shore with him.
When they got to the boat-house, the fisherman's dog came to him and
greeted him joyfully, barking and fawning on him, and wagging his tail.
But his master's temper being none of the best, he struck the poor
animal; whereupon the merman laughed for the first time.
Having fastened the boat, he went toward his house, dragging his prize
with him over the fields, and stumbling over a hillock which lay in his
way, cursed it heartily; whereupon the merman laughed for the
second time.
When the fisherman arrived at the farm, his wife came out to receive
him, and embraced him affectionately, and he received her salutations
with pleasure; whereupon the merman laughed for the third time.
Then said the farmer to the merman, "You have laughed three times, and I
am curious to know why you have laughed. Tell me, therefore."