Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14/X
X
THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF GREECE
The value attached by the Greeks to education is manifested in many ways. There was no duty which was regarded as of more sacred obligation in a parent than to provide for the education of his children. In some states, such as Sparta, it was taken out of his hands and made the care of the whole community. In others there were laws inflicting penalties and disabilities on those who neglected it, while in others the absence of such laws was made up for by the force of public opinion. When the Athenian population was removed en masse before the battle of Salamis, we are told that the people of Troezen, among other acts of kindness, provided school fees for the children who had taken refuge with them, so that not even that crisis should be allowed to interrupt the training proper to their age. More than three hundred years later Polybius still speaks of the payment of school fees for one's children as the last to be omitted amidst financial difficulties. The sentiment was, therefore, strong and permanent. The result seems to have been that the number of those who grow up without at any rate the rudiments of letters and arithmetic was everywhere very small.
The professed object of this education, however, was not technical, but moral. It was to make good men and useful citizens. Technical instruction, the teaching of a trade or an art, was regarded also as incumbent upon all parents, except, perhaps, the wealthiest. But this was not education. The object of education was something higher and more universal—to familiarise the soul with what was great and noble, and to train the body to be the effective servant and agent of the soul. This education was simple and uniform as compared with that of our day. It did not include the study of any foreign language, nor, at any rate directly, such studies as geography, history, or theology, though these were in a manner involved in it. The first principles of morality and religion were the business of the mother, nurse, or paidagogos—the slave who, in most houses, was especially attached to the service of the children, taking them to school and guarding them from evil company.
The two subjects of primary education were music and gymnastics. But by "music" the Greeks understood all intellectual subjects. Education began with reading and writing, and for the poorer children, whose stay at the school was necessarily short, it went, perhaps, little beyond that. But for the average child, and above all for the rich, it included learning by heart and reciting passages from the poets, selected for the lessons in virtue or knowledge which they conveyed. The next step was music, in the modern acceptation of the term. All boys were taught to play the lyre or flute, and to sing to it, as far as they were capable of learning. The greatest importance was attached to this branch of education. Music was believed to soften and humanise the soul, as well as to inspire it with noble and lofty emotions, and in the representations of the interior of schools which survive on pottery, no scene is more frequent than that of boys practising on a lyre or flute with a master facing them and giving them instructions. This view of education is put by Plato into the mouth of a great teacher—Protagoras:—
"When children have learnt to read and understand the written, as well as they do the spoken word, schoolmasters set before them for reading aloud poems of good writers, and compel them to learn them by heart. These poems contain much moral instruction, many narratives, panegyrics, and encomiums upon brave men of old, that the child may be roused to emulation of their virtues and yearn to become like them. . . . Besides, when they have learnt to play on the lyre, their masters teach them the songs of another class of poets—the lyrical, setting their songs to the music. Thus compelling the principles of rhythm and harmony to sink into their souls, that the children may be more cultivated, and becoming imbued with the principles of true rhythm and harmony, may be effective in speech and action alike. For a man's life needs always to be rhythmical and harmonious. Next they send the children to the trainer's, that they may have sound bodies in the service of sound minds, and may not be compelled to play the coward whether in war or any other activity by the bad state of their bodies."
Though we cannot suppose that ordinary people would reason with such refinement upon the effect of education, it was some such theory that unconsciously influenced the Greek view of its significance. But for the boys who looked forward to playing an important part in public life—generally the sons of wealthier parents—there was something else needed. In a democracy like that of Athens—and in varying degrees in other states—the only method of attaining power was to persuade the people, and to do that there was need of eloquence, the faculty of putting a case clearly and attractively. Even without aiming at political influence a citizen of Athens was always liable to plead before a law court. The courts were miniature popular assemblies, the jurors numbering about five hundred, and plaintiffs and defendants had to appear in person and deliver their speeches themselves, though in course of time they were often written for them by professional orators. The need of training in rhetoric was therefore very general. This was supplied by a class of teachers who made it their business to instruct young men after they had left school. They came from various parts of Greece, and lectured in various cities, but Athens attracted those of greatest eminence, and their lecture-rooms to a certain extent filled the place of a university. Though rhetoric was the most prominent subject of their teaching, some of them professed to give instruction in ethics and politics also, and they were known generally by the name of Sophists, or Professors of Wisdom. In a certain sense Socrates may be looked upon as the most eminent Sophist at Athens, though he dis- claimed the title, and would not give formal lectures, or receive fees. Still, some of the ablest young men frequented his company with the view of getting from his conversation and arguments something of the same instruction as that offered by the formal discourses of other Sophists. Of these travelling professors who became known at Athens the most prominent were: (1) Protagoras of Abdera, born about B.C. 480, who was in Athens about B.C. 411, from which city he was banished for the supposed atheistical tendency of his teaching. (2) Gorgias of Leontini, in Sicily, who, born about the same time as Protagoras, is said to have lived more than a hundred years. He visited Athens in B.C. 427 as an ambassador from his native town. He was a rhetorician rather than a Sophist or philosopher, and it is as such that Plato treats him. (3) Polus of Agrigentum, who was also a professional rhetorician, and seems to have been at Athens about the same time as Gorgias. (4) Hippias of Elis, about the same time, was a man of many accomplishments and seems to have lectured on many subjects—rhetoric, politics, ethics, mathematics, and art. He, too, served his country as an ambassador to Sparta. A man who professed such encyclopaedic knowledge was pretty certain not to have gone very deeply into any. Yet lie enjoyed a great reputation, and gained much money as he travelled from city to city. (5) Prodicus of Ceos, who is said to have exercised much influence upon Socrates in early life. He was best known for certain apologues or fables bearing upon morals and right conduct. The well-known fable of the "Choice of Hercules," in which virtue and vice describe to the young hero the two paths of life which they alternately urge him to take, is preserved in the Memorabilia of Xenophon.
As these Sophists depended for their living on the power to draw large classes of young men in the various cities which they visited, they had not only to embellish their discourses with such attractive episodes, but to study to make their style and language striking, novel, or ornate. It would be impossible for them to treat philosophical questions profoundly or in an over-technical spirit. They had to be popular, but their teaching seems to have been suggestive, and on the whole on the side of right. The sort of sensation which they wished to create among the young men of ability in the various cities visited, has been well illustrated by Plato's account of the arrival of Protagoras in Athens. He makes Socrates describe how he was roused before daybreak one morning by an enthusiastic friend, announcing in a state of violent excitement that Protagoras had arrived, the wisest man and most accomplished speaker in the world. He insists on Socrates rising at once and accompanying him to the house of Callias where Protagoras is staying. When they arrived they were roughly repulsed by the porter, irritated by the crowd of visitors, and were with difficulty admitted. When they got in they found Protagoras walking round the cloistered court, with a number of the most distinguished young Athenians walking in line with him on either hand, while a crowd of other young men followed respectfully behind, whom the charm of his eloquence had drawn from the several cities he had visited to follow him. Socrates was amused to notice how neatly the crowd managed never to get in front of him. When he turned it opened to let him pass and then fell in again behind. In other parts of the same court were Hippias and Prodicus, each with his band of admirers, but Protagoras is the chief centre of attraction, and to him Socrates addresses himself with a politeness which, though tinged with irony, is yet reverential in tone and manner. The scene is dramatic, yet it doubtless represents in its main features the sort of thing which occurred when famous Sophists visited a Greek city. The welcome that philosophers found at Athens—tempered by peremptory expulsion if their tenets were regarded as dangerous—tended to make it the natural home of philosophy and gradually to become a kind of university, to which young men resorted to complete their education. There they found a variety of schools to suit their particular tastes and needs, founded and endowed with houses and other property by their original teachers or subsequent adherents. Thus Plato (B.C. 427–347) taught for many years in the gymnasium outside the walls called Academeia, whence
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PLATO, B.C. 427–347.
From the Hermat, Berlin.
the school of philosophy as developed by his successors took its name. Of all the philosophers Plato is the greatest man of letters and master of style. His philosophy, though it inspired and still inspires many men of genius or special aptitude, was too purely ideal and critical to have much influence on ordinary people, and his successors—while professing to found themselves on him—reached in time a position of almost complete scepticism, which is never popular with the masses who desire, above all things, from their teachers something clear and definite. Nor did he, like the Sophists, give what was needed for practical life; for he neither professed nor taught the art of rhetoric.
His pupil Aristotle—the next founder of a school—was born at Stageiros, but passed much of his time at Athens, first in his early youth, and later on (after having been for four years tutor to Alexander the Great) during another thirteen years (B.C. 335–322). His followers and successors were called "peripatetics," from the peripatos or covered walk in the Lyceium, where, for a time at any rate, he met his pupils. The prominent feature in the Peripatetic philosophy is the abandonment of the "ideal" theories of Plato as to the origin of knowledge, and the adoption of the "inductive" method—the collection of facts from which knowledge is derived by reason. Aristotle himself was encyclopaedic in his range of knowledge and interest. He wrote treatises on nearly every subject—on ethics, rhetoric, poetry, politics, metaphysics, and many branches of physics. These treatises have formed the basis of modern advances in philosophy and science, and have therefore profoundly influenced the best intellects of all ages. Still this school did not immediately affect society in the same way as the two next schools founded at Athens, which long retained their head- quarters there—the Epicureans and the Stoics. The doctrines of Epicurus (B.C. 342–270) radically changed the views of a large number of people in the two points which concern men most obviously—religion and morals. In regard to the former, though Epicurus did not deny the existence of gods, he regarded them as unconcerned with the world and men, living apart in endless bliss, not interfering in the world which they did not create and would not guide. The origin of the universe he explained—as the earlier philosophers, Leucippus, Anaxagoras, and Democritus, had done—by the theory of innumerable atoms combining by natural or accidental causes in infinite space. By this doctrine he claimed to have freed mankind from the long tyranny of superstition and fear. The soul was a function of the body and with the body dissolved at death. In death, therefore, there were no terrors, "for as long as we are death is not with us, and when death comes then we are not." Lucretius, whose poem interpreted Epicurus to the Romans, dwells on this point, as Tennyson makes him say—
“'Till that hour |
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ARISTOTLE, B.C. 384–322.
(Spada Palace.)
As to the ethical end, or summum bonum, he affirmed it to be pleasure (ἡδονή); it is for this that we cultivate the virtues and wisdom itself. This doctrine was liable to be misunderstood by those who failed to take into account the life-teaching of Epicurus, which enforced the truth that many immediate pleasures were to be avoided in order to attain true pleasure. This at once gave room and motive for the practice of virtue. On the other hand, as the highest pleasures are to be found in freedom from agitation, the Epicurean was exhorted to seek a life of retirement and to avoid public business. Such a philosophy was easily misinterpreted and became the creed of the rich and idle, or at best of the learned and cultured in Greece and Rome, rather than of the multitude or of the more strenuous and active members of the governing class.
Stoicism, on the other hand, inspired some of the best and finest natures for many centuries. It was founded about B.C. 300 by Zeno, and got its name from the Stoa Poikile at Athens, where he taught. In Ethics it held up a higher ideal than Epicureanism. Happiness (ἐυδαιμονία), not pleasure (ἡδονή), was, according to the Stoics, the end of action, or summum bonum; but that is equivalent to living in harmony with Nature, and that again is equivalent to virtue. It is virtue, therefore, which is alone choice-worthy for its own sake and without regard to fear or hope or anything external to itself. Virtue again is one; wisdom, self-control, justice, courage are only various exhibitions of it. The contraries to these are all included in vice, which, like virtue, is one. There is no middle term. An action is good or bad. All other things affecting men are indifferent (ἀδιάφορα), such as life and death, honour and dishonour, labour and pleasure, wealth and poverty, health and sickness. The perfectly wise man (and he alone) is perfectly virtuous and perfectly happy without regard to any of these external circumstances. Though the equality of all breaches of duty would seem to make social and political institutions useless, yet Stoics were encouraged to enter into ordinary life and business, for they alone are capable of true brotherhood and the highest social life. The religion of Stoicism contained practically the doctrine of Monotheism. One God, of infinite purity, was the origin of all things, existing independently, and furnishing the vital principle which quickened dead matter. In another point of view it is a doctrine of Pantheism—God is everything and everything is God. Providence is not idle, but watches over and directs the universe according to fixed laws and destiny. The human soul, connected with the world-soul, is infused into the body, has a distinct existence and form, and is separated from the body by death. These doctrines commended the Stoic system, with its lofty rules of conduct and reverential views of Nature, to many of the best minds in antiquity; and that Athens should have been the city in which all these philosophies flourished side by side gave her for many centuries a unique place in the admiration and regard of mankind. The highest flight of Stoic views on God and Nature may be here partially illustrated by an extract from a hymn or prayer composed by Cleanthes, who succeeded Zeno as head of the school in B.C. 265:—
“Hail! most glorious of immortal beings, of many names, almighty for ever, Zeus, lord of Nature, that guidest all things by law! To thee all mortals may make their prayer: for of thee are we sprung, having alone of mortal things which live and move upon the earth been dowered with a likeness of thy voice. Therefore of thee will I sing and ever hymn thy might. Thee all this heavenly frame, rolling round the earth, obeys,—by whatever path thou leadest it,—and owns thee for its lord. . . . King art thou, supreme, for ever! Nothing is wrought on earth apart from thee, oh God, nor in the realm of air divine nor in the sea, save what the wicked work by their own lack of wisdom- But thou knowest to make the crooked straight, to bring order out of chaos, to atone strife. For so hast thou yoked together evil with good that order ariseth therefrom, one, eternal. But the wicked will have none of it. Miserable men! they ever yearn to possess the good, yet look not on the impartial law of God, nor hearken thereto, which, if they would obey it, would give them good life. Whereas of their own act they rush upon evil, one with another, some seeking glory with ill-starred rivalry, some set on gain heedless of right or wrong, some given over to loose living and the pleasures of the body. . . . But, oh Zeus, that givest all, oh God of the dark cloud and the vivid lightning, save thou men from folly that beareth bitter fruit! Scatter it from our soul, oh Father, and grant that we attain unto wisdom, whereby thou rulest all things aright, that so being honoured, we may requite thee with honour, hymning thy works for ever, as beseemeth a mortal man: for to none on earth is there nobler task, nor to those in heaven, than rightfully to hymn the Universal Law!”
The earliest literature which formed the staple of the education described above consisted of the Homeric poems and the Epic cycle, which not only served later poets as an inexhaustible store-house of legend and myth, but was regarded by the Greeks generally as the source of their knowledge of the antiquities and early history of their country, and the most authoritative exposition of religion. Of the great mass of this ballad literature there have survived only the Iliad and the Odyssey and the Hymns. The rest—the Cypria, the Aethiopica, the Sack of Troy, the Little Iliad, the Returns, the Thebais and Epigoni (the two last not connected with Troy, but Thebes)—were known rather to the literary class than to the people generally from the sixth century B.C. It was the Iliad and Odyssey, as collected and edited under Peisistratus for the Athenians, and by others for other states, which formed the Bible of Greece : quoted to settle questions of state boundaries and other historical claims, and examined for teaching in morals and theology. It is true that in the fifth and fourth centuries Socrates and Plato, and perhaps other philosophers, objected to the attribution of human passions, disputes, and violent quarrels to the gods which is found in Homer, and wished to forbid these poems and others like them being used in the education of the young. But this was not the view of the ordinary man. They were widely known and received with simple acquiescence. Though written copies were few, yet professional reciters, or Rhapsodes, travelled from town to town, and in the halls of princes or on village greens charmed their hearers with the familiar tale, set out in the stately hexameter, than which no metre ever devised is more musical and simple. Most of the listeners had learnt long portions of it at school and knew the characters of the chief heroes and their fortunes, had been stirred to terror or pity by the wrath of Achilles and his passionate sorrow for Patroclus, by the parting of Hector and Andromache, or the pathetic courage of the aged Priam venturing into the Greek camp to ransom the body of his heroic son from the hand that had slain him. They learnt, as they listened, how an overmastering Fate bound the gods themselves, how Zeus ruled with Justice as his assessor, and how all that sustained or concerned mortals was divine or divinely directed—the air they breathed, the ocean that surrounded the world, the fire that ministered to their needs, the sun, moon, and stars that gave them light, the earth that nurtured and fed them, the wisdom that guided their steps aright, and the folly that bred presumption and involved men in ruin. In the Iliad they found the first elements of ordered government, the necessity of approaching the gods by prayer and sacrifice, the discipline of a camp, the earliest form of those athletic contests which played so large a part in their own lives, and the funeral rites due to the gallant dead. The Odyssey is different. It is a tale of travel and adventure, with pictures ever and again of still life. To sea-going folk like the Greeks, who for many generations had been sending off swarms of their kindred in search of fresh homes in distant lands, its recitation must have stirred the imagination and roused curiosity in a hundred ways; and the descent of the hero to Hades is the earliest view we have of the vague terror of the hereafter, which has inevitably been encountered sooner or later by all peoples whose minds have in any way been roused to speculate on the mystery of life and death.
Connected with this there seems to have been at one time a considerable mass of poetry which may be classed as “Orphic,” from Orpheus, the chief reputed author. It dealt generally with the mystic interpretation of the received theology, and treated of the rites of initiation and symbolic cleansing that atoned for sin or gave hopes of a life to come. Thus initiation in the Eleusinian mysteries was said “to cause those who shared in them to have sweeter hopes concerning the end of life and all eternity.” “Happy he,” says Pindar, “who has seen these mysteries before he goes below the earth! He knows the end of life, and knows its divinely-given beginning.” But though traces of these doctrines or imaginings may perhaps be found in most extant Greek poetry, the original poems of this class are lost. Those that now go under the name are of very late origin. Greek country life, however, has its epic in the “Works and Days” of Hesiod (of uncertain date), which contains a kind of manual of the life and work of a Boeotian farmer set in a mass of homely maxims or proverbs, presenting a curious mixture of shrewd worldly wisdom and primitive religion.
The next class of Greek literature, of which we have any considerable fragments, is that of the Lyric and Elegiac poets from the seventh century. Lyrical poetry is poetry meant to be sung to music, and it is naturally more personal and fervent than other kinds of verse. But this fervour was of two kinds—that of passion, and that of political excitement. To the former class belong the poems of Sappho of Lesbos (about B.C. 610), of whom, besides some less important, there remain two considerable fragments which are marvellously beautiful both in language and in the passion that inspires them.
Alceus (about 610–580 B.C.) was also of Lesbos, and took an active part in the political struggles in the island, first on the side of the nobles against the democrats, and then against Pittacus when (about B.C. 606) he became tyrant or dictator. We have much less of his poetry left, but such short fragments as remain, along with the imitations of Horace, let us see that his muse was inspired by his own activities and controversies, varied by the usual praises of wine as the true consoler. Love he seems not to have cared for. He coined one phrase at least which was copied in various shapes by many Greek writers after him—“Brave men are a city's real tower of strength,” and perhaps another when he said that “Wine was a mirror to mankind,” or again, “Wine, dear boy, and truth.” From a later Lyric poet—Simonides of Ceos (B.C. 556–468)—we have again some valuable remains, especially one beautiful hymn or dirge describing Danae afloat in the wooden chest with her infant son; and also a stanza of nine brilliant lines on the dead at Thermopylae—
“Whose winding-sheet is fame, which no decay |
But the lyric art was carried to its highest perfection by Pindar (about B.C. 521–442), of whose work, how- ever, we have only that part which consisted of hymns of Victory, that is, odes celebrating victors in the great games. Though a Boeotian, and residing at Thebes, Pindar was employed to write these odes by men of all states, and his plan was to say little about the individual victor, but to dilate upon the legends concerned, sometimes only remotely, with his native country or supposed ancestry.[1] The influence of these poems was national just because of this detachment from a personal or local view of things. The legends were the common heritage of Greece, handed down from heroic times, and representing the highest aspirations of the people. They are also so represented as to soften or explain away those stories which attributed immoral or unjust actions to the gods. He shows himself now and again in touch with the great military events of his age, as when he speaks of Artemisium, “where the sons of the Athenians laid a brilliant foundation of liberty. But he is not fond of war, and in later times Polybius censured him for his support of his countrymen in their non-resistance to the Persians, as a peace-at-any-price man. And, indeed, peace is dear to him—she is a “kindly” goddess, a “daughter of Justice,” “holding the keys of counsel and war.” His views on a future life were mostly expressed in his Threnoi, or dirgies, of which only a few fragments remain. He describes the sun which makes the lower world light to its inhabitants, the meadows with their bright flowers and golden fruits, and the spirits engaged in the games or exercises in which they took pleasure on earth, cheered by music, rich banquets, fragrant odours, and burnt sacrifices. Death in his view is a relief from toil, especially happy for those who have been initiated in the mysteries. Still, there is a distinction between the good and the bad. To some favoured souls there is the hope that after due purification they may be restored to the upper air, and animate the bodies of the great and wise.
Elegiac poetry was used chiefly as a means of exhortation and encouragement to bravery in war, or to set out certain views as to politics and social conduct, or, lastly, to furnish epitaphs for those who fell in war. The earliest writer known to us is Callinus of Ephesus (about B.C. 700), the one fragment of whose work of any length is a kind of address by a general to his soldiers exhorting them not to fear death:—
“With dying hand still hurl the quivering spear! |
Tyrtaeus (about B.C. 685–668) migrated from Athens to Sparta, and wrote marching songs and stirring exhortations to the Spartans to fight to the death against the Messenians, as well as a poem named Eunomia, meant to allay party conflicts in Sparta. One tradition represented him as a lame schoolmaster, whom the Athenians contemptuously sent to Sparta in answer to an appeal for help, and who turned out to be the greatest benefit they could have sent for the spirit which his verses inspired in the Spartan youth. The poems either aim at making the Spartans proud of their country and its customs, or exhort the young men to gallantry. “The most desirable death is that which comes in the forefront of the fight, if the youth wishes to be praised of men and loved of women. He dies, but lives for ever: he is mourned and honoured by old and young. If he plays the coward, shame covers him, and life is a misery : he must wander forth a beggar with wife and child, loathed and contemned by all.”
The poems of Solon (c. B.C. 620–560) are more peaceful and political, though the earliest is an exhortation to the Athenians to secure by arms the island of Salamis. In the later ones, however, his chief themes are the beauty and advantage of good order and government, and the problem of reconciling them with freedom, the danger of wealth and corruption, the superiority of virtue to vice, of moderation to pride and presumption. There are reflections also on the various problems of life—the prosperity of the wicked, the mysterious ways of providence, as well as certain details of his own personal habits and thoughts; and a description of the ten stages of a man's life in periods of seven years. The most complete extant work of the Elegiac poets is that of Theognis of Megara (B.C. 540 about). It consists of a series of short poems, varying, as a rule, from four to eight lines (though some are longer) addressed to a certain Cyrnus. They contain a curious medley of practical observations and precepts adapted to the life of the Dorian nobles with whom he lived. Sometimes he is cynical, sometimes practical and acute, but he is never very poetical or interesting. The Elegiacs of Simonides, whose lyrics have been already noticed, are mostly epitaphs on those fallen in the war, or on men with whom he had some special tie of interest. A specimen in a lighter vein, almost “let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,” will show a different side of his genius:—
“ ‘Nothing human that will hold,’— Hope is stronger far than truth, |
Numerous epigrams in Elegiac metre[2] have been preserved in the Anthology, some of them attributed to writers famous in other departments of literature, as, for instance, Plato. One exquisite stanza, rightly or wrongly attributed to him, may be quoted:—
“Thou gazest on the stars, my star! |
Archilochus is said to have first used the Iambic metre in personal satire, “rage armed Archilochus with his own Iambic,” says Horace; and the story is told how he drove the daughters of Lycambes to hang themselves by the bitterness of his attacks. There is little in the fragments that remain to explain such a story, though there is a truculent tone and a suggestion of personal attack in most of the lines: “One great lesson I have learnt, to retaliate on those who use me ill with a sharp return of evil.” Yet he is the earliest to enunciate one generous sentiment which has become proverbial: “'Tis no noble thing to malign the dead.”
Simonides of Amorgos (about B.C. 660) seems to have taken a melancholy view of men and things. One of the two considerable extracts that survive contains a catalogue of the miseries of man—his helplessness in the presence of fate, his baffled hopes, the brevity of his life and the various accidents that bring it to an end. The other is a curious satire on women whose bad qualities he deduces from the several beasts of which they are compounded; yet in another short fragment he can say:—
“A man can find no better prize in life |
The shortness of life and the endlessness of death he perhaps thought balanced each other:—
“Death, were we wise, would seem but one long day.”
“The time for being dead for man is long, |
This melancholy, indeed, finds expression very early in Greek literature, and can be traced through many generations of it, as perhaps of all literatures, taking the form of resignation or despair, angry protest against providence, or faith in an unseen power, according to the character of the individual or his age.
The fifth century saw the rise of the Athenian Drama. Of this literature once so copious we have only plays remaining from three Tragic poets, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides (between B.C. 525 and 405). The foundation of a Greek Play was the Choric Song, which being for the most part of Dorian origin, continued by a literary convention to be written in the Doric dialect, though with considerable modifications. The first step towards a play was the employment of an actor to hold a dialogue with the leader of the chorus. Aeschylus (B.C. 525–456) added a second actor—and perhaps a third—and thus the drama, as we have it, became possible. In the tragedies of Aeschylus the chorus plays a much more conspicuous part than in those of Sophocles, and still more so than in Euripides. In form, however, the plays are, roughly, on the same model, but the poets differ considerably in style and in their view of life, of duty, and providence. Yet there are certain characteristics common to all three arising chiefly from the peculiar circumstances of their age. Thus they are all affected by the rising need and use of oratory. In every play speeches delivered either by the persons chiefly affected, or by some messenger describing the catas
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ÆSCHYLUS, B.C. 525–426.
(Capitoline Museum.)
trophe, are prominent, and are composed with great skill, though with increasing indication of rhetorical training as time goes on. Again, they have all three been affected by philosophical speculation. It has had a very different influence on each, as we shall see, but still it is there. Thirdly, they all take occasion to glorify Athens, either directly or by implication. Again, all alike found their plots on legends or myths already known from Homer or the Cyclic poets or by common tradition. They were, therefore, familiar to their audiences. The originality of the poets was shown in delineation of character displayed in circumstances already known, or in the rearrangement of details so as to bring about the catastrophe demanded by the dramatic situation. Euripides was distinguished from the other two by the freedom with which he treated his material, and the more human and less heroic traits of his characters.
Their point of view in regard to the deeper problems of life was also different. Aeschylus looked at things principally from the religious side. The eternal laws of God, the punishment of sin, reaching through generations, the inevitable doom waiting not only blood-guiltiness, but also impious presumption and contempt of justice. It is these doctrines rather than the delineation of character on which he is intent. Thus in the "Suppliant Women," in which Danaus and his daughters fly to Argos to avoid marriage with their cousins, the sons of Aegyptus, the women and their father are almost lay figures, the King of Argos (not named) merely represents the sovereign conscious of his duty to suppliants. The reason of the women's objection to the marriage is hardly expressed, but force is wrong, the abandonment of suppliants is a breach of religion, and the Divine punishment of both is certain:
“Nay, not though he be dead and in the Unseen |
In the Persians, again, which represents the horror with which news of the defeat of Xerxes at Salamis is received in Persia, what the poet cares for most is to show the punishment of pride and presumption, and of the sacrilege committed by burning the temples in Greece. Xerxes, though a mortal, expected to be able to defy the gods. He put chains upon the sea—the divine Hellespont: his army coming to Hellas scrupled not to burn the images and the temples of the gods and to overturn their altars. Thence came his fall:—
“Ill fares the man whose heart is swollen with pride,— |
In the Seven against Thebes it is the effect of a father's curse and the inevitable and abiding consequences of sin that the poet is illustrating. When Oedipus blinded himself in horror at his involuntary crime his sons Eteocles and Polynices imprisoned him and agreed to share his kingdom. He curses them, and presently the curse is fulfilled. Eteocles expels Polynices, who, with six other heroes, comes to take Thebes. The brothers fall by mutual slaughter. “Since they have fallen by each other's deadly hands and the dust has the black blood of murder, who shall bring purifications? Who shall wash them clean? A new curse upon the house has become involved with an old taint, an old sin swift to bring its penalty, and abiding to the third generation.” At the end of the play Antigone announces her intention to defy the order of the State and to bury her brother. The consequences are not brought out in this play: her words stand as a declaration of sisterly affection, and a protest against the breach of divine law involved in the refusal of funeral rites to the dead.
In the Trilogy—Agamemnon, Choephoroi, and Eumenides—Aeschylus returns to the cycle of the Trojan legend. Here, again, we have a curse abiding to the third generation, but it is made clear how human presumption and sin co-operate with it It can only be stayed by divine interposition. Still Zeus is not the author of sin, but the establisher of an immutable law which makes sorrow its certain sequel (Ag. 167):—
“He will be wise who from his heart proclaims |
It is not God, but the incalculable capacity of men and women for passion and its consequences that is accountable for such horrors as have haunted the house of Atreus (Choeph. 576):—
“Many the forms of woe and fear |
The man that in the pride of his heart spurns the dictates of justice and righteousness, vainly calls on the gods, whom he neglected in his day of prosperous wickedness. They will laugh when his trouble cometh (Eum. 528):—
“Caught in the racing current, which no skill |
is taken, had a narrower and more local object, namely, to support the prestige and authority of the Areopagus, it contains, like the other plays of the Trilogy, reiterated statements of a lofty faith in the justice of providence, in the punishment of sin and presumptuous pride, and in the eternal laws of right and wrong. It is the Prometheus that shows us the poet touched by the philosophic or rationalistic movement. Prometheus represents humanity struggling with the inequalities and injustice of the divine rule of the world. He suffers because he endowed men with “the knowledge of good and evil,” and with the resources which tended to make them more equal to the gods, or, at any rate, less dependent upon them. The gift of fire which he brought them was the origin of all the arts and sciences which ameliorate life and make man self-sufficing, and the superiority of Zeus less marked. He is the martyr of humanity, and suffers because he defied a tyrannical and jealous power. He looks for consolation in converse with all the powers of nature, and claims fellowship with all those who had experienced the injustice of the gods. How can a man serve humanity nobly and unselfishly and yet be offensive to Heaven? That is the problem which Aeschylus has suggested, but has not solved. Prometheus is left in the full horror of his punishment, amidst the loud artillery of Heaven's wrath, still defying it and protesting against its injustice.
As a specimen of the narrative style of Aeschylus, the following extract from the account of the battle of Salamis, put in the mouth of a Persian messenger may perhaps serve (Per. 384):—
“So all night long the masters of the ships |
In Sophocles (B.C. 495–405) we find less insistence on the religious aspect of life, though little rebellion against Providence. To him the highest study of mankind is man. Human passions,
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| Photo] | [Anderson. |
SOPHOCLES, B.C. 495–405.
(Lateran Museum.)
pride, wounded honour, remorse, jealousy, and self-will are traced remorselessly to their inevitable results. Yet the outlook is not all black; the picture is relieved by instances of noble courage and loyal devotion. Œdipus passes from unreasoning confidence to equally unreasoning despair. In his misery and self-inflicted blindness he still retains the hard inflexible temper towards his disloyal sons, which no amount of personal failure or horror for an unwitting sin has served to soften. Ajax is driven to madness by wounded self-love. Philoctetes is weak in everything but resentment. Clytemnestra is a woman whose wickedness is unredeemed by any touch of tenderness or natural feeling. But Electra is a noble nature, though placed in circumstances too difficult for her strength. Antigone is altogether great in affection and courage; Tecmessa shows touching loyalty and devotion to her husband; and Neoptolemus, though persuaded by the cunning of Odysseus to enter upon an ungenerous intrigue, in the end retrieves his good name and proves the real nobility of his nature. Of love scenes in the modern sense there is little or nothing in the tragedians. Nearest to the picture of a lover, as we regard him, is perhaps Hæmon in the Antigone of Sophocles. But though he kills himself upon Antigone's death, it is more from horror than love. It leaves us cold after all. The love (ἔρως) of the tragedians is mostly a baneful passion—irresistible, it is true, and divine, but almost always harmful in its effects—rather a heaven-sent plague than a divine blessing. In the famous invocation to "invincible love" in the Antigone, Sophocles dwells after all as much upon its baleful influence as upon its charm.
Euripides (B.C. 480–406), nearly contemporary with Sophocles, represents a different development of the drama. He is less confined to well-known and familiar subjects of mythology. His language is more careless of the conventional tragic style. He shows clearer signs of having been influenced by philosophical speculations in physics, religion, and morals, as well as by the fashionable study of rhetoric. His critics accused him of weakening the reverence for the gods, of dangerous moral teaching, of lowering the dignity of tragedy by representing heroic figures in mean or sordid circumstances, and particularly of maligning the character of women. Notably Aristophanes attacks him fiercely as a mere sophist, miserable as an artist, and harmful as a moralist, the apostle of modern scepticism, patron of quibbling and disingenuous arguments. Notwithstanding such attacks it seems certain that Euripides was the most popular of the three dramatists, that his plays and their choric songs were widely known and loved. Still Euripides was an innovator in many respects, and had to bear the fate of those who swerve from recognised paths. His heroes and heroines are human, their language is the language of common life, and the choruses in many cases do not form constituent parts of the play. They become as it were interludes between the scenes, and might sometimes be omitted without loss to the development of the plot. At one period of his life he was doubtless fond of putting in the mouth of his
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| Photo] | [Girandon. |
EURIPIDES, B.C. 480–406.
(Louvre.)
characters words that reflected upon the received belief in the gods, and on the providential government of the universe. But, in the first place, it is dangerous to attribute to the poet all that he represents as the reflections of characters in a drama; and, in the second place, if they are to be taken as the expressions of the poet's own sentiments, we cannot but sympathise with a spirit which felt the weight of the unsolved riddle of life, and rejected as impossible many of the solutions which were so easily admitted, by his contemporaries. One of these speculations, ridiculed by Aristophanes, seems to show a profound insight into the supreme difficulty—"Who knows whether our life is not a death, our death a life?" Τίς οἷδεν εἰ τὸ ζῆν μέν ἐστι κατθανεῖν, τὸ κατθανεῖν δὲ ζῆν; The other sentence so often brought up against him, once even in a law court, to show that his oath could not be trusted—ἡ γλῶσσ' ὀμώμοχ' ἡ δὲ φρὴν ἀνώμοτος, "My tongue has sworn, but my mind is bound by no oath,"—is put into the mouth of Hippolytus, who nevertheless braves death rather than break the oath. If again there are many evil things said of women in his plays, there are also many splendid testimonies to their high qualities, and the noble courage and devotion of Alcestis, Polyxena, Iphigeneia and Macaria. are proofs that Euripides could rise to the highest conception of womanly excellence. It must be remembered, moreover, that the literary activity of Euripides fell for the most part in the period immediately preceding the Peloponnesian war and during that war itself. It was a time in which party feeling ran high, and it would seem that Euripides was on the side of the war party, while Aristophanes and the conservatives generally were for accommodation with Sparta. Even after the peace of Nikias (B.C. 421) there was strong distrust of Sparta, which Euripides perhaps gave expression to when he made Andromache utter her fierce denunciation of Menelaus (Androm. 445):—
“Of mortals hatefulest to the world of men, |
If this at all represents the political feelings ol Euripides it is quite enough to account for the animosity of Aristophanes. Towards the end of his life he retired to Macedonia, on the invitation of King Archelaus, and what is probably his latest play, the Bacchœ, was written there. It is not easy to define the poet's object in this charming and picturesque drama, or how far it was meant to convey a recantation of his old opinions in religion. It seems at least to suggest that he had given up hope of solving deep questions, and was content to let things be.
Of Attic Comedy we have only remaining the eleven plays of Aristophanes (circa B.C. 444–380). These plays, with two exceptions, were produced during the Peloponnesian war. The Acharnians, the
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| Photo] | [Alinari. |
ARISTOPHANES, C. B.C. 444–380.
(Uffizi Gallery, Florence.)
Knights, the Clouds, the Wasps, the Peace, and the Birds (between B.C. 425 and 413) are full of political allusion and denunciations. They are all on the side of peace and against the demagogues (especially Cleon), and anything else which the poet regards as characteristic of the democratic or war party. Thus in the Clouds he attacks the supposed atheistic and immoral tendency of the teaching of certain Sophists, of whom Socrates is unfairly made the representative. In the Wasps he shows up the ill effects of payment to the dicasts. The next two plays, the Thesmophoriazusae and Lysistrata (B.C. 411), join to political suggestions in the same direction a violent attack upon Euripides, which is repeated in the Frogs (B.C. 405). These plays may be classed as the Old Comedy, the distinguishing features of which are unscrupulous attacks upon living men, and a chorus of which the leader addresses the audience in the name of the poet in a long speech called the para- basis full of contemporary allusions. In the Thesmophoriazusae and Lysistrata, however, there is no parabasis, and they are sometimes classed as Middle Comedy. Two other plays remain—the Ecclesiazusae, “Women in Parliament,” and the Plutus (B.C. 392). The political element is much modified in the former, and altogether absent in the latter. They have no parabasis, and they lead the way to a new style of comedy,—a comedy of manners, in which the choric element wholly disappears. This is called the “New Comedy,” of which the chief writer was Menander of Athens (B.C. 342–291), of whom only fragments remain. We, however, have some knowledge of his work and that of other writers in this style from the plays of Plautus and Terence, which were translated, or at any rate adapted, from them. They give a picture of the domestic life in Greece as it was when politics were no longer of absorbing interest. The plots generally turn on the love adventures of young men, assisted by cunning or faithful slaves, frowned upon or pardoned by severe or indulgent fathers. In most there are seen those blots on Greek life—the habit of exposing infants, the trade of the slave-dealer in young girls, and the severities to which slaves themselves were exposed. The only outlet for the energies of active young men seems to be now the career of a mercenary soldier in the service of some of the successors of Alexander the Great. The picture of social and domestic life is not otherwise unkindly, and though there are the conventional gibes at women and marriage, there is a manifest appreciation of family confidence and purity. The parasite, or needy hanger-on, is an almost invariable feature in these plays, performing a part something between those of the chorus and the “messengers” in the old plays. He, too, is perhaps rather a stage convention than a representative of anything real. Along with these plays of the “New Comedy” there existed a sort of dramatic dialogue or “mime.” These mimes seem to have belonged principally to outlying parts of Hellas. Those of Herondas (discovered in 1890) came from the cities on the Pontus, perhaps Cyzicus, and are written in the dialect used in those parts. They do not give a very agreeable picture of Greek life.
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| Photo] | [Alinari. |
MENANDER, C. B.C. 342–291.
(Vatican Museum.)
After the time of Alexander, literary activity tended to centre at Alexandria rather than Athens, which still, however, remained the headquarters of philosophy. Not that the poets were for the most part born at Alexandria; they came from Sicily and other parts of Hellas, but they generally spent part of their life at Alexandria, where a school of critics gathered round the great Library, and made a natural centre for men of learning and letters. To this school, therefore, belong the epic poet Apollonius of Rhodes (c. B.C. 235), whose Argonautica is an imitation of the Homeric style, and the pastoral poets, Bion of Smyrna, Moschus and Theocritus of Syracuse (between B.C. 300 and 250). Of these Theocritus has left the largest amount of work and has had the greatest influence on succeeding writers. In his thirty-six Idylls there are the qualities whose charms are universal—freshness, humour, passion. The dramatic skill of his dialogues, such as that of the immortal fifteenth Idyll, satisfies every sense and taste. The country scenes and the pastoral background in which the poems are set have an extraordinary fascination. A short passage taken from the seventh Idyll, and describing a woodland retreat in the southern summer, may give us some idea of this charm. Two shepherds are resting after a walk on a couch of “sweet mastich and vine leaves”:—
Of quivering leaves. Hard by a sacred spring
Leapt babbling from the grotto of the nymphs,
'Neath shady sprays the brown cicala kept
An endless chirping. Where the tree-frog haunts
A distant murmur filled the bramble's maze.
Soft cooed the doves, nor ever ceased the note
Of lark and finch. About the water's edge
This way and that hovered the yellow bees
In tangled flight. The luscious summer's scent,
The scent of autumn fruit-time, filled the air.
Pears by our feet and apples at our sides
Rolled in rich plenty, and the sloe-tree's boughs
Dipped to the ground beneath their load of fruit.”
The Greek historians of the classic age have been noticed in the preceding pages and have supplied their substance. Historical writing began in Ionia, but the earliest writer whose work is extant came from the Doric colony of Halicarnassus in Caria. In the eyes of Herodotus (c. B.C. 484–425) the right preparation for writing history was travel. He there- fore visited most parts of Greece and of the Persian Empire, and made a careful study of Egypt—everywhere asking questions and visiting famous places and buildings. He loved a good story and tells it with consummate skill, but he is nevertheless careful to distinguish between what he thinks can be proved and what depends upon mere report. His work is also conceived in an epic spirit. All his researches and episodical narratives contribute to one great theme—the struggle of East and West, and lead up to one catastrophe—the victory of moderation and discipline over pride and luxury. Thucydides, son of Olorus (about B.C. 471–401), confined himself to describing one episode in Greek history, the Peloponnesian War, though his first book contains a valuable summary of the early history of Greece. He only lived to complete the story of that war to the year B.C. 411. Herodotus had used the Ionic dialect, either because he had become familiar with it during his residence at Samos, or because of a literary tradition from the earliest historians of Miletus (Hecataeus and Hellanicus); but Thucydides was an Athenian, and the Attic dialect in his time was becoming the language of literature. He has many of the highest qualities of an historian, patient accuracy, large and sagacious insight, and on great occasions a supreme power of vivid representation. But his style is often complex and obscure, and his idea of representing his views dramatically by com- posing speeches to be put into the mouths of the actors in the great events, set a precedent which was unfortunate. Xenophon (c. B.C. 431–354) continued the narrative of Thucydides in his Hellenica down to B.C. 362. He was neither a great artist nor possessed of any deep insight; but he excels in a certain simplicity and directness of statement. He wrote many things besides this history: the narrative of the march of the ten thousand Greeks who accompanied Cyrus in the expedition against his brother; the life of King Agesilaus; essays in various political and agricultural subjects; and two political romances, the Hiero and Cyropaedeia. In his youth he was much influenced by Socrates, whose teaching he recorded in a Symposium and Anecdotes (Memorabilia). Polybius (B.C. 203–121) is the historian of the Graeco-Roman period. To him chiefly we owe our knowledge of the Achaean and Aetolian Leagues, and of the Macedonian wars which brought Greece under Roman sway. Happily the plan of his history was so wide that it embraced much else: and to him we owe our knowledge of the first Punic War, and a great deal relating to the kingdoms of Syria and Egypt established after the death of Alexander.
Those are the four great historians of Greece. There were many others, but their works have been lost. The later writers of history in Greek—Diodorus of Sicily, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Appian (in the last century B.C.) are on a lower level as artists, and the two last were historians rather of Rome than Greece. To Diodorus, however, who was dull but honest, we owe a good deal of what is known of the history of Sicily.
The last department of Greek classical literature to be noticed is Oratory. Democratic institutions, I have already said, imply the existence and influence of oratory. Pericles and the demagogues who succeeded him were what they were because they knew how to persuade the people. Popular law courts involve the same necessity. In Athens, for instance, the jury consisted of some five hundred men. To address them successfully implied something of the same qualities as those possessed by a popular leader. Everywhere in Greece, therefore, we find professional teachers of the art of speech. No subject was more often professed by the Sophists, but of scientific treatises on its principles—represented by the general term Rhetoric (ῥητορικὴ τέχνη), we have of the classical age only that of Aristotle. Of the actual products of the art—speeches—we have somewhat more. A class of professional speech-writers arose in answer to the needs of the time, and there must once have been a great many of such compositions existing. We possess, however, only specimens from the ten Attic Orators: Antiphon (B.C. 480–411); Andocides (B.C. 435–387); Lysias (c. B.C. 450–373); Isaeus (c. B.C. 420–348); Isocrates (B.C. 436–338); Lycurgus (B.C. 396–323); Aeschines (B.C. 387–314); Demosthenes (B.C. 384–322); Hypereides (B.C. 396–322); Deinarchus (B.C. 361–285).
Of these Lysias was mainly a speech-writer for others, though some of the orations were delivered in his own name and in his own interests; Isocrates wrote for the most part pamphlets in the form of speeches; Isaeus in his extant speeches confines himself to cases of disputed claims under wills. From the others we have one or more speeches on special subjects, as that of Andocides on the violation of the mysteries, but most of them are in favour of or against the anti-Macedonian policy of Demosthenes. Of the three surviving speeches of Aeschines one is on the embassy to Philip on which he and Demosthenes served, and one is in prosecution of the man who proposed to "crown" Demosthenes. The answer of Demosthenes to both is extant. As literature far the most important in number and splendour of style are the orations of Demosthenes. Though a considerable number of them are purely forensic—spoken by himself or his clients in private lawsuits, the most notable are those which relate to public questions, and they are for the most part connected with his policy of opposition to the designs of Philip, king of Macedonia—the Olynthiacs, the Philippics, on the Chersonese, on the "fraudulent embassy," "on the Crown," and others. The political purpose of these speeches has already been noted. As literature they mark the highest point in the development of a Greek prose style. Clear, incisive, and harmonious, the language at once pleases the ear and flashes the meaning upon the mind. The art is so great that it is entirely concealed; and for the moment each word or phrase seems inevitable, He carried conviction as though by an irresistible torrent. It was only when the commanding voice, and the long roll of the sentences were silent, that an audience could begin to see that it had been carried off its feet, and swept far in a direction to which, in its soberer reflections, it had no intention of going.
Though with the loss of freedom the constant need for oratory was much diminished, it continued to be cultivated in Greece as an art. Rhetoric schools existed in other parts of Hellas as well as at Athens, as, for instance, at Rhodes and in various Greek cities of Asia. The Attic style, however, retained its reputation for purity and moderation, while that of Asia was ornate and turgid. The Rhodian style was regarded as intermediate, and in the age of Cicero the school at Rhodes was very largely frequented by young Roman nobles who wished to perfect themselves in the art of Rhetoric, as the foundation for the practical use of oratory, so much needed by public men at Rome.
Within the last twenty years certain parts of the writings of Greek authors long lost have been recovered on papyri found in Egypt. The most important are (1) a treatise on the Constitution of Athens, attributed to Aristotle. (2) Five speeches of Hypereides. (3) About twenty odes of Bacchylides more or less complete. (4) Part of the Antiope of Euripides. (5) Part of the triumphal Ode of Timotheus. (6) Certain Mimes of Herondas. (7) Part of a play of Menander—the Labourer. Some Epicurean treatises have also been deciphered on the charred rolls discovered at Herculaneum.
- ↑ Other Lyric poets were of the Aeolian school, with Sappho Alcaeus, Anacreon (circ. B.C. 530); of the Dorian school, Alcman, Stesichorus, Arion, Ibycus (B.C. 660–540); contemporary with Pindar, and writing in somewhat the same style, Bacchylides of Ceos, and four women, Myrtis and Corinna of Boeotia, Telesilla of Argos, and Praxilla of Sicyon.
- ↑ Other Elegiac and Iambic poets are Archilochus (about B.C. 670), who was also known best for his Iambics; Simonides of Amorgos (about B.C. 660); Phocylides of Miletus (about B.C. 540), who also wrote Hexameters; Xenophanes of Colophon (about B.C. 510), the Eleatic philosopher; Hipponax of Ephesus (about B.C. 540), wrote Scazons, i.e., Iambics with a spondee in the last foot, copied afterwards by Callimachus (about B.C. 240) and Babrius, the fabulist (about A.D. 40). The Planudean Anthology was collected by Planudes Maximus, a monk of Constantinople (about A.D. 1330). There were other Anthologies: the most important is that called the Palatine Anthology, made by Constantinus Cephalus in the tenth century A.D., and rediscovered in Heidelberg in the library of the Palatine electors in 1606, by Salmasius. This is now the standard Greek Anthology.