GREAT MEN OF ATHENS
Athens, in the age of Pericles, was the home of literary men as well as
of sculptors and architects.
Æschylus, one of the greatest men of the age, was a diligent writer
of tragedies or serious plays. You will think that he was diligent
indeed, when I tell you that he wrote ninety plays, although only seven
are known to us now. His tragedies were acted in the great theatre of
Dionysus. The _Persae_, his first play, was written eight years after
the great sea-fight at Salamis, to tell of the victory the Athenians
had won over the Persians.
Just as races were run, and music was written by competitors to win
renown and gain prizes at the festival of Dionysus, so plays were
written and prizes were awarded to the successful author at this great
feast. These plays might be about the things that were taking place in
Greece at that very time, or the plot might be taken from the old-world
stories of Troy. Proud and dauntless were the men and women whom
Æschylus made to live upon the stage of Athens. Of many of these you
will some day read yourself.
Sophocles and Euripides also wrote tragedies, and Euripides is known,
too, for the beauty of his songs. He was a magician who made all that
he touched radiant with beauty. Many people loved Euripides because of
the wonderful songs and plays which he wrote, but some hated him.
Aristophanes, the writer of comedies or amusing plays that made
the Athenians laugh with uncontrollable glee, was one of those
who disliked Euripides and held up some of his works to scorn. But
Socrates, a greater man than he, loved Euripides and called him his
favourite poet.
Herodotus was the first great Greek historian. He was not born in
Attica, but he lived some years in Athens. He wrote the story of the
Persian wars, while Thucydides wrote that of the Peloponnesian war.
Some of the greatest teachers in Greece at this time were called
Sophists. A Sophist meant, at first, one who was clever in any
special art. It did not matter what the art was; it might be cooking,
gardening, teaching.
Protagoras was one of the most famous Sophists, but the Athenians did
not treat him well. For he wrote a book which displeased them, so
that they condemned it and accused him of writing against the gods of
Greece. So angry were his enemies that Protagoras knew that he could no
longer live safely in Athens. He fled from the city and set sail for
Sicily, but he was drowned before he reached the island.
It was of his dead friend Protagoras that Euripides was thinking when
he wrote in one of his plays, ‘Ye have slain, O Greeks, ye have slain
the nightingale of the muses, the wizard bird that did no wrong.’
These are a few of the great men who, with Ictinus, Pheidias, and
many another of whom I have not told, made the glory of Greece known
throughout the wide world.