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Transcriber's note:
Obvious printer's errors have been corrected. Hyphenation
and accentuation have been made consistent. All other
inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's
spelling has been retained.
Page 185, the date of the death of Rev. Tennyson is 1831,
not 1811 as written in the book.
GREAT MEN AND FAMOUS WOMEN
A Series of Pen and Pencil Sketches of
THE LIVES OF MORE THAN 200 OF THE MOST PROMINENT PERSONAGES IN HISTORY
VOL. VII.
[Illustration: The First Meeting of Dante and Beatrice.]
Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess
edited by Charles F. Horne
[Illustration: Publisher's arm.]
New-York: Selmar Hess Publisher
Copyright, 1894, by SELMAR HESS.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME VII.
SUBJECT AUTHOR PAGE
ROBERT BROWNING, 191
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, _Richard Henry Stoddard_, 148
JOHN BUNYAN, _John Greenleaf Whittier_, 66
ROBERT BURNS, _Will Carleton_, 112
THOMAS CARLYLE, _W. Wallace_, 154
_Letter from Carlyle on the "Choice of a Profession,"_ 161
CERVANTES, _Joseph Forster_, 39
THOMAS CHATTERTON, _Colonel Richard Malcolm Johnston_, 107
GEOFFREY CHAUCER, _Alice King_, 29
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, _President Charles F. Thwing_, 144
DANTE, _Archdeacon Farrar, D.D., F.R.S._, 19
DANIEL DE FOE, _Clark Russell_, 72
CHARLES DICKENS, _Walter Besant_, 186
RALPH WALDO EMERSON, _Moncure D. Conway_, 166
_Letter from Emerson to his child on the subject of "Health,"_ 173
GOETHE, _Rev. Edward Everett Hale_, 122
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, _Francis H. Underwood_, 196
HOMER, _William Ewart Gladstone_, 1
HORACE, _J. W. Mackail_, 16
VICTOR HUGO, _Margaret O. W. Oliphant_, 161
WASHINGTON IRVING, 140
SAMUEL JOHNSON, _Lord Macaulay_, 99
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, _Hezekiah Butterworth_, 174
JOHN MILTON, 60
MOLIERE, _Sir Walter Scott_, 50
PETRARCH, _Alice King_, 25
PLATO, _George Grote, F.R.S._, 7
ALEXANDER POPE, _Austin Dobson_, 82
SCHILLER, _B. L. Farjeon_, 116
SIR WALTER SCOTT, _W. C. Taylor, LL.D._, 130
_Letter of advice from Scott to his son_, 135
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, _Senator John J. Ingalls_, 44
DEAN SWIFT, _Samuel Archer_, 77
TORQUATO TASSO, 34
ALFRED TENNYSON, _Clarence Cook_, 182
VIRGIL, 12
VOLTAIRE, _M. C. Lockwood, D.D._, 92
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 136
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME VII.
PHOTOGRAVURES
ILLUSTRATION ARTIST TO FACE PAGE
THE FIRST MEETING OF DANTE AND
BEATRICE, _Henry Holiday_ _Frontispiece_
PETRARCH AND LAURA INTRODUCED TO THE EMPEROR
AT AVIGNON, _Vacslav Brozik_ 28
A DINNER AT THE HOUSE OF MOLIERE
AT AUTEUIL, _Georges-Gaston Melingue_ 58
THE ARREST OF VOLTAIRE AND HIS NIECE BY FREDERICK'S
ORDER, _Jules Girardet_ 96
VICTOR HUGO, _From life_ 162
LONGFELLOW'S STUDY, _From photograph_ 178
WOOD-ENGRAVINGS AND TYPOGRAVURES
HOMER RECITING THE ILIAD. _J. Coomans_ 6
THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS, _Raphael_ 10
OCTAVIA OVERCOME BY VIRGIL'S
VERSES, _Jean Ingres_ 14
VIRGIL, HORACE, AND VARIUS AT THE
HOUSE OF MAECENAS, _Ch. F. Jalabert_ 18
CHAUCER AND THE CANTERBURY
PILGRIMS, _Corbould_ 32
TASSO AND THE TWO ELEANORS, _F. Barth_ 36
SHAKESPEARE ARRESTED FOR
DEER-STEALING, _J. Schrader_ 46
OLIVER CROMWELL VISITS JOHN MILTON, _David Neal_ 62
DEFOE IN THE PILLORY, _Eyre Crowe_ 74
DR. JOHNSON'S PENANCE, _Adrian Stokes_ 100
THE DEATH OF CHATTERTON, THE YOUNG
POET _H. Wallis_ 110
BURNS AND HIGHLAND MARY, 114
SCHILLER PRESENTED TO THE PRINCESS
OF SAXE-WEIMAR, _Mes_ 120
GOETHE AND FREDERIKE, _Hermann Kaulbach_ 124
SIR WALTER SCOTT AT ABBOTSFORD, _Sir William Allan_ 134
CARLYLE AT CHELSEA, _Mrs. Allingham_ 158
TENNYSON IN HIS LIBRARY, _Roberts_ 184
ARTISTS AND AUTHORS
Art is the child of nature; yes,
Her darling child in whom we trace
The features of the mother's face,
Her aspect and her attitude.
--LONGFELLOW
HOMER
By WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
(ABOUT 1000 B.C.)
[Illustration: Homer.]
The poems of Homer differ from all other known poetry in this, that
they constitute in themselves an encyclopaedia of life and knowledge at
a time when knowledge, indeed, such as lies beyond the bounds of
actual experience, was extremely limited, but when life was singularly
fresh, vivid, and expansive. The only poems of Homer we possess are
the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," for the Homeric hymns and other
productions lose all title to stand in line with these wonderful
works, by reason of conflict in a multitude of particulars with the
witness of the text, as well as of their poetical inferiority. They
evidently belong to the period that follows the great migration into
Asia Minor, brought about by the Dorian conquest.
The dictum of Herodotus, which places the date of Homer four hundred
years before his own, therefore in the ninth century B.C., was little
better than mere conjecture. Common opinion has certainly presumed him
to be posterior to the Dorian conquest. The "Hymn to Apollo," however,
which was the main prop of this opinion, is assuredly not his. In a
work which attempts to turn recent discovery to account, I have
contended that the fall of Troy cannot properly be brought lower than
about 1250 B.C., and that Homer may probably have lived within fifty
years of it.
The entire presentation of life and character in the two poems is
distinct from, and manifestly anterior to, anything made known to us
in Greece under and after that conquest. The study of Homer has been
darkened and enfeebled by thrusting backward into it a vast mass of
matter belonging to these later periods, and even to the Roman
civilization, which was different in spirit and which entirely lost
sight of the true position of Greeks and Trojans and inverted their
moral as well as their martial relations. The name of Greeks is a
Roman name; the people to whom Homer has given immortal fame are
Achaians, both in designation and in manners. The poet paints them at
a time when the spirit of national life was rising within their
borders. Its first efforts had been seen in the expeditions of Achaian
natives to conquer the Asiatic or Egyptian immigrants who had, under
the name of Cadmeians (etymologically, "foreigners"), founded Thebes
in Boeotia, and in the voyage of the ship Argo to Colchis, which was
probably the seat of a colony sprung from the Egyptian empire, and was
therefore regarded as hostile in memory of the antecedent aggressions
of that empire. The expedition against Troy was the beginning of the
long chain of conflicts between Europe and Asia, which end with the
Turkish conquests and with the reaction of the last three hundred
years, and especially of the nineteenth century, against them. It
represents an effort truly enormous toward attaining nationality in
idea and in practice. Clearing away obstructions, of which the cause
has been partially indicated, we must next observe that the text of
Homer was never studied by the moderns as a whole in a searching
manner until within the last two generations. From the time of Wolf
there was infinite controversy about the works and the authorship,
with little positive result, except the establishment of the fact that
they were not written but handed down by memory, an operation aided
and methodized by the high position of bards as such in Greece (more
properly Achaia, and afterward Hellas), by the formation of a separate
school to hand down these particular songs, and by the great
institution of the Games at a variety of points in the country. At
these centres there were public recitations even before the poems were
composed, and the uncertainties of individual memory were limited and
corrected by competition carried on in a presence of a people
eminently endowed with the literary faculty, and by the vast national
importance of handing down faithfully a record which was the chief
authority touching the religion, history, political divisions, and
manners of the country. Many diversities of text arose, but there was
thus a continual operation, a corrective as well as a disintegrating
process.
The Germans, who had long been occupied in framing careful monographs
which contracted the contents of the Homeric text on many particulars,
such as the Ship, the House, and so forth, have at length supplied, in
the work of Dr. E. Buchholz, a full and methodical account of the
contents of the text. This work would fill in English not less than
six octavo volumes.
The Greeks called the poet _poietes_, the "maker," and never was there
such a maker as Homer. The work, not exclusively, but yet
pre-eminently his, was the making of a language, a religion, and a
nation. The last named of these was his dominant idea, and to it all
his methods may be referred. Of the first he may have been little
conscious while he wrought in his office as a bard, which was to give
delight.
Careful observation of the text exhibits three powerful factors which
contribute to the composition of the nation. First, the Pelasgic name
is associated with the mass of the people, cultivators of the soil in
the Greek peninsula and elsewhere, though not as their uniform
designation, for in Crete (for example) they appear in conjunction
with Achaians and Dorians, representatives of a higher stock, and with
Eteocretans, who were probably anterior occupants. This Pelasgian name
commands the sympathy of the poet and his laudatory epithets; but is
nowhere used for the higher class or for the entire nation. The other
factors take the command. The Achaians are properly the ruling class,
and justify their station by their capacity. But there is a third
factor also of great power. We know from the Egyptian monuments that
Greece had been within the sway of that primitive empire, and that the
Phoenicians were its maritime arm, as they were also the universal and
apparently exclusive navigators of the Mediterranean. Whatever came
over sea to the Achaian land came in connection with the Phoenician
name, which was used by Homer in a manner analogous to the use of the
word Frank in the Levant during modern times. But as Egyptian and
Assyrian knowledge is gradually opened up to us we learn by degrees
that Phoenicia conveyed to Greece Egyptian and Assyrian elements
together with her own.
The rich materials of the Greek civilization can almost all be traced
to this medium of conveyance from the East and South. Great families
which stand in this association were founded in Greece and left their
mark upon the country. It is probable that they may have exercised in
the first instance a power delegated from Egypt, which they retained
after her influence had passed away. Building, metal-working,
navigation, ornamental arts, natural knowledge, all carry the
Phoenician impress. This is the third of the great factors which were
combined and evolved in the wonderful nationality of Greece, a power
as vividly felt at this hour as it was three thousand years ago. But
if Phoenicia conveyed the seed, the soil was Achaian, and on account
of its richness that peninsula surpassed, in its developments of human
nature and action, the southern and eastern growths. An Achaian
civilization was the result, full of freshness and power, in which
usage had a great sacredness, religion was a moral spring of no mean
force, slavery though it existed was not associated with cruelty, the
worst extremes of sin had no place in the life of the people, liberty
had an informal but very real place in public institutions, and
manners reached to much refinement; while on the other hand, fierce
passion was not abated by conventional restraints, slaughter and
bondage were the usual results of war, the idea of property was but
very partially defined, and though there were strong indeterminate
sentiments of right there is no word in Homer signifying law. Upon the
whole, though a very imperfect, it was a wonderful and noble nursery
of manhood.
It seems clear that this first civilization of the peninsula was sadly
devastated by the rude hands of the Dorian conquest. Institutions like
those of Lycurgus could not have been grafted upon the Homeric
manners; and centuries elapsed before there emerged from the political
ruin a state of things favorable to refinement and to progress in the
Greece of history; which though in so many respects of an unequalled
splendor, yet had a less firm hold than the Achaian time upon some of
the highest social and moral ideas. For example, the position of women
had greatly declined, liberty was perhaps less largely conceived, and
the tie between religion and morality was more evidently sundered.
After this sketch of the national existence which Homer described, and
to the consolidation of which he powerfully ministered, let us revert
to the state in which he found and left the elements of a national
religion. A close observation of the poems pretty clearly shows us
that the three races which combined to form the nation had each of
them their distinct religious traditions. It is also plain enough that
with this diversity there had been antagonism. As sources illustrative
of these propositions which lie at the base of all true comprehension
of the religion--which may be called Olympian from its central seat--I
will point to the numerous signs of a system of nature-worship as
prevailing among the Pelasgian masses; to the alliance in the war
between the nature-powers and the Trojans as against the loftier
Hellenic mythology; to the legend in Iliad, i., 396-412, of the great
war in heaven, which symbolically describes the collision on earth
between the ideas which were locally older and those beginning to
surmount them; and, finally, to the traditions extraneous to the poems
of competitions between different deities for the local allegiance of
the people at different spots, such as Corinth, to which Phoenician
influence had brought the Poseidon-worship before Homer's time, and
Athens, which somewhat later became peculiarly the seat of mixed
races. I have spoken of nature-worship as the Pelasgian contribution
to the composite Olympian religion. In the Phoenician share we find,
as might be expected, both Assyrian and Egyptian elements. The best
indication we possess of the Hellenic function is that given by the
remarkable prayer of Achilles to Zeus in Iliad, xvi., 233-248. This
prayer on the sending forth of Patroclus is the hinge of the whole
action of the poem, and is preceded by a long introduction (220-232)
such as we nowhere else find. The tone is monotheistic; no partnership
of gods appears in it; and the immediate servants of Zeus are
described as interpreters, not as priests. From several indications it
may be gathered that the Hellenic system was less priestly than the
Troic. It seems to have been an especial office of Homer to harmonize
and combine these diverse elements, and his Thearchy is as remarkable
a work of art as the terrestrial machinery of the poem. He has
profoundly impressed upon it the human likeness often called
anthropomorphic, and which supplied the basis of Greek art. He has
repelled on all sides from his classical and central system the cult
of nature and of animals, but it is probable that they kept their
place in the local worships of the country. His Zeus is to a
considerable extent a monarch, while Poseidon and several other
deities bear evident marks of having had no superior at earlier epochs
or in the countries of their origin. He arranges them partly as a
family, partly as a commonwealth. The gods properly Olympian
correspond with the Boule or council upon earth, while the orders of
less exalted spirits are only summoned on great occasions. He
indicates twenty as the number of Olympian gods proper, following in
this the Assyrian idea. But they were far from holding an equal place
in his estimation. For a deity such as Aphrodite brought from the
East, and intensely tainted with sensual passions, he indicates
aversion and contempt. But for Apollo, whose cardinal idea is that of
obedience to Zeus, and for Athene, who represents a profound working
wisdom that never fails of its end, he has a deep reverence. He
assorts and distributes religious traditions with reference to the
great ends he had to pursue; carefully, for example, separating Apollo
from the sun, with which he bears marks of having been in other
systems identified. Of his other greater gods it may be said that the
dominant idea is in Zeus policy, in Here nationality, and in Poseidon
physical force. His Trinity, which is conventional, and his
Under-world appear to be borrowed from Assyria, and in some degree
from Egypt. One licentious legend appears in Olympus, but this belongs
to the Odyssey, and to a Phoenician, not a Hellenic, circle of ideas.
His Olympian assembly is, indeed, largely representative of human
appetites, tastes, and passions; but in the government of the world it
works as a body on behalf of justice, and the suppliant and the
stranger are peculiarly objects of the care of Zeus. Accordingly, we
find that the cause which is to triumph in the Trojan war is the just
cause; that in the Odyssey the hero is led through suffering to peace
and prosperity, and that the terrible retribution he inflicts has been
merited by crime. At various points of the system we trace the higher
traditions of religion, and on passing down to the classical period we
find that the course of the mythology has been a downward course.
The Troic as compared with the Achaian manners are to a great extent
what we should now call Asiatic as distinguished from European. Of the
great chieftains, Achilles, Diomed, Ajax, Menelaos, and Patroclus
appear chiefly to exhibit the Achaian ideal of humanity; Achilles,
especially, and on a colossal scale. Odysseus, the many-sided man, has
a strong Phoenician tinge, though the dominant color continues to be
Greek. And in his house we find exhibited one of the noblest among the
characteristics of the poems in the sanctity and perpetuity of
marriage. Indeed, the purity and loyalty of Penelope are, like the
humility approaching to penitence of Helen, quite unmatched in
antiquity.
The plot of the Iliad has been the subject of much criticism, on
account of the long absence of Achilles, the hero, from the action of
the poem. But Homer had to bring out Achaian character in its various
forms, and while the vastness of Achilles is on the stage, every other
Achaian hero must be eclipsed. Further, Homer was an itinerant
minstrel, who had to adapt himself to the sympathies and traditions of
the different portions of the country. Peloponnesus was the seat of
power, and its chiefs acquired a prominent position in the Iliad by
what on the grounds we may deem a skilful arrangement. But most
skilful of all is the fine adjustment of the balance as between Greek
and Trojan warriors. It will be found on close inspection of details
that the Achaian chieftains have in truth a vast military superiority;
yet by the use of infinite art, Homer has contrived that the Trojans
shall play the part of serious and considerable antagonists, so far
that with divine aid and connivance they reduce the foe to the point
at which the intervention of Achilles becomes necessary for their
deliverance, and his supremacy as an exhibition of colossal manhood is
thoroughly maintained.
The plot of the Odyssey is admitted to be consecutive and regular in
structure. There are certain differences in the mythology which have
been made a ground for supposing a separate authorship. But, in the
first place, this would do nothing to explain them; in the second,
they find their natural explanation in observing that the scene of the
wanderings is laid in other lands, beyond the circle of Achaian
knowledge and tradition, and that Homer modifies his scheme to meet
the ethnical variations as he gathered them from the trading
navigators of Phoenicia, who alone could have supplied him with the
information required for his purpose.
That information was probably colored more or less by ignorance and by
fraud. But we can trace in it the sketch of an imaginary voyage to the
northern regions of Europe, and it has some remarkable features of
internal evidence, supported by the facts, and thus pointing to its
genuineness. In latitudes not described as separate we have reports of
the solar day apparently contradictory. In one case there is hardly
any night, so that the shepherd might earn double wages. In the other,
cloud and darkness almost shut out the day. But we now know both of
these statements to have a basis of solid truth on the Norwegian coast
to the northward, at the different seasons of the midnight sun in
summer, and of Christmas, when it is not easy to read at noon.
[Illustration: Homer reciting the Iliad.]
The value of Homer as a recorder of antiquity, as opening a large and
distinct chapter of primitive knowledge, is only now coming by degrees
into view, as the text is more carefully examined and its parts
compared, and as other branches of ancient study are developed,
especially as in Assyria and Egypt, and by the remarkable discoveries
of Dr. Schliemann at Hissarlik and in Greece. But the appreciation of
him as a poet has never failed, though it is disappointing to find
that a man so great as Aristophanes should describe him simply as the
bard of battles, and sad to think that in many of the Christian
centuries his works should have slumbered without notice in hidden
repositories. His place among the greatest poets of the world, whom no
one supposes to be more than three or four in number, has never been
questioned. Considering him as anterior to all literary aids and
training, he is the most remarkable phenomenon among them all. It may
be well to specify some of the points that are peculiarly his own. One
of them is the great simplicity of the structure of his mind. With an
incomparable eye for the world around him in all things, great and
small, he is abhorrent of everything speculative and abstract, and
what may be called philosophies have no place in his works, almost the
solitary exception being that he employs thought as an illustration of
the rapidity of the journey of a deity. He is, accordingly, of all
poets the most simple and direct. He is also the most free and genial
in the movement of his verse; grateful nature seems to give to him
spontaneously the perfection to which great men like Virgil and
Milton had to attain only by effort intense and sustained. In the high
office of drawing human character in its multitude of forms and colors
he seems to have no serious rival except Shakespeare. We call him an
epic poet, but he is instinct from beginning to end with the spirit of
the drama, while we find in him the seeds and rudiments even of its
form. His function as a reciting minstrel greatly aided him herein.
Again, he had in his language an instrument unrivalled for its
facility, suppleness, and versatility, for the large range of what
would in music be called its register, so that it embraced every form
and degree of human thought, feeling, and emotion, and clothed them
all, from the lowest to the loftiest, from the slightest to the most
intense and concentrated, in the dress of exactly appropriate style
and language. His metre also is a perfect vehicle of the language. If
we think the range of his knowledge limited, yet it was all that his
country and his age possessed, and it was very greatly more than has
been supposed by readers that dwelt only on the surface. So long as
the lamp of civilization shall not have ceased to burn, the Iliad and
the Odyssey must hold their forward place among the brightest
treasures of our race.
PLATO
Extracts from "Plato," by GEORGE GROTE, F.R.S.
(427-347 B.C.)
Of Plato's biography we can furnish nothing better than a faint
outline. We are not fortunate enough to possess the work on Plato's
life composed by his companion and disciple, Xenocrates, like the life
of Plotinus by Porphyry, or that of Proclus by Marinus. Though Plato
lived eighty years, enjoying extensive celebrity, and though Diogenes
Laertius employed peculiar care in collecting information about him,
yet the number of facts recounted is very small, and of those facts a
considerable proportion is poorly attested.
Plato was born at Aegina (in which island his father enjoyed an estate
as clerouch or out-settled citizen) in the month Thargelion (May), of
the year B.C. 427. His family, belonging to the Deme Collytus, was
both ancient and noble, in the sense attached to that word at Athens.
He was son of Ariston (or, according to some admirers, of the God
Apollo) and Perictione; his maternal ancestors had been intimate
friends or relatives of the law-giver Solon, while his father belonged
to a gens tracing its descent from Codrus, and even from the God
Poseidon. He was also nearly related to Charmides and to
Critias--this last the well-known and violent leader among the
oligarchy called the Thirty Tyrants. Plato was first called
Aristocles, after his grandfather, but received when he grew up the
name of Plato, on account of the breadth (we are told) either of his
forehead or of his shoulders. Endowed with a robust physical frame,
and exercised in gymnastics, not merely in one of the palaestrae of
Athens (which he describes graphically in the Charmides), but also
under an Argeian trainer, he attained such force and skill as to
contend (if we may credit Dicaearchus) for the prize of wrestling among
boys at the Isthmian festival. His literary training was commenced
under a schoolmaster named Dionysius, and pursued under Draco, a
celebrated teacher of music in the large sense then attached to that
word. He is said to have displayed both diligence and remarkable
quickness of apprehension, combined too with the utmost gravity and
modesty. He not only acquired great familiarity with the poets, but
composed poetry of his own--dithyrambic, lyric, and tragic; and he is
even reported to have prepared a tragic tetralogy, with the view of
competing for victory at the Dionysian festival. We are told that he
burned these poems, when he attached himself to the society of
Socrates. No compositions in verse remain under his name, except a few
epigrams--amatory, affectionate, and of great poetical beauty. But
there is ample proof in his dialogues that the cast of his mind was
essentially poetical. Many of his philosophical speculations are
nearly allied to poetry and acquire their hold upon the mind rather
through imagination and sentiment than through reason or evidence.
According to Diogenes (who on this point does not cite his authority),
it was about the twentieth year of Plato's age (407 B.C.) that his
acquaintance with Socrates began. It may possibly have begun earlier,
but certainly not later, since at the time of the conversation
(related by Xenophon) between Socrates and Plato's younger brother
Glaucon, there was already a friendship established between Socrates
and Plato; and that time can hardly be later than 406 B.C., or the
beginning of 405 B.C. From 406 B.C. down to 399 B.C., when Socrates
was tried and condemned, Plato seems to have remained in friendly
relation and society with him, a relation perhaps interrupted during
the severe political struggles between 405 B.C. and 403 B.C., but
revived and strengthened after the restoration of the democracy in the
last-mentioned year.
Whether Plato ever spoke with success in the public assembly we do not
know; he is said to have been shy by nature, and his voice was thin
and feeble, ill adapted for the Pnyx. However, when the oligarchy of
Thirty was established, after the capture and subjugation of Athens,
Plato was not only relieved from the necessity of addressing the
assembled people, but also obtained additional facilities for rising
into political influence, through Critias (his near relative) and
Charmides, leading men among the new oligarchy. Plato affirms that he
had always disapproved the antecedent democracy, and that he entered
on the new scheme of government with full hope of seeing justice and
wisdom predominant He was soon undeceived. The government of the
Thirty proved a sanguinary and rapacious tyranny, filling him with
disappointment and disgust. He was especially revolted by their
treatment of Socrates, whom they not only interdicted from continuing
his habitual colloquy with young men, but even tried to implicate in
nefarious murders, by ordering him along with others to arrest Leon
the Salaminian, one of their intended victims; an order which
Socrates, at the peril of his life, disobeyed.
Thus mortified and disappointed, Plato withdrew from public functions.
What part he took in the struggle between the oligarchy and its
democratical assailants under Thrasybulus we are not informed. But
when the democracy was re-established his political ambition revived
and he again sought to acquire some active influence on public
affairs. Now, however, the circumstances had become highly unfavorable
to him. The name of his deceased relative, Critias, was generally
abhorred, and he had no powerful partisans among the popular leaders.
With such disadvantages, with anti-democratical sentiments, and with a
thin voice, we cannot wonder that Plato soon found public life
repulsive, though he admits the remarkable moderation displayed by the
restored Demos. His repugnance was aggravated to the highest pitch of
grief and indignation by the trial and condemnation of Socrates (399
B.C.) four years after the renewal of the democracy. At that moment
doubtless the Socratic men or companions were unpopular in a body.
Plato, after having yielded his best sympathy and aid at the trial of
Socrates, retired along with several others of them to Megara. He made
up his mind that for a man of his views and opinions it was not only
unprofitable, but also unsafe, to embark in active public life, either
at Athens or in any other Grecian city. He resolved to devote himself
to philosophical speculation and to abstain from practical politics,
unless fortune should present to him some exceptional case of a city
prepared to welcome and obey a renovator upon exalted principles.
At Megara Plato passed some time with the Megarian Eucleides, his
fellow-disciple in the society of Socrates and the founder of what is
termed the Megaric school of philosophers. He next visited Cyrene,
where he is said to have become acquainted with the geometrician
Theodorus and to have studied geometry under him. From Cyrene he
proceeded to Egypt, interesting himself much in the antiquities of the
country as well as in the conversation of the priests. In or about 394
B.C., if we may trust the statement of Aristoxenus about the military
service of Plato at Corinth, he was again at Athens. He afterward went
to Italy and Sicily, seeking the society of the Pythagorean
philosophers, Archytas, Echecrates, Timaeus, etc., at Tarentum and
Locri, and visiting the volcanic manifestations of Aetna. It appears
that his first visit to Sicily was made when he was about forty years
of age, which would be 387 B.C. Here he made acquaintance with the
youthful Dion, over whom he acquired great intellectual ascendancy. By
Dion Plato was prevailed upon to visit the elder Dionysius at
Syracuse; but that despot, offended by the free spirit of his
conversation and admonitions, dismissed him with displeasure, and even
caused him to be sold into slavery at Aegina on his voyage home. Though
really sold, however, Plato was speedily ransomed by friends. After
farther incurring some risk of his life as an Athenian citizen, in
consequence of the hostile feelings of the Aeginetans, he was conveyed
away safely to Athens, about 386 B.C.
It was at this period, about 386 B.C., that the continuous and formal
public teaching of Plato, constituting as it does so great an epoch in
philosophy, commenced. But I see no ground for believing, as many
authors assume, that he was absent from Athens during the entire
interval between 399-386 B.C.
The spot selected by Plato for his lectures or teaching was a garden
adjoining the precinct sacred to the hero Hecademus or Acedemus,
distant from the gate of Athens called Dipylon somewhat less than a
mile, on the road to Eleusis, toward the north. In this precinct there
were both walks, shaded by trees, and a gymnasium for bodily exercise;
close adjoining, Plato either inherited or acquired a small
dwelling-house and garden, his own private property. Here, under the
name of the Academy, was founded the earliest of those schools of
philosophy, which continued for centuries forward to guide and
stimulate the speculative minds of Greece and Rome.
We have scarce any particulars respecting the growth of the School of
Athens from this time to the death of Plato, in 347 B.C. We only know
generally that his fame as a lecturer became eminent and widely
diffused; that among his numerous pupils were included Speusippus,
Xenocrates, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Hyperides, Lycurgus, etc.; that
he was admired and consulted by Perdiccas in Macedonia, and Dionysius
at Syracuse; that he was also visited by listeners and pupils from all
parts of Greece.
It was in the year 367-366 that Plato was induced, by the earnest
entreaties of Dion, to go from Athens to Syracuse, on a visit to the
younger Dionysius, who had just become despot, succeeding to his
father of the same name. Dionysius II., then very young, had
manifested some disposition toward philosophy and prodigious
admiration for Plato, who was encouraged by Dion to hope that he would
have influence enough to bring about an amendment or thorough reform
of the government at Syracuse. This ill-starred visit, with its
momentous sequel, has been described in my "History of Greece." It not
only failed completely, but made matters worse rather than better;
Dionysius became violently alienated from Dion and sent him into
exile. Though turning a deaf ear to Plato's recommendations, he
nevertheless liked his conversation, treated him with great respect,
detained him for some time at Syracuse, and was prevailed upon, only
by the philosopher's earnest entreaties, to send him home. Yet in
spite of such uncomfortable experience, Plato was induced, after a
certain interval, again to leave Athens and pay a second visit to
Dionysius, mainly in hopes of procuring the restoration of Dion. In
this hope, too, he was disappointed, and was glad to return, after a
longer stay than he wished, to Athens.
[Illustration: The School of Athens.]
The visits of Plato to Dionysius were much censured and his motives
misrepresented by unfriendly critics, and these reproaches were still
further embittered by the entire failure of his hopes. The closing
years of his long life were saddened by the disastrous turn of events
at Syracuse, aggravated by the discreditable abuse of power and
violent death of his intimate friend, Dion, which brought dishonor
both upon himself and upon the Academy. Nevertheless, he lived to the
age of eighty, and died in 348-347 B.C., leaving a competent property,
which he bequeathed by a will still extant. But his foundation, the
Academy, did not die with him. It passed to his nephew Speusippus, who
succeeded him as teacher, conductor of the school, or scholarch, and
was himself succeeded after eight years by Xenocrates of Chalcedon;
while another pupil of the Academy, Aristotle, after an absence of
some years from Athens, returned thither and established a school of
his own at the Lyceum, at another extremity of the city.
The latter half of Plato's life in his native city must have been one
of dignity and consideration, though not of any political activity. He
is said to have addressed the Dicastery as an advocate for the accused
general Chabrias; and we are told that he discharged the expensive and
showy functions of Choregus with funds supplied by Dion. Out of Athens
also his reputation was very great. When he went to the Olympic
festival of B.C. 360 he was an object of conspicuous attention and
respect; he was visited by hearers, young men of rank and ambition,
from the most distant Hellenic cities.
Such is the sum of our information respecting Plato. Scanty as it is
we have not even the advantage of contemporary authority for any
portion of it. We have no description of Plato from any contemporary
author, friendly or adverse. It will be seen that after the death of
Socrates we know nothing about Plato as a man and a citizen, except
the little which can be learned from his few epistles, all written
when he was very old and relating almost entirely to his peculiar
relations with Dion and Dionysius. His dialogues, when we try to
interpret them collectively, and gather from them general results as
to the character and purposes of the author, suggest valuable
arguments and perplexing doubts, but yield few solutions. In no one of
the dialogues does Plato address us in his own person. In the Apology
alone (which is not a dialogue) is he alluded to even as present; in
the Phaedon he is mentioned as absent from illness. Each of the
dialogues, direct or indirect, is conducted from beginning to end by
the persons whom he introduces. Not one of the dialogues affords any
positive internal evidence showing the date of its composition. In a
few there are allusions to prove that they must have been composed at
a period later than others, or later than some given event of known
date; but nothing more can be positively established. Nor is there any
good extraneous testimony to determine the date of any one among them;
for the remark ascribed to Socrates about the dialogue called Lysis
(which remark, if authentic, would prove the dialogue to have been
composed during the lifetime of Socrates) appears altogether
untrustworthy. And the statement of some critics, that the Phaedrus was
Plato's earliest composition, is clearly nothing more than an
inference (doubtful at best, and in my judgment erroneous) from its
dithyrambic style and erotic subject.
VIRGIL
(70-19 B.C.)
[Illustration: Virgil.]
Next to Homer on the roll of the world's epic poets stands the name of
Virgil. Acknowledged by all as the greatest of Roman poets, he
entered, as no other Roman writer did, into Christian history and
mediaeval legend. Constantine, the first Christian emperor, professed
to have been converted by the perusal of one of Virgil's "Eclogues,"
and Dante owned him as his master and model, and his guide through all
the circles of the other world, while Italian tradition still regards
him a great necromancer, a prophet, and a worker of miracles. From the
date of his death till to-day, in every country, his works have been
among the commonest of school-books, and editions, commentaries and
translations are countless.
Publius Vergilius Maro--for the manuscripts and inscriptions of
antiquity spell his name Vergilius, not Virgilius, as is
customary--was born near the present city of Mantua, in Upper Italy,
in the year 70 B.C., at a little village called Andes, which has been
identified with the modern Italian hamlet of Pietola. At the time of
his birth this region was not included in the term "Italy," but was a
part of Cisalpine Gaul, where the inhabitants did not obtain Roman
citizenship till the year B.C. 49. Thus the writer whose greatest work
is devoted to immortalizing the glories of Rome and the deeds of its
founder, was not a Roman by birth, and was over twenty before he
became a citizen.
His father seems to have been in possession of a small property at
Andes which he cultivated himself, and where the poet acquired his
love for nature, and the intimate practical acquaintance with farm
labors and farm management, which he used so effectively in his most
carefully polished work, his "Georgics." His first education was
received at the town of Cremona, and the larger city of Milan, and he
was at the former place in his sixteenth year on the day when the poet
Lucretius died.
Greek in those days was not only the language of poetry and
philosophy, but the language of polite society and commercial usage.
It was the common medium of communication throughout the Roman world,
and a knowledge of it was indispensable. Hence, after studying his
native language in Northern Italy, Virgil was sent to Naples, a city
founded by Greeks, and possessing a large Greek population. Here he
studied under Parthenius for some time, and then proceeded to Rome,
where he had as his instructor, Syron, a member of the Epicurean
school, of whose doctrines Virgil's poems bear some traces.
Rome, however, offered no career to a youth who was not yet a citizen,
and Virgil seems to have returned to his paternal farm, and there
probably he composed some of his smaller pieces, which bear marks of
juvenile taste. Among those that have been assigned to this early part
of his life, is one of considerable interest to Americans, for in it
occurs our national motto, "_E pluribus unum_." The short poem--it
consists of only one hundred and twenty-three lines--describes how a
negro serving-woman makes a dish called _Moretum_, a kind of salad, in
which various herbs are blended with oil and vinegar, till "out of
many one united whole" is produced. To the same period critics have
assigned his poem on a "Mosquito," and some epigrams in various
metres. The home in the country had, however, soon to experience, like
thousands of others, a sad change. The battle of Philippi took place,
and Marc Antony and Octavius Caesar, the future emperor, known to later
ages as Augustus, were masters of the world. We have no hints that
Virgil had been, like Horace, engaged in the civil war in a military
or any other capacity, or that his father had taken any part in the
struggle, but the country in which his property lay was marked out for
confiscation. The city of Cremona had strongly sympathized with the
cause of Brutus and the republic, and in consequence, the doctrine
that "to the victors belong the spoils," having a very practical
application in those days, its territory was seized and divided among
the victorious soldiers, and with it was taken part of the territory
of its neighbor, Mantua, including Virgil's little farm. According to
report the new occupier was an old soldier, named Claudius, and it was
added that by the advice of Asinius Pollio, the governor of the
province, Virgil applied to the young Octavius for restitution of the
property. The request was granted, and Virgil, in gratitude, wrote his
first "Eclogue," to commemorate the generosity of the emperor. These
facts, if at all true, indicate that the young poet had already become
favorably known to men of high position and great influence. Pollio
was eminent not only as a soldier and statesman who played an
important part in politics, but as an orator, a poet, and an
historian, and above all as an encourager of literature. It was a
fortunate day when a governor of such power to aid, and such taste to
recognize talent, discovered the young poet of Andes, and saved him
from a life of struggling poverty. Virgil's health was always feeble,
and his temper seems to have been rather melancholy; he had had little
experience of life except in his remote country town, and would, we
may plausibly conjecture, have succumbed in a contest from which the
more worldly-wise Horace emerged in triumph.
Pollio remained a steadfast friend, and Augustus and Maecenas took him
under their protection. He was on terms of close intimacy with the
latter, and introduced Horace to that great minister and patron of
letters. The two poets were close friends, and Horace mentions Virgil
as being in the party which accompanied Maecenas from Rome to
Brundisium about the year 41 B.C. Between 41 B.C. and 37 B.C., he
composed, as already stated, his "Eclogues" or "Bucolics." In these
idylls we find many simple and natural touches, great beauty of metre
and language, and numerous allusions to the persons and circumstances
of the time. The fourth of these ten short poems is dedicated to
Pollio, and is to be noted as the one quoted by Constantine as leading
to his conversion to Christianity. "It is bucolic only in name, it is
allegorical," writes George Long, "mystical, half historical, and
prophetical, enigmatical, anything in fact but bucolic." The
best-known imitation of his idyll is Pope's "Messiah." Pleasing as all
these poems are, they do not represent rural life in Italy, they are
in most part but echoes of Theocritus.
It is to the suggestion of Maecenas that we owe Virgil's most perfect
poem, his "Georgics," which he commenced after the publication of the
"Bucolics." To suppose these four books of verses on soils,
fruit-trees, horses and cattle, and finally on bees, as a practical
treatise to guide and instruct the farmer, is absurd. Few farmers have
time or inclination to read so elaborate a work. It is probable that
Maecenas, while recognizing the talent of the "Bucolics," saw likewise
the unreality of their pictures of life, and gave him the subject of
the "Georgics" as being in the same line as that the poet seemed to
have chosen for himself, and yet as less liable to lead to imitations
and pilferings from Greek originals. In fact there was no work that he
could follow. In this work we find great improvement in both taste and
versification, and the rather uninviting subject is treated and
embellished in a way that makes his fame rest in great part on the
poem. The fourth book, especially, with its episode of Orpheus and
Eurydice will live forever for its plaintive tenderness. The work was
completed at Naples, after the battle of Actium, 31 B.C., while
Augustus was in the East.
[Illustration: Octavia overcome by Virgil's Verses.]